Folks,

Finally, some cooler heads in the Republican party are beginning to stand up and speak out for the truth, putting their loyalty to America before their fealty to Dubya’s throne. And just when I thought the whole GOP had had a lobotomy.

First, a much-circulated column from the VERY conservative Charley Reese of the Orlando
Sentinel. Showing that he still has the capacity for independent thought, and sound reasoning, he concludes that Bush’s extreme policies are very bad indeed for America:

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display
their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush
is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me
once, but he won’t fool me twice.

Next, a stinging rebuke from Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb, a senior member of the International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who calls the invasion of Iraq a mistake, and “a dangerous, costly mess.”

Kudos to these right-wingers for having the guts to call it like it is, and speak up for true conservatism. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of this sort of thing before November.

–C

Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet

by Charley Reese
Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush’s re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.

It’s no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush’s comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It’s unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry’s very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.

But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed that people who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he won’t fool me twice.

It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don’t matter, and that people should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century. His administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian.

It’s no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans of supporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and a federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain this or the president will designate you an enemy combatant and you’ll be held incommunicado for the duration?

This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because Bush’s foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He’s almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration. Don’t forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace.

I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to Kerry’s Web site and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You’ll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.

Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.

May 17, 2004

Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969–71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column which is carried on LewRockwell.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.

© 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Charley Reese Archives

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Intelligence vice chairman calls war unjustified

The Associated Press

Aug. 19, 2004

LINCOLN, Neb. – A top Republican lawmaker has broken from his party in the final days of his House career, saying he believes that the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified and that the situation there has deteriorated into “a dangerous, costly mess.”

“I’ve reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action,” Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., wrote in a letter to his constituents.

“Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action,” he said.

Bereuter, 65, is a senior member of the International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He is stepping down after 13 terms to become president of the Asia Foundation effective Sept. 1.

The letter, which Bereuter (pronounced BEE-writer) sent to constituents who have contacted him about the war, was reported Wednesday by the Lincoln Journal Star.

Signs of GOP slippage
In 2002, Bereuter spoke out in support of a House resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war. Bush has continued to argue that the war was justified because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the United States, his neighbors and the people of Iraq.

Most Republicans and top administration officials say the war was justified even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found.

However, after a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded in early July that intelligence agencies had provided false assessments of the Iraqi threat before the war, the panel’s Republican chairman, Pat Roberts of Kansas, said Congress might not have approved the Iraq war had lawmakers known the truth.

Roberts said that without an immediate threat that Saddam had and was trying to get weapons of mass destruction, military action against Iraq still could have been justified on humanitarian grounds but that the battle plan might have been different from a full-scale invasion.

Bereuter sees other problems
Bereuter said that in addition to “a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence,” the Bush administration made several other errors in going to war.

“From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force,” he said. “Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.

Bereuter said that as a result of the war, “our country’s reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened.”

Bereuter declined to answer questions Wednesday about the letter. His spokesman, Alan Feyerherm, said Bereuter feels the letter speaks for itself.

Folks,

I know from past experience that when parallels are noted between fascism and the extreme right of American politics, lots of conservatives cry foul, and lots of lefties nod their heads knowingly.

But how many of us know what “fascism” really means?

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

“Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is ‘an attempt to create a “modern” version of feudalism by merging the “corporate” interests with those of the state.’”

Sound familiar?

It’s not enough to know about Hitler, the modern poster boy of fascism. There is more to it, and if one really looks at the tactics and beliefs of fascism from history, the parallels with our current administration are startling indeed.

In 1944, writing about the rise of fascism in America, Vice President Henry Wallace wrote:

“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

That comment stands as true today as it did in 1944. My first impulse when I started reading this article was to throw it out. But by the time I got to the end, I decided it was worthy of broader circulation. This is a history lesson none of us–especially true conservatives–can afford to miss.

–C

The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: “It Can Happen Here”

by Thom Hartmann

Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

The Republican National Committee has recently removed from the top-level pages of their website an advertisement interspersing Hitler’s face with those of John Kerry and other prominent Democrats. This little-heralded step has freed former Enron lobbyist and current RNC chairman Ed Gillespie to resume his attacks on Americans who believe some provisions of Bush’s PATRIOT Act, his detention of American citizens without charges, his willingness to let corporations write legislation, and the so-called “Free Speech Zones” around his public appearances are all steps on the road to American fascism.

The RNC’s feeble attempt to equate Hitler and Democrats was short-lived, but it brings to mind the first American Vice President to point out the “American fascists” among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman President), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents – John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945). In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following
questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”

Vice President Wallace’s answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word “fascist” – the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled “The Doctrine of Fascism” he wrote, “If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.” But not a government of, by, and for We The People – instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the “Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni” – the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

” If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace’s view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels. “American fascism will not be really dangerous,” he added in the next paragraph, “until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…”

Noting that, “Fascism is a worldwide disease,” Wallace further suggest that fascism’s “greatest threat to the United States will come after the war” and will manifest “within the United States itself.”

In Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician – Buzz Windrip – runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American. When Windrip becomes President, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new “patriotic” laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.

As Lewis noted in his novel, “the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: ‘There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don’t belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!’ The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy.” And, President “Windrip’s partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the ‘Corpos,’ which nickname was generally used.”

Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book “It Can’t Happen Here.” And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler. These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wallace’s thinking when he
wrote:

” Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after ‘the present unpleasantness’ ceases.”

Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is “an attempt to create a ‘modern’ version of feudalism by merging the ‘corporate’ interests with those of the state.”

Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as “rule by the rich.”

Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his new book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” that, “You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America – ‘going out of business’ signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush.”

The businesses “going out of business” are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business “are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage.” He added, “Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.”

But American fascists who would want former CEOs as President, Vice President, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don’t generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a “them” to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of George W. Bush’s recent suggestion that civilization itself is at risk because of gays, Wallace
continued:

” The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…”

But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation’s largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media – they could promote their lies with ease.

“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote. “Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Finally, Wallace said, “The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. … Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must…develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”

This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this
day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of “Trust Buster” Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).

As Wallace’s President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party’s renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, “…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man….”

Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core: “These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

But, he thundered in that speech, “Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

In 2004, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II. Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself “compassionate conservatism.” The RNC’s behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, “In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.”

It’s particularly ironic that the CEOs and lobbyists who run the Republican National Committee would have chosen to put Hitler’s fascist face into one of their campaign commercials, just before they launched a national campaign against gays and while they continue to arrest people who wear anti-Bush T-shirts in public places.

President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace’s warnings have come full circle. Which is why it’s so critical that this November we join together at the ballot box to stop this most recent incarnation of feudal fascism from seizing complete control of our nation.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk radio show. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight,” “Unequal
Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights,” and “We The People: A Call To Take Back America.” His new book, “What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy,” based on four years of research in Jefferson’s personal letters, begins shipping this week from Random House/Harmony.

Folks,

Capitol Hill Blue has really been on point lately with its insider reports on Dubya. Guaranteed you will not see any of this in the mainstream press! I think you’ll find some thought-provoking material on their site if you want to poke around there.

Here are two recent posts from them, showing that Bush’s paranoia and melancholy are becoming real matters of concern in the White House. Worth reading. The “Keep those motherfuckers away from me” quote was inspired by some reporters who wanted to question him about his relationship with Ken Lay. Is that the other shoe I hear falling?

–C

Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior

By TERESA HAMPTON

Editor, Capitol Hill Blue

Jul 28, 2004, 08:09

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Angry Bush walked away from reporter’s questions.

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters’ questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.

“President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies,” Dr. Frank adds.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior are not known, White House sources say they are “powerful medications” designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President’s annual physical, details of the President’s health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President.

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about Bush’s health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan’s second term when aides managed to conceal the President’s increasing memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer’s Disease.

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon’s final days when the soon-to-resign President wandered the halls and talked to portraits of former Presidents. The stories didn’t emerge until after Nixon left office.

One long-time GOP political consultant who – for obvious reasons – asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

“We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes,” he says sadly. “That’s not good for my candidates, it’s not good for the party and it’s certainly not good for the country.”

© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue

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Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World

By TERESA HAMPTON & WILLIAM D. McTAVISH

Capitol Hill Blue Staff

Jul 29, 2004, 09:08

A sullen President George W. Bush is withdrawing more and more from aides and senior staff, retreating into a private, paranoid world where only the ardent loyalists are welcome.

Cabinet officials, senior White House aides and leaders on Capitol Hill complain privately about the increasing lack of “face time” with the President and campaign advisors are worried the depressed President may not be up to the rigors of a tough re-election campaign.

“Yes, there are concerns,” a top Republican political advisor admitted privately Wednesday. “The George W. Bush we see today is not the same, gregarious, back-slapping President of old. He’s moody, distrustful and withdrawn.”

Bush Walks Alone

Bush’s erratic behavior and sharp mood swings led White House physician Col. Richard J. Tubb to put the President on powerful anti-depressant drugs after he stormed off stage rather than answer reporters’ questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay, but White House insiders say the strong, prescription medications seem to increase Bush’s sullen behavior towards those around him.

“This is a President known for his ability to charm people one-on-one,” says a staff member to House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert. “Not any more.”

White House aides say Bush has retreated into a tightly-controlled environment where only top political advisors like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes are allowed. Even White House chief of staff Andrew Card complains he has less and less access to the President.

Among cabinet members, only Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fundamentalist who shares many of Bush’s strict religious convictions, remains part of the inner circle. White House aides call Bush and Ashcroft the “Blue Brothers” because, like the mythical movie characters, “both believe they are on a mission from God.”

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, the man most responsible for waging America’s war on terrorism, complains to staff that he gets very little time with the President and gets most of his marching orders lately from Ashcroft. Some on Ridge’s staff gripe privately that Ashcroft is “Bush’s Himmler,” a reference to Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS (the German Police) under Adolph Hitler.

“Too many make the mistake of thinking Dick Cheney is the real power in the Bush administration,” says one senior Homeland Security aide. “They’re wrong. It’s Ashcroft and that is reason enough for all of us to be very, very afraid.”

While Vice President Cheney remains part of Bush’s tight, inner circle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has fallen out of favor and tells his staff that “no matter what happens in November, I’m outta here.”

White House aides say the West Wing has been overtaken by a “siege mentality,” where phone calls and emails are monitored and everyone is under suspicion for “disloyalty to the crown.”

“I was questioned about an email I sent out on my personal email account from home,” says one staffer. “When I asked how they got access to my personal email account, I was told that when I came to work at the White House I gave up any rights to privacy.”

Another staffer was questioned on why she once dated a registered Democrat.

“He voted for Bush in 2000,” she said, “but that didn’t seem to matter. Mary Matalin is married to James Carville and that’s all right but suddenly my loyalty is questioned because a former boyfriend was a Democrat?” Matalin, a Republican political operative and advisor to the Bush campaign, is the wife of former Bill Clinton political strategist James Carville.

Psychiatrists say the increasing paranoia at the White House is symptomatic of Bush’s “paranoid, delusional personality.”

Dr. Justin Frank, a prominent Washington psychiatrist and author of the book, Bush on the Couch, Inside the Mind of the President, says the President suffers from “character pathology,” including “grandiosity” and “megalomania” – viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

Dr. Frank also concludes that Bush’s years of heavy drinking “may have affected his brain function – and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step programs puts him at a far higher risk of relapse.”

Whatever the cause for the President’s increasing paranoia and delusions, veteran White House watchers see a strong parallel with another Republican president from 30 years ago.

“From what people who work there now tell me, this White House looks more and more like the White House of Richard M. Nixon,” says retired political science professor George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon White House. “It may be 2004 but it is starting to seem more like 1974 (the year Nixon resigned in disgrace).”

© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue

Folks,

Michael Moore’s new movie is making as big a stink off the screen as it is on the screen. The right-wing attack machinery was in full swing to try to characterize him and his message as looney before the movie even hit the theatres. But as the biggest opening documentary of all time, and the biggest movie in America on its opening weekend (even in the “red” states), its message will be heard by those who have ears to hear it. And those who won’t watch it can continue their mindless attacks on it. But the American people are, finally, despite the best efforts of Disney and their big-money stakeholders, going to get a chance to make up their own minds about it.

But this post isn’t about Michael Moore, or his movie. More than enough has already been said about that. This is about self-censorship, and the proper role of the media, and journalism, even documentary filmmaking (or, if you prefer, dissident propaganda).

While Howard Stern wages his one-man battle against censorship, and Moore wages his; while the New York Times admits that it really didn’t do its job in the lead-up to war and censored itself while slavishly parrotting the administration’s lies; and while the fight for control of U.S. media continues to rage (the Supreme Court recently overturned the FCC’s ruling permitting larger mergers of media ownership), one man continues his fight for journalistic truth, now long in the tooth, and that man is Dr. Noam Chomsky.

Aside from being a towering intellectual and resolute dissident, doing the unrewarding hard work for truth in reporting much as Ralph Nader did for consumer safety, Chomsky is a national treasure for his unwavering committment to spin-free comprehension of “terror,” the troubles in the Middle East, the war in Iraq, and other U.S. adventures abroad. It’s that same committment that has earned Chomsky, a Jew, the accusation of being an Anti-Semite. (Just as Richard Perle accused those who dared to question his motivations for fomenting war on Iraq for over a decade now.)

If Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent were required reading for every college freshman in this country, I daresay we’d be a much less foolish nation, and much more savvy about the propaganda that we get every day from the media.

Here are two articles that should give any reader much to think about, and hopefully, encourage a little more critical thought about what passes for the American news. Good stuff.

–C

First, a link to an excerpt from Understanding Power, New York, 2002, pp. 244-248. Want to know why today’s journalists are so cowardly? Well, here’s why. Speak against the machine, and you’ll sacrifice your career.

The Fate of an Honest Intellectual

by Dr. Noam Chomsky

Next, the transcript of an 8-minute interview of Chomsky on BBC2’s Newsnight programme hosted by Jeremy Paxman, the country’s premier
political interviewer. It’s an excellent primer on rhetorical devices and spin techniques, including the “media bleat point,” a meme that I hope will catch on in the general public. Reprinted here for your convenience:

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

June 22, 2004

MEDIA ALERT: JEREMY PAXMAN INTERVIEWS NOAM CHOMSKY – PART 1

Media Bleat Points, Herd Traps, Herd Clichés, And Other Exotica

On May 21, BBC2’s Newsnight programme contained an 8-minute interview with Noam Chomsky hosted by Jeremy Paxman, the country’s premier political interviewer.

A Newsnight anchor introduced the interview:

“If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals, he’d be hanged. So too, mind you, would every single American President since the end of the second world war, including Jimmy Carter.

“The suggestion comes from perhaps the most feted liberal intellectual in the world – the American linguist Noam Chomsky. His latest attack on the way his country behaves in the world is called Hegemony or Survival, America’s Quest for Global Dominance.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3732345.stm)

Chomsky produces ‘attacks’, we are to understand, rather than some of the most outstanding political analyses of our time. ‘Attack’ is a pejorative term suggesting anger which, in turn, suggests biased irrationality. It’s a familiar theme in mainstream reviews of dissident work. Oliver Robinson writes in the Observer:

“Since 11 September, 2001, the appetite for Noam Chomsky’s polemics has rocketed. Hegemony or Survival, an unequivocally incensed, if meandering, exploration…” (Oliver Robinson, The Observer, May 23, 2004)

Again, the sense of a furious attack is used to smear what, in fact, is a calm and meticulous demolition of establishment lies.

In the New York Times, Frank Rich notes of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11:

“Of course, Mr. Moore is being selective in what he chooses to include in his movie; he’s a polemicist, not a journalist..” (Frank Rich, New York Times, May 23, 2004)

The media are currently trying hard to present as established fact the idea that Moore is sloppy and gets his facts wrong. The attempt is approaching a kind of ‘tipping point’ – we call it the Media Bleat Point. If a fraudulent claim is made in sufficient numbers of high-profile media on both sides of the Atlantic, the Bleat Point is passed, the claim becomes ‘true’, and is then repeated in confident chorus by virtually the entire journalistic herd. The Bleat Point was rapidly passed in May of this year after Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, was sacked by his corporate bosses: ‘Morgan +had+ to go’, the media confidently insisted from their tight huddle.

In a Guardian article in January, Jason Deans wrote of Carlton TV:

“Carlton’s output… has included the award-winning documentary Kelly and Her Sisters [and] John Pilger’s controversial polemic Palestine is Still the Issue…” (Deans, ‘Hewlett quits Carlton’, The Guardian, January 8, 2004)

Kelly and Her Sisters was “award-winning” but Pilger’s documentary was a “controversial polemic”. In fact, Palestine Is Still The Issue was nominated for a BAFTA – an honour in itself. It won a gold award at the Chicago Documentaries Festival, considered the ‘Oscars’ of documentaries, and a Khris Award, another top American prize. The film was praised by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) for the “thoroughness of its research”, and its “integrity” and its “balance” – no mention was made of it being a “polemic”. The “controversial” element was an orchestrated pro-Israel attack, whose premises were completely rejected by the ITC.

Back to the interview:

“Jeremy Paxman met him at the British Museum, where they talked in the Assyrian Galleries. He asked him whether he was suggesting there was nothing new in the so-called Bush Doctrine.”

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Well, it depends. It is recognised to be revolutionary. Henry Kissinger for example described it as a revolutionary new doctrine which tears to shreds the Westphalian System, the 17th century system of International Order, and of course the UN Charter. But nevertheless it has been very widely criticised within the foreign policy elite. But on narrow ground the doctrine is not really new, it’s extreme.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“What was the United States supposed to do after 9/11? It had been the victim of a grotesque, intentional attack, what was it supposed to do…?”

This is a consistent theme in Paxman’s questioning. In an interview with the anti-war playwright, Arthur Miller, Paxman asked:

“You live in New York City… you must vividly recall what happened on September 11. In the world in which we live now, isn’t some sort of pre-emptive strike the only defensive option available to countries like the United States?” (Newsnight, February 18, 2003)

As Chomsky has pointed out elsewhere, if waging war is a reasonable response to grotesque, intentional attacks, what does that imply for victims of Western aggression in Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places? Are we to understand that they, also, are entitled to launch massive military strikes against their attackers? In his book 9-11, Chomsky discussed Britain’s options when IRA bombs were exploding in London:

“One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston, or to infiltrate commandos to capture those suspected of involvement in such financing and kill them or spirit them to London to face trial.” (Chomsky, 9-11, Seven Stories Press, 2001)

Everyone understands that this would have been lunacy, and yet it is considered perfectly reasonable in the case of Afghanistan.

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Why pick 9/11? Why not pick 1993. Actually the fact that the terrorist act succeeded on September 11 did not alter the risk analysis. In 1993, similar groups, US trained Jihadis, came very close to blowing up the World Trade Centre. With better planning, they probably would have killed tens of thousands of people. Since then it was known that this is very likely. In fact right through the 90′s there was technical literature predicting it, and we know what to do. What you do is police work. Police work is the way to stop terrorist acts and it succeeded.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“But you are suggesting the United States in that sense is the author of its own nemesis.”

The media delight in trying to lure dissidents into what we call Media Herd Traps. A Herd Trap is designed to press audience and media buttons – it is a position that is accepted by the mainstream as outrageous, irresponsible and beyond the pale. If a dissident can be lured into one of these traps, it is understood that the interviewer (and viewer) may reasonably reject the interviewee as outrageous and irresponsible.

One such Herd Trap is the idea that the United States is ‘to blame’ for September 11 – its policies, not al-Qaeda terrorism, were the prime cause of the atrocity. Doubtless some on the left do hold this view, and it is used by mainstream journalists to assert that dissidents are ‘self-hating Americans’ who blame everything on America and forever side with America’s enemies.

Interestingly, in this case, Chomsky had said nothing of the sort. He had merely noted that the United States had established and trained al-Qaeda groups to oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is recognised by specialists in the field of international affairs and terrorism that this empowered terrorists keen to strike at the United States. This is not to suggest that the United States was the author of September 11 – a very different view.

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Well, first of all this is not my opinion. It’s the opinion of just about every specialist on terrorism. Take a look, say, at Jason Burke’s recent book on al-Qaeda, which is just the best book there is. He runs through the record of how each act of violence has increased recruitment financing mobilisation. What he says is, I’m quoting him, that ‘each act of violence is a small victory for Bin Laden.’”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“But why do you imagine George Bush behaves like this?”

This question contained the first of Paxman’s Media Herd Clichés – a banal idea mindlessly repeated by the media – there were several over the course of the 8-minute interview. In this case, the implicit idea is that leaders are primarily responsible for formulating and directing policy. Focusing on individuals in this way obscures the reality that destructive policies are deeply rooted in structures of power subordinating people to profit. This helps justify the media’s failure to examine the consistent brutality of policy goals and means over many years and decades, and the kind of mass popular awareness and opposition that would be required to reform them.

Focusing on individuals, particularly rogue ‘bad apples’, promotes the idea that the status quo is fundamentally benign – with Bush and Blair gone, all will be well under John Kerry and Gordon Brown (just as all was supposed to have been well under Clinton and Blair). In the real world, the institutions of power that dominate society remain unaffected by such minor alterations, providing little reason to expect significant positive change. Result: we keep focusing on, loving, hating and changing our leaders – and the institutions pulling their strings keep bombing and exploiting Third World countries.

Paxman’s clichéd comments contrasted starkly with Chomsky’s informed and rational responses. We were clearly, here, dealing with two very different mindsets – Paxman was assertive and assured, but there was a sense that his confidence was ultimately rooted in a sense of ‘what everyone knows to be true’. Chomsky’s answers, by contrast, were rooted in his own independent and critical thought, and in serious research of the facts and issues. At a gut level, there was something real about Chomsky and something fake about Paxman. Chomsky’s answer to the question of why George Bush behaves as he does was a good example:

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Because I don’t think they care that much about terror; in fact we know that. Take say the invasion of Iraq, it was predicted by just about every specialist in intelligence agencies that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat of al-Qaeda style terror, which is exactly what happened.”

It was good to hear this point being made on a BBC news programme that forever refers to the “war on terror” without using inverted commas. Much of the BBC’s coverage of foreign affairs is premised on the idea that the US and UK governments are passionately committed to fighting terrorism. Typically, in September 2003, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, said of the United States:

“The war with terror may have moved from these [the United States’} shores to Iraq. But for how long?" (Frei, BBC News At Ten, September 10, 2003)

Again, we felt that Chomsky was speaking from another, real world existing beyond the media’s “necessary illusions”. Paxman couldn’t disagree with Chomsky on this occasion, however, because he was not in a position to challenge the idea that intelligence agencies had widely predicted an increase in terrorism as a result of the invasion – an undeniable fact. Silence and moving swiftly on are favoured media strategies in this kind of situation.

A Machiavellian Romance - Don’t Mention The O-Word

Paxman again asked about Bush’s motivation for invading Iraq: “Then why would he do it?”

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Because invading Iraq has value in itself. I mean establishing...”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“Well what value?”

Only one, unspoken word could be heard in the minds of viewers as Paxman repeatedly pressed the question - ‘Oil!’ From very early on in the Iraq crisis, a Media Bleat Point was quickly passed so that to suggest oil as a primary motive for the invasion was to be labelled a childish conspiracy theorist. The sheer weight of unchallenged assertions to this effect from the likes of Straw, Powell, Perle, Adelman and Frum on programmes like Newsnight, Question Time, Channel 4 News and the Jonathan Dimbleby programme, soon established this as ‘Truth’.

Earlier this year, former US Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, reported seeing a memorandum preparing for war dating from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the September 11 attacks. Another, marked "secret" said, "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq". O'Neill also saw a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which discussed the division of Iraq's fuel reserves among the world's oil companies. (Julian Borger, 'Bush decided to remove Saddam "on day one"', The Guardian, January 12, 2004)

None of this impacted on the media’s view of oil ‘conspiracy theories’.

Journalists responded in similar fashion a decade earlier. Analysis of media reporting of the 1991 Gulf War found that the issue of oil featured in just 4% of BBC1 reports and in 3% of BBC2 reports - a remarkable achievement, given the blindingly obvious central concern. In January 1991, the Financial Times explained that the war “came about not because of US hubris and imperialism, or because of oil” but “because the annexation of Kuwait was an act intolerable to a world which cannot live in peace if the integrity of nations is treated so casually”. (Leader, ‘A cause for war’, Financial Times, January 17, 1991)

This doubtless came as interesting news to people living in East Timor, Panama, Palestine and elsewhere. Journalists love to berate greens and leftists for their naivety, while affecting a level of wide-eyed innocence that puts the most ardent tree-hugger to shame. This is a kind of pragmatic idealism, or Machiavellian romanticism.

Chomsky gave his view on the current US goal:

“Establishing the first secure military base in a dependent client state at the heart of the energy producing region of the world.”

Chomsky rightly suggested that control of oil, dominance of the region, and related influence over the wider energy-dependent world were all factors. The Herd Trap was simply to mention oil as the motive – Chomsky evaded this with ease.

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“Don't you even think that the people of Iraq are better off having got rid of a dictator?”

The Media Herd Trap here involved rejecting war +and+ the removal of Saddam Hussein, a position which plays into the hands of propagandists smearing the left as “useful idiots”, and even secret admirers, of Saddam. As the Observer’s Nick Cohen wrote to Media Lens on this theme: "Dear Serviles... Viva Joe Stalin." (Email to Media Lens, March 15, 2002)

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“They got rid of two brutal regimes - one that we are supposed to talk about, the other one we are not supposed to talk about. The two brutal regimes were Saddam Hussein's, and the US-British sanctions, which were devastating society, had killed hundreds of thousands of people, [and] were forcing people to be reliant on Saddam Hussein. Now the sanctions could obviously have been turned to weapons, rather than destroying society, without an invasion. If that had happened, it is not at all impossible that the people of Iraq would have sent Saddam Hussein to the same fate as other monsters supported by the US and Britain: Ceausescu, Suharto, Duvalier, Marcos; there’s a long list of them. In fact the Westerners who know Iraq best were predicting this all along.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“You seem to be suggesting, or implying, perhaps I’m being unfair to you, but you seem to be implying there is some equivalence between democratically elected heads of state like George Bush or Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and regimes in places like Iraq.”

Having failed to lure Chomsky into the first Herd Trap, Paxman here resorted to a second – the suggestion that Bush and Blair are no better than Saddam. Michael Buerk made a similar comment when interviewing former UN assistant-secretary general Denis Halliday in a BBC radio interview in 2001:

“You can’t… you can’t +possibly+ draw a moral equivalence between Saddam Hussein and George Bush Senior, can you?”

Listeners could sense the trap closing around Halliday when he defiantly suggested that it was indeed possible to suggest an equivalence.

The problem being, of course, that the question of moral equivalence arises out of a heavily loaded media context. The mainstream media forever portray our leaders as fundamentally virtuous and well-intentioned. In an April 2003 documentary, for example, Matt Frei said:

“There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East… is now increasingly tied up with military power.” (Panorama, BBC1, April 13, 2003)

In a May 1999 Observer article, Andrew Marr declared of Blair:

“I am constantly impressed, but also mildly alarmed, by his utter lack of cynicism.” (Marr, ’Hail to the chief. Sorry, Bill, but this time we’re talking about Tony’, The Observer, May 16, 1999)

A June 2004 Channel 4 documentary, In Search of Tony Blair, told us:

“Blair’s Christianity guided him into politics to help build a fairer society.” (Channel 4, June 12, 2004)

Political historian Anthony Sheldon added on the Iraq war:

“I think the tragedy of Tony Blair is that it was when he thought that he was being his most morally right that he made his fundamental error.” Blair was “utterly certain he was morally right”, according to Sheldon.

To affirm a “moral equivalence” between Western governments glorified in this way, and enemy leaders demonised in equal measure, is to crash through an ancient and thickly-sown propaganda minefield – audience outrage and rejection are all but guaranteed. Chomsky, however, responded:

“The term moral equivalence is an interesting one, it was invented I think by Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It is a meaningless notion, there is no moral equivalence whatsoever.”

Chomsky was exposing Paxman’s game to his face and to the audience. It was a stunning answer, one that brought back fond memories of Chomsky’s encounter with Andrew Marr (now the BBC’s political editor) in 1996. Marr had suggested to Chomsky:

“What I don’t get is that all of this suggests – I’m a journalist – people like me are self-censoring.”

Chomsky responded:

“I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” (The Big Idea, BBC2, February 14, 1996)

Marr responded with a series of curious facial gestures but said nothing.

Western Civilisation And Other Good Ideas

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“If it is preferable for an individual to live in a liberal democracy, is there benefit to be gained by spreading the values of that democracy however you can?”

This was Paxman’s least sophisticated Media Herd Cliché. He is not, here, we believe, merely playing devil’s advocate. Along with much of the media establishment, Paxman honestly believes that the West is in the business of promoting liberal democracy wherever possible. This is one of the bedrock assumptions of media coverage capable of weathering almost any conflicting evidence.

Thus, the Sunday Telegraph observed ahead of the war last year, that “it is the neighbourly duty of the West to liberate the Iraqis from their captivity at the hands of Saddam”. (Matthew d’Ancona, ‘The Pope’s disapproval worries Blair more than a million marchers’, Sunday Telegraph, February 23, 2003)

Or consider the remarkable presumption contained in Nick Cohen’s reference to “an anti-war movement which persuaded one million people to tell Iraqis they must continue to live under a tyranny…” (Cohen, ‘The Left’s unholy alliance with religious bigotry’, The Observer, February 23, 2003)

“Yes, the Americans want democracy here [Iraq]”, Jonathan Rugman declared on Channel 4 News, “but they don’t want to die for it”. (November 12, 2003)

Of course the Americans want to give Iraqis the free and untrammelled right to have nothing more whatever to do with America. What does it matter to America if, in securing that noble end, it pays the price in thousands of dead and injured troops, and in hundreds of billions of dollars spent?

Paxman’s question does not qualify as a Media Herd Trap, however – media and political propaganda is unable to suppress the evidence that makes a mockery of the idea that the US is motivated by a desire to spread democracy around the world. Chomsky was therefore again free to challenge the whole basis of the question without alienating the audience.

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“That reminds me of the question that Ghandi was once asked about western civilisation: what did he think of it? He said ‘Yeah, it would be a good idea.’ In fact it would be a good idea to spread the values of liberal democracy. But that’s not what the US and Britain are trying to do. It’s not what they’ve done in the past. Take a look at the regions under their domination. They don’t spread liberal democracy. What they spread is dependence and subordination. Furthermore it’s well-known that this is a large part of the reason for the great opposition to US policy within the Middle East. In fact this was known in the 1950′s.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“But there is a whole slur [sic] of countries in eastern Europe right now that would say we are better off now than we were when we were living under the Soviet Empire. As a consequence of how the West behaved.”

Some years ago, Chomsky might well have responded that people living under US domination would have dreamed of life under Soviet domination. People in Eastern Europe, for example, were imprisoned for dissent but they were not massacred in their hundreds of thousands as happened in US client states in Central America, Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere. Chomsky might also have pointed to the horrific collapse in health and life expectancy in Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Typically, Paxman was here relying on public ignorance and presumption – most viewers have no idea how much better or worse off people in Eastern Europe are, or are likely to become, in comparison to the Soviet era (presumed to be incomparably worse).

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“And there are a lot of countries in US domains, like Central America, the Caribbean, who wish that they could be free of American domination. We don’t pay much attention to what happens there but +they+ do. In the 1980s when the current incumbents were in their Reaganite phase, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Central America. The US carried out a massive terrorist attack against Nicaragua, mainly as a war on the church. They assassinated an archbishop and murdered six leading Jesuit intellectuals. This is in El Salvador. It was a monstrous period. What did they impose? Was it liberal democracies? No.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“You’ve mentioned on two or three occasions this relationship between the United States and Britain. Do you understand why Tony Blair behaved as he did over Afghanistan and Iraq?“

This was a version of the Media Herd Cliché previously mentioned (promoting a focus on individuals rather than on systems of power). For the first time Paxman seemed genuinely interested to hear Chomsky’s view.

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Well, if you look at the British diplomatic history, back in the 1940s, Britain had to make a decision. Britain had been the major world power. The United States, though by far the richest country in the world, was not a major actor in the global scene, except regionally. By the Second World War, it was obvious the US was going to be the dominant power, everyone knew that. Britain had to make a choice. Was it going to be part of what would ultimately be a Europe that might move towards independence, or would it be what the Foreign Office called a ‘junior partner’ to the United States? Well, it essentially made that choice to be a junior partner to the United States.

“So during the Cuban missile crisis, for example, you look at the declassified record, they treated Britain with total contempt. Harold McMillan wasn’t even informed of what was going on and Britain’s existence was at stake. It was dangerous. One high official, probably Dean Acherson, although he’s not identified, described Britain as, in his words, ‘Our lieutenant, the fashionable word is partner’. Well the British would like to hear the fashionable word, but the masters use the actual word. Those are choices Britain has to make. I mean why Blair decided, I couldn’t say.”

JEREMY PAXMAN:

“Noam Chomsky, thank you.”

Thus ended the interview. Paxman, the country’s premier ‘attack dog’ interviewer – reputed to earn at least £1 million a year – had posed a series of clichés and clumsy provocations. We saw the fundamental superficiality and banality of the mainstream media, and got a glimpse of the extent and depth of Chomsky’s insight and learning.

But how extraordinary to reflect that Chomsky – the world’s most-read author on international affairs, and one of the all-time great political analysts – was granted this single Newsnight ‘special’ interview, while lunar celebrities such as Adelman, Frum and Perle are regular fixtures on the programme.

There was perhaps the sense of a dissident bone being tossed to the hundreds of people who have sent complaints to Newsnight over the last couple of years. The understanding was clear enough: Chomsky will be granted a kind of ‘celebrity’ interview in the British Museum while visiting the country, but do not expect him to be accepted as a serious, regular contributor to the programme. After all, as Peter Horrocks, Newsnight editor at the time, told staff in 1997:

“Our job should not be to quarrel with the purpose of policy, but to question its implementation.” (Quoted, Robert Newman, The Guardian, August 7, 2000)

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to: Jeremy PaxmanEmail: jeremy.paxman@bbc.co.uk

Peter Barron, editor of NewsnightEmail: peter.barron@bbc.co.uk

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:Email: editor@medialens.org

Folks,

I know it’s been quite a while since I posted to the blog. It’s certainly not for a lack of news! I’m just too occupied with work, and besides, the media are finally doing their jobs as journalists a little more, making my blogging less urgent.

But here’s one you gotta see. I think it speaks volumes about how we got where we are today, and what’s really going on in the White House. Apparently, Dubya believes he’s got a direct line to God, and his actions are nothing less than “God’s will.”

Scary, scary stuff. (By the way, if you missed the article on the Dominionists, you should definitely check that one out: George W. Bush, Head of the American Dominionist Church/State.)

Rapture accellerant, anyone?

–C

Bush Leagues

Bush’s Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”

Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.

“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”

Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.

The President’s abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.

“Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn’t hear of it,” says an aide. “That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying ‘that’s it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now.”

Tenet was allowed to resign “voluntarily” and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as “God’s will.”

God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”

“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”

But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”

“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.

(c) Copyright 2004 by Capitol Hill Blue

Go to Original

Folks,

I have a huge backlog of stuff to send you, as usual. But this one was too good to wait. Greg Palast (author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy of course) lays it down. I’m pasting the whole thing right here into the email so you don’t even have to click to read it.

–C

Folks,

This is an article I’ve been waiting for someone to write. While Dubya follows Karl Rove’s prescription for success, constantly reinforcing his “conviction” and “credibility” regardless of how his position bears up against reality, the rest of us are left to scratch our heads and wonder what planet Bush is living on. Most sensible people, having discovered that what they’re doing is wrong-headed, will stop doing it, not insist that doing it is right because it’s consistent and because they mean what they say. He would do well to remember the First Rule of Holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.

This article explores several instances of how Bush seems unaware that his view of the world is at growing variance with external reality. But he wants us to know that we can count on him to remain unaware. Good stuff.

–C

Trust, Don’t Verify

Bush’s incredible definition of credibility.
By William Saletan

Slate Magazine

Posted Wednesday, April 14, 2004, at 3:27 AM PTOne thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.

That’s the summation President Bush delivered as he wrapped up his press conference Tuesday night. It’s the message he emphasized throughout: Our commitment. Our pledge. Our word. My conviction. Given the stakes in Iraq and the war against terrorism, it would be petty to poke fun at Bush for calling credibility “incredibly important.” His routine misuse of the word “incredible,” while illiterate, is harmless. His misunderstanding of the word “credible,” however, isn’t harmless. It’s catastrophic.

To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. “A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America’s word, once given, can be relied upon,” he argued Tuesday night. When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush’s most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush’s notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true.

Outside Bush’s head, his statements keep crashing into reality. Tuesday night, ABC’s Terry Moran reminded him, “Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq: that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, ‘We know where they are.’ How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong?”

Inside Bush’s head, however, all is peaceful. “The oil revenues, they’re bigger than we thought they would be,” Bush boasted to Moran, evidently unaware that this heightened the mystery of why the revenues weren’t covering the reconstruction. As to the WMD, Bush said the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq had confirmed that Iraq was “hiding things. A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught.” See the logic? A country that hides something must be afraid of getting caught, and a country afraid of getting caught must be hiding something. Each statement validates the other, sparing Bush the need to find the WMD.

Bush does occasionally cite other people’s statements to support his credibility. Saddam Hussein “was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States,” Bush told Moran. “That’s … the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence. That’s the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence.” Actually, the Security Council didn’t say Iraq was a threat to the United States, but never mind. The more fundamental problem with Bush’s appeal to prewar assessments by Congress and the Security Council is that these assessments weren’t reality. They were attempts—not even independent attempts, since the administration heavily lobbied both bodies—to approximate reality. When they turned out not to match reality, members of Congress (including Republicans) and the Security Council (including U.S. allies) repudiated them.

Not Bush. He’s impervious to evidence. “I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where [the WMD] are,” he told Time‘s John Dickerson at the press conference. A year after Saddam’s ouster and four months after Saddam’s capture, Bush continued to insist that “people who should know about weapons” are still “worried about getting killed, and therefore they’re not going to talk. … We’ll find out the truth about the weapons at some point.” You can agree or disagree with this theory. But you can’t falsify it.

Bush doesn’t see the problem. He’s too preoccupied with self-consistency to notice whether he’s consistent with anything else. “I thought it was important for the United Nations Security Council that when it says something, it means something,” he told Moran. “The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, ‘Disarm or face serious consequences.’ And [Saddam] refused to disarm.” Never mind that the Security Council didn’t see what Bush saw in terms of Iraqi disarmament and didn’t mean what Bush meant in terms of serious consequences. Never mind that this difference in perception was so vast that Bush ducked a second Security Council vote on a use-of-force resolution. What’s important is that when the Security Council says something, it must mean something, even if the something the council said isn’t the something Bush meant.

As Tuesday night’s questions turned to the 9/11 investigation, Bush retreated again to the incontrovertible truths in his head. “There was nobody in our government, at least, and I don’t think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale,” he told NBC’s David Gregory. Never mind that somebody who had worked in Bush’s administration and the prior administration—namely, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke—had raised precisely this concern about the 1996 Olympics. Never mind that the president’s daily intelligence brief on Aug. 6, 2001—titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S.“—had warned Bush, “FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” These were external phenomena and therefore irrelevant. What mattered was that Bush couldn’t “envision” the scenario.

Three times, Bush repeated the answer he gave to Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times: “Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it.” Outside Bush’s head, the statement was patently false: The 9/11 threat required action, and Bush failed to deal with it. But inside Bush’s head, the statement was tautological: If there were a threat that required action, Bush would have dealt with it; Bush didn’t deal with it; therefore, there was no threat that required action. The third time Bush repeated this answer—in response to a question about whether he owed an “apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11″—he added, “The person responsible for the attacks was Osama Bin Laden.” This is how Bush’s mind works: Only a bad person can bear responsibility for a bad thing. I am a good person. Therefore, I bear no responsibility.

On 9/11, as on WMD, Bush mistakes affirmation for verification, description for reality, and words for deeds. “I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me,” he told Chen. “I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats.” This was Bush’s notion of dealing with terrorism: being briefed by the CIA director. The world that mattered was the Oval Office.

Did the briefings lead to action outside the office? No, because there was no “threat that required action.” What about the Aug. 6 brief? “I asked for the briefing,” Bush told Chen. “And that’s what triggered the [Aug. 6] report.” Tuesday’s Washington Post tells a different story: “According to senior intelligence officials familiar with the document, work on it began at the end of July, at the initiative of the CIA analyst [who] wanted to raise the issue” of Bin Laden’s threat to the U.S. mainland. But Bush can’t believe that someone outside his head was trying to tell him something. He’s certain he “triggered” the brief. That’s why, as he explained to Chen, he “didn’t think there was anything new” in it: He assumed it was his idea. He doesn’t understand that the point of a briefing is to be told something you hadn’t already thought of.

This explains the most amazing part of Bush’s answer to Chen: “What was interesting in [the brief] was that there was a report that the FBI was conducting field investigations. And that was good news, that they were doing their job.” Here is a president who reads that the FBI has found “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijacking” and concludes that all is well because the FBI is “investigating” such activity. Why does Bush make this mistake? Because he doesn’t understand that the “suspicious activity” is the subject of the brief. He thinks the “investigations” are the subject. He thinks he’s being told about his version of reality—the world inside his administration—not the world of plots beyond his awareness.

How does Bush square his obtuseness to the threat from Bin Laden with his obtuseness to the absence of a threat from Saddam? “After 9/11, the world changed for me,” he explained Tuesday night. That’s Bush in a nutshell: The world changed for him. Out went the assumption of safety, and in came the assumption of peril. In the real world, Bin Laden was still a religious fanatic with global reach, and Saddam was still a secular tyrant boxed in by sanctions and no-fly zones. But in Bush’s head, everything changed.

To many Americans, the gap between Bush’s statements about the months before 9/11, on the one hand, and the emerging evidence about those months, on the other, raises doubts about the credibility of their government. To other nations, the gap between Bush’s statements about Iraqi weapons, on the one hand, and the emerging evidence about those weapons, on the other, has become the central reason to distrust the United States in other matters of enormous consequence, such as North Korea’s nuclear program.

To all of this, however, Bush is blind. He doesn’t measure his version of the world against anybody else’s. He measures his version against itself. He says the same thing today that he said yesterday. That’s why, when he was asked Tuesday whether he felt any responsibility for failing to stop the 9/11 plot, he kept shrugging that “the country”—not the president—wasn’t on the lookout. It’s also why, when he was asked to name his biggest mistake since 9/11, he insisted, “Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons [not found in Iraq], I still would’ve called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.” Bush believes now what he believed then. Incredible, but true.

William Saletan is Slate’s chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2098810/

Folks,

Please consider responding to this alert reader’s request for contributions to Kerry’s campaign. C’mon, he’s even put up a challenge grant out of his own pocket!

–C

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Got a credit card? Good. Contribute to John Kerry’s campaign here. I will match the first $1000 contributed dollar-for-dollar

It will take less than 2 minutes. Contribute early, contribute often (subject to the FEC limits of $2000/individual).

Myself, despite considering myself politically aware, I never gave a single dollar to any political campaign. But that changes now. This may be the most important presidential election of our generation. This isn’t just about choosing a leader, it’s about choosing how we define ourselves as a country and what kind of country we will leave to our children.

Kerry is fighting a slick GOP-driven money machine that has raised $145 million already, much of it from executives of energy companies and other beneficiaries of Bush policies.

Without cash, Kerry will not be able to respond to the lies and misrepresentations that have already begun to characterize this campaign.

Please, take the time now to contribute whatever you can and I’ll increase the impact by matching it. And regardless of whether you contribute, make sure you vote!

–Mark A. Gollin

Folks,

This submission by an alert reader is an juxtaposition of book reviews on the subject of American empire. It’s a bit on the scholarly side, but if you’re interested in the topic, you will probably find it worthwhile.

You might also want to see some past GRL articles on American empire

–C

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An interesting overview of some recent books on US Foreign Policy from the Council on Foreign Relations. The whole thing has a lively pace. I particularly enjoy the part where the author dismisses the French essayist Emmanuel Todd’s assertion that “a rapacious clique of frightened oligarchs has taken over U.S. democracy is simply bizarre.” The very idea is unthinkable!

Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order
By G. JOHN IKENBERRY

From the March/April 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs.
G. John Ikenberry is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. By Chalmers Johnson. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004, 400 pp. $25.00

Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. By Niall Ferguson. New York: Penguin Press, 2004, 368 pp. $25.95.

Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy. By Benjamin R. Barber. New York: Norton, 2003, 192 pp. $23.95.

Incoherent Empire. By Michael Mann. New York: Verso, 2003, 284 pp. $25.00.

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. By Emmanuel Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 192 pp. $29.95.

The debate on empire is back. This is not surprising, as the United States dominates the world as no state ever has. It emerged from the Cold War the only superpower, and no geopolitical or ideological contenders are in sight. Europe is drawn inward, and Japan is stagnant. A half-century after their occupation, the United States still provides security for Japan and Germany — the world’s second- and third-largest economies. U.S. military bases and carrier battle groups ring the world. Russia is in a quasi-formal security partnership with the United States, and China has accommodated itself to U.S. dominance, at least for the moment. For the first time in the modern era, the world’s most powerful state can operate on the global stage without the constraints of other great powers. We have entered the American unipolar age.

The Bush administration’s war on terrorism, invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, expanded military budget, and controversial 2002 National Security Strategy have thrust American power into the light of day — and, in doing so, deeply unsettled much of the world. Worry about the implications of American unipolarity is the not-so-hidden subtext of recent U.S.-European tension and has figured prominently in recent presidential elections in Germany, Brazil, and South Korea. The most fundamental questions about the nature of global politics — who commands and who benefits — are now the subject of conversation among long-time allies and adversaries alike.

Power is often muted or disguised, but when it is exposed and perceived as domination, it inevitably invites response. One recalls the comment of Georges Clemenceau, who as a young politician said of the settlement ending the Franco-Prussian War, “Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom.” At Versailles a half-century later, he would impose just as harsh a peace on a defeated Germany.

The current debate over empire is an attempt to make sense of the new unipolar reality. The assertion that the United States is bent on empire is, of course, not new. The British writer and labor politician Harold Laski evoked the looming American empire in 1947 when he said that “America bestrides the world like a colossus; neither Rome at the height of its power nor Great Britain in the period of economic supremacy enjoyed an influence so direct, so profound, or so pervasive. …” And indeed, Dean Acheson and other architects of the postwar order were great admirers of the British Empire. Later, during the Vietnam War, left-wing thinkers and revisionist historians traced the same deep-rooted impulse toward militarism and empire through the history of U.S. foreign policy. The dean of this school, William Appleton Williams, argued in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy that the nation’s genuine idealism had been subverted by the imperial pursuit of power and capitalist greed.

Today, the “American empire” is a term of approval and optimism for some and disparagement and danger for others. Neoconservatives celebrate the imperial exercise of U.S. power, which, in a modern version of Rudyard Kipling’s “white man’s burden,” is a liberal force that promotes democracy and undercuts tyranny, terrorism, military aggression, and weapons proliferation. Critics who identify an emerging American empire, meanwhile, worry about its unacceptable financial costs, its corrosive effect on democracy, and the threat it poses to the institutions and alliances that have secured U.S. national interests since World War II.

THE “E” WORD

No one disagrees that U.S. power is extraordinary. It is the character and logic of U.S. domination that is at issue in the debate over empire. The United States is not just a superpower pursuing its interest; it is a producer of world order. Over the decades — with more support than resistance from other nations — it has fashioned a distinctively open and rule-based international order. Its dynamic bundle of oversized capacities, interests, and ideals constitutes an “American project” with unprecedented global reach. For better or worse, other states must come to terms with or work around this protean order.

Scholars often characterize international relations as the interaction of sovereign states in an anarchic world. In the classic Westphalian world order, states hold a monopoly on the use of force in their own territory while order at the international level is maintained through the diffusion of power among states. Today’s unipolar world turns the Westphalian image on its head. The United States possesses a near-monopoly on the use of force internationally; on the domestic level, meanwhile, the institutions and behaviors of states are increasingly open to global — that is, American — scrutiny. Since September 11, the Bush administration’s assertion of “contingent sovereignty” and the right of preemption have made this transformation abundantly clear. The rise of unipolarity and the simultaneous unbundling of state sovereignty is a new and volatile brew.

But is the resulting political formation an empire? And if so, will the American empire suffer the fate of great empires of the past: ravaging the world with its ambitions and excesses until overextension, miscalculation, and mounting opposition hasten its collapse?

The term “empire” refers to the political control by a dominant country of the domestic and foreign policies of weaker countries. The European colonial empires of the late nineteenth century were the most direct, formal kind. The Soviet “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe entailed an equally coercive but less direct form of control. The British Empire included both direct colonial rule and “informal empire.” If empire is defined loosely, as a hierarchical system of political relationships in which the most powerful state exercises decisive influence, then the United States today indeed qualifies.

If the United States is an empire, however, it is like no other before it. To be sure, it has a long tradition of pursuing crude imperial policies, most notably in Latin America and the Middle East. But for most countries, the U.S.-led order is a negotiated system wherein the United States has sought participation by other states on terms that are mutually agreeable. This is true in three respects. First, the United States has provided public goods — particularly the extension of security and the support for an open trade regime — in exchange for the cooperation of other states. Second, power in the U.S. system is exercised through rules and institutions; power politics still exist, but arbitrary and indiscriminate power is reigned in. Finally, weaker states in the U.S.-led order are given “voice opportunities” — informal access to the policymaking processes of the United States and the intergovernmental institutions that make up the international system. It is these features of the post-1945 international order that have led historians such as Charles Maier to talk about a “consensual empire” and Geir Lundestad to talk about an “empire of invitation.” The American order is hierarchical and ultimately sustained by economic and military power, but it is put at the service of an expanding system of democracy and capitalism.

Fundamentally, then, the debate over the new American empire hinges on how extensive and deeply rooted these characteristics are — and whether its assertion of power since September 11 constitutes a fundamental break with this liberal past.

THE GLOBAL RACKET

In The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson advances the disturbing claim that the United States’ Cold War-era military power and far-flung base system have, in the last decade, been consolidated in a new form of global imperial rule. The United States, according to Johnson, has become “a military juggernaut intent on world domination.”

Driven by a triumphalist ideology, an exaggerated sense of threats, and a self-serving military-industrial complex, this juggernaut is tightening its grip on much of the world. The Pentagon has replaced the State Department as the primary shaper of foreign policy. Military commanders in regional headquarters are modern-day proconsuls, warrior-diplomats who direct the United States’ imperial reach. Johnson fears that this military empire will corrode democracy, bankrupt the nation, spark opposition, and ultimately end in a Soviet-style collapse.

In this rendering, the American military empire is a novel form of domination. Johnson describes it as an “international protection racket: mutual defense treaties, military advisory groups, and military forces stationed in foreign countries to ‘defend’ against often poorly defined, overblown, or nonexistent threats.” These arrangements create “satellites” — ostensibly independent countries whose foreign relations revolve around the imperial state. Johnson argues that this variety of empire was pioneered during the Cold War by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in East Asia. Great empires of the past — the Romans and the Han Dynasty Chinese — ruled their domains with permanent military encampments that garrisoned conquered territory. The American empire is innovative because it is not based on the acquisition of territory; it is an empire of bases.

Johnson’s previous polemic, Blowback, asserted that post-1945 U.S. spheres of influence in East Asia and Latin America were as coercive and exploitative as their Soviet counterparts. The Sorrows of Empire continues this dubious line. Echoing 1960s revisionism, Johnson asserts that the United States’ Cold War security system of alliances and bases was built on manufactured threats and driven by expansionary impulses. The United States was not acting in its own defense; it was exploiting opportunities to build an empire. The Soviet Union and the United States, according to this argument, were more alike than different: both militarized their societies and foreign policies and expanded outward, establishing imperial rule through “hub and spoke” systems of client states and political dependencies.

In Johnson’s view, the end of the Cold War represented both an opportunity and a crisis for U.S. global rule — an opportunity because the Soviet sphere of influence was now open for imperial expansion, a crisis because the fall of the Soviet Union ended the justification for the global system of naval bases, airfields, army garrisons, espionage listening posts, and strategic enclaves. Only with the terrorist attacks of September 11 was this crisis resolved. Bush suddenly had an excuse to expand U.S. military domination. September 11 also allowed the United States to remove the fig leaf of alliance partnership. Washington could now disentangle itself from international commitments, treaties, and law and launch direct imperial rule.

Unfortunately, Johnson offers no coherent theory of why the United States seeks empire. At one point, he suggests that the American military empire is founded on “a vast complex of interests, commitments, and projects.” The empire of bases has become institutionalized in the military establishment and has taken on a life of its own. There is no discussion, however, of the forces within U.S. politics that resist or reject empire. As a result, Johnson finds imperialism everywhere and in everything the United States does, in its embrace of open markets and global economic integration as much as in its pursuit of narrow economic gains.

Johnson also offers little beyond passing mention about the societies presumed to be under Washington’s thumb. Domination and exploitation are, of course, not always self-evident. Military pacts and security partnerships are clearly part of the structure of U.S. global power, and they often reinforce fragile and corrupt governments in order to project U.S. influence. But countries can also use security ties with the United States to their own advantage. Japan may be a subordinate security partner, but the U.S.-Japan alliance also allows Tokyo to forgo a costly buildup of military capacity that would destabilize East Asia. Moreover, countries do have other options: they can, and often do, escape U.S. domination simply by asking the United States to leave. The Philippines did so, and South Korea may be next. The variety and complexity of U.S. security ties with other states makes Johnson’s simplistic view of military hegemony misleading.

In fact, the U.S. alliance system — remarkably intact after half a century — has helped create a stable, open political space. Cooperative security is not just an instrument of U.S. domination; it is also a tool of political architecture. But Johnson neglects the broader complex of U.S.-supported multilateral rules and institutions that give depth and complexity to the international order. Ultimately, it is not clear what the United States could do — short of retreating into its borders or ceasing to exist — that would save it from Johnson’s condemnation.

PAX AMERICANA

In Colossus, Niall Ferguson argues that the United States is indeed an empire and has been for a long time. To Ferguson, however, it is a liberal empire that upholds rules and institutions and underwrites public goods by maintaining peace, ensuring freedom of the seas and skies, and managing a system of international trade and finance. The United States is the imperfect but natural inheritor of the British system of global governance; it is open and integrative and inclined toward informal rule. Accordingly, Ferguson’s worry is not that the world will get too much American empire but that it will not get enough. U.S. leaders, for all their benign intent, have unusually short attention spans and tend to go “wobbly.”

In Ferguson’s view, the United States shares many characteristics with past empires. Like Rome, it has remarkably open citizenship. “Purple Hearts and U.S. citizenship were conferred simultaneously on a number of the soldiers serving in Iraq last year, just as service in the legions was once a route to becoming a civis romanus,” Ferguson writes. “Indeed, with the classical architecture of its capital and the republican structure of its constitution, the United States is perhaps more like a ‘new Rome’ than any previous empire — albeit a Rome in which the Senate has thus far retained its grip on would-be emperors.” The spread of America’s language, ideas, and culture also invites comparison to Rome at its zenith.

But Ferguson is even more taken by parallels with the British Empire. U.S. presidents, from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, have put their power to work promoting the great liberal ideals of economic openness, democracy, limited government, human dignity, and the rule of law — a “strategy of openness” that is remarkably similar, Ferguson argues, to the aspirations of the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. After all, it was a young Winston Churchill who argued that the aim of British imperialism was to “give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. … ”

Most of Colossus retells the familiar story of the rise of U.S. global dominance as an exercise in liberal empire. What is distinctive about American imperialism, according to Ferguson, is that it has been pursued in the name of anti-imperialism. For each phase of U.S. history, Ferguson nicely illuminates the tensions between republican ideals and the exercise of global power and shows how those tensions are often resolved. The Cold War — and George Kennan’s doctrine of containment — provides the ultimate example of this fusion of anti-imperialism and hard power. Security, openness, democratic community, political commitment, and the mobilization of U.S. power went together. The core of U.S. global rule involved the enforcement of rules of economic openness, but the United States was also willing to act forcefully to integrate countries into the liberal order.

Ferguson’s most interesting claim is that the world needs more of this liberal American empire. This argument stems in part from the uncontroversial claim that the current international order needs enlightened leadership and that only Washington can provide it. (Ferguson holds little hope that Europe will ever overcome its preoccupation with the internal contradictions of its enlargement.) It is especially the wider system of sovereign but failed states that needs imperial supervision by Washington. In vast swatches of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East national self-determination has led to much grief. Ferguson argues without qualification that “the experiment with political independence — especially in Africa — has been a disaster for most poor countries.” To Ferguson, the extension of liberal empire into these regions (even involving some form of colonial rule) is necessary. What precisely these imperial arrangements would look like, however, remains unclear.

When Ferguson says that he is “fundamentally in favor of empire,” he is to some extent pulling a conceptual sleight of hand. What Ferguson means by “liberal empire” scholars have previously called “liberal hegemony”: a hierarchical order that is still very different from traditional forms of empire. By virtue of its power, the liberal hegemon can act on its long-term interests rather than squabble over short-term gains with other states; it can identify its own national interests with the openness and stability of the larger system. The United States thus shapes and dominates the international order while guaranteeing a flow of benefits to other governments that earns their acquiescence. In contrast to empire, this negotiated order depends on agreement over the rules of the system between the leading state and everyone else. In this way, the norms and institutions that have developed around U.S. hegemony both limit the actual coercive exercise of U.S. power and draw other states into the management of the system.

Ferguson’s case for the virtues of American empire hinges on his claim that in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the world could have gone one of two ways: international order organized around independent nations or an American imperium. He maintains that a world of decentralized, competing states, many of which are not democracies, would result in chaos. This may be true; he is certainly right that stability and open markets are not easily sustained without the support of powerful states. But the notion of liberal empire conflates very different types of U.S.-led order. One in which Washington coerces other states into obedience is very different from a system of multilateral rules and close partnerships. The challenges of peace and economic development that Ferguson identifies are best pursued by advanced democracies working together. Ultimately, such a cooperative order would require that Washington transcend the atavistic habits of empire rather than pursue a more complete realization of it.

In the end, Ferguson finds invoking the image of empire useful for political reasons. Unlike the British, Americans do not believe that they operate an empire. As a result, the United States makes a flighty and impatient imperial power (in contrast to the British, who acquired a cultural mentality for global rule). Ferguson thinks that speaking honestly about the reality of American empire will foster understanding of its duties and obligations.

Yet precisely the opposite is true. The United States does not need to view the world as its Raj and deploy a colonial service to the vast periphery; it needs to find ways to exercise its power in sustained, legitimate ways, working with others and developing more complex forms of cooperative international governance. It is also extremely doubtful that the American people would accept such a massive imperial undertaking: last September, as soon as President Bush revealed the price tag for occupying Iraq, public support plummeted immediately.

IMPERIAL INSECURITY

Benjamin Barber’s Fear’s Empire presents a case against the recent unilateral impulses in U.S. foreign policy. According to Barber, empire is not inherent in U.S. dominance but is, rather, a temptation — one to which the Bush administration has increasingly succumbed. In confronting terrorism, Washington has vacillated between appealing to law and undermining it. Barber’s thesis is that by invoking a right to unilateral action, preventive war, and regime change, the United States has undermined the very framework of cooperation and law that is necessary to fight terrorist anarchy. A foreign policy oriented around the use of military force against rogue states, Barber argues, reflects a misunderstanding of the consequences of global interdependence and the character of democracy. Washington cannot run a global order driven by military action and the fear of terrorism. Simply put, American empire is not sustainable.

For Barber, the logic of globalization trumps the logic of empire: the spread of McWorld undermines imperial grand strategy. In most aspects of economic and political life, the United States depends heavily on other states. The world is thus too complex and interdependent to be ruled from an imperial center. In an empire of fear, the United States attempts to order the world through force of arms. But this strategy is self-defeating: it creates hostile states bent on overturning the imperial order, not obedient junior partners.

Barber proposes instead a cosmopolitan order of universal law rooted in human community: “Lex humana works for global comity within the framework of universal rights and law, conferred by multilateral political, economic, and cultural cooperation — with only as much common military action as can be authorized by common legal authority; whether in the Congress, in multilateral treaties, or through the United Nations.” Terrorist threats, Barber concludes, are best confronted with a strategy of “preventive democracy” — democratic states working together to strengthen and extend liberalism.

Barber’s overly idealized vision of cosmopolitan global governance is less convincing, however, than his warnings about unilateral military rule. Indeed, he provides a useful cautionary note for liberal empire enthusiasts in two respects. First, the two objectives of liberal empire — upholding the rules of the international system and unilaterally employing military power against enemies of the American order — often conflict. As Barber shows, zealous policymakers often invoke the fear of terrorism to justify unilateral exercises of power that, in turn, undermine the rules and institutions they are meant to protect. Second, the threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are not enough to legitimate America’s liberal empire. During the Cold War, the United States articulated a vision of community and progress within a U.S.-led free world, infusing the exercise of U.S. power with legitimacy. It is doubtful, however, that the war on terrorism, in which countries are either “with us or against us,” has an appeal that can draw enough support to justify a U.S.-dominated order.

BALANCING ACT

Michael Mann also warns of a dangerous, and ultimately unsustainable, imperial turn in U.S. foreign policy. This “new imperialism,” he argues in Incoherent Empire, is driven by a radical vision in which unilateral military power enforces U.S. rule and overcomes global disorder.

Mann believes that this “imperial project” depends on a wildly inflated measure of American power; the United States may have awesome military muscle, but its political and economic capabilities are less overwhelming. This imbalance causes Washington to overemphasize the use of force, turning the quest for empire into “overconfident and hyperactive militarism.” Such militarism generates what Mann calls “incoherent empire,” which undermines U.S. leadership and creates more, not fewer, terrorists and rogue states.

In his distinguished scholarly work on the history of social power, Mann, a sociologist, has argued that four types of power drive the rise and fall of states, nations, empires, regions, and civilizations: military, political, economic, and ideological. Applying these categories to the United States, Mann concludes that it is, in a jumble of metaphors, “a military giant, a back-seat economic driver, a political schizophrenic, and an ideological phantom.”

Mann acknowledges that the United States is a central hub of the world economy and that the role of the dollar as the primary reserve currency confers significant advantages in economic matters. But the actual ability of Washington to use trade and aid as political leverage, he believes, is severely limited, as was evident in its failure to secure the support of countries such as Angola, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan in the Security Council before the war in Iraq. Moreover, Washington’s client states are increasingly unreliable, and the populations of erstwhile allies are inflamed with anti-Americanism. American culture and ideals, meanwhile, hold less appeal than they did in previous eras. Although the world still embraces the United States’ open society and basic freedoms, it increasingly complains about “cultural imperialism” and U.S. aggression. Nationalism and religious fundamentalism have forged deep cultures of resistance to an American imperial project.

Mann and Barber both make the important point that an empire built on military domination alone will not succeed. In their characterization, the United States offers security — acting as a global leviathan to control the problems of a Hobbesian world — in exchange for other countries’ acquiescence. Washington, in this imperial vision, refuses to play by the same rules as other governments and maintains that this is the price the world must pay for security. But this U.S.-imposed order cannot last. Barber points out that the United States has so much “business” with the rest of the world that it cannot rule the system without complex arrangements of cooperation. Mann, for his part, argues that military “shock and awe” merely increases resistance; he cites the sociologist Talcott Parsons, who long ago noted that raw power, unlike consensus authority, is “deflationary”: the more it is used, the more rapidly it diminishes.

EMPIRE UNRAVELLING

The French essayist Emmanuel Todd believes that the long-term decline predicted by Mann and Barber has already started. In a fit of French wishful thinking, he argues in After the Empire that the United States’ geopolitical importance is shrinking fast. The world is exiting, not entering, an era of U.S. domination. Washington may want to run a liberal empire, but the world is able and increasingly willing to turn its back on an ever less relevant United States.

Todd’s prediction derives from a creative — but ultimately suspect — view of global socioeconomic transformation. He acknowledges that the United States played a critical role in constructing the global economy in the decades after World War II. But in the process, Todd argues, new power centers with divergent interests and values emerged in Asia and Europe, while the United States’ own economy and society became weak and corrupt. The soft underbelly of U.S. power is its reluctance to take casualties and to pay the costs of rebuilding societies that it invades. Meanwhile, as U.S. democracy weakens, the worldwide spread of democracy has bolstered resistance to Washington. As Todd puts it, “At the very moment when the rest of the world — now undergoing a process of stabilization thanks to improvements in education, demographics, and democracy — is on the verge of discovering that it can get along without America, America is realizing that it cannot get along without the rest of the world.”

Two implications follow from the United States’ strange condition as “economically dependent and politically useless.” First, the United States is becoming a global economic predator, sustaining itself through an increasingly fragile system of “tribute taking.” It has lost the ability to couple its own economic gain with the economic advancement of other societies. Second, a weakened United States will resort to more desperate and aggressive actions to retain its hegemonic position. Todd identifies this impulse behind confrontations with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed, in his most dubious claim, Todd argues that the corruption of U.S. democracy is giving rise to a poorly supervised ruling class that will be less restrained in its use of military force against other democracies, those in Europe included. For Todd, all of this points to the disintegration of the American empire.

Todd is correct that the ability of any state to dominate the international system depends on its economic strength. As economic dominance shifts, American unipolarity will eventually give way to a new distribution of power. But, contrary to Todd’s diagnosis, the United States retains formidable socioeconomic advantages. And his claim that a rapacious clique of frightened oligarchs has taken over U.S. democracy is simply bizarre. Most important, Todd’s assertion that Russia and other great powers are preparing to counterbalance U.S. power misses the larger patterns of geopolitics. Europe, Japan, Russia, and China have sought to engage the United States strategically, not simply to resist it. They are pursuing influence and accommodation within the existing order, not trying to overturn it. In fact, the great powers worry more about a detached, isolationist United States than they do about a United States bent on global rule. Indeed, much of the pointed criticism of U.S. unilateralism reflects a concern that the United States will stop providing security and stability, not a hope that it will decline and disappear.

RULERS OR RULES?

Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson’s liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson’s military empire. But ultimately, the notion of empire is misleading — and misses the distinctive aspects of the global political order that has developed around U.S. power.

The United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery. But U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when “neo” or “liberal” modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate within a “security community” in which the use or threat of force is unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political order built on bargains, diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working relationships. This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has no name or historical antecedent.

To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to appreciate the role of cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its legitimacy as the preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes, the American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire. Thus, there are limits on American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era.

Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important international development of recent years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war. Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so too does the unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an international order. The United States’ success stems from the creation and extension of international institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.

The United States is now caught in a struggle between liberal rule and imperial rule. Both impulses lie deep within the American body politic. But the dangers and costs of running the world as an American empire are great, and the nation’s deep faith in the rule of law is undiminished. When all is said and done, Americans are less interested in ruling the world than they are in creating a world of rules.

Folks,

Here’s another article about the inner political workings of Saudi Arabia, with a bit more detail than the last one. Why is this important? Because 3/4 of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and because the Saudis are one of the few players in global oil and gas supply who have enough excess production capacity that they can open and close the spigot as needed, thus controlling the global oil markets and counterbalancing major fluctuations therein. Never mind Iraq. Never mind Afghanistan and Korea. Never mind Libya. We should be watching the Saudi kingdom above all, because, for the time being at least, our future and theirs are inextricably linked.

–CAdapt or die