Given the ongoing war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine, it’s natural for Americans to conclude that Russia is our enemy. Not so. Our enemy is instead the US national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — the entity that is responsible for the war in Ukraine and that is destroying our lives, liberties, and well-being here at home.
Our American ancestors would have understood this phenomenon. If the Constitution had called into existence a national-security state form of government, our ancestors would never have accepted it. That would have meant that the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental structure without a standing army.
Our American ancestors loathed standing armies, which was the term they used to describe what we call today a national-security state. They understood that big, permanent military establishments are always the enemies of the citizenry. They understood that standing armies or national-security states end up destroying the lives, liberties, and prosperity of the citizenry.
That’s why the Constitution called into existence a limited-government republic, one whose powers were few and limited and that had only a relatively small, basic army. That’s why America lived without a national-security state for more than 150 years.
Today, things are totally inverted. Americans love the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which is, in actuality, one great big military-intelligence entity that is divided into three wings. Americans don’t see this enormous permanent entity as their enemy or as a grave threat to their lives, liberties, and well-being, as Americans did at the nation’s founding and for the next 150 years. Today’s Americans see the national-security state as their friend, ally, and protector that keeps them safe from all those scary creatures in the world.
But what today’s Americans don’t realize is that it is their very own national-security state that gins up those scary creatures in order to have Americans view their national-security state as their friend and protector.
Recall what the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA said after the 9/11 attacks — that the terrorists had attacked America out of hatred for our “freedom and values.” But it was lie, and they knew it was a lie. The truth was that the US national-security establishment had ginned up the threat of anti-American terrorism by killing vast numbers of people in Iraq, especially children with the US sanctions, knowing full well the depth of anger and rage the continuous death toll would produce among people in the Middle East.
Then came the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which produced a continuous stream of new official enemies —terrorism, Islam, Muslims, and Sharia law, which many Americans were certain was coming to America. Our nation acquired a new cause — the “war on terrorism,” which replaced the now-outdated “war on communism.” The continuous death tolls in Afghanistan and Iraq brought into existence what I called the greatest terrorist-producing machine in history, one that kept the national-security state in high cotton because people were as afraid of the new official enemies as Americans had been of the old official enemies, communism and communists (and Cuba, North Vietnam, Red China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc.)
But the national-security establishment knew that there was a good possibility that its war on terrorism might fizzle out, especially if it was no longer killing vast numbers of people, including children, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thus, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA hedged their bets by slowly but surely reviving Russia as an official enemy. That’s why the national-security establishment used NATO to move eastward by absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact, with the ultimate aim of absorbing Ukraine, which would have enabled the national-security establishment to establish its troops, missiles, and tanks right on Russia’s border.
The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA knew that Russia would invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening. That would enable the US national-security establishment to make Russia an official enemy once again. Equally important, it would enable the national-security establishment to wage war against Russia indirectly, by using U.S.-trained Ukrainian soldiers to fight the war using U.S.-supplied weapons. And with a continuous war against Russia, Americans could be kept agitated and afraid and motivated to continue heaping ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer-funded largess onto the national-security establishment.
It’s worth pointing out that in the process of keeping us “safe” and “secure,” the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have acquired omnipotent powers, such as assassination, torture, indefinite detention, and secret surveillance, which are exercised not only against foreigners but also against Americans. It’s also worth mentioning that the national-security establishment is one of the critical factors leading America toward national bankruptcy. The federal government’s $35 trillion in debt comes to mind, not to mention the decade-after-decade debasement of the currency.
Ever since the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state, Americans have lived their lives under what amounts to perpetual war for perpetual peace. In the process, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have made life less safe for the American people while, at the same time, destroyed our liberty and our well-being. With “friends” like that, who needs enemies?
Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.
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