-
Homeland Security Act: The Rise of the American Police State
(Part 2 of a Three Part Series)

By Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday, 3 December 2002

Cheney's Plan for Global Dominance

One does not need to look into the Council on Foreign Relations, 
however, to discover the hidden agenda behind the Homeland Security 
Act. David Armstrong recently wrote a detailed article for Harper's 
Magazine on "Dick Cheney's Song of America: Drafting a Plan for 
Global Dominance."1    

Armstrong reviewed the "Defense Planning Guidance" reports issued by 
the Office of the Secretary of Defense while Cheney was the secretary 
under Bush I and thereafter.   

Jasper links the Homeland Security Department to "one of several 
unprecedented efforts to centralize military and law enforcement 
power in the executive branch," and notes Bush's June 1st speech 
at West Point in which he introduced the doctrine of "defensive 
intervention" (more commonly called "preemptive strikes").   

David Armstrong echoes this conclusion when he states that the West 
Point speech was part of Cheney's "perpetually evolving work" which 
"will take its ultimate form ... as America's new national security 
strategy."   

"The plan," according to Armstrong, "is to rule the world. The overt 
theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination.
It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military 
superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on 
the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike.
It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most 
powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful."   

Armstrong muses that the Plan "is disturbing in many ways, and 
ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the 
'new realities' of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold 
previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War 
world." He says "Cheney's unwavering adherence to the Plan would be 
amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan."    

Armstrong tracks Cheney's evolving work from the initial idea of America's 
need to project a military "forward presence" around the world, shifting 
from the policy of global containment in order to manage "less-well-defined 
regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies" to the doctrine of 
preemptive military force with nuclear weapons. He notes the shift from 
a threat-based defense strategy to a capability-based assessment.  

The capability-based assessment of military requirements became a 
key theme of Cheney's plan. Capability-based: because we can. The 
inanity of this approach is well-illustrated by singer/songwriter 
Jonatha Brooke in her 1995 song "War" -  

     It's the American way, the new world order

     We hold these truths to be self-evident

     In the American day, you must give and I shall take,

     And I will tell you what is moral and what's just

     Because I want, because I will, because I can, so will I kill.

Behind Cheney's doctrines was a deep fear and suspicion of the 
Soviets that was shared by Colin Powell, who as Ronald Reagan's 
national security adviser began working on this Plan in the late 
1980s, and by Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of defense for 
policy.   

When the Plan was leaked in March 1992 to the New York Times, 
Delaware Senator Joseph Biden criticized its proposal of "a 
global security system where threats to stability are suppressed 
or destroyed by U.S. military power."   

Wolfowitz might have us believe that the Cheney Plan is a brilliant 
anticipation of the terrorist attacks. Wolfowitz asked in a 1996 
editorial: "Should we sit idly by with our passive containment policy 
and our inept covert operations, and wait until a tyrant possessing 
large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated 
delivery systems strikes out at us?"    

The Council on Foreign Relations, on the other hand, refers to the 
Hart-Rudman Commission as the "now famous Commission on National 
Security that warned of such a terrorist attack three years ago."   

These boastings, however, ignore what Armstrong's article so clearly 
reveals: the dangerous course these doctrines promote.    

From national unity to state control.    

From clear separations between foreign and domestic intelligence 
activities under the CIA charter of 1947 ("the Charter") and the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, in clear 
deference to the United States Constitution's Fourth, Fifth, and 
Sixth Amendment requirements, to wholesale merging of these 
activities, in violation of the Charter, the obvious intent of 
FISA, and the Constitution.

From military "base force" and a tentative "forward
presence" to   
"preemptive strikes" and "unwarned attacks."

[snip snip snip]
----------------------------------------------------------------

Full article at "Truthout"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.04B.jvb.hsa.2.htm

Cheers, Steve..

---