politics

In his recent resignation letter John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat with twenty years of service in the State Department wrote: "[T]his Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? ... I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration." I have been trying to put into words my fear that 9/11 was, in fact, a loosely orchestrated "Night of Broken Glass" for the extreme right. Though they may not have given direct aid, I have a very strong suspicion that the present day Oliver Norths of this world did not interfere with Al Qaeda's plans where they knew of them. They needed something just like this to begin converting to a military dictatorship. I hate to be overly paranoid but considering our "President" wasn't actually elected, our attorney general has already used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper, and we are about to join Emperial Japan, Germany, and Iraq in the very exclusive pre-emptive strike club I feel that our government is in the hands of the wrong people. Add to that the membership of the far right leaders in "The Family" and the Christian Coalition of America and it all seems frighteningly apocalyptic.