In article <337bgvgfs7peujnvprqnc68afrpnct5erg@4ax.com>, House Widdershins
says...

-snip-

War Crimes in the Name of Freedom: 227 Years....by John Stanton

"Great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live
up to this obligation." That according to Leo Szilard, the Manhattan Project
physicist commenting on the United States and its decision in August of 1945 to
obliterate non-military targets Hiroshima (70,000 dead instantly with 210,000
total deaths) and Nagasaki (40,000 dead instantly with 200,000 total deaths) in
Japan. When the United States of America takes its place in the graveyard of
empires, its tombstone will display Szilard's words alongside the inscription,
"Born in violence, practiced violence and came to a violent end." Americans
fancy their society as a peaceful, freedom loving enterprise when the reality is
that Americans are brutally competitive and adversarial in every aspect of their
lives. And they are warlike to the core. Is it any wonder that in America, the
easiest act for the US government to carry out is war?

As Americans prepare to celebrate their Independence Day this July 4, 2003, with
a grandiose glorification of ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-and wars from
days past--it's worth remembering those millions of civilians and/or
non-combatants who have died at the hands of unconstrained and psychopathic
American power. The US government has a long history of reengineering and
downsizing populations that get in the way of freedom loving Americans and their
business interests. Each and every American has the blood of the world on
his/her hands. And freedom is going to get even bloodier as history, it turns
out, is an excellent guide.

Kill 'Em All

Prior to those fateful days in August of 1945, the US Target Committee met in
May of 1945 and discussed the need for following up those two days of nuclear
infamy with B-29 incendiary raids. "The feasibility of following the raid by an
incendiary mission was discussed. This has the great advantage that the enemies'
fire fighting ability will probably be paralyzed by the gadget [atomic bomb] so
that a very serious conflagration should be capable of being started." The US
Target Committee, anxious to collect data on the "gadget's" performance
recommended a 24 hour waiting period before letting loose the B-29's to vaporize
any humans or structures that might have survived the "gadget's" output.

In February of 1945 in Dresden, Germany, the United States--and its coalition
partner Great Britain--were engaged in the firebombing slaughter of scores of
German civilians and refugees fleeing the Soviet Army's advance. According to
rense.com. "Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one military
unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city. Together with the
600,000 refugees from Breslau, Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million
people. Churchill had asked for "suggestions on how to blaze 600,000 refugees.
He wasn't interested in how to target military installations 60 miles outside of
Dresden. More than 700,000 phosphorus bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people.
One bomb for every 2 people. The temperature in the center of the city reached
1600 degrees centigrade. More than 260,000 bodies and residues of bodies were
counted. But those who perished in the center of the city could not be traced.
Approximately 500,000 children, women, the elderly, wounded soldiers and the
animals of the zoo were slaughtered in one night.  Others hiding below ground
died. But they died painlessly--they simply glowed bright
orange and blue in the darkness. As the heat intensified, they either
disintegrated into cinders or melted into a thick liquid--often three or four
feet deep in spots."

Writing in World War II magazine, Christopher Lew points out that the Americans
incinerated Tokyo, Japan in March of 1945 via firebombing raids killing 100,000
civilians. The US government engaged in military campaigns such as Operation
Starvation meant to deny food supplies to the population.  Every city in Japan
was targeted in a ruthless, murderous and calculated manner. Yet, the Emperor of
Japan's residence was considered off limits by US commanders (the rationale
being he would be an asset in the post-war era).  "For three hours over Tokyo,
334 B-29s unleashed their cargo [including napalm] upon the dense city below.
The fires raged out of control in little less than 30 minutes, aided by a 28-mph
wind. Even the water in the rivers reached the boiling point. The fire was so
intense that it created updrafts that tossed the gigantic B-29s around as if
they were feathers. Officially the Japanese listed 83,793 killed and 40,918
injured. A total of 265,171 buildings were destroyed, and 15.8 square miles of
the city were burned to ashes. It was the greatest urban disaster, man-made or
natural, in all of history." The slaughter of the Japanese and their cities was
unrelenting and so insidiously effective that the US military ran out of
targets.

Of course, the US government has never been content just to annihilate those
pesky civilians in other lands. There's always work to be done right here in the
United States. Whether rounding up Arabs in 2003 and locking them away or
engaging in genocide in the 1800's, the US government has a long history of
reengineering and downsizing populations that get in the way of freedom loving
Americans. For example, in 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the
Indian Removal Act according to understandingprejudice.org. President Andrew
Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. In the summer of 1838, US Army General
Winfield Scott led his men in the invasion of the Cherokee Nation. In one of
many bloody episodes in US history, men, women, and children were taken from
their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then
forced to march a thousand miles--some made part of the trip by boat in equally
horrible conditions. Under the indifferent US Army commanders, an estimated
5,000 native Americans would die on the Trail of Tears.

The Tradition Continues: Make War Not Love

Thanks to its penchant for war and belief in its divine invincibility, worldwide
polls now show that the United States is a reviled nation. Little surprise
there. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shrugs off the deaths of 10,000
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is equally without pity for the American
troops now dying each day in both failed military campaigns. Attorney General
John Ashcroft-who now likes to be addressed as General Ashcroft-presides over an
American justice system which has stripped away the rights of all Americans to
due process and other rights formerly guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. In
the US, accused serial killers and rapists have more access to legal assistance
than an individual suspected of terrorism. And for the first time, America has
more of its citizens incarcerated and executed than any nation on the planet.
"With liberty and justice for all" seems meaningless as the United States
flaunts the fact that it runs a death camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that its
foreign and domestic policies include torture, assassination, and eavesdropping
on any person it deems a threat to national security.

America has been at war since 1775. Indeed, the US has never been at peace. The
following are considered major conflicts: Revolutionary War (1775-1783), War of
1812 (1812-1815), Mexican War (1846-1848), Civil War (1861-1865), Spanish
American War (1898), World War I (1917-1918), World War II (1941-1945), Korean
War (1950-1953), Vietnam War (1964-1972), and the Gulf War I (1990-1991). And
that list excludes the invasion of Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Gulf War II and a
whole slew of covert actions that overthrew governments the world over. The
future holds Iran, North Korea, Syria, Colombia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and, arguably,
the entire planet.

Unfortunately, war is the defining characteristic of the US government and a
majority of its people. American freedom depends on war and their economic
system demands it. "Under capitalism, corporations that produce weapons make
huge profits from these weapons of war and therefore are happy both to prepare
for war and to engage in war. You prepare for war, you have all these government
contracts, and make all this money, and you engage in war and you use up all
these products and you have to replace them," according to Howard Zinn.

Is there any hope of breaking away from a bloody history celebrated mindlessly
each July 4th? Will Americans ever live up to the ideals set forth in the US
Constitution? Can they break the habit of war?

"War has always diminished our freedom," says Zinn.

"When our freedom has expanded, it has not come as a result of war or of
anything the government has done but as a result of what citizens have done.
The best test of that is the history of black people in the United States, the
history of slavery and segregation. It wasn't the government that initiated the
movement against slavery but white and black abolitionists. It wasn't the
government that initiated the battle against racial segregation in the 1950s and
1960s, but the movement of people in the South. It wasn't the government that
gave the people the freedom to work eight hours a day instead of twelve hours a
day. It was working people themselves who organized into unions, went out on
strike, and faced the police. The government was on the other side; the
government was always in support of the employers and the corporations. The
freedom of working people, the freedom of black people has always depended on
the struggles of people themselves against the government. So, if we look at it
historically, we certainly cannot depend on governments to maintain our
liberties. We have to depend on our own organized efforts."

Only the American people can stop war.
______________________
John Stanton is the author (along with Wayne Madsen) of America's Nightmare:
The Presidency of George Bush II, May 2003, available at booksurge.com and
barnesandnoble.com. Copyright J Stanton 2003.
______________________
Washington has a love affair with terror by  Robin Miller  

Many questions remain unasked as the U.S. continues its war on terrorism. One is
whether Washington possesses the moral right to condemn terrorism when its own
hands are so bloody.  Let's examine our use of terror directed against civilians
to achieve political or military goals, beginning with the atomic devastation of
Japan. "Little Boy," exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killed 130,000
people immediately (including a dozen U.S. POWs) and 200,000 within five years,
all but some 20,000 of them civilians. Twenty-five square miles of civilization
were gutted.  "Fat Man," detonated over Nagasaki three days later, took another
70,000 lives immediately, and nearly double that over five years. All but 150
were civilians. That's the equivalent of 50 World Trade Centers of people
vaporized.

When the Korean War erupted in 1950, the U.S. worked on perfecting this criminal
way of waging war, the targeting of a country's civilian population. Gen.
Douglas MacArthur ordered that every "installation, factory, city and village"
be destroyed in much of the north. Gen. Curtis LeMay reported that "over a
period of three years or so ... we burned down every town in North Korea and
South Korea, too."  Three million civilians died in that conflict, a large
majority from American bombing. That's the equivalent of another 750 World Trade
Centers full of the dead.

We employed the same murderous tactic ---- widespread, sustained assaults on the
civilian population---- in the Vietnam War and its extensions in Cambodia and
Laos. U.S. forces dropped 8 million tons of bombs ---- four times the entire
Allied total of World War II. Eighty percent were dropped on areas rather than
individual targets. The region was immolated with 373,000 tons of napalm,
dwarfing the 14,000 tons employed in World War II.  We subjected the people of
Indochina to 15 million tons of munitions with the combined explosive power of
600 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The result was a decade-long crime against
humanity that killed 2 million to 3 million civilians.

In the same part of the world, we supported Indonesian generals who presided
over the slaughter of a million of their people after a failed October 1965 coup
attempt. The killings of alleged communists and their families raged for months.
The country's rivers became clogged with bodies.

Washington, however, was euphoric. Time magazine described the generals'
ascension as "the West's best news for years in Asia," while the Johnson
administration, according to The New York Times, expressed "delight."  A decade
later, we supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. The attack began less
than 24 hours after then-President Ford concluded a visit to Jakarta. For years
thereafter we blocked international efforts to halt the bloodbath. Some 200,000
Timorese, one-third of the population, died before Indonesia withdrew in 1999.
This was genocide.

Washington's most recent savageries, which are continuing, are the suffocating
sanctions imposed on Iraq. By 1998, malnutrition and disease from lack of
medicines and clean water had killed 500,000 children under the age of 5 ,
according to UNICEF. The total deaths attributable to the sanctions may exceed 1
million. Chalk up 250 World Trade Centers dead from U.S. sanctions.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark reported this year that the number of
deaths of children---- now running at 6,700 a month ---- continues to escalate.
That's a World Trade Center full of Iraqi children dead every month from
sanctions.

Our government has known of these deadly conditions from the beginning. A Jan.
22, 1991 report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Iraq Water Treatment
Vulnerabilities," states: "With no domestic sources of both water treatment
replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to
circumvent United Nations sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing
to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of
the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of
disease."

A DIA document dated one month later, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq," reports:
"Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in
major urban areas affected by coalition bombing."  We have repeatedly allied
ourselves with dictators willing to massacre their own people. In Argentina,
some 30,000 suspected "subversives" were "disappeared" ---- abducted and
murdered ---- during the military government's "dirty war" from 1976 to 1983. By
1977 a junior official in the U.S. embassy, "Tex" Harris, concluded that this
was "a massive, coherent, military effort to exterminate Argentine citizens."

In Guatemala, another American ally with a fondness for death squads, the toll
was much higher. The Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission has
estimated that 200,000 people were killed in more than 30 years of brutal
repression, 93 percent of them by government forces.  That's the equivalent of
another 50 World Trade Centers.

In these and many other countries ---- Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, El Salvador,
Iran, Zaire, the Philippines, Greece ---- our record of support for savage
military dictatorships is unconscionable, and seemingly endless.  Now, I do not
make the obscene suggestion that "we had it coming," or that U.S. foreign policy
justifies the Sept. 11 attacks. There is no justification for those atrocities.
But when Washington condemns terrorism by others, where, precisely, does it
locate the moral ground on which it purports to stand? - Miller lives in New
Orleans.
- - - -
US imperialism and its feckless opposition By Stephen Gowans

The aims of the Bush administration's foreign policy are clear enough: to
use force, or the threat of force, to manoeuvre other countries into
positions of subordination. The official justifications are flattering, as
justifications are. The United States will use force to rid the world of the
scourge of extremism; to topple regimes that support terrorism; to make the
world more stable and less dangerous; to deliver oppressed people from
tyrants; to spread democracy and respect for human rights. If force is used
to place other countries under the thumb of the US, it's only to secure
these desired ends. The means -- bombing campaigns, invasions, occupation --
with their grim and bloody consequences, are to be justified by the ends,
which along with the ostensible goals of liberation from tyranny and
humanitarian intervention, include the removal of threats to the personal
safety of Americans, these days presented as "making sure another 9/11 never
happens again."

9/11, an unprecedented event for Americans (though on the scale of
atrocities, a minor one, compared to what has gone on elsewhere in the
world) has invested the idea that Americans are in peril with a substance
that otherwise was lacking in the laughable and hardly pressing horror
stories Washington previously invented to justify the use of force. The
Sandinistas are only two days drive from the Texas border hasn't quite the
galvanizing effect of terrorists are plotting another 9/11.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfwowitz recalled:

I know my thinking [after 9/11] was that the old approach to terrorism
was not acceptable any longer. The old approach being you treat it as a law
enforcement problem rather than a national security problem. You pursue
terrorists after they've done things and bring them to justice, and to the
extent states are perhaps involved, you retaliate against them but you don't
really expect to get them out of the business of supporting terrorism
completely. To me what September 11th meant was that we just couldn't live
with terrorism any longer. {1}

Wolfowitz wasn't expressing the view of a minority. For ordinary
Americans, terrorism on the scale of 9/11, that is, large scale terrorism
directed at Americans, is intolerable, and eclipsing the problem is
understood to warrant harsh measures. Central to Wolfowitz's view is that
regime change (replacing governments that may support or sponsor anti-US
terrorists, according to the official view) is more effective a means of
dealing with terrorism than law enforcement alone or addressing whatever it
was that drove terrorists to attack the US in the first place.

"I think," recalled Wolfowitz, "what September 11th to me said was this is
just the beginning of what these bastards can do if they start getting
access to so-called modern weapons, and that it's not something you can live
with any longer. So there needs to be a campaign, a strategy, a long-term
effort, to root out these networks and to get governments out of the
business of supporting them. " {2}

Wolfowitz claimed that Iraq was attacked "because of its history and the
weapons of mass terror." {3} In other words, as a country under the control
of a regime that wasn't under Washington's thumb, Iraq had the potential to
furnish weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to those who held a grievance
against the US. The regime, then, had to be eliminated. But above this,
Wolfowitz's analysis reduces to: any regime that does not willingly
subordinate itself to Washington is a potential threat, and will be
replaced. Or, in George W. Bush's words, you're either with us or against
us. You can think of this as sincere, though misguided, or simply as a
clever way of justifying a course of action that a country with a history of
expansion, an economic system that drives it to conquer other peoples'
markets and resources, and a bloated military, would do anyway.

It might be wondered why, of the trio of axis of evil countries, Iraq was
attacked first, and why, from the earliest moments of 9/11's aftermath, the
Bush administration sought to construct a casus belli against the Ba'athist
regime. {4} The answer is that of other countries that fit the bill of being
largely independent of Washington, and therefore able in principle to
furnish terrorists with WMD's, or, from another perspective,  to pursue an
economic course at odds with Washington's preferred regime of markets open
to US investment and control, Iraq had four attractive qualities:

(a) it had been weakened by two wars, by a low intensity conflict
involving Anglo-American warplanes enforcing the no-fly zones over northern
and southern Iraq, and by over a decade of sanctions. It could, therefore,
be expected to put up little resistance to a US-led assault;

(b) the question of whether it was hiding banned weapons could be turned
into a pretext for war;

(c) it offered the alluring treasure of vast reserves of oil;

(d) it is situated in the heart of a geostrategically significant region.

But these qualities only made Iraq an easier, and more tempting, first
target than the others. Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Libya are no less
within Washington's sights.

To Wolfowitz, "diplomacy...is rarely going to get you much unless you're
dealing with people who basically share your values and your interests," {5}
a curious view since diplomacy is a way of resolving differences that often
originate in the absence of shared values and interests among conflicting
parties. If every country shared Washington's values and interests there
would be no conflict and, therefore, no need for diplomacy.  Other countries
would simply do what Washington wanted because shared values and interests
would push them in that direction anyway. Indeed, Washington's program of
regime change can be seen as a way of using force or the threat of force to
replace governments that don't share Washington's values and interests with
those that do -- a kind of "no need for diplomacy" scheme "because we've
arranged to replace independent foreign governments with those that are
agreeable to our demands."

Where values conflict--and diplomacy is ruled out as an alternative
because, in Wolfowitz's words, "it's rarely going to get you much"--the use
of force becomes the preferred course. Since no other country can match the
US's military weight, flexing the Pentagon's considerable muscle is an
attractive option. It is also attractive from the perspective of the legion
of defense contractors who carry enormous weight in Washington. For
Pentagon-suppliers Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, General Electric, TRW and
Boeing, a foreign policy based on military supremacy is congenial to their
bottom lines. Why, then, negotiate, or respect the sovereignty of weaker
countries, when you don't have to, when it is so much more profitable not
to, and no one and nothing -- not international law, not another country,
not even widespread public opposition to war -- can stop you?

"[I]f you're talking about trying to move people to something that they're
not inclined to do," says Wolfowitz, "then you've got to have leverage and
one piece of leverage is the ultimate threat of force." {6} It all sounds
reasonable and dispassionate, and it is dispassionate, so much so that it
shows Wolfowitz to have missed a promising career in organized crime, where
he would have been placed in good stead by his grasp of the idea that the
threat of hurting others, if you're strong and ruthless enough, will get you
a whole lot farther than diplomatic words. For shorn of its euphemistic
language of "leverage" and "the ultimate threat of force" (that is,
threatening to kill a whole lot of people and being ruthless enough to carry
through on the threat if you have to) Wolfowitz's view amounts to the
Mafioso principle of breaking legs and putting bullets through heads to get
what you want, outside the law.

For many Americans the object of this criminal reign is understood to be
their personal safety. The means are harsh and outlawed, but at least the
terrorists, it is believed, are kept at bay. For others, the objectives of
Washington's bullying are less the security of Americans, and more the
enlargement of American economic interests. Indeed, while 9/11 seems to
offer a unique justification for US intervention abroad, the practice of the
US military and intelligence agencies being pressed into service to topple
unwanted regimes--typically those that stand in the way of the US
aggrandizing the interests of its most influential firms--is hardly unique.
It has been a constant feature of US foreign policy stretching back more
than a century. And in instance after instance, there has been a
justification that has later been shown to be false, a pretext to smooth the
way. The now discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction waiting on the shelf to be deployed within 45 minutes is only
more of the same. The practice of regime change, therefore, has remained a
constant throughout the history of US foreign policy. Only the excuses have
varied. Preventing another  9/11, as all the other excuses, is nothing more
than a convenient cover for doing what Washington would have done anyway.

********

George W. Bush's September 20, 2002 National Security Strategy begins with
a bold declaration: There is, it says, "a single sustainable model for
national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise." Declaring free
enterprise to be a summum bonum is a rather odd way to set out on the task
of putting forward a plan to safeguard the security of a nation, if "nation"
is taken to comprise the 300 million or so people who claim US citizenship.
For whatever has free enterprise -- or Bush's commitment, set out in the
same document, to "actively work to bring...free markets and free trade to
every corner of the world" -- to do with securing the personal safety of ord
inary Americans? Doesn't this have more to do with securing attractive
overseas investment opportunities for American banks and corporations?

According to Bush, poor countries are hospitable hosts for terrorist
networks. "Poverty does not make people into terrorists," he says, but
"poverty...can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks." And since
"[f]ree trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift whole
societies out of poverty," solving the problem of terrorism means imposing
the single sustainable model of free trade and free markets on countries
whose poverty is the fertile soil in which terrorist networks are able to
put down roots, or so the argument goes.

To say there are a few problems with Bush's formulation is to understate
the obvious. For one, it's not clear how much more free trade and free
enterprise a desperately poor country like Haiti can withstand, before the
word "desperation" becomes too mild a description of the straitened
circumstances under which the island's residents subsist. And Central
America has a long history of free trade and free markets (imposed by US
gunboat diplomacy), and nothing to show for it, but misery, poverty and
unrelenting strife. But American corporations, among them United Fruit, have
profited handsomely from a model of free trade and free markets that--while
not lifting Central Americans out of poverty--has certainly kept the profit
margins of US firms with stakes in the region agreeably large.

As for there being a single, sustainable model based on free markets,
Cuban-style socialism, a counter-model, has enjoyed sustained success in
delivering startling social gains to Cubans, achievements that not only put
pre-Castro, US-dominated Cuba to shame, but raise troubling questions about
the US. How is it, for example, that a Third World country, whose per capita
GDP is a fraction of that of the United States, can offer universal
healthcare for free, while 40 million Americans have no health insurance and
another 40 million are inadequately insured? How is it that a poor Caribbean
country can lead the world in the number of doctors and teachers per capita,
have the world's lowest teacher to pupil ratio, offer education through
university for free, and top the hemisphere with the lowest child mortality
rate, while access to education in the US is grossly unequal and in some
parts of the country child mortality reaches Third World levels? Even more
troubling for defenders of the "there's nothing better than the American
system" school of thought, is how Cuba has, under the most inauspicious of
circumstances, managed to deliver benefits that, were they proposed for
Americans, would be immediately dismissed as too expensive. The tiny country
has been blockaded, menaced by economic warfare, and subject for more than
40 years to Washington's unrelenting efforts to smash a society that stands
as a challenge to the claim that there's one sustainable model, and yet, in
matters of social well-being, economic security and equality, it outperforms
its vastly richer northern neighbor.

The Bush document is chock-a-block of references to visiting the virtues
of this single model of free trade and free markets on other countries. "We
will promote...economic freedom beyond America's shores," it promises,
presumably, whether the intended recipients approve or not. But however much
the Bush administration is smitten by free trade and free markets (code for
markets open to US firms on terms agreeable to US investors), it might be
asked why it is necessary to impose this model on others? Markets open to US
firms have proved infinitely more beneficial to US firms than to the
majority of the domestic populations involved, which is not to say there
aren't comprador sections of foreign populations that have also profited,
but on the whole, the pursuit of free markets and free trade has had nothing
to do with lifting others out of poverty, and has had everything to do with
expanding markets and preventing the US economy from slipping into permanent
recession. There is little to recommend this model to foreign populations,
or the majority of Americans, for that matter, whose interests, if they are
served by the model at all, are served only incidentally.

In this, Bush's emphasis on opening markets abroad and imposing free trade
(a moral principle, Bush calls it, though not one to be observed when it
comes "at the expense of American workers," which is kind of like saying
marital fidelity is a moral principle, though not one to be observed at the
expense of giving up an opportunity to bang the office flirt in a night of
gloriously unbridled sex), is simply a continuation of a long-standing US
foreign policy reaching back over a century, if not longer. It is a foreign
policy that puts US corporate control over foreign markets, labor and
resources at its center, supported by robust military intervention as a
major means of achieving the central goal.

"I firmly believe," remarked Connecticut's Senator Orville Platt in 1894,
"that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the
United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our
commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it." {7}
Platt's importunities were largely superfluous. The United States would have
lost no time anyway in acquiring what has come to be known as "America's
vital interests," be it tin and tungsten in Indochina or oil in the Middle
East. Capitalism, like a shark, must keep moving, and American capitalism
has been very successful in moving across the face of the globe.

Thirteen years later, Woodrow Wilson, soon to become president, would
utter the shark-keeper's credo. "Since trade ignores national boundaries,"
he said, "and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the
flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are
closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers
must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of
unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or
planted in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or
left unused." {8}

Wilson, like most presidents, was a Marxist of sorts. Compare his remarks
to this, from the Communist Manifesto: "The need of a constantly expanding
market for [their] products chases the [manufacturer] over the whole surface
of the globe. [They] must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connections everywhere." {9} The difference, of course, was that Wilson was
a willing servant, and beneficiary of, the capitalist exploitation Marx and
Engels deplored. But they were all pretty well agreed on the imperative that
drove capitalists to batter down the doors of nations closed against them.
And much of the battering, in the American case, was being done by the
United States military.

Major General Smedley Butler, a 33-year veteran of the US Marine Corps.,
would have perceived nothing unusual in George Bush's seeking to protect the
security of a nation by committing to "bring...free markets and free trade
to every corner of the world." That's because Butler came to perceive his
role in the country' military establishment, which nominally exists to
protect the security of Americans from attack, as one of securing access to
foreign markets and resources on behalf of US firms, a necessary part of the
imperative that drove capitalists to "nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere," even if it meant outraging the
sovereignty of unwilling nations. It was perfectly true that the US military
protected Americans, if by Americans you meant "some Americans" and you were
speaking of their business opportunities and investments overseas.

"I spent most of my time [in the Marines] as a high-class muscle man for
Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers," {10} Butler recalled. "In
short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." {11}

"I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests," he explained. "I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank." And
he added that he "helped in the raping of half a dozen central American
republics for the benefit of Wall Street." {12}

Call it rape, or call it enforcing stability and security. It's all the
same. Clinton's Defense Secretary William Cohen preferred the
higher-sounding "stability." "Business follows the flag," he explained, when
asked why 100,000 US troops were stationed in Europe, 40,000 were in South
Korea, and tens of thousands were in the Persian Gulf region. "Where there
is stability and security, there is likely to be investment." {13}

But then Cohen was simply echoing Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State, and
former Supreme Commander of NATO's forces in Europe, Alexander Haig. "A lot
of people forget [the presence of US troops in Europe] is also the bona fide
of our economic success," Haig explained. "[I]t keeps European markets open
to us. If those troops weren't there, those markets would probably be more
difficult to access." {14}

And Haig was simply echoing another former General, Dwight Eisenhower. "A
serious and explicit purpose of our foreign policy [is] the encouragement of
a hospitable climate for [private] investment in foreign nations." {15}

But encouraging hospitable climates for US investment in foreign nations,
often using the kind of Mafia-style arm-twisting techniques of the
high-class muscle men of the US military, lacks the moral allure that brings
people to their feet in wild frenzies of patriotic fervor, of the kind that
might lead the Jay Garners of a nation to ejaculate, "We ought to look in a
mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and
say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'"

And so it is that the process of US firms nestling everywhere, settling
everywhere, and establishing connections everywhere, even where it has meant
outraging the sovereignty of unwilling nations, has been cloaked in
do-gooder morality. This has been true of all conquests. We didn't come for
the gold, or the riches, or the oil, we came to spread Christianity, to
bestow civilization on savages, to bring democracy and human rights to those
who have suffered under tyranny, to root out terrorism, to bring relief from
poverty, and to stop ethnic cleansing. We didn't station 100,000 troops in
Europe to protect the access of US firms to European markets. We did it to
protect western Europeans from Soviet aggression. And when the Warsaw Pact
disbanded, 100,000 US troops remained, and a new cloak, just as
high-faulting as the last, was donned.

*******************

How to stop the American juggernaut? The answer may, contrary to
appearances, lie with the American public. It seems otherwise, with mass
demonstrations against the latest eruption of US imperialism run amok
proving ineffective in deflecting Washington from its bloody minded path;
the assault on Iraq went ahead away. But while it seems otherwise, the US
public is able to act as a brake on Washington's imperial designs, where the
cost to the public of untrammelled interventionism is personal and direct
and readily perceived. The problem is, the costs, inasmuch as they can be
apprehended, aren't that high, and are unlikely to become so. It's doubtful
that Washington could sustain support for its foreign adventures too long
were Americans forced to endure dear personal sacrifices: massive loss of
life, severe retrenchment, economic penalties, troubling disruptions and
shortages, paralysing uncertainty. Anything that could shake the public from
its normal quiescence, one whose disruptions are usually limited to marching
in the streets in an orderly fashion on a sunny Sunday afternoon (if that),
is anathema to the foreign policy establishment, and so, is studiously
avoided. This Washington learned from the backlash that attended its
campaign of murder and rapine in Vietnam, one that grew stronger as the
personal penalties paid by ordinary Americans, in the psychological trauma
that attended the actual or feared loss of life, of oneself or sons or
fathers, grew larger. The political establishment has since taken pains to
ensure that Americans are sheltered from penalties as severe and
disquieting. The military is professional, not conscripted. High-altitude
bombing, use of proxy armies, covert, and nowadays quite open, campaigns of
subversion and destabilization are preferred to risky confrontations to keep
loss of American life to a bare minimum. Bulk up and pick on weaklings,
while coopting  anyone who could put up a decent fight, is the preferred
approach, with the latest addition being the pre-emption of anyone who
might, some day, get strong enough to be able to stand up to all the
bullying. But above all, the approach stipulates, don't do anything to push
Americans from the sidelines into the middle of the action where a few body
blows will leave them asking, "Is this really worth it? How much more of
this do I have to take?"

That this is understood is evident in the infamous glimpse into the
strategy behind NATO's bombing camping over Yugoslavia, revealed in the
words of US Air Force General Michael Short.

"If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and
no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be
lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey,
Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to
withstand?'" {16}

US foreign policy is built on the same principle, in reverse. You want
citizens of whatever target country you're trying to bring into your orbit
to say, "Hey, how much more of this do we have to withstand?" The desired
response is the pressing of the offending government by its citizens to
capitulate to US pressure, or to back, in the case of multiparty
democracies, (the almost invariably US-funded and controlled) opposition, in
general elections. At the same time, you want to avoid provoking any kind of
backlash that will prompt your own people to ask, "Hey George, how much more
of this do we have to take?" A premium is placed on quiescence at home, as
much as one is placed on unrest in offending countries abroad.

It is, however, quite possible that blowback -- retaliatory strikes by
whoever has been aggrieved by US foreign policy -- could disturb the
complacency of Americans, and spark demands that Washington stop provoking
other countries and groups. But given the deplorably shallow presentation of
foreign affairs in the largely docile and hyper-patriotic US media
(controlled by the same corporate interests that profit from US meddling
abroad), the chances of Americans in large numbers perceiving any connection
between retaliatory strikes and US provocations, are slim. This is no better
illustrated than in the attempts to explain 9/11. While an event of this
magnitude should have prompted Americans to wonder why anyone would commit
an act so vile, discussion of the precipitating events was largely limited
to:

(a) the comically absurd notion that the hijackers were motivated by
hatred of American freedoms and democracy; and

(b) hysterical denunciations of anyone who suggested that preventing
another 9/11 meant first understanding the motivations of those who
orchestrated it.

Evil was also trotted out in the aftermath as an explanation for troubling
events, thereby preventing anyone from delving too deeply into why others
could be so infuriated at the United States that they could go to such
extraordinary lengths. But evil is no explanation at all.

"Why did the hijackers do what they did?"

"Because they're evil."

"How do you know they're evil?"

"Because they did what they did."

Doing 150 laps on a circular treadmill will work up a lot of sweat, but it
won't get you anywhere, which is just as well, if that's the aim.

Accordingly, the chances of Americans ever becoming frustrated at having
to endure blowback are slim. What blowback does occur is simply chalked up
to evil, not to the overseas provocations of one's own government. Besides,
other than 9/11, how much blowback has there been that wasn't directed at US
targets abroad -- embassies, warships, barracks -- and not at civilian
targets at home, the kind of blowback that would disturb the desired
domestic quietude?

Therein lies a troubling dilemma. The imperatives that compel the people
who run the United States are the most retrograde and violent on earth, yet
the greatest possibility for change lies within the hands of the American
people themselves, who seem unlikely to exercise their latent power to
overturn a destructive and regressive regime. That Americans have at least
the potential to overturn the retrograde path on which their government
travels is not lost on the political establishment, which takes pains to
ensure ordinary Americans remain sheltered, for the most part, from the
repercussions of their country's foreign policy, such as they are. The most
severe reaction at home to Washington's muscular imperialism has been pangs
of conscience, expressed in "not in our name" campaigns, but, while
admirable and necessary, the campaigns are small, and more importantly, too
pacific, too non-disruptive, too ad hoc, to deflect Washington from its
accustomed course of jackbooting around the globe in search of advantage for
US firms. Moreover, the reactions are, for the most part, unconnected with a
larger agenda of radical transformation, and any kind of mass adherence to
such an agenda lacks the impetus that a directly perceived personal cost
arising from the status quo would provide.

The opposition that does exist is inspired largely by moral and liberal
democratic concerns. It is, for these reasons, that the opposition can often
be channelled in the direction of joining in the demonization campaigns
authored by the US foreign policy establishment to prepare public opinion
for war or destabilization abroad. These campaigns often appeal to these
central concerns. A target country is ruled by a dictator. Human rights are
not respected. But ritualistic denunciations of US foreign policy betes
noires have the unfortunate outcome of diverting attention from Washington's
own violent and retrograde actions, and how to remediate them. Given the
high dudgeon Americans can work themselves into over the measures some
foreign governments have taken to resist the depredations of the US empire,
you'd think the toppling of Castro, Mugabe and Kim Jong Il, ought to be job
#1 in any program of making the world a better place, as opposed to, say,
dismantling the concentration camp at Gautananmo Bay, or retooling the US
economy so that Washington isn't continually driven to intervene, often in
violent ways, in the affairs of other nations.

The toppling of the Eastern Bloc Communist regimes was also promised, by
the same opposition, to be an event that would make the world a better
place, but growing misery, disease, ethnic strife and economic demise in the
newly "liberated" regions scream otherwise. Whatever stains maculated the
records of the Communist regimes (and there were many), the promise of a
post-Communist world being an improvement on the old is entirely hollow.
Indeed, one of the chief outcomes of the overthrow of Communism, apart from
the Second World having been rapidly returned to the Third World, is that
Washington now enjoys an unmatched freedom to intervene at will just about
anywhere it wants to exercise its self-declared right of global
leadership -- that is, expanding its empire, with agreeable consequences for
the US corporate class, in whose interests it acts.

The opposition, apart from being utopian at worst, and at best, naive
about the courses of action available to target countries to defend
themselves against Washington's imperial designs, has not only been wrong
about what would attend the collapse of Communism, but spectacularly
unsuccessful in improving the lot of ordinary Americans. Its greatest
triumph (a self-declared one) is the US withdrawal from Indochina, a
decision that had far less to do with the antiwar movement, and far more to
do with the Vietnamese doggedly defending themselves. In the end,
Washington's isolation of Vietnam, which, once US forces quit the country,
received little support from the US opposition, largely brought the battered
country to heel. To this day, the opposition refuses to speak kindly of any
foreign regime that does not adopt multiparty democratic structures, and
which does not put civic and political rights above economic rights, whether
history, local traditions, or political exigencies conduce to such
arrangements or not.

Meanwhile, the outcome of this feckless opposition has been for the
political and economic position of ordinary Americans to deteriorate, while
corporations grow stronger, and Washington's assertiveness in pressing US
corporate interests, either through trade arrangements, tax cuts, regressive
labor legislation, the shredding of social programs, defense spending, and
conquest, grows bolder. The opposition's response has been to lament the
media's collusion with US corporate interests in manufacturing consent for
regressive policies, while working diligently to establish its
anti-totalitarian credentials, and little else. That this has accomplished
nothing of substance is evidenced by the fact that those of us who are
subjects, as writer Arundhati Roy puts it, of the US empire, find ourselves
living under the rule of a bold section of the US corporate class that's
pushing the envelope to see how far it can go. The answer: Farther than
anyone imagined, undeterred by an opposition that's more comfortable
attacking the victims of US foreign policy for not being liberal democratic,
than pursuing any kind of realistic and concrete program of radical
transformation at home.

Washington, which has always been ruthlessly assertive in pressing US
corporate interests, even if it has meant outraging the sovereignty of
unwilling nations and intensifying exploitation of its own population, has,
for the collapse of an effective opposition abroad, and not much of an
opposition at home, become far bolder. It aspires to primacy and acts as
global hegemon, because it can, and because the imperatives of economic
expansion and the profit-making demands of its firms push it in that
direction. By sheltering its own population from the storms that attend its
crimes abroad, it's free to carry on more or less as it pleases. What's
more, there's no hyper-power to enforce its compliance with international
law and no competing superpower to check its campaigns of conquest. The
claim that public opinion has become a second superpower, able to restrain
the United States, is as much at odds with reality as the claim that the
world is better off for the overthrow of communism. World public opinion,
massively opposed to a war on Iraq, didn't stop Washington from ordering
British and American troops to march on Baghdad. Revealingly, the nonsense
about communism's demise being good for humanity and public opinion being a
second superpower has been touted by the same people, who, it would seem,
live in a la la land, where you can complain about drought while standing up
to your knees in water, and be applauded for your principled adherence to
the truth. As to those inclined to question their government, the standard
practice is to impugn everything that comes from Washington, except the most
damning and negative accusations about foreign policy targets. The
assumption, part of the orthodoxy of the opposition, is that these claims
alone must be true because anyone in a position of power must surely be an
unrelieved reprobate, thug and strongman, one of Bakunin's vampires of
history, who feed on the blood of the people, and therefore must be swept
away for the good of humanity. Even wondering whether the accusations are
dubious, or even relevant, is frowned upon. Which is just as well for people
like Wolfowitz, who, one imagines, couldn't wish for a better opposition.

1. "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity
Fair," May 9, 2003,
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. "A major focus for Wolfowitz and others in the Pentagon was finding
intelligence to prove a connection between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al
Qaeda terrorist network," revealed The Washington Post on June 5, 2003.
"Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits."

5. "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity
Fair," May 9, 2003,
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

6.Ibid.

7. David Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890's,
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1970, p. 173, cited in Joel Andreas,
Addicted to War, AK Press, 2002.

8. Micheal Parenti, Against Empire, City Light Books, San Francisco, 1995,
p.40.

9. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," in Leo
Panitch and Colin Leys, Eds., "The Socialist Register, 1998," Monthly Review
Press, 1998, p. 243.

10. Major General Smedley Butler, "War is a Racket,"
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. "Cohen: No 'Superpower Fatigue' Secretary Says U.S. Military Presence
Promotes Stability," Military.com, May 24, 2000, cited in Joel Andreas,
Addicted to War, AK Press, 2002.

14. UPI, January 7, 2002.

15. New York Times, February 3, 1953, cited in Michael Parenti, The
Terrorism Trap, City Light Books, San Francisco 2002, p.88.

16. "What this war is really about," The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1999.

..
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/feckless.html


From:         Wider Anal Sham

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Wider Anal Sham

From: House Widdershins <sinistre@concentric.net>
Organization: Concentric Internet Services
This will likely be my final post to usenet. 
.....kiss my ass.... NO WIDER SHAM!!