May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Bigger doesn't imply better. Bigger often is a sign of obesity, of lost control, of overcomplexity, of cancerous
cells
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot
stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility
while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about
the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining
an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot
pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city
swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those
of the rest of the world combined.”
New American militarism is connected with the desire to establish global neoliberal empire ruled
by the USA (the dream of total world dominance). It became official policy since the collapse
of the USSR and involves "heliocentric" view on foreign policy, when the USA is the center of
the world order and other states just rotate around it on various orbits. The US population is by-and-large-completely
brainwashed into this vision.
Opposition to the US militarism is almost non-existent due contemporary US popular culture infused
with the language of militarism and American exceptionalism. As Bacevich noted:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans have
managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America’s uniformed
military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats. The typical
Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honor, extraordinary technological aptitude and
sheer decency of the nation’s defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to enter a world of ‘virtuous
men and perfect weapons’, as one reviewer noted. ‘All the Americans are paragons of courage, endurance
and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly competent and occasionally inspired.
Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.’ Indeed, in the contract that he signed
for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad
light.
The "New American militarism" or as it called "Neocon mentality"
is not that different from the early Soviets militarism (of Trotskyite variety), eager to spread
the blessings of Scientific Socialism toward other countries on the tips of bayonets. Here the
role of scientific socialism is played by neoliberal ideology. With the slogan "Transnational
elite unite" and Davos style Congresses of the new "Neoliberal International" of comprador
elites. While converting other countries into neoliberal model using color revolution of direct military
invasion or combination of both) are disguised as spread of "democracy".
In this new Crusade for world hegemony the key ideas of Trotsky Permanent Revolution remains intact
-- a crusade for establishing new social system on all counties on the Earth. This is just Great Neoliberal
Crusade, instead of Communist Crusade. This new justification for Crusades has the same problems
as two previous. But it does not matter as the key role of democracy here is the same as in quote "the
goal justifies the means"
Professor Andrew Bacevich wrote several short books on the subject. he avoids the term neoliberalism
and did not try to explain new American militarism in terms of the quest for neoliberal empire expansion.
But he is a very good observer and the books contain many insights into US elite thinking and blunders.
Among them we can note two:
While all three books are excellent and raise important issues, they overlap. Probably the
most original and the most important on them is Washington Rules, were Bacevich attempts to explain
"Permanent War for Permanent Peace" that the USA practice since the end of WWII. All three books have
the same weaknesses: Bacevich does not see connection between Neoliberalism demand for economic expansion
and "New American Militarism" and regime of permanent wars that the USA pursue since WWII.
He provide sharp critique of neocons, but never ask the question: which political forces brought
those pathetic second or third rate thinkers to the forefront of formulation of the US foreign policy
and maintain them for more then a decade after Iraq debacle.
He also mistakenly believe that American people (who were completely estranged from any influence
on nation's policies) bear some guilt for the policy which was formulated to benefit the first hundred
of the largest US corporations. In other words he does not understand that the USA is yet another occupied
country.
[Neocons] advocate permanent war for permanent peace
Professor Basevich
The foreign policy of the USA since 1945, but especially, after the dissolution of the USSR was and
is "open militarism". Recently John Quiggin tried to define militarism is came to the following
definition (crookedtimber.org):
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from the
catastrophe of the Great War and the decades of slaughter that followed it. Rather than get bogged
down (yet again) in specifics that invariably decline into arguments about who know more of the historical
detail, I'm going to try a different approach, looking at the militarist ideology that gave us the
War, and trying to articulate an anti-militarist alternative.
Wikipedia offers a definition
of militarism which, with the deletion of a single weasel word, seems to be entirely satisfactory
and also seems to describe the dominant view of the political class, and much of the population
in nearly every country in the world.
Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain
a strong military capability and be prepared to use it
aggressively[^1] to defend or promote national
interests
This new epidemic of the US militarism started after the dissolution of the USSR was called by Professor
Bacevich (who is former colonel of the US army) it New
American Militarism.
global interventionism is used to achieve those ends.
Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination of the
US foreign policy, and, especially, neocons domination in State Department regardless of whether Republicans
or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that is uniquely qualified to take on the worldwide
foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful lessons of World War II,
Vietnam, and Iraq. And that establishing and maintaining the neoliberal empire is worth the price we
pay as it will take the USA into the period of unprecedented peace.
Bacevich scored a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this
scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States
into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive "perpetual war for perpetual peace".
Bacevich scores a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this
scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States
into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive posture of nearly perpetual war. These assumptions
take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the unique responsibility
to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means it wants --
and the supporting "trinity" of requirements for the U.S. to maintain a global military presence,
to configure its military forces for global power projection, and to counter threats by relying on
a policy of global interventionism.
Lessons that President Obama is clearly never able to learn. In this sense his book
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War is an excellent peace of research with sections
that some may find very troubling as it suggest that the USA elite is suicidal and is ready to sacrifice
the county for achieving its delusional goal of world domination.
UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper CXXXVII:
September 27, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (New York: Metropolitan
Books/Henry Holt and Company, August 2010).
Thesis
The Washington consensus on national security policy that constitutes convention wisdom in American
foreign policy began with the Cold War and survived, remarkably, the Vietnam War and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, no longer serves American interests, but the failure of the Obama administration
to alter it shows that change can only come from the American people.
Introduction: Slow Learner
The author's faith in orthodoxy began to crumble when visiting the BrandenburgGate in Berlin in
the winter of 1990-1991(1-4). In October 1990 a visit to Jenarevealed the backwardness of EastGermany
(4-6). During his years in the Army, Bacevich had kept down doubts; after the end of the Cold War
he retired, and his loss of status freed him to educate himself (6-10).
"George W.Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition"
(10). "This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom" (11). The past 60 years of American history
shows continuity: a symbiotic "credo" (formulated by Henry Luce in 1941 as the "American Century")
and a "sacred trinity" ("the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United
States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection,
and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism")
together define "the rules to which Washington adheres" (11-15).
In this book, "Washington" refers to the upper echelons of the three branches of government, the
main agencies of the national security state, select think tanks and interest groups, "big banks
and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television networks
and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on
Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government" (15).
This book aspires to
(1) trace the history of the Washington rules;
(2) show who wins, who loses, and who pays under them;
(3) explain how itis perpetuated;
(4) show that the rules have lost what utility they might once have had;
and (5) re-legitimate "disreputable (or 'radical') views to our national security debates" (16).
The American Century is ending, and it "has become essential" to devise an "alternative to the
reining national security paradigm" (16-18).
Ch. 1: The Advent of Semiwar.
As president, Barack Obama's efforts to change the U.S.'s exercise of power "have seldom risen
above the cosmetic"(20). He made clear he subscribes to the "catechism of American statecraft," viz.
that 1) the world must be organized, 2)only the U.S. can do it, 3) this includes dictating principles,
and 4) not to accept this is to be a rogue or a recalcitrant (20-21).
It follows that the U.S. need not conform to the norms it sets for others and that it should maintain
a worldwide network of bases (22-23).
Imagine if China acted in a comparable manner (23-25). The extraordinary American military posture
in the world (25-27). To call this into question puts one beyond the pale(27). James Forrestal called
this a permanent condition of semiwar, requiring high levels of military spending(27-28).
American citizens are not supposed to concern themselves with it (29-30). As to how this came
about, the "standard story line" presents as the result of the decisions of a "succession of presidential
administrations," though this conceals as much as it reveals (30-32).
Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address on the "military-industrial complex" was a rare exception (32-34).
More important than presidents were Allen Dulles [1893-1969] and Curtis Lemay [1906-1990] (34-36).
Bacevich attributes the vision for an American-dominated post-World War II world with the CIA
playing an active role to the patrician Dulles (36-43). The development of the U.S. military into
a force capable of dominating the world, especially in the area of strategic weapons, he attributes
to the hard-bitten Curtis LeMay, organizer of the StrategicAir Command (SAC) (43-52). Dulles and
LeMay shared devotion to country, ruthlessness, a certain recklessness (52-55). They exploited American
anxieties and insecurities in yin (Dulles's CIA) yang(LeMay's SAC) fashion, leaving the mainstay
of American military power, the U.S. Army, in a relatively weak position(55-58).
Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control
Kennedy kept Dulles and LeMay to signal continuity, but there was a behind-the-scenes struggle
led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to reassert the role of the U.S. Army by expanding and modernizing conventional
forces that was "simultaneously masked by, and captured in, the phrase flexible response " (60; 59-63).
This agenda purported to aim at "resisting aggression" but really created new options for limited
aggressive warfare by the U.S. (63-66).
McNamara engaged in a struggle with LeMay to control U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, but he embraced
the need for redundancy based on a land-sea-air attack "triad" and LeMay et al. "got most of what
they wanted" (66-72).
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy instituted the morally and legally "indefensible"
Operation Mongoose," in effect, a program of state-sponsored terrorism" against Cuba (80; 72-82 [but
Bacevich is silent on its wilder elements, like Operation Northwoods]).
U.S. recklessness caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to his credit Kennedy acknowledged this
(albeit privately) and "suspended the tradition" in defusing the crisis (82-87).
Bacevich rejects as a romantic delusion the view that in the aftermath of this crisis Kennedy
turned against the military-industrial complex and the incipient Vietnam war and shows no interest
in Kennedy's assassination itself (87-92).
He sees a parallel between escalation in Vietnam and post-9/11 aggression as "fought to sustain
the Washington consensus" (107; 92-107).
Ch. 3: The Credo Restored.
William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power (1966) urged a rethinking of the Washington rules (109-15).
A radicalized David Shoup, a Medal of Honor winner and former commandant of the MarineCorps, argued
in "The New American Militarism" (Atlantic, April 1969) that the U.S. had become "a militaristic
and aggressive nation" (120; 115-21). The 1960s Zeitgeist shift made LeMay "an embarrassment,
mocked and vilified rather than venerated," which showed that the Washington rules had incurred serious
damage in Vietnam; the Army was in dire shape (122; 121-27).
Yet astonishingly, in the subsequent decade the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) was "fully restored"
(127). As in post-1918 Germany, élites looked for scapegoats and worked to reverse "the war's apparent
verdict" (128). The Council on Foreign Relations 1976 volume entitled The Vietnam Legacy: The
War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy is an expression of élite consensus
that the Vietnam war was insignificant, an anomaly (129-34).
By 1980, Democrats and Republicans were again on the same page (134-36).Reagan's election
"sealed the triumph of Vietnam revisionism" (136; 136-38). And the end of the Cold War posed
no challenge to the Washington rules, as Madeleine Albright's pretentious arrogance exemplifies (138-45).
Ch. 4: Reconstituting the Trinity
The period from 1980 to 2000 saw "notretrenchment but reconfiguration" (147). The new mission
was not American defense but facilitation of a new world order (148-50). After 9/11 this pretense
was dropped and "[a]ctivism became the watchword" (150, emphasis in original;150-52). Resorting to
war became "notably more frequent and less controversial" in 1980-2000, finding "its ultimate expression
in the Bush Doctrine of preventive war" (152-53). Americans "passively assented" (154).
Behind the scenes, the shape this took was struggled over by the officer corps and civilian semi-warriors
pushing RMA(Revolution in Military Affairs) (154-64).Initially, U.S. élites held that victory in
Iraq demonstrated that speed could be substituted for mass in military campaigns (165-75). But the
experience of the occupation revealed this to be a fantasy (175-81).
Ch. 5: Counterfeit COIN.
Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, replacing "shock and awe" as "the Long War" replaced the "global
war on terror," is the latest doctrinal effort to preserve the Washington rules (182-86). The so-called
"surge" implicitly marked a quest for conditions allowing the U.S. to leave Iraq without admitting
defeat (186-91).Gen. David Petraeus emerged as an advocate (and as salesman, through FM3-24, the
manual he revised and which Bacevich insists is in its emphasis on narrative replete with postmodernism)
of counterinsurgency doctrine as "a substitute [for warfare] suited to the exercise of great power
politics in the twilight of modernity" (197; 191-97). Implicitly, the manual argues that "war as
such . . . no longer worked" (198; 198-202). Petraeus took credit for progress in Iraq that he did
not achieve (202-04).
The general with a Princeton Ph.D. was lionized with a view to normalizing war and lowering expectations,
a view now embraced by the Obama administration(205-11). Proponents of global counterinsurgency (GCOIN)
emerged, like John Nagl and Gen. Benet Sacolick (211-13). Obama embraced the GCOIN version of the
Long War with Gen.Stanley McChrystal to carry it out in Afghanistan, forfeiting the opportunity to
reassess American policy (213-21).
Ch. 6: Cultivating Our Own Garden.
Time-honored no-nonsense American pragmatism has turned into an absurdity-swallowing herd mentality
(222-23). The problem set the U.S. faces has radically changed from the time of the early Cold War,
but the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) that proposes to address them remains essentially the same (224-25).Eisenhower
would have been appalled(225-26). The size of the Pentagon budget, the size of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal, and the extent of overseas military presence cannot be justified(226-27).
These persist because of the interests they serve, not the mission the fulfill, and are likely
to do so for sometime (228-30). Bacevich invokes George Kennan, William Fulbright, and Martin Luther
King Jr. in urging that the U.S. needs a new approach, to model freedom rather than impose it (231-37).
First and foremost, America should save not the world but itself (237).
Bacevich proposes a new trinity:
the purpose of the military is to defend the U.S. and its vital interests;
soldiers' primary duty stations are on American soil;
force should be used only as a last resort and in self-defense, in accord with the Just War
tradition (238-41).
The American public must shoulder its complicity in what has happened, fostered by an all-volunteer
force and debt-financed budgets (241-47). It is tragic that Barack Obama, elected to institute
change, has lacked the courage to alter the Washington rules, instead "choosing to conform"
(247-49). "If change is to come, it must come from the people"(249). The need for education "has
become especially acute" (249; 249-50).
Except from Macmillan
Introduction: Slow Learner Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young
man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes
to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination.
All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.
My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with
precision: For me, education began in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not
long after the Berlin Wall had fallen. As an officer in the U.S. Army I had spent considerable time
in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most
famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end
of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the
communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking the length of the Unter
den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened.
The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted.
Few people were about. It was hardly a night for sightseeing. For as long as I could remember, the
Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol of the age and Berlin the epicenter of contemporary
history.
Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving on.
The Cold War had abruptly ended. A divided city and a divided nation had re united. For Americans
who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily as a metaphor. Pick a date—
1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989—and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of power, depravity,
tragedy, defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the past as a chronicle
of parables, the modern history of Berlin offered an abundance of material. The greatest of those
parables emerged from the events of 1933 to 1945, an epic tale of evil ascendant, belatedly confronted,
then heroically overthrown.
A second narrative, woven from events during the intense period immediately following World War
II, saw hopes for peace dashed, yielding bitter antagonism but also great resolve. The ensuing stand-off—the
"long twilight struggle," in John Kennedy's memorable phrase— formed the centerpiece of the third
parable, its central theme stubborn courage in the face of looming peril. Finally came the exhilarating
events of 1989, with freedom ultimately prevailing, not only in Berlin, but throughout Eastern Europe.
.... ... ...
Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire,
East Germany more closely resembled part of the undeveloped world.
... ... ...
Briquettes of soft coal used for home heating made the air all but unbreathable and coated everything
with soot. In the German cities we knew, pastels predominated—houses and apartment blocks painted
pale green, muted salmon, and soft yellow. Here everything was brown and gray
... ... ...
Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble. That worldview had derived from this conviction:
that American power manifested a commitment to global leadership, and that both together expressed
and affirmed the nation's enduring devotion to its founding ideals. That American power, policies,
and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each element drawing strength
from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That, during my adult life, a penchant
for interventionism had become a signature of U.S. policy did not—to me, at least—in any way contradict
America's aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness to expend lives and treasure in distant places
testified to the seriousness of those aspirations. That, during this same period, the United States
had amassed an arsenal of over thirty-one thousand nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned
to units in which I had served, was not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life
and liberty; rather, threats to life and liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such
an arsenal and maintain it in readiness for instant use.2 I was not so naíve as to believe that the
American record had been without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had
been committed in good faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast
Asia as in Western Europe, in the Persian Gulf as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had
simply done what needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent to any dilution of American
power would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom,
not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.
The choices seemed clear enough. On one side was the status quo: the commitments, customs, and
habits that defined American globalism, implemented by the national security apparatus within which
I functioned as a small cog. On the other side was the prospect of appeasement, isolationism, and
catastrophe. The only responsible course was the one to which every president since Harry Truman
had adhered. For me, the Cold War had played a crucial role in sustaining that worldview.
Given my age, upbringing, and professional background, it could hardly have been otherwise. Although
the great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had contained moments of considerable
anxiety — I remember my father, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stocking our basement with water
and canned goods — it served primarily to clarify, not to frighten.
The Cold War provided a framework that organized and made sense of contemporary history. It offered
a lineup and a scorecard. That there existed bad Germans and good Germans, their Germans and our
Germans, totalitarian Germans and Germans who, like Americans, passionately loved freedom was, for
example, a proposition I accepted as dogma. Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil
answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still others irrelevant.
Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, more than a few members of my generation had rejected
the conception of the Cold War as a Manichean struggle. Here too, I was admittedly a slow learner.
Yet having kept the faith long after others had lost theirs, the doubts that eventually assailed
me were all the more disorienting. Granted, occasional suspicions had appeared long before Jena and
Berlin
My own Vietnam experience had generated its share, which I had done my best to suppress. I was,
after all, a serving soldier. Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in those
days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing the ladder of career success required
curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when studying the
history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges to orthodoxy,
which I vigorously deflected. When it came to education, graduate school proved a complete waste
of time — a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation of facts, while I exerted
myself to ensuring that they remained inert.
Now, however, my personal circumstances were changing. Shortly after the passing of the Cold War,
my military career ended. Education thereby became not only a possibility, but also a necessity.
In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It's the perfect antidote for excessive self-regard.
After twenty-three years spent inside the U.S. Army seemingly going somewhere, I now found myself
on the outside going nowhere in particular. In the self-contained and cloistered universe of regimental
life, I had briefly risen to the status of minor spear carrier. The instant I took off my uniform,
that status vanished. I soon came to a proper appreciation of my own insignificance, a salutary lesson
that I ought to have absorbed many years earlier. As I set out on what eventually became a crablike
journey toward a new calling as a teacher and writer—a pilgrimage of sorts—ambition in the commonly
accepted meaning of the term ebbed. This did not happen all at once. Yet gradually, trying to grab
one of life's shiny brass rings ceased being a major preoccupation.
Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis.
History—especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War—no longer offered answers; instead,
it posed perplexing riddles. Easily the most nagging was this one: How could I have so profoundly
misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain? Had I been insufficiently
attentive? Or was it possible that I had been snookered all along? Contemplating such questions,
while simultaneously witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s"— the period bookended by two wars
with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights—prompted the realization that I
had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries. Yet that was the lesser half
of the problem. Far worse than misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had misperceived "us." What
I thought I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared especially
acute.
George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition.
Claims that once seemed elementary—above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes
of American power— now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an ostensibly peace-loving
nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and
hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global
war on terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won,
and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords.
During the era of containment, the United States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled
strategy; now, the last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the
worldview to which I had adhered as a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely.
*
What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting the conventional
wisdom, substituting a new Manichean paradigm for the old discredited version—the United States taking
the place of the Soviet Union as the source of the world's evil—would not suffice. Yet arriving at
even an approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional wisdom, both present and past,
to sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but with growing confidence, this I vowed
to do. Doing so meant shedding habits of conformity acquired over decades. All of my adult life I
had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional loyalties induce myopia.
Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept
certain things as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making education
accessible. Over a period of years, a considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had
to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply
wrong. Adopting fashionable attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness—the world of politics
is flush with such people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle—is akin to
engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory notes. It's not only demeaning but downright
foolhardy. This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential and enduring
form, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of
statecraft to which the United States has adhered since the end of World War II— the era of global
dominance now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition combines two components, each one so deeply
embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.
The first component specifies norms according to which the international order ought to work and
charges the United States with responsibility for enforcing those norms. Call this the American credo.
In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States—and the United States alone—to lead, save,
liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto issued at the dawn of what
he termed "The American Century," Henry R. Luce made the case for this spacious conception of global
leadership. Writing in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow
citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence
for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Luce thereby captured what remains
even today the credo's essence.3 Luce's concept of an American Century, an age of unquestioned American
global primacy, resonated, especially in Washington. His evocative phrase found a permanent place
in the lexicon of national politics. (Recall that the neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied
for more militant U.S. policies named their enterprise the Project for a New American Century.) So,
too, did Luce's expansive claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States.
Even today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they signal
their fidelity to this creed. Along with respectful allusions to God and "the troops," adherence
to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office. Question its claims and your
prospects of being heard in the hubbub of national politics become nil. Note, however, that the duty
Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose
the purposes for which they would bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well.
Here we confront the second component of the postwar tradition of American statecraft. With regard
to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard power over soft, and coercion
(often styled "negotiating from a position of strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of
global leadership as prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities
staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense. Prior to World War II, Americans by and
large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake
of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American
identity. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a gigantic
five-sided building.
Like "Wall Street" at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions
veiled in secrecy, its reach extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in
Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the concentration
of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring. A people who had long seen standing
armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them
to lavish resources on the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about
falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a position of overall
primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper
of national debate, unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate
to global leadership. Every great military power has its distinctive signature. For Napoleonic France,
it was the levée en masse— the people in arms animated by the ideals of the Revolution. For Great
Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of the seas, sustained by a dominant fleet and a
network of far-flung outposts from Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong.
Germany from the 1860s to the 1940s (and Israel from 1948 to 1973) took another approach, relying
on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational audacity to achieve battlefield superiority.
The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of a different order
altogether. The United States has not specialized in any particular type of war. It has not adhered
to a fixed tactical style. No single service or weapon has enjoyed consistent favor. At times, the
armed forces have relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times, long-service professionals.
Yet an examination of the past sixty years of U.S. military policy and practice does reveal important
elements of continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials
of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence,
to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats
by relying on a policy of global interventionism. Together, credo and trinity—the one defining purpose,
the other practice—constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and
police the American Century. The relationship between the two is symbiotic. The trinity lends plausibility
to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo justifies the trinity's vast requirements and
exertions.
Together they provide the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to U.S. policy
regardless of which political party may hold the upper hand or who may be occupying the White House.
From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack Obama, that consensus has remained intact. It defines
the rules to which Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which Washington rules. As used
here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of interlocking institutions headed by
people who, whether acting officially or unofficially, are able to put a thumb on the helm of state.
Washington, in this sense, includes the upper echelons of the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches of the federal government. It encompasses the principal components of the national security
state— the departments of Defense, State, and, more recently, Homeland Security, along with various
agencies comprising the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to
select think tanks and interest groups. Lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, former officials, and retired
military officers who still enjoy access are members in good standing. Yet Washington also reaches
beyond the Beltway to include big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and
major corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic
entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
With rare exceptions, acceptance of the Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into this
world. My purpose in writing this book is fivefold: first, to trace the origins and evolution of
the Washington rules—both the credo that inspires consensus and the trinity in which it finds expression;
second, to subject the resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing who wins and who loses
and also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules are perpetuated, with certain
views privileged while others are declared disreputable; fourth, to demonstrate that the rules themselves
have lost whatever utility they may once have possessed, with their implications increasingly pernicious
and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and finally, to argue for readmitting disreputable (or
"radical") views to our national security debate, in effect legitimating alternatives to the status
quo. In effect, my aim is to invite readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked
two decades ago in Berlin. The Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and
power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed. The United States has drawn down the
stores of authority and goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words uttered in Washington command less
respect than once was the case. Americans can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving
the world, much less remaking it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American Century.
Similarly, the United States no longer possesses sufficient wherewithal to sustain a national security
strategy that relies on global military presence and global power projection to underwrite a policy
of global interventionism. Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled
the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military misadventures of
the past decade have demonstrated.
To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules have become plainly
evident. Although those most deeply invested in perpetuating its conventions will insist otherwise,
the tradition to which Washington remains devoted has begun to unravel. Attempting to prolong
its existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the interests of the American
people.
Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a daunting challenge—especially
if Americans look to "Washington" for fresh thinking. Yet doing so has become essential. In one sense,
the national security policies to which Washington so insistently adheres express what has long been
the preferred American approach to engaging the world beyond our borders. That approach plays to
America's presumed strong suit—since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War,
thought to be military power. In another sense, this reliance on military might creates excuses for
the United States to avoid serious engagement: Confidence in American arms has made it unnecessary
to attend to what others might think or to consider how their aspirations might differ from our own.
In this way, the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism—a national trait for which
the United States continues to pay dearly. The persistence of these rules has also provided
an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement. From this perspective, confidence that the credo and
the trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or desires — whether
for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods—has allowed Washington to postpone or ignore
problems demanding attention here at home.
Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit. Purporting
to support the troops in their crusade to free the world obviates any obligation to assess the implications
of how Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom. When Americans demonstrate a willingness
to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves, then
real education just might begin.
In their article ‘The American Century’ Has Plunged the World Into Crisis. What Happens Now?"
Conn Hallinan and
Leon Wofsy outlined important
reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic foreign policy in
the USA political establishment:
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global
challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?
There’s something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope — a tentative
nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba — we’re locked into seemingly
irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed
powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating
cycle that reflects an inability — or unwillingness — to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world,
but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous
military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms
of “world order.”
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed “American Century.” The idea
that the United States had “won” the Cold War and now — as the world’s lone superpower — had the
right or responsibility to order the world’s affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started
with President Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W.
Bush’s disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration’s
own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound
consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions
that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It’s this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to
mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East — and to a significant extent, our
tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia — distract us from the most compelling
crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental perils have to be dealt
with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action. That also holds for
the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict,
terror, and human suffering. There’s no short-term solution — especially by force — to the deep-seated
problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international
cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the
major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent, including through
alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into “friend” and “foe” according to our perceived
interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests
in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence
is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated
global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin,
alternative centers of economic
power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations
and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people); the Union of South
American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and
our infrastructure crumbles.
Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us
pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate
to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light
of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz
— who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power — for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot’s advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first
place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited,
our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State
(ISIS) — itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common
ground in the fight against ISIS with designated “foes” like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to
allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine
barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government,
despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A “war first” policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney
and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
Though it’s attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions
with planned military realignments like the “Asia
pivot” aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It’s also taken a
more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an “American Century.” International
order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries — if we don’t learn to take
our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of
war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There’s a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy
must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the
name of “American exceptionalism,” it’s the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine,
technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief
is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact
they’ve dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates.
We’ve made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling
to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those
in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization’s ranking of health
care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations
studied.
The old anti-war slogan, “It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the
Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier” is as appropriate today as it was in the
1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets
over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the “exceptionalism” myth courts the danger of being labeled “unpatriotic” and
“un-American,” two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology “superior” is hardly unique. But no
other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview
on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo’s independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar
Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force
in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world’s military spending.
It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo
and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny
bases called “lily
pads” of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson
estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at
its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans
have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were
major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some
were quick “smash and grabs” like Panama and Grenada. Others are “shadow wars” waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term “war” as the application of organized
violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars — including the long-term health problems of veterans — will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related
items. The “official” defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn’t include such items as
nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions
a year in interest we’ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already
paid out $316 billion
in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our “official” military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human
Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we’ve
spent $70 million an hour on “security” compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic
inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic
problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply
racism — the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth —
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security
state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that “the business of America is business.”
Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions
lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that
its products don’t always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example — the
most expensive weapons system in U.S. history — will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn’t work. It’s over
budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful
corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals.
Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil
and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the
U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 “Carter
Doctrine” — a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin
America — put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:
“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force.”
It’s no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition
with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests
of Washington and its allies — Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international
tensions. It’s critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward
alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations
will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international
relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined — and the impulse to respond by military
means — is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some
governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise
or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential
for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond
to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in “American
Century” exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty,
to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only
the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange
between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of
humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and
survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an
ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around
us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience
shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant
change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances
have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in
a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican
administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition
could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society
is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other
colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated
in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs
has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial
efforts were labeled “quixotic.”
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger
of the course we’re on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians — and much of
the public — are beginning to say “enough” to war and military intervention all over the globe, and
the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into “friend or foe.”
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded
into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that “over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism.” Only 37
percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State
began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force,
46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it
has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war,
a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses
negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the
candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even
most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further
into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans — right, left, or neither
— who sense the futility of the course we’re on. These voices have to be represented or the election
process will be even more of a sham than we’ve recently experienced.
One can’t predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement
suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward,
although a limited bilateral pact
cannot
substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in
the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed
chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition
from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama’s bold move — long overdue
— to restore diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there
is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations.
We are certain that there is much we’ve missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S.
foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests
of the majority of the world’s people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy,
and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great
that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won’t all agree with
each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition
around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern
of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do
we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists
to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible — as
well as necessary — to make significant changes in the power structure itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party
that was successfully elected to power
on a platform of ending austerity. Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos Party — now the number-two party
in the country — came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots
up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate
that there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues,
particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn’t be conceived of as dependent
on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear
online at Dispatches From
the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments
on current affairs appear online at Leon’s
OpEd.
"...These rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly
everywhere, the pursuit of security has become open-ended. "
"...One is reminded of
John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon a Hill,
the eyes of all people are upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the American
mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence. From that mission emerged the idea
of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the globe. Along
the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration and warning:
Aspire to greatness, but remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged a shining beacon,
worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down from the hill and ram ideals down the throats of the
recalcitrant. "
"...Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation
in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation
is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the meeting, noted how "the question hovered
for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored assumptions
and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady course toward disaster.
"
"...Barack Obama once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules
by escalating an unwinnable and certainly unaffordable war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped,
have been illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness has prevailed. "
"We need some great failures," the muckraking journalist
Lincoln Steffens
wrote in his autobiography. "Especially we ever-successful Americans -- conscious, intelligent, illuminating
failures." What Steffens meant was that a people confident in righteousness need occasionally to
be reminded of their fallibility. The past 50 years have produced failures aplenty -- the Bay of
Pigs, Vietnam and Iraq among them. Unfortunately, as Andrew Bacevich and John Dower demonstrate,
the light of failure has not penetrated the darkness of delusion. As a result, wars provide a repeating
rhythm of folly.
"Washington
Rules" and "Cultures
of War" are two excellent books made better by the coincidence of their publication. In complementary
fashion, they provide a convincing critique of America's conduct of war since 1941. Steffens would
have liked these books, specifically for the way they use past failures to explain the provenance
of our current predicament.
Read "Cultures of War" first. It's not an easy book, but it is consistently perceptive. Dower
examines Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Sept. 11 and the second Iraq War, drawing disconcerting linkages.
Pearl Harbor and Iraq, he feels, demonstrate how otherwise intelligent leaders are drawn toward
strategic imbecility. Both attacks were brilliantly executed in the short term, but neither
paid sufficient attention to the long-term problem of winning a war. More controversially, Dower
pairs Hiroshima with Sept. 11, both acts of terror born of moral certitude. Osama bin Laden and Harry
Truman justified wanton killing with essentially the same Manichean rhetoric. Motives, context and
scale might have been different; methods were not. For both leaders, the ability to separate good
from evil made killing easy.
In 1941, Americans drew comfort from the stereotype of the irrational Oriental. They assumed that
the Japanese would be easily defeated because they were illogical -- as their attack upon Pearl Harbor
proved. That attack was indeed illogical (given the impossibility of defeating the United States
in a protracted war), but it was not peculiarly Japanese. As Dower reveals, the wishful thinking,
delusion and herd behavior within the court of Emperor Hirohito was a symptom of war, not ethnicity.
The same deficiencies, in 2003, convinced those in the Oval Office that invading Iraq was a good
idea.
Since the culture of war encourages patterned behavior, folly proliferates. This is the essence
of the Washington rules that Bacevich elucidates. The rules dictate that protection of the American
way of life necessitates a global military presence and a willingness to intervene anywhere. Power
and violence are cleansed by virtue: Because America is "good," her actions are always benign.
These rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly
everywhere, the pursuit of security has become open-ended.
The alternative, according to Bacevich, is not isolationism or appeasement, two politically loaded
words frequently used to pummel those who object to Washington's behavior. He advocates, instead,
a more level-headed assessment of danger, advice all the more cogent since it comes from a former
soldier. Iraq and Afghanistan did not threaten America; in fact, those countries and the world have
become more dangerous because of heavy-handed American intervention. Nor does North Korea pose a
threat. Nor did Vietnam.
One is reminded of
John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon
a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the
American mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence. From that mission emerged
the idea of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the
globe. Along the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration
and warning: Aspire to greatness, but remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged
a shining beacon, worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down from the hill and ram ideals down
the throats of the recalcitrant.
The power of virtue is Bacevich's most profound message. Instead of trying to fix Afghanistan's
Helmand Province, he
insists, Americans should fix Detroit and Cleveland. Instead of attempting to export notions of freedom
and democracy to nations that lack experience of either, America should demonstrate, by her actions,
that she is still a free, democratic and humane nation. Her real strength lies in her liberal tradition,
not in her ability to kill.
Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation
in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation
is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the meeting, noted how "the question
hovered for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored
assumptions and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady
course toward disaster.
Those unexplored assumptions and entrenched convictions have now pushed the United States
into a new quagmire. Despite that predicament, both Dower and Bacevich try to end positively. "If
change is to come, it must come from the people," argues Bacevich. Dower agrees. But these feeble
attempts at optimism are the least convincing parts of two otherwise brilliant books. Barack Obama
once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules by escalating an
unwinnable and certainly unaffordable war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped, have been
illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness has prevailed.
Gerard De Groot is a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland
and author of "The Bomb: A Life."
For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional
life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended on conformity, he followed
the rules and “took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom.” Comfort, that
is, until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more
third-world shambles than first-rate threat.
That experience, combined with the introspection that followed his subsequent retirement from
the army, led Bacevich to reevaluate the relationship between truth and power. After having taken
his superiors at their word for decades, he slowly came to understand “that authentic truth is never
simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high…is inherently suspect. The exercise
of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.”
Washington Rules:
America’s Path to Permanent War is Bacevich’s fourth book on the subject of American exercise
of power. This time, he takes up the question of the political calculations that have produced the
basic tenets of American foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, examining how and why
they came to exist and to survive all challenges to their supremacy.
Bacevich describes two components that define U.S. foreign policy.
The first is what he dubs the “American credo,” which calls on “the United States — and the
United States alone — to lead save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world.”
Second is what he calls the “sacred trinity,” which requires that the United States “maintain
a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projections,
and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.”
These rules, Bacevich argues, are no longer vital to the existence of the United States, and have
led to actions that threaten to break the army and bankrupt the treasury. Rather, they are kept in
place by individuals who derive personal benefit from their continuance. Bacevich does not hesitate
to blame a Washington class that “clings to its credo and trinity not out of necessity, but out of
parochial self-interest laced with inertia.”
This is a theme that runs throughout the book: that those who make the rules also benefit from
them, and thus their demands should always be regarded skeptically.
While abstaining from questioning the patriotism of past leaders, Bacevich is not reluctant to
point out how many policies that were later widely embraced were originally trumpeted by ambitious
men who had as much to gain personally by their acceptance as did the country:
General Curtis LeMay, who built a massive nuclear arsenal as head of Strategic Air
Command;
Allen Dulles, who backed coups across the globe as CIA director;
General Maxwell Taylor, who rode the idea of “flexible response” from retirement to
the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The story of foreign policy, then, is not so much different than any government bureaucracy
through which vast sums of money flow, and is driven as much by officials jockeying for status than
by genuine concern for policy outcomes. Whether in disputes between the Army and the Air Force
or the Pentagon and the White House, and whether over money or over purpose, different sectors of
the national security establishment propose and promote new doctrines that necessitate increasing
their budgets and enhancing their importance.
But Bacevich is not content to only blame leaders. In contrast to George Washington’s ideal of
the citizen who would consider it his duty to actively serve his country, Bacevich finds today’s
Americans “greedy and gullible,” pursuing personal gain in the stead of collective benefit. Any solution,
he argues, must come from an awakened people who demand change from the people they put in office.
As for what that change should look like, Bacevich proposes a new credo and trinity. As a new
mission statement, he offers: “America’s purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations
expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage
of time and in light of hard-earned experience.”
As a new trinity, he suggests that “the purpose of the U.S, military is not to combat evil or
remake the world but to defend the United States and its most vital interests…the primary duty station
of the American soldier is in America…consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should
employ force only as a last resort and only in self defense.”
Bacevich writes in the short, clipped style with which he also speaks, presumably a legacy of
his West Point education and decades in the military. His style allows for easy comprehension and
neat packaging of his ideas, and readers will not get bogged down in flowery language.
Parts of Bacevich’s thinking require further scrutiny and remind readers of his self-identification
as a conservative (lowercase “c”). Economically, he is no fan of stimulus spending, and socially
he places blame on individual failings and personal flaws, choosing not to mention an unequal economic
system that leaves tens of millions of Americans with barely the resources to take care of their
families, much less have time to be informed and active citizens.
In fact, the emphasis throughout the book is on the fact that expansionism, at this particular
moment, is not wrong but impossible. Bacevich is, after all, a realist when it comes to international
relations theory, and though he happens to agree with liberal anti-imperials on many issues, it is
often for different reasons.
However, debates over theory can wait for when the republic is in less immediate peril. This is
the second work Bacevich has published under the auspices of the American Empire Project, a book
series documenting America’s imperial adventures and their disastrous consequences. The contribution
of conservative authors to this task is vital. They remind us that opposition to imperialism is hardly
just a liberal cause, and in fact for much of American history was actually a rallying point for
conservatives across the country.
Washington Rules is valuable for putting in print what those inside the military establishment
don’t dare admit: that, even aside from moral concerns, U.S. international strategy is neither successful
nor sustainable and maintained more by lies than by actual results. Bacevich can truly be said to
be a realist in that he understand that leaders, when faced with the choice of admitting failure
or lying, will almost always choose the latter.
Andrew Feldman is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus.
This is the bluntest, toughest, most scathing critique of American imperialism as it has become
totally unmoored after the demise of the Soviet Communist empire and taken to a new level by the
Bush administration. Even the brevity of this book - 182 pages - gives it a particular wallop since
every page "concentrates the mind".
In the event a reader knows of the prophetic work of the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr,
you will further appreciate this book. Bacevich is a Niebuhr scholar and this book essentially channels
Niebuhr's prophetic warnings from his 1952 book, "The Irony of American History". The latter has
just been reissued by University of Chicago Press thanks to Andrew Bacevich who also contributed
an introduction.
In essence, American idealism as particularly reflected in Bush's illusory goal to "rid the world
of evil" and to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East or wherever people are being tyrannized,
is doomed to failure by the tides of history. Niebuhr warned against this and Bacevich updates the
history from the Cold War to the present. Now our problems have reached crisis proportions and Bacevich
focuses on the three essential elements of the crisis: American profligacy; the political debasing
of government; and the crisis in the military.
What renders Bacevich's critique particularly stinging, aside from the historical context he gives
it (Bush has simply taken an enduring American exceptionalism to a new level), is that he lays these
problems on the doorstep of American citizens. It is we who have elected the governments that have
driven us toward near collapse. It is we who have participated willingly in the consumption frenzy
in which both individual citizens and the government live beyond their means. Credit card debt is
undermining both government and citizenry.
This pathway is unsustainable and this book serves up a direct and meaningful warning to this
effect. Niebuhrian "realism" sees through the illusions that fuel our own individual behavior and
that of our government. There are limits to American power and limits to our own individual living
standards and, of course, there are limits to what the globe can sustain as is becoming evident from
climate changes.
American exceptionalism is coming to an end and it will be painful for both individual citizens
and our democracy and government to get beyond it. But we have no choice. Things will get worse before
they get better. Bacevich suggests some of the basic ways that we need to go to reverse the path
to folly. He holds out no illusions that one political party or the other, one presidential candidate
or the other, has the will or the leadership qualities to change directions. It is up to American
citizens to demand different policies as well as to govern our own appetites.
While this is a sobering book, it is not warning of doomsday. Our worst problems are essentially
of our own making and we can begin to unmake them. But we first have to come to terms with our own
exceptionalism. We cannot manage history and there are no real global problems that can be solved
by military means, or certainly not by military means alone.
Without Exception
By Edwin C. Pauzer VINE VOICE on September 24, 2008
This is one of those books you might find yourself sitting down to read chapter and verse over
and over again, only because the writing is so intelligent and so profound. "The Limits of Power:
The End of American Exceptionalism," by Andrew Bacevich, is one of those works that will enthrall
the reader with its insight and analysis.
According to the author, the US has reached its limit to project its power in the world. His rationale
for this conclusion are three central crises we now face: economic and cultural, political, and military,
all of which are our own making.
The first crisis is one of profligacy. Americans want more, whether it is wealth, credit, markets,
or oil, without consideration for cost or how these things are acquired. There is complete apathy
in what policies are being produced as long as they provide plenty.
The political crisis was born of our mobilization in World War II to meet the threat of tyranny,
and from the Cold War to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union. Both gave rise to unprecedented
presidential power, an ineffectual Congress, and a disastrous foreign policy. Bacevich contends
that our legislature no longer serves their constituents or the common good "but themselves through
gerrymandering, doling out prodigious amounts of political pork, seeing to the protection of certain
vested interests" with the paramount concern of being re-elected. Our presidents have been willing
accomplices in keeping the American dream or greed alive by using our military as part of a coercive
diplomatic tool to feed and fuel the first crisis.
Bacevich traces the end of the republic to the start of both wars, which gave rise to the "ideology
of national security." The mission of the new Department of Defense is not defense, but to project
power globally where we will view any nation as a threat that tries to match us in military might.
At the same time, the largest intelligence agencies in the world are created to afford us more security,
but after seventy years are unable to defend our cities and buildings in the US while it worries
about intrigues worldwide. Competition and rivalry lead to a lack of cooperation, intelligence, and
security when it was needed most.
The third crisis is our military which has been employed to satisfy the neuroses of the first
and second crises. The author puts much of the blame squarely at the feet of inept military leadership,
which he believes has confused strategy with operations. Content with the resilience of the American
fighting man or woman, he is scathing in his critique of their leadership finding them "guilty of
flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud." He illustrates how improvised explosive
devices that cost no more than a pizza have checked a military that is designed for speed and maneuver--that
was considered invincible.
Andrew Bacevich contends that nothing will change as long as Americans are told to go to Disney
World instead of making sacrifices, as long as the same one half percent of our population continue
to populate the military that the president sees as his personal army, as long as an apathetic public
and an ineffectual Congress continue to make periodic, grand gestures of curbing presidential power,
the United States will have reached the limits of its power and exceptionalism.
This book profoundly moved me, and I was impressed by the insight that Professor Bacevich could
bring in such few pages. Passages of this book should be plastered in the halls and offices of Congress,
as well as the West Wing.
This book really stands out as a jewel in a sea of mediocre publications by radio and TV personalities
who think they know what they are talking about when it comes to economics or geopolitics. The difference
is that Andrew Bacevich does
--without exception.
Also Recommended:
Mayer, Jane, "The Dark Side, The Inside Story How The War on Terror Turned into a War on America's
Ideals."
Schlesinger, Arthur, "War and the American Presidency."
Mann, Thomas & Ornstein, Norman, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How
to Get It Back on Track."
Zinni, Tony (Gen. Ret.), "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and
Purpose."
Niebuhr, Reinhold, "The Irony of American History."
For your convenience some of them which I judge to be the most insightful are reproduced below:
Andrew J. Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans Are seduced By War,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-19-517338-4, is the most coherent analysis of how
America has come to its present situation in the world that I have ever read. Bacevich, Professor
of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University,
is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton.
And he is retired military officer. This background makes him almost uniquely qualified to comment
on the subject.
Bacevich admits to an outlook of moderate conservatism. But in ascribing fault for our plight
to virtually every administration since W.W. II, he is even handed and clear eyed. Since he served
in the military, he understands the natural bureaucratic instincts of the best of the officer corps
and is not blinded by the almost messianic status that they have achieved in the recent past.
His broad brush includes the classic period, the American Revolution - especially the impact of
George Washington, but he moves quickly to the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his direct descendants
of our time, the Neoconservatives. The narrative accelerates and becomes relevant for us in the depths
of the despair of Vietnam. At that juncture, neocon intellectuals awakened to the horror that without
a new day for our military and foreign policy, the future of America would be at stake. At almost
the same time, Evangelical Christians abandoned their traditional role in society and came to views
not dissimilar to the neocons. America had to get back on track to both power and goodness. The results
of Vietnam on American culture, society, and - especially - values were abhorrent to both these groups.
The perfect man to idealize and mythologize America's road back was Ronald Reagan. Again, Bacevich
does not shrink from seeing through the surreal qualities brought to the Oval Office by Reagan to
the realities beneath them. The Great Communicator transformed the Vietnam experience into an abandonment
of American ideals and reacquainted America with those who fought that horrible war. Pop culture
of the period, including motion pictures such as Top Gun and best selling novels by many, including
Tom Clancy completely rehabilitated the image of the military.
The author describes how Evangelical leaders came to find common cause with the neocons and provided
the political muscle for Reagan and his successors of both parties to discover that the projection
of military might become a reason for being for America as the last century closed.
One of his major points is that the all volunteer force that resulted from the Vietnam experience
has been divorced from American life and that sending this force of ghosts into battle has little
impact on our collective psyche. This, too, fit in with the intellectual throw weight of the neocons
and the political power of the Evangelicals.
Separate from but related to the neocons, Bacevich describes the loss of strategic input by the
military in favor of a new priesthood of intellectual elites from institutions such as the RAND Corporation,
The University of Chicago and many others. It was these high priests who saw the potential that technology
provided for changing the nature of war itself and how American power might be projected with `smart
weapons' that could be the equivalent of the nuclear force that could never be used.
So it was that when the war we are now embroiled in across the globe - which has its antecedents
back more than twenty years - all of these forces weighed heavily on the military leaders to start
using the force we'd bought them. The famed question by Secretary of State Madeline Albright to General
Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if
we can't use it?" had to have an answer and the skirmishes and wars since tended to provide it.
Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need
for natural resources, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for
our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable appetite for oil and economic
expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national
energy policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.
It is in his prescriptions that the book tends to drift. The Congress must do its constitutionally
mandated jobs or be thrown out by the people. Some of his ideas on military education are creative
and might well close the gap between the officer corps and civilians that he points to as a great
problem.
But it is the clearly written analysis that makes this book shine. It should be a must read for
those who wonder how we got to Iraq and where we might be heading as a society. The nation is in
grave danger, and this is a book that that shows how we got to this juncture. Where we go from here
is up to us. If we continue as we are, our options may narrow and be provided by others.
READ THIS BOOK
===This review is from: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Hardcover)
In his book The New American Militarism (2005), Andrew Bacevich desacralizes our idolatrous infatuation
with military might, but in a way that avoids the partisan cant of both the left and the right that
belies so much discourse today. Bacevich's personal experiences and professional expertise lend his
book an air of authenticity that I found compelling. A veteran of Vietnam and subsequently a career
officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton where he earned a PhD in history, director
of Boston University's Center for International Relations, he describes himself as a cultural conservative
who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but who also is a person whose "disenchantment with
what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies,
is just about absolute." Finally, he identifies himself as a "conservative Catholic." Idolizing
militarism, Bacevich insists, is far more complex, broader and deeper than scape-goating either political
party, accusing people of malicious intent or dishonorable motives, demonizing ideological fanatics
as conspirators, or replacing a given administration. Not merely the state or the government, but
society at large, is enthralled with all things military.
Our military idolatry, Bacevich believes, is now so comprehensive and beguiling that it "pervades
our national consciousness and perverts our national policies." We have normalized war, romanticized
military life that formally was deemed degrading and inhuman, measured our national greatness in
terms of military superiority, and harbor naive, unlimited expectations about how waging war, long
considered a tragic last resort that signaled failure, can further our national self-interests. Utilizing
a "military metaphysic" to justify our misguided ambitions to recreate the world in our own image,
with ideals that we imagine are universal, has taken about thirty years to emerge in its present
form. It is this marriage between utopians ends and military means that Bacevich wants to annul.
How have we come to idolize military might with such uncritical devotion? He likens it to pollution:
"the perhaps unintended, but foreseeable by-product of prior choices and decisions made without taking
fully into account the full range of costs likely to be incurred" (p. 206). In successive chapters
he analyzes six elements of this toxic condition that combined in an incremental and cumulative fashion.
After the humiliation of Vietnam, an "unmitigated disaster" in his view, the military set
about to rehabilitate and reinvent itself, both in image and substance. With the All Volunteer
Force, we moved from a military comprised of citizen-soldiers that were broadly representative
of all society to a professional warrior caste that by design isolated itself from broader society
and that by default employed a disproportionate percentage of enlistees from the lowest socio-economic
class. War-making was thus done for us, by a few of us, not by all of us.
Second, the rise of the neo-conservative movement embraced American Exceptionalism as our
national end and superior coercive force as the means to franchise it around the world.
Myth-making about warfare sentimentalized, sanitized and fictionalized war. The film Top Gun
is only one example of "a glittering new image of warfare."
Fourth, without the wholehearted complicity of conservative evangelicalism, militarism would
have been "inconceivable," a tragic irony when you consider that the most "Christian" nation on
earth did far less to question this trend than many ostensibly "secular" nations.
Fifth, during the years of nuclear proliferation and the fears of mutually assured destruction,
a "priesthood" of elite defense analysts pushed for what became known as the Revolution in Military
Affairs (RMA). RMA pushed the idea of "limited" and more humane war using game theory models and
technological advances with euphemisms like "clean" and "smart" bombs. But here too our "exuberance
created expectations that became increasingly uncoupled from reality," as the current Iraq debacle
demonstrates.
Finally, despite knowing full well that dependence upon Arab oil made us vulnerable to the
geo-political maelstroms of that region, we have continued to treat the Persian Gulf as a cheap
gas station. How to insure our Arab oil supply, protect Saudi Arabia, and serve as Israel's most
important protector has always constituted a squaring of the circle. Sordid and expedient self
interest, our "pursuit of happiness ever more expansively defined," was only later joined by more
lofty rhetoric about exporting universal ideals like democracy and free markets, or, rather, the
latter have only been a (misguided) means to secure the former.
Bacevich opens and closes with quotes from our Founding Fathers. In 1795, James Madison warned
that "of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises
and develops the germ of every other." Similarly, late in his life George Washington warned the country
of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious
to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hotile to republican liberty."
K. Johnson:
Relevant and Objective, January 3, 2007
Author Andrew Bacevich has superb credentials on military, diplomatic, and historical issues.
A Vietnam Veteran, 25+ year career in the Army and now professor of International Relations, Bacevich
is one of the few that has the experience *and* knowledge to dissect what has been occurring in
American socio-political culture and society for the last several decades. Bacevich notes the
current focus on the military to solve the world's problems and to promote America's interests
is not the sole work of a President and Congress, but the combination of culture, mentality, political,
and now primarily economic, interests. This book has tons of footnoting, which allows you to delve
further into these issues on your own.
The author astutely reinforces the fact that the Militarist Mentality won't change, regardless
of which political party is in control of the Executive and Houses of Congress in the United States.
Here only some examples out of many:
Entry of the U.S. military into the Middle East:
THE CARTER DOCTRINE:
The Carter Doctrine was prescribed at the State of the Union Address in 1980.
Another civilian prescription utilizing the military as medicine to alleviate and even cure, political
symptoms. This Doctrine began a new era of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, specifically using
the American military to enforce its economic interests and lifestyle dependence on oil. The Carter Doctrine was a major shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. It specifically
stated that use of the military can and will be used to enforce U.S. economic interests.
At his State of the Union Address, Carter stated:
"Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be
declared as an assault on the vital interest of the United States of America, and such an assault
will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force" (p. 181).
Worth noting is that the Carter Doctrine was declared during the Cold War, when there was a
adversary to check U.S interests. Today, that rival is gone.
Some argue the so-called 'War on Terror' is merely a historical continuation of American
foreign policy interests in using its military to promote its geo-political and economic interests.
WAR AS SPECTATOR SPORT:
War has been, and now is presented as a spectacle. No different than a spectator sport.
Live reports, video display, and laymen presentations of new technology, usually via video, to
the civilian public at press conferences.
One example of many are current U.S. newspaper reports: they don't use the term "wounded" when
reporting about American soldiers in Iraq. They use the euphemistic term, "injured." "17 Iraqis
'wounded' and 3 American soldiers 'injured.'" Similar to a football game. Slogans such as "Shock
and Awe, Support the Troops," and deck of cards identifying the most wanted Baath party members.
"Freedom is not Free." Many American military personel (and civilians) have internalized this
propaganda.
Using Hollywood To Enhance "Honor" and perpetuate myths:
Bacevich carefully details the planned and choreographed footage of George W. Bush dressed
as a fighter pilot on the USS Abraham Lincoln. This was intentionally and specifically lifted
from the movie "Top Gun." Immediately after this planned footage, an action figure doll was created
and sold for $39.99. It was called the "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush: U.S. President and
Naval Aviator" (p. 31).
Well-dressed, handsome, and beautiful anchors report about the war in such series as "The Week
in War." More simulation of the spectator sport of war in our pop culture. One segment in the
"Week in War program" is called "The Fallen," where the photo of a soldier, his name, age, and
hometown are presented, and the date of his death. Then the cameramen go to his family's home.
Often a family picture of the "fallen soldier" is shown. Then, an interview with the somber, and
at times tearful family in their living room, sitting on their couch: "He was a good kid. He always
wanted to help people."
The "Fallen" is related to a concept that the Germans began about 300 years ago. This concept
is called the "Cult of the Fallen Soldier." When a soldier is killed in war he is elevated to
a higher status because of his death. He is placed on a pedestal, because somehow, and in some
enigmatic way, he "sacrificed" for a noble cause that is often abstract or confusing to the public.
To further simplify the confusion and sullenness resulting from the soldier's death, religion
is often injected into the deceased soldiers elevation on a pedestal. You can see this Cult
of the Fallen Soldier in Arlington, Virgina today, and in many military cemeteries around the
world.
GLORIFICATION OF THE MILITARY THROUGH MOVIES:
Bacevich notes moves and their role. "Top Gun" had a tremendous impact in many ways. Pop culture,
and Navy recruiting sky-rocketing. As for the flurry of "Vietnam war movies," again the noble
concepts of "courage, honor, fear, triumph" are latently and explicitly reinforced to the public
of all ages and socio-economic levels.
It took me a chapter or two to get used to Bacevich's writing style, but I grew to like it.
Chapters: 1) Wilsonians Under Arms 2) The Military Professions at Bay 3) Left, Right, Center
4) California Dreaming 5) Onward 6) War Club 7) Blood for Oil 8) Common Defense
"Support" for the military is often incorrectly linked with one's "patriotism." This faulty
thinking is perpetuated by the electronic and print media in often subtle forms but extremely
effective forms, and at times very explicit and in aggressive manners. The government intentionally
steers the publics' focus to the 'Military aspects of war' to avoid attention to the more realistic
and vital 'political aspects.' The latter being at the real heart of the motivation, manner, and
outcome of most *political* conflicts.
Bacevich notes journalists: journalist Thomas Friedman complained that a Super Bowl half-time
show did not honor the "troops." He then drove to the Command Center to visit and speak with the
"troops." Soon after, he carried on with his own self-centered interests, like everyone else.
The military in and of itself is not dangerous nor pernicious. The military doesn't formulate
foreign policy. The military just implements it, carrying out the orders and instructions of elitist
civilians who have never served in the armed forces. It's not the military nor the men and women
serving in it, we must be wary of. It's the civilians masters with vested interests in the governmental
and corporate world who must be held accountable.
General Creighton Abrams wanted to diminish the influence of civilian control over the military
after Vietnam. Civilians and politicians were making military decisions. It seems the situation
is similar in 2007. Chairman of the JCS Peter Pace sounds political. History will be the judge.
This is a very insightful book for those interested in recent history as well as the current
situation the United States is in. The troops should be supported for what they do. Because unfortunately
they are the ones that pay the price for elitist decisions made by upper-class civilians from
the Ivy League cliques that run the U.S. politically and economically.
Highly recommended and relevant to our contemporary times and our future.
Andrew Bacevich did excellent research and writing in this book. I'll think we'll be hearing
a lot more of him. Hopefully He'll get more access to the public. If - the mainstream media allows
it.
Robert S. Frey
An Informed, Insightful, and Highly Readable Account of American Foreign Policy Today,
December 23, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevich's "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War," should
be read and considered carefully by every member of the national political leadership in the United
States as well as by adult Americans in general. Bacevich brings impeccable credentials to his
work in this book--professor of history and international relations at Boston University, West
Point graduate, and veteran of the Vietnam conflict. His writing is engaging, insightful, and
historically well anchored. Importantly, this work is highly accessible and eminently readable.
The level of documentation is very valuable as well. Finally, the book is not about fault-finding
and finger-pointing toward any one national figure or group.
What I found most beneficial was that the book presented well-argued alternative historical
"meta-narratives" that are much more closely aligned with post-World War II historical events
and processes than the ones currently accepted as "conventional wisdom." A case in point is the
periodization of World War IV beginning with President Carter's pronouncements regarding the Persian
Gulf area in 1980 rather than with the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11. "The New American
Militarism" carefully and credibly brings together the many seemingly disparate actions, decisions,
and events of the past 60+ years (e.g., the atomic bombing of Japan, Vietnam, oil shortages of
the 1970s and 80s, the end of the Cold War, the First Gulf War, etc.) and illustrates important
patterns and trends that help to explain why United States' foreign policy is what it is today.
Dr. Bacevich's book helps us understand and appreciate that the global projection of American
military power today has deep roots in the national decisions and behaviors of the second half
of the twentieth century.
Robert S. Frey, M.A., MBA, MSM
Adjunct Professor, History
Brenau University
Dr. Lee D. Carlson
Interesting, insightful, and motivating, October 21, 2006
Why is it that some people, including this reviewer, are reluctant to criticize the writings
or verbalizations of those Americans that have been or are currently in the military? This is
particularly true for those officers and soldiers who have served in combat. To be critical of
someone is who has faced such horror would be a sacrilege. Their opinions on subjects, especially
those related to war and the military, are given much higher weight than those that have never
been in the military. What is the origin of this extreme bias and does it not thwart attempts
to get at the truth in matters of war and politics? If a war is illegal or immoral, are not the
soldiers who participate in it themselves war criminals, deserving the severest condemnation?
The author of this book sheds light on these questions and gives many more interesting opinions
on what he has called the 'new American militarism.' If one examines carefully American history,
it is fair to say that Americans have been reluctant to go to war, preferring instead to settle
conflicts via negotiation and trade agreements. Americans have been led to the horrors of war
kicking and screaming, and breath a sigh of relief when they are over. Historically, Americans
have applied extreme skepticism to those politicians, like Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to participate
in World War I to make the world "safe for democracy." So if Americans are "seduced by war", as
the author contends they have been in recent decades, an explanation must be found. It is
tempting to say that they have been merely "brainwashed", and contemporary neuroscience lends
some credence to this claim, but one must still be open to alternative explanations, and let the
evidence determine the proper interpretation. Once the causes have been identified, it
becomes necessary to find methodologies and strategies to counter these causes, lest we find ourselves
in another unnecessary and brutal conflict, initiated by some who do not directly participate
in it, and have no intention ever to do so.
This book is not a scientific study, but instead is a collection of opinions, mostly supported
by anecdotal evidence, to support the author's thesis. On the surface his opinions do seem plausible,
but one must still apply to his writings the same level of skepticism applied to other studies
of the same kind. It does seem reasonable to believe for example that current attitudes about
war are governed by the American failure in Vietnam, Carter's supposed ineptitude in dealing with
the resulting loss in "self-esteem" of the American populace, and Reagan's exploitation or correction
of this loss. But more evidence is needed to set such a conclusion in stone.
The author though is intellectually honest enough to admit that he has not obtained the "definitive
version of the truth" on the new American militarism within the pages of his book. His words are
more "suggestive than conclusive" he writes, and he welcomes criticism and alternative interpretations.
Vietnam, oil and energy considerations, 9-11, and the media all have a role to play in the current
American attitudes about war he argues. Further analysis though is needed, and cognizance must
be made that all readers, including this reviewer, are embedded in the same culture as the author,
and subjected to the same ideological, historical, and media pressures. We must be extremely cautious
in our acceptance of what we find in print and indeed in all information outlets. And we must
learn that soldiers, active duty or otherwise, are not infallible and must be subjected to the
same criticism as any other citizen. This is again, very difficult to do, and this difficulty
is perhaps the best evidence for the author's thesis.
R. Albin:
Exceptional Polemic; 4.5 Stars, October 19, 2006
This concise and well written book is the best kind of polemic; clear, well argued, and
designed to provoke debate. Bacevich is definitely interested in persuading readers of
the truth of his views but his calm and invective free prose, insistence on careful documentation,
and logical presentation indicate that his primary concern is promote a high level of discussion
of this important issue. Bacevich argues well that a form of militarism based on an exaggerated
sense of both American mission and American power, specifically military power, has infected public
life. He views this militarism as both leading to unecessary and dangerous adventures abroad,
epitomized by the Iraq fiasco, and corrupting the quality of domestic debate and policy making.
Beyond documenting the existence of this phenomenon, Bacevich is concerned with explicating how
this form of militarism, which he views as contrary to American traditions, came to be so popular.
Bacevich argues well that the new militarism came about because of a convergence of actions
by a number of different actors including our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals
and publicists, evangelical Christians, resurgent Republican party activists, and so-called defense
intellectuals. For a variety of reasons, these sometimes overlapping groups converged
on ideas of the primacy of American military power and the need to use it aggressively abroad.
Bacevich devotes a series of chapters to examining each of these actors, discussing their motivations
and actions, often exposing shabby and inconsistent thinking. Some of these, like the role of
neoconservative intellectuals and the Religous Right, are fairly well known.
Others, like the behavior of professional military over the last generation, will be novel
to many readers. Bacevich's chapters have underlying themes. One is the persisent occurrence of
ironic events as the actions of many of these groups produced events counter to their goals.
The post-Vietnam professional military attempted to produce a large, vigorous military poised
to fight conventional, WWII-like, combats. This force was intended to be difficult for politicians
to use. But as these often highly competent professionals succeeded to restoring the quality
of the American military, the temptation to use it became stronger and stronger, and control
escaped the professionals back into the hands of politicians as varied as Bush II and Clinton.
Another theme is that politicians seized on use military force as an alternative to more difficult
and politically unpalatable alternatives. Jimmy Carter is described correctly as initiating the
American preoccupation with control of the Persian Gulf oil supplies, which has generated a great
deal of conflict over the past generation. Bacevich presents Carter as having to act this
way because his efforts to persuade Americans to pursue sacrifice and a rational energy policy
were political losers. Ronald Reagan is presented as the epitome of this unfortunate trend.
Bacevich is generally convincing though, perhaps because this is a short book, there are some
issues which are presented onesidely. For example, its true that Carter began the military preoccupation
with the Persian Gulf. But, its true as well that his administration established the Dept. of
Energy, began a significant program of energy related research, moved towards fuel standards for
vehicles and began the regulatory policies that would successfully improve energy efficiency for
many household items. No subsequent administration had done more to lessen dependence on foreign
oil.
Bacevich also omits an important point. As he points out, the different actors that sponsored
the new militarism tended to converge in the Republican Party. But, as has been pointed out by
a number of analysts, the Republican Party is a highly disparate and relatively unstable coalition.
The existence of some form of powerful enemy, perceived or real, is necessary to maintain
Republican solidarity. The new militarism is an important component of maintaining the internal
integrity of the Republican party and at unconciously appreciated as such by many important Republicans.
An interesting aspect of this book is that Bacevich, a West point grad, former career Army
officer, and self-described cultural conservative, has reproduced many of the criticisms put forward
by Leftist critics.
Bacevich concludes with a series of interesting recommendations that are generally rational
but bound to be controversial and probably politically impossible. Again, this is an effort to
change the nature of the discussion about these issues.
Adam Bahner
How Permanent Military Deployment Became Congruent With World Peace, June 29, 2006
In The New American Militarism, Andrew J. Bacevich contends that American culture and policy
since the end of the Cold War has merged a militaristic ethos with a utopian global imaginary.
He notes that American militarism is a "bipartisan project" with "deep roots" that even garner
support on the political margins, with some leftist activists seeing a humanitarian mission for
U.S. global military hegemony. He traces these roots to the worldview of Woodrow Wilson, who envisioned
a globe "remade in America's image and therefore permanently at peace." Yet Wilson's view was
moderated by a public and policy perception of war as an ugly, costly, brutal, traumatic and unpredictable
last resort. This is corroborated by the massive military demobilizations that followed U.S. involvement
in both world wars. Bacevich also points to works of popular culture, from Erich Maria Remarque's
All Quiet On The Western Front to Oliver Stone's Platoon, that reflect on the inhumanity of war
from World War I through Vietnam.
Bacevich sees a massive deviation from these historical trends after the end of the Cold War.
While conceding that a permanent military mobilization was expected during the Cold War (from
roughly NSC-68 to the fall of the Berlin Wall)--no significant demobilization followed. Forces
slated for deactivation were quickly mobilized for Operation Desert Storm. No successful popular
culture critiques of that war's brutality would emerge. The author sees the end of the cold war
and Desert Storm as framing a period of "new American militarism" that breaks from historical
precedent in several regards. He claims that since the 1988 presidential campaign, the character
of the presidency has emphasized military more than civilian leadership. This contradicts previous
presidents of military stature (e.g. Grant, Eisenhower) who obsessively positioned themselves
as civilians. Post-Cold War military budgets have been dramatically larger despite no global adversary.
The public has uncritically accepted a permanent military stance. The perception of war as ghastly
and treacherous has been replaced with war as a clinical and technologically managed spectacle.
The link between the covenant of citizenship and military service has been replaced by a specialized
force of volunteers. The numbers of veterans serving in congress has steadily decreased since
World War II. Bacevich correlates this with the shunning of military service by elites as the
military has increasingly drawn from areas of the population that are poor and brown. Because
of this, force is "outsourced" and in turn the stature of soldiers has dramatically increased
through an infrastructure of praise by the majority who are not involved in military operations.
Senior military officers have tremendous clout in politics, policy, and spending.
To understand this new militarism, Bacevich notes that it is point-for-point an inversion of
Vietnam's military milieu. There, politicians up through the president framed themselves as civilians,
officers felt out of touch with bureaucratic decisions, and war was perceived as carnal and bumbling.
The book traces cultural responses to Vietnam that reformed the American relationship to militarism.
As military leaders like Creighton Abrams sought to mandate broad political investment for military
action by creating interdependence with reserves and to limit the criteria for deployment with
the Weinberger doctrine, politicians like Ronald Reagan rehabilitated an American demoralization
that peaked with Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw by invoking popular culture mythologies
like Rambo.
Bacevich is unabashedly religious. He ultimately couches America's outsourced and technocratic
militarism as a departure from natural Gods in the pursuit of a scientistic idol that more perfectly
regulates human affairs. He openly sees in this scientism the same flaw and outcome as Communism
or Fascism. He suggests that affirmation of military service across economic privilege would raise
the stakes of military engagements and help to contradict the cultural illusions that form the
basis of American militarism. (That war is technical, distant, clinical, predictable, outsourced,
humane, and everything contrary to what writers like Remarque tell us.) He meticulously synthesizes
a new paradigm that relates the difficult subjects of military policy and popular sanction. In
this regard, The New American Militarism is an exciting contribution to historical scholarship.
M. Ward:
The New American Militarism - A Bipolar Look at Todays State of Affairs, February
4, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevichs', The New American Militarism, gives the reader an important glimpse of
his background when he wrote that, as a Vietnam veteran, the experience baffled him and he wrote
this book in an effort to "sift through the wreckage left by the war." After the Vietnam War,
the author stayed in the military because he believed being an American soldier was a "true and
honorable" calling. Bacevich states he is a devoted Catholic and a conservative who became disillusioned
with mainstream conservatism. He also states that he believes the current political system is
corrupt and functions in ways inconsistent with genuine democracy.
Bacevich states that he tried to write this book using facts in an unbiased way. However, he cautions
the reader that his experiences have shaped his views and that his views are part of this book.
This is a way to tell the reader that although he tried to remain unbiased, his background and
biases find voice in this book. I believe the authors warning are valid; he draws heavily upon
his background and biases to support his thesis.
The book is about American militarism, which Bacevich describes as the "misleading and dangerous
conceptions of war, soldiers, and military institutions" that have become part of the American
conscience and have `perverted' US national security policy. According to Bacevich, American militarism
has subordinated the search for the common good to the permanent value of military effectiveness
that will bankrupt the US economically and morally. Bacevich supports this thesis by discussing
issues that have contributed to this state of affairs.
Bacevich believes the current state of American militarism has roots dating back to the Wilson
administration. Wilson's vision was to remake the world in America's image. God Himself willed
the universal embrace of liberal democracies and Wilson saw the US as a `divine agent' to make
the world a safe and democratic place. Today, with no serious threat to keep our military forces
in check, we are now, more than ever, free to spread liberal democracy using military force, if
necessary.
Considering the military, Bacevich makes the point that the militarism of America is also due,
in part, to the officer corps of the US military trying to rehabilitate the image and profession
of the soldier after the Vietnam War. Officers attempted to do this by reversing the roles of
the soldiers and the politicians that was problematic during the Vietnam War. They tried to establish
the primacy of the military over the civilians in decisions as to how to use the military. The
Weinberger and Powell doctrines were the manifestation of this idea by spelling out conditions
for the use of the US military in combat.
Neo-conservatives further enhanced the trend of militarism. They see US power as an instrument
for good and the time was right to use the military to achieve the final triumph of Wilson's idea
of spreading American liberal democracy around the globe.
Religion also played a role. According to Bacevich, evangelical Protestants see the US as a
Christian nation singled out by God and Americans are His chosen people. These evangelicals believed
the Vietnam War was not only a military crisis, but also a cultural and moral crisis threatening
our status. Evangelicals looked to the military to play a pivotal role in saving the US from internal
collapse due to the higher expression of morals and values found in the military. The military
would become the role model to reverse the trend of godlessness and social decay.
Another set of actors that contributed to American militarism were the defense intellectuals
whose main contribution was to bring the military back under civilian control. According to Bacevich,
they laid the groundwork of our current policy of `preventative war' and reinforced American militarism.
Finally, Bacevich accuses politicians of deceiving the American public as to the true nature of
American militarism by wrapping militarism in the comfortable trappings of nationalism. By using
labels such as the Global War on Terrorism, politicians are using a political sleight-of-hand
trick to hide our true militaristic nature in patriotic terms. Bacevich concludes his book with
a list of recommendations to mitigate the current trend of American militarism.
Bacevich seems to create a mosaic of conspiracy perpetrated by sinister actors aimed at deceiving
an unsuspecting public as to the true nature of American militarism. Until the last chapter where
Bacevich tells the reader that there is no conspiracy, it is very easy to believe there might
be one lurking in the shadows. I was shocked when I reached Bacevich's recommendations. The contrast
between his recommendations and the rest of the book is astounding. I was expecting highly provocative
recommendations that would match the tone of the rest of the book. However, his recommendations
were solid and well thought out...delivered in the calm manner one would expect from a political
scientist. Nevertheless, in the end, Bacevich's message leading up to his recommendations were
hard to swallow. I believe he wrote this book not to enlighten but to be provocative in order
to sell books and build his status in academic circles. If Bacevich's aim was to build a convincing
argument on a serious subject, he needed to be less provocative and more clinical.
David Friedman:
What is militarism? What is it, particularly as applied to today's America? West Point educated
Andrew Bacevich opens his book with a concise statement: "Today as never before in their history
Amercans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States
presently enjoys . . . has become central to our national identity." This is the basic premise
of The New American Militarism. Anyone who does not accept the accuracy of this statement, or
is unconcerned about its implications should probably not read this book--it will only annoy them.
For those, however, who are concerned about how militarism is increasingly seeping into our core
values and sense of national destiny, or who are disturbed by the current glaring disconnect between
what our soldiers endure "over there", and the lack of any sacrifice or inconvenience for the
rest of us "over here", this book is a must-read.
Refreshingly, Bacevich approaches the new American militarism as neither a Democrat nor Republican,
from neither the left nor the right. No doubt, those with a stake in defending the policy of the
present Administration no matter how foolish, or in castigating it as the main source of our current
militarism, will see "bias" in this book. The truth though is that Bacevich makes a genuine effort
to approach his subject in a spirit of open and disinterested inquiry. He has earned the right
to say, near the end of his book, that "this account has not sought to assign or impute blame."
As a result, he is not stymied by the possibility of embarrassing one political side or the other
by his arguments or conclusions. This leads to a nuanced and highly independent and original treatment
of the subject.
In chronicling the rise of American militarism, Bacevich rightly starts with Wilson's vision
of American exceptionalism: an America leading the world beyond the slaughterhouse of European
battlefields to an international order of peaceful democratic states. But where President Wilson
wanted to create such a world for the express purpose of rendering war obsolete, Bacevich notes
that today's "Wilsonians" want to export American democracy through the use of force. He follows
this overview with an insider's thumbnail history of American military thinking from Vietnam to
the first Gulf war. He explains how the military in effect re-invented itself after Vietnam so
as to make it far more difficult "to send the Army off to fight while leaving the country behind."
Today's highly professionalized and elite force is largely the result of this thinking. In turn
this professional military presented to the country and its civilian leaders a re-invented model
of war: war waged with surgical precision and offering "the prospect of decision rather than pointing
ineluctably toward stalemate and quagmire." Gulf War I was the triumphant culmination of this
model. The unintended and ironic consequence, of course, was that war and the aggressive projection
of American military power throughout the world came to be viewed by some in our nation's leadership
as an increasingly attractive policy option.
The body of the book analyzes how the legitimate attempt to recover from the national trauma
of Vietnam led ultimately to a militarism increasingly reflected in crucial aspects of American
life. In religion he traces how a "crusade" theory of warfare has supplanted the more mainstream
"just war" theory. In popular culture he discusses the rise of a genre of pop fiction and movies
reflecting a glamorized and uncritical idealization of war (he examines "An Officer and A Gentleman",
"Rambo: First Blood Part II", and "Top Gun" as examples). In politics he identifies the neo-conservative
movement as bringing into the mainstream ideas that "a decade earlier might have seemed reckless
or preposterous"; for example the idea that the United States is "the most revolutionary force
on earth" with an "inescapable mission" to spread democracy -- by the sword if necessary. Bacevich
calls these ideas "inverted Trotskyism", and notes that the neo-conservative movement shares with
Mao the assumption that revolution springs "from the barrel of a gun".
Bacevich concludes his book with a pithy ten-point critique offered as a starting point for
"a change in consciousness, seeing war and America's relationship to war in a fundamentally different
way." Among his points are greater fidelity to the letter and the spirit of the Constituional
provisions regarding war and the military, and increased strategic self-sufficiency for America.
Perhaps the most important points of his critique are those about ending or at least reducing
the current disconnect between er how we might reduce
Patrick Connor
Careful observers will note the abolute claims that lie under the surface of these criticisms.
If you criticize anything about the United States, you're automatically anti-Bush. If you question
the wisdom of viewing the military as a first-option in handling international problems, you're
even worse: a liberal anti-Bush peacenick. History supposedly demonstrates that diplomacy never
works with any "tyrant" (whatever that is), while war allegedly always work. It's just one stark
claim after another, with never any gray area in the middle.
If you read the book, this "you're either with us or with the terrorists, either dream war
or hate President Bush" mentality should remind you of something. It very closely resembles the
description Bacevich gives of neoconservatism, which he says engenders a worldview that is constantly
in crisis mode. Things are always so dire for neocons, Bacevich explains, that only two feasible
options present themselves at any given time: doing what the neocons want (usually deploying military
force in pursuit of some lofty but unrealistic goal), or suffering irreversible and potentially
fatal setbacks to our national cause.
Is it really surprising that the reviews of this book from a neocon mindset are also the reviews
giving one star to a book that sytematically critiques and upends neoconservatism?
In actuality, as many have pointed out already, Bacevich is "anti-Bush" only insomuch as he
is anti-neoconservative. Bacevich openly states that he throws his full weight behind traditionally
conservative issues, like small government and lower taxes. Indeed, he is a devoutly religious
social conservative who himself severed twenty years in the Army officer corps. This is why his
exposee on America's new militarism has so much credibility.
Since he was in the military, he knows that sometimes the military is necessary to handle situations
that develop in the world. However he also understands that the military is often grossly unfit
to handle certain situations. This is the main theme of his book. At its core, the story is about
how, in response to Vietnam, military leaders worked frightfully hard to rebuild the military
and to limit the freedom of starry-eyed civilians to use the armed forces inappropriately.
Their most important objective was to ensure that no more Wilsonian misadventures (like Vietnam)
would happen. The officer corps did this by carving out a space of authority for the top brass,
from which they could have unprecedented input in policy decisions, and be able to guide strategy
and tactics once the military deployed into action. After ascending to a position of greater prominence,
they implemented the "Weinberger Doctrine," followed by the "Powell Doctrine," both specifically
tailored to avoid Vietnam-style quagmires. The Gulf War, claims Bacevich, saw the fruition of
fifteen years of hard work to accomplish these reforms. And they worked beautifully.
However, the end of the last decade saw the Neo-conservatives challenge the status quo. And
with the election of W. Bush, they were finally in a position where their ideas could again have
a disproportionate influence on foreign policy. What we now have in Iraq is another military quagmire,
where the solution must be political, but where military occupation renders political solutions
impossible.
This story is about how the military profession emerged from the post-Vietnam wilderness, dazzled
the world during the first Gulf War, then once again lost its independent ability to craft related
policies with the arrival of Rummie and the neocons.
It's a fascinating story, and Bacevich relates it skillfully.
Andrew S. Rogers:
Baedecker on the road to perdition, December 5, 2005
I was sorry to see Andrew J. Bacevich dismiss Chalmers Johnson's 2004
The Sorrows
of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
quite as quickly as he did (on page 3 of the introduction, in fact), because I think these two
books, taken together, provide probably the best -- and certainly the most historically-informed
-- look at the rise and consequences of American empire. I endorse "The New American Militarism"
as heartily as I did "The Sorrows of Empire."
Bacevich's capsule summary of Johnson's work notwithstanding, both these books take the long
view of America's international military presence and are quick to grasp one key point. As Bacevich
notes on page 205, "American militarism is not the invention of a cabal nursing fantasies of global
empire and manipulating an unsuspecting people frightened by the events of 9/11. Further, it is
counterproductive to think in these terms -- to assign culpability to a particular president or
administration and to imagine that throwing the bums out will put things right."
In several insightful chapters, Bacevich traces the rise of militarism over the course of several
administrations and many decades. A former Army officer himself, the author is particularly insightful
in charting the efforts of the military's officer corps to recover from the stigma of Vietnam
and reshape the *ethos* of the armed services as an elite intentionally separate from, and morally
superior to, the society it exists to defend. But the officers are only one of the strands Bacevich
weaves together. He also looks at the influence of the "defense intellectuals;" the importance
of evangelical Christians and how their view of Biblical prophecy shapes their understanding of
politics; the rise of (yes) the neo-conservatives; and even the role of Hollywood in changing
America's understandings of the "lessons of Vietnam" and the re-glamorization of the military
in films like "Top Gun."
The author is a sharp-eyed analyst, but also an engaging writer, and he gives the reader a
lot to think about. I was intrigued, for example, by his discussion of how "supporting the troops"
has become the *sine qua non* of modern politics and how doing so has replaced actual military
service as an indicator of one's love of country. More fundamentally, his identification and analysis
of "World War III" (already over) and "World War IV" (currently underway, and declared [surprisingly]
by Jimmy Carter) struck me as a remarkably useful lens for interpreting current events.
In tying his threads together, Bacevich is not afraid to make arguments and draw conclusions
that may make the reader uncomfortable. As the passage I quoted above makes clear, for example,
someone looking for a straightforward declaration that "It's all Bush's fault!" will have to go
someplace else. As a further implication of the above passage, Bacevich argues that the "defense
intellectuals," the evangelicals, and even the neocons were and are doing what they believe are
most likely to promote peace, freedom, and the security of the American people. "To the extent
that we may find fault with the results of their efforts, that fault is more appropriately attributable
to human fallibility than to malicious intent" (p. 207). Additionally, Bacevich is unashamed of
his military service, holds up several military leaders as heroes, has some choice words for the
self-delusions of leftist "peace activists," and even argues that federal education loans should
be made conditional on military service.
This doesn't mean the president and his fellow conservatives get off much easier, though. Bacevich
is roundly critical of Bush and his administration, including Colin Powell; dismisses the Iraq
invasion ("this preposterous enterprise" [p. 202]); and in a move that will probably get him crossed
off the Thayer Award nominations list, suggests officer candidates be required to graduate from
civilian universities instead of West Point (his alma mater) or Annapolis -- intellectually-isolated
institutions that reinforce the officer caste's separation from civil society.
So this book isn't one that will blindly reinforce anyone's prejudices. In part for that reason
-- but mostly for its trenchant analysis, readable prose, and broad historical view -- I'm happy
to list "The New American Militarism" as one of the best and most important books I've read in
some time. Perhaps even since "The Sorrows of Empire."
Izaak VanGaalen:
Militarism and Public Opinion, August 12, 2005
According to many of the custodians of public opinion, Andrew Bacevich has earned his right
to a fair hearing. Not only is he a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative
Catholic, he is a professor of international relations and a contributor to "The Weekly Standard"
and "The National Review." Obviously, if he were a left-leaning anti-war Democrat and a contributor
to, say, "The Nation," he wouldn't be taken seriously as a critic of American militarism - he
would be merely another "blame-America-first" defeatist.
Bacevich sees militarism manifesting itself in some disquieting ways. Traditionally America
has always gauged the size of its military with the magnitude of impending threats. After the
Civil War, World War I and II, the military was downsized as threats receded. Not so after the
fall of the Soviet Union. The military budget has continued to grow and the expenditures are greater
- by some measures - than all other countries combined. American military forces are now scaling
the globe and the American public seems quiet comfortable with it. And everyone else is growing
uneasy.
The mindset of the current officer corps is dominant control in all areas "whether sea, undersea,
land, air, space or cyberspace." In other words, supremacy in all theaters. Self-restraint has
given way to the normalization of using military force as a foreign policy tool. From 1989 (Operation
Just Cause) to 2002 (Operation Iraqi Freedom) there have been nine major military operations and
a number of smaller ones. The end of the Cold War has given the US a preponderance of military
strength (the proverbial unipolar moment) that has enamoured successive administrations with the
idea of using military force to solve international problems. In earlier times, war was always
an option of the last resort, now it is a preventative measure.
War, according to Bacevich, has taken on a new aesthetic. During World War I and II, and also
Vietnam and Korea the battlefield was a slaughterhouse of barbarism and brutality. Now, with the
advent of the new Wilsonianism in Washington, wars are seen as moments of national unity to carry
out a positive agenda, almost as if it were international social work.
The modern soldier is no longer looked upon as a deadbeat or a grunt, but rather as a skilled
professional who is undertaking socially beneficial work. In fact, in a poll taken in 2003, military
personnel consider themselves as being of higher moral standards than the nation they serve.
In the political classes, the Republicans have traditionallly been staunchly pro-military,
but now even Democrats have thrown off their ant-military inclinations. When Kerry was running
for president he did not question Bush's security policies, he was actually arguing that Bush
had not gone far enough. Kerry wanted to invest more in military hardware and training. Even liberal
Michael Ignatieff argues that US military intervention should be used to lessen the plight of
the oppressed and that we should be assisting them in establishing more representative government.
But superpowers are not altruistic; they are only altruistic to the extent that it serves their
self-interest. That's probably why Ignatieff will not get much of a hearing and Bacevich will.
This book should give us pause as to why the range of opinion in the America on the use of military
force is so narrow. If there is one voice that stands a chance of being heeded, it is from this
conservative ex-soldier. \
Douglas Doepke:
The US may have been an expansionist and aggressive power as history shows. But unlike European
peers, the American public never really took to the seductions of militarism. That is, until now.
This is an important and occasionally brilliant book that tells a forty-year tale of creeping
over-reliance on the military. And a heck-of an important story it is. I like the way Bacevich
refuses to blame the Bush administration, even though they're the ones who've hit the accelerator.
Actually the trend has been in motion for some time, especially since 1980 and Reagan's revival
of military glory, contrived though it was.
Each chapter deals with an aspect of this growing militariism movement. How intellectual guru
Norman Podhoretz and other elites got the big engine together, how twenty million evangelical
passengers abandoned tradition and got on board, and how a crew of enthusiastic neo-cons charted
a destination -- nothing less than world democracy guaranteed by American military might. All
in all, the ride passes for a brilliant post-cold war move. Who's going to argue with freeing
up the Will of the People, except for maybe a few hundred million Sharia fanatics. Yet, it appears
none of the distinguished crew sees any contradiction between dubious means and noble end, nor
do they seem particularly concerned with what anybody else thinks. (Sort of like the old Soviets,
eager to spread the blessings of Scientific Socialism.) However, as Bacevich pounts out, there's
a practical problem here the crew is very alert to. Policing the world means building up the institutions
of the military and providing a covering mystique to keep John Q. Public supportive, especially
with tax dollars and blood supply. In short, the mission requires sanitizing the cops on the beat
and all that goes into keeping them there. It also means overcoming a long American tradition
of minding-one's-own-business and letting the virtues of democratic self-governance speak for
themselves. But then, that was an older, less "responsible" America.
Bacevich's remedies harken back to those older, quieter traditions -- citizen soldiers, a real
Department of Defense, a revived Department of State, and a much more modest role in international
affairs.With this book, Bacevich proves to be one of the few genuine conservatives around, (a
breed disappearing even faster than the ranks of genuine liberals). Much as I like the book, especially
the thoughtful Preface, I wish the author had dealt more with the economic aspects of build-up
and conquest. But then that might require a whole other volume, as globalization and the number
of billion-dollar servicing industries expands daily. At day's end, however, someone needs to
inform a CNN- enthralled public that the military express lacks one essential feature. With all
its hypnotizing bells and whistles, history shows the momentum has no brakes. Lessons from the
past indicate that, despite the many seductions, aggressive empires make for some very unexpected
and fast-moving train wrecks. Somebody needs to raise the alarm. Thanks Mr. Bacevich for doing
your part.
Still his critique of neocons is a class of its own has value in itself as it comes from professional
military officer. Professor Bacevich argues that the US new militarism which emerged after the
dissolution of the USSR is the result of a convergence of actions by a number of different groups including
our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals and publicists, evangelical Christians, resurgent
Republican party activists, and so-called defense intellectuals (see
New American Militarism).
Andrew Bacevich has a wonderful essay, in the form of an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz,
in the current
Harper's. You have to subscribe to read it -- but, hey, you should be
subscribing
to any publication whose work you value. This essay isolates the particular role Wolfowitz had in
the cast of characters that led us to war. As a reminder, they included:
Dick Cheney, who was becoming a comic-book churl by this stage of his public life;
Colin Powell, the loyal soldier, staffer, and diplomat whose "Powell Doctrine" and
entire life's work stood in opposition to the kind of war that he, with misguided loyalty, was
to play so central a role in selling;
Tony Blair, the crucial ally who added rhetorical polish and international resolve
to the case for war;
Donald Rumsfeld, with his breezy contempt for those who said the effort would be difficult
or long;
Paul Bremer, whose sudden, thoughtless dismantling of the Iraqi army proved so disastrous;
Condoleezza Rice, miscast in her role as White House national-security advisor;
George Tenet, the long-time staffer who cooperated with the "slam-dunk!" intelligence
assessment despite serious disagreement within the CIA;
and of course George W. Bush himself, whose combination of limited knowledge and strong
desire to be "decisive" made him so vulnerable to the argument that the "real" response to the
9/11 attacks should be invading a country that had nothing to do with them.
But Paul Wolfowitz was in a category of his own because he was the one who provided the
highest-concept rationale for the war. As James Galbraith of the University of Texas has put it,
"Wolfowitz is the real-life version of Halberstam's caricature of McNamara" [in The Best and the
Brightest].
Bacevich's version of this assessment is to lay out as respectfully as possible the strategic duty
that Wolfowitz thought the U.S. would fulfill by invading Iraq. Back before the war began, I did
a much more limited version of this assessment
as an Atlantic article. As Bacevich puts it now, Wolfowitz was extending precepts from
his one-time mentor, Albert
Wohlstetter, toward a model of how the United States could maximize stability for itself and
others.
As with the best argumentative essays, Bacevich takes on Wolfowitz in a strong rather than an oversimplified
version of his world-view. You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, but here is a brief
sample (within fair-use limits):
With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America's for the taking. What others
saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to
seize, for its own good as well as for the world's....
Although none of the hijackers were Iraqi, within days of 9/11 you were promoting military
action against Iraq. Critics have chalked this up to your supposed obsession with Saddam. The
criticism is misplaced. The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.
In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter's
Precepts, and Iraq offered a made-to-order venue....In Iraq the United States would demonstrate
the efficacy of preventive war.... The urgency of invading Iraq stemmed from the need to validate
that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed.
Bacevich explains much more about the Wohlstetter / Wolfowitz grand view. And then he poses the challenge
that he says Wolfowitz should now meet:
One of the questions emerging from the Iraq debacle must be this one: Why did liberation at gunpoint
yield results that differed so radically from what the war's advocates had expected? Or, to sharpen
the point, How did preventive war undertaken by ostensibly the strongest military in history
produce a cataclysm?
Not one of your colleagues from the Bush Administration possesses the necessary combination
of honesty, courage, and wit to answer these questions. If you don't believe me, please sample
the tediously self-exculpatory memoirs penned by (or on behalf of) Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Rice, Tenet, Bremer, Feith, and a small squad of eminently forgettable generals...
What would Albert [Wohlstetter] do? I never met the man (he died in 1997), but my guess is
that he wouldn't flinch from taking on these questions, even if the answers threatened to contradict
his own long-held beliefs. Neither should you, Paul. To be sure, whatever you might choose to
say, you'll be vilified, as Robert McNamara was vilified when he broke his long silence and admitted
that he'd been "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so
that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there.
Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country.
Anyone who knows Andrew Bacevich's story will understand the edge behind his final sentence. But
you don't have to know that to respect the challenge he lays down. I hope Paul Wolfowitz will at
some point rise to it.
For another very valuable assessment of who was right and wrong, when, please see
John Judis's piece in The New Republic.
20190116 : Corporatism is the control of government by big business. This is what we have in the USA today. The main difference between corporatism and fascism is the level of repressions against opposition. Corporatism now tales forma of inverted totalitarism and use ostracism instead of phycal repressions ( Jan 16, 2019 , profile.theguardian.com )
"[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western
thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that
human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of
life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues.
Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that
human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control
and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and
self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades Whereas Socialism, and even
capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said
to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings
itself at his feet"
? George Orwell
BRH, in his perversity, supports Capitalism/Communism and the growth of the Gay Disco
Global State. He should be with us but that would mean discarding this Holy of Holies, World
War Two American military triumphalism. He jus can't, the Truth be damned.
Americans really do not understand who Hitler was, and that is EVRYONE I know. And they
never understood, even in the 50s. But the British understand, but made a deal with the
devil.
But let's start everything in order.
For the dualistic consciousness of Americans, the natural desire is to belittle the role
of the USSR in the defeat of Hitler's Germany, since this does not fit their concept of "good
guys vs bad guys " – if the Russians are the bad guys, then why did they fight along
with the good guys against the bad guy Hitler?
In addition, in the process of changing generations, they are more and more inclined to
the view that Hitler was not so bad, and their fathers and grandfathers put a lot of
accusations against him, just as America puts many accusations on those she desire to bomb
today.
Of course, this should not apply to American intelligentsia, but, as I understand it, it
is difficult to live in a society that professes these or other errors en masse, and not to
allow these errors to penetrate your brain and soul, even if you absolutely know that these
errors are invented by you propaganda.
Especially if these errors are invented by your own propaganda.
Hitler was vilified publicly but glorified privately by the elite (Allen Dulles in
particular). He provided a valuable service by providing the test bed for theories and
practices (eugenics, wholesale population controls and disruptions, sophisticated propaganda
techniques, and perpetual full-spectrum wars) which have since been perfected and are being
implemented much more discreetly and effectively now.
Powerful video about US propaganda machine. Based on Iraq War propaganda efforts. This is a
formidable machine.
Shows quite vividly that most US politicians of Bush era were war criminal by Nuremberg
Tribunal standards. Starting with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. They planned the war of aggression
against Iraq long before 9/11.
"... Today, it seems, the best description of the FBI's main activity is corporate enforcer for the white-collar mafia known as Wall Street. There is an analogy to organized crime, where the most powerful mobsters settled disputes between other gangs of criminals. Similarly, if a criminal gang is robbed by one of its own members, the mafia would go after the guilty party; the FBI plays this role for Wall Street institutions targeted by con artists and fraudsters. Compare and contrast a pharmaceutical company making opiates which is targeted by thieves vs. a black market drug cartel targeted by thieves. In one case, the FBI investigates; in the other, a violent vendetta ensues (such as street murders in Mexico). ..."
"... The FBI executives are rewarded for this service with lucrative post-retirement careers within corporate America – Louis Freeh went to credit card fraudster, MBNA, Richard Mueller to a corporate Washington law firm, WilmerHale, and Comey, before Obama picked him as Director, worked for Lockheed Martin and HSBC (cleaning up after their $2 billion drug cartel marketing scandal) after leaving the FBI in 2005. ..."
"... Some say they have a key role to play in national security and terrorism – but their record on the 2001 anthrax attacks is incredibly shady and suspicious. The final suspect, Bruce Ivins, is clearly innocent of the crime, just as their previous suspect, Steven Hatfill was. Ivins, if still alive, could have won a similar multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against the FBI. All honest bioweapons experts know this to be true – the perpetrators of those anthrax letters are still at large, and may very well have had close associations with the Bush Administration itself. ..."
"... Comey's actions over the past year are certainly highly questionable, as well. Neglecting to investigate the Clinton Foundation ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments and corporations, particularly things like State Department approval of various arms deals in which bribes may have been paid, is as much a dereliction of duty as neglecting to investigate Trump ties to Russian business interests – but then, Trump has a record of shady business dealings dating back to the 1970s, of strange bankruptcies and bailouts and government sales that the FBI never looked at either. ..."
I made the mistake of listening to NPR last week to find out what Conventional Wisdom had to say
about Trump firing Comey, on the assumption that their standardized Mister-Rogers-on-Nyquil voice
tones would rein in the hysteria pitch a little. And on the surface, it did-the NPR host and guests
weren't directly shrieking "the world is ending! We're all gonna die SHEEPLE!" the way they were
on CNN. But in a sense they were screaming "fire!", if you know how to distinguish the very minute
pitch level differences in the standard NPR Nyquil voice.
The host of the daytime NPR program asked his guests how serious, and how "unprecedented" Trump's
decision to fire his FBI chief was. The guests answers were strange: they spoke about "rule of law"
and "violating the Constitution" but then switched to Trump "violating norms"-and back again, interchanging
"norms" and "laws" as if they're synonyms. One of the guests admitted that Trump firing Comey was
100% legal, but that didn't seem to matter in this talk about Trump having abandoned rule-of-law
for a Putinist dictatorship. These guys wouldn't pass a high school civics class, but there they
were, garbling it all up. What mattered was the proper sense of panic and outrage-I'm not sure anyone
really cared about the actual legality of the thing, or the legal, political or "normative" history
of the FBI.
For starters, the FBI hardly belongs in the same set with concepts like "constitutional" or "
rule of law." That's because the FBI was never established by a law. US Lawmakers refused to approve
an FBI bureau over a century ago when it was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt. So he ignored Congress,
and went ahead and set it up by presidential fiat. That's one thing the civil liberties crowd hates
discussing - how centralized US political power is in the executive branch, a feature in the constitutional
system put there by the holy Founders.
In the late 1970s, at the tail end of our brief Glasnost, there was a lot of talk in Washington
about finally creating a
legal charter for the FBI -70 years after its founding. A lot of serious ink was spilled trying
to transform the FBI from an extralegal secret police agency to something legal and defined. If you
want to play archeologist to America's recent history, you can find this in the New York Times' archives,
articles with headlines like
"Draft of Charter for F.B.I. Limits Inquiry Methods" :
The Carter Administration will soon send to Congress the first governing charter for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. The proposed charter imposes extensive but not absolute restrictions
on the bureau's employment of controversial investigative techniques, .including the use of informers,
undercover agents and covert criminal activity.
The charter also specifies the duties and powers of the bureau, setting precise standards and
procedures for the initiation ,and conduct of investigations. It specifically requires the F.B.I.
to observe constitutional rights and establishes safeguards against unchecked harassment, break‐ins
and other abuses.
followed by the inevitable lament, like this editorial from the Christian Science Monitor a year
later, "Don't Forget the
FBI Charter". Which of course we did forget-that was Reagan's purpose and value for the post-Glasnost
reaction: forgetting. As historian Athan Theoharis
wrote , "After 1981, Congress never seriously considered again any of the FBI charter proposals."
The origins of the FBI have been obscured both because of its dubious legality and because of
its original political purpose-to help the president battle the all-powerful American capitalists.
It wasn't that Teddy Roosevelt was a radical leftist-he was a Progressive Republican, which sounds
like an oxymoron today but which was mainstream and ascendant politics in his time. Roosevelt was
probably the first president since Andrew Jackson to try to smash concentrated wealth-power, or at
least some of it. He could be brutally anti-labor, but so were the powerful capitalists he fought,
and all the structures of government power. He met little opposition pursuing his imperial Social
Darwinist ambitions outside America's borders-but he had a much harder time fighting the powerful
capitalists at home against Roosevelt's most honorable political obsession: preserving forests, parks
and public lands from greedy capitalists. An early FBI memo to Hoover about the FBI's origins explains,
"Roosevelt, in his characteristic dynamic fashion, asserted that the plunderers of the public
domain would be prosecuted and brought to justice."
According to New York Times reporter Tim Wiener's Enemies: A History of the FBI , it
was the Oregon land fraud scandal of 1905-6 that put the idea of an FBI in TR's hyperactive mind.
The scandal involved leading Oregon politicians helping railroad tycoon Edward Harriman illegally
sell off pristine Oregon forest lands to timber interests, and it ended with an Oregon senator and
the state's only two House representatives criminally charged and put on trial-along with dozens
of other Oregonians. Basically, they were raping the state's public lands and forests like colonists
stripping a foreign country-and that stuck in TR's craw.
TR wanted his attorney general-Charles Bonaparte (yes, he really was a descendant of that
Bonaparte)-to make a full report to on the rampant land fraud scams that the robber barons were
running to despoil the American West, and which threatened TR's vision of land and forest conservation
and parks. Bonaparte created an investigative team from the US Secret Service, but TR thought their
report was a "whitewash" and proposed a new separate federal investigative service within Bonaparte's
Department of Justice that would report only to the Attorney General.
Until then, the US government had to rely on private contractors like the notorious, dreaded Pinkerton
Agency, who were great at strikebreaking, clubbing workers and shooting organizers, but not so good
at taking down down robber barons, who happened to also be important clients for the private detective
agencies.
In early 1908, Attorney General Bonaparte wrote to Congress asking for the legal authority (and
budget funds) to create a "permanent detective force" under the DOJ. Congress rebelled, denouncing
it as a plan to create an American okhrana . Democrat Joseph Sherley wrote that "spying
on men and prying into what would ordinarily be considered their private affairs" went against "American
ideas of government"; Rep. George Waldo, a New York Republican, said the proposed FBI was a "great
blow to freedom and to free institutions if there should arise in this country any such great central
secret-service bureau as there is in Russia."
So Congress's response was the opposite, banning Bonaparte's DOJ from spending any funds at all
on a proposed FBI. Another Congressman wrote another provision into the budget bill banning the DOJ
from hiring Secret Service employees for any sort of FBI type agency. So Bonaparte waited until Congress
took its summer recess, set aside some DOJ funds, recruited some Secret Service agents, and created
a new federal detective bureau with 34 agents. This was how the FBI was born. Congress wasn't notified
until the end of 1908, in a few lines in a standard report - "oh yeah, forgot to tell you-the executive
branch went ahead and created an American okhrana because, well, the ol' joke about dogs
licking their balls. Happy New Year!"
The sordid history of America's extralegal secret police-initially named the Bureau of Investigation,
changed to the FBI ("Federal") in the 30's, is mostly a history of xenophobic panic-mongering, illegal
domestic spying, mass roundups and plans for mass-roundups, false entrapment schemes, and planting
what Russians call "kompromat"- compromising information about a target's sex life-to blackmail or
destroy American political figures that the FBI didn't like.
The first political victim of J Edgar Hoover's kompromat was Louis Post, the assistant secretary
of labor under Woodrow Wilson. Post's crime was releasing over 1,000 alleged Reds from detention
facilities near the end of the FBI's Red Scare crackdown, when they jailed and deported untold thousands
on suspicion of being Communists. The FBI's mass purge began with popular media support in 1919,
but by the middle of 1920, some (not the FBI) were starting to get a little queasy. A legal challenge
to the FBI's mass purges and exiles in Boston ended with a federal judge denouncing the FBI. After
that ruling, assistant secretary Louis Post, a 71-year-old well-meaning progressive, reviewed the
cases against the last 1500 detainees that the FBI wanted to deport, and found that there was absolutely
nothing on at least 75 percent of the cases. Post's review threatened to undo thousands more FBI
persecutions of alleged Moscow-controlled radicals.
So one of the FBI's most ambitious young agents, J Edgar Hoover, collected kompromat on Post and
his alleged associations with other alleged Moscow-controlled leftists, and gave the file to the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives-which promptly announced it would hold hearings to
investigate Post as a left subversive. The House tried to impeach Post, but ultimately he defended
himself. Post's lawyer compared his political persecutors to the okhrana (Russia, again!):
"We in America have sunk to the level of the government of Russia under the Czarist regime," describing
the FBI's smear campaign as "even lower in some of their methods than the old Russian officials."
Under Harding, the FBI had a new chief, William Burns, who made headlines blaming the terror bombing
attack on Wall Street of 1920 that killed 34 people on a Kremlin-run conspiracy. The FBI claimed
it had a highly reliable inside source who told them that Lenin sent $30,000 to the Soviets' diplomatic
mission in New York, which was distributed to four local Communist agents who arranged the Wall Street
bombing. The source claimed to have personally spoken with Lenin, who boasted that the bombing was
so successful he'd ordered up more.
The only problem was that the FBI's reliable source, a Jewish-Polish petty criminal named Wolf
Lindenfeld, turned out to be a bullshitter-nicknamed "Windy Linde"-who thought his fake confession
about Lenin funding the bombing campaign would get him out of Poland's jails and set up in a comfortable
new life in New York.
By 1923, the FBI had thoroughly destroyed America's communist and radical labor movements-allowing
it to focus on its other favorite pastime: spying on and destroying political opponents. The FBI
spied on US Senators who supported opening diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union: Idaho's William
Borah, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Thomas Walsh of the Judiciary Committee, and
Burton K Wheeler, the prairie Populist senator from Montana, who visited the Soviet Union and pushed
for diplomatic relations. Harding's corrupt Attorney General Dougherty denounced Sen. Wheeler as
"the Communist leader in the Senate" and "no more a Democrat than Stalin, his comrade in Moscow."
Dougherty accused Sen. Wheeler of being part of a conspiracy "to capture, by deceit and design, as
many members of the Senate as possible and to spread through Washington and the cloakrooms of Congress
a poison gas as deadly as that which sapped and destroyed brave soldiers in the last war."
Hoover, now a top FBI official, quietly fed kompromat to journalists he cultivated, particularly
an AP reporter named Richard Whitney, who published a popular book in 1924, "Reds In America" alleging
Kremlin agents "had an all-pervasive influence over American institutions; they had infiltrated every
corner of American life." Whitney named Charlie Chaplin as a Kremlin agent, along with Felix Frankfurter
and members of the Senate pushing for recognition of the Soviet Union. That killed any hope for diplomatic
recognition for the next decade.
Then the first Harding scandals broke-Teapot Dome, Veterans Affairs, bribery at the highest rungs.
When Senators Wheeler and Walsh opened bribery investigations, the FBI sent agents to the senators'
home state to drum up false bribery charges against Sen. Wheeler. The charges were clearly fake,
and a jury dismissed the charges. But Attorney General Dougherty was indicted for fraud and forced
to resign, as was his FBI chief Burns-but not Burns' underling Hoover, who stayed in the shadows.
"We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in
sex-life scandals and plain blackmail This must stop."
With the Cold War, the FBI became obsessed with homosexuals as America's Fifth Column under Moscow's
control. Homosexuals, the FBI believed, were susceptible to Kremlin kompromat-so the FBI collected
and disseminated its own kompromat on alleged American homosexuals, supposedly to protect America
from the Kremlin. In the early 1950s, Hoover launched the Sex Deviates Program to spy on American
homosexuals and purge them from public life. The FBI built up 300,000 pages of files on suspected
homosexuals and contacted their employers, local law enforcement and universities to "to drive homosexuals
from every institution of government, higher learning, and law enforcement in the nation," according
to Tim Weiner's book Enemies. No one but the FBI knows exactly how many Americans' lives and careers
were destroyed by the FBI's Sex Deviants Program but Hoover-who never married, lived with his mother
until he was 40, and traveled everywhere with his
"friend" Clyde Tolson .
In the 1952 election, Hoover was so committed to helping the Republicans and Eisenhower win that
he compiled and disseminated a 19-page kompromat file alleging that his Democratic Party rival Adlai
Stevenson was gay. The FBI's file on Stevenson was kept in the Sex Deviants Program section-it included
libelous gossip, claiming that Stevenson was one of Illinois' "best known homosexuals" who went by
the name "Adeline" in gay cruising circles.
In the 1960s, Hoover and his FBI chiefs collected kompromat on the sex lives of JFK and Martin
Luther King. Hoover presented some of his kompromat on JFK to Bobby Kennedy, in a concern-trollish
way claiming to "warn" him that the president was opening himself up to blackmail. It was really
a way for Hoover to let the despised Kennedy brothers know he could destroy them, should they try
to Comey him out of his FBI office. Hoover's kompromat on MLK's sex life was a particular obsession
of his-he now believed that African-Americans, not homosexuals, posed the greatest threat to become
a Kremlin Fifth Column. The FBI wiretapped MLK's private life, collecting tapes of his affairs with
other women, which a top FBI official then mailed to Martin Luther King's wife, along with a note
urging King to commit suicide.
FBI letter anonymously mailed to Martin Luther King Jr's wife, along with kompromat sex tapes
After JFK was murdered, when Bobby Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1964, he recounted another disturbing
FBI/kompromat story that President Johnson shared with him on the campaign trail. LBJ told Bobby
about a stack of kompromat files - FBI reports "detailing the sexual debauchery of members of the
Senate and House who consorted with prostitutes." LBJ asked RFK if the kompromat should be leaked
selectively to destroy Republicans before the 1964 elections. Kennedy recalled,
"He told me he had spent all night sitting up and reading the files of the FBI on all these
people. And Lyndon talks about that information and material so freely. Lyndon talks about everybody,
you see, with everybody. And of course that's dangerous."
Kennedy had seen some of the same FBI kompromat files as attorney general, but he was totally
opposed to releasing such unsubstantiated kompromat-such as, say, the Trump piss files-because doing
so would "destroy the confidence that people in the United States had in their government and really
make us a laughingstock around the world."
Imagine that.
Which brings me to the big analogy every hack threw around last week, calling Trump firing Comey
"Nixonian." Actually, what Trump did was more like the very opposite of Nixon, who badly wanted to
fire Hoover in 1971-2, but was too afraid of the kompromat Hoover might've had on him to make the
move. Nixon fell out with his old friend and onetime mentor J Edgar Hoover in 1971, when the ailing
old FBI chief refused to get sucked in to the Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers investigation, especially
after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times. Part of the reason Nixon created his
Plumbers team of black bag burglars was because Hoover had become a bit skittish in his last year
on this planet-and that drove Nixon crazy.
Nixon called his chief of staff Haldeman:
Nixon: I talked to Hoover last night and Hoover is not going after this case [Ellsberg] as
strong as I would like. There's something dragging him.
Haldeman: You don't have the feeling the FBI is really pursuing this?
Nixon: Yeah, particularly the conspiracy side. I want to go after everyone. I'm not so interested
in Ellsberg, but we have to go after everybody who's a member of this conspiracy.
Hoover's ambitious deputies in the FBI were smelling blood, angling to replace him. His number
3, Bill Sullivan (who sent MLK the sex tapes and suicide note) was especially keen to get rid of
Hoover and take his place. So as J Edgar was stonewalling the Daniel Ellsberg investigation, Sullivan
showed up in a Department of Justice office with two suitcases packed full of transcripts and summaries
of illegal wiretaps that Kissinger and Nixon had ordered on their own staff and on American journalists.
The taps were ordered in Nixon's first months in the White House in 1969, to plug up the barrage
of leaks, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Sullivan took the leaks from J Edgar's
possession and told the DOJ official that they needed to be hidden from Hoover, who planned to use
them as kompromat to blackmail Nixon.
Nixon decided he was going to fire J Edgar the next day. This was in September, 1971. But the
next day came, and Nixon got scared. So he tried to convince his attorney general John Mitchell to
fire Hoover for him, but Mitchell said only the President could fire J Edgar Hoover. So Nixon met
him for breakfast, and, well, he just didn't have the guts. Over breakfast, Hoover flattered Nixon
and told him there was nothing more in the world he wanted than to see Nixon re-elected. Nixon caved;
the next day, J Edgar Hoover unceremoniously fired his number 3 Bill Sullivan, locking him out of
the building and out of his office so that he couldn't take anything with him. Sullivan was done.
The lesson here, I suppose, is that if an FBI director doesn't want to be fired, it's best to
keep your kompromat a little closer to your chest, as a gun to hold to your boss's head. Comey's
crew already released the piss tapes kompromat on Trump-the damage was done. What was left to hold
back Trump from firing Comey? "Laws"? The FBI isn't even legal. "Norms" would be the real reason.
Which pretty much sums up everything Trump has been doing so far. We've learned the past two decades
that we're hardly a nation of laws, at least not when it comes to the plutocratic ruling class. What
does bind them are "norms"-and while those norms may mean everything to the ruling class, it's an
open question how much these norms mean to a lot of Americans outside that club.
The USA doesn't have a legal basis either, it is a revolting crown colony of the British Empire.
Treason and heresy all the way down. Maybe the British need to burn Washington DC again?
Wondered how Comey thought he could get away with his conviction and pardon of Sec Clinton.
Seems like part of the culture of FBI is a "above and beyond" the law mentality.
Back in the early 1970s a high school friend moved to Alabama because his father was transferred
by his employer.
My friend sent a post card describing among other things the fact that Alabama had done away
with the requirement of a math class to graduate high school, and substituted a required class
called "The Evils of Communism" complete with a text-book written by J. Edgar Hoover; Masters
of Deceit.
In Dallas,Texas my 1959 Civics class had to read the same book. We all were given paperback
copies of it to take home and read. It was required reading enacted by Texas legislature.
So I'd guess you weren't fooled by any of those commie plots of the sixties, like the campaigns
for civil rights or against the Vietnamese war.
I can't really brag, I didn't stop worrying about the Red Menace until 1970 or so, that's when
I started running into returning vets who mostly had no patience for that stuff.
We've learned the past two decades that we're hardly a nation of laws, at least not when
it comes to the plutocratic ruling class. What does bind them are "norms"
Or as David Broder put it (re Bill Clinton): he came in and trashed the place and it wasn't
his place.
It was David Broder's place. Of course the media play a key role with all that kompromat since
they are the ones needed to convey it to the public. The tragedy is that even many of the sensible
in their ranks such as Bill Moyers have been sucked into the kompromat due to their hysteria over
Trump. Ames is surely on point in this great article. The mistake was allowing secret police agencies
like the FBI and CIA to be created in the first place.
Sorry, my initial reaction was that people who don't know the difference between "rein" and
"reign" are not to be trusted to provide reliable information. Recognizing that as petty, I kept
reading, and presently found the statement that Congress was not informed of the founding of the
FBI until a century after the fact, which seems implausible. If in fact the author meant the end
of 1908 it was quite an achievement to write 2008.
Interesting to the extent it may be true, but with few sources, no footnotes, and little evidence
of critical editing who knows what that may be?
Who he is is irrelevant. I don't take things on faith because "the Pope said" or because Mark
Ames said. People who expect their information to be taken seriously should substantiate it.
So anything the FBI does to get rid of him must by definition be ok! Besides, surely our civic-minded
IC would never use their power on the Good Guys™!
Ah yes, the voice of "caution." And such attention to the lack of footnotes, in this day when
the curious can so easily cut and paste a bit of salient text into a search engine and pull up
a feast of parse-able writings and video, from which they can "judiciously assess" claims and
statements. If they care to spend the time, which is in such short supply among those who are
struggling to keep up with the horrors and revelations people of good will confront every blinking
day
Classic impeachment indeed. All from the height of "academic rigor" and "caution." Especially
the "apologetic" bit about "reign" vs "rein." Typos destroy credibility, don't they? And the coup
de grass (sic), the unrebuttable "plausibility" claim.
One wonders at the nature of the author's curriculum vitae. One also marvels at the yawning
gulf between the Very Serious Stuff I was taught in grade and high school civics and history,
back in the late '50s and the '60s, about the Fundamental Nature Of Our Great Nation and its founding
fathers and the Beautiful Documents they wrote, on the one hand, and what we mopes learn, through
a drip-drip-drip process punctuated occasionally by Major Revelations, about the real nature of
the Empire and our fellow creatures
PS: My earliest memory of television viewing was a day at a friend's house - his middle-class
parents had the first "set" in the neighborhood, I think an RCA, in a massive sideboard cabinet
where the picture tube pointed up and you viewed the "content" in a mirror mounted to the underside
of the lid. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5onSwx7_Cn0
The family was watching a hearing of Joe McCarthy's kangaroo court, complete with announcements
of the latest number in the "list of known Communists in the State Department" and how Commyanism
was spreading like an unstoppable epidemic mortal disease through the Great US Body Politic and
its Heroic Institutions of Democracy. I was maybe 6 years old, but that grainy black and white
"reality TV" content had me asking "WTF?" at a very early age. And I'd say it's on the commentor
to show that the "2008" claim is wrong, by something other than "implausible" as drive-by impeachment.
Given the content of the original post, and what people paying attention to all this stuff have
a pretty good idea is the general contours of a vast corruption and manipulation.
Interesting article on the history of the FBI, although the post-Hoover era doesn't get any
treatment. The Church Committee hearings on the CIA and FBI, after the exposure of notably
Operation CHAOS (early
60s to early 70s) by the CIA and
COINTELPRO(late 1950s to
early 1970s) by the FBI, didn't really get to the bottom of the issue although some reforms
were initiated.
Today, it seems, the best description of the FBI's main activity is corporate enforcer for
the white-collar mafia known as Wall Street. There is an analogy to organized crime, where the
most powerful mobsters settled disputes between other gangs of criminals. Similarly, if a criminal
gang is robbed by one of its own members, the mafia would go after the guilty party; the FBI plays
this role for Wall Street institutions targeted by con artists and fraudsters. Compare and contrast
a pharmaceutical company making opiates which is targeted by thieves vs. a black market drug cartel
targeted by thieves. In one case, the FBI investigates; in the other, a violent vendetta ensues
(such as street murders in Mexico).
The FBI executives are rewarded for this service with lucrative post-retirement careers within
corporate America – Louis Freeh went to credit card fraudster, MBNA, Richard Mueller to a corporate
Washington law firm, WilmerHale, and Comey, before Obama picked him as Director, worked for Lockheed
Martin and HSBC (cleaning up after their $2 billion drug cartel marketing scandal) after leaving
the FBI in 2005.
Maybe this is legitimate, but this only applies to their protection of the interests of large
corporations – as the 2008 economic collapse and aftermath showed, they don't prosecute corporate
executives who rip off poor people and middle-class homeowners. Banks who rob people, they aren't
investigated or prosecuted; that's just for people who rob banks.
When it comes to political issues and national security, however, the FBI has such a terrible
record on so many issues over the years that anything they claim has to be taken with a grain
or two of salt. Consider domestic political activity: from the McCarthyite 'Red Scare' of the
1950s to COINTELPRO in the 1960s and 1970s to targeting of environmental groups in the 1980s and
1990s to targeting anti-war protesters under GW Bush to their obsession with domestic mass surveillance
under Obama, it's not a record that should inspire any confidence.
Some say they have a key role to play in national security and terrorism – but their record
on the 2001 anthrax attacks is incredibly shady and suspicious. The final suspect, Bruce Ivins,
is clearly innocent of the crime, just as their previous suspect, Steven Hatfill was. Ivins, if
still alive, could have won a similar multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against the FBI.
All honest bioweapons experts know this to be true – the perpetrators of those anthrax letters
are still at large, and may very well have had close associations with the Bush Administration
itself.
As far as terrorist activities? Many of their low-level agents did seem concerned about the
Saudis and bin Laden in the late 1990s and pre-9/11 – but Saudi investigations were considered
politically problematic due to "geostrategic relationships with our Saudi allies" – hence people
like John O'Neil and Coleen Rowley were sidelined and ignored, with disastrous consequences. The
Saudi intelligence agency role in 9/11 was buried for over a decade, as well. Since 9/11, most
of the FBI investigations seem to have involved recruiting mentally disabled young Islamic men
in sting operations in which the FBI provides everything needed. You could probably get any number
of mentally ill homeless people across the U.S., regardless of race or religion, to play this
role.
Comey's actions over the past year are certainly highly questionable, as well. Neglecting to
investigate the Clinton Foundation ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments and corporations,
particularly things like State Department approval of various arms deals in which bribes may have
been paid, is as much a dereliction of duty as neglecting to investigate Trump ties to Russian
business interests – but then, Trump has a record of shady business dealings dating back to the
1970s, of strange bankruptcies and bailouts and government sales that the FBI never looked at
either.
Ultimately, this is because FBI executives are paid off not to investigate Wall Street criminality,
nor shady U.S. government activity, with lucrative positions as corporate board members and so
on after their 'retirements'. I don't doubt that many of their junior members mean well and are
dedicated to their jobs – but the fish rots from the head down.
As far as terrorist activities? Many of their low-level agents did seem concerned about
the Saudis and bin Laden in the late 1990s and pre-9/11 – but Saudi investigations were considered
politically problematic due to "geostrategic relationships with our Saudi allies" – hence people
like John O'Neil and Coleen Rowley were sidelined and ignored, with disastrous consequences.
The Clinton Administration had other priorities. You know, I think I'll let ex-FBI Director
Freeh explain what happened when the FBI tried to get the Saudis to cooperate with their investigation
into the bombing of the Khobar Towers.
"That September, Crown Prince Abdullah and his entourage took over the entire 143-room Hay-Adams
Hotel, just across from Lafayette Park from the White House, for six days. The visit, I figured,
was pretty much our last chance. Again, we prepared talking points for the president. Again,
I contacted Prince Bandar and asked him to soften up the crown prince for the moment when Clinton,
-- or Al Gore I didn't care who -- would raise the matter and start to exert the necessary pressure."
"The story that came back to me, from "usually reliable sources," as they say in Washington,
was that Bill Clinton briefly raised the subject only to tell the Crown Prince that he certainly
understood the Saudis; reluctance to cooperate. Then, according to my sources, he hit Abdullah
up for a contribution to the still-to-be-built Clinton presidential library. Gore, who was
supposed to press hardest of all in his meeting with the crown Prince, barely mentioned the
matter, I was told." -Louis J. Freeh, My FBI (2005)
In my defense I picked the book up to see if there was any dirt on the DNC's electoral funding
scandal in 1996. I'm actually glad I did. The best part of the book is when Freeh recounts running
into a veteran of the Lincoln Brigade and listens to how Hoover's FBI ruined his life despite
having broken no laws. As if a little thing like laws mattered to Hoover. The commies were after
our precious bodily fluids!
I'm not sure there are many functioning norms left within the national political leadership.
Seemed to me Gingrich started blowing those up and it just got worse from there. McConnell not
allowing Garland to be considered comes to mind
Thanks to Mark Ames now we know what Pres. Trump meant when he tweeted about his tapes with
AG Comey. Not some taped conversation between Pres. Trump & AG Comey but bunch of kompromat tapes
that AG Comey has provided Pres. Trump that might not make departing AG Comey looked so clean.
"... "I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," warns former CIA Director Jack Devine, saying that, with "frankly uncivilized" ISIS, there is a greater risk of violence worldwide than ever before. ..."
"... Devine argued that dismantling ISIS's command structure is crucial for minimizing the danger it presents, much like al Qaeda before them. "We killed three-fourths of their leadership," he said of al Qaeda. "We have to do the same thing with ISIS. "We have to destroy their refuge over there. When they start to lose, their recruiting numbers start to fall." ..."
"... My guess is that Iran have done a deal with Putin in that once ISIS is swept away Iran gets to build a gas pipeline through Iraq (which it controls) and through Syria into Europe. Russia is allowing Iran into the European gas market because Bandar threatened Sochi, and Putin wants to end the House of Saud in retaliation. Two weeks from now the world is going to make laws that pushes countries towards natural gas and away from coal and oil. ..."
"... I would say that's accurate, since the U.S. put ISIS there to block the Iran - Iraq - Syria pipeline. When Russia destroys ISIS, the previously planned pipeline can proceed. It has nothing to do with Russian 'permission' - Putin expects someone to eventually be sending gas up from the Middle East once the slaughter stops. He doesn't care who it is or how much. It's not going to displace more than a fraction of the Russian supply to Europe. Syria rejected the Qatari pipeline for its own reasons - probably because Qatar was planning on killing Assad and replacing him with a Western stooge well before the Qatari-Turkey pipeline was announced. In fact, the announcement was pretty much an insult to Syria. Qatar quite arrogantly announced that they WOULD be building the pipeline through Syria without bothering to ask them. ..."
"... Putin negotiates with everyone. He was even talking with Israel about helping them with the Leviathan pipeline. The U.S. seems to favor 'regime change' as the preferred strategy to expand its oil interests where it has no business doing so. ..."
"... The CIA serves no master, it is the fucking master. It does deals that are anti American, and they don't care, because America is just a sugar daddy to them. We are the chumps who pay their bills, while they put half of all honest Americans on their enemies list. ..."
"... CIA is international, not American. They are the hit men for the biggest corporations on earth, and most especially the biggest energy firms. Oil and CIA go together, and there is the Saudi connection. ..."
"... CIA is the lead agent if world Islamic extremism, they don't fight it, they nurture it! Their long term goal is to use mass Islamic terror armies to do what the CIA and Corporate masters want done. Need a police state in America? Do a hit on America 9/11. Need to eliminate Russia? Create ISIS and direct them against Russia's allies. And you can take it from there. It will continue on as before. Nobody left has the power to take down the CIA terror rings. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," warns former CIA Director Jack Devine, saying that, with
"frankly uncivilized" ISIS, there is a greater risk of violence worldwide than ever before.
"I think this is the most dangerous time in terms of sustained violence," he said on "The Cats Roundtable"
in an interview airing Sunday on New York's AM-970.
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," he told host John Catsimatidis. "Some percentage of the world today
is always either unbalanced or radicalized. When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill
anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
Devine cited the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as an unprecedented threat in terms of its wanton disregard for human
life...
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately,"
he said.
"You have a group in ISIS today that is frankly uncivilized. These folks could get stronger and stronger.
We basically have to destroy ISIS over there," Devine said.
Devine argued that dismantling ISIS's command structure is crucial for minimizing the danger it presents, much like al
Qaeda before them. "We killed three-fourths of their leadership," he said of al Qaeda. "We have to do the same thing with ISIS.
"We have to destroy their refuge over there. When they start to lose, their recruiting numbers start to fall."
Devine, who mainly served during the Cold War, said ISIS is a scourge without parallel because it has no concern for self-preservation.
"There is nothing that can be compared with nuclear weapons and their use," he said of tensions between the U.S. and the former
Soviet Union.
"[But] people felt safe in the sense there was countervailing balance," he added. "Early in our contest with
the Russians, it was clear we had checks and balances."
Finally Devine admits...
"If there's blame to be put, it's on our failure to have done that by this point."
Selected Skeptical Comments
i_call_you_my_base
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s..."
"And by dealt I mean trained and funded."
Looney
John Kerry to the MSM:
Do not use "Al Qaeda" or "Al Nustra" - just call them "Allies" (pronounced Al Lies). ;-)
Looney
Vatican_cameo
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," he told host John Catsimatidis. "Some percentage of the world today
is always either unbalanced or radicalized. When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill
anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
By small group he means CIA, Right? I thought he would have been a little clearer.
Occident Mortal
My guess is that Iran have done a deal with Putin in that once ISIS is swept away Iran gets to build a gas pipeline through
Iraq (which it controls) and through Syria into Europe. Russia is allowing Iran into the European gas market because Bandar threatened
Sochi, and Putin wants to end the House of Saud in retaliation. Two weeks from now the world is going to make laws that pushes
countries towards natural gas and away from coal and oil.
Paveway IV
"...once ISIS is swept away Iran gets to build a gas pipeline through Iraq (which it controls) and through Syria into Europe..."
I would say that's accurate, since the U.S. put ISIS there to block the Iran - Iraq - Syria pipeline. When Russia destroys
ISIS, the previously planned pipeline can proceed. It has nothing to do with Russian 'permission' - Putin expects someone to eventually
be sending gas up from the Middle East once the slaughter stops. He doesn't care who it is or how much. It's not going to displace
more than a fraction of the Russian supply to Europe. Syria rejected the Qatari pipeline for its own reasons - probably because
Qatar was planning on killing Assad and replacing him with a Western stooge well before the Qatari-Turkey pipeline was announced.
In fact, the announcement was pretty much an insult to Syria. Qatar quite arrogantly announced that they WOULD be building the
pipeline through Syria without bothering to ask them.
The U.S. blocked the first Iran pipeline (called the Persian Pipeline) FROM IRAN to Iraq in 2010 by forcing the Swiss company
that partnered with Iran to back out due to Israeli - ooops, 'Western' sanctions on Iran. The second Iran-sourced NG pipeline
from Iran through Iraq and Syria - called the Friendship Pipeline - was agreed to in 2012 by the countries involved. That's when
the U.S. launched it's failed coup attempt in Syria and let its ISIS mad-dogs loose in Iraq. Tyler usually refers to this by the
derogatory label of "Islamic Pipeline" - a snide label that Kagan-PNAC and Western oil companies used. Tyler never refers to the
Western-backed Qatari pipeline as the Jihadi Pipeline, nor does he refer to the Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline as the Jewish Pipeline.
I'm not sure about the inconsistency - maybe he's trying to make some point.
Putin negotiates with everyone. He was even talking with Israel about helping them with the Leviathan pipeline. The U.S.
seems to favor 'regime change' as the preferred strategy to expand its oil interests where it has no business doing so.
goldhedge
The CIA guy doesn't mention the House of Saud.
Pfft.
Jack Burton
Good catch! And there never do.
CIA and House of Saud have done a long term deal to look out for each other in this world. The CIA serves no master, it
is the fucking master. It does deals that are anti American, and they don't care, because America is just a sugar daddy to them.
We are the chumps who pay their bills, while they put half of all honest Americans on their enemies list.
CIA is international, not American. They are the hit men for the biggest corporations on earth, and most especially the
biggest energy firms. Oil and CIA go together, and there is the Saudi connection.
CIA is the lead agent if world Islamic extremism, they don't fight it, they nurture it! Their long term goal is to use
mass Islamic terror armies to do what the CIA and Corporate masters want done. Need a police state in America? Do a hit on America
9/11. Need to eliminate Russia? Create ISIS and direct them against Russia's allies. And you can take it from there. It will continue
on as before. Nobody left has the power to take down the CIA terror rings.
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately,"
he said.
No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and
FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today!
Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown
countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending
up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International
Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.
Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's basically pleading guilty to murder,
FFS.
Ms No
They didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.
Perimetr
"If there's blame to be put. . ."
It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars a year coming from its Afghanistan
heroin operation.
sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We are close to Christmas. There
will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage
war.
It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war. A war can be justified, so to
speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here,
a little there-there is no justification.
What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of
children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers."
The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The Revolutionary War had to happen.
Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin, but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end.
Old School colonization of poor nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The
Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had to happen. Germany's 20's depression
had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win
WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War
had to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China had to happen, going off
the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office. Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter
an actor had to be President. Unions had to be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down.
The MIC had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen.
Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could have done to stop it.
Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks. I see no trade embagoes, I
see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato bombing in Syria.
blindman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive
question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision,
both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money
(including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:
It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited
political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies
to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff
to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present
time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that
is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.
blindman
corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the dead and doomed.
Dinero D. Profit
The Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military industrial contractors, their
workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all
publically traded companies, and every person employed by the MSM.
The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no vital questions.
Dick Buttkiss
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't
give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead, it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend,
much less navigate. Thus is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how much of
the country and the outside world it takes down with it.
ross81
thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that the Brits stirred up Protestant
hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in
the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.
geno-econ
This is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle East oil and result in huge
increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for
a Peace Conference of all interested parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference.
Macho talk will only make things worse.
moonmac
We can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of terrorists. Got it!
sgt_doom
Or, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart such as myself can figure out
that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?
GRDguy
Ex-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
should be:
"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.
Ban KKiller
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost endless...
BarnacleBill
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their like. For them, it's all a business
deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere
else; do it again and again until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.
And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.
Duc888
"You get the politicians you deserve."
CIA types are appointed, not elected.
Duc888
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely worth the time. The FEDGOV
came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation
she uncorks exactly HOW the deep black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was
simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's how it was all deigned right
from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer saying....."it's a feature, not a bug".
She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head brigade will come along here
and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well, who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled
with facts.
Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...
"... Donald Trump's presidency, like preceding ones, is trapped by the interests of the power elite that has ruled America since World War II. The constraints imposed on domestic policy by this elite inevitably have a direct impact on America's foreign policy. ..."
"... The growing misalignment between government policies and people's yearnings coincides with the ascent of the military establishment within the power elite that rules America. Despite the country's aggressive expansionism, America's power elite was initially driven mainly by political and economic forces and much less by its growing military strength. It is fair to say that the military establishment, as an influential component of the American power elite, only appeared in the context of World War II. Nowadays, it is a dominant player. ..."
"... Today's power elite in America is fundamentally the same as the one that emerged after World War II and which was accurately described by C. Wright Mills in the 1950s. Consequently, the main forces shaping US domestic and foreign policies have not changed since then. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War did not make irrelevant the existing power elite at that time. The elite only became more vocal in its efforts to justify itself and this explains today's existence of NATO, for instance. ..."
"... Despite its economic and entrepreneurial might, the US distilled version of capitalism is unable to attain the needs of a growing number of its population, as the Great Recession of 2008 has shown. Within the OECD, arguably the club with the highest levels of economic and social development in the world, US rankings are abysmal, for instance concerning education and health, as it lays at the bottom in learning metrics and on critical health measures such as obesity. The wealth gap has widened and the social fabric is broken. American economic decline is evident and growing social conflict across economic, social and geographic lines is just a reaction to this decline. ..."
"... Concerning China, Trump is learning about the limits of his ability to successfully challenge it economically. It seems virtually impossible to reverse China's momentum which, if it continues, will consolidate its economic domination. ..."
"... A fundamental weakness of American foreign policy is its inability to understand war in all its different dimensions ..."
"... Despite the need to see through Trump's true intentions beyond his pomp and circumstance, there is an important warning to be made. Trump's eventual inability to fulfill his promises, combined with his bravado and America's incapacity to take a more sobering approach to world events is a dangerous combination. ..."
Donald Trump's presidency, like preceding ones, is trapped by the interests of the power elite
that has ruled America since World War II. The constraints imposed on domestic policy by this elite
inevitably have a direct impact on America's foreign policy. Alternative social forces, like
the ones behind Trump's presidential triumph, only have a limited impact on domestic and ultimately
on foreign policy. A conceptual detour and a brief on history and on Trump's domestic setting when
he was elected will help clarifying these theses.
Beyond the different costumes that it wears (dealing with ideology, international law, and even
religion), foreign policy follows domestic policy. The domestic policy actors are the social forces
at work at a given point of time, mainly the economic agents and their ambitions (in their multiple
expressions), including the ruling power elite. Society's aspirations not only relate to material
welfare, but also to ideological priorities that population segments may have at a given point of
time.
From America's initial days until the mid 1800s, there seems to have been a broad alignment of
US foreign policy with the wishes of its power elite and other social forces. America's expansionism,
a fundamental bulwark of its foreign policy from early days, reflected the need to fulfill its growing
population's ambitions for land and, later on, the need to find foreign markets for its excess production,
initially agricultural and later on manufacturing. It can be said that American foreign policy was
broadly populist at that time. The power elite was more or less aligned in achieving these expansionist
goals and was able to provide convenient ideological justification through the writings of Jefferson
and Madison, among others.
As the country expanded, diverging interests became stronger and ultimately differing social forces
caused a significant fracture in society. The American Civil War was the climax of the conflicted
interests between agricultural and manufacturing led societies. Fifty years later, a revealing manifestation
of this divergence (which survived the Civil War), as it relates to foreign policy, is found during
the early days of the Russian Revolution when, beyond the ideological revulsion of Bolshevism, the
US was paralyzed between the agricultural and farming businesses seeking exports to Russia and the
domestic extractive industries interested in stopping exports of natural resources from this country.
The growing misalignment between government policies and people's yearnings coincides with the
ascent of the military establishment within the power elite that rules America. Despite the country's
aggressive expansionism, America's power elite was initially driven mainly by political and economic
forces and much less by its growing military strength. It is fair to say that the military establishment,
as an influential component of the American power elite, only appeared in the context of World War
II. Nowadays, it is a dominant player.
Today's power elite in America is fundamentally the same as the one that emerged after World War
II and which was accurately described by C. Wright Mills in the 1950s. Consequently, the main forces
shaping US domestic and foreign policies have not changed since then. The collapse of the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War did not make irrelevant the existing power elite at that time.
The elite only became more vocal in its efforts to justify itself and this explains today's existence
of NATO, for instance.
Despite its economic and entrepreneurial might, the US distilled version of capitalism is unable
to attain the needs of a growing number of its population, as the Great Recession of 2008 has shown.
Within the OECD, arguably the club with the highest levels of economic and social development in
the world, US rankings are abysmal, for instance concerning education and health, as it lays at the
bottom in learning metrics and on critical health measures such as obesity. The wealth gap has widened
and the social fabric is broken. American economic decline is evident and growing social conflict
across economic, social and geographic lines is just a reaction to this decline.
Trump won his presidency because he was able to get support from the country's growing frustrated
white population. His main social themes (bringing jobs to America by stopping the decline of its
manufacturing industry, preventing further US consumer dependence on foreign imports and halting
immigration) fitted well with the electors' anger. Traditional populist themes linked to foreign
policy (like Russophobia) did not play a big role in the last election. But whether or not the Trump
administration can align with the ruling power elite in a manner that addresses the key social and
economic needs of the American people is still to be seen.
Back to foreign policy, we need to distinguish between Trump's style of government and his administration's
actions. At least until now, focusing excessively on Trump's style has dangerously distracted from
his true intentions. One example is the confusion about his initial stance on NATO which was simplistically
seen as highly critical to the very existence of this organization. On NATO, all that Trump really
cared was to achieve a "fair" sharing of expenditures with other members and to press them to
honor
their funding commitments.
From immigration to defense spending, there is nothing irrational about Trump's foreign policy
initiatives, as they just reflect a different reading on the American people's aspirations and, consequently,
they attempt to rely on supporting points within the power elite which are different from the ones
used in the past.
Concerning China, Trump is learning about the limits of his ability to successfully challenge
it economically. It seems virtually impossible to reverse China's momentum which, if it continues,
will consolidate its economic domination. A far-reaching lesson, although still being ignored, is
that China's economic might is showing that capitalism as understood in the West is not winning,
much less in its American format. It also shows that democracy may not be that relevant, as it is
not necessarily a corollary or a condition for economic development. Perhaps it even shows the superiority
of China's economic model, but this is a different matter.
As Trump becomes more aware about his limitations, he has naturally reversed to the basic imprints
of America's traditional foreign policy, particularly concerning defense. His emphasis on a further
increase in defense spending is not done for prestigious or national security reasons, but as an
attempt to preserve a job generating infrastructure without considering the catastrophic consequences
that it may cause.
On Iran, Obama's initiative to seek normalization was an attempt to walk a fine line (and to find
a less conflictive path) between supporting the US traditional Middle East allies (mainly the odd
combination of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) and recognizing Iran's growing aspirations. Deep
down, Obama was trying to acknowledge Iran's historical viability as a country and a society that
will not disappear from the map, while Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, may not be around in a few
years. Trump's Iran policy until now only represents a different weighing of priorities, although
it is having far reaching consequences on America's credibility as a reliable contractual party in
international affairs.
In the case of Afghanistan, Trump's decision to increase boots on the ground does not break the
inertia of US past administrations. Aside from temporary containment, an increasing military presence
or a change in tactics will not alter fundamentally this reality.
Concerning Russia, and regardless of what Trump has said, actions speak more than words. A continuous
deterioration of relations seems inevitable.
Trump will also learn, if he has not done so already, about the growth of multipolar forces in
world's events. Russia has mastered this reality for several years and is quite skillful at using
it as a basic tool of its own foreign goals. Our multipolar world will expand, and Trump may even
inadvertently exacerbate it through its actions (for instance in connection with the different stands
taken by the US and its European allies concerning Iran).
While fulfilling the aspirations of the American people seems more difficult within the existing
capitalist framework, there are also growing apprehensions coming from America's power elite as it
becomes more frustrated due to its incapacity of being more effective at the world level. America's
relative adolescence in world's history will become more and more apparent in the coming years.
A fundamental weakness of American foreign policy is its inability to understand war in all its
different dimensions. The US has never suffered the consequences of an international conflict in
its own backyard. The American Civil War, despite all the suffering that it caused, was primarily
a domestic event with no foreign intervention (contrary to the wishes of the Confederation). The
deep social and psychological damage caused by war is not part of America's consciousness as it is,
for instance in Germany, Russia or Japan. America is insensitive to the lessons of history because
it has a very short history itself.
Despite the need to see through Trump's true intentions beyond his pomp and circumstance, there
is an important warning to be made. Trump's eventual inability to fulfill his promises, combined
with his bravado and America's incapacity to take a more sobering approach to world events is a dangerous
combination.
Oscar Silva-Valladares is a former investment banker that has lived and worked in North and
Latin America, Western & Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Philippines and Western Africa.
He currently chairs Davos International Advisory, an advisory firm focused on strategic consulting
across emerging markets.
When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been
attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to
be executed.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
I think Professor Cohen has a real point in the following statements:
" In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever
more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons–Putin
announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they're real–that can elude
any missile defense. .. Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading
nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, 'It's time to
negotiate an end to this new arms race,' and he's 100 percent right. So when I heard Trump
say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been
probably around the summer of 2016–just on this one point, because none of the other
candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia "
Then, when he goes on to elaborate on China's weaponry and posit including them in the
next round of draw-down negotiations, as far off as that may look – that to me is what
Trump can use for his re-election. I do believe his attitude towards Russia won him his first
term.
Those Russia-gate kooks need to focus on the American people, not on Trump. Well, maybe
they did, and still do. It's really about us, not him.
When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, "Our democracy has been attacked," I
an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
So the USA helped to re-install medieval treatment of woman in Afghanistan and then called it progress toward human rights...
Notable quotes:
"... But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open. Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as well. ..."
Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal.
... ... ...
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the
discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a
critical history that has been suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the
attacks occurred, when "some people did something." Many of those people served at the highest
levels of U.S. government, and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an
international network – and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Taliban 'Unimportant'
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy
weapons in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi
clerics such as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of
dollars worth of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them
to commit acts of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to
wreak havoc on the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause
with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
To some in Washington, the Taliban were a historical footnote. To others, they were allies
of convenience. As a top State Department diplomat commented to journalist Ahmed Rashid in
February 1997, "The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There be [the Saudi-owned
oil company] Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with
that."
CIA Cover-ups and Blowback
Back in the U.S., some people fueled the blowback from the Afghan proxy war. The Blind
Sheikh was given a special entry visa by the CIA as payback for the services he provided in
Afghanistan, allowing him to take over the al-Kifah Center in New York City, which had
functioned as the de facto U.S. arm of Al Qaeda's Services Bureau. Under his watch and with
help from bin Laden, some people and lots of aid were shuttled to the front lines of U.S. proxy
wars in Bosnia and Chechnya while the Clinton administration generally looked the other
way.
Though the Blind Sheikh was eventually convicted in a terror plot contrived by a paid
informant for the FBI, some people in federal law enforcement had been reluctant to indict him.
"There was a whole issue about [Abdel-Rahman] being given a visa to come into this country and
what the circumstances were around that," one of his defense lawyers, Abdeed Jabara told me.
"The issue related to how much the government was involved with the jihadist enterprise when it
suited their purposes in Afghanistan and whether or not they were afraid there would be
exposure of that. Because there's no question that the jihadists were using the Americans and
the Americans were using the jihadists. There's a symbiotic relationship."
During the 1995 trial of members of the Blind Sheikh's New York-based cell, another defense
lawyer, Roger Stavis, referred to his clients before the jury as "Team America," emphasizing
the role they had played as proxy fighters for the U.S. in Afghanistan. When Stavis attempted
to summon to the witness stand a jihadist operative named Ali Abdelsauod Mohammed who had
trained his clients in firearms and combat, some people ordered Mohammed to refuse his
subpoena. Those people, according to journalist Peter Lance, were federal prosecutors Andrew
McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald.
The government lawyers were apparently fretting that Mohammed would be exposed as an active
asset of both the CIA and FBI, and as a former Army sergeant who had spirited training manuals
out of Fort Bragg while stationed there during the 1980s. So Mohammed remained a free man,
helping Al Qaeda plan attacks on American consular facilities in Tanzania and Kenya while the
"Day of the Planes" plot began to take form.
In early 2000, some people gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to prepare the most daring Al
Qaeda operation to date. Two figures at the meeting, Saudi citizens named Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Midhar, were on their way to the United States. While in Kuala Lumpur, the duo's
hotel room was broken into by CIA agents, their passports were photographed, and their
communications were recorded. And yet the pair of Al Qaeda operatives was able to travel
together with multiple-entry visas on a direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles. That's
because for some reason, some people from the CIA failed to notify any people at the FBI about
the terror summit that had just taken place. The "Day of Planes" plot was moving forward
without a kink.
In Los Angeles, some people met Hazmi and Midhar at the airport, provided the two
non-English speakers with a personal caretaker and rented them apartments, where neighbors said
they were routinely visited each night by unknown figures in expensive cars with darkened
windows. Those people were Saudi Arabian intelligence agents named Omar Bayoumi and Khaled
al-Thumairy.
Crawford , Texas
It was not until August 2001 that Midhar was placed on a terrorist watch list. That month,
some people met at a ranch in Crawford, Texas, and reviewed a classified document headlined,
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US." The bulletin was a page-and-a-half long, with
detailed intelligence on the "Day of Planes" plot provided by Ali Mohammed, the Al
Qaeda-FBI-CIA triple agent now registered as "John Doe" and disappeared somewhere in the
federal prison system. Those people reviewed the document for a few minutes before their boss,
President George W. Bush, moved on to other matters.
According to The Washington Post , Bush exhibited an "expansive mood" that day,
taking in a round of golf. "We are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die,
and it could be in the U.S.," CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned days later. Bush
did not meet with his cabinet heads again to discuss terrorism until Sept. 4.
A week later, on Sept. 11, some people did something.
They hijacked four civilian airliners and changed the course of American history with little
more than box cutter blades in their hands. Fifteen of those 19 people, including Hazmi and
Midhar, were citizens of Saudi Arabia. They were products of a Wahhabi school system and a
politically stultifying society that had thrived under the protection of a special relationship
with the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. had showered theocratic allies like Saudi Arabia with aid and
weapons while threatening secular Arab states that resisted its hegemony with sanctions and
invasion. The Saudis were the favorite Muslims of America's national security elite not because
they were moderate, which they absolutely were not, but because they were useful.
In the days after 9/11, the FBI
organized several flights to evacuate prominent Saudi families from the U.S., including
relatives of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Islamophobia erupted across the country, with even
mainstream personalities such as TV news anchor Dan Rather taking to the airwaves to claim
without evidence that Arab-Americans had celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
Unable to find a single operational Al Qaeda cell in the country, the FBI turned to an army
of paid snitches to haul in mentally unstable Muslims, dupes and idlers like the Lackawanna 6
in manufactured plots. Desperate for a high-profile bust to reinforce the "war on terror"
narrative, the bureau hounded Palestinian Muslim activists and persecuted prominent Islamic
charities like the Holy Land Foundation, sending its directors to prison for decades for the
crime of sending aid to NGOs in the occupied Gaza Strip.
As America's national security state cracked down on Muslim civil society at home, it turned
to fanatical Islamist proxies abroad to bring down secular and politically independent Arab
states. In Libya, the U.S. and UK helped arm the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a longtime
affiliate of Al Qaeda, using it as a proxy to depose and murder Muammar Gaddafi. As that
country transformed from a stable, prosperous state into an Afghanistan-style playground for
rival militias, including a chapter of the Islamic State, the Obama administration moved to do
the same to Damascus.
In Syria, the CIA armed an outfit of supposedly "moderate rebels" called the Free Syrian
Army that turned out to be nothing more than a political front and weapons farm for an array of
extremist insurgent factions including Al Qaeda's local affiliate and the Islamic State. The
latter two groups were, of course, products of the sectarian chaos of Iraq, which had been
ruled by a secular government until the U.S. came knocking after 9/11.
The blowback from Iraq, Libya and Syria arrived in the form of the worst refugee crises the
world has experienced since World War II. And then came the bloodiest terror attack to hit the
UK in history – in Manchester. There, the son of a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group member,
who traveled to Libya and Syria on an MI6 ratline, slaughtered concert-goers with a nail
bomb.
Cataclysmic social disruptions like these were like steroids for right-wing Islamophobes,
electrifying Trump's victorious 2016 presidential campaign, a wing of the Brexit "Leave"
campaign in the UK, and far-right parties across Europe. But as I explain in "The Management of
Savagery," these terrifying trends were byproducts of decisions undertaken by national security
elites more closely aligned with the political center – figures who today attempt to
position themselves as leaders of the anti-Trump resistance.
Which people did which things to drag us into the political nightmare we're living through?
For those willing to cut through the campaign season bluster, Ilhan Omar's comments dare us to
name names.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling
" Republican
Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," "
The
Fifty One Day War " and " The Management of
Savagery ," published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles
for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including "
Killing Gaza " and "
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie ." Blumenthal founded the
Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic
repercussions. 36 comments for "Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of 9/11"
Jeff Harrison , April 19, 2019 at 11:24
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic phrase
"leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of the world
has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading them.
bill haymes , April 19, 2019 at 05:20
everyone who has not examined ALL THE EVIDENCE of 9/11 WITH AN OPEN MIND is imo simply
whistling in the wind
Anarcissie , April 19, 2019 at 11:12
I suppose, then, that that would mean going back to the earliest days of the 20th century,
when the British leadership, considering that its future navy, a main pillar of its empire,
would have to be fueled with oil instead of coal, and that there was a lot of oil in the
Middle East, began its imperial projects there, which of course involved wars, police, spies,
economic blackmail, and other tools of empire. The US seized or wangled or inherited the
imperial system from the British and thus acquired the associated regional, ethnic, and
religious hostilities as well. Since the Arabs and other Muslims were weak compared with the
Great Powers, resistance meant terrorism and guerrilla warfare on one side and massive
intervention and the support of local strongmen, Mafia bosses, dictators, and so on on the
other.
After 9/11. mentioning this important fact became 'justifying bin Laden' or 'spitting on
the graves of the dead' so you couldn't talk about it.
But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a
conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open.
Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as
well.
Abe , April 18, 2019 at 23:23
Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of the pro-Israel Lobby
Max Blumenthal's article and his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery: How America's
National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (2019), is an
impressive exercise in burying the leads.
Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel
Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection
between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's
national security state.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has
interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has
corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to
initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and
has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media
to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all
that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That
country is, of course, Israel."
i really like her and support her but if she just had the good sense to have simply said
"some people did something terrible" none of the present chapter of "islamophobia" would be
acted out..no matter how much we think we know about the real truth(?) what happened that day
did not blow up the white house, congress or the ruling class of america but nearly three
thousand pretty ordinary folks yes, just like what "we" do repeatedly, but nevertheless, and
considering the overwhelming mind fuck that went on with replaying the tragedy on tv for days
so that millions across the nation were put in shock, we need to be just a little more
considerate and possibly understanding both about how many people might feel and how some
people might use any opportunity to perform this second rate islamophobia, which is a tiny
fractional form of the original monstrous behavior that has destroyed nations, governments
and millions of people in the islamic world..that is islamophobia, not the reactionary crap
that passes for it which should be as understandable – under the circumstances –
as terrorism!
Zhu , April 18, 2019 at 22:32
It should have been obvious that our government had made enemies around the world &
that some would attempt revenge some day. Instead, we all thought that what we did to other
people could never happen to us.
Joe Tedesky , April 18, 2019 at 21:41
This is a must read for the skeptics who doubt any questioning of the official 9/11
Commission Report. This investigative reporting by Max Blumenthal is another good reason to
read the Consortium.
hetro , April 18, 2019 at 17:18
Max Blumenthal's emphasis on "somebody did something" in echo to Ilhan Omar's comments,
plus his emphasis on what has been "suppressed," will hopefully lead on to further
disclosures of what took place for the 9/11 event.
Anyone who watches the Omar video will see she is mainly emphasizing a disgraceful
demonizing of Muslims in general. Additionally, what has brought on all the hatred to her,
she did not speak with the "quasi-theological understanding" that demands the official
narrative, with hushed tones, while speaking of the event:
Max Blumenthal above:
". . . by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves anti-Muslim
narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must
be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
It would be a fine thing for CN, despite Mr. Parry's former reservations, to open up
enquiry into further discussion of what has been "suppressed"–or at the very least to
the very serious questions that have not yet been answered on that horrible day.
OlyaPola , April 18, 2019 at 14:17
"Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal."
All processes of suppression tend to spread that which is being suppresed facilitating
de-suppression of much that is being suppressed leaving a residual.
Framing and access to sources may continue the lack of perception of this residual and
hence facilitate misrepresentation through ommission.
"Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly."
Restriction of frame is a tool of obfuscation and choice of point of initiation a tool of
misrepresentation.
During the early 1970's due to internal factors primarily but not wholly in the period of
1964 to 1970, the Politburo of the Soviet Union agreed detente on the bases of spheres of
influence with the United States of America facilitating the creation of a greater assay of
and reliance upon the US dollar fiat currency, further butressed by commodity arrangements
including but not restricted to the petro-dollar, in part to underpin the United States of
America economic recovery including recovering their control over their perceived threats
within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan.
In reaction/attempt at circumvention in 1973 Mitsui-Mitsubishi representing the zaibatsu
sought to jointly develop the Trans-Siberian railway, the port of Nahodka and other
industrial options including in Japan primarily in Northern Honshu and in Hokkaido with the
Soviet Union but this project was terminated by the Politburo, the reason given being
potential threats from China after confrontation including on the Amur and the need to build
BAM (Baikal-Amur Railway) to the north of the Trans-Siberian Railway – the projects
rejected were ancestor of the present OBOR project with differing participants re-explored
from 1993 onwards.
These opportunities and trajectories in the 1970's were explained to the Politburo in the
1970's but rejected by the Politburo.
The Soviet Union was invited into Afghanistan by the Afghani government and hence never
"invaded" Afghanistan.
The Politburo accepted the invitation of the Afghani government despite the advice of
those practiced in strategic evaluation – the illusion that the Politburo was practiced
in strategic evaluation endured in an ideological half-life post August 1968 but increasingly
was ignored in practice.
During the 1970's there was an oscillating aspect of contrariness and attempt to regain
perceived control in many of the decision of the Politburo led by the man who loved medals
and awards Mr. Brezhnev.
Consequently the Politburo and the Soviet Union was complicit in facilitating
opportunities for " Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert
operation to trap the Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft
underbelly."
However the targets of these operations were not restricted to the Soviet Union but
included as part of an ongoing "strategy" "to underpin the United States of America economic
recovery/maintainence including recovering/maintaining their control over their perceived
threats within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan." and the
location of these efforts were chosen the middle of Central Asia in reaction to experiences
in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Israel post 1973.
The above are necessarily thumbnails in confirmation and extension of the not widely
perceived causation/facilitation/ history/trajectories/time horizons which may aid
perception, as may testing the hypotheses that Ms. Omar is being attacked for challenging
myth irrespective of which myth she attempts to challenge.
"... Rep. Omar is playing around with assasination in taking on the Israeli Lobby and other powerful interests in Washington. I would be willing to bet that there are already contracts out on her life with the purpose of scaring anyone else from raising there head and stating the obvious. ..."
Good article. The problem is that no one in the USA gives a s**t about facts. The
Government is immune from public opinion. Of course the MSN is going to crucify her .
Rep.
Omar is playing around with assasination in taking on the Israeli Lobby and other powerful
interests in Washington. I would be willing to bet that there are already contracts out on
her life with the purpose of scaring anyone else from raising there head and stating the
obvious.
You're absolutely right. Americans are happy to believe the official narrative because it
doesn't threaten their comfy pathetic lives. What they don't seem to realize is that the rest
of the world doesn't share their blind gullibility.
Bigotry, violence, and extreme language – America, it all literally oozes from the
pores of your skin. You just look terrible anymore to outside observers.
"... But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open. Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as well. ..."
Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal.
... ... ...
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the
discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a
critical history that has been suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the
attacks occurred, when "some people did something." Many of those people served at the highest
levels of U.S. government, and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an
international network – and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Taliban 'Unimportant'
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy
weapons in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi
clerics such as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of
dollars worth of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them
to commit acts of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to
wreak havoc on the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause
with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
To some in Washington, the Taliban were a historical footnote. To others, they were allies
of convenience. As a top State Department diplomat commented to journalist Ahmed Rashid in
February 1997, "The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There be [the Saudi-owned
oil company] Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with
that."
CIA Cover-ups and Blowback
Back in the U.S., some people fueled the blowback from the Afghan proxy war. The Blind
Sheikh was given a special entry visa by the CIA as payback for the services he provided in
Afghanistan, allowing him to take over the al-Kifah Center in New York City, which had
functioned as the de facto U.S. arm of Al Qaeda's Services Bureau. Under his watch and with
help from bin Laden, some people and lots of aid were shuttled to the front lines of U.S. proxy
wars in Bosnia and Chechnya while the Clinton administration generally looked the other
way.
Though the Blind Sheikh was eventually convicted in a terror plot contrived by a paid
informant for the FBI, some people in federal law enforcement had been reluctant to indict him.
"There was a whole issue about [Abdel-Rahman] being given a visa to come into this country and
what the circumstances were around that," one of his defense lawyers, Abdeed Jabara told me.
"The issue related to how much the government was involved with the jihadist enterprise when it
suited their purposes in Afghanistan and whether or not they were afraid there would be
exposure of that. Because there's no question that the jihadists were using the Americans and
the Americans were using the jihadists. There's a symbiotic relationship."
During the 1995 trial of members of the Blind Sheikh's New York-based cell, another defense
lawyer, Roger Stavis, referred to his clients before the jury as "Team America," emphasizing
the role they had played as proxy fighters for the U.S. in Afghanistan. When Stavis attempted
to summon to the witness stand a jihadist operative named Ali Abdelsauod Mohammed who had
trained his clients in firearms and combat, some people ordered Mohammed to refuse his
subpoena. Those people, according to journalist Peter Lance, were federal prosecutors Andrew
McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald.
The government lawyers were apparently fretting that Mohammed would be exposed as an active
asset of both the CIA and FBI, and as a former Army sergeant who had spirited training manuals
out of Fort Bragg while stationed there during the 1980s. So Mohammed remained a free man,
helping Al Qaeda plan attacks on American consular facilities in Tanzania and Kenya while the
"Day of the Planes" plot began to take form.
In early 2000, some people gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to prepare the most daring Al
Qaeda operation to date. Two figures at the meeting, Saudi citizens named Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Midhar, were on their way to the United States. While in Kuala Lumpur, the duo's
hotel room was broken into by CIA agents, their passports were photographed, and their
communications were recorded. And yet the pair of Al Qaeda operatives was able to travel
together with multiple-entry visas on a direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles. That's
because for some reason, some people from the CIA failed to notify any people at the FBI about
the terror summit that had just taken place. The "Day of Planes" plot was moving forward
without a kink.
In Los Angeles, some people met Hazmi and Midhar at the airport, provided the two
non-English speakers with a personal caretaker and rented them apartments, where neighbors said
they were routinely visited each night by unknown figures in expensive cars with darkened
windows. Those people were Saudi Arabian intelligence agents named Omar Bayoumi and Khaled
al-Thumairy.
Crawford , Texas
It was not until August 2001 that Midhar was placed on a terrorist watch list. That month,
some people met at a ranch in Crawford, Texas, and reviewed a classified document headlined,
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US." The bulletin was a page-and-a-half long, with
detailed intelligence on the "Day of Planes" plot provided by Ali Mohammed, the Al
Qaeda-FBI-CIA triple agent now registered as "John Doe" and disappeared somewhere in the
federal prison system. Those people reviewed the document for a few minutes before their boss,
President George W. Bush, moved on to other matters.
According to The Washington Post , Bush exhibited an "expansive mood" that day,
taking in a round of golf. "We are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die,
and it could be in the U.S.," CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned days later. Bush
did not meet with his cabinet heads again to discuss terrorism until Sept. 4.
A week later, on Sept. 11, some people did something.
They hijacked four civilian airliners and changed the course of American history with little
more than box cutter blades in their hands. Fifteen of those 19 people, including Hazmi and
Midhar, were citizens of Saudi Arabia. They were products of a Wahhabi school system and a
politically stultifying society that had thrived under the protection of a special relationship
with the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. had showered theocratic allies like Saudi Arabia with aid and
weapons while threatening secular Arab states that resisted its hegemony with sanctions and
invasion. The Saudis were the favorite Muslims of America's national security elite not because
they were moderate, which they absolutely were not, but because they were useful.
In the days after 9/11, the FBI
organized several flights to evacuate prominent Saudi families from the U.S., including
relatives of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Islamophobia erupted across the country, with even
mainstream personalities such as TV news anchor Dan Rather taking to the airwaves to claim
without evidence that Arab-Americans had celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
Unable to find a single operational Al Qaeda cell in the country, the FBI turned to an army
of paid snitches to haul in mentally unstable Muslims, dupes and idlers like the Lackawanna 6
in manufactured plots. Desperate for a high-profile bust to reinforce the "war on terror"
narrative, the bureau hounded Palestinian Muslim activists and persecuted prominent Islamic
charities like the Holy Land Foundation, sending its directors to prison for decades for the
crime of sending aid to NGOs in the occupied Gaza Strip.
As America's national security state cracked down on Muslim civil society at home, it turned
to fanatical Islamist proxies abroad to bring down secular and politically independent Arab
states. In Libya, the U.S. and UK helped arm the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a longtime
affiliate of Al Qaeda, using it as a proxy to depose and murder Muammar Gaddafi. As that
country transformed from a stable, prosperous state into an Afghanistan-style playground for
rival militias, including a chapter of the Islamic State, the Obama administration moved to do
the same to Damascus.
In Syria, the CIA armed an outfit of supposedly "moderate rebels" called the Free Syrian
Army that turned out to be nothing more than a political front and weapons farm for an array of
extremist insurgent factions including Al Qaeda's local affiliate and the Islamic State. The
latter two groups were, of course, products of the sectarian chaos of Iraq, which had been
ruled by a secular government until the U.S. came knocking after 9/11.
The blowback from Iraq, Libya and Syria arrived in the form of the worst refugee crises the
world has experienced since World War II. And then came the bloodiest terror attack to hit the
UK in history – in Manchester. There, the son of a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group member,
who traveled to Libya and Syria on an MI6 ratline, slaughtered concert-goers with a nail
bomb.
Cataclysmic social disruptions like these were like steroids for right-wing Islamophobes,
electrifying Trump's victorious 2016 presidential campaign, a wing of the Brexit "Leave"
campaign in the UK, and far-right parties across Europe. But as I explain in "The Management of
Savagery," these terrifying trends were byproducts of decisions undertaken by national security
elites more closely aligned with the political center – figures who today attempt to
position themselves as leaders of the anti-Trump resistance.
Which people did which things to drag us into the political nightmare we're living through?
For those willing to cut through the campaign season bluster, Ilhan Omar's comments dare us to
name names.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling
" Republican
Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," "
The
Fifty One Day War " and " The Management of
Savagery ," published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles
for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including "
Killing Gaza " and "
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie ." Blumenthal founded the
Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic
repercussions. 36 comments for "Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of 9/11"
Jeff Harrison , April 19, 2019 at 11:24
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic phrase
"leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of the world
has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading them.
bill haymes , April 19, 2019 at 05:20
everyone who has not examined ALL THE EVIDENCE of 9/11 WITH AN OPEN MIND is imo simply
whistling in the wind
Anarcissie , April 19, 2019 at 11:12
I suppose, then, that that would mean going back to the earliest days of the 20th century,
when the British leadership, considering that its future navy, a main pillar of its empire,
would have to be fueled with oil instead of coal, and that there was a lot of oil in the
Middle East, began its imperial projects there, which of course involved wars, police, spies,
economic blackmail, and other tools of empire. The US seized or wangled or inherited the
imperial system from the British and thus acquired the associated regional, ethnic, and
religious hostilities as well. Since the Arabs and other Muslims were weak compared with the
Great Powers, resistance meant terrorism and guerrilla warfare on one side and massive
intervention and the support of local strongmen, Mafia bosses, dictators, and so on on the
other.
After 9/11. mentioning this important fact became 'justifying bin Laden' or 'spitting on
the graves of the dead' so you couldn't talk about it.
But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a
conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open.
Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as
well.
Abe , April 18, 2019 at 23:23
Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of the pro-Israel Lobby
Max Blumenthal's article and his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery: How America's
National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (2019), is an
impressive exercise in burying the leads.
Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel
Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection
between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's
national security state.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has
interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has
corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to
initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and
has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media
to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all
that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That
country is, of course, Israel."
i really like her and support her but if she just had the good sense to have simply said
"some people did something terrible" none of the present chapter of "islamophobia" would be
acted out..no matter how much we think we know about the real truth(?) what happened that day
did not blow up the white house, congress or the ruling class of america but nearly three
thousand pretty ordinary folks yes, just like what "we" do repeatedly, but nevertheless, and
considering the overwhelming mind fuck that went on with replaying the tragedy on tv for days
so that millions across the nation were put in shock, we need to be just a little more
considerate and possibly understanding both about how many people might feel and how some
people might use any opportunity to perform this second rate islamophobia, which is a tiny
fractional form of the original monstrous behavior that has destroyed nations, governments
and millions of people in the islamic world..that is islamophobia, not the reactionary crap
that passes for it which should be as understandable – under the circumstances –
as terrorism!
Zhu , April 18, 2019 at 22:32
It should have been obvious that our government had made enemies around the world &
that some would attempt revenge some day. Instead, we all thought that what we did to other
people could never happen to us.
Joe Tedesky , April 18, 2019 at 21:41
This is a must read for the skeptics who doubt any questioning of the official 9/11
Commission Report. This investigative reporting by Max Blumenthal is another good reason to
read the Consortium.
hetro , April 18, 2019 at 17:18
Max Blumenthal's emphasis on "somebody did something" in echo to Ilhan Omar's comments,
plus his emphasis on what has been "suppressed," will hopefully lead on to further
disclosures of what took place for the 9/11 event.
Anyone who watches the Omar video will see she is mainly emphasizing a disgraceful
demonizing of Muslims in general. Additionally, what has brought on all the hatred to her,
she did not speak with the "quasi-theological understanding" that demands the official
narrative, with hushed tones, while speaking of the event:
Max Blumenthal above:
". . . by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves anti-Muslim
narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must
be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
It would be a fine thing for CN, despite Mr. Parry's former reservations, to open up
enquiry into further discussion of what has been "suppressed"–or at the very least to
the very serious questions that have not yet been answered on that horrible day.
