Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 by iNoodle.com

by Sean M. Madden

Publicly exposing -- as a first step toward discrediting and undermining -- the fundamentally anti-democratic neoconservative agenda must fast become a top sociopolitical priority not only of progressives, liberals and "Third Way" New Democrats and Labour supporters, but of all the world's citizens who demand that their so-called democratic governments honorably represent rather than mendaciously deceive their respective citizenries.

The neocon agenda endangers us all, directly through the violent upheaval it has spurred on in very short order, and indirectly by way of other corrupt regimes which may decide to model the hypocritical example of the U.S. and U.K. governments.

But only the American and British people have the power to demand from within that their respective experiments in democracy survive the neocon agenda, which is playing out as much in Britain as it is in the United States.

All the world has witnessed the lies and the supreme arrogance of both the U.S. and U.K. governments these past few years. We have all witnessed, in cerebral numbers provided in print if not in person or graphic detail, the tragic deaths of tens of thousands of individual human beings killed by way of our governments' illegal war of aggression in Iraq. We have all seen the plunge into the immoral, inhumane and, thus, criminal abyss of officially sanctioned torture, state-sponsored kidnappings and disappearances (officially known as "extraordinary renditions") and indefinite detentions of individuals imprisoned for years without charge or due process of law.

We now know beyond any doubt -- as the majority of the world's politically aware knew before the start of the war, despite the onslaught of rhetoric spewed by politicians to quell dissent and the continual drumbeat of the corporate media-delivered propaganda craftily packaged as if to deliver us from the evil that is, apparently, commonsense -- that this war could only have been sold to the American and British people were we to be bombarded by our own governments' criminal lies. And, sold it was, rolled out and marketed as would a psychologically researched, high-end advertising campaign of an immoral corporation which seeks to maximize shareholder value through the plying of harmful products, practices or byproducts. Yet, when democratic representation exists in name only, corrupt politicians, like their corrupt corporate executive counterparts, will continue to rule, as we the people rue, the day.

In an article entitled, "Indicting America," written by former chief U.N. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, and published on the 29th of October by Information Clearing House, Mr. Ritter said the following:

"Void of a major backlash on the part of the American people in response to the deliberate falsification and deceit that has transpired regarding Iraq and the now-debunked case for war, the Libby indictment may prove to be little more than an exercise in damage control.

"Already senior Republican officials, such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, are calling the Libby indictment a mere "technicality." Right-wing pundits refer to the indictment as the "criminalization of politics," as if lying one's way into an illegal war of aggression is somehow akin to politics as usual."

In a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on the 26th of October, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, had the following to say about the neoconservative agenda:

"We have been warned. Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, as plans are being laid for the next U.S.-led regime change -- in Syria. A UN report on the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri elicited this comment from a senior U.S. policy maker: "Out of tragedy comes an extraordinary strategic opportunity." This statement reflects the continued neo-conservative, Machiavellian influence on our foreign policy. The "opportunity" refers to the long-held neo-conservative plan for regime change in Syria, similar to what was carried out in Iraq.

"This plan for remaking the Middle East has been around for a long time. Just as 9/11 served the interests of those who longed for changes in Iraq, the sensationalism surrounding Hariri’s death is being used to advance plans to remove Assad."

Please note, in case you missed it, that the above was delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by a Republican Congressman from Texas.

As these two quotes suggest, there exists an overabundance of information publicly available via both mainstream and independent media, as well as from primary, sources to demonstrate that the neocon movement is, indeed, anti-democratic, out-of-line with traditional Anglo-American political philosophy, and is inherently dishonest in that it relies on a foreign-policy elite which deliberately deceives the very citizenry which such elected representatives and other government officials have sworn oaths to serve. Such Machiavellian deception is justified in their minds because they quite rightly believe that their foreign-policy objectives will not be tolerated, let alone supported, by a well-meaning American (or British) public which, by and large, continues to believe that the history they learned in school is true, and that the United States (or Britain) only goes to war when it absolutely must do so to defend itself from harm, never in outright aggression.

There is no shortage of evidence that our respective democracies in the U.S. and U.K. are in grave danger of a fate worse than being qualified as ostensible; they are very nearly dead. Nor is there a shortage of criminal evidence by which the American and British people can and must demand, not "an exercise in damage control" but, the "major backlash" of the sort Mr. Ritter spoke of, above.

Will the American and British people demand -- not wish, hope or plead for, but demand -- that their ransacked, just-barely ostensible, and corporatized democracies be exchanged for the real McCoy, true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, law and mutual respect, so that democracy itself may live?

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Sean M. Madden is a 39-year-old American writer-educator living in East Sussex, England. In August 2005, he earned an M.A. in Eastern Classics at the Graduate Institute at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In December 2003, he completed an M.A. in Liberal Arts at the original St. John's campus (est. 1696) in Annapolis, Maryland. Before attending the Graduate Institute, he was a community activist living in Northampton, Massachusetts.

He may be reached at  sean@inoodle.com or via the iNoodle.com blog:  http://inoodle.com/blog.html.