Chris Floyd:Every now and then the mask slips, and we see the true face of the system that marshals the world. For an instant, the heavy paint of sober wisdom and moral purpose falls away, and there, suddenly, with jolting clarity, is the snarling rictus of an ape.
Note carefully the change in rhetoric -- the change in target -- from "terrorism" to "insurgency." An "insurgent" is someone who rises up to resist or overthrow a ruling power. George Washington was an insurgent; so was Pol Pot. But a perceived "global insurgency" can only be aimed at a global power. What Rumsfeld is clearly saying is that anyone anywhere who resists the world-spanning will of the American Empire will be subject to "the path of action." That's the blood-and-iron terminology that Bush himself used to describe his policies in the official "National Security Strategy" he issued -- just months before killing more than 10,000 civilians in Iraq.What should you do with such dangerous creatures in a civilized society? Why, put them in a cage, of course.No doubt the definition of "global insurgent" will prove to be every bit as elastic as "terrorist," in a world where Iraqi prisoners -- 70 percent to 90 percent of them completely innocent, according to the Red Cross -- were "Gitmo-ized," treated just like the alleged terrorists in America's lawless Guantanamo concentration camp; a world where even U.S. citizens simply disappear into the maw of military custody, held without charges, indefinitely, on the president's express order. If America controls your country and you don't like it, you're an insurgent. If you're an American who doesn't like to control other countries, you too are an insurgent. And the war against you is "just beginning."
[ As always, lots of good links.]
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