Orwell foresaw our times

By Ross Nelson

The executive branch of the federal government is a peculiar thing when it comes to spying on and tyrannizing Americans. Let the U.S.S.R. point 5,000 nuclear warheads at us and the feds mostly leave us alone. However, protest against an optional war in Vietnam (or Iraq), a country that posed us no harm, and the FBI and NSA are unleashed to monitor and harass us. These agencies were later restrained but have returned with a vengeance, appropriate adornments to imperial America and the warmongers in the White House. The Iraq war and 9/11 have opened the floodgates.

A government that asserts a right to monitor and to strip at will the privacy of its citizens is one that essentially owns its people. Those Americans who see no problem with the Pentagon, FBI, NSA, and heaven knows who else is spying on them, who have no problem with President Bush asserting that he is above the law, would be better served living under a monarchy than a republic.

We have the FBI, issuer of thousands of “National Security Letters” lately. These devices are essentially warrantless searches, the victims of which may not refuse or talk about publicly, even in court. The FBI has again secretly gathered files on nonviolent and anti-war groups.

The Pentagon – yes, that military institution – has its own domestic spying program. NBC News got hold of a 400-page database the Pentagon has compiled, which includes the usual anti-war groups, Quakers, and others it deems a “threat.” According to the Washington Post it (requires) almost as many military investigators as the FBI has agents assigned to counterterrorism. Posse Comitatus, anyone?

Perhaps worst of all is Bush’s blatantly illegal authorization of warrantless NSA spying on our communications. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act specifically forbids electronic eavesdropping outside of its restrictions and was built to give easy, rapid warrants – even retroactively if necessary. In 2004 Bush asserted that his administration got court orders before wiretapping terrorists, yet another lie from a man who could make Bill Clinton blush. He recently implied that the NSA searches covered only international communications of Americans suspected of al-Qaida links, omitting NSA’s far broader data mining that involves spying on large portions of the phone and Internet systems.

 Naturally Bush’s shoeshine brigade in print and radio media thinks all this spying is just fine. (How many conservative principles can it give up and still call itself conservative?) Just as disturbing is some Americans’ response that since they have nothing to hide, the federal spooks should be free to pry into their lives. Some non-rhetorical questions for these people are in order. Did you consciously choose to lay down your citizenship to become subjects? Do you understand that it took hundreds of years to pry the rights we enjoy now out of the hands of tyrants and kings, that this effort is marked with the blood and suffering of heroes and martyrs, and that you threw it all away at the first whisper of war?

How is it that you can bravely thump your chests about superpower America which has killed thousands of innocent Iraqis for nothing, and yet flee to Big Brother’s loving bosom at the first drop of a terrorist’s hat?

This is a lose-lose deal for those who aren’t appeasers of tyranny. If we restrict Leviathan and there’s another terrorist incident, the totalitarian neocon right will bellow from page and microphone that traitors betrayed America. If we let the feds trample our rights and still have another terrorist attack, the same warmongers will call for even greater suppression. Perhaps a telescreen in every room? Orwell foresaw our day.

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