Why Not Let Them Hate Us, as long as They Fear Us?
Posted by Ingolf on Thursday, February 8, 2007
Much as I hesitate to introduce yet another post with a plug for LNL, the interview with Chas Freeman last night obliges me to take the risk. Now retired, he was, as well as holding many other distinguished positions, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Terrific speaker . . . . . low key, intelligent, well informed with a humour so dry as to almost be invisible.
I was curious about this fellow and so had a look on Google. Found a few interesting things, amongst which was this transcript of a speech given late last year to the United States Information Agency Alumni Association. In it, he sums up the radical deterioration in the US position in the last five years particularly well, I thought, and does so as an insider. The title of this post is the one he used for that talk. Indeed, his opening words were:
“We are gathered together to reflect upon our country’s adoption of Caligula’s motto for effective foreign policy — ODERINT DUM METUANT — ‘let them hate us, as long as they fear us.’ As we do so, let us observe a brief moment of silence for the United States Information Agency and also for our republic, both of which long stood for a different approach.”
Although he takes care to trace the decline in America’s influence and reputation to well before the current administration, there’s no doubt things have taken a sharp turn for the worse on its watch. The post 9/11 American descent into a kind of serial irrationality, one that also found slight echoes here, he puts down to “the equivalent of a national nervous breakdown”. I think that’s right. Certainly measured judgement, openness to reality and awareness of the aspirations and viewpoints of others largely vanished on that day and have not yet reappeared. This despite the rebuke handed out to the White House and the Republicans in the recent election.
It’s particularly alarming that the cognitive dissonance so apparent in US policy vis a vis Iraq is, even in the face of overwhelming public dissatisfaction with that benighted enterprise, flourishing around the question of what to do about Iran. If anything, the principle Democratic candidates appear more bloodthirsty than the administration. As Freeman pungently puts it:
“Both Republicans and Democrats seem to consider that statecraft boils down to two options: appeasement; or sanctions followed by military assault. Both behave as though national security and grand strategy require no more than a military component and as though feeding the military-industrial complex is the only way to secure our nation. Both praise our armed forces, ignore their cavils about excessive reliance on the use of force, count on them to attempt forlorn tasks, lament their sacrifices, and blithely propose still more feckless tasks and ill-considered deployments for them. Together, our two parties are well along in destroying the finest military the world has ever seen. “
Critical though they are to the health of a democracy, the separation of powers and checks and balances Cam discussed in his earlier post on “Democracy and Empire” may in fact have limited application when the entire body politic is in thrall to an essentially emotional, fear based state. While some Americans are in the process of slowly emerging from this largely self-induced nightmare, it seems the political leadership lags far behind, obsessed with not appearing weak, belligerent to a fault and almost entirely impervious to rational analysis. Despite the manifest failure of current policy, and the frantic scrambling to find a solution to the resulting impasse, it would seem an attack on Iran can’t with confidence be ruled out. Truly extraordinary.
Freeman attempts, at the end of this talk, to sum up the present dilemma and propose in broad terms the way forward:
“We have lost international support not because foreigners hate our values but because they believe we are repudiating them and behaving contrary to them. To prevail, we must remember who we are and what we stand for. If we can rediscover and reaffirm the identity and values that made our republic so great, we will find much support abroad, including among those in the Muslim world we now wrongly dismiss as enemies rather than friends.
To rediscover public diplomacy and to practice it successfully, in other words, we must repudiate Caligula’s maxim and replace it with our traditional respect for the opinion of mankind. I do not think it is beyond us to do so. We are a far better and more courageous people than we currently appear. But when we do restore ourselves to mental balance, we will, I fear, find that decades are required - it will take decades - to rebuild the appeal and influence our post-9/11 psychoses took a mere five years to destroy.”
That seems about right. The fear I can’t quite shake is that the lingering madness which still seems to infect American political judgement will prove sufficiently strong to drive them, and us, over a cliff.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 1:51 PM and filed under Politics - international, Society, Terror.
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For about ten years Romolo who ran Cafe Lella in Green Square in Kingston (ACT) had a sign up on the cafe’s wall ‘Let them hate, so long as they fear’.
He was a funny guy - especially when sending us up - as with his chants (in an Italian accent) of ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.
His spaghetti gamberi (is that how you spell it) has no equal. He’s now plying his trade with some others in Yarralumla - not sure if the sign has reappeared.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 2:47 pm | PermalinkWe should make up a roster for LNL follow-up posts, Ingolf, to prevent any one individual from seeming obsessed.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 3:11 pm | PermalinkWith a two for two score so far, James, in percentage terms at least I’m obviously the primo candidate. I shall have to choose my next foray with care.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 3:23 pm | PermalinkPlease could you two stick to the topic - spaghetti gamberi.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 5:17 pm | PermalinkBit like herding cats, isn’t it?
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 5:21 pm | PermalinkHarder than herding prawns.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 5:26 pm | PermalinkDo you think a trip to Yarralumla may be necessary to corral this unfolding obsession?
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 5:33 pm | PermalinkThanx for the link to this fine Freeman speech. Most of his observations are imho spot-on, going right to the root of the problem the US faces these days in its foreign affairs, and may I add, increasingly Australia too.
Somehow he delivers a before and after shot of the US image abroad, with this being the before package:
This itself is a pretty rosy appraisal of the US, certainly not how I perceived the US and its gun barrel diplomacy throughout my years on this planet, but then again, I am one of those Vietnam critics, one that hasn’t been “silenced†by the non-existing spectacle of success. Freeman tries to coat last century’s US foreign policy in a cloak of success, depicting the nation as the world’s knight in shining armour who stuck to and defended international laws and freed the suffering princess from the communist dragon.
The institutions he mentions were created by the US after WW2 in order to institutionalise and cement American dominance, make their will look like the legitimate will of the free world. He speaks of ‘generous attention to the development of other nations’, although I am almost certain there are plenty of nations who would have wished less for less US attention, lets say most of the Middle & South American states, where US hegemonic wet dreams have been a plague since the beginning of the 20th century. Palestine and the Middle East are in the state they are in because of a less than admirable US foreign policy that lasted for nearly half of the last century, hardly a success by anyone’s standard (apart from Israel, a point that Freeman didn’t miss to make). I am sure there is some truth in what he is saying about how well respected the US was before the bite on 9/11 caused the country’s infection with national rabies, making its foreign affairs policies exceptionally aggressive, attack without provocation, and exhibit otherwise uncharacteristic behavior, but I wouldn’t come to such a positive evaluation of the US pre 9/11.
Freeman’s After picture:
Pretty strong words by a former ambassador, but there is no denying, a large chunk of the American population has no problems sending their kids of to war, it’s seen as patriotic to serve the country with honour. And that means killing other people, armed or unarmed, by the millions if necessary. Which is it seems OK with many US voters, as long as the US number of casualties stays low it’s a good war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two cities and its citizens burned to the crisp in order to save US soldiers lives, no long and drawn out invasion which could cost US lives, no no, just nuke two cities and get Japan to surrender. And not much has changed over the decades, aerial bombing is still the preferred choice of weapon, to Vietnam, to Yugoslavia right through to Iraq. “Softening up the targetâ€. No matter what and where the problem is, battle field or suburb, to solve it - always bomb the living crap out of it first. Neither the US military nor any other official US agency counts the number of victims, they are of no relevance, and that not only since 9/11. Civilian casualties are numbers many US voters don’t want to know, possibly because it could trouble their conscience. Looking at the list of wars the US was involved in over the years, one gets the idea that the electorate is generally at ease with its soldiers enforcing US interests, errr dropping bombs on nations who have never attacked the US.
Once the willingness within the population disappears to accept sheepishly the presidents decisions to use military means to achieve the foreign policy goals, once the US voters start contemplating the human tragedies they are causing with their militarism instead of, as they are told, preventing, thats when there is a chance for change. Once as a nation they are actually held liable for damages caused in their name like the crippled humans in Vietnam, then there is a chance for change. However, as long as the Superman-syndrome, or as Freeman calls it ‘our sacrifices to defend small states against larger predators’ view remains the US punter’s preferred idea of what their soldiers do when deployed overseas, as long will the States have to live with the stigma of being ignorant and indifferent.
As the man himself said it in this John Wayne classic:
Sergeant John M. Stryker (Sands of Iwo Jima):
“A lot of guys make mistakes, I guess, but every one we make, a whole stack of chips goes with it. We make a mistake, and some guy don’t walk away - forevermore, he don’t walk away.”
And finally, Freeman’s line
seems to be his conclusion on what causes this image loss across the globe. That is too easy a way out for my liking, the ‘if only the rest of the world would only understand our best intentions’ defence. That is neo-con and self-delusional dribble. The US is understood abroad, don’t worry, actions speak for themselves.
GW Bush, John Howard and Tony Bliar were all three re-elected despite the fact that they started a war for no good reason and are responsible for potentially hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. That is a result that’s hard to misinterpret, it confirms to the rest of the world that the majority of those three countries population is happy for its military to invade foreign countries and wreak havoc. No second guessing needed.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 10:25 pm | PermalinkClearly you are caring human being. There can be no doubt of that. But to think that you have a monopoly on caring because you percieve your views to be “the caring views,” however, is a demonstration of ideology, not truth. The nexus of Geopolitics, Economics, Necessity, Emotionalism, Propaganda and Truth is so much more complicated than you seem to suggest. Neoconservatives love their children, and other’s, too. Quelle horreur!
Furthermore, your charaterization of the people of U.S. and our participation in the 20th century is a sad sad simplification. Whenever I hear these lines of arguments my first instinct is to ask “Are you a fan of Chomsky, Znet, Howard Zinn and The Nation?” In America the answer to that question is usually yes. Then when I ask, “who do you read on the other side?” I get a blank stare. Or “I don’t read that right wing fascist garbage!” Or something similar. I used to be the same way, until I broke out of the bubble and started reading more widely. The world is so much more complicated than the anti-war marxian crowd allows.
It would take me all day to address all the half-truths you repeat above. The one that struck me quickest is the one that often causes the most brain fog with respect to the twentieth century. And that is the heedless shrugging-off of the horrors of the Soviet union while simultaneously scrutinizing american actions according to Soviet propaganda paradigms. This results in a complete misunderstanding of the cold war and, often, venemous self-righteous hatred toward the U.S.
Once this ideologically-cleansed mindset is achieved, it acts as a funnel down which all facts travel. It’s all America’s fault. Rinse and repeat.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 1:24 am | Permalink‘I used to be the same way, until I broke out of the bubble and started reading more widely…’
Ahah! The old ‘I used to think that’ gambit. I used to subscribe to the opinion you currently hold. Therefore I understand the logic underpinning all your arguments. But since, as you see, I no longer subscibe to that opinion, it must follow that the logic is flawed. QED.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 8:52 am | PermalinkThe point stands, that everyone should look at the countering arguments to what they believe for the sake of intellectual honesty. I used my particular educational journey as an example and a plea, not as a proof of anything. That is your imputation.
Furthermore, I felt the point about the Soviet Union was a telling one. And one that tends to be associated with an ideological imperviousness that I believe needs to be combatted. Again I say it is simply impossible to understand the twentieth century without taking a long, hard, cold look at the atrocities of the Soviet System and the enormous impact they had upon the world. This in turn tends to temper one’s views toward the United States given how much of America’s actions and reactions were predicated on the fact that the Soviet Union was a threat to the civilized world.
If you do not believe that the Soviet Union was a threat to the civilized world, or at least not much of one, I would suggest a little more study of the other side of the ledger was in order. Assuming other ideas are entertainable, of course.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 10:54 am | PermalinkJuan, I don’t think Freeman for one moment holds the view that America’s loss of respect and liking around the world is primarily due to being “misevaluated and misunderstood”. I imagine much of the boilerplate extolling America’s past virtues as well as that comment are a kind of reflexive act of diplomacy, particularly when addressing an audience such as the US Information Agency Alumni Association.
The following two sentences alone provide sufficient evidence that he’s very clear on where the blame lies for the current unhappy state of affairs:
Not much wriggle room there.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 11:13 am | PermalinkKevin,
We’re grown ups here. Of course we believe that the Soviet Union was a threat to the civilised world. It was an abomination.
May I suggest you try to take in some of the criticisms of your once great country on their merits?
I guess we could tell David Hicks about how terrible the Soviet Union was. But that wouldn’t really be germane to the issue as he sits there chained to the floor without proper charges or trial for five years while your own nationals accused of the same things were removed and tried in a court of law.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 11:14 am | PermalinkKevin, I can’t speak for James but I’d be astonished if he disagreed with your exhortation to “look at the countering arguments to what they believe for the sake of intellectual honesty”. I certainly wouldn’t.
What is striking is that you don’t engage with Freeman’s arguments. This is a man who I’d imagine you would accept as an American patriot, one who has spent much of his professional life fighting the good fight, as he would see it, not least against the Soviet Union and its satellites and proxies. I very much doubt he needs reminding about any aspect of the Cold War. And yet he’s devastated by the egregious folly of US policy.
I listened carefully to the interview with him that prompted this post and there was not a hint of schadenfreude. All his energy is devoted to trying to steer a country he clearly loves back onto a sensible course, one that may in time return it to the favoured position in the world’s affections it so long held.
And your response to all of this is to quibble about Juan’s possible exaggerations and James’ clear indentification of a rhetorical gambit?
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 11:42 am | PermalinkEvery so often someone shows up in the comments box who posts long comments, one quarter of which constitute actual arguments, with the remainder devoted to accusing people who don’t agrre with them of being uninformed, narrowly read, under the spell of leftwing ideologues, lacking intellectual honesty, motivated by hate, etc., etc. A stock feature of these comments is a transcript of a conversation with some cariacature leftist who illustrates all these lamentable traits. Presumably readers are supposed to recognise themselves in these portraits, recoil in horror, and recant.
You are the latest in the procession, Kevin. I have no objection to hearing your arguments, but you would do us all a favour, and save yourself a lot of typing, by skipping all the other stuff. We’ll just take it as read.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 11:42 am | PermalinkOn the etiquette required of the posters to this board, all I can say in my own defense is I am learning.
In my above comments I was directly addressing Mr. Moment’s opinions, which I assume are available to be commented upon. I was not addressing Mr. Freeman. Mr. Gruen your defense of Mr. Moment’s knowledge of the Soviet Union does not seem to borne out by what he wrote.
On the Freeman piece, I think we can all appreciate it for what it is, an informed opinion piece by a respected former ambassador. Whether we judge Mr. Freeman’s opinions in a favorable or unfavorable light seems a purely subjective matter — based upon which information set we are subjected to, or in some cases, predisposed to. This is not to say that I don’t agree with him on many points. But I can’t help feeling that the intense hatred many feel for our current president is the main culprit of much of the current ill will directed toward my country. I think the west will return to more friendly terms when he is out of office, no matter who replaces him.
By the way, “once great country” is pretty funny. Everything that was great about the U.S. is still intact, I assure you, despite what the hysterical media has to say.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 1:01 pm | PermalinkWhether a country is great is less about material means than it is about spirit and character, Kevin. As it happens, the nuts and bolts part has also suffered considerable decline in recent years.
As to board requirements, as far as I can see its etiquette seems fairly simply centred around respect and avoiding ad hominem arguments. I’m sure you can make whatever sort of argument you feel best promotes your view of the world, but as James indicated, how receptive people will be depends on your credibility. For my part, your tendency to sidestep by shifting the focus to where you can hammer away at tried and trusted themes reduces the pleasure of the conversation. As does the regular procession of straw men you raise only to demolish.
It strikes me as odd that you could imagine such transparent techniques would serve any useful purpose on a board such as Troppo.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 1:50 pm | PermalinkIngolf,
You write: “Whether a country is great is less about material means than it is about spirit and character, Kevin. As it happens, the nuts and bolts part has also suffered considerable decline in recent years.”
To the first part I say, yes, of course. And no doubt Democratic and Media loathing of our president has worsened the admittedly annoying fact of his presence in leadership. But that is all cosmetics. And insofar as the cosmetics affect the spirit of this nation, it is still a temporary proposition. The war, as well as the resulting debates over individual rights versus collective security, is certainly taking its toll on the American Psyche. But I think these are unavoidable factors during a time of crisis, exacerbated by the presence of the inarticulate Mr. Bush in office and an hysterical left press that despises him and wildly mischaracterizes his party to the public and the world.
To the second part I say, do you have some evidence of this? Are you under the impression that the wheels are falling off over here?
As far as “tried and trusted themes” goes, I only address them as they come up and affect thinking. In the case of Mr. Moment’s characterizations of the cold war, I think my repudiation was legitimate. He was wrong to diminish or shrug off Soviet culpabilities during the cold war, and it seemed to me the rest of his post demonstrated that this was naturally titling his thinking about America toward the negative end of the spectrum. This led me to make the analogy that most of those who share his view in this country tend to have a preferred reading list. I was hoping he would respond with information that either rejected or confirmed the applicability of my analogy.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 3:08 pm | PermalinkKevin,
Lets have an argument on the merits?
Oh - and yes those Soviets were very very nasty indeed. Very nasty.
If you’d like like a latter day Cato I’ll repeat that at the every comment.
Very nasty indeed. I wish people appreciated that more . . .
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 3:25 pm | PermalinkNicholas Gruen,
The repetition re: Soviet Super-Badness was necessary in order to explain myself in this thread. I would have thought that obvious. And, as you already undoubtably know, your sarcasm is hilarious and withering.
kev
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 3:46 pm | Permalink[...] a personal level, I’ve been most impressed with new Troppodillian Ingolf, and recommend his piece on the twists and turns of US foreign policy - which seems to be taking its cues from nutjob Roman [...]
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 3:51 pm | PermalinkYes, my sarcasm wasn’t very nice, but I think if you really understood how nasty those Soviets were you’d appreciate that I’m a fairly easy going guy.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 3:56 pm | PermalinkYes, but you’re no Caligula.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 4:31 pm | PermalinkWas it Caligula - I thought it was a latter Emperor? That’s what the sign in Romolo’s cafe said (I think).
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 4:54 pm | PermalinkCicero.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 5:14 pm | PermalinkAccording to Wikipedia (sprinkles salt), Caligula cribbed it from an earlier (Republican even) tragic poet, Lucius Accius (170 BC).
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 5:45 pm | PermalinkMy bartlett’s quotations says, Lucius Accius 170-86 BC, fragment. The footnote says: From a lost tragedy. Frequently cited by Cicero and others. Suetonius says that Caligula was fond of quoting it.
It also references Quintus Ennius who said “whom they fear they hate” and Machiavelli with “From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 6:01 pm | PermalinkThe New Penguin Dic. Quot. adds that it was quoted in Cicero’s Philippic (1.14). He didn’t use it approvingly.
Seneca also used the phrase to disparage the principle in De Ira (On Anger) 1.20.4
Caligula seems to be the only one who used the phrase approvingly.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 6:39 pm | PermalinkKevin, you say you only address “tried and trusted themes” as they “come up and affect thinking.” I can see that you might wish to inject some balance into the picture painted by Juan and that to do this, mention must be made of the part played by the other great actor in the post WWII world.
Still, you know my views on this subject from our earlier long exchange and Nicholas certainly made his clear, so wherein lies the virtue — or necessity as you might have it — in sticking to your favoured side of the ledger and ignoring or downplaying the other? As I was at pains to point out so that this conversation might have a chance of moving on, Ambassador Freeman is unlikely to need reminders on the harsh realities of the Cold War. That’s what I meant by sidestepping.
As I see it, your insistent focus on the invidious media plays a similarly useful role. Now, I grant you many of them are getting a bit toey with Mr Bush recently, but from 9/11 until not that long ago they couldn’t have been more obsequious if they’d been indentured servants. So the issue of balance cuts both ways. For the record, lest I find myself pigeonholed, I’m not at all sure I’d be any more comfortable with a President Hillary Clinton, for example, than the current incumbent. The sickness in the American body politic is in my view quite pervasive.
Finally, a quick word on the nuts and bolts. How would you characterise an heir to a great fortune who, through a combination of excessive consumption, grandiose gestures and ill-advised adventures is not only chewing through the accumulated wealth of generations but also putting himself ever more at the mercy of his lenders? For that, in a nutshell, and with all due allowance made for a bit of hyperbole, is how I see the US today.
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 10:41 pm | PermalinkIngolf,
You wrote: Still, you know my views on this subject from our earlier long exchange and Nicholas certainly made his clear, so wherein lies the virtue — or necessity as you might have it — in sticking to your favoured side of the ledger and ignoring or downplaying the other?
Simply, I was addressing Juan on the matter at first, not you or Mr. Gruen. When you both posted regarding my post, it seemed reasonable to respond to that as well. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan had it, one is entitled to one’s own opinion, but not to one’s own facts. In that regard, I contend that you and maybe most on this board, have not read Mitrokhin, for instance. But Chomsky will have found a place. Am I supposed to respect that “choice” because you have already expressed your opinion on the matter?
As far as “sticking to my favored side of the ledger and ingnoring the other” this seems a bit of a flippancy. An attempt to correct the record is not an attempt to distort it. You seem to not realize the relentless anti-american tone of much of what is coming out of your keyboard. Must I add to it to play in your club? I don’t see how relentless self-flaggelation is useful, but if that’s what is required mea culpa, Iran Contra!
And I find it telling that you would select the ambassador’s laundry-list diatribe to emphasize on troppo, rather than some essay counter to what you believe. That strikes me as not much of a self-challenge.
And really, you complain about opinion, but how much of the ambassador’s speech which you’re so fond of is in fact fact-checkable? It is nearly all opinion. The man has had a distinguished career undoubtably, but that does not make his word iron clad, let alone his opinion. He isn’t even producing testimony, except for his note that abroad he finds himself more a pariah among his friends than he had before. And the following is almost boilerplate by now:
At the mention of Guantanamo the people shudder! Abu Ghraib, the worst atrocity in history! The Iraq intelligence, cherry picked, cooked… brave dissenters crushed under the jackboot of a fascist torturing warmongering theocratic oil-garchy!
How does one who has investigated the details of these matters over several years, begin to address those who believe these hysterical simplifications. If you have not yet met with the countering arguments and explanations to all of the above charges, it seems very likely you don’t want to. What dent can little old me make in that kind of armour?
There was a story in Newsweek about a Koran being flushed down the toilet by a Guantanamo guard. People were killed in the subsequent riots. The story was not true. Newsweek printed a retraction. Those killed in the riots impressed by the retraction, later returned from the dead. Were you aware of the Koran story? If so, were you aware it was false?
What interest do you show in the fleet of jet fighters found buried in the deserts of Iraq? Do you connect that up to Pacepa’s explanation of the Soviet Saarindar program? Does oil-for-food explain any of the diplomatic impasse over the Iraq war to you? Why hasn’t The New York Times editorial page printed a retraction of Joe Wilson’s famous Niger piece, given that his testimony to the Iraq Study group and his report to the CIA directly contradicts it?
Is there time enough in the day to explain how the democratic party in this country manipulates world opinion and then uses world response as a political tool at home? Do I have to explain all the mechanisms by which this is accomplished? There just simply isn’t enough time. That is why I try to correct the big errors as I see them and hope that it will have a trickle down effect.
If you want to truly challenge yourself why not respond to this snippet of an interview between John Burns of the New York Times and Tim Russert of NBC News. This is the kind of partisan-deflating clarity I consider worth discussing, rather than some ambassador’s garbage-media-based screed: (I will post it following…)
P.S. Our war department budget is at a lower percentage of GDP now than it ever has been historically. The debt is going downwards and should be balanced in five years. The stock market is doing great. Tax receipts are at a record. The Libraries, Museums, and Post Offices remain open and functional. The innovations coming out of american industry, technical and medical research labs, etc. are literally by-the-minute. The accumulated wealth ofAmerica is in fact compiling because that wealth is in the hands of the people and they are innovating with it. We are eating too much, I must admit and I am not happy with the profusion of stultifying video games among the youngsters. And of course the lack of Health Insurance for many in this country is a scandal. The sky, nevertheless, is not falling, grandiose gestures or not.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 12:51 am | PermalinkHere is the snippet I mentioned:
Tim Russert: “John, was it possible for our policy makers to truly understand the way Iraqis would have reacted? The judgments made here were that when we went in we would be greeted as quote, ‘liberators,’ to quote Dick, Vice President’s Cheney’s phrase, that they were prepared, in effect, to take governing into their own hands, that they were so upset and had been so downtrodden by Saddam Hussein that they would embrace democracy and rise up, almost immediately.â€
John Burns, New York Times: “Well first of all, I think, again, to be fair, the American troops were greeted as liberators. We saw it. It lasted very briefly, it was exhausted quickly by the looting and the astonishment and puzzlement and finally anger of Iraqis that nothing, or very little was done to stop that. I think that to be fair to the United States, when I speak as a citizen of the United Kingdom, I think that the instincts that led to much that went wrong were good American instincts: the desire not to have too heavy of a footprint, the desire to empower Iraqis.
“But, and I think that the policy makers in Washington, and to be on honest with you the journalists also, to speak for myself, completely miscalculated the impact of 30 years of violent, brutal repression on the Iraqi people and their willingness, in President Bush’s phrase, ‘ to stand up’ for themselves, to take authority, to take risks. Why did we who, people like Rajiv [fellow guest Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post] and myself who were there under Saddam, why did we not fully understand that? I think it’s because we were extremely limited by the Saddam’s regime as to where we could go and where we could go and speak to and what we wrote about mostly — certainly I can speak for myself — was what was most palpable and accessible to us which was the terror, it was real.
“To that extent, I suppose you’d have to say people like myself enabled what happened, the decisions made here to go into Iraq and I’m not going to apologize for that. I’ve been to, I think many of the world’s nastiest places in a 30 year career as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and Iraq was, by a long way saving only North Korea, the nastiest place I’ve ever been. It was a truly terrible place and what I think we were transfixed by was the notion that if you could remove this of carapace of terror and you could liberate the Iraqi people, many good things would happen. We just didn’t understand, and perhaps didn’t work hard enough to understand, what lay beneath this carapace which is a deeply fractured society that had always been held together, since the British constructed it, by drawing geometric lines on the map — Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia in the 1920s — a country that had really always been held together by force and varying degrees repression. The King, King Faisal, is remembered, the King who was assassinated in 1958, as a kind of golden era, but even that is really, was not really a parliamentary democracy. It was still basically an autocratic state and I think we needed to understand better the forces that we were going to liberate.
“And my guess is that history will say that the forces that we liberated by invading Iraq were so powerful and so uncontrollable that virtually nothing the United States might have done, except to impose its own repressive state with half a million troops, which might have had to last ten years or more, nothing we could have done would have effectively prevented this disintegration that is now occurring.â€
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 12:57 am | PermalinkThe gloves come off again, it seems.
Kevin, I know from our long previous conversation that you’re convinced the west faces a “massive, irrational, devious existential threat†and that “people’s minds are being shielded by their own ostrich-like proclivities and the ideologues who would exploit them; multi-culti mullahs, and the ayatollas of isolation.†I don’t think fear, especially such existential fear, is at all conducive to measured analysis.
Indeed, you went on to say in your last post on that other thread:
“I am tempted to say — in fact I will say — I would rather rather run roughshod over the entire islamic world until the cancer of Islamism is stamped out, and have the world hate us for a thousand years, than leave the world to be destroyed for its own fine principles.
That is my principle. We can always apologize afterwards.â€
We stand about as far apart on this issue as is realistically possible and should probably have heeded that bit of advice from George Kennan I quoted back then, only partly in jest: “In international — as in personal — life, the best recipe for coexistence between very different people is elaborate courtesy — and distance.â€
In my last post of that thread I also tried to help you understand why, as I put it, “no amount of detailed argumentation on your part – no matter how good – is likely to make much difference to my in principle take on these matters.â€
That of course still holds true and I therefore have no wish to attempt to confirm or deny the claims you make about jet fighters, or the Soviet Saarindar programme, or any of the rest. Even if they were all true – which prima facie seems unlikely to me given that the administration, as far as I know, hasn’t used them to bolster its case — it wouldn’t change my view that America’s strategy in the Middle East over the last few decades has for the most part been tragically counterproductive. My concern, and principle reason for writing this most recent post, is that the current dislocation in the psyche of American political life may be profound enough to produce an even more dangerous turning.
As for the John Burns interview, it didn’t contain anything very surprising. I’m clearly not in a position to properly judge the accuracy of his diagnosis but, assuming it’s spot on, it tends if anything to confirm the folly of taking such a momentous step with no way of being able to either predict or control the consequences.
One small final personal matter, Kevin. You obviously see me as anti-American. I don’t view myself that way, and I would have hoped that much was apparent from both my words and manner. I’m simply saddened by how far it has strayed from the principles that made it great and hope that it will in time find its way home again. You will perhaps view that sentiment as patronising, or disingenuous . . . . I don’t know, but to the extent my word has any meaning for you, rest assured it is true.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 10:58 am | PermalinkIngolf,
I take you at your word that you admire the America of Yore. When that particular Edenic America existed, I don’t know. To my mind, the principles you appreciate are all still intact and emanating from our shores. But there is a cloud of hysteria stretching across the Atlantic that often blocks the rays.
I have never thought you were, in fact, anti american. But I do believe that what you often say is, let us say, counterproductive. Not just to American interests, but to Western interests all told, including your own.
Eventually, if the Iraq and Afghan projects succeed, and they still may well, the world will settle down into an era of unprecidented prosperity. I hope if that time comes, you will look back at this grandiose gesture and say “even though I thought it was clueless and poorly executed, headed by an oafish character and his machiavellian minions, in the end it was for the best.”
If I may attempt to crack your information bubble again: Condeleeza Rice was quoted as asking administration officials to play down the Russia angle. This was obviously a strategic assessment to keep the war, and the concentration of the American people, focused on the projects at hand. Despite the ludicrous amount of Russian weaponry at the ready throughout that region.
The buried warplanes in the desert are factual. Mitrokhin is there waiting for you. Pacepa’s revelations are fascinating and illuminating. Georges Sada might be worth a look too. Closing your ears to facts and opinions not coming through your narrow slit to the world fairly well contradicts the erudition your grammar posits. How could you consider yourself educated when you’re only allowing in half the story? You betray yourself.
The quote of mine you cite, “hate us for a thousand years” was in regard to the either/or scenario. It seems obvious enough that it is rhetoric — “poetic” exaggeration used to exemplify my firmness. It was not a recipe, how could it be. It went to this idea, which relates to the idea of propaganda: If America’s choice is either stave off Islamist expansionism at the sacrifice of its “good standing” in the world, or pussyfoot around expanding Islamism so that the free thinking world opines we’re swell, I would choose the former. Bad opinion can always swing around to a good reality. The reverse is unlikely to be the case.
The Russert inteview is in direct contradiction to many of the hysterical “observations” of Freedman’s. Particularly in the area of the supposed bad faith of the administration. Incidentally, the Saudis did not want the iraq war to happen, for several reasons. The fact that Freedman was the Saudi Ambassador is interesting, in this light.
Furthermore, in case you didn’t know, the U.S. State Department tends to be Democrat-run, diplomatic, and thus, nearly by definition, pacifist. The joke about state is, it always believes in more negotiation.
On the uses of fear and rational analysis: Fear is what has kept man alive for the millenia. It is the ultimate in rationality in that sense. That which keeps us on our toes, keeps us alive. Analysis, properly utilized, has been used to create defenses, weapons and strategies, all based on alleviating fear by outthinking enemies — that we may kill them first. Or find a way to co-opt them, if such a possibilitly arises.
Abstract Rationalists (Critiques offered but never Ideas, Considerations gathered but never Willpower) are often considered weak because when push comes to shove, they pick up a book and retreat from the battle space.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is a nice statement, but countries don’t mobilize into global conflicts because they feel secure. Fear is the great motivator.
Rationality, in times of conflict, is a demotivator — and is only as good as your enemy’s word. After all, could anything be more rational than wanting “Peace in our time?”
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 12:55 pm | PermalinkYou’re right of course that an Edenic America is more myth than reality. Still, it’s dedication to its founding principles has at times been moderately strong. An underlying sense of manifest destiny and great worldly success do, however, tend to make for a heady brew.
I’m happy, once again, to leave matters there, Kevin. We’re pretty clear on each other’s views and I don’t see much to be gained in trying to bring them any closer. If, as you suggest — and despite all the indications I see to the contrary — it all turns out swimmingly that would certainly cause me no pain. I’m not wedded to disaster scenarios.
That said, I would also undoubtedly in such a case still be quibbling about whether there wasn’t a far more effective and civilised path . . . .
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 1:37 pm | PermalinkHello Kevin,
Thank you, likewise.
Never did I make such claims to exclusivity.
My few lines were by no means an attempt to come up with a holistic analysis of history, there are whole libraries full of books on the relationships of the factors you mention, many written by much smarter people than myself. I took reference only to Freeman’s postulations, which are pretty damning of recent US foreign policy, and went a step further by pointing out that the emergence of US policies to achieve global dominance by military means is not as recent as Freeman makes us believe, but are in IMHO already recognisable in many of the wars of the 20th century, especially the later half. I am sorry to say, but the facts speak for themselves:
And so it goes. I am sorry to say Kevin, the cruel reality is that the number of innocent people killed by US regimes over the last 50 odd years is in the millions. Freeman at least has the admirable ability to identify the lack of awareness (or care, your call) in a large part of the US society of the suffering their soldiers have caused. From my understanding its not a big topic in the US, and anyone mentioning it is McCarthysized and hung out to dry as the traitor he/she is.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 5:37 pm | PermalinkYour comment about neo-conservatives also loving their children, whilst schmalzy is for the most part true, with respect to other peoples children only to the extend that they don’t live in countries the US government wants to invade or cripple.
There is a second part to this reply, but for some reason it won’t print it. Anybody has any ideas why?
Greetings
Juan
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 5:57 pm | PermalinkPart 2:
You are right, it is a simplification and it is sad. You dont however have to read Chomsky and company to come to such judgement, reading newspapers will do. I do try to understand the ‘other side’s’ arguments, the ‘defend the free world’ blanket reasonung, the ’stop the tyrants’-case they put forward. I find myself more often than not supportive of those motives, but not the means to achieve those ends. I can not agree to methods tyrants would use, regardless if they are used by tyrants or people who want to fight the tyrants. If the US tortures (and it does), it is in the same league as Saddam Hussein. For the majority of the electorate to accept this ‘breaking eggs’ for the omelettes sake and re-elect GW Bush is in my books a sign of indifference, not care. Simple and sad.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 6:03 pm | PermalinkAgain Kevin, where did I shrug off the horrors of the Soviet Union? I didn’t even mention it in my first post.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 6:10 pm | PermalinkBut while we are at it, I despise the atrocities and aim for global dominance of that country as much as I do the US’s.
Please don’t get me wrong, I grew up in Germany, where people are very grateful for US forces air support that kept Berlin alive, the Allied sacrifices made during (although Dresden was not necessary) and after the war in assisting the German people back on their feet. Similarly, I am aware of the protection the US strength and presence via NATO has afforded western Europe during the cold war. But that is not the point. The one doesn’t excuse the other. Under the disguise of fighting for a free (of communism) western world much carnage was unleashed on countries and their innocent inhabitants. The close to 1 million dead Vietnamese people are a stark reminder of this US hypocrisy. No country in the last century has produced and dropped as many bombs as the US. All in the name of liberty.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 6:14 pm | PermalinkAnd you know Kevin, the best of it all, a historic fact quite often forgotten by the ‘All we did was fight/kill the SU communist threat’-crowd, is that the Warsaw Pact collapsed not under the strains of war, but in a peaceful manner no one would have believed possible not oven 25 years ago. Not a shot was fired in East Germany, Poland and other SU client states. The whole communist thing came tumbling down due to peaceful people power rather than US hostility and military muscle. It was an impressive lecture on how much change on a continental scale can be forced without the gun, but through feets on the streets and civil disobedience. Whilst it is true that the SU just couldn’t keep up with the West’s increased spending on military and eventually in a Gorbatchov kind of way had to admit it was unable to compete any longer for world dominance, exposing finally the weakness of their economic set-up, the Kremlin’s ultimate collapse was not a result of direct military action, but of people power, people like Lech Walesa and Solidarność.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 6:32 pm | PermalinkWell Juan,
Thanks for the reply and all the work you put into it.
Of course it is difficult to know where to begin to respond. You say this fact-set you present is from newspapers, not books. Well, unless you were alive in 1954, which I doubt, you are getting your history lesson from somewhere. The fact that your take on US history directly coincides with the Chomskian/Soviet line suggests to me that either you’ve read Chomsky or one of his confreres or you’ve read people who’ve read Chomsky (or one of his confreres). Let’s be honest here.
Most of the facts you present have a foundation in reality, as these critical litanies of the US tend to be checkable. Just google Grenada or Mossadegh and you have your proof. But facts are pretty well meaningless without context. It seems reasonable that any set of facts can be used to prove just about anything without a context to ground them. So without getting a firm grip on the Cold War context which your fact-set seems to slightly drift up from, the gaps in knowledge get filled in with bias.
History cannot be reduced to a laundry list. This left anti-US laundry list you offer is a classic tactic used to overwhelm dissenters. It works because it would take a book for each episode you site to explain what the heck was really going on and why it was important, why it was important in context of larger global conflicts such as the cold war and Islamist expansionism, etc. Not to mention that there are usually about seven different version of each episode, the first of which is usually the Soviet-style line.
This has been one of the grave consequences of US secrecy. The real story doesn’t come out for decades, and by that time the world has been carpet-bombed by the Soviet-line. That’s why to this day Chomsky can spout error after error and be oblivious to them. Because at the time he was educating himself on many of these manners, the truth WAS the soviet line.
The history of the twentieth century is still being written. Unfortunately, many have already filled their cups and don’t care to drink any more. People being what they are, I don’t hold out hope that this will change.
The twentieth century was quite a mess. Indeed the US is probably responsible for a few million deaths that were arguably unnecessary. I say arguably. Because we are by no means perfect and we are out there in the world like every other country trying to be successful. And one of the ways we have always defined success, besides materialistically, is Peace. And peace is hard won and often times thankless. So nobody counts the lives we saved. We probably saved the world. But nevermind that, we made some tough choices, played a little economic hardball, and we have to hear it from the left. Well, thank you very much. America hears you and hopes to do better in the future.
What’s that old phrase about a cynic; One who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Well, that’s what I sense a bit of here. You see suffering and you naturally respond with heart. As I do, and I submit, every single neoconservative I know or read. How many beautiful German people were killed by the allies during World War II? Untold numbers. And each one is a tragedy, a life lost, a mother burned to death, a father without an eye, a child disfigured. If we wanted to cry for all the beautiful innocent lives lost in battle, we would weep until the end of days. We would cry forever.
The twentieth century was rife with moral impossibilities. It takes enormous courage to act in the face of these impossibilities. To listen to your laundry list is to have evidence of that impossibility once again.
You look at our interventions and you point to the US and you say, you have done this! But you do not ask why. The context doesn’t count.
The Soviet Union was an expansionist empire that killed something like 80 million people. It’s economy was wretched, backwards and caused untold horrors, starvation, slavery. It jailed its dissidents, millions of them, and left them to rot in concrete prisons. Its ideology was odious, its beaurocracy filled with duplicitous thugs, paranoid, anti-semitic, abusive torturers, executioners. It had spies everywhere, in Germany, in the US, throughout the third world. It owned politicians and newspapers. It paid for the publication of anti-west propaganda in books and magazines. It taught terrorists how to hijack planes, what to say to get the ears of the west’s disaffected, how to make bombs, it gave them guns and weapons and tanks.
The Soviet Union had to be stopped. According to Gorbachev it would have taken forty more years for it to collapse by itself. And it only came to that kind of ruin because we blocked them at every expansionist turn, including viet nam, at the cost of trillions of dollars and many many lives. For which we get next to no credit, apparently, from people who only see costs, not value.
The accusations implicit in your slanted “history lesson” are easily dispelled in the face of the facts now available. I respecfully suggest you try to acquire a bit more perspective.
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 1:42 am | PermalinkKev,
What do you think of David Hicks being untried for five years, and I would imagine completely destroyed psychologically. Do you think it is in any way defensible while your own nationals are given different treatment ?
Yes or no please. Are you proud or ashamed of your country regarding its treatment of our national.
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 10:48 am | PermalinkHmm, I realize this may be an indictment by itself, but I have not heard much about this. I perfectly understand your concern and anguish. I will look into it and get back to you.
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 1:27 pm | PermalinkHeloo Kevin,
Chomsky, Chomsky, Chomsky….Who ever has a less favorable opinion of the US military involvement over the past 50 years than you must have read or was indoctrinated with Chomsky. My opinion is similar to at least 3 Billion other people, of whom I assume many can’t even read, but we are all chomskynated? Get real Kevin.
Facts are what they are, concrete and (mostly) indisputable, context is assigned by people.
What is left about the list? That it is about US wars only has something to do with the ‘context’ of this thread and our discussion about US aggression. Feel free to list other wars to support your view. If you feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of military invasions/incidents I listed, think about it! Were they really all necessary?
Can you back that up? That might have been the case in the SU and the WP countries at the time, but from my understanding in the US and allied Europe the press was not known to perpetuate the SU line. Quite contrary, barely a word of dissent. The Iraq invasion is the classic example of the western MSM accepting vace value the rhetoric coming out of the White House. And if, time to rename French Fries into Freedom Fries. Laughable Kevin, laughable.
With all due respect, that seems to include you.
Would you have understood if the SU leaders would have used such excuses, as in “sorry guys, we did the best we could at the time, nobody is perfect you know, and all we did is tried to be successful, just like other countries.” Hardly Kevin, hardly. But you dish them out here as condolence price for the ones who lost in this US rampage. Thanx however for acknowledging that the US was responsible for potentially millions of innocent peoples deaths, a good first step.
Would you like me to list the wars of agression (as in not defending the US Homelands, but brutal overseas interventions) again? For a nation that allegedly cherishes peace, the US has started a hell of a lot of wars, don’t you think?
I agree with you on that one, but only to the extend that the US helped end the 1st and 2nd WW, where the US miltary did save some lives. But where exactly does that fit in with Chile or Nicaragua? How many lives did the US save by shooting down an Iranian airliner? How many by the invasion of Panama to arrest Noriega, a long time CIA asset? How many lives were saved with the bombing raids on Cambodia? The Khmer Rouge and its reign of horror was a direct result of this attack. If you want peace, help end or avoid wars, don’t start them.
Sure, and with it the galaxy and possibly the universe.
As in not bomb Iran?
We value global free market rule, no matter how many lives it costs, is that it?
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 3:48 pm | PermalinkFunny enough Kevin, I do ask WHY? Why so many deaths? Why should god bless an America for murdering?
Agreed, a pretty good description of what the SU resembled.
True, and it was. But not by the Vietnam or any other proxy war, but through peaceful methods. The SU didn’t explode, it imploded. It wasn’t the Cuban missile crisis or Grenada that caused its downfall, it was the desire of the people caught within the system and their strength of morale who tipped the empire over. To give support to such an internal revolution, clantestine or openly, is one thing and to be applauded, but the bombing of its citizens another. As I pointed out earlier, and I note you conveniently didn’t address this historic fact, the SU and its WP was forced to retreat not with gun powder but with banners and shouts of defiance by the people who had to endure it.
Similarly, the end of apartheid in South Africa was not a result of invasion of a foreign country and the bombing of thousands of its citizens, but through more or less non-violent methods. Similar to the US, the injustice of apartheid there was knocked heavily by people like Rosa Parks Martin Luther King, through the moral strength of their arguments rather than an invading force.
Same with Iraq or Iran, and if it ever comes down to it, China, people like the Tank man will be of far greater help to advance the cause than a bloody invasion or bombing campaign. I agree with many of the motives the US population names in support of their foreign policies, but not the military stick it uses to act on them. To abuse human rights in order to defend them is absurd, no matter what ideological enemy one thinks needs fighting.
Do you seriously believe that the SU would not have collapsed if Vietnam, Cuba or Afghanistan would have turned communist? The SU did not collapse because of the Vietnam war (very little Sowjet soldiers or military advisers died in Vietnam) or Grenada, any such idea is grand-standing. When Gorbatchev refers to “itself”, he means the nerve and bravery of the SU’s own people who finally had a gutful of its deprivations and made a stand. The SU was poised to disintegrate, Vietnam or not. Even if the millions of Vietnamese would not have been bombed to smithereens, the SU would have collapsed, but at least todays birth-defects due to Agent Orange would not be crippling so many Vietnamese.
How much credit do you want for the millions of deaths? As a matter of fact, I credit the lot to US paranoia and resulting bombing raids. Do you want even more credit?
Which facts dispell my accusations? I am all ears.
Which sources do you suggest? Should you want to suggest the Project For The New American Century, I have read it. Suffice to say that all it does support my argument. We are the Kings coz we got the bombs. Anything I forgot?
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 4:43 pm | PermalinkJuan,
You’re analysis of the collapse of the SU is unsupportable when the full measure of history is taken into account.
If the US had not fought all those wars against Soviet encroachment, the soviets would have taken most of those countries into its web. Those countries would have bolstered the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union would have gotten stronger on the backs of those countries. And the SU would have grown still further and felt emboldened to continue its mad ideological march towards global dominance.
And as we all know, the Soviet communist system was wretched economically, styfling innovation and growth, destroying the spirit of the people, practically enslaving them, clearly damaging them psychologically, mismanaging food supplies and farming, causing famines and starvations, and shortages, etcetera…
Not to mention its viral ideology.
It should be obvious that whatever SU touched would have also been infected by that awful societal torpor. There was quite enough evidence among the former Soviet sattelites, even to this day, for you to see what the world would have become had the cold war gone the other way.
Instead we fought them every step of the way, every inch, in seeming every country in the world in good ways and bad for every year from 1945 to the present at enormous costs. (The cold war is not quite over yet, IMHO, although the forces of freedom, democracy and open markets are clearly taking route the world over) The cold war was fought on other battlefields than those of the actual participants. I can understand how some countries would resent that fact. But larger questions were at stake. I do not believe it is callous to say so.
This is what you don’t seem to grasp… You look at the 1980s, when most western scholars were still talking about the SU in glowing terms, and you say, well from what we know now, they were totally gonna collapse anyhow. Not only is that wrong in terms of what we knew at the time, witness all the scholars who were wrong about the matter. If that were true Reagan’s tear down this wall speech wouldn’t have cause such a shock wave accross the SU.
Furthermore, your emphasis on the inevitability of the fall prevents you from seeing the strategic point of detente plus proxy wars plus CIA plus Interventions, etc. that the US kept up for all those many years that led to that “inevitability”.
You miss the fact that it was EVERY U.S. effort to check the SU, stretching from the falling of the Berlin Wall back to the collapse of Nazi germany, that made the difference in turning back the tide of the SU. It was the TOTALITY of our efforts that beat back the SU and showed itself for what it was, including the evidence of our success. We slow-crushed them over half a century on every front there was.
But again, the cold war was a morally impossible situation. Clearly, that people such as yourselves hold such animosity toward my country demonstrates the futility of explaining grand strategy to certain types of thinkers. Like, for instance, those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
About your lefty laundry list (I call it that, because of the reductionist nature of it. It simplifies everything to an accusation. And I’ve only ever heard it read as a list except by lefties) we’ll take the example of Chile…
Do a study of what was happening in the Soviet-aligned Chilean economy during Allende: Allende’s socialists, the marxists in government and the lunatic far-left MIR were destroying the country. According to the marxist revolutionary style book, they went and seized factories and farms and such and presto the nationalized sector of the economy got so screwed up so quickly the only way to pay its workers was to print boatloads of unbacked currency blasting inflation into the stratosphere at a 600% clip!
The attempts by suddenly struggling agra-businesses to right this mess (expropriations and such) caused a mini-civil war and Chile was torn up with food shortages and a flourishing black market and many internationally trading business in-country simply collapsed. Thereafter there was no businesses left to advertise in the free media, so free-speech outlets like newspapers and such pretty much disappeared — except for those few that remained afloat because of secret funding from — you guessed it — the dreaded CIA!!
So the country was going through absolute hell and the people get scared and there’s a burst of right-centrist sentiment in the country that led to a 56% by-term parliamentary victory against Allende’s irresponsible government, though still short of the 66% that would have been required to oust Allende through impeachment. And Allende wouldn’t step down. For many in-country by late summer of ‘73 the only hope seemed to be some kind of military intervention which was widely expected to occur shortly. Of course the military was in kind of mess too, some of its top leaders having been brought into government by Allende as a way to try to co-opt the rage many of the military’s bourgeoise followers felt against his government. This included commander in chief of the army, Carlos Prats.
Turns out though, that Prats’ pro-Allende sentiments weren’t shared by those officers directly under him, and Prats was ousted by them. This was two weeks before Allende fell. The guy that took over for Prats was Pinochet, who at that point, just about nobody knew. The tidal wave of a military coup was already cresting.
(The vagaries of the “coup” moment itself have also undergone quite a bit of new research which I advise looking into.)
Anyhow, I think my point was made. Soviet/marxist influence was absolutely deadly. And, in terms of your list of deadly US deeds, by and large the Chilean coup was internally generated by interior societal forces caused by soviet/marxist influence, and the rise of Pinochet was essential a stroke of even worse luck, so strike that one off your naughty list if you please.
The only thing that kept the SU afloat economically all those years was oil. Which is why they were and have been so obsessed with the Middle East and Latin America since 1920, when they first made the tactical switch to totalitarianism.
You should look into the efforts Reagan and Casey made to beat the SU via economic maneuvers in the oil markets, too. That should be very enlightening on the oil question. With their influence in the Middle East and Latin America and Venezuela it is quite conceivable that left to its own devices the SU could have lasted for another 40 years simply on oil revenue alone. Not to mention the fact that the beaurocracy of the Empire was still chugging along with the KGB at its head.
Post Berlin-Wall sovietology has a host of testaments by high placed Soviets from Gorbachev on down that go to Reagan and the Pope and American Militarism and the arms race and “Star Wars” and the “Evil Empire” speech and other proactive outside events as catalytic. Your notion goes counter to what the actual participants in the event believe. I would trust them over you any day of the week. Maybe you should write to all those greatful to America for their efforts and tell them why they are wrong.
To this day Russia can’t make enough food to feed it’s people, because of the bad agriculture practices instituted during the twentieth century. Imagine that kind of ineptitude going global.
And as far as “democratically elected” goes… so was Hitler. Life isn’t black and white and neither is history. Tough choices have to be made.
I’m still not yet sure if the use of Agent orange would be one of them. We didn’t have a better defoliant. It wasn’t known that it contained dioxin and wasn’t considered a toxic substance at the time of the Viet Nam war so under international law it was legal to use in warfare. It had been used on crops in the US with apparant safety. And I’m sure you know that trials are still ongoing vis a vis the effects of agent orange. And undoubtably you would have heard about the recent, more scientifically sound, study of its effects. Link here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14721554/
So, I just don’t really know the deal with Agent Orange. And neither do you.
Anyhow, if you really want to get into more updated sovietology try Vasily Mitrokhin to start. Two volumes. About 1200 pages. Anything by Robert Conquest should also help you get an overview. He’s the one scholar above all others who understood what the SU was all about. And he had it right when it was fashionable to have it totally wrong. He is now considered a hero across the former Soviet Empire.
There’s tons more authors on the subject. Just read every scholar that you’ve been told to hate by whatever websites you frequent.
P.S. I certainly do not advocate using military action willy-nilly. Peaceful methods are always best, unless there is such repression that it becomes a moral issue to intervene. That, of course, is a judgement call that has to be made. I think there was a moral abdication by many important countries with respect to Iraq. China and Russia don’t care about human rights. Russia, France and Germany had illicit under the table deals with Saddam for oil.
If all those countries and the rest of the corrupt UN had joined the Iraq project, the war would probably be over by now and the peace won. Instead many of these countries actively worked against the success of the project, Russia especially.
Posted on 12-Feb-07 at 1:29 pm | PermalinkStill waiting for your views on David Hicks Kev,
If there in there with the long explanations - I’ve stopped reading till we do the basic reality check - that’s what the question about David Hicks is about.
Posted on 12-Feb-07 at 2:41 pm | PermalinkI love the Perry Mason stuff. I don’t answer your questions, boy, you answer mine!
And thank you for not reading my above post. On a purely humane level, I would prefer you preserve your eyesight anyhow.
Just to make clear for the tenth time, if you’re under the impression that I think my country is perfect, you’re wrong. Not a chance. I know far more about the problems and unpardonables of my country than you ever can. I merely request balance and perspective and sobriety, that we may all see reality clearer. My country has been a positive force in the world and it has been a negative force in the world. But on balance it has been positive. Those who speak in unbalanced negative terms about it… well what can be said about them? No use getting personal. People will be people.
But I can tell you really want to blow up at me and AmeriKKKa over the whole “David Hicks” thing, so I’ll just get to it. I can feel the seething rage coming through the words and I wouldn’t want to prolong your wait. I know this is a very important question for you. I can totally understand. You said it’s not just a reallity check. Its THE reality check. And I get how important this is to you. You are practically demanding I answer. Nothing else matters. No defense of my country holds a candle to this one question for which your passion for justice finds so fine a cause. Are you reading this? I know how important this question is to you. I just want to make sure you’re reading this. Is your heart pounding? I imagine it is. So I’ll just get right to it. So without further ado, I’ll just get right to it. I’ll just come out with it. I’ll just speak my mind and you can read it over, and I’m sure you’ll read it over very carefully, and you’ll be able to see exactly the kind of way that I see these matters that you are clearly so anxious and ….
On Abu Muslim al-Austraili — I don’t think he calls himself David Hicks anymore, does he? I think that’s his dad calling him that — which is perfectly smart thing to do politically. If he used the Abu Muslim name, the public interest among Australians would probably be more muted, I would guess.
Anyhow, I looked up as much info as I could find from all different sources. There’s not too much I can say about it. I don’t know the inside scoop, except what I’ve read, like everybody else.
Looking at it as soberly as I can, it seems Abu when he was still David, was a bit of a wild man, drugs, partying, bit screw-loose, he got recruited a la “Taliban John” and became a radical muslim, changed his name, and wrote some nutjob things like “its all a jewish plot to divide muslims” in letters to his dad (which is curious given the thousand year split between shia and sunni and how persians detest arabs and most of the middle east hates palestinians that live in their countries.) It does sound like he’s sort of an unstable guy who went rad-muz, and was caught on the battlefeild with the enemy.
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t accorded international rights.
I think the only question is how those rights are administered and what his combat capture status was and all that. Actually, I don’t know what the deal is because international law is just about the fuzziest law going. It sounds like he qualifies as an enemy combattant, from the rules of enemy combattenthood that I read. But I wasn’t there on the battlefield, so I just don’t know.
Whether he was actually tortured or not is sort of impossible to tell because of the Islamist tactic of constantly claiming torture and desecration of the Koran when imprisoned. So it becomes impossible to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth. But except for a few isolated incidents, like that moron who did the Abu Ghraib porn, I would tend to think the US is pretty good to prisoners. Even when they get spit on by them. Plus they have human rights folks constantly running through there and its been pretty high marks from what I read.
So the answer is, I just don’t know. I’m not an international law scholar.
I can only give my opinioin on the matter as a whole. Which is: Clearly the length of this war is going to require some change in the law where people don’t get sequestered for decades without trial. Beyond that, I hope this all is resolved soon. That enough of reality check for ya?
Posted on 12-Feb-07 at 6:06 pm | PermalinkKevin,
thanx for your lengthy reply. I think I know where you are coming from, but in the end we probably have to agree to disagree.
You are by the looks a firm beliver in ‘the end justifies the means’, a philosophy that doesn’t sit as easy with me as it does with you. For you any argument remotely critical of US policies is dispatched as lefty Anti-Americanism with no footing in reality, as it does not recognise “the wider context”, the ‘how the US saved the World’ context (I am sorry, but I am still laughing about that one).
Reading your posts, I get the impression that, whilst you might feel ’sort of’ sorry for the millions of people who were killed by the US Military machine, you believe they were all necessary to stop the evil SU empire from expanding.
As you might have understood, I too was not a fan of the SU, quite the opposite. A repressive regime with very little compassion for its people. The fact that it collapsed was worth me and countless others celebrating its end. Its peaceful end. So you are waisting time by trying to explain to me just how bad the SU was, preaching to the converted so to speak. But what you certainly have not understood is my believe that this collapse could have and would have also happened without many of the wars the US thought it had to fight. I don’t believe that the Vietnam war did anything to accelerate the SU’s demise. Vietnam become communist anyway and the SU still collapsed.
Greetings
Posted on 12-Feb-07 at 6:55 pm | Permalink“But what you certainly have not understood is my believe that this collapse could have and would have also happened without many of the wars the US thought it had to fight. I don’t believe that the Vietnam war did anything to accelerate the SU’s demise. Vietnam become communist anyway and the SU still collapsed.”
You keep repeating that the SU came to a peaceful end. You mean, like in Afghanistan? The SU ended because a cumulative effect of long term American action, overt, covert and everything else. We had to show that we were willing to combat it anywhere and everywhere so the SU would understand that their domination of the globe would never be easy. This is what is not understood. I perfectly understood what you believe. I simply find your position unsupportable and a little bit, I don’t know, addled.
But what you fail to imagine — and I do think you suffer from a failure of imagination on this - -is what the world would look like if we didn’t do what we did, mistakes and all. You say I sound like I don’t care about the people who got “trampled” in the meantime during the cold war. That’s just wrong. The patient is never the same after a complicated cancer operation but to not do the operation is far worse.
Posted on 13-Feb-07 at 12:41 am | Permalink