6 January, 2009
Either the ghost of George Orwell is living in the minds of White House speech writers, or Team Cheney has been utilizing striking screenwriters from the film 1984 (those who adapted Orwell’s novel, starring John Hurt and Sir Richard Burton, released in the year 1984). For whatever convenient reason, the latest report from the Center for Public Integrity[1], economic woes for the major central banks (which are all private banks by the way), the coming collapse in the housing market, the revelation that the Bush legacy will take its rightful place next to a used roll of toilet paper in the annals of history, Cheney went public and spewed the same, tired, emesis that Colin Powell, Condoleezza, Rummy, and W. have spread for years. And while Keith Olbermann has rightly criticized the Bush administration as having merely leafed through a copy of 1984, the latest remarks of Cheney look like they were lifted directly. Consider this passage of roughly 350 words, in comparison with around 200 from the movie.
Cheney’s address before the Heritage Foundation (23 January 2008)[2]
“…after September 11th, the government made some difficult choices. One of these was to stop treating terrorist attacks as criminal matters [i.e.,] find out what happened, arrest the bad guys, put them in jail, and move on.
“The world changed when a coordinated attack ended the lives of 3,000 Americans and turned 16 acres of New York City to ashes. … we are dealing with a strategic threat to the United States. We are at war with an enemy that wants to cause mass death inside the United States. And we must act systematically and decisively until this enemy is destroyed.
“The terrorists waging war against this country don't fight according to the rules of warfare, or international law, or moral standards, or basic humanity.
“And we have to be clear-eyed about the character and objective of these adversaries. They have a strategic goal to recreate the old seventh-century caliphate, an empire stretching from Europe through the Middle East, all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to arm themselves with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and they would not hesitate to use such weapons.
“Their tactics … are familiar to all: hijackings … suicide attacks, car bombs, beheadings, messages of violence and hatred on the Internet. Their method is … to plan in secret, and to proceed by stealth, so that we won't know what they're up to until a moment of sudden, catastrophic violence.
“To wage this fight we have to marshal our resources to go after the terrorists, to shut down their training camps, to take down their networks, deny them sanctuary, disrupt their funding sources, and bring them to justice. We've taken necessary steps, as well, to go after the sponsors of terror, and to confront those who might provide these killers with more deadly capabilities. And because some of the early battlefields of the war have been right here in the United States, we have taken vital actions to defend the homeland against future attacks. …”
And Now for Something Completely Different
For you readers and movie buffs who find that Cheney’s speech seems eerily familiar, I present a review of the “Statement” of an Inner Party member at Victory Square: [3]
“ … They have attacked an unarmed village with rocket bombs and murdered defenseless, innocent, and peaceful citizens of Oceania. “This is no longer war. This is cold-blooded murder.
“Until now, the war has been conducted with honor, and bravery, with the ideals of truth and justice, in the best traditions of mankind... until this moment. [editor's note: I always love that line which links war with the best traditions of mankind]
“… the endless catalogue of bestial atrocities which will inevitably ensue from this appalling act must, can, and will be terminated. The forces of darkness and treasonable maggots who collaborate with them, must, can, and will be wiped from the face of the earth.
“We must crush them. We must smash them. We must stamp them out! We will not rest until a final victory has been achieved. Death to the eternal enemy of Oceania. Death!
“Brothers and sisters one week from now, in this very square we shall, as a demonstration of our resolve, as a sure sign to those who attempt to threaten our Party and our State, … execute publicly the same number of East-Asian prisoners by hanging, drawing and quartering!”
Maybe we should be pleased that Cheney did not call for public executions of men and boys held in Guantánamo or in the prisons of Iraq or those black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Perhaps the subtext of the Cheney speech is that reading Orwell is fundamental. That is, Cheney, or his speech writer wants us to remove the blinders from our eyes – for which knowledge of Orwell and Doublethink is essential. How did W. say it? “Is our children learning?”[4]
A Child’s Critique
I really should not have to challenge all of the “made for the MSM echo-chamber” lines in this Cheney except, but I leave you with a few:
(1) 3,000 Americans were not killed in re the hijackings and bombings of 9/11. How do I know? Because some of the families of the workers in the WTC were denied claims on the grounds that they were undocumented workers. (I mean screw those janitors – they do not create real wealth, Wall Street investors who make bad investments do.)
(2) There is no “strategic” threat to the United States government that comes in the form of bombs or killings. In fact, if 50 million Americans died tomorrow via nuclear bombs, anthrax, and small pox, we would still have a government, a Constitution (sort of), and laws. Iraq has lost perhaps as much as 20% of its population since March 2003 via death, bombings, cancer, emigration and displacement. We face nothing like that.
(3) In taking the Orwellian line that “we must act systematically and decisively until the enemy is destroyed” is a call for permanent war. Such is a wet dream for international bankers, the Federal Reserve (i.e. those private banks who steal us blind), and all those who are making millions and billions via war contracts. (Does anyone read Smedley Butler anymore?)
(4) So Cheney says that “the terrorists” do not follow the rules of war or moral standards. Can you say “water boarding” boys and girls? How many civilians do Americans get to kill per bomb? How much radiation can be spread in the name of freedom and democracy?
(5) I know that the clear goal of the neo-cons and the petroleum industry is American military hegemony from Spain to Indonesia, because they have said so – and acted accordingly. And we know who has sold and used the chemical, biological, and radiological weapons in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Guam, Vieques, etc.
(6) About methods, hmm. Steal elections, control the media, plant stories, extract confessions via torture, commit war crimes, e.g. aggressive war, give billion dollar no-bid contracts to your friends and campaign contributors, and declare that your god is bigger than theirs.
(7) Hit those training camps – especially those build by the Army Corps of Engineers, cut off the money for bad terrorists – unless it comes from Saudi Arabia, expand the pedagogy of the School of the Americas to spread love and joy in the Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, and Africa.
Yes Dick, we must crush them. Death to the enemies of liberty, Habeas Corpus, and permanent war. Death, Death, Death!
John Calvin Jones, PhD, JD(Top)
[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080123-2.html
[3] http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/n/1984-script-transcript-george-orwell.html
[4] http://www.amusingquotes.com/h/b/George_W._Bush_1.htm
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