Addicted to War
Time for an American Awakening
by Erin Niemela
The recent NSA revelations of widespread surveillance on American citizens should be cause for intense protest. Surely it will be, as a day of nationwide mass action to restore the Fourth Amendment has been planned for the fourth of July. But any awake American can 
see that PRISM is only one sock on a long line of dirty laundry. The list of U.S. government abuses and failures to protect stretches far and wide, an alphabet soup of depravity: PRISM, NDAA, CISPA, SOPA, Patriot Act, the Monsanto Protection Act, drones, secret kill lists, Guantanamo Bay, DNA tests, Abu Ghraib, Afghan Massacre, Keystone, Tar Sands, Hanford. I’m certain you’ll think of more.
While PRISM and the rest of the gang are individually sordid, when combined they are the track marks of a far more pervasive, widespread, life-wasting problem. One that has systematically attacked not just the Fourth Amendment, but also the First, Second, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and 10th. No matter how hard we advocate for the Fourth Amendment now, others will fall so long as this substance burns through the veins of the Republic.
This is your government on war.
An unnatural, synthesized invention, war courses through Congress, city halls and the Oval Office. Paranoia, fear, consumption, degradation, enslavement, betrayal and suffering — these are the family values of a nation on war.
Our government’s addiction consumes the domestic budget, leaving little for health, education or infrastructure. It invades privacy and creates enemies through paranoia and fear, painting its opposition as savage, barbaric, shady, and justifying oppression, enslavement, torture and murder. It desecrates the natural world, poisoning the veins of the Earth and its abundance, waging chemical warfare and extracting the resources to do so.
This addiction isolates and alienates us from the global community, our physical and spiritual connections with the human family severed by consistent betrayal and erratic abuse. This addiction gives illegitimate power and authority to the highest bidder; toxic dealers of the military-industrial complex operate within an untraceable, uncontrollable, private Silk Road.
Looking for a fix, the U.S. government betrays us for its own benefit and that of its corporate dealers. It transforms the Edward Snowdens, Bradley Mannings and Julian Assanges into puny snitches, faced with demands for assassination, and charged with illuminating our government’s addiction and challenging pervasive denial.
We need an intervention, an American Awakening, to end the inevitable suffering of the American people — indeed, the global village — at the whims of mega users. Want to protect the Fourth Amendment? Want to protect them all? Call for a 28th Amendment — an amendment to abolish the slavery of addiction, an amendment to abolish war.
Amendment XXVIII of the Constitution of the United States of America
Section 1. The American people, in accordance with the promotion of international justice, peace, human rights and dignity, hereby renounce the use of organized, armed force to resolve intra- and inter-state conflict; neither war nor war-making processes shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
We can file as many class-action lawsuits as we’d like. We can repeal Citizens United, fight the NDAA, demolish Gitmo, and we should. But these sores will be replaced with new ones so long as the syringe of the military-industrial complex remains intact and full.
Section 2. Congress shall neither make nor approve war, nor approve of the use of military force, as a means for resolving intra- and inter-state conflict.
Just as we abolished slavery, another fundamentally immoral manmade institution, we can abolish the fundamentally immoral manmade institution of war, and all the harms associated thereof.
Section 3. The United States shall neither make nor keep locations of detention for prisoners of war, and all prisoners, upon recognition, shall be released to their respective home nations or non-military, judicial courts.
On the fourth of July, our day of independence, stand up for the Fourth Amendment, but also stand up for the rest, because last week it was the Sixth, and tomorrow it’ll be the Fifth, so long as war is our drug of choice. No constitutional right is safe from the manipulative behavior of a government in denial. We must demand a 28th Amendment — one amendment to secure them all — and declare our independence from the tyranny of addiction, from the enslavement of war.
Erin Niemela is a graduate student in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University, a PeaceVoice syndicated journalist, and a Contributing Author for New Clear Vision.
While we are now focusing on the secret NSA programs begun by G. W. Bush and continued in a slightly more legal form by Obama, these 4th Amendment encroachments are closely tied to, and inseparable from, the NeoCon military strategy for Full-Spectrum Dominance, a strategy which has become fully bi-partisan.
The “New World Order” began under Bush Sr., when Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered his aides, Paul Wolfowitz (later Assistant Secretary of Defense under Bush Jr.) and Lewis “Scooter” Libby (later VP Cheney’s Chief of Staff and finally disbarred after being convicted of a felony in relation to the Valerie Plame affair), to draw up a “Defense Guidance Plan” to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world.
The report called for regime change in Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya, a new policy of “pre-emptive” war, developing technologies for closely monitoring communications and transactions on the Internet, and establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia
The original report was leaked in the midst of the 1992 presidential campaign and was publicly disowned by President George H.W. Bush. After Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton, a lame-duck Cheney issued a watered-down version of the paper as official policy. The Clinton Administration then scrapped it upon taking office.
But the NeoCons continued to refine the strategy and, in 1997, formed the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which included such luminaries of the Right as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dan Quayle, and Jeb Bush.
Immediately after 9/11, which was the “new Pearl Harbor” that PNAC’s Strategy for a New American Century said was necessary in order to get the American people to go along with such a far-reaching doctrine, the Bush/Cheney administration implemented every element of the NeoCon strategy, including wiretapping of all global communications.
After the New York Times disclosed the existence of the warrantless wiretapping program in 2005, the Bush administration shut down the program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with FISA Court approval, but with “general warrants” rather than targeted ones. Congress approved it, with Sen. Barack Obama voting against it.
The passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to US-98XN – known as Prism – which allows the government to get a user’s entire email inbox from their provider, which becomes permanent government property.
In addition to Prism, the NSA “Total Information Awareness” surveillance programs initiated by the PNAC strategy include MAINWAY, a metadata program for telephony; MARINA, a metadata program for the internet; and NUCLEON, which intercepts phone voice content (just as Prism captures and stores internet content, including email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats such as Skype, and file transfers).
As Erin Niemela suggests, these surveillance programs are essential elements of an overall war strategy that brooks no competition, seeks global domination in all arenas of battle, and perceives all Americans as potential enemies of the state.
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