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Local News & Opinion
01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31 Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
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02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason Letters
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Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block 01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients Media Watching
02.04 Err-America 02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired' Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
01.25 Thinking About Fictions 01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road 01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy 01.22 Security Fools US Politics, Policy & Culture
02.09 Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs 02.09 Growing Hunger in America 02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being 02.08 Thinking About Oracles 02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle 02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union 02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism? 02.04 The New War Against Money 02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers 02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts 02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite 02.01 Thinking About Definitives 02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010) 01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo 01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual 01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship 01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power 01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform 01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding” 01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand 01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid 01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth 01.21 How Obama Lost His Way 01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts 01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements 01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors 01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors High Crimes?
01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power 01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist 02.06 The Free Market Fetish 02.04 The Crisis is Not Over 02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block 02.02 Rule by the Rich 01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs 01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True 01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation 01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It 01.18 Thinking About Accelerants International
02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic 02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes 02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine 02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti 01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry" 01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning 01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered 01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders 01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs 01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover 01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Rewriting History with "Noble Lies"
Looking specifically at the Vietnam War, she notes that although those who designed and implemented that debacle understood the obstacles and dangers, they insisted on "staying the course" due to a combination of overreaction, illusions of omnipotence, and a shortage of reflective thought--the inability to balance the possible gain against the harm being done both in Vietnam and at home. She categorizes these as forms of folly, an explanation more generous than many people currently apply to the Bush administration. Although the ingredients are largely the same — exaggerating the "national security" imperatives at work, assuming that the world’s “only remaining Superpower” can’t possibly lose, and refusing to consider that an invasion could spark global resistance, potentially on a scale that is impossible to contain--describing the Iraq War as pure folly is far too simple. The first alternative explanation, advanced largely by elected accomplices eager to save face, was incompetence. The war began due to a "massive intelligence failure," they have argued, pointing to years of so-called evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a serious, although perhaps not imminent, threat to Iraq's neighbors and the West. But even such semi-critics, both liberal and conservative, endorsed the idea that the United States should pursue "regime change." In other words, they assumed the right and the power to transform a country, to replace its power structure and "democratize" it. Clearly, a delusion of grandeur. At this point, most people in the United States can see the re-writing on the wall and appear to believe their leaders have been deluded, somewhat incompetent, or both. Others claim what could be defined as folly. What remains is a heated debate over whether this completely explains the situation, or if darker forces are at work. In short, was it just a terrible mistake, or did the Bush administration consciously mislead the country? If the latter, the issue becomes whether its actions meet the definition of tyranny. Sensitive to the danger, Pres. George Bush used a Veterans Day speech to respond to his critics, charging that it is "deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." His version is that removing Hussein from power had "strong bipartisan support" and that no one pressured the intelligence community to alter its apparently erroneous judgments. But this is itself an historical rewrite. What Congress authorized was the use of force, if necessary, to ensure that Iraq either gave up its weapons of mass destruction, or proved it didn't have any. Although it is disingenuous for Democrats to claim that they didn't know Bush's true aim, the fact is that their votes voiced a potentially different outcome. It is also clear that the information Congress received was not complete, but rather scrubbed of all doubts, warnings, and qualifications.
So, what is the real history of this war? The story begins long before Congress voted, even before the 9/11 attacks so often used to justify an open-ended "war on terror." In September 2000, prior to Bush's installation in the White House, Dick Cheney commissioned a strategy paper by the Project for a New American Century. This telling document asserted that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." It also pointed out that the public would not agree to a war unless there were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event —like a new Pearl Harbor."* During the campaign, Bush and Cheney presented a very different agenda, criticizing the idea of nation-building and, in Cheney's word, any moves suggesting that "we were an imperialist power." As soon as the new Pearl Harbor presented itself, however, the entire administration united behind a series of arguments favoring war, all of which have been proven false. Bringing democracy to Iraq, transforming the Middle East, and permanently installing U.S. forces in Gulf were not among them. Were lies told? That's the issue on the table, but the Bush administration cares not, since many of the war's architects are admirers of philosopher Leo Strauss, a great believer in the usefulness of lies in politics. Secrecy and deception, a veritable culture of lies, are necessary, he argues, to protect "the wise"--those with a natural right to rule--from the vulgar masses, who would otherwise be ungovernable and rise up against them. He calls such tactics "noble lies," the grease of aggressively nationalistic politics. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," Strauss once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united--and they can only be united against other people." This neatly explains not only why and how the nation was misled into war, but also why Bush is now aggressively attacking his critics. Lying is more than an occasional option with this administration, it is essential, as is an endless supply of enemies, both abroad and at home. *"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor," page 51 of the Sept. 2000 report called "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." View entire report here. Learn more about the Project for the New American Century by clicking here. Greg Guma is the co-founder and an editor of Vermont Guardian, (www.vermontguardian.com), a statewide weekly newspaper. This editorial was first published in the Vermont Guardian, and is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author, who may be reached at gguma@vermontguardian.com. Copyright © 2005 The Baltimore Chronicle.
All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on November 21, 2005. |
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