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February
18, 2002
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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A Pocket Guide to
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February 18,
2002
Empire in Decline
By George Lewandowski
A few nights ago, I sank onto the couch next
to the dog, and popped "The Missiles of October,"
a 1974 made-for-TV docu-drama about the Cuban missile crisis,
into the DVD player. This is a behind the scenes teleplay, based
upon Robert F Kennedy's book about the two week period in October
1962, when his brother, President John F. Kennedy, wrestled
with the moral dilemmas presented by the shocking news that
Russian Premier, Nikita Khrushchev was installing surface to
surface ballistic missiles in Cuba.
This fascinating portrayal of historical
events is not relaxing family fare. It was first produced as
a TV film in 1974 and it is not to be confused with the much
prettier Kevin Costner Hollywood production of 2000 titled "Thirteen
Days," which is more loosely based upon the same book.
Like the 2000 Hollywood movie, the 1974
TV dramatization conveniently leaves out the context of the
crisis. There is no acknowledgement of any U.S. provocation
for the Soviet duplicity, no mention of prior U.S. support for
Fidel Castro the friendly free market dictator who was subsequently
banished to the status of an evil totalitarian after he seized
American corporate property. (Sound familiar?) Similarly, there
is no mention of Operation Mongoose (a well documented U.S.
plan to assassinate Castro with poison cigars, pills, pens and
even a tainted wetsuit), and only passing reference is made
to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of the previous year,
or of the trade and travel embargo initiated by former President
Eisenhower, a nonsensical affectation which survives to this
day.
One virtue of an anemic made-for-TV visual
presentation is that there are no scenic panoramas, no languid
love scenes to distract the viewer from the political debates
and the philosophical dialogue. The ideas being thrown about,
in this story, are adult themes, presented without any sugary
overlay of star crossed lovers, and cute kiddies in peril.
In so far as the dialogue of this movie
and the text of Robert Kennedy's book are presumed to represent
an accurate rendering of the dialogue that actually took place
among the members of Ex Comm (Executive Committee of the National
Security Council), then one must conclude that we are very
lucky to have survived that fiasco. The actual audio recordings
of some of these conversations are available from the national
archives, and they are just as shocking as the televised recreations.
Our own Donald Rumsfeld, and his company
of cluster bombers, have been content so far to merely generate
a few thousand corpses in their mission to eradicate Evil from
a scorched Earth. Their 1962 predecessors, by contrast, put
forth plans that called for tens of millions of collateral deaths
as a reasonable price to pay for punishing the uppity and evil
Mr. Khrushchev. Starting with the entire population of Cuba
and spreading immediately up the Eastern Seaboard, where receiving
retaliatory strikes was anticipated as a foregone conclusion,
the civilian losses on all sides from a nuclear exchange would
have been horrendous.
Almost incidental to these civilian casualties,
Cuba was equipped with tactical nuclear weapons, which could
have turned the invading armada of American troop ships into
a giant waterspout on a boiling sea.
This human toll was acceptable to the
Cold War warriors of 1962, but apparently it was not acceptable
to the Kennedys. In spite of their personal ambitions, these
two politicians were apparently held back by pangs of conscience
- what we sometimes call principles.
In his book, "Thirteen Days,"
Robert Kennedy recalls how General LeMay and the Joint Chiefs
wanted to launch swift, decisive, and deadly military action,
capitalizing upon the element of surprise that was certain to
evaporate in a matter of days if they didn't act swiftly.
More mature minds called for a blockade
to stop the construction of missile sites, backed up with verbal
demands for their removal. This plan would, at least, provide
an opportunity for the Russian Premier to back out of his tactical
blunder. One of the more mature minds was the civilian Secretary
of Defense, Robert McNamara, who "became the blockade's
strongest advocate," according to Robert Kennedy, even
as he supervised the military preparations for Armageddon.
Kennedy wrote, "I supported McNamara's
position in favor of a blockade. This was not from a deep conviction
that it would be a successful course of action, but a feeling
that it had more flexibility and fewer liabilities than a military
attack. Most importantly, like others, I could not accept the
idea that the United States would rain bombs on Cuba, killing
thousands and thousands of civilians in a surprise attack. Maybe
the alternatives were not very palatable, but I simply did not
see how we could accept that course of action for our country."
At that time, the American arsenal of
nuclear weapons dwarfed Khrushchev's operational inventory by
a factor of ten to one. The result of a nuclear exchange might
reasonably have been expected to leave the Americans slightly
less dead than their Cuban, European and Soviet counterparts.
Nonetheless President Kennedy and his young brother clearly
had second thoughts about being the Goliath who attacked David,
without warning.
Robert Kennedy argued that "whatever
validity the military and political arguments were for an attack
in preference to a blockade, America's traditions and history
would not permit such a course of action. Whatever military
reasons he (hawkish Secretary of State, Dean Acheson) and others
could marshal, they were nevertheless, in the last analysis,
advocating a surprise attack by a very large nation against
a very small one. This, I said, could not be undertaken by
the U.S. if we were to maintain our moral position at home and
around the globe. Our struggle against Communism throughout
the world was far more than physical survival - it had as its
essence our heritage and our ideals, and these we must not destroy.
"We spent more time on this moral
question during the first five days than on any other single
matter ... We struggled and fought with one another and with
our consciences, for it was a question that deeply troubled
us all."
With this historical perspective in mind,
one has to wonder about the emotional maturity of our nation
today, and particularly of the current occupants of the White
House. If we were presented with such an excuse today, a perfect
pretext for another lop-sided and glorious military victory
over a weaker nation, such as China for instance, who among
our current cast of prayer breakfast politicians possesses
the emotional intelligence, and the courageous energy necessary
to engage a room full of warriors in a mature and principled
discussion of national morality?
The Kennedys, in spite of all their faults
and their allegiance to American empire building, were still
able to muster enough courage to support principles that cast
them in the role of peaceniks among the generals, a role that
cost them some serious political capital when they eventually
revealed the crisis and their action plan to a hostile Congress.
Kennedy once remarked that those who
make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution
inevitable. He understood the kind of political forces that
created our own September 11th crisis, even though his own regime
suppressed peaceful revolutions when it should not have. Vietnam
was, after all, part of the Kennedy legacy, but the peaceful
resolution of the Cuban missile crises, with a critical helping
hand from Premier Khrushchev, was one of John Kennedy's proudest
moments. The world might be a far different place today, had
cooler heads not prevailed in October 1962.
This is the role of principled adults.
Courageous grownups have some moral boundary beyond which they
know they should not go, no matter what the political payback,
no matter how fearsome the face of the "enemy."
Today, an adoring press tells us that
our country's Commander in Chief has posted a scoreboard on
his wall, where he scrawls large black Xs across the glowering
faces of his vanquished enemies. Presumably, some CIA flunky
stationed a half world away, sifts the ashes of a primitive
civilization that has been burned beyond recognition. He searches
through teeth and bones for forensic evidence of trophy kills
to lift the spirits our warrior chief. Speculative reports of
such victories also help an adoring press fill those empty column
inches around their Lexus ads.
Each time one of Bush's "daisy cutters"
annihilates a valley, in hopes of incinerating a few more of
the "Evil Ones" amongst the expendable peasants, one
can visualize the President reaching for his magic marker in
anticipation of recording a fresh kill. This first phase of
the endless war is just another sporting event for the fraternity
boy who was privileged to sit out the Vietnam War, safely installed
by family connections in a Texas National Guard unit. Meanwhile,
the sons of less rich and powerful families were getting their
legs blown off, protecting American interests overseas.
Don't look for principles or moral courage
in this White House. It doesn't live there anymore. The concept
of moral boundaries, within the world's most powerful empire,
has deteriorated into a preoccupation with draping modesty
curtains over the bosoms of aluminum statues in the Hall of
Justice. This peek-a-boo childishness reflects the maturity
of American leadership. In this respect, we have become the
new Taliban. Will the Army Corps of Engineers demolition team
soon fan out across the country, with a list of other public
works of art that offend the high priests on the Potomac? Can
such an empire be long for this world?
If the President's popularity polls are
to be believed, only ten percent of Americans are able to recognize
an adult conversation about principles anymore. The other ninety
percent would have been appalled by the Kennedys' lack of "character."
The Kennedys, after all, failed to cover those offensive bosoms.
Apparently, ninety percent of Americans
are too busy with playground peek-a-boo games to notice any
logical disconnect between a crime carried out by nineteen criminals
who were mostly Saudi Arabian, and the resulting hellfire of
retribution that was unleashed upon thousands of Afghan peasants
living under the brutal Taliban government. Americans seem to
be unconcerned that this same Taliban government was the one
which American money had imposed upon the Afghans in a previous,
equally unprincipled crusade.
Ninety percent of America's citizens
cannot see any logical disconnect between labeling foreign trained
killers as "terrorists" and calling American trained
and financed death squads "a stabilizing force." Even
when the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and dozens of
other thugs whom the U.S. has supported over the years, got
re-labeled and recycled as "terrorists," ninety percent
of us still lacked the guts to question the obvious fickleness
of this unprincipled labeling process. This script formula has
proven so successful that the writers are busy converting even
more of our "allies" into "terrorists." This
will provide fresh venues for TV's newest soap opera, "The
War on Terrorism."
Ninety percent of us were apparently
impressed by our leader's public demonstration of moral agonizing
over the "right to life" question as it relates to
a few stem cells in a petri dish. His photo-op hand wringing
scenes starred the same ham actor who remains totally unruffled
by the arguments of people with real principles, people who
plead for him to recognize the right to life as it applies to
the already born children of the world, including Afghan and
Palestinian children. The "right to life" now applies
exclusively to microscopic organisms in petri dishes, tiny
new theoretical citizens who lack the mental capacity to challenge
the absurdities spewing forth from the capital.
Ninety percent of us apparently think
that a multi-million dollar peek through a While House keyhole,
to catch a Democratic president with his pants down, was essential
to returning moral integrity to the White House.
Curiously, that same ninety percent feels
that secret meetings between our Republican administration and
Enron gift bearers, meetings at which the corporate mouthpieces
dictated our latest national energy policy into the vice president's
Dictaphone, were a private affair between consenting adults.
These meetings will impact the entire air breathing, oil importing,
and oil producing populations of the planet for decades to come,
but ninety percent of us think that it's none of our business
who serviced whom during those pay-to-play White House huddles.
We do not question the moral right of our rulers to sell public
policy in private transactions. After all, the lobbyists and
their congressional bedmates have carefully written the laws
to permit this form of prostitution.
That is why our foreign policies, the
same policies that produce and provoke terrorists around the
world, support no consistent set of principles. U.S. foreign
relations represent the composite result of public policy purchases
by competing bidders. Unfortunately, the public pays the price,
in skyrocketing national defense costs, while the profits are
pocketed in private transactions.
Ninety percent of us will accept the
label of "war" whenever it is conveniently applied
to justify an unchecked application of force, or whenever it
is politically necessary to excuse outrageous behavior. An "America
at War" is an America that is exempt from all the inconvenient
restrictions of civilized behavior. On the other hand, the
resulting war's prisoners are not "prisoners of war"
because this use of the war label would subject our government
to the same expectations of civility that it demands from its
opponents during real "wartime." The principles behind
the Geneva Conventions are beyond the mental grasp of ninety
percent of us.
Ninety percent of us think that "stabilization"
is a noble goal for our foreign policy. The Nazis had a grand
scheme for stabilizing Europe. Some Americans of my father's
generation, many of whom were motivated by principles, destabilized
the Nazi concentration camps. Death, oppression, imprisonment,
torture, and the endless repetition of Big Lies are the tools
most commonly used by "stabilizing forces." Such forces
seek to contain the status quo within blocks of concrete and
rolls of razor wire.
The most stable citizenry is one which
no longer has any rights. It never complains. Today's Americans
don't like complainers. Our rulers are now in the process of
stabilizing America. More prisons will soon be needed to contain
the stabilized populations of America. We are becoming what
we have embraced all over the world.
Why should "stability" be an
acceptable substitute for the pursuit of such principles as
freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and shared access
to our common natural heritage of clean water, clear air and
life sustaining habitat? Why should "terrorists" be
condemned for attempts to poison us, while General Electric
and Enron receive public subsidies for producing the same results?
Those who oppose this greedy poisoning of America are called
"radicals and environmental extremists." Only the
poisons injected by "Islamic extremists" are "evil."
The PCBs dumped into our rivers, and the nuclear toxins dumped
onto my own state's pristine deserts, are not "evil."
They are proof of our "stable economy." Parts of the
Hanford Reach, our newest national monument, will be stable
and sterile for uncountable generations to come.
Why should American taxpayers provide
foreign thugs with the weapons necessary to secure the perimeters
of the world's newest concentration camps, in the name of maintaining
stability? Were the Afghans really better off when American
tax money "stabilized" them under the Taliban regime?
Now they are being "stabilized" again, under a new
regime. If any principles are applied to this war, they won't
come from the American camp. We are already racing off to stage
the next grand performance. The sights of our robot weapons
are already trained on some other primitive society that needs
to be "stabilized" for an appreciative press corps.
What principle was served by "stabilizing"
Iraq under the thumb of the Shah, and then later stabilizing
it under the fist of Saddam Hussein? What good will be accomplished
if Saddam is exiled and Iraq is stabilized under some new murderous
regime, again imposed by American military might acting without
any guiding principles?
If no principles are ever applied to
such work, what is the point of it? What good comes from stabilizing
three million desperate Palestinian prisoners behind barbed
wire barriers and American artillery?
Where are the people who will inspire
the tomorrow's world with their moral courage and their mental
command of principles? Where is tomorrow's world leadership
going to come from? They probably won't come from the most powerful
empire the world has ever known. We can't muster enough moral
muscle to shut down our own terrorist training camp, the School
of the Americas.
The United States of America is acting
more and more like a has-been, an empire that has peaked and
which now has developed round heels on its Reeboks. The fervor
for reform, so brazen, bold and brash in the early seventies,
has now slumped into a media induced stupor. Ninety percent
of us are plugged into intravenous TV news. We are content to
go along in order to get along. If the only measure of our
greatness is our accumulation of hot tubs and luxury cars, then
we are on top of the world. Why rock the corporate yacht? Why
ask any questions?
Fortunately, for the rest of the world,
there are courageous new voices rising up in unexpected places.
Even though America is no longer governed by men with the conscience
of the dead Kennedys, no longer restrained by men and women
with the maturity to think twice about incinerating whole nations
for political expedience, there are still hopeful signs of a
moral rebirth elsewhere in the world. It is deep winter in America,
but there are signs of a spiritual spring elsewhere on the planet.
In Israel, for instance, two hundred
thirty two military reservists have risked their careers, their
reputations, and even their personal liberty to take a moral
stand against the amoral deeds of their own war mongering government.
They have signed
a petition refusing to take part in war crimes against Palestinian
civilians. While these young patriots pledge their continuing
support to the defense of Israel, they also publicly pledge
that they "shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967
borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an
entire people."
These men of uncommon courage are combat
veterans. They are not the Bush-Cheney brand of flag wavers
who wear their patriotism proudly on their sleeves while hiding
their cowardice behind Ivy League family privilege. The Israeli
Army Reserve is not the Texas National Guard. It's not a babysitting
service for sons of the rich and famous. It is a real army,
one that sees real combat, and takes real casualties. These
Israeli soldiers have put their names on the line and put themselves
in harm's way, to stand up for principle.
There are even faint signs of a spiritual
awakening in Afghanistan, where other nations, acting through
the U.N. have shown an interest in nurturing the growth of a
more modern civilization on this ancient battlefield. Of course,
ninety percent of Americans have little patience for such "women's
work." Our push button gladiators are already heading over
the hill to cross swords with the Axis of Evil.
Around the world, from Geneva to Davos,
there is a new stirring of young idealists, men and women willing
to pick up the torch that has been cast aside by the ninety
percent of Americans who "have better things to do."
The new movers and shakers are not content to slap flag decals
on their SUVs. They are dogging the heels of the world's power
brokers as they crisscross the globe. These are the youngsters
whom America dismisses as "activists," "extremists,"
"radicals," and "protestors." Without any
help from us, they are demanding to be treated like real citizens
of the world. Many of these troublemakers are pushing against
great odds to promote those very same citizenship rights that
ninety percent of Americans have discarded as being too messy,
to much trouble.
These troublemakers are not welcome in
America. We are a one party democracy, composed of cowering
Democrats and Republican wannabes. We politely confine our civic
impulses to the comfort zone of Rotary lunches and Chamber of
Commerce dinners.
Nonetheless, out beyond the limited visual
range of America's well coiffed Eyewitness News Team, the real
world is stirring from its slumber. Radical, unauthorized thinking
is already spreading under the heavy blanket of winter snow.
The carefully contrived "stability"
of prisons built with bricks of moral complacency and the mortar
of propaganda will slowly but inexorably yield to the constant
assault of principles. If water drips long enough on stone,
the stone eventually yields. The principles of liberty and justice
are simple, basic, and universally desired. They wear down the
hardest of hearts.
It was the relentless onslaught of these
ideals, not the empty rhetoric of some cold war warrior, which
undermined the foundation of the Berlin Wall and brought it
crashing down. East Germany was destabilized by principles stirring
in the hearts of men and women of courage. It can happen elsewhere.
The laws of physics and political maturation don't change.
While America retreats into its second
childhood, other cultures are growing up and learning to think
for themselves. Those people who are more morally vigorous will
take our place. Ninety percent of us will be content to merely
watch history unfold on our big screen TVs. Real citizenship
is hard work, better left to the young, the healthy, and the
politically conscious.
Ninety percent of us are like our leaders.
We are content with our Bud Light and our pretzels.
George Lewandowski is the content director for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: glewandowski@YellowTimes.ORG.
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