William Blum page
"It was in the early days
of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his
American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We
read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase
in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'.
What happened?"
An American might have been
asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban
during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or
a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international
goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close
of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention
by intervention."
William Blum
Books
Killing Hope: US
Interventions in the Third World since World WarII
Rogue State - a
Guide to the World's Only Superpower
Freeing the World to Death - essays
on the american empire
Articles
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
American
Empire For Dummies (10/02)
CIA and Torture
CIA
and its "Unsavory" Foreign Agents
War
Criminals: Theirs and Ours
US
vs. World at UN
How
the CIA sent Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years
The
CIA and Drugs
The
United States, Cuba, and this thing called Democracy
A
Day in the Life of a Free Country - Not!
Needless
slaughter, useful terror
The
United States vs. Iraq -- A study in hypocrisy
Making
Heads Roll - the CIA's assassination record since WWII
The
Bloody Road to Empire
What
NY Times Left Out - US sent biological weapons to Iraq in 80s
Why
Terrorists Hate America
The
Anti-Empire Report takes on Iraq Doubletalk
The
CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack (11/06)
Speech
"Goodness has nothing to do with it" - a speech by William Blum, November 2, 2007, at the University of Vermont in Burlington
www.killinghope.org/
bblum6@aol.com
Authors
and Books
Home Page
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
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.
China, 1945-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. The Communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.
Italy, 1947-48:
Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy. The Communists lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe.
Greece, 1947-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
Philippines, 1945-53:
U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks were still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U. S. continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing a series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
South Korea, 1945-53:
After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.
Albania, 1949-53:
The U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist government and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed largely of monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.
Germany, 1950s:
The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Iran, 1953:
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.
Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Middle East, 1956-58:
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, "Communist." In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.
Indonesia, 1957-58:
Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States could not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. He refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies could easily give other Third World leaders "wrong ideas." The CIA began throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.
British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:
For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz-his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington's greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics-from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.
One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.
Vietnam, 1950-73:
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ..." But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of Communist.
Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.
Cambodia, 1955-73:
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret "carpet bombings" of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had caused Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever.
Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.
The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:
In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the natives by the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a "Communist." The poor man was obviously doomed.
Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.
Brazil, 1961-64:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing "communists" to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political crimes" was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the "moral rehabilitation" of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.
Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long sought " showcase of democracy " that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
Cuba, 1959 to present:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba." There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a "good example" in Latin America.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of course was the idea.
Indonesia, 1965:
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists, suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.
It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of "Communist" operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. "It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands," said one U.S. diplomat. "But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment. "
Chile, 1964-73:
Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende's electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.
They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile women wear dresses!"; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check- books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.
Greece, 1964-74:
The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for j national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.
It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.
Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."
George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-Communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.
East Timor, 1975 to present:
In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day after U. S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under U.S. Iaw, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington's most valuable tool in Southeast Asia.
Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.
Nicaragua, 1978-89:
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba." Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington's proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
Grenada, 1979-84:
What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country of 110,000? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's, Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba," particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.
U. S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation and dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.
In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style."
Libya, 1981-89:
Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space. The U. S . also dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including Qaddafi's daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.
Panama, 1989:
Washington's bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the official body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.
Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?"
George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat." The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega's drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all bothered by.
Iraq, 1990s:
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and biological weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price. "
Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that they supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.
Yugoslavia, 1999:
The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era. It would like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by "humanitarian" impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions can help one decide how much weight to place on this claim.
***
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Portions of the book can be read at: http://members.aol. com/bblum6/American holocaust.htm.
William
Blum page
Foreign Policy watch
American Empire For Dummies
A talk given in Boulder Colorado
by William Blum
www.doublestandards.org/, October
21, 2002
Good evening, it's very nice to be here, especially since the bombs have not yet begun to fall; I mean in Iraq, not Boulder; Boulder comes after Iraq and Iran if you folks don't shape up and stop inviting people like me to speak.
The first time I spoke in public after September 11 of last year, I spoke at a teach-in at the University of No. Carolina. As a result of that I and some of the other speakers were put on a list put out by an organization founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of you know who. The organization's agenda can be neatly surmised by a report it issued, entitled "Defending Our Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It". In the report and on their website they listed a large number of comments made by mainly faculty and students from many schools which indicated that these people were not warmly embracing America's newest bombing frenzy and were guilty of suggesting that some foreigners might actually have good reason for hating the United States, or what I call hating US foreign policy.
Because of that listing, as well as things I wrote subsequently, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in the past year, hate e-mail to be exact. I'm waiting to receive my first e-mail with anthrax in it. Well, there are viruses in e-mail, why not bacteria? The hate mail almost never challenges any fact or idea I express. They attack me mainly on the grounds of being unpatriotic. They're speaking of some kind of blind patriotism, but even if they had a more balanced view of it, they would still be right about me. I'm not patriotic. I don't want to be patriotic. I'd go so far as to say that I'm patriotically challenged.
Many people on the left, now as in the 1960s, do not want to concede the issue of patriotism to the conservatives. The left insists that they are the real patriots because of demanding that the United States lives up to its professed principles. That's all well and good, but I'm not one of those leftists. I don't think that patriotism is one of the more noble sides of mankind. George Bernard Shaw wrote that patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it. And remember that the German people who supported the Nazi government can be seen as being patriotic, and the German government called them just that.
The past year has not been easy for people like me, surrounded as we've been by an orgy of patriotism. How does one escape "United We Stand", and "God Bless America"? And the flag - it's just all over - I buy a banana and there it is, an American flag stuck on it. And making heroes out of everyone - the mayor of NY, Rudy Giuliani, became a hero. On Sept. 10 he was an arrogant, uncompassionate reactionary - suddenly he was a hero, even a statesman, speaking before the UN. George Bush also became a hero. People who called him a moron on September 10 welcomed him as hero and dictator after the eleventh. In the play, Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht, one character says to another: Unhappy the land that has no heroes. And the other character replies: No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes. Although I'm not loyal to any country or government, like most of you I am loyal to certain principles, like political and social justice, economic democracy, human rights.
The moral of my message to you is this: If your heart and mind tell you clearly that the bombing of impoverished, hungry, innocent peasants is a terrible thing to do and will not make the American people any more secure, you should protest it in any way you can and don't be worried about being called unpatriotic. There was, sadly, very little protest against the bombing of Afghanistan. I think it was a measure of how the events intimidated people. The events and the expanding police powers, led by Ayatollah John Ashcroft. I think it was also due to the fact that people felt that whatever horrors the bombing caused, it did get rid of some really nasty anti-American terrorists. But of the thousands in Afghanistan who died from American bombs, how many do you think had any part in the events of 9-11? I'll make a rough guess and say "none". And how many do you think ever took part in any other terrorist act against the United States? We'll never know for sure, but my guess would be a number in the very low one digits, if that. Terrorist acts don't happen very often after all, and usually are carried out by a handful of men.
So of all those killed by the American actions, were any of them amongst any of those few handfuls of terrorists, many of whom were already in prison? And keep in mind that the great majority of those who were at a training camp of al Qaeda in Afghanistan were there to help the Taliban in their civil war, nothing to do with terrorism or the United States. It was a religious mission for them, none of our business. But we killed them or have held them under terrible conditions at the Guantanamo base in Cuba for a very long time now, with no end in sight; with many attempts at suicide there amongst the prisoners.
It is remarkable indeed that what we call our government is still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the heads of defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Beginning in the late 1980s, Michael Gorbachev put an end to the Soviet police state, then the Berlin Wall came down and people all over Eastern Europe were joyfully celebrating a NEW DAY, and South Africa freed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble, and Haiti held its first free election ever and chose a genuine progressive as president ... it seemed like anything was possible, optimism was as widespread as pessimism is today.
And the United States joined this celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. At the same time, the US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat the Sandinistas. Then, when Albania and Bulgaria, "newly freed from the grip of communism", as our media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments. Soon came the bombing of the people of Iraq for 40 horrible days without mercy, for no good or honest reason, and that was that for our hopes of a different and better world. But our leaders were not through. They were soon off attacking Somalia, more bombing and killing. Meanwhile they continued bombing Iraq for years. They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, just as if it was the cold war in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and still doing it in the 1990s. Then they bombed the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights. And once again, last year, grossly and openly intervened in an election in Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning. Meanwhile, of course, they were bombing Afghanistan and in all likelihood have now killed more innocent civilians in that sad country than were killed here on Sept. 11, with more to come as people will continue to die from bombing wounds, cluster-bomb landmines, and depleted-uranium toxicity. And all these years, still keeping their choke hold on Cuba. And that's just a partial list.
There was none of the peace dividend we had been promised, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world. What the heck is going on here? We had been taught since childhood that the cold war, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets, all the foreign invasions and overthrows of governments - the ones we knew about - we were taught that this was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy, headquarters in Moscow. So what happened? The Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capitalists. ... And nothing changed in American foreign policy. Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created - so we were told - to protect Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remains, bigger than ever, getting bigger and more powerful all the time, a NATO with a global mission. The NATO charter was even invoked to give a justification for its members to join the US in the Afghanistan invasion. The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of our global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name we give to the enemy - communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist ...
You think the American Empire is against terrorists? What do you call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 people? Who attempts assassinations against several diplomats? Who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports? Who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor - Orlando Bosch Day. He was freed from prison in Venezuela, where he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American ambassador, Otto Reich, who earlier this year was appointed to the State Dept. by George W. After Bosch returned to the US in 1988, the Justice Dept condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President Bush, the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida. So is George W. and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. The plane that Bosch bombed, by the way, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to turn him over to them; to Cuba he's like Osama Bin Laden is to the United States. But the US has refused. Can you imagine the reaction in Washington if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans refused to turn him over? Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed Osama Bin Laden Day?
Washington's support of genuine terrorist organizations has been very extensive. To give just a couple of examples of the past few years - The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been our allies because they've attacked people out of favor with Washington. The paramilitaries in Colombia, as vicious as they come, could not begin to carry out their dirty work without the support of the Colombian military, who are the recipients of virtually unlimited American support. This, all by itself, disqualifies Washington from leading a war against terrorism. Bush also speaks out often and angrily against harboring terrorists.
Does he really mean that? Well, what country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out hundreds, if not thousands of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson attacks, assassinations and bombings. They have been harbored here in safety for decades. As have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the Empire. The CIA is looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as the Agency sits in bars in Miami having beers with terrorists. What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand our government's foreign policy?
Well, if I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes. I know it's not easy for most Americans to take what I say at face value. It's not easy to swallow my message. They see our leaders on TV and their photos in the press, they see them smiling or laughing, telling jokes; see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and freedom, of human rights and justice and even baseball ... How can such people be moral monsters, how can they be called immoral? They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed or Abdullah in the bunch. And they even speak English. Well, George almost does. People named Mohammed or Abdullah cut off arms or legs as punishment for theft. We know that that's horrible. We're too civilized for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald drop cluster bombs on cities and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and before very long a child picks one up or steps on one of them and loses an arm or leg, or both arms or both legs, and sometimes their eyesight. And the cluster bombs which actually explode do their own kind of horror. But our leaders are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... if that's a distinction worth making. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the Empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home - the ones who make it back - with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. Our leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things. It must be great fun to be one of the leaders of an empire, glorious in fact ... intoxicating ... the feeling that you can do whatever you want to whomever you want for as long as you want for any reason you care to give ... because you have the power ... for theirs is the power and the glory.
When I was writing my book Rogue State a few years ago I used the term "American Empire", which I don't think I had seen in print before. I used the term cautiously because I wasn't sure the American public was quite ready for it. But I needn't have been so cautious. It's now being used proudly by supporters of the empire. There's Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative intellectual at the Hoover Institution, who became well-known with his theories on the "natural" inferiority of Afro-Americans. Earlier this year, he wrote an article entitled "In praise of American empire", in which he argued that Americans must finally recognize that the US "has become an empire, the most magnanimous imperial power ever". Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment writes: "And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the US is good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives." And syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer speaks of America's "uniquely benign imperium."
So that's how people who are wedded to American foreign policy are able to live with it - they conclude, and proclaim, and may even believe, that our foreign policy is a benevolent force, an enlightened empire, bringing order, prosperity and civilized behavior to all parts of the globe, and if we're forced to go to war we conduct a humanitarian war. Well, inasmuch as I've devoted much of my adult life to documenting in minute detail the exact opposite, to showing the remarkable cruelty and horrific effects of US interventions on people in every corner of the world, you can understand, I think, that my reaction to such claims is ... Huh?
These conservative intellectuals ... Is that an oxymoron? They are as amoral as the folks in the White House and the Pentagon. After all, the particles of depleted uranium are not lodging inside their lungs to keep radiating for the rest of their lives; the International Monetary Fund is not bankrupting their economy and slashing their basic services; it's not their families wandering in the desert as refugees. The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia - Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Powell and Rice and Wolfowitz and Perle - and their scribes as well, are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama Bin Laden. And the regime change they accomplished in Afghanistan has really gone to their heads. Today Kabul, tomorrow the world. So get used to it, world. The American Empire. Soon to be a major motion picture, coming to a theatre near you.
Part Two
A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called "a radical solution to poverty - pay people enough to live on." Well, I'd like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism - stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America. Now our leaders and often our media would have us believe that we're targeted because of our freedom, our democracy, our wealth, our modernity, our secular government, our simple goodness, and other stories suitable for schoolbooks. George W. is still repeating these cliches a year after 9-11. Well, he may believe it but other officials have known better for some time. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."
Jimmy Carter, some years after he left the White House, was unambiguous in his agreement with such a conclusion. He said: We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers - women and children and farmers and housewives - in those villages around Beirut. ... As a result of that ... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.
The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in part: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." And finally, several members of al Qaeda have repeatedly made it quite plain in the past year that it's things like US support of Israeli massacres and the bombing of Iraq that makes them hate the United States. I present more evidence of the same sort in one of my books along with a long list of US actions in the middle east that has created hatred of American foreign policy.
I don't think, by the way, that poverty plays much of a role in creating terrorists. We shouldn't confuse terrorism with revolution. And the attacks are not going to end until we stop bombing innocent people and devastating villages and grand old cities and poisoning the air and the gene pool with depleted uranium. The attacks are not going to end until we stop supporting gross violators of human rights who oppress their people, until we stop doing a whole host of terrible things. We'll keep on adding to the security operations that's turning our society into a police state, and it won't make us much safer. It's not just people in the Middle East who have good reason for hating what our government does; we've created huge numbers of potential terrorists all over Latin America during a half century of American actions far worse than what we've done in the Middle East.
I think that if Latin Americans shared the belief of many Muslims that they will go directly to heaven for giving up their life and acting as a martyr against the great enemy, by now we would have had decades of repeated terrorist horror coming from south of the border. As it is, there have been many non-suicidal terrorist attacks against Americans and their buildings in Latin America over the years. There's also the people of Asia and Africa. The same story.
The State Department recently held a conference on how to improve America's image abroad in order to reduce the level of hatred; image is what they're working on, not change of policies. But the policies scorecard reads as follows: From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist movements fighting against insufferable regimes. In the process, the US bombed about 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize - very publicly and very sincerely - to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that America's global interventions have come to an end and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but - believe it or not - a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to our victims and repair the damage from our bombings. There would be enough money. Do you know what one year's military budget is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated.
On page two of The American Empire for Dummies, I'd put this in a box outlined in bright red: Following its bombing of Iraq, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Following its bombing of Yugoslavia, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Following its bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now winding up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and perhaps elsewhere in the region. That's not very subtle, is it? Not really covert. The men who run the empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that's the way the empire grows, a base on every corner, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. 57 years after World War II ended, the US still has major bases in Germany and Japan; and 49 years after the Korean War ended, the US military is still in Korea. A Pentagon report of a few years ago said: Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere ... we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
The bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan have served the purpose of setting up a new government that will be sufficiently amenable to Washington's international objectives, including the installation of military bases and communications listening stations and, perhaps most important of all, the running of secure oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea region, which I'm sure many of you have heard about. For years, the American oil barons have had their eyes on the vast oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea area, ideally with an Afghanistan-Pakistan route to the Indian Ocean, thus keeping Russia and Iran out of the picture. The oilmen have been quite open about this, giving very frank testimony before Congress for example. Now they have their eyes on the even greater oil reserves of Iraq.
If the US overthrows Sadaam Hussein and installs a puppet government, as they did in Afghanistan, the American oil companies will move into Iraq and have a feast and the American empire will add another country and a few more bases. Or as General William Looney, the head of the US-UK operation that flies over Iraq and bombs them every few days, said several years ago: If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn missiles. They know we own their country. We own their airspace. ... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.
We've gone through a few months now of a song and dance show that passes for debate, a debate about whether to attack a sovereign nation that has not attacked us, that has not threatened to attack us, that knows it would mean instant mass suicide for them if they attacked us. This debate is absurd not simply because Iraq is not a threat - by now, even the Martians must know that - but because our imperial mafia know that Iraq is not a threat, at all.
They've been telling us one story after another about why Iraq is a threat, an imminent threat, a nuclear threat, a threat increasing in danger with each passing day, that Iraq is a terrorist state, that Iraq is tied to al Qaeda, only to have each story amount to nothing; they told us for a long time that Iraq must agree to having the weapons inspectors back in, and when Iraq agreed to this they said "No, no, that isn't good enough." How soon before they blame the horror in Bali on Iraq? Does any of this make sense? This sudden urgency of fighting a war in the absence of a fight? It does, I suggest, only if you understand that this is not about Sadaam Hussein and his evilness, or his weapons, or terrorism. What it's about is that the empire is still hungry and wants to eat Iraq and its oil and needs to present excuses to satisfy gullible people. And then they want to eat Iran. And then? ... I understand when George W. was asked: "Who next?", he said "Whatever".
The empire, in case you missed it, is not content with merely the earth; the empire has been officially extended to outer space. The Pentagon proudly admits this and they have a nice name for it. They call it "full-spectrum dominance", and for years now they've been planning to fight wars in space, from space, and into space. And that's a quote. And if you're wondering "Why now?" about Iraq. I think - as many have said - that the coming election plays a role. It's going to decide which party will control congress and there's nothing like a lot of talk about war and defending America to sway voters, and make them forget about the economy and health care at the same time.
In addition to all the absurdities and lies they've been throwing at us, what I've found most remarkable and disturbing about this period has been the great absence in the mass media of the simple reminder that a US attack upon Iraq means bombs falling on people, putting an end to homes, schools, hospitals, jobs, futures. The discussion has focused almost entirely on whether or not to go after the evil Sadaam and his supposed evil weapons. What it all means in terms of human suffering is scarcely considered worthy of attention. Is that not odd? Also absent from the discussion is that over the course of several years in the 1990s, the UN inspectors found and destroyed huge amounts of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. I'm sure that most Americans are convinced that Sadaam got away with hiding virtually all his weapons and that he'll get away with it again if there's a resumption of the inspections.
But that's not what happened. Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, recently stated that "since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed; 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been verifiably eliminated. This includes all of the factories used to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the associated equipment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products coming out of these factories." And we have similar testimony from others who were involved in the inspections.
Each of the big American bombing campaigns carries its own myths with it, but none so big as the one before last. I must remind you of that. We were told that the US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was to save the people of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing by the Serbs. And since the ethnic cleansing finally came to an end, the bombing seems to have worked. Right? First there was the ethnic cleansing, then came the bombing, then came the end of the ethnic cleansing. What could be simpler? I'm sure that about 90% of those Americans who think about such things firmly believe that, including many of you, I imagine.
But it was all a lie. The bombing didn't end the ethnic cleansing. The bombing CAUSED the ethnic cleansing. The systematic forced deportations of large numbers of Kosovars - what we call ethnic cleansing - did not begin until about two days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it by the Serb forces, born of great anger and feelings of powerlessness due to the heavy bombardment.
This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads: ... with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added] The next day, March 27, we find the first reference to a "forced march" or anything of that sort.
How is it possible that such a powerful lie could be told to the American people and that the people would swallow it without gagging? One reason is that the media don't explicitly point out the lies; at best you have to read between the lines. There's the story from the Cold War about a group of Russian writers touring the United States. They were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. "In our country," said one of them, "to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We torture them. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What's the secret?"
Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the US-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia three years ago? Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the US bombing of Iraq eleven years ago? Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the US bombing of Afghanistan? Isn't that remarkable? In a supposedly free society, with a supposedly free press, with about 1500 daily newspapers, the odds should be way against that being the case. But that's the way it is.
I suppose that now some of you would like me to tell you how to put an end to all these terrible and absurd things I've talked about. Well, good luck to all of us. I could say that personally I proceed from the assumption that if enough people understand what their government is doing and the harm that it causes, at some point the number of such people will reach critical mass and some changes can be effectuated. But that may well be a long way off. I hope I live to see it. I'm sure that if all Americans could see their government's bomb victims up close, see the body fragments, smell the burning flesh, see the devastated homes and lives and communities, there would be a demand to end such horror so powerful that even the imperial mafia madmen couldn't ignore it.
But how to get Americans to see the victims? I and many of you don't need to see those terrible sights to be opposed to the madmen's policies, but most Americans do. If we could figure out why we have this deep empathy for the victims, this imagination, it might be a very good organizing tool. Gandhi once said that "Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it." And the reason I must do it is captured by yet another adage, cited by various religious leaders: "We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us."
Sam Smith, a journalist in Washington, whom some of you are familiar with, in his new book makes the point that "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it." He then asks: Knowing what we know now about how certain things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on? We don't know what surprises history has in store for us when we give history a little shove, just as history can give each of us a little shove personally.
In the 1960s, I was working at the State Dept., my heart set on becoming a Foreign Service Officer. Little did I know that I would soon become a ranting and raving commie-pinko-subversive-enemy of all that is decent and holy because a thing called Vietnam came along. So there is that kind of hope as well.
Let me close with two of the laws of politics which came out of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, which I like to cite: The First Watergate Law of American Politics states: "No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine." The Second Watergate Law states: "Don't believe anything until it's been officially denied." Both laws are still on the books.
Written by William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
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12/14/2018 Update on William Blum, Author, Teacher:
About William Blum and the Anti-Empire report
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Dec 13, 2018, 6:08 AM (23 hours ago)
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