Voor al die mensen die zo graag goed willen zijn door een land plat te bombarderen, lees dit:
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
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