It is just too easy to simply place blame for all this warmongering violence at the feet of Bush and Blair. Far too simplistic. Their motivations generally identified are no more than a subtext of the prevalent rhetoric; given to us in one form and another, drip, drip, drip.
The first level of propaganda was assembled from the so called ‘war on terrorism’, rogue states, axis of evil, the supposed legitimacy of taking a pre-emptive strike against growing threats. Call this the ‘knee-jerk’ rhetoric.
For those who quickly saw past this false justification, the second level included war for oil, or more broadly ‘economic advantages’ including usurping water resources, controlling central banks, enjoying military contracts, building oil pipelines and so on. All true of cause.
The third level includes: building the mechanisms of a police state, strategic advantages and comfort for Israel, weakening the potential of Arab and Islamic nations (especially in unification), consolidating the current power and authority of the US/Dollar hegemony, polarising global politics into UN and NATO led paradigms and drawing the world economy into the control of long established international corporate and banking interests.
To bang on simply about Bush and Blair is to evade the prospect that they are no less than puppets; functionaries of an agenda far broader than these two weak men or any other public figures we can name. What difference would it make if Blair shot himself in the head leaving a note admitting his and Bush’s guilt. We already know what they did. Anyone with a brain knew before war on Iraq – there were over a million in the street who knew. We all knew Bush was an android remote-controlled by his NeoCon PNAC administration (junta).
It is enticing to think of Blair, driven by ego, thinking he was ‘making it’ onto the world stage; feeling the hand of history giving a little squeeze where it is most rewarding. But if that is all it took I do believe he would have been stopped. The fact is more probably the converse; that the agenda was in place long before these two entered the stage.
It is possible that Blair saw America would proceed with these wars regardless of Britain’s inclusion but that with the UK it allowed for at least a call of moderation, a fig-leaf of legitimacy. What would the world look like today if America had undertaken these escapades in isolation. They would have crossed the Rubicon and I think the world would be a more dangerous place still.
What if Blair had stood-up in Parliament and announced that the British Government were not satisfied that the supposed conspirators of the 9/11 event were as we have been told. And that the three buildings of the WTC that fell that day could not have collapsed in the way they did as a result of aircraft impacts and fire. That America was in the hands of a deception of historic magnitude. I do not think he would have lived a week. He would be dead in the woods.
Anyway would Blair really have been selected for the role if he was going to ‘out’ the true means by which the world has been run since before history was recorded.
These men’s crimes were knowing what was expected of them and doing it. To just identify them as culprit of this changes nothing, does nothing to protect us from the same scenario repeating into the future.
I do agree that all of those who abuse or negligently fail in their position must be fully accountable for their actions. There should be no forms of indemnity.
If every leader, political and corporate, was totally accountable for their each-and-every action the world would be a different and better place. For one thing: no sane person would leave themselves open to such liabilities. For another: nobody could legitimately rise to such a position because the potential liabilities would exceed anybody’s ability to atone.
Why is it that the vast majority think we need a world where the few are expected to operate in such capacities; roles which clearly far exceed any person’s ability to atone. It is madness, it is the false paradigm within which the world is currently lost. It surely is one clear reason why people in such positions of power do, so frequently, abuse their office in so many ways; they know they never can be really called upon to atone for their actions.
A fellow who truly accepted full liability for every aspect of their tenure would have to act with great caution; but I fear persons of such qualities do not often rise to any such position.
By an almost inverted process of exclusion, those who manage to make it to be our leaders are most likely to be the least suitable. Indeed if one imagines how leaders would match against the Hare Psychopathy Check-list, for example, the conclusion is striking:
Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Callousness; lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Factor 2: Case history “Socially deviant lifestyle”
Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioural control
Lack of realistic long-term goals
Impulsiveness
Irresponsibility
Juvenile delinquency
Early behaviour problems
Revocation of conditional release
Traits not correlated with either factor
Promiscuous sexual behaviour
Many short-term marital relationships
Criminal versatility
Acquired behavioural sociopathy/sociological conditioning
The mechanisms by which those who function within the state can be called upon to atone are the very mechanisms of that selfsame entity. That is why there is minimal opportunity for traction in such an endeavour; its their game which they need only play with their stacked deck and loaded dice.
All the while we accept the state we will be subjected to a system that can only inflict psychopaths onto the people. The system is inherently psychopathic.
To want to employ the state’s systems, to correct the inevitably undesirable actions of the state and its agents, only acts to endorses the very system that is erroneous by it nature, by its every dynamic.
People like Bush and Blair are not the problem, they are a symptom. The disease is the state and such failed leaders are but one clearly evident pustule manifestation of the wretchedness it only creates.
Are we alone in realising these truths and our political masters all blind and foolish. I think not, not at all. If we can work it out the state’s police and security apparatus surely can too; let alone the various official enquiries.
Since I awoke, following 9/11, to the endless lies fed to the people, I have undergone a metamorphic transformation; a slow but complete reformation.
I believe I now can see our enemy, formed as Trompe-l’œil, shifting; one moment visible and the next the illusion.
My conclusion is not that the concept of the state is just broken and needs to be fixed. It is that the illusion of the state, including the notion of democracy, is nothing but a hollow sham to hold mankind stupefied into slavery. The state works fine at what it truly intended for.
Take for poignant example whosoever it really is that has such vast financial resources sufficient to to lend so copiously to governments to break them, then yet more to bail them out and more still to break them even harder yet again. How will these people fare without their multi-layered control apparatus, woven into and including the state, to do their bidding? How will they do when control of the means of exchange is no longer in the hands of their false edifice called state?
The first battle is within ourselves. It is to cast-off the belief, the belief that the state is a necessary enterprise at all. Every function of normal decent human existence and progress can be enacted without its central control; more effectively I will argue. The authority of the state will always be usurped by the few at the expense of the many.
