"The long war," as the Bush administration now calls its program, is straight out of George Orwell's 1984:
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
Nat Perry writes (click the title of this post) in
Consortium News about the war on Americans, not just residents and citizens who might be suspected of violent acts of terror but anyone who is perceived to be undermining, i.e., critical of, this administration's -- this government's -- programs, as well as the business of its supporters.
[T]he White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. (Washington Post, July 19, 2005)
Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
tags: anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism, animal rights
