William Rivers Pitt: The New Wall
[William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress. ]
My eighteenth birthday fell on November 9, 1989. I woke that morning and came downstairs with three simple tasks to achieve: go to school, eat some birthday cake, and go to the Post Office to register for the Selective Service as required by law. I sat down at the breakfast table, flipped over the copy of the Boston Globe my mother left out, and there it was: a banner headline announcing the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I got all my tasks done that day - school was predictably dull, my friends got me a carrot cake, and the Selective Service registration took all of five minutes - but everything looked and felt somehow different, new, bigger, stranger. I was eighteen for the first time in history, and I had just registered for the draft, which meant that I was officially eligible for military service should the occasion arise, but both of these facts had come against the backdrop of thousands of eager Germans using sledgehammers, picks and their bare hands to smash down an edifice that had come to define the harsh reality of the Cold War for decades.
I was eighteen, and the world had changed beneath my feet. The Cold War was all but over, fears of nuclear annihilation had receded, and from that point on the discussion turned from brinkmanship and superpower stare-downs to peace dividends and military draw-downs. Everything was going to change, of course, because the forty-year global paradigm represented by that wall was literally crumbling before our eyes.
That was then, and this is now, and on balance, matters are exactly as polarized, bloody and costly now as they were then. If you told someone twenty years ago that the year 2009 would look and feel very much like 1989, they would not have believed you, because of course everything was going to change after the end of the Cold War. Yet here we are, right in the middle of the same old madness...
... Hindsight can all too often become a cheap parlor game, and laying blame is slightly easier than getting out of bed in the morning, but all these decades later, those of us looking back can point to any number of Cold War decisions and tactics that did far more harm than good. Vietnam, our close relationship with Saddam Hussein, the arms sales to Iran, our terrible adventures in South and Central America: the list is long and bloody, and most importantly, profitable.
For many, the core element of the Cold War was the permanent state of fear and conflict that defined the age. George Orwell's "1984" described a world where WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and of course, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. In other words, the permanent state of conflict during the Cold War was in fact a state of peace, the freedoms surrendered in the process were actually liberating, asking questions or resisting was a sign of dangerous weakness, and finally, we are being watched...
... What happened to that future? Strangely enough, the Cold War happened to that future. The decision to stand with Saddam Hussein against the Iranian regime led to the first Gulf War, and then the second. The decision to arm, train and fund the Afghan mujeheddin led to the establishment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which became the catalyst for the new Cold War, a.k.a. the "War on Terror." The use of fear to control the populace and convince them that billions of tax dollars were better spent on bombs and guns than schools and infrastructure, so effective during the Cold War, came back into play with a fearsome vengeance.
Two decades later, the Wall has been rebuilt right under our noses. We are in a permanent state of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this state of affairs has been transmogrified into the insidious notion that we are safe and at peace because of it. We are expected to surrender our personal liberties to the NSA and other government agencies in order to keep us safe. We are a culture that allows mind-bending fallacies to our national discourse in the name of keeping us strong in the face of yet another terrible foe. We are certainly all being watched, or at least we suspect this is so. And, O my Lord, how the money is rolling in for the same defense industry that was paid so handsomely during the last state of permanent war we were forced to endure.
Read entire article at Truthout
My eighteenth birthday fell on November 9, 1989. I woke that morning and came downstairs with three simple tasks to achieve: go to school, eat some birthday cake, and go to the Post Office to register for the Selective Service as required by law. I sat down at the breakfast table, flipped over the copy of the Boston Globe my mother left out, and there it was: a banner headline announcing the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I got all my tasks done that day - school was predictably dull, my friends got me a carrot cake, and the Selective Service registration took all of five minutes - but everything looked and felt somehow different, new, bigger, stranger. I was eighteen for the first time in history, and I had just registered for the draft, which meant that I was officially eligible for military service should the occasion arise, but both of these facts had come against the backdrop of thousands of eager Germans using sledgehammers, picks and their bare hands to smash down an edifice that had come to define the harsh reality of the Cold War for decades.
I was eighteen, and the world had changed beneath my feet. The Cold War was all but over, fears of nuclear annihilation had receded, and from that point on the discussion turned from brinkmanship and superpower stare-downs to peace dividends and military draw-downs. Everything was going to change, of course, because the forty-year global paradigm represented by that wall was literally crumbling before our eyes.
That was then, and this is now, and on balance, matters are exactly as polarized, bloody and costly now as they were then. If you told someone twenty years ago that the year 2009 would look and feel very much like 1989, they would not have believed you, because of course everything was going to change after the end of the Cold War. Yet here we are, right in the middle of the same old madness...
... Hindsight can all too often become a cheap parlor game, and laying blame is slightly easier than getting out of bed in the morning, but all these decades later, those of us looking back can point to any number of Cold War decisions and tactics that did far more harm than good. Vietnam, our close relationship with Saddam Hussein, the arms sales to Iran, our terrible adventures in South and Central America: the list is long and bloody, and most importantly, profitable.
For many, the core element of the Cold War was the permanent state of fear and conflict that defined the age. George Orwell's "1984" described a world where WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and of course, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. In other words, the permanent state of conflict during the Cold War was in fact a state of peace, the freedoms surrendered in the process were actually liberating, asking questions or resisting was a sign of dangerous weakness, and finally, we are being watched...
... What happened to that future? Strangely enough, the Cold War happened to that future. The decision to stand with Saddam Hussein against the Iranian regime led to the first Gulf War, and then the second. The decision to arm, train and fund the Afghan mujeheddin led to the establishment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which became the catalyst for the new Cold War, a.k.a. the "War on Terror." The use of fear to control the populace and convince them that billions of tax dollars were better spent on bombs and guns than schools and infrastructure, so effective during the Cold War, came back into play with a fearsome vengeance.
Two decades later, the Wall has been rebuilt right under our noses. We are in a permanent state of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this state of affairs has been transmogrified into the insidious notion that we are safe and at peace because of it. We are expected to surrender our personal liberties to the NSA and other government agencies in order to keep us safe. We are a culture that allows mind-bending fallacies to our national discourse in the name of keeping us strong in the face of yet another terrible foe. We are certainly all being watched, or at least we suspect this is so. And, O my Lord, how the money is rolling in for the same defense industry that was paid so handsomely during the last state of permanent war we were forced to endure.