[E]xceptionalisme is een vast onderdeel van de Amerikaanse identiteit. Het is ons vitale belang, en daarom onze plicht, er alles aan te doen dat het zich zo manifesteert dat het internationale systeem er stabieler van wordt. Voorlopig schieten we daarin tekort,
aldus de universitair docent Ruud van Dijk in zijn opiniestuk 'Amerika is nog steeds de onmisbare natie' in de Volkskrant van 19 december 2015. De redenen waarom de VS als — in de woorden van Geert Mak — 'ordebewaker en politieagent' van de wereld dient op te treden, zijn volgens academicus Van Dijk de volgende:
In de eerste plaats omdat de liberaal-democratische orde van onze tijd grotendeels op Amerikaanse initiatieven teruggaat. Amerika zit in het dna van het internationale systeem. Verder hebben de VS sinds 1945 een centrale rol gespeeld bij handhaving en uitbouw. Het is daarom twijfelachtig of de diverse internationale verbanden, juist ook in hun onderlinge samenhang, effectief kunnen blijven zonder Amerikaanse voortrekkersrol.
Van Dijk's bewering dat er sprake is van 'de liberaal-democratische orde van onze tijd' is een propagandistische leugen, zoals hijzelf weet, tenzij feiten niet tot zijn bewustzijn kunnen doordringen. In 1953 bracht de VS de regering van de democratisch gekozen Perzische premier Mossadeq ten val nadat het parlement de Britse oliebronnen in Perzië had genationaliseerd. Als de lezer wil weten hoe de CIA vanuit de VS de gebeurtenissen in Iran manipuleerde, dan adviseer ik het goed geïnformeerde boek All the Shah's Men, an American coup and the roots of middle east terror (2008) te raadplegen van de Amerikaanse voormalige New York Times-correspondent, Stephen Kinzer. Kinzer, die nu Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek doceert aan Boston University, toont in zijn uitgebreid gedocumenteerde 'National Bestseller' aan dat
By violently pushing Iran off the path to democracy in 1953, the United States created a whirlpool of instability from which undreamed-of threats emerged years later.
De toenmalige Amerikaanse interventie, een ernstige schending van het internationaal recht, heeft de basis gelegd voor de huidige chaos in het Midden-Oosten, zoals ook de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Robert Dreyfuss concludeerde in zijn boek Devil's Game. How the United States helped unleash fundamentalist islam (2005).
The central theme of this book is that the Islamic right was seen as a valuable U.S. ally during the Cold War... There is an unwritten chapter in the history of the Cold War and the New World Order that followed. It is the story of how the United States -- sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly -- funded and encouraged right-wing Islamist activism. Devil's Game attempts to fill in that vital missing link.
Gezien het feit dat Ruud van Dijk 'History of International Relations' doceert en 'courses in the history of recent international relations, but also… American Studies (in Dutch and English). I am also the coordinator of the BA and MA programs in the History of International Relations,' mag ik ervan uitgaan dat hij op de hoogte is van het feit dat de VS in 1954 de regering van de democratisch gekozen president Jacobo Arbenz ten val bracht, nadat hij het grootgrondbezit aan banden wilde leggen. Ook de gevolgen van die interventie, een misdaad aangezien zij een ernstige schending was van de soevereiniteit van een ander land, zijn vandaag de dag nog merkbaar. Op 26 november 2010 schreef ik op mijn weblog het volgende:
Voor me op mijn bureau ligt een brief van Unicef, het kinderfonds van de wereldgemeenschap. Op de enveloppe staat:
Bijna 1 miljoen kinderen in Guatemala zijn ondervoed. Zij willen maar één ding: zonder honger naar bed.
Dit is het resultaat van de politiek van Washington en Wall Street. Wikipedia schetst de achtergrond, die noodzakelijk is om te beseffen hoe exemplarisch het geval Guatemala is wat betreft de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek, en hoe propagandistisch Ruud van Dijk's beweringen zijn:
Colonel Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. September 14, 1913 – January 27, 1971) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as Defense Minister of Guatemala from 1944–1951, and as President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954.
He was ousted in a coup d'état engineered by the United States government and CIA, and was replaced by a military junta, headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo.
He went into exile after the coup and died in Mexico in 1971...
Historical background
In the 1890s, the United States began to implement the Monroe Doctrine, pushing out European colonial powers and establishing U.S. hegemony over resources and labor in Latin American nations. The dictators that ruled Guatemala during the late 19th and early 20th century were generally very accommodating to U.S. business and political interests. So unlike other Latin American nations, such as Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba, the U.S. did not have to use overt military force to maintain dominance in Guatemala, and the Guatemalan military/police worked closely with the U.S. military and State Department to secure U.S. interests. The Guatemalan government exempted several U.S. corporations from paying taxes, privatized and sold off publicly owned utilities, and gave away huge swaths of public land.
In 1930, the dictator General Jorge Ubico came to power, backed by the United States, and initiated one of the most brutally repressive governments in Central American history. He created a widespread network of spies and informants, and had large numbers of political opponents tortured and put to death. A wealthy aristocrat (with an estimated income of $215,000 per year, in 1930s dollars) and a staunch anti-communist, he consistently sided with landowners and urban elites in disputes with peasants. He implemented a system of debt slavery and forced labor, and passed laws allowing landowners to execute workers as a 'disciplinary' measure. He also openly identified as a fascist; he admired Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler, saying at one point: 'I am like Hitler. I execute first and ask questions later.' Ubico was disdainful of the indigenous population, calling them 'animal-like,' and stated that to become 'civilized' they needed mandatory military training, comparing it to 'domesticating donkeys.' He gave away hundreds of thousands of hectares to the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and exempted them from taxes, and allowed the U.S. military to establish bases in Guatemala.
Ubico considered himself to be 'another Napoleon.' He dressed ostentatiously, and surrounded himself with statues and paintings of the emperor, regularly commenting on the similarities between their appearances. He militarized numerous political and social institutions — including the post office, schools, and symphony orchestras — and placed military officers in charge of many government posts. He frequently travelled around the country performing 'inspections,' in dress uniform, followed by a military escort, a mobile radio station, an official biographer, and cabinet members.
Ubico's repressive policies and arrogant demeanor eventually led to a widespread popular insurrection, led by middle-class intellectuals, professionals, and junior army officers. In July 1, 1944 Ubico resigned from office amidst a general strike and nationwide protests. Initially, he had planned to hand over power to the former director of police, General Roderico Anzueto, who he felt he could control. But his advisors noted that Anzueto's pro-Nazi sympathies had made him very unpopular, and that he would not be able to control the military. So Ubico instead chose to select a triumvirate of Major General Bueneventura Piñeda, Major General Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, and General Federico Ponce Vaides. The three generals promised to convene the national assembly to hold an election for a provisional president, but when the congress met on July 3, soldiers held everyone at gunpoint and forced them to vote for General Ponce, rather than the popular civilian candidate Dr. Ramón Calderón. Ponce, who had previously retired from military service due to alcoholism, took orders from Ubico and kept many of the officials who had worked in the Ubico administration. The repressive policies of the Ubico administration were continued.
Opposition groups began organizing again, this time joined by many prominent political and military leaders, who deemed the Ponce regime unconstitutional. Among the military officers in the opposition were Jacobo Árbenz and Major Franciso Javier Araña. Ubico had fired Árbenz from his teaching post at the Escuela Politécnica, and since then Árbenz had been in El Salvador, organizing a band of revolutionary exiles. On October 19, 1944 a small group of soldiers and students, led by Árbenz and Arana, attacked the National Palace.
By 1950, a handful of U.S. corporations controlled Guatemala's primary electrical utilities, the nation's only railroad, and the banana industry, which was Guatemala's chief agricultural export industry. By the mid-1940s, Guatemalan banana plantations accounted for more than one quarter of all of United Fruit Company's production in Latin America.
Election
In March 1951, Árbenz assumed the presidency after Guatemala's second-ever universal-suffrage election, marking the first peaceful transition of power in Guatemala's history. He campaigned as a reformer and garnered 60% of the vote by promising to make Guatemala an economically independent, socialist state that would shed its colonial-era dependence on the U.S. His predecessor, Juan José Arévalo, had successfully begun a series of reforms to open the political process to all citizens. Arévalo's extension of voting and labor rights threatened the power of the traditional elite and led to more than twenty failed coup attempts to oust him.
Land reform
Arbenz set land reform as his central goal as only 2 % of the population owned 70 % of the land.
Árbenz continued Arévalo's reform agenda and, in June 1952, his government enacted an agrarian reform program. The agrarian reform law (decree 900) gave the government power to expropriate only uncultivated portions of large plantations. Estates of up to 670 acres (2.7 km2) were exempted if at least two-thirds of the land was cultivated; also exempt were lands that had a slope of more than 30 degrees (a significant exemption in mountainous Guatemala). The land was then allocated to individual families. Owners of expropriated land were compensated according to the worth of the land claimed in May 1952 tax assessments. Land was paid for in twenty-five year bonds with a 3 percent interest rate. Arbenz himself, a landowner through his wife, gave up 1,700 acres (7 km2) of his own land in the land reform program.
While Árbenz's proposed agenda was welcomed by impoverished peasants who made up the majority of Guatemala's population, it provoked the ire of the upper landowning classes, powerful U.S. corporate interests, and factions of the military, who accused Árbenz of bowing to Communist influence. This tension resulted in noticeable unrest in the country. Carlos Castillo, an army officer, rebelled at the Aurora airport in the early 1950s, was defeated and shot, surviving his injuries. Castillo then spent some time in a Guatemalan prison before escaping and going into exile in 1951.
Excavation by Human Rights investigators at a massacre site of civilians killed by Guatemalan soldiers during the country's civil war. Quiche, Guatemala.
Coup
May 1975 CIA internal memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act, describing the CIA's role in the overthrow of Árbenz. Instability, combined with Árbenz's relative tolerance of Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT) and other leftists influences, prompted the CIA to draw up a contingency plan entitled Operation PBFORTUNE in 1951. It outlined a method of ousting Árbenz if he were deemed a Communist threat in the hemisphere.
The United Fruit Company — now renamed Chiquita — a U.S.-based corporation, was also threatened by Árbenz's land reform initiative. United Fruit was Guatemala's largest landowner, with 85% of its holdings uncultivated, vulnerable to Árbenz's reform plans. In calculating its tax obligations, United Fruit had consistently (and drastically) undervalued the worth of its holdings. In its 1952 taxes, it claimed its land was only worth $3 per acre. When, in accordance with United Fruit's tax claims, the Árbenz government offered to compensate the company at the $3 rate, the company claimed the land's true value was $75/acre but refused to explain the precipitous jump in its own determination of the land's value.
In 1952, the Guatemalan Party of Labour was legalized; Communists subsequently gained considerable minority influence over important peasant organizations and labor unions, but not over the governing political party and won only four seats in the 58-seat governing body. The CIA, having drafted Operation PBFORTUNE, was already concerned about Árbenz's potential Communist ties. United Fruit had been lobbying the CIA to oust reform governments in Guatemala since Arévalo's time but it wasn't until the Eisenhower administration that it found an ear in the White House. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration was still flush with victory from its covert operation to topple the Mossadegh government in Iran the year before. On February 19, 1954, the CIA began Operation WASHTUB, a plan to plant a phony Soviet arms cache in Nicaragua to demonstrate Guatemalan ties to Moscow.
As it happened, WASHTUB was unnecessary. In May 1954, Czechoslovak weaponry arrived in secret into Guatemala aboard the Swedish ship Alfhem. The ship's manifests had been falsified as to the nature of its cargo. The U.S. took this as final proof of Árbenz's Soviet links. The Czechoslovaks supplied, for cash down, obsolete and barely functional German WWII weaponry.
'The direct contacts between the Soviet Union and the Árbenz Government consisted of one Soviet diplomat working out an exchange of bananas for agricultural machinery, which fell through because neither side had refrigerated ships. The only other evidence of contact the CIA found after the operation were two bills to the Guatemalan Communist Party from a Moscow bookstore, totalling $22.95.'
The Árbenz government was convinced a U.S.-sponsored invasion was imminent: it had previously released detailed accounts of the CIA's Operation PBFORTUNE (called the White Papers) and perceived US actions at the OAS convention in Caracas that year as a lead-up to intervention. The administration ordered the CIA to sponsor a coup d'état, code-named Operation PBSUCCESS that toppled the government. Árbenz resigned on June 27, 1954 and was forced to flee, seeking refuge in the Mexican Embassy.
After the coup, Frank Wisner organized an operation called PBHistory to secure Árbenz Government documents. PBHistory aimed to prove Soviet control of Guatemala and, in so doing, hopefully provide actionable intelligence with regard to other Soviet connections and personnel in Latin America. Wisner sent two teams who, with the help of the Army and Castillo Armas's junta, gathered 150,000 documents. Ronald M. Schneider, an extra-Agency researcher who later examined the PBHistory documents, found no traces of Soviet control and substantial evidence that Guatemalan Communists acted alone, without support or guidance from outside the country.
De interventies in Iran en Guatemala zijn exemplarisch voor de drijfveren achter de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Het draait daarbij allereerst om het veiligstellen en globaliseren van de financiële belangen van de grote concerns en banken, het beschermen van de markten en de noodzakelijke grondstoffen om het winstprincipe in stand te houden. Er is daarom geen sprake van een 'liberaal-democratische orde,' die volgens de apodictische Ruud van Dijk 'grotendeels op Amerikaanse initiatieven teruggaat.' Een ander bewijs dat een docent van de 'Capaciteitsgroep Geschiedenis' van de UVA de geschiedschrijving verkracht is de Amerikaanse steun in 1973 aan de militaire staatsgreep die een einde maakte aan de democratisch gekozen Allende-regering van Chili. De bekende Britse onderzoeksjournalist Christopher Hitchens beschreef deze terreur als volgt in zijn tevens in het Nederlands verschenen boek De Zaak Henry Kissinger. (2002):
De naam Allende was een gruwel voor extreem-rechts in Chili, voor een aantal grote bedrijven (met name ITT, Pepsi-Cola en de Chase Manhattan Bank) die zaken deed in Chili en de Verenigde Staten, en voor de CIA. Deze afkeer deelde zich al snel mee aan president Nixon. Hij had een persoonlijke verplichting aan Donald Kendall, de president-directeur van Pepsi-Cola, die hem zijn eerste bedrijfsaccount had gegeven toen hij als jonge jurist was toegetreden tot het advocatenkantoor van John Mitchell in New York. In een reeks gesprekken in Washington, binnen elf dagen na Allendes verkiezingsoverwinning, werd in feite het lot van de Chileense democratie bezegeld. Na ontmoetingen met Kendall, met David Rockefeller van Chase Manhattan, en met CIA-directeur Richard Helms ging Kissinger met Helms naar de president. Uit de aantekeningen die Helms van dit gesprek maakte, blijkt dat Nixon van zijn hart geen moordkuil maakte. Allende mocht geen president worden. 'Kan me niet schelen hoe riskant. Ambassade erbuiten laten. 10.000.000 dollar beschikbaar, zo nodig meer. Fulltime karwei – beste mensen die we hebben […] Laat de economie kermen. 48 uur voor plan de campagne.' Uit vrijgegeven documenten blijkt dat Kissinger — die zich nooit eerder voor Chili had geïnteresseerd en het land losweg typeerde als 'een dolk die op het hart van Antarctica was gericht' — met beide handen deze kans aangreep om indruk te maken op zijn baas. In Langley, in de staat Virginia, werd een werkgroep gevormd die tot doel had een 'tweesporen-politiek' voor Chili te voeren: één die schijnbaar volgens de diplomatieke regels verliep, en een tweede — buiten medeweten van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken en de Amerikaanse ambassadeur in Chili, Edward Korry — een strategie van destabilisatie, ontvoering en moord, met het doel een militaire staatsgreep uit te lokken.’
Onder: Pinochet en Kissinger. Why the State Department Finally Confirmed Augusto Pinochet’s Role in International Terrorism. It’s a great way of using US documents to advance the cause of human rights and redress Washington’s dark, interventionist past. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-state-department-finally-confirmed-augusto-pinochets-role-in-international-terrorism/
In het kader van de algehele destabilisering van Chili werd ook de chef van de Chileense generale Staf, generaal René Schneider vermoord. Hij was namelijk ‘een onverbiddelijk tegenstander van elke militaire inmenging in het verkiezingsproces.’ Schneider werd opgevolgd door Pinochet, die als dictator 17 jaar lang met terreur, die duizenden Chilenen het leven kostte, over Chili heerste en wiens neoliberaal beleid, bedacht en uitgewerkt door de Chicago School of Economics, de kloof tussen arm en rijk almaar vergrootte. De Amerikaanse historicus William Blum maakte in 1999 in 'A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present' de volgende balans op:
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
- extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a 'great power.'
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
De lijst is inmiddels weer langer geworden, het schenden van de soevereiniteit van landen en de mensenrechten van bevolkingen elders is wat Nederlandse academici, politici en de mainstream-pers doorgaans betitelen als 'collateral damage,' dus 'bijkomende schade,' die nu eenmaal altijd optreedt wanneer andere volkeren met geweld gedwongen worden om Ruud van Dijk's 'liberaal-democratische orde van onze tijd' te accepteren. Vanuit dit perspectief dient de lezer Van Dijks volgende woorden op waarde te schatten:
De echte vraag is wat we zelf kunnen doen om de unilaterale en isolationistische impulsen in de VS tegen te gaan en de internationalisten te sterken.
Hier wordt de wereld door een universitair docent, uit naam van de wetenschap, ondersteboven gezet. 'Oorlog is vrede. Vrijheid is slavernij' en 'Onwetendheid is kracht.' In hedendaags jargon: 'Humanitair ingrijpen is zoveel mogelijk terreur toepassen.' Zodra het taalgebruik is uitgehold, de woorden hun oorspronkelijke betekenis hebben verloren en in het Westen de begrippen 'liberaal' en 'democratie' het tegenovergestelde zijn geworden van wat ze eens waren, treedt de fase van de ineenstorting aan, zo verklaarde tegenover mij de Amerikaanse intellectueel Lewis Lapham, decennialang de 'editor of Harper's Magazine,' en een journalist 'in the tradition of Mencken and Twain.' In zijn boek Waiting for the Barbarians (1997) vat hij de situatie aldus samen:
The empire collapses under the weight of its accumulated folly, its forum empty of politics, its orators as silent as the decorative marble, its principal citizens eager to buy the favor of a future with presents of amethysts and scrolls.
The spectacle was sufficiently familiar to the ancient Greeks that Aristotle accepted it as a proof of his hypothesis that the forms of government follow one another in a sequence as certain as the changing of the seasons — monarchy dissolving into despotism, despotism overthrown by democracy, democracy degenerating into anarchy, anarchy forcing the return of monarchy. He proceeded from the premise that all government, no matter what its name or form, incorporates the means in which the privileged few arrange the distribution of property and law to the less fortunate many. A government's longevity thus depends on the character of the oligarchy that supports its claims to legitimacy and pretensions to grandeur… Once the oligarchy has been made stupid with insolence (onbeschaamdheid. svh) and greed, it's only a matter of time — maybe two or three decades, never more than three or four generations — before the government reformulates itself under a new row of statues and a new set of glorious truths.
In dit vacuum functioneren de meeste leden van de 'vrije pers' en de 'waardevrije wetenschappers' als slippendragers van de gecorrumpeerde macht. Lapham:
The collapse of communism at the end of the Cold War removed from the world's political theater the last pretense of a principled opposition to the rule of money, and the pages of history suggest that oligarchy unhindered by conscience or common sense seldom takes much of an interest in the cause of civil liberty…
I thought of historian Sallust (Gaius Sallustius, Romeinse geschiedschrijver. leefde vóór begin jaartelling. svh) remarking on the fecklessness (lamlendigheid. svh) of the decadent Roman republic that reduced the rule of law to a flourish of pompous rhetoric. Sallusts description of Rome in 80 B.C.—a government controlled by wealth, a ruling-class numb to the repetitions of political scandal, a public diverted by chariot races and gladiatorial shows—stands as a fair summary of some of our own circumstances, but as premonition it is surpassed by the remarks of the bookseller Ruault, writing to his brother from Paris in the summer of 1786:
Money there must be, and there's an end to it; money for expenditure known and unknown; money for the ordinary and for the extraordinary; money for the five or six kings reigning in France who dip so generously into the public treasury; money for the king of Paris, the king of finance, the king of war, the king of the fleet, the king of foreign affairs, and the King of all these kings, who, they say, would be the thriftiest of them all if it weren't for his wife, his brothers, his cousins and so forth…
Finance has grown so powerful, so proud, so despotic that one must believe it can go no higher and must infallibly perish before many years have passed. When finance is honored, says Montesquieu, the state is lost. A fearful revolution is very imminent; we are very, very close to it, at any minute we been, that is self-evident. There is nothing but speculation, finance, banking, discount, borrowing, wagering, and payment. Every head is glued to money, crazy with speculation. A little patience, and we may see some pretty goings-on in 1800!
Anno 2016 is de tijdgeest die van 'the rule of force (more laws restricting the liberty of persons, fewer laws restraining the rights of property), and the locus of the hope for a brighter future,' een combinatie van het ongecontroleerde geweld van de staat en de onverzadigbare begeerte van de elite. Deze werkelijkheid wordt door de 'politiek-literaire elite,' waar volgens Hofland geen 'natie zonder [kan],' via de corrupte massamedia gepropageerd als 'de liberaal-democratische orde van onze tijd' die 'grotendeels op Amerikaanse initiatieven teruggaat,' waardoor 'Amerika in het dna van het internationale systeem [zit].' Daarentegen ervaren de miljarden slachtoffers in de wereld de Amerikaanse 'dna' als een fascistisch systeem, waarin het recht van de sterkste geldt. Tekenend voor Ruud van Dijk's woordkeuze is de suggestie dat de mens hier met een wetenschappelijke fenomeen te maken heeft, dat 'we' als het ware biologisch gedetermineerdheid zijn, aangezien het DNA 'fungeert als belangrijkste drager van erfelijke informatie.' Feit is echter dat we hier niet te maken hebben met een wetenschappelijk bewijsbaar verschijnsel, maar met simplistische propaganda, niet met een historisch feit, maar met een politieke mening. Wanneer Van Dijk in de Volkskrant beweert dat 'Washington nog altijd [streeft] naar een wereld waarin individuele vrijheden - fundamentele rechten van de mens - de norm zijn,' dan is dit een politieke stellingname die onwetenschappelijk is, dat wil zeggen: onbewijsbaar. Sterker nog: het is vrij eenvoudig voor een geschoold mens om aan te tonen dat Van Dijk's bewering een leugen is. Al in 1948 formuleerde George Kennan, de grondlegger van de 'containment-politiek,' het uitgangspunt van de Amerikaanse buitenland-politiek, als volgt:
Wij hebben ongeveer 50 procent van de rijkdommen in de wereld, maar slechts 6,3 procent van haar bevolking… In deze omstandigheden zullen we niet in staat zijn te voorkomen dat wij het voorwerp worden van jaloezie en haat. Onze werkelijke taak in het komende tijdperk is een netwerk van betrekkingen op te bouwen die ons in staat stelt deze positie van ongelijkheid te handhaven… Daartoe zullen wij alle sentimentaliteit en dagdromen opzij moeten zetten en dient onze aandacht overal geconcentreerd te zijn op onze directe nationale doelstellingen… We moeten ophouden te spreken over vage en… imaginaire doelstellingen als mensenrechten, het verhogen van de levensstandaard, en democratisering. De dag is niet veraf dat we in pure machtsconcepten moeten handelen. Hoe minder we daarbij gehinderd worden door idealistische slogans, des te beter het is.
Kennan schreef dit als Hoofd van het Planningbureau van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken in een toen nog geheim memorandum, waarvan de adviezen bijna integraal werden overgenomen door de Amerikaanse beleidsbepalers. Het tragische van Kennan is dat hij na een lang leven getuige te zijn geweest van Amerika’s machiavellistische realpolitik, waarvan hij zelf de basis legde, in 1989 een gedesillusioneerde terugblik schreef op zijn tijdperk. Aan het slot van zijn boek Sketches From A Life stelde hij somber vast:
Ik beschouw de Verenigde Staten van deze laatste jaren van de twintigste eeuw als een in wezen tragisch land, begiftigd met uitstekende natuurlijke hulpbronnen die het snel aan het verkwisten en uitputten is, en met een intellectuele en artistieke intelligentsia van groot talent en originaliteit. Voor deze intelligentsia hebben de dominante politieke machten in het land weinig begrip of respect. Haar stem wordt doorgaans tot zwijgen gebracht of overschreeuwd door de commerciële media. Het is waarschijnlijk veroordeeld om, net als de Russische intelligentsia in de negentiende eeuw, voorgoed een hulpeloze toeschouwer te blijven van de verontrustende koers in het leven van de natie.
De Amerikaanse historicus, professor Mark Atwood Lawrence, wees er in de New York Times van 8 september 2009 op dat
acceptance of containment also brought Kennan disappointments that haunted him until his death in 2005. Kennan believed that the Soviet Union, however repugnant, posed little military threat to the West and urged that the United States rely mostly on economic and political means to resist Communist expansion… Kennan watched with regret as the United States subsequently poured enormous resources into weaponry and military bases.
Daarentegen beweert de buitenstaander en polder-academicus Ruud van Dijk dat de reden waarom sinds 1945 biljoenen dollars naar het Amerikaans 'militair-industrieel complex' zijn gevloeid eenvoudigweg is dat 'Washington nog altijd naar een wereld [streeft] waarin individuele vrijheden - fundamentele rechten van de mens - de norm zijn.' Dit kennelijk belangeloos altruïsme is volgens hem bedoeld om van de wereld een 'liberaal-democratisch' geheel te maken, en dus blijft 'de Verenigde Staten de onmisbare ordeningsmogendheid in het internationale systeem.' Zijn zienswijze spoort met de NAVO-propaganda waarmee gecorrumpeerde politici, academici en de mainstream-media hun publiek dagelijks bestoken. Ik gebruik met nadruk het begrip propaganda, zoals het werd gedefinieerd door de Franse socioloog, professor Jacques Ellul, in zijn beroemde werk Propaganda. The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965). Na eerst te hebben gesteld dat 'propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins,' en dat daarom 'The force of propaganda is a direct attack against man,' schreef de inmiddels overleden Ellul dat:
The strength of propaganda reveals, of course, one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy. But that has nothing to do with my own opinions. As I am in favor of democracy, I can only regret that propaganda renders the true exercise of it almost impossible. But I think it would be even worse to entertain any illusions about a co-existence of true democracy and propaganda. Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render a system.
En:
In reality propaganda cannot exist without using the mass media. If, by chance, propaganda is addressed to an organized group, it can have practically no effect on individuals before that group has been fragmented.
Met als gevolg dat,
Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal – the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings… Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person.
Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every area of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude. The myth has such motive force that, once accepted, it controls the whole of the individual, who becomes immune to any other influence. This explains the totalitarian attitude that the individual adopts – wherever a myth has been successfully created – and simply reflects the totalitarian action of propaganda on him.
Not only does propaganda seek to invade the whole man, to lead him to adopt a mystical attitude and reach him through all possible psychological channels, but, more, it speaks to all men. Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial successes, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion. As long as a noticeable or expressed tension or a conflict of action remains, propaganda cannot be said to have accomplished its aim. It must produce quasi-unanimity, and the opposing faction must become negligible, or in any case cease to be vocal.
Binnen deze werkelijkheid beweegt de universitair docent Ruud van Dijk zich als een vis in het water. Dat hij pure propaganda bedrijft onder de naam van wetenschap blijkt opnieuw zodra men over geïnformeerde bronnen beschikt. Ik citeer daarom senator William Fulbright de ‘longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’ en 30 jaar lang lid van het Amerikaanse Congres. Fulbright was één van de meest gerespecteerde senatoren uit de Amerikaanse geschiedenis zoals ondermeer blijkt uit de opmerkingen van de bekende senator Frank Church, 'candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1976 presidential election, losing to Jimmy Carter. He is known for heading the Church Committee, which investigated abuses in the U.S. intelligence agencies.' Church verklaarde: 'When all of us are dead, the only one they'll remember is Bill Fulbright.' Om een beeld te krijgen van William Fulbright, naar wie het 'prestigieuze Amerikaanse uitwisselingsprogramma voor studenten in het Hoger Onderwijs, het zogenaamde Fulbright-programma, werd genoemd,' blijf ik even bij zijn visie stilstaan. Zijn loopbaan laat zo duidelijk het verzet van binnenuit zien tegen de corrumpering van de Amerikaanse politiek. Een fragment uit Fulbright's boek The Pentagon Propaganda Machine (1971):
Since the 1950s, 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.
Deze feiten van een Amerikaanse insider staan lijnrecht tegenover de opinies van de Nederlandse outsider Ruud van Dijk. In verband met de lengte stop ik. Volgende keer meer over.
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