The Paramilitary Threat to American Democracy

In the last minutes of her life, Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein was dropping off and picking up paperwork at the central customs office near al Khilani Square in Baghdad.  McClatchy reports that as she walked out of the customs building:

an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets. Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she’d held in her arms fluttered down the street.

She must have hated us for our freedoms . . . fortunately, Blackwater USA was on the job and pumped several bullets into her to teach her to have more respect for the greatest democracy on earth.

Four other people were also killed in this incident.  As we all know, a week later Blackwater security guards thugs killed 11 people and wounded 12 more in central Baghdad.  Video confirms that they were unprovoked when they opened fire on a car with three people and a baby in it, killing them all.  By the time they finished firing, 7 more innocent people were dead, one of them a mother with eight children. 

This is what Iraqi “democracy” looks like.  Unless we’re very fortunate, American “democracy” may look much the same way if there’s a catastrophic war with Iran or another 9/11 and Blackwater is deployed on American streets to provide “security”.

In Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet? author Naomi Wolf warns that “Blackwater is available to anyone who can write the checks.”  They consider themselves to be Americas Holy Warriors and are a growing threat to American democracy:

If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy.  War, with the huge profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition.  And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans could appear on streets across the U.S.  Such a presence could paralyze us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.

In Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps Naomi Wolf documents how the Bush administration has been following what she identifies as a time-tested, 10 step plan to establish fascism:

  1.   Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
  2.   Create a gulag
  3.   Develop a thug caste
  4.   Set up an internal surveillance system
  5.   Harass citizens’ groups
  6.   Engage in arbitrary detention and release
  7.   Target key individuals
  8.   Control the press
  9.   Dissent equals treason
  10. Suspend the rule of law

Over the past 7 years Bush/Cheney have taken every one of these steps.  Everything is in place for a police state. If a triggering event such as war with Iran or another 9/11 occurs, we may well get one. The rapid development of a thug caste in the form of Blackwater and other paramilitary groups, and the recent expansion of internal surveillance through FISA “improvements” are two of the more alarming developments in recent months, and who knows what else is being prepared by these lunatics Cheney has entrenched throughout the entire executive branch?

America wouldn’t be called a police state of course, we’ll be told that “enhanced security conditions” are necessary for a few weeks months years decades.  Apparently, Rick Santorum, one of Bush/Cheney’s favorite storm troopers, has proudly posed for the official justification poster: 

Hi wingnut lurkers!  You’ll be happy to know that this inspiring poster is available now at your local WalMart store for only $19.99.  Look for it in the New Amerika aisle.

InfoWars quotes Santorum predicting that, “between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events.”

If Santorum was the only one talking about “some unfortunate events” I wouldn’t be concerned, but John Paul Roberts, a Republican with far more credibility than Santorum is warning that something is in the works to trigger a police state:

Roberts said that because of Bush’s unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election. However, Roberts emphasizes, “the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling.” Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. “Something’s in the works,” he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

Roberts issued this warning before Rove “retired”, but I doubt that Turdblossom is just sitting on his porch somewhere in Texas sipping lemonade.  Seeking vengeance against his enemies has driven him his entire sordid life, and I think he’s plotting some major vengeance, martial law style.  A police state would be our worst nightmare.  But Bush, Cheney, Republicans, and the Architect of their “victories” wouldn’t mind a police state at all, it may be the only way to prevent their worst nightmare, an Election Night 2008 electoral map like this:

John Paul Roberts:

The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists … are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events,” Roberts continued. “Chertoff has predicted them …. The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped …. You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda’s not going to do it, it’s going to be orchestrated …. The Republicans are praying for another 9/11.

All Bush and Cheney need now in order to expand and intensify their control is a triggering event like a war with Iran or another 9/11.  I don’t know if that triggering event will happen, but I do know they don’t give a damn how many people would die.  Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein was a nobody to them.  We’re all nobody’s to them.  If the Democrats weren’t standing up for us with such impressive determination, courage, and integrity, we’d be in big trouble.

Wait.

SHIT.

January 20, 2009 can’t get here soon enough for me.