Okay, so what happens now?
June 20th, 2006[…]
The US Government lied to start the war in Iraq. The whole world knows that now. And more to the point, the whole world knows that Americans know that the US Government lied to start the war in Iraq. The world is now watching to see what the people of the United States will do. We must do something. No longer able to pretend we are innocent victims of government deception, the world will expect the people of the United States to do something about this horrific deception and the equally horrific war it created.
Americans have long held themselves up as the champions of justice and freedom for the rest of the world. It is our image to the world. It is our image to ourselves. It is how we define ourselves, it is our identity, and it is who we are collectively as a nation. And, if we fail to take action in the face of the lies used to start a war, we must in the process sacrifice that image, not only to the world, but to ourselves. Either one acts like a champion of truth and freedom, or one admits one is just another sheep. There is no other choice left.
Most Americans don’t want to face that choice. They want their cake and eat it too. They want to believe that, being Americans, they are honorable people willing to fight for principles, but being practical, they also don’t want to run the risks that taking a stand against corrupt government entails. It is for that reason that so many people will gratefully accept even the most obvious and shoddy propaganda lies, in order to avoid that choice. They can go on believing they have the courage to stand up for freedom and justice while pretending they do not see any reason to do so at the present moment.
But the current, “Big deal, so we lied” attitude of the administration has removed that comforting self-deception. Americans are facing that unpleasant choice of deciding whether they really do have the courage to stand up for truth, justice, and freedom, or if they are cowards who wear their convictions only for show on the appropriate social occasions.
For many Americans still believing the idea that the government is the servant of the people and is looking out for the people’s best interests, the revelation of the deception that took this nation to war in Iraq is a severe psychic shock, not unlike that felt by a child who realizes that it is not the child but the abusive parent that is the problem, or the discovery that one’s spouse has been cheating all along. Reactions to the shock will be varied, evolving through denial, anger, and finally acceptance.
Ultimately, after the angst, the choice Americans do not want to face will have to be made. First choice; stand up for freedom, truth, and justice. In other words, be what an American is supposed to be before the world and before oneself. Second choice, do nothing, and by that nothing cease to be what an American is supposed to be.
From those that choose the second course, we can expect the usual excuses, justifications, rationalizations, the pathetic “my country right or wrong” voiced in a thousand variations by a million useful idiots throughout history. Like the abused child making excuses for the abusing parent, or the cuckold covering up for the wandering spouse, these are pathetic people in deep denial, and can hardly be called Americans any longer. Having had their money and children stolen through lies and deceptions, they have now lost their very identity. In such surrender, in ceasing to live what America is supposed to be, such people have damaged the nation far more deeply than any real terror attack could hope to do, and must rank in history with those Germans who knew what Hitler was really doing, and stayed silent, or worse, were driven to fanaticism by their own denial that they were doing wrong.
For the rest of us, the time has come to face the reality of a government that rules us by lies and deceptions. Action is called for, at all levels of society.
At the very least, men and women of good conscience, confronted with the lies that led us to war in Iraq, must now abandon the assumption that the government has ever told us the truth about anything. Lies got us into war with Iraq. Did lies get us into war with Afghanistan? Was 9-11 a deception to further the war agenda? […]
For those Americans with the courage to stand for truth, justice, and freedom, living under a government that lies is intolerable. And, given that the Constitution of the United States does not explicitly grant the government the right to lie to the people, it is illegal as well.
Let me reiterate. The Constitution of the United States does not explicitly grant the government the right to lie to the people. And the Tenth Amendment bars the government from simply assuming that right.
Therefore, under the rule of law, a government that lies acts both unconstitutionally and illegally. At the point in time when the lie is told, the government steps outside its lawful authority and ceases to be the legal government of this land. And for those Americans who have the courage to stand for truth, justice, and freedom, the time has come to acknowledge that the current government is acting in an illegal manner.
Clearly a government that lies to the people to take from them money and children for wars created out of personal desire and greed is not a government of the people, by the people, or for the people, but usurpers stealing gold and blood under false pretenses.
When Bush lied to start the war in Iraq, the entire government and media, with only a few exceptions, stood up to be counted with the lie. It therefore follows that the entire government has lost its legitimacy. How can it be legitimate? How can a government that claims to rule with the consent of the people claim to have that consent when the people never consented to being lied to?
Some observers have stated that because of the current lie, the burden of proof has shifted onto the government. In truth, it was always there. The government is always obligated to be able to document the accuracy and honesty of whatever it claims, whether it’s the ratification of the 16th amendment, or Dick Cheney’s Energy policy.
We live under a government that has lied to Americans to trick us into wars waged for conquest and profit. We cannot allow this to stand and remain Americans. Bush’s lies about Iraq have forced an unpleasant choice on you, and the time to choose what you will do about it is now. […]
Ok, but you have not answered the question:
“So what happens now?”
What Really Happened is one of the better news sites, even better than the Alex Jones sites because at the bottom of the article excerpts there is analysis . Republishing and aggregating articles that can be found anywhere is easy. The hard part is providing analysis on each one, putting them into context so that the reader can more easily make sense of the bigger picture. But I digress.
What this article fails to do is to propose what action the american people need to take to restore that country to somehting like what it should be. We have done this many times here at BLOGDIAL. If only half of the americans who understand what is really going on simply refuse to finance their criminal regime, it will collapse. Even if that assessment is wrong, it is put on the table as something instead of eloquently whining about the problem, which produces no action at all; in fact, when people read these sorts of article, it reinforces their false belief that they are living in a free country where, “you can say whatever you want, so you are free”, or that makes the usual suspects trott out, “try saying that in Iran / Russia / China $straw_man_regime”.
Let us help. What happens now is that you organize the half of the population that is with you to put a permanent end to your problems. Anything less is a failure, and as that article points out:
The Warren Report claimed JFK was shot by a lone gunman, but the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded JFK was killed by multiple gunmen. We are taught in school that Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but documents declassified in 1994 proved that FDR not only knew the Japanese were coming, but had goaded the Japanese into the attack, as a means to get the US into the war against the Axis. There were no torpedoes in the Gulf of Tonkin. USS Maine was not blown up by a Spanish mine but by a fire in a coal bunker located imprudently next to a magazine. The investigation into the attack by Israel on the USS Liberty was ordered by President Johnson to conclude the attack was an accident even though the evidence indicated otherwise. The Iraqis did not actually steal incubators from Kuwaiti hospitals.
Time and time again the stories We The People are fed to justify wars both current and past do not bear close scrutiny. Of the dozens of military interventions carried out by the US in the years since the Korean war under the claim of bringing democracy to the world, not one has actually resulted in a functioning democracy. In Chile, the US actually destroyed a democratic government to install the dictator Pinochet. […]
They have been doing this for a VERY long time, and will continue to do so in a ‘business as usual’ fashion unless they are permanently prevented from engaging in these acts again.
As we have said here many times, only permanent solutions should be formulated and persued. You need to sit down and think about it, then write it out and deploy it. It should not involve any form of public protest, marching, public gathering, engagement with mainstream media or any energy wasting process. The good thing is that it can be done with literally ten dollars.
The time for talking is over. Oblique Twenty First Century Action is what is required.
Now go and DO IT.