"Global Strike" Capable? PAPER TIGER Capable Is More Like It.

Arthur Gilroy

19 years ago

This started out as a comment on Steven D’s fine front paged diary The Future of Blitzkrieg is Now: US is “Global Strike” Capable, about the latest press release from BushCo’s pet generals regarding our ability to destroy the world yet ANOTHER twenty times over.

This is NEWS???

Are we supposed to feel protected by these madmen?

Anyway…it brought back to me a piece I once read that was part of a series of interviews that Mao tse Tung had with leaders of opposition groups from South America, Central America and the Caribbean way back in 1956. The one where he coined the phrase “Paper Tiger” to describe the U.S.

Read on if you are interested…

Now I am no Marxist…OR Maoist, as Booman so gently accused me of being a week or two ago…because I have seen firsthand the generalized failure of Communism on my travels around the world as a musician. Its failure as far as I am concerned, anyway. Societal and cultural failure. But Mao tse Tung had his points, both as a strategist and as a tactician. He saw things in at the very least an effective way, considering the unparalleled success that he had as a leader of resistance movements.

And here is what he had to say.

In 1956.

Mao tse Tung, 1956.

The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of Europe and Oceania. The whole world, Britain included dislikes the United States. The masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United States because it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free from U.S. aggression. The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S. aggression, although some of them are allies of the United States. The people are dissatisfied and in some countries so are the authorities.

All oppressed nations want independence.

Sound somehow…familiar? Except for perhaps the Japan part. Many of whose people STILL largely dislike us, only now it’s because we are bad for business.

THEIR business.

More.

Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn’t. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.

—snip—

Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won’t become extinct of their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain.

When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.

Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time.

It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have to go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the paper tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.

Like I said…sound familiar? (Except of course for the “100 million tons of steel a year” part. Whoops, there goes another tooth!!!)

Now the current incarnation of the resistance to American power has no use whatsoever for “Communism”. It is a fundamentalist religious movement in its strongest parts….the antithesis of the idea of Communism as it evolved in both Russia and in China.

But its leaders have read Mao. AND Metternich AND Machiavelli AND Sun Tzu AND that great general and tactician Mohammed as well. (He won, didn’t he?)