Bigger & More Repressive
Government
Big government under "proper"
auspices
by Edward S. Herman
Z magazine, January 2004
The right wing speaks regularly about
the menace of "big government" and the importance of
shrinking "the beast," but they include in government
only its civil functions, not the military establishment or police,
which are put in a separate category. This is based on their view
that "government" must be considered bad, whereas the
military and police are good. Thus government in its usual meaning
didn't shrink under Reagan and isn't being down-sized under Bush-2
because the increase in military and police outlays more than
offsets any cutbacks in civilian state expenditures. Furthermore,
to the dismay of the right wing, important parts of civil society
outlays are mandatory and may even expand under prior law. While
right-wing regimes have been able to diminish entitlements for
the weakest members of society, they have not yet mustered the
political power to destroy Social Security and have only begun
to undermine Medicare. But their intentions here are clear and,
with a reelection of Bush-2, enough diversion by war and repression
in the name of fighting terrorism, and a satisfactory obfuscation
of the issues with the help of the corporate media, the Bush cabal
and right-wing might actually pull off shrinking "the beast"
(i.e., spending on the civil society).
Meanwhile, military and police expenditures
will grow by leaps and bounds to serve five ends. First, military
outlays facilitate the projection of power abroad to the advantage
of transnational companies.
The U.S. corporate elite is pleased to
have the overwhelming military power of their country in the post-Soviet
world used for their benefit. Some of the elite might prefer a
less aggressive and unilateralist imperialism, but many are happy
and supportive and the great majority of the business community
approves the Bush-2 administration.
Second, the military outlays directly
benefit numerous arms contractors, the Pentagon, and a great many
workers, all of whom lobby for a growing military budget and are
pleased with Bush-2's wars, which generate new business. The military-industrial
complex (MIC) is very powerful and has spread its largesse over
many states for strategic political reasons. MIC power is reflected
in the fact that the huge and sharply rising military budget is
regularly passed without serious debate in the Congress or the
mainstream press and Bush and Gore competed only in protestations
of devotion to a growing military budget. When the federal government,
under budget pressure, forces cutbacks in government expenditures,
demanding efficiency improvements to offset revenue shortfalls,
such cuts and demands are never imposed on the MIC.
Third, the pro-lsrael lobby supports aggressive
policies abroad, as this results in strengthened ties with the
Israeli military, greater support for hardline Israeli leaders
and policies, and a willingness to overlook small matters like
the illegal large-scale dispossession and ethnic cleansing of
people in an occupied territory. This lobby power is closely linked
to the integration of the military establishment of the United
States and Israel. Israeli activist and analyst Jeff Halper points
out, "Israel's sophisticated military hardware and military
software are very important in weapons development in the United
States. Israel has become the main subcontractor of American arms."
Given that in Israel "there are no ethical or moral constraints
[in selling arms]...you have a high-tech, military expert rogue
state.... For the most part, Israel is the subcontractor for American
arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime-Colombia,
Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the
colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone-there
is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel....
So this is the missing piece... Israel is a key member of the
empire" interview with Halper by Jon Elmer, "Israel
and the Empire," www. from Occupied Palestine. org, September
20, 2003).
Fourth, war and a focus on "security"
are marvelous devices for distracting public attention from mundane
matters like the upward redistribution of income and wealth and
the looting and destruction of the environment in the corporate
interest. In the United States, with the help of the corporate
media, this focus on war, allegedly in service to U.S. "security,"
has been turned to the benefit of an Administration that was on
duty and responsible for what was perhaps the greatest security
failure in U.S. history-9/11. Since then this Administration has
carried out foreign policies that would seem almost perfectly
designed to reduce security-carte blanche to Ariel Sharon to aggressively
pursue a Greater Israel program that was already a source of enormous
hostility to the United States; the attack on Afghanistan and
great turmoil produced in that region; the illegal invasion-occupation
of Iraq; support of counterrevolutionary forces everywhere as
long as they were "with us"; declaration of the right
to preventive war in general and an intention to militarize further
in the interest of domination; economic policies at home and abroad
that have worsened inequalities and polarized communities and
the world.
Fifth, since a counterrevolutionary right-wing
program is going to elicit serious and growing internal protest,
large and properly trained cadres of police and ample prison space
are necessary complements to control that other "beast"-the
people-in the word usage of Alexander Hamilton. Just as the United
States trained Latin American military and police in methods of
fighting against "populism" in their countries, by this
means helping to produce a "favorable climate of investment"
by bringing into power National Security States, so a large, well-trained,
and ruthless police is needed in the home country as it pushes
a right-wing agenda that is contrary to the interests of a vast
majority. Hence the right-wing approval of a hefty budget for
the police as well as military establishment. These are both needed
to help protect "freedom"-that is, the unconstrained
ability of the strong to dominate, with business free to operate
without government restraint, and the masses induced to serve
their masters quietly and without protest.
U.S. activists, civil libertarians, and
minority communities are well aware of the fact that the Bush
administration has been putting in place a repressive apparatus,
complete with a legal and judicial underpinning to give it sanction.
They are also aware of the increasing use of repressive tactics
as the government confronts growing protest. One of the many ironies
of the New World Order is the way in which the leaders of the
Free World increasingly meet in remote places out of the reach
of their citizenry, like Doha/Qatar, and how within each country
larger and larger areas are blocked off to prevent protesters
from getting within leadership or TV audience sight. (In a famous
Ron Cobb cartoon of 1967 that could by updated for widespread
application today, we see President Lyndon Johnson on a podium
addressing "Mah Fellow Americans," with only a sea of
police in sight around and before him.) In the same undemocratic
mold, agreements like NAFTA are prepared in secret and without
public participation, just as WTO decisions are made in non-public
meetings by unelected bureaucrats, all in the pursuit of "freedom"
as defined above, which is actually reducing freedom in its common-sense
and traditional meaning. The New York Times rarely if ever mentions
this ironical divergence between claimed interest in freedom and
complementary tactics of undemocratic decision-making and repressive
and freedom-threatening treatment of protests from below.
The future of repression looks frighteningly
bright. The Patriot Act was a major step in removing constitutional
protections of privacy, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and indirectly
the rights of free speech and assembly. (It should be noted, however,
that as in so many areas, Bill Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Penalty Act of 1996 led the march now being advanced by Ashcroft
and Bush, permitting the use of federal troops against the civilian
population, thereby nullifying the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878
and allowing the selective suspension of habeas corpus protections.)
The judiciary has been restructured by Republican aggressiveness
and Democratic weakness into an increasingly repression-supportive
collective and the prospect of years more of Bush-2 court appointments
is scary. Both Scalia and Rehnquist have indicated that legal
protections of citizens rights are in abeyance in wartime. The
evidence from Miami and other protest sites is that "preventive"
police actions in violation of the law at many levels (illegal
use of force, illegal arrests, mistreatment, plus, of course,
denial of the constitutional rights to free speech and assembly)
are becoming better organized, better armed, and more ruthless;
designed to discourage as well as disrupt protests.
The Bush party is advancing the repression
agenda as fast as is feasible-witness the temporarily aborted
Patriot Act II, with its enlarged and vague definition of terrorism
and support for terrorism and its proposal for executive authority
to deprive those guilty of terrorism, or supporting it, of their
citizenship. There are no apparent limits to what Bush-Ashcroft
will do in moving this country toward a fascist state if they
can get away with it. Sadly, there is a strong possibility that
in the not-too-distant future this country will suffer another
serious terrorist event, which would provide a ready basis for
a new SuperPatriot Act that would effectively nullify the Constitution.
General Tommy Franks has recently suggested this nullification
as a likely outcome of such a terrorist act and, as \ noted, the
Bush war against terrorism has been well designed to elicit a
terrorist response. The election of a Democrat in 2004 might slow
the momentum toward a more repressive state, although in the face
of major terrorist acts this would not be certain under a Lieberman
or Clark administration.
The mainstream media have done their bit
for the Bush program. First, they allowed him to come away unscathed
from his horrendous 9/11 security failure and to position himself
as a protector of U.S. security. Second they have allowed him
to undermine U.S. security by a series of illegal wars and essentially
unconditional support for Sharon and accelerated ethnic cleansing
in Palestine without serious criticism. Third, they allowed him
to brazenly lie his way into the invasion-occupation of Iraq,
failing to challenge his lies, and in fact functioning as agents
of war propaganda. Their service here, and failure as public servants,
may be read from the pre-invasion majority belief that Saddam
Hussein was an "immediate threat" to the United States
and that he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Fourth,
their criticism of the AshcroftBush campaign to weaken constitutional
protections has been extremely low- key, where it exists at all,
and has been easily offset in its effects on the public by their
conduiting Bush fear propaganda.
Finally, the media have effectively become
part of the Bush reelection campaign by giving his pronouncements
excessive and uncritical attention and by failing to focus on
his overall macro-economic performance-service to his donors by
his tax, environmental, and Iraq contracting policies, and his
assault on the Constitution at home and international law abroad.
In a dramatic case, the New York Times (and many other papers,
and TV) gave huge front-page coverage on November 28 to Bush's
quickie visit to Iraq to have his picture taken eating turkey
with "our warriors." This photo-op stunt was designed
to counter the image of Bush as the man who said "bring 'em
on" from Washington, DC and who had failed to give enough
attention to the returning body bags. The media made this propaganda
stunt work, just as they had done for warrior Bush's landing on
the SS Abraham Lincoln to announce "mission accomplished.
"
Edward S. Herman is an economist and media
critic.
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