Saturday, December 1, 2012

Garrison State Update


The Wall Street Journal today 12/1/2012 has an interesting article titled "Pentagon Lawyer Looks Post-Terror" by J. Barnes p. A9

[Excerpted] The Pentagon's top lawyer [Jeh Johnson] said that policy makers must look to a time when the US is no longer at war with al Quada and that taking on the remnants of the terrorist group would be a matter for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, not the military....

...Republicans argue such statements [as Rice's claim that the group has been decimated] underestimate the strength of the affiliated groups in North Africa and the Middle East....

Majia here: I strongly urge readers to watch Adam Curtis' series The Power of Nightmares to understand how the "war on terror" has been constructed and waged here

The "war on terror" essentially replaced the Soviet Union as the boogeyman that justifies US military-industrial-surveillance growth (e.g., see my article on the "unmanned system caucus" a.k.a. "drone caucus" here)

The "war on terror" also legitimizes US resource imperialism in the Middle East and Africa.

Finally, "the war on terror" has justified significant domestic infringements on civil liberties, in the forms of the Patriot Act and the National Defenese Authorization Act, which essentially ends habeas corpus in America. 

In 2011 Reuters warned that "Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
 
NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision Back in Effect By Josh Gerstein, Politico  03 October 12
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13779-ndaa-indefinite-detention-provision-back-in-effect

Majia here: The war on terror is a very convenient pretext. I don't see it ending any time soon. It could have been waged using law enforcement and intelligence agencies from the very beginning. It was not because the war on terror is a convenient fiction that justifies the expansion of the US garrison state. 

The war on terror produces the enemies it fights, primarily by killing civilians in drone attacks.

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