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15 May 2007.
As humans, we exhibit a propensity to compare and order more or less disparate entities into categories and, within each category, to make choices as to the excellence of the elements found therein. We see this in everything from the Nobel prizes awarded annually to persons judged to have, in their respective fields, «during the preceding year, ... conferred the greatest benefit on mankind», to Miss XX contests, and judgements as to the «100 best books of the last 1000 years». That such rankings, despite more or less serious attempts to lend them some sort of universal validity and objectivity, are deeply subjective is obvious upon even the most cursory consideration. But if I were to dare to take upon myself the parlous enterprise of selecting candidates for the «best» political article of 2007 after scarcely more than four and a half months of that year have passed, I should place my bets on Professor Chalmers Johnsons's Ending the Empire, published today on Tom Engelhardt's invaluable TomDispatch. Below, slightly edited, the letter of appreciation that I sent to Tom :
Dear Tom,
Just as I thought you would, you - and Tom Dispatch - have come up with the goods - and in so brilliant and timely a fashion ! But then again, you could hardly have had better help : Professor Johnson seems to be one of the few (several other names, among them those of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, come also to mind) in the United States able to grasp the uncomfortable truth - that the current problem cannot be reduced to one of the persons of Messrs Bush and Cheney, as many would have it, nor can it be adequately addressed by a simple change in the political party in power, even if that must be a part of any solution. The issue, rather, is the much larger one of Republic or Empire, Democracy at home or Tyranny both at home and abroad. As Professor Johnson puts it :... the war itself is the outcome of an imperial presidency and the abject failure of Congress to perform its Constitutional duty of oversight. Had the government been working as the authors of the Constitution intended, the war could not have occurred. Even now, the Democratic majority remains reluctant to use its power of the purse to cut off funding for the war, thereby ending the American occupation of Iraq and starting to curtail the ever-growing power of the military-industrial complex. ...
It is you, the residents of the United States who must make this fearful choice ; we in the rest of the world have little say in the matter, as our ability to resist the military power exercised in your name is limited, and attempts to do so risk setting off the very conflagration we wish to avoid. Or, in Professor Johnson's words :
The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.
For the U.S., the decision to mount such a campaign of imperial liquidation may already come too late, given the vast and deeply entrenched interests of the military-industrial complex. To succeed, such an endeavor might virtually require a revolutionary mobilization of the American citizenry, one at least comparable to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
...
The American approach to diplomatic relations with the rest of the world would also require a major overhaul. We would have to end our belligerent unilateralism toward other countries as well as our scofflaw behavior regarding international law.
...
In terms of the organization of the executive branch, we need to rewrite the National Security Act of 1947, taking away from the CIA all functions that involve sabotage, torture, subversion, overseas election rigging, rendition, and other forms of clandestine activity. The president should be deprived of his power to order these types of operations except with the explicit advice and consent of the Senate. The CIA should basically devote itself to the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. We should eliminate as much secrecy as possible so that neither the CIA, nor any other comparable organization ever again becomes the president's private army.
...
Normally, a proposed list of reforms like this would simply be rejected as utopian. I understand this reaction. I do want to stress, however, that failure to undertake such reforms would mean condemning the United States to the fate that befell the Roman Republic and all other empires since then. That is why I gave my book Nemesis the subtitle "The Last Days of the American Republic."
When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or -- even more improbably -- "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
To those who ask «What is to be done ?», Professor Johnson has spelled out the alternatives clearly. Will it be done ? I am not optimistic. But thank you once again for publishing Professor Johnson's clear-sighted and moving analysis....
Henri
Professor Ira Chernus' article, originally published the day before yesterday under the title Will we suffer from the Iraq syndrome? Beware of the boomerang on Tom Dispatch and a day later under the truncated title Beware the Iraqi boomerang on the Asia Times website, provides us with a brief, but thought provoking analysis of the what may be the future development of a polymorphic «Vietnam syndrome», one in which the so-called «backlash» is far more powerful than the «syndrome» itself. Professor Chernus writes :...
The very idea of such a «syndrome» implied that what the Vietnam War had devastated was not so much the Vietnamese or their ruined land as the traumatized American psyche. As a concept, it served to mask, if not obliterate, many of the realities of the actual war. It also suggested that there was something pathological in a post-war fear of taking our arms and aims abroad, that America had indeed become (in Richard Nixon's famous phrase) a «pitiful, helpless giant», a basket case.
...
Iraq -- both the war and the «syndrome» to come -- could easily evoke a similar set of urges: to evade a painful reality and ignore the lessons it should teach us. The thought that Americans are simply a collective neurotic head-case when it comes to the use of force could help sow similar seeds of insecurity that might -- after a pause -- again push our politics and culture back to a glorification of military power and imperial intervention as instruments of choice for seeking «security».
What put an end to the US war on Indochina was not a sudden revulsion on the part of the citizens and residents of the United States for the death and destruction wreaked in their name on the peoples of Indochina, but a gradually increasing unwillingness to accept the growing costs of the war upon themselves, and the realisation on the part of their leaders that the war, which by that time had long since attained its primary objective - that of making excruciating clear to all the costs of pursuing a course of development opposed by the economic and political of the United States - was now destroying the country's army and indeed, the elite's ability to manipulate public opinion. «Cutting and running» - after placing the responsibility for maintaining an illusory balance of power on an equally illusory Government of the Republic of Vietnam, etc, and dropping extra plane-loads of bombs and napalm on the Indochinese peoples to give further expression to US displeasure - became the better part of valour, and we saw those shots of helicopters departing in unseemly haste from the symbolic places of US power in Vietnam. But as in Germany after WWI, the elite could not accept the fact that their reach had, however slightly, exceeded their grasp - and a new, US version of the old stab-in-the-back theory was launched, the more easily believed by a people who have been carefully taught to believe that the US exercise of power, in particular military power, in foreign lands is always an act of virtue, and that virtue - the good guys - always wins in the end, unless its purpose is subverted by traitors - the bad guys - at home. And so, as Professor Chernus writes, «[t]he desire to 'cure' the Vietnam syndrome became a springboard to unabashed, militant nationalism and a broad rightward turn in the nation's life»....
If all this sounds distressingly familiar, it should, and it tends to demonstrate the validity of the aphorism that the only thing we learn from history is the fact that we learn nothing from history. Is it our primate genes that make us constitutionally incapable of controlling our greed and our lust for power, our self-serving gullibility, and our propensity for violence on a scale unknown to other species ? I do not know, but here below the letter I sent to the Asia Times (with a copy, as usual, to StumbleUpon) regarding Professor Chernus' article :
The residents and citizens of the USA and the rest of the world are doomed to repeat the events of recent history, until either the former learn to accept that the United States is not the unique repository of global political virtue or until a general conflagration puts and end to human life on the planet - whichever happens first. You pays your money and you takes your choice....
23 february 2007.
Even so sycophantic a journal as the Washington Post has been forced to admit - and not merely in an article by a so-called «liberal» commentator (cf Dan Froomkin's A Ludicrous Attempt at Spin), but in a news article, appropriately entitled Ally's Timing Is Awkward for Bush, that things are not going quite as well for the imperial alliance as certain of its strategists might wish :
As the British announced the beginning of their departure from Iraq yesterday, President Bush's top foreign policy aide proclaimed it "basically a good-news story." Yet for an already besieged White House, the decision was doing a good job masquerading as a bad-news story.
But for a deeper analysis of what is going on, from a British point of view, Patrick Cockburn's Independent is a must read. What Mr Cockburn doesn't treat, however, is why the Bush-Cheney regime, like that of the egregious Mr Blair, doesn't finally bow to the public will (which admittedly means little to this particular regime) and get out. My analysis, for what it is worth, is to be found in the brief response I posted to StumbleUpon :
As usual, Mr Cockburn dispels the vapours produced by the spinmeisters regarding the British retreat from the Hell that they, as minor partners in the Empire, have managed to make of Iraq. The Danes, smelling with their sensitive hound noses, have drawn the same same conclusions, and are also moving to get out before the final collapse. But Messers Cheney and Bush, who tout the British retreat of proof of how well things are going in that lacerated land, will remain, for at least three reasons : 1) the money being made by contractors for arms and mercenaries, 2) to be able to blame the (limp) opposition (the Democratic Party) for the debacle, and 3)to make sure that Iraq does not, through some major miracle, avoid the descent into a bellum omnium contra omnes, i e, that the Iraqis themselves, the US, UK, Polish, Danish, etc invasion and interference brought to an end, might just be able to save their country from total destruction. But that destruction - the removal of Iraq as a threat to the regional hegemony of the appointed satrap, the state of Israel - was the major strategic goal of the invasion, and the US will not leave until the strategist are absolutely certain that Iraq has gone beyond the tipping point....
25 November 2006.
Yesterday, Information Clearing House published an article entitled Syria is a convenient fallguy for Gemayel’s death in which Jonathan Cook took the liberty of calling attention to what should be the obvious fact that none of the journalists, including himself, who pontificate on the recent assassination of the Phalangist politician and Minister of Industry in the Lebanese coalition government, Pierre Gemayel, know for a fact who it was that lay behind the Mafia-style murder (unless, of course, they maintain unusually close connexions with the perpetrators). Unlike many of his colleagues, however, Mr Cook does not claim to know who did the deed, but he does offers a «few impolite thoughts» regarding who benefits from it. He points out that neither Syria nor Hezbollah (nor the Lebanese people, of course) stand to gain from the situation resulting from the assassination, which nudges Lebanon further to the brink of civil war (here, I cannot help but reflect over the fact that the US «intervention» has resulted in something that certainly resembles a civil war. There are those, of course, who claim that this is an unforeseen and undesired consequence of the invasion ; there are also those who believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy). Which states then, do stand to gain from the assassination and its aftermath ? Mr Cook is not coy about indicating a possible answer :Conversely, civil war may pose serious threats to Syrian interests -- and offer significant benefits to Israel. If Hizbullah’s energies are seriously depleted in a civil war, Israel may be in a much better position to attack Lebanon again. Almost everyone in Israel is agreed that the Israeli army is itching to settle the score with Hizbullah in another round of fighting. This way it may get the next war it wants on much better terms; or Israel may be able to fight a proxy war against Hizbullah by aiding the Shiite group’s opponents. Certainly one of the main goals of Israel’s bombing campaign over the summer, when much of Lebanon’s infrastructure was destroyed, appeared to be to provoke such a civil war. It was widely reported at the time that Israel’s generals hoped that the devastation would provoke the Christian, Sunni and Druze communities to rise up against Hizbullah.
The Litani River remains, no doubt, a major (if not the ultimate) strategic goal for Israeli expansionism ; a civil war in Lebanon could, perhaps be perceived by its strategists as providing yet another opportunity to attain that for which the Israeli state has been straining but never quite achieved (despite a 20-year occupation of southern Lebanon) during the whole of its 60 years of existence. In any event, Mr Cook's voice is one to which we should be wise to listen ; below the response I posted to the International Clearing House thread and to StumbleUpon, upon reading his article :
Somehow, I doubt that we shall be given the opportunity to read Jonathan Cook any time soon in the New York Times, for example, or the Washington Post, or, for that matter, in the Independent or the Guardian. But we very much need to hear more from him, and of his carefully reasoned, dispassionate analyses of the latest spin on the latest atrocity taking place in Southwest Asia. We are thus all indebted to Information Clearing House for publishing Mr Cook's work....
18 November 2006.
This week a series of meetings have been taking place in Vietnam's capital Ha Noi under the auspices of an organisation known as APEC, an acronym for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Reports from the meeting of the heads of state of the 21 states that are members of this forum indicate that most of the talk taking place there concerns another state, both Asian and Pacific, but whose voice is not allowed to be heard in the forum. Ironically, the recent history of that state, North Korea, resembles to a great degree that of the state, Vietnam, hosting the forum this year, in that both of these states were subjected to a colonial war on the part of a United States that intended to gather all the remnants of the Japanese empire that collapsed in 1945 in its own far-flung empire. The results of these two wars were disappointing to the leadership of the United States - the first ended in 1953 with a divided Korean peninsula, the second in 1975 with a unified Vietnam. But for reasons which would require far more space to analyse than that available here, successive US administrations have found the first defeat even more difficult to accept than the second, which has lead to the fact that even today, more than 53 years after the armistice ending major hostilities in Korea was signed in 1953, a peace treaty finally bringing the war to a formal end is yet to be concluded between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Korea. (Readers with good memories might here observe that a peace treaty between Russia and Japan formally ending the hostilities of WW II has never been signed, despite the passage of more than 60 years, but all must agree that relations between these two countries proceed on a far different basis from that which governs those obtaining between the US and the DPRK.) Given the total success in the case of North Korea that the extreme demonisation of opponents so characteristic of US psychological warfare has enjoyed, Stephen Gowans' article reviewing the history of the conflict, published first on his blog What's Left under the title Understanding North Korea, and republished by Global Research in an article with the same title, provides a necessary antidote to the «common [lack of] knowledge» concerning that state and its history. But as the Chinese saying goes, 良药苦口, and I fear that many of my readers will find it extremely difficult to swallow the bitter pill of this knowledge, no matter how salubrious its effects would be upon their view of the world. Here below, in any event, the response I posted to StumbleUpon after reading Mr Gowans' article :
What do you know about North Korea - aside from, of course, that it is the very epitome of inhumanity and repression, the linchpin that holds the «Axis of Evil» in place ? You've learned - unfortunately, somewhat post festum - to be suspicious of the US administration's picture of the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you realise that the image of Vietnam propagated by another US administration as an excuse to make war on that country and that region, with approximately three million premature deaths as a result, was false. But when King George and his loyal courtiers - loyal to whom and to what, it might be asked, but alas, all too often is not - present their view of North Korea, it remains almost completely unchallenged. Who remembers that the US war in Korea was, just like the war in Vietnam which started at the same time (1945, under French auspices) but which was, unlike that in Korea which ended - at least for the time being - in 1953, to continue for another three decades), part of an attempt to pick up the pieces of the erstwhile Japanese empire that WW II had brought to an end and incorporate them in a new, larger US empire ? Stephen Gowans, a Canadian writer and activist, is to be commended for publishing this brief but well-researched review of Korean history from 1945 on his blog, and Global Research for bringing it to the attention of a wider readership....
6 November 2006. 
Given my obvious shortcomings as a theologian (and the difficulties of adducing evidence on the matter), I am reluctant to pontificate upon the adequacy of the view attributed to the 3rd century religious reformer, known to us only by his title Mani, of the universe as the transitory result of an attack from the realm of darkness on the realm of light, created by the Living Spirit, an emanation of the light realm, out of the mixture of light and darkness. But as a guide to human affairs, views which postulate a dichotomy between an Axis of Good on the one side, and one of Evil on the other, are bound to lead us astray, no matter on which side of the divide we happen to find ourselves. As always, and not least in our times, this Manichaean view of human conflict is promoted mainly by those who have most to hide themselves ; thus a certain George W Bush has felt it incumbent upon himself to pronounce upon what he (or rather his speechwriter) has dubbed the «Axis of Evil». One of the charter members of this so-called «axis» is North Korea, a country almost totally destroyed by a US-led war from 1950 - 1953 and with which the latter power has been unwilling to conclude a treaty of peace, despite the passage of more than half a century. Recently, this country, under constant threat of military attack by a superpower whose nuclear arsenal includes tens of thousands of weapons and whose military budget is greater than that of the rest of the world combined, had the temerity to conduct a test of what it claimed was a nuclear weapon. All the Chicken Littles of the world, both the sincere who are concerned with the real threats to our existence, and the less sincere, who are very selective concerning which threats they allow to exercise them, threw their hands into the air, crying that the world had become a much more insecure place and that the United Nations Organisation(yes, indeed, I kid you not - indeed, His Excellency John Bolton, whose dislike of and contempt for the organisation were his primary qualifications for his appointment as US ambassador to it, led the choir), must do something about this disgusting breach of etiquette. I briefly addressed this anomaly on this page in a review, supra, of Gregory Elich's Global Research article last week ; the publication of Tim Beal's carefully documented North Korea's Nuclear Test—Bush's Godchild? in the latest number of Japan Focus has provided me with the occasion to return to the matter in a posting to StumbleUpon, which I take the liberty of reproducing, infra. Japan Focus is to be thanked for publishing this article detailing one particular aspect of US foreign policy under the reign of King George on the eve of the US 2006 mid-term elections; would that that portion of the US electorate which is allowed by the guardians of order to cast a ballot would read it before doing so ! But alas, I fear the Living Spirit has not yet progressed that far....
Readers who have forced their way through my review last week of Gregory Elich's Why Bush is seeking confrontation with North Korea are aware that, despite assiduous efforts towards this end, I find it difficult to share the Manichaean view of the world with USA in the role of Light and North Korea in that of Darkness that for the obvious reasons is de rigeur when discussing why the former is allowed to possess thousands of nuclear warheads and a military doctrine which insists on the «right» to first use and «pre-emptive war», while the latter is excoriated for perhaps possessing as many as five warheads and a doctrine which permits their use only if the country is under attack. Alas, Tim Beal's carefully researched Japan Focus article does nothing to reduce my skepticism in this respect - quite the contrary. As Mr Beal, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington, points out,
... Since it is a small country targeted by the world's superpower, which, though hemorrhaging and perhaps in relative decline, still possesses such formidable political, economic and military power that no country, or international civil servant for that matter, dares openly speak up, even if they so desired. Politicians have hastened to express moral outrage even if, and perhaps especially if, they come from countries which have many nuclear weapons and have conducted tests. Journalists have been having a field day, many delighting in the opportunity to write lurid stories unencumbered by the need to check facts and qualify opinions. Under the circumstances, it is more necessary than ever before to keep a clear head and try to disentangle fact from fantasy, to unearth what has been going on, and what is likely to happen.
The only thing I should like to add to Mr Elich's and Mr Beal's analyses is that the present US policy vis-a-vis North Korea does not, it should be noted, aim at regime change only in that country, but also, and not least, in South Korea, where one of the most important US policy objectives is to discredit the Kim/Roh «Sunshine Policy» towards the North and bring the country back to the state of a loyal US vassal it found itself in before Kim Daejung's election to the presidency in December 1997. To the United States, North Korea is undoubtedly far more important as a tool for keeping South Korea under its thumb than it is in its own right....
5 November 2006.
- Seldom do I find myself disturbed by articles I read in the press or online, but I must confess that I found Elizabeth de la Vega's article on Ricky Clousing, Move Over G.I. Joe and Han Solo : Sgt. Ricky Clousing, Peace Action Hero, published a few days ago on Tom Engelhardt's Tom Dispatch, deeply disturbing. To summarise, Mr Clousing is a 24 year-old man who, after joining the US military after the 11 September 2001 attacks and undergoing intensive language training found himself posted to Iraq as an interrogator. On patrol there he experienced an event, hardly uncommon, which seems to have marked his young life indelibly :
Ricky was on patrol when he saw a boy, "probably 18 years old, a small maybe high-school age kid" turn down a road his unit was attempting to secure. The teenager, Ricky said, was quite visibly terrified at the sight of "a whole bunch of Americans with big weapons" staring him in the face. He started turning the car around, but didn't get very far. This is how Ricky described what happened next:
One of the soldiers in the turret of the humvee behind me just opened up fire on the machine gun on the vehicle. As the vehicle was turning away, all I heard above my head was "pop, pop, pop, pop." This was my first deployment, my first combat experience was that moment right then, and just the sound of machine guns going off over my head. He popped about five or six rounds in the side of the vehicle. Myself and two of the other guys ran over to the vehicle, smashed the window, and pulled the guy out to provide first aid on him… I was looking down at this kid who had just been shot in the stomach for no reason really -- he was trying to leave…I was still just standing there in shock, looking down at this kid, and he looked right up at me. And his mouth was foaming. His stomach was falling out in his hands… I was looking down at this kid, this young boy who was just trying to drive around town and took a wrong turn and tried to go the other direction, was shot at and killed, and I'm looking down at him now. And we made eye contact for about five seconds, and he just looked at me with the most empty, terrified look in his face that will never leave me in my whole life I'm sure.
That Iraqi boy died on the way to the hospital. I think the boy in Ricky Clousing died that day as well, but what an extraordinary man he has since become. Deciding he would be haunted forever if he kept silent about such an egregious violation of the rules of engagement, Sgt. Clousing notified the unit's Platoon Sergeant, who did not "take kindly" to his advice.
Further attempts to take up the matter with his superiors led to his being variously advised to effect a discharge from the US army by saying he was gay, or claiming he was suffering from PTSD, or filing as a conscientious objector, none of which, he felt applied to him, or at least avoid another tour in Iraq by serving in the US. But neither was that an acceptable alternative :I felt that my involvement in the army, whether it be directly or indirectly, whether in Iraq or training guys to go to Iraq, I was still that piece of machine in the system that was still allowing this war to take place and still supporting that. My actions, whether or not they were on the front line or back safely at home, were still part of the body of the machine that's occupying [Iraq]. So I ultimately felt that the only thing I could do was to leave, so I packed my stuff last June and I went AWOLI felt that my involvement in the army, whether it be directly or indirectly, whether in Iraq or training guys to go to Iraq, I was still that piece of machine in the system that was still allowing this war to take place and still supporting that. My actions, whether or not they were on the front line or back safely at home, were still part of the body of the machine that's occupying [Iraq]. So I ultimately felt that the only thing I could do was to leave, so I packed my stuff last June and I went AWOL.
Mr Clousing turned himself in on 11 August 2006 and is currently serving a three-month sentence in a military brig. Why I was so disturbed by this article and what this particular incident has to say about the nature of war and civil courage in our times I leave to the reader to decide, but this is the letter (with one minor modification) I sent to Tom Englehardt (and posted to StumbleUpon) after reading Ms de la Vega's article :
What the hell, Tom ! I was beginning to become, if not comfortable with, at least inured to the cynicism and misanthropy, in particular with respect to your country, which recent events have contributed so richly to calling forth and maintaining in my mental life. Now you, Ms de la Vega, and in particular, Ricky Clousing, bust it all up and show that there do exist alternatives to cynicism and misanthropy, even if they do not seem to be so popular. For some reason this just makes the whole thing worse - the fact that alternatives to «le meilleur monde possible» as defined by Bush/Cheney and their ilk do exist makes the coming catastrophe all the harder to view with equanimity....
Henri
