By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2013) — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, told investigators yesterday that he and his brother Tamerlane were “self-radicalized,” motivated in part, by the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Amazingly, THE PLANET learned of the news between reports of truly important news, that of Kate Middleton showing off her baby bump. Such are the times and its distractions.

Thank you, President George W. Bush. Sure, you didn’t create the diversion of the hoi polloi‘s mind-numbing obsession with celebrity, but your turn in the Oval Office drove a good many in our number to tune out. Those without sufficient curiosity for the truth and who cannot tune out the media end up, if they are intellectually lazy, caring about Lady Middleton’s bump.

The Erosion of Freedom

Thank you, George W. Bush, for turning America into an international target of hatred for the hordes of dissatisfied masses  around the world who do not share in this country’s wealth, do not know what it feels like to have constitutionally supplied freedoms, and who cannot aspire to much more than the kind of instant political change brought about by the business end of a lit fuse. Thank you, too, Mr. President, for instituting an erosion of those constitutional freedoms, having set before us as justification the one-sided coin of “public safety” and “national security”. Thank you for accelerating the erosion of our liberties. We can see you in a zip-up jacket, standing on a heap of smoldering ruin at the WTC site, and setting up the tray for your grand slam play.

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“To see how far liberties have eroded since the founding of the US, one might ask how someone a century ago might view the current situation. First and foremost, he would be astounded by the phenomenal growth in the size of government at all levels, but of the federal government in particular. The feudalistic level of taxation would have caused riot and rebellion in his time. He would also be struck by the direct limitation of health freedom, such as the right to put whatever into your body you want, be it aspirin, morphine, tobacco or marijuana. And he would be struck by the federalization of law, leading to a frenzy of federal prison-building unable to keep up with demand, and the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Most of all, a visitor from the past would be incredulous that, with such miraculous growth in prosperity, we would still be ruled by fear, anxiety and suspicion toward the free market and the future.” — From the website www.elsol.org.

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Thank you, O student of history, for proving Thomas Jefferson correct when he said, “The natural progress of things is for Government to gain ground and for Liberty to yield.” Jefferson said those words as a warning. You, Mr. Bush, and your handlers took them as a justification to exploit the weaknesses of human nature.

A Climate of Fear, the Exchange for ‘Security’

Thank you, Mr. Bush, for creating a climate of fear, which drives people to consciously give up their rights in exchange for so-called “security. It’s not a bargain at any price, not even the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, international destruction, and domestic languor. Thank you for exploiting the ensuing apathy following the election you stole in November 2000, counting on people’s ignorance to prevent them from noticing the usurpation of the rights they never knew they had. Thank you for creating a national mindset of hyper-vigilance that has eroded our ability to filter out the incessant reports of doom, gloom, Armageddon, distant disasters, criminal acts, bombings, outbreaks of disease, accidents and other acts that do not come from God.

Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush’s Lucky Day

Thank you, W., you Christian, for Sept. 11, 2001, when, in your incompetence, the underlings you hired in various branches of government, including those who headed the intelligence and national security sectors chose to ignore billboard warnings of the attacks that day that forever changed public life in the USA. You had the ignorance that allowed you to claim culpable deniability, turning Sept. 11, 2001, into the luckiest day of your life.

Prior to that day, you were the empty-suited commander in chief of a floundering state, an unqualified lightweight made president in an electoral theft so confident, so complete in its partisan guarantors — from Florida, where your brother and his secretary of state cooked the results, to the Supreme Court, which your handlers knew would follow a 5-4 suit. On Sept. 11, 2001, and after that day, however, you had a blank check to wage a phony war against an enemy that doesn’t exist, except in ideology. You “flew” in a fighter jet, landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and smirked under a banner proclaiming, “Mission Accomplished.” That was 10 years ago.

You and your handlers understood ideology. You folks knew that while there were no armies or tanks poised to attack the United States, the 9/11 attacks allowed you to erect an idea as an enemy. Thus, you took us to a “war on terrorism,” one as phony as the “war on drugs,” a siege that you could not define, an unreal ethic that could not be held, viewed, tasted, touched, or heard. All you could do amidst the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center was assert that an enemy was there — much like the “weapons of mass destruction” you claimed Iraq possessed, which that country never did. You asked the country to believe you. You knew that by claiming a “war,” you would have the emotional support of the country — a country that you turned around and screwed.

‘There Was No Enemy. There Was No Water’

You authored a period of American history unlike any other before, and there has been no variance since. You and your handlers created the notion of perpetual war on a phantom “terroristic” threat. In doing so, you crafted the classic self-fulfilling prophecy, managing to stir up enough disaffected young men to give you that make-believe army of enemy combatants — teenagers with box cutters; 30 somethings armed with weapons sold by the United States. You even had the gall to pin this threat down by using a cynical, skewed geopolitical wand, waving the forked stick of “national security” to identify the “enemy” the way a dowser might claim to find water. There was no “enemy” except the one you created. There was no water. There was Afghanistan and Iraq. That is all.

And so, you launched a preventive strike. People err when they call your gutless invasion of Iran a “pre-emptive” strike. Here’s the difference. Let’s say you are walking down the street, and a man walking toward you strikes at you with your fist. You have the right to strike back. That is a defensive war, the only kind of war that, prior and up to World War II, this country ever knew.

A “pre-emptive strike” would be if you saw the guy coming your way cock his fist, getting ready to strike you. You hit first. You “pre-empt” his attack with one of your own. That, too, has a moral justification. You, though, chose the “preventive” route. That’s when you think the guy next to you will do something, and you hit him first. You have no evidence that he was going to do something, except your thoughts. Paranoid people and countries fight that way.

You sent US troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. You destroyed those two countries and then sent your buddies in with the lucrative contracts to “rebuild.” In the process, you will have diverted between $4 trillion and $6 trillion dollars, with medical care and disability benefits continuing to drain the US treasury for generations to come. Presently to date, your actions have cost US taxpayers $2 trillion, not counting $260 billion in interest on war debt.

Compare that to President Obama’s current budget to run the country for an entire year: $3.8 trillion. Speaking of Obama, he said he would close Guantanamo. He didn’t. He said he would get us out of Afghanistan. He hasn’t. Same breeds same.

Coming Full Circle to the Boston Finish Line

Thus we come full circle to yesterday, when young Dzhokhar Tsarnaev explained why he and his brother did what they did. It was you, Mr. Bush, and your two stinking wars. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Incidentally, when officials informed Tsarnaev of the charges, they read him his rights.) It appears the brothers, especially the older one, were motivated by radical Islam and its venomous anti-Americanism, stirred up by you, Mr. President.

Petitions Sent to Obama

Pursuant to our discussion yesterday on the young man’s rights, a Change.org petition to “guarantee Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the right to a fair trial,” addressed to President Obama, has more than 6,000 supporters.

“We believe that within the chaos caused by the Boston Marathon explosion, two young men were wrongfully accused of something they did not do, and one of them has lost his life before even getting the opportunity of a proper trial,” Anita Temisheva, the user who launched the petition, wrote. “We do not wish to see blood of yet another innocent victim, someone who, by U.S. law, is innocent until proven guilty. It is vital to end this persecution, as all the conflicting information shown by the media, and footage from the incident, seen by people from all corners of the world, doesn’t manifest itself as enough evidence to condemn Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of this heinous crime.”

THE PLANET neither supports nor opposes this statement. All we can do is presume the living brother is innocent and insist upon the full application of his rights, including that of a fair trial. The evidence appears convincing that Dzhokhar was involved in the bombings, but that will be up to the prosecution.

Our main point today is to illustrate how the jaundiced seeds sewn by a flailing President Bush in light of the 9/11 attacks continue to bear their bitter fruit. The United States of America has now been at “war” for 11 years. Iraq is in ruins, still. In Afghanistan, the US is learning what the Soviets found out after the 10 or 11 years they spent there: It’s easy to kill civilians, women, children, and old people. It’s hard to kill soldiers. We are $2 trillion poorer, with the ultimate cost to be at least doubled and possibly tripled.

Thank you, President Bush — for nothing.

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“Down the blue night the unending columns press / In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, / Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow / Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.” — Rupert Brooke 

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.