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Secrecy and Fidelity

By Gordon F. Corbett
gordon@harborside.com

      The Bush Administration keeps a great many secrets, and some of those secrets and reasons even FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley endorses.

    She said on the television interview-show "NOW":  "Terrorists are partially criminal and partially intelligence oriented.  And no one has really asked or answered the question as to whether perpetual secrecy is necessary or even beneficial for terrorist investigations.  It is for country-sponsored intelligence and spying, without a doubt.  Those types of things need to remain secret for long, long periods of time."

    Even she believes that we, the people who paid her salary, and who are now paying her retirement, are not entitled to know who is spying on us.  Still less, presumably, are we entitled, through our (ahem!) "justice system," to prosecute, convict, and possibly even kill enemy agents.  Maybe she would object that such "reckless" actions might get in the way of "detente."

    Then, she mused:  "But with terrorists, often times who could be prosecuted, do we need the same types of secrecy?"

    Well, let us see.  "Terrorists" are people whose prosecution she allows.  They are saboteurs and murderers who work for foreign nations.  They destroy and kill not merely to destroy and kill alone, but mostly to frighten others remote from their actual crimes.  The sponsors reason that if their servants frighten enough people sufficiently, the victims' governments will accommodate the sponsors.

    Terrorism is a tactic of "low-intensity" or "limited" warfare which comprises sabotage and murder, on the one hand, and secret bargaining on the other.  The bargainers are the sponsor nation, the victim nation, and, perhaps, the sponsor nation's bigger and stronger "friends."

    These "friends" may have urged the sponsor nation to commit its crimes. The victims' governments keep the "terrorists"' sponsor's identity secret to facilitate bargaining with the sponsor governments and / or the sponsor governments' patrons.

    Clearly, this whole schema depends on immorality.  The sponsor nation and its "friends," if involved, keep their respective roles secret instead of issuing forthright declarations of war.

    The victim nation's politicians play along.  They keep the sponsor nation's identity secret to avoid arousing their own citizens.  Reeling from the sponsor's crimes, they would demand a declaration of war.  Declarations of war disrupt commerce and diplomacy.  This disruption costs money.  On that money depend many politicians' careers.  Who cares if a trifling dozen, or a measly hundred, or even a few thousand people are sacrificed?

    Assume, arguendo, that somehow I have learned what nation sponsored the attacks of 11 September, and, even better, that I have acquired some sort of solid proof.  According to some people's reasoning, if I were to broadcast these documents over the Internet to one and all, I would be committing a profoundly unpatriotic and subversive act.

    The act would be unpatriotic because it would damage or destroy the government's ability to settle the disputes responsible for 11 September.  It would be subversive because it might undermine the regime behind our ostensible government.

    This point of view is anti-Constitutional.  The Constitution limited and diffused governmental power.  Illegally, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal removed those limitations and divisions.  Roosevelt's premises were that the Constitution was obsolete, and that the people's government should be freed to make serving the people's needs possible.

    Roosevelt said that we needed a "brains trust" to create the specific solutions.  This "trust" was drawn from the same rough group of organizations that dominate our government today.

    Many people refer to those organizations as the "Establishment."

    Some love it.  They say that it has, however secretly, helped us through a great many crises over the years, and, conceivably, we can depend on them still.  Others hate it.  They say that nobody elected it, although many Establishmentarians have been elected.

    Naturally, once in office, the elected officials appoint other Establishmentarians to various posts to carry out policies originating with--you guessed it--the Establishment.

    I wish that I could say that our current Establishment is un-American.  Alas.  Since at least the days of Andrew Jackson, groups of businessmen and other influential people have dominated our government.  When Jackson refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, they actually caused a depression.

    Our country is not a European nation.  In Britain, or Germany, or France, the people realize that their leaders are the masters.  They elect their masters, but once elected, those masters are in charge.  They serve, not the individual citizens, but that great gray concept known as "the state," of whom the citizens as a body make up only one part.  Other parts are the church, such remnants of the nobility as exist, and powerful businessmen.

    Colonists came to our shores for many reasons, but the main one was a strong desire to escape Europe.  We fought our War of Independence to make that escape permanent.  Some want us to return to that system.

    We need to ask Nancy Reagan's old question, "What's wrong with just saying, "No?"
 
 
 

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