A lot of people, especially people that think 9/11 was an inside job, have pointed to statements made by neo-conservatives that we needed a new Pearl Harbor to wake people up to our national security needs. Even Zbigniew Brzezinski thought this. He spelled it out quite clearly in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives:
“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” (p.30)
“America’s withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival – would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy.” (p. 30)
“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211)
“The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” (pp 24-5)
Brzezinski is not a neo-conservative…he represents more of the consensus view of the Washington foreign policy establishment…especially of the Clinton years. He wasn’t literally hoping for a Pearl Harbor event. But he sure as hell was suggesting that if a Pearl Harbor event should come along, it damn well better be put to full advantage.
But the opposite is also true. We never would have been able to pass the first campaign finance laws, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), re-open the JFK and MLK Jr. assassination investigations, or pry the family jewels from the CIA, if we hadn’t had the catastrophic event of Watergate.
We are suffering under a steady erosion of our privacy rights in this country. There is no will in Congress to do anything about it. And it’s up to the people that care about privacy (mainly libertarians and civil libertarians) to take advantage of revelations of governmental overreach.
When 9/11 happened, the Patriot Act was already sitting there…ready to be introduced as a bill. People on the right were thinking ahead. We need our own Patriot Act. And when Bush is out of office, we need to open up the full extent of his privacy crimes. And we need to use the ensuing public outrage to put in new tough laws that protect America’s fourth amendment rights.
It’s a Brave New World out there, and the courts are afraid to tell the government that they can’t have whatever they want. The FBI doesn’t show any restraint, issuing National Security Letters like they are M&M’s. The CIA is out kidnapping people, torturing them, and sending them to Syria to be tortured. We’ve had American citizens held without charges for over three years. This has to stop. But it isn’t going to stop until there is some major event that crystallizes the threat in the minds of Americans.
That was the great mistake in how the Democrats reacted to the December 2005 news that the president was routinely violating the FISA law. The Democrats should have called it what it was…an impeachable offense. And they should have ran for election on putting an end to it and getting to the bottom of it, and holding anyone that committed crimes accountable.
When 9/11 came, the Republicans were ready. They had been planning for an event that they could use to implement policies the American people would never buy under normal circumstances. As Brzezinski explained:
“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”
Or, as PNAC put it:
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor”
They were ready. Are we?
It has happened the people are fighting back. This administration has gone beyond the pale, and they will continue to hide from us, while they invade our privacy.
The civil rights Pearl Harbor is has already happened, we just haven’t found out about it yet.
Clearly not, or we would have seized on what John Dean called Bush’s “impeachable offense” – the NSA spying. There are so many other crimes, but as with Watergate, it only takes one, and the will to pursue.
But remember – Watergate was a little trickle of a story, and would have died if the CIA and others hadn’t kept leaking info to Bob Woodward at the Post and Sy Hersh at the Times.
and the decent of America into a fascist totalitarian regime in only six years should again point out the premeditated US government participation in flattening WTC 1,2 and 7.
The real world prize here is in eliminating the lifestyle of middle class Americans, suburbia and the McMansions along with all those SUVs. I really do believe global powers vastly outweigh what most Americans preceive as the might of the US.
They financed China’s development and now China is going to kick our ass. How’s that for “incompetence”.
I hate to think what our Pearl Harbor might be. Outrage after outrage but still no large scale mobilization. I do think your premise is a really good frame for asking just what it will take to get Americans off their asses.
The liberal’s “Pearl Harbor” will possess a somewhat different quality and aspect and it must be directed against the interests of the neocons rather than benefiting them.
I would suggest having Bush and Cheney being flown by USAF to Guantanomo on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, against their will and without their knowledge. Let the planes supposedly flying them to their original destinations arrive empty. Let all wonder what happened to their heros. As of noon that date, they have no power and even the Secret Service is under the command of a different individual.
The neocons believe that it can’t happen to them. Only some outrage like this would drive home the concept. Otherwise, they’ll just keep lying to themselves, as they have to us, until their final breaths.
This is the way I see it: Watergate was, in a strange way, a “Silent Coup,” as Colodny wrote. It was the folks behind the JFK coup getting rid of Nixon for straying too far from the script. The post-Watergate round of investigations were an unfortunate by-product, but since G. H. W. Bush was in charge of the secrets in 1976, they managed to survive and minimize the damage.
Watergate wasn’t a celebration of the free press. It was CIA sources leaking information to friendly media outlets. Woodward, fresh out of Naval Intelligence, spit out stories to undermine Nixon. Seymour Hersh managed to expose My Lai while keeping the CIA’s “Phoenix Program” relatively unexposed. Even today Hersh is basically a mouthpiece, leaking information from a segment of the military-industrial complex. He’s not a hero.
While we wait for a Pearl Harbor I suspect we’ll get a Kristalnacht.
We had our Pearl Harbour and Kristalnacht all in one on December 12, 2000: the installation by the U.S. Supreme Court of George W. Bush as president of the U.S. The country sat still and silently marvelled at the audacity of it all, as if it was happening in another world, entirely outside themselves, a coup in a political thriller somewhere in South America, something not worth remarking, after all, the hype of the 1990s was still fresh in the country’s mind. The country cooed and chortled that real men had finally come into their own. At that moment the mass of the people gave their approval to lawlessness. Since then, they have continued to do the same. We’ve had the election of 2006 and little seems to have changed. Why should things turn out so differently in 2008? Or do you have information which I don’t?
Agreed, although by that logic we sat on our hands when our President was taken out in a coup in 1963. By not demanding justice we proved to be a nation of sheep and showed that we would lay down no matter the event. Our quiet made them bold – so bold they would slaughter innocents in our name, knowing we the sheeple would do nothing to stop them.
More of this please.
Z-Big’s analysis begs a few questions: Why does a isolationist America necessarily lead to global anarchy? I thought freedom was good.