How convenient to have a war

One of the first things that troubled me about the Bush administration happened well before 9/11. An executive order was issued to label public records from both the Clinton and the previous Bush administration “top secret” to keep them hidden for many decades to come. Among other things, some of these records could shed light on the first George Bush’s knowledge of the Irangate scandal.

Today’s story is nothing new to those paying attention but it demostrates how convenient the War on Terror has been for an administration intent on hiding its actions from the public. It reminds me of the distopian future in George Orwell’s novel 1984 which conjured up an authoritiarian government at constant war. The war justified bugging every phone and placing television cameras in every room of its citizen’s houses to ferret out any dangerous disloyalty.

Not every bug was being listened to in the novel but this security loophole could soon be remedied by computers. All we need to keep the state’s business secret and ours public is the justification a war provides. Since no other nation presents much of a militarily threat to us these days its convenient that we have terrorists out there to menace us.

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