Tommy Franks: Martial Law Will Replace Constitution After Next Terror Attack

[Guest guest]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/120803doomsdayscenario.html

 

 

Tommy Franks: Martial Law Will Replace Constitution

After Next Terror Attack.

 

 

 

 

From Tommy Franks, a doomsday scenario

 

St. Petersburg Times

 

The doomsday scenario was laid out by Gen. Tommy

Franks, the recently retired head of CentCom, in of

all places the December edition of Cigar Aficionado

magazine.

 

" What is the worst thing that can happen in our

country? " Franks asked rhetorically. " Two steps. The

first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass

destruction . . . and terrorism. " The second step

would be " the western world, the free world, loses

what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and

liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in

this grand experiment that we call democracy. "

 

Franks suggested that a " massive casualty-producing

event " might cause " our population to question our own

Constitution and begin to militarize our country. "

 

For those tapped into the alternative media world of

the Internet, the quotes bounced around faster than a

Paris Hilton sex video. Franks, a four-star general,

was warning of a future he sees as possible if not

likely. Our economy might survive another terrorist

assault, so might our mass culture - it'll take more

than a nuclear device to shut up Jessica Simpson - but

the prognosis for the Constitution is bleak.

 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman repeated the

alarm in a recent column when he said that virulent

terrorism " is the most serious threat to open

societies, because one more 9/11 and we'll really see

an erosion of our civil liberties. "

 

We ain't seen nothing yet, according to the experts.

If terrorism's sting is felt again, fascism may be its

aftermath.

 

These pundits and prognosticators are saying out loud

what anyone who has been following the government's

actions since 9/11 already senses.

 

Consider how far down this road we've already moved:

The passage of the USA Patriot Act has given the

government extraordinary powers to spy on Americans

without cause. The FBI has been unleashed to surveil

Americans engaged in antiwar protests. Immigrants have

been secretly detained and deported by the hundreds.

And two Americans have been imprisoned indefinitely

and without charge as " enemy combatants. " (Only last

week did the Defense Department agree to grant one of

those, Yaser Esam Hamdi, access to a lawyer.) To all

this, the courts and Congress have barely blinked.

 

In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, we are holding more than 600

prisoners from 42 countries who are being refused

prisoner of war status or any other formal legal

designation. The Bush administration believes these

prisoners should have no access to American courts to

challenge the legitimacy of their detention and the

president alone, as commander in chief, has the power

to decide each man's fate. The Justice Department will

argue this in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court

this term.

 

In essence, the administration is asserting something

unprecedented - that the kinds of emergency powers

that might flow to the military on the battlefield

should be available in the " war on terrorism. "

 

But combating terrorism is not the same as prosecuting

a traditional war. As the administration itself has

explained, with terrorism there is no discrete enemy,

place of battle or anticipated end to hostilities.

Emergency powers take on a very different sheen when

the emergency is permanent and everywhere.

 

Egypt has slouched toward totalitarianism in this way.

Since 1981, the country has used fighting terrorism as

a justification to repeatedly renew emergency laws

that allow the government to hold suspects without

charge and try civilians in military courts - with the

U.S. State Department objecting the whole way.

Conveniently, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has

also used the laws to thwart prodemocracy efforts and

dispatch political enemies.

 

It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave

New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the

world reformers who then took control of nearly all

human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell

described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a

changeable enemy who " always represented absolute

evil. " These inventors of the great dystopias

understood the way governments use war and its

associative fear and instability to consolidate power.

Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's

hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food,

water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and

are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its

pursuit.

 

Within the current government there are those who

would exploit this weakness. Before it was leaked to

the Center for Public Integrity, a bill dubbed the

Patriot Act II was in development at the Justice

Department. The draft would have allowed for the

stripping of American citizenship and the secret

detention of citizens; and popular conjecture had it

that Attorney General John Ashcroft was just waiting

for another terror attack to roll the bill out. In

that moment of national panic, a malleable Congress

wouldn't resist.

 

So, will another major terrorist attack on American

soil lead, as Franks warns, to the end of freedom and

democracy? There aren't many hopeful signs to the

contrary.