Chomsky: An Ignorant Public Is the Real Kind of Security Our Govt. Is After

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/chomsky-staggering-differences-between-how-people-and-powerful-define-security

A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense."

The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?

Depending on what we mean, the credibility of the proposition ranges from negligible to very high.

Security for state power is at the high extreme, as illustrated by the efforts that states exert to protect themselves from the scrutiny of their own populations.

[bemildred]

1. Yep. The only enemy the US gov't truly fears is us, the American public. nt

[MisterP]

2. secrecy = impunity; Ollie North's drugrunning-for-gunrunning operation was called

secret from the president, but it was basically the NSC adopting the Argentinean Method--druglords and fascists to create proxy armies and strike squads against rebels and class enemies (students, bankers, priests)

the CIA asked too many questions and kept too many receipts