- Remember the Red Menace, also known as the
Communist
threat? Or how about the Third Reich, the creator of which became
the chief
metaphor for evil in the 20th century?
-
- Most Americans, certainly those younger
than 30, don't
remember either. Hell, they don't even remember Vietnam or Nixon or
The
Beatles. The terms and their connotations are totally unfamiliar,
unless
encountered in history texts. Millions of Americans simply do not
remember
what America used to stand for - freedom, justice, equality - and as
a
result, don't fully comprehend the appalling reality of what America
has
become.
-
- Once upon a time, back in the days of Elvis
and the hula
hoop, when I was a little shaver, I was taught in school that when
Germany
took over France, Poland and other European countries, that was
wrong,
and the United States sacrificed almost a half million of its own
young
people to reverse those situations in the name of freedom. And that
happened
twice, 1916-18 and 1941-45.
-
- In the same vein, I grew up being taught
that the Soviet
Union's annexation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and all of
Eastern
Europe was an evil deed, and that for many years in a period called
the
Cold War, the American military objective was aimed at overturning
this
unjust oppression. Back in the 1950s when I was in elementary
school, we
used to have routine Civil Defense drills where we used to have to
hide
under our desks pretending we were about to be nuked by the
Russians. Really!
-
- It's a new world now. For one thing, the
population of
the planet has doubled in those mere 50 years. And for another, it
is the
United States that is now sweeping the world, scooping up all these
other
countries in the name of capitalist democracy, and telling lies
about why
it has to go to war. And instead of railing against the powerful
giant
stealing freedom from all these hapless victims, as it did in years
past,
the American press is now cheering it, justifying it in the
increasingly
ambivalent names of capitalism and democracy. Worse, the American
people
are cheering it, too, something that's never really happened in U.S.
history,
when the people support a war that they know is based on lies.
-
- Of course, the American press is cheering
it because
it is the American military doing it. Even the German and Russian
press
aren't really criticizing it in a serious way. Because there is no
country
that can oppose America, which spends more on its military than all
the
other countries in the world combined, yet still complains that it
needs
to spend more, even as its bridges and schools are falling apart and
its
manufacturing base has completely disappeared, precipitating its
imminent
economic collapse. Still the military spending increases, and war
plans
ooze out like an evil ink stain spreading across the globe.
-
- The evil empire, number one threat to peace
in the world,
is now the United States. No more Red Menace. No more Third Reich.
Now
it's a War on Terror executed by the biggest terrorist of all -
America,
the nation that killed its own people by the thousands in order to
trigger
World War III and capture all the world's oil fields.
-
- Now the shoe is obviously on the other
foot. The United
States has now assumed the role of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia at
their
worst and all rolled into one. It has troops poised and threatening
in
127 other countries. By the diabolical mechanisms of the World Trade
Organization
and the International Monetary Fund, it has already plundered most
other
countries financially, stealing their utilities and impoverishing
their
inhabitants. And those nations who resist this financial con game,
like
Yugoslavia, are simply invaded and coerced into servitude. Those
nations
who play the game, like Russia and Argentina, are reduced to abject
poverty
with a few pro-Western billionaires owning everything.
-
- And woe to those nations who won't play the
game, like
Iraq. They are obliterated and turned into permanent war zones.
Their people
are murdered in their sleep by hopped-up American soldiers who are
told
by their cynical leaders that they are spreading democracy, when
really
what they are spreading are endless opportunities for plunder by
politically
connected corporations.
-
- And America's leader lie about absolutely
everything.
Never at any time in my personal history has there been a time when
an
American president has not at least accidentally told the truth
about something,
but that time is now.
-
- Once upon a time, Americans used to preach
the cause
of freedom and justice for all. It's actually written in their
Pledge of
Allegiance. But they don't adhere to that anymore. After all,
Americans
have canceled their Bill of Rights, which once made them famous -
made
them loved! - all over the world. Now they are feared all over the
world.
Reviled. When Americans launched their worldwide war on terror -
based
on a treasonous event in which they killed large numbers of their
own people
- they betrayed the whole world. They betrayed every dream of
freedom anybody
ever had anywhere.
-
- The people who did it did it for a few
billion dollars.
Can you blame them? It's easy money blowing up countries and blaming
it
on somebody else. Even you might do it if you had the chance.
Americans
support such an idea. It's capitalism at its best, controlling the
market,
make money on the destruction by selling the weapons, make money on
the
reconstruction by involving your friends in the contracts, no public
bids,
of course. So you lose a few dark-skinned lives. The world is
overpopulated
anyway. Look at it as population control (although that it another,
much
larger topic).
-
- Things have become so ugly in the United
States that
the liberal opposition candidate for president tells peace activists
to
"Get over it!" That there will be no peace no matter who is
president.
That America is united to overrun and ravish the whole world, simply
because
there is no one to stop it. This is the America that was venerated
and
admired all over the world. This is what America became when there
was
no other power to keep it honest. It became dishonest - and a killer
nation.
-
- People overseas make a mistake when the say
they have
nothing against the American people, that it is simply the American
government
they loathe and fear. It is the American people who have permitted
this
to happen, and they who bear the blame and will reap the whirlwind
for
their inaction.
-
- Once, America set an example for the world
to establish
representative government and take care of its less fortunate.
Today, America
is still setting an example for the world, an example that democracy
is
a hoax, and that all we can expect for our children's futures is a
dark
abyss of endless war based on phony pretenses.
-
- The thing that made the episodes with Nazi
Germany and
Soviet Union have happy endings was that there was somebody to fight
for
freedom ready to rescue those oppressed by military tyranny from a
foreign
power.
-
- But now, who is ready to defend the freedom
of those
in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in Macedonia, Serbia, the
Philippines, Colombia,
Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nicaragua,
Chile,
Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala ... or Palestine?
-
- Who is ready to defend freedom now that the
Americans
have declared freedom incompatible with security?
-
- But these things tend to even out over
time. Rome wasn't
built in a day and it took centuries to fall apart, but eventually
it was
picked apart by jackals and sycophantic traitors from within.
-
- The world will yet have the last laugh on
America, after
its own leaders have finished picking the bones of its financially
depleted
carcass.
-
- Because Americans have given up defending
true freedom
around the world, the day will soon arrive (sooner than they think)
when
they will have to defend their own freedom against the very monster
they
have created by their own selfish indifference. The corporate beast
that
consumes freedom around the world will one day soon turn its gaping
jaws
on America itself, and the Americans, who have decided to forget how
to
defend true freedom around the world, will necessarily have
forgotten how
to defend their own.
-
- Once upon a time, when I was a little
shaver and the
president was some guy named Ike, I was told that America was the
greatest
nation in the world because it was a champion of freedom and
justice, and
rescued the oppressed whenever people were in trouble.
-
- So ... were they lying then and telling the
truth now,
or telling the truth then and lying now?
-
- And when the rest of the world comes
calling to rectify
this murderous tyranny and worldwide oppression that America now
practices,
what will you say to them when they aim their guns at you? That you
didn't
know?
-
-
-
-
- John Kaminski is the author of "America's
Autopsy
Report," a collection of his Internet essays published by Dandelion
Books and featured on hundreds of websites around the world. For
more information
on how to get this book or to financially support his work
(seriously needed
now), go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/. Or, to read some more of
his
recent essays for free, go to
http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html
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