Iraq, Orwell, and American Foreign Policy

Iraq, Orwell, and American Foreign Policy

P. Schultz

January 9, 2014

            Here is a quote from an article in the NY Times from today:

“Critics complain that Mr. Obama squandered the military success achieved by President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop “surge” and should have done more to persuade Baghdad to accept a residual American force beyond 2011. They say he should have been more active in restraining Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose Shiite leadership has alienated many Sunnis, fueling the latest uprising.”

            Where to begin? Anywhere, actually. First: This implies that Obama’s Iraq policies are different than those of George Bush II. Really? “The military success achieved by….Bush” was that Bush got to leave the presidency with the appearance of success. In this sense, and in this sense only, did “the surge work.” And it was Bush who, because of the alleged “success” of the surge, claimed that it would be possible to do what Obama did, pull out of Iraq.

            Second: This continues the fantasy that the presence of American power is the key to peace around the world. Why a fantasy? Well, just to name a few examples: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Afghanistan. All of these are places where the “presence” of American power did little or nothing to promote peace. In places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan especially, American power was the cause of war and created, facilitated, and extended wars there. People forget too easily that more American soldiers were killed and injured in Vietnam after Nixon was elected president than before with his “secret peace plan.” And, of course, the war in Afghanistan has been going on for at least 13 years since the United States has been “involved” there. And now we see that Iraq is quite similar. The war, started by Bush II, as it bears repeating, is on going. It is a fantasy for us to think that “the projection of American power,” as some like to say, leads to peace – or is intended to.

            Third: What is currently happening in Iraq is, I submit, precisely what Bush II and the Obama administration want to happen: Chaos in the Middle East. It seems to me pretty obvious that this has been the goal of American foreign policy over the past few presidencies, a policy that is meant to serve the interests not only of the United States but also those of Israel and Saudi Arabia. The most obvious action supporting my contention is how the Bush II administration “dealt with” Iraq once the invasion was over. And it is impossible to buy explanations like, “Oh, the Bush administration forgot to plan for the occupation.”

Does this policy mean that there might be “blowback,” say in the form of “terrorism” even here in the United States? Of course, but then such “blowback” is merely “collateral damage” for those holding the reins of power in Washington. Such damage is part of a realist’s modus operandi. And what the Bush administrations and the Obama administration have in common, in addition to other things, is an embrace of “realism” as the basis of American foreign policy. “Unconscionable,” you say? Yes, of course. But again that is the essence of “realism.”

So, here is my guess: The killing, the war will go on in Iraq, while Republicans and Democrats squabble here, making it seem that this is, from their perspectives, an undesirable state of affairs. But it is not. In fact, it is exactly the state of affairs they both embrace. And, so, whichever party holds the presidency, war in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, and maybe elsewhere as well, will go on and on and on, as George Orwell saw so long ago when he wrote 1984. And like Winston in 1984, we will be expected to accept these wars as necessary and even as justified. We seem to be pretty much there already, as the Times article illustrates.

Here is the link to the Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/world/middleeast/grim-sequel-to-iraqs-war.html?hp&_r=0

Obama: Perhaps His Instincts Were Better Than HIs Reason

-->

Obama: Perhaps His Instincts Were Better Than His Reason

P. Schultz

January 7, 2014

            In an article in the NY Times today, an account is given of a memoir by Robert Gates which is, allegedly, critical of President Obama, at least with regard to Afghanistan. Here is a quote from the article, the link to which is provided below:

“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

            Gee, I guess for Mr. Gates this, “losing faith,” qualifies as criticism, while for me it qualifies as thoughtfulness, unaccompanied by a will to follow one’s instincts. Trust Petraeus? Is that what Petraeus’ wife did? Trust him? Oops! Do business with Karzai? You mean, the guy whose brother was as corrupt as they come and who was himself seen as a “lightweight” in the arena of Afghan politics? And what is wrong with “getting out?” As if, “getting in” did the United States much good. Oh yeah, that’s right: By getting in we disabled bin Laden, didn’t we? Well, not so much, it would seem. And our “strategy” there. What did that amount to? It is debatable whether “counterinsurgency” has ever “worked” anywhere. But, of course, that is not the American way.

You know, it is almost always the case that Americans like to think that the reason they have failed, e.g., in Vietnam, in Korea, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, is because they did not employ the “right strategy.” “Oh, if only we had employed the right strategy, all would have been well.” We Americans never fail because we have chosen to fight wars that we could not win; no, we just make “mistakes.” Or, our strategies are never wrong; they are just improperly implemented. “Oh, if only JFK had lived. Even if he didn’t pull out of Nam, he would have ‘won’ that war! After all, he was young, he was handsome, and he had a Harvard education. How could he fail?”

            When we will learn that the world is not “manageable,” that power does not guarantee success, that all the technological “break throughs” do not and cannot guarantee success? When? I doubt ever. And so it is little wonder to me that Obama probably thought of his instincts the way Gates thinks of them: Not to be trusted and certainly not to be acted upon. Too bad. He might have meant something if he had trusted his instincts more than his reason.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/world/asia/obama-lost-faith-in-his-afghan-strategy-memoir-asserts.html?hp

More Fantasy

More Fantasy

P. Schultz

January 5, 2014

            Here is a headline in the NY Times, as displayed on its main web page: “Absent U.S., Power Vacuum in the Middle East Lifts Militants.” You will find the link below.

            To me, this is just astounding. After all, it was the exercise of U.S. power in the Middle East, especially in the form of Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq that has led to rise of militancy in the Middle East! And this is to say nothing at all about how U.S. support for Israel might also contribute to the strength of the militants in the Middle East.

            Oh yes, and by the way, what do you call a nation which claims as its right to preemptively strike, that is, wage war on those who it perceives to be its enemies? I suggest that the word “militant” could be accurately used to describe such a nation. So why is it that the Times feels free to label some in the Middle East “militants,” but chooses not to do so with regard to the United States? Y’all know the answer to that question, of course.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/world/middleeast/power-vacuum-in-middle-east-lifts-militants.html?hp

Oh, How We and the NY Times Love to Fantasize

Oh, How We and the NY Times Love to Fantasize

P. Schultz

January 3, 2014

            Immediately below is a link to an article in today’s NY Times reminiscing about how wonderful it was when Reagan was president and he and the Congress “made government work,” as the saying is these days. And then following that is an excerpt from Walter Karp’s Liberty Under Siege, providing a different description and evaluation of Reagan and how government “worked” when he president. When the oligarchs get together, it is amazing just how well the government “works.” Of course, the question is: “Works” for whom? Which is always the question.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/us/politics/when-a-2nd-term-president-and-a-divided-congress-made-magic.html?hpw&rref=politics

Excerpts From Liberty Under Siege, by Walter Karp

The Reagan Revolution As A Political Crime Against Self-Government

            “A tremor of fear ripples through Republican ranks [1980] – with reason most compelling. Inside the supply-side quackery and immense and dangerous force lies latent, coiled up within it like a boa constrictor. Once the Federal Reserve succeeds in disinflating the economy, the one certain result of Reagan’s huge promised tax cut is huge annual budget deficits – more than $100 billion a year; $150 billion, perhaps, counting the military buildup. So calculates Reagan’s future budget director, David Stockman, age thirty four, a former protégé of Senator Moynihan’s. No mace in Stockman’s eyes are these huge crushing deficits, but an ‘opportunity,’ he calls it, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for ‘a formal assault on the welfare state.’ Given the ‘battering ram’ force to those deficits, a titanic reversal of history lies within the power of the Right: ‘Forty years of promises, subventions, entitlements and safety nets issued by the federal government to every component and stratum of American society would have to be scrapped or drastically modified,’ so Stockman recalls himself thinking in those heady autumn days of 1980. The ‘craven politicians’ would have no choice: dismantle the enterprises of government, liberate and exalt the power of capital – trampled and brought low for so many years – ‘or risk national ruin’ from the crush of those deficits.

            “Therein lies the true beauty of the scheme: no choice. No need to persuade a feckless electorate that mitigating gross inequality is an enterprise unworthy of a republican commonwealth. No need to persuade them that a house of one’s own, yeomanly independence, security in old age, clear air and clean water, the principles of liberty and equality perpetually upheld (however ill served), a public realm shielded from hungry mobs and criminal despair (for misery is the enemy of liberty) are impermissible public goals – ‘bloated, wasteful and unjust spending enterprises,’ so the future budget director calls them. No need to undertake the hopeless task of teaching the national mob the sublime, icy truths of laissez-faire capitalism; no need to persuade them – for it is equally hopeless – that no purpose beyond ‘economic efficiency’ is fit and proper for a capitalist country, for America as ‘just one big business,’ for America the ‘industrial giant,’ as the President-elect likes to call this Republic. Are we not something other than that, the feckless rabble would ask? Have Americans not died on a hundred battlefields for something other than that? For something more like government of, by and for the people, which is supposed not to perish from this earth? No need to turn aside such questions. The American people are drowning in inflation, are clinging to the balanced budget idea like a shipwrecked sailor clutching at flotsam. Let Congress enact – but will it? – these huge tax-reduction deficits and then let Reagan demand they be wiped away and there is no need to persuade a free people to abandon their feckless public goals. Under the crushing weight of ‘fiscal necessity’ – a false necessity, necessity brutally, deceitfully contrived – the judgment of the vicious many shall be subjugated to the will of the righteous few, to us, the Right, keepers of the flame, dwellers in the political wilderness for fifty years, in the wilderness no longer.

            “Such is the latent power coiled up within supply-side quackery – the power to carry out a brutal plot, a deceitful scheme, a political crime, a crime against government by the consent of the governed, a tyrant’s crime against a free people’s freedom to decide their own fate, a crime by no means deeply concealed. On October 14, poor, unheeded Carter had presciently warned that his rival’s program must lead, inevitably, to a $130 billion deficit by 1983, to a bloated military establishment and a federal government stripped, impoverished and paralyzed for years to come. Suppose the supply-side plot were launched and the people rose up against it? What would become of the Reaction then? What possible hope would there be for Oligarchy restored?” [127-29]

"Saving" Iraq

-->

“Saving” Iraq

P. Schultz

January 1, 2014

            Nothing the US does will “save” Iraq, primarily because the purpose of US policy is decidedly not to save Iraq. And that was not and is not today the purpose of US policy. Rather, the purpose of Shrub’s invasion and occupation was to undermine Iraq as a functioning nation, just as it was and is the purpose of US in the Middle East to create chaos there for as long as is possible and regardless of the inhumanity of this policy. One should never underestimate, as Machiavelli reminded us, of the inhumanity of those we label today “realists.” To succeed, the prince must “learn to be able not to be good.” Link follows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/opinion/more-guns-will-not-save-iraq.html?hp&rref=opinion

Happy New Year!

Blowback in Russia?

Blowback in Russia?

P. Schultz

December 31, 2013

            Below is an article from today’s NY Times entitled “Bomb Attacks Echo Threats by Chechen Insurgent.” And it made me think of something I had recently read in a book entitled Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, by Steve Coll. Here are some of the relevant passages.

            “Drawing on his experiences running dissident Polish exiles as agents behind Nazi lines, [William] Casey [head of the CIA under Reagan] decided to revive the CIA’s propaganda proposals targeting Central Asia. . . .As [Mohammed] Yousaf recalled it, Casey said that there was a large Muslim population across the Amu Darya [River] that could be stirred to action and could ‘do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union.’ The CIA director talked about the propaganda efforts but went further. Casey said, according to Yousaf, ‘We should take the books and try to raise the local population against them, and you can also think of sending arms and ammunition if possible.’ . . .Robert Gates, Casey’s executive assistant and later CIA director, has confirmed that Afghan rebels ‘began cross-border operations in the Soviet Union itself’ during the spring of 1985. These operations included ‘raising cain on the Soviet side of the border.’ The attacks too place, according to Gates, ‘with Casey’s encouragement.’” [p. 104]

            The CIA, of course, has denied these assertions but as Coll says, “Gates’ account appears unambiguous, and Yousaf’s recollections are precise. It would hardly be unusual for Casey to pursue covert action outside the boundaries of presidential findings. . . .And as Gates reflected later, referring more generally to his sense of mission, Casey had not come to the CIA ‘with the purpose of making it better, managing it more effectively, reforming it, or improving the quality of intelligence. . . . Bill Casey came to the CIA primarily to wage war against the Soviet Union.’” [p. 105]

                                                 

            So, perhaps, the current terrorism has it roots at least partially in Bill Casey’s war against the Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union is gone but Russia remains, as do some Muslims who are still willing and able to make war against Russia. And perhaps the “rewards” of Casey’s belligerence will be felt at the Olympics in Sochi. But then when you are willing “to play hardball,” these are the kinds of repercussions you should expect. They are the price of making war covertly or, as some might say, of encouraging terrorists to do your bidding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/world/europe/bomb-attacks-in-russia-echo-threats-by-chechen-insurgent.html?hp&_r=0

Truman and the Bomb, Part 3

Truman and the Bomb, Part 3

P. Schultz

December 27, 2013

“The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.” Herbert Hoover, the day before the bombing of Nagasaki.

“I could not put into words the shock I felt from the news that a city of hundreds of thousands of people had been destroyed by a single bomb. That awful event and its successor at Nagasaki sank into my soul, and they sank into the souls of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.” Bishop of Seattle, Raymond Huntshauser.

“The knowledge of horrible events periodically intrudes into public awareness [but] it is rarely retained for long. Denial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as on an individual level.” Judith Herman, psychiatrist.

The United States “adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to the president [Truman].

“The readiness to use nuclear weapons….is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity – and indignity of monstrous dimensions – offered to God.” George F. Kennan, “A Christian’s View of the Arms Race.”

            Gar Alperovitz concludes his book, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by arguing that we cannot know, at least not yet, why Truman decided to use the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. He goes through the reasons most often offered, the military reasons, the political reasons, the economic reasons, the governmental/bureaucratic reasons, and the diplomatic reasons. But he modestly asserts that we cannot know exactly why Truman made the decisions he made, and he did make decisions.

            But perhaps the “why question” is not as important or as interesting as the “what question.” That is, what did Truman do? And as some of the above quotes seem to make clear, what Truman had done was to sin. He committed “a blasphemy” which he “offered to God.” And this is why it revolted Hoover’s soul and why it “sank into [Bishop Huntshauser’s] soul” and, if the Bishop is correct, into “the souls of all of us.” It might be said even that Truman was possessed, that is, possessed by what some human beings have been possessed by throughout recorded history, the dream of possessing god-like power or powers, powers bordering on omnipotence. He possessed the power of fire that seems to originate in the heavens and can be used to cleanse the earth of its scourges. With this god-like fire, Truman would be able to control the world and bring it to a peace that is final and perpetual. In this way, Truman’s actions had little or nothing to do what Admiral Leahy calls “an ethical standard.” Truman was “beyond good and evil,” he was beyond morality. He had entered a different kind of realm altogether, the realm of sin.