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World Focus: American Foreign Policy - Have Our War Lovers Learned Anything? Posted on Tuesday, March 05 @ 05:01:32 UTC
Topic: USA
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By William Blum March 05, 2012 - www.killinghope.org
Over the past four decades, of all the reasons
people over a certain age have given for their becoming
radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has
easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the
best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think
that if the war lovers who run the United States had known
of this in advance they might have had serious second
thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war
crime.
At
other times, however, I have the thought that our dear war
lovers have had 40 years to take this lesson to heart, and
during this time what did they do? They did Salvador and
Nicaragua, and Angola and Grenada. They did Panama and
Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2012 American
President Barack Obama saw fit to declare that the Vietnam
War was "one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery
and integrity in the annals of military history".1
So,
have they learned nothing? When it comes to following
international law, is the United States like a failed state?
The Somalia of international law? Well, if they were
perfectly frank, the war lovers would insist that the
purpose of all these interventions, and many others like
them, was to keep the atheists out of power – the
non-believers in America's god-given right to rule the world
– or to at least make life as difficult as possible for
them. And thus the interventions were successful; nothing to
apologize for; even the Vietnam War achieved its purpose of
preventing that country from becoming a good development
option for Asia, a socialist alternative to the capitalist
model; precisely the same reason for Washington's endless
hostility toward Cuba in Latin America; and Cuba has indeed
inspired numerous atheists and their alternatives for a
better world.
If
they were even more honest, the war lovers might quote
George Kennan, the legendary State Department strategist,
who wrote prophetically during the Cold War: "Were the
Soviet Uni0n to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean,
the American military-industrial establishment would have to
go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary
could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable
shock to the American economy. "2
But
after all these years, after decades of American militarism
– though not a day passes without some government official
or media acolyte expressing his admiration and gratitude for
"our brave boys" – cracks in the American edifice can be
seen. Some of the war lovers, and their TV groupies would
have us believe that they have actually learned something.
One of the first was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in
February 2011: "In my opinion, any future defense secretary
who advises the president to again send a big American land
army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have
his head examined."
And
here's former Secretary of State George Shultz speaking
before the prestigious Council of Foreign Relations last
month (January 29): "Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be the
template for how we go about" dealing with threats of
terrorism.
A few
days earlier the very establishment and conservative
Economist magazine declared: "The best-intentioned
foreign intervention is bound to bog its armies down in
endless wars fighting invisible enemies to help ungrateful
locals."
However, none of these people are in power. And does history
offer any example of a highly militaristic power – without
extreme coercion – seeing the error of its ways? One of my
readers, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote to me
recently:
It
is my opinion that the German and Japanese people only
relinquished their imperial culture and mindset when
they were bombed back to the stone age at the end of
WWII. Something similar is the only cure for the same
pathology that now is embedded into the very social
fabric of the USA. The USA is a full-blown pathological
society now. There is no other cure. No amount of
articles on the Internet pointing out the hypocrisies or
war crimes will do it.
So,
while the United States is busy building bases and
anti-missile sites in Europe, Asia and Africa, deploying
space-based and other hi-tech weapons systems, trying to
surround Russia, China, Iran and any other atheist that
threatens American world hegemony, and firing drone missiles
all over the Middle East I'm busy playing games on the
Internet. What can I say? In theory at least, there is
another force besides the terrible bombing mentioned above
that can stop the American empire, and that is the American
people. I'll continue trying to educate them. Too bad I
won't live long enough to see the glorious transformation.
Afghanistan: Manufacturing
the American Legacy
"A
decade ago, playing music could get you maimed in
Afghanistan. Today, a youth ensemble is traveling to the
Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. And it even includes
girls."
Thus
reads the sub-heading of a Washington Post story of
February 3 about an orchestra of 48 Afghan young people who
attended music school in a country where the Taliban have
tried to silence both women and music. "The Afghan Youth
Orchestra is more than a development project," the article
informs us. For "the school's many international donors, it
serves as a powerful symbol of successful reconstruction in
Afghanistan. And by performing in Washington and New York,
the seats of U.S. political and financial power, the
orchestra hopes to showcase what a decade of investment has
achieved."
"The
U.S. State Department, the World Bank, the Carnegie
Corporation and Afghanistan's Ministry of Education have
invested heavily in the tour. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul
awarded nearly $350,000 footing most of the estimated
$500,000 cost. For international donors, the tour symbolizes
progress in a country crippled by war."
The
State Department's director of communications and public
diplomacy for Afghanistan and Pakistan declares: "We wanted
Americans to understand the difference their tax dollars
have made in building a better future for young people,
which translates into reduced threats from extremists in the
region."
"There's a lot of weariness in the U.S. and cynicism about
Afghanistan," said William Harvey, an American violinist who
teaches at the school, where 35 of 141 students are girls.
"What are we doing there? What can be achieved? These
concerts answer those questions in the strongest way
possible: Cooperation between Afghanistan and the
international community has made it safe for young girls and
boys to learn music."
There
can be no question that for the sad country of Afghanistan
all this is welcome news. There can also be little doubt
that a beleaguered and defensive US foreign policy
establishment will seek to squeeze out as much favorable
publicity as possible from these events. On the issue of the
severe oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan,
defenders of the US occupation of that desperate land would
have you believe that the United States is the last great
hope of those poor females. However, you will not be
reminded that in the 1980s the United States played an
indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and
relatively progressive Afghan government, one which
endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they'll
ever have under the current Karzai-US government, more
probably than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986
US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of
this government concerning women:
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"provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage
partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at
16 for women and 18 for men"
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"abolished forced marriages"
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"bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social
programs"
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"extensive literacy programs, especially for women"
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"putting girls and boys in the same classroom";
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"concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a
more active role in politics". 3
The
US-led overthrow of this government paved the way for the
coming to power of Islamic fundamentalist forces, which led
directly to the awful Taliban. And why did the United States
in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Because
the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Uni0n and
Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless
military quagmire – "We now have the opportunity of giving
to the Soviet Uni0n its Vietnam War", said Zbigniew
Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser.4
The
women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to
raise them to the status of full human beings would have
turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price
to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.
Guantánamo Bay
People
on the left never tire of calling for the closing of the US
prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The fact that President
Obama made the closing a promise of his 2008 campaign and
repeated it again in the White House, while the prison still
remains in operation, is seen as a serious betrayal. But
each time I read about this I'm struck by the same thought:
The horror of Guantánamo is not its being open, not its mere
existence. Its horror lies in its being the site of more
than 10 years of terrible abuse of human beings. If the
prison is closed and all its inmates are moved to another
prison, and the abuses continue, what would have been
accomplished? How would the cause of human rights be
benefitted? I think that activists should focus on the
abuses, regardless of the location.
The War on Terror – They're
really getting serious about it now
For
disseminating classified materials that exposed war crimes,
Julian Assange is now honored as an official terrorist as
only America can honor. We Shall Never Forget 9/11, Vol.
II: The True Faces of Evil - Terror, a graphic coloring
novel for children, which comes with several pages of
perforated, detachable "terrorist trading cards". Published
by Really Big Coloring Books Inc. in St. Louis, the cards
include Assange, Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted
Kaczynski, Maj. Nidal Hasan, Bill Ayers, and others.5
Superpower – the film
Starring Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Michel Chossudovksy,
Karen Kwiatowski (Pentagon "defector"), William Blum, Sergei
Khrushchev (son of Nikita), Kathy Kelly, and many others:
https://vimeo.com/55141496 (enter password when
prompted: barbarasteegmuller) – 2 hours
long.
New Book and talk
The
eagerly awaited (I can name at least three people) new book
by William Blum is here at last. "America's
Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign
Policy and Everything Else" is made up of essays which
are a combination of new and old; combined, updated,
expanded; many first appeared in one form or another in the
Anti-Empire Report, or on my website, at various times
during the past ten years or so.
As
mentioned in the book, activists like myself are sometimes
scoffed at for saying the same old things to the same old
people; just spinning our wheels, we're told, "preaching to
the choir" or "preaching to the converted". But long
experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of
foreign policy tells me it just ain't so. From the questions
and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email
and in person, I can plainly see that there are numerous
significant information gaps and misconceptions in the
choir's thinking, often leaving them unable to see through
the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they're
unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that
illuminates the present; or knowing the facts but unable to
apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being
led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument
that opposes what they currently believe, or think they
believe; and, perhaps worst of all, many of them suffer
pathetically from an over-abundance of conspiracy thinking,
often carrying a justified suspicion or idea to a ridiculous
level; virtually nothing is taken at face value.
The
choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened to be
better able to influence others, to be better activists.
To
order a signed copy directly from me you can go to my
website: http://killinghope.org.
I'll
be speaking about the new book at Politics and Prose
bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave., NW, in Washington, DC,
Saturday, March 2 at 1 pm.
Notes
-
May 28, 2012, speaking at the Vietnam War
Memorial in Washington
-
George Kennan, Wikipedia entry
-
US Department of the Army,
Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128,
130, 223, 232 (Library of Congress Call Number DS351.5
.A34 1986)
-
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wikipedia entry
-
View the press release;
see the cards
William Blum is the author of:
Source: killinghope.org
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