DETROIT -- We have a government that now has unprecedented and dangerous authority to delve into every imaginable secret of our lives. Yet that same government does everything possible to keep its activities secret and away from public scrutiny.
That's a one-two punch that seriously erodes democracy and will only get worse as we plunge into war.
Those dedicated and noble public servants in the White House (bowing to public opinion, just this once, I'll refrain from using the apt nickname I usually apply to them) have a penchant for secrecy that has lawmakers of both parties, legal experts and historians stunned.
You have to reach back to the Nixon administration to find a crew that is so consumed with secrecy, confidentiality and passion for doing the public's business behind closed doors, and leaving no trail behind.
This all stems from the top. Our commander in chief, supreme leader, his most esteemed excellency, America's King George IV (refraining from using a wonderful five-letter nickname that best describes him) views secrecy as the way prosperous and powerful white men in suits should conduct business.
Remember, his excellency was a member of Skull and Bones, the secretive frat-boy outfit, when he was an affirmative action student at Yale. As governor of Texas, he held private meetings with the state's major industrial polluters to allow them to set their own air quality standards.
Long before Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft prepared a plan to instruct all federal agencies to withhold as much information from the public as possible and use every conceivable legal dodge to keep the conduct of government secret.
We have secret courts, secret surveillance, wire taps, computer searches and God knows what else in the name of protecting our freedom.
Those horrible laws Joe Stalin might have crafted, the USA Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, allow government vast, unrestrained and secret intrusions into American life that have no conceivable relation to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Hell, if the public really knew what was going on, there would be revolt in the streets. Or maybe not, since the administration has done such a thorough and successful job of lying to, propagandizing and spinning the American public into mind-numbing complacency and willingness to buy the company line.
The compliant mainstream media, throwing out its primary obligations to question authority and seek the truth, have aided and abetted this Orwellian mission, dutifully injecting the populace with liquid Valium in a syringe of generals and politicians, all essentially of one mind: We must have war!
In a scorching op-ed piece in the Times of London, British novelist John Le Carre writes that America has entered "one of its periods of historic madness." Citing a recent poll that showed one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Le Carre marvels at the big lie: "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history."
Le Carre rails against the religious cant the president uses in his call for battle. "Bush has an armlock on God. And God has very particular political opinions," Le Carre writes.
When we do have war, the American media won't cover it, they'll celebrate the violence. Television news will follow it like a spectacular fireworks display as bombs and rockets rain on Baghdad.
Every network and cable outlet will have their own set of generals with laser pointers giving the play-by-play. Local news will provide saturation coverage of yellow ribbons and every conceivable use of the American flag, however tasteless.
Dissension of any kind will be labeled "unpatriotic."
One extraordinary American will be spared the wretched excess and distorted view of battle the coverage of Gulf War II is sure to bring.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin died last week. The glorification of war would repulse him. Mauldin was the Army sergeant in World War II who created Willie and Joe, the gritty GIs who saw war from the front lines and knew its brutality and usual madness.
Willie and Joe were the unshaven, cynical dogfaces who didn't let their disdain for the generals diminish their determination to defeat the Germans.
"Must be a tough objective," Willie says to Joe in one cartoon, as they prepare their weapons. "Th' old man says we're going to have th' honor of liberatin' it."
I got to know Bill Mauldin when I worked in Oklahoma City. It's the home of the 45th National Guard Division Mauldin joined in 1940 and it's where he began drawing war cartoons. At the 45th Division Museum, many of his original cartoons are on display.
I was working on a series of reports marking the 40th anniversary of D-Day and I heard Mauldin was in town. I gave him a call and spent the day with him at the museum.
He was gracious, insightful, funny and irreverent. I regret not taping every moment with him as he recalled his wartime experiences and his thoughts, describing how he made Willie and Joe reflect his view of the "real" war.
My father was a naval airman based in England for most of the war and he imbued me with a pretty good knowledge of the major events of the conflict, which I supplemented with years of reading (unlike our commander in chief, who probably thinks Anzio is a suburb of Albuquerque).
That enabled me to chat with ease with Mauldin during the interview. He hated pomposity and that's surely why Gen. George Patton despised him, although the egalitarian Dwight Eisenhower loved Mauldin's work, thus sparing him from Patton's wrath.
Mauldin also questioned authority, and Willie and Joe, true predators, often poked fun at the housecat generals and politicians who ruled their lives with a distorted view of reality.
After the war, Mauldin continued his career, spending more than 50 years at newspapers, and his work was syndicated around the country. He loved to caricature bigots, rednecks, superpatroits, dictators, conservatives, doctrinaire liberals and always the high-and-mighty, like secrecy-obsessed politicians.
His cartoons were powerful and poignant. One memorable one showed Lincoln reacting to President John F. Kennedy's assassination, weeping into his hands.
Another showed Russian novelist Boris Pasternak in a Soviet gulag saying to another prisoner, "I won the Nobel prize for literature. What was your crime?"
Mauldin believed editorial cartoonists have grown too soft, too mainstream and politically correct, and more of them need to be " stirrer-uppers."
Few cartoonists and others in the media have been "stirrer-uppers" as the nation marches on the path to war. When we get there, I expect fewer still will do anything provocative or show dissension and poke fun at the self-important generals and politicians. Bill Mauldin would.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | January 28 2003 |