Since the I950s, as we have moved from crisis to
crisis, the constitutional responsibilities of the Congress have been eroded in
dangerous measure by the diversion of power to the President and the Joint
Chiefs and the Department of State.
It seems to me we have grown distressingly used to
war… War and the military have become a part of our environment, like
pollution.
Violence is our most important product. We have been
spending nearly $80 billion a year on the military, which is more than the
profits of all American business, or, to make another comparison, is almost as
much as the total spending of the federal, state, and local governments for
health, education, old age and retirement benefits, housing, and agriculture.
Until the past session of the Congress, these billions have been provided to
the military with virtually no questions asked.
The military has been operating for years in that
Elysium of the public relations man, a seller's market. Take the climate into
which the Sentinel ABM program was introduced. Many people looked on it, as
they now look on Safeguard, not as a weapon but as a means of prosperity. For
the industrialist it meant profits; for the worker new jobs and the prospect of
higher wages; for the politician a new installation or defense order with which
to ingratiate himself with his constituents… There are 22,000 major corporate
defense contractors and another 100,000 subcontractors. Defense plants or
installations are located in 363 of the country's 435 congressional districts.
Even before it turns its attention to the public-at-large, the military has a
large and sympathetic audience for its message.
These millions of Americans who have a vested interest
in the expensive weapons systems spawned by our global military involvements
are as much a part of the military-industrial complex as the generals and the
corporation heads. In turn they have become a powerful force for the
perpetuation of those involvements, and have had an indirect influence on a
weapons development policy that has driven the United States into a spiraling
arms race with the Soviet Union and made us the world's major salesman of
armaments…
Militarism has been creeping up on us during the past
thirty years… Today we have more than 3.5 million men in uniform and nearly 28
million veterans of the armed forces in the civilian population… The American
public has become so conditioned by crises, by warnings, by words that there
are few, other than the young, who protest against what is happening.
The situation is such that last year Senator Allen J.
Ellender of Louisiana, hardly an apostle of the New Left, felt constrained to
say:
‘For almost twenty years now, many of us in the
Congress have more or less blindly followed our military spokesmen. Some have
become captives of the military. We are on the verge of turning into a military
nation.’
This militarism that has crept up on us is bringing about profound changes in the character of our society and government-changes that are slowly undermining democratic procedure and values.
James
William Fulbright. The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine. 1971
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/Pentagon_Propaganda_JWF.html En: http://eca.state.gov/fulbright/about-fulbright/history/j-william-fulbright
Senator William Fulbright
sprak uit ervaring, hij was de ‘longest serving chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee,’ en 30 jaar lang lid van het Amerikaanse
Congres. De vooraanstaande joods Amerikaanse criticus van Israelische staat Alfred M. Lilienthal schreef over hem:
The one senator
who, over many years, consistently refused to bow to Zionist pressures and who
defied the Israeli lobby was Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J.
William Fulbright. He incurred Zionist wrath when he stated on ‘Face the Nation’
in 1973 that: ‘The Israelis control the policy of the Congress and the Senate
... Somewhere around 80% of the Senate of the U.S. is completely in support of
Israel-of anything Israel wants...’
Jews in Arkansas
blasted the Senator: Fulbright's rival in the May 1974 Democratic primary,
Governor Dale Bumpers boasted:
'I could have
bought central Arkansas with the offers of money from the Jewish community ...
The offer of assistance came from people in New York and California who had
raised a lot of money in the Jewish community for political purposes.’
To the great
satisfaction of the lobby, this flow of money helped defeat Senator Fulbright
and return him to private life. But this victory in the long run may turn out
to be only a Pyrrhic one for American Jews.
In a memorable
speech on the floor of the Senate, Mr Fulbright had placed ‘the whipsawing of
foreign policy by certain minority groups to the detriment of the national
interest’ in its broader, historical perspective:
‘Mr. President,
this nation has welcomed millions of immigrants from abroad. In the 19th
century we were called the melting pot, and we were proud of that description.
It meant that there came to this land people of diverse creeds, colors and
races. These immigrants became good Americans, and their ethnic or religious
origins were of secondary importance. But in recent years we have seen the rise
of organizations dedicated apparently, not to America, but to foreign states
and groups. The conduct of foreign policy for America has been seriously
compromised in this development. We can survive this development, Mr.
President, only if our political institutions-and the Senate in particular-
retain their objectivity and their independence so that they can serve all
Americans.’
But as long as
legislative staff members kept their Jewishness uppermost in mind, vital
objectivity could never be accomplished.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, likewise, has done its share in ‘converting’ congressmen at critical moments. Opposition to sending the deadly C-3 concussion bombs to the Zionist state immediately brought overt suggestions from the ADL that opponents were secretly anti-Semitic. ‘That's the perversive force they strike at in the hearts of members up here,’ one Capitol Hill aide was quoted as saying. ‘If you're in opposition to anything Israel wants, you get a big white paintbrush that says you're anti-Semitic.’
Senator Fulbright’s visie
dat ‘violence is our most important product’ staat
lijnrecht tegenover de bewering van Geert Mak dat de VS na de Tweede
Wereldoorlog ‘decennialang als
ordebewaker en politie agent [fungeerde],’ en dat de ‘Amerikaanse soft power… de agenda van de
wereldpolitiek’ bepaalt. Ik heb in de vorige
afleveringen laten zien dat Mak’s oordeel wat betreft de periode 1945 tot 1990
niet gebaseerd is op feiten, maar op de officiele propaganda van de mainstream.
Laten we nu de periode 1990-2000 onder de loep nemen.
Iraq, 1990s:
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the
most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern
capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the
most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted
uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and
biological weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a
degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately;
the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions
continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million
children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may
have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: ‘It's been a leading, driving
doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled
energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United
States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force
will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil
production and price. ‘
Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan,
carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many
people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a
government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th
century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that
the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against
this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to
this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet
intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and
the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three
million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S.
support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud
and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took
to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an
advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more
active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in
helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over
combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground
fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian
deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social
change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the
country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing
death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then
opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was
working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With
this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward
position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that
they supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in
a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years,
Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after
obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense
of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This
meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western
Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.
Yugoslavia, 1999:
The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era.
It would like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by ‘humanitarian’
impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions can help one decide
how much weight to place on this claim.
Hoewel deze agressie wordt
verkocht als ‘responsibility to protect,’ of ‘humanitair ingrijpen’
dan wel ‘vredesmissies,’ of de ‘verspreiding van democratie en
mensenrechten’ zijn deze termen in de praktijk niet meer dan een
politiek wapen om westers geweld te legitimeren. De Amerikaanse geleerde James
Peck wees hierop in zijn uitgebreid gedocumenteerde studie Ideal Illusions. How The U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights:
‘Holding high the banner of
human rights’ became a way to quiet the
growing alarm that America’s ‘arrogance of power,’ in Senator J. William Fulbright’s phrase,
reflected a global imperial ethos. The United States would again become a
nation ‘for others to admire and to emulate,’ Carter promised, with human rights as a ‘beacon of something that
would rally our citizens to a cause.’
Apparently ‘holding high the human rights
banner’ did not require looking too
closely at the nation's actions in Vietnam. As president, Carter largely
avoided mentioning war crimes and human rights violations in the Vietnam War –
even such egregious ones as free-fire zones (where soldiers could shoot
unidentified civilians at will), tiger cages (cramped cells in which prisoners
were tortured), Operation Phoenix (for assassinating National Liberation Front
members and sympathizers in the South), or the massive bombings of Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia. Nor did he ever question American intentions: ‘we
went there to defend the freedom of the Vietnamese,’ he insisted, ‘without any desire to impose American will on
another people.’ Vietnam was ‘a
moral crisis,’ he said, because we ‘stooped’
to acting like Communists, ‘abandoning
our own values for theirs’; but by
reaffirming our values in the light of human rights, we could reestablish our
claims to moral leadership.
Toen ik James Peck in januari 2012 interviewde over de
continuiteit van het geweld in de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek, zei hij
ondermeer het volgende:
In de Verenigde Staten speelden de mensenrechten als
actiemiddel tot het einde van de jaren zestig, begin jaren zeventig geen rol
van betekenis in de publieke opinie. En toen ze belangrijk werden, kwam dit
door twee redenen. Eén ervan was de impact van de oorlog in Vietnam, waardoor
onder andere de anticommunistische beginselen onwerkzaam werden, en de vraag
moest worden beantwoord of Vietnam simpelweg een aberratie was van de
Amerikaanse politiek dan wel een kenmerkend onderdeel ervan. De andere reden,
waarvan de nationale veiligheidswereld diep doordrongen was, was het besef dat
de wereld zeer snel veranderde, met name in de media en in het bedrijfsleven,
en dat het onrecht en de gruweldaden niet meer gelegitimeerd konden worden door
het anticommunisme. Zo werden mensenrechten, die eerst geassocieerd waren met
de positie van joden in de Sovjet Unie, al snel in het Congres en de media
gekoppeld aan Vietnam als aberratie van de Amerikaanse macht. De gedachte werd
gepropageerd dat als we maar naar onze idealen zouden leven, als we ons zouden
houden aan het recht, de oorlogsmisdaden niet zouden plaatsvinden. Op die
manier kon het beeld ontstaan dat wat er in Vietnam gebeurde niet het ware
Amerika vertegenwoordigde en kon de werkelijkheid worden versluierd. Voor
iemand van mijn generatie die opgroeide in de jaren zestig, waren er twee grote
bewegingen in de Verenigde Staten. Eén ervan was de vredesbeweging van een
omvang die wij hier nooit eerder hadden gezien. Die beweging stelde niet alleen
Vietnam ter discussie maar ook een reeks andere kwesties met betrekking tot
oorlog en agressie. Daarbij werd verwezen naar het Proces van Neurenberg dat in
1945 de nadruk had gelegd op het verschijnsel agressieoorlog. omdat daaruit al
het andere kwaad was voortgevloeid. Niet de mensenrechten stonden toen
centraal, maar de misdaden tegen de vrede. In de jaren zestig werd het militair
industrieel complex een vraagstuk, de groeiende kloof tussen arm en rijk en de
reikwijdte van de Amerikaanse macht.
Nog fundamenteler was de vraag of de Verenigde Staten
de belangrijkste macht op de planeet moest zijn, stuk voor stuk kwesties die
Martin Luther King zo overtuigend aan de orde had gesteld. Wat ik zag was dat
vele overtuigde mensenrechtenactivisten die ten tonele verschenen nog voordat
de Amerikaanse mensenrechtenorganisaties waren ontstaan – Amnesty International
was in Europa opgericht – zich begonnen af te keren van deze fundamentele
vraagstukken. Dat wil zeggen: ze hielden zich niet bezig met de kwesties van
oorlog en het militair industrieel complex, maar met de vraag hoe de macht van
de Verenigde Staten weer een morele macht kon worden, in feite het werkelijke
thema van Jimmy Carter die als eerste president mensenrechten als politiek
instrument van Amerikaans buitenlands beleid inzette. De andere grote
ontwikkeling was de burgerrechtenbeweging die de rassenscheiding in het Zuiden
wilde breken. Natuurlijk konden Amerikanen niet voor mensenrechten in het
buitenland pleiten zolang die segregatie bleef bestaan; ze was een bespotting
van de Amerikaanse aanspraak op hegemonie. Maar dat was zeker niet alles. Op
een dieper niveau ging het King en vele anderen die hem steunden om gelijkheid.
Dit betekende niet alleen het hebben van mogelijkheden om gelijkwaardig deel te
kunnen nemen aan de samenleving, wat dat ook in de praktijk moge betekenen.
Gelijkheid betekende een herverdeling van rijkdom en macht. Het betekende een
kritiek op de macht van de grote concerns en het zoeken naar manieren waarop
burgers gemobiliseerd konden worden om politiek actief te kunnen zijn waardoor
fundamentele veranderingen mogelijk zouden worden. Ik noem met enige nadruk
Martin Luther King omdat hij weliswaar een betrekkelijk gematigde man was wiens
visie een groot publiek bereikte, maar die desalniettemin ongezouten kritiek op
het systeem leverde door bijvoorbeeld te betogen dat een maatschappij die haar
oplossingen probeert te zoeken in de marktideologie, en tegelijkertijd een
maatschappij is die zoveel geld besteedt aan militaire middelen, een
samenleving is die de ziel doodt. Dit waren fundamentele vraagstukken die snel
naar de achtergrond verdwenen toen mensenrechten de boventoon begonnen te
voeren. Het gevolg is dat de opkomst van de mensenrechten de afgelopen veertig
jaar gepaard is gegaan met de wereldwijde toename van extreme ongelijkheid, de
ontzagwekkende uitbreiding van de Amerikaanse macht, en het onvermogen om de
enorme concentratie van privébezit te beheersen. Daarom vond ik het de moeite
waard deze ontwikkeling te onderzoeken en te analyseren.
http://stanvanhoucke.net/audioblog/pivot/entry.php?id=45#body Een interview met hem
uit januari 2012 kunt u lezen in mijn boek De val van het Amerikaanse
imperium
Kort samengevat kan zonder
overdrijven worden gesteld dat Mak’s stellige bewering dat de VS ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politie agent
[fungeerde],’ wat betreft de jaren ’45 tot 2000 niets
anders is dan een leugen. Het beste is misschien wel om deze propaganda van de
blanke domineeszoon Geert Mak te confronteren met de visie van dominee Martin
Luther King, volgens Mak in moreel opzicht ‘een groot voorbeeld’ voor de mensheid. Bijna een halve eeuw geleden, februari 1967, verklaarde King:
I would like to speak to you
candidly and forthrightly this afternoon about our present involvement in Viet
Nam. I have chosen as a subject, ‘The Casualties of the War In Viet Nam.’ We
are all aware of the nightmarish physical casualties. We see them in our living
rooms in all of their tragic dimensions on television screens, and we read
about them on our subway and bus rides in daily newspaper accounts. We see the
rice fields of a small Asian country being trampled at will and burned at whim:
we see grief-stricken mothers with crying babies clutched in their arms as they
watch their little huts burst forth into flames; we see the fields and valleys
of battle being painted with humankind's blood; we see the broken bodies left
prostrate in countless fields; we see young men being sent home
half-men--physically handicapped and mentally deranged. Most tragic of all is
the casualty list among children. Some one million Vietnamese children have
been casualties of this brutal war. A war in which children are incinerated by
napalm, in which American soldiers die in mounting numbers while other American
soldiers, according to press accounts, in unrestrained hatred shoot the wounded
enemy as they lie on the ground, is a war that mutilates the conscience. These
casualties are enough to cause all men to rise up with righteous indignation
and oppose the very nature of this war.
But the physical casualties of
the war in Viet Nam are not alone the catastrophies. The casualties of principles
and values are equally disastrous and injurious…
One of the first casualties of
the war in Viet Nam was the Charter of the United Nations…
It is very obvious that our
government blatantly violated its obligation under the charter of the United Nations
to submit to the Security Council its charge of aggression against North Viet
Nam. Instead we unilaterally launched an all-out war on Asian soil. In the
process we have undermined the purpose of the United Nations and caused its
effectiveness to atrophy. We have also placed our nation in the position of
being morally and politically isolated…
But honesty impells me to admit
that our power has often made us arrogant. We feel that our money can do
anything. We arrogantly feel that we have everything to teach other nations and
nothing to learn from them. We often arrogantly feel that we have some divine,
messianic mission to police the whole world. We are arrogant in not allowing
young nations to go through the same growing pains, turbulence and revolution
that characterized cur history. We are arrogant in our contention that we have
some sacred mission to protect people from totalitarian rule, while we make
little use of our power to end the evils of South Africa and Rhodesia, and
while we are in fact supporting dictatorships with guns and money under the
guise of fighting Communism. We are arrogant in professing to be concerned
about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order.
Many of our Senators and Congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of
dollars for war in Viet Nam, and these same Senators and Congressmen vote
loudly against a Fair Housing Bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of
Viet Nam to purchase a decent home. We arm Negro soldiers to kill on foreign
battlefields, but offer little protection for their relatives from beatings and
killings in our own south. We are willing to make the Negro 100% of a citizen
in warfare, but reduce him to 50% of a citizen on American soil. Of all the
good things in life the Negro has approximately one half those of whites; of
the bad he has twice that of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in
substandard housing and Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to
the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice
as many unemployed. The infant mortality rate is double that of white. There
are twice as many Negroes in combat in Viet Nam at the beginning of 1967 and
twice as many died in action (20.6%) in proportion to their numbers in the
population as whites.
All of this reveals that our nation has not yet used its vast resources of power to end the long night of poverty, racism and man's inhumanity to man… A fifth casualty of the war in Viet Nam is the principle of dissent. An ugly repressive sentiment to silence peace-seekers depicts advocates of immediate negotiation under terms of the Geneva agreement and persons who call for a cessation of bombings in the north as quasi-traitors, fools or venal enemies of our soldiers and institutions. Free speech and the privilege of dessent and discussion are rights being shot down by Bombers in Viet Nam. When those who stand for peace are so villified it is time to consider where we are going and whether free speech has not become one of the major casualties of the war…
Wat blijft er over van Mak’s
bewering dat de Verenigde Staten als ‘vitale… democratie… decennialang
als ordebewaker en politieagent’ in de wereld ‘fungeerde’? Morgen
daarover meer wanneer ik de feiten van de jaren 2000-2013 kort op een rij zal
zetten aan de hand van langdurige onderzoeken van Amerikaanse intellectuelen.
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