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Rights, Security, and their Preservation

By Gordon Francis Corbett

Toward the end of a recent piece denouncing our defense planners as "Cold Warriors," Pentagon consultant Thomas P. M. Barnett said, "That is the big limitation with this crowd:  they need a big enemy, otherwise they SIMPLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO MANAGE THE WORLD'S SECURITY SYSTEM."  (Capitals in original.) 

This sentence says or implies several things.  

                         1.  We have defense planners.

                         2.  The defense planners define "defense" as, "thwarting enemies' moves against us."

                         3.  The defense planners can only recognize enemies if they are "big."  The word, "big," in this context, is not defined.

                         4.  These "small" enemies' "invisibility" lets them act with impunity.

                         5.  Their impunity lets them endanger "the world," whose "security system"--undefined--needs to be "managed."

                         6.  Our defense planners' small-enemy blindness renders them incapable of managing this "security system."

                         7.  This incapacity endangers us directly because it makes our planners incapable of thwarting small enemies' attacks.

                         8.  This incapacity endangers us indirectly because it imperils nations whose trade sustains us, and whom our planners therefore defend.

In short:  the world has a "security system";  our defense planners try to manage it;  their blindness to small enemies renders them inept;  and, therefore, the world stands generally endangered.

The attacks of 11 September 2001 were described as "acts of terrorism."  President Bush subsequently launched a "War on Terror," comprising several campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Osama bin Laden launched 11 September's attacks;  but, I contend, he did so on behalf of a still-unnamed employer.  Because our leaders have not revealed who paid bin Laden, they have prevented the average American from knowing what principal endangers our country.

Our intelligence agencies' capabilities astonish.  Their SIGINT satellites monitor electronic communications.  Their photographic satellites scan the earth, using light from several spectra to reveal every facet of its surface.  Their radar-emanating satellites penetrate all camouflage or concealment.  Speaking facetiously, when a national leader breaks wind, our analysts learn the contents of his dinner.  That people so magnificently equipped and superlatively organized could not determine who paid bin Laden to murder almost three thousand people in New York City is laughable. 

Our leaders know very well who ordered 11 September, but are withholding that information from us, the people who pay their salaries.  

Why?

As do we, our leaders like being free to choose and to implement solutions.  They know that their continuing to do both requires our ignorance of two things:  who commissioned 11 September, and the fact that our leaders kept that fact secret.  Substantiated by specific facts, those two disclosures would cost our attackers their lives;  and our leaders their jobs.  They could even lead us to discard our leaders' seventy-plus years' labor at building "One World."  

So, to preserve their jobs, their power, and their goals, they limit our knowledge and, thereby, prevent our outrage.  For them, secrecy only starts with protecting legitimate defense secrets.  Governance by ignorance is their watchword.  

To destroy all that, we must expand our knowledge and, therefore, kindle our outrage.  For us, secrecy starts and ends with protecting legitimate defense secrets.  Liberation through information is our watchword.  

Not counting those legitimate defense secrets, when we know everything that our public guardians do on our nickel;  when we can show the public their broad policies and narrow decisions;  and when we, through our elected Representatives and Senators, can veto any without fear or favor, we shall have journeyed a long way toward restoring our neutrality and rebuilding our liberty.

That liberty will lead citizens of other nations to emulate us.  Peaceable citizens living under peaceable leaders can elect new ones dedicated to protecting their individual's rights.  Those living in countries where, as Will Rogers said, "Your criticism is your epitaph," can profit by our example.  Ours need not be the only country where the principles of Locke, Mason, and Jefferson led a people to eject a tyrant.   

When individual citizens of any nation can make public guardians protect their rights;  when they can hold them accountable at the polls;  and, when they can fire them when they want, they will be free.  They will then attain the prosperity and happiness which is every man's birthright.

What righteous person could ask for more?

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