The US Is History's First Superbanana Republic
9-11: In the evening, we went to bed in Athens; in the morning, we awoke in Sparta.
All else is commentary.
OK, I confess. This Afghan mess, combined with the trickle of stories from Washington that, no, we can't prove they used boxcutters, and no, we don't have enough evidence to extradite Bin Laden if we had to — is creating a lurid fascination for me. In retrospect, the hypocritically goofball behavior of LBJ and his bunch in the Viet-Nam war — piously preaching for freedom as his indirectly-owned container companies made millions on military transport — is beginning to look downright intellectual. In a previous article I wondered if the term Chinese Fire Drill, meaning self-defeating mayhem, would be replaced by Afghan Fire Drill. One thing about being Libertarian: your most extreme predictions about government will sound like moderate Nestorian wisdom in time.
WORLD'S ONLY SUPERBANANA REPUBLIC
Let me say it first: the US is not the Only Superpower. It is not the kernel of American Empire. Rather, it is morphing into history's first Superbanana Republic. All it needs is for Bush to dress up in surplus doorman's uniforms.
Ah, what a time: I have become a modest celebrity in the US because I have sustained a reasoned continuous polemic on 9-11 [1]. The fact is that , don't look now, but I say today the US military is sustaining the most massive defeat in its history — Custer throwing away his bullets before amazed Indians. I say this after . . .
Meanwhile . . . silence on thousands of "detainees" worthy of the movie Wild Palms of Oliver Stone, that depicts an explicitly-stylized Libertarian struggle to free America from a conspiracy of statists and religious fanatics where thousands disappear in supra-legal processes after a concocted terrorism incident. (Mr. Stone is not a Libertarian, but like many in Hollywood — such as Paul Verhoeven, who has made Starship Troopers and movies exploring what one might call the FAQS of Libertarian ideas, such as police privatization vs. civic spirit in RoboCop, or whether privatization brings fascism in Total Recall — is interested in coming to grips with it, and was made aware of Libertarianism by the unsung and indefatigable late LIO advisor Dr. Timothy Leary — whose impressionistically-written, thought-provoking exploration on how psychic shocks generate political behavior and make obvious truths literally psychologically invisible, Neuropolitique, seems more relevant then ever.
And mark my words — much of the impulse for fascism decorated by calls to go to war in every alley in every port of every nation no one can find on the map and save the Homeland is coming from the Left, which sees the Golden Opportunity to crush the momentum for even quasi-Libertarian market approaches. The Left in the US is an Olympus of genius when it comes to expanding the government through war while maintaining an air of pacifism and letting the political Right take the historical blame. FDR, through either cunning or stupidity, led the nation into WWII, and Truman presided over, and Eisenhower warned against, a Military-Industrial complex — but it is Republicans who are viewed as militarists and foolishly confuse defense with a bureaucratized military.
BUT I'M JUST A PATSY
Viet-Nam was a golden LBJ project — and Nixon was left holding the bag and the blame. Will the day come when Bush will appear on sob-sister shows such as Oprah, crying he was just a patsy of the Left's dirty work?
At this rate, we may well turn on our TVs and see the country has been seized by Left-wing populist militaries who are slowly gaining control of the Universities, the Academies, the ROTC, the Pentagon — and unsurprisingly attempting to discredit and tie-down with further laws the National Guard, the last but still politically powerful remnant of the Revolutionary State militias and private militia societies that once provided the US a quasi-Libertarian defense and were the wonder of the world, electing their own officers like the Ancient Greeks in the Anabasis, once in this country the reading of every grade-school boy.
That book is about a Greek mercenary militia who were trying to get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, by the way. Their officers got themselves slaughtered. So they elected what we would call today a journalist who was there for scholarly reasons to lead them out in an amzing march over thousands of miles — and did survive.
Thus I was bemused to see my comparisons of 9-11 secrecy to the JFK mystery taken up by papers as far afield as the Vancouver Sun, legalistic problems I pointed out asked to be copied to and then repeated by people on CNN, and my articles linked by a bevy of sites, including a lefty site that pronounced me a definitive source. I have declined a flurry of requests for press interviews except on local Libertarian business. My articles are not perfect, merely the best I can honestly do in difficult times, but by simply being there they are noticed.
BEING THERE
As do some other Libertarian commentators who have been raising the alarm that the problem is not barbarians sneaking within the gates but preaching all power to them at the pulpit, I increasingly feel like the Albert Brook character in the movie Broadcast News. His character ends up contemplating how his incidental observations are blared to the media — I say it here, it comes out there.
My simplest comments, according to one e-mail fan (a retired very senior military officer, so pay attention) ring like Chauncey Gardner's common sense in Being There. As Woody Allen said, I also fervently believe 90 percent of success is showing up — and few Intellectuals in US, let alone who are like me also men of deeds, are willing to show up.
Our Press and Intellectuals are AWOL in what should be an investigator's paradise. Few are willing to criticize the US government — and the Democratic and Republican leadership that with its left-right hypnosis is creating this spreading mess — meaningfully in the intimidating chill of Washington threats to arrest or try for various crimes anyone who casts doubt on Washington, and the hysterical atmosphere of panicky citizens, including many Libertarians who only now are beginning to listen to what actions Libertarians are taking — such as leading the campaign to arm US pilots, to fight the Patriot Act so the editor of the Left-wing Nation said in a syndicated editorial that while he despised Libertarians' growing influence, they might well be the ones to lead the salvation of civil liberties in America — and finally, the critical work of Libertarians abroad . . . instead of slipping back into pro-Pentagon rationalizations.
Of those, fewer still will criticize the government without an ax to grind — my position is to bring to light the stupidity of the coercive government system and the need for voluntary alternatives, to show that the venality of any leader is an effect so that even if we had Angels at the helm they would be in time obliged to make coercive and increasingly disastrous decisions. Of those, very few critics can speak calmly and have the sources or knowledge to connect the dots.
MG DADAISM
And so, just by showing up to sit in the near-empty theater, I find my questioning comments are part of the play.
Not to mention the deluge of informative e-mails and 3 am calls from concerned citizens who felt that there was a calm and centered voice willing to name the unnamable.
Now it has all moved from questioning uncertainties to the daily absurd, and indeed as breathless State Department Ignoramuses who think Caesar invented Caesar Salad preen that we are entering the Age of a Roman-Empire like era, of a US sole Superpower.
No, as the US appears to be in fact becoming the world's first Superbanana-Republic, I find that I am not only one of the few people willing to explicitly name what people are discussing, but also being quoted over the Internet and read by High Officials asking What Will Happen next.
ME SPEAKA YOUR LANGUAGE
In part this is because I have over the years developed excellent contacts, and have no nutty ax to grind. I just want the facts, and so say in reasonable tones.
Some of it is reading the foreign press and contacts in Latin America where government officials and leaders are wondering if in coming decades they will be "the part of America" people think of first when they hear the words let's bomb for liberty and democracy.
But in addition a lot is simple common sense, especially when it now seems common sense is contraband in the US along with low-tax out-of-state tobacco as States desperately raise such taxes in the economic paralysis created by the War that, uh, isn't quite there.
After I visited Washington DC to talk with several Congressmen and officials making them aware of the Libertarian position, quite a few ended up making sure they have my articles on their desks because, as one Senator put it, of a few things:
One, that Libertarians had groups on ground (a revered member of the Afghan Royal family, Aslan Effendi, has written a book on Libertarian ideas to be translated soon by ISIL [2], while the MOER group in Bangladesh [3], as the site photo shows, has been working with Afghans for some years and is presently organizing a conference in London).
Two, that Libertarians leaders actually understood that Arabic is not the official language there — contrary to hysterical CIA demands for more Arabic (not Pushto — the Pashtun-language — or other local Afghan languages) translators via massive funding. "Look at this!" said one Senator, "the CIA was in here this morning begging for more stuff that won't work. I swear before this is over we'll find Bin-Laden's to-do list was on Bush's desk mixed in with his lunch order or it was the Mafia or some crazy secret group the whole time. If they had any evidence at all it would be on my desk — but people are either afraid to say anything, or care less because this is an electoral bonanza. Do you know there are more appropriation requests to fight terrorism than the entire budget of the US for the next 3 years?"
Now I should hope the senator was exaggerating. I am sure the CIA knows what languages they speak as well as they have maps of Chinese embassies in the rest of the Government . . . but perhaps they don't trust Senators to know that.
Three, since then LIO and local Libertarians have attracted attention advising Kabul officials to successfully defy Washington and move towards democracy ("They aren't ready!" complained a Bush official on TV) while Ashcroft fumes to the Washington Post that Libertarians are the main stumbling block in his bizarre program of undermining Civil Liberties.
Said one military official to me: "Frankly, I worry we are so mixed up going in all directions we can't defend the US. There are people who want to get rid of our military inventory like something out of The Brethren and cry for new toys in 2003. A lot of people have no idea what is going on. But it seems the Libertarians do, can and are. "
THE LITTLE PARTY THAT WASN'T THERE
The press non-reaction is something, in tandem with Anti-Libertarian blather.
Meanwhile, in 9-11 issues, except for a drumbeat of fervent if sometimes poorly done Internet skeptics, the "Big Press" is silent. Our Allies are openly saying we're nuts? Press reaction: Silence. Bush a laughingstock in his last two trips, particularly in diplomatically critical Spain? Duh. Kabul saying Osama Bin-who? It's reported in a short paragraph on Page Z-68. There is still no evidence of al Qaeda involvement? Distracting headlines everywhere of the FBI and CIA muttering to each other of alleged warnings as if this proved something beyond the fact that no one in DC has read CYA mail since Herbert Hoover.
(Cultural Note: The Spanish, parents of the Aryan, Persian, Hebrew, Egyptian, Arab and other peoples, originally came from Kashmir, as e.g. Sallust indicates and Ancient Irish stories tell us; and older families such as the De Lemos continue to have ancient and discreet contacts and even co-ordinate clans, such as the Lee clan in China, in those regions — above and beyond at one time defeating or influencing quite a few of them. While I am not involved, the personal shuttling in the Kashmir crisis by Spanish blue-bloods I leave to your imagination. Spain was first to voice support to the American people in the 9-11 crisis, and its subtle diplomacy is increasingly being recognized as a consistently calming and unifying influence so Madrid has become the place to hold International Human rights and diplomatic conferences. Only the Spanish and increasingly industrious Latin Americans can sit down simultaneously with leaders in nearly every country in the world and referring to ancient ties start the conversation, "Now look, dear cousin . . .")
Plus everybody knows Latins don't believe in Armies. They don't believe in police. They believe in exquisite good manners so the most modest workingman puts a Boston Brahmin to shame, and watch out if you act like a buffoon like flying a plane into a building. You will never know what happened — that of course, would be personal, very bad form.
They just send someone quietly to exterminate you if you become a problem, usually after inviting you to dinner and handing you a humanitarian award. Poor Bin Laden. We loved him but he just died of a cold after the White House dinner, while some unknown person poisoned the entire Taliban leadership, probably disgruntled barbars with no beards to shave since they came to power, quien sabe? Must do something about those plane navigation systems, though.
During the Franco era, the Spanish did not let a little thing like dictatorship interfere with their sense of independence, as I have written here in a previous article. It is rumored that during the hijackings in the '60s, passengers on an Iberia plane tossed out the hijackers as the plane came in slow. The pilot was cited for unauthorized garbage discharge. And the government plastered the Mideast with diplomacy and hard-boiled Spanish businessmen who make Don Corleone look like Mother Theresa so everyone knew that, in spite of that little unpleasantness in La Reconquista, Spaniards just loved the Muslims and thought of them. Frequently.
End of hijackings. That is how you defend a country and a culture. Which if the US Government had someone with sense in the White House would, in fact, have been smoothly done.
TWO MEN AND A MIDGET
Libertarians used to cynically characterize the USSR as a US-maintained banana republic, whose presence served dark agendas in the US from Soviet-sweetheart businessmen to Academics intent on crushing dissent to Military men in search of a budget appropriation.
America's St. George created by his stare the very dragon he beheld.
To his credit Reagan heard these ideas with sympathy and worked with Libertarians in cutting this political Gordian knot. People forget today that as Libertarian ideas changed perceptions — and the Libertarian proposal to offer to share the quasi-Libertarian SDI unnerved the Politburo, aware that it had no resources for this, into infighting even as people like General Lebed read Libertarian books smuggled in — the American Legion magazine ran front-cover articles warning Russia would probably rule the world.
If Bush would listen to such Libertarian ability . . . to by reaching out before problems occur and targeting, not coddling the dictators with unhelpful help it would dissolve conflict today.
The truth is while the people believe they are fighting a welcome war to rectify past wrongs in Afghanistan and defend their country from fruitcakes by a growing world hegemony where we parachute in to save every stray dog and treed cat, the US, and the US Government are destroying what is left of monetary, cultural and political integrity — and the Government becoming its own banana republic — on a scale unimagined.
Let me illustrate the points I made at the beginning:
Could the Inquisition do better? Do Muslims who worry of a new Crusader Medieval mentality in the West have a point?
America is sliding toward a New Inquisition. Latins in the US openly wonder if the US has forgotten the best of Latin culture for the worst precedents of its history which took centuries to overthrow. But take heart. For the US is in a slapstick way doing the revrse of what it intends.
It says it is crazy for citizens to watch the planes, let alone Libertarians — no, we need Marine-type guards in first Class.
But it ended up putting a Libertarian to watch the skies, as we shall see.
Next Week: Part 2: The New Inquisition
References
[1] http://www.gilson.uni.cc[2] www.isil.org
[3] www.libertarian.uni.cc
Michael Gilson De Lemos ("MG") is on the National Committee of the US Libertarian Party, and also co-ordinates the Libertarian International Organization. Retired as a Fortune 100 management consultant, he is working on books on management and libertarian philosophy. His email address is mg4u@oasis.net.
from The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, Vol 1, No 23, July 22, 2002