The estimated 50 million Americans already living in poverty will be hit hardest by the $85 billion in spending cuts set to begin after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement over the most effective way to address the national debt.
New statistics from the US Census Bureau reveal that one in every six Americans is living below the poverty line.
Additionally, one in five American children is now living in the same unfortunate situation.
The news that 16 per cent of the American public was living in poverty last rang true in the mid-1960s, when then-president Lyndon Johnson tried to launch a war on poverty. But his efforts – which fell under the Great Society program – were first suspended then permanently abandoned in order to pay for the US invasion of Vietnam.
Each individual American, or American family, is assigned one out of 48 possible poverty thresholds which vary depending on the size of the family and the age of its members. The thresholds were determined in 1964 and are based on what portion of their income families spend on food, although they do not vary geographically.
According to the Census Bureau, if a family’s monetary income is less than their predetermined appropriate threshold, then that family is in poverty. For example, a family of five with two children, a mother, father, and great aunt’s threshold was $27,517 in 2011. The 2013 threshold for a family of four is $23,021.
Food stamps, housing subsidies, and other non-cash government benefits are not used to determine a family’s income.
Now, the extra $85 billion in cuts will further exacerbate that financial stress. The sequester, which could have been avoided before the presidential election in November, could devastate programs that receive federal funding to help the poor.
William McCarthy, executive director of Catholic Charities, told the Associated Press that the national budget cuts “will deepen and increase poverty” for low-income areas, children, poor senior citizens and many other demographics.
As we draw closer to the withdrawal in Afghanistan promised at the close of 2014, a look back at America’s longest war.
In October 2001, George W. Bush told the country he was sending the American military to Afghanistan in order to “bring justice to our enemies.” It’s safe to say support for the war would not have been as nearly unanimous as it was had he said, “Oh, and by the way, our troops are going to be fighting there for the next 13 years.” But if all goes according to plan and Barack Obama follows up on his pledge to bring them home by the end of 2014, that’s how long the Afghanistan war will have lasted.
We thought it would be useful to take a brief look at some of the basic facts of our involvement there. Last spring, Afghanistan passed Vietnam (measured by the time between the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 and the departure of the last Americans from Saigon in 1975) to become America’s longest war.
To date, we’ve spent over half a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, a figure that includes only the direct yearly costs for both military expenditures and civilian aid. It doesn’t include the cost of replacing materiel and weapons used in Afghanistan, nor the long-term costs of caring for the thousands of servicemembers who were wounded there. Those factors will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the tally in the years to come. And today, keeping a single servicemember in Afghanistan costsupwardof a million dollars per year.
Nevertheless, the number of troops serving in Afghanistan has been lower than in most of our past conflicts, including Iraq. Until President Obama began winding down the Iraq War, the number of troops there typically averaged between 140,000 and 150,000. On the other hand, when Obama took office, the number of troops in Afghanistan had never exceeded 40,000. After he undertook a “surge” of troops to Afghanistan, the number maxed out at 100,000 during the summer of 2011. Last fall it came down to its current level of 68,000; plans for the ultimate drawdown that will take place over the next two years have not been finalized.
For all their horrors, our current conflicts have been far less deadly than the wars of America’s past. Over 100,000 Americans died in World War I, over 400,000 in World War II, 36,000 in Korea, and 58,000 in Vietnam. But advances in medicine, communication, and transportation—not to mention the asymmetric nature of the conflicts—have kept casualties significantly lower in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That’s no comfort, of course, to the thousands of men and women killed and wounded in those wars, nor to their families and friends. Last August, the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan passed 2,000.
PART ONE: “Two, Three, many Vietnams”: National Liberation and the Rise of the Third World (1945 – 1991)
Asia, Africa and Latin America in the Early Years of the Century
With the exception of Latin America, and several noteworthy cases in Africa and Asia, the pre-1945 history of what came to be known as the “Third World” is overwhelmed by the fact of imperialism. Native voices were silenced and native cultures nearly eradicated.
In Asia, Japan was the only country to industrialize, and thus the only country to emerge as a major player in world affairs. Although at first resistant to Western influences; by the middle of the 19th century Japan had embarked on a major modernization program. Building upon traditional values, Japan built an army and navy powerful enough to challenge Russia over Korea at the turn of the last century; and strong enough to join the British, French, Germans, and Americans in carving out a sphere of influence in China. A hybrid of feudal/warrior institutions and modern technology would characterize Japan throughout most of the 20th century. Some argue that this mixture would enable Japanese economic success.
China, the most populous nation on earth, with a culture going back some 5,000 years, was weak and felt herself victimized by the Great Powers. Unlike Japan, China had not modernized. Chinese institutions had frozen. The Manchu dynasty which had ruled China for some 300 years seemed more interested in maintaining itself in power than in bettering the lot of its people; the majority of whom lived in conditions of appalling poverty. Although there was a strong feeling against foreign domination, which periodically erupted into mass uprisings such as the Boxer Rebellion; China had been effectively divided up amongst the Great Powers, who controlled large areas known as ‘concessions’ where they enjoyed trade monopolies. The corrupt and infirm Manchu dynasty fell underneath its own weight in 1911. The collapse of Manchu rule created a power vacuum which was filled by ambitions local strongmen, the ‘warlords,’ who became a law unto themselves in China’s vast outlying regions and frustrated any attempt at national unification.
Only two nations in Africa escaped colonial rule: Liberia and Ethiopia. Liberia, created by American abolitionists in 1825 as place to which future freed slaves could be “repatriated,” existed as a small anomaly to the general imperialist trend. Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, continued as a feudal monarchy surrounded by European protectorates and outright colonies.
Latin America was the great exception. By 1821, most of the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies had become independent states. Most of the 19th Century, in Latin America was consumed by a fierce struggle between traditional elites who favored a continuation of the old colonial plantation system and modernizers who wished to institute capitalist economics and bring in contemporary technologies and ideas. This conflict was further complicated by the beginning of the 20th Century by the active involvement of the United States in the region. Going back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1825, the United States had seen Latin America as its “back yard”; and American investments and interests in Latin America grew exponentially.
In Central America and the Caribbean, the battle between Conservatives (traditionalists) and Liberals (modernizers) lasted, in some case up to the 1930s. The ever increasing US presence stunted indigenous development and encouraged the rise of military dictatorships which maintained a precarious balance between repressing domestic dissent and ensuring continued US support. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, Spanish colonial rule was replaced, in the first instance by an apparent independence masking the reality of outside control, and in the second case, by direct US annexation.
Different scenarios were played out north and south of Central America. To the north, Mexico, which had, shortly after independence, lost much of its territory to the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1842, developed a strong, albeit contradictory state. In 1911, the Mexican Revolution overthrew the 40-year military dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and inaugurated a period of titanic political/economic/social struggle. Populist radical leaders such as Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata vied with conservatives such as Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon as ad hoc revolutionary armies fought against whom ever happened to constitute the government at the time and each other. Eventually, the radicals were either marginalized or destroyed, and power settled into the hands of a conservative, modernizing elite composed of political strongmen and their followers. This elite held power through the mechanism of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI oversaw the secularization and modernization of Mexican society. By 1945, Mexico was a contradictory mixture of large cities with modern industries, and a poor, backward countryside; a strong national sense of self, and control by a coterie of politicians and businessmen; an independent foreign policy, and a sharp awareness of the presence of the United States. In one way or another, this pattern would come to characterize not only Mexico, but much of Latin America.
In the south, Brazil and Argentina were becoming industrial power houses – albeit conflicted ones. Brazil seemed to follow the pre-established Mexican pattern: large, sprawling urban areas surrounded by impoverished rural zones. Brazil’s industries were concentrated in the north and along the coast; the wealth of the interior was only sporadically exploited. Argentina, with its large immigrant population (mainly Italian and Eastern European) provided something of a contrast. Heavy industry had appeared at the dawn of the century; the immense volume of European immigrant coming to work in those industries. The immigrants brought with them European ideas and social relations; both of which conflicted with traditional values. By 1945 the dictatorship of Juan Peron which combined a fascist core with modernizing elements initiated a period of military rule which would, by and large, characterize Argentina until the 1980s.
Imperialism and Colonialism Revisited
The decisions of the Versailles Conference of 1919 dismantled the Turkish, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but kept the British and French Empires intact. Not only that, but the Portuguese continued to rule Angola and Mozambique in Africa; the Belgians continued to rule the Congo; and the Dutch continued to govern Indonesia. The Middle East was divided between British French spheres of influence and protectorates. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did become independent commonwealths – and Ireland did fight her way to a disunited independence – but, by and large, imperialism remained intact after World War I.
It wouldn’t be until after World War II that powerful drives towards independence and de-colonization would shatter the old European empires and create the modern states of Asia and Africa. The Second World War, with its anti-fascist and democratic aspirations, would impel the peoples of the colonial world to demand the same.
National Independence Struggles
In some cases, indigenous forces had played a major role in the defeat of the Axis powers. In Vietnam and Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno (respectively) emerged from the war as venerated national leaders. After the war, the French attempted to restore their rule in South East Asia. This misguided attempt came to an end in 1954 when, at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese forces under the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh which had previously defeated the Japanese; now prevented the French from returning. When the Americans tried to supplant the French, they too came to grief. A similar situation unfolded in Indonesia when the Dutch tried to restore the pre-war order. A similar outcome resulted: Sukarno, who had led resistance to the Japanese, now oversaw the independence of Indonesia.
The British came out of World War II in no condition to hold their empire together. In India, the Congress Party, under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah had been the focus of the independence movement there for decades. Their moment arrived in 1948 when the British pulled out and Indian independence was declared. But independence brought crisis. Perhaps with British encouragement, Jinnah led a faction which demanded that a separate Muslim state be created. In multi-religious, polyglot India, this demand led to massive disruption, forced resettlement of huge amounts of people, and a great amount of ethnic and sectarian bloodshed. In the end, India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim) were created as two separate – and mutually hostile – states.
In Africa, decolonization quite often led to extended periods of instability. Independence leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Julius Nyere (Tanzania), and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) strove to modernize their countries by following a socialist model of development. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba failed to establish a fully independent state, at the cost of his life. In many parts of Africa, the pull out of the colonial powers created confusion, chaos, and ethnic strife. Often this was caused by old imperial states themselves, as they continued to try to exert influence in their former possessions by sponsoring ethnic and political rivalries. Portugal refused to divest itself of its colonies, with the result that it took nationalist guerrilla movements until the 1970s to establish the independent nations of Mozambique and Angola. In the former British colonies of Rhodesia and South Africa, the white settler population refused to yield to demands for civil equality for the native Africans. Fighting lasted until 1975 when Rhodesia became the majority-African governed Zimbabwe (under Robert Mugabe); and until 1989 when the racist apartheid system was destroyed in South Africa (under Nelson Mandela).
In the Middle East, the Algerian Revolution of 1956 forced the French out of that country. In Egypt, Gamel Abdel Nasser came to power with a promise to encourage “Arab unity” and “Arab Socialism.” Nasser’s ideas spread to Syria and Iraq, where a movement claiming to champion Arab Socialism, but in fact more reminiscent of Italian Fascism took hold, Baathism. In many cases, interference by Western powers led to the displacement of radical, modernizing regimes with repressive conservative governments. The neutralization of the Left and the bankruptcy of the Right led many to see radical Islam as a viable political alternative.
The creation, by UN mandate, of the state of Israel in 1948 exacerbated the crises endemic to the area. The flow of immigrants to the new Jewish state led to the displacement of much of the native Palestinian population. The new Israel developed into a thoroughly militarized state, eventually going to war with the surrounding Arab states in 1967 and 1973.
The movement for de-colonization was strongly affected by the Cold War. Many independence movements had adopted one or another variety of socialism as its ideology, and many post-independence regimes sought Soviet aid. Other, more conservative post-independence governments became allies of the United States. Some changed sides. Thus, movements such as the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, Frelimo in Mozambique, and the MPLA in Angola saw themselves as Marxist; Israel, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia were in the US camp; while governments in Algeria, Egypt, and the Congo (Zaire) switched from Soviet to American sponsorship. The proxy conflict between the US and USSR was played out in the post-colonial world. Soon, two other forces, China and Cuba, would enter the fray.
The Chinese Revolution
China has seen a century of revolution – and some would say that it’s far from over. Revolution overthrew the decrepit Manchu dynasty in 1911. The newly created Chinese Republic, under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), wanted to create a united, modern, and democratic China. The first step in achieving this would be the cancellation of foreign concessions and the bringing to heel of the regional warlords. It was ‘simple’ enough to ask the British, French, etc. to leave; the second part of that equation was more difficult to achieve. The warlords were ensconced in remote areas, unseating them would require a trained, professional army. In order to raise an officer class capable of leading such an army, the Whampoa military academy was established in 1920. The Whampoa academy attracted many young, patriotic Chinese of all political persuasions. Many of China’s future leaders would come out of the Whampoa Academy. At the head of the academy, as director, was Sun yat-Sen’s protégé, Chiang Kai-Shek. By the end of the 1920s, the “Northern Expedition,” as the anti-warlord campaign was termed, was largely successful. By that time, however, a new conflict had developed.
The new China was alone in the world. The former imperial powers, who had just been asked to leave, weren’t about to render any aid. Desperate for support, China turned to another nation just then going through a revolution of their own, the Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed to provide political and military aid to China, but at a price: that the Kuomintang bring into the government, as partners, the newly-created Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-Sen agreed, and the Communists were essential to victory in the Northern Expedition. However, Sun Yat-Sen’s lieutenant Chiang Kai-shek vehemently disagreed with any cooperation with the Communists. After Sun’s death in 1925, he was succeeded by Chiang who jettisoned any pretense of democracy, making himself military dictator. Chiang also wanted to get rid of the Communists at the first available opportunity.
In November of 1927, Chiang struck. Nationalist troops unexpectedly turned on their Communist fellows. In all of China’s major cities, Communists and their sympathizers were massacred in the streets. Overnight, the Chinese Communist Party was almost exterminated. In a state of confusion and disarray, the surviving Communists, made their way to the southern province of Jianxi where, a local Communist leader, an ex-librarian named Mao Tse-tung, had managed to hold the party together.
Organizing Communist guerrilla forces into a Red Army, Mao managed to hold off the Nationalists long enough to force an escape out of Jianxi. Known as the “Long March,” the Communists embarked on a 6,000 mile trek over rivers, mountains, and deserts, fighting Nationalists troops all the way. Finally, the Communists found sanctuary in the area of Yenan in China’s northern mountains. This, then, became their base. The Long March solidified Mao as the unquestioned leader of the Communist Party. From Yenan, Mao’s Communists engaged Chiang’s Nationalists in guerrilla warfare, and extended the Communist-controlled zone.
The full-scale Japanese invasion of China brought a temporary truce between the Communists and Nationalists, as they agreed to join forces against the foreign occupiers. Overall, as American advisers during World War II pointed out, the Communists were the more effective fighters against the Japanese. Chiang seemed to be more afraid of the Chinese Communists than he was of the invading Japanese; and American aid sent to Chiang often ended up in the pockets of Nationalist politicians. The end of the war and the defeat of Japan signaled a resumption of hostilities between the Nationalists and Communists. After an intense four-year civil war, Communist forces gained the upper hand. Chiang’s Nationalists were forced to flee the mainland; establishing themselves, as the republic of China, on the island of Taiwan – where they have remained to this very day. On October 10, 1949, from Beijing, Mao proclaimed the creation of the new, communist, Peoples Republic of China.
Communist China became a new and powerful ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In fact, Chinese troops entered the Korean War against the United States. Domestically, the Communists embarked on numerous developmental and modernization campaigns. Campaigns to eliminate infectious disease and illiteracy, as well as campaigns to ensure the equality of women were, in great part, successful. Attempts to industrialize China’s economy were less so. The best known of these, the “Great Leap Forward” (1959), which tried to jump start China’s development through mass participation in the form of things such as encouraging the building of backyard blast furnaces to produce steel, was a failure.
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and his policy of Peaceful Coexistence with the West met with disapproval in Beijing. Mao felt that the new Soviet leaders were abandoning revolutionary principles and bowing to the US. Tensions within the Communist camp came to the breaking point in 1961 when, at a meeting of Communist parties in Moscow, the Chinese and Albanian delegations denounced the Soviets and their supporters and walked out. The Sino-Soviet split divided the world Communist movement and led to the creation of new, more militant Communist groups dedicated to the Chinese position. China felt itself to be the new center of the world revolutionary movement and, as such, supported and encouraged revolutionary parties and guerrilla groups in the Third World. The Cold War was developing into a three-cornered fight.
Within the Communist Party of China itself, Mao feared that elements similar to those represented by Khrushchev in the USSR would derail his revolutionary vision. Starting in 1964, Mao moved to isolate “conservative” and “pragmatic” elements in the Party. His attempt at a mass mobilization to reinvigorate revolutionary enthusiasm resulted in the upheaval known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” The Cultural Revolution consumed China in chaos as radical and moderate forces, through the medium of youth organizations known as “Red Guards,” jostled each other for power and influence. Reaching a crescendo in 1966 – 1967, the Cultural Revolution involved pitched armed battles between rival Red Guard units. Mao called a halt to the anarchy in 1969, castigating some of the excesses of the more extreme radicals. However, tension and conflict between the more radical and the more pragmatic members of Mao’s inner circle remained.
The same year, 1969, that Mao rolled back the Cultural Revolution saw an intensification of the Sino-Soviet crisis as the Chinese and Soviets came to blows over a border dispute. This event seems to have convinced Mao that the Soviet Union was a greater threat to China than the United States. China offered the United States an opportunity to begin a normalization of relations; an opportunity the American President Richard Nixon took advantage of. In 1972, Nixon traveled to China, met with Mao and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and the thaw in the Chinese- American Cold War began.
Chou En-lai’s, a protector of the moderates in Mao’s circle, death in 1976, followed by Mao’s own passing later that year renewed the conflict between radicals and moderates within ruling Party circles. After a brief and intense power struggle, the radicals were defeated. Deng Xiaoping, who had been exiled as a “capitalist roader” during the Cultural Revolution emerged as China’s new leader. Deng’s policies not only reversed the Cultural Revolution, but effectively dismantle communism itself. Throughout the 1980s, China more and more embraced a pro-market orientation, encouraging foreign investment and development of key industries. By the 1990s, China had emerged as a major economic force, exporting goods across the globe. Although the People’s Republic of China is still ruled by the Communist Party, it has, in fact, become a modern capitalist power.
The Cuban Revolution
Although conducted on a much smaller scale than the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 would send even stronger shock waves throughout the Third World. On New Year’s Eve of 1959, guerrilla forces led by Fidel Castro overthrew the long-standing government of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been supported by the United States since 1933; and, under his leadership, the island had become a haven for US interests which virtually managed the Cuban economy.
Castro’s victory signaled major reform, including land redistribution, literacy and public health campaigns, and the nationalization of major utilities and industries. These latter reforms incurred the ire of American corporations which lost their investments in Cuba. The United States’ severing of diplomatic relations followed by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and an economic embargo against Cuba caused the Castro government to fully enter the Soviet orbit. However, the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union was far from smooth. Having come to power in through a guerrilla movement in a peasant society, Cuba had much in common with China. Both China and the USSR courted Cuba to support them in their struggle with each other. Cuba was, for a time, caught between the feuding Communist powers. Instead, Cuba developed a unique image and presented itself as a model for Third World nations to follow. This pleased neither China nor the Soviet Union. Adding to the conflict with the Soviets was Cuba’s support for armed guerrilla movements, especially in Latin America, which threatened Soviet attempts at a rapprochement with the US.
In the wake of the Cuban Revolution guerrilla and national liberation movements emerged, aiming at spreading the Cuban example in Latin America. Castro’s right-hand-man, the Argentine born Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was central to this endeavor. Guevara personally led Cuban-trained guerrillas in Africa; and, in an attempt to foment revolution in South America, died while organizing a guerrilla force in Bolivia, becoming a revolutionary icon in the process. Although most of the guerrilla organizations spawned in the 1960s failed, they had the unexpected consequence of producing a severe reaction in the form of repressive military regimes devoted to their destruction. Thus, in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Argentina, extremely violent military dictatorships characterized those nations in the 1970s. In Chile, the election and subsequent overthrow of a Socialist president, Salvador Allende, produced a similar phenomenon. Cuban advisers trained guerrillas in other parts of the world, as well, namely Angola and South Africa.
Cuban attempts at developing an independent, diversified, modern economy met with failure. By the 1970s, Cuba had abandoned overtly encouraging armed struggle and integrated itself into the Soviet system. This would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.
In the 1950s, Indian Prime Minister Nehru stated that the modern world was divided into “Three Worlds.” The “First World” consisted of the United States and the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe; the “Second World” was the Soviet Union and its Communist Bloc allies; the “Third World” was the poor, underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Fought over by both the First and Second Worlds, Nehru urged the Third World to develop an independent stance, find its own voice, and put forward its own demands and aspirations. Thus, the “Non-Aligned Movement” came into being.
Led by India’s Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Tito, and Egypt’s Nasser, Non-Alignment did not mean neutrality. India leaned to the West, Cuba (who later joined the Non-Aligned Movement), leaned towards the Soviets; instead, Non-Alignment meant that the Third World countries recognized that they shared a commonality of interests. Indeed, many of the Non-Aligned nations were bitter rivals; India and Pakistan readily come to mind. However, despite sometimes serious differences, the Non-Aligned nations managed to bring questions of development and industrialization, debt and poverty, national independence and self-determination to the world’s attention.
Although the Non-Aligned movement seems to have greatly dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, non-alignment did shift world politics from the East vs. West emphasis of the Cold War to the North vs. South conflict that persists to this very day.
FORTHCOMING:
PART TWO: “The coming of the new international:” Third Worldist Theory in the 1950s – 1970s.
One man introduced indefinite detention and expanded the deadly global drone war. Another was the architect of the deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina. What do they have in common? Both are Nobel Peace laureates.
Gandhi never got one. Al Gore did. In one of the stranger ironies befitting of both Kafka and Orwell, sometimes the makers of permanent war are awarded for bringing temporary peace. Sometimes they don’t even get that far.
With the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize set to be announced in Oslo, Norway on Friday, the shadow of Barack Obama still looms large. In 2009, the committee awarded the current US president “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Nominations for the award are due by February 1, meaning Obama had served as America’s executive for less than two weeks when the Norwegian Nobel Committee selected him. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.
Since then, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, making it legal to indefinitely detain US citizens. There are also the deadly drone wars in Yemen and Pakistan, the war waged in Libya, the Afghan surge and a secret “kill list” revealed this year by The New York Times, which grants a select few American officials the option to mark perceived national security threats – foreign citizens or otherwise – for assassination. Ironic, yes, but they never could have known.
Even attempts for the committee to play it more conservatively have backfired. Last year, the committee decided to recognize three women for their role in a non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work. The three women included a Yemeni activist, Liberian President Johnson Sirleaf and her fellow citizen and civil society activist Leymah Gbowee.
On Wednesday, Gbowee publically lambasted Sirleaf for failing to fight corruption and nepotism in Liberia.
Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission even put Sirleaf on a list of 52 people who should be sanctioned for committing war crimes for supporting former Liberian warlord and President Charles Taylor in the late 1980s.
Taylor, who infamously campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him” during the 1997 general election that followed a war that killed over 200,000 people, fortunately did not win a Nobel Prize.
The post-Obama rehabilitation of the prize might not have gone as smoothly as hoped, but the prize’s history is replete with examples of questionable choices, to say the least.
Chief among them was the 1973 prize awarded to North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger. Tho rejected the prize, telling Kissinger that peace had not been restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger for his part accepted the prize “with humility.”
Before, during and after his acceptance of the prize, Kissinger would be implicated in assassination, war crimes and the slaughter of civilians in a large swath of countries: East Timor, Pakistan, Greece, Cyprus, Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
This year’s winner(s) will be drawn from 231 different nominations, 188 of whom are individuals, while the rest are organizations.
Among them are Russia’s own radio station Ekho Moskvy and the Memorial human rights center.
Also on the list is Myanmar’s President Thein Sein, who might be recognized for his role in moderating Myanmar’s notoriously repressive military regime. But even Sein has been implicated in confiscating land from paddy farmers which was later sold to an officer from the effectively paramilitary United Wa State Arm, who then used the land for the production of amphetamines.
If Sein were to win, it might cause a scandal. But it certainly wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the prize’s hundred-plus years.
Since 1945, the small Japanese island of Okinawa has been unwilling host to a massive U.S. military presence and a storehousefor a witches’ brew of dangerous munitions and chemicals, including nerve gas, mustard gas, and nuclear missiles. However, there is one weapon the Pentagon has always denied that it kept on Okinawa: Agent Orange.
Now, for the first time, a recently uncovered U.S. army report reveals that, during the Vietnam War, the United States stockpiled 25,000 barrels of Agent Orange on the Pacific island. The barrels, containing over 1.4 million gallons of the toxic defoliant, were brought to Okinawa from Vietnam before being taken to Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. military incinerated its stocks of the compound in 1977.
Contradicting decades of denial by Washington, the report is the first direct admission by the U.S. military that it stored these poisons on Okinawa. A series of photographs was also uncovered, apparently showing the 25,000 barrels in storage on Okinawa’s Camp Kinser, near the prefectural capital of Naha.
The army report, published in 2003 but only recently discovered, is titled “An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll.” Outlining the military’s efforts to clean up the tiny island that the United States used throughout the Cold War to store and dispose of its stockpiles of biochemical weapons, the report states directly, “In 1972, the U.S. Air Force brought about 25,000 55-gallon (208 liter) drums of the chemical Herbicide Orange (HO) to Johnston Island that originated from Vietnam and was stored on Okinawa.”
A Leaky Story
In the early 1970s, the U.S. government banned the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam after scientific studies showed the dioxin-tainted herbicide posed aserious threat to human health. The timeframe covered by the recently discovered report suggests that the barrels were a part of Operation Red Hat—the military’s 1971 operation to remove its 12,000-ton store of chemical weapons (including mustard gas, VX, and sarin) from Okinawa in preparation for the island’s reversion to Japanese control the following year.
This is not the first time that Agent Orange has been linked to Red Hat. According to a 2009 statement from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “The records pertaining to Operation Red Hat show herbicide agents were stored and then later disposed in Okinawa from August 1969 to March 1972.” However, attempts to access the sources the V.A. used to make that statement—including the filing of multiple Freedom of Information Act requests—have been hampered by U.S. authorities, and the Pentagon has refused to help former service members who claim they were exposed to toxic defoliants during the operation.
Lending weight to suspicions that the barrels were shipped as part of Operation Red Hat was the discovery by independent researcher Nao Furugen of a set of photographs in the Okinawa Prefecture’s archives. The images were taken during a U.S. military public relations event designed to assure the local media that the safety procedures in place for Operation Red Hat were sound. In the background of the shots, there is a large stack of barrels. Apparently striped with painted lids, they are consistent with the way in which the U.S. military shipped herbicides during the Vietnam War.
But according to documents supplied by veterans involved in the shipment of stocks of Agent Orange to Johnston Island, the barrels arrived in various stages of deterioration. Some accounts show that almost 9,000 of the 25,000 barrels developed leaks on Johnston Island, leading to the contamination of large areas of land.
These accounts have caused alarm in Okinawa, where local residents have been urging the authorities to conduct environmental tests within the bases where U.S. veterans allege Agent Orange was stored. However, both Tokyo and Washington have refused these requests.
During the past year and a half, dozens of U.S. veterans have spoken out about the use, storage, and disposal of Agent Orange on Okinawa during the 1960s and 70s. During this period, the island was a major staging point for the U.S. war in Vietnam—where the United States sprayed millions of liters of Agent Orange, poisoning tens of thousands of its own troops and approximately 3 million Vietnamese people. Many former service members stationed on Okinawa claim that they are suffering from similar illnesses due to exposure to the herbicide. However, the U.S. government is only known to have paid compensation to three of these veterans, including a former soldierwho was poisoned while handling thousands of barrels of Agent Orange at Naha Port between 1965 and 1967.
Exposing the Truth
There is increasing evidence to suggest that ordinary Okinawans, including the 50,000 employed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, were also affected. However, attempts to organize health surveys have been stymied by the authorities. According toMasami Kawamura—cofounder of Okinawa Outreach, the citizens’ group at the forefront of demands for a full inquest into Agent Orange use on the island—the Okinawan Prefectural government “claimed that if they ‘investigated blindly’ without identifying locations with ‘high probabilities’ of being contaminated with [Agent Orange], this could just create rumors harmful to the communities.”
Following the discovery of the army report, 10 former service members wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs demanding a full investigation into the military’s use of Agent Orange on Okinawa. “We have a strong desire to do the right thing for all of the U.S. veterans who were exposed to herbicides/Dioxin on Okinawa as well as for Okinawa,” states the letter, which was organized by former Air Force sergeant Joe Sipala.
Sipala, who believes he was exposed to Agent Orange on the island in 1970, and the nine other veterans have offered to travel to Washington to testify on the issue. The former service members were angered last year when the U.S. government and Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested that the veterans’ accounts of herbicides on Okinawa were dubious.
“That is insulting to the credibility and integrity of the men and women who served honorably, giving up years of our young lives to protect our great country of the United States of America and the island of Okinawa,” says Sipala’s letter.
Sipala said that he hopes the letter will convince the U.S. government to provide compensation to veterans who believe they were exposed to Agent Orange on Okinawa. At the moment, the government provides help to U.S. veterans who were exposed to military herbicides in Vietnam, Thailand, and along the demilitarized zone in Korea. But the Pentagon’s denials about the presence of these herbicides on Okinawa have prevented hundreds of these veterans from receiving aid. Now it would appear those denials are losing currency.
John Olin, the Florida-based researcher who discovered the 2003 army report, says he will keep investigating the military’s use of Agent Orange on Okinawa. “Right now we have two governments—Japan and the U.S.—who were actively working together for many decades to lie to their citizens,” he said. “There is an obvious disinformation campaign on this issue that only makes me want to look closer.”
The CIA has revealed the identities of 15 of its fallen officers, some of whose secret ties to the spy agency are being made public for the first time in almost three decades.
Engraved on a memorial wall at the CIA’s headquarters building in Northern Virginia are 103 stars, each representing a CIA officer who perished in the line of duty since the agency’s founding in 1947. For some, the star is all recognition they have – many names have still not been made public out of concern for secret operations.
At a memorial ceremony Monday, CIA Director David Petraeus praised their service saying the “103 souls represented by the stars on the wall behind me all heard the same call to duty and answered it without hesitation – never for acclaim, always for country.”
The latest of the 103 was added this year, honoring Jeff Patneau, who was killed in a 2008 car crash in Yemen. Petraeus described Patneau as having “boundless talent, courage, and innovativeness to offer our country in its fight against terrorism.”
A CIA statement released Tuesday said Patneau was among the 15 names inscribed in the CIA’s Book of Honor this year, which allows “agency officers to publicly acknowledge those who have been represented by stars and whom we have silently mourned for years.”
Some of the individuals whose service as CIA officers was publicly confirmed today have been the object of speculation in the past as having worked for the spy agency.
For example, Matthew K. Gannon died in the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Officially listed as a Foreign Service Officer for the State Department, Gannon’s links to the CIA appeared in press reports at the time of the crash. However, the agency never officially confirmed that he was a CIA officer until this week.
Leslianne Shedd died in November 1996 in the high-profile crash of a hijacked plane off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. Videotape of the plane’s fatal attempted water landing just off of a crowded tourist beach was seen around the world. Shedd was also described as being a Foreign Service Officer. According to the CIA statement, “Survivors of that flight tell us that Leslianne – an outstanding young woman – spent her final moments comforting those around her. “
Another victim of terror was Molly N. Hardy, who was killed in the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. According to the CIA, Hardy “used her keen situational awareness to warn colleagues to take cover. “
A former intelligence official told ABC News the CIA takes “very seriously” the process of when to publicly release the names of its fallen officers and publicly acknowledge their ties to the agency.
According to the official, the agency conducts thorough reviews of a fallen officer’s work history and takes into account any security and operational considerations. The official said another factor is “the possible impact that making public the officer’s name might have on current missions and overseas relationships. “
The seriousness with which the CIA decides when to publicly acknowledge a fallen officer’s links to the agency may be a reason why five of the officers were not named until today, despite having been killed back in 1983 in a car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut that killed 63.
The five who are listed as having worked for the agency are Phyliss Nancy Faraci, Deborah M. Hixon, Frank J. Johnston, James F. Lewis and his wife Monique N. Lewis.
According to the CIA statement Faraci “was one of the last four Americans evacuated from the Mekong Delta when Saigon fell. She was an intensely devoted officer who volunteered to work in Beirut. “
Monique Lewis “was only hours into her first day as an agency officer when the bomber struck that terrible day.”
The shocking images of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York is well-etched in the minds of almost everyone who had access to a TV set. Similarly, all those who were adults or in their teens in the late 1960s and early 1970s and had access to radio or newspapers would have heard or read about the Vietnam War. Some of them may be familiar with the phrase “Agent Orange” and may even have come across some fleeting reference about the same. However, the devastating effect of the chemical warfare that the U.S. military had unleashed on Vietnam from 1961 to 1971 is hardly ever in the news despite being hundreds of times deadlier than the 9/11 attack in terms of death, devastation and long-term impact. This report is an attempt to shed light on some aspects of this 50-year old critical issue that has gone largely unnoticed and unaddressed.
The Second International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin was held in Hanoi from 07 to 10 August 2011 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first use of herbicides in Vietnam by the U.S. military during the then ongoing civil war between the Ho Chi Minh-led communist regime of North Vietnam and the U.S.-propped regime of South Vietnam. (The first Conference was held in 2006.) The U.S. Administration began ruthlessly using chemical-weapons on Vietnam (notably in areas theoretically under the “protection”of the U.S.-backed regime) exactly sixteen years after President Harry Truman had shocked the world by his decision to test nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 06 and 09 August 1945. The thoughtless use of these chemical-weapons, especially the one in the form of an herbicide called “Agent Orange” that contained trace amounts of a byproduct called TCDD (dioxin – one of the most toxic-chemicals known to humans), has had devastating effects. [1] No less than 80 million liters of herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam from 1961 to 1971, which had effectively destroyed over 3 million hectares of forests, mangroves and cultivable land and had devastated the lives of more than 3 million people in Vietnam alone.
LETHAL EFFECTS
The U.S. military used Agent Orange and other herbicides from 1961 to 1971 reportedly to save the lives of U.S. and allied soldiers by defoliating dense vegetation in the Vietnamese jungles and therefore reducing the chances of ambush. In the process, at least 3 million hectares of forests, mangroves and cultivable land were destroyed with toxins and about 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to the effects of the dioxin-laced “Agent Orange” of whom at least 3 million were affected. As a result, over 400,000 of them have since died and about 500,000 children have been born with all kinds of birth-defects ranging from acute physical deformities to extreme mental disabilities or a combination of both. A large section of U.S. and allied forces, who had served in Vietnam, has also met with a similar fate. Justice continues to elude all of them. In addition, the former U.S. military bases in Vietnam, where the herbicides were stored and loaded onto the airplanes for spraying, are suspected to contain high levels of dioxin in the soil, which continue to pose a threat to the surrounding communities.
The Second International Conference, which was organized by the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA), was attended by over 200 delegates, half of whom were from 24 other countries. They included Agent Orange victims from not only Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but also from U.S.A, South Korea, Australia, and Canada. Victims of chemical warfare [2] from Sardasht (Iran), Marivan (Iran) and Halabja (Iraq) and victims of chemical disasters from Seveso (1976) and Bhopal (1984) also attend the Conference. Sanjay Verma, who lost his parents and six siblings in the Bhopal disaster and in its aftermath, along with this writer represented the Bhopal gas victims at the event.
The fact that U.S. and allied soldiers also became victims of Agent Orange testifies to the recklessness with which the U.S. military had sprayed these herbicides over Vietnam. The most striking example in this regard is the case relating to the Zumwalt family. Admiral Zumwalt, as commander of the U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam during 1968-1970 and as the one who had commanded the flotilla of Swift Boats that patrolled the coasts, harbors, and rivers of Vietnam, was instrumental is increasing the area and intensity with which Agent Orange was sprayed over Vietnam. His son, Lt. Zumwalt, who was commander of one of the Swift Boats that had patrolled areas that had been worst hit by Agent Orange, died of cancer in 1988 when he was just 42 years old. His grandson, Russell Zumwalt (born in 1977) suffers from mental retardation. Their unenviable plight is recounted in a moving account titled “My Father, My Son” (Macmillan, 1986). Lt. Zumwalt believed that Agent Orange had caused his cancer as well as the severe learning disabilities in his son.
Heather Bowser, a second generation U.S. Agent Orange victim (whose late father, Bill Morris, had served as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam in 1968 and had died of Agent Orange related disease in 1998) was born without her right leg below the knee, the big toe on her left foot and several of her fingers. The 38-year old Heather, the first second generation U.S. Agent Orange victim to interact with her counterparts in Vietnam, was there to seek justice for all Agent Orange victims. Concerned lawyers, scientists, and social activists from several countries as well as ambassadors of China, Greece, Iran, South Africa and Venezuela were among others who attended it.
Rosemarie Höhn-Mizo of Germany and Masako Sakata of Japan, who are now in their early 60s, had nothing to do with the war in Vietnam. Their tragedy was that they happened to marry U.S. war veterans, who had served in Vietnam in the late 1960s in areas that were sprayed with Agent Orange. Their husbands, George Mizo and Greg Davis, who realized that they were suffering from the effects of Agent Orange and who went back to Vietnam to seek justice for the victims of Agent Orange, subsequently died of cancer in 2002 and 2003 respectively. Rosemarie, as president of the International Committee of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project that supports Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, and Masako, as a documentary film maker, are carrying on the struggle to seek justice for all Agent Orange victims. They too attended the Conference.
It is not known if President John Kennedy, who had first sanctioned the use of herbicides on 10 August 1961, was aware of the presence of dioxin in them and about the nature of their toxicity. Official reports have tried to argue that at the time these herbicides were permitted to be used on Vietnam, they were in fact sold commercially in the U.S. [3] In other words, these herbicides were then legally produced and used in the U.S. However, there was one crucial difference: there was wide variation in the amount of dioxin present in the batch of Agent Orange that was sold domestically and in the consignment that was exported to Vietnam. It appears that, “in domestic preparations, it is present in much lower concentrations, 0.05 ppm (parts per million) as opposed to peaks of 50 ppm in stock shipped to Vietnam. Therefore dioxin contamination of Agent Orange was up to 1,000 times higher than in domestic herbicides.”[4]
While 0.05ppm was considered the “safe” level for domestic sale of Agent Orange in the U.S., the manufacturers (Dow, Monsanto, and 5 other companies) and the U.S. Administration consciously manufactured and exported Agent Orange to Vietnam with unacceptable levels of toxicity. They knew very well that using herbicides with high levels of dioxin would cause irreparable harm to the Vietnamese people, who happened to be in the vicinity of the spraying area, and would result in widespread destruction of the exposed environment. Thus, the U.S. Administration and the concerned manufacturers knowingly committed an abhorrent war crime – a crime against humanity – for which they have to be held accountable and punished. However, Dow, one of the guilty chemical companies, has conveniently placed the entire blame on the U.S. Administration by propounding the spacious plea that: “As a nation at war, the U.S. government compelled a number of companies to produce Agent Orange under the Defense Production Act. The government specified how it would be produced and controlled its use.”[5] While Monsanto has taken the following position: “We believe that the adverse consequences alleged to have arisen out of the Vietnam War, including the use of Agent Orange, should be resolved by the governments that were involved.” [6]
The U.S. Administration cannot claim that it had the right to use chemical-weapons because the U.S. was not a party to the Geneva Protocol of 1925 [7] until 1975. If signing of international protocols has to be the yardstick for determining culpability, no action should have been contemplated against terrorists like Osama Bin Laden for the 9/11 attack because he was not a party to any international treaty governing conduct of war! The U.S. Administration is guilty of willfully poisoning the people of Vietnam (as well as its own soldiers and those of its allies) and of destroying the environment; it can in no way claim ignorance about the grievous consequences of its action. Thus, there is a strong case for the Government of Vietnam to seek suitable remedy before the International Court of Justice and to highlight the matter before the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN General Assembly, and every available international fora for eliciting appropriate support for their just cause.
Due to consistent protest from the then North Vietnam regime and the mounting evidence about the high toxicity of dioxin, concerned people across the U.S., including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), expressed their firm opposition to the use of dioxin based herbicides. As a result, “On 15 April 1970, the Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare; Interior; and Agriculture announced the suspension of uncontrolled domestic use of herbicides containing 2, 4, 5–T. That same day, the Deputy Secretary of Defense suspended temporarily all use of Orange in military operations pending a more thorough evaluation of the situation.”[8] This decision practically ended yet another diabolical and sordid act of the U.S. Administration during the 20th century because the decision was never rescinded.
Considering the enormous level of destruction and devastation that the U.S. military had unleashed on Vietnam, at the time of signing the Paris Peace Accord on 27 January 1973, the U.S. made a solemn commitment to undertake necessary action to heal the wounds of war. Under Article 21 of the Accord, the U.S. pledged that: “In pursuance of its traditional policy, the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and throughout Indochina.”[9] This promise was followed by a letter dated 01 February 1973 in which President Nixon had promised that the U.S. would contribute “in the range of $3.25 billion” in postwar reconstruction assistance to Vietnam over a five-year period. [10] The U.S. has completely failed to comply with this commitment despite the National Academy of Sciences’ Report affirming as early as 1974 that:“it is the Committee’s firm belief that rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts should …be undertaken as rapidly as conditions permit….. since any delay will make its accomplishment more difficult.” [11]
Considering the enormity of the task of detoxifying 3 million hectares of affected environment and of medically, economically and socially rehabilitating 3 million dioxin-victims, the proposed plan of the ‘U.S.–Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin’ to tackle the problem over the next ten years (2010-2019) with a total budget of just $300 million is rather a farfetched one. [12] It only amounts to an average expenditure of just $5 per dioxin-victim for meeting all their needs per year and another $5 per hectare for detoxifying the affected land per year! Effectively, the Dialogue Group’s proposed plan grossly belittles the enormity and gravity of the problem while making a pretence that effective steps are being taken to remedy the same.
U.S. representatives on the Dialogue Group, who include senior members of the Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute, did not attend the Second International Congress despite claiming that the Dialogue Group was set up to support the cause of Agent Orange Victims. It is, indeed, ironical that the U.S., which had no qualms in spending an estimated $658 billion (in 2008 dollars) for waging the Vietnam War and in spending an almost equal amount for waging the Iraq War [13], is so financially hard-pressed when it comes to the question of raising requisite funds for healing the wounds of war! Retribution in the case of the 9/11 attack has been dealt with by the U.S. Administration on an entirely different level. This was despite the fact that the impact of the chemical warfare on Vietnam was hundreds of times greater than the impact of the 9/11 attack in terms of grievous human and environmental effects.
The U.S. Administration has either arrested or killed most of the alleged perpetrators of the 9/11 attack. Over $38 billion has been paid out as compensation to the 9/11 victims, including $8.7 billion for 2880 cases of death (at an average of $3.1 million each), and $23.3 billion as compensation for property damages. Injury cases, numbering about 2680, were also paid over $1 billion as compensation which works out to an average of over $373,000 each. [14] Whereas in the case of the Agent Orange attack, no one has been arrested or prosecuted in the last fifty years. Of the 105,000 U.S. war veterans, who had served in Vietnam and who had reportedly suffered from the effects of Agent Orange, 52,000 have been awarded a total compensation of just $197 million at an average of about $3800 each. [15] The glaring double-standards in the award of compensation by the U.S. Administration even to its own citizens are evident on the face of it! As already noted, Vietnam has been promised a total of just $300 million in the next ten years for remediation of the effected land and as medical assistance!
Under the circumstances, despite President Kennedy’s questionable role in ordering the use of herbicides on Vietnam, it has to be noted that, he was the one who actually tried for a rapprochement with Vietnam as early as 1962. [16] Not only was President Kennedy against escalation of the war in Vietnam, but also he had already initiated the process of rapprochement with the Soviet Union through, what became known as, the McCloy-Zorin Accord on General and Complete Disarmament that was signed on 20 September 1961. [17]Subsequently, on 20 December 1961, the historical McCloy-Zorin Accord was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly [18] and serious negotiations had begun under the aegis of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) for implementing the Accord. However, the entire process was reversed by the wanton assassination of President Kennedy by forces associated with the military industrial complex, which felt threatened by the prospect of world peace if the disarmament process progressed. Kennedy’s assassination, thus, cleared the way for U.S. combat troops to land in Vietnam and for the escalation of the war.
The Second International Conference in its Appeal [19] has called upon the U.S. Administration and the U.S companies (Dow, Monsanto, etc.) to assume responsibility for the horrendous crime it committed against the people of Vietnam and against its own soldiers and those of its allies. The Appeal noted that the U.S Administration and the said U.S. companies have an abiding duty to take appropriate remedial measures for detoxifying the affected environment and for medical, economic and social rehabilitation of all the dioxin-victims. Unfortunately, the Appeal is silent on the role of the Government of Vietnam and other concerned governments and peoples in pressurizing the U.S. Administration to fulfill its duties and responsibilities towards the victims of Agent Orange and to take the U.S Administration to task for the war crime it committed against the people of Vietnam and against humanity in general.
N.D. Jayaprakash is a Co-Convener, Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS – a national coalition of organizations for supporting the cause of the Bhopal gas victims) and Joint Secretary, Delhi Science Forum. He can be reached at: jaypdsf@gmail.com.
(b) Jeanne Stellman et al, “The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam”, NATURE, 17 April 2003, pp.681-687, at: http://www.stellman.com/jms/Stellman1537.pdf
[2] Saddam Hussein, as an ally of the U.S., had used a variety of chemical weapons (including phosgene, sarin and mustard gas) primarily on the Kurdish people during the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988
[3] Willard J. Webb and Walter S. Poole, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam – 1971-1973”, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC, 2007, p.378 at: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/doctrine/history/vn71_73.pdf
“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”– George Orwell
In 1942, George Orwell wrote, “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense.” At first glance, this sentence from Orwell’s essay “Pacifism and the War” appears to be an outrageous defamation, a provocative statement by a writer seeking attention. How on Earth could anyone equate pacifism – seemingly the expression of love for humankind, peace and harmony, relentless opponent of all forms of violence – with support for fascism – the most reactionary, chauvinist, militaristic and bloodthirsty form of bourgeois rule, which at that time waged a genocidal war? Furthermore, how could one go further and call such a label “elementary common sense?”
However, if we do not let our knee-jerk reaction have the best of us but have a closer look, we will realize that both statements are true. Orwell continues:
“If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle [...] is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.”
He also points out that the Nazis actively spread pacifist propaganda in Great Britain and the USA. Whether we like the thought or not, it is the objective truth: in a war like World War II you had to choose sides, there was simply no way to remain neutral. Those who pretended to others and themselves to live in an ivory tower of peace and love for all of humanity while opposing all sides in the war were obviously blind to the enormous threat that the fascist Axis powers posed to the world.
“Well, that’s still a slanderous generalization”, a pacifist or sympathizer of non-violence philosophy might say, “World War II surely is a special case, and anybody who’d claim the same today as Orwell did in those days would be completely out of their mind. Today we aren’t in a total war over the future of humanity.” – Yes, we are! We are in class struggle against an enemy de-facto as merciless as the Nazis. Those propagating uncompromising non-violence, pretending to stand aloof from the mechanisms of society and condemning the mere thought of violent resistance must still be seen as “fascifists”.
In the following work we will see that the anti-pacifist statements above are also valid when applied to the class struggle. Instead of contributing successful tactics to the workers’ movement, pacifism hinders and hampers the struggle against the ruling class and this way effectively supports the latter.
The Class Base of Pacifism
Marxism-Leninism teaches that only the working class – because of its special place in the capitalist mode of production and the resulting role in bourgeois society – has a genuine interest in the socialist revolution and is solely capable of carrying it out, seizing the means of production, overcoming the class system together with it all exploitation of man by man. Therefore we have to examine the class base of pacifism. Is it a progressive expression of the class struggle, a tactic dictated by the needs and struggle of the oppressed and exploited, rooted in the working class movement? Does it pose a challenge, a threat to the existing class order, capitalism and the bourgeois rule?
On the contrary, pacifism is a product of the petty-bourgeoisie, the favorite of members of that class and liberal academics. We already saw that Orwell rightfully called it “a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.” Realizing this origin, it is no longer surprising that pacifism often appears to be out of touch with reality, drenched with idealist notions. This and the refusal to recognize or grasp the essence of class struggle makes pacifism an obstacle to the working class movement and liberation struggles.
Class struggle is the driving force of history, inherent to class society. Marx and Engels showed that the bourgeoisie can only make profits at the expense of the working class while the working class can only advance its interests and better its situation at the expense of the bourgeoisie. In other words: the aims of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are diametrically opposed, their antagonistic class interests are irreconcilable.
If we understand this, we have to realize that violence is inherent to class struggle. History has yet to record a ruling class voluntarily giving up its power and privileges. It has never happened and it will never happen.
Of course the pacifist is either ignorant of this, or knowingly complicit. The petty-bourgeoisie is essentially a doomed class and torn between supporting the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Most of the time they are drawn toward the bourgeoisie, but in case they support the latter it is not out of understanding the objective necessity to abolish capitalism and thus the existence of classes. Instead, they are driven by either rebellious adventurism or, in case of pacifists, an emotional humanism.
For them, violence is, far from an unavoidable consequence. It is merely a personal choice, the product of an irrational and brutal mind. After all, the pacifist fairy tale goes, everybody can be convinced by rational arguments. So let us “speak truth to power,” appeal to the good will, the rational and emotional side of those with power, and let us remind them of their “moral responsibility.”
It should be obvious that this is a naïve and idealist approach requiring nothing short of a miracle: the bourgeoisie denying their class interests and acting contrary to them would mean ceasing to be the bourgeoisie.
In his valuable book How Nonviolence Protects the State, the American anarchist Peter Gelderloos reminds us:
“The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated” ( Gelderloos 22).
If the ruling class cannot be swayed, maybe at least “the ordinary man” will see the truth behind our words and rationality will celebrate its triumph this way?
If there was any truth to the anti-materialist assumption that it is all about propagating “the right idea” and everybody will have to see its beauty and truth, then there is absolutely no way to explain why we in the West do not already live in a socialist society. We should also wonder why there is still so much wrong with the world, despite so many people speaking out against out various problems in the most rational and agreeable manner for decades. Public support requires that sympathetic attention is drawn to the cause. The most important factor in directing attention and building public support is undoubtedly the media.
Who controls the media again and therefore has a monopoly in opinion making? Ah, right, the corporate elite. Back at the idealist appeals to the mercy of the very people we struggle against.
“… an ostensibly revolutionary movement would have constrained itself to a horribly mismatched battle, trying to win hearts and minds without destroying the structures that have poisoned those hearts and minds” (Gelderloos 92).
Expecting otherwise means taking a step back to the days of the Utopian socialists who argued and expected the same. We should ask ourselves: what compels one to hold similar naïve views after Utopian socialism was succeeded by scientific socialism, that is after Marx and Engels gave socialism a scientific base?
The answer lies again in the class base of pacifism. The petty-bourgeoisie does not want to overcome capitalism as this would mean them putting their privileged position at risk!
The Racism of Pacifism
The color of your skin is another factor greatly contributing to a privileged or disadvantaged position in society. Although Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are used as figureheads, the overwhelming majority of pacifist adherents and theoreticians are also white, which leads to an Euro-centric view and little attention for the institutionalized discrimination people of color have to face on a daily base.
“Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class [sic], pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence” (Gelderloos 23).
Instead of taking into account the different circumstances of people less well-off, oppressed, discriminated and brutalized, of oppressed minorities at home and peoples threatened by imperialism worldwide, the typical pacifist will moralize that “violence can never be the answer.” Successfully they manage to overlook the fact that in almost all the time violent resistance is, in fact, an answer – to even more violence experienced on a regular base, directed against people who simply have no choice than to fight back if they want to live!
Gelderloos points out that this is essentially a different form of colonialist thinking (“white man’s burden”), the expression of an underlying racism:
“the idea that we are all part of the same homogeneous struggle and white people at the heart of the Empire can tell people of color and people in the (neo-) colonies the best way to resist” (28).
That this is not just a wild accusation but a valid observation, proven by the attempts of supporters of white supremacy to utilize pacifism in general and especially colored pacifists to keep their movements down.
“Perhaps the largest of the limited, if not hollow, victories of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated they would not remain peaceful forever” (Gelderloos 12).
The ruling class suddenly discovered their concern for the rights of black people when the latter was fed up with months of non-violent protests and started to fight back against police violence, like in Birmingham in 1963. To prevent further situations like this the FBI focused on tracing and “pacifying” potential troublemakers. Gelderloos quotes a FBI memo worried about the rise of a “black messiah” like Malcolm X could have been if he was still alive then. The document continues:
“Prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program [in the original government lingo, that phrase refers to a specific operation, of which there were thousands, and not the overarching program]. Through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence” (Gedlerloos 47).
What the FBI policy meant in practice was impressively illustrated by the “neutralization” of activists of the Black Panther Party, for example.
The majority of the petty-bourgeois is incapable of being radical, “going to the root,” as this would mean critically questioning and in all likelihood endangering their own privileged role in capitalist society. The “lower classes” and the “colored folks” claiming their rights sounds like a threat to those who benefit of the current power structure. Even if they give in to their more rebellious feelings, they still enjoy more leniency from the ruling class than working class militants or militants from an oppressed minority could ever expect. The moment that they genuinely join the ranks of one of the latter groups the lose their status in society.
The “Victories” of Pacifism
Bearing this in mind, we should deal with the notion that pacifism is a successful approach which accomplished several historical victories. Heroes of non-violent resistance like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi immediately come to mind.
Previous articles in The Red Phoenix have already dealt with their alleged single-handed struggle and historical triumph. Nevertheless, let us hear what Mr. Orwell has to say:
“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there.”
Peter Gelderloos similarly challenges the notion that Gandhi accomplished anything else than ensuring comfort and safety for British imperialism. He shows that the British were faced with the death toll of both World Wars, the immense destruction the German Luftwaffe caused and with the armed struggles in their Arab colonies. No matter what pacifists and the mainstream view would like to have us believe, it was not Gandhi’s civil disobedience that worried and compelled the British to give up their “jewel in the crown of the Empire,” as India was called. The British, responsible for several devastating famines that killed millions, were struggling with more compelling reasons to withdraw from India than the possibility of Gandhi starving himself to death:
“As part of a disturbingly universal pattern, pacifists white out those other forms of resistance and help propagate the false history that Gandhi and his disciples were the lone masthead and rudder of Indian resistance. Ignored are important militant leaders such as Chandrasekhar Azad, who fought in armed struggle against the British colonizers, and revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, who won mass support for bombings and assassinations as part of a struggle to accomplish the ‘overthrow of both foreign and Indian capitalism’” (Gelderloos 8).
Clearly the latter aim was not accomplished and we have a right to wonder together with Gelderloos whether the liberation movement in India was really as successful as we are told:
“The liberation movement in India failed. The British were not forced to quit India. Rather, they chose to transfer the territory from direct colonial rule to neocolonial rule,” What kind of victory allows the losing side to dictate the time and manner of the victors’ ascendancy? The British authored the new constitution and turned power over to handpicked successors. They fanned the flames of religious and ethnic separatism so that India would be divided against itself, prevented from gaining peace and prosperity, and dependent on military aid and other support from Euro/American states.” India is still exploited by Euro/American corporations (though several new Indian corporations, mostly subsidiaries, have joined in the pillaging), and still provides resources and markets for the imperialist states. In many ways the poverty of its people has deepened and the exploitation has become more efficient“ (Gelderloos 9).
On to Martin Luther King Jr., the alleged champion of the American civil rights movement. Unsurprisingly we discover the same pattern again: the role of a pacifist figurehead is generously exaggerated, the “victory” of the movement is attribute to non-violent spokespersons and tactics alone. Ignored are militant groups like the Black Panther Party and individuals like Malcolm X, ignored is the immense influence they had among the black community and ignored are their successes.
“According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views” (Gelderloos 11).
The ruling class, as we already saw, actively sought to isolate and pacify these groups and individuals by instrumentalizing people like Dr. King to this end. Again, the alleged victory is not as complete as it is portrayed:
“People of color still have lower average incomes, poorer access to housing and health care, and poorer health than white people. De facto segregation still exists. […] Other races have also been missed by the mythical fruits of civil rights. Latino and Asian immigrants are especially vulnerable to abuse, deportation, denial of social services they pay taxes for, and toxic and backbreaking labor in sweatshops or as migrant agricultural laborers. Muslims and Arabs are taking the brunt of the post-September 11repression, while a society that has anointed itself “color-blind” evinces nary a twinge of hypocrisy. Native peoples are kept so low on the socioeconomic ladder as to remain invisible, except for the occasional symbolic manifestation of US multiculturalism-the stereotyped sporting mascot or hula-girl doll that obscures the reality of actual indigenous people” (Gelderloos 11).
The list goes on and on. Non-violent resistance did not stop the US wreaking havoc upon Indochina in general and Vietnam specifically — the violent resistance of the Indochinese and Vietnamese people did. After defending themselves for years against the imperialist aggression, including the largest bombing campaign known in history and further genocidal acts causing unimaginable suffering, the ruling elites came to the conclusion that the war could not be won. To make things even worse for them, the troops became increasingly “infected” with militant working class and black liberation views. More and more demoralized the troops refused to obey their orders, resorted to sabotage and even the killing of hated officers. Even after the American ground troops withdrew they continued to support their puppet, the military dictatorship in the south. The peace movement could do the same about it as before: absolutely nothing. Many did not even care anymore after the US troops were out.
Needless to say, the same applies to more recent wars. None of them were stopped by pacifist appeals and demonstrations. Rather, the armed resistance in attacked and occupied countries bothers imperialist leaders and results in increasing calls for reducing or withdrawing troops.
The Immorality of Pacifism
Why this “principled” condemnation of violence? Why completely rule out the possibility of violent resistance accomplishing anything? Why this insistence that everything else but non-violent tactics are doomed to fail? What is the pacifist justification? The answer is very simple, namely that “violence is never the answer,” “all violence is bad” or because “violence is violence” or even that “violence begets violence.”
Time to examine this profound wisdom. Thoroughly applying it enriches us with even deeper insights. Looking back to Orwell and his article on WW2 we have to condemn not only all armies but also partisan groups fighting the Nazis because “violence only breeds more violence.”
So after all, Gandhi was right in recommending the Jews to stop resisting the Nazis and instead “offer themselves to the butcher’s knife.”
What right did the Vietcong have to take up arms against the US invaders, knowing this would lead to a “spiral of violence?”
Suddenly we discover that Israel deserves our sympathy because if these nasty Palestinians would not constantly resort to violence the poor besieged Zionists probably would have never been forced into bombing the Gaza Strip and similar “defensive actions.” Even if the bombing would have occurred anyway, this apparently would not justify Palestinian violent resistance in the least. The Palestinians only lose their moral high ground because “violence is violence,” “violence is never the answer” and “violence begets violence.” They should probably have a few sit-ins and candlelight vigils, maybe stick flowers in Israeli rifles or speak truth to the Knesset!
“If the Palestinians hadn’t made the Israeli occupation and every successive aggression so costly, all the Palestinian land would be seized, except for a few reservations to hold the necessary number of surplus laborers to supplement the Israeli economy, and the Palestinians would be a distant memory in a long line of extinct peoples. Palestinian resistance, including suicide bombings, has helped ensure Palestinian survival against a far more powerful enemy” (Gelderloos 122).
Pacifists often argue that those who use violence as “the easy way out” are bad, ignorant, emotion-driven and overall immoral while pacifists are good, enlightened rational people who are morally vastly superior. Yet again we see the moral and “principled pacifist position” playing into the hands of the ruling class and imperialism. Not violent resistance but pacifism is in fact “the easy way out” and by working into the hands of deeply immoral people (accepting that ridiculous “the good ones vs. the evil ones” moralizer approach for a second) pacifism becomes their accomplice. The examples above should have illustrated this logical fact but in case there is need for more Peter Gelderloos provides this prospect:
“Nonviolence declares that the American Indians could have fought off Columbus, George Washington, and all the other genocidal butchers with sit-ins; that Crazy Horse, by using violent resistance, became part of the cycle of violence, and was “as bad as” Custer. Nonviolence declares that Africans could have stopped the slave trade with hunger strikes and petitions, and that those who mutinied were as bad as their captors; that mutiny, a form of violence, led to more violence, and, thus, resistance led to more enslavement” (24).
Whether the Russian proletariat rises up to end the imperialist war and the tsarist reaction or whether the Tsar orders his troops to shoot into an unarmed crowd of peaceful protestors (speaking truth to power) – it does not matter because “violence is violence.” The pacifist approach ignores concrete conditions and thus cannot grasp that not all violence is bad and that there are different “violences” in motivation, content, quality and quantity.
Pacifism does not care to differ, instead it throws around an over-simplified term evoking negative connotations. Instead of showing support for the liberation struggles of the oppressed, pacifism ends up at victim-blaming and advising them to wait for miracles to happen. Because apparently if we do not want to fall victim to an endless cycle of violence we have to ensure that only non-violent tactics are followed. Funny that we seem to have a free choice now to reject violence and embrace pacifism but are inevitable predestined to drown in blood if we dare take up arms. Why should people not be able to turn their backs to violence after their country was liberated from imperialism or after the revolution succeeded – if not it is so easy to reject violence once and for all?
“Pretending that all violence is the same is very convenient for supposedly anti-violence privileged people who benefit from the violence of the state and have much to lose from the violence of revolution” (Gelderloos 123).
The Tactics of Pacifism
The petty-bourgeois class interest can be observed not only in its ideological expression but also in the concrete tactics and aims. The preconditioned rejection of violence under any circumstances of course considerably narrows the pool of tactics available, such as sit-ins, candlelight vigils, chanting songs, etc. That is all fine and well, sure a lot of fun for everybody and clearly shows that those protesting are good people morally vastly superior to their corrupt opponents. But unfortunately we can conclude together with Orwell:
“Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”
Gelderloos adds:
“Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence” (p. 22).
That is exactly what the state is — it not some neutral and benevolent entity worried for the well-being of society but an instrument of class rule eager to ensure its monopoly on violence. It does not do so out of an irrational savage instinct. On the contrary, centralizing and institutionalizing violence is vital for the survival of the ruling class. If this state monopoly is challenged the ruling class will react fiercely as a plain look at the news or a history book shows.
“At the absolute best, strategies of this type will lead to an oppositional but passive majority, which history has shown is easy for an armed minority to control (colonialism, for example)” (Gelderloos 92).
Insisting on exclusively non-violent tactics therefore only ensures that any chance for real progress is effectively wasted and that discontent is kept under control and directed into harmless channels. Thus we can say that pacifists, far from challenging the ruling power, actually consolidate it. While governments all over the world react more and more violently to protests questioning their policies we are told to disarm, to not even think about the mere possibility of resisting violently.
Gelderloos quotes another FBI memo to local police officers, explaining what constitutes an “extremist.” Their most outstanding, terrible and inexcusable characteristic is that “extremists may be prepared to defend themselves against law enforcement officials” (47).
The depravity of these “extremists” knows no end, listed are the wearing of sunglasses and scarves “to minimize the effects of tear gas and pepper spray,” using shields and body equipment for protection and they even may – Good God! – “use intimidation techniques such as videotaping and the swarming of police officers to hinder the arrest of other demonstrators!” Needless to say that under such grave circumstances “law enforcement officials should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
Luckily the FBI and the law enforcement officials are not alone in their heroic struggle against these dangerous “extremists;” the strict adherents of non-violence come to our rescue! Their rationale goes like this: “Since all violence is bad and since extremists are obviously immoral people threatening the whole movement with their thirst for violence they have to be isolated, pacified, ousted and if necessary handed over to the police. If the movement demonstrates good-will to the state and its representatives and makes clear that it cannot tolerate any acts of violence under any circumstances it will surely be received far more sympathetic. Who can blame the police if they have to restore order after some irresponsible short-minded and -tempered brutes started rioting? All these violent people achieve is giving the state and the media a reason to go after us and crush the protest.” Apart from pondering why suddenly police violence would be “justified” while “violence is never justified” we should be realistic about this:
“The state is not a passive thing. If it wants to repress a movement or organization, it does not wait for an excuse, it manufactures one […] About such campaigns, the FBI says, “It is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge….[D]isruption [through the media] can be accomplished without facts to back it up” (Gelderloos 57).
After the uncompromising pacifists have thus succeeded in keeping discontent in acceptable, harmless forms and the people helpless and dependent on the sudden enlightenment after “speaking truth to power” they have to be rewarded. They can have their protest and their media coverage. Nobody really cares, nothing really changes, some liberals can feel like real rebels and most important, the facade of social peace, freedom of speech and democracy is kept up. Successfully the ruling class has prevented the possibility of violent resistance destroying the image of social peace, love and harmony.
“Permitting nonviolent protest improves the image of the state. Whether they mean to or not, nonviolent dissidents play the role of a loyal opposition in a performance that dramatizes dissent and creates the illusion that democratic government is not elitist or authoritarian. Pacifists paint the state as benign by giving authority the chance to tolerate a criticism that does not actually threaten its continued operation” (Gelderloos 53).
How can another phenomenon the pacifist movement likes to credit to itself, the so-called “non-violent revolutions,” be explained then? The state and the ruling class were challenged, maybe they used the police against protesters but no bloodshed worth speaking of occurred and definitely no civil war erupted. Yet these regimes collapsed and the people triumphed. What do we make of all that Velvet, Orange, Rose and other “Color Revolutions?”
It is sad and once again shows the naivety of the non-violent movement that you even have to answer such a question. Are they not self-explanatory? What was the result of all these “revolutions?” Did they really succeed? Did anything really change for the better? Do people in the countries where these “revolutions” occurred now live in pacifist wonderland?
“In its long history, this strategy type has not succeeded in causing the class of owners, managers, and enforcers to defect and be disobedient, because their interests are fundamentally opposed to the interests of those who participate in the disobedience.What disobedience strategies have succeeded in doing, time and time again, is forcing out particular government regimes, though these are always replaced by other regimes constituted from among the elite.
[...]
It is not even proper to say the old regimes are “forced out.” Faced with rising disobedience and the threat of real revolution, they choose to hand over power to new regimes that they trust to honor the basic frameworks of capitalism and state. When they do not have the option of a transfer of power, they take off the gloves and attempt to brutalize and dominate the movement, which cannot defend itself and survive without escalating tactics.” (Gelderloos 100 ).
Conclusion
As we have seen, pacifism:
“assumes a society without race and class hierarchy; without privileged, powerful, and violent elites; without a corporate media controlled by the interests of state and capital, ready to manage the perceptions of the citizenry. Such a society does not exist among any of the industrial, capitalist democracies” (Gelderloos 59).
Does this mean that all peaceful tactics are completely useless or that we should stay at home when non-violent protests and rallies take place and should rather seek to escalate violence whereever and whenever possible? Is throwing Molotov cocktails at every occasion what we have to do?
Of course not! Marxism-Leninism condemns individual terrorism and counter-productive inciting of violence. Such would indeed only alienate potential supporters and give the state a reason to increase its reactionary pressure. Agitation and propaganda are of utmost importance and both are non-violent tactics. Peaceful tactics can be a useful and effective mean for gaining attention, support and minor victories such as reforms. But we have to keep in mind that peaceful tactics never be more than means to achieve our final goal, socialist revolution, which will be necessarily violent. This article is directed against denial of the latter fact and an outright rejection of anything else than pacifist tactics, seen as an end within themselves.
There is no way around this fact and no matter how much we try to ignore it, no matter how safe we feel in our dream world and ivory tower, reality will catch up; hopefully it will not take us by surprise. When the time has come we both have to be prepared to defend ourselves and answer violent reaction by violent means as well as preparing and arming the proletariat in theory and practice for the inevitable violent showdown with the bourgeoisie, the revolution.
Everything else would mean to “give up militant revolution (which is to give up on revolution as a whole),” as Gelderloos correctly states (126). The ruling class will not go peacefully, they will not stand by and simply watch us taking the base of their power and wealth. If we do not wantto work into the hands of our class enemy we have to realize that there is a war going on and that pacifism is still pro-fascist, pro-bourgeoisie and pro-imperialist.
“Privileged activists need to understand what the rest of the world’s people have known all too long: we are in the midst of a war, and neutrality is not possible. There is nothing in this world currently deserving of the name peace. Rather, it is a question of whose violence frightens us most, and on whose side we will stand” (Gelderloos 134).
“We must realistically accept that revolution is a social war, not because we like war, but because we recognize that the status quo is a low-intensity war and challenging the state results in an intensification of that warfare” (142).
To conclude, we might paraphrase Engels with an excerpt of his work Anti-Dühring:
“To [the pacifist] force is the absolute evil; the first act of force is to him the original sin; his whole exposition is a jeremiad on the contamination of all subsequent history consummated by this original sin; a jeremiad on the shameful perversion of all natural and social laws by this diabolical power, force. That force, however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms — of this there is not a word in [the pacifist]. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economic system of exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralises the person who uses it. And this in spite of the immense moral and spiritual impetus which has been given by every victorious revolution! [...] And this parson’s mode of thought — dull, insipid and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary [class] that history has known!”
Sources
Engels, Frederick. Anti-Dühring. 1878.
Gelderloos, Peter. How Nonviolence Protects the State. South End Press, 2007.
Orwell, George. Pacifism and the War. London: 1942.
Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) is yet another first-person shooter fetishizing imperialist war and allowing children to be their own one-man death-squads in a virtual world. America’s youth will be tossing grenades, firing automatic weapons, slitting throats and even occasionally committing torture on another battlefield waged across the living rooms of America and, when they tire of this, will be embarking on a cheesy add-on quest to defend the White House from hordes of zombies with John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon as their companions.
With a single-player campaign mode that rips off more Vietnam War films than one can count (with notable references to Apocalypse Now!, TheDeer Hunter and even themes from TheManchurian Candidate) and a frenetic multiplayer mode that has players killing one another for money to be spent on in-game weapons-upgrades, Black Ops has everything that adolescent American wants. Yet, while this game will satiate this boyish bloodlust for a few weeks, this will inevitably be remembered as merely “another Call of Duty game.” The significance of this review is not to analyze necessarily what this game is, but what it represents in terms of capitalism’s fetishization of violence and the implications of this fetish in our understanding of American imperialism.
Call of Duty: From World War to Whatever Sells
The Call of Duty series wasn’t always the degenerate cliché of online butchery combined with a lame excuse of a story trying desperately to hold itself together that it is now. Rather, it had its beginnings as a World War II shooter that drew on historical accounts, interviews of veterans and a more-or-less earnest attempt to create an immersive WWII experience. To its credit, Call of Duty was one of the first shooters of this kind to allow the player to play as a Soviet soldier fighting against the Nazis on the Eastern Front and, while the first game was bogged down in the Enemy at the Gates portrayal of the Red Army being disorganized and having as much to fear from their own officers as the enemy they were fighting, later installments were less chauvinist in their portrayal of the Soviet resistance to fascism. Call of Duty: World At War even allowed the player to play the part of a Soviet soldier whose journey takes him from the victory at Stalingrad to the capturing of the Reichstag.
The franchise began to deviate away from its focus on WWII with the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, which sought to apply Call of Duty 2‘s gameplay to a fictional contemporary war between the US and Russia, with a side campaign in the middle east. Here the emphasis was less on story and more on creating a gameplay experience that was more easily adapted to Call of Duty’s successful online mode. Rather than having players fighting one another online using WWII era weapons and being dressed either as Allies or Nazis, they would now be able to do battle with modern weapons complete with scopes, laser sights, under-the-barrel grenade launchers and being outfitted either as Marine Force Recon, the British SAS or a Russian Spetznaz instead.
The result was that Modern Warfare was wildly successful, leading to its own independent sequel, Modern Warfare 2. With the overarching plot having been resolved in those games, the makers of Call of Duty tried to get the same utility of having modern weapons for their online gameplay while not retelling the same stories they had been thus far. Their solution came in the form of Call of Duty: Black Ops, combining a “cowboys and Indians” Cold War narrative with gratuitous violence and action-movie plagiarism.Become Imperialism’s Hang-Man
The “plot” of Black Ops’ single-player campaign, revolving around the Soviet Union plotting to release chemical weapons against the United States, has the player doing imperialism’s dirty work, from attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs to participating in the Tet offensive and slaughtering hordes of Cuban, Russian and Vietnamese along the way. As well, every effort is made to make the Cubans, Russians and Vietnamese appear to be savage and brutal. At one point the character must escape from a labor camp in the USSR and is forced to play Russian Roulette while being beaten and shouted at.
The attempt to tap into latent American anti-communism is obvious, resulting in characters talking about how they need to stop “the communists” as if they are a collective horde of unwashed barbarians beating at the doors of American empire (all while ignoring the United State’s role all throughout the Cold War). Anyone who makes any effort to understand the geopolitics of the Cold War era would find this national-chauvinist perception both typical and laughable, yet it is obvious that the Black Ops production team wasn’t looking for the sort of historical accuracy they sought out in earlier titles. Rather, the “enemy” simply makes for a convenient adversary to be slaughtered in droves. Some on the left have focused their criticism chiefly on the anti-communism of Black Ops, yet the more important message of this game is less specifically anti-communist than pro-imperialist.
One Irony Worth Noting
There are many inconsistencies, ironies and other aspects of this game which would make the class-conscious player grimace, laugh out loud or otherwise be incapable of taking the game seriously. One such irony is the focus of this games plot around a former Nazi scientist who is working with the Soviets to release chemical weapons against American cities. This is ironic, being that the greatest ally to former Nazis after the war was the United States, who collaborated with former members of the Third Reich to construct think tanks for the purposes of undermining the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.
More Blood, Less Substance
One characteristic of Call of Duty’s degeneration has been an increase in the brutality with which the character is made to kill their enemies. For instance, the first games had the option of hitting one’s opponents with the butt of their rifle or pistol if the enemy got too close. In Modern Warfare and other later installments the rifle butt was replaced with a combat knife for slashing the enemy. Additionally, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops have an increase in “special” melee kills in which certain opponents can be killed in a non-standard melee attack. These “special” kills are often excessively brutal, involving sawing through an enemy’s neck with a knife or even hacking into their spine with a hatchet later on. If one combines this with an increase in the power of weapons to dismember enemies and burn opponents alive while they writhe and scream, the experience becomes a visceral orgy of blood and death on par with the Postal games.
The Torture Scene
As if this weren’t enough, there is also a part of the game wherein the player must torture a man by inserting glass into their mouth and punching them in the jaw until they surrender the desired information. While this scene isn’t very prolonged, the idea that this would make it into a game released after the United States’ role in directly torturing detainees (as well as outsourcing torture to private contractors and rightist groups) has become public knowledge demonstrates an extremely reactionary sentiment towards the use of sadistic measures for advancing the cause of imperialism. The idea that adolescent children, who represent the chief demographic for games like this one, would have first-hand experience within the virtual realm of committing acts of torture in the name of imperialism is alarming to say the least.
The Murder behind the Mundane
The most alarming aspect of Black Ops’ brutality is that it demonstrates just how desensitized America’s youth are to such violence. Typical first-person shooters have become mundane, necessitating higher levels of violence, gore and brutality to keep adolescents entertained. To keep hawking their wares, game makers need to take it to the next level because they have exceeded in numbing their consumers to the reality of war through repetition. To merely kill within the virtual world is not enough; one needs to be able to break their enemies apart into little pieces and watch with sadistic glee as armies become limp, bloody piles at their feet.
The child develops the perfect mentality for a soldier fighting imperialism’s battles, able to slaughter men, women and children without a second thought for the humanity of those they destroy. It’s no wonder that games have consciously been used as recruitment tools by the United States military, or that the CIA itself has been responsible for contributing funding and expertise in games that involve the enemies of US hegemony.
Conclusion: Fascist “Art” for the Xbox Generation
In the United States, there is often a glaring double-standard with how violent media is perceived. Whenever a school shooting or other tragedy involving youth violence in suburbia occurs, the focus immediately turns to the music they listen to or the video games they play. However, when American soldiers open fire on civilians from a helicopter and shred journalists with 50 caliber rounds, no one stops to consider how violent media may have brought them to where they are. What could make it so that a soldier can murder men, women and children without batting an eye? What force, what socialization, can work to desensitize the agents of imperialism to the atrocities they visit on other human beings?
The answer is that capitalist media, from music to film, from its documentation of its history to the video games that end up on store shelves, seeks to fetishize violence and dull the senses of its consumers to the horrors of imperialist war. The same efforts are undertaken whenever an empire seeks to undertake wars for the purposes of expanding their dominion. Call of Duty: Black Ops is an exemplary example of such media.
“He is simply one of the giants of American foreign policy,” President Obama said of him on Monday. Upon the news of the sudden death of Richard Holbrooke on December 13th, 2010, an elaborate state funeral was quickly arranged, carried out and reported. Attending Holbrooke’s funeral were such figures as Madeline Albright, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and General James Jones, who made sure to swiftly give their respects in public statements.
Holbrooke had been rushed to the hospital after collapsing during a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton. He underwent emergency surgery that lasted almost 24 hours to repair the torn aorta in his heart. This was ultimately unsuccessful, and soon the news broke that Holbrooke had died at the age of 69. Immediately after his death his praises were sung by the country’s most powerful, and the entire deal seems signed, sealed and quietly buried.
There is one issue nagging at the heart and minds of the American people however: exactly who was Richard Holbrooke?
This is a question that faces us all at the moment. Western media praises him. Everyone in power from Bill Clinton to Afghan President Hamid Karzai has spoken of this man like he hung the moon. Underneath all the high-falutin’ praises there certainly must be more to see and learn about this mysterious figure.
The reality is that “Richard C. Holbrooke, the long-time US diplomat […] was a bully and a liar for the most rapacious and militaristic power in the world, a man steeped in the commission and cover-up of bloody crimes. He devoted his life to defending the worldwide interests of American corporations and banks, and became personally wealthy as a consequence” (1).
“On December 13, New York Times writer Robert McFadden headlined, ‘Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis,’ saying: ‘Mr. Holbrooke was hospitalized on (December 10) after becoming ill. (After two major surgeries), he remained in very critical condition until his death….A brilliant, sometimes abrasive infighter, he used a formidable arsenal of facts, bluffs, whispers, implied threats and, when necessary, pyrotechnic fits of anger to press his positions.’ For good reason, he was nicknamed ’The Bulldozer’” (2).
This is the same Richard Holbrooke who was Obama’s special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan up until his death. The press says Holbrooke’s main claim to fame is brokering the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, which allegedly ended the Bosnian War in the former Yugoslavia. As we shall see, the facts are that this “peace” was brokered at gun point, and it is sheer nonsense for a man who did so much for imperialism to be called an agent of peace. Indeed, looking back at the life of Richard Holbrooke, it becomes clear it was the life of a gangster and a criminal, a career and an existence that could be mapped by merely connecting the dots between case after case of U.S.-sponsored terrorism and war.
Vietnam
“A junior foreign service officer in the early stages of the Vietnam War, Holbrooke rose rapidly to leading positions, and served in every Democratic administration since John F. Kennedy’s. He had close connections with the Republican foreign policy establishment as well, including Henry Kissinger and Holbrooke’s colleague from Vietnam, John Negroponte, US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush. Holbrooke was stationed in the Mekong Delta as a 22-year-old civil affairs officer in charge of an entire province with 600,000 people. He was one of the cabal of young, energetic and ruthless operatives, dubbed ‘The Best and the Brightest’ by author David Halberstam, who spearheaded the American effort in Vietnam. His initial position was as a field officer for the US Agency for International Development, which placed US officials as overlords in Vietnamese villages and towns, supervising the operations of the stooge government of South Vietnam. The US had established this puppet regime in an effort to thwart the Vietnamese nationalist movement that defeated the French colonialists in the first Vietnam War, between 1946 and 1954.
Holbrooke was an operative in the protracted effort to break the connection between the insurgents and the peasantry, which included, in a long series of failures, locating US officials in villages (the Pacification Program), removing the population from their villages to larger aggregations (‘strategic hamlets’), and the systematic assassination of suspected NLF cadres (the Phoenix Program). More than 20,000 Vietnamese were tortured and executed in the last-named campaign, one of the great unpunished war crimes of the twentieth century. Those educated in this school for mass murder included a who’s who of later top US diplomats, most of them in Democratic administrations. These included Holbrooke, Negroponte, future Clinton National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, future Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin, Frank Wisner, a future top State Department official in both the Carter and Clinton administrations, and Peter Tarnoff, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state.
Holbrooke moved up quickly from field officer to become a staff assistant at the US Embassy in Saigon, and then in 1966 joined the White House staff of President Lyndon Johnson, working for Robert Komer, known as ‘Blowtorch Bob’ for his role as chief of the Phoenix Program. Later he moved to the State Department, working as part of the team that drafted the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of US-Vietnam relations leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg” (1).
Richard C. Holbrooke was a man who spent his life shuffling back and forth between the State Department and Wall Street. He was a loyal soldier of the Washington clique, a diplomat who was a living embodiment of the mindset of liberal capitalism and fittingly propped up by huge sums of money. Despite being a Democrat on paper, he fawned over fellow warhawk Paul Wolfowitz:
“In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington” (3).
He even went so far as to say, “recent activities illustrate something that’s very important about American foreign policy in an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes between the parties” (3).
Holbrooke worked as a campaign advisor for Jimmy Carter and worked for the Carter Administration from 1977–1981. On March 31, 1977, Holbrooke became Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was the youngest person to ever hold that position. Under Carter, Holbrooke became the best friend of the American imperialists and the Chinese bourgeoisie. When the capitalist Deng Xiaoping became head of the Communist Party of China, Holbrooke was instrumental in continuing the Nixon/Kissinger policy of close relations with the People’s Republic of China. As a result of the efforts of Holbrooke and others, the United States normalized relations with the Chinese government in December 1978 and supported its aggressive invasion of Vietnam in 1979.Indonesia, Suharto & East Timor
Perhaps the most scandalous event of Holbrooke’s career occurred in August 1977, when he traveled to Indonesia to meet with Suharto. Suharto was a five-star general who had gained power through a violent coup in 1966 and whose forces were at the time conducting a genocide campaign in East Timor, which had been going on for two years when Holbrooke visited. During the coup, Suharto had also overseen the slaughter of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which with three million members was the largest in the world outside China.
After Suharto assumed control over Indonesia, hundreds of thousands of PKI members and alleged civilian affiliates were immediately arrested and executed. State terror soon followed for decades. Overall, well over a million people would be killed under Suharto’s autocratic rule of Indonesia. In the East Timor genocide alone, 200,000 out of a population of 700,000 would be killed. Despite this, the United States under Carter and Clinton supported him as an anti-communist leader in the Cold War.
Richard Holbrooke got his hands dirty soon enough after the meeting:
“It was Carter’s appointee to the Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels” (3).
Indonesian protesters demand justice in the wake of Suharto's atrocities
Professor Benedict Anderson, in a testimony before Congress, said in February 1978:
“If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never felt the force of the U.S. government’s ‘anguish,’ the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to express statements by General Fish, Mr. Oakley and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at least four separate offers of military equipment were made to the Indonesian government during the January-June 1976 ‘administrative suspension.’ This equipment consisted mainly of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War era planes designed for counterinsurgency operations against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons, and wholly useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The policy of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other counterinsurgency-related equipment has continued without substantial change from the Ford through the present Carter administrations” (3).
Hoolbrooke went along with the U.S. government in having a positive image of Suharto. Referring to Wolofwitz, Holbrooke once remarked that “Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests.”
Holbrooke also said “The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer — which plays a moderate role within OPEC — and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans … We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia” (4).
Holbrooke left politics for a few years, although apparently not to recover from supporting genocide in Indonesia, but rather to serve Wall Street in between diplomatic careers, acting as a vice chairman in the firm Credit Suisse First Boston and as managing director for Lehman Brothers. …By the Company He Keeps
It is perhaps a most fittingly ironic sign of Holbrooke’s true legacy that on the day when the headline “Kosovar leader says people lost ‘a friend’ in Holbrooke” [Click here] appeared, so did one saying “Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports” [Click here]. This is followed by the gruesome caption “Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian ‘mafia-like’ crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys.”
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim “the Snake” Thaçi, a former KLA (UÇK) guerrilla, was among the first to admire Holbrooke publically. In the years since the Yugoslav Wars, Thaçi, a beloved friend of NATO and Israel, has made his drug smuggling and Balkan mafia ties well-known, not that they were exactly a mystery before, during or after the war. He was supposedly not only involved with organized crime but was apparently a “boss” figure, perhaps even a leader, of the powerful criminal network that holds sway over the Kosovo government.It is quite odd that this accusation of war crimes and is “breaking news,” since this story about the Thaçi’s involvement in organ trafficking broke over two years ago. The FBI, the European Union and the Council of Europe are now repeating these same charges.
Richard Holbrooke, it turns out, was one of the masterminds behind the Yugoslav Wars. The existence of “independent” Kosovo comes as the result of U.S. imperialism allowing the UN to occupy the territory and local former guerrilla leaders to establish a privatized mafia state for smuggling weapons and drugs in the Balkans.
Masterminding Yugoslavia: the Bosnian War
From 1993 to 1994, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany. After 1989, a united Germany tried to re-colonize Yugoslavia (Slovenia and Croatia were both colonized by Germany under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Nazis) and establish itself as a strong economy and a formidable imperialist power within Europe. The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which Holbrooke also had a hand in, as we shall see) had as their predecessor the NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, another “liberation” mission.
Before the Yugoslav Wars broke out in earnest, Germany pushed to offer recognition, weapons and diplomatic relations to nationalist and separatist forces within Yugoslavia. The German intelligence service, the BND, was active in training reactionary and neo-Ustaše former Croatian Nazis. Other secret intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, also played their role in training various other movements, as did larger external powers such as the U.S., Britain, Russia, Turkey and Italy. Middle Eastern and European countries, and NATO as well, all backed differing warring nationalist factions in the conflict. The highlight of Holbrooke’s diplomatic career would come in the 1990’s during this violent breakup of the country.
During his service in Germany, Holbrooke was a heavy promoter of a more powerful NATO and military intervention in Bosnia. Holbrooke served as a Chairman on The American Academy in Berlin along with Henry Kissinger and Richard von Weizsäcker. Bloody conflicts were triggered with imperialist aid throughout the whole of Yugoslavia, starting with Slovenia, Croatia and by 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Soon enough, in 1995, Richard Holbrooke would become a semi-household name for being the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, which the West has claimed ended the Bosnian War. Since then, he has been celebrated in the mainstream media as helping to end the bloody civil war. In fact, the Yugoslav Wars took place amid the rise of nationalism and the imperialist economic and social pressure on the dominating Yugoslav bourgeoisie, in which Holbrooke himself had no small role.
In the context of a violent ethnic conflict, Richard Holbrooke oversaw the illegal smuggling of enormous shipments of weapons to Bosnia using mammoth C-130 American military planes, despite a supposed international arms embargo. These shipments included small arms, anti-tank weapons, ammunition and explosives. During the Clinton administration this was compared with Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal. Soon the newly-independent states in Yugoslavia became a haven for foreign capital.
Holbrooke also encouraged Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to embark on the bloody “Operation Storm” in August 1995, which cost thousands of lives, drove hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs from the region and was carried out with intelligence, training and planning from “retired” US military advisors.
In his 1998 memoir of the Yugoslav Wars, To End a War, he claimed that the United States and NATO were late in responding to alleged atrocities by the Bosnian Serbs. Yet, ironically, according to recently-indicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, Holbrooke personally offered him immunity from persecution for war crimes if he disappeared. A recent study by Purdue University shows he may be right as others have come forward and backed his claims.
Karadžić claimed “a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there. […] The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now [2009] a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war.
But the rumor persists, and different versions have recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic’s assertion, including a new historical study of the Yugoslav wars published by Purdue University in Indiana.
Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke’s activities told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics” (6). In fact, the report even mentions a written agreement between the two.
In 1996, Holbrooke was awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal by the German Ministry of Defense for his work towards “peace and freedom.”Kosovo
This brings us back to the case of occupied Kosova (called “Kosovo” these days, especially since the 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia) and the infamous Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi. What exactly connects Mr. Thaçi to Richard Holbrooke, aside from the few snapshots and the remark to the press we mentioned earlier? Well, it just so happens that back in 1998-1999, Richard Holbrooke served as a special presidential envoy for Clinton in Kosovo during the Kosovo War, giving special support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UÇK in Albanian), an illegal radical Albanian nationalist organization the U.S. classed as a terrorist group. Holbrooke was called “the KLA’s Godfather” and recruited many mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia to fight with the KLA. Mr. Thaçi was one of the leaders of the KLA and was wanted for bomb attacks by Interpol. In 1999 a war broke out between the KLA and Yugoslav Federal Army. NATO air forces launched a war of aggression and bombed Yugoslavia, ostensibly to deter Serb ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. In reality, it was the Yugoslav government’s hesitancy to embrace economic reform.
“The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year’s invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors” (5).
In March 1999, Richard Holbrooke himself delivered the ultimatum to Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević about the imminent NATO bombing campaign. The 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia consisted of 79,000 tons of bombs and over 10,000 cruise missiles and cluster bombs as well as depleted uranium. Infrastructure was targeted, and many civilian structures as well. The bombings displaced one million people, killed 2,000 and injured over 4,000 more. Only 15 tanks were destroyed, but 372 industrial centers were hit, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. In all of this, not one privately-owned business or building was bombed. Afterwards, Kosovo declared independence and was immediately recognized by the United States.Regarding Holbrooke’s “Peace treaty” which would have allegedly prevented the Kosovo War, it was not actually a plan for peace but rather a legalized occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia:
“[T]he Rambouillet process cannot be considered a negotiation under any normal definition of the word: A bunch of lawyers at the State Department write up a 90-page document and then push it in front of the parties and say: ‘Sign it. And if you (one of the parties) sign it and he (the other party) doesn’t then we’ll bomb him.’ And of course, when they said that, Secretary Albright and the State Department knew that one of the parties would not, and could not, sign the agreement. Why? Because — as has received far too little attention from our supposedly inquisitive media — it provided for NATO occupation of not just Kosovo but of all of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) under Paragraph 8 of Appendix B: ‘8. NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access through out the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], including associated air space and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations’” (7).
Iraq
On January 2001, Holbrooke was quoted as saying: “Saddam Hussein’s activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world, not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times.” Even until his death, Holbrooke continued to call for a deployment of more U.S. troops in Iraq.Conclusion
When looking at all of this, the answer to our previous question becomes quite clear. Who was Richard Holbrooke? Richard Holbrooke was a monster and a war criminal complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people for the sake of profit.
Left-wing music has been a cornerstone of the American socialist movement throughout its entire history. Stemming from the early 1900s to the present day, a good number of musicians and bands have expounded socialism through their lyrics and song content. Whether it is in support of Marxism-Leninism or other various forms of leftism, music has always been there to get the idea across to the broad masses. Many of said artists have themselves been victimized by capitalist society and the capitalist mode of production, influencing them to spread the word on the injustice inherit in the profit motive and the damage it wreaks on workers, the environment, and the family unit.
While not American, what is likely the most widely recognizable socialist songs is, of course, the Internationale. The original French words were written in June 1871 by Eugène Pottier (1816–1887), previously a member of the Paris Commune. It was first publicly performed in July 1888. Since then, The Internationale has been translated in nearly every language and was even adopted as the Soviet Union’s original national anthem. It has also become a popular rallying song sung by students and workers.
Written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, Solidarity Forever is a pro-union song originally created for use within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), although other unions and some political parties have been known to sing it during rallies or demonstrations. Chaplin began writing the song in 1914 as he was covering the Kanawha coal miners’ strike in West Virginia, in which miners and their families were forcibly evicted from company houses by mine guards. The Preamble of the song makes a brilliant and simple class analysis of American society with, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” stating quite plainly that the contradictions inherent between the laboring and capitalist classes will continue until the workers take control of society and expropriate the exploiting classes. Throughout the years, stanzas have been added and/or modified to the original lyrics. For example in the 1970s, women members added their take on their involvement in the IWW’s affairs:
“We’re the women of the union and we sure know how to fight.
We’ll fight for women’s issues and we’ll fight for women’s rights.
A woman’s work is never done from morning until night.
Women make the union strong!
(Chorus)
It is we who wash dishes, scrub the floors and clean the dirt,
Feed the kids and send them off to school – and then we go to work,
Where we work for half men’s wages for a boss who likes to flirt.
But the union makes us strong!
(Chorus)”
Although Ralph Chaplin was an anarchist and opposed “state” socialism, we commemorate his work and his dedication to the class struggle and for taking the time to produce this work that would remain in the hearts of millions of toilers.
A lesser known left-leaning song, The Battle Hymn of Cooperation, was written by a baker (Elizabeth Mead) and a busboy (Carl Ferguson), who won a five-dollar prize for composing “the best song on cooperation.” The song was sung at the annual meetings of the Consumers Cooperative Association of Missouri, several thousand strong. It is the official song of the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). It is notably sung also to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Bandiera Rossa became one of the most popular songs of the Italian labor movement. The lyrics were written by Carlo Tuzzi in 1908, obtaining the melody from two Lombardian folk songs. The last two lines “Evviva il comunismo e la libertà,” or in English “Long live communism and liberty,” were put in the text after the rise of Benito Mussolini’s fascist government in Italy. Since the song was first written and published, there have been many remakes of the song, especially by South American socialists and communists.
With the escalation of the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, a new generation of anti-imperialist culture was born, leading to one what was quite possibly the most lively and active periods in American history. Marching, protests songs, and sit-ins were commonplace and became well practiced methods of civil disobedience. To compliment this, new forms of anti-imperialist music gripped the American left. In 1969, Country Joe and the Fish performed their I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag at Woodstock to many peace-loving youth’s ears. The song’s lyrics are satirical, yet they contain a strong anti-war message.
“Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
[second stanza repeats]
Well, come on generals, let’s move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
‘Cause the only good commie is the one that’s dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ‘em all to kingdom come.
[second stanza repeats]
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don’t hesitate
To send your sons off before it’s too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
[second stanza repeats]”
This is an obvious strike towards all the warmongerers in the Vietnam War-era U.S. government, as well an attack on all those taken in by nationalism who volunteer to die fighting for the wrong side.
In 1972, David Crosby and Graham Nash released their single, Immigration Man, inspired by an incident that occurred between Nash and an immigration official as he was making his way into the United States for a concert. A U.S. Customs official had held him up, and although Nash was allowed to go through after people started coming up to him for his autograph, he was indignant. The song speaks of getting stopped by the “immigration man.” The song then describes Nash’s trouble producing documents and filling out a form “as big as a blanket.” “Come on and let me in, immigration man. Can I cross the line and pray I can stay another day.” Towards the end of the song, he gives a warning to would-be global travelers, “So go where you will, as long as you think you can. You better watch out, watch out for the man, anywhere you’re going.” In his discussion of his motivations for writing the song with Crosby, Nash stated, “I’m not against local colour, but why should you fight me just because you speak differently than I do?” Nash also expressed his reasoning as to why he chose a picture of the earth from space for the cover of the sheet music for their song. “When you look at a photograph of the earth you don’t see any borders. That realization is where our hope as a planet lies.”
Tom Paxton, a progressive-minded folk song writer, has written numerous songs that take a forward-thinking stand on such issues as racial injustice, fascism and finance capital. An anti-aggression song was written by him, titled Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation, in which he mocks LBJ’s promises of withdrawal from Vietnam, only to lead to further troop deployment and the increase in foreign aggression the small, former colonial country. The second stanza is as follows: “Lyndon Johnson told the nation have no fear of escalation. I am trying everyone to please. Although this isn’t really a war, we’re sending fifty-thousand more, to help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.” Interestingly enough, one could substitute these lines for nearly any international conflict, and the core presentation still holds solid. From Grenada and Nicaragua to Afghanistan and Iraq, our politicians have always used the same excuses to justify their class based interests in other countries.
Revolutionary leftist music was carried over to the 80s, 90s, and 00s and given a hip-hop and hard rock makeover. Both working within the boundaries of and superceding a market dominated by gangster rap, a noticeable number of pro-revolution bands have gained prominence among the public.
To give an example, Immortal Technique has published numerous songs and albums portraying life in the third world, as well as life in the first world ghetto. His songs and views generally portray the socialist point view on issues such as class hierarchy, racism, colonialism, poverty and government. In his music, he expresses the fact that record companies, and not artists themselves, are the ones who gain the most out of producing music. His song, The Third World speaks of colonialism of Africa by the United States of America and Europe with the support of the Catholic Church. He speaks against the funding of pro-capitalist militias and the traditional economic subordination of the majority of African workers and farmers at the expense of United States backed regimes and semi-colonial relations. His lyrics are hard-hitting towards reactionary elements in America.
“Just death following the forth right disaster, a legacy of bastards
With plastic explosives your futures been eroded
Cause you forgot that when your free it’s multiplied indefinitely
By the struggle that be the struggle I see
To socialistically united the third world countries
Expose hypocrisy in Americas democracy
Sloppily obsessed with stopping me cause I speak prophecy
Trample and dismantle your capitalist philosophy
The same way I stomp the conquering rap monopoly”
Even more well-known is the group Rage Against the Machine. Formed in 1991 and inspired by acts such as Public Enemy and Death Squad, their music can best be described as an outspoken concoction of creative rap and heavy metal geared towards a radical audience. The band’s most notable video is perhaps their performance of Sleep Now in the Fire, which was recorded in from of the New York Stock Exchange on January 26, 2000. Upon setting up, the band’s lead singer, Zack de la Rocha proclaimed to the audience, “Brothers and Sisters, our democracy has been hijacked!” Their performance sparked both positive and negative response from both supporters of the band as well as police, respectively, causing the doors of the New York Stock Exchange to close temporarily. The director of the music video, Michael Moore, complimented that, “We decided to shoot this video in the belly of the beast.” Michael Moore himself was detained by police and threatened with arrest during the video’s production.
In 1992, a politically-minded hip-hop group was formed in Oakland, California. Many today recognize them as The Coup. Originally comprised of three emcees, Raymond “Boots” Riley, and E-Roc along with DJ Pam the Funkstress, E-Roc left the group after their second album was released. The Coup is now a duo of Boots Riley and DJ Pam. The Marxist hip-hop group has produced sometimes serious and sometimes satirical lyrics, criticizing American politics, police brutality, capitalism and pimping as a form of exploitation towards women.
“I think that people should have democratic control over the profits that they produce. It is not real democracy until you have that. And the plain and simple definition of communism is the people having democratic control over the profits that they create.” – Raymond “Boots” Riley
In the early 1990s, The Coup released Dig It. According to Robin D.G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, “The Coup refers to its members as “The Wretched of the Earth”; tells listeners to read The Communist Manifesto; and conjures up revolutionary icons such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, H. Rap Brown, Kenya’s Mau Mau movement, and Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt” (1). The group takes an internationalist viewpoint by commemorating and offering references to leftist authors, guerillas and theoreticians. Every country’s revolutionary movement is embodied in its music, and the United States is no exception.
Sources:
1) Robin D.G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, Black Like Mao: Red China & Black Revolution, Part 1.
“I’d like to harness their youthful energy with a strap.”–Concerning student demonstrations in California, 1966
“The entire graduated income tax structure was created by Karl Marx. It has no justification in getting government revenue.”–During the 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California
Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States, ruling from 1981-1989. The American media portrays him as a great leader and hero who single-handedly won the Cold War, fixed the economy and gave new spirit to the United States. Liberals and conservatives alike line up to sing his praises endlessly, worshipping him as some sort of God of Americanism. Conservatives try their best to imitate his campaign policies and invoke his name, spinning tales about how great the theory of “Reaganomics” worked. We are told over and over that he was the greatest President and world leader to ever walk the halls of the White House. It’s time to separate truth from myth regarding Reagan’s legacy—in this article we will examine Ronald Reagan’s presidency and give our readers the story that few ever hear from the corporate media.The Reality of Reaganism
“We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas.”–1966
“Welfare recipients are a faceless mass waiting for a handout.”–1966
During the Reagan era, wages stagnated, worker benefits declined, working hours increased and employers were allowed to crack down violently on labor unions as well as ignore labor laws entirely. Contrary to the preachings of neo-liberals, Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” enriched the few and the privileged. The wealth trickled up and not down. Reagan’s vision of American democracy was that of the true capitalist—a twisted version of “democratic” society run by a small elite stratum of oligarchs over the working classes, women, the poor, the youth and the non-white. Reagan reinforced this dictatorship of the blackest reaction with the most violent foreign and domestic policy seen for decades in US history—Reagan did not hesitate to ally himself with vicious armies of fascist butchers to eliminate his enemies and maintain US hegemony worldwide. At home, his policy was much the same, overseeing massive debt and poverty, police crackdowns and a swell in the prison population. Mindless patriotism, support for the military, surges in religious extremism, 1980s decadence and yuppie culture, rigid reinforcement of traditional gender roles (including chauvinistic and homophobic policies) and “get rich” capitalist culture of the most blatant, dog-eat-dog and cutthroat-to-the-bone variety were promoted.
Ronald Reagan brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in his ceaseless expansion of US Empire, focusing on aggressive expansion by use of force. Reagan’s policies slashed all progressive social programs while at the same time ushering in the new age of the United States military-industrial machine by setting a yearly 1.5 trillion dollar military budget, a number unprecedented in world history. Anything that was opposed to the most merciless free market policies, anything that opposed the domination of the United States, anything that was progressive or even vaguely humanitarian or liberal became a target for the Reaganites. Homelessness, national debt, inflation, unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketed, the brunt of it being born by poor people, Latinos and African-Americans.
Ronald Reagan remains perhaps the most famous “Cold Warrior” for his brutal global policies, which put weapons in the hands of anyone who opposed the Soviet Union. To this end, Reagan recruited vicious legions of right-wing death squads, fascists, drug-running kingpins, killers, religious fanatics and CIA puppets to his cause. Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, P.W. Botha of apartheid South Africa, Ferdinand Marcos, the Nicaraguan Contras and many other unsavory characters became “champions of democracy” and “freedom fighters.”
Ronald Reagan unleashed armies of genocideres, dictators, gangsters, torturers and spies abroad and had them trained and funded in a manner unforeseen. His Administration targeted countries like Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Cambodia, Angola, Laos, Ethiopia and Afghanistan for military intervention and takeover, regardless of the popularity of democratic or leftist governments or the wishes of the people of those countries.
Strong popular movements of peasants and workers that rose in the Third World in response to massive preventable death from malnutrition, disease such as malaria and lack of human services in their countries were denounced as “communist” and put down with violence. Civilian and military targets alike were annihilated by Reagan’s cronies. In response to strikes in places like the farming plantations in El Salvador where the workers demanded an extra 40 cents a day, or the Coca-Cola plant in Guatemala where they called for a minimum wage, right-wing militias supported by the Reagan Administration would crush these attempts at reform.
In the Court of the Nuclear-Armed Warlord
“The time has come to stop being our brother’s keeper.”–Concerning welfare budget cuts in California, 1967
“If it’s a bloodbath they want, let’s get it over with.”–Concerning student demonstrations, 1970
To this day, the mentality of the Reagan era, of the predatory, corrupt culture of greed and heartless accumulation, of the psychotic faith in the absolute virtue of the free market, continues to poison the globe. Human compassion was cast aside for animal hungers and naked self-interest; ruthless colonialist ambition became the hallmark of American foreign policy. Reagan was a mouthpiece for the wealthy, the lucky, the elite and the power-hungry, an intentionally banal and wise-cracking speaker with a “folksy” crudity and passion for sound bites that managed to pass for logical arguments and sound philosophy. Understanding Reagan’s savagery is important for understanding the nature of the imperial capitalist system we live in.
US Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the former for escalating mass murder in Vietnam and the latter for the same activities, plus illegal wiretapping. Both were subjected to the wrath of protesting Americans in the 60s and 70s. Reagan, however, would oversee the end of all that. Reagan was a known to purposefully instigate violent conflicts with student movements who opposed his policies—on May 15, 1969, Reagan sent in police to crush protests in Berkeley Park in a confrontation known as “Bloody Thursday.” 2,200 National Guard troops then occupied the city of Berkeley for two weeks on Reagan’s orders.
Reagan signed NSD 52, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to round up hundreds of thousands of people and place them into military concentration camps. With help from Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who would later become infamous due to the Iran-Contra Scandal, Reagan organized an operation entitled “Rex 84 Bravo.” This contingency plan contained blueprints and authorization for the federal government to declare martial law in the United States, abolish the Constitution, place the military in charge of state and local governments and give them unlimited power to move and execute citizens and imprison Americans viewed as security threats. When the air traffic controllers’ labor union, known as Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), organized a strike in 1981, Reagan ordered the 11,345 striking controllers fired. For years after the first cases of AIDS were documented, Reagan refused to use state resources or social mobilization to help contain the virus which primarily affected homosexuals. By the time he acknowledged its existence, 30,000 people had died of the disease, the epidemic of which still plagues the United States.
Due to draconian cuts in social programs, a proposed directive by the United States Department of Agriculture in Reagan’s Administration tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable, which would have allowed public schools to cut out servings of vegetables for school lunches. The Office of Management and Budget reported eliminating nutritional requirements for subsidized meals for low-income students netted a potential $1 billion a year.
Some statistics regarding the era of Ronald Reagan are also relevant for analyzing his policies:
- The top one percent’s share of household wealth had dropped from 1929 to 1981 from 44% to 27%. By 1998 it was back up to 39%.
- “The Congressional Budget Office says the income gap in the United States is now the widest in 75 years. While the richest one percent of the U.S. population saw its financial wealth grow 109 percent from 1983 to 2001, the bottom two-fifths watched as its wealth fell 46 percent” – CBS
- Meanwhile, for households of all ages, between 1983 and 1998 the average household net worth of the poorest 40% in the U.S. declined 76%.
- “The biggest indicator of a healthy society – average life expectancy – dropped. People in the U.S. now don’t live even as long as people in Costa Rica. Meanwhile the U.S. infant mortality rate has risen […]” – CBS
- In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the news media in America. By 2002, six corporations did.
- The number of Americans without health insurance climbed 33 percent during the 1990′s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
- Farmers in 1999 were getting 36% less for their products in real dollars than in 1984.
- In 1980 there were less than 500,000 people in prison in the U.S. By 2000 there were two million. In 1980, 8% of the prisoners were there for drug offenses; by 1998, 28% were.
- Ninety percent of young white male workers are now doing worse than they would have 20 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the income of a recent male high school graduate declined 28% between 1973 and 1997.
- Wages for the bottom 10% of all wage earners fell by 9.3% between 1979 and 1999
- Median student-loan debt, 1977: $2,000. 1997: $15,000
- Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1980: 42 to 1. Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1998: 419 to 1. Annual pay of a factory worker if it had kept pace with executive salaries: $110,000
- In 1977, the disclosed wealth of the top ten senators was $133 million. In 2001 it was $1.83 billion.
- In 1982, U.S. foreign debt was less than 5% of GDP; by 2002 it was almost 25%
- Between 1973 and 2001, the incomes of the poorest 20% went up 14%, that of the 20% in the middle went up 19%, but the richest 5% went up 87%.
- The real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1969 at over $7 an hour. Its real value is now at $5 an hour.
- Eighty-six percent of stock market gains between 1989 and 1997 flowed to the top ten percent of households while 42 percent went to the most well-to-do one percent.
- In 1998 the top-earning one percent had as much income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest earnings.
- Two-thirds of American households headed by a person between the ages of 47 and 64 in 1998 had the same pension wealth or less in real dollars than they did in 1983. Almost 20% of all near-retiree households could expect to retire in poverty.
- By the turn of the century poor black families were working 190 hours more a year – and poor white families 22 hours more — than in 1979 for roughly the same pay.
Since Ronald Reagan:
- The two richest men in America — Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — own more assets than the bottom 45% of the country.
- Anti-trust laws, once considered the great mediator of commercial excess, have been steadily eroded.
- Organized labor has become a mere shadow of its former self [...].
- Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. per capita spending on schools increased 32%. The per capita spending on prisons grew 189%
- California built 21 prisons between 1980 and 1998; it built just one college.
- From the inauguration of a full-scale war on drugs in 1985 to 1998, the number of deaths per 100,000 for drug-induced causes almost doubled. In other words, having a drug war proved twice as deadly as not having one.
- There has been a massive shift towards the language of capitalism in all aspects of our conversation and speech, making our words more clichéd, less meaningful, less enjoyable, and less human. To an extraordinary degree we now speak to each as salesmen rather than as fellow citizens. This makes for a pretty seedy culture, full of insincerity and deceit while short on cooperation, individual creativity and shared goals.
- The age of Social Security coverage is rising as the public is being taught not to expect that either Social Security or Medicare will continue to serve as they do at present.
- There has been a dramatic increase in homelessness.
- Efforts to control individual rebellions against the banal and life-draining culture of extreme capitalism have produced increasingly authoritarian, militaristic and punitive tactics such as the war on drugs, zero tolerance, and the conversion of public schools into quasi-detention centers [...].
- Advertising has invaded every aspect of our life, making existence increasingly one long commercial.
- Our environment has steadily and dangerously deteriorated [...].
- Medicine has been converted from a public service to a corporate exploitive enterprise.
- [The United States] increasingly use corporatized prisons without adequate public supervision and prison slave labor to serve corporate interests.
- [V]oting turnout has declined.
- Corruption, both corporate and political, has increased to the point that it is no longer deviation but an assumed part of our culture. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now.
“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”–California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966
“It’s just too bad we can’t have an epidemic of botulism.”–In response to the Hearst family’s free food giveaway to the poor as partial ransom for their daughter Patricia (kidnapped by the SLA) 1974
The “Reagan Doctrine” was akin to the “Bush Doctrine” in saying that Washington had the right to attack and destroy any state, government or movement that interfered with US corporate or state interests. In the 1980s, the United States under Reagan supported forces and governments that committed widespread atrocities.
The most famous example were the Contras in Nicaragua, who fought against the leftist policies of the Sandinistas. The Contras murdered, tortured, and terrorized the population. Human Rights groups reported “murder, rape, torture, maiming children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, and amputating genitals.” The CIA provided the Contras with a manual instructing them how to perform sabotage and terrorism. Tens of thousands of civilians died, many of them elderly and children. The Contras routinely raped women before executing them. These actions were widely reported by human rights organizations, church groups, Latin American scholars and many others.
Reagan’s administration claimed the Nicaraguan Sandinistas wanted to conquer the world because they once used the phrase “revolution without borders.” What Nicaragua really wanted was to inspire other countries with their accomplishments. Since that was against US hegemony, they had to go. The World Court and many members of the international community condemned the crimes Reagan was committing in Nicaragua, but he ignored this. When Nicaragua took its case to the World Court, the Court ruled against the US and condemned its use of international terrorism. They said the Reagan administration’s actions were illegal.
Under Reagan, the CIA used the funds from global drug trafficking for arms purchases, flying United States planes full of cocaine from Central America into military bases on the mainland and flying back with arms. The spreading of cocaine helped to create the epidemic of crack-cocaine in the ghettos of America. This if course, happened while Reagan’s wife pushed her “Just Say No!” campaign and the expression “War On Drugs” began to be a household phrase.
In 1981, Reagan sent a United States aircraft carrier into waters in oil-rich Libya’s territory where they shot down two Libyan planes, an open declaration of war. Later, in 1986, Reagan would bomb the home of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in an attempt to assassinate him in his bed. The attempt on Qaddafi’s life failed, but claimed the lives of 30 people, including Qaddafi’s infant daughter.
In 1982, Reagan supported the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people. It was during this war that the Israeli massacres and mass rapes in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were committed. Reagan unleashed “Operation Urgent Fury” against Grenada, occupying the country with 2,000 troops. In the Persian Gulf, Reagan backed the government of Saddam Hussein, funneling billions in funds, arms and chemical weapons.
Conclusion
Now Reagan is finally dead. For a monster with the blood of so many on his hands, Reagan, like Francisco Franco in Spain, would die safely in his bed many years later, unpunished for his innumerable crimes. The tragedy of history is that he is remembered a hero and not the tyrant he truly was.
Adam Jones’ book Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity is an incredibly revealing anthology containing accounts of atrocities carried out by Western imperial capitalism and those who serve its interests abroad. Articles describing the little-known and little-understood history of imperialist actions from Algeria to Vietnam, Armenia to Yugoslavia, and even the genocide of Native peoples by colonialism in the United States and Canada are reproduced in this essential text. Jones’ book serves as an important lesson to its readers about the reality behind the United States and other powers’ attempts to “spread democracy and civilization” at gunpoint, as well as to remind those who advocate “peaceful resistance” to imperialism of the futility of their position.
Imperialism at the Forefront
One strength of this work that makes it useful to those who seek to understand and resist imperialism is how the authors of this text never forget the broader context behind the events chronicled. Unlike some more traditional perspectives on genocide and war crimes that seek to address the issue via the psychology of the perpetrators, these authors correctly connect the geopolitical agenda of capital as the root of these events. In essence, this text provides not only the what, but the why, behind the greatest crimes of the 20th century – and the why is capitalism. Several chapters discuss US interventionism in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and while outlining the extent of crimes committed by Henry Kissinger and other imperialist agents, the context of the Cold War and the yearnings of US capital to maintain its hegemony over what it saw as its “back yard” are not forgotten. Rather than merely catalog the violence in Somalia under Siad Barre, the text talks about how funds and arms from the United States made it possible. Behind the many horrors being perpetrated all over the globe at any given moment, there is the presence of capital, the influence which leads to war, genocide and poverty for much of the world’s peoples, and Jones’ book is faithful in recognizing this connection.
Understanding Vietnam and Iraq as Genocide
This book makes an important contribution to the understanding of the Vietnam War and the sanctions against Iraq as genocidal actions. This is important, because these direct attacks on civilian population centers have yet to be admitted as genocidal actions by the United States. Apparently, the targeting of defenseless villages in Vietnam and the starving of 500,000 Iraqi children do not count as genocide because it was the United States who perpetrated it. If the Soviet Union is perceived as being slow to provide aid to the Ukraine during famine, then it was clearly Stalin who intended to starve the populous into submission, yet when the United States imposes crippling sanctions after bombing raids targeting sanitation facilities and other essentials to civilian life, starvation and illness are merely a convenient accident. And, when it comes to the bombing of civilian population centers within “free fire zones” in Vietnam, the United States would attest that in wartime such atrocities are unavoidable. The double standard put forward by Western propaganda in the context of Cold War does well to whitewash the crimes they committed, and in engaging these accounts of mass murder, Jones’ text serves to reveal the true nature of imperialist violence.Capitalism: Itself a Genocide
The most important chapter of this anthology is an article entitled Collateral Damage: The Human Cost of Structural Violence in which the author, Peter G. Prontzos, outlines how international capitalism itself is a genocide. In this chapter, Prontzos compiles a wealth of statistical data about death associated with poverty world-wide, and argues that this structural violence is generated by the capitalist system itself; that since there is no material reason for the disparities in this world, the ultimate source of this death and despair is imperial capitalism’s imperative to reap profits from the labor and material resources of the rest of the world. Even without warfare, without bombing raids on civilian population centers in the name of profit margins, capitalism itself functions as a system of the organized exploitation and murder of the world’s laboring masses. Prontzos begins his essay quoting Darwin, saying, “If poverty is not a result of nature, then great is our sin.” This quote is appropriate, being that the misery of world capitalism is not the cause of nature and the sin of its structural violence and imperialist warfare falls on the capitalist exploiters themselves.
What about Israel?
This text does well to incorporate important examples of genocide and war crimes throughout the 20th century, but unfortunately makes no reference to the crimes perpetrated by the state of Israel against the people of Palestine. This myopia towards a nationalist state which sees fit to drop white phosphorus on schools and hospitals, or impose an illegal blockade which is driving the standard of living of Palestinians to incredible squalor, cannot be viewed as anything other than intentional. Jones admits that his work is not exhaustive, and makes reference to the fact that material regarding Israel and British crimes in Ireland have been left out, though we at the APL must protest to this decision, being that not addressing such crimes is what allows them to be perpetrated. Conclusion: This Text is Essential
This book is essential for those who wish to understand the true nature of Western imperial capitalism. Capitalism is a system of organized crime; an economic construction built to allow a small minority of the population plunder and exploit the laboring masses. When this system doesn’t break out into earnest warfare against the world proletariat by shooting and bombing men, women and children at will, it seeks to reinforce its hegemony through structural violence. Adam Jones and the authors of the various articles included in this anthology do a great service by offering these accounts. Poverty and imperialist war, genocide and the multitude of atrocities presented by both, are the crimes of capital. Only when one understands this essential truth is one able to wage an effective resistance to it, and this book is incredibly useful in bettering that understanding.
The 25th of July, 2010 is a day that will be marked in history. The media has been abuzz about the release by Wikileaks of the Afghanistan War Logs, which are being called the “new Pentagon Papers.” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said the files showed “thousands” of war crimes committed in Afghanistan. 76,000 of the approximately 90,000 files were posted Sunday night, while 15,000 are being vetted by the group for future release. Afghanistan has been called the “graveyard of empires,” because every empire that has attempted to occupy it has subsequently failed and collapsed. Until this empire digs its own grave it will continue to makes graves for the Afghan people. In this scenario, the Wikileaks release will help spread a more truth picture of the cost of imperial war and spread dissent. Fittingly, Wikileaks also uncovered a 32-page counterintelligence document that plans to “fatally marginalize the organization.”A Revisit from the Days of the Vietnam War?
Any student of contemporary history will know that the war in Vietnam ended not due to a military weakness by either side, but rather the victory for the Vietnamese people was political. The war dragged on and on, sapping the will of the American imperialists to continue fighting there for so little gains, and a great deal of losses at the home front. Indeed, at the time the US was the closest to having a revolution since the Civil War. Like those days the new Pentagon Papers show us just how poorly the unjust, unlawful and immoral war in Afghanistan is being waged, again much like the Vietnam War.
The Content of the War Logs Summed Up
The files released paint a devastating picture of the Afghanistan War. Firstly, there is the revelation that there are fewer than 100 confirmed al-Qaeda operatives inside the country of Afghanistan. Secondly, there are revelations that by and large the military and police training of Afghans is going extremely poorly. Thirdly, there are revelations that the Taliban is not a threat to the Afghan puppet government and is certainly not a threat to the American Empire. There are also revelations of Reaper drone strikes being conducted in the so-called ally of the American Empire–Pakistan. These drone strikes hunt and kill targets by remote control from bases in America.
The findings include detailed reports on hundreds of unreported attacks on civilians by coalition forces, ranging from the shootings of individuals to massive air strikes, some resulting in hundreds of casualties. Attacks by the Afghan resistance have soared, with 16,000 incidents of homemade explosive devices in the logs, rising from 308 in 2004 to 7,155 in 2009. A secret black ops Special Forces unit named Task Force 373 hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial. The so-called “kill or capture” list of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda figures includes more than 2,000 names and is known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List.
These files also reveal that the Taliban itself is increasing in power and number. They have, according to these files, acquired surface-to-air missiles and have increased their use of road side bombing and a general intensification of their low-intensity warfare strategy. There may even be indication from theses reports that the Taliban may be gearing up for a Tet Offensive-style guerrilla warfare breakout. Again, students of contemporary history will note just how effective the Tet Offensive was at breaking American political will to continue its aggression in Vietnam.Resources Involved
Stephen Grey said in an interview with “Democracy Now” host Amy Goodman:
“But it’s really the extent of it. I mean, you know, I’m sure some of the other people you’ve got on today have also seen firsthand, you know, incidents like death of civilians. But it’s really in the totality of it all that it becomes shocking. It’s the fact that you’ve got absolutely everything here. OK, not the most secret stuff, but it gives an absolutely compelling portrait.”
And a compelling portrait it paints indeed. First, as readers of The Red Phoenix will recall, the oil company Unocal during the Clinton administration was negotiating an oil pipeline from the Caspian oil fields in Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and to the port city of Karachi, Pakistan. These talks broke down early in 2001. Suddenly, the events of September 11th happened and that was used as an excuse to invade Afghanistan. Just recently, the American people were informed that there might be lithium reserves in Afghanistan. Lithium, as some may know, is a key raw material used in batteries for electronics and even hybrid automobiles.
In short, this disastrous war that has cost tens of thousands of lives—most of whom are civilians—is driven by one thing and one thing alone. Profits!
The American Party of Labor once again renews its call:
Today is the 4th of July, a holiday celebrated all over the nation as the date of American Independence from the British crown. I was considering burning an American flag to protest US foreign policy, imperial aggression, indigenous holocaust, sponsorship of terrorism, slavery and discrimination of minorities, etc., and promptly began wondering if flag-burning on public property is considered to be a fire hazard. Today is a holiday that is spent trying to spread patriotic feelings among our people, and thus in effect to try and goad them into flag-waving, chauvinism, jingoism and xenophobia. Patriotism, the way the imperialists see it, means love for their government and love for their class of oppressors. It means love for the police, the prison complex, the courts, the army and the ruling class dictatorship. It means love for the exploitive system of capitalism and the settler-fascists that have run it from the start.
On this celebrated day of the creation of the American state, it is time to take a look back at our long, star-crossed history, and it is time to present a challenge to ourselves—what has American really been about all this time? As Frederick Douglass famously said about this particular holiday in 1852:
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
He continues, “Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.” There are those who might say that Douglass’s words no longer ring true because of the Obama presidency, and then there are those who know that a change in the ruler’s skin color does not abolish racism and oppression overnight. In addition, Major General Smedley Butler from the US Marines speaks about what real role the US military has been playing over the years: “I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect money in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.” These revelations are by no means new, since they have been given by many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialists since the beginning of the domination of American imperialism, which started after World War II and strengthened itself through the selling-out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the collapse of socialist Albania.
To give a more detailed or complete account of American foreign policy, which has always been driven by nothing more and nothing less than the capitalist system’s desire for global hegemony under American leadership, would take many pages and several lifetimes of research into the history of the modern-day Roman Empire. But this 4th of July, and keeping with our challenge to ourselves, a few examples taken from the recent history of the United States alone should serve to give an idea of what this class dictatorship has really been about since the beginnings of its foundation.
A History Lesson In 1945, the US invades the Korean peninsula and declares a “temporary” partition of Korea. America installs an illegitimate American-friendly regime in the South, backed by a force of 50,000 troops. After 2,617 troop incursions in the Northern Pro-Soviet half, sometimes with as many as a few thousand troops, a war ensues when North Korea finally invades South Korea in response. A three-year war takes place and millions are killed. Thousands of American troops remain in South Korea to this day.
In 1966, a US-backed coup ousted President Sukarno of Indonesia and replaced him with the fascist butcher Suharto. Over a million people were hunted down and killed, including thousands of popular leftist leaders, whose names were given to the military by the American Embassy. Suharto would go on to rule Indonesia with an iron fist for two decades. Newly-liberated East Timor was then invaded by Suharto’s Indonesia the day after President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (both butchers of the Vietnam War) gave them permission. By 1989, over one-third of East Timor’s 700,000 people had been killed. Indonesia had US backing, including armaments, throughout its 24-year occupation.
In 1967, a US-backed military coup took place to prevent Greek politician George Papandreou being elected Prime Minister. The colonels declared martial law, implemented torture, beatings, arrests, leaving 8,000 dead in the first month. The coup leaders were fiercely anti-communist and pro-American, working closely with the CIA. The colonels held power until 1974.
In 1970, Marxist reformist Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile. He nationalized the giant US companies. Soon, the right-wing, backed by the CIA and US foreign policy, engineered a 1973 coup lead by the infamous General Augusto Pinochet. Allende was overthrown and replaced by a fascist military dictatorship that used mass executions and torture. Thousands were murdered and disappeared. Chile became an economic experiment that led to economic growth for the richest while leaving many homeless and greatly decreasing economic equality.
In 1978 in Nicaragua, the popular and progressive Sandinista movement overthrows the US-backed dictator Anastasio Samoza. The US then launches a military occupation in order to prevent “another Cuba.” A program of terrorism and economic sabotage is begun, which leads to the US support of the infamous Contra death squads. The Contras prove to be one of the most brutal fighting forces Latin America has ever seen, infamous for burning down schools, churches and hospitals as well as using mass murder, rape and torture. The Contras massacre whole villages though to be sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Over 60,000 die. President Reagan labels them as “freedom fighters.”
Summation From these examples alone—Korea, Indonesia, East Timor, Greece, Chile and Nicaragua, which are merely the most prominent of many dozens more ready-made examples including the Vietnam War—we can see that United States foreign policy has never been driven by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor by any kind of longing for freedom or democracy. From the start, the United States has been driven by the necessity to make the world safe for investment by capitalism, to enrich US armaments who contribute generously to Congress members, to prevent the development of any society which becomes an example of an independent alternative to the capitalist model and to extend its political and economic control over as much of the globe as possible. Everyone alive today remembers the media immediately after the events of 9/11. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” the newspapers asked. Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps dropping bombs really pisses some “less civilized” people off. This is a simple list of the nations bombed since World War II:
China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1965-73, Vietnam 1961-73. Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-2002, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003 (1).
It is worth noting that violence and exploitation are also not limited to outside the US borders, either. Of all western nations, the US has the greatest income inequality. 40% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. The US has the greatest discrepancy in the world between the wealthy and the poor when it comes to health care, and also when it comes to life expectancy.
Finally, the Land of the Free has the highest number of its population in prison than any other state in the world (2). And all this is without mentioning the minute details of the oppressive structure of the class society as it exists for us every day. These sorts of atrocities will continue until this capitalist system is done away with through struggle and revolution in the US.
On the day of American Independence, among all other days, this is a fact for all of us to remember. (1) Taken from Australian Options Quarterly No. 31, Summer 2002. (2) From Scientific American, Dec. 2005
Ongoing Discussion