----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2000 12:15 AM Subject: [STOPNATO] Rogue removal as official U.S. foreign policy STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a399480370aee.htm FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum" -- ROGUE REMOVAL AS OFFICIAL U.S. FOREIGN POLICY Foreign Affairs Opinion (Published) Source: ZNet Published: 8/11/00 Author: Edward S. Herman Posted on 08/11/2000 15:37:43 PDT by H.R. Gross -- ROGUE REMOVAL AS OFFICIAL U.S. FOREIGN POLICY By Edward S. Herman In her August 1 speech before the Republican National Convention, Bush foreign policy adviser Condoleezza Rice explained to the audience that Bush "recognizes that the magnificent men and women of America's armed forces are not a global police force. They are not the world's 911." On the contrary, she said that in a Bush government these magnificent men and women will not only defend our shores and skies from any threats, they will "go forth to extend peace, prosperity and liberty beyond our blessed shores." And the Republican platform calls for the active pursuit of a "rogue removal" strategy to take out outlaws that the effete Clinton administration has merely sought to contain ("Bush plans to undermine 'rogue' states," Financial Times, Aug. 2, 2000). This of course does a grave injustice to Clinton, who has used a full array of boycotts, sanctions, civilian medical deprivation and starvation, bombing raids, inspections, support of external dissidents, and inducements to the Iraq military to overthrow the rogue leader Saddam Hussein. In Yugoslavia as well, Clinton has used massive bombing, sanctions, intervention in support of dissident parties, Tribunal condemnations of Milosevic, and putting a price on Milosevic's head as an inducement to dispatch the villain in another multi-pronged rogue removal operation. The only thing Clinton hasn't done is invade with U.S. troops to dislodge these rogue state leaders. It is not at all clear that the Republicans in power will go beyond Clinton in dealing with rogues, but they must differentiate themselves from him, especially as they are obliged to justify their intention to greatly enlarge the already immense military budget. They have to claim a plan for important "national security" action that Clinton wasn't already doing. It is awkward for the Republicans that in the case of Iraq he has pursued with genocidal energy the subversion process installed under Bush One. The anti-missile boondoggle is aimed at that other great national security threat, North Korea, whose leaders might someday in the far distant future have the power to commit national suicide by sending off a missile across the ocean. The Republicans are eagerly pushing that boondoggle, no doubt hoping that the possible rapprochement between North and South Korea will not force them to look for a boondoggle rationale elsewhere. But this boondoggle will not advance the cause of removing the rogue state leadership. According to Condoleeza Rice, the need for a defense against missiles "at the earliest possible date" results from the fact that rogue efforts to acquire long-range missiles are aimed strictly at "blackmail." The rogues couldn't want missiles for "defense" as this peace-loving country obviously seeks overwhelming military power and an anti-missile defense system only because of our "special responsibilities to keep the peace"! Could the Romans at the height of their imperial power have been more brazenly and self-righteously self-serving? Ms. Rice implies that Clinton's policy was only to provide a global "police force" and "911," without any larger rationale. But Clinton's foreign policy has surely been designed for corporate service, and he has been doing his subversion dirty work partly because he, like the Republicans, is devoted to the U.S. "national interest" in creating a global system hospitable to U.S. transnational corporations. But Clinton also feels the need to lean over backwards to show that he and the Democrats are not "soft" and will be at least as ready as the Republicans to beat up a Grenada, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc., and to put the national (corporate) interest first. The Republicans do not have to prove their patriotic willingness to bomb and their devotion to a corporate interest they serve so undeviatingly; which is why they sometimes have to extricate the country from wars in which the Democrats are bogged down (Korea, Vietnam). On the other hand, the Republicans are possibly closer to the military-industrial complex than the Democrats (Lockheed's head couldn't contain his enthusiasm at the prospect of a Bush presidency; Lynne Cheney is on his board of directors at $125,000 a year); they have more intimate ties to the oil industry (Bush and Cheney both come right out of the business); and the Republicans nurture a larger contingent of ideological crazies than the Democrats (Rice is a Bush team "moderate," allegedly fending off Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other hardline warriors). This makes the contest over who is more prone to imperialistic excesses a close one. But it is notable how, with the end of the Soviet Union and its modest "containment" of the United States, subversion of foreign enemies has become more open and brazen. Clinton carried it pretty far, and the Republicans are now saying that subversion is going to be official policy and will be carried farther. There is still that small genuflection to "morality" in describing the targets as "rogues," the follow-on to the designation as "terrorist" states of several years back. But the right to name a country as a "rogue" and then proceed to take systematic action to displace the rulers and install new ones is now presented as entirely reasonable. No questions have been raised in the U.S. media about the assertion of this right and its relation to the supposed rule of law in international affairs. The liberal Boston Globe editorially congratulates the Republicans for their platform call for rogue removal ("Being Clear About Saddam," Aug. 8). For the loyal media, the effective law is what their leaders say and do. The word "subversion" is of course not used to describe the Republican plans in foreign policy. That is an old-fashioned term of the Cold War years, like terrorism, that designated Soviet efforts to overthrow governments by KGB disinformation and propaganda, economic destabilization by boycotts and sanctions, buying politicians, and encouraging violence and assassinations. These were precisely the tactics used by the CIA and other arms of the U.S. security state in Latin America and globally, as described so compellingly by former CIA operative Philip Agee in his book Inside the Company, but as the mainstream media took for granted our natural right to subvert, an invidious word like subversion was never applied to us. And it reamins out of service today. (For an analysis of this natural right, and the forms of subversion used by the U.S. in Latin America, see my Real Terror Network, 132-5.) Another reason why we don't subvert is that all our efforts to deal with rogues are based on our concern for our "national security," one of the most elastic phrases in the English language. If a government that takes power in a distant country threatens to tax a U.S. company more heavily, this is a national security problem. By posing such a threat that government has demonstrated its hostility and unreasonableness-it has done something to which we object, and it has failed to recognize the neoliberal truth that such higher taxes are unsound, etc. Of course, on this conception of national security, anybody who does not do our precise bidding constitutes a national security threat and can reasonably be called a rogue. This is obviously a perfect intellectual instrument of a policy of aggressive imperialism. Another important feature of national security is that, like "Hoover's law"-i.e., the smaller the number of Communists the greater their subversive threat-we have a "National Security threat law," which says that the more powerful this country and the greater its military superiority over others the more fearsome and intolerable are any challenges to its desires abroad. This law is a symptom of that sickness known as the "pitiful giant syndrome," which causes our military-political elite to fret and gnash their teeth at our supposed helplessness in combating all these external menaces. Possibly there is in all this a trace of insincerity and a bit of calculated rationalization for the desire to maintain superiority and to intervene freely at our own discretion. But it may be an internalized truth for many. The military-industrial complex certainly needs rationales for the growing military budget, and threat inflation has a long history in the serial Cold War "gaps" that weren't there. The Bush Two gang have their work cut out for them in justifying escalated military expenditures in the post-Soviet threat era, but the mainstream media can always be relied on to help. And Bush Two's prospective unlimited service to Greed Inc. may make it necessary for our "magnificent men and women" in the armed services to work over some of those less magnificent men and women, victims of the "miracle of the market," needing pacification at home, as well as abroad. 1 Posted on 08/11/2000 15:37:43 PDT by H.R. Gross -- Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. -- FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 Forum Version 2.0a Copyright � 1999 Free Republic, LLC =============================== Support Antiwar.com http://Antiwar.com and also the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space http://www.space4peace.org +Make nonviolent peace. Speak truth to power. Pray for one another. Be merciful. Love your enemies. Forgive those who've hurt you. Come Lord Jesus Christ. Deo Gratias.+ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] FREE SHIPPING OR FREE SUNGLASSES at wonderfulbuys.com! We're giving free shipping on all our great buys plus get free sunglasses. Also, register to win a Total Gym 3000 ($1000.00 retail value). Click now, limited time offer. http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/wonderfulbuys
