The False View Americans Have of Themselves.
The
Americans, in their intercourse with strangers, appear impatient of
the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. The most slender
eulogy is acceptable to them, the most exalted seldom contents them;
they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their
entreaties, they fall to praising themselves. ... Their vanity is
not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing,
while it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at
the same time.
If
I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one,
"Ay," he replies, "there is not its equal in the
world." If I applaud the freedom that its inhabitants enjoy, he
answers: "Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to
enjoy it." ... I can imagine," says he, "that a
stranger, who has witnessed the corruption that prevails in other
nations, would be astonished at the difference.” At length I leave
him to the contemplation of himself; ... It is impossible to conceive
a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even
those who are disposed to respect it.
A
post making the rounds on social media has noted that all four former
presidents and the sitting one were unanimous in their non-support of
Trump. The tweet concluded with, “Perhaps America should pay
attention to the people who actually know what the job entails.”
Perhaps
Americans should acquire a conception of themselves that is grounded
in reality rather than in some Disneyfied fantasy.
I
It was
Jimmy Carter who spawned the Taliban by aiding Afghanistan’s mujahideen in
order to “push back” at the Soviet Union, as per the confrontational
doctrine elaborated by his neocon national security advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski. Doing James Monroe one further, the “Carter Doctrine”
announced that the U.S. would not allow any other outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf. It's ours! So too Africa in which,
Brzezinski announced, Russia was not to be allowed any commercial ties
or influence. Carter also has the distinction of founding the American
Star Chamber, otherwise known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISA)
To
Ronald Reagan
goes the credit of subversion and mass murder in Nicaragua and San
Salvador. Under the so-called
Reagan
Doctrine, the United
States provided overt and
covert aid to anti-communist "resistance movements" in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed communist governments in Latin America. But those
native “resistance movements” were actually home-grown in Langley
Labs. In the days before
“twitter revolutions,” they were reactionary fifth columns drawn
from the military and bourgeoisie aimed at “rolling back” social and economic
justice. And.... murdering Catholic nuns. It
behooves to recall exactly what “it's
morning in america”
entailed elsewhere.
Catholic
nuns
worked
in rural areas with peasants who lived in fear of being kidnapped and
killed by soldiers and right-wing death squads. In the eyes of
the Salvadoran military, working with the poor was synonymous with
being a subversive, and “marked them for assassination” One such
woman marked for assassination was Sister Diana Ortiz
“After
they tired of [burning her with cigarettes], they gambled to see who
would rape me first. “Heads, I go first,” said the Policeman.
After he raped me, the proud winner whispered into my ear “Your God
is dead.” (I didn’t argue.) And then the others took their turns
"I
regained consciousness and found myself in a courtyard of some type.
They then lowered me into an open pit filled with human bodies—bodies
of children, women, and men—some decapitated, some caked with
blood—some dead—some alive. I remember them, those barely
alive—crying out. Our cries joined together to become one
terrible declaration of hopelessness—as the rats danced about,
feasting on the already dead.
"The
next step in my descent into hell—I was placed in a dark room.
Gradually, I became aware of someone else there, terribly tortured
herself, on a table, covered with a foul smelling, blood stained
sheet. We spoke briefly. Then the torturers came in, one with a video
camera. They placed a knife in my hand and I felt grateful for
I thought that, somehow, it was to be used to kill me. Instead,
as the filming began, hands were placed over mine and the knife was
thrust into the woman. Her screams met mine as my torturers
gloated. When it was finished they told me, “Now, you are
just like us.”
Left
alone in the dark cell, I prayed to a deaf God to be rescued from
this nightmare. Then I sensed someone—or—something
approaching. For a moment, I thought I might actually be rescued but
as it neared me, I saw the dog’s two dark eyes and snarling teeth.
It was then that all hope died.” (Interview)
 |
| Ixil Maya Woman killed by Death Squads |
According
to Ortiz, her torture was witnessed by a tall, silent American
standing in the shadows.
The
Reagan Administration also
encouraged the Iraq-Iran war by giving
Saddam diplomatic, monetary, and military support,
including massive loans, political clout, and intelligence on Iranian
deployments gathered by American spy satellites.
Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow
Iraq to lose the war to Iran" and that the United States "would
do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with
Iran". Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National
Security Decision Directive to this effect in June 1982.
Iraq's
notorious use of gas on civilians was enabled by assistance in
developing chemical weapon from the United States, West Germany, the
Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France. The U.S. provided
reconnaissance intelligence to Iraq around 1987–88 which was then
used to launch chemical weapon attacks on Iranian troops. A senior
defence intelligence officer for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
stated that the CIA fully knew that chemical weapons would be
deployed and "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis
was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his
aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did
not lose."
By
1988,
Iran's losses were estimated to be 300,000 soldiers, while Iraq's
losses were estimated to be 150,000
Iranian casualties up to 600,000
While
the Reagan Administration was rolling back "subversive"
elements in Central America and
promoting war in the Middle East, it
was also seeking to undermine the Soviet Union directly, by
outspending it on tools of mass destruction (aka “military
hardware”). According
to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger “They can't sustain military
production the way we can. Eventually it will break them, and then
there will be just one superpower in a safe world – if, only if, we
can keep spending.”
And
spend he
did, while social programs in the country were arrested or “roll
backed.” In order to accomplish this feat of outspending, it was
also necessary for the Reagan Administration to “roll back”
unions
and the standard of living their existence guaranteed.
Not content with warmongering abroad, Reagan ramped up the “War on Drugs” at home. That war was the first step in the militarization of the police and the subversion of the Fourth Amendment (i.e., the rule of law in the basic interaction between citizens and governmental action). An ever compliant Supreme Court gave the wink and the nod to the police to ferret out drugs by whatever means they felt expedient. Judicial rationales would follow and no penalty would attach. As we have said elsewhere before, police extra judicial violence and killings are entirely attributable to the judiciary.
Of
course, Reagan was unable to attend the line of former presidents
naysaying Trump. But his policies remained alive and well. The
militarization of the homeland, extravagant military spending,
cut-backs in social programs and confrontation or subversion of
disfavored regimes abroad were all continued by his successors.
George
H.W. Bush,
negotiated
NAFTA, waged the First Iraq War and declared the advent of the “New
World Order.”
His
tenure
represented a change of tone and tactics but not direction. The
Reagan administration was notable for a certain inflated and charged
rhetoric which would later reappear in the belligerent bluster of
Bush II. Bush I, preferred the more “reasoned” tone of George F.
Kennan and traditional U.S. imperialists. These preferred the
appearance of working with allies and under the nominal aegis of
established international institutions, as was done in Korea and Vietnam. Bush
also preferred the traditional emphasis on free trade, a
euphemism
for economic domination.
It was said of old that “Roman legions followed where Roman
traders trod,” and that was very much the approach that Bush
preferred. But the goal of economic hegemony and, if necessary,
military elimination of non-compliant nations remained the same.
NAFTA
was very much at the heart of the New World Order. The essence of
“free trade” at all times has always been the removal of
government impediments to commerce. That is what the word “free”
refers to. Duh. But what exactly are these “government
impediments”? They are measures designed to (1) foment national
development and (2) provide economic and social security for a
country's people. Free-traders disparage such protective regulation
as something inherently bad. Anti-Freedom. Ugh. Pooh! But that is
not true. In all things, it is a question of balance and moderation.
Mexico
was a classic example. The post (1910)
revolutionary regime pursued
a policy of national ownership and reinvestment of capital in
Mexico in order to develop the country's industry and infrastructure.
Following the European model, it nationalized certain industries
(oil, electricity, telephones, airlines, trains) so that the profits
could be used in part to fund social programs. Again, like Europe,
it pursued a policy of agricultural price supports in order to
sustain a particular mode
of production. The maintenance of a peasant class
was considered a socio-cultural good in and of itself over and above
the isolated goal of growing corn and tomatoes. Such measures do not
outlaw trade; they simply regulate it for a good beyond that of a
company's shareholders. The United States itself developed its
economic muscle behind protective tariffs. It raises the Holy
Banner of free trade only when it wants to poach on someone else's
turf.
And
poach it did. Mexico has always traded with the United States. The
real goal of NAFTA was to dismantle Mexico's regulatory and social
model. It did this in cunning and nasty ways. The treaty forbade
the Mexican government from supporting its “agricultural sector”
(i.e. the peasantry and small producers). Yet the same treaty did not
forbid U.S. government assistance and support to A.D.M., Cargill,
Tyson, et. al. The result was foreseeable and intended. Mexico's
peasantry was destroyed virtually overnight.
When it came to industry, the
treaty worked in the opposite direction. It opened up “investment”
and “development” into Mexico's industrial sector. Nominally,
Mexico “limited” this free trade to the northern border region.
But this was a fig leaf. U.S. companies had no immediate interests
in setting up assembly plants in the Yucatan. The point was to move
factories just so far outside U.S. borders in order to escape from
the “shackles” of union collective bargaining. Mexico itself
was required to provide both the infrastructure and tax incentives
for these assembly plants.
The whole thing was the U.S.
version of English enclosures. U.S. workers were destituted and a
destitute Mexican peasantry was reduced to working at slave wages in
U.S. corporate owned factories and farms. Why would Mexico's
leadership sign such a treaty? There were various reasons, but
suffice to say, shortly and presently, that beginning with Miguel de
la Madrid (1982-1988), all Mexican presidents have been Harvard or
Yale trained. The one who wasn't (Luis Donaldo Colosio) was shot
(1994) before he could assume office. Perhaps the reader gets the
point.
This
then was the paradigm for Bush's New World Corporate Order: U.S.
funded NGO's and American trained quislings, pushing an agenda of
corporate globalization backed by military force.
When
it came to domestic social policy, Bush reverted to the volunteerism
of Herbert Hoover:
"Points of Light are the soul of America. They are ordinary
people who reach beyond themselves to touch the lives of those in
need, bringing hope and opportunity, care and friendship.”
Gubmint?
Who needs gubmint?
As
ought to be obvious by now to the dumbest ox, William Jefferson
Clinton represented the GOP take-over of the Democratic Party.
What Clinton realized was that hobby horse “liberals” could be bought off
with cheap and feel good rhetoric on “social and identity”
issues. This was the hard meaning of “social liberal and economic
conservative.” The reason the “triangulation” worked was that
the bouregeois left (please not to laugh) had yet to wake up to its
declining standard of living. Easy credit and inflating real estate
gave it the illusion of asset-growth. As they say, boil the frog
slowly.
In
all essential respects Clinton continued Reagan-Bush policies. On
January 1, 1994, Clinton signed NAFTA
into law. A few years later as dispossessed Mexicans flooded into
the U.S., Clinton went to San Diego, blamed Mexicans for stealing our
jobs and promised tougher immigration controls. (Yes he did.)
In
September 1994, Clinton signed the Omnibus Crime Bill into law. The
law
made many draconian
changes
to criminal
justice
and law enforcement including extending
the
death penalty to include 60
additional categories of crimes
not resulting in death. Think about that: capital punishment for non-capital crimes. Clinton
was not solely responsible for the law and order hysteria that
gripped the nation but he fanned the flames and rode the waves. It
was under his administration that the U.S. gulag was built up. This gulag included “supermax”
prisons soared and the use of 24/7 solitary confinement, a
practice condemned in 1996 by the United Nations. Never mind, by
1999, the United States contained at least 57 state and federal
supermax facilities.
While
his wife blabbered about negro “predators,”
Clinton
blabbered about welfare
mammies
and destroyed welfare in order to supposedly save it. In pushing his 1996
Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,
Clinton built on Ronald Reagan's oft-repeated story of a welfare
queen from Chicago's South Side. Said
Clinton,
the act "gives us a chance ...to break the cycle of dependency
that has existed for millions and millions of our fellow citizens,
exiling them from the world of work.” Exiling them from work!
As
the euphemising doubletalk had
it: “The
legislation was designed to increase labor market participation among
public assistance recipients.”
It
was capitalism at its most grotesque. The poor were blamed for being
dependent on public charity while food assistance, housing
supplements
and medical care were blamed for inducing “laziness.” Solution
to the false problem? Force “recipients” into low paying jobs
that will (1) cause them to loose essential benefits while (2) not
providing enough to live on. Clinton's reform
represented a major departure from the protectionist legacy
institutionalized in U.S. social welfare policy from the inception of
"mother's pensions" beginning in the early 19th century.
Caring for children was subordinated to "labor market participation" by the no longer "public assistance recipients." The
implicit policy regarding "women's roles" was that
full-time mothering was a luxury reserved only for married and middle
class women. There
is a special place in hell for the apologists of
this type of feminism.
 |
| Clinton's Welfare Reform |
In
addition to implementing a Republican domestic agenda, Clinton
continued Bush's foreign policy. In
1998 Clinton accused Saddam Hussein of “developing
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver
them.” Later that
year he signed
the Iraq
Liberation Act
which instituted a policy of "regime change" though it did
not provide for direct military
intervention. The administration then launched a four-day bombing
campaign named
Operation Desert Fox.
Odd,
is it not, that while le
tout monde
excoriates George W. Bush for lying about Iraq's WMDs, no one holds
Clinton's feet to the fire.
More
damaging than Desert Fox was Clinton's continuation
of Bush's sanctions regime, which embargoed Iraqi oil. No doubt
comfortable people fail to draw the connection between what is put in
the tank and what you put in the stomach. Iraq was a net importer of
food. Ergo, an embargo on oil = an embargo on food. Under the name
of “sanctions” the United Stage instituted a good old fashioned
starve-em-out siege
against Iraq.
Shortly
after the sanctions were imposed, the Iraqi government
was forced to resort to
a system of food rationing
consisting of 1000 calories per person/day or 40% of the daily
requirements, on which an estimated 60% of the population relied for
a vital part of their sustenance. This
remained unchanged until 1997 at which time small
incremental
changes were allowed.
Other
essentials were included within the siege. Since chlorine could be
used to make chlorine gas, it was included in the list of prohibited
goods. But since chlorine is also used to purify water, the
sanctions regime basically waged biological warfare. High rates of
disease ensued from Iraq's lack of clean water. The
U.S. inspired sanctions caused United Nations Humanitarian
Coordinator in Baghdad to resign saying, “"I don't want to
administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide.”
The successor to the post
also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a
"true human tragedy." Indeed, it is estimated that the
Bush-Clinton sanctions caused the deaths of 500,000 children under
the age of five.
Interviewed
in 2001 Madeleine Albright was asked, "We
have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's
more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price
worth it?" Albright replied "we think the price is worth
it.”
 |
| "Worth it" |
While
Clinton and Albright were laying seige to Iraq, they were also out Bombing
in the Balkans. The Kosovo War is too complicated a topic for this
article. It will suffice to note that Yugoslavia was one of those
artificial concoctions put together at the Versailles Conference
following the Allied breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When
Tito died and the Soviet Union collapsed, Yugoslavia began to break
apart along ethnic and religious lines. The break up was not
entirely “homegrown” given that the U.S. with and through the
U.K., was arming the Kosovo “rebels.” The denouement was the
fragmentation of Yugolsavia under a NATO bombardment. (In addition
to military targets NATO
targeted several important civilian facilities (the Pančevo oil
refinery, Novi Sad oil refinery, bridges, TV antennas, railroads,
etc.)
The
sum of the matter was distilled by Chinese
Premier Jiang Zemin who
stated
that the US was using its economic and military superiority to
aggressively expand its influence and interfere in the internal
affairs of other countries. Chinese leaders called the NATO campaign
a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, and
a
new form of colonialism. It was seen as part of a plot by the US to
destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.
China was right. As part of the war the United States constructed
Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. It remains the largest forward base of
operations in Southeastern Europe. It
was the first step in the implementation of Zbigniew
Brzezinski's wet-dream of rolling back and breaking up Russia (See
The
GrandChessboard
1997.)
Given
the execratory litany of the bourgeois left, little needs be said
about George W. Bush's tenure other than to note that under his
administration the National Security State became an open, notorious
and entrenched fact. The suspension of civil liberties and
constitutional rights, militarization of domestic police, the use of
“full spectrum” occupational armies to destabilize regimes and to
both provoke and control populations under their control, the
use of torture and chemical weaponry, the wholesale dismantling and
export of domestic industry and the unregulated financialized plunder
of the economy were the incontestable hallmarks of the Cheney-Bush
regime. But what the bourgeois left and social liberals refuse to
recognize is the continuity
of that regime with the past. Bush did not represent a “break”
but rather a continuation of Clintonian policies to the next,
inevitable and necessary phase. All the rest is People
Magazine bullshit.
Nothing
best demonstrates the continuity of U.S. policy that Dick Cheney's
Defense Planning Guide
of 1992, written by a team of neocons under the direction of Paul
Wolfowitz. The gist of voluminous bureau-burble is distilled in its
own summary,
"Our first objective is to
prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant
consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and
requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from
dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions
include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet
Union, and Southwest Asia
“There are three additional
aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership
necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise
of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a
greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their
legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must
account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial
nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking
to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we
must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from
even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
Cheney's
Defense Planning Guide, was the cornerstone of neocon geopolitics.
It's premises and implementations were lifted wholesale and tweaked
by the more famous RebuildingAmerica's Defenses white
paper put out in September /2000 by the defense-industry funded
Project for the New American Century. The P.N.A.C. paper became
official policy of the United States under George Bush's NationalSecurity Strategy of
September 2002. Since 2002, Woodchip has written numerous articles analysing the meaning and implications of these vicious spews.
Although Cheney's memorandum (1992) was not officially adopted before
Bush handed office to Clinton (1993), it reflected the thinking of a
majoritarian part of the U.S. defense and diplomatic establishment.
It serves as a flashlight to illuminate the continuity in U.S. policy
regardless of administration. It
explains Afghanistan, Iraq/Iran Kosovo and Eastern Europe. It
explains the U.S. confrontation with Russia and China the two
principal and ultimate targets of neo-con strategies. It
is all written in black and white for anyone who will take the
trouble to read.
The essence of that policy is
simply global bullying. When the memorandum states that the U.S.
“must maintain ... mechanisms for deterring potential
competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”
what is meant is that the U.S. should engage in a “battered nation
syndrome” to keep the bitches humble, unaspiring and in their
place. It means nothing else.
Senator Kennedy called the
Planning Guide “"a call for 21st century American
imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.” But not
only have they been accepted they have become entrenched in the
country's institutional and intellectual constructs.
All of these policies, domestic
and foreign, have been continued under Barrack Obama. The change has been
one of tone and tactics but the objectives remain the same. As we
stated in Woodchip back on 6 November 2008,
I am sorry to rain on the party,
but Obama is not going to introduce any fundamental change to the
neo-liberal regime which has gotten us to where we are. Nor is he
going to reverse the irreversible course of history, which is that
all empires have to rise and fall.
A neo-con is simply a neo
liberal gone punk. Domestically and diplomatically Obama will provide
some emollients and better manners, but I doubt little else. He may
take a few paltry steps towards realizing Bismarckian social benefits
and he may go back to an Eisenhower-esque diplomacy of working
"through" allies and international institutions. Otherwise
the Flush Democrats are already "warning" us not to expect
a new New Deal (i.e. a new faux social democracy) and the New
York Times is peddling its usual demented ravings telling us
it's time to leave off the "folly" of Iraq and focus on the
"necessary" war in Afghanistan." (Delirium Tremens.)
We are not loathe to toot our
horn. Everything we forecast has been proven by the events.
Everything.
With unparalleled cynicism, Obama
campaigned on a platform of feel-good puff talk that exploited the
yearning of ordinary Americans for peace, the rule of law and social
justice. He implied much but committed to little. His one explicit
promise – to bring about a public-option on health care – was
jettisoned within the first month of his presidency. Within that
first month, he also told a secret meeting of top bankers that he
“had their backs” and went on to guarantee Big Pharma's obscene
profits and prohibiting government purchases of drugs. His economic
recovery has been a sham for anyone not in the upper 1% or 5%. The
vaunted unemployment rate is based on Clinton's phoney U3 measurement
instead of the discarded U6 measure which counts the absolute total
of unemployed persons and which has at all times been at least double
the U3 figure. Even this “recovery” is largely based on stock
buybacks and other financial tricks. Aside from minor adjustment
to some interest rates Obama did nothing to alleviate the crushing
debt-burden of higher education. He did next to nothing to prevent
foreclosures and has done absolutely nothing to guarantee affordable,
secure and decent housing to those not in the Nine Percent. When it
came to social security, he actually proposed a downward
adjustment to the already inadequate COLA.
His signature achievement -
“Obamacare” - is a massive ponzi scheme that enriches
insurers while leaving the insured to pay ever increasing premiums,
with ever higher deductibles both of which still leave them
facing bankruptcy. This act of legerdemain, which leaves millions
uninsured, was accomplished by a legal fraud befitting the national
capitalist state. Obamacare is not a true public, state run
system. It simply floods the private market with mandatory
purchases of private health insurance, on the theory that this forced
purchasing will fill insurance company coffers sufficiently for them
to lower their exorbitant rates. One can always be forced to pay
taxes to government but never, in the history of the
“Republic” had anyone been forced into a private contract.
Never mind, the ever accommodating Supreme Court, ruled that
Obamacare's insurance mandate was a “non-tax tax.” In other
words, not only is health care in the U.S. privatized, private
corporations are allowed to assume the position of governmental
surrogates. The nominal government enforces the payment of non-tax
taxes to private corporate entities discharging what everywhere else
is a governmental function.
Aside from minor tweaks and
chicken feed here and there, Obama's political-economy is based on
feeding and empowering the corporate monster in all possible ways.
Not only is public policy implemented through “incentives” to
private business, but governmental functions are themselves
privatized. The signature piece of this emerging corporate
feudalism are the trade agreements which have nothing to do with
“trade” and everything to do with enriching corporations and
empowering them with supra-sovereign prerogatives. It might be
recalled that Cheney's overriding domestic goal was to “destroy the
beast” by which he meant a government taking charge of the public
and general welfare. Obama's trade treaties and domestic economic
policies are entirely consistent with Cheney's goal of returning
government to its paleo-liberal role as keeper of the peace,
guarantor of property and provider of national defense – all of
which is simply a euphemism for capitalist mafia enforcer. This is the underlying reason for the militarization of the police which has proceeded apace in tandem with legislation outlawing protests against or even disclosures of corporate corruption, cruelty or depredations.
Needless to say, Obama has also done nothing to
halt or reverse the entrenchment of the National Security State. His
administration has opposed every legal challenge warrantless searches
and spying. He has prosecuted lawful whistleblowers with a
vengeance. He has asserted the prerogative to kill American
citizens without trial on his own initiative, on the spurious
rationale that they are “waging war” on the United States,
notwithstanding the killings take place on a battlefield which exists
only as a semantic metaphor. He has continued the devastating
rampages of neo-con policy in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. He
subverted the duly elected presidents of Honduras and the Ukraine, in
the latter case by funding and instigating neo-nazis. True to
prediction, he has sought to sanitize U.S. involvement by using
drones, subversives and surrogates such as France or the U.K.
Nevertheless, the policy remains the same: “rolling back” Russia,
destroying possible rivals and forcing their people to accept
corporate exploitation, privatization austerity, permanent
indebtedness to Western banks.
History is a matter of currents not choices. If the bourgeois left was led
astray by their foolish hopes that was their foolish problem. Facts
are facts, and once a trajectory has been plotted on the graph the
future course of that trajectory is clear. The difference between a neocon
and a neoliberal is largely rhetorical. Neoliberals emphasize
economic warfare coupled with use of surrogates whereas neocons a
emphasize military warfare to install puppets. It could be said that
if neocons are simply neoliberals gone punk, neoliberals are simply
neocons greased with hypocrisy and treacle
II
But the continuity of “21st
American imperialism” goes back far far further. To 1774 in fact.
The Quebec Act of that year sought to regulate the administration
of that province and to protect the economic and religious rights of
its inhabitants. Well, so who cares? The Colonists cared, because
in those days “Quebec” extended into the Ohio Valley and the full
length of the Appalachian mountains
The
provisions of the Quebec Act were seen by the colonists as a new
model for British colonial administration, which would strip the
colonies of their elected assemblies. Thus
the Declaration of Independence accused King George III of,
“abolishing the free System of
English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an
Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it
at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same
absolute rule into these Colonies"
The Act introduced nothing into
the Colonies. It simply applied Crown rule (consistent with English
Law) into areas not occupied or governed by the colonists. What
annoyed the latter was that the Act extended the boundaries of Quebec
into the Ohio Valley, which the colonists had been surveying with
avaricious eyes.
The
Act extended Crown jurisdiction into the Ohio Valley in order to
protect the French and Indians who lived there
from being poached and picked off by the Colonists. This was
intolerable!!!
The Declaration went on to excoriate King George decrying that
and [he] has endeavored to bring
on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages,
whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions.
(Jefferson's
near
hysterical
draft also included a rant against King George for at once causing
slavery and urging the slaves to revolt against their peaceable
owners.)
The Crown did not forbid gradual
acquisition of land in the Ohio Valley. It simply regulated the
expansion so that it would be something other than outright carnage
and plunder. But the idea of protecting Indian property rights
simply outraged decent men like George Washington whose family was
engaged in real estate development. (Why does anyone think he was a
“surveyor”?)
Once
independent,
the New Pygmy,
invaded
and acquired Florida, drove the Cherokee from their lands,
genocidally marching them to their deaths. It
intrigued a revolt in
Texas after
which it
invaded Mexico
and stole half of its territory.
Polk
not
only
called for an
expansion
that included Texas, California, but
the
entire Oregon territory as
well. In those days.
the
northern boundary of Oregon was the latitude line of 54
degrees, 40
minutes. Polk
rejected British offers to settle the dispute through arbitration.
Newspapers
in the United States clamored for Polk to claim the entire region.
Headlines like "The Whole of Oregon or None” and "Fifty-four
forty or fight!"
called
for war with the United Kingdom rather than accepting anything short
of all of Oregon up
through the entirety
of British Columbia. In the end it
was the
overwhelming naval power which Britain could have brought to bear
against the United States that
poured cold water on the fevered inflammation
of American Manifest Destiny. The conflict over Oregon illustrated
how hyper-grandiose and insane the Americans were.
Instead, the
sociopathic side of American policy manifested itself southward.
The so-called Monroe
Doctrine was actually the brain-child of Lord Canning, Britain's Foreign Secretary.
Canning understood that an Anglo-American (i.e. U.S.) penetration of
Ibero-America was more beneficial to Britain than continued Spanish
or French influence. In effect, England used its Navy to give the
U.S. a free hand in
erstwhile Spanish America while restraining it in British North America.
Once cooled off from
its northern ambitions,
the U.S. resumed its southern expansion.
The following partial
list will bridge the gap between 1847 and the Carter Administration.
-
1856
- First of five U.S.
interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific
railroad from Panamanian nationalists.
-
1898
- U.S. declares war on Spain,
blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S.
Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an
accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico,
Guam, and the Philippines where American repression caused the death
250,000 Filipino civilians from violence, famine, and disease.
-
1904
- U.S. sends customs agents to
take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure
payment of its external debt.
-
1905
- U.S. Marines help Mexican
dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora.
-
1909
- Liberal President José Santos
Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana
companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and
legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed
two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign
through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the
former treasurer of an American mining company.
-
1910
- U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua
to help support the Díaz regime.
-
1912
- U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba
to put down a rebellion of sugar workers.
-
1912
- Nicaragua occupied again
by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is
called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and
one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the
country until 1925.
-
1914
- U.S. bombs and then occupies
Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's
new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns.
-
1921
- President Coolidge strongly
suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos
Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply.
-
1925
- U.S. Army troops occupy Panama
City to break a rent strike and keep order.
-
-
1929
- U.S. establishes a military
academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the
country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic.
"There is no room for
any outside influence other than ours in this region. We could not
tolerate such a thing without incurring grave risks... Until now
Central America has always understood that governments which we
recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not
recognize and support fall. Nicaragua has become a test case. It is
difficult to see how we can afford to be defeated."
--Undersecretary of State Robert Olds
- 1932
- The U.S. rushes warships to El
Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President
Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own
forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100).
-
1946
- U.S. Army School of the
Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy.
Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the
chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the
guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere.
-
1954
- Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected
president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes
some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the
value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a
small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras.
When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat,
he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves
he's a Red.
The
CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel
army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army
refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked
dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces
the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as
well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 200,000 Maya Indians are
killed in the next 30 years of military rule.
- 1960
- A new junta in El Salvador
promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies,
withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup
comes along in three months.
"Governments of the
civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in
containing communist penetration in Latin America." --John F.
Kennedy, after the coup
- 1960s
- U.S. Green Berets train
Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan
efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing,
scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and
death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S.
Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that
"the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the
army."
"If it is necessary to
turn the country into a cemetary in order to pacify it, I will not
hesitate to do so." --President Carlos Arana Osorio
- 1965
- A coup in the Dominican
Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S.
invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist
rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay,
Honduras, and Nicaragua.
"Representative
democracy cannot work in a country such as the Dominican Republic,"
Bosch declares later. Now why would he say that?
-
1973
- U.S.-supported military coup
kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet
imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and
rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil
liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and
reverses Allende's land reforms.
-
1973
- Military takes power in
Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression
reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population
imprisoned for political reasons.
-
1980
- A right-wing junta takes over
in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador,
assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death
squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing
terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and
murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S.
military aid for one month.
- The U.S. demands that the junta
undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program
is halted by the oligarchy.
-
1982
- A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos
Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan
administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos
Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the
counterinsurgency campaign. Montt's pacification unleashing a
scorched earth campaign on the nation's Mayan population, resulting
in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages, killings averaging 3,000
a month and totaling 5.5% of the Ixil people. (Montt, was later
convicted of genocide.) Te war did not end until 1996, leaving more
than 200,000 people dead and 1 million as refugees.
-
1984
- CIA mines three
Nicaraguan
harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which
brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to
recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case
Marine Corps Commandant Smedly
Butler, put it this way in 1933,
War is just a racket. A racket
is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems
to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is
about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense
of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a
nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with
America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then
it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag
follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I
wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy
investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight
for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of
Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There
isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind
to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its
"muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men"
to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss"
Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It
may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison.
Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four
months in active military service as a member of this country's most
agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned
ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that
period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for
Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I
suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of
it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a
thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties
remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of
higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I
helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for
the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the
raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of
Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in
1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to
the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China
I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During
those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell
racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone
a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three
districts. I operated on three continents.
Throughout
history, the U.S.'s technique has been remarkably consistent. It
uses the mantra of “free trade in goods
and ideas” as a cover for interfering in the domestic affairs and
politics of another country where
it
supports groupings of pro-American quislings. Today this is done
through NGO's or trade and trade union associations. In the 19th
century through Masonic lodges. For example, following Mexico's
“independence” in 1821, U.S. ambassador Poinsett
promoted
the creation of the Lodge of York Rite whose adherents
were “Liberals” who
favoured close ties with (i.e. annexation by) the United States.
The so-called “saviour” of his country, Benito Juarez was quite
willing to have Mexico chopped into three sections by U.S. duty-free
“transit” corridors and one canal as collateral for the loans he
was receiving from the United States. Upon assuming office after
the civil war (mislabeled a “French Invasion”), he began to sell
off Mexican assets to U.S. companies in order to repay the loans.
(In pre IMF days, this was done outright and on the table) When
Juarez's successor Lerdo de Tejada sought to put a brake on the
process, First National Citibank of New York, called in all its loans
and bankrupted the government on the spot.
General Porfirio Diaz, having
lost the previous election to President Lerdo de Tejada, went to New
York, where he met with the Stillmans, Harrimans and Taylors and
then left for New Orleans, where he met with
leaders of the Whitney Bank and the Morgan shipping lines, and thence
to Brownsville where he stayed in Charles Stillman's house for six
months, during the duration of a guerilla war which overthrew the
Mexican government. Diaz then returned to Mexico as the incoming
president, where he would rule the country from 1876 - 1910 directly
as president, and four years indirectly through a subaltern. During
that time, Americans took over 100 percent of Mexico's
infrastructure. They acquired 70 percent of the country's coastlines
and frontiers; 28 percent of the nation's surface; 100 percent of the railroads and 70 percent of all incorporated businesses; all the copper and with their Anglo allies, all of the oil.
In 1910, after 40 years of
constitutional dictators ship, Diaz began to think that maybe perhaps
the process had gone too far. The U.S. suddenly discovered an
urgent interest in “democracy” (see Creelman Interview) and a new
hero in the “fair-election liberal,” Francisco I. Madero. This
useless “revolutionary” hero, son a mining magnate, continued
Diaz's war against the Zapatistas and when he failed to bring the
country to heel, was assassinated with the connivance and knowledge
of ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who supported installing the thug
Victoriano Huerta as president, thereby plunging the country into
outright civil war.
In
an act of astonishing cognitive dissonance, Huerta's election led
Woodrow Wilson to snort, “I
am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men"
And
teach he did. His instructional interventions
included Mexico in 1914, Haiti from 1915 -1934, Dominican Republic in
1916, Cuba in 1917, and Panama in 1918. The U.S. maintained troops in
Nicaragua throughout the Wilson administration and used them to
select the president of Nicaragua. U.S. meddling in Mexico continued unabated.
When Victoriano Huerta gained
control of Mexico in 1913 Wilson refused to recognize him because,
said Wilson quite forgetting the role of the U.S. ambassador, he had
illegally seized power. The real reason was that Huerta actually
sought to continue the Diaz's lately found policy of opening up
Mexico to all foreign investment equally. Free trade with
someone else??!! Never!!
In April 1914, Mexican officials
in Tampico arrested a few American sailors who blundered into a
prohibited area, and Wilson used the incident to justify ordering the
U.S. Navy to occupy the port city of Veracruz. The move greatly
weakened Huerta's control, and he abandoned power to Venustiano
Carranza, whom Wilson immediately recognized as the president of
Mexico.
As
fate would have it, Carranza convoked a constitutional convention.
Seeking to rectify the Diaz's laissez fair liberalism, the
Constitution of 1917, embodied strong socialist and nationalist
provisions which hurt many U.S. interests. As a result now,
President Warren G. Harding refused to recognize as the legitimate
the government of Carranza's succesor, Álvaro Obregón. Harding also demanded the
repeal of several articles of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 or at
least that they be not applied to United States. This is what the
U.S. calls “promoting democratic values.”
Many of Woodrow Wilson's ideas
about moral diplomacy and America's role in the world derived from
American exceptionalism –- the self-enfatuated proposition that the United States
is different from other countries in that it has a specific world
mission to spread liberty and democracy. When you hear Obombo
string-stroking his belief in American Exceptionalism, (which he does over and over again ad nauseum) think Wilson.
But
Wilson
was no fool. He himself said, “Is is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?
What “exceptionalism”
stacked up to was coating age-old commercial venality with thick
icings of hypocritical kitsch. The sort of inflated, smarmy
rhetoric Americans thrill to and lap up.
"I have frequently noticed that the Americans, who generally treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament and so extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end of a harangue to the other; and to hear them lavish imagery on every occasion, one might fancy that they never spoke of anything with simplicity." (De Tocqueville, op cit. Bk II, ch XVIII.)
Viewing matters with the long
arc of history, it can be seen that nothing has changed, except the
geographical focus of U.S. interests.
Mexico and Ibero-America are
paradigmatic of the U.S. modus operandi which is based on fomenting
and then supporting such “local discontent” that is favourable to
U.S. corporate interests and then directly intervening or supporting
thugs and dictators to suppress that “local discontent” which
seeks popular welfare and true national sovereignty. This is the
technique of U.S. destabilization and conquest. It proceeded a pace
under all these five “pragmatic” and “experienced”
presidents. Cheney's neo-con defense planning guide was simply a
restatement of what the U.S. has been about since day one. Obama
continues that policy, but does so more in the inflated and pious
Wilsonian manner as opposed to using the thug-speak of a Polk,
Jackson or Bush II.
“U.S. interests” is simply a
national label slapped on capitalist enterprise. As such, Obama has
also continued the neo-liberal domestic agenda, the essence of which
is to incentivize private entities to deliver public functions. Of
course, this is the most costly and inefficient way to provide for
the public welfare because for every dollar spent on a public good a
chunk of that dollar is diverted to enrich private investors. The
system is a form of reverse tax farming which subordinates the public
good in question to the imperatives of profit. Worse than being
merely costly, the national capitalist system gradually endows
private entities with attributes of sovereignty. It is a form of
governmental divestment similar to the one initiated by Diocletian
and the later Roman Emperors. This has been the paradigm of
American political-economy since the founding of the colonies (all of
which were private enterprises endowed with governmental attributes).
The tepid attempt to impose some managerial oversight on the
“delivery” mechanism – that is, to impose social
responsibility on private corporations – was rejected Reagan and
progressively abandoned by his successors.
In summary, domestic neo-liberal
policies and neo-conservative militarism are the interweaved
components of American policy, the essence of which is repression,
aggression, plunder and destruction in the name of “growing the
economy” and promoting democratic values. That is the
continuity the five presidents represent. That is what “the job
actually entails.”
III
The historical consciousness of
les americains is an act of delirium. It bears no relation to the
actual facts. US Americans think of themselves as a “little house
of the prairie.” They think of their genocide of the Indians as
O beautiful for pilgrim
feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom
beat
Across the wilderness!
(O, please...)
They think of themselves as a
big, well meaning oaf who “occasionally makes mistakes” closing
their eyes to the monstrous gorgon the country really is.
American
self-consciousness is pastiche of counter-factual platitudes and
myths. The country was not pioneered by hardy yeomen of yore, but by
unemployed destitute men fleeing urban misery and setting up what were
in effect homeless camps in dank hollers.
 |
| From Moonshine to Meth. |
It was little better out west. “Settlement” was reserved for
the lucky. Large numbers looking for “sustainability” simply roamed
from state to territory to province in search of some viable if
circumstantial livelihood.
Our borders were not thrown open to the huddled masses of Europe so they
could breath free, but in order to assure a huddled, cheap, labour
force living in squalid tenements as bad as the Warsaw Ghetto.
 |
| Yearning to Breathe Free |
The point is not that it was no better elsewhere but rather that it
was not exceptionally better here. Our larger spaces simply enabled us
to diffuse and ignore the malnutrition, the consumption and the misery.
From
approximately 1900 to 1975, half the Western world experienced a
remarkable upsurge in living standards. (Germany of course, led the
way.) One might say that the first world was the world’s middle class
neighborhood. But this prosperity did not arise out of thin air.
Ultimately it arose from the plunder of third world resources and the
exploitation and repression of its peoples. The amount of trickledown is always proportional to the squeezing.
After
Lyndon Johnson, the owners of the United States and their political
henchmen and whores renounced any notions of social solidarity (i.e.,
income distribution and guaranteed economic security.) Beneath the
opiate of patriotism, exceptionalism and trashy spectacles, they set
about to return the country to the hard-scrabble austerity of the 18th
and 19th centuries. Only worse. If in Smedly Butler’s day wars abroad
at least brought prosperity at home, in the Era of the Five Wise Presidents, Americans are subjected to war and austerity.
- National vanity is certainly
not limited to Americans; and, vanity being what it is, national
narratives are often bent mirrors. What distinguishes U.S. vanity
from others is its stupendous self-ignorance and willingness to believe self-indulgent fictions. Most other peoples
we have been acquainted with tacitly accept the failings and
foibles of their countries. It is taken for granted that their politics and history were a cruel and sordid business as to which they are
no exception.
- Once
when being taken to lunch at a garden restaurant overlooking the
Eternal City, I asked my host how it was that all those monuments
and buildings erected by Mussolini were still standing. “What do
you mean,” my host asked. “Well, he was a fascist dictator
wasn't he?” “Senti,”
my host said with a mild air of pity,
waving his arm over the panorama below, “if we tore down
everything built by a dictator, there would be nothing left.”
- In
such places, sentiments of
pride and patriotism are engendered by an ethnic and cultural
legacy built up over centuries irrespective of politics and imperial
ambitions. The stupendous cathedral at Alby, France, illustrates
the point.
-
- It
was built in the aftermath of the Albigensian slaughter ("Caedite eos omnes. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius"); but although steeped in blood it remains an artifact of transcendental beauty [Link] and this achievement embodies the paradox of pride tempered with regret.
The United States simply does not have much of a cultural legacy to point to. It has stupendous natural beauty, but clapboard white churches, jazz and skyscrapers simply don't stack up. Sorry; they don't. Lacking a legacy, the paradox doesn't exist; and without paradox, national vanity is left to feed upon itself.
"No one would think
of preventing young Germans from
establishing a true ethnical
community in a noble love of freedom and loyalty to their country.
[But] Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a
particular form of State, or the depositories of power, - however
necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things -
whoever raises these notions above their standard value and
divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an
order of the world planned and created by God. – Pius XII, Mit
Brennende Sorge (1937)
But that is precisely what Americans do and it what De Tocqueville
signified when he said that American vanity will grant nothing, while it
demands everything... The granting of nothing is founded in willful
ignorance, in the refusal to look the national self squarely in the face
for what it is and instead taking refuge in a sentimental and boastful
narcissism that demands everything. That was the revolting spectacle we
witnessed in the two recent conventions, which is now aided and abetted
by idealizing five monsters as noble, sagacious, and accomplished
statesmen
