The Dark Side

 Professor J,

Throughout this book Hedges lays out some hard truth. Isn't it interesting how often those words go together? 

I don't know what to do with the information Hedges relays on pages 179-180 except to quote it nearly in its entirety: 

Sen. Frank Church, as Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence in 1975, investigated the government's massive and  highly secretive National Security Agency. He was alarmed at the ability of the state to intrude into private lives. He wrote when he finished his investigation:

'The capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology...I don't want to see this country ever go across this bridge. I know the capability that there is to make tyranny total in America,and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return...'

At the time Senator Church made this statement, the NSA was not authorized to spy on American citizens. Today it is.

The military can be ordered by the president into any neighborhood, any town or suburb, capture a citizen and hold him or her in prison without charge. The executive branch can do this under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress after 9/11 (oh the things we trade away for a false sense of security) that gives the president the power to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against anyone involved in planning, aiding, or carrying out terror attacks. And if the president can declare American citizens living inside the United States to be enemy combatants and order them stripped of constitutional rights, which he effectively can under this authorization, what does this mean for us?..." (179)

The bad news continues on the next page:

"The specter of social unrest was raised a the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in November 2008, in a monograph by Nathan Freier titled Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development. The military must be prepared, Freier warned, for a 'violent, strategic, dislocation inside the United States' that could be provoked by 'unforeseen economic collapse,' purposeful domestic resistance, pervasive public health emergencies, or loss of functioning political and legal order." (180)

One has to wonder just what "violent, strategic, dislocation" might mean...

I'm currently reading the biography, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. It's a compelling work. Every decision we see him make, every truth sought, and every conviction held tightly is viewed with the end in mind. The tragic, violent end. Less than two hundred pages in and it is clear already that the driving force of his life was a search for intellectual and spiritual truth.

"...he was never what one might term today a cultural warrior, nor could he be labeled conservative or liberal...Anyone on the side of truth wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded."

I have a feeling we are going to need many, many people like that in the days to come.