June 20, 2005
Anti-Empire Report
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends
Counterpunch.com
By WILLIAM BLUM
The Pentagon awarded three contracts this past week, worth up to $300
million, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into US
psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion
about the United States, particularly their opinion of the American
military. "We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of
media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint
Psychological Operations Support Element.
Dan Kuehl, a specialist in information warfare at the National Defense
University, added: "There are a billion-plus Muslims that are
undecided. How do we move them over to being more supportive of us? If
we can do that, we can make progress and improve security."{1}
And so it goes. And so it has gone since September 11, 2001. The
world's only superpower has felt misunderstood, although co-existing
with this feeling at times, and expressed more than once by Bush
administration officials, has been oderint dum metuant, a favorite
phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero -- "let them hate
so long as they fear".
"How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is
vitriolic hatred for America?" asked George W. (aka jerkus maximus) a
month after 9-11. "I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed
that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that
people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe
it because I know how good we are."{2}
Psychological operations, information warfare, cutting-edge media ...
surely there's a high-tech solution.
But what if it's not a misunderstanding? What if the problem is that
people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world understand the
Pentagon and US foreign policy only too well? In short, what if they
don't know how good we are? What if they -- in their foreign ignorance
and al-Jazeera brainwashing -- have come to the bizarre conclusion that
saturation bombing, invasion, occupation, destruction of homes,
torture, depleted uranium, killing a hundred thousand, and daily
humiliation of men, women and children do not indicate good intentions?
In early June, as well, Zalmay Khalilzad, nominated to be US ambassador
to Iraq, appeared before the Senate. "The degree of support for our
policies, opinion polls indicate, is not very high," he said. It has
partly "to do with the perception that what we are about in Iraq is
occupation, what we're about is to gain control of Iraqi resources. I
think what we need to do is a better job of explaining our goals, the
goal of an Iraq that's self-reliant, an Iraq that's successful. We want
Iraq for the Iraqis, an Iraq that works for the Iraqi people. It's the
insurgents who don't care about the Iraqi people."{3}
Yes, it is remarkable indeed how misinformed some people can be.
The Cold War is dead. Long live the cold war.
In last month's report, during the celebration of the 60th anniversary
of the end of World War II in Europe, I commented about three enduring
tales which the West exploited to win Cold War points against the
Soviet Union: the Soviets signing a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939;
their occupation of the three Baltic nations in 1940; and their
occupation of the rest of Eastern Europe after the war. My purpose was
to show that there were ways of looking at these events radically
different from the ways Americans are taught to look at them.
This greatly upset a number of my readers; not because what I wrote was
historically incorrect, but because to them it seemed to excuse the
crimes of the Soviet Union. The idea that the Russians could have
legitimate reasons, self defense for one, for doing some of what they
did is too painful to acknowledge for committed anti-communists. To
them, any attempt to correct a myth concerning the Soviet Union is
tantamount to ignoring -- if not approving -- Stalin's crimes and the
sufferings of the people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Progressives of my generation became anti-anti-communists because the
powers-that-be in the United States, for decades and decades, used the
sins -- real and (often) fabricated -- of the Soviet Union as a
justification for US foreign policy. Thus, the horrors carried out by
the US in Korea were justified because "we're fighting communism".
Thus, the horrors carried out by the US in Vietnam were justified
because "we're fighting communism". Ditto the horrors of Cambodia,
Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, etc., etc.,
etc. (Now, of course, "we're fighting terrorism", but it's for the
exact same imperialist reasons.) It's no wonder that people with a
social conscience, who suffered over the horrors of US foreign policy,
it's no wonder that so many became anti-anti-communists. And still are.
I've written a concise history of American anti-communism, which can be
read online.{4}
Another myth I should have added in last month's report: The Yalta
agreement of 1945, in planning for "the establishment of order in
Europe", affirmed "the right of all peoples to choose the form of
government under which they will live." We've been told ever since that
it was the evil commies that caused this noble agreement to fall apart.
But, in fact, it was the United States and the United Kingdom who
cynically violated this affirmation before Stalin did. In Greece.
Before the war in Europe even ended! By grossly interfering in the
civil war, taking the side of those who had supported the Nazis in the
war (sic), thus enabling them to defeat those who had fought against
the Nazis. The latter, you see, had amongst its number some who could
be called (choke, gasp) "communists".(5)
Anti-communism still holds a death grip on the American psyche. Witness
the screams of pain -- from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the media --
over Amnesty International's recent characterization of US torture
sites as "the gulag of our times". Could anything be more infuriating
and humiliating to an inveterate cold warrior than for the United
States to be compared to Stalin's Russia?
Yet another patriotic myth (sorry to burst so many bubbles)
August 6 and 9 will mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of atomic
bombs on Japan. We can expect the usual speeches and editorials telling
us how the use of the bombs obviated the need for a land invasion of
Japan, thus saving a huge number of US servicemen's lives.
"Omission," wrote George Orwell, "is the most powerful form of lie."
The principal omissions from the a-bomb story is that Japan's military
capability had been hopelessly destroyed and the Japanese government
had been frantically sending peace feelers to the United States for a
long time before those fateful days of August; peace feelers which
Washington completely ignored because they wanted to use the atomic
bombs. The full story can be read online.{6}
But to American government and media leaders, it doesn't matter much if
the official a-bomb story is only a legend. It's a higher truth.
Why does NATO exist?
NATO is preparing an "ambitious" expansion into southern Afghanistan
next year, announced its Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on
June 1. Eventually, the alliance will take charge of foreign security
in "the whole of the country", he said.{7}
NATO has been taking ambitious steps for years -- bombing Yugoslavia;
patrolling the Balkans like a Governor-General; training Iraqi security
forces; putting itself into the war on terrorism; providing security
for the 2004 Olympics in Greece; expanding its membership, which now
stands at 26 nations plus 20 others brought into the NATO fold under
the reassuring name of Partnership for Peace; and much more.
Time out. Where does NATO get all this authority? What body of citizens
has ever voted for them to do any of this? Why does NATO routinely
ignore the UN Security Council? Why, indeed, does NATO even exist?
We were told during the Cold War that NATO was needed to protect
Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. As some may have noticed, the
Soviet Union no longer exists,. (It's been suggested, plausibly, that
NATO was created originally to suppress the left in Italy if the
Communist Party came to power through an election.)
We were also told that NATO was there to counter the Warsaw Pact. The
Warsaw Pact folded its tent in 1991, calling upon NATO to do the same.
If NATO hadn't begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have
highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. "Out of area or out of
business" it was said.
If NATO had never existed, what argument could be given today in favor
of creating such an institution? Other than being a very useful
handmaiden of US foreign policy.
Reforming the Indonesian military, for 40 years
On May 25, President Bush stated that it makes sense for the United
States to maintain close military ties with Indonesia, despite the
objections of human rights activists who say such coordination should
be withheld until Indonesia does more to address human rights abuses by
its military. "We want young officers from Indonesia coming to the
United States," said Bush. "We want there to be exchanges between our
military corps -- that will help lead to better understandings." Bush
made his remarks after meeting with the Indonesian president, who, Bush
added, "told me he's in the process of reforming the military, and I
believe him."{8} (In May 2002, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori met
with US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Matori said his
government had begun to "reform the military". Rumsfeld believed him
enough to call for "military-to-military relations" to be
"re-established".){9}
Indonesian officials saying they're going to reform the military is
like officials in Nevada saying they're going to crack down on
gambling. For 40 years the Indonesian military has engaged in mass
murder and other atrocities, in Jakarta, East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and
elsewhere, taking the lives of well over a million people, including
several Americans in recent years. For 40 years relations between the
US and Indonesian militaries have been one of the very closest of such
contacts in the third world for the United States, despite the
occasional objections and prohibitions from Congress. For 40 years,
American officials have been saying that they have to continue training
and arming Indonesia's military because the contact with the American
military will have some kind of ennobling effect. For 40 years it has
had no such effect at all. As Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa) observed in
1999: "I have seen no evidence in my 24 years in Congress of one
instance where because of American military involvement with another
military that the Americans have stopped that foreign army from
carrying out atrocities against their own people. No evidence,
none."{10}
Yet the pretense continues, for what else can an American official say?
Something like this? -- "We don't care how brutal the Indonesian
military is because they got rid of Sukarno and his irritating
nationalism for us, and for 40 years they've been killing people we
call communists, killing people we call terrorists, and protecting our
oil, natural gas, mining, and other corporate interests against
Indonesian protestors. Now if that's not freedom and democracy, I don't
know what is."
Liberals: conservatives -- How meaningful the distinction?
Kenneth Tomlinson, the dogmatically conservative chairman of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees the Public
Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, has been trying to
remove what he sees as a liberal stain on the airwaves and replace it
with what he calls "objectivity and balance". This endeavor has been
heating up of late, resulting in all the old discussions about liberal
vs. conservative. As I've mentioned before in this report, these
discussions are usually less than satisfying or enlightening due to a
very common misunderstanding in the mainstream media and among the
public -- the idea that conservatives (far to the right on the
political spectrum) and liberals (ever so slightly to the left of
center) are ideological polar opposites. This is particularly not the
case with the current, omnipresent breed of neo-conservatives. Thus, a
radio or TV program with one of these conservatives and a liberal
maintains that it is "balanced", when in fact a more appropriate
balance to a conservative is a left-wing radical, progressive or
socialist. Liberals, at least those of the genus Americanum, are often
closer to conservatives, especially on foreign policy, than they are to
these groupings on the far left. In this light, the never-ending debate
about whether the media has a conservative or a liberal bias takes on
much less significance.
Tomlinson, it should be noted, was appointed to the corporation board
by President Clinton. He was chosen as chairman by President Bush in
September 2003.
The other Watergate mystery
The Watergate mystery has been solved, we've been told again and again
in the wake of the exposure of Deep Throat. But I'm confused. Doesn't
the much more important mystery still remain? Why was the office of the
Democratic National Committee burglarized in the first place? Did I
somehow miss that piece of news? I've read a number of theories about
the break-in over the years, but as far as I know nothing has been
substantiated or settled upon as the official, correct explanation. I'd
appreciate it if anyone could enlighten me.
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's
Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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