Opinion> Paul Craig Roberts> Making Americans Unsafe

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Making Americans Unsafe

The Bush regime's "terrorist" protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the U.S. Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now 1 million names on the "terrorist" watch list.

One of them is that of former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent "terrorist" protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson who served in the highest echelons of the U.S. government from a Muslim terrorist.

What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an assistant U.S. attorney general from a terrorist?

Robinson said: "If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced."

"Hundreds of thousands of people" on a watch list that they have no business being on?

Yes. "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

And this is America, not Nazi Germany?

How can airport "security" possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high-level American government official from a terrorist?

Do you really believe there are 1 million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government's account of that episode)?

How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins.

According to the Bush regime's line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America's tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon, and to send the president of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.

One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn't need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.

What we are witnessing with the 1 million person "watch list" is bureaucracy run amok. One million terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water, and riffling your belongings in your luggage.

Show your ID. Take off your shoes.

Take off your belt. Take off your jacket.

Empty your pockets.

Don't complain about being searched without a warrant, or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused — the fate of many American citizens.

The morons who comprise the U.S. government call the "watch list" one of the government's "most effective tools in the fight against terrorism."

What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.

The "watch list" has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.

The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning."

It is worse than that. What the "watch list" or "no-fly list" is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of "safety from terrorists," Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

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"A Gestapo is being trained."
Yes, this does seem to be a plausible claim. However, who will be the beneficiaries? (I think of this
title I see at Barnes and Noble: The Nazi Beneficiaries.)
My perhaps suprising answer is those whom the ACLU and The People for the American Way are
most inclined to protect!
The last time I flew was 12/16/1989 -- my 33rd birthday. I flew from Orlando to Atlanta. The next
day, Atlantan are introduced to Judge Robert Vance, a federal judge of the Atlanta circuit livng in Alabama.
Robert Leroy Moody was eventually convicted of this action in a federal court in Minnesota. Interestingly,
he was also convicted of vandalizing the abortion clinic in my neighborhood (Home Park) on the last weekend
of August 1989 -- interesting federal crime! I have good reason to believe that my favorite GIT professor
was a lookout (or something) for the vandalism. My reason for being back at Home Park on that anniversary
of the BTP, was that Operation Rescue was having a protest at the clinic. (I may have been on TV exchanging
gifts with Santa -- I received a condom, Santa received a tea bag.) One of the recollections I have of OR is
a man who showed up at the Home Park clinic while there some sidewalk counsellors there. he said that he
had been discussed when the news was the bombing of clinics, but thank God for Randy Terry and the non-violent
Ghandiesque rescuers. I don't believe I responded; I certainly did not give my immediate reaction: I am much
more discussed with the pictures of fully formed fetuses having been salted to death, than news that an empty
building used for the Naziesque practice of abortion being reduced to rubble.
I have talked with Michael Hirch, one of the 3 pillars of OR1988, and requested that he and his Baby John and
Baby jane Does have a reunion in Denver this August. But this time have a Boston Tea Party. I have only two
rules: Don't kill anyone and make sure that whatever property you destroy is not productive (eg: do not bomb
grocery stores -- admittedly, I do not care if you bomb a liquor store.)

Comment: #1
Posted by: John Mark Coney
Wed Jul 23, 2008 9:25 AM

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I believe more the poll that says Obama is ahead by 1%, rather than the one which says that he is
ahead by 9%. Even if Obama wins, however, it will only be a bump in the road to establishing world
peace through the American-Zionist Alliance. It was disappointing to read the report that GWB was
so mesmerized by the pope that he wants to join the RCC. This gives support to Jonah Goldberg's
thesis that, for all their disagreement on foreign policy now, they are the same kind of conservative.
Goldberg's critique of GWB/PJB does suggest to me that I may have some common ground with PJB.
However, reading through his books "Day of Reckoning" and "How the Right Went Wrong", and especially
"Unnecessary War," I lose hope. The only commonality I have with PJB is on moral issues, but like
any Pope-Defender, his refusal to denounce and leave the RCC over the issue of immoral priests leads
me to believe that he will eventually accept the practice of sodomy. Even abortion is defensible on the
grounds that if Mary is Queen of the Universe, then our mothers should have absolute right to decide
whether their offspring will live. I have begun to declare myself to have been immaculately conceived.
It is time to challenge the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. Paul writes: So then death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. NOT: Sin passed to all men because Adam sinned!
Concerning "Unnecessary War": PJB's argument appears to be: Britain made a mistake in defending
Poland. Hitler wanted peace with Britian, and if Britian would have allowed Germany and Russia to split
Poland, we would have had peace, not only "in our time", but indefinitely. GIANT PROBLEM: BJP grants
that Hitler wanted to destroy the Jews. Conclusion: Churchill should have let Hitler destroy the Jews.
The defense of the Jews was entirely unnecessary! I can imagine PJB responding that saving the Jews
was never a goal of Britian, which only would be more evidence how anti-Semitic and crypto-Nazi he is.
Who else can imagine a Germany under Hitler living in a peaceful Europe? I fear there are many crypto-
Nazi like PJB. Well, there is always the Audacity of Hope!

Comment: #2
Posted by: John Mark Coney
Mon Jul 28, 2008 1:33 PM

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PJB quotes Strobe Talbot about his vision of a world without the nation-state. He also alludes to
WSJ's Robert Bartlett. What no one seems to observe is that in this New Globalist vision, there will
still be geographic regions, and perhaps more subtly, there will be a capital. A capital for the globe,
and a capital for each region. Let me first try to establish some common ground between me, the
New Globalists, and the Old Globalists (PJB and the like minded): We all look or a day when we will
beat our swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks (for those unfamiliar, this phrase occurs
3 times in the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah 2, Micah, and perhaps Joel, though I am uncertain about the
third place.), neither shall we learn war any more. Strobe Talbot's mechanism for destroying the
nation-state must be the UN; My guess is that for Barlett, somehow we will all end up buying stock
on the NYSE! Now , I have claimed that, contrary to appearance, PJB is a globalist: His capital is
Vatican City. The idea of the New Globalists is terribly naive. It occurs to me to claim that their
biggest shortcoming is how they view the future of sexual mores. They are apparently Lennonists:
The fundamental law of sex in the World of Global Peace is: Have it your way. I will designate Karl
Menger, son of founder of the Austrian School of Economics Carl Menger, and a mathematician of
note as the leading intellectual behind the Sexual Theory of the New Globalists. My reason is the recollection of his short book on ethics wherein he seems to espouse unrestrained
eugenics. Probably Peter Singer, the Princeton bioethicist and author of a book about his grandfather's
Vienna, would be fully acceptable to Menger. I make this claim: The model for a society where there are
no sexual mores except personal desire is Hindustan (India).
I will stop here, and await someone's response.

Comment: #3
Posted by: John Mark Coney
Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:29 AM

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