Harry Targ : The Real Romney Foreign Policy

Will the real Mitt Romney please stand up? Image from Foreign Policy.
Unleashing the military:
The real Romney foreign policy

Military spending would grow in a Romney administration, especially because of ties to the neocons and a hawkish Congress which promotes military spending district by district.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / October 30, 2012

After the outbreak of fighting on the Korean peninsula, NSC 68 was accepted throughout the government as the foundation of American foreign policy -- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.

The third and last presidential debate of the 2012 election season, October 22, 2012, addressed issues of foreign policy and their connections to the United States economy. The debates reflected the idiosyncrasies of American politics, 2012, as well as the enduring features of the United States empire.

As to the candidate’s realization that he needed to “move to the center,” Mitt Romney tried to portray himself as peace-oriented. This approach contradicted the neo-conservative vision of the 17 of 24 key foreign policy aides advising him. These former Bush advisors and associates of the Project for a New American Century or (PNAC), stand for a foreign policy designed to reestablish United States global hegemony.

PNAC, formed in the 1990s, in its official positions argued that the United States, as the last remaining super power, must use that power to remake the world. The PNAC vision combines the ideology of the United States as the “City on the Hill” and the “Beacon of Hope” for the world, with the advocacy of using overwhelming military force to achieve imperial goals.

Romney, contrary to prior statements, endorsed the Obama administration plans for withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. He, like President Obama, supported the Syrian opposition short of U.S. direct military intervention. He called for maintaining sanctions against Iran to force the latter to end its alleged nuclear program while avoiding war. And Romney, like Obama, endorsed challenging China’s trade policy while engaging in constructive diplomacy with the burgeoning new superpower.

These and other Romney statements mirrored (for better or worse) the foreign policies of President Obama. The flexible Republican candidate “moved to the center” on foreign policy because of his perceived need to present an image of wisdom and caution to the America voters who oppose a continued presence in Afghanistan, getting directly involved in wars against Syria and Iran, and the wars on “terrorism,” “drugs,” and other crusades.

However, candidate Romney was firm in his commitment to increasing U.S. defense spending over the next decade, while he would cut domestic programs. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported in September 2012 that a President Romney would cap total federal spending at 20 percent of GDP by 2016, maintain defense spending at 4 percent of GDP, and rapidly repeal the Affordable Care Act (Richard Kogan and Paul N. Van de Water, “Romney Budget Proposals Would Necessitate Very Large Cuts in Medicaid, Education, Health Research and Other Programs”).

President Obama claims that the Romney military project would add $2 trillion to military spending over the next decade. Even though figures are loosely introduced to debates, it is clear that a Romney presidency would add enormously to naval programs, maintain high levels of troops, and continue drone programs that were expanded during the Obama presidency.

In short, military spending would grow in a Romney administration, especially because of ties to the neocons and a hawkish Congress which promotes military spending district by district.

The Obama defense budget projected for fiscal year 2013 would total $525 billion, a 2.5 percent decline from the 2012 budget (if inflation is considered). The basic DOD budget request does not include ongoing war costs, U.S. nuclear weapons systems, homeland security, military assistance, or other elements of security.

The DOD recommended cuts in troop strength in the army, marines, and reserves. The National Priorities Project reports that an Obama defense budget would modestly increase from about $525 billion in 2013 to just less than $530 billion at the end of a second term.

A Romney administration would unleash the military in terms of expenditures, and, if he listens to his neocon advisors, worldwide adventures. But, President Obama’s defense budget proposals continue the basic parameters of military spending into the future. As the National Priorities pie chart notes, the 2013 proposed federal budget allocates 57 percent of discretionary spending directly to the military, with 6 percent for education, 6 percent for housing and community, 5 percent for veterans benefits, 3 percent for science, 2 percent for labor, 2 percent for transportation, and 1 percent for food and agriculture.

National Security Council Document 68, written in the bleak Cold War winter of 1950 before the onset of the Korean War recommended that military spending should be the number one priority of every president before he/she discussed any other program or activity of government. NSC 68, just a wild proposal that winter, became policy after the Korean War started and has for the most part continued ever since, costing American workers trillions of dollars in taxes.

The Romney proposal, based on a vision of reestablishing the United States as the global hegemonic power, is based on the principle articulated in NSC 68. Spend more and more on the military and pay for it by cutting everything else. The Obama budget, while more circumspect and committed to the military contributing “their fair share” to the health and well-being of the nation, maintains the same commitment to prioritizing the military.

The task of the peace movement over the coming weeks is to first challenge the candidacy of Mitt Romney, who is committed to reinstituting the principle of NSC 68, and then, if the President is re-elected, to demand that President Obama reject the 60-year tradition of privileging unnecessary military spending over the basic needs of the American people.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Robert Parry : Mitt Romney's Lies and Distortions

That trademark Romney smirk. Image from policymic.
Mitt Romney lies to the world

Mitt Romney gave a rousing speech about how his foreign policy would be much more muscular than President Obama’s. But Romney displayed again his proclivity to lie on specifics and distort the broader reality.

By Robert Parry / Consortium News / October 10, 2012

While it’s true that all politicians play games with the facts, it is actually rare for a politician to be an inveterate liar. But Mitt Romney is one of that rare breed on matters both big and small. And with some polls showing his surge toward victory on November 6, his dishonesty may soon become an issue for the entire world.

Romney’s foreign policy speech on Monday, October 8, was another example of his tendency to lie on minor stuff as well as weighty issues. For instance, he claimed that President Barack Obama “has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years” though Obama secured passage of agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama and signed them in October 2011.

Romney apologists suggest that the Republican presidential nominee was hanging his truthiness on the word “new” since negotiations on the agreements began late in George W. Bush’s presidency. But the work was completed by Obama and he pushed the deals through Congress despite resistance from some of his own supporters in labor unions.

So, by any normal use of the English language, Obama had signed new trade agreements, but Romney simply stated the opposite.

Romney also accused Obama of staying “silent” in the face of street protests in Iran over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. But Obama wasn’t “silent.” He did speak out, with his comments becoming increasingly harsh as more images of violence emerged.

“The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” the President said on June 23, 2009. He added that he strongly condemned “these unjust actions."

If Romney wished to criticize Obama for not condemning Iran in even stronger terms or for not using his harshest language immediately that might be one thing, but to say, the President was “silent” is just a lie.

More broadly, Romney’s depiction of U.S. foreign policy as weak and feckless under Obama is almost the inverse from the truth. For instance, Obama helped organize an international military force to wage war in Libya, enabling rebels to overthrow longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but Romney acts as if that never happened.

Instead, Romney lays every foreign policy problem at Obama’s door and credits others with every accomplishment, including the killings of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.

On that topic, Romney said: “America can take pride in the blows that our military and intelligence professionals have inflicted on Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the killing of Osama bin Laden.” But Romney gives no credit to Obama for ordering these strikes and taking criticism from many on the Left for his aggressive use of drone attacks.


The Palestine flip-flop

Another jaw-dropping example of Romney’s dishonesty was his sudden embrace of negotiations leading to a Palestinian state after he was recorded in his infamous “47 percent speech” last May as deeming such talks hopeless.

“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way,” Romney told a group of wealthy donors. “The Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”

As for what the U.S. policy would be in a Romney administration, he said, “we kick the ball down the field.”

However, on Monday, Romney declared: “I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel.”

And again, all the blame for the impasse is placed on Obama: “On this vital issue, the President has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new president will bring the chance to begin anew.”

And then, there’s the traditional hypocrisy that you get from both parties but most notably from the Republicans, preaching the value of liberty and democracy but advocating ever closer ties with the oppressive monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

Romney declared about Obama’s approach to the Arab Spring that “the greater tragedy of it all is that we are missing an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East -- friends who are fighting for their own futures against the very same violent extremists, and evil tyrants, and angry mobs who seek to harm us.”

However, Romney then added, “I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf.”

One reason that I criticized Romney’s debate performance -- though many other Americans, including many Democrats, disagreed with my assessment -- was that I felt his lying and his squirrely behavior were more important than Obama’s sluggishness.

Neocon revival

Besides the lies and misrepresentations in the speech, there were some genuine policy differences expressed by the Republican presidential nominee. For instance, he vowed to expand the U.S. military and to deploy it more aggressively around the globe.

Romney also repeated his pledge to yoke U.S. foreign policy to Israel’s desires. “The world must never see any daylight between our two nations,” he said.

And Romney renewed his belligerence against Russia, which he had previously deemed “without question, our Number 1 geopolitical foe.” In his speech on Monday, Romney said, “I will implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats. And on this, there will be no flexibility with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.”

Despite the Depression-level economic crisis gripping Europe, Romney also announced that he “will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only three of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark.”

One might regard Romney’s neoconservative revival as delusional in a variety of ways -- further driving the United States toward bankruptcy even as U.S. interventionism in the Muslim world would surely make matters worse -- but it is Romney’s reliance on systematic lying that perhaps should be more troubling to American voters.

Romney has long been known as a serial flip-flopper who changes positions to fit the political season, but his pervasive mendacity has been a concern since the Republican primaries when his GOP rivals complained about him misrepresenting their positions and reinventing his own.

That pattern has continued into the general election campaign, with Romney telling extraordinary whoppers on the campaign trail and even during last Wednesday’s presidential debate, such as when he claimed his health-care plan covered people with pre-existing conditions when it doesn’t.


Strategic lying

One reason that I criticized Romney’s debate performance -- though many other Americans, including many Democrats, disagreed with my assessment -- was that I felt his lying and his squirrely behavior were more important than Obama’s sluggishness. Telling lies while waving your arms shouldn’t trump telling the truth in a moderate tone.

Indeed, as a journalist, I simply cannot abide politicians who lie systematically, who don’t just trim the truth once in a while but make falsehoods a strategic part of their politics and policies.

When I arrived in Washington in 1977 as a reporter for the Associated Press, the nation had just emerged from the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. To reassure the country that the government could be honest, President Jimmy Carter promised never to lie to the American people.

But then came the Reagan administration with its concept of “perception management,” i.e., the manipulation of the public’s fears and prejudices for the purpose of lining up the people behind new foreign adventures. A chief  “public diplomacy” goal of the administration was to cure the American people of “the Vietnam Syndrome.”

Thus, minor threats, like peasant uprisings in Central America, were portrayed as part of a grand Soviet strategy to invade the United States through Texas. The strength of the Soviet Union was itself exaggerated to justify a massive U.S. military build-up. Today’s neocons cut their teeth of such distortions and lies.

Post 9/11, with George W. Bush in the White House, this neocon strategy of fear-mongering led the United States into the debacle of the Iraq War (in pursuit of imaginary weapons of mass destruction).

Now, less than a year after U.S. military forces left Iraq -- and with a withdrawal from Afghanistan finally underway -- the latest polls suggest that the American voters are shifting toward the election of another neocon President who promises more soaring rhetoric about U.S. “exceptionalism” and more interventionism abroad.

It’s almost as if many Americans like being lied to.

[Robert Parry is the editor and founder of Consortium News. Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.]

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Jack A. Smith : Reversing the Vietnam War Verdict

Demonstrators at the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon carry a banner that says, "Support our GIs, Bring Them Home Now."
Reversing the Vietnam War verdict

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / June 7, 2012

The Pentagon has just launched a multi-year national public relations campaign to justify, glorify, and honor Washington's catastrophic, aggressive, and losing war against Vietnam -- America's most controversial and unpopular military conflict.

President Barack Obama opened the militarist event, which was overwhelmingly approved by Congress four years ago, during a speech at the Vietnam Wall on Memorial Day, May 28. The entire campaign, which will consist of tens of thousands of events over the next 13 years, is ostensibly intended to "finally honor" the U.S. troops who fought in Vietnam. The last troops were evacuated nearly 40 years ago.

In reality, the unprecedented project -- titled the Vietnam War Commemoration -- will utilize the "pro-veteran" extravaganza to accomplish two additional and more long lasting goals:

• The first is to legitimize and intensify a renewed warrior spirit within America as the Pentagon emerges from two counterproductive, ruinously expensive, and stalemated unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepares for further military adventures in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Within days of Obama's speech, for instance, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced a big increase of U.S. Navy forces in the Pacific, a move obviously targeting China. At the same time the Obama Administration's drone wars are accelerating as the Oval Office's kill list expands, and the president engages in cyber sabotage against Iran.


• The second is to dilute the memory of historic public opposition to the Vietnam war by putting forward the Pentagon's censored account of the conflict in public meetings, parades, and educational sessions set to take place across the nation through 2025. These flag-waving, hyper-patriotic occasions will feature veterans, active duty military members, government officials, local politicians, teachers, and business leaders who will combine forces to praise those who fought in Vietnam and those on the home front who supported the war. There won't be much -- if any -- attention focused on the majority of Americans who opposed this imperialist adventure, except as a footnote describing how tolerant U.S. democracy is toward dissent.

The principal theme of the president's address was that American troops have not received sufficient laurels for their efforts to violently prevent the reunification of North and South Vietnam. He did not point out that there would have been no war had the United States permitted nationwide free elections to take place in Vietnam in 1956 as specified by the 1954 Geneva Agreement ending the French colonialism in Indochina. Washington recently decided that the war "officially" began in 1962 (although U.S. involvement dates back to the 1950s), allowing the commemoration to begin during the "50th anniversary" year.

President Obama lays a commemorative wreath during Memorial Day ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, May 28, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images.
President Obama told the large, cheering crowd of veterans and their families at the Vietnam Wall exactly what they — and all those who still resented the era's large antiwar movement — wanted to hear:

One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam -- most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there....

You were often blamed for a war you didn't start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. (Applause.) You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that's why here today we resolve that it will not happen again. (Applause.)....

[Y]ou wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history. (Applause.).... [E]ven though some Americans turned their back on you -- you never turned your back on America... And let's remember all those Vietnam veterans who came back and served again -- in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You did not stop serving. (Applause.)

So here today, it must be said -- you have earned your place among the greatest generations. At this time, I would ask all our Vietnam veterans, those of you who can stand, to please stand, all those already standing, raise your hands -- as we say those simple words which always greet our troops when they come home from here on out: Welcome home. (Applause.) Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Thank you. We appreciate you. Welcome home. (Applause.)....

May God bless you. May God bless your families. May God bless our men and women in uniform. And may God bless these United States of America.

There was virtually no criticism in the corporate mass media about the president's gross exaggerations concerning the "mistreatment" of Vietnam era veterans. True, there were no victory parades, but that was because the U.S. Armed Forces were defeated by a much smaller and enormously outgunned adversary -- the guerrilla forces of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) and regular forces from North Vietnam.

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) hold a peaceful demonstration outside the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami. Photo by JP Laffont / Sygma / Corbis.
By the time many vets returned home the American people had turned against the war and wanted it over, as did a significant portion of active duty troops, including the many who identified with the peace movement or who mutinied or deserted. Undoubtedly some veterans were disrespected -- but to a far lesser extent than Obama and pro-war forces have suggested over the years.

Whenever the U.S. conducts unpopular invasions, as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Washington and the mass media invariably insist that it is the duty of patriotic citizens to "support the troops" even if they oppose the war. But to manifest the kind of support the government seeks inevitably implies support for the war. This is why the peace groups came up with the slogan "Support the Troops -- Bring 'em home NOW!"

According to the Pentagon, which is in charge of staging the Vietnam War Commemoration, the main purpose is

To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War... for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans. To highlight the service of the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and the contributions of Federal agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces. To pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War..."

Thousands of community, veteran, and various nongovernmental organizations throughout the U.S. are expected to join the Commemorative Partner Program

to assist federal, state and local authorities to assist a grateful nation in thanking and honoring our Vietnam Veterans and their families. Commemorative Partners are encouraged to participate... by planning and conducting events and activities that will recognize the Vietnam Veterans and their families’ service, valor, and sacrifice.

In addition the government and its "partners" will be distributing educational materials about the war, according to the Pentagon, but it is unlikely that the Vietnamese side of the story or that of the multitude of war resisters in the U.S., civilian and military, will receive favorable attention. Many facts, including the origins of the war will undoubtedly be changed to conform to the commemoration's main goal of minimizing Washington's defeat and maximizing the heroism and loyalty of the troops.

Officially, the Vietnam war lasted 11 years (1962-1973), but U.S. involvement actually continued for 21 years (1954-1975). The U.S. financially supported the restoration of French colonial control of Vietnam and all of Indochina after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in 1945 (Japan earlier displaced French rule). By 1954, Washington not only supplied money and advisers but sent 352 Americans to Vietnam in a "Military Assistance Advisory group" supporting the French against liberation forces led by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The liberators defeated the French army at the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu that same year.

The Geneva Conference of 1954, facilitating impending French withdrawal, established that Vietnam would be divided temporarily into two halves until free elections were held in 1956 to determine whether the liberation forces, led by Ho Chi Minh, or Emperor Bao Dai, who had collaborated with both French and Japanese occupation forces and was a puppet of the U.S., would rule the unified state.

American soldiers carry a wounded comrade through a Vietnam Swamp. Photo by Paul Halverson, 1969. Image from The Veterans Hour.
It is doubtful that the commemoration is going to emphasize the fact that the U.S., led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, used its power to prevent nationwide elections from taking place when it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote. Eisenhower acknowledged this in his memoirs. Instead, Washington allied itself to right wing forces in the southern sector to declare "South Vietnam" to be a separate state for the first time in history and set about financing, training and controlling a large southern military force to prevent reunification. The U.S. dominated the Saigon government throughout the following war.

When Paris withdrew remaining French troops in April 1956, according to John Prados in Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (2009), "their departure made America South Vietnam's big brother," i.e., overlord and military protector against popular liberation forces in the southern half of the country.

By June 1962, 9,700 U.S. "military advisers" plus a large number of CIA agents were training and fighting to support the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), at which time President Kennedy's Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, announced that "every quantitative measure shows that we're wining the war."

By 1968, when the number of U.S. troops attained their apogee of 535,040, Washington was obviously losing to its tenacious opponent. This is when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek reelection rather than face the humiliation of defeat. Republican President Richard M. Nixon succeeded to the presidency and vastly increased the bombings while also calling for negotiations to end the war.

Facing an impending defeat and political catastrophe, American troops pulled out in 1973. The CIA and some U.S. military personnel and political advisers remained in diminished South Vietnam assisting the right wing government in Saigon until April 1975 when the entire country was liberated.

The U.S. lost 58,151 troops in the war. Between four and five million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed on both sides in a catastrophe that could have been entirely avoided had Washington allowed the free elections to take place. Over a million civilians in neighboring Laos and Cambodia also were killed or wounded by U.S. firepower.

Vietnam, north and south, was pulverized by U.S. bombs and shells. The Pentagon detonated 15,500,000 tons of ground and air munitions on the three countries of Indochina, 12,000,000 tons on South Vietnam alone in a failed effort to smash the National Liberation Front backed by the North Vietnamese army. By comparison, the U.S. detonated only 6,000,000 tons of ground and air munitions throughout World War II in Europe and the Far East. All told, by the end of the war, 26,000,000 bomb craters pockmarked Indochina, overwhelmingly from U.S. weapons and bombers.

The Pentagon also dumped 18,000,000 gallons of herbicides to defoliate several million acres of farmland and forests. Millions of Vietnamese suffered illness, birth defects, and deaths from these poisonous chemicals. The AP recently reported from Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, that "More than 100,000 Vietnamese have been killed or injured by land mines or other abandoned explosives since the Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago, and clearing all of the country will take decades more."

It should also be mentioned -- since it will be suppressed during the commemoration -- that U.S. forces, including the CIA and the Pentagon-controlled South Vietnamese military, tortured many thousands of "suspected" supporters of the liberation struggle, frequently with portable electrical current. An estimated 40,000 "Vietcong" (suspected members or supporters of the NLF) were murdered during the long-running "Operation Phoenix" assassination campaign conducted by the CIA, Special Forces, and killer units of the Saigon forces.

Iconic photo of crying Vietnamese children after an aerial napalm attack near near Trang Bang, Vietnam, June 8, 1972, Photo by Nick Ut / AP.
There were three main fronts in the Vietnam war, in this order: First, the battlefields of Indochina. Second, the massive antiwar movement within the United States and international support for Vietnam. Third, the Paris Peace Talks. Well over 60% of the American people opposed the war by the late 1960s-early '70s. The first peace protest took place in 1962; the first very large protest took place in Washington in 1965. Subsequently there were thousands of antiwar demonstrations large and small in cities, towns, and campuses all over America.

[Disclosure; This writer was a war opponent and a conscientious objector during this period. His information about the war derives from when he functioned as the news editor, managing editor and then chief editor of the largest independent leftist paper in the U.S. at the time, the weekly Guardian. This publication thoroughly covered the war, peace movement, antiwar veterans (Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] was founded in 1967 and is still active today), the extraordinary resistance of active duty troops in Vietnam and at U.S. bases and COs in prison or in Canada and Europe throughout the period of conflict.]

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces -- falsehoods Obama chose to repeat as part of the Pentagon's campaign to reverse history's negative verdict on the war in Vietnam. The peace movement's targets were the warmakers in Washington and their allies abroad, not members of a largely conscript army. Perhaps the most notorious of the false accusations were frequent reports about antiwar individuals "spitting" at GIs and vets. The rumors were so wild that sociologist Jerry Lembcke wrote a book exposing the lies -- The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, New York University Press, 1998.

It's extremely doubtful that the war commemoration will dare touch honestly upon the movement of active duty troops against the war and the hundreds of cases killing their own officers.

Historian Howard Zinn included this paragraph on the opposition to the Vietnam War by American soldiers in his People's History of the United States:

The capacity for independent judgment among ordinary Americans is probably best shown by the swift development of antiwar feeling among American GIs -- volunteers and draftees who came mostly from lower-income groups. There had been, earlier in American history, instances of soldiers' disaffection from the war: isolated mutinies in the Revolutionary War, refusal of reenlistment in the midst of hostilities in the Mexican war, desertion and conscientious objection in World War I and World War II. But Vietnam produced opposition by soldiers and veterans on a scale, and with a fervor, never seen before.

According to the Washington Peace Center:

During the Vietnam War, the military ranks carried out mass resistance on bases and ships in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, U.S., and Europe. Military resistance was instrumental in ending the war by making the ranks politically unreliable. This history is well documented in Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright and the recent film Sir! No Sir!

One of the key reports on GI resistance was written by Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr. and published in the Armed Forces Journal of June 7, 1971. He began:

The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous. Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.

Intolerably clobbered and buffeted from without and within by social turbulence, pandemic drug addiction, race war, sedition, civilian scapegoatise, draftee recalcitrance and malevolence, barracks theft and common crime, unsupported in their travail by the general government, in Congress as well as the executive branch, distrusted, disliked, and often reviled by the public, the uniformed services today are places of agony for the loyal, silent professions who doggedly hang on and try to keep the ship afloat.

According to the 2003 book by Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, Gen. Creighton Abrams -- the U.S. military commander in Vietnam -- made this comment in 1971 after an investigation: "Is this a god-damned army or a mental hospital? Officers are afraid to lead their men into battle, and the men won’t follow. Jesus Christ! What happened?"

Another former Army colonel in Vietnam, Andrew J. Bacevich Sr. (now a professor of international relations at Boston University and a strong opponent of U.S. foreign/military policy) wrote a book about how the U.S. military labored for a dozen years after the defeat to revamp its war strategy and tactics. (The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Oxford University Press, 2005.)

One major conclusion was that a conscript army may become unreliable if the war is considered unjust in nature and unpopular at home. This is why conscription was ended for good and the Pentagon now relies on better paid professional standing military supplemented by a large number of contractors and mercenaries, who perform many duties that were once handled by regular soldiers.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War at 2009 Atlanta Veterans Dav Parade. Photo by David Howell.
Veterans' movements from the professional military of contemporary wars, such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and March Forward, as well as from the Vietnam era, are still out in the streets opposing imperialist wars, and public opinion polls reveal that over 60% of the American people oppose the Afghan adventure.

Despite the colossal damage the U.S. inflicted on Vietnam and its people during the war years, the country has emerged from the ashes and is taking steps toward becoming a relatively prosperous society led by the Communist Party. The Hanoi government has received no help from Washington. During the Paris Peace Talks of 1973, Nixon promised Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in writing that the U.S. would pay Vietnam $3.5 billion in reparations. This promise turned out to be worthless.

What strikes visitors to Vietnam in recent years, including this writer, is that the country appears to have come to terms with what it calls the American War far better than America has come to terms with the Vietnam War. Despite the hardships inflicted upon Vietnam, the government and people appear to hold no grudges against the United States.

Hanoi has several times extended the welcome mat to former antagonists, urging Americans and residents of southern Vietnam who now live abroad to "close the past and look to the future." Wherever touring U.S. citizens -- including former GIs -- travel in Vietnam, they are met with the same respect as visitors from other countries.

In the U.S., the Vietnam war still evokes fighting words in some quarters. Some Americans still argue that the U.S. "could have won if it didn’t have one hand tied behind its back" (i.e., used nuclear weapons), and some continue to hate the antiwar protesters of yesteryear, just as they do demonstrators against today’s wars. And some others -- in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon -- still seem to continue fighting the war by organizing a massive propaganda effort to distort the history of Washington's aggression and unspeakable brutality in Vietnam.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.

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Harry Targ : Diplomatic Rejection at Cartagena Summit Reflects U.S. Decline

Is U.S. image fading? President Obama on giant screen at Americas Summit in Cartagena, April 14, 2012. Photo by John Vizcaino / Reuters.
Occupy Latin America:
Changing relations in the hemisphere

Latin America’s rejection of U.S. diplomatic dominance at the Cartagena, Colombia, summit signifies the decline of U.S. power in the region.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / April 17, 2012

The 2012 Summit of the Americas ended Sunday, April 15, without a closing statement as is traditional. In fact, it ended with acrimony.

Countries with political regimes as varied as Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia condemned the refusal of the United States to formally recognize Cuba, thus allowing that country to attend. Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, did not even attend the summit to protest Cuba’s exclusion. By the end of the meeting, Evo Morales, Bolivian President, made it clear that no future summits would occur if Cuba were not included.

Along with political conflict between the United States and Canada and the rest of the Hemisphere countries over Cuba, most rejected the decades-long violent and destructive “war on drugs” launched by the United States in the twentieth century to maintain a rationale for a pervasive military presence in the region.

Also, President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina left the meeting early to protest the lack of U.S. support for her country’s claims on the Malvinas Islands.

The Summit of the Americas was launched in 1994 by President Clinton to advance Hemisphere diplomacy beyond the traditional regional organization, the Organization of American States. Clinton and George Bush used the summits to lobby for a Hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, a North America Free Trade Agreement, writ large.

In 2003, the former Brazilian President, Luiz Inacion Lula da Silva, demanded that the United States end farm subsidies for U.S. products before Brazil would consider a trade agreement. Subsequently Brazil joined forces with Russia, India, and China (the BRICs) to challenge the hegemony of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan in the global economy.

While visible global political/military contests in the twenty-first century centered in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, significant changes have been occurring in Latin America. A continent pillaged by Spain, Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands for hundreds of years has been doggedly moving towards political autonomy and economic independence.

Colonialism came to an end with the Spanish/Cuban/American war in 1898. In its place, the United States established neocolonial control over the politics and economics of virtually every country in the Hemisphere. At first, from 1898 until 1933, the U.S. maintained control through repeated military interventions (over 30 in 35 years with long marine military occupations of Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua).

From the 1930s until the 1980s, U.S. control was maintained by putting in place and supporting military dictatorships in such countries as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. During the time Reagan, Bush senior and Clinton were in office, control was enhanced by so-called “neoliberal” economic policies. These demanded of countries, increasingly tied to international banks by crippling debt, the creation of open markets, foreign economic penetration, and reduced domestic spending for its own citizens.

During the years of dictatorship and neoliberalism, the primary example of resistance to U.S. economic imperialism and militarism was Cuba. For that reason, the United States put in place a policy of diplomatic isolation, an economic blockade, and a 50-year campaign to subvert and overthrow the revolutionary government.

As the 2012 election season approaches, presidential candidate Barack Obama, apparently felt he could not buck the declining but still influential counterrevolutionary Cuban Americans of South Florida, despite what Latin America thinks.

Latin America’s rejection of U.S. diplomatic dominance at the Cartagena, Colombia, summit signifies the decline of U.S. power in the region. The power of the newly formed Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), an organization promoting economic and political cooperation in the region constitutes one kind of challenge to the United States. Another is the trade regime, Common Southern Market or Mercosur, which has a membership of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay (with membership of Venezuela in process, and associate membership status for Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

More important, economic populist (some say 21st century socialist) regimes are in power now in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and, of course, Cuba. In addition center/left regimes rule in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Peru.

Hal Weitzman documents in Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering (Wiley, 2012) Latin America’s growing relationships with China and to a lesser extent Europe. He identifies a troubling contradiction in the U.S. regional relationship:

The longer-term trend is clear: while Latin America becomes an increasingly more important trade partner for the United States with every passing year, the United States is becoming less and less important to Latin America.

And finally, in advance of electoral shifts to the Left in the region, mass organizations all around the Hemisphere have emerged based on class, gender, and race. Also indigenous people struggling to keep their land in the face of expropriation by multinational corporations have risen up, even against what they regard as oppressive policies of populist regimes.

The World Social Forum, launched as a dialogue among the poor and oppressed in Porte Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, was a forerunner of the Occupy movements of our own day.

In short, the rejection of United States policies at the summit signifies the fundamental transformation of U.S/Latin American relations. The winds of change are becoming gusts.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Tom Hayden : On Bin Laden and Searching for Monsters

Seeking monsters to destroy. Image from Slog.
Searching for monsters:
Bin Laden is dead, but will
the 'Long War' on terror live on?

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / May 3, 2011

John Quincy Adams long ago urged that American foreign policy should be based on the principle that "she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

The killing of Osama bin Laden is a triumphant moment for President Obama and the CIA, allowing a symbolic claim to victory in the War on Terror, bringing an understandable feeling of closure for the victims of 9/11, and it will almost certainly assure the President’s re-election in 2012.

But as I wrote in The Nation in October 2009, however, the death of bin Laden is not likely to end the Long War on Terror, now spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and a dozen other theaters of counterterrorism.

If bin Laden is gone, and his network heavily damaged, what is left of the terrorist threat to our national security that justifies so many trillions of dollars and costs in thousands of lives?

Because of a fabricated fear of bin Laden, we invaded Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was to deny sanctuaries to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In response, Al Qaeda moved into Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed on May 2.

So why are the Taliban in Afghanistan a threat to the security of the United States with bin Laden gone? Surely there are terrorist cells with lethal capacity scattered around the world, surely there might be revenge attacks, but there is hardly a centralized conspiratorial threat that justifies the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American troops.

Now we shall learn whether there is another agenda that keeps 150,000 American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

John Quincy Adams long ago urged that American foreign policy should be based on the principle that “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

As history turned out, however, our governments have identified and defined many monsters, from Crazy Horse and Geronimo on to the present. The underlying theory has been that demonic conspirators provoke, lead, and manipulate insurgent movements, and that silencing them will end the threat.

The example of Che Guevara is instructive. Detected, hunted, captured, and killed by Bolivians accompanied by the CIA in October 1967, Che was transformed in death into a global symbol of rebellion. His spirit continues to be alive today all over Latin America, and indeed the world. It can be argued that Che’s impact became greater in martyrdom than during his guerrilla campaigns in Africa and Bolivia.

So it could be with the myth of Osama bin Laden. It may depend on whether the U.S. moves away from the War on Terrorism model to more active support of the youthful social revolution sweeping the Arab world today, which has already surpassed Al Qaeda in its scope and momentum.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties.This article was also posted at The Nation and was distributed by Progressive America Rising. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog]

Also see:

• With Afghanistan, a moment of opportunity for Obama by Tom Hayden / Los Angeles Times / May 5, 2011.

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Ed Felien : Obama and the Lies About Libya

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / Denver Post / inToon.com
What's really up in Benghazi?
Obama's lies about Libya

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / April 5, 2011

Barack Obama tried to explain the U. S. war against Libya on Monday, March 28, and he said a number of things that simply are not true.

He said, “Gaddafi has lost the confidence of his people.” Compared to most other Arab countries, Gaddafi seems to enjoy widespread if not universal support. The city of Benghazi is an isolated exception. Thomas C. Mountain has been following events in Libya for 25 years. Here is his assessment:

In 1969 when Col. Gaddafi came to power by overthrowing the Libyan king in a military coup, Libyans were one of the poorest people in the world with an annual per capita income of less than $60.

Today, thanks to the “Arab Socialism” policy of the government as well as bountiful petroleum exports, the Libyan people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world. Most Libyan families own their own homes and most Libyan families own an automobile.

The free public health system in Libya is one of the best in the Arab world and Libya’s free education system up to the graduate level is as good if not better than any other in the region.

So the question is, why has a revolt broken out?

The answer, which I have been intensely researching for the past month is not a simple one.

The revolt started in Benghazi in eastern Libya. A very important point not mentioned anywhere in the international media is the fact that due to geographic location, being one of the closest points to Europe from the African continent, Benghazi has over the past 15 years or so become the epicenter of African migration to Europe. At one point over a thousand African migrants a day were pouring into Libya in hopes of arranging transport to Europe.

The human trafficking industry, one of the most evil, inhumane businesses on the planet, grew into a billion dollar a year industry in Benghazi. A large, vicious underworld mafia set down deep roots in Benghazi, employing thousands in various capacities and corrupting Libyan police and government officials. It has only been in the past year or so that the Libyan government, with help from Italy, has finally brought this cancer under control.

With their livelihood destroyed and many of their leaders in prison, the human trafficking mafia have been at the forefront in funding and supporting the Libyan rebellion. Many of the human trafficking gangs and other criminal elements in Benghazi are known for racist pogroms against African guest workers where over the past decade they regularly robbed and murdered Africans in Benghazi and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Since the rebellion in Benghazi broke out several hundred Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean guest workers have been robbed and murdered by racist rebel militias, a fact well hidden by the international media.

Benghazi has also long been a well-known center of religious extremism. Libyan fanatics who spent time in Afghanistan are concentrated there and a number of terrorist cells have been carrying out bombings and assassinations of government officials in Benghazi over the past two decades. One cell, calling itself the Fighting Islamic Group, declared itself an Al Queda affiliate back in 2007. These cells were the first to take up arms against the Libyan government.”

Obama said, “Gaddafi chose to escalate his attacks.” From the outset the Libyan revolt was different from the rest of the nonviolent revolts in the Middle East and North Africa: it was a violent revolt led by gangster elements and Islamic fundamentalists. The press has conveniently ignored this distinction.

Obama said, “I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973.” The very first statement of the UN resolution says, “1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;” The U.S. has spearheaded an offensive against Libyan forces in direct violation of a ceasefire and an end to violence.

The resolution, “Decides to establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians;” The U.S. with its allies has established air superiority, but it is not complying with the ban on all non-humanitarian flights. It is not possible to verify, but it is very likely that the U.S. is sending mercenaries and arms to aid the rebels in direct violation of the UN Resolution establishing an arms embargo.

Obama said he had promised “we would not put ground troops into Libya.” While it is obviously true that no combat troops in uniform have landed on “the shores of Tripoli,” it seems very likely that with hundreds of thousands of paid mercenaries in the immediate area and tons of military hardware, the U.S. is most certainly playing a covert support role to the rebels with boots and guns on the ground.

And the Obama administration has admitted that CIA operatives have been on the ground with the rebels (in violation of the UN resolution) for more than three weeks.

Obama said, “Our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives.” Clearly the mission is to support the rebels, continue advancing to Tripoli and overthrow Gaddafi.

Then Obama tried to articulate the Obama Doctrine to justify intervention,

Some question why America should intervene at all -- even in limited ways -- in this distant land. They argue that there are many places in the world where innocent civilians face brutal violence at the hands of their government, and America should not be expected to police the world, particularly when we have so many pressing concerns here at home.

In Bahrain the King brought in foreign troops from Saudi Arabia to fire on protesters, and the U.S. did nothing. There have been demonstrations against the feudal autocracies in Morocco and Saudi Arabia and the U.S. did nothing. We have been mildly critical of President Saleh, but we continue to supply him with guns and technical support to suppress dissent. We are outspoken against Syria because Syria, like Libya, is a socialist country.

Most people in the world understand that the main reason the U.S. and NATO want to bring down the Libyan government is because they produce millions of gallons of oil, and a more sympathetic government would make it more profitable for American and British oil companies to do business there.

Obama concluded his explanation by saying, “That is why we are going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold.” This was the most bizarre lie of the evening. Gaddafi has been fighting al Qaeda since 1995. Al Qaeda elements were part of the Benghazi uprising. We are allied with al Qaeda. They are a major part of the rebels.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan, said he has recruited around 25 men to fight against Gaddafi. According to Praveen Swami of the Guardian, “U. S. and British government sources said Mr. Al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.”

Obama knows we are allied with al Qaeda. He knows there has been a civil war in Libya between the secular, feminist, and socialist government of Gaddafi and Islamic fundamentalists for almost 20 years.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. The major theme of American foreign and domestic policy for the last hundred years has been anti-communism. From the intervention against Russia in the 1920’s and the Red Scare in the U.S., through the Cold War and the McCarthy hearings, American foreign and domestic policy has been driven by a defense of capitalism and a hatred of socialism or communism.

That fixation and oil are the reasons we intervened against the Baath Socialist government in Iraq. And those are the reasons we are intervening against the government of Libya.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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Marc Estrin : Pea of the Month

Image from OB Rag.
PEA OF THE MONTH

"Keep your eye on the pea." "What pea? Where?" "The one under the shell, this shell, here. Got it?" "Yeah." "OK. Now watch carefully."

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / April 5, 2011

First The Holy Trinity spoke only of imposing a no-fly zone. That -- and "all necessary measures" -- code for military action -- to protect innocent civilians against Gaddafi's forces.

It's widely understood that "a no-fly zone" is most often the first step towards broader military engagement, and adding the UN license for unlimited military escalation was crucial to getting the U.S. on board. The "all necessary measures" language also appears to be the primary reason five Security Council members abstained. For Russia, China, Germany, India and Brazil, that phrase meant giving the Pentagon and NATO a blank check backed by UN legitimacy.

Some supporters of the resolution insisted on explicitly excluding a "foreign occupation force." But any U.S., British, or French troops arriving in Libya could easily be disguised as an "assistance team" or "training mission" or any diplomatic pseudonym.

After getting support from international bodies on that understanding the Trinity immediately began to wage war against Libyan military forces, and whoever was nearby, a level of direct U.S., British, French, NATO and other international military intervention which went far beyond the "no-fly zone but no foreign intervention" that the rebels wanted, escalating the militarization of the entire region and internationalizing the military battle.

In yet another breach of international law, the president announced an “Obama doctrine” -- an approach to situations where U.S. action is not imperative but desirable, in concert with the international community.

Then, to smear the blame, he shifted command of the no fly zone over to NATO -- a front for U.S. military control -- itself commanded by U.S. admiral James Stavridis.

The claim is that UN Resolution 1973 "allows everything except boots on the ground."

So why are twenty-two hundred Marines and sailors from Camp Lejeune preparing to deploy off the coast of Libya? And who in Libya is gathering intelligence to call in all the air strikes? Those CIA trainers on the ground probably wear boots.

And who are the rebels we are supporting at the current cost of $100 million/day? It seems that the newly denominated rebel leader, Khalifa Hifter, has spent the last 20 years living just outside Washington, ten minutes from Langley, and with no clear means of support.

NATO, BTW, may order ground forces into Libya, Adm. James Stavridis admits. He recently told Congress that "while allied forces were not yet considering the deployment of troops on the ground in Libya, it was a possibility."

Some have termed this mission creep. To me, it seems more like mission bait and switch.


The great American pastime

If one follows the money flow, the great American game is surely no longer baseball, but rather Bait 'n Switch. Americans, for all their smarts around sports, are mindless suckers for various shell and pea games, in which they are always the victims.

Some peas begin with P's -- protect, preserve; others don't -- terrorism and defense, for example. Oh, here's a good one: petroleum. When a P-word is mentioned, we seem to shift instantly from cognitive to limbic thinking.

Jon Stewart, though of somewhat suspicious politics, ran a segment which hilariously captures this behavior. His P-word is "squirrel." (Begin at 4.00 minutes, and watch to the end -- another 4 min).

What is one face of squirrel for us? The immediate equating of intervention with military intervention. We've got the biggest, most expensive hammer, so why diddle around? The UN resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire, for negotiations to reduce rather than escalate the level of bloodshed,– all sidelined or ignored as soon as direct military engagement was on the table. And for us, it would have to be on the table before we'd agree to play. "All necessary measures." And now, of course, it’s too late.


Bait 'n switch

I thought you might like to see it in action. A quite cool piece of street con. Here it is in its pure form. You might want to turn the sound off to better concentrate.

Slick, huh? What's at play here is pure technique, leaving out the most obvious dimension of baiting. Here it is in street context:

You'll notice the strong possibility that there is more than one perp. Given the particular surroundings, there may even be more. The TOSSER challenges the PLAYER to bet, say $20 on guessing which shell the pea is under. The first to volunteer is the SHILL -- and by God, he wins, and the TOSSER actually pays up, saying that one was too easy, and he will make the next one harder.

"Harder?" an interested sucker in the audience thinks. "Maybe I should hold off to see what harder is." So he does, giving SHILL #2 a chance to bet. And he also finds the pea, and now the sucker PLAYER (who had guessed right, too), goes for it -- maybe is allowed to win one -- and the psychology cascades from there. The dream team may also include a LOOKOUT, depending on the place.

Want to see how the trick is done? I thought so:


The President's version

The above is not simply infotainment, but will serve as an angle for analysis.

As the tosser does not invite people to be stung, the first thing Obama does not do is say "I am taking the country into yet another war." No, we are not at war. The Obama administration prefers the term "kinetic military action." Bait 'n switch: No war? Sure, let's go. Protect the People from a dictator's terrorism.

Our goal is not "regime change," but on the other hand, we wouldn't be unhappy to see Ghadaffi go (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Obama:

To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and -- more profoundly -- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Damn. Left out the mushroom cloud. But still, "Squirrel!" enough.

This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and now Libya, but who turns a blind eye when "the great democracy in the Middle East," Israel, murders ever more Palestinians and our sonsa bitches exercise population control in Algeria, Tunisia, the Emirates, and above all, Saudi Arabia.

Operation Odyssey Dawn, the current name of the game in this Culture of Deception and the Stragegy of Imposture. Obama the TOSSER; NATO, and arm-twisted countries of the Security Council; The European Union, the endorsing SHILLS; the mainstream media, the LOOKOUT. What an all-star cast for a heavy-duty con game.

What would a clear eye connected to a sense of history discern?

That the deadly goal of this charade is to assert Western control over the Arab rebellions, to slow them down, channel them, co-opt them, confiscating their spontaneity, preventing these popular movements from changing the basic political realities in the middle east, and in the best case, restoring the statue quo ante.

If George W looked too scary, we'll give you the more user-friendly Obama to pursue and escalate the same goals. If another mideastern war seems too scary, let's identify another Hitler (cf. Saddam) and begin a kinetic military action, not to replace him, of course, but to protect the innocent uprising of democracy.

Operation (sterile, precise) Odessey (heroic, adventurous, sexy) Dawn (America brings you morning around the world!).

Who wants to bet $20?

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Joshua Brown : Life During Wartime: Data Overload

Political cartoon and verse by Joshua Brown / The Rag Blog / January 17, 2011.The Rag Blog

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Danny Schechter : WikiLeaks and the Fetish of Secrecy

Graphic from APS.
Wikileaks and the secrets that deceive us

It's the age-old battle between our right to know and their right to keep us from knowing.

By Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / December 21, 2010

In the days of Stalin’s Russia, not only would dissidents “disappear” but also, even in the pre-digital era, photographs of officials at May Day reviewing stands would be erased from photographs when their political stars fell. Our own “Kremlinologists” would know who was in, and who was out by comparing last year’s pictures with this years.

That’s one way of concealing information.

Just last week Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission pushed to have certain words removed from the report they were writing because they posed a conflict to their view that only the government was to blame for the financial collapse

Explained economist Paul Krugman,

Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: "deregulation," "shadow banking," "interconnection," and, yes, "Wall Street."

When Democratic members refused to go along with this insistence that the story of Hamlet be told without the prince, the Republicans went ahead and issued their own report, which did, indeed, avoid using any of the banned terms.

In our media today, omission of images and ideas is as key to sanitizing the news as is commission, What is not reported or perhaps even known is often more important than stories that are twisted by bias.

Enter WikiLeaks and an age-old battle between our right to know and their right to keep us from knowing. Its critics make a fetish about keeping secrets as if it is a holy duty and not a system of keeping the public uninformed about what their government is doing in its name.

The public has a right to know if officials are saying one thing in private and another in public, if they are concealing information or just plain lying.

The Pentagon Papers showed us that wars could be waged deceptively, based on deliberate falsehoods. WikiLeaks revelations about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars tell a similar story. We have learned how torture and civilian deaths were pervasive -- and covered up.

Veteran investigative reporter Bob Parry argues that in the national security area, journalists -- and the people -- need leaks from officials of conscience.

He writes:

Whatever the unusual aspects of the case, the Obama administration’s reported plan to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for conspiring with Army Pvt. Bradley Manning to obtain U.S. secrets strikes at the heart of investigative journalism on national security scandals.

That’s because the process for reporters obtaining classified information about crimes of state most often involves a journalist persuading some government official to break the law either by turning over classified documents or at least by talking about the secret information. There is almost always some level of “conspiracy” between reporter and source.

Contrary to what some outsiders might believe, it’s actually quite uncommon for sensitive material to simply arrive “over the transom” unsolicited. Indeed, during three decades of reporting on these kinds of stories, I can only recall a few secret documents arriving that way to me.

It’s not just the government that hides behind secrecy rules it puts in place. The private sector does too -- with the complicity of much of the media, which did not warn us about the financial crisis that was building. We didn’t learn about the pervasive fraud in the banking and real estate industries and still don’t know the full extent of the crimes of Wall Street.

Do we have to wait for historians to tell us that the stories we are being told are a crock?

Anyone remember reading about the Spanish American war? That’s the one which also marked the beginnings of “yellow journalism” when screaming headlines and falsified photos were used to mobilize the public for war.

Back then, at the turn of the last century, an American battleship, the USS Maine, sank in Havana Harbor. The incident sparked a battle cry, “REMEMBER THE MAINE.” We were told that “THEY” sank it. The incident led to war which later spread to the Philippines at a cost of six million lives.

Eighty years later, a submersible submarine went down to the remains of the Maine on the harbor floor. What they found was that no one -- no terrorists, no Spaniards, no Cubans, nobody sank the Maine. There had been an accident in the engine room. The whole war was based on a well publicized event that never happened.

If we had known that at the time, many lives would have been saved and U.S. foreign policy might not have gone in an imperial direction.

So, back to today:

What do we gain from persecuting and prosecuting Bradley Manning who was among three million people with access to the diplomatic cables we are now reading about? What will we gain by jailing or killing (as some right wingers advocate) Julian Assange, who is already being called “the Che Guevara of the Information Age”?

The CIA’s murder of the original Guevara created a global martyr whose image is still among the most popular icons in the world. Guevara had his own problems with hostile women. One, Molly Gonzales, tried to break through barricades upon his arrival in New York with a seven-inch hunting knife. He later became famous for saying, “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love."

Assange is being accused of sexual crimes in Sweden, a country, ironically, recently condemned by Amnesty International for not enforcing its own laws against rape. Now, the WikiLeaker-in-chief, is being targeted by the leak of a Swedish police document detailing charges against him. (They are charges, not facts, and may be serious under Swedish law.)

The ongoing and well-orchestrated war on WikiLeaks is also outraging millions worldwide who see the United States as a secretive and manipulative colossus that lives on lies and deception.

For many, this issue has reached a level of hysteria which, like the “Red Hunts” of the 1920s and the commie “crimes” of the cold war era, will only bring more shame to a Washington desperate to change the story away from the content of the leaked cables to allegations of wrongdoing by Assange. The Administration is also virtually torturing the man who dumped the documents, Bradley Manning, in Gitmo-like conditions, in an effort to turn hum against Assange. He has yet to be tried.

We can’t put the leaks genie back in the bottle. We might do better reflecting on the meaning of these disclosures for our democracy and media. The big secret is the one we don’t want to see: that we are building support and respect for WikiLeaks even as officials fulminate against it.

["News Dissector" Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, Emmy award winning television producer, and independent filmmaker. Schechter directed Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, and a companion book, The Crime of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail. Contact him at dissector@mediachannel.org.]

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Ted McLaughlin : Republicans Play Political Football With START Treaty

Political cartoon by Matson / Roll Call.

UPDATE: December 22, 2010 -- The New START arms control treaty with Russia was ratified by the Senate today by a 71-26 vote, with 13 Republicans crossing the aisle to support it. But they did so in defiance of the Republican leadership which opposed the treaty to the end -- after making unsuccessful attempts to sabotage it with amendments that would have made the treaty unacceptable to the Russians.

The Republicans, the START Treaty,
and the "No" game

Congressional Republicans are treating the issue like another political football.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 21, 2010

It looks like the Republicans are still playing the "No" game, where they try to delay or stop anything President Obama tries to accomplish. The difference this time is that their obstructionism will make life more dangerous -- both for Americans and for those living in other countries. That's because this time their little game may determine whether the number of nuclear weapons in the world is reduced or increased.

Last April the United States and Russia agreed, after serious negotiations, on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The new treaty, signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, would reduce the strategic nuclear weapons of both countries by an additional 30%. There is little doubt that the Russians will confirm the treaty, since Putin gets whatever he wants from the Russian Duma (legislature). The only doubt is whether the U.S. Senate will ratify the treaty.

It takes a two-thirds vote of the Senate to ratify a treaty with another country, and although a clear majority of the Senate is in favor of ratification, it remains to be seen whether the magic number of 67 can be reached. That's because many Republicans, including the party leadership in the Senate, have come out against approving the treaty. One senator even had the temerity to suggest there is no reason to rush into approving the treaty -- although voting on the treaty eight MONTHS after both presidents signed it can hardly be called a rush to judgment.

The Republicans have tried to give the impression over and over again that the treaty was unverifiable and would put the United States at a disadvantage somehow. Both of those charges are ridiculous. The fact is that all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Military are enthusiastically in favor of the START treaty. I can't believe they would be in favor of any treaty that disadvantaged the United States or weakened our defenses.

In addition, all of the former (and the current) Secretary of States (including the ones who served in Republican administrations) have come out in favor of the treaty. And all of our NATO allies (who are probably in more danger from Russian weapons than we are) are in favor of the treaty. In fact, it seems that the only opponents of the START treaty are some Congressional Republicans, and they're treating the issue like another political football. They just don't want to let President Obama have any kind of accomplishment -- even one that makes the world a little safer place.

The Republicans seem to think they can kill the treaty (showing their fringe right-wing base how anti-Obama they are) and nothing will really change with the world balance of power. Unfortunately, that's just not true. The Republicans have tried to amend the treaty, but that is just an effort to kill it. Any amendment would mean the two countries would have to go back and negotiate all over again, and the Russians are in no mood to do that.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "The START agreement, which was drafted on the basis of strict parity, completely meets the national interests of both Russia and the United States. It cannot be reopened, becoming the subject of new negotiations." Putin, the real power in Russia, went even further. He said the failure to ratify the treaty would be "dumb," and would most likely be the start of a new arms race -- he said Russia would have to take some kind of action in response.

So things are not going to stay the same no matter what the Senate does. If they ratify the treaty, nuclear arms will be reduced by a significant 30%. If they don't, the Russians are likely to increase their nuclear weapons total (and we would probably do the same) -- putting the Doomsday clock a few minutes closer to midnight. And I couldn't really blame the Russians if they reacted in that way.

Why should they trust us if we refuse to ratify a reduction in nuclear weapons? Remember, we are the only nation on Earth that has ever used nuclear weapons. We are also the only nation that has refused to guarantee that we won't launch a first strike of nuclear weapons. Those two facts together make us look like a very dangerous foe -- a foe that may not be trustworthy.

It is extremely important that the United States ratify this treaty, especially after all the international relations that were seriously damaged by the Bush administration. It is critical that President Obama be viewed by the world as restoring the United States as a trustworthy partner in establishing world peace (and that he be viewed as having the internal power to do that). If the Republicans are able to kill the treaty it will damage our relations abroad -- among our friends and our enemies.

It looks like the vote will be close [though things are looking better as of this writing]. All of the Republican's "poison pill" amendments have been easily defeated, but not by two-thirds votes (like the treaty would need for ratification). The Democrats say they have 57 votes from their own caucus (55 Democrats and both independents -- Sanders and Lieberman). Wyden (Oregon) is absent because he just had cancer surgery. That means 10 Republican votes will be necessary for ratification.

According to Sen. Schumer (New York), there are currently five Republicans who say they will vote for the START treaty -- Cochran (Mississippi), Collins (Maine), Snowe (Maine), Voinovich (Ohio), and Lugar (Indiana). That means five more Republican votes will be needed, and it's anyone's guess as to who they will be or whether it's even possible.

Even though I think it's bad politics, I can sort of understand the Republican desire to obstruct President Obama from accomplishing anything. But this time they've stepped over the line. This time they're playing a dangerous game of international political chicken. I wonder if they know that -- or even care.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Ted McLaughlin : The WikiLeaks Brouhaha

Political cartoon by samir alramahi / toonpool.com.
WikiLeaks brouhaha:
A danger to our security,
or serving the public's right to know?

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / November 29, 2010

I doubt if there's any established government on earth that can't access that kind of information, which means the only people these "secrets" are being kept from are the voting public.

The internet site called WikiLeaks is in the headlines again, and once again they are embarrassing the United States government (and a bunch of other governments also, this time). They are in the process of releasing hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables, which the government is claiming to be "classified" material.

Some of the material is just embarrassing, such as when government officials make unflattering remarks about other countries' officials. Other cables show us some "secret" discussions between governments that could have serious repercussions for American citizens, such as cables that show that countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia have been putting a lot of pressure on the United States to attack Iran (and at least destroy their nuclear facilities).

The big question being debated right now is whether the release of these cables to the public (several news organizations are making them widely known to the public at large) poses a real danger to the United States government and the citizens, or does it just expose some things that probably should be public knowledge anyway in a democracy (regardless of whether some officials are embarrassed or not).

The Obama administration is taking the tack that the release of this information poses a danger. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says:

To be clear, such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. These documents also may include named individuals who in many cases live and work under oppressive regimes and who are trying to create more open and free societies.

By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals. We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange counters that the United States is just trying to cover up its participation in serious "human rights abuse and other criminal behavior." The New York Times, which is printing some of the exposed diplomatic cables, says "the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."

After much thought, I have to agree with WikiLeaks and The New York Times. This is information that the American people have a right to know. Are there times when a government needs to keep a secret for national security? Yes. But I believe a Democratic government needs to keep as few secrets as is possible, and there is little doubt that our government keeps far too much from the voters (who have the right to know as much as possible to make intelligent decisions when they go to the polls).

If the government is just covering up embarrassing blunders or statements by government officials, then they are wrong -- that kind of thing should not be a "state secret." If they are indeed covering up human rights abuses or criminal behavior, that is even worse. The American people needs to know if its government is acting in such a way.

I also have to wonder just how secure these "secrets" were if an organization like WikiLeaks could get hold of them. Frankly, any government that sends real secrets by cable or electronic transmission in this information age is pretty stupid anyway (and that is something else the people need to know).

I doubt if there's any established government on earth that can't access that kind of information, which means the only people these "secrets" are being kept from are the voting public. The idea that WikiLeaks has been able to access information not available to any interested intelligence service is just ludicrous.

The most intelligent comment on this WikiLeaks mess that I've heard comes from Professor Michael Cox, associate fellow of Chatham House Think Tank. He says:

It's a great treasure trove for historians and students of international relations. It is a sign that in the information age, it is very difficult to keep anything secret. But as to whether it's going to cause the kind of seismic collapse of international relations that governments have been talking about, I somehow doubt.

Diplomats have always said rude things about each other in private, and everyone has always known that. Governments have a tendency to try to keep as much information as possible secret or classified, whether it really needs to be or not. The really secret information, I would suggest, is still pretty safe and probably won't end up on WikiLeaks.

I seriously doubt that any of these released cables will hurt the security of the United States. I do think that there will be officials of the U.S. government (and other governments) who will be embarrassed by exposure of stupid or criminal actions. That is a good thing. I just don't care if government officials are embarrassed, and I care even less if officials from other countries are embarrassed or exposed.

The American people need to know how these other countries are thinking and acting. As for our own officials, they shouldn't be doing or saying anything they wouldn't want their fellow citizens to know about.

Are the folks at WikiLeaks traitors or heroes? I'm voting for heroes -- albeit minor ones.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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