Pretext for War and Dominion

In the past, many times leaders of nations have needed a pivotal event, a trigger, in order to shake loose the masses from their inertia.  Evil men are not above manufacturing such pretexts:  the Reichstag Fire, the "invasion" of Germany by Poland in 1939 are among a long string of criminal actions.

Well, a friend sent me something that has caused me to rethink some things.  More below the flip.

We all suspect (and some of us adamantly believe) that the Bush and the Cheney cabals are composed largely of sociopaths, men who have no empathy for others and view others as tools to be used or squandered.  We know they are driven by a lust for power and wealth.  And, in a country where Ford would make a cost/benefit analysis that the costs of lawsuits were less than fixing a product that killed hundreds of people, why is it too outlandish to contemplate that truly evil men would "invest" innocent lives for a greater cause?

So, what my friend sent me was this link.  Watch the video, it will take an hour or so.  At the least it is unsettling and raises disturbing questions.  And consider what has occurred since 9/11, the gargantuan transfer of wealth between different sectors of industry and different economic strata of our population.  

Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars have changed hands, flowing in certain very specific directions.  And we now have a police state, with Congress a lapdog, the media a de facto organ of the state, and the judiciary subsumed by the executive branch.  Look long and hard at where we are, at what has actually transpired at the macro level, and tell me whether you think it is too preposterous to contemplate.

•  If these men were capable of lying us

  into a war of aggression against Iraq, why wouldn't they be capable of creating a pretext for the war on terror?

  by lysias on Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 02:55:54 AM PDT

•  Too horrible

  to even contemplate.
  Most people ignore the signs and hints that something terrible is going to happen or is happening.Human nature, fuck you Jack I'm alright !
  Sad but true.

  by madbernie on Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 03:55:44 AM PDT

•  yes...

  why is it too outlandish to contemplate that truly evil men would "invest" innocent lives for a greater cause?

  Ignoring the good/evil dichotomy (which, IMO, is false) this excuse has been used to rationalize many deeds as "necessary evils."  Hiroshima and Nagasaki for example.  The invasion of Iraq under the doctrine of preventing further war (i.e. war is peace).

  We like to toss Hitler into the "evil" bin, yet we forget that in order to have a Holocaust, one has to have people who support such a thing.  Who think it's a neat idea.  Or perhaps they are just "doing their job."  What the Nuremberg trial teachs us is that people are capable of heinous acts.  People who are just like me and you.  All it takes is the right psychological environment.

  It's scary when people hundreds of miles away from D.C. show devoted loyalty to the figurehead sitting in the White House, even to the extent that they damage relations with their own neighbors.  Yet these devoted "patriots" don't see the money.  They don't see the international capitalism.  They don't see the luxury the aristocrats in Washington have to travel around the globe and how they enjoy it.  The common folk in Georgia can barely afford a vacation to Disney, let alone a trip to Europe or Asia.

  It would be nice if the representatives in Washington were as devoted to the national boundary as they claim they are.  But between you and me, the average America is as important as those 11 innocent Iraqis killed the other day.  Or the innocents living on the Pakistan border, slaughtered from afar by a flying machine.

  Then there is the cold humanless bureaucracy, which has probably resulted in more deaths than all wars combined.  The casual trickle of death adding up to a mountain.

  Where did the idea that life is sacred come from?  Maybe the system has gotten so big that it's impossible to mask out the true nature of life, which is that life is competition.

  Enough rambling...

  by hour on Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 05:30:12 AM PDT

•  I keep wondering when other countries

  will see all the signs that we saw with Japan and Germany and decide like we did to get together and do something about The United States of America, the country that has gone crazy with supremacist ideology.  What will be the tipping point for them?  Perhaps they will merely cut off our supply of oil and goods, particularly the war munitions made in China.  At any rate, they must be thinking they need to give up something bigger to worry about than turning the middle east into the end game.  They must be thinking they need to redirect our focus.  They HAVE to be talking about it.  Just look at the polls of all other nations showing the U.S. is really losing it big time.  What to do with a crazy nation?

  by alwaysquestion on Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 07:20:06 AM PDT