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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:28 AM
Original message
The Mission (help?)
Edited on Thu Oct-09-03 09:09 AM by WilliamPitt
I am writing this in a cafe in Berlin. I am out of pocket here, and need help to make sure this essay makes sense. Can y'all take a pass through and help me out? Many thanks.

======

The Mission
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 10 October 2003

"The right-wing politics that had forced the scandal were alien and unknown to much of the White House senior staff. To them, what the right was doing seemed so far-fetched, so impossibly convoluted, that they couldn't quite credit it. The self-enclosed hothouse nature of the right-wing world made it difficult to explain what was going on to those who lacked contact with it. Many had never even heard of people like Scaife."

- Sidney Blumenthal, 'The Clinton Wars'

I am writing this essay from an internet cafe nestled in a blue-collar neighborhood in Berlin, Germany. I have been, in the last week, to Amsterdam, Antwerp and The Hague. I will go from here to London, Oxford and Paris. I have been giving talks to ex-pat American groups and large crowds of confused Europeans. The Europeans are not confused because they are ill-informed; they are, in fact, far more aware of what is happening in America than most Americans are back home. These Europeans know all about the Project for The New American Century, they know all about the Office of Special Plans, they know all about the lies that have been spoon-fed to America and the world. They know all of this, simply, because the news media in Europe is not owned and operated as an advertising wing for General Electric, AOL/TimeWarner, Viacom, Disney or Ruppert Murdoch.

What these Europeans don't understand, and what they keep asking me, is why. "America had everything going for it," said noted Dutch author Karel von Wolfen to me the other day. "America had the respect of just about the whole world. No one here can possibly fathom why they would so quickly and so brazenly throw that all away."

Explaining this whole phenomenon is a bit like trying to unravel a Robert Ludlum plot. It is part fantasy, part madness, part greed, bound together with the barbed wire of an unyielding ideology. I try, again and again, to make it all clear.

I tell them that all this started in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This election ushered in the phenomenon known as the New Deal - the rise of Social Security, the eventual rise of Medicare, the development of dozens of other social programs, and the enshrinement of the basic idea that the Federal government in America can be a force for good within the populace. Even in 1932, such an idea was anathema to unrestricted free-market profiteers and powerful business interests, for the rise of a powerful Federal government also heralded the rise of regulation.

Within the ebb and drift of American politics, those who stood against the concepts espoused by FDR and his adherents drifted inexorably into what is now the modern Republican Party. This drift was aided by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which motivated the last vestiges of the old, racist, Confederate Democratic Party to bolt to the right. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society plan further widened the rift, and the progressive activism in the 1960's and 1970's solidified the battle lines. Once the shift was completed, the stage was set for the kind of political to-the-knife trench warfare that has been happening to this day.

Many issues were bandied about in the no-man's land between the lines, but at the end of the day, the issue to be tested was that basic premise brought by FDR: What will the place of the Federal government be in the lives of the American people? Can that government be a help?

Those who argued against this idea had ample rationales for their resistance, some of them uncomfortable to hear in the light of day. The activism of the Federal government brought about racial desegregation and the rise of minority rights, something a segment of the right finds unaceptable to this day. The activism of the federal government made it difficult for unrestricted free-market loyalists to secure the privatization of available mass markets like health care, insurance and Social Security. The activism of the Federal government kept mega-businesses from the ability to grow to whatever size they pleased, even though such growth was death to the basic capitalist concept of competition. The activism of the Federal government forced these businesses to spend a portion of their profits on pollution controls. The list of complaints went on and on. In a corner of their hearts, many who stood against FDR's plans did so because the rise of an activist Federal government smelled a little too much like Soviet-style communism for comfort.

And so the trenches were dug, the bayonettes were fixed, and the war dragged on and on. The right howled that such an activist government would require the American people to be taxed to death. The right howled that public schooling did not work, and they de-funded public education on the state and local levels to prove their point. The right invented bugaboos like the "welfare queen," with her Cadillac and ten children, who avoided working and lived of the sweat from the honest man's brow. Often, the American people listened to their arguments. The rise of Ronald Reagan is evidence that their message had strength, if not merit.

The problem, as ever, became clear before too long. Unrestricted free-marketeering, deficit spending, tax cuts for the richest people in the country which would purportedly cause the trickling down of monies to the rest, unrestricted polluting, unrestricted defense spending, and the deregulation of absolutely everything, is poison to any economy that is subjected to it. George Herbert Walker Bush was left holding this particular bag in 1992, and he was not enough of a salesman to convince the American people that it was still working.

This, I tell my European counterparts, is when all hell really began to break loose.

Many people believe the statement that "Bill Clinton was the best Republican President we've ever had." There are a great many facts to back this assertion, but it begs the question: If Clinton was the best Republican President we've ever had, why did the Republicans work every night and every day for eight years, why do they continue to work to this day, to destroy him and the economic legacy he left behind?

The answer is complex. Clinton is labeled 'Republican' by the Left because of the passage of NAFTA, of GATT, of the Welfare Reform Act, of the Telecommunications Act, and for a variety of other reasons. In many ways, however, this does not tell the entire story. The passage of these rightist packages came, in no small part, because Clinton had no hard-core activated base pushing him in the proper direction. After twelve years of warfare against Reagan and Bush, a massive swath of the progressive community saw Clinton's victory in 1992 and felt like they had at last won the fight. They threw their activism into neutral, leaving Clinton with no army to back him up. One can hardly blame them for doing so after such a protracted struggle.

But this left Clinton exposed. The onslaughts of the right pushed him inexorably in their direction, because there was no powerful progressive network there to push back. Only after the impeachment mayhem broke loose did the tattered threads of progressive activism come back together again, but by then the damage had been done. Certainly, there were many progressives in America who fought the good fight every step of the way, but there were not enough of them. Progressives in 2003 who label Clinton as 'Republican' should take a long look in the mirror, and remember what they were not doing from 1993 to 1998, before casting final judgment. I am, sadly, one who has trouble facing that mirror.

An analysis of the facts, and the record, reveals Clinton to have been one of the most effective progressive Presidents in American history. By 1998 he had managed to create an economic system that filled the Federal treasury with unprecedented amounts of available money, and he had also managed to pass a variety of progressive social programs that benefitted vast numbers of middle-class Americans. When Clinton stood up in 1998, with a massive budget surplus waiting in the wings, and cried, "Save Social Security first!" he was roaring a battle cry across the trenches that had been there since 1932. Such a surplus would fund social programs all across the country. Such a surplus would, at long last, settle the argument: An activist Federal government can be a force for good within the American populace, and once more, can be paid for with extra left over. The New Deal/Great Society wars seemed to be coming to an end.

This was why he had to be destroyed.

The rest is coda. The impeachment, funded by right-wing activists and business interests, stormed along by a mainstream media whose Reagan-era deregulated status led to a complete breakdown in journalistic ethics, and all buttressed by years of unsubstantiated scandals pushed along by congressional zealots with subpoena power, left the American population exhausted enough to vote against their own best interests in 2000. Too many didn't vote at all. The "Clinton! Clinton! Clinton!" drumbeat that lasted over 2,000 days drove the voters into thinking a change was required. Though Gore won the election, the margin of victory was small enough to be exposed to theft by a partisan Supreme Court which, by rights, should not have come within a country mile of touching that case. A corrupted news media, again, pushed the whole farce along.

Now, we have a nation run by profiteers who preach the gospel of privatization in all things. When Bush, on October 4, 2001, argued that more massive tax cuts for rich people were needed to "counteract the shockwave of the evildoer," while a pall of poison smoke still hung over New York City, the truth was there for all to see. Now, pollution controls have ceased to exist, and the private realm of defense contractors are seeing more money than they ever dreamed they could. The simple truth that the Federal government can be a force for good within the American populace, a truth realized in 1998, has been flushed down the toilet by a pack of right-wing activists who are links in a chain of warfare that stretches back to 1932.

Mission accomplished indeed.

The fallout from this has been extreme. Trickle-down economics have returned to America, with the inevitable economic downturn and unemployment riding sidecar. The Federal Treasury, once full to bursting, has been looted completely. This, in the end, was the mission. That money could not be allowed to stay in the Treasury, because the American people would have exprected it to be used to fund the programs they depend on. The Bush administration moved every penny of that money into the wealthiest portions of the private sector, using September 11 and terrorism and fear and war as an excuse to storm the trenches their forefathers had been shooting into for over 70 years. It was a smash-and-grab robbery writ large.

When I explain all this to these Europeans, they want to know if the war is over. Not hardly, I tell them. The hubris of these zealots has led to economic problems in America that are quickly moving beyond the reach of spin. The hubris of these zealots has caused the Central Intelligence Agency to act in their own defense, a deadly turn of events for the Bush administration. The last two Presidents who found themselves on the bad side of the CIA, Kennedy and Johnson, did not end their terms comfortably. The war in Iraq, begun in no small part to further loot the Treasury, has loosed a tiger with very sharp claws. Internationally, the realization that the Atlantic Alliance is gone has begun to take root, and forces beyond the control of the Bush administration are coming together globally to act as a counterweight to all that is happening in America.

The laughable irony of it all, also, may come to aid their undoing. Consider the fact that the Bush administration worked hammer and tong to discredit the work of the weapons inspectors in Iraq in the run-up to the war. Fast-forward to today, and the administration is telling everyone to be patient, be trusting, be faithful in the weapons inspection work being done by Dr. David Kay in Iraq on behalf of the administration. The massive stockpiles of weapons we heard about ad nauseam are still missing, with the sole exception of a vial of botulinum toxin that was found, sitting spoiled in the refrigerator of an Iraqi scientist for ten long years. The essential contradiction is so blatant that the evening comedy programs in America are making hay out of it. When this kind of silliness makes prime-time, the writing is on the wall.

The corrupted media is still there, of course. The zealots hold all the high ground for the moment. Ending this masive catastrophe will cost oceans of blood and sweat and tears. But it can and will be ended. You can bank, I tell these Europeans, on that.
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Q Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:39 AM
Response to Original message
1. Your intended audience is....?
- First...allow me to say that this is an excellent article...but the stronger points are buried among the sometimes meandering historical notes. Give people something they can fight with...tools that can be used against those who oppress them.

- I've always felt that the Left gets in trouble when they try to intellectualize in a world too busy to get past the headlines. Make it easier for them to absorb the main points and use them in real world politics.

- But...good stuff...as always.

- er friend, Q
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:41 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. I'm stuck in the old Chomsky trap
Edited on Thu Oct-09-03 08:42 AM by WilliamPitt
Chomsky said that progressives lose arguments on television because they can't explain their positions in 10 seconds. If you can figure out a way to encapsulate FDR, the New Deal, the Great Society, all detractors of same, their motivations for same, Clinton, his term, his impeachment, the election, and the subsequent mayhem in a sound-bite sized argument, I am all ears. :)
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Q Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:03 AM
Response to Reply #2
9. Keep in mind...
...that you're addressing a 'dumbed-down' America. You have absolutely no problem communicating with your peers here at DU...and many on the 'intellectual left'. But in the end result it's kind of like have a discussion with yourself.

- Reagan and Bush* and their Rovian advisors appear like simpletons to the left...but then again their message is not meant for us. Their 'us vs. them' rhetoric is designed to appeal to those who want someone else to think for them...to be told that their way is right and the other side is wrong. They approach politics like a team sport...and everyone wants to be on the 'winning team'. This has great appeal in a world where winning is more important than truth.

- I certainly can't presume to advise you on how or what to write. But it's clear that the left needs to condense their message into 'sound bites' and 'slogans' that provoke further discussion after the fact. YOU don't need to convince DUers or the intellecual left...we're already on board. It's the voter who has long ago given up that you need to bring back into the fold.

- Take care and be safe. Q
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:10 AM
Response to Reply #9
13. truthout isn't really a sound-bite sloganeering kind of place
We're allowed to be smart there. :) Seriously, I see myself making these dense arguments so other people can take the data and condense it in conversation. That's my role.

Thanks, Q. Much appreciated.
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bobbieinok Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:02 AM
Response to Reply #1
8. Bur the history IS important
to explain to Europeans WHY this has happened.

AND to explain to American liberals and progressives who have forgotten the history since 1932

...because they never learned this in school

...and/or because they are too young to have lived through the period or through the 40s and 50s strong anti-FDR and New Deal propaganda that was constantly being pushed in local newspapers (eg, the Tulsa Tribune and the Tulsa World) and radio newsbroadcasters like Fulton Lewis Jr.

Maybe Will needs to write a separate article with sound-bite talking points for action.

One of the real problems we as Democrats seem to always have is that we are constantly surprised by the opposition: 'Where in the world did that attack come from? Why in the world would they say that?'

....See, for example, the Bush adm's contempt for the UN. Getting the US out of the UN has been a goal of part of the Republican party since the founding of the UN.
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Punkingal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:48 AM
Response to Original message
3. Excellent.....
Edited on Thu Oct-09-03 08:49 AM by Punkingal
just superb. I am so glad you put this in perspective, because even though you are talking to the Europeans, I think it is great that you posted it here. Americans to be reminded when this battle we are fighting started.

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Speed8098 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:50 AM
Response to Original message
4. Excellent Will
Even though you and I have disagreed on some issues in the past, I am happy that you are out there getting our message across.

If you get a spare moment,(is that possible?) can you look at my post
"Calling Will Pitt"?

Thanks
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:51 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. Where is it?
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Speed8098 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:51 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. Page 2
Sorry
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 08:57 AM
Response to Original message
7. I have to leave in a minute
Any last thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
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JHB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:12 AM
Response to Reply #7
15. Welfare queens live off the sweat...
not of the sweat.

Only up to that point, but you're in a rush, so I hope this is on time.

Great so far.

JHB
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KittyWampus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:06 AM
Response to Original message
10. FDR- Medicare, Social Security
IMO, it's important to point out that these are provided for in the Constitution with the phrase and concept "THE COMMON GOOD".

it's not as if FDR started something that was AGAINST the principles guiding our Nation.

GOP/Neo-Cons try to frame it as "Communism"
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cmd Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:09 AM
Response to Original message
11. KISS - Keep It Short, Stupid
You may want to consider serializing the essay. Use some sound bites and links to tie each part together.
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Zuni Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:10 AM
Response to Original message
12. This is fantastic---pat yourself on the back, Will
this is the best essay on Bushco's irreponsibility and ideological nonsense I have read in a long time.

I never thought of the Clinton impeachment like that, but I think that may partly be right.
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:11 AM
Response to Reply #12
14. It was about power
The power to make, or break, 1932.
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AP Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:12 AM
Response to Original message
16. What these Europeans don't understand,
and what they keep asking me, is 'why?'
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Girlfriday Donating Member (570 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:13 AM
Response to Original message
17. Excellent summary!
What a Great essay, I wouldn't change a thing. Excellent incite into the Clinton administration, I never thought of it in those terms.

One typo in paragraph 8 - And so the trenches....lived OFF the sweat
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:17 AM
Response to Reply #17
20. Got it, thanks
:)
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AP Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:13 AM
Response to Original message
18. noted Dutch author Karel von Wolfen
C'mon, Wil, give the guy's book a plug...what's the title of his last book?
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:17 AM
Response to Reply #18
19. Dunno
Something in Dutch. :(
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:18 AM
Response to Original message
21. OK; GOTTA RUN
Thanks, everyone! This essay cost me 5.50 euros to write. :) Goddam German wacky keyboard.
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VelmaD Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:42 AM
Response to Reply #21
24. And well worth it...
as far as I'm concerned. :-)

As always, nice work honey.

Quick comment, you might wanta get someone to give it a cold read for grammar. There were some spots where the noun and verb tenses seemed a little weird. Otherwise, wowee.

DV
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AP Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:23 AM
Response to Original message
22.  ...
"Once the shift was completed, the stage was set for the kind of political to-the-knife trench warfare that has been happening to this day."

The way I see it as that the Republicans are confronted with demographic shifts, and an increasingly intelligent electorate (what's the stat? 15 years ago 20% of HS graduates got college degrees, and now it's up to just under 50%?).

Without the dirty pool, they'd have to adjust their politics so that they appealed to 50%+1 of the voters, which means they'd have to change a lot of their wealth-shifting, power-consolidating politics. They don't want to do that, for obvious reasons.

The stolen election, destroying the economy, the recall, Texas redistricting, an agressively deceptive media (at some point, you really should cite that report on how Fox viewers don't know the facts, and point out that this isn't a happy accdent...this is the strategy), it's all part of holding back the demographic tide, and the more society moves, glacially, to the left, the crazier the shit the Republicans have to do to stop it.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt if a million kids have to drop out of college and then learn about how the world works not from a PhD, but from Rush Limbaugh and Fox, which is how dismantling the new deal actually helps turn the demographic tide as well...two birds with one stone, there...you ensure that you have your wage slaves who'll increase profits for the big businesses you serve, and you build your Republican-voting demographic of undereducated 18-30 year olds (who are NEVER going to get back these years Bush is stealing from them, incidentally).
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AP Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:33 AM
Response to Reply #22
23. And one more thing about Clinton...
I just posted this somewhere else, but I guess it's appropriate for this thread as well...


Clinton was a liberal, and this is why.

I think Clinton had to compromise, which you always have to do. That's how the system is intentionally designed. It's very easy to be a liberal in opposition to government. But once you're governing, you have a responsibility to your constiutents to deliver policy, and to deliver policy you have to compromise. So you can't characterize your president by his compromises.

But this is how Clinton is a liberal: when he became governor of Ark, Ark was allowing Stephens, Inc a monopoly on issuing bonds for government projects. This was just plain cronyism. Stephens, Inc was making millions and millions of dollars, and taxpayer money that Ark COULD have been spending on projects making more Ark'ans lives happier and wealthier was going into the bank accounts of Stephens, Inc shareholders.

Clinton established a state bond-issuing company which reversed that shift of government wealth from the poor to the rich to a shift in wealth from the taxpayers of Ark to the taxpayers of Ark, with value added (which is the entire purpose of gov't).

To me, you can talk all day about social liberalism, but what Clinton did is the CORE of liberalism -- spreading and growing wealth among the (black and white , gay and straight, male and female) middle and working class. That's how you build democracy -- it's ALL about political and economic power to the middle and working class.

And you know what, the Republicans knew what was happening, even if most Democrats didn't get it. Because Clinton did this, the Republican party put him in its cross-hairs. Republicans like Democratic politicians who think liberalism is all about the social issues, and they let them do their shit because they know they can use those issues as wedge issuses (eg, Dean). But they hate a Democrat who cuts through all the crap, and gets down to the core liberal principle: economic, and therefore, political power to the people. (This is also why the wingers have it out for Blair, by the way).

And Clinton (and Blair) are actually very courageous, because they are addressing issues that most people don't perceive. If you're only $100 richer because your governor made sure Stephens, Inc didn't rip you off, you, as a voter, might not feel that wealthy. However, Clinton didn't do that so just one person could be $100 richer. He did it to save 4 million people $100 each, and so that $400 million that didn't go to making Stephens, Inc. more politically power did go to making the entire middle and working class $400 mill stronger.

So, when you fight these battles, your voters don't really get what you're doing (which is why Clinton lost an election, and had to get even smarter about politics to get reelected to get back to helping the middle and working class).

And, my friends, that's what liberalism is all about. And Clinton was a liberal.

 
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Media_Lies_Daily Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 09:45 AM
Response to Original message
25. Even as early as 1933, the rightwing has been actively involved...
...in trying to control the levers of the US government. Here's an example:

THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT
<http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Coup.htm>

One could argue that Big Business has either been in direct control of the White House, or trying to gain control, since the earliest days of "Manifest Destiny". Fabricating the need to go to war has been a tactic of the rightwing for quite some time. Here is an excerpt from an article entitled "Another Pearl Harbor - In What Sense?" that I wrote under a pseudonym for another website. I don't know if the links included in the text still work, but here goes:

"1. The Mexican War, 1846-1848 <http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/> was in my opinion the culmination of the unofficial policy of "Manifest Destiny", and the official 1822 Monroe Doctrine that loudly proclaimed that European interference in the Western Hemisphere would not be tolerated. Major business interests in the U. S. wanted control of all of the land from "sea to shining sea" to include all of the natural resources, and were willing to do whatever was necessary to get it. The Texas War for Independence from Mexico, 1835-1836, along with the annexation of Texas in March of 1845, was one of the two major provocations leading to the Mexican War because we knew that Mexico would never recognize the independence of Texas nor its annexation. The second major provocation took place in January of 1846 when Polk sent Gen. Zachery Taylor's newly raised military force at Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande. In April of 1846, Mexican cavalry crossed the Rio Grande and killed some members of an American scouting expedition, and the U. S. had the major event necessary to create the rationale for going to war with Mexico. With the signing of the July 1848 peace treaty with Mexico, the U. S. had acquired huge tracts of land north of the current border with Mexico. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase acquired some additional territory that is now in Arizona.

2. The Spanish-American War of 1898 took place as a direct result of the sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba's Havana Harbor, and the efforts by the so-called "yellow press" of William Randolph Hearst <http://www.spanamwar.com/Hearst.htm> and Joseph Pulitzer to whip up anti-Spanish sentiment. As originally written by the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers, a mine attached to the hull by Spanish and/or Cuban saboteurs had sunk the USS Maine. Again, U. S. business interests achieved their desired results with the elimination of all Spanish military interests in the Western Hemisphere to include the Philippines. It was only much later that it became known that the hull-plates of the Maine had been blown outward, not inward as would have been expected from the explosive blast of an externally-placed mine. What caused the explosion on the Maine? Or rather, what caused the TWO explosions that were described in detail by the ship's captain in his log? We are now expected to believe the last "official" theory that coal dust in one of the ship's coal bins exploded, causing the Maine to sink <http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/battleships/maine/maine.html>.

3. U. S. military involvement in World War I lasted from 1916 to 1918, and was a direct result of the anti-German feeling that grew out of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915 off the southern coast of Ireland with the loss of 124 American lives. The fact that the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat is incontestable...however, there has been considerable controversy surrounding whether or not the Germans were tipped-off to the route of the Lusitania, and why the captain chose to sail in waters that he supposedly had been warned to avoid <http://www.ku.edu/~kansite/ww_one/naval/lusika00.htm>. Was it a British conspiracy to get the Americans into the war, or was it a joint U. S.-British conspiracy that got the U. S. into the war to achieve certain U. S. business objectives?

4. Much has been written about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that galvanized the previously isolationist American public to enter World War II. WWII Pacific Theater veteran Robert B. Stinnett has recently written "Day of Deceit" <http://www.independent.org/tii/news/001207Stinnett.html>, published by Touchstone Books, 2000, in which he details from previously unreleased military and government documents that we had broken the Japanese codes in early 1940. FDR had tried desperately to get the U. S. into the war in Europe without success...the American people were once again taking an isolationist view, and nothing short of a major event would cause them to consider fighting in another World War. FDR used an eight-point plan developed by Lt. Cdr. Arthur McCollum (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/McCollum/index.html) to provoke the Japanese into attacking our assets in the Pacific, assets that were moved into place from 1940 to just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Using the information supplied from the broken codes, FDR was able to anticipate the Japanese moves in the Pacific, and was fully aware of the plans to attack the U. S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. This fleet had originally been based on the U. S. West Coast and was moved to Pearl Harbor over the objections of Admiral Richardson, the commander of that fleet. Because Japan was allied with Germany and Italy, any attack by Japan on U. S. assets in the Pacific would warrant a declaration of war against Japan, one that would also involve us in the war in Europe, which had been FDR's primary objective all along. It was also well-known among the leaders of major U. S. business interests that getting into another war would be good for those U. S. business interests, during and after the completion of the war...FDR knew that he could count on their support. The Bush, Walker, and Harriman families were among those that profited, along with Ford, General Motors, and IBM to name but a very few major U. S. corporations that did quite well financially.

5. The Korean War, 1950-1953 <http://www.korean-war.com/> was fought primarily to stem the flow of Communism in the Far East, at least that's what we've been told. It was really all about protecting U. S. business interests in the Far East, and creating a permanent base in South Korea that would require constant funding.

6. The events surrounding the creation of what we know to be modern-day Cuba are still shrouded in partial secrecy. From Fidel Castro's seizure of power in 1959, with CIA assistance, until 1963, we have seen the Bay of Pigs fiasco (April 1961), the attempt to activate Operation Northwoods (March 1962), the Cuban Missile Crises (October 1962), and the JFK Assassination (November 1963). What, besides Cuba itself, was the common thread in all of these events? The common thread was the attempt by U. S. business, intelligence, military and criminal interests to regain what they had lost when Castro's men took control of the government of Cuba.

6.A. The Bay of Pigs was meant to be the spark that would cause the anti-Castro Cubans to revolt. Like L. Fletcher Prouty, I find it very interesting that two of the transport ships associated with this operation were named the "Barbara J." and the "Houston" after they were acquired by L. Fletcher Prouty (then military liaison in the Pentagon to the CIA) from the Navy and repainted. Another interesting fact about the Bay of Pigs is that it was code-named "Operation Zapata"...which just happens to be the name of George H. W. Bush's first company...the Zapata Offshore Oil Drilling Company. Is it possible that that George Bush I played some part in the Bay of Pigs operation, or could all of this be chalked up to a mere coincidence? <http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/chp1_p3.html#pgfId=6356>

6.B. I also find it interesting that among the contemporaries of George H. W. Bush during the boom of the Cuban Task Force based in Miami, Florida, were Vice President Richard Nixon, CIA agents E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis (Fiorini), and Bernard Barker, and CIA contract agent George DeMohrenschildt. Richard Nixon was intimately involved in the planning of the covert and overt operations against Cuba, as he was with all active and planned intelligence operations at that time. Hunt was known in Miami as “The Bagman” because he controlled large sums of money used to pay for some of the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban operations, Sturgis is believed to have assisted Castro’s forces during Castro’s rise to power, and Barker was involved in the Bay of Pigs Operation. Hunt, Sturgis and Barker became famous, or infamous, for their work as White House Plumbers during the Watergate Scandal. DeMohrenschildt is an interesting historical figure that I will discuss a greater length below.

6.C. Operation Northwoods <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html> was a plan drafted by the JCS and forwarded for approval to McNamara...a plan that called for the U. S. military to carry out domestic acts of terrorism against U. S. cities to build public opinion for an invasion of Cuba. Does this plan sound similar to anything that has happened recently?

6.D. The Cuban Missile Crisis during the month of October 1962 <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/index.html> was an attempt by U. S. hardliners to up the ante, so to speak...to enable the U. S. military to have the excuse necessary to attack the old Soviet Union and to re-take Cuba.

6.E. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the last attempt to create the "war fever" necessary to support a war against the Soviet Union. As soon as the last gunshot echo died in Dealey Plaza, the media was inundated with information about Lee Harvey Oswald. What better person to blame for the killing of JFK than a "deserter" who had lived in the Soviet Union and had been documented handing out leaflets in New Orleans supportive of Fidel Castro? But how does that square with the fact that while in the Marines he was a radar operator involved with tracking U-2 flights in and out of the Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan? And how exactly did Oswald end up with a 201 personnel file in CIA records? It's interesting to me that the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) documented the fact that George DeMohrenschildt, a Russian who, oil geologist, and the man who had befriended Oswald and Marina in Fort Worth, Texas, had the name of George H. W. Bush listed in his address book. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was a contract agent for the CIA. <http://www.informamerica.com/Articles/Abraham%20Zapruder%20-%20A%20Closer%20Look.htm>. It's also interesting that the HSCA makes note of the fact that "George Bush of the CIA" was briefed by an FBI man in Houston following the JFK assassination. And finally, why did Nixon say to the CIA that they didn't want the subject of the "Bay of Pigs" brought up? Why did he say, in recently revealed audiotapes, that the Warren Commission was the "biggest hoax"? Why was he in Dallas prior to November 22, 1963, and only flew out of Dallas 30 minutes before the assassination took place...and then later denied three different times that he had even been there? <http://dirtypolitics.50megs.com/dirty.htm>

7. The Tonkin Gulf Incident in August 1964 off the coast of Vietnam was used as an excuse by LBJ to escalate the war in Vietnam, a war that was to drag on for ten long years from 1963 to 1973. JFK had signed NSAM (National Security Action Memorandum) 263 on October 11, 1963 that called for the beginning of the removal of U. S. troops from Vietnam <http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsam-jfk/nsam-263.htm>.
Less than a month and a half later, JFK was lying dead in a Dallas hospital. On November 26, 1964, four days after the death of JFK, President Johnson signed NSAM 273 calling for the renewed support of South Vietnam and doing whatever it took to help the South Vietnamese <http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/NSAMs/nsam273.asp>. But, the American public had to be convinced that fighting in Vietnam was "justified", and the Tonkin Gulf Incident supplied that motive. What exactly was the Tonkin Gulf Incident? The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on August 2, 1964 -- and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later. Rather than being on a routine patrol August 2, the U.S. destroyer USS Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. On the night of August 4, 1964, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had taken place earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf -- a report cited by LBJ as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam. Prior to the U.S. air strikes, top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any August 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to "freak weather effects", "almost total darkness", and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat." One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets -- there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power." In 1965, Lyndon Johnson commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there." But Johnson's deceitful speech of August 4, 1964, won accolades from editorial writers. The president, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities." <http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html>

8. The 1991 Desert Storm Campaign raises a number of issues, primarily what were the events leading up to the War with Iraq, and what role did the U. S. play in creating the conditions that allowed the war to take place? Did a U. S. Ambassador tell an Iraqi senior functionary that the U. S. would do nothing if Iraq invaded Kuwait <http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html>? Was the young woman who tearfully testified to a Congressional Committee that Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti babies off respirators in a Kuwaiti hospital really the daughter of a senior Kuwaiti ambassador and not a nurse as she had claimed, and that she had lied about those events to Congress <http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/kelly/what.htm>? The answer to both of those questions is "Yes", and they were used to bolster the case for war against Iraq following their invasion of Kuwait. Iraq was the only country at that time militarily capable of hindering the continued acquisition of Middle Eastern oil, and our country's business interests required that Iraq be dealt with in a way that would convince other countries around the world via the American mainstream media that the U. S. was the only Superpower in the world. Since history has this rather annoying habit of repeating itself, take a guess as to which country is now perceived to be a current hindrance to our acquisition of the vast oil reserves of the Caspian Sea area."

One could also argue that the assassination of Lincoln made sure that the rightwing business interests in the North controlled the so-called "Reconstruction" of the defeated Confederacy. That also included additional retribution in the form of the twenty-year military occupation. Lincoln had wanted to take a moderate approach to allow the devastated South a chance to become fully functioning at all levels as quickly as possible.

So much has been written about the real causes of 911 that I don't feel the need to go into details on that particular subject.

Hope this helps!
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-09-03 10:56 AM
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26. Ambassador Pitt
One of my wife's good friends from her book group, an editor at a major business weekly, is verrrrrrry conservative — these people LIKE Ann Koulter. Anyway, my wife's friend spent a month in Frankfurt for her company and was ASTOUNDED at what she discovered in the European media. Living in America's information environment, she had no idea of Who did What to Whom, nor Why and How or When. So, there may be hope for the vast sea of brainwashed Americans at home. All it takes is the Truth.

Keep up the good work, Will! And keep giving the BFEE the what's for! A kick for improved cultural understanding...

:dem:
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