The End Of America? In Ten Easy Steps?

September 8, 2007

Rising early this morning and turning on Fox and Friends Saturday I viewed a brief “interview” with a Naomi Wolf, left-winger noted for writing a couple books “warning” us about the evils of the traditional America most of us have loved for years. She was hawking her newest endeavor, the book “The End of America,” outlining ten steps the Bush Administration is using to instill a dictatorship on us.

Sensing the usual left-winged, kool-aid sipping, tin foil hat wearing rants I have come to expect from the Socialist left, I embarked upon discovering just what these ten steps were and if there is any truth in her claims. What I am about to write is not to be misconstrued as a review of her book, as I don’t intend to waste my hard earned cash on yet another ‘blame America first’ rant, but a review of these ten steps she outlines. Just who dreamt up and compiled the list is unstated, leaving me to believe she did it herself.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

Arguing that the President, after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, had the Patriot Act pushed through Congress with members having little chance to “debate it,” Wolf condemns passage of the act some 43 days after 9/11. It should be noted that there was one lone dissenting vote in the Senate, Russ Feingold (D. WI). I don’t know about you, but 43 days after a major attack upon our soil doesn’t sound all the rushed to me. As I recall learning in history class, we were attacked on December 7, 1941 and Congress voted to Declare War the very next day, again with one lone dissenting vote.

We won that war and thrived afterwards, even though several sacrifices were made, habeas corpus was constitutionally suspended, liberties were restricted and our enemies of the time were demonized in print, radio and movies.

On the other hand, today just who is being labeled as an enemy? Who is it we are constantly told is out to destroy the liberty we love? Who is it we are always told is causing America to be hated? Who is it being demonized today? Is it not the ‘Vast Right Winged Conspiracy” we continue to hear of?

We are repeatedly told that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others decided for war even before Bush won the 2000 elections, that he stole that election, that he started the war to enrich his oil buddies and even that he conspired to cause and bring the 9/11 Terrorist attacks to American soil. And now, Ms. Wolf reminds us that Bush is leading America towards Fascism.

She, like the rest of the left, neglects to recall or mention the increasing terrorist attacks against American interests since the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. Instead, they divert your attention to their political opponents as they work diligently to undermine both the current administration and our Troops as they fight this enemy that has been fighting us for nearly 3 decades.

Listening to the left, it is they who have invoked a terrifying enemy, George W. Bush and the Republicans in general.

2. Create a gulag

Gulags are defined as, “1. A network of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. 2. A forced labor camp or prison, especially for political dissidents. 3. A place or situation of great suffering and hardship, likened to the atmosphere in a prison system or a forced labor camp.” Of course, the “gulag” she alludes to is our prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and anywhere else terrorist suspects have been held and, as she puts it, “Where torture takes place.”

The excesses of a few at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad are often cited as “proof of torture,” neglecting that trials were held, convictions were won and sentences were imposed. Also neglected and unmentioned are the out of balance beheadings of civilians and mutilation of bodies of our Troops and civilian workers abducted by terrorists.

As for “secret prisons,” Ms. Wolf leads us to believe that everyday average America citizens are being snatched off our streets and sent to these prisons. Her kool-aid induced delusion ignores that only the most dangerous terrorists and those believed to have the most valuable information were selectively targeted for this program and even then were "carefully controlled and lawfully conducted."

Results of the “carefully controlled” program have been the disruption of terrorist networks and no terrorist attack upon American soil in six years. Results of the interference in, misrepresentation of and publicizing of the program have been a resurgence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and emboldening of terrorists in Iraq.

In the effort to convince readers that innocent Americans who may disagree with the administration are being snatched in the dead of night to be sent to “secret gulags,” Ms. Wolf also ignores that several have been released from Guantánamo, at the urging of the left, with many returning to the battlefields to kill more American Troops and others fearful of leaving and being returned home to face real abuse and torture.

3. Develop a thug caste

Here Ms. Wolf tries desperately to convince us that the Bush administration has hired “mercenaries” to “terrorize citizens.” While it is true that some of the work traditionally performed by our Military in wars past, has been passed over to hired civilians, she neglects to state that we have been left with a severely down-sized Military in comparison to past wars.

In citing “thugs” firing on innocent unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and “Groups of angry young Republican men menacing poll workers counting in Florida in the 2000 election (which was prior to Bush even being elected), Wolf ignores that the storm ravaged Gulf region after hurricane Katrina was very susceptible to gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13 due to the hiring of many outsiders to rebuild the region and the lack of manpower available to established Police and Sheriff personnel. Initially, these “thugs” were hired by business owners and wealthy persons desiring their property to be guarded from looters and gang members.

If Wolf’s argument is that our Military should be doing the Policing of this zone, she should study the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which substantially limits the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement. Had President Bush imposed Martial Law in Louisiana and placed Federal Troops in charge of Police, can you imagine the outcry that would have ensued over his innapropriate conduct then? It would be our Troops being denigrated as “armed thugs” had he done that.

I question the quote of “one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city.” If true, why was this man not reported to the Police and prosecuted? That I recall, one group of Private Security Guards did fire on “civilians,” but they were gang members that first opened fire on the guards. The incident was duly reported to both the Police and the Military in the area and considered justified.

Claims of voter intimidation in the 2000 Florida election have been discredited, but that doesn’t prevent the kool-aid sipping left from crying about the “jack-booted thugs” of the right preventing Socialists from “winning” elections.

Not mentioned by Wolf or the leftists seeking Socialism in America is the “disenfranchisement” of overseas Military personnel whose ballots were challenged and not counted due to efforts of the leftist Democrats who used technicalities to deny our Troops their right to vote!

Unmentioned also are groups of leftists who storm stages, induce near riots, send nasty letters and emails to celebrities and businesses who show public support to the President or protesters who burn effigies of our Troops or defecate on a burning American flag, as was done in Portland, Oregon in March of 2007.

The identity of the real “thugs” apparently escapes Ms. Wolf.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

Ms. Wolf tells us here that a New York Times article “revealed” a secret state program to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions. We are led to believe that the Bush administration imitates Mussolini's Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist East Germany and Communist China where secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors.

To quote a respected American General, this is pure Bovine Scatology!

She is of course referring to the NSA Eavesdropping program that has listened in on overseas calls and emails between terrorists and persons within the U.S. Gross misrepresentations of this program and public revelations of it have interfered with it’s effectiveness at discovering potential terrorist attacks within the country.

Applying it to everyday regular citizens has been an irresponsible report of an effective program essential to protecting human life in America and elsewhere. From the beginning it was narrowly focused, aimed only at international calls and targeted at Al Qaeda and related groups.

On the other hand, Ms. Wolf selectively once again ignores that the authority to eavesdrop under these circumstances has been legal for sometime now and has been used by past administrations to combat crime and terror. Up until the time of President Bush utilizing the program there has ben no outcry at all.

Under the Clinton administration, a domestic eavesdropping program, Echelon, was called a “necessity” by the same media that condemned the Bush administration of utilizing a far more restrictive program.

Ms. Wolf does not address the “necessity” of one administration utilizing the program and the “condemnation” of another suing it. Perhaps she is agenda driven to mask who it is we really need to be leery of?

5. Harass citizens' groups

Wolf would have us believe that “innocent” protesters and those opposed to the Bush administration are regularly exposed to harassment and infiltration of their groups to undermine them and counter their opposition to the imposition of the new Fascism Bush and Republicans are bring on to America. She goes on to say that peaceful political activities of such groups as animal rights activists are being listed as "potential terrorist threats.”

Funny, but I don’t ever recall President Bush or any other Republican ever crying about a Vast ‘Left-Winged’ Conspiracy.

The “animal rights groups” she alludes to aren’t all the peaceful, either. We have groups such as the animal-rights/liberation (ARL) movement, Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and more than have increased their “activity” to the point that respected groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center began scrutinizing their activities. Joined by the environmental group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), groups have employed "death threats, fire bombings, and violent assaults" against those they accuse of abusing animals.

In Britain, the drug-testing facility, Huntingdon Life Sciences had one managing director was badly beaten by three masked assailants swinging baseball bats, while another executive was temporarily blinded with a caustic substance sprayed into his eyes.

Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College said in an October 2003 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, “It is a sick era when "environmental terrorist" is a label used for people who destroy Hummers and fight urban sprawl…” Apparently, the “professor” has no problem with the wanton firebombing and arson of other people’s property, so long as it is not his.

Maybe there is good reason these “peaceful political activities” are now under the scrutiny of anti-terrorist groups.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

Wolf almost touches some truth here, almost. Of course she lists a couple of extreme cases of names showing up on a Terrorist Watch List wrongfully. The list, estimated to be some 325,000 in all, most likely does have a few innocent names on it, as is not unusual when dealing with the bureaucratic red tape we have come to see in government.

That does not mean it is deliberate nor does it mean that innocents remain listed or are targeted simply because they disagree with the administration. In the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim attorney that the FBI mistakenly linked to fingerprints found on a plastic bag in Madrid, after the train bombings there. The mistake was rectified within a couple weeks, Mayfield was released and made the usual accusations of Islamophobia and promptly sued the FBI in true fashion, gaining $2,000,000.00 of our tax dollars for his “inconvenience.”

Once again, though, she neglects incidents of those women who accused the former president of sexual misconduct of being audited for the first time by the Internal Revenue Service, while he was still sitting in office. Can we assume they were ‘mistakenly’ audited when it was every single one of them as well as groups who were considered as “political hostiles” to the left?

7. Target key individuals

Referencing a lone and unidentified CIA contract worker, a lone Military Lawyer and eight US Attorneys fired by the administration, we are to believe that the Bush administration is targeting “key individuals” who disagree with them. In the fashion of Mussolini, Joseph Goebbels, Chile's Augusto Pinochet and the Chinese communist Politburo we are told by Wolf that “pro-democracy students and professors” are constantly being “punished” for not coordinating with the Fascist Bush!

Maybe she feels that the firing of Ward Churchill over plagiarism, false claims on his application to Colorado University and outright lies was unjust?

Completely ignored by Wolf is the steady drone of accusations and calls for the resignations of President Bush, Vice-president Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Security Advisor and current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove and several other actual “key individuals” of the Bush administration, by prominent members of the Democrat party and their willing accomplices in the left leaning mainstream media.

Perhaps she is so busy stretching her imagination to claim the perfectly legal firings of eight US Attorneys for not properly performing their jobs of prosecuting illegal immigrants and government corruption that she fails to notice the pre-emptive effort at discrediting the upcoming report to be given soon by General David Petraeus, the Commander of US Forces in Iraq, as demanded by the leftist Democrats in Congress.

8. Control the press

We are told of a couple incidents of a blogger arrested by local Police for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war protest and a reporter who had a “criminal complaint” filed against him for filming “victims” of Hurricane Katrina as proof of the out of control Bush administration. Laughingly, she even claims the totally discredited liars, Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson as being “punished” for opposing Bush in his quoting of a British report of Saddam Hussein trying to acquire material for building nuclear weapons from Niger. If she hasn’t noticed, no one has ever been charged with any misconduct towards the Democrat operatives and the only prosecution was of L. ‘Scooter’ Libby, not for “outing” of Plame but for perjury in that his memory wasn’t the same others.

On the other hand, one news network, Fox News, strives to actually present both sides fairly and they are continually castigated by the left to the point that key Democrat candidates for president in 2008 refuse to appear at a debate co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus because they planned to have Fox News air it. Their refusal is due to extreme pressure from far left kook groups such as Democratic Underground, DailyKOS, Moveon.org and such.

Additionally, we are hearing the call for reinstatement of the “Fairness Doctrine” for Talk Radio where conservative voices are predominant. That is the only avenue that right-winged voices are dominant and left-winged pundits cannot drown out. So, they now demand a “Fairness Doctrine” to counter that one source of right-winged information.

Wolf claims “journalists” and staffers of Al Jazeera and CBS have been drug off to harsh prisons in Iraq by US Forces and even fired upon by our Troops. In true left-winged fashion, she cannot refrain from some bashing of the Brave Troops that place themselves between our enemies and us.

In the fog of war innocents are mistakenly hit, in spite of every effort to avoid it. Still, if you were hit by an I.E.D. in an ambush and as you exited your destroyed vehicle, stunned and bleeding and saw a film crew that had prior knowledge of the ambush and who didn’t warn you, wouldn’t you be a bit incensed?

We are at war with a very brutal enemy and personally, I have no use for a media that will give the words of our enemy precedence over the word of our Troops and who willingly film ambushes of American Troops when they had prior knowledge of the ambush but refused to report it to our own people so they could “get the story.”

9. Dissent equals treason

Only a blame America first leftist could classify the publishing of classified material used to discover planned attacks us as anything less than treason. But, what is what Ms. Wolf does. Of course, she compares it to “dissent” and “criticism.” It is not! Revealing State Secrets knowing they are useful and are saving American lives and helping in the war is treason, plain and simple.

Supporting your countries enemies isn’t “dissent.” Try that in nations like Iran and North Korea or Cuba and you will see how they treat and respect “dissent.”

If Wolf’s concern were true, would she be allowed to publish this book? Wouldn’t she and many others who daily cry about all the abuses of the Bush administration have disappeared already?

No Ms. Wolf, masking “treason” as “dissent and criticism” is what is wrong and reprehensible.

Referring back to steps 6 and 7 we can see how those she prefers to be in power handle opposition to their agenda.

10. Suspend the rule of law

After pillorying President Bush for not acting fast enough to relieve beleaguered New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed and Bush signed what is known as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The outcry from the left over this and that coming from leftist Democrats like Patrick Leahy would lead one to believe that life and liberty as we know it has ceased.

Of course, they neglect to ever mention the stringent conditions that must be met to impose martial law in the U.S., even under this new bill, or that subsequent Presidents, even if Democrats, would hold the same power in case of National Emergency.

Critics and Bush haters like Wolf cry that it violates the Posse Comitatus Act mentioned earlier when in reality it does no such thing. The bill, as “an act of Congress,” complies with the Posse Comitatus Act.

Wolf continues to claim, “our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.” In this, she is correct. Our liberties of Freedom of Religion, the right to bear arms, freedom from excessive taxation, freedom to cater to the clientele a private business may desire, freedom to purchase and drive the vehicle you desire, to eat the foods you wish, to own and build on your own private property, to freely speak without fear of repercussions, to raise your children with the values you desire, to tap our own natural resources, to be employed without forced membership in Unions, to seek the medical treatment you desire and many more freedoms too numerous to list are assaulted daily. But, not by the Bush administration, by the Socialist Leftists like Naomi Wolf and those like her.

Ms. Wolf was hired by the 2000 Gore Campaign to “target female voters” at a salary of $15,000 a month. Apparently, her expertise was no better there than in this book and article and as we all know, Gore lost and not by the election being stolen from him.

What Wolf and others like her in their ‘Bush is Hitler’ mode fail to see is that if what they claim were true, would they be able to make these outlandish claims and go on public television and radio to express them, freely without their own fear of repercussions? No!

Like leftists throughout history, Wolf is the one to cry wolf!

Lew