A license to lie that never expires
I touched upon this a year ago, but our much-esteemed leader and his
equally-esteemed acolytes continue to use the same argument in order to
deflect attention from their deformed child, the War On Terror — the
argument being that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, US
counterterrorism policy has worked. How do they know? Because there
haven't been any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six
years since that infamous day.
Right, but there weren't any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six years
before
Sept. 11, 2001 either, the last one being the Oklahoma City bombing of
April 19, 1995, with no known connection to al Qaeda. The absence of
terrorist attacks in the US appears to be the norm, with or without a
War on Terror.
More significantly, in the six years since
9-11 the United States has been the target of terrorist attacks on
scores of occasions, not even counting anything in Iraq or Afghanistan
— attacks on military, diplomatic, civilian, Christian, and other
targets associated with the United States, in the Middle East, South
Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen times in Pakistan alone. The
attacks include the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in Bali,
Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people, almost all of them
Americans and citizens of their Australian and British war allies; the
following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott
Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th
of July celebrations held by the American Embassy; and other horrendous
attacks in more recent years on US allies in Madrid and London because
of the war.
When the Bush administration argues that the absence of terrorist
attacks in the US since 9-11 means that its war on terrorism has
created a safer world for Americans ... why do I doubt this?
The past is unpredictable
As the call for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq grows louder,
those who support the war are rewriting history to paint a scary
picture of what happened in Vietnam after the United States military
left in March 1973.
They speak of invasions by the North Vietnamese communists, but fail to
point out that a two-decades-long civil war had simply continued after
the Americans left, minus a good deal of the horror which US bombs and
chemical weapons had been causing.
They speak of the "bloodbath" that followed the American withdrawal, a
term that implies killing of large numbers of civilians who didn't
support the communists. But this never happened. If it had taken place
the anti-communists in the United States who supported the war in
Vietnam would have been more than happy to publicize a "commie
bloodbath". It would have made big headlines all over the world. The
fact that you can't find anything of the sort is indicative of the fact
that nothing like a bloodbath took place. It would be difficult to
otherwise disprove this negative.
"Some 600,000 Vietnamese drowned in the South China Sea attempting to
escape."[4] Has anyone not confined to a right-wing happy farm ever
heard of this before?
They mix Vietnam and Cambodia together in the same thought, leaving the
impression that the horrors of Pol Pot included Vietnam. This is the
conservative National Review Online: "Six weeks later, the last
Americans lifted off in helicopters from the roof of the U.S. embassy
in Saigon, leaving hundreds of panicked South Vietnamese immediately
behind and an entire region to the mercy of the communists. The scene
was similar in Phnom Penh [Cambodia]. The torture and murder spree that
followed left millions of corpses."[5]
And here's dear old Fox News, July 26, reporters Sean Hannity and Alan
Colmes, with their guest, actor Jon Voight. Voight says "Right now,
we're having a lot of people who don't know a whole lot of things
crying for us pulling out of Iraq. This — there was a bloodbath when we
pulled out of Vietnam, 2.5 million people in Cambodia and Vietnam —
South Vietnam were slaughtered."
Alan Colmes' response, in its entirety: "Yes, sir." Hannity said
nothing. The many devoted listeners of Fox News could only nod their
heads sagely.
In actuality, instead of a bloodbath of those who had collaborated with
the enemy, the Vietnamese sent them to "re-education" camps, a more
civilized treatment than in post-World War Two Europe where many of
those who had collaborated with the Germans were publicly paraded,
shaven bald, humiliated in other ways, and/or hung from the nearest
tree. But some conservatives today would have you believe that the
Vietnamese camps were virtually little Auschwitzes.[6]
Has the conservative view of Vietnam post-US withdrawal already
hardened into historical concrete? "The agreed-upon historical record",
to use Gore Vidal's term?
The way of all flesh, the way of all wars
In 1967 and '68 I was writing a column of a type very similar to this
report, only it wasn't online of course; it was for the Washington Free
Press, part of the so-called "underground press". In looking over those
old columns recently I found three items whose relevance has not been
dimmed by time at all:
(1) [From the Washington Post, 1968]: "It has never been clearer that
the Marines are fighting for their own pride, from their own fear and
for their buddies who have already died. No American in Hue is fighting
for Vietnam, for the Vietnamese, or against Communism."[7]
[Make the obvious substitutions and we have: No American in Baghdad is
fighting for Iraq, for the Iraqi people, or against terrorism. And how
many of today's warriors can look around at what is happening in Iraq
and convince themselves that they're fighting for something called
freedom and democracy?]
(2) Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs, was the man most responsible for "giving, controlling and
managing the war news from Vietnam". One day in July 1965, Sylvester
told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate
only information that made the United States look good. When one of the
newsmen exclaimed: "Surely, Arthur, you don't expect the American press
to be handmaidens of government," Sylvester replied, "That's exactly
what I expect," adding: "Look, if you think any American official is
going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? —
stupid." And when a correspondent for a New York paper began a
question, he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: "Aw, come on. What
does someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?"[8]
(3) The US recently completed an operation in the III Corps area of
South Vietnam called "Resolved to Win". Now, a new operation is being
planned for the same area. This one is called "Complete Victory", which
should give you an idea of how successful "Resolved to Win" was. I
expect that the only operation standing a chance of success will be the
one called "Total Withdrawal."
Libertarians: an eccentric blend of anarchy and runaway capitalism
What is it about libertarians? Their philosophy, in theory and in
practice, seems to amount to little more than: "If the government is
doing it, it's oppressive and we're against it." Corporations, however,
tend to get free passes. Perhaps the most prominent libertarian today
is Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who ran as the Libertarian Party's
candidate for president in 1988 and is running now for the same office
as a Republican. He's against the war in Iraq, in no uncertain terms,
but if the war were officially being fought by, for, and in the name of
a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Bechtel, and some other
giant American corporations, would he have the same attitude? And one
could of course argue that the war is indeed being fought for such a
consortium. So is it simply the
idea or the
image of "a government operation" that bothers him and other libertarians?
Paul recently said: "The government is too bureaucratic, it spends too much money, they waste the money."[9]
Does the man think that corporations are not bureaucratic? Do
libertarians think that any large institution is not overbearingly
bureaucratic? Is it not the nature of the beast? Who amongst us has not
had the frustrating experience with a corporation trying to correct an
erroneous billing or trying to get a faulty product repaired or
replaced? Can not a case be made that corporations spend too much (of
our) money? What do libertarians think of the exceedingly obscene
salaries paid to corporate executives? Or of two dozen varieties of
corporate theft and corruption? Did someone mention Enron?
Ron Paul and other libertarians are against social security. Do they
believe that it's better for elderly people to live in a homeless
shelter than to be dependent on government "handouts"? That's exactly
what it would come down to with many senior citizens if not for their
social security. Most libertarians I'm sure are not racists, but Paul
certainly sounds like one. Here are a couple of comments from his
newsletter:
"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks
have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market,
individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."
"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the 'criminal
justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the
black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."[10]
Author Ellen Willis has written that "the fundamental fallacy of right
libertarianism is that the state is the only source of coercive power."
They don't recognize "that the corporations that control most economic
resources, and therefore most people's access to the necessities of
life, have far more power than government to dictate our behavior and
the day-to-day terms of our existence."[11]
NOTES
[1] "Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999", New York Times, March 8, 1992, p.14, emphasis added
[2] Financial Times (London), August 2, 2007
[3] BBC News, December 4, 1997, "Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline"
[4] Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative WorldNetDaily
(worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56769), August 6, 2007
[5] Mona Charen, National Review Online, July 20, 2007
[6] Search Google News: <bloodbath iraq vietnam> for more examples
[7] Washington Post, February 20, 1968, article by Lee Lescaze
[8] Congressional Record (House of Representatives), May 12, 1966, pp.
9977-78, reprint of an article by Morley Safer of CBS News
[9] National Public Radio, Morning Edition, August 9, 2007
[10] Atlanta Progressive News, June 3, 2007 (www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/views/0024-views.html)
As far as I can determine, Paul does not deny that these remarks, and
others equally racist, appeared in his newsletter, but he claims that a
staff member of his is the author of those remarks.
[11] Ellen Willis, Dissent magazine, Fall 1997
William Blum is the author of:
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Writings 
On several occasions I've been presented with the argument that contrary to widespread opinion in the anti-war movement and on the left, oil was not really a factor in the the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. The argument's key, perhaps sole, point is that the oil companies did not push for the war. 
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