Although I’ve soured on him in recent years, for the first decade and more of Paul Krugman’s tenure at the New York Times I regarded him as about the only national columnist worth reading. Certainly many others felt the same way, and Krugman regularly ranked among the most influential liberal voices in the country, gaining that position by his uniquely strong stance against the Iraq War plans of President George W. Bush, while his prestige was capped by winning 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics.
But few probably remember that just a couple of years into his column there was a concerted effort to pressure the Times into firing him, a campaign spearheaded by blogger Andrew Sullivan, then an ardent Bush supporter. Given the steady drum-beat of harsh accusations and the climate of that period, I had feared that it would succeed. Now suppose that he had been purged from all media access in 2002, and also that Bush’s Iraq adventure had turned out to be a considerable success, rather than the utter disaster it actually became. A couple of decades hence, would anyone remember Krugman, except in some minor historical footnote recounting the misguided naysayers whom our heroic President “W” had fortunately overcome?
Perhaps by 2040 any mention of Krugman’s name would either draw a blank stare or evoke a vague sense that he had been some sort of disreputable radical activist, perhaps with pro-Islamicist leanings and even suspected by some of having had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. History has traditionally been written by the political winners, and this was especially true in the days before the growth of the Internet weakened the total monopoly of our establishment media.
These were some of the thoughts that gradually crossed my mind during the middle part of the 2000s as I discovered some remarkable anomalies while creating my content-archiving website, a system intended to provide convenient access to millions of articles from America’s most influential publications of the last 150 years. Since I had never really studied American history, my views were generally quite conventional ones, formed from a mixture of the History 101 classes I had taken and what I had casually absorbed over the years from all the newspapers and magazines that I read.
Many of the most frequent names I encountered in America’s prestigious and respectable periodicals of the past were reasonably well known to me, but others were not. It was a strange feeling to see the overwhelming presence of writers who were either completely obscure or else whom I had always regarded as denizens of the disreputable radical fringe, distributing their angry mimeographed tracts on street corners, rather than respected figures regularly gracing the pages of The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation. My comprehension of the past was obviously mistaken.
Take the case of John T. Flynn, probably unknown today to all but one American in a hundred, if even that. Given my much broader ideological explorations, I had sometimes seen him hailed as an important figure in the Old Right, a founder of the America First Committee, and someone friendly to both Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society, though falsely smeared by his opponents as a proto-fascist or Nazi-sympathizer. This sort of description seemed to form a consistent if somewhat disputed picture in my mind.
So imagine my surprise at discovering that throughout the 1930s he had been one of the single most influential liberal voices in American society, a writer on economics and politics whose status may have roughly approximated that of Paul Krugman, though with a strong muck-raking tinge. His weekly column in The New Republic allowed him to serve as a lodestar for America’s progressive elites, while his regular appearances in Colliers, an illustrated mass circulation weekly reaching many millions of Americans, provided him a platform comparable to that of any major television personality in the later heyday of network TV.
To some extent, Flynn’s prominence may be objectively quantified. A few years ago, I happened to mention his name to a well-read and committed liberal born in the 1930s, and she unsurprisingly drew a complete blank, but wondered if he might have been a little like Walter Lippmann, the very famous columnist of that era. When I checked, I saw that across the hundreds of periodicals in my archiving system, there were just 23 articles by Lippmann from the 1930s but fully 489 by Flynn.
Much of Flynn’s early prominence came from his important role in the 1932 Senate Pecora Commission, which had pilloried the grandees of Wall Street for the 1929 stock market collapse, and whose recommendations ultimately led to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other important financial reforms. Following an impressive career in newspaper journalism, he had moved over to The New Republic as a weekly columnist in 1930. Although initially sympathetic to Franklin Roosevelt’s goals, he soon became skeptical about the effectiveness of his methods, noting the sluggish expansion of public works projects and wondering whether the vaunted NRA was actually more beneficial to big business owners than to ordinary workers.
As the years went by, his criticism of the Roosevelt Administration turned harsher on economic and eventually foreign policy grounds, and he incurred its enormous hostility as a consequence. Roosevelt began sending personal letters to leading editors demanding that Flynn be barred from any prominent American print outlet, and perhaps as a consequence he lost his longstanding New Republic column immediately following FDR’s 1940 reelection, and his name disappeared from mainstream periodicals. However, he still authored a number of best-selling books over the years sharply attacking Roosevelt, and after the war his byline occasionally surfaced in much less mainstream and influential publications. A decade ago the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute republished a couple of Flynn’s books, and a lengthy introduction by Prof. Ralph Raico sketched in some of this background.
Supporters of my local Palo Alto library hold a monthly book sale at which donated items are sold for a pittance, and I usually drop by to browse the shelves out of curiosity for what I might find. A few years ago, I happened to notice one of Flynn’s FDR books, published in 1948, and bought it for a quarter. The material presented on the yellowing pages of The Roosevelt Myth were eye-opening to me.
Anyone can write a book saying anything, and if some obscure right-winger leveled astonishing charges against a liberal president, I might not pay much attention. But if Paul Krugman had spent years expressing growing doubts about Barack Obama’s policies and effectiveness, then finally turned against him and published a national best-seller denouncing his administration, surely those opinions would carry much more weight. And so it was with Flynn’s accusations against Roosevelt.
I am no expert on the New Deal Era, but Flynn’s work seemed soberly and persuasively written, although in a journalistic muck-raking style, and he makes all sorts of claims I had never previously encountered. My software system provides cross-referenced book reviews and I read a dozen of these. A few from around the time of the book’s publication were extremely critical, denouncing the contents as total nonsense written by a notoriously crazed “Roosevelt-hater.” But no specific rebuttals were provided and the general tone was much like that of the numerous Wall Street Journal op-eds from the mid-2000s which issued blanket denunciations of books written by “crazed Bush-haters.” Indeed, the sum-total of the one 1949 review consisted of the single sentence “Unadulterated venom from a professional F.D.R.-hater.” However, other, more recent reviews, admittedly drawn from the libertarian camp, were overwhelmingly favorable. Having no great expertise, I cannot effectively judge.
But Flynn’s claims were extremely precise, detailed, and specific, including numerous names, dates, and references. Most surprisingly, he accused the Roosevelts of exhibiting an extraordinarily degree of familial financial corruption, which he claimed may have been unprecedented in American history. Apparently, despite his wealthy and elite background FDR’s eldest son Elliott never attended college and had essentially no professional qualifications in anything. But soon after FDR became president, he began soliciting large personal payments and “investments” from wealthy businessmen who needed favors from the massively growing federal government, and seemingly did so with FDR’s full knowledge and approval. The situation sounded a little like Billy Carter’s notorious activities during the late 1970s, but the money involved totaled as much as $50 million in present-day dollars relative to the household income of that era. I had never heard a word about this.
Even more shocking was the case of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who also had never attended college and apparently had little formal education of any sort. Soon after FDR was inaugurated, she began a major round of very well-paid personal advertising for corporate consumer products such as soap and took all sorts of other large payments over the next few years from various businesses, especially those crucially dependent upon government regulatory decisions. Imagine if recent First Ladies such as Michelle Obama or Laura Bush were constantly seen in TV ads hawking cars and diapers and fast food. The payments Eleanor personally received over the course of the FDR’s dozen years in office allegedly came to an astonishing $150 million, again relative to current family incomes. This, too, was something that I had never suspected. And all this was occurring during the very depths of the Great Depression, when a huge fraction of the country was desperately poor. Perhaps Juan and Eva Peron just didn’t hire the right PR people or simply aimed too low.
Obviously, the unprecedented growth in the spending and regulatory power of the federal government during the New Deal years increased opportunities for this sort of personal graft by an enormous amount. But Flynn notes how odd the situation seemed since FDR’s inherited fortune meant that he had already come into office as one of the wealthiest presidents of modern times. And as far as I’ve heard, his successor Harry S. Truman left the White House about as poor as he had entered it.
Some of Flynn’s other shocking claims were easier to verify. He argues that the New Deal was largely a failure and in support of that contention notes that when FDR entered office in 1933 there were 11 million unemployed and in 1938 after six years of enormous government spending and deficits and the creation of an alphabet soup of New Deal programs there were…11 million unemployed. That claim appears to be factually correct.
Indeed, Flynn alleges that by late 1937, FDR had turned towards an aggressive foreign policy aimed at involving the country in a major foreign war, primarily because he believed that this was the only route out of his desperate economic and political box, a stratagem not unknown among national leaders throughout history. In his January 5, 1938 New Republic column, he alerted his disbelieving readers to the looming prospect of a large naval military build-up and warfare on the horizon after a top Roosevelt adviser had privately boasted to him that a large bout of “military Keynsianism” and a major war would cure the country’s seemingly insurmountable economic problems. At that time, war with Japan, possibly over Latin American interests, seemed the intended goal, but developing events in Europe soon persuaded FDR that fomenting a general war against Germany was the best course of action. Memoirs and other historical documents obtained by later researchers seem to generally support Flynn’s accusations by indicating that Roosevelt ordered his diplomats to exert enormous pressure upon both the British and Polish governments to avoid any negotiated settlement with Germany, thereby leading to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Such an interventionist foreign policy may have represented a remarkable reversal of Roosevelt’s promises. All my introductory history books had always indicated that an Isolationist-leaning Congress had passed the various Neutrality Acts of the mid-1930s over FDR’s strong opposition and that these were intended to handcuff him. But according to Flynn, FDR had not only initially proposed that very legislation to his close Congressional allies, but actually made his personal advocacy and support for the Neutrality laws ones of the most popular centerpieces of his successful 1936 reelection campaign, thereby helping him carry the Mid West against Kansas Gov. Alf Landon. Once gain, Flynn provides a very specific and detailed description of that history. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia provides the opposite, totally conventional account.
Leaving aside the extraordinary level of family financial corruption alleged by Flynn, his portrayal of FDR reminds me more of “W” than any other recent president. We must remember that “W” had run for office promising a “humble” foreign policy and the removal of various kinds of anti-Muslim government profiling, but quickly reversed himself when the 9/11 attacks gave him the opportunity to enter the history books as a “war president.”
The background of the book’s publication provides an indication of the publication obstacles faced by critics of government policy. Notwithstanding Flynn’s outsize reputation and his previous string of best-sellers, his manuscript was rejected by virtually every major publisher, and in desperation, he finally turned to an obscure Irish-American house. Yet despite such an inauspicious launch and his near-complete exclusion from mainstream media outlets, his book quickly rose to the #2 spot on The New York Times list. Merely a decade earlier, he had been at the pinnacle of American influence, and the ongoing blacklisting by the mainstream media had apparently not yet fully managed to smother his memory.
Although Flynn was perhaps the most prominent public figure to disappear from public visibility around that time, he was hardly alone. As I began to explore the aggregate contents of so many of the publications that had influenced our ideas since the 19th century, I detected a significant discontinuity centered around a particular period. Quite a number of individuals—Left, Right, and Center—who had been so prominently featured until that point suddenly disappeared, in many cases permanently, near the start of the Great American Purge of the 1940s.
I sometimes imagined myself a little like an earnest young Soviet researcher of the 1970s who began digging into the musty files of long-forgotten Kremlin archives and made some stunning discoveries. Trotsky was apparently not the notorious Nazi spy and traitor portrayed in all the textbooks, but instead had been the right-hand man of the sainted Lenin himself during the glorious days of great Bolshevik Revolution, and for some years afterward had remained in the topmost ranks of the Party elite. And who were these other figures—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov—who also spent those early years at the very top of the Communist hierarchy? In history courses, they had barely rated a few mentions, as minor Capitalist agents who were quickly unmasked and paid for their treachery with their lives. How could the great Lenin, father of the Revolution, have been such an idiot to have surrounded himself almost exclusively with traitors and spies?
But unlike their Stalinist analogs from a couple of years earlier, the American victims who disappeared around 1940 were neither shot nor Gulaged, but merely excluded from the mainstream media that defines our reality, thereby being blotted out from our memory so that future generations gradually forgot that they had ever lived.
Sometimes echoes of their former existence remained in the most unlikely contemporary contexts. For example during the early 2000s when I occasionally browsed websites of the ultra-right fringe, I might sometimes see favorable references to some totally unknown individual named “Harry Elmer Barnes,” who apparently seemed to have been some long-forgotten homegrown Fascist ideologue of the 1930s.
Imagine my shock at later discovering that Barnes had actually been one of the most frequent early contributors to Foreign Affairs, serving as a primary book reviewer for that venerable publication from its 1922 founding onward, while his stature as one of America’s premier liberal academics was indicated by his scores of appearances in The Nation and The New Republic throughout that decade. Indeed, he is credited with having played a central role in “revising” the history of the First World War so as to remove the cartoonish picture of unspeakable German wickedness left behind as a legacy of the dishonest wartime propaganda produced by the opposing British and American governments. And his professional stature was demonstrated by his thirty-five or more books, many of them influential academic volumes, along with his numerous articles in The American Historical Review, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading journals.
A few years ago I happened to mention Barnes to an eminent American academic scholar whose general focus in political science and foreign policy was quite similar, and yet the name meant nothing. By the end of the 1930s, Barnes had become a leading critic of America’s proposed involvement in World War II, and was permanently “disappeared” as a consequence, barred from all mainstream media outlets, while a major newspaper chain was heavily pressured into abruptly terminating his long-running syndicated national column in May 1940.
In many respects, Barnes’ situation typified those who fell in the purge. Although many powerful critics of FDR’s presidency seem to have suffered from a considerable amount of government investigation and IRS harassment throughout the 1930s, America’s movement towards involvement in a new world war seems to have been the central factor behind a wider purge of public intellectuals and other political opponents. The combined influence of the pro-British Eastern Establishment together with powerful Jewish groups was deployed to clear the media of opposing figures, and after the Germans broke the Hitler-Stalin Pact by attacking the USSR in June 1941, Communists and other leftists also joined this effort. Polls seem to have shown that as much as 80% of the American public was opposed to such military involvement, so any prominent political or media figure giving voice to that popular super-majority needed to be silenced.
Over a dozen years after his disappearance from our national media, Barnes managed to publish Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, a lengthy collection of essays by scholars and other experts discussing the circumstances surrounding America’s entrance into World War II, and have it produced and distributed by a small printer in Idaho. His own contribution was a 30,000 word essay entitled “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” and discussed the tremendous obstacles faced by the dissident thinkers of that period.
The book itself was dedicated to the memory of his friend, historian Charles A. Beard. Since the early years of the 20th century, Beard had ranked as an intellectual figure of the greatest stature and influence, co-founder of The New School in New York and serving terms as president of both The American Historical Association and The American Political Science Association. As a leading supporter of the New Deal economic policies, he was overwhelmingly lauded for his views.
Yet once he turned against Roosevelt’s bellicose foreign policy, publishers shut their doors to him, and only his personal friendship with the head of the Yale University Press allowed his critical 1948 volume President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 to even appear in print. Beard’s stellar reputation seems to have begun a rapid decline from that point onward, so that by 1968 historian Richard Hofstadter could write: “Today Beard’s reputation stands like an imposing ruin in the landscape of American historiography. What was once the grandest house in the province is now a ravaged survival”. Indeed, Beard’s once-dominant “economic interpretation of history” might these days almost be dismissed as promoting “dangerous conspiracy theories,” and I suspect few non-historians have even heard of him.
Another major contributor to the Barnes volume was William Henry Chamberlin, who for decades had been ranked among America’s leading foreign policy journalists, with more than 15 books to his credit, most of them widely and favorably reviewed. Yet America’s Second Crusade, his critical 1950 analysis of America’s entry into World War II, failed to find a mainstream publisher, and when it did appear was widely ignored by reviewers. Prior to its publication, his byline had regularly run in our most influential national magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. But afterward, his writing was almost entirely confined to small circulation newsletters and periodicals, appealing to narrow conservative or libertarian audiences.
In these days of the Internet, anyone can easily establish a website to publish his views, thus making them immediately available to everyone in the world. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter can bring interesting or controversial material to the attention of millions with just a couple of mouse-clicks, completely bypassing the need for the support of establishmentarian intermediaries. It is easy for us to forget just how extremely challenging the dissemination of dissenting ideas remained back in the days of print, paper, and ink, and recognize that an individual purged from his regular outlet might require many years to regain any significant foothold for the distribution of his work.
And this situation actually understates the tremendous obstacles faced by Flynn, Barnes, and similar writers, which they themselves probably did not fully recognize at the time. We must remember that by the early 1950s, television and films had only just begun to displace all other forms of media in their reach and influence, but soon the three networks and the handful of Hollywood studios began to enjoy an overwhelming stranglehold on the popular interpretation of historical events and all other types of information. So although many of the once-prominent individuals we have discussed sometimes retained a foothold in books, small-circulation magazines, and even some radio broadcasts, their total exclusion from TV and movies effectively transformed them into un-persons.
Given the remarkable prosperity and domestic tranquility of the 1950s, most ordinary Americans were reasonably content, and saw no great need to question the veracity of what they heard and saw on their magical screens, whether small or large. If once-prominent but now half-forgotten intellectuals sought to rehash the past political decisions of 15 or 20 years earlier, they inevitably attracted small audiences.
The year 1940 seemed to mark the point at which some of the most significant dissenting voices in the national media were either removed or intimidated into silence. Once that had been accomplished, the strategic landscape obviously shifted, facilitating political maneuvers that might have been far more difficult under a climate of robust press scrutiny.
Given the overwhelming popular opposition to war intervention, Roosevelt’s prospects for an unprecedented third term might have seemed difficult, since he would either be forced to strongly commit himself to that position or else risk defeat against his Republican opponent, drawn from a party that was overwhelmingly anti-interventionist. But in one of the most unlikely twists in all of American political history, the June 1940 Republican convention held in Chicago selected as its nominee the obscure Wendell Willkie, a strongly pro-interventionist individual who had never previously held any public office and until just a few months earlier had been a committed lifelong Democrat. Two decades ago, historian Thomas E. Mahl thoroughly documented that British intelligence agents played a crucial role in that extremely unexpected turn of events, quite possibly even employing lethal means. The resulting Roosevelt-Willkie race thus provided voters virtually no choice on foreign policy matters, and FDR was reelected in a huge landslide, thereby largely freeing his hands to pursue a much more aggressive foreign policy.
Alarmed by their growing fear that America might be drawn into another world war without voters having had any say in the matter, a group of Yale Law students launched an anti-interventionist political organization that they named “The America First Committee,” and it quickly grew to 800,000 members, becoming the largest grass-roots political organization in our national history. Numerous prominent public figures joined or supported it, with the chairman of Sears, Roebuck serving as its head, and its youthful members included future presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford as well as other notables such as Gore Vidal, Potter Stewart, and Sargent Schriver. Flynn served as chairman of the New York City chapter, and the organization’s leading public spokesman was famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, who for decades had probably ranked as America’s greatest national hero.
Throughout 1941, enormous crowds across the country attended anti-war rallies addressed by Lindbergh and the other leaders, with many millions more listening to the radio broadcasts of the events. Mahl shows that British agents and their American supporters meanwhile continued their covert operations to counter this effort by organizing various political front-groups advocating American military involvement, and employing fair means or foul to neutralize their political opponents. Jewish individuals and organizations seem to have played an enormously disproportionate role in that effort.
At the same time, the Roosevelt Administration escalated its undeclared war against German submarines and other naval forces in the Atlantic, unsuccessfully seeking to provoke an incident that might stampede the country into war. FDR also promoted the most bizarre and ridiculous propaganda inventions aimed at terrifying naive Americans, such as claiming to have proof that the Germans—who possessed no large surface navy and were completely stymied by the English Channel—had formulated concrete plans to leap across two thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean and seize control of Latin America. British agents supplied some of the crude forgeries he cited as evidence.
These facts, now firmly established by decades of scholarship, provide some necessary context to Lindbergh’s famously controversial speech at an America First rally in September 1941. At that event, he charged that three groups in particular were “pressing this country toward war[:] the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration,” and thereby unleashed an enormous firestorm of media attacks and denunciations, including widespread accusations of anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies. Given the realities of the political situation, Lindbergh’s statement constituted a perfect illustration of Michael Kinsley’s famous quip that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” But as a consequence, Lindbergh’s once-heroic reputation suffered enormous and permanent damage, with the campaign of vilification echoing for the remaining three decades of his life, and even well beyond. Although he was not entirely purged from public life, his standing was certainly never even remotely the same.
Meanwhile, FDR’s drive to have America enter the war continued on various parallel tracks. Over the years, diplomatic historians have demonstrated that faced with such stubborn domestic opposition to direct military intervention in Europe, the Roosevelt Administration undertook a wide range of steps directly intended to provoke a Japanese attack and thereby achieve a “back door to war” as Prof. Charles C. Tansill later entitled his important 1952 book on that history. These measures include a complete freeze on Japanese assets, an embargo on the oil absolutely vital to the Japanese military, and the summary rejection of the Japanese Prime Minister’s personal plea to hold top-level governmental negotiations aimed at maintaining peace. As early as May 1940, FDR had ordered the Pacific Fleet relocated from its San Diego home port to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, a decision strongly opposed as unnecessarily provocative and dangerous by James Richardson, its commanding admiral, who was fired as a result.
Thus, the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941 actually marked the success of Roosevelt’s strategy by putting America into the war. Indeed, some scholars have even pointed to considerable evidence that the highest levels of the U.S. government were fully aware of the impending attack and allowed it to proceed in order to ensure that a sufficiently large number of American casualties would sweep away all popular obstacles to full-scale involvement in the world war.
There was also a very strange domestic incident that immediately followed the Pearl Harbor attack, one which seems to have attracted far too little interest. In that era, films were the most powerful popular media, and although Gentiles constituted 97% of the population, they controlled only one of the major studios; perhaps coincidentally, Walt Disney was also the only high-ranking Hollywood figure perched squarely within the anti-war camp. And the day after the surprise Japanese attack, hundreds of U.S. troops seized control of Disney Studios, allegedly in order to help defend California from Japanese forces located thousands of miles away, with the military occupation continuing for the next eight months. Consider what suspicious minds might have thought if on September 12, 2001, President Bush had immediately ordered his military to seize the CBS network offices, claiming that such a step was necessary to help protect New York City against further Islamicist attacks.
Most of us live within a comfortable framework of what we have been taught and therefore believe to be true, and breaking out of that sheltering cocoon often entails considerable mental adjustments. This was certainly the case for me a dozen years ago as I increasingly noticed the sharp divergence between the claims and implications of my history books and the actual facts contained within the scanned pages of old publications.
The notion of a sweeping purge of media dissidents in the past seemed far easier for me to accept when I myself had witnessed something rather similar only a couple of years earlier, once again aimed at clearing away the obstacles to an American foreign war.
In the patriotic fervor following the 9/11 attacks, few national media figures dared challenge the plans and proposals of the Bush Administration, with Paul Krugman’s column at the Times being a very rare exception; expressing “unpatriotic sentiments” as very broadly defined could severely impact a career. This was especially true of the electronic media, with its vastly greater reach and therefore subject to more extreme pressure. During 2002 and 2003, it was very rare to find an Iraq War naysayer anywhere on network television or among the fledgling cable alternatives, and even MSNBC, the least popular and most liberal of the latter soon began a sharp ideological crackdown.
For decades, Phil Donahue had pioneered the daytime television talk show, and in 2002 he revived it to high ratings on MSNBC, but in early 2003 his show was canceled, with a leaked memo indicated that his opposition to the looming war was the cause. Conservative Pat Buchanan and liberal Bill Press, both Iraq War critics, hosted a top-rated debate show on the same network, allowing them to spar with their more pro-Bush opponents, but it too was cancelled for similar reasons. If the cable network’s most famous hosts and highest rated programs were subject to summary termination, lesser ranking personalities surely drew the appropriate conclusions about the risks of crossing particular ideological lines.
My old friend Bill Odom, the three-star general who ran the NSA for Ronald Reagan and possessed among the strongest national security credentials in DC was similarly blacklisted from the media for his opposition to the Iraq War. Numerous other prominent media voices were “disappeared” around the same time, and even after Iraq became universally recognized as an enormous disaster, most of them never regained their perches.
By this time the early Internet had come into existence, so these media disappearances were often noted by angry commentators, and therefore less completely effective. Buchanan might no longer have a show on cable television, but his pungent print commentaries were still available on the web, and the same was true for others. However, the political impact of an audience of thousands of selected website readers was very different than that of a national audience of millions of mainstream viewers.
When we seek to understand the past, we must be careful to avoid drawing from a narrow selection of sources, especially if one side proved politically victorious in the end and completely dominated the later production of books and other commentary. Prior to the existence of the Internet, this was an especially difficult task, often requiring a considerable amount of scholarly effort, even if only to examine the bound volumes of once popular periodicals. Yet without such diligence, we can fall into very serious error.
The Iraq War and its aftermath was certainly one of the central events in American history during the 2000s. Yet suppose some readers in the distant future had only the collected archives of The Weekly Standard, National Review, the WSJ op-ed page, and FoxNews transcripts to furnish their understanding the history of that period, perhaps along with the books written by the contributors to those outlets. I doubt that more than a small fraction of what they would read could be categorized as outright lies. But the massively skewed coverage, the distortions, exaggerations, and especially the breathtaking omissions would surely provide them with an exceptionally unrealistic view of what had actually happened during that important period.
Over the last fifteen-odd years, I’ve gradually come to believe that exactly the same is probably true of much of the American history I had always assumed that I knew.
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August 24, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | MSNBC, UK, United States |
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President Donald Trump faces an exceedingly narrow path to re-election in 2020. In order to beat him, the Democratic nominee only needs to pick up 38 electoral votes. With more than 100 electoral votes in play in states that Trump won narrowly in 2016 — especially Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida — all the Democrats have to do is pick a nominee ever so slightly more popular than Hillary Clinton.
That’s a low bar that the Democratic National Committee seems determined, once again, to not get over. As in 2016, the DNC is putting its finger on the scale in favor of “establishment” candidates, the sentiments of the rank and file be damned.
Last time, the main victim was Bernie Sanders. This time, it’s Tulsi Gabbard.
Michael Tracey delivers the gory details in a column at RealClearPolitics. Here’s the short version:
By selectively disqualifying polls in which Gabbard (a US Representative from Hawaii) performs above the 2% threshold for inclusion in the next round of primary debates, the DNC is trying to exclude her while including candidates with much lower polling and fundraising numbers.
Why doesn’t the DNC want Gabbard in the debates? Two reasons come to mind.
Firstly, her marquee issue is foreign policy. She thinks the US should be less militarily adventurous abroad, and as an army veteran of the post-9/11 round of American military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia, she’s got the credentials to make her points stick.
Foreign policy is a weak spot for the increasingly hawkish Democratic establishment in general and the front-runner and current establishment pick, former vice-president Joe Biden, in particular. As a Senator, Biden voted to approve the ill-fated US invasion of Iraq. As vice-president, he supported President Barack Obama’s extension of the war in Afghanistan and Obama’s ham-handed interventions in Libya, Syria, and other countries where the US had no business meddling. The party’s leaders would rather not talk about foreign policy at all and if they have to talk about it they don’t want candidates coloring outside simplistic “Russia and China bad” lines.
Secondly, Gabbard damaged — probably fatally — the establishment’s pre-Biden pick, US Senator Kamala Harris, by pointing out Harris’s disgusting authoritarian record as California’s attorney general. Gabbard knows how to land a punch, and the DNC doesn’t want any more surprises. They’re looking for a coronation, not a contest.
If the DNC has its way, next year’s primaries will simply ratify the establishment pick, probably a Joe Biden / Elizabeth Warren ticket, without a bunch of fuss and argument.
And if that happens, the Democratic Party will face the same problem it faced in 2016: The rank and file may not be very motivated to turn off their televisions and go vote.
Whatever their failings, rank and file Democrats seem to like … well, democracy. They want to pick their party’s nominees, not have those nominees picked for them in advance. Can’t say I blame them.
Nor will I blame them for not voting — or voting Libertarian — if the DNC ignores them and limits their choices yet again.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).
August 23, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism | United States |
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Russia and China are right to condemn the testing this week of an INF-busting new missile by the US. Washington is brazenly jeopardizing global security under the usual cynical guise of “defense”.
Washington launched a ground-based cruise missile off the coast of California. It was reportedly a Tomahawk-type nuclear-capable warhead, but the Pentagon said it was conventionally armed. The projectile apparently succeeded in hitting its target after more than 500 kilometers of flight. The testing of such a missile would have been banned by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which the US officially withdrew from on August 2.
The INF, first signed in 1987, banned the testing and deployment of missiles within the range of 500-5,500 kms.
It is inconceivable that the latest weapon could not have been in the long-term works for development prior to the three-week period since the INF was abandoned. In others words, the abrogation of the treaty was long-anticipated by Washington, which belies US claims over recent months that it was crashing out of the INF due to alleged Russian violations. The US wanted out of the treaty. Now that it is freed from restriction, the prompt deployment of the cruise weapon off California seems to confirm the ulterior agenda.
Previously, Pentagon chief Mark Esper indirectly admitted this ulterior agenda when he told Senate hearings that the purpose for scrapping the INF was for the US to be able to confront China.
This week Esper said the missile testing was aimed at sending Beijing a message that the “US is capable of deterring China’s bad behavior”.
So, let’s have some honesty here. Washington just ripped up an important arms-control treaty for global security, not because of alleged Russian violations, but rather because the US wants to give itself a free hand to expand its short and medium-range arsenal to challenge China.
Indeed, Esper also remarked during a recent trip to Australia that the US intends to deploy INF-type ground-based missiles in Asia.
Admittedly, China is reckoned to have an arsenal of short and medium-range missiles. Beijing was not a party to the INF, so technically it is not in breach of its restrictions. But a crucial distinction is that such Chinese weapons do not pose a threat to the US mainland. Whereas US intentions of moving similar ballistic warheads to land bases in Asia do pose an imminent threat to China, as well as to Russia.
The US and its NATO allies claim they do not want to start a new global arms race. Washington says it is not planning to deploy INF-type warheads in Europe. However, the type of launcher used this week and which is already deployed in Romania and, it is believed, in Poland as well, could be used sometime in the near future to fire nuclear-capable missiles at Russia.
Washington is thus recklessly shifting the balance of power and undermining the global architecture for security against nuclear war.
Both Russia and China have deplored the risk of a new arms race being incited by the US.
Perhaps this kind of arms race is exactly what Washington is seeking, despite claims to the contrary. The nefarious calculation is that Russia and China will be diverted from economic development by being forced into responding in kind to new threats from the US.
After all, with its presumed license to rack up never-ending national debt, American strategic planners may feel that they can impose crippling economic costs on geopolitical rivals Russia and China.
The Chinese government said it best this week when it commented that the US “must give up its Cold War mentality”.
The endemic premise in Washington is that Russia, China and other states are mortal threats to the US. The official American view of the world is relentlessly paranoid about enemy states, which are allegedly harboring malign designs to the destroy the US.
Of course such cynical, nihilistic thinking is necessitated by the fundamental operating need of US capitalism and its addiction to the military-industrial complex. War is good, peace is bad, so goes the Orwellian American credo, albeit never outrightly stated as such. If the US were to somehow make peace with the world and enter into normal friendly international relations, then its $700-billion-plus annual spending on the military would cease to exist from lack of “justification”, and with that would follow the calamitous implosion of its militarized capitalist economy.
An arms race for the US state planners is like finding a drug-fix for a junkie. It is damnable that Washington is tearing up arms control treaties and jeopardizing global security in order to gratify its dysfunctional systematic dependence on insecurity, tension, conflict and ultimately war.
The undoing of arms controls treaties by the US, first the ABM in 2002, then the INF this year, next perhaps the New Start treaty expiring in 2021, is reprehensible. But what is more reprehensible is the underlying ideology that impels that. American citizens have to address that root ideological disease, otherwise the world will continually be in peril of war.
August 23, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | INF treaty, United States |
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The US ambitions have put the world on the brink of a new arms race that can easily spiral out of control, warned the Russian envoy to the UN. Washington responded by blaming Moscow for the INF treaty’s collapse.
“Are you aware of the fact that all of us have found ourselves just one step away from an uncontrolled arms race, because of the US geopolitical ambitions?” Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, said at the emergency session of the Security Council that Moscow and Beijing convened on Thursday, in the wake of the US missile tests.
This a source of great concern for us, but apparently not for the US.
Washington apparently planned to leave Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty long before announcing its withdrawal from the 1987 agreement back in February, Polyanskiy added, since this is the only way it could have tested a new ground-launched cruise missile that violated the accord mere weeks after it officially expired.
The launcher used in the test was the same one installed in Aegis Ashore missile defense batteries in Romania and Poland. When the first of those systems was placed in 2016, Moscow expressed its concerns over their capability to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles in violation of the INF treaty. The US assured Russia at the time the Aegis systems did not have such features.
“Now these suspicions are confirmed,” Polyanskiy said,
The Russian diplomat also rebuked US allies in Europe for their reluctance to support Moscow’s efforts in strengthening the treaty, back when it could have still been saved. In December 2018, Russia introduced a draft resolution to the UNSC that sought to enhance international support for the treaty, without any no criticism of the US. Yet, the western nations did not back it.
“Are you happy that you pressed the red button at that time?” the Russian diplomat said, addressing the European nations. Their inaction, he argued, has thrown back the security situation in Europe to the times before the INF, when short- and mid-range nuclear missiles were stationed on the continent.
Washington maintained its was Russia that “materially breached” the treaty by developing and allegedly deploying “multiple battalions” of missile systems the US allege are violating the INF. Moscow has repeatedly denied the accusations and even invited international inspections of the system in question – but no one took it up on the offer.
The acting US envoy to the UN, Jonathan Cohen, called the latest missile test a “prudent response” to the “aggressive strategies” pursued by Russia and China, which he blamed for the “deteriorating security environment” in the world.
After withdrawing from the INF treaty, Washington hinted it would like to re-negotiate the deal and include China into it. Beijing’s envoy to UN said it has “no interest in participating in trilateral disarmament talks” right now and insisted that the primary responsibility for the arms control rests with the powers possessing the largest nuclear arsenals.
August 22, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Russia, United States |
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A recent missile test confirmed by the Pentagon is stoking fears of a newly established arms race which would include, among others, Russia and China.
On August 18, North Korea tested a previously banned ground-launch missile with a range of over 500km, sending the entire world into an enormous, frenzied panic. Oh no, it was the United States which in fact tested the missile to the sound of crickets over Western media discourse.
The missile in question was likely a Tomahawk missile (at a cost of at least $1.4 million per missile, but then again you can’t put a price on wanton death and destruction), which is typically launched from ships and submarines – as we saw in Trump’s infamous April 2017 Syria strike.
It sounds like a waste of money (to me, anyway) but there’s a reason why Tomahawks cost a fortune. According to Popular Mechanics, a modern-day Tomahawk is guided by GPS and has the capacity to store coordinates for several targets. If a primary target was destroyed by friendly strikes, it can “take a picture of the damage done and loiter nearby until planners decide to re-attack the target or send the missile to attack an alternate.”
I think this is what some commentators are referring to when they speak of US weapons systems as being more “humanitarian” than its adversarial counterparts. One day it may even wait while you finish your meal before it decides to rain down on you and your family.
Under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, weapons with a range between 500km (310 miles) and 5,500km (3,417 miles) were banned. As we know, the US ripped up the treaty in spectacular fashion and within weeks began escalating tensions right across the geopolitical chessboard. Analysts are right to fear that these events are kick-starting a new cold war and arms race.
Despite nonsensical claims that Donald Trump was elected to represent Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests in the United States, this move is a colossal slap in the face of Russia-US relations. This is in part due to the use of the Mark 41 Vertical Launching System, as these launchers are positioned at US missile defense sites in Poland and Romania.
This positioning was already seen as a violation of the INF Treaty. In 2016, Putin issued a direct warning against the sequence of events which continues to unfold before our eyes, saying at the time:
“They say [the missile systems] are part of their defense capability, and are not offensive, that these systems are aimed at protecting them from aggression. It’s not true… the strategic ballistic missile defense is part of an offensive strategic capability, [and] functions in conjunction with an aggressive missile strike system.”
“How do we know what’s inside those launchers? All one needs to do is reprogram [the system], which is an absolutely inconspicuous task,” Putin added, claiming that essentially, a ‘defensive’ missile system can very quickly become an offensive system.
This is further compounded by the fact that the Pentagon claimed the missile was “conventionally configured” – in other words, not nuclear-equipped. But it wouldn’t take a genius to see how the US military could eventually begin firing nuclear-equipped missiles at similar length.
And don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of Washington’s actions. While repeatedly denouncing North Korea for launching missiles, the US (and it’s media arm) are seemingly quiet about the fact that the US not only is testing missiles that could pulverise North Korea, but that the US is one of the only nations in the world that actively tests missiles and deploys them for practical use in a number of theatres. North Korea – currently bombing no one – is branded as a rogue threat to global security, while the US, which, generally speaking, bombs more countries than can be counted on one hand, is allowed to exit treaties and test intermediate range missiles all with free reign.
Of course, Russia was not naïve enough to think that these events were not going to unfold. Russia had already suspected that the US would quit the INF Treaty, and the speed with which it has begun testing banned missiles seems to give Russian officials the impression that these tests were in the pipeline for some time.
It is difficult to see how all of this fits in with Trump’s view of himself as the world’s best dealmaker, and the extent to which these are all just ploys for him to create new deals. Just as Trump has used maximum pressure on Iran to try to forcibly drag Tehran to the negotiating table (presumably, to establish a new deal which includes, for example, Iran’s missile tests), there are more than enough indications that one of Trump’s aims is to draw up a new treaty which would include Beijing, as well. Beijing, of course, is not having any of this proposal.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the US likely abandoned the INF Treaty because it placed no constraints on China, examining statements such as this one from Defense Secretary Mark Esper, that “80 percent plus of their [Beijing’s] inventory is intermediate range systems, so that shouldn’t surprise them that we would want to have a like capability.”
At the time, a Sydney-based think tank released a pretty damning report concluding that China’s “growing arsenal of accurate long-range missiles poses a major threat to almost all American, allied and partner bases, airstrips, ports and military installations in the Western Pacific.”
As if the US required further support for the idea that it needs to boost its missile capabilities, the report further stated that: “As these facilities could be rendered useless by precision strikes in the opening hours of a conflict, the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] missile threat challenges America’s ability to freely operate its forces from forward locations throughout the region.”
I imagine some of you are by now growing tired of listening to me blaming most geopolitical problems on the United States, but in all honesty, it simply becomes too easy after a while. North Korea is a perfect example. According to Trump himself, Kim Jong-un has said he will stop missile-testing if the US stops its joint military drills with South Korea. This is something many of us have said countless times, but no one will listen.
So, in most cases, you have the US instigating the problem, the US continuing the problem, and most importantly, the US reneging on its word multiple times and exiting agreements left and right, and the rest of the world is left to its own devices to determine how best to move forward.
Recently revealed documents have quite clearly established that the US made multiple promises to the Soviet Union that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.” NATO not only continues to expand, but so too might its intermediate range missile capabilities as happily provided by the US directly on Russia’s border.
Also on rt.com:
‘One possible conclusion’: US banned-missile test apparently in works long before leaving INF
August 21, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | INF treaty, Russia, United States |
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It took the US just 17 days after it was no longer officially bound by the INF Treaty to conduct a missile test that would have breached its rules. And it probably was breaching the treaty, given how long preparation takes.
On Sunday, the Pentagon fired a Tomahawk cruise missile from a truck-mounted Mark 41 Vertical Launching System to a distance of over 500km. The test was hardly unexpected. Both the missile and the launcher are time-tested, and their capabilities are publicly known. The only novelty was that the Mk41 was placed on a ground vehicle as opposed to a warship.
If anything, the test was a demonstration of intent and attitude. It would have been legally impossible just a month ago, when the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty still forbade not only deploying but even developing weapon systems like the ground-based Tomahawk.
The INF kicked the bucket this year after years of bickering between the US and Russia over who was the worst at sticking to the spirit of the deal. Washington said the Russians had secretly developed a missile that was in violation. There was even secret intelligence to support the accusations – or at least to convince NATO allies not to question the US’ justification for withdrawal.
At the same time, the US developed and fired missiles banned by the treaty, saying it was OK since they were just target missiles and not actual missiles meant to kill and destroy. A similar explanation somehow didn’t work for North Korea with its satellite launch, which was instantly branded a clandestine ballistic missile test by the US. But when the US used one, Russia was expected to just go along.
Washington also deployed the Mk41 VLS in Europe, claiming that they could only fire interceptor missiles to stop Iran from obliterating the Europeans, rather than directing Tomahawks at Russia. What a big surprise this new test must have been for every expert and defense official who said Moscow was overreacting to those missile defenses in Romania and Poland!
There is a notable pattern in Washington’s attitude to international relations, whereby it spots every speck on the record of others, while finding sensible-sounding solutions for any blemishes on its own. How is that work on destroying your chemical weapons going, by the way? For this test to come on such short notice is the latest example.
“In two weeks, one can prepare and get a green light for a test program, and even that would take extra effort,” RT’s defense expert Mikhail Khodarenok remarked. “The rest of it, including bringing the tested weapon system to the range, training the crew in its use, preparing the target, putting sensors in place – that cannot be done in two weeks.”
There is only one possible conclusion – the test was designed, organized, prepared and financed long before the US officially withdrew from the INF.
Now it turns out that all the while Washington was telling the world how the treaty could still be salvaged – if only Russia pled guilty and destroyed its stockpiles of missiles that supposedly violated the INF – it was also developing a weapon system that breached the very same treaty.
The work has been ongoing since at least February this year, according to a Department of Defense spokesperson quoted by RIA Novosti. This is right after the US announced its formal withdrawal and long before the expiration of the six-month grace period stipulated in the treaty. Who could have seen this one coming?
August 21, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | Russia, United States |
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Russia will not fall for US “provocations” and be dragged into an “expensive arms race,” a senior diplomat said. Washington had earlier test-fired a cruise missile that was banned under the now-defunct INF Treaty.
The Pentagon’s recent cruise missile test is “regretful” as it shows that “the US has clearly embarked on a path of inciting military tensions,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
Over the weekend, the US test-fired a ground-based cruise missile that hit a target more than 500km away. Such weapons would have been banned under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which outlawed all ground-based missiles with the range of 500km to 5,500km, as well as their launchers. Washington officially withdrew from the agreement earlier this month, citing alleged violations by Russia, and Moscow followed suit.
Ryabkov said that the new test by the US proves that it was actually the Pentagon that has been secretly violating the INF Treaty. “There can’t be more striking and obvious proof that the US has been developing such systems for a long time,” he told reporters, adding that Moscow will not jump the gun in response.
“We have been assuming this turn of events. We will not allow ourselves to be dragged into an expensive arms race.”
“We don’t fall for provocations.”
The diplomat reiterated that if Russia ever obtains missiles that were previously banned under the INF Treaty, it will not deploy them unless the US does so first.
During his trip to France on Monday, President Vladimir Putin had said that if short- and mid-range missile systems are “produced by the US,” Moscow will do the same. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russia will deploy such missiles only if Washington does so in Europe or Asia-Pacific.
August 21, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | INF treaty, Russia, United States |
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Australia will send a frigate and a spy plane in support of Washington’s dubious initiative to boost security in the Straits of Hormuz by filling it with foreign warships, increasing the risk of miscalculations and provocations.
“The government has decided that it is in Australia’s national interest to work with our international partners to contribute,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday morning. “Our contribution will be limited in scope and it will be time-bound.”
Following the US and UK lead, the former British colony will reinforce the sparse coalition with a P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance plane this year and will dispatch a frigate next January for at least six months’ patrol, foreign affairs minister Marise Payne and defense minister Linda Reynolds said in a statement.
Besides this ‘limited’ contribution, Canberra also agreed to provide intelligence and other assistance, as the US faces an uphill battle trying to muster support for its “maritime policing” initiative. Previously, only the UK and Israel had volunteered to battle the much-hyped Iranian threat, following a series of mysterious attacks on oil tankers that were pinned on Tehran and reciprocal vessel seizures by Iran and the UK.
The Islamic Republic, meanwhile, believes the US is simply trying to enforce its unilateral oil sanctions through military pressure after failing to do it via political extortion.
August 20, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Australia, Iran, Israel, UK, United States |
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The US military has tested a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of over 500km, the Pentagon confirmed. Such weapons were banned under the INF arms control treaty, which the US exited this month.
The flight test of a “conventionally configured ground-launched cruise missile” was conducted on August 18 at a range on San Nicolas Island, California, the US Department of Defense said Monday. After a successful launch, the missile struck its target more than 500km (310 miles) away.
Weapons with a range of between 500km and 5,000km were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, a key arms control mechanism that helped de-escalate Cold War nuclear tensions when it was signed in 1987.
In February this year, the US announced it was quitting the treaty, accusing Russia of having a non-compliant missile system. Moscow denied the accusations and invited inspections of the system, but no one took it up on the offer. The treaty expired on August 1.
The Trump administration had previously signaled it was determined to exit the INF back in October 2018, when National Security Advisor John Bolton described it as a “relic of the Cold War” during his visit to Moscow.
“There’s a new strategic reality out there,” Bolton told reporters at the time, describing the INF as a “bilateral treaty in a multipolar ballistic missile world,” that applied only to the US and Russia in Europe and did not do anything to constrain the actions of China, Iran or North Korea.
The INF was the second major Cold War arms control treaty the US led the way in dismantling, following the demise of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2001. The sole remaining arms control treaty, New START, is due to expire in February 2021.
August 19, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | United States |
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US Air Force has launched flying operations from a recently constructed remote air base in the West African country of Niger in efforts to carry out intelligence gathering missions over the impoverished region.
“This joint-use runway allows for a better response to regional security requirements and provides strategic access and flexibility,” said commander of US Air Forces in Europe-Air forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA), Gen. Jeff Harrigian in a statement as quoted Friday in a report by the US-based Stars and Stripes military news outlet.
“Air Base 201 gives Niger and the US incredible capability in a challenging region of the world,” Harrigian added, referring to the 6,200-foot runway built by American forces in the southern Sahara Desert in Niger.
The USAFE-AFAFRICA commander further praised the American troops for completing the largest-ever, airmen-led construction project in Air Force history.
According to the report, Niger’s government granted authority to the US military for conducting armed drone flights over the country back in 2018, shortly after the ambush killing of four American soldiers in the country by alleged ISIL-linked militants in October 2017.
Citing a USAFE-AFAFRICA spokesman, the report further noted that construction on Niger’s Air Base 201 is still continuing, with full flying operations expected to begin later this year.
Air Force C-130 cargo planes and other aircraft on resupply missions, in coordination with the Nigerien air force and the country’s civil aviation authorities, began flying limited Visual Flight Rule (VFR) operations into and out of the air base on August 1, added a USAFE-AFAFRICA statement as cited in the report.
It further noted that VFR operations are conducted without instruments to assess an airfield before full flight operations begin, including drone missions.
The report also cited the US Air Force as saying that the $110-million airfield in Niger “is the most austere location from which the Air Force has attempted to operate,” noting that it was finished earlier this summer following delays caused by the challenges of working in a remote desert, “including sandstorms, locust swarms and difficulties in transporting supplies to the base in central Niger.”
US Africa Command says several militant groups operate in the border area between Niger, Nigeria and Chad, including ISIL in West Africa, which has emerged as a priority for the American forces in the region.
August 17, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Africa, Niger, United States |
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Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton commenced bombing Serbia in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance. Approximately 1,500 Serb civilians were killed by NATO bombing in one of the biggest sham morality plays of the modern era. As British professor Philip Hammond recently noted, the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called ‘dual-use’ targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorise the country into surrender.”
Clinton’s unprovoked attack on Serbia, intended to help ethnic Albanians seize control of Kosovo, set a precedent for “humanitarian” warring that was invoked by supporters of George W. Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq, Barack Obama’s bombing of Libya, and Donald Trump’s bombing of Syria.
Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo, and there is an 11-foot statue of him standing in the capitol, Pristina, on Bill Clinton Boulevard. A commentator in the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton “with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999.” It would have been a more accurate representation if Clinton was shown standing on the corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign.
Bombing Serbia was a family affair in the Clinton White House. Hillary Clinton revealed to an interviewer in the summer of 1999, “I urged him to bomb. You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?” A biography of Hillary Clinton, written by Gail Sheehy and published in late 1999, stated that Mrs. Clinton had refused to talk to the president for eight months after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. She resumed talking to her husband only when she phoned him and urged him in the strongest terms to begin bombing Serbia; the president began bombing within 24 hours. Alexander Cockburn observed in the Los Angeles Times,
It’s scarcely surprising that Hillary would have urged President Clinton to drop cluster bombs on the Serbs to defend “our way of life.” The first lady is a social engineer. She believes in therapeutic policing and the duty of the state to impose such policing. War is more social engineering, “fixitry” via high explosive, social therapy via cruise missile…. As a tough therapeutic cop, she does not shy away from the most abrupt expression of the therapy: the death penalty.
I followed the war closely from the start, but selling articles to editors bashing the bombing was as easy as pitching paeans to Scientology. Instead of breaking into newsprint, my venting occurred instead in my journal:
April 7, 1999: Much of the media and most of the American public are evaluating Clinton’s Serbian policy based on the pictures of the bomb damage — rather than by asking whether there is any coherent purpose or justification for bombing. The ultimate triumph of photo opportunities…. What a travesty and national disgrace for this country.
April 17: My bottom line on the Kosovo conflict: I hate holy wars. And this is a holy war for American good deeds — or for America’s saintly self-image? Sen. John McCain said the war is necessary to “uphold American values.” Make me barf! Just another … Hitler-of-the-month attack.
May 13: This damn Serbian war … is a symbol of all that is wrong with the righteous approach to the world … and to problems within this nation.
The KLA
The Kosovo Liberation Army’s savage nature was well known before the Clinton administration formally christened them “freedom fighters” in 1999. The previous year, the State Department condemned “terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.” The KLA was heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close to ties to Osama bin Laden. Arming the KLA helped Clinton portray himself as a crusader against injustice and shift public attention after his impeachment trial. Clinton was aided by many congressmen eager to portray U.S. bombing as an engine of righteousness. Sen. Joe Lieberman whooped that the United States and the KLA “stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.”
In early June 1999, the Washington Post reported that “some presidential aides and friends are describing [bombing] Kosovo in Churchillian tones, as Clinton’s ‘finest hour.’” Clinton administration officials justified killing civilians because, it alleged the Serbs were committing genocide in Kosovo. After the bombing ended, no evidence of genocide was found, but Clinton and Britain’s Tony Blair continued boasting as if their war had stopped a new Hitler in his tracks.
In a speech to American troops in a Thanksgiving 1999 visit, Clinton declared that the Kosovar children “love the United States … because we gave them their freedom back.” Perhaps Clinton saw freedom as nothing more than being tyrannized by people of the same ethnicity. As the Serbs were driven out of Kosovo, Kosovar Albanians became increasingly oppressed by the KLA, which ignored its commitment to disarm. The Los Angeles Times reported on November 20, 1999,
As a postwar power struggle heats up in Kosovo Albanian politics, extremists are trying to silence moderate leaders with a terror campaign of kidnappings, beatings, bombings, and at least one killing. The intensified attacks against members of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, have raised concerns that radical ethnic Albanians are turning against their own out of fear of losing power in a democratic Kosovo.
American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Serbian civilians, bombing Serbian churches, and oppressing non-Muslims. Almost a quarter million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and other minorities fled Kosovo after Clinton promised to protect them. In March 2000 renewed fighting broke out when the KLA launched attacks into Serbia, trying to seize territory that it claimed historically belonged to ethnic Albanians. UN Human Rights Envoy Jiri Dienstbier reported that “the [NATO] bombing hasn’t solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones. The Yugoslav economy was destroyed. Kosovo is destroyed. There are hundreds of thousands of people unemployed now.”
U.S. complicity in atrocities
Prior to the NATO bombing, American citizens had no responsibility for atrocities committed by either Serbs or ethnic Albanians. However, after American planes bombed much of Serbia into rubble to drive the Serbian military out of Kosovo, Clinton effectively made the United States responsible for the safety of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo. That was equivalent to forcibly disarming a group of people, and then standing by, whistling and looking at the ground, while they are slaughtered. Since the United States promised to bring peace to Kosovo, Clinton bears some responsibility for every burnt church, every murdered Serbian grandmother, every new refugee column streaming north out of Kosovo. Despite those problems, Clinton bragged at a December 8, 1999, press conference that he was “very, very proud” of what the United States had done in Kosovo.
I had a chapter on the Serbian bombing campaign titled “Moralizing with Cluster Bombs” in Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton–Gore Years (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), which sufficed to spur at least one or two reviewers to attack the book. Norman Provizer, the director of the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership, scoffed in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, “Bovard chastises Clinton for an illegal, undeclared war in Kosovo without ever bothering to mention that, during the entire run of American history, there have been but four official declarations of war by Congress.”
As the chaotic situation in post-war Kosovo became stark, it was easier to work in jibes against the debacle. In an October 2002 USA Today article (“Moral High Ground Not Won on Battlefield“) bashing the Bush administration’s push for war against Iraq, I pointed out, “A desire to spread freedom does not automatically confer a license to kill…. Operation Allied Force in 1999 bombed Belgrade, Yugoslavia, into submission purportedly to liberate Kosovo. Though Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic raised the white flag, ethnic cleansing continued — with the minority Serbs being slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground in the same way the Serbs previously oppressed the ethnic Albanians.”
In a 2011 review for The American Conservative, I scoffed, “After NATO planes killed hundreds if not thousands of Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians, Bill Clinton could pirouette as a savior. Once the bombing ended, many of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo were slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground. NATO’s ‘peace’ produced a quarter million Serbian, Jewish, and Gypsy refugees.”
In 2014, a European Union task force confirmed that the ruthless cabal that Clinton empowered by bombing Serbia committed atrocities that included murdering persons to extract and sell their kidneys, livers, and other body parts. Clint Williamson, the chief prosecutor of a special European Union task force, declared in 2014 that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had engaged in “unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites.”
The New York Times reported that the trials of Kosovo body snatchers may be stymied by cover-ups and stonewalling: “Past investigations of reports of organ trafficking in Kosovo have been undermined by witnesses’ fears of testifying in a small country where clan ties run deep and former members of the KLA are still feted as heroes. Former leaders of the KLA occupy high posts in the government.” American politicians almost entirely ignored the scandal. Vice President Joe Biden hailed former KLA leader and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in 2010 as “the George Washington of Kosovo.” A few months later, a Council of Europe investigative report tagged Thaci as an accomplice to the body-trafficking operation.
Clinton’s war on Serbia opened a Pandora’s box from which the world still suffers. Because politicians and pundits portrayed that war as a moral triumph, it was easier for subsequent presidents to portray U.S. bombing as the self-evident triumph of good over evil. Honest assessments of wrongful killings remain few and far between in media coverage.
August 17, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, NATO, Serbia, United States |
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When Washington announced a few weeks ago the formation of a maritime “international coalition” to “protect shipping” in the Persian Gulf, many observers were skeptical. Now skepticism has rightly turned to alarm, as the proposed US-led “coalition” transpires to comprise a grand total of just three nations: the US, Britain and Israel.
The term “coalition” has always been a weasel word used by Washington to give its military operations around the world a veneer of international consensus and moral authority. If the US goes ahead with deploying forces in the Persian Gulf the guise of “coalition” is threadbare. It will be seen for what it is: naked aggression.
Iran promptly warned that if the US, Britain and Israel move on their intention to deploy in the Persian Gulf, it will not hesitate to defend itself from a “clear threat”.
Britain has ordered this week another warship, HMS Kent, to the Gulf. The move, significantly, occurred as Trump’s hawkish national security advisor John Bolton was in London for two-day official meetings with PM Boris Johnson and other senior ministers. Bolton praised Britain’s decision to join the US-led Operation Sentinel mission, rather than an alternative proposed European naval mission. It’s not clear if HMS Kent is simply replacing another British warship in the Gulf, HMS Duncan, or if this is a further buildup in force. Either way, the line up of US, Britain and reportedly Israel is a foreboding potential offensive.
Israeli leaders have in the recent past repeatedly called for military attacks on Iran, claiming without evidence that the Islamic Republic is secretly building nuclear weapons, thus allegedly posing an existential threat to the Jewish state, despite the latter possessing an estimated 200-300 nuclear warheads.
Given the Trump administration’s manic hostility towards Tehran, which it labels a “terrorist regime”, and given the long history of US-British treachery against Iran, it is understandable the alarm being aroused if Washington, London and Tel Aviv proceed with their flotilla in the Gulf.
Major General Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, slammed the proposed US-led trio of forces as a “coalition of demons”.
Iranian defense minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami warned that any such US deployment involving Israel in a waterway contiguous with Iran’s southern coast would have “disastrous consequences for the region”. Tehran would view it as an act of war.
Will Washington light the fuse? President Donald Trump and his psychotic war advisor John Bolton have certainly talked tough on several occasions over recent weeks about attacking Iran and “destroying” the Persian nation with overwhelming force. Combined with the depraved Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu and the lackey British premier Boris Johnson, the “axis of insanity” is perplexing.
However, Trump’s threats have often turned out to be empty. Washington has said before it would “defend” its interests when cargo ships were sabotaged in recent weeks. Iran was blamed by the US without evidence for the sabotage incidents, but Washington’s bellicose rhetoric didn’t materialize in military action. Even when Iran shot down a US $220-million spy drone over its territory on June 20, Trump balked at ordering “retaliatory” air strikes.
Another deterring factor is Iran’s formidable anti-ship missiles and air defenses which are augmented by the latest Russian technology, as documented by John Helmer.
There is thus a fair chance that the Trump administration will back off from its plans for a maritime incursion in the Persian Gulf. Even the intellectually challenged White House must know that any such move – especially involving a blatant axis of aggression of the US, Britain and Israel – will be tantamount to declaring war. The consequences for the war-torn region, the global economy and world peace would indeed be potentially calamitous. Surely, the unhinged American, British and Israeli leaders know this?
International consensus and world opinion may also be a vital check on the US-led folly of antagonizing Iran. The refusal by Germany, France and other European nations to participate in the US maritime force dealt a significant blow to Washington’s subterfuge of forming a coalition camouflage for its aggression against Iran.
The Americans were infuriated. US officials have reportedly lobbied the Berlin government to change its mind, to no avail. One American official was reported to have complained: “German officials keep telling us that they’re on our side, but they have to side with Iran on nuclear related issues because of the nuclear deal. Iran is attacking tankers which has nothing to do with the deal. So what’s Germany’s excuse for not siding with us this time?”
Richard Grenell, the pesky US ambassador in Berlin, displayed exasperation over Germany’s rebuff to the naval coalition plan, dubbed Operation Sentinel. Employing his best double-think, Grenell said: “German participation would help deescalate the situation. The Iranians would see a united West.”
This comes against a background of various rows between the Trump administration and Berlin, including on NATO spending, trade tariffs and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia.
Washington is peeved by the Europeans and Germany in particular for not giving its purported naval coalition in the Gulf the desired appearance of international mandate.
As Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif remarked, the US is “isolated”, apart from having the British and Israelis riding shotgun on its now-evident adventure of aggression. From political, legal and moral viewpoints, it will be difficult for the Trump administration to proceed with its plan to “protect shipping” in the Persian Gulf because it is abundantly clear that the plan is a flagrant war footing.
If the US and its allies were genuine about forming a protection arrangement for commercial shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf – where 20-30 per cent of globally shipped oil passes each day – then they would do well to take on board the Russian proposal presented at the UN on August 8.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s acting envoy to the UN, set forth a multilateral security concept. He emphasized that the partnership would be a genuine international coalition acting within the framework of the UN Security Council. The proposal, which China has backed, would include all stakeholders for the safety of shipping through the vital Persian Gulf, including Iran. This is surely the way to go towards de-escalating the dangerous tensions in the region. The key is that any such initiative must be formulated in keeping with UN principles and international law. It is not for one, two or three nations to assume the role of naval “policemen” in an area of international waterways. Even if we take Washington’s rhetoric about “protecting shipping” at face value, its deployment of force in the Gulf is an illegitimate assumption of power. It is outside UN principles and without Security Council mandate. In a word, illegal.
European and Asian nations would be advised to back the Russian initiative in order to maintain peace in the Gulf. By contrast, Washington’s plans are a reckless and reprehensible provocation for war.
August 15, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Wars for Israel | Israel, UK, United States, Zionism |
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