I leave the Archives and head for the dinosaurs, who presumably no longer present any security risks. I pass through the Archive's security gates uneasily, knowing that my country has lost something important. We're hardly any safer for keeping Saudi history a secret. The 9/11 terrorists committed a horrendous crime, but they did not take away our national security. We have done this to ourselves.
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Yes, precisely.
The loss of freedom of information with regards to now off-limits topics (which in the case of Saudi Arabia is for political motives so obvious they're glowing) and the transformation of library staff who are willing into commissars are not the only effects. Though those should be enough to arouse public resistance.
The PATRIOT act outlook, the way of seeing mandated and inspired by this law, is that a sufficiently well developed sense of fear and suspicion is the proper mind-set for intercepting terrorists and foiling their plans.
This springs primarily from the Bush administration's love of authoritarian techniques but also, I believe, from a kind of ineptitude and even laziness which is trying to mask itself as 'muscular action.' Anyone who's worked for a corporation should be familiar with this.
Which course is easier do you suppose: hounding immigrants, 'apprehending' men like John Walker Lindh, Zacarias Mossaoui and Jose Padilla while loudly declaring them to be 'terrorist masterminds' or performing the slow, detailed work of tracking internationally mobile criminals?
The Busheviks, a group who apparently believe it's possible to achieve empire on the cheap with minimal effort and planning, have shown that they love to bully.
What they have yet to demonstrate is the skill of the bully whose hegemony has legs.
The generation of American imperialists who created the cold world order appear to have been clever fellows - mostly morality free, racist and classist, but skillful at executing their program (the devil must be given his due). The present bunch, while sharing their vainglory, seem to have none of their acumen.
DRM
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