Iron Mountain: America’s Hope Became America’s Suicide Note
Report From Iron Mountain: Peace Would Be All Hell
By Rand Clifford
VeteransToday.com
Sunday, August 19th, 2012
Early in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, protagonist Winston Smith writes in his diary, “I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.”
Sixty-four years later, neocon think-tank warriors bristling with the bravery of being out of range are realizing their dreams of perpetual war; fruition of their world-conquest manifesto, Project for the New American Century (1). For humanity it’s all translating into a nightmare with no waking up.
If we step back from mainstream-media sweet talk about freedom and liberty, democracy, government of, by and for the People, human rights, “humanitarian” interventions…we might better see the roots of perpetual war.
Mainstream corporate media calls what is essentially perception management, news.
Regarding HOW:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H. L. Mencken (2)
Hobgoblins come in many varieties. Among the most enduring are inanimate menaces such as communism, socialism, environmentalism, Islam, other nations’ weapons of mass destruction; and there’s Cuba, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela—essentially, any nation not yet under Washington’s thumb….
Living hobgoblins are more ephemeral; we often kill them and add fresh ones.
Castro, Milosevic, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Kony, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, bin Laden…ahem, Osama was scary enough that even after mainstream media reported his death at the end of 2001, his menace was prolonged for years with ridiculous body doubles, then audio for idiots…until we “…killed Osama bin Laden” for political lube (3).
So many people actually swallowed Osama’s second death that, after profound amnesia kicks in as usual, we may kill him again, and again—keep surfing the amnesia waves until the “new” wears off. Stay tuned to Fox News (if we do kill bin Laden again, it will be Fox’s third announcement of his demise).
Third time’s a charm—or is Osama bin Laden a bad cat living to the nines?
My apologies if this seems over the top, but…please consider that, officially, 19 Arab boys with box cutters executed the heinous “surprise attacks” of 9/11. It’s stoned into history now, right down to a hijacker’s passport fluttering unscathed to the sidewalk for officials to snatch up. 9/11 is evidence that if the PR, branding and packaging are just right, and fear is cultivated properly, virtually anything is salable to the American public.
The hobgoblin mill runs at capacity 24/7, scaring us into apathetically surrendering citizens’ rights earned over centuries with bravery and blood.
Ever more docile, ignorant, disinformed, xenophobic, acceptive of fascism…we have hands bloodier by the day from being party to an expanding palette of war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Acquiescence to neocon barbarity has left our hands—even our souls?—with stains that might never wear off.
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, told us at every opportunity that “They hate us for our freedoms and democracy.” Well, perhaps “they hate us” more for our handiwork (and souls—or lack thereof) than anything else?
The Rest…HERE
