Noam Chomsky
It goes without saying that what happens in the US has an enormous impact on
the rest of the world – and conversely: what happens in the rest of the world
cannot fail to have an impact on the US, in several ways. First, it sets
constraints on what even the most powerful state can do. And second, it
influences the domestic US component of “the second superpower,” as the New
York Times ruefully described world public opinion after the huge protests
before the Iraq invasion. Those protests were a critically important
historical event, not only because of their unprecedented scale, but also
because it was the first time in hundreds of years of the history of Europe and
its North American offshoots that a war was massively protested even before it
was officially launched. We may recall, by comparison, the war against South
Vietnam launched by JFK in 1962, brutal and barbaric from the outset: bombing,
chemical warfare to destroy food crops so as to starve out the civilian support
for the indigenous resistance, programs to drive millions of people to virtual
concentration camps or urban slums to eliminate its popular base. By the time
protests reached a substantial scale, the highly respected and quite hawkish
Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard Fall wondered whether
“Viet-Nam as a cultural and historic entity” would escape “extinction” as “the
countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever
unleashed on an area of this size” – particularly South Vietnam, always the
main target of the US assault. And when protest did finally develop, many
years too late, it was mostly directed against the peripheral crimes: the
extension of the war against the South to the rest of Indochina – hideous
crimes, but lesser ones.
It’s quite important to remember how much the world has changed since then – as
almost always, not as a result of gifts from benevolent leaders, but through
deeply committed popular struggle, far too late in developing, but ultimately
effective. One consequence was that the US government could not declare a
national emergency, which should have been healthy for the economy, as during
World War II when public support was very high. Johnson had to fight a
“guns-and-butter” war, buying off an unwilling population, harming the economy,
ultimately leading the business classes to turn against the war as too costly,
after the Tet Offensive of January 1968 showed that it would go on a long time.
The memoirs of Hitler’s economic Czar Albert Speer describe a similar problem.
The Nazis could not trust their population, and therefore could not fight as
disciplined a war as their democratic enemies, possibly affecting the outcome
seriously, given their technological lead. There were also concerns among US
elites about rising social and political consciousness stimulated by the
activism of the ‘60s, much of it reaction to the miserable crimes in Indochina,
then at last arousing popular indignation. We learn from the last sections of
the Pentagon Papers that after the Tet offensive, the military command was
reluctant to agree to the President’s call for further troop deployments,
wanting to be sure that “sufficient forces would still be available for civil
disorder control” in the US, and fearing that escalation might run the risk of
“provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.”
The Reagan administration – the current administration or their immediate
mentors — assumed that the problem of an independent aroused population had
been overcome, and apparently planned to follow the Kennedy model of the early
1960s in Central America. But they backed off in the face of unanticipated
public protest, turning instead to “clandestine war” employing murderous
security forces and a huge international terror network. The consequences were
terrible, but not as bad as B-52s and mass murder operations of the kind that
were peaking when John Kerry was deep in the Mekong Delta in the South, by then
largely devastated. The popular reaction to even the “clandestine war,” so
called, broke entirely new ground. The solidarity movements for Central
America, now in many parts of the world, are again something new in Western
history.
State managers cannot fail to pay attention to such matters. Routinely, a
newly elected President requests an intelligence evaluation of the world
situation. In 1989, when Bush I took office, a part was leaked. It warned
that when attacking “much weaker enemies” – the only sensible target – the US
must win “decisively and rapidly.” Delay might “undercut political support,”
recognized to be thin, a great change since the Kennedy-Johnson years when the
attack on Indochina, while never popular, aroused little reaction for many
years.
The world is pretty awful today, but it is far better than yesterday, not only
with regard to unwillingness to tolerate aggression, but also in many other
ways, which we now tend to take for granted. There are very important lessons
here, which should always be uppermost in our minds – for the same reason they
are suppressed in the elite culture.
We might tarry for a moment to recall Canada’s role in the Indochina wars, some
of the worst crimes of the last century. Canada was a member of the
International Control Commission for Indochina, theoretically neutral, in fact
spying for the aggressors. We learn from recently released Canadian archives
that Canada felt “some misgivings about some specific USA military measures
against [North Vietnam],” but “supports purposes and objectives of USA policy”
in opposing North Vietnamese “aggression of [a] special type.” This Vietnamese
aggression against Vietnam must not be allowed to succeed, not only because of
the possible consequences in Vietnam, still not facing the threat of
“extinction” at this time, but also because if Vietnam survives “as a viable
cultural and historic entity,” the aggression of the Vietnamese might set a
precedent “for other so-called liberation wars.” The concept of Vietnamese
aggression in Vietnam against the American defenders of the country has
interesting precedents, which out of politeness I will not mention. It is
particularly striking because the Canadian observers surely were aware that at
the time there were more US mercenaries in South Vietnam as part of the
invading US army than there were North Vietnamese – even if we assume that
somehow North Vietnamese are not allowed in Vietnam. And the US mercenaries,
along with the far greater US army, were threatening South Vietnam with
“extinction” by mass terror operations right at the heart of the country, while
the North Vietnamese “aggressors” were at the periphery, mainly trying to draw
the invading forces to the borders, at a time when North Vietnam too was being
bombed. That remained true, according to the Pentagon, until many years after
these Canadian government reports.
The diplomatic historians who have explored the Canadian archives have not
reported any misgivings about the attack against South Vietnam, which by the
time of these internal communications, was demolishing the country. The
distinguished statesman Lester Pearson had gone far beyond. He informed the
House of Commons in the early 1950s that “aggression” by the Vietnamese
against France in Vietnam is only one element of worldwide “communist
aggression,” and that “Soviet colonial authority in Indochina” appeared to be
stronger than that of France – that’s when France was attempting (with US
support) to reconquer its former Indochinese colonies, with not a Russian
anywhere in the neighborhood, and not even any contacts, as the CIA had to
concede after a desperate effort to find them. One has to search pretty far to
find more fervent devotion to imperial crimes than Pearson’s declarations.
Without forgetting the very significant progress towards more civilized
societies in past years, and the reasons for it, let’s focus nevertheless on
the present, and on the notions of imperial sovereignty now being crafted. It
is not surprising that as the population becomes more civilized, power systems
become more extreme in their efforts to control the “great beast” (as the
Founding Fathers called the people). And the great beast is indeed
frightening: I’ll return to majority views on major issues, which are so far to
the left of the spectrum of elite commentary and the electoral arena that they
cannot even be reported – another fact that teaches important lessons to those
who do not like what is being done in their names.
The conception of presidential sovereignty crafted by the radical statist
reactionaries of the Bush administration is so extreme that it has drawn
unprecedented criticism in the most sober and respected establishment circles.
These ideas were transmitted to the President by the newly appointed
Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales – who is depicted as a moderate in the
press. They are discussed by the respected constitutional law professor
Sanford Levinson in the current issue of the journal of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences. Levinson writes that the conception is based on the
principle that “There exists no norm that is applicable to chaos.” The quote,
Levinson comments, is from Carl Schmitt, the leading German philosopher of law
during the Nazi period, who Levinson describes as “the true éminence grise of
the Bush administration.” The administration, advised by Gonzales, has
articulated “a view of presidential authority that is all too close to the
power that Schmitt was willing to accord his own Führer,” Levinson writes.
One rarely hears such words from the heart of the establishment.
The same issue of the journal carries an article by two prominent strategic
analysts on the “transformation of the military,” a central component of the
new doctrines of imperial sovereignty: the rapid expansion of offensive
weaponry, including militarization of space – joined apparently by Canada — and
other measures designed to place the entire world at risk of instant
annihilation. These have already elicited the anticipated reactions by Russia
and recently China. The analysts conclude that these US programs may lead to
“ultimate doom.” They express their hope that a coalition of peace-loving
states will coalesce as a counter to US militarism and aggressiveness, led by –
China. We’ve come to a pretty pass when such sentiments are voiced in sober
respectable circles not given to hyperbole. And when faith in American
democracy is so slight that they look to China to save us from marching towards
ultimate doom. It’s up to the second superpower to decide whether that
contempt for the great beast is warranted.
Going back to Gonzales, he transmitted to the President the conclusions of the
Justice Dept that the President has the authority to rescind the Geneva
Conventions — the supreme law of the land, the foundation of modern
international humanitarian law. And Gonzales, who was then Bush’s legal
counsel, advised him that this would be a good idea, because rescinding the
Conventions “substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution
[of administration officials] under the War Crimes Act” of 1996, which carries
the death penalty for “grave breaches” of Geneva Conventions.
We can see right on today’s front pages why the Justice Department was right to
be concerned that the President and his advisers might be subject to death
penalty under the laws passed by the Republican Congress in 1996 – and of
course under the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, if anyone took them
seriously.
Two weeks ago, the NY Times featured a front-page story reporting the conquest
of the Falluja General Hospital. It reported that “Patients and hospital
employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie
on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs.” An accompanying
photograph depicted the scene. That was presented as an important achievement.
“The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for
the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian
casualties.” And these “inflated” figures – inflated because our Dear Leader so
declares – were “inflaming opinion throughout the country” and the region,
driving up “the political costs of the conflict.” The word “conflict” is a
common euphemism for US aggression, as when we read on the same pages that the
US must now rebuild “what the conflict just destroyed”: just “the conflict,”
with no agent, like a hurricane.
Let’s go back to the picture and story about the closing of the “propaganda
weapon.” There are some relevant documents, including the Geneva Conventions,
which state: “Fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical
Service may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times be
respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.” So page one of the
world’s leading newspaper is cheerfully depicting war crimes for which the
political leadership could be sentenced to death under US law. No wonder the
new moderate Attorney-General warned the President that he should use the
constitutional authority concocted by the Justice Department to rescind the
supreme law of the land, adopting the concept of presidential sovereignty
devised by Hitler’s primary legal adviser, “the true éminence grise of the Bush
administration,” according to a distinguished conservative authority on
constitutional law, writing in perhaps the most respectable and sober journal
in the country.
The world’s greatest newspaper also tells us that the US military “achieved
nearly all their objectives well ahead of schedule,” leaving “much of the city
in smoking ruins.” But it was not a complete success. There is little evidence
of dead “packrats” in their “warrens” or the streets, which remains “an
enduring mystery.” The embedded reporters did find a body of a dead woman,
though it is “not known whether she was an Iraqi or a foreigner,” apparently
the only question that comes to mind.
The front-page account quotes a Marine commander who says that “It ought to go
down in the history books.” Perhaps it should. If so, we know on just what
page of history it will go down, and who will be right beside it, along with
those who praise or for that matter even tolerate it. At least, we know that
if we are capable of honesty.
One might mention at least some of the recent counterparts that immediately
come to mind, like the Russian destruction of Grozny 10 years ago, a city of
about the same size. Or Srebrenica, almost universally described as “genocide”
in the West. In that case, as we know in detail from the Dutch government
report and other sources, the Muslim enclave in Serb territory, inadequately
protected, was used as a base for attacks against Serb villages, and when the
anticipated reaction took place, it was horrendous. The Serbs drove out all
but military age men, and then moved in to kill them. There are differences
with Falluja. Women and children were not bombed out of Srebrenica, but
trucked out, and there will be no extensive efforts to exhume the last corpse
of the packrats in their warrens in Falluja. There are other differences,
arguably unfair to the Serbs.
It could be argued that all this is irrelevant. The Nuremberg Tribunal,
spelling out the UN Charter, declared that initiation of a war of aggression is
“the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” – hence the war
crimes in Falluja and Abu Ghraib, the doubling of acute malnutrition among
children since the invasion (now at the level of Burundi, far higher than Haiti
or Uganda), and all the rest of the atrocities. Those judged to have played
any role in the supreme crime — for example, the German Foreign Minister – were
sentenced to death by hanging. The Tokyo Tribunal was far more severe. There
is a very important book on the topic by Canadian international lawyer Michael
Mandel, who reviews in convincing detail how the powerful are self-immunized
from international law.
In fact, the Nuremberg Tribunal itself established this principle. To bring
the Nazi criminals to justice, it was necessary to devise definitions of “war
crime” and “crime against humanity.” How this was done is explained by Telford
Taylor, chief counsel for the prosecution and a distinguished international
lawyer and historian:
Since both sides in World War II had played the terrible game of urban
destruction – the Allies far more successfully – there was no basis for
criminal charges against Germans or Japanese, and in fact no such charges were
brought… Aerial bombardment had been used so extensively and ruthlessly on the
Allied side as well as the Axis side that neither at Nuremberg nor Tokyo was
the issue made a part of the trials.
The operative definition of “crime” is: “Crime that you carried out but we did
not.” To underscore the fact, Nazi war criminals were absolved if the defense
could show that their US counterparts carried out the same crimes.
Taylor concludes that “to punish the foe – especially the vanquished foe – for
conduct in which the enforcer nation has engaged, would be so grossly
inequitable as to discredit the laws themselves.” That is correct, but the
operative definition also discredits the laws themselves, along with all
subsequent tribunals. Taylor provides this background as part of his
explanation of why US bombing in Vietnam was not a war crime. His argument is
plausible, further discrediting the laws themselves. Some of the subsequent
judicial inquiries are discredited in perhaps even more extreme ways, such as
the Yugoslavia vs. NATO case now being adjudicated by the International Court
of Justice. The US was excused, correctly, on the basis of its argument that
it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court in this case. The reason is
that when the US finally signed the Genocide Convention (which is at issue
here) after 40 years, it did so with a reservation stating that it is
inapplicable to the United States.
In an outraged comment on the efforts of Justice Department lawyers to
demonstrate that the President has the right to authorize torture, Yale Law
School Dean Howard Koh said that “The notion that the president has the
constitutional power to permit torture is like saying he has the constitutional
power to commit genocide.” The President’s legal advisers, and the new
Attorney-General, should have little difficulty arguing that the President does
indeed have that right – if the second superpower permits him to exercise it.
The sacred doctrine of self-immunization is sure to hold of the trial of Saddam
Hussein, if it is ever held. We see that every time that Bush, Blair, and
other worthies in government and commentary lament over the terrible crimes of
Saddam Hussein, always bravely omitting the words: “with our help, because we
did not care.” Surely no tribunal will be permitted to address the fact that US
presidents from Kennedy until today, along with French presidents and British
Prime Ministers, and Western business, have been complicit in Saddam’s crimes,
sometimes in horrendous ways, including current incumbents and their mentors.
In setting up the Saddam tribunal, the State Department consulted US legal
expert Prof. Charif Bassiouni, recently quoted as saying: “All efforts are
being made to have a tribunal whose judiciary is not independent but
controlled, and by controlled I mean that the political manipulators of the
tribunal have to make sure the US and other western powers are not brought in
cause. This makes it look like victor’s vengeance: it makes it seem targeted,
selected, unfair. It’s a subterfuge.” We hardly need to be told.
The pretext for US-UK aggression in Iraq is what is called the right of
“anticipatory self-defense,” now sometimes called “preemptive war” in a radical
perversion of that concept. The right of anticipatory self-defense was
affirmed officially in the Bush administration National Security Strategy of
September 2002, declaring Washington’s right to resort to force to eliminate
any potential challenge to its global dominance. The NSS was widely criticized
among the foreign policy elite, beginning with an article right away in the
main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, warning that “the new imperial
grand strategy” could be very dangerous. Criticism continued, again at an
unprecedented level, but on narrow grounds: not that the doctrine itself was
wrong, but rather its style and manner of presentation. Clinton’s Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright summed the criticism up accurately, also in FA. She
pointed out that every President has such a doctrine in his back pocket, but it
is simply foolish to smash people in the face with it and to implement it in a
manner that will infuriate even allies. That is threatening to US interests,
and therefore wrong.
Albright knew, of course, that Clinton had a similar doctrine. The Clinton
doctrine advocated “unilateral use of military power” to defend vital
interests, such as “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies
and strategic resources,” without even the pretexts that Bush and Blair
devised. Taken literally, the Clinton doctrine is more expansive than Bush’s
NSS. But the more expansive Clinton doctrine was barely even reported. It was
presented with the right style, and implemented less brazenly.
Henry Kissinger described the Bush doctrine as “revolutionary,” pointing out
that it undermines the 17th century Westphalian system of international order,
and of course the UN Charter and international law. He approved of the
doctrine but with reservations about style and tactics, and with a crucial
qualification: it cannot be “a universal principle available to every nation.”
Rather, the right of aggression must be reserved to the US, perhaps delegated
to chosen clients. We must forcefully reject the principle of universality:
that we apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others, more stringent
ones if we are serious. Kissinger is to be praised for his honesty in
forthrightly articulating prevailing doctrine, usually concealed in professions
of virtuous intent and tortured legalisms. And he understands his educated
audience. As he doubtless expected, there was no reaction.
His understanding of his audience was illustrated again, rather dramatically,
last May, when Kissinger-Nixon tapes were released, over Kissinger’s strong
objections. There was a report in the world’s leading newspaper. It mentioned
in passing the orders to bomb Cambodia that Kissinger transmitted from Nixon to
the military commanders. In Kissinger’s words, “A massive bombing campaign in
Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” It is rare for a call
for horrendous war crimes – what we would not hesitate to call “genocide” if
others were responsible – to be so stark and explicit. It may be more than
rare; it would be interesting to see if there is anything like it in archival
records. The publication elicited no reaction, refuting Dean Koh. Apparently,
it is taken for granted in the elite culture that the President and his
National Security Adviser do have the right to order genocide.
Imagine the reaction if the prosecutors at the Milosevic Tribunal could find
anything remotely similar. They would be overjoyed, the trial would be over,
Milosevic would receive several life sentences, the death penalty if the
Tribunal adhered to US law. But that is them, not us. The distinction is a
core principle of the elite intellectual culture in the West – and in fact,
throughout history quite generally.
The principle of universality is the most elementary of moral truisms. It is
the foundation of “Just War theory” and in fact of every system of morality
deserving of anything but contempt. Rejection of such moral truisms is so
deeply rooted in the intellectual culture as to be invisible. To illustrate
again how deeply entrenched it is, let’s return to the principle of
“anticipatory self-defense,” adopted as legitimate by both political
organizations in the US, and across virtually the entire spectrum of articulate
opinion, apart from the usual margins. The principle has some immediate
corollaries. If the US is granted the right of “anticipatory self-defense”
against terror, then, certainly, Cuba, Nicaragua, and a host of others have
long been entitled to carry out terrorist acts within the US because there is
no doubt of its involvement in very serious terrorist attacks against them,
extensively documented in impeccable sources, and in the case of Nicaragua,
even condemned by the World Court and the Security Council (in two resolutions
that the US vetoed, with Britain loyally abstaining). The conclusion that Cuba
and Nicaragua, among many others, have long had the right to carry out
terrorist atrocities in the US is of course utterly outrageous, and advocated
by no one. And thanks to our self-determined immunity from moral truisms,
there is no fear that anyone will draw the outrageous conclusions.
There are still more outrageous ones. No one, for example, celebrates Pearl
Harbor day by applauding the fascist leaders of Imperial Japan. But by our
standards, the bombing of military bases in the US colonies of Hawaii and the
Philippines seems rather innocuous. The Japanese leaders knew that B-17 Flying
Fortresses were coming off the Boeing production lines, and were surely
familiar with the public discussions in the US explaining how they could be
used to incinerate Japan’s wooden cities in a war of extermination, flying from
Hawaiian and Philippine bases — “to burn out the industrial heart of the
Empire with fire-bombing attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps,” as retired
Air Force General Chennault recommended in 1940, a proposal that “simply
delighted” President Roosevelt. That’s a far more powerful justification for
anticipatory self-defense than anything conjured up by Bush-Blair and their
associates — and accepted, with tactical reservations, throughout the
mainstream of articulate opinion.
Fortunately, we are once again protected from such politically incorrect
conclusions by the principled rejection of elementary moral truisms.
Examples can be enumerated virtually at random. To add one last one, consider
the most recent act of NATO aggression prior to the US-UK invasion of Iraq: the
bombing of Serbia in 1999. The justification is supposed to be that there were
no diplomatic options and that it was necessary to stop ongoing genocide. It
is not hard to evaluate these claims.
As for diplomatic options, when the bombing began, there were two proposals on
the table, a NATO and a Serbian proposal, and after 78 days of bombing a
compromise was reached between them – formally at least: it was immediately
undermined by NATO. All of this quickly vanished into the mists of
unacceptable history, to the limited extent that it was ever reported.
What about ongoing genocide – to use the term that appeared hundreds of times
in the press as NATO geared up for war? That is unusually easy to
investigate. There are two major documentary studies by the State Department,
offered to justify the bombing, along with extensive documentary records from
the OSCE, NATO, and other Western sources, and a detailed British Parliamentary
Inquiry All agree on the basic facts: the atrocities followed the bombing;
they were not its cause. Furthermore, that was predicted by the NATO command,
as General Wesley Clark informed the press right away, and confirmed in more
detail in his memoirs. The Milosevic indictment, issued during the bombing —
surely as a propaganda weapon, despite implausible denials — and relying on
US-UK intelligence as announced at once, yields the same conclusion: virtually
all the charges are post-bombing. Such annoyances are handled quite easily:
the Western documentation is commonly expunged in the media and even
scholarship. And the chronology is regularly reversed, so that the anticipated
consequences of the bombing are transmuted into its cause. I have reviewed the
sordid tale in detail elsewhere, and will skip it here.
There were indeed pre-bombing atrocities, about 2000 killed in the year before
the March 1999 bombing, according to Western sources. The British, the most
hawkish element of the coalition, make the astonishing claim – hard to believe
just on the basis of the balance of forces – that until January 1999, most of
the killings were by the Albanian KLA guerrillas, attacking civilians and
soldiers in cross-border raids in the hope of eliciting a harsh Serbian
response that could be used for propaganda purposes in the West, as they
candidly reported, apparently with CIA support in the last months. Western
sources indicate no substantial change until the bombing was announced and the
monitors withdrawn a few days before the March bombing. In one of the few
works of scholarship that even mentions the unusually rich documentary record,
Nicholas Wheeler concludes that 500 of the 2000 were killed by Serbs. He
supports the bombing on the grounds that there would have been worse Serbian
atrocities had NATO not bombed, eliciting the anticipated crimes. That’s the
most serious scholarly work. The press, and much of scholarship, choose the
easier path of ignoring Western documentation and reversing the chronology.
It’s an impressive performance, instructive too, at least for those who care
about their countries.
It is all too easy to continue. >But the – unpleasantly consistent — record
leaves open a crucial question: how does the “great beast” react, the domestic
US component of the second superpower?
The conventional answer is that the population approves of all of this, as just
shown again by election of George Bush. But as is often the case, a closer
look is helpful.
Each candidate received about 30% of the electoral vote, Bush a bit more, Kerry
a bit less. General voting patterns – details are not yet available — were
close to the 2000 elections; almost the same “red” and “blue” states, in the
conventional metaphor. A few percent shift in vote would have meant that Kerry
would be in the White House. Neither outcome could tell us much of any
significance about the mood of the country, even of voters. Issues of
substance were as usual kept out of the campaign, or presented so obscurely
that few could understand.
It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the
same people who sell toothpaste and cars. Their professional concern in their
regular vocation is not to provide information. Their goal, rather, is deceit.
Their task is to undermine the concept of markets that we are taught to
revere, with informed consumers making rational choices (the tales about
“entrepreneurial initiative” are no less fanciful).Rather, consumers are to be
deceived by imagery. It has hardly surprising that the same dedication to
deceit and similar techniques should prevail when they are assigned the task of
selling candidates, so as to undermine democracy.
That’s hardly a secret. Corporations do not spend hundreds of billions of
dollars in advertising every year to inform the public of the facts – say,
listing the properties of next year’s cars, as would happen in an unimaginable
market society based on rational choice by informed consumers. Observing that
doctrine of the faith would be simple and cheap. But deceit is quite
expensive: complex graphics showing the car with a sexy actress, or a sports
hero, or climbing a sheer cliff, or some other device to project an image that
might deceive the consumer into buying this car instead of the virtually
identical one produced by a competitor. The same is true of elections, run by
the same Public Relations industry. The goal is to project images, and
deceive the public into accepting them, while sidelining issues – for good
reasons, to which I’ll return.
The population seems to grasp the nature of the performance. Right before the
2000 elections, about 75% regarded it as virtually meaningless, some game
involving rich contributors, party managers, and candidates who are trained to
project images that conceal issues but might pick up some votes – probably the
reason why the “stolen election” was an elite concern that did not seem to
arouse much public interest; if elections have about as much significance as
flipping a coin to pick the King, who cares if the coin was biased? Right
before the 2004 election, about 10% of voters said their choice would based on
the candidate’s “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals”; 6% for Bush voters, 13% for
Kerry voters. For the rest, the choice would be based on what the industry
calls “qualities” and “values.” Does the candidate project the image of a
strong leader, the kind of guy you’d like to meet in a bar, someone who really
cares about you and is just like you? It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that
Bush is carefully trained to say “nucular” and “misunderestimate” and the other
silliness that intellectuals like to ridicule. That’s probably about as real
as the ranch constructed for him, and the rest of the folksy manner. After
all, it wouldn’t do to present him as a spoiled frat boy from Yale who became
rich and powerful thanks to his rich and powerful connections. Rather, the
imagery has to be an ordinary guy just like us, who’ll protect us, and who
shares our “moral values,” more so than the windsurfing goose-hunter who can be
accused of faking his medals.
Bush received a large majority among voters who said they were concerned
primarily with “moral values” and “terrorism.” We learn all we have to know
about the moral values of the administration by reading the pages of the
business press the day after the election, describing the “euphoria” in board
rooms – not because CEOs are opposed to gay marriage. Or by observing the
principle, hardly concealed, that the very serious costs incurred by the Bush
planners, in their dedicated service to power and wealth, are to be transferred
to our children and grandchildren, including fiscal costs, environmental
destruction, and perhaps “ultimate doom.” These are the moral values, loud and
clear.
The commitment of Bush planners to “defense against terrorism” is illustrated
most dramatically, perhaps, by their decision to escalate the threat of terror,
as had been predicted even by their own intelligence agencies, not because they
enjoy terrorist attacks against Americans, but because it is, plainly, a low
priority for them — surely as compared with such goals as establishing secure
military bases in a dependent client state at the heart of the world’s energy
resources, recognized since World War II as the “most strategically important
area of the world,” “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the
greatest material prizes in world history.” It is critically important to
ensure that “profits beyond the dreams of avarice” – to quote a leading history
of the oil industry – flow in the right directions: to US energy corporations,
the Treasury Department, US high tech (militarized) industry and huge
construction firms, and so on. And even more important is the stupendous
strategic power. Having a firm hand on the spigot guarantees “veto power” over
rivals, as George Kennan pointed out over 50 years ago. In the same vein,
Zbigniew Brzezinski recently wrote that control over Iraq gives the US
“critical leverage” over European and Asian economies, a major concern of
planners since World War II.
Rivals are to keep to their “regional responsibilities” within the “overall
framework of order” managed by the US, as Kissinger instructed them in his
“Year of Europe” address 30 years ago. That is even more urgent today, as the
major rivals threaten to move in an independent course, maybe even united. The
EU and China became each other’s leading trading partners in 2004, and those
ties are becoming tighter, including the world’s second largest economy, Japan.
Critical leverage is more important than ever for world control in the tripolar
world that has been evolving for over 30 years. In comparison, the threat of
terror is a minor consideration – though the threat is known to be awesome;
long before 9-11 it was understood that sooner or later, the Jihadist terror
organized by the US and its allies in the 1980s is likely to combine with WMD,
with horrifying consequences.
Notice that the crucial issue with regard to Middle East oil – about 2/3 of
estimated world resources, and unusually easy to extract — is control, not
access. US policies towards the Middle East were the same when it was a net
exporter of oil, and remain the same today when US intelligence projects that
the US itself will rely on more stable Atlantic Basin resources, including
Canada, which forfeited its right to control its own resources in NAFTA.
Policies would be likely to be about the same if the US were to switch to
renewable energy. The need to control the “stupendous source of strategic
power” and to gain “profits beyond the dreams of avarice” would remain.
Jockeying over Central Asia and pipeline routes reflects similar concerns.
There are plenty of other illustrations of the same ranking of priorities. To
mention one, the Treasury Department has a bureau (OFAC, Office of Foreign
Assets Control) that is assigned the task of investigating suspicious financial
transfers, a crucial component of the “war on terror.” OFAC has 120 employees.
Last April, the White House informed Congress that four are assigned to
tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while almost two
dozen are dedicated to enforcing the embargo against Cuba – incidentally,
declared illegal by every relevant international organization, even the usually
compliant Organization of American States. From 1990 to 2003, OFAC informed
Congress, there were 93 terrorism-related investigations with $9000 in fines;
and 11,000 Cuba-related investigations with $8 million in fines. No interest
was aroused among those now pondering the puzzling question of whether the Bush
administration — and its predecessors — downgraded the war on terror in favor
of other priorities.
Why should the Treasury Department devote vastly more energy to strangling Cuba
than to the war on terror? The US is a uniquely open society; we therefore
have quite a lot of information about state planning. The basic reasons were
explained in secret documents 40 years ago, when the Kennedy administration
sought to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, as historian and Kennedy
confidante Arthur Schlesinger recounted in his biography of Robert Kennedy, who
ran the terror operations as his highest priority. State Department planners
warned that the “very existence” of the Castro regime is “successful defiance”
of US policies going back 150 years, to the Monroe Doctrine; no Russians, but
intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere. Furthermore, this
successful defiance encourages others, who might be infected by the “Castro
idea of taking matters into their own hands,” Schlesinger had warned incoming
President Kennedy, summarizing the report of the President’s Latin American
mission. These dangers are particularly grave, Schlesinger elaborated, when
“the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the
propertied classes … and the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the
example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent
living.” The whole system of domination might unravel if the idea of taking
matters into one’s own hands spreads its evil tentacles.
Recall the concern of Canadian “neutral observers” in the ICC over the possible
precedent of Vietnamese aggression in Vietnam, traceable to similar roots, we
learn in the US documentary record. And quite a common feature of aggression,
subversion, and state-sponsored international terrorism masked in Cold War
rhetoric when those pretexts were available.
Successful defiance remains intolerable, ranked far higher as a priority than
combating terror, just another illustration of principles that are
well-established, internally rational, clear enough to the victims, but not
perceptible among the agents who describe the events and debate the reasons.
The clamor about revelations of Bush administration priorities by insiders
(Clarke, O’Neil), and the extensive 9-11 hearings in Washington, are just
further illustrations of this curious inability to perceive the obvious, even
to entertain it as a possibility.
Let’s return to the great beast. US public opinion is studied with great care
and depth. Studies released right before the election showed that those
planning to vote for Bush assumed that Republican Party shared their views,
even though the Party explicitly rejected them. Pretty much the same was true
of Kerry supporters, unless we give a very sympathetic interpretation of
occasional vague statements that most voters had probably never even heard.
The major concerns of Kerry supporters were economy and health care, and they
assumed that he shared their views on these matters, just as Bush voters
assumed, with comparable justification, that Republicans shared their views.
In brief, those who bothered to vote mostly accepted the imagery concocted by
the PR industry, which had only the vaguest resemblance to reality. That’s
apart from the more wealthy, who tend to vote their class interests. Though
details are not yet available, it is a reasonable surmise that the wealthy may
have expressed their gratitude to their benefactors in the White House with
even higher votes for them in 2004 than in 2000, possibly accounting for much
of the small differences.
What about actual public attitudes? Again, right before the election, major
studies were released reporting them – and when we look at the results, barely
reported, we see right away why it is a good idea to base elections on deceit,
very much as in the fake markets of the doctrinal system. Here are a few
examples.
A considerable majority believe that the US should accept the jurisdiction of
the International Criminal Court and the World Court; sign the Kyoto protocols;
allow the UN to take the lead in international crises (including security,
reconstruction, and political transition in Iraq); rely on diplomatic and
economic measures more than military ones in the “war on terror”; and use force
only if there is “strong evidence that the country is in imminent danger of
being attacked,” thus rejecting the bipartisan consensus on “pre-emptive war”
and adopting a rather conventional interpretation of the UN Charter. A
majority even favor giving up the Security Council veto. Overwhelming
majorities favor expansion of purely domestic programs: primarily health care
(80%), but also aid to education and Social Security. Similar results have
long been found in these studies, carried out by the most reputable
organizations that monitor public opinion.
In other mainstream polls, about 80% favor guaranteed health care even if it
would raise taxes – a national health care system is likely to reduce expenses
considerably, avoiding the heavy costs of bureaucracy, supervision, paperwork,
etc., some of the factors that render the US privatized system the most
inefficient in the industrial world. Public opinion has been similar for a long
time, with numbers varying depending on how questions are asked. The facts are
sometimes discussed in the press, with public preferences noted but dismissed
as “politically impossible.” That happened again on the eve of the 2004
elections. A few days before (Oct. 31), the NY Times reported that “there is
so little political support for government intervention in the health care
market in the United States that Senator John Kerry took pains in a recent
presidential debate to say that his plan for expanding access to health
insurance would not create a new government program” – what the majority want,
so it appears. But it is politically impossible and there is too little
political support, meaning that the insurance companies, HMOs, pharmaceutical
industries, Wall Street, etc., are opposed.
It is notable that these views are held by people in virtual isolation. They
rarely hear them, and though the question is not asked in the published polls,
it is likely that respondents regard their own views as idiosyncratic. Their
preferences do not enter into the political campaigns, and only marginally into
articulate opinion in media and journals. The same extends to other domains,
and raises important questions about a “democratic deficit” in the world’s most
important state, to adopt the phrase we use for others.
What would the results of the election have been if the parties, either of
them, had been willing to articulate people’s concerns on the issues they
regard as vitally important? Or if these issues could enter into public
discussion within the mainstream? We can only speculate about that, but we do
know that it does not happen, and that the facts are scarcely even reported.
It seems reasonable to suppose that fear of the great beast is rather deep.
The operative concept of democracy is revealed very clearly in other ways as
well. Perhaps the most extraordinary was the distinction between Old and New
Europe in the run-up to the Iraq war. The criterion for membership was so
sharp and clear that it took real discipline to miss it. Old Europe – the bad
guys – were the governments that took the same stand as the large majority of
the population. New Europe – the exciting hope for a democratic future – were
the Churchillian leaders like Berlusconi and Aznar who disregarded even larger
majorities of the population and submissively took their orders from Crawford
Texas. The most dramatic case was Turkey, where, to everyone’s surprise, the
government actually followed the will of 95% of the population. The official
administration moderate, Colin Powell, immediately announced harsh punishment
for this crime. Turkey was bitterly condemned in the national press for
lacking “democratic credentials.” The most extreme example was Paul Wolfowitz,
who berated the Turkish military for not compelling the government to follow
Washington’s orders, and demanded that they apologize and publicly recognize
that the goal of a properly functioning democracy is to help America. Small
wonder that the liberal press hails him as the “Idealist-in-Chief” leading the
crusade for democracy (David Ignatius, veteran Washington Post correspondent
and editor), a vocation well grounded in the rest of his gruesome record, kept
carefully under wraps.
In other ways too, the operative concept of democracy is scarcely concealed.
The lead think-piece in the NY Times on the death of Yasser Arafat opened by
saying that “the post-Arafat era will be the latest test of a quintessentially
American article of faith: that elections provide legitimacy even to the
frailest institutions.” In the final paragraph, on the continuation page, we
read that Washington “resisted new national elections among the Palestinians”
because Arafat would win and gain “a fresher mandate” and elections “might help
give credibility and authority to Hamas” as well.
In other words, democracy is fine if the results come out the right way;
otherwise, to the flames. That is “the quintessential faith.” The evidence is
so overwhelming it is pointless even to review it – at least, for those who
care about such matters as historical fact, or even what is conceded publicly.
To take just one crucial current example of the same doctrines, a year ago,
after other pretexts for invading Iraq had collapsed, Bush’s speech writers had
to come up with something to replace them. They settled on what the liberal
press calls “the president’s messianic vision to bring democracy” to Iraq, the
Middle East, the whole world. The reactions were intriguing. They ranged from
rapturous acclaim for the vision, which proved that this was the most noble war
in history (Ignatius), to critics, who agreed that the vision was noble and
inspiring, but might be beyond our reach: Iraqi culture is just not ready for
such progress towards our civilized values. We have to temper the messianic
idealism of Bush and Blair with some sober realism, the London Financial Times
advised.
The interesting fact is that it was presupposed uncritically across the
spectrum that the messianic vision must be the goal of the invasion, not this
silly business about WMD and al-Qaeda, no longer credible to elite opinion.
What is the evidence that the US and Britain are guided by the messianic
vision? There is indeed evidence, a single piece of evidence: our Leaders
proclaimed it. What more could be needed?
There is one sector of opinion that had a different view: Iraqis. Just as the
messianic vision was unveiled in Washington to reverent applause, a US-run poll
of Baghdadis was released. Some agreed with the near-unanimous stand of
Western elite opinion: that the goal of the invasion was to bring democracy to
Iraq. One percent. Five percent thought the goal was to help Iraqis. The
majority assumed the obvious: the US wants to control Iraq’s resources and use
its base there to reorganize the region in its interest. Baghdadis agree that
there is a problem of cultural backwardness: in the West, not in Iraq.
Actually, their views were more nuanced. Though 1% believed that the goal of
the invasion was to bring democracy, about half felt that the US wanted
democracy – but would not allow Iraqis to run their democracy “without U.S.
pressure and influence.” They understand the quintessentially American faith
very well, perhaps because it was also the quintessentially British faith while
Britain’s boot was on their necks. They don’t have to know the history of
Wilsonian idealism, or Britain’s noble counterpart, or France’s civilizing
mission, or the even more exalted vision of Japanese fascists, and many others
– probably also close to a historical universal. Their own experience is
enough.
It is not unusual for those at the wrong end of the club to have a clearer
picture of reality than those who wield it.
At the outset I mentioned the notable successes of popular struggles in the
past decades, very clear if we think about it a little, but rarely discussed,
for reasons that are not hard to discern. Both recent history and public
attitudes suggest some pretty straightforward and quite conservative strategies
for short-term activism on the part of those who don’t want to wait for China
to save us from “ultimate doom.” We enjoy great privilege and freedom,
remarkable by comparative and historical standards. That legacy was not
granted from above: it was won by dedicated struggle, which does not reduce to
pushing a lever every few years. We can of course abandon that legacy, and
take the easy way of pessimism: everything is hopeless, so I’ll quit. Or we
can make use of that legacy to work to create – in part re-create – the basis
for a functioning democratic culture, in which the public plays some role in
determining policies, not only in the political arena from which it is largely
excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in
principle.
These are hardly radical ideas. They were articulated clearly, for example, by
the leading twentieth century social philosopher in the US, John Dewey, who
pointed out that until “industrial feudalism” is replaced by “industrial
democracy,” politics will remain “the shadow cast by big business over
society.” Dewey was as “American as apple pie,” in the familiar phrase. He was
in fact drawing from a long tradition of thought and action that had developed
independently in working class culture from the origins of the industrial
revolution — right where I live, near Boston. Such ideas remain just below the
surface, and can become a living part of our societies, cultures, and
institutions. But like other victories for justice and freedom over the
centuries, that will not happen by itself. One of the clearest lessons of
history, including recent history, is that rights are not granted; they are
won. The rest is up to us.
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika
machafuko"
--
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