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18 March 2002. Thanks to the authors.
March 17, 2002
The War that Destroyed America
By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs and Wayne
Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist who writes and
comments frequently on civil liberties and human rights issues.
In a maddening repetition of history, the young warfighters of the United States,
along with those of its coalition partners, find themselves in battle with an amorphous
opponent in a global counter-insurgency campaign managed by paranoid policy
makers who see themselves as the enlightened sons of God. As the illegitimate and
extremist government of the United States prepares to expend another generation of
its youth for power, money and resources thousands of kilometers from home, they
are negligently and criminally allowing the infrastructure, health and welfare of the
United States to deteriorate. As America wages World War III against its 21st
century barbarians�the Taliban and Al Qaeda (the Visigoths and Huns?)�in a war
that may well see the use of nuclear weapons, the American Empire seems doomed
to duplicate the concluding events of 476 A.D. And it�s not Al Qaeda�s 5,000 militants
that will destroy the USA, it�s the current �selected� government that will sacrifice
the
future of the world�s greatest experiment in freedom on the altar of fascism.
Close to 200 years ago, the English novelist-historian Edward Gibbon commented
that,
"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.
Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with
the
extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial
supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The empire
of Rome was firmly established by the singular and perfect coalition of its members.
The subject nations, resigning the hope, and even the wish, of independence,
embraced the character of Roman citizens. But this union was purchased by the loss
of national freedom�and the servile provinces, destitute of life and motion, expected
their safety from the mercenary troops and governors, who were directed by the
orders of a distant court. The happiness of a hundred million [people] depended on
the personal merit of one or two men [emperors] perhaps children [in Rome], whose
minds were corrupted by education, luxury, and despotic power�The multiplication
of oppressive taxes was countered and evaded by the rich, who shifted the burden to
the poor, who in turn also dodged them and fled to the woods and mountains to
become Rome's rebels and robbers...�
And so it seems America will share the same fate.
In the coming years, trillions of taxpayer dollars previously earmarked for
non-military
expenditures will be siphoned off to feed the voracious appetite of the Grendelesqe
US military-industrial complex. And for what purpose? Billions more dollars for a
grandiose national missile defense instead of billions for the tools the young Special
Operations warfighters, who will inevitably fight and die in countries as far-a-field
as
Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia and Georgia, need to do their jobs. Trillions more dollars
will be directed to a military and intelligence establishment that failed to protect
and
defend American citizens and the U.S. Constitution on September 11, 2001. And as
more billions and billions of dollars get poured into Homeland Defense, it's worth
looking at The State of the Union, or should we say State of the Homeland, to see if
the warfighters who return from their efforts in foreign lands will recognize the
country
they left. For while Americans fight on the frontiers of strange and distant lands,
they
do not understand that their country is disintegrating. And the numbers tell the story.
Dieing Nation
The CIA's World Fact Book 2001 cautions that "long-term problems [for the United
States] include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising
medical costs of an aging population, sizable trade deficits, and stagnation of family
income in the lower economic groups." And so it goes.
In 2002, over 31 million Americans live in poverty, according to Poverty USA, a
website run by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. 1 in 6 American
children live in poverty. Minorities, of course, are hardest hit with 22.1% of African-
Americans (who experience three times the poverty rate for white non-Hispanics),
21.2% of Hispanics, 10.8% of Asians and Pacific Islanders, and 7.5% of white non-
Hispanics who struggle to exist on a daily basis in what proponents of American
greatness like to describe as the wealthiest nation in history. The United States has
the dubious distinction of having the second highest percentage of children living in
poverty in the industrialized world and one of the most disgusting track records for
low birth weight of infants.
If ever there were a subject that was "underreported" it is the plight of America's
children. The National School Boards Association's Ten Critical Threats To
America's Children: Warning Signs for the Next Millennium provides disturbing data
on the state of America's youth. Despite these obvious disasters, the Bush regime is
more interested in school vouchers and the "unborn" rather than the horrors that
millions of young people in our country, and their parents, experience. Over 3 million
children experienced hunger in 1998 in the wealthiest country in the world. In 1998,
approximately 11.1 million children younger than 18 had no health insurance. In
1998, close to 44.3 million Americans had no health insurance and 11.1 million - or
25 percent - were younger than 18, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
Because of lax pollution laws, 900,000 children in the United States have elevated
levels of lead in their bloodstream, putting them at risk for a variety of health and
behavioral problems. There are 96,000 schools serving State subsidized lunches to
26 million children, which means that these young Americans are starving. The sheer
number of America�s youth who have been killed or wounded by gunfire in recent
years is shocking when placed in historical context. Between 1979 and 1996, more
than 75,000 American children and teens were killed with guns and, further, firearms
wounded another 375,000. That's almost 20,000 more deaths and 225,000 more
casualties than American troops suffered in the Vietnam War, according to Ten
Critical Threats.
Infrastructure Blues
One year ago in March 2001, the American Society of Civil Engineers failed
America's infrastructure with a grade of D+. "When you've got rolling blackouts in
California, bridges crumbling in Milwaukee, and kids in Kansas City attending class in
a former boys' restroom, something is desperately wrong," said then ASCE President
Robert W. Bein, a civil engineer from Irvine, California. According to ASCE's website
www.asce.org, "The solutions to these problems involve more than money, but as
with most things in life, you get what you pay for. America has been seriously under-
investing in its infrastructure for decades and this report card reflects that."
Among the many problem areas, one of the more notorious involves water.
Wastewater declined from a "D+" in 1998 to a "D," while drinking water remained a
"D." Wastewater and drinking water systems are both quintessential examples of
aged systems that need to be updated. For example, some sewer systems are 100
years old. Aged drinking water systems are structurally obsolete. The results of
maintaining such antiquated systems have sometimes been fatal. In 1993, 100
people died and 400,000 became ill after Milwaukee's water supply had been
contaminated by cryptosporidium, a virulent microscopic parasite resistant to chlorine
and filtration.
That very same year, Washington, DC experienced a four-day boil water alert arising
from excessive "turbidity" in the city's water. The Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta measures turbidity by analyzing the presence of small "suspended particles"
in a glass of water poured from a municipal water supply's tap. The murky water from
the Dalecarlia Reservoir in Washington in December 1993 was found to be very
turbid�dangerously so. Little wonder, since many of the reservoir's conduits were
built during the Civil War. The shortfall of $11 billion for drinking water and $12
billion
in wastewater only account for improvements to the current system and do not even
take into consideration the demands of a growing population.
ASCE estimated it would take roughly $1.3 trillion dollars to fix America's
infrastructure. That amount is roughly equivalent to George Bush II tax cut that
benefited primarily this nation's most wealthy individuals.
As of 1997, the richest five percent of U.S. households held more than 60 percent of
the nation's private wealth and the top 1 percent of households held 40 percent of the
wealth according to data from inequality.org. There are approximately 500,000 to
600,000 homeless Americans wandering throughout American communities, notes
the National Coalition for Homelessness. And the Disaster Center reports that for the
year ending in 2000, 105,703 Americans were murdered or raped in their own
country.
And if that were not enough to pique an interest, now we hear from our Teutonic-
sounding Office of Homeland Security that our nation's pipelines and refineries are
vulnerable to terrorist attack. Wait! Not so fast! In August 2000, a natural gas
pipeline
exploded near Carlsbad, New Mexico, killing 12 people, many of them families on
camping vacations. A little over a year earlier, a natural gas pipeline exploded in
Bellingham, Washington killing two 10-year old boys and an 18 year-old male.
According to the Environment News Service, since 1986, there have been more than
5,700 pipeline accidents, killing more than 300 people and releasing some six million
gallons of oil, gas and other pollutants into the environment.
Was Osama bin Laden responsible for them? No. Was it Sadaam Hussein? No,
again. The perpetrator was the U.S. Government. It turns out that the Interior
Department's Office of Pipeline Safety, a whorish marionette for the oil and natural
gas industry, failed to conduct adequate inspections. The oil industry, which now
apparently controls the White House and the Executive branch, does not want
increased pipeline inspections for fear that they will cost them money. A docile
Congress, bought and paid for by the oil industry, rejected legislation to force the
industry to inspect and fix its pipelines. The mother of one of the 10- year-old boys
killed, speaking to the Environment News Service, had this message for the �Evil
Doers� of the oil industry:
"Your profit means little to us in the face of the lives we care about."
So, the families of those killed in the explosions had to be content to bury their
loved
ones without the satisfaction of seeing the government correct its evil ways. It's very
much the same logic that results in Arthur Andersen getting indicted for keeping
Enron's books, while chief Enronite "Kenny Boy" Lay remains unscathed. This would
be like the government indicting John Dillinger's get-away driver while leaving the
bank robber free and clear of any charges.
Bread and Circuses
Historians will write that the American Empire, in its final days, experienced many of
the phenomena that plagued The Roman Empire. Roman senators formed their own
wealthy class of landowners who rarely attended senate meetings but enjoyed the
privileges of their office. Consider that most U.S. Senators and Representatives
spend most of their time outside of Washington soliciting contributions from
corporations. One does not need a time machine to actually witness what was
occurring in Rome during its tumultuous decline. William Langer, in his tome An
Encyclopedia of World History, writes "the lethargy" of Rome resulted from "the
unwieldy and inflexible system and�the poor mental caliber of the rulers." (Gibbon�s
George W. Bush II and the insane John Ashcroft?).
Yes, sadly, it seems that our own neo-Romanesque leaders share many things in
common, with their quirky and demented Pax Romana counterparts. Take Nero and
Claudius for example. The latter is described by Langer as a "driveling imbecile."
Claudius was known for taking away the power of the Senate to investigate financial
crimes cases and instead granting that power to imperial procurators. Bush II, of
course, is stonewalling Congress's attempt to investigate ties between the
administration and the oil industry, opting to leave the investigation of Enron up to
his
own politically motivated "procurators" in the Justice Department.
As we remember the old days, it�s worth noting that Nero was actually responsible for
setting Rome on fire�during which he sang to the music of a lyre a poem about the
burning of Troy. It turns out that Nero used the burning of Rome as a pretext to
increase his already substantial dictatorial powers and exterminate Christian
believers in the city. Like John Ashcroft�who requests anointment with oil by a
follower before the day�s activities and holds mandatory prayer breakfasts�he is
orchestrating a systematic article-by-article disposal of the U.S. Constitution. The
man bellows religious songs at news conferences, turns away in horror at statues of
females with bare breasts, and eschews Calico cats as signs of Satan. Nero would
have found comfort and friendship in such bizarre behavior.
As America seems on a path to repeat the history that swept away the Roman
Empire, we should remember the words of one of our greatest symbols of popular
resistance: "Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary
spirit
and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism
and militarism," said Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems we owe that to those who
expect to return to a vibrant democracy.
End<{{{
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