On February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag was consumed by an enormous blaze. Hitler, whose immense popularity was based on his promises to resurrect Germany's economy, immediately accused the Communists - his political opponents - of instigating the conflagration. He had thousands of of their leaders and activists arrested and proceeded to coerce the ageing President Hindenburg into passing an emergency decree that suspended basic judicial, civil, and human rights and led to the setting up of concentration camps. The Nazis fanned up the hysteria and convinced the population that the Fatherland was facing an impending civil war to be initiated by a minority (the Jews) and their brainchildren, Bolshevism and the Comintern.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaida Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the Twin Towers in New-York by crashing into them fuel-laden passenger airplanes that they had earlier hijacked in various airports. The Towers collapsed and 3000 people have lost their lives.
US President George Bush declared a War on Terror. Within less than 18 months, the United states suspended basic judicial, civil, and human rights and embarked on a prolonged series of deliberate violations of both its own Constitution and various international treaties. Torture, illegal eavesdropping, breaches of privacy, kidnapping, suspension of due process and habeas corpus all followed. The United States, in all but name, is in the throes of being incrementally transformed into a police state.
The terrorists are winning. Gradually but perceptibly, the USA and the United Kingdom (UK) are shedding their liberal democratic veneer, axing their traditions, reinterpreting their constitution (USA) and case law (UK) and, thus, becoming police states.
Both the US Patriot Act, recently extended by Congress and the British Prime Minister's newly acquired powers to exclude and deport not only active terrorists but also people who disagree with his foreign policy suspend long-standing and hard-won human and civil rights. The right to privacy has been all but eradicated in both countries.
Blair (now Brown) and Bush exercise self-defense through moral suicide. Visitors to the UK as well as residents and naturalized Britons must adhere to Britain's set of values and observe them, thunders the former. Presumably, it is the same set of values that the British are so bent on bending and ignoring. And as for Bush, remember Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib.
The UK will maintain a registry of undesirables. Brits, please add me to the list. I believe that the terrorist attacks in London were a desperate and criminal response to your own war crimes throughout the world and, lately, on a monstrous scale, in Iraq. Terrorism is deplorable and red in tooth and claw. It should be fought with determination and imagination - not with oppression and slaughters of the innocent.
British mothers should have taught their offspring that hanging around bad company invariably ends badly. Evidently, they had failed in this particular respect. The British cast their obsequious lot with a narcissistic, thuggish, gun-toting, trigger-happy, bible-thumping, and dangerously violent nation, the United States of America. Violence breeds counter-violence and profound contempt. Thus, the British found themselves on the receiving end of both in ample doses in July 2005. The taste of one's medicine is always bitter.
In a string of uninterrupted and unpunished war crimes, the UK and the USA (and Israel and France) taught Muslim militants that civilians are potential warriors and merit no special treatment or protection. International law has become the self-interested and biased "justice" of the victors, a policy tool, a discriminatory travesty, worthy only of condemnation.
From Dresden to Hiroshima, through Vietnam and Yugoslavia, and down to Palestine and Iraq, the hectoring and hypocritical West itself made no distinction between peaceful population and combatants. Lately, it took to invading or threatening to invade Muslim territories, occupying holy places, and massacring tens of thousands of innocents in the process. More than 100,000 civilians died in Iraq since the American-British led "liberation".
Yet, as New-York and Madrid and London can attest, ignoring one's own rules of engagement in warfare is a recipe for recurrent disaster. By courting the USA, the British are abetting a pernicious transformation in the nature of their people and country that generations of future patriots and compatriots are bound to mourn.
About the Author
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East.
He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, Global Politician, PopMatters, eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
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