In terms of articulating
what's going on, who runs things for whose benefit in the country,
hell, the world, we are gifted with two stand-out analysts; Noam
Chomsky and Michael Parenti. I've been reading Chomsky's first book
on the subject, American Power and the New Mandarins and an
early book of Parenti's, The Sword and the Dollar, 1989.
American Power
engages the Vietnam War, which was raging at the time of publication,
1967. This “new release” has a foreword by the late great Howard
Zinn, a treat in itself. Chomsky approaches the subject by examining
the rationalizations on the liberal end of the spectrum, to
devastating effect, for those authors. The conclusion is inescapable
- these folks are in service to power, by a pragmatic recognition of
the path to privilege and/or self delusion. I can relate. At the
time I was a recent Vietnam vet and hawkish on the subject, until my
professors and fellow students got to me with those questions no one
else had thought to raise. That along with Senator Fulbright's
enlightening hearings which I read transcripts of in book form. I
marveled at how administration officials offered justifications for
the war and when the good senator shot them full of holes, instead of
admitting they were wrong and changing course they came up with a
series of equally flimsy new ones.
It strikes me how this
pattern repeats. I was trying to tell the Georgia Public Service
Commission this same lesson. Opponents of Plant Vogtle argued against
the plant originally, and its latest expansion. In contrast the
supporters painted a rosy picture. Whose arguments eventually turned
out to be spot on? The opponents of course. So when it comes to
future projects does the PSC listen to those who've lost all
credibiity or to the opponents who were proven right? You know the
answer and it is the same with the Vietnam War, Iraq and many other
issues. Perhaps there is a hidden money component? Ya think? There's
certainly an ideological one.
Chomsky also looks at
World War II. in the Pacific, from the provocative, economically
stifling policies of the Imperial powers, the U.S., Britain etc;
which served to strengthen the hardline fascists in the Japanese
power structure, to the decisions made to obliterate Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The revelation that a frivolous 1,000 plane bombing mission
was cynically sent against Japan between the agreement to surrender
and the actual, technical signing, blemishes the benevolent
propaganda image the machine likes to spit out. Truman's claim that
the atomic bombs were dropped on military targets was also
disingenuous and suggests that the real reasons for the barbaric
decision were, ah... classified, as usual.
Parenti joins in “U.S.
Bashing” by sampling an assortment of facts. Like, the U.S. Gave
more money to the infamous Contras, terrorists by any sober
definition, to undermine the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, than aid to
the forty poorest nations on the planet. Most such aid, Parenti
points out, is military, aimed at securing local elite rule against
their own people, whom they, in service to U.S. corporate interests
and anti-socialist hysteria, use to suppress any questioning of this
arrangement. Our leaders ever seek stability and what they
mean by that is maintaining current class relations, both abroad and
at home.
The World Bank and
International Monetary Fund are intricate aspects of this effort.
Loans are typically contingent on the dismantling of social programs
and/or to be used for the purchase of failing U.S. Enterprises at
above market rates. It is largely U.S. taxpayers who fund these
institutions who, on the whole, have no idea of their actual purpose.
The closest many might get to insight is the propaganda line from the
right that the U.S. indulges in way too much foreign aid. This does
not include the information that 2/3 of aid stays in the U.S. due to
requirements that shipping, materials etc; be U.S. Third world
nations, like U.S. farmers, become indebted beyond their ability to
pay, enriching elites but leaving the onerous debt to be paid by
citizens who had no say in the borrowing. So the lower classes are
saddled with the debt on both ends. In 1973 third world debt was
about $73 billion. By 1988 it had grown to a trillion dollars. A
large portion of the debtor nation's earnings go to service the debt.
Loaning in this manner is more profitable than direct investment in
the countries. Another requirement in the usurious terms is that in
addition to slashing social programs the recipients must adopt an
export-oriented economy. Thus an agriculturally rich area can have
high rates of malnutrition, more collateral damage.
This explains part of the
U.S. hostility toward Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya and other nations who
attempt to escape this kind of entrapment - always justified by the
bugaboo of the Soviet Union, a handy “enemy”, the dissolution of
which in the 90s created a scrambling for new “threats” much like
the Johnson Administration minions with their justifications for
Vietnam. This same boogie man was earlier used to justify Reagan's
two trillion dollar military extravaganza. Parenti likes to point out
that a billion dollars is a thousand million and a trillion is a
thousand billion. Getting into some real money. And it's the same
people paying for it... and the same people profiting from it. They
do have themselves a nice little game going. Another way ordinary
people pay is in the fact that as military spending increases, social
spending is cut. This is not merely collateral damage, this is part
of the intent. Just as social spending abroad is discouraged,
social spending at home is under continuous attack for such spending
empowers the wrong people. Our current administration has removed all
subtlety, approaching these values in caricature, spiced by a
jingoist, racist, near-fascist rhetoric.
What is the alternative?
It's my mantra - instead of chasing money our energy could be
directed into answering this question: how can we provide food,
clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for the world's
population without despoiling the life system and creating widespread
extinction of other species?
