The Obama administration has adopted the Bush administration's search procedures. Under these rules travelers' computers, cell phones, and other devices can be seized for searches that can take up to 30 days. If you are on your way to a meeting and your presentation is on your computer and your contacts' numbers are on your cell phone, you are out of luck.
There is no excuse for these Gestapo practices. However, there have been no domestic acts of terrorism in eight years. The few "plots" that led to arrests were all instigated by FBI agents in order to keep the nonexistent threat alive in the public's mind. Yet, despite any real terrorist threat the police state continues to gain ground. Considering the extent of America's oppression of peoples abroad, one would expect much more blowback than has occurred, assuming that 9/11 was not itself an inside job designed to provide an excuse for America's wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Europe must look beyond the empty American political rhetoric about "freedom and democracy" and recognize the emerging Brownshirt American State. Democracy is slipping away from America. Its place is being taken by an oligarchy of powerful interest groups, such as the financial sector, the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned, and AIPAC. Political campaign contributions from interest groups determine the content of US domestic and foreign policy. A country in which political elites are above the law and can violate with impunity both laws against torture and constitutional protections of civil liberties is not a free country.
American political leaders and the American people need Europe's help in order to avoid the degeneration of the American political entity. American freedom, as well as sovereign independence elsewhere in the world, require criticisms of US foreign and domestic policies. The US media, which was concentrated into a few hands during the Clinton administration, functions as a Ministry of Propaganda for the government. It was the New York Times that gave credibility to the neoconservative propaganda and forged documents that were used to sell the invasion of Iraq to the public. It was the New York Times that sat for one year on the evidence that the Bush ad- ministration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was not until after Bush was re-elected that the reporter was able to force his story through editorial opposition.
Americans need criticism from Europe to compensate for the absence of an independent American media. Americans need outside help in order to reach an understanding of the immorality of their government's policies, because they receive no such help from their own media. Without Europe's help, Americans cannot regain the spirit of liberty and tolerance bequeathed to them by their Founding Fathers. America herself is a victim of the neoconservative and liberal internationalist pursuit of US hegemony.
We in America need to hear many voices telling us that it is self-defeating to become like an enemy in order to defeat an enemy. As Germans learned under Hitler and Russians learned under Stalin, it is the internal enemy -- the unaccountable elite that controls a country's government -- that is the worst and most dangerous enemy.
If America has enemies who are against "freedom and democracy," then America herself must make certain not to sacrifice her own civil liberties, and the sovereignty of other peoples, to a "War on Terror." Acts of terror are a small cost compared to the cost of the erosion of civil liberties that took centuries to achieve. Far more people died to achieve liberty than have died in terrorist attacks.
The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of liberty when the US government takes away liberty from its own citizens.
The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of peace and democracy when the US government uses deception to attack other lands on false pretenses.
Europe, whose culture was wrecked by 20th century wars; Europe, which has experienced tyranny from the left-wing and from the right-wing, has a right to its own voice.
America needs to hear this voice.
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An American Plea for European Awakening (18 Sept 09)
By Karel van Wolferen
What I hoped to read has finally been written: A plea from an American addressed to all Europeans for help with bringing the United States to its senses. It ought to be on the editorial pages of every serious newspaper in Europe. In a speech contributed to the Mut zur Ethik Conference held in Austria a couple of weeks ago, Paul Craig Roberts lays out the case for Europe to "go into active opposition to US foreign policy." American freedom as well as "sovereign independence elsewhere in the world" require this. Both the political leaders and the people of the United States "need Europe's help in order to avoid the degeneration of the American political entity."
Europeans insufficiently clued in about the gyrations of American non-mainstream media discussion might imagine such exhortation as coming from rather far-off leftist quarters. But Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and has held numerous academic appointments in what in the US are categorized as "conservative" institutions. I first came across his writing on a well-known "conservative" website. He disappeared from that ever rightward drifting site when he became one of the first authors from a non-leftist background to pierce through the political exploitation of the September 11 attacks. And pierce he did, deeper and more to the point than many on that threadbare left side of the American political spectrum. Articulate, erudite, and informed by historical perspective, Roberts has been one of my anchors on the internet, a reassurance that it was not me who had gone mad, while what I call the insanity factor began to affect widening circles of political discourse in the United States and Europe.
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