Adolf Hitler penned "Mein Kampf" during his imprisonment in 1924: "The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil....Therefore in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that are too big."

The National Security State is such a lie.

Although the name "national security state" came from the National Security Act of 1947 (creating the National Security Agency and the CIA), it did not begin there. The national security state began when the first pilgrims stepped off their boats and commenced a centuries-long process of stealing wealth from Native Americans -- instant enemies. When our Westward expansion had consumed all the available land, we sought to gobble up, along with the other great imperialistic powers, tiny countries like Hawaii, The Phillipines and Cuba and to establish economic dominance in other weak countries within our "sphere of influence".

In 1917, we fought to "make the world safe for democracy" by siding with the largest anti-democratic imperialistic regime of the time, Great Britain, in its economic dispute with imperialistic upstart Germany and, in so doing, we established the draft and income tax as part of our burgeoning big government. We had found something worth dying for and worth ceding our rights and our wealth -- our government.

We capped off our victory with the Versaille Treaty, a treaty so harsh that it caused economic tragedy and civil war in the defeated nation, paved the way for dictatorship and pretty much guaranteed a second world war. This was good for the military, arms industries, intelligence organizations and for anyone who wanted governmental powers to grow, including Great Britain whose empire grew to include the Middle East.

The second world war was a doozer -- we were heroes (even though the Soviets won it with their 27.5 million dead and had stopped the Germans by our Dec. 11, 1941 entry) and our government grew even more. Best of all, America emerged with an implacable and awesome new enemy -- our former comrade in arms, the Soviet Union. This allowed our government to grow further, to protect us from the awful communists, including even communists in tiny little countries like Vietnam and big countries like China, in spite of the fact that the Chinese had fought side by side with us against our old enemy, those awful Japanese.

 And so, to prevent another (un)surprise attack like Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman, egged on by OSS spooks like Allen Dulles, proposed the 1947 National Security Act to establish a super intelligence agency, the CIA. And what was the purpose of the CIA? To centralize the collection of intelligence and "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures".

But the fundamental nature of the CIA was changed in 1949 when the Truman administration agreed to interpret the CIA's charter to allow covert action, i.e. actions not known to or regulated by the democratic process (citizens) and, presto, the CIA became a power independent of our democracy and Presidents began to become intoxicated with the unreviewable power of directing CIA covert wars/meddling/dirty tricks, and the Imperial Presidency was enthroned.


                                   

What does all this have to do with today's world? And how did America become a country of perpetual war and endless enemies? Can we find the answer?. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, through his character Sherlock Holmes, tells us how:

"It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact - of absolute undeniable fact - from the embellishment of theorists and reporters. Thus, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn, and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns."

The "whole mystery turns' on something rather simple, the biological imperative, that all life forms attempt to increase their size and strength. Government is no exception, and our Founding Fathers specifically warned against this tendency and created the Constitutional balance of powers and separation of powers to guard against it. For centuries, persons inside our government have been searching for ways to increase their power and, today, they have surely found it in the national security state.

What is the national security state? A government whose primary reason for its size/strength is a real or pretended external threat. Eisenhower called it the "military-industrial complex" -- the institutions which profit from wars. In a draft of his speech, Eisenhower had called it the "military- industrial-congressional complex", so he understood it to include those parts of government which increase their power through war. So the National Security State might also be called the "military-industrial-governmental complex", which increases its size/power with war or fear of war.
                

What does a student get for starting a food fight at Mountain Ridge High School? What do highly-educated government officials get for inciting, starting, financing and arming wars in which hundreds of thousands of people die? If you work for the CIA or the President, you get a medal and a pay raise. But not from the families of the people you killed and the nations whose governments you destroyed. And these families and nations have a hard time forgetting. And why should they forget?

A Nov. 4, 2004 letter to the editor in The Arizona Republic. The National Security State was caught flat footed with the unexpected demise of the Soviet Union, and so quickly instituted a replacement -- the war on drugs. Remember the talk about a "peace dividend" due  to the end of the Soviet Union? Never happened, because it would have taken power away from the NSS . Anyway, the war on drugs was quickly forgotten with the advent of the "war on terror". Our National  Security State creates, arms, finances and nurtures thug dictators/warlords so it can one day turn on them, as necessary, to provide justification for increased expenditures and powers. Saddam was one such dictator and the Afghan Mujahadeen (including bin Laden) was such a group of warlords.

The percentage of tax dollars allocated to the military is actually just over 40%; Add 3% for veterans to the 30% for military and another 7.5% for that portion of the national debt attributable to the 33/81 military share of non-debt expenditures. This does not include monies spent on the intelligence and paramilitary organizations like the CIA, NSA, FBI, TSA, ATF, HLS, etc. Of course this is money well spent -- for 733 U.S. military bases in 159 foreign countries (Jeez, a lot of different peoples must hate us) and for new anti-terrorist weapons like a fleet of shallow-water nuclear submarines. I guess these subs are going after terrorists in their rubber dingies. Plus a new generation of carbon-fibre,
fly-by wire, computer guided stealth aircraft to go after guys in caves, somewhere in Afghanistan (which we control?) or maybe in Pakistan (which our sponsored nuclear-armed warlord does notcontrol). Barefoot guys in caves?   Arizona Republic April 15, 2005.

The writer is correct that "It is a simple matter of right prevailing over might" and this applies to our entire cockeyed "full-spectrum dominance" official foreign policy. We have oppressed the peoples of the Middle East for at least 54 years (commencing with the 1953 Kermit Roosevelt/CIA overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Iran) and most recently, the many crimes against the Iraqi people, including crimes against humanity. If you doubt these crimes, read "Web of Deceit" by Lando wherein these crimes are detailed and footnoted for hour after reading hour. If you don't want to purchase the book, I will lend it to you. These crimes are not some left-wing crazy's invention, but admitted by the various Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense Secretaries, Military Brass, etc. Will these crimes ever be reported by mainstream media? What a dumb question. 

Do we really support the "war on terror"? Did you ask your child or grandchild to enlist? Did you enlist? We know viscerally that this "war" is not worth that sacrifice and that is why we keep our families out of it. This is why the military has to lower standards to get new enlistees, reach deep into our National Guard, and farm out so much to private industry, and why only one Congressperson has a kid in Iraq. But why have so many Muslims, Arabs and Persians chosen to give their lives to expel the invaders? Is it because they have a crazy religion, or is it because they are doing what indigenous invaded peoples have been doing for millenniums -- they are expelling invaders out of THEIR land. Incidentally, America has been oppressing and murdering peoples in the Middle East, stealing their resources and profoundly interfering with their political processes since 1953. Great Britain started this bully's sport in 1917! No wonder the Brits are our ally today. Onward Christian Soldiers! Is "Thou Shalt Not Kill" the Fifth Commandment? And which is the Commandment about stealing? And which is the one about lying? We can sure lie about it -- that is the job of mainstream media. And what is the Commandment about coveting our neighbors' goods? Looks like we scored with our neighbors' oil!  International Herald Tribune 7-04-04.

"Cut off the hands of the foreign meddlers"? What would you do if a country ten times as large and a hundred times more powerful invaded, occupied and bombed us, killed our young men, ridiculed our culture and replaced our government with one of their own?  Arizona Republic article.

The Aristocracy of Big Government. The Bushes, Cheneys et. al. are no different. They are all chauffeured around in luxury private jets and limousines, golf anywhere and anytime they want, and are attended to by a fleet of servile wannabees. What I learned from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" was visual -- the visual luxury in which the Bush family lives. The Crawford Texas brush-cutting is Karl Rove photo op propaganda. The Bush Clan are Aristocrats on the very top of the world.

The price regular people pay for the "full spectrum dominance" world domination fantasies of people like Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Douglas Feith, etc. None of these PNAC domination junkies would risk their own children's lives, or their own.  Arizona Republic article 4-06-04.

For the first two years of the Iraq "war", mainstream media wouldn't acknowledge Iraqi deaths -- and our military wouldn't count them. Same thing with Vietnam -- we know we lost 52,000 U.S. lives, but it was only recently that Robert McNamara admitted that we killed over 3 million Vietnamese and Laotians. Jeeze, did we have to kill that many to make them "free"? Mainstream media will never admit that Secretary of State Albright confirmed that our 1990s Iraq embargo killed over 500,000 Iraqi children and destroyed their civilian water infrastructure. Or that we financed, armed, furnished target intelligence and protected Saddam throughout the 1980s while he killed and gassed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, Kurds and Iraqis. Or that we abandoned the Kurds to slaughter in 1991 after desperate pleas from the U.N. and our own foreign service corp. Or the effects of our DU-238 aerated depleted uranium throughout Iraq. Google that one. Or that we prop up the anti-democratic Saud family billionaire-monarchists. Or that we financed internal security for the hated dictator of Uzbekistan who boils his opponents alive. Or that we have a formal policy of "destabilization" for countries whose resources we covet. Why do they hate us? Headline from the November 10, 2006 AZ Republic.

The last of the free Native Americans -- Geronimo (second from left) just before he surrendered and was imprisoned for the rest of his life, first in Florida and then in Oklahoma where our Army paraded him around in wild west reenactments while white folks picnicked and applauded. Quanah Parker, the last Comanche Chief, was present (as a spectator) on one of these occasions and described the scene:

"I speak of Geronimo.... We understood the awful things you did to him; promiscuous cut-noses were treated better. You set Geronimo down as a beggar in our midst, among his ancestral enemies, to sell buttons off his shirt at day and sew new ones one at night until the firewater made his hands shake too much. You turned him and the few Apache left into women.... On purpose you stabbed Geronimo's heart and his soul bled to death, all for no good reason... What you did in our last few years of freedom was shameful. You killed everything -- the buffalo and our women and children when you couldn't kill our warriors. Was your freedom so much greater than ours?"

Sound familiar? When Americans want something, Americans take it, be it from the Indians or the Iraqis. What kind of American are you?

Agency), ATF, DHS, NCC (National Counterterrorism Center), ODNI (Office Director National Intelligence) and FBI who run around creating enemies (liabilities). Who is paying for all this? You and I through our taxes and through currency inflation/debasement. And the Chinese and Japanese who have been lending us the money by purchasing our T-Bills which allow us to print even more money to pay off our old debts (like a counterfeiter). Alan Greenspan has repeatedly warned us that all this will come to an end, and exactly what that end will be. But don't believe me, Google "Alan Greenspan" and read what he says. The economic law is "reversion to the mean" or "You pay for it in the end". This is not my invention, this is Macro Economics 101. America, get ready to pay for all the dumb-ass fun we have had playing Army, Super Spy and World Dominatrix. Turn off your TV and get ready for a real Reality show. Then, after we have all been profoundly economically injured (and
only then), we will get rid of the National Security State.