The first casualty of any war is truth. so says Butler Shaffer in his article: "Making it McCrystal Clear" in www. LewRockwell.com. 6/2/2010
All wars are grounded in lies. Any threat to the war machine must be silenced through censorship, top secret classifications, media sound bites and outright lies and misdirection. Witness the "weapons of mass destruction", "the search for Osama Bin Laden"," to destroy the Taliban
and Al Qaeda threat to our democracy", and "Operation Freedom Iraq".
Lies and deceptions.
Shaffer writes: "The uncertainties and contradictions that attend the "fog of war" are more easily overlooked – or ignored – when the fallen soldiers, themselves, can be enshrouded in the cloak of being "unknown." If the soldiers who die are unfamiliar to us – fungible nonbeings who, like ourselves, have been conditioned to serve the state – how can the rest of us be expected to cut our ways through the cloudiness? As long as we are prepared to insist upon the protection of our ignorance; to wave our flags when the cheerleaders so direct us; and to regard war as but the expression of some imagined sense of "human nature," this evil, institutionally-profitable racket will continue unabated. The entire mess can then be synthesized into such an incoherent hodgepodge of confusing complexity that no one can be expected to make any sense of it."
. . "Gen. McChrystal has discovered what so many others before him learned – from Socrates to Thomas More to Gen. Smedley Butler to Sophie Scholl to Daniel Ellsberg to Seymour Hersh to untold governmental "whistleblowers" – even, more recently to Helen Thomas – that it is dangerous to speak truth not to power, but to ordinary people. The owners of the political establishment know the truth; they are fully aware of the lies they have fabricated; the deceptions they – along with their obliging media and academic supporters – have carefully manipulated into a perception of "truth." The owners don’t want you to know what they know. Those who would dare to so inform you get labeled as "paranoid conspiracy theorists," "disgruntled former employees," "racists," or "anti-Semitic." When I am asked if I believe in "conspiracy theories" of history, I respond – in the words of the late Chris Tame – "I am not interested in conspiracy theories, but in the facts of conspiracies."
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"The institutionalized order cannot tolerate any deviation from the mindset it has worked so hard to maintain. At least since the time of Gutenberg, it has been at war with any expressions that undermine the status quo. Because life is a constant process of response to changing environments, practices that inhibit such resiliency can only diminish life. This is why there is nothing so liberating as the free flow of information which, coupled with respect for the inviolability of property, allows people to engage in self-interested adaptations to their world."
"There is one voice the establishment owners have been reluctant to silence, even years after his death. Former President Eisenhower – who personified the "hero" of World War II to such a degree that both the Republican and Democratic parties wanted to nominate him – declared, in his farewell address that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Perhaps it was his hands-on familiarity with war – unlike so many war-loving lounge-generals who never heard a shot fired in anger – that left within him such a distaste for the system.[emphasis added ] But you and I are not to think such thoughts, nor to listen to those who do. We are to believe the great lie that our family members and friends died to protect us, rather than to profit the corporate-state interests who create and manage the institutionalized carnage."
"As the political establishment continues to collapse, its war against the transformative nature of information becomes intensified. Efforts are currently being made by some politicians and governmental agencies to control the Internet; to give to the president a "kill switch" that would allow him to shut down, on his dictatorial whim, this decentralized and unrestrained engine of communication whenever he considers it necessary for the interests of national security. That Sen. Lieberman – the sponsor of such a bill – justifies the measure on the grounds that the Chinese government has such power, is indicative of just how strongly the established order feels threatened by free minds!"
"It is not that the existing power structure is concerned that "false" ideas, or "untrue" statements might be loosed upon society – it has long thrived on such practices – but that speakers and writers might step outside the permitted circle of opinion certified as "safe" by and for the guardians of our minds. It was not that Helen Thomas’s comments were objectionable – I, for one, criticized them on the grounds of the collectivist premise underlying them – but that she crossed the line about what free men and women are allowed to think about and discuss. In this, as in all other matters, I remain an anarchist: people should be free to control their own lives and property – including the content of their minds – as they find useful to their own ends.
Perhaps former President Eisenhower can once again be called upon to advise the Liebermans, the Hillary Clintons, the Sen. Jay Rockefellers, and others who have predilections for tyrannizing the minds of their neighbors: "Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
These deniers of truth will continue from engagement to engagement from war to war until and unless those who fight and die in the hostilities and are brought home in a body bag or a gurney are not glorified, praised for their valor and self sacrifice, honor and false patriotism. When the war mongers are the first to go into combat rather than cheer from behind the lines. When war a creation of satan is identified as that which comes out of hell to "rob, kill and destroy"truth will be absent.
With Love and Kindness,
THE HATMAN
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