Kirwan Articles

Ignorance & Fear, a Deadly Combination

August 2,  2004

This war on terror is about many things: It’s about ideology, philosophy, personal courage and the strength to hold a point of view—but most of all this has been a war about our very lives.

There is a lot of blame to study and debate. In the final analysis, it all comes down to what ‘we’ did or did not do about it. The final blow was struck when Bush stole the office in the 2000 ‘election.’ At that moment the dye was cast, and the final curtain began to fall when we refused to take up the challenge that all must accept, all that is, who want to have a life that’s truly theirs.

Everything after the theft of the presidency was about putting the pieces of the dictatorship together, to seal the victory for the sellouts, forever. The battle cry of the Republic has been silenced. Freedom’s torch is dead, even the embers have now smoldered into cold dead ashes. Since that inaugural day in 2000, most of us have only watched as re-born criminals and thieves began deciding what will be allowed in our new Dictatorship, without a word of protest.

How could this happen here? It wasn’t quick or easy and it took a long, long time, yet it was possible and the plotters knew it. Most strove to remain secure in the certainty that "they could never really do" what they were planning: But they were wrong! Not only could they do it, they did it, and they continue to do it to us still – and we go quietly to wherever they decide to send us, because somewhere very deep – we seem to know that we have lost!

"NO!" – Some will scream - with fury. But look around you. Where is the evidence that we have not accepted what has happened here?

DENIAL was the first and foremost boulder that we clung to after 911. The nation looked to the thief who stole his office, then ran away on 911. We actually looked to him to tell us what to do? How sick is that! Did we seek to have him charged for failing to stop, or even try to stop, the attacks? No. Did we demand any proof whatever that the people he accused had anything at all to do with those events? No. We believed, because we wanted to, and because we feared the truth. Many saw him for what he is, the one who made unilateral war upon the world, to rectify a crime that we chose not to even try to solve. Instead we allowed he and his pretenders to call this "an attack upon the nation," which was only true in part: but who did it—and why—were the two key questions that no one was allowed to ask. The fact that this had been pre-planned for years, only surfaced, long after we had committed troops and treasure to Afghanistan.
www.itszone.co.uk/

But Bush walked away from there without bin Laden, and began another inexplicable and unilateral action, this time in Iraq. And just like Viet Nam, this one was built solely on fabricated evidence and lies. Yet still we went along. As the truth came out, there was no call to action, no demand for impeachment, or reversals: instead we followed when he said. "Stay the Course!" What course, to where? This was not spelled out and we did as we were told. So the losses keep on rising, and our debt mushrooms by the second, but still we—would not be moved!

Then came the horrors of the torture, and the false arrests, ordered from on high – and still we did not act. We arrested children and subjected them to sexual abuse and torture as well as the adults. How "American" is that? All of this plus the outsourcing of most decent jobs, and the emptying of the Treasury, all this happened on the first watch of George W. Bush, the man in charge who will not answer questions.
www.capitolhillblue.com/

There’s an election coming, which is how we used to deal with failed presidents, and failed policies. Not this time. Instead, the opposition political party held a tightly controlled media circus and called it a convention. No mention of the wars was ever really made, and those of anti-war sentiment were made unwelcome and arrested if they persisted. This was a dry run because the real targets of this administration are the demonstrators that will attend the Republican national convention, in NYC.
www.nytimes.com/

Demonstrators in New York will face severe penalties thanks to the new terror threat. The administration has touted the fear surrounding what they allege is coming from Muslim extremists. But if that is the standard for our success or failure in these unilateral wars, then we lost this one a very long time ago.
www.dissidentvoice.org/

We are now prisoners to draconian US security measures that protect no one, but simply impede life at every turn. "We have 11 million plus illegal immigrants of what nationalities-who knows-that have crossed our borders-90% of all incoming cargo containers (as big as tractor trailers) go un-searched. Cargo on planes goes un-searched as nursing mothers-toddlers-and wheelchair bound elderly are frisked! The Democratic Convention in Boston looked like troops readying to ship off to Armageddon! But no—helmets, full body armor-clubs-shields-snipers on rooftops-helicopters-armored carriers-and F-16s were on hand to quell the invasion of puppets-costumed butterflies-and citizens with Signs of Mass Destruction. In case nobody’s paying attention—it’s not terrorists or evil that’s the enemy—it’s the American people." JM

Shepherding the public to "free speech zones" behind razor wire, miles from the events in question is obscene—and any judge who fails to uphold the rights of those citizens, not to be restricted to such areas, should be removed from the bench, because this too is a denial of the political right to speak. This is as basic as it gets in America.

War or no war, people here have the right, to attend in force any political event they choose to participate in. The government has the duty to keep the peace, and to maintain order, but these duties cannot be allowed to prevent people from attending and speaking in a civil manner, about their personal beliefs especially now. Whenever citizens disapprove of the government, its policies or its actions, then people have an obligation as citizens to speak out against those policies, or actions. To do less is to be complicit in the crimes that this government commits hourly.

Wars and attacks bring people together, divisions flourish only in divided societies. The national symbol of free speech zones in the USA, surrounded by barbed wire and riot police, is hardly an image of American’s practicing their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech. That freedom is not happening here because we have not challenged Bush or the government, and because of this it may never happen here again.

How is it possible that Americans care so little about their loved ones that they do not DEMAND a full accounting about everything surrounding these wars for the soul of this nation that now seeks to be an Empire?

How is it possible that the public actually allows both parties not to talk about these spreading stains of theft, of crime, of torture, and of death—all of it committed in our names, and none of it allowed to become any part of the national debate that is supposed to decide on a leadership that will have to deal with this and other failures, if there is to be a country after this.

The only thing that unites us here and now is fear of the government, and the very real fear of the possible loss of a job, almost nothing else merits even a casual glance: Which proves that we have already lost. No other nation could have forced so complete a silence on the public, as have Bush & his Outlaw government of borderline psychotics.

All that bluster about heroes and patriots and dedicated soldiers is just so much cotton candy on the circus midway of our lives that has become a tragedian farce, as surely as our money has almost become useless paper. We publicly brag about how good and right we are in the world community and yet we can’t even talk about reality. This is not the nation I defended or the same Armed Forces that I served in. This is no longer even a nation, this is just a collection of appetites and desires without the courage or the clarity to speak about the things that must matter in the life of any people.

Some see how far the mighty have fallen – others believe we still have a long way to go!