So. I wrote this diary here.
An Open Letter to Col. Patrick Lang
Essentially about the basic strategic fault in the economic policies of the developed nations regarding the third world and how these ill considered policies were apparently about to blow the lid off of France if applied there yet again.
And another. About jazz.
ALL that “jazz”. An open letter to Knoxville Progressive. And to the rest of you, too.”
One made it to the rec list and got a bunch of comments. The other sank like a stone.
Except for ONE comment from someone who agreed with me.
(Guess which diary tanked?)
And I wrote a comment on it that asked why “liberals” were happy to talk their asses off about CDs and but didn’t want to deal with the root causes of WHY “jazz” has been so covered up in this society.
At which point someone named Alice commented: “Settle down Arthur. Timing is everything, you posted at noon on Sunday. That means nobody is going to respond. Keep an eye on your audience. Calling people liberals as an insult isn’t that endearing. However, I am always glad to see your stuff, and don’t always have something to say publicly.”
So I wrote an answer to her comment.
And, having been brought to task by Susanhu twice recently for “rudely” writing long comments…I now present that comment (Which grew like Topsy, maximalist that I am.)…here as a diary instead of on that thread as a comment.
Read on…
Re: “Settle down Arthur.”
I do not mean to be endearing here.
“Liberals” have nominated a string of totally ineffective people to run for the office of President of the United States EVERY TIME EXCEPT TWO since they ran JFK.
That’s over forty years.
Humphrey.
Dukakis.
Small K kerry.
“I invented the internet” Gore.
Nice.
Only a little over 8 years ago they allowed Joe Lieberman…as sad a sack of left wing political shit as ever compromised a principle…to run for Vice President.
Noon on Sunday? What are they doing? Eating brunch and perusing the Washingtoon Post and the Sunday New York Times? All The News That’s Fit to Be Spun? Watching a bunch of middle aged liars harrumph their way through their Sunday “News” shows? Getting ready to pig out on a bit of the old ultra-violence as they watch steroid induced masses of muscle try to rip each other’s heads off in a sports wargame that is not even a picture of how to WIN a contemporary war? (See the popular series “Shock and Awe In The Middle East” for more on THAT.)
Please.
I AM keeping an eye on my audience.
It is not an endearing sight, these days.
So I am offering some shock and awe myself.
We need to wake the fuck UP, Alice.
Sure, many of the corporate interests that have supported BushCo have turned now. Finally.
Dumb as a stick, they can’t even make a decent automobile. But they HAVE figured out that this gang of criminals is doing a bad job on their behalf. So they are withdrawing their support and siccing their media dogs on ’em.
Preparatory to putting in a NEW bunch that will continue the old policies, the old strategies, with new tactics. Try to find a NEW way to continue to keep ripping the majority of the people on this planet off.
And the “liberals”…they sit there over their Sunday omelettes in their Sunday middle class homes and pat themselves on the back for having finally made a dent in BushCo’s almost unblemished record of successful deceit, murder and theft.
Right.
And on a “liberal” blog I find frontpaged an article by an ADMITTED high level, old line military spook who is advocating having the French run the same tired old “Get a haircut or I’ll SHOOT your worthless brown ass” game yet again.
And ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky.
‘Scuse me while I do NOT kiss this guy. OR his ass.
And ‘scuse me while I point this out.
Anybody here know what “Humint” IS? Human Intelligence. That’s establishment spook-speak for spies. Anybody care to guess WHICH spies this fella supervised? This “first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point?”
Please.
William Burroughs, “The Old Yellow Serpent”.
This guy is about as “liberal” as John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen.
So I wrote what I wrote.
And very few people read it or at least cared to recommend or comment upon it.
So it goes.
In Liberal Land.
So it goes.
AG
what it is you wish to convey. Stereotypes, generalizations aren’t engaging.
That we suck? That we’re stupid? That we aren’t liberals? That we shouldn’t have Pat Lang frontpaging? That we need to pay more attention to you?
Sorry if I lost your message in there somewhere.
Why so angry at us? Because on a Sunday afternoon people might want to take a break and talk about jazz? That people can’t live on politics 24/7? Or that maybe not everybody a) likes or b) agrees with your diaries and decides to recommend?
How lovely Arthur. Really. Such a way to connect with people. How about this as an option for what people were doing… playing with their kids. Riding a bike outside. Reading a book. Making love to their spouse. Having lunch with their family or friends. Jeez man. People do LIVE you know. They don’t all spend every waking hour online dissecting the news… at least I hope they don’t otherwise they wouldn’t have the full perspective of what we are actually fighting to save… LIFE.
In terms of Pat Lang… yeah. He ain’t as liberal as your or me. He’s worked in spy craft. No one said he was completely sympatico with all of us. Hell, all of us aren’t sympatico with eachother. So what? He’s bringing his perspective here and not stifling anyone elses. How is that a bad thing? Isn’t it better to know how “the other side” thinks? Or to have other realpolitik issues thrown into the mix? Is he making policy here? Are we? Or are we a bunch of people on a blog trying to get and share information to stop this madness in the world/ US and hopefully make some friends and share some smiles while we go to it.
But then again, as I said, I’m not sure what your main point is, so I could be wrong.
I like what you said about Pat Lang, Spiderleaf.
It’s been fascinating to see what he’s been writing lately — more and more attacking the Bush administration, the Iraq war plan, and more.
And, since he knows those agencies and systems, he can bring background that most of us don’t have.
I don’t agree with everything he writes. And THANK GOD for that. I don’t learn anything, or think much, unless writing does prick my consciousness and conscience.
Also: If you ever visit his own blog, you’ll find that he loves literature — poetry, novels, film reviews, and more.
And his LOVE for Arab countries and the Arabs seeps through his writings and his e-mails. Has has deep respect for those cultures and tribes. It’s quite touching.
The Lang thing is one thing I totally feel Arthur on. It’s not that I’m against him posting here, but I do feel leery about it. I’d even say that I take everything he writes with a huge grain of salt. All the things you say about him are very likely true, but the fact that someone involved in the intelligence game is posting on a very liberal blog is idiosyncratic if not outright weird.
People who ran the School of the Americas also have a background that most of us don’t, but I doubt we’d welcome them to this site.
I guess I just want to say that I’m also ambivalent about having establishment-type authority figures front-paged.
Well, I thought the blogs were supposed to be the media that was “outside the box”, where Establishment types didn’t get to say what they think–it’s where the people whose voices are NOT heard in the mainstream media get to be heard. Environmentalists, feminists (yes, even sanctimonious women’s studies group types), people advocating for universal health care, etc. You rarely, if ever, hear those people in the “mainstream” media, even though they number in millions in the USA alone.
But instead I see the blogs apeing the mainstream media’s (read: corporate media) idea of the acceptable parameters of debate. The argument is over who gets to run the CIA, not over whether or not we ought to have the CIA at all.
Well, if that’s the argument, political progressivism is dead. There’s only two sides to the argument, and both of them end up with the CIA sitting atop a $30 billion plus “off the books” budget, doing as it damn well pleases.
I had hoped for more from the blogs, freed as they were from the constraints of corporate media. It appears I hoped for too much. Oh well, meet the new boss, same as the old boss….
I guess that if anybody has a reason to hate the Intel services is me. Maybe because I was in the target lits, maybe because they helped in the killing of so many of my fellow citizens.
And I also had many questions when I saw his backgrownd. But I read hsi articles, appreciated his insights, and look foward to his writings.
Also I have to ask you if just because he worked in the Intel service, should we prevent him from being here? And if so, should we also prevent members of the militry to come here to inform us of their views?
And if so should we prevent those who are not complete liberals to come and post here?
I dont like censorship, and that is why I left DK,and I know that thatwon’t happen here, and if it did, I would dissapear really fast
I say post all he wants. The only thing that is troubling to me is the front-paging, as it implies a closer relationship with BT. I’m not for telling anyone they can’t post or what they can post about, but I also think it takes the liberal street cred of Booman down a notch by frontpaging Lang and Johnson. If Booman doesn’t care that it’s his choice, but it does change the perception of the site.
And we’ve probably both read enough in the blogosphere in general, and DK in particular, to know that there definitely are people out there getting paid to spread disinformation and to be virtual agents provocateur. The nature of the internet seems to have made the old COINTEL program obsolete but to also have made it’s modern equivalents a lot more powerful.
Ok, allow me to clarify my position:
Frontpaging Pat Lang, who is an advocate for a kinder, gentler national security apparatus, is no different than CNN hosting a debate in which one ex-CIA analyst says America ought to torture some people, and another ex=CIA analyst says no torture, but we can spy on them.
Where is the voice that says, why do we have you guys at all? You didn’t prevent 9/11, you didn’t predict the fall of the Soviet Union, you have a fifty year history of subverting democracy at home and democracy abroad–to hell with you.
Maybe you don’t agree with that point of view. But it deserves to be heard, and it’s not being heard in the mainstream media.
There is no questioning of the rightness of the military-industrial complex or the national security apparatus in the American mainstream media.
There ought to be questioning raised on the blogs, which are supposed to be the “alternative” media.
Increasingly, the voices that question are being muffled. When Pat Lang is frontpaged day in and day out, it sends a clear message–what Pat Lang has to say is more important than those little recommended diaries stuck off in the right hand column.
And yes, it bothers me. If you don’t understand why, then perhaps I haven’t explained it very well. I wouldn’t say I’m angry, just very, very disappointed and disillusioned with the so-called “progressive” blogs. All they seem to be about is throwing Bush out so that the Democrats can manage the national security state and America’s empire more competently.
And that’s the saddest thing of all–to put so much effort to effect such a small change. We could have tried for a mountain of gold, and instead settled for a copper farthing.
I couldn’t agree more. Good to see I’m not alone in thinking thusly.
SusanHu wrote: “..since he knows those agencies and systems, he can bring background that most of us don’t have.”
Isn’t this just another version of journalists cosying up to government officials so they can have “access” to “insider information”?
Actually, I believe that one can gain just as much insight, if not more, from critics of the operation of intelligence agencies who have studied their workings for years.
Me? I’d rather hear about the workings of the CIA, NSA, et al, from someone in the ACLU or another civil liberties organisation.
and sometimes learn from, Col. Lang, therefore we all suck?
And the “liberals”…they sit there over their Sunday omelettes in their Sunday middle class homes and pat themselves on the back for having finally made a dent in BushCo’s almost unblemished record of successful deceit, murder and theft.
I don’t know who exactly you mean to be referring to here, but the only thing I have found to pat myself on the back for lately is getting my family’s bankruptcy filing in before the new law took effect.
I am a liberal, I am not a Democrat, and I am slowly losing any realistic claim to call myself “middle class”, as there will not be such a thing much longer in the good ole USofA. We are not responing enough to your diaries and/or comments? Maybe the probloem is yours, not ours?
What exactly is your point, AG?
spend time enjoying our weekends with our families, or like cooking a nice meal to share with them, we suck?
Do I have to be grouchy and eat porridge and refuse to consider other viewpoints to count as a liberal?
Good thing I prefer the term progressive anyway.
I remember when this site was new, BooMan invited an actual crusader to post messages.
And he lets me post here, as you may be aware, I am opposed to the crusade. 😉
I like your posts. I linked to one here and on my blog.
It seems I am having something of an unsolicited advice attack, so stand back:
Just type your stuff in the little box, don’t expect that people will agree with you about everything. Just hope they read it, and if you make somebody think, you did your job, whether they comment on it or not.
Just type your stuff in the little box,
Yes. But not long comments, please. They kill the stream of conversation.
If you have something long to write, put it in a diary. That’s a great alternative that’ll get you noticed a lot more anyway.
People see a long posts in the comments section, and they tend to scroll right past it, and are rightfully irritated that they have to do all that scrolling.
Who’s irritated? I know you are, but let’s not assume that all of us don’t like long comments.
If the comment is well-written, thoughtful, and is not longer than it needs to be, then I will read it.
Not everybody automatically scrolls past a long comment. Some of us begin reading it and, if we find it engaging, we read the whole thing.
Not everything can be encapsulated in 100 words or less. But once again, it seems we have added a new rule: don’t write long comments in the diaries! They bore some people and heavens know, we wouldn’t want anyone to be bored.
I don’t agree. I’d rather see long, thoughtful comments than one-liners.
If it’s rambly and not well-organized, that is a complaint, but I don’t agree with objecting just because it’s long.
I just now asked a question regarding long comments and I suppose I would ask the same question about shadowtheif’s above.
I would really like it if some of these were codified if they are going to become “rules” — I’m not asking for a democracy, just clarity and consistency — when these become unclear and muddles and there seem to be double-standrds being held to is when I get frustrated.
Put me down on the long comment ledger.
I look forward to each and every one of AG’s posts. I dutifully read every drop…and still manage to scroll on down to finish the rest. Who is interested in rushing around a blog, anyway? What purpose does it serve to rush? If someone is going to be deterred by having to scroll through a long post in order to finish reading the comments- then they probably have nothing cogent to add anyway. Let them go.
If someone is convinced that another poster adds little value or they tire of her/his writng style, does this technology support an ignore user function?
I enjoy long comments when they’re well written, and when they’re not I don’t find scrolling a major hardship. It doesn’t irritate me at all. Not everything merits a diary, and if the comment refers to the subject of another diary, why not make it part of the dialog? I’m sorry. I just don’t see your point here, at all.
Sometimes people read and don’t comment. Some of my environmental diaries have gone that way, and I feel like reaching through the monitor and shaking folks and saying “It’s the fucking global warming, man, don’t you get it!!!”
Just keep speaking truth as you see it and people who are open to hear will eventually listen. Maybe not agree, but listen.
Bitch-slapping the audience doesn’t usually help, unless you do it as wittily as Ductape. ;-D
I’ll second what DuctapeFatwa says. If I were to add my own unsolicited advice – Goddam! I thank it’s contagious – it would be this:
As Sun Ra might say, nothing is.
Btw, oftentimes I will read something and not comment, as I don’t feel I have anything to add. Realize that I am probably not the only one who has ever done that. A thread of “me toos” would get tedious, and I am probably tedious enough as it is. 😉
Lack of comments then, is not the same thing necessarily as being ignored.
All I know is I type a few things here and there, sometimes find that my words are correctly interpreted or sometimes misinterpreted in very creative ways. Sometimes folks agree; sometimes not. Somehow I keep on plugging away.
Arthur, you add some color, some spice here that will add to this community. It’s all good.
Peace.
It IS contagious! Here’s my unsolicited advice:
Do you have your own blog, Arthur? I didn’t find one linked. It’s my observation that when a person starts feeling really frustrated with the blog he or she is participating in, and they feel insufficiently read and appreciated and they start lashing out at the other people on it, it may just mean they’re ready to create their own place. As hard as that may be, it’s got to be easier than trying to remake us in your own image! I can’t speak for anybody else here, but I know that I don’t “remake” easily.
Often one nighters, often no time to be running a blog. I have a professional, music oriented website and forum, but it pretty much runs itself.
Sometimes when I am working on a compositional project I am out of touch due to sheer work load.
I also practice about 6 hours/day whenever I have the time.
The upshot of all of this is that I simply do not have the time to make the consistent effort needed to start an effective political blog. I tried…under a different name…and it went nowhere. I would just begin to get a group of people interested and the I would have to disappear for three weeks.
As would the audience.
So…here I am…
AG
and sometimes who cares.
I used to define myself as a ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative Democrat’. No more. There are no labels that fit me.
I am a feminist and a nurturing grandmother that knits and embroiders tablecloths. No brunch on Sunday – I sat in the floor with a 13 month old eating dry Cheerios – and sometimes damp ones when she shared with me.
I am a progressive in favor of taxation to pay for social programs. I am opposed to 95% of all local bond measures. I am a flat tax advocate.
I am pro-military and pro-veterans and anti-this war.
I read Booman Tribune and participate because I want different perspectives. Your diaries were interesting and I read them all. Since it was unclear what you were trying to say in several, I didn’t comment. Not sure what you are trying to say in this one either.
No labels, no stereotypes, and no santicmonious attitudes work for us. We are all just complex people with confusing ideas and conflicting goals. All of us.
Until now, I haven’t read Lang or either of your previous diaries. Many diaries pass through with few comments and few (or none) recommendations. But that doesn’t mean that others haven’t read both of your postings. And that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had an impact. I know for a fact that a fair number of readers leave no “tracks” choosing to post no comments or recommendations. Furthermore, I would agree with Alice that Sunday is perhaps a poor time to post if one is hoping for great exposure. BooMan himself has stated that weekends are far slower here.
If you find that the liberals here are generally uncaring I’m not sure that a blog is the way to properly guage this. Comments and/or recommendations (or lack thereof) to your diary are poor evidence upon which to base your assertions. I would have to agree with spiderleaf’s statements above. She has stated things with which I agree far more succinctly than I could. Which brings up another point. Some posters find attention automatic as evidenced by many comments, others languish. But that is beyond the point here.
This is a only a blog, I (and everyone else) have a real life to which this site is only peripheral. Personally I have realized that I can have a far greater impact upon the local goverment, in which I have become involved as an appointee. That does not mean that I don’t care about the issues you write/have written about. But each time I come here I am taking time away from my 6 year old, time of which he is hugely deserving.
I find Lang’s diaries a crashing bore, to be quite honest–they rarely tell me something I hadn’t already figured out for myself, nor read somewhere else. Obviously, SusanHu adores Mr. Lang’s writing or she wouldn’t frontpage it.
But this blog is not a democracy, and if people don’t like what is frontpaged, they can go elsewhere, or simply choose–as I do–to skim over the frontpage diaries and only read the ones that provide new information or a new interpretation of existing information.
Please, please, please pardon us for having taken time away from the blogs to participate in reality. Did you even consider what Alice told you Arthur? Sunday is not a particularly great time to post a diary here or anywhere else. Pat Lang, as well as Larry Johnson, have openly admitted being Republicans. That doesn’t mean that cannot write here or be against the insanity of Bushco. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with either of them but maybe, just maybe we can learn something from them. I highly recommend getting some fresh air.
AG, I share your frustration in that the topics that one prioritizes are not necessarily the topics that others do. One probably can point with sound logic as to why one’s arguments of choice should be the priority…and that is the challenge. One must write persuasively, w/o calling out and demeaning one’s (mostly like-minded) audience, about the paramount importance of one’s preferred topic. Sign ’em up AG, don’t drive them away. Everyone is in a different place in their political development. If you want them to come to your place on the continuum, invite them.
If you think the day for persuasive writing and invitiation is over, you’re not likely to find many anarchic recruits here in my estimation.
that you decide to pick on Allan Dulles, who may not have been a liberal, but he certainly was a progressive. He was one of Woodrow Wilson’s chief negotiators at Versailles, and headed up all our disarmament conferences during the twenties.
He eventually drifted away from the Democrats and campaigned for Dewey in 1948. That didn’t prevent Truman from keeping him on in the intelligence community and appointing him to run the CIA.
Dulles is more complicated than most liberals understand.
Must be why President Kennedy fired Allan Dulles as the Director of the CIA–you know how much JFK hated liberals.
Or maye Kennedy fired Dulles for some other reason.
Dulles was fired from the CIA by Kennedy in 1961 over Operation Northwoods, a proposed covert CIA operation aimed at gaining popular support for a war against Cuba by framing Cuba for stage real or simulated attacks on American citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
Of course, Dulles WAS a complex man–with all sorts of complicated schemes to undermine democracy not only abroad, but also at home in the USA:
Under Dulles’s direction, the CIA established MK-Ultra, a top secret mind control research project which was managed by Sidney Gottlieb.
At Dulles’ request, President Eisenhower demanded that Senator McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA. In March, McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential communist subversion of the Agency. Although none of the investigations revealed any wrongdoing, the hearings were still potentially damaging, not only to the CIA’s reputation, but to the security of sensitive information as well. During the time, Dulles was personally overseeing Operation Mockingbird, a program which influenced American media companies.
Dulles went on to be successful with the CIA’s first attempts at removing foreign leaders by covert means. Notably, the elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran was deposed in 1953 (via Operation Ajax), and President Arbenz of Guatemala was removed in 1954.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
Operation Mockingbird, which was Dulles’ brainchild, was of course classic liberalism:
“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”[1].
After 1953 the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time Magazine and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor). [9]
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954 Wisner arranged for the funding the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell. [10]
According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts”. Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS). [11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
I could offer more proof of Dulles’ liberalism and complexity, but I don’t want to make an overlong post that people will skim right past.
I apologise, Dulles was NOT a liberal. Everything I posted should be proof of Dulles’ PROGRESSIVISM. Assassinating democratically-elected leaders in other countries, planting shills in the American media, paying for all of this by siphoning off funds from the Marshall Plan–progressive moves, one and all. And let’s not forget the mind-control scheme coded “MK Ultra”. Oh, those wacky, progressive-minded spies. I love ’em!
this list of Allen Dulles articles shows how his main focus before WW2 was disarmament. Actually, he changed his tune in about 1936 and started warning about Hitler.
In any case, he started out as a big proponent of the League of Nations, disarmament, and going that route. That was all a part of the Wilsonian movement and legacy.
Hitler rebuilt German industry and the German economy before he started that war thingie, Booman–World War Whatever. You know the one.
Everybody has some positive accomplishments. Hell, Nixon was pro-civil rights.
But from the early 1950s onwards, it is undisputed–unless you are disputing the records of hundreds of respected historians as well as the report of the Church Committee–that the CIA, both under Allan Dulles and after he was fired by JFK, undertook a massive programme of subverting democracy both within the United States and abroad.
Dulles died with blood on his hands. The man wasn’t Satan, but he did have the Prince of Darkness’ home telephone number and sent him birthday cards.
I find your obstinate insistence on painting Dulles as a “progressive” because he embraced some progressive policies and ideas in the 1930s most curious. Historians agree that the CIA under Dulles attempted to undermine and destroy democracy in the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe (the CIA had a hand in the Greece coup in the 1960s, in which the military took over the country).
Progressive, my arse. No matter how he started out, Dulles ended up a fascist. No other reasonable conclusion may be drawn from the available record.
Oh, and Operation Paper Clip–recruiting Nazi war criminals for the American side–is a dark stain on US history. I wouldn’t cite it with even half-approval again if I were you.
Operation Paperclip should be considered in comparison with Operation Paul Bremer.
Seriously.
If there are serious scholars that think the Soviet Union fell for without any regard to American pressure then I am unaware of them. What is disputed, most often, is that they fell in response to Reagan’s arms buildup. However, denying them our advantages (control of the oil fields, access to friendly ports, control of mineral rich nations, etc.) all had a part in crippling their economic performance. The example of prosperity, freedom, and creativity in the West inspired unrest. Propaganda kept their minority populations restive. We fought them on all fronts. Ultimately, we proved the superiority of our economic model, but you’re fooling yourself if you think we were fighting on even terms. Many of our acts of sabotage and geopolitics worked to undermine their economic performance, as well as their image.
And in the 70’s they had higher economic growth and seemed to many experts to be winning the Cold War.
The Soviet Union collapsed because they couldn’t pay the bills, and they no longer had the will to impose their power over unhappy populations. America had a tremendous amount to do with that, and no expert would seriously dispute it.
Um, actually many European experts–free of the restraints of “Go USA!” propaganda imposed by the American media–DO dispute America’s role in bringing about the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The widely-held view amongst European political thinkers is that the Soviet Union largely disintegrated due to the failings of its own system, and not due to American external pressure. The American policy of containment was not aimed at destroying the Soviet Union, but merely keeping it from expanding its sphere of influence outside its own borders and those of its subject states in Eastern Europe (the so-called Soviet Bloc).
But I won’t bore you by quoting any namby-pamby pinko European intellectuals. Rather, I shall quote a man named George F. Kennan. Know who that is? If not, you ought to–he is widely acknowledged as the architect of the Cold War “containment” policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan
This is what the author of the containment policy and one of the principal designers of the Cold War had to say on this subject:
“Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and politics of the West. It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that the U.S. military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this development.”
George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of “containment” of the same country, asserts that “the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.” He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. “Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.”
http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/47-1340.asp
Kennan, like the Russian expert quoted (Arbatov), agrees–a consensus was building within the Soviet Union from the time of Stalin’s death that the “Soviet Empire” was untenable and that the Soviet system was unworkable. However, Western hostility–led by America and including Reagan’s huge military buildup of the 1980s–DELAYED, not sped up, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If we were playing chess, Booman, I’d say “checkmate”. But as we’re only playing checkers, “king me”. Because now you know of at least TWO experts who DO seriously dispute America’s role in bringing about the fall of the Soviet Union–including the man who invented the policy of Cold War containment!
It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov…provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure…
in the context of Reagan’s arms buildup, which still seems to get all the credit in the USA, and Kennan was saying that it has nothing to do with it.
I think it is likely that our hardline attitudes made reform in Russia more difficult, but my point is that it was their economy that failed them and that we were instrumental in undermining their economy. It’s a mistake to think Reagan’s arms buildup was the cause, because if they could have paid for it it wouldn’t have bothered them to match him missile for missile. The point is that they couldn’t afford it, and they couldn’t afford a lot of other things either, and they lost the will to go on paying for the repression of their union and bloc.
There is a lesson in that for Bush and the neo-cons.
After all, we are doing all the damage to our economy without any assistance.
No, Kennan’s remark was not merely about the Reagan arms buildup. I knew you’d try to argue that, but it’s simply not going to work.
Kennan said from the very beginning of the containment policy that it would NOT bring about the destruction of the Soviet system, but instead would keep it from spreading.
Kennan was horrified by the extreme, brutal measures by which the policy of containment was carried out, and ultimately perverted until the US became indistinguishable (and, in some cases, even worse) than the Soviet Union to many in the Third World. Those who followed Kennan forgot that one of the principles of containment was to forge democracies in the Third World as a bulwark against Soviet communism–but instead, Kennan’s successors preferred brutal, pro-big business dictatorships over democracies of the leftist sort. Thus was many a potential American friend and ally against Communism lost, and the Cold War struggle made all the more brutal…and the Soviet hardliners strengthened in their domestic politics.
We need only look at Communist China to see how things could have played out differently. Nixon opened up rapprochement with China, and consequently the Chinese became more open to the world as the Americans engaged diplomatically with them. China is now a major exporter of goods to the United States, although its political liberalisation has had its limits.
Imagine if the United States had taken a similar tact with the Soviet Union. Ah, but then who would have been the bogeyman to frighten the American public and keep the military-industrial complex oiled up and running at top speed? After the fall of the Soviet Union, of course, a new bogeyman was found–International Terrorism!!!!!!–but it took a few years. And just as with their Cold War predecessors, those fighting against International Terrorism have gone about it all wrong.
I refer you to a further excerpt from Professor Kennan’s 1992 article, in which he wrote the following:
Nikita Khrushchev took the leadership in the resulting liberalizing tendencies. He was in his crude way a firm Communist, but he was not wholly unopen to reasonable argument. His personality offered the greatest hope for internal political liberalization and relaxation of international tensions.
The downing of the U-2 spy plane in 1960, more than anything else, put an end to his hope. The episode humiliated Khrushchev and discredited his relatively moderate policies. It forced him to fall back, for the defense of his own political position, on a more strongly belligerent anti-American tone of public utterance.
The U-2 episode was the clearest example of that primacy of military over political policy that soon was to become an outstanding feature of American cold war policy. The extreme militarization of American discussion and policy, as promoted by hard-line circles over the ensuring 25 years, consistently strengthened comparable hard-liners in the Soviet Union.
The more America’s political leaders were seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate military rather than political resolution of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the greater the braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime. This, the general effect of cold war extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s.
What did the greatest damage was not our military preparations themselves, some of which (not all) were prudent and justifiable. It was rather the unnecessarily belligerent and threatening tone in which many of them were publicly carried forward. For this, both Democrats and Republicans have a share of the blame.
Nobody–no country, no party, no person–`won’ the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party. It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries, leaving both, by the end of the 1980’s, confronted with heavy financial, social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.
The fact that in Russia’s case these changes were long desired on principle by most of us does not alter the fact that they came–far too precipitately–upon a population little prepared for them, thus creating new problems of the greatest seriousness for Russia, its neighbors and the rest of us, problems to which, as yet, none of us have found effective answers.
All these developments should be seen as part of the price we are paying for the cold war. As in most great international conflicts, it is a price to be paid by both sides. That the conflict should now be formally ended is a fit occasion for satisfaction but also for sober re-examination of the part we took in its origin and long continuation. It is not a fit occasion for pretending that the end of it was a great triumph for anyone, and particularly not one for which any American political party could properly claim principal credit.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r103:S02FE3-103:
Ok, this time I WILL say it: CHECKMATE
It is not a fit occasion for pretending that the end of it was a great triumph for anyone, and particularly not one for which any American political party could properly claim principal credit.-FROM THE ARTICLE ABOVE.
Because some things bear repeating.
with anything he is saying except that it was a great victory for the people of the world suffering under the yoke of Moscow, that it delivered a death blow to the ideology of communism, and that we beat them economically, not militarily, and that was part of the overall strategy.
First of all, we contained them, which also translates to: they did not contain us. Which means that we had enormous economic advantages beyond whatever is inherent in the differences between capitalism and communism.
In any case, you are investing Kennan with arguments he wasn’t making. His point was to deflate American triumphalism and specfically the hagiography of Ronald Reagan. He didn’t address the impact of our successful blocking campaign in Central Asia.
I guess you missed the bit where Kennan wrote that NOBODY won. I repeated it, twice, so that nobody would miss it. And I posted a lengthier excerpt of Kennan’s remarks so that I couldn’t be accused of quoting him out of context, or distorting his words. Kennan’s statement is unambiguous and requires no “spin” from the likes of me. His words stand on their own.
Not only that, but it’s QUITE clear you haven’t followed any of the links I’ve posted in order to read them. If you had, you’d know that Kennan conceived of cold war containment primarily as a political strategy (the Marshall Plan, building industrialized democracies, was what he had in mind) and not as a military strategy–which was the perversion of the “cold war” he envisioned. Kennan said the Soviet Union was not expansionist in nature and should only be met with force when it used force–which the US did in Afghanistan.
Now…what “successful blocking campaign in central Asia” would that be?
Korean War? Ended with the Korean peninsula split in half.
Vietnam War? Need I say more?
China? America gave in and extended its hand to China rather than fight it, because America couldn’t fight Communist China and the Soviet Union simultaneously.
Afghanistan? Ended up with the country shattered by war, half a million Afghanis dead, and the country ruled by brutal warlords (and later by the looney Taliban). Afghanistan today is a worse mess than Iraq, and that’s saying a lot.
Hm, if that’s success, I’d hate to see failure. Of course, there’s Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where the US supports–surprise!–brutal pro-American dictators. Gosh, who could have seen THAT coming?
your point. Kennan said the same thing in his Letter X as he did in his pre-election slapdown of George H.W. Bush, which is all that article was.
His point in 1946, when he wrote the famous memo, was that Russia was deeply fucked up, and that it would be a while before they were willing to start any foreign adventures. We should check them at every opportunity with propaganda and economically, but we shouldn’t fear their immediate expansion.
That’s not surprising since they had just lost 20 million men in a war with Germany.
Unfortunately for Kennan’s thesis, Stalin gave the thumbs up for North Korea to invade the south just a short while later. And that upset the apple cart and changed the whole perception about the Soviet threat. That was when we learned the proxy war strategy.
As for his idea that nobody won, he was making a rhetorical point. He was critiquing both our triumphalism and Bush’s crap at the end of the 1992 campaign, and lamenting the costs we wasted in arms races and unnecessary wars. But he wasn’t saying the fall of communism wasn’t a victory for the whole planet, and for the enemies of communism.
And if you asked him, I bet he would agree with me that the economic warfare was ultimately effective, not all the proxy war bullshit.
Stalin died in 1953. Under Kruschev, the Soviet Union denounced Stalinism and moved away from his policies. In 1956, Kruschev gave his so-called “Secret Speech”, which denounced the “cult of personality” surrounding Stalin, which marked a clear break from the past.
Once again, you have taken one part of history and stretched it to cover all of history. One must distinguish between the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Soviet Union post-Stalin–they were different places. Kruschev undertook a policy of reform and the Soviet Union only maintained control within its sphere of influence (Hungary, for example).
Kennan was not in favour of “economic warfare”–if you’d read any of Professor Kennan’s books (or my comments), you’d know that his model for containment was primarily a political strategy, along the lines of winning friends and influencing enemies with economic aid (the Marshall Plan). Kennan didn’t advocate sanctions against the Soviet Union, and his point was that the Cold War was unnecessarily costly. It would have been better for both sides, and for the whole world, had the US sought rapprochement and reconciliation with the USSR, rather than confrontation and hostility.
In short, Kennan thought that the policy of containment was done all wrong, resulting in colossal waste.
You keep assuring me that you know Kennan’s views, yet your own words reveal to me that you are unfamiliar with his books and lectures, in which he made his views well-known over a period of decades. When you write, “I bet he would agree…”, you wager without knowing the truth.
But it is all there in black-and-white. I don’t need to bet that Professor Kennan would agree with me, because I am agreeing with HIM and summarising his view of US-USSR relations accurately.
Perhaps you ought to read Professor Kennan’s memoirs, or this collection of speeches: At a Century’s Ending: Reflections, 1982-1995 (available at your public library, I’m sure). Either Kennan’s Memoirs or At a Century’s Ending would be a good basic introducton to what Kennan really thought about the Cold War, and why.
“The Soviet Union collapsed because they couldn’t pay the bills, and they no longer had the will to impose their power over unhappy populations.”
And now here we are, in exactly the same position.
Does it not occur to you that it is appearing more and more likely as time goes on that the increasingly difficult effort of imposing one’s “power over unhappy populations” is the REASON that economic imperialist societies can no longer pay their bills?
NOT the competition between opposing predator states?
It used to be relatively easy.
Go loot the wogs at gunpoint and then force them to work at subsistence wages or in outright servitude.
It’s becoming harder to pull that off.
It gets expensive.
And then…you can’t pay your bills.
Haven’t you noticed?
All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.
This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.
All Praise is due to Allah.
So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.
—snip—
for example, al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost – according to the lowest estimate – more than $500 billion.
Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.
As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.
They have found a VERY effective gambit, and it is most obviously working.
Just look at the state of America today for more on THAT.
“America” didn’t collapse the Soviet Union.
It collapsed all on its own. Because it committed too much money to a losing war.
And because it was an unwieldy and inefficient system.
Ours is LESS unwieldy and inefficient. Marginally, these days. But we are making the same mistake.
Imperialism in ANY form is through. The opposition’s got weapons and organization, and it’s just STARTING.
South America is next, if we are so stupid as to try to go in there militarily. And maybe even if we are NOT.
And FORGET about China.
Fuck with THEM, and they will simply buy us out.
An international financial hostile takeover. Only of a STATE instead of a company.
“Back in the U.S.S.R” wrote the prophet John Lennon about 40 years ago.
Yup.
Same game, different match.
Same results if we do not wise up.
AG
Doesn’t calling a mainstream establishment liberal like Dulles a “progressive” only serve to further marginalize the tattered remnants of the progressive American left?
Is there a box in the labeling matrix for the likes of Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, or Alexander Cockburn? Voices that are already essentially cut out of the debate?
What about reporters like Kevin Pena — whose work on the ongoing sponsored atrocities in Haiti have gone largely ignored in both the US press & blogosphere?
Pina’s fantastic and highly regarded series on the US engineered coup d’etat in Haiti should be required reading for all Americans. It provides great insight into what we are currently doing in Venezuela and what we have done to everyone of our colonies in the Americas.
When AG says wake up…he means wake up to these truths:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/67/67_pina.html
I certainly agree that everyone who considers themselves progressive/liberal-whatever label you choose should subscribe to Black Commentator. I get their newsletter in my email and have for a very long time. Always fascinating and insightful commentary. I’ve linked to it several times and do wish more people would read their articles and discuss.
And your right that the story of what happened in Haiti is just another story that has been completely ignored by the media here or what was reported was very biased against Haiti.
Kevin Pina was here last weekend showing his film Haiti: The Untold Story at a small anarchist bookstore here in Austin. Only about six people showed up to see it, plus the four people who worked at the bookstore, so we got to just talk to him for about an hour or so after the film. Awesome dude. Memorable night. Horrifying story. (He had shown it at a theater the night before, so I hope a lot more people got to see it.)
And if any of our Canadian friends drop into this thread, can any of you explain wtf Canada is doing supporting – and participating in – what’s going on down there?
Thanks for catching my typo. You may know it already, but Haiti Action is also a good news source.
because the progressive movement was a historical movement of the early 20th Century that influenced both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and Allen Dulles was a solid progressive Democrat in that tradition. He did recoil from the New Deal in some respects, but he was basically an Eisenhower republican, which is a far cry from the way he portrayed.
Also, he is often savaged for taking some of the Gestapo and using them to build the German intelligence agency, and I think there is a real reason to question that decision. However, our de-Ba’athification program in Iraq shows what happends when you go too far in purging a conquered country. So, that issue is debatable. What is less known is that Dulles’s World War two operations (he was chief of station-OSS-Switzerland) were heavily indebted to communists. In fact, he could have been easily run out of the CIA for his communist connections if anyone had cared to go McCarthy on his ass.
Anyone who could overthrow governments on a whim while bubbling the hormones of Rebecca West was certainly a man of many dimensions.
But you really only need look at his Eisenhower era masterstrokes, Iran and Guatemala, to see what a malignant influence he had on this nation’s foreign policy, and our image in the world at large. We are still paying the price for these acts of folly a half century later, as one can see in the Middle East, and in the angry reception Bush was given in Argentina last week.
“I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.” – E.B. White
Noon on Sunday? What are they doing? Eating brunch and perusing the Washingtoon Post and the Sunday New York Times? All The News That’s Fit to Be Spun?
Acutally I was out working to get the next Democratic Governor of VA elected. I wasn’t sitting on my ass bitching about someone I don’t know and will probably never meet.
So what’s your point? That your ego is so fragile that you need every diary to be recommended? Hell, I had a diary on Sunday about GOP dirty tricks in the VA Governors race and got a whopping 2 comments (4 total because I responded). You don’t see me whining about it.
I read your diary, and was glad you posted it! I just didn’t comment because I know nothing about the VA race…
Thanks for reading. And that’s fine that you didn’t comment. You don’t see me posting a diary about how unfair that is. 😉
people get their hands dirty. Some people want everybody else to change and some people are the change they desire, and I guess we know where you fit in. I find Arthur entertaining though most of the time. He even cracks me up when he calls me names, I don’t know why…….I’m just sick I guess.
I was not aware that one must be a liberal to post diaries or have diaries front paged on Booman. I find some things that Pat Lang posts interesting and personally helpful and some not. I am a big girl and capable of discerning for myself what I think about anything. That is what is wonderful about being an American. After 9/11 the whole nation fell under the spell of UNITY and hell, we lost a lot that day and we gave Bush everything plus on that day. It has been hard if not painful for most Americans to get to the point that they have to turn their back on the guy…..it took double and triple the bullshit from him to finally sink him, but once a president has broken in the people what normally can’t be broken (ONE NATION/INDIVISIBLE, in order to defeat a common enemy before he/she/it kills us) HE IS FUCKED. There is no recovery from this. He was given three times the trust and commitment that any president has since Pearl Harbor……. and when that trust and commitment is shit upon to the point that the people have to withdraw it before the mission is accomplished that requires it YOU ARE DONE!
Now calm down Arthur!
I missed him too. And many of you as well.
But thank you. “I” (him…me…) is back.
Regarding 9/11.
I was in NYC that day.
I saw and felt the whole thing, up close and personal.
A couple of weeks before, I had played a concert on one of the plazas there. Wandered around in the mall downstairs because the subway got me there early. Had a snack and just kinda…looked around. Could’a been me choking down the black smoke. And it was me that took the two year financial hit, too.
AND…I’m 20 generations back on one side, working class NY. Literally. From the 1600s. And several generations on the other side. Including one of the first Irish mayors. Up from the gutter. Thomas F. Gilroy. You could look it up.
Plus…I’ve lived in the NYC underworld for 40 years. Jazz clubs. Mafia latin dives. South Bronx and Harlem after hours clubs. Living in the neighborhoods.
The REAL neighborhoods. Like where most of the victims of 9/11 came from.
So like I said…I know NYC. On a genetic level.
And I am sorry…I did NOT knee-jerk into attention and trust for Bush, that slimeball Giuliani and the rest of the poseurs who took the credit for our survival. I knew DAMNED WELL what their game was, from well before. They sure as hell didn’t run up into any burning towers. Their kind never does.
I watched Giuliani’s cop, Kerik, run roughshod over the rights of people of color here. For years. And HIS cops on the take in every neighborhood in NYC.
BET on it.
I have stood on the bandstand and watched these predators and parasites get drunk enough so that their REAL faces come out.
A hundred times.
I have literally SEEN the deals being made.
So it took me no time at all to distrust Bush.
The firemen, the cops, the victims…I felt for them and their families.
But BUSH???
Just like in Iraq…they all died for HIM.
Him and the gang of thieves and fools that runs him.
All of this “trust and commitment” that you talk about, all aimed at Bush?
That was a TOTAL media hype job.
24/7 for MONTHS.
Don’t you remember it?
Don’t you THINK about what you are consuming?
This same man who literally stole the election in his brother’s state in 2000? Now a HERO???!!!
Had the media done its job, within a week they would have been asking the hard questions. And the country would NOT have backed him.
But they did NOT ask those questions. And you got hyped.
New Yorkers knew better. At least the ones I know.
NO one trusted him.
Not even the hard, right wing firemen, cops and working men a couple of blocks away from where I live in the Bronx, in one of the few remaining Irish neighborhoods.
EVERYBODY knew he was grandstanding and faking.
Anyway…glad that the worm is finally turning.
My only hope now is that the NEXT worms are at least SLIGHTLY more…benevolent.
We shall see…
AG
Folks,
What AG is saying is IMHO very valuable. Pat Lang’s agenda must be called into question, especially given his FP status and past work. Posting on the FP confers a certain status on someone. FPers here OFTEN set the tone and parameters of debate. I think that many people are more prepared to accept uncritically what FPers say/believe than say your average intermittent poster. It is important to gauge what Pat Lang’s agenda MAY be, just as it is important to guage what my agenda, AG’s agenda, Booman’s agenda, susanhu’s agenda, or any poster’s agenda MAY be.
AG’s agenda is transparent, he tells you exactly where he is coming from and what he would like to see as a desirable outcome. My handle and posts speaks volumes as to my agenda; to expose the neoconservative Zionist/Likudnik apparachiks and their disproportionate influence on our political system that I believe is a cancer to our sovereignty and future. I am not that intimate w Booman’s, Susanhu’s, or Pat Lang’s writings to know whether their agenda is self-evident in their writings.
I do know that an allegedly “former” intelligence officer is a master at subterfuge. This is what they do. I think it is instructive to keep in mind that our intelligence services have an agenda that they have pursued for decades and that Pat Lang served and was colored by that agenda for a long time. It is fair and imperative to ask if Pat Lang, himself, has a vested interest in maintaining the primacy of the status quo he helped enforce for many years.
AG is simply reminding us to be ever vigilant that everyone has an agenda, which some reveal candidly and others disguise. I welcome the reminder.
has an agenda, I think it is to take back the inlelligence agencies independence from the neo-cons, which is something you would probably support.
Remember, intelligence agencies are split between analysts and operatives. Analysts are supposed to be apolitical, and their advice is supposed to be independent. If you ask them to look for evidence that Saddam Hussein has been aiding and assisting al-Qaeda, they are supposed to go look at the evidence and give you a yes, no, sort of, or maybe answer. They are not supposed to be bullied, ignored, undermined, or gone around to get the answer you want to hear.
When CheneyCo. decided to invade Iraq using bogus intelligence, and ignoring solid analysis and planning from the various intelligence agencies, a war was started. The GOP keeps complaining that the intelligence agencies tried to get Kerry elected. It’s true. They did, and now they are trying to get the neo-cons indicted. It’s a war, and that’s the agenda.
Whatever role Pat is playing in this war, is mostly open for all to see. But there are people still working in the intelligence agencies that are leaking things like our torture centers in Europe, our desecration of Korans, and other things because they don’t believe in torture, or doing incredibly stupid and counter-productive things that destroy our image and credibility.
That doesn’t mean that they are New Deal democrats. It means they think the neo-cons must be exposed and stopped.
Many people in the GOP feel the same way. Take Brent Scowcroft for example.
I revel in the anger and blowback Cheney’s unprecented pressure visits to Langley, and his OSP intelligence stovepiping have caused. I hope the CIA successfully chases out all the neoconservative “idealists.”
I do not take a monolithic view of intelligence agencies or their personnel.
I do consider the relevant background of all would be commentators, especially those that are masters of deception. I am inclined to think that Lang, Johnson, Wilkerson, Kwiatkowski, McGovern, Scheurer, and others are genuinely concerned that neoconservative criminality and hubris have endangered our Nation and are acting out of that impetus rather than merely a blood feud.
I doubt that Lang shares AG’s desire to overturn our greed-based unfettered capitalistic approach to global dominion. That’s all. It’s important to recall the global role our intelligence agencies have played in our economic success.
you limit the voices to those who are upset that we won the Cold War, you are going to have a vanishingly small number of supporters.
Crushing Stalinism was one of the most important things this country ever did, and we didn’t always do it intelligently or morally. And we made compromises on our principles that are coming back to bite us now.
I’m an unabashed capitalist, and I think it is crazy to expect a country to engage in policies that don’t contribute to its citizens economic success. You act as though our economic success is something to be upset about.
That is almost the definition of the old canard about ‘hating America first’.
Part of our intelligence agencies job is to steal economic secrets and to maintain our access to energy, minerals, etc., so that we can never be blackmailed. These activities cause endless consternation among liberals, but you could never convince a majority of Americans to support a policy that undermined our economic success.
The problem with these free-trade agreements is that they abandon our former policy of ruthlessly protecting our national economic interests in favor of one-world corporate agenda, where our only interest is in our 401(K)’s.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be better global citizens, that we shouldn’t use less energy, or water, or food. But we should not expect our country to forego seeking an advantage, protecting that advantage, and we should complain when our interests are abandoned to some global levelling agenda.
I believe we should be upset about an economic success borne out of subgagation of entire peoples and continents through direct force, proxy forces, implied force, covert political manipulation, assassinations, and punitive economics. I guess you disagree with me.
Who suggested we limit the voices to Red Cold Warriors? Tuck that straw man back in your vest-pocket.
One can have moderated capitalism vs. an enthusiastic embrace of Stalinism. Further, our economic strategem has not changed since the long ago dissolution (15+years) of the Soviet Empire. You are dishonestly conflating two distinct issues; neo-liberal economics & “crushing Stalinism.”
You go on to issue a blatantly self-contradictory statement at the end of your unprovoked rant: being better global citizens and resisting a global leveling agenda is, in fact, mutually exclusive.
is that the great game was played at all.
But that is a false choice. The great game is always being played, and always has been played. We are not the only ones playing it, and if we stop playing it, it will go on being played by others.
To use a simplistic example, let’s look at access to oil during World War Two. Germany had an obvious disadvantage, in that their access to oil was limited both by geography and by an inferior navy.
Therefore, Hitler made several mistakes because he was so concerned about access to oil. His first mistake was to break off the march on Moscow and divert his troops toward Azerbaijan. His second mistake was to weaken his defenses on a direct line to Berlin in favor of protecting his Romanian oil fields.
When the war ended, our first priority was to make sure that we controlled the oil fields, especially in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Soviets never recovered from that action on our part.
Are we happy at how our relationship with Iran and Saudi Arabia turned out? No. Should we have left those oil fields vulnerable to Stalin? No.
Subjugating people, if that is what you insist on calling our Cold War economic strategy, was not something that would not have occurred in our isolation. It was what happens when a great power needs tungsten and uranium and oil in order to protect its military interests. And our ideology was in competition with a virulent strain of totalitarianism clothed in sheep’s clothing as third world liberation.
As for the last fifteen years, we have begun abandoning our national interests in favor of free trade agreements that drive down our standard of living, eliminate jobs, etc. Other countries benefit from that, but don’t try to run for office on a platform of equalizing out standard of living with India’s. Because that dog won’t hunt.
Sorry if I have a bit of a cold-hearted view of things, but the payoff of our ideology succeeding over it’s 20th-Century competitors cannot be denied, even for the people that appear to have suffered from it.
And as I said above, we did many stupid and deeply immoral things during the Cold War. I don’t excuse them, especially the things I deem either unnecessary, or counterproductive.
But we were in a battle with the Soviet Union, and they didn’t sit on the sidelines, and China is not sitting on the sidelines now.
Lastly, I totally reject the idea that we can’t be better global citizens while simultaneously protecting our economy.
Well…overthrowing the democratically elected governments of Chile, Guatemala, and Iran (to name three prominent examples) was, in the long run, not a very smart thing to do. Doing so contributed to instability (not to mention great human suffering) in Latin American and the Middle East.
America did not “win” the Cold War–the Soviet Union self-destructed, as many European scholars predicted it would. The collapse of the Soviet Union caught American, but not European, intelligence agencies by surprise–the Europeans anticipated the fall for years.
And what has America done with its winnings? Cut military spending? Invested its military expenditures into its own physical infrastructure and education systems? Promoted truly democratic ideology around the world?
Not a bit of it. America still sides, in its foreign policy, with thugs and dictators. America’s foreign policy has demanded subjugation rather than asked for partnership. America’s military spending is more than that of the rest of the world combined. These expenditures are not, many argue, for self-defence but rather for imperialism and subjugation.
Of course, not all agree–but those voices asking for a more humane, pro-democratic foreign policy are constantly silenced in the American media. I think America’s best defence is to promote freedom around the world. For the most part, it hasn’t done that.
if America and our allies didn’t win the Cold War, the Soviet Union definitely lost it.
And what are you currently complaining about?
You are complaining that there is not enough democracy to go around, not that there is not enough totalitarianism.
So, our ideology won.
I agree that Chile and Guatamala were blunders. I think our operation in Iran was an overreaction based on very bad intelligence about the level of support for the Soviets current in Iran.
I would argue that our Latin America policy during the Cold War was hysterical, and mostly unnecessary, and that it became outright criminal under Kissinger.
But, I never said I supported those policies.
“Our ideology”?
You’ve omitted a little thing called the Vietnam War. And the fact that, in the name of fighting Communism, ANYTHING WAS PERMITTED.
That meant establishing most of Latin America as a torture chamber under brutal pro-American dictators. Democratically elected governments like Guatemala and Chile were overthrown because they weren’t sufficiently pro-American (read: pro-American big business).
That meant overthrowing a nascent democracy in Iran because it wasn’t sufficiently pro-American.
That meant subverting democracy at home by planting hundreds of fake journalists to define and limit the terms of the debate.
That meant rampaging throughout southeast Asia and steeping the nations of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in blood, killing over a million people.
All in the name of fighting Communism and the Red Peril.
Booman, you say that you didn’t approve of these things. But you approved of the policy of fighting Communism.
All of these things WERE the policy. There was nothing else. No attempt to reach out to nations in partnership, to uplift people, to show them a better way.
When you say you supported the policy of fighting Communism, you cannot in the same breath disclaim the policy of supporting dictators, torture, and destructive wars. It was all inseparable, all part of the Master Plan.
The reason there is so little democracy in American client states is because it has been US foreign policy to undermine and suppress democracy in favour of dictatorship. Dictators are easier to control than democracies, after all–democratic governments are likely to elect somebody like, say, Hugo Chavez, who thinks for himself and doesn’t always toe the American big business line.
Perhaps, Booman, you would like to specifically list the ways America fought against Communism of which you DO approve. You are rather vague on specific examples on how America’s ideology “won”. And you’ve yet to address my argument–which is one that is widely circulated in European political circles–that the Soviet Union self-destructed largely on its own, and not in response to American pressure.
“”but the payoff of our ideology succeeding over it’s 20th-Century competitors cannot be denied, even for the people that appear to have suffered from it.””
That is a ridiculous assertion. Tell that to the throngs in Argentina, Brasil, Venezuela, Central America, Southeast Asia,and the African continent. Man. Have you ever lived in the developing world?
Go ahead, Boo, show me how our becoming better global citizens WON’T in fact help the economically disenfranchised all over the world.
They are many different tactics for how the game can be played. We shouldn’t opt for the most morally bankrupt approaches everytime. You almost lurched into neo-conland there. You should try to get your last comment published in the Washington Times. You could call it:
“The Iraq War: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
I mean, really, we had no choice…China, Russia, or India would have taken forcefully if we didn’t. Lucky for the rest of the world it was us and not them. Specious.
the Iraq War has virtually nothing to do with anything we are talking about. Insofar as it does, it only applies to oil resources, which were in the process of being farmed out to France, Russia, and China. Without getting into that, it follows from our history that we would resist Iraq’s oil fields coming under Russian or Chinese control. Especially when we were doing the heavy work of containing Saddam.
But it does not follow that the best response to this was either to allow China and Russia to develop their oil fields, or to start a preemptive war based on WMD lies.
Perhaps you don’t think it makes a difference who develops the Iraqi oil fields, or that Saddam Hussein should get to decide since it is his country.
In reality, it does make a difference who develops them. And the game is played on a very high level. The mistake is to think the Iraq War has helped serve our strategic interests, or the interests of our Cold War allies. It was a stupid power grab that undermined our power.
Still, the status quo was aggravating and was unsustainable. If you look at Iran, we have succeeded in getting our proxy Japan to develop a lot of their fields, which is better than an invasion or in losing control to China.
What is really dangerous is when the oilmen control the national security apparatus, because they go several steps beyond playing the great game to looking to specifically profit from it. This leads them to take reckless actions.
And the Iraq War was certainly reckless and done out of spite towards the deals Saddam had cut with Russia, France, and China. There were options available that would have kept the fields out of the their control, or that would have allowed Anglo, Japanese, or Norwegian firms to have a piece too. That’s what global diplomacy is about.
What doesn’t do is to think that we are only imperial players, or that we play it in a vacuum.
Wishing away big business and its connections to our national security is pretty unrealistic.
At the same time, I think we have made several glaring errors since 1989 out of an obsession with controlling central asia and keeping the Chinese at bay. I don’t think we can or want to support this level of empire. I think we should think about moving out of our Cold War posture vis-a-vis energy supplies. However, as the energy supplies become more scarce and China’s needs rise, it looks doubtful that we will back off.
How did you establish a relationship with Johnson and Lang; or they w/ you?
Susan made the connections with them.
She a Spook?
Susanhu, how did you make their acqaintances?
it’s a giant conspiracy!!
Don’t laugh too soon…JOKING
Please FP this diary…it may actually prompt Lang/Johnson to become a bit more interactive and to identify their agendas/purpose here.
And, it will placate the disgruntled among us…a win-win for BMT. 😉
Let’s face it, spies are dead sexy.
Two words: Austin Powers.
Exactly, don’t think Rumsfeld and Bush will have each made trips to Mongolia this month to merely check out the beautiful capital city of UB…
As Putin re-establishes control of the Stans we need new basing rights, not to mention dominance of Mongolia’s vast natural resources.
It’s ALSO important to consider the global role our intelligence agencies may have played in our economic failure.
It is their MASTERS who call the play.
Until THEY start calling different plays…self-reliance, conservation, human ecology (the efficient use and conservation of home-grown HUMAN resources), then we will continue to go down.
AG
That’s just it, everybody’s arguing over who gets to run the CIA.
It’s a false debate; I want to argue over whether or not there ought to BE a CIA.
The CIA failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union.
The CIA destabilised Latin America and the Middle East for generations (and into the present time) by overthrowing progressive left-of-centre governments that might have given their people true democracy.
The CIA has been infiltrating the American media since the 1950s via Operation Mockingbird (and is apparently still doing so, if one can judge by Judy Miller’s brilliant journalistic career), thereby subverting freedom at home as well as abroad.
No wonder President Kennedy said (according to the New York Times!):
. . . President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bays of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted “to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” (“C.I.A.: Maker of Policy or Tool?,” April 25, 1966)
I find Mr. Lang’s views on every subject wholly predictable. I was hoping that blogs such as BoomanTribune would be able to move beyond the usual false debates set forth in the mainstream American media–Tastes great! Less filling!–and consider issues in a new and truly progressive (as in, “moving forward”) way.
You say:
. . . President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bays of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted “to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” (“C.I.A.: Maker of Policy or Tool?,” April 25, 1966)”No wonder President Kennedy said (according to the New York Times!):
. . . President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bays of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted “to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” (“C.I.A.: Maker of Policy or Tool?,” April 25, 1966)
Note well what happened to HIM.
And to ANYONE seriously opposing the hegemony of the intel pros in promoting the aims of THEIR controlling interests…old, big money… in the power wars in Washington.
One way or another…the opposition all goes down.
Now it’s BushCo’s turn.
Suddenly the mainstream media “turn against” the administration.
What? You think they didn’t know what a crock of shit the Iraq thing was?
But they went along with the program, because it might be “good for business”.
Well, it hasn’t turned out that way.
And suddenly, up and down the system…INCLUDING on these blogs…the word is spread.
What a COINCIDENCE!!!
Unless you believe in divine intervention…and at least on THIS level, I do not…then something is up here.
PRAVDA.
USA Today style.
Dig it.
AG
1-I was not writing in disagreement to Col. Lang’s comments because he is Col. Lang. OR a spook. Or military.
I was writing because I think that his position is wrong, wrong, wrong and could, if carried out up and down the line of society quite conceivably result is us all getting killed.
And where the fun be in THAT, I ask you?
As above, so below…is what we are doing in Iraq any different than what Col. Lang advocates in France, except for the scale on which the two systems work? I think not, myself.
“Use ’em. If the pitch a bitch…light ’em up.”
And further…if Adolph Hitler HIMSELF signed on here…or Genghis Khan or Allen Dulles (who by the way PRESIDED over the beginnings of what we are suffering now. Quite consciously.) or any OTHER militarist villain…signed on here and convinced me that he had experienced a change orfheart, I would welcome his thoughts.
And conversely, if St. Francis of fucking Assissi, Noam Chomsky, Mother Theresa or Gautama Buddha signed on and said what Col. Lang said, I’d disagree.
Vehemently.
2-I did not “complain” about not getting recced or getting attention. Not for PERSONAL reasons, anyway. I could pull cover myself and write a tome about harmonic theory that would melt your mice, you’d be clicking so fast to get past it.
So WHAT?
Ain’t ABOUT that.
Applause don’t mean SHIT.
ANY good musician will tell you that.
You either say it right or you don’t; people either GET it or they don’t, and the two parts of that particular equation have no particularly consistent relationship.
This is the best that I can say it today.
Hit it hard and wish it well.
NEXT player…
What got MY attention was that I wrote two separate diaries…one that could conceivably have appeared on the feel-good pages of a “liberal” newspaper (If they weren’t all in bed with the corporately funded Arts Establishment, of course), and one that dealt with life and death issues.
And I got almost NO response to the one that had some mortal content to it.
As I said…
Liberals.
Y’gotta love ’em.
3-Sunday, Schmunday. You’re either interested in what’s happening or you are not. In fact, inveterate NEWSTRIKER that I am, for me Sunday is prime blog attention time. No Sunday Times or Talking Pundit Heads to distract me…
Friends and family…but not ALL day…(Plus I usually work Sunday nights.)
No football, either, thank you very much.
Reminds me too much of the Marines I know and the silverbacks down at the local gym.
“Grunt grunt grunt grunt grunt grunt groan…”
“Two more YARDS!!!”
“Two more KILOMETERS!!!”
“Two more REPS!!!”
“YAAAAYYY…we’re WINNING.’
“BOOOM!”
“Nevermind…”
3-Liberals. Democrats. Small K kerry. Muskie. Dukakis. Etc. Weak. If the foo shits, wear it.
4-Long comments…
Sorry…I guess I blew it again.
Is a comment in response to other comments on my own diary exempt from the “NO LONG COMMENTS” rule?
Maybe not.
Tell you what Susanhu…if this one bothers you, feel free to go right ahead and get rid of it.
I’ve copied it, and I’ll just re-post it as a diary.
But I’d rather not.
It belongs right here, in my opinion.
Fair?
AG
Perhaps you need to reread some of the above. In no particular order:
I grow weary of this.
I agree.
My points ARE “environmental”, in that
A-If we cease to depend on foreign oil we will be FORCED to put together a W.W.II-sized set of crash programs to conserve energy and to develop alternate energy sources.
B-If we stop misusing our most PRECIOUS resourcre…human beings…we will ALL be better off.
Here AND abroad.
Human Ecology.
Job ONE.
If your environmental posts “get little or no attention”,…PITCH A BITCH UNTIL THEY DO !!!
And please do not castigate ME for doing so.
Yes, this is just a little blog.
We do what we can.
AG
This liberal, who can’t even get anywhere close to being “middle class” anymore due to illness, was helping a friend move on Sunday afternoon – something this liberal is also doing this week.
As for who front pages posts here, how do you really know who we are? For all you know, I could be Grover Norquist.
I judge by what people write and what their positions are – not their real life connections. I’ve even agreed with some right-wing bloggers lately. Have I jumped the shark suddenly? No. They’re just finally waking up to reality under the Bush regime and because they’ve chosen to be somewhat open-minded, I’m willing to admit that I agree with some of what they write.
We can call ourselves whatever we want to. It’s how we live our lives that makes the difference.
In the blogosphere you can’t measure success by the number of replies to your diaries because you have absolutely no idea how many people have read what you wrote and didn’t comment on it. You just have to keep plugging away because it’s what you want to do.
Recommended
Otherwise….no comment.
ok, now, will someone pass me the keg of beer so we all can toast to anything that has been said here?!
I for one love what most everyone writes. I can learn almost anything I don’t know. In the process, I think. This is an eye opener for me. You see, I was living a rather dormant life in politics until 1999-2000. I suddenly had a jar that was most distasteful to me. That happened to be gee w bush. How did he slip in my life like this..he is the most unqualified person I know to be the leader of MY nation… I do not always agree with Col. Lang. I read what he has to say tho. If I feel qualified enough to subject a comment to his diary, I most certainly will…Now I know lots of in here do know a few things about VN that he doesn’t know we know. I will not fight with him over this because, I do not argue with ignorance. plain and simple as it can be! But he has his rights as do I. I do not take too kindly to spooks, as if you have read my comments, should know by now. I have my own particular reasons for that too…they lie very deep in my heart!
Now I want MY country back…lets all get busy and do this very thing..can we, please…but, please keep the food for thoughts coming, if you will…Hugs to every one…all of you…… BTW, I do not like J.F.Dulles one bit!!!!!! He falls into the crowd of the bushes and we should know that!!!!!!!He was close friends to GW’s Grandfather….so there….
Arthur,
I don’t know how old you are. I’m in my early 50s. I say this because of the threat I felt as a kid from the missiles pointing at us. The “duck and cover” drills. But, no all-out war. We had the Cold War, fought by spies. I respect people who can do what they do. I am intensely glad we had them then and now.
I respect Lang, and I fully realize he’s not liberal, not like I am.
I read his blog regularly; don’t always agree with him. But he’s knowledgable, experienced and is no neo-con true believer.
I pick my battles carefully, and I do not have a fight to pick with Lang.