About this Website
This website was launched on November 7, 2007 as a result of aggressive efforts by neoconservatives within the Bush administration to start a new war against Iran. The website launch coincided with the release of my paper exposing a neoconservative agenda to deliberately sacrifice the U.S. Fifth Fleet so as to jusify a major new war against Iran. It was a great surprise to me to discover information pointing to the Bush administrations's adoption of covert policies that could lead to such a catastophe. The evidence supports the worst fears of many that the Bush administration has hijacked America's key institutions of power, and turned it into an imperial global power that uses military intervention and covert action for purposes very different to that envisaged by America's Founding Fathers.
What follows is the background to why I decided to create this website based on my earlier research on the Hero's Journey cycle in American history, and contemporary policies of neoconservatives in the Bush administration. It is my hope that by emphasizing America's Founding ideals, that enough citizens will awaken to their responsibilities and make accountable those individuals that have hijacked America's foreign policy traditions and principles.
The Neoconservative Agenda for a War against Iran
On August 30, 2007, a B-52 bomber loaded with six Advanced Cruise missiles with adjustable nuclear warheads from five to 150 kilotons flew across the U.S. in a covert mission to the Middle East. The B-52 was scheduled to be used against Iran in an operation that would have coincided with Israel's secret attack on Syria on September 6. This covert operation was secretly ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney who attempted an end-run around objections by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who first in April 2006 and again in 2007 had conclusively rejected the use of nuclear weapons in any war to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. Air Force personnel involved in the leaking of news of the nuclear armed B-52 bomber and stood down orders to complete the mission were scapegoated in an official Air Force investigation released on October 19. Two days earlier on October 17, President Bush delivered a Press Conference claiming that World World III was worth starting in order to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. On October 21, Vice President Cheney began warning of "serious consequences" if Iran doesn't comply with U.S. demands. This was the same language that preceeded the military intervention in Iraq in March 2003.
Despite determined opposition by the American public, the Democratic led Congress and the U.S. Military, Bush administration efforts have proceeded to justify a new war. A war against Iran will be devastating for the Middle East, U.S. regional interests there, and the entire planet. A war against Iran is part of an neoconservative agenda that is involves the deliberate sacrifice of much or all of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. This would be declared to be a new Pearl Harbor where the goal would be to get the American public to support an escalation of war activities in the Middle East. Again misleading information is being used to justify attacks on Iran as part of the contrived "War on Terror." Furthermore, further false flag operations are being planned to get the American public to support a new military campaign against Iran.
Once again, it appears that events surrounding the 'terrorist attacks' on 911 has been used as a justification in esclating the global "war on terror" with a further military campaign by the U.S. The Bush administration has steered America into a 'Deep Forgetting' of its founding principles and vision. This was predicted by me in 2000/2001 with the publication of my book The Hero's Journey to a Second American Century . So now I can introduce the idea of a "Hero's Journey" and its relevance to the United States is needed.
The Hero's Journey
In 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces where he described the hero's journey as an archetypical experience found in all cultures. According to Campbell, the hero's journey goes through three phases for all individuals wherein they undergo a profound moral transformation. Campbell's phases were: the 'Separation' from society; 'Initiation' into a new set of transformative truths and experiences; and the 'Return' to society as a teacher or prophet. Campbell found that all epic heroes' stories are variations on this theme which he describes as a monomyth.
In 1999/2000, I wrote, The Hero's Journey to a Second American Century (published in 2001) where Campbell's 'hero journey' was applied to nation-states. An extra phase was identified which created a complete cycle. So a nation-state could go through repeated cycles of a national hero's journey over centuries of history. The idea that the policies of nations could follow distinct cycles was first proposed by the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Snr., in a 1939 essay, "The Tides of History" (Yale Review). The idea was further developed by his son, Arthur Schlesinger, Jnr. in The Cycles of American History (1986) where he identified moral cycles in America's foreign and domestic policies.
The different stages used in The Hero's Journey to a Second American Century were, first, the 'Call to Adventure' where a nation would separate itself from a corrupted international system. The second, the 'Great Remembering,' was where the nation returned to its founding ideals and integrated these into a new national mission. The third stage was the 'Return to International Society,' where the nation would embark again to support its ideals on the international stage. The final stage, the 'Deep Forgetting', represented a nation entering into a period of forgetting its national ideals in pursuit of imperialism and national greed. The United States has gone through seven complete cycles of the hero's journey. An article summarizing America's different hero journies is available here. At the beginning of the Bush administration, America was poised to enter a 'Deep Forgetting' wherein the ideals of the Founding fathers would be forgotten.
911 and the Deep Forgetting
The attacks on September 11, 2001, galvanized American public support for a set of military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq that were claimed by the Bush administration to be necessary part of a global war on terror. There however has been growing evidence that the attacks on 911 was a false flag operation where senior members of the Bush administration were complicit. This was compellingly argued by authors such as David Ray Griffin in The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about 911 and the Bush Administration. Authors such as Michael Ruppelt in Crossing the Rubicon have provided strong evidence that a number of civil and military exercizes occurred on the morning of 911 which simulated by hijacked aircraft hitting buildings including the World Trade center. Vice President Cheney was in charge of these exercizes as mandated by a May 21, 2001 Presidential Statement and directly played a role in preventing NORAD intercepting hijacked planes.
In conclusion, 911 was a false flag operation to deceive the American public to support a series of wars that are part of a contrived global "war on terror".The "war on terror" has been used to significantly cut back on civil liberties to the extent that the Bush administration's designation of an individual as an "enemy combatant", can result in indefinite detention and the suspension of habeas corpus with minimal legal appeal. The Democratic Party has offered only nominal opposition, and to date has not made accountable the officials responsible for facilitating the false flag attacks on 911, or the contrived intelligence data that led to military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Articles of Impeachment submitted in April 2007 by Congressman Dennis Kucinich to the U.S. House of Representives have not yet been supported by the Democratic leadership. On November 6, 2007, the Democratic leadership voted down immediate debate of the articles and submitted them to the House Judiciary Committee for further study.
There has subsequently been much evidence emerging into the public realm to confirm that the Bush administration is committing international war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. That international conflicts are being used as a cover for the CIA's involvement in the drugs trade to generate revenues for undisclosed purposes. That war profiteering is occurring through corporations that supply or service military contracts, and that covert efforts are being conducted to steal the national treasures and knowledge of ancient archeological sites in the Middle East. Finally, compelling evidence has emerged that military munitions containing depleted uranium (DU) cause irreparable harm to soldiers and civilians that ingest airborne DU particles, and that DU is being allowed to poison the environment by its widespread use and testing.
Restarting the America's Hero's Journey
The above developments lead to the conclusion that there is a secret system of government in the U.S. that uses the 'visible' government' in the form of neoconservatives within the Bush administrations for its purposes. The secret government takes advantage of international conflicts and/or manufactures these, to generate a black budget that runs over a trillion dollars annually. The black budget has been argued to fund a highly classified set of projects called the Second Manhattan Project whose true purpose is yet to be disclosed to the American public. Consequently, it is clear that America has forgotten its democratic roots and a democracy exists in name only. There is little government transparency and accountability in key institutions of American power that are unresponsive to the general public.
If the Hero's Journey is to have any relevance to the United States in the 21st Century, then it is clear that Bush administration's covert and imperial practices, and the secret government that sanctions these, must be exposed. America's needs to embark on a new hero's journey (it's eighth) where it restores the civil liberties historically enjoyed by its citizenry that have been maliciously eroded by the Bush administration. Most importantly, America's democratic heritage needs to be restored through a genuine form of democracy wherein there is transparency in key institutions of power, and the rule of law is established to ensure accountability for all office holders. The impeachement and removal from government office of individuals responsible for the egregious policies listed above, will mark the starting point of a new Hero's Journey for America.
Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D.
www.AmericasHeroJourney.com
Kona, Hawaii
November 7, 2007
one: 808 323 3400