Spare A Sovereign

Buddy, Can You Spare a Sovereign?

There has been a lot of talk about sovereignty lately, and it has largely taken the tone of Where oh where has my little dog gone? or of a deflowered debutante bemoaning the loss of her irretrievable virginity. A sovereign is a ruler, an unelected hereditary chief. Here in these United States the country's forefathers fought bloody wars to prevent sovereigns in the new republic. Sovereignty would be retained by the people. It was a wierd, new idea, but it appealed to the rank and file as well as the landed gentry who knew where sovereignty would really reside: with the American aristocrats who were of the European royal bloodline. That has been the case to the present day - George the Second is the closest thing Americans have yet had to a dynastic prince.

Sovereignty, according to George Will, is the monopoly of legitimate violence and the ability to make laws. Any two bit tinhorn tyrant can issue decrees for law from his ivory tower, but it is the monopoly of legitimate violence that makes laws stick. Governments hate it when their monopoly of legitimate violence is contested, by the colonists in British America, by the Confederates in industrial America, by the Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Filipinos, Haitians, and so on in colonial America and by the Afghanis and Iraqis in imperialist America. Those patriots', rebels', insurgents' and terrorists' recourse to violence was legitimized by the sufferings of their people and aspirations for ethnic, economic and political independence. Any oppressed party holds these truths to be self evident as it seeks to establish its own monopoly of legitimate violence.

Speaking of violence, how about those troops? One second lieutenant from Maine who joined the reserves to pay for college was disappointed not to be deployed with the 344 Engineers in Iraq, feeling the unit would be "let down". The officer in question remained stateside because she was four months pregnant. She claimed she didn't know, which speaks to female soldiers' intimacy with weapons and alienation from their own bodies, but the Pentagon has a policy of not sending pregnant soldiers into battle. Good thing too because since the resident signed the fetal felony law, any insurgent who killed a pregnant trooper would have to be tortured twice. And speaking of torture, the U.S. has come a long way since war hero Jessica Lynch was captured, treated by an Iraqi doctor and rescued by unopposed special forces. In the latest episode of G.I.rls Gone Wild, Lynndie England has become America's new poster babe for the Iraq war, getting in a little payback for the sisters by making macho Iraqi pigs do the dog. Images from within Saddam's old dungeons, now administered by righteous liberating forces, have caused a furor around the world and indignation on the part of America's ruling elite.

Apparently appalled, resident George Bush apologized publicly months after the abuses were made known to the administration by the ICRC, and a week after the photos had spread throughout the internet forcing the reluctant no-alternative media to print the least offensive examples in America's major dailies. Mr. Bush in making his apologia asked the world to believe the incidents were anecdotal and not representative of America or its armed forces. He added that "something is wrong with the system" and that "the guilty will be punished", although he was referring to the system of detention of Iraqis by the Occupation, not the venal, corrupt and inhuman imperial system of which he is the titular head. Some may find it remarkable that after wantonly killing tens of thousands of Iraqi non-combatants by "rubblizing" their neighborhoods with high explosives without a twinge of remorse, the thief of state waxed indignant about these "atrocities". Not so remarkable that boy George should feel compassion for detainees - he too was almost arrested for his crimes once.

Chickenhawk Donald Rumsfeld pulled a Reno and accepted full responsibility for these images being taken on his watch (could they have been taken on his cel phone?), and promised steps would be taken to prevent any recurrence of the lamentable practices. His first order was to restrict the troops' access to the internet, but he warned that it would get a lot worse, knowing as he does the extent of official policy regarding treatment of detainees. In an attempt to provide damage control, the Secretary of Defense made a fine point of the difference between torture and abuse, saying the incidents were "only abuse". Like any imperial lackey caught with his hand in the game, Mr. Rumsfeld refuses to step down simply because he was responsible.

Preparations for war are the organizing principal of society said USAF colonel Leroy Fletcher Prouty (Mr. "X" in Oliver Stone's JFK), who retired in December 1963 after being assigned to the South Pole in November whereas his duty station had been Dallas. Not only does the monopoly of legitimate violence yield the sovereignty for which nations hunger, but without war and rumors of war, there would be no context for the nation state, no basis for empire. If it weren't for war with Great Britain, the United States would just be the separate states. Since emerging as a world power in the twentieth century, the United States has sought a global monopoly of legitimate violence as a substrate for expansion of capitalist empire to every corner of the globe and even off the globe into space.

The hoopla about torture of detainees is a smoke screen, a sideshow, a diversionary tactic in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the world. Publication of the images may even be part of the policy of obfuscation promulgated by the powers that be. Over six hundred U.S. servicepersons have been killed since the war was declared over in May 2003. Though it may sound strange to hear reports of Fallujah which describe "the heaviest fighting since the war's end", war will never end until the monopoly of legitimate violence is uncontested. The contest is only warming up. Though the technique helped defeat the British, who announced the war for the colonies was over once Bunker Hill was captured, asymmetric warfare is a mystery to the U.S. military establishment. Iraqi forces abandoned their outmoded Russian tanks in the face of the unstoppable U.S. military juggernaut and faded into the crowd to wage guerilla war against the occupying army stretched out across the desert. As actual military action in the Middle East theatre is performed for the coalition by South African mercenaries receiving $1000 per day for six week tours, citizen soldiers of the national guard are being exposed to death in a no win situation for $14,000 per year of extended tours of duty. The regular army, trained for a stand up fight, is at a loss providing police function in an unfamiliar and hostile country, and just as on reality TV, in actual reality ordinary persons put in compromising situations become monsters, ready to relieve their own internal conflicts by tormenting helpless, often innocent, official enemies.

There will be no end to atrocities against people as long as there is still war, and there will be no end to war as long as there is still the nation state, and there will be no end to the nation state as long as profit oriented patrists seek sovereignty. The peace sought by billions worldwide will not result from any reorganization of patrist structuring. Peace is not an absence of warfare, but a spirit of benevolence, support and respect for all persons, regardless of race, creed or country of national origin. All violence is illegitimate, and any who seek to legitimize it in their twisted quest for sovereignty are the enemies of everyone and friends only to themselves.

Reverend Doktor "C." Sarian

Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia

Church of the SubGenius

052815