In Chomsky's 'Understanding Power' he said in a speech transcript from the 90s that the White House and Pentagon were afraid the country would completely come apart in the streets as anti-Vietnam War protests grew.
Consequently, according to Chomsky, the generals kept troops at home in case of martial law and didn't send as many overseas to Vietnam as they would have due to concerns over well-organized domestic dissent and the appearance of losing control in the streets followed by further loss of support for the war.
That's why the US government long ago (1984 during Reagan's secret wars south of here) planned to never again be hampered in waging war by the mere wishes of the electorate and upsettingly visible protesters. They didn't want to have to dedicate troops to holding the fort while they were away fighting Injuns for land to add to the American empire.
So the warrior class learned to stay out of sight and stay below the threshold of resistance to using mass-murder, torture, and theft to ‘grow’ the nation’s economy. All US-inflicted casualties are now carefully screened out by the war-profiteering weapons industry-owned media.
But just in case the truth of US atrocities again came to light and outraged the public to resistance, executive orders from the White House (REX84) were enacted allowing the military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to take over the country and put dissenters in concentration camps ‘during times of national emergency such as widespread civil unrest at time of war’ thereby assuring the Pentagon autonomy from democracy. The assault on the Bill of Rights from the USAPATRIOT Act was developed at that time also as we were warned in a 1987 speech by former Angola CIA station chief, John Stockwell:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm(The Secret Wars of the CIA)
>snip<
"The `Pre-emptive Strikes' bill. President Reagan, working through the Secretary of State Shultz... almost 2 years ago, submitted the bill that would provide them with the authority to strike at terrorists before terrorists can do their terrorism. But this bill... provides that they would be able to do this in this country as well as overseas. It provides that the secretary of state would put together a list of people that he considers to be terrorist, or terrorist supporters, or terrorist sympathizers. And if your name, or your organization, is put on this list, they could kick down your door and haul you away, or kill you, without any due process of the law and search warrants and trial by jury, and all of that, with impunity.
Now, there was a tremendous outcry on the part of jurists. The New York Times columns and other newspapers saying, `this is no different from Hitler's "night in fog" program', where the government had the authority to haul people off at night. And they did so by the thousands. And President Reagan and Secretary Shultz have persisted.... Shultz has said, `Yes, we will have to take action on the basis of information that would never stand up in a court. And yes, innocent people will have to be killed in the process. But, we must have this law because of the threat of international terrorism'.
>snip<
"The special actions teams that will do the pre-emptive striking have already been created, and trained in the defense department.
They're building detention centers. There were 8 kept as mothballs under the McLaren act after World War II, to detain aliens and dissidents in the next war, as was done in the next war, as was done with the Japanese people during World War II. They're building 10 more, and army camps, and the... executive memos about these things say it's for aliens and dissidents in the next national emergency....
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by Loius Guiffrida, a friend of Ed Meese's.... He's going about the country lobbying and demanding that he be given authority, in the times of national emergency, to declare martial law, and establish a curfew, and gun down people who violate the curfew... in the United States.
And then there's Ed Meese, as I said. The highest law enforcement officer in the land, President Reagan's closest friend, going around telling us that the constitution never did guarantee freedom of speech and press, and due process of the law, and assembly.
What they are planning for this society, and this is why they're determined to take us into a war if we'll permit it... is the Reagan revolution.... So he's getting himself some laws so when he puts in
the troops in Nicaragua, he can take charge of the American people, and put people in jail, and kick in their doors, and kill them if they don't like what he's doing..."
Remember, this was from 1987. And it happened in 2001.
Eliminating the draft effectively eliminated resistance from the middle class college kids. Mainly the poor sign up out of desperation mixed with searching for acceptance through self-sacrifice. Thus the poverty conscripts are co-opted by becoming complicit in the empire's expansion while they apply for food stamps as reward.
Perfectly illustrating the Stockholm Syndrome-like (victim bonding with kidnapper) relationship that US troops have with their abusive and corrupt Commander-in-Chief, the NAACP has a cozy working relationship with the Pentagon with military dinners sponsored by Lockheed Martin. Originally, the NAACP fought for integration and equal benefits for African American soldiers. Now the NAACP enables a jobs program for people of color who pull the trigger in the so-called War on Terror which is really 'Operation Global Lynching."
Yet the NAACP decried the US military coup in Haiti this year. Trying to get a piece of the pie in a permanently militarized economy can lead to eating army rations. Affirming the institution of the military in order to support the troops taking orders has served to trickle legitimacy up to the war criminals who give the orders.
Americans are still in denial about being complicit in the violence perpetrated by a government they know deep down in their hearts isn't of, by, or for the people thus making it utterly illegitimate.
Inquiring minds or throbbing consciences are mollified with patriotic lullabyes to soothe the schizophrenic disconnect from logic and humanity with the cover story that they kill to defend family, God, and life itself.
It takes courage to admit that you live in country that is devastating the planet and has slaughtered innocents for generations.
Yet many Americans cling to a master-race mythology of democratic infallibility when weighing 'their' governments impact on other people like a child who’s unable to admit their parent is a genocidal mass-murderer. It seems that in order to like ourselves we must believe we are part of a family or nation that is good and noble just like ourselves. Any one who suffers at our hands must surely be evil and deserve it.
Daddy said so.
Fuhrer knows best.
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