us terrorist attacks: homeland insecurity

by Douglas Valentine (redspruce@douglasvalentine.com) -
   October 09, 2001


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 Congress
persons 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 considering 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 (p22-26a), 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
America's 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.


www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1631/pg1/&back=

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