-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine2.html
}}}>Begin
October 1, 2001
Homeland Insecurity
By Douglas Valentine
Under Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security Office
will coordinate 46 government agencies against terrorist suspects in
the United States. Ridge will perform this function in conjunction
with Bush's deputy national security advisor, Army Gen. Wayne
Downing.
Bush Administration officials are still working out the "lines of
authority" between the two new positions, but it's clear that from
now on, the military is going to have a central role in domestic anti-
terrorism activities.
The reason for the military's prominence is simple: Bush wants to
establish special, extra-legal military tribunals that can try
suspected terrorists without the ordinary legal constraints of
American justice. These military tribunals apparently would have the
authority to execute terrorists within 30 days of their conviction.
The Bush Administration denied considering a national identification
card system that would empower our Big Brothers with the omnipotence
required to catch terrorists before they strike. But you can be sure
that some system will be devised to enable Ridge at Homeland
Security, and Downing on behalf of the Pentagon, to keep track of
every suspects every move."
The problem is that no one has yet defined "suspect".
The Usual Suspects
During the Vietnam War, under the CIA's Phoenix Program --which is
the model for the Homeland Security Office -- a terrorist suspect was
anyone accused by one anonymous source. Just one. The suspect was
then arrested, indefinitely detained in a CIA interrogation center,
and tortured until he or she (or in some cases children as young as
twelve) confessed, informed on others, died, or was brought before a
military tribunal (such as Bush is proposing) for disposition.
In thousands of cases, innocent people were imprisoned and tortured
based on the word of an anonymous informer who had a personal grudge,
or was actually a Viet Cong double agent feeding the names of loyal
citizens into the Phoenix blacklist.
At no point in the process did suspects have access to due process or
lawyers, and thus, in 1971, four US Congresspersons stated their
belief that the Phoenix Program violated that part of the Geneva
Conventions guaranteeing protection to civilians in time of war. I
repeat, in time of war.
But those sorts of abuses can't happen here, during Bush's newly
declared war on terrorism, right?
Yeah, right.
Symbolically, the terror attacks of 11 September wiped the
psychological slate clean. All the moral prohibitions on the
reactionary right wing have been lifted. The same thing happened in
the Fatherland after the First World War -- and that is the real
threat of anti-terrorism we're facing in America today.
In the name of anti-terrorism, all of the nation's pent-up anger and
frustration over Vietnam, and a host of other "cultural" issues, is
poised to be unleashed on the Enemy Within. And the Bush
Administration and its propagandists have already defined the Enemy
Within in very clear terms: "We're all Israelis now," they say,
adding that, "You're with us or you're against us," in the declared
war against terrorism.
And being "against us" is a dangerous proposition. As noted, Bush is
considerating the formation of Phoenix-style military tribunals that
operate beyond due
process of law. The system was tested in Vietnam thirty years ago,
and perfected in Israel on the Palestinians, and is ready for
application here and now.
The New Psywar
As stated twelve years ago in the October 1989, Marine Corps Gazette
(p 22-26a), Bush's New War will be "widely dispersed and largely
undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to
the vanishing point." There will be no "definable battlefields or
fronts," and the distinction between "civilian" and "military" will
disappear. "Success will depend heavily on effectiveness in joint
operations (such as Bush proposes between Ridge at Homeland Security
and Downing at the Pentagon) as lines between responsibility and
mission become very blurred."
According to the Gazette article, success in the New War against
undefined suspects will also depend on "psychological operations"
manifest "in the form of media/information intervention." One must
be "adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic and world
opinion...." On the psywar battlefield, "Television news may become a
more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions."
The TV "hawks" love to blame the anti-war movement for Americas
defeat in Vietnam, and they assert in these do-or-die times that
dissent promotes terrorism. In terms of the psywar strategy outlined
above, this is exactly how nationalists and even pacifists became
equated with terrorists in Vietnam, and thus subject to indefinite
detention and torture in an interrogation center, and -- in the case
of some 40,000 plus individuals -- assassination under the CIA's
Phoenix Program.
The Bush Administration claims that a war against terrorism requires
different justice. The strategy is working in Israel, but in Vietnam
it turned an entire population against its government and engendered
a tragedy of epic proportions.
One can only wonder how Americans will react if due process is
abandoned through the Office of Homeland Security, under the
direction of the Pentagon. CP
Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch. He is the
author of The Phoenix Program, the only comprehensive account of the
CIA's torture and assassination operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY
a chilling novel about the CIA and the drug trade.
http://www.douglasvalentine.com/
End<{{{
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