The Crumbling of American Democracy

An increasing dependence on police and intelligence services and Pentagon monitoring of American citizens are sure signs of ominous times to come. According to this op-ed article from Russia's Novosti News Service, 'having lost its global ideological cache, the United States has been increasingly dependent on illegal methods and the use of force.'

By Lieutenant General (Retired) Gennady Yevstafyev, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service

December 16, 2005

Original Article (English)    

MOSCOW: A chain of scandalous revelations about American human rights violations both in and out of the United States is increasingly distressing, even to nations that look on patiently at the conduct of the current U.S. administration. They believed that the painful lessons learned in Iraq and other places would sober up the men in Washington, but they were wrong.

The recent controversy over secret U.S. prisons in third countries and "flying prisons" prove that Washington learned nothing from previous scandals, such as the Afghan concentration camp located at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and the crimes of U.S. officials at the [once] secret Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib.

Let's examine the case of Khaled El-Masri, who with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, is suing the CIA for running a chain of secret prisons and for torturing prisoners. A German citizen, he was illegally abducted in Macedonia and subject to prohibited methods of investigation: torture, beatings and the use of drugs. It appears that he was completely innocent, and was mistaken for someone else. And this is not the only case.

Notably, a number of prisons were located in the "new democracies," such as Poland and Romania, whose leaders are impudent enough to lecture Russia on "democratic principles." Indeed, they are the real veterans of Western democracy. Their mentors [the United States] are much the same. While accusing North Korea of abducting Japanese in the remote Cold War years, the [Americans] themselves are not at all squeamish about using methods that we thought had long ago become anachronistic.

The Leaders of the "Axis of the Good" have not proved so angelic. It is clear that from the very beginning, the Republican Administration laid claim to a monopoly on the use of "legitimate" violence on a global scale. The world doesn't seem to have awakened to the serious weakening of democracy in that country, which used to be its pioneer. It hasn't noticed that since the time of de Tocqueville, America has been habitually exploiting, for its own purposes, the language of freedom and equality. But the words often hide the disgusting deeds which were mentioned earlier.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the only leader in the Bush Administration who still enjoys credibility abroad, was chosen to settle the scandal. Despite all of finger pointing, neither Rice nor any other U.S. official has apologized for the crimes of their compatriots. But even this deplorable fact is not important at this juncture. What matters is that it is going to get worse. Many facts involving U.S. domestic policy bear this out, and one of these facts is the emergence of new organizations.

Washington policymakers were still reeling at revelations in the beginning of 2005 of the Strategic Support Branch, or "Project Icon," which has been active at the Pentagon for two years, when more unpleasant surprises were unearthed.

The American press reported that the Pentagon has continued to expand its program of collecting and analyzing intelligence within the United States. Three years ago, Donald Rumsfeld set up the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) agency within the Pentagon. Its purpose is to investigate crimes within the United States, including cases of treason, foreign and terrorist subversion, and even economic spying.

Thus, the Department of Defense been given the right to keep as close an eye on American citizens as police, the Prosecutor's Office and other law-enforcement bodies that are traditional in democratic societies.

Keith Martin, director of the Homeland Security Office, said that the chief law enforcement agency of the United States, the FBI, was obliged to share information on individuals with CIFA, removing one of the few remaining barriers keeping government agencies from compiling files on anyone they choose and interfering in the private lives of Americans.

The reason for this unparalleled mushrooming of secret services and organizations is that the CIA has suffered a major defeat and is losing its position. It has now become a scapegoat for the Iraq disaster. A huge mechanism of accumulating data on "suspicious activity," code-named TALON, has been set up outside the CIA. Apparently, the military plays the leading role in the project.

[Editor's Note: the Washington Post reported that: The Talon reports, as they are called, are based on information from civilian and military personnel who stumble across people or information they think might be part of a terrorist plot or threat against defense facilities at home or abroad. ]

Not long ago, there where strict restrictions on the collection of data about American citizens by the military, a principle which had proven itself in the U.S. and other democratic countries. But under the present circumstances, many restrictions that have become important global norms stand in the way of the current White House team. Slowly but surely, the U.S. is crawling into the ranks of disreputable countries, with mostly military regimes, where police functions are steadily eroding democratic institutions.

Prominent French political scientist Emmanuel Todd made this discouraging comment on recent U.S. domestic political trends: "... God is not saving America these days. We see that evil is all around, but this is because things inside the country are taking a bad turn. This degradation compels us to understand what we're losing: the America of 1950-1965, a land of massive democracy, freedom of expression, the expansion of civil rights and the defense of human rights. It was the country of the good."

This warning by Todd is quite correct - albeit with serious reservations about "the country of the good." It is abundantly clear that having lost its global ideological cache, the United States has been increasingly dependent on illegal methods and the use of force.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.