Excellent must read interviews with author, scholar and CIA veteran Chalmers Johnson published by Tomdispatch. His decades of intelligence and political experience, knowledge of history and academic discipline make Johnson one of the most insightful and effective analysts and critics of the current administration and the potentially devastating course America is set on, and the likely disastrous ramifications to the continued future of the republic. Of particular note are his points about the fiscal insolvency of the nation and the impact that will have on the nation’s future.

Something personally interesting with the history and biography of Johnson are his credentials as a veteran cold warrior, and his unwavering belief in the resistance to the USSR. He was even a supporter of the war in Vietnam at the time, as well as an advocate of the projection of American power in opposition to international communism. I, too, shared certain elements of support for those positions during that period, and like Johnson, saw the fall of the USSR as a crowning achievement and opportunity to scale back the enormous expenditure in armaments and militarization of our national security state.

But as he points out, that was not in the agenda of the ruling corporate classes which run our empire, and new enemies had to be created to justify the ever-expanding domination of global corporatism and the military-industrial complex.

It truly is a shameful sickness afflicting what is left of our republic.

Read the complete Tomdispatch interviews…
Part 1 - Cold Warrior In a Strange Land
Part 2 - Our Fading Republic

Another excellent treatise from one of America’s pre-eminent historians (and admittedly rare and oxymoronic breed, it seems. “American” and “historian”, something that doesn’t work well in the United States of Amnesia).

If you want some actual historical perspective on what is going on, and with an eye towards history being something that didn’t start in the 18th century, Read Here.

Jonathan Schell writes that the most critical question has been whether American democracy, severely eroded but still breathing, would bring down the modern and highly corrupt Republican machine, or whether the GOP machine - call it the budding one-party global empire - would bring down American democracy. Its not that the Democratic party isn’t partner to the corrosive elements of corporate corruption of our political system, but just that while they are corrupted by these influences, the modern GOP ARE those influences (the Abramoff issue being Exhibit A as evidence of this issue). Now perhaps it looks as if democracy, after years of decline, has hopefully gained the upper hand. We can only work and pray for this to be the case.

Read The Full Article Here

This is disturbing. If this is not an accurate picture of the current realities we are facing these days and the political stakes on the line, I would genuinely like to hear the case being made that that is indeed so. Are the facts presented here not actually facts?

Like John Pilger states here, there can be no change in the current state and course…

“…until we in the West look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name, its extremes and terrorism. The traditional double-standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pin-striped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists. The difference used to be distance. Now they are bringing it home.”

Permanent Occupation
By Rep. Barbara Lee
In These Times

September 29th, 2005

No one disputes that the military bases are of a physically permanent character. The only question is whether Iraq will be under permanent US military occupation.

If you are inclined to believe the president, we will be in Iraq, in his words “as long as necessary, and not a day longer.” Members of the Bush administration, including the president, have been at pains to dispel any notion that they have plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq.
On April 13, 2004, President Bush said, “As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America.”

On February 17, 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate, said, “We have no intention, at the present time, of putting permanent bases in Iraq.”

The circumstances on the ground, however, tell another story. On March 23, 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported on the construction of 14 “enduring bases” in Iraq. The May 22, 2005, Washington Post described the military’s plan to consolidate military personnel in Iraq into four massive “contingency operating bases.” According to the Congressional Research Service, Emergency Supplemental funds appropriated for military construction in Iraq for fiscal years 2001-2005 total more than $805 million, with the vast majority, more than $597 million, coming in the 2005 fiscal year.

Anyone familiar with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) should be skeptical about the administration’s claims that it does not have plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq. PNAC, many of whose founders, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, went on to serve in the Bush administration, published a document in 2000 titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” It plainly cites the objective of an increased US military presence in the region as a rationale for invading Iraq: “While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for US military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

In discussing the 14 “enduring bases” then under construction, Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman, chief engineer for base construction in Iraq, raised the question, “Is this a swap for the Saudi bases? I don’t know,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “When we talk about enduring bases here, we’re talking about the present operation, not in terms of America’s global strategic base. But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense.”

No one disputes that many of the installations under construction are of a physically permanent character. The issue revolves around the policy question of whether Iraq will be under permanent US military occupation.

That is why I introduced H. Con. Res. 197, which would make it “the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United States military presence in Iraq.”

This commonsense measure does two very important things. First, it explicitly states that the United States has no plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq and thus help to defuse the insurgency and improve the security situation on the ground.

Larry Diamond, former advisor to Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, is a Hoover fellow and author of Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq. He writes:

We know from a variety of sources, private as well as public, that intense opposition to US plans to establish long-term military bases in Iraq is one of the most passionate motivations behind the insurgency. There are many different strands to the violent resistance that plagues Iraq: Islamist and secular, Sunni and Shiite, Baathist and non-Baathist, Iraqi and foreign. The one thing that unites these disparate elements is Iraqi (or broader pan-Arab) nationalism - resistance to what they see as a long-term project for imperial domination by the United States. Neutralizing this anti-imperial passion - by clearly stating that we do not intend to remain in Iraq indefinitely - is essential to winding down the insurgency.

Second, this bill allows those who have opposed this war from the outset to define one of the most critical components of an exit strategy - namely, that our troops actually exit. The Bush administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge their intentions in Iraq, coupled with the growing disapproval of their handling of the war and the increasing public support for withdrawing our troops, offer an immediate opportunity to define this debate.

Members of Congress disagree about when, and under what circumstances, our troops should be brought home, but you are not likely to find any member of Congress who would dare to publicly come out in support of staying in Iraq permanently.

It is a question that supporters of the president should be forced to answer. If they don’t support being in Iraq permanently, they should co-sponsor my bill, and put themselves on record. It is that simple.

—————————–

Rep. Barbara Lee is a member of the Progressive Caucus and represents California’s 9th Congressional District.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Anti-Neocon
By David Corn
TomPaine.com

July 20th, 2005

“I’m the anti-neocon.” That’s how Robert Merry recently described himself to me. After reading his new book-Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition -I have to say: He got that right.
His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He’s certainly not keeping company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in his view) American national security interests with feel-good global humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché-the enemy of my enemy is my friend-he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry’s knife-throwing gallery.

His high-minded goal was to pen an intellectual history that traced the ideas that led-over decades-to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. (Let’s assume that ideas had something to do with it.) Merry does reach back far, reviewing the works and notions of such profound ponderers as the Abbé Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre (who postulated that humankind was on an inevitable journey toward further enlightenment and civilization), Oswald Spengler (the chronicler of the ups and downs of civilizations), and such big-idea moderns as Frances Fukuyama (the premature prophet of the End of History), Samuel Huntington (the advocate of the Clash of Civilizations), and Thomas Friedman (the cheerleader for the Glory of Globalization). Merry suggests that in the broadest terms there are two ideas that have motivated Western thought: the Idea of Progress (humankind is on a never-ending advance), and the Cycle of History (history is the story of civilizations that rise and then fall; screw progress). And a corollary to the Cycle of History view, he notes, is Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, which suggests that not only is progress not inevitable but that conflict between civilizations is. The capital letters are his.

Out of all this, he notes, American history has yielded four basic strains of foreign policy: conservative interventionism (the hard-headed Cold War policy that came out of World War II), conservative isolationism (poster boy: Pat Buchanan), liberal interventionism (sending U.S. troops to help troubled countries such as Haiti), and liberal isolationism (think of the movement against the Vietnam War). His descriptions invite the charge that he is being overly simplistic. For instance, he claims Reagan’s use of force in Central America in the 1980s-which he points to as an example of conservative interventionism-was necessary to “save Western civilization from the threat of Soviet expansionism.” No, it wasn’t. But the real question for him-and for us-is, which of these four teams is essentially right?

To answer that, Merry has fun batting aside those he consider wrong. He scoffs at Fukuyama’s thesis-that America and other Western democracies represent the culmination of human civilization and stand as the obvious (and only) ideal for the rest of the world. From this stance, Merry notes, it’s a perilously short distance to presuming a missionary destiny for the United States: Let’s make them more like us. He notes that Fukuyama, in his famous 1989 essay “End of History,” observed that nationalism and ethnic zeal could no longer threaten a nation and that Islamic fundamentalism “has little appeal for non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any universal significance. Ouch. And he whips Thomas Friedman to an inch of his intellectual life, noting that the gaga-on-globalization columnist is deft at analyzing transnational economic forces but willfully naïve in saying that the people of the world, looking toward the United States as “a spiritual value and a role model,” will harness these new economic trends and ride off to a better future because they have no choice. “Political analysis as exhortation is not serious political analysis,” Merry rightfully huffs, adding, “The impulses of human nature go far beyond the material comforts and options that so preoccupy Friedman.”

Why does Merry devote himself to disproving Fukuyama and Friedman? It’s because they are idealists whose out-of-touch-with-reality views (as Merry sees it) lead toward danger. But it is the neocons who have put this danger into practice. It’s no secret: Merry is with the hardheaded conservative interventionists and quite sympathetic to Huntingtonism. The world is nasty and full of nasty people-most notably, Islamic extremists-and it’s our job not to change the world but to define the threat wisely and specifically and to take the practical steps necessary to thwart that threat or at least keep it at bay for as long as possible.

He and I would, no doubt, consume many beers in any full-length conversation about the past glories and mistakes of U.S. foreign policy. But Merry is not interested in raking through the coals of the many past debates. This is what concerns him now: “Can an effective brand of conservative interventionism be fashioned for the post-9/11 era, when the West is locked in a clash of civilizations with major elements of the world of Islam and cultural instability seems on the rise elsewhere around the globe?” He adds, “That is probably the most pressing question facing the country-and the world-today.” And the biggest obstacle to fashioning a positive response, he argues, is the neocons.

Another obstacle, he claims, are liberal interventionists such as those who supported the U.S. bombing in Kosovo and Bill Clinton’s involvement in the Balkans. Merry goes for the jugular in questioning the arguments for and the wisdom of these actions. This section of the book is not for the faint-hearted. (”True, Serbian actions in Kosovo prior to the bombing were barbaric. But in fact they never matched the kinds of abuses the [Clinton] administration had been willing to accept in Turkey, Kashmir, Sudan, and Rwanda-or in Croatia, for that matter. Thus did the United States action reveal a fundamental reality of any moralistic foreign policy: inevitably it exposes a selective morality.”) But since the liberal interventionists are not in the driver’s seat and did not lead the nation into the wrong war in Iraq, Merry has less reason to worry about them these days. So he unleashes the lion’s share of his fury upon the neoconservatives.

He traces the history of this bunch and pokes at the contradictions and inconsistencies that lie in their wake. This band of Democratic-liberals-turned-Republicans-armchair-warriors, he notes, have abandoned the typical “conservative hostility” toward utopian visions and bold government initiatives and have “embraced a Brave New World in which American exceptionalism holds sway everywhere and peoples around the globe abandon their own cultures in favor of Western ideals.[T]he neoconservatives have arrived at a point where they aren’t really conservative at all.” The neocons’ transition into idealists-hey, let’s fight for democracy in the Middle East!-is an odd one and ought to be greeted with skepticism. Merry points out that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the neocons held firm to a less noble operating premise. It was Jeane Kirkpatrick, the godmother of the neocons, who wrote an influential article that bitterly decried assigning human rights a priority in foreign policy. She scoffed at those who believed “that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances.” Such conversions, she said, take “decades, if not centuries.” (Hmmmm.) And in a 1978 essay, Irving Kristol, the neocons’ godfather (and the actual father of William Kristol, the movement’s unofficial student body president), urged the United States to be “less vaguely moralistic in its pronouncements.” In 1980, Merry notes, Irving Kristol wrote that it was a “fundamental fallacy” to believe that people in all nations are entitled to a liberal constitutional government. The apple has bounced far from this tree.

So how did we get from there to the point where Bill Kristol and Co. are rah-rahing and egging on a president who justifies invading a country-forget those nonexistent WMDs-with the most lofty rhetoric about exporting democracy and freedom overseas? It’s not just 9/11. The neocons were hankering for a war against Iraq long before nineteen al Qaeda recruits stunned the world. The neocons, Merry writes, “have a tendency to make their way to whatever watering hole they can find to quench their need for a rhetorical argument of the moment.” And in the years prior to 9/11, they became enthralled with the idea of “American hegemony.” Merry considers this quest for a Wilsonian-fueled hegemony nuts, for it obscures the difficult questions and prevents consideration of what to do about complex, centuries-in-the-making, on-the-ground realities.

Merry sees the clash between “the West and Islam” as the fundamental reality of the day. But he is not looking forward to any ultimate confrontation. This reality, he argues, “demands from the West a steady, careful, measured approach to diplomacy and war. Will the West, with all its power and influence, stimulate and aggravate these emerging cultural tensions around the world? Or will it seek an approach aimed at protecting its interests while calming as much as possible the cultural hostilities that are an integral part of our era.” He’s essentially calling for a Nixonian approach. (I can’t bring myself to refer to it as Kissingerian.)

His book half-echoes the critique made by the left (whether it is the isolationist or interventionist left) of the current regime. Merry is talking about wrestling with realities. The neocons speak of redefining reality-which also can become ignoring reality. Remember Dick Cheney’s promise that American troops in Iraq would be welcomed as liberators? Merry does, and he catalogues all the false assumptions made by the neocons and Bush’s foreign policy team:

“This litany of misstatements, misperceptions, faulty thinking and off-the-mark predictions raises a question: how could so many highly intelligent people be so wrong? The only answer is that they stumbled into a classic case of ideological policymaking-viewing the world through the prism of a rigid ideology, and then placing the pieces together to fit that ideological picture.”

Instead of offering a solution to the knotty dilemmas of the post-9/11 threat, the Iraq war has worsened the problem. This war, Merry maintains, can only “enflame anti-Western passions in the world of Islam.” That will mean “more jihadists directed against the United States.” The war also increases the odds of destabilization in other lands-such as Saudi Arabia (which has oil we need) and Pakistan (which has nukes we don’t want to see used or transferred). Merry sums up:

In taking his military into the heart of Islam and planting his country’s flag into the soil of a foreign culture based on flimsy perceptions of a national threat, George W. Bush has brought his country and the world closer to that kind of Armageddon than it faced before. He did so on the basis of a world outlook and political idealism that are alluring, comforting, and widely embraced throughout American intellectual circles. They are also false and highly dangerous.

Strong stuff. This book shows that anti-war passion does not reside only on the left. Merry, an Establishment sort, whacks Bush and the neocons for turning America into the “Crusader State.” And he calls for a foreign policy with less idealistic zeal. Cut deals with strongman dictators who can contain Islamic fundamentalism. Realize that “missionary democracy in the Middle East is not necessarily our friend, for it likely would foster fundamentalist and anti-American regimes in that strategically important region.” Take the swagger out of U.S. diplomacy. Drop the tough talk about who is “evil” and who is not. Such actions, he maintains, only “exacerbate the civilizational war.” Instead, he advises, the United States to “foster the emergence of Islamic core states” and to not fret too much about their records on democracy and human rights. He calls for a rapprochement with Iran. He also suggests Washington does what’s necessary to encourage China and Russia to join in a containment policy aimed at Islam. “What is required,” he writes, “is an approach that is sustained, measured, defensive in nature, limited in ambition, and based on a sophisticated understanding of the cultural currents in play in the world.”

Merry is indeed the anti-neocon. Forget any idealism. Lose the rhetoric about freedom, democracy and human rights. Don’t give a damn about American hegemony and exceptionalism. Just figure out what must be done in practical and realistic terms to curtail the threat posed by Islamic extremism. It would be hard for me to endorse an overarching policy so free of sentiment and aspiration. But when idealism has been commandeered by the neocons for this misguided (and so far unending) war, the desire for a foreign policy devoid of such notions is understandable. Merry’s provocative book is so hard-edged that it poses a challenge to neocons and their critics on the left. But his skewering of the Kristol crowd is so thorough and delicious that it makes one yearn for more tough-talk from the self-described realists of the foreign policy establishment.

———–

David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Scourge of Militarism: Rome and America
By Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch.com

June 10th, 2005

The collapse of the Roman republic in 27 BC has significance today for the United States, which took many of its key political principles from its ancient predecessor. Separation of powers, checks and balances, government in accordance with constitutional law, a toleration of slavery, fixed terms in office, all these ideas were influenced by Roman precedents. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams often read the great Roman political philosopher Cicero and spoke of him as an inspiration to them. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of the Federalist Papers, writing in favor of ratification of the Constitution signed their articles with the name Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul of the Roman republic.
The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome’s imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency - and its supporting military legions - undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome - turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability - suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office.

Obviously, there is nothing deterministic about this progression, and many prominent Romans, notably Brutus and Cicero, paid with their lives trying to head it off. But there is something utterly logical about it. Republican checks and balances are simply incompatible with the maintenance of a large empire and a huge standing army. Democratic nations sometimes acquire empires, which they are reluctant to give up because they are a source of wealth and national pride, but as a result their domestic liberties are thereby put at risk.

These not-particularly-original comparisons are inspired by the current situation of the United States, with its empire of well over 725 military bases located in other people’s countries; its huge and expensive military establishment demanding ever more pay and ever larger appropriations from a supine and manipulated legislature; unsolved anthrax attacks on senators and newsmen (much like Rome’s perennial assassinations); Congress’s gutting of the Bill of Rights through the panicky passage of the Patriot Act - by votes of 76-1 in the Senate and 337 to 79 in the House; and numerous signs that the public is indifferent to what it is about to lose. Many current aspects of our American government suggest a Roman-like fatigue with republican proprieties. After Congress voted in October 2002 to give the president unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he - and he alone - deemed it “appropriate,” it would be hard to argue that the constitution of 1787 was still the supreme law of the land.

Checks and Balances

My thinking about the last days of republics was partly stimulated during the summer of 2003 by a new book and an old play. The book is Anthony Everitt’s magnificent account of the man who had his head and both hands chopped off for opposing military dictatorship - Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (Random House, 2001). The play was a modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, seen at San Diego’s Old Globe theater. The curtain opened on a huge backdrop of Julius Caesar looking remarkably like any seedy politician with the word “tyrant” scrawled graffiti-style beneath his face in red paint. At play’s end, after Octavian’s hypocritical comments on the death of Brutus, who was one of the republic’s most stalwart supporters (”According to his virtue let us use him. . . .”), the picture of Caesar dropped away, replaced by one of Octavian - soon to become the self-proclaimed god Augustus Caesar - in full military uniform and bearing a marked resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, Octavian’s military rule did not actually follow at once after the suicides of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC and Shakespeare does not say it did. But that is what the play - and the history - are all about: killing Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC only prepared the ground for a more ruthless and determined successor.

The Roman republic is conventionally dated from 509 to 27 BC even though Romulus’s founding of the city is traditionally said to have occurred in 753 BC. All we know about its dim past, including the first two centuries of the republic, comes from the histories written by Livy and others and from the findings of modern archaeology. For the century preceding the republic, Rome had been ruled by Etruscan kings from their nearby state of Etruria (modern Tuscany), until in 510, according to legend, Sextus, the son of king Tarquinius Superbus (”King Tarquin”), raped Lucretia, the daughter of a leading Roman family. A group of aristocrats backed by the Roman citizenry revolted against this outrage and expelled the Etruscans from Rome. The rebels were determined that never again would any single man be allowed to obtain supreme power in Rome, and for four centuries the system they established more or less succeeded in preventing that from happening. “This was the main principle,” writes Everitt, “that underpinned constitutional arrangements which, by Cicero’s time [106 to 43 BC], were of a baffling complexity.”

At the heart of the unwritten Roman constitution was the Senate, by the early years of the first century BC composed of about 300 members from whose ranks two chief executives, called consuls, were elected. The consuls took turns being in charge for a month each, and neither could hold office for more than a year. Over time an amazing set of “checks and balances” evolved to ensure that the consuls and other executives whose offices conferred on them imperium - the right to command an army, to interpret and carry out the law, and to pass sentences of death - did not entertain visions of grandeur and overstay their time. At the heart of these restraints were the principles of collegiality and term limits. The first meant that for every office there were at least two incumbents, neither of whom had seniority or superiority over the other. Office holders were normally limited to one-year terms and could be reelected to the same office only after waiting ten years. Senators had to serve two to three years in lower offices - as quaestors, tribunes, aediles, or praetors - before they were eligible for election to a higher office, including the consulship. All office holders could veto the acts of their equals, and higher officials could veto decisions of lower ones. The chief exception to these rules was the office of “dictator,” appointed by the consuls in times of military emergency. There was always only one dictator and his decisions were immune to veto; according to the constitution, he could hold office only for six months or the duration of a crisis.

Once an official had ended his term as consul or praetor, the next post below consul, he was posted in Italy or abroad as governor of a province or colony and given the title of proconsul. It is absurd for journalistic admirers of the US military today to pretend that its regional commanders-in-chief for the Middle East (Centcom), Europe (Eucom), the Pacific (Pacom), Latin America (Southcom), and the United States itself (Northcom) are the equivalents of Roman proconsuls.[1] The Roman officials were seasoned members of the Senate who had held the highest executive post in the country, whereas American regional commanders are generals or admirals who have served their entire careers away from civilian concerns and risen to this post by managing to avoid making egregious mistakes.

After serving as consul in 63 BC (the year of Octavian’s birth), for example, Cicero was sent to govern the colony of Cilicia in present-day southern Turkey, where his duties were both civilian and military. Over time this complex system was made even more complex by the class struggle embedded in Roman society. During the first two centuries of the republic, what appeared to be a participatory democracy was in fact an oligarchy of aristocratic families that dominated the Senate. Not everyone was happy with this. After 287 BC, when the constitution was more or less formalized, a new institution came into being to defend the rights of the plebs or populares, that is, the ordinary, non-aristocratic citizens of Rome. These were the tribunes of the people, charged with protection of the lives and property of plebeians. Tribunes could veto any election, law, or decree of the Senate, of which they were ex officio members, as well as the acts of all other officials (except a dictator). They could also veto each others’ vetoes. “No doubt because their purpose in life was to annoy people,” Everitt notes, “their persons were sacrosanct.” Controlling appointments to the office of tribune later became very important to generals like Julius Caesar, who based their power on their armies plus the support of the populares against the aristocrats.

The system worked well enough and afforded extraordinary freedoms to the citizens of Rome so long as all members of the Senate recognized that compromise and consensus were the only ways to get anything done. Everitt poses the issue in terms of the different perspectives of Caesar and Cicero; Caesar was Rome’s, and perhaps history’s greatest general; whereas Cicero was the most intellectual defender of the Roman constitution. Both were former consuls: “Julius Caesar, with the pitiless insight of genius, understood that the constitution with its endless checks and balances prevented effective government, but like so many of his contemporaries Cicero regarded politics in personal rather than structural terms. For Caesar the solution lay in a completely new system of government; for Cicero it lay in finding better men to run the government - and better laws to keep them in order.”

“Remember That You Are Human”

Imperialism provoked the crisis that destroyed the Roman republic. After slowly consolidating its power over all of Italy and conquering the Greek colonies on the island of Sicily, the republic extended its conquests to Greece itself, to Carthage in North Africa, and to what is today southern France, Spain, and Asia Minor. By the first century BC, Rome dominated all of Gaul, most of Iberia, the coast of North Africa, Macedonia (including Greece), the Balkans, and large parts of modern Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. “The republic became enormously rich on the spoils of empire,” Everitt writes, “so much so that from 167 BC Roman citizens in Italy no longer paid any personal taxes.” The republic also became increasingly self-important and arrogant, believing that its task was to bring civilization to lesser peoples and naming the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum (our sea), somewhat the way some Americans came in the twentieth century to refer to the Pacific Ocean as an “American lake.”

The problem was that the Roman constitution made administration of so large and diverse an area increasingly difficult and subtly altered the norms and interests that underlay the need for compromise and consensus. There were several aspects to this crisis, but the most important was the transformation of the Roman army into a professional military force and the growth of militarism. During the early and middle years of the republic, the Roman legions were a true citizen army composed of small, conscripted landowners. Differing from the American republic, all citizens between the age of 17 and 46 were liable to be called for military service. One of the more admirable aspects of the Roman system was that only those citizens who possessed a specified amount of property (namely, a horse and some land) could serve, thereby making those who had profited most from the state also responsible for its defense. (By contrast, of the 535 members of Congress, only seven have children in the US’s all-volunteer armed forces.) The Roman plebs did their service as skirmishers with the army or in the navy, which had far less honor attached to it. At the beginning of each term, the consuls appointed tribunes to raise two legions from the census role of all eligible citizens.

When a campaign was over, the troops were promptly sent back to their farms, sometimes richer and flushed with military glory. Occasionally, the returning farmers got to march behind their general in a “triumph,” the most splendid ceremony in the Roman calendar, a victory procession allowed only to the greatest of conquerors. The general himself, who paid for this parade, rode in a chariot with his face covered in red lead to represent Jupiter, king of the gods. A boy slave stood behind him holding a laurel wreath above his head while whispering in his ear “Remember that you are human.” In Pompey’s great triumph of 61 BC, he actually wore a cloak that had belonged to Alexander the Great. After the general came his prisoners in chains and finally the legionnaires, who by ancient tradition sang obscene songs satirizing their general.

By the end of the second century BC, in Everitt’s words, “The responsibilities of empire meant that soldiers could no longer be demobilized at the end of each fighting season. Standing forces were required, with soldiers on long-term contracts.” The great general Caius Marius undertook to reform the armed forces, replacing the old conscript armies with a professional body of long-service volunteers. When their contracts expired, they expected their commanders, to whom they were personally loyal, to grant them farms. Unfortunately, land in Italy was by then in short supply, much of it tied up in huge sheep and cattle ranches owned by rich, often aristocratic, families and run by slave labor. The landowners were the dominant conservative influence in the Senate, and they resisted all efforts at land reform. Members of the upper classes became wealthy as a result of Rome’s wars of conquest and bought more land as the only safe investment, driving small holders off their property. In 133 BC, the gentry arranged for the killing of the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (of plebian origin) for advocating a new land-use law. Rome’s population continued to swell with landless veterans. “Where would the land be found,” asks Everitt, “for the superannuated soldiers of Rome’s next war?”

CONTINUED IN PART TWO

The Scourge of Militarism: Rome and America
By Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch.com

June 10th, 2005

CONTINUED FROM PART ONE…

During the last century before its fall, the republic was assailed by many revolts of generals and their troops, leading to gross violations of the constitution and on several occasions to civil wars. These included the uprisings of Marius and Sulla and of the failed revolutionary Catilina. There was also the Spartacus slave rebellion of 73 BC, put down by the immensely wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus, who in the process crucified some 6,000 survivors. Crassus was a member of the First Triumvirate, along with Pompey and Caesar, which attempted to bring the situation under control by direct cooperation among the generals. Everitt writes, “During his childhood and youth Cicero had watched with horror as Rome set about dismantling itself. If he had a mission as an adult, it was to recall the republic to order. . . . [He] noticed that the uninhibited freedom of speech which marked political life in the republic was giving way to caution at social gatherings and across dinner tables. . . . The Senate had no answer to Rome’s problems and indeed sought none. Its aim was simply to maintain the constitution and resist the continual attacks on its authority. . . . The populares had lost decisively with the defeat of Catilina, but the snake was only stunned. Caesar, who had been plotting against Senatorial interests behind the scenes, was rising up the political ladder and, barring accidents, would be consul in a few years’ time.”
Caesar became consul for the first time in 59 BC enjoying great popularity with the ordinary people. After his year in office, he was rewarded by being named governor of Gaul, a post he held between 58 and 49 during which he earned great military glory and became immensely wealthy. In 49 he famously allowed his armies to cross the Rubicon, a small river in northern Italy that served as a boundary against armies approaching the capital, and plunged the country into civil war, taking on his former ally and now rival, Pompey. He won, after which, as Everitt observes, “No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. . . . His leading opponents were dead. The republic was dead too: he had become the state.” Julius Caesar exercised dictatorship from 48 to 44 and a month before the Ides of March had arranged to have himself named “dictator for life.” Instead, he was stabbed to death in the Senate by a conspiracy of eight members, led by Brutus and Cassius, both praetors, known to history as “principled tyrannicides.”

Shakespeare’s recreation of the scenes that followed, based upon Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch, has become as immortal as the deed itself. In a speech to the plebeians in the Forum, Brutus defended his actions. “If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I lov’d Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and all die slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?” However, Mark Antony, Caesar’s chief lieutenant, speaking to the same audience, had the last word. He turned the populace against Brutus and Cassius, and as they raced forth to avenge Caesar’s murder, said cynically, “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

Who Will Watch the Watchers?

The Second Triumvirate, formed to avenge Caesar, ended like the first, with only one man standing, but that man, Caius Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar’s eighteen-year-old grand nephew, would decisively change Roman government by replacing the republic with an imperial dictatorship. Everitt characterizes Octavian as “a freebooting young privateer,” who on August 19, 43 BC, became the youngest consul in Rome’s history and set out, in violation of the constitution, to raise his own private army. “The boy would be a focus for the simmering resentments among the Roman masses, the disbanded veterans, and the standing legions.” Cicero, who had devoted his life to trying to curb the kind of power represented by Octavian, now gave up on the rule of law in favor of realpolitik. He recognized that “for all his struggles the constitution was dead and power lay in the hands of soldiers and their leaders.” In Cicero’s analysis, the only hope was to try to co-opt Octavian, leading him toward a more constitutional position, while doing everything not to “irritate rank-and-file opinion, which was fundamentally Caesarian.” Cicero would pay with his life for this last, desperate gamble. Octavian, allied with Mark Antony, ordered at least 130 senators (perhaps as many as 300) executed and their property confiscated after charging them with supporting the conspiracy against Caesar. Mark Antony personally added Cicero’s name to the list. When he met his death, the great scholar and orator had with him a copy of Euripides’ Medea, which he had been reading. His head and both hands were displayed in the Forum.

A year after Cicero’s death, following the battle of Philippi where Brutus and Cassius ended their lives, Octavian and Antony divided the known world between them. Octavian took the West and remained in Rome; Antony accepted the East and allied himself with Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt and Julius Caesar’s former mistress. In 31 BC, Octavian set out to end this unstable arrangement, and at the sea battle of Actium in the Gulf of Ambracia on the western coast of Greece, he defeated Antony’s and Cleopatra’s fleet. The following year in Alexandria Mark Antony fell on his sword and Cleopatra took an asp to her breast. By then, both had been thoroughly discredited for claiming that Antony was a descendant of Caesar’s and for seeking Roman citizenship rights for Cleopatra’s children by Caesar. Octavian would rule the Roman world for the next 45 years, until his death in 14 AD.

On January 13, 27 BC, Octavian appeared in the Senate, which had legitimized its own demise by ceding most of its powers to him and which now bestowed on him the new title of Augustus, first Roman emperor. The majority of the Senators were his solid supporters, having been handpicked by him. In 23 BC, Augustus was granted further authority by being designated a tribune for life, which gave him ultimate veto power over anything the Senate might do. His power rested ultimately on his total control of the armed forces.

Although his rise to power was always tainted by constitutional illegitimacy - not unlike that of our own Boy Emperor from Crawford, Texas - Augustus proceeded to emasculate the Roman system and its representative institutions. He never abolished the old republican offices but merely united them under one person - himself. Imperial appointment became a badge of prestige and social standing rather than of authority. The Senate was turned into a club of old aristocratic families, and its approval of the acts of the emperor was purely ceremonial. The Roman legions continued to march under the banner SPQR - senatus populus que Romanus, “the Senate and the Roman People” - but the authority of Augustus was absolute.

The most serious problem was that the army had grown too large and was close to unmanageable. It constituted a state within a state, not unlike the Pentagon in the United States today. Augustus reduced the army’s size and provided generous cash payments to those soldiers who had served more than twelve years, making clear that this bounty came from him, not their military commanders. He also transferred all legions away from Rome to the remote provinces and borders of the Empire, to ensure their leaders were not tempted to meddle in political affairs. Equally astutely, he created the Praetorian Guard, an elite force of 9,000 men with the task of defending him personally, and stationed them in Rome. They were drawn only from Italy, not from distant provinces, and were paid more than soldiers in the regular legions. They began as Augustus’s personal bodyguards, but in the decades after his death they became decisive players in the selection of new emperors. It was one of the first illustrations of an old problem of authoritarian politics: create one bureaucracy, the Praetorian Guard, to control another bureaucracy, the regular army, but before long the question will arise: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will watch the watchers?)

Augustus is credited with forging the Roman Peace (Pax Romana), which historians like to say lasted more than 200 years. It was, however, a military dictatorship and depended entirely on the incumbent emperor. And therein lay the problem. Tiberius, who reigned from 14-37 AD, retired to Capri with a covey of young boys who catered to his sexual tastes. His successor, Caligula, who held office from 37-41, was the darling of the army, but on January 24, 41 AD, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and proceeded to loot the imperial palace. Modern archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Caligula was an eccentric maniac, just as history has always portrayed him.[2]

The fourth Roman emperor, Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54, was selected and put into power by the Praetorian Guard in a de facto military coup. Despite the basically favorable portrayal of him by Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) and years later on TV by Derek Jacobi, Claudius, who was Caligula’s uncle, was addicted to gladiatorial games and fond of watching his defeated opponents being put to death. As a child, Claudius limped, drooled, stuttered, and was constantly ill. He had his first wife killed and married Agrippina, daughter of the sister of Caligula, after having the law changed to allow uncles to marry their nieces. On October 13, 54 AD, Claudius was killed with a poisoned mushroom, probably fed to him by his wife, and at noon that same day, the sixteen-year-old Nero, Agrippina’s son by a former husband, was acclaimed emperor in a carefully orchestrated piece of political theater. Nero, who reigned from 54 to 68, was a probably insane tyrant who has been credited with setting fire to Rome in 64 and persecuting some famous early Christians (Paul and Peter), although his reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated in recent years as a patron of the arts.

The Short, Happy Life of the American Republic

After Augustus, not much recommends the Roman Empire as an example of enlightened government despite the enthusiasm for it of such neoconservative promoters of the George W. Bush administration as the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, the Los Angeles Time’s Max Boot, and the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol. My reasons for going over this ancient history are not to suggest that our own Boy Emperor is a second Octavian but rather what might happen after he is gone. The history of the Roman republic from the time of Julius Caesar on suggests that it was imperialism and militarism - poorly understood by all conservative political leaders at the time - that brought it down. Militarism and the professionalization of a large standing army create invincible new sources of power within a polity. The government must mobilize the masses in order to exploit them as cannon fodder and this leads to the rise of populist generals who understand the grievances of their troops and veterans.

Service in the armed forces of the United States has not been a universal male obligation of citizenship since 1973. Our military today is a professional corps of men and women who join up for their own reasons, commonly to advance themselves in the face of one or another cul de sac of American society. They normally do not expect to be shot at, but they do expect all the benefits of state employment - steady pay, good housing, free medical benefits, relief from racial discrimination, world travel, and gratitude from the rest of society for their military “service.” They are well aware that the alternatives civilian life in America offers today include difficult job searches, no job security, regular pilfering of retirement funds by company executives and their accountants, “privatized” medical care, bad public elementary education systems, and insanely expensive higher education. They are ripe, it seems to me, not for the political rhetoric of patrician politicians who have followed the Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School route to riches and power but for a Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Juan Perón - a revolutionary, military populist with no interest in republican niceties so long as he is made emperor.

Regardless of the outcome of the next presidential election, the incumbent will have to deal with the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, our empire of bases, and a fifty-year-old tradition of not telling the public what our military establishment costs and the devastation it can inflict. History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic is in serious trouble - and that conversion to a military empire is, to say the least, not the best answer.

Notes:
[1]See, for example, Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military (New York: Norton, 2003).
[2]Shasta Darlington, New Dig Says Caligula Was Indeed a Maniac, Reuters, August 16, 2003.

The first two books in Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback Trilogy - Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic - are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Third Stage of American Empire
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

March 1st, 2005

There have been three stages of American empire since the creation of this nation. Each has fed the other, and each has been established and fortified by war. More importantly, each has been fortified by the vast profits derived by the few in the making of war. The first two stages did not collapse, so much as they were absorbed by the next iteration, carrying over all circumstances and attendant difficulties. We exist today within the third stage of empire, one that is sick at the core.
The first stage of this American empire began with the Mexican-American war, but began to flourish at the conclusion of the Civil War. All the states east of the Mississippi River had been brought by force back under the rule of the federal government, a national taxation system had been established to provide revenues to that government, and the nascent outlines of what Eisenhower described as ‘the military/industrial complex’ had been built by the lucrative contracts handed out to arm, clothe and feed the military.

For many years prior, Americans had been pushing into the western lands occupied by native peoples. Under the banner of Manifest Destiny, the military/economic machine created to fight the Confederacy pushed its way to the Pacific Ocean. In the process, the vast majority of Native Americans were erased from the book of history, a book that is always written by the victors.

The boundaries of this first stage were limited to the 48 continental states, but did not long remain this way. By the time Woodrow Wilson assumed the presidency, the first stage had expanded to include Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Imperial footholds had been established in South America and East Asia. While other global empires were on the wane ˆ the Spanish empire was essentially dissolved with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, while the French and British empires were being attacked and slowly rolled back ˆ this American empire became more muscular with each passing day.

The transition between the first and second stages began on April 2nd, 1917, when newly re-elected President Wilson reversed his campaign theme of staying out of the European conflict and asked congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Previously, Americans had defined themselves in no small part by being separated from the troubles of the ‘Old World.’ When the doughboys shipped out, however, that line of demarcation was crossed.

Despite the eventual victory in Europe, the second stage took many more years to flower and flourish. American armies and navies were essentially dismantled in the aftermath of the ‘War to End All Wars,’ and the 1930s saw the near-collapse of the American economic system. The advent of and eventual victory in World War II not only cemented the second stage, but resurrected and forever changed the fundamental underpinnings of the American economy. From that victory to now, the American economy has been based centrally on preparation for and fighting of wars.

By the end of World War II, the influence of the American empire stretched throughout Europe to the borders of the new foe, the Soviet empire. Strongholds of the second stage could be likewise found in Africa, the Japanese mainland and many Pacific islands and, with the creation of the state of Israel, the strategically-vital Middle East. American corporations that had built the victorious war machine swam in an ocean of profits. The ‘military/industrial complex’ was about to become the dominant force in domestic and global commerce, conflict and social structure.

The central reality of the second stage was the Cold War, a death struggle between two competing empires waged across the width and breadth of the planet. The icy staring contest at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin stood a grim counterpoint to the hot blood spilled in proxy wars fought in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. American and Soviet arms dealers salted the world with millions of conventional weapons to aid these proxy fights.

All the while, larger and more powerful nuclear weaponry was developed by both sides, deployed across the globe, and aimed with deadly intent. On several occasions, most prominently during the Cuban Missile Crisis, these dragons came within inches of slipping the leash. The production of these weapons left uncounted tons of waste behind.

The roots of the third stage were planted deep in this time. At home, the populace became accustomed to existing in a perpetual state of war. The establishment of the Truman Doctrine by men like Paul Nitze created the foundations for an enduring reality: Americans are most easily governed when they are made to fear the strangers ‘over there’ across the horizon.

Contracts for the development and deployment of weaponry became profitable on an epic scale. The military/industrial complex came to own whole swaths of the American political spectrum on both sides of the aisle, and attached itself umbilically to the petroleum industry as a matter of basic expediency. One cannot fight wars without an abundance of oil and gasoline, and after a fashion, the means and the ends became indistinguishable.

The transition from the second stage to the third stage of American empire came slowly. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest the large-scale death empire required. The Vietnam War ended with images of Americans fleeing from rooftops in helicopters. A president was required to resign his office or face removal and imprisonment. A 1950s-era chess move in Iran resulted in the 1979 Islamic revolution and the daily humiliation of America by masked gunmen pointing rifles at blindfolded hostages.

The Soviet empire had invaded Afghanistan. The CIA, long the sharp saber of American foreign policy, was broken by the Church Committee. Gasoline became brutally expensive and the American economy struck yet another reef. The American populace, by and large, fell into what could be called a mass depression, described by the last president of the second stage as ‘malaise.’

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the third stage came into being, but a hockey game will suffice as a marker. On February 2, 1980, the American Olympic hockey team came from nowhere to defeat the unbeatable Soviet squad in Lake Placid. The subsequent eruption of nationalistic fervor, augmented by the American squad’s victory over Finland in the final round to capture the gold medal, led to an outpouring of public emotion that no sporting event had ever created.

It was at Lake Placid that the now-familiar chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” was born. The American people had been well-trained during the second empire to expect being on top, and the years prior to Lake Placid had been hard. Something so simple as a win on that ice was enough to strike sparks again, to ignite the long fuse that has been this third American empire. The American people were mesmerized by the vision of their flag rising next to but just a little higher than the red Soviet banner. It was their first taste of what would become a long and uninterrupted stretch of total global dominance.

The central aspect of this third stage has been the rise of the ‘movement conservative.’ Not to be confused with the breed of conservative that included Nixon and Rockefeller, the movement conservatives held American nationalism and evangelical Christianity as a dual-headed state religion. They spurned concepts of détente and international cooperation. They were and remain radicals in every sense of the word, seeking to deconstruct the American social state that had been in place since the days of FDR.

Ronald Reagan, the first president of this third stage, was the avatar of these movement conservatives, who first began to become an organized entity in American politics during the campaign of Barry Goldwater. Reagan was their perfect man: Confident to a fault, dedicated to the enrichment of the wealthy corporate class while deconstructing Roosevelt’s social safety net by any means necessary.

Reagan established the forked-tongue policy talk adopted by the present administration: Speak about the end of large government, gut entitlement programs wherever they can be found, while simultaneously cutting against the grain of the ’small government’ ideal by vastly increasing the military and intelligence apparatus of government with trillions of dollars of taxpayer monies.

This cash, as it did during the rise of the first and second stages, vastly increased the power and reach of the military/industrial/petroleum combine. The movement conservatives, funded by this combine, pushed for the deregulation by government of business in every aspect of commerce, none more pointedly than within the media. Over the course of this third stage, that combine purchased 99% of the news media, ensuring that an uninterrupted commercial advocating for empire would be broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Competing messages were all but shut out.

When the Berlin Wall finally fell, when the Soviet empire finally imploded, the banner for this third stage was unfurled for all to see. For the first time in history since the apex of Roman rule, one nation and one government and one military ruled supreme over the known world. The movement conservatives, having lost communism as the main target for their energies and ire, turned inward and laid siege to their fellow citizens. The ultimate goal of this was to purge from debate and consideration anyone who did not approve of empire, and anyone who did not fit the Christian Reconstructionist mold they wished to build American society around.

The rise of George W. Bush, leader of the evangelical/political wing of American Christianity since 1996, to the office of the president has been the fulfillment of the dreams of movement conservatives. September 11 cemented their ascendancy. Now, permanent war and rule by fear are accepted without question. Now, the news media owned by the combine opens the public dialogue to these radicals while painting them as moderate, rational Americans. Now, the dominance of the military/industrial/petroleum combine is unquestioned. Now, the idea that America is engaged in a holy war has been widely disseminated.

There are several cracks in the veneer, however, many of which began during the second stage. The conventional weapons disbursed across the planet during the Cold War are now being pointed at us. Many of our former client states such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which served us so well during the Cold War, have now become profoundly debilitating problems that have exposed our vaunted national security system and military forces as less than adequate to the tasks of empire. The dollar is failing slowly but surely, and new power combines between nations like China, Russia and Iran threaten to destabilize American dominance. Oil, the true coin of this realm, is also becoming scarce. The extremism that always comes when one overwhelming force spreads its wings has passed the point of management, and has itself become both organized and well-funded.

It seems all too clear that this third American empire is threatening to collapse under its own ponderous weight. The movement conservatives cannot contain the forces that have been unleashed against them. The American military is proving itself to be incapable of sustaining the unreasonable demands being placed upon it. The ghosts from the second empire loom large, in Europe and Africa and the Middle East and Central Asia. The American economy, sustained for sixty years by petroleum and war, stands at grave risk of being subsumed by both.

Perhaps, someday, a powerful society will rise that understands the lessons of history. Empires fall, always. They consume themselves, slowly at first, but then with ever-increasing speed as military solutions fail to resolve threats and drain the resources of the core. Perhaps, someday.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But…
By Ray McGovern
TomDispatch

March 2nd, 2005

“‘This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.’
(Short pause)
“‘And having said that, all options are on the table.’
“Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: ‘(Laughter).’”
The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin on George Bush’s February 22 press conference.

For a host of good reasons — the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran’s ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters — the notion that the Bush administration would mount a “preemptive” air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran’s government again, as in 1953 — this time under the rubric of “regime change.”
But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men — yes, only men — who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as “the crazies.” I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.

According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier’s adjective to the “crazies” sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was overheard calling them “the f—ing crazies” during a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack — with or without UN approval. Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for him.

If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history…so far.

It Can Get Worse

“The crazies” are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as “crazy like a fox,” with a value system in which “might makes right.” Operating out of that value system, and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker “neoconservative,” they are convinced that they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they put out at the Project for the New American Century over recent years.

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs — with the added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.

But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has just told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until “early in the next decade?” The answer, according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction and there is only a narrow “window of opportunity” to destroy them without causing huge environmental problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year.

Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the Iranians may have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear club much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course, neoconservative doctrine that it is best to nip — the word in current fashion is “preempt” — any conceivable threats in the bud. One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.

What about post-attack “Day Two?” Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented moderates in Iran who, with a little help from the U.S., could seize power in Tehran. I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when “intelligence,” pointing to “moderates” within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious “evidence” on Iranian “moderates,” former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie — and alarming.

George H. W. Bush Saw through “the Crazies”

During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep “the crazies” at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept well below the level of “principal” — that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.

Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, “the crazies” stirred up considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance, became the centerpiece of the draft “Defense Planning Guidance” that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain military strength beyond conceivable challenge — and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with those who might acquire “weapons of mass destruction.” Sound familiar?

Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to the draft leaked it to the New York Times, forcing President George H. W. Bush either to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did — and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of “the crazies.” Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method to their madness — even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always overreach and fall.

The Return of the Neocons

In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of national intelligence.

Those of us who — like Colin Powell — had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu. They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement.

Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous reality that the earth is running out of readily accessible oil - something of which they are all too aware. Not surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction smokescreen they laid down as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war — oil. In any case, the neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now have a carte-blanche “mandate.” And with the president’s new “capital to spend,” they appear determined to spend it, sooner rather than later.

Next Stop, Iran

When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally) on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing of George W. Bush’s decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the father; you mean Afghanistan… that’s where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son said, “No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that’s what they mean.”

Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran; and that appears to be what they mean.

Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric and a preponderance of other “dots,” though, and everything points in the direction of an air attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the New Yorker reports of Seymour Hersh to Washington Post articles, accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February 18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before the Iraq War on that country’s lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president has already “signed off” on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program and eventually bring about “regime change.” This does not necessarily mean an automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may signal the president’s seriousness about this option.

So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past four years, and the troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we do well to inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the “Iranian option.”

Why Would Iran Want Nukes?

So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, “Well, you know, Israel has…” At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.

Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word “Israel” hanging there, Lugar began again: “Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability.”

Is alleged to have…? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn’t know that Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)

Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar’s disingenuousness. Small wonder our highest officials and lawmakers — and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them — are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is standard operating procedure when the word “Israel” is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts. And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.

If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran’s apprehension is partly fear that Israel (with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and vice president can be read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran “in light of its nuclear activity.”

US-Israel Nexus

The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology. Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s, Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel’s nuclear capability is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North Korea’s success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring the “sole remaining superpower in the world.”) And Iran already has missiles with the range to hit Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington’s support for an early “pre-emptive” strike on Iran. Indeed, American defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within six months — years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate mentioned above.

In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as “guesses” — especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons - Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney — actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel and those of the US — at least as they imagine them.

As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly, has the president “wrapped around his little finger.” (As Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also saying that the president has been “mesmerized” by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.

When “Regime Change” Meant Overthrow for Oil

To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to 1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Premier Mohammad Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their own.

Iranians also remember Washington’s strong support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after it decided to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam’s use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq. Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well, once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Is the Nub

The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches to the nub of the problem. As a start, I’ll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would answer “yes” to the question, “Does Israel have nuclear weapons?” That is key, it seems to me, because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.

On the other hand, I’ll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, “Of course Israel has nuclear weapons; that’s why we Iranians need them” — which was, of course, the unmentionable calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. “And we also need them,” many Iranians would probably say, “in order to deter ‘the crazies’ in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans, who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush’s ‘axis of evil.’”

The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance. A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?

A Nuclear-Free Middle East

How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral clarity — the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, “Of course such a pact would include Israel, right?” The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers. Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable charges of anti-Semitism.

The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived threats to the fledgling state’s existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians, for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal, they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders. That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.

That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial about Israel’s nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly, attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do to alleviate their concerns.

Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village drunk preaching sobriety — the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another’s.

Lessons from the Past…Like Mutual Deterrence

Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons? The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons — bearing in mind that the Bush administration’s policies of “preemption” and “regime change” themselves create powerful incentives for exactly such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic threat to Americans — or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability, there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.

It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis’ sense of insecurity — however exaggerated it may seem to those of us thousands of miles away — is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective “deterrence insurance” it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area. Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through — unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that “preemption” is an acceptable course for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take that line. Rather…

“Israel Is Our Ally.”

Or so said our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn’t think we had a treaty of alliance with Israel; I don’t remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?

Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing support for Israel’s defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our policymakers — from the president on down — seem to speak and behave on the assumption that we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, has put it this way: “The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies.”

An earlier American warned:

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification…. It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.” (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

In my view, our first president’s words apply only too aptly to this administration’s lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our domesticated media.

—————————————-

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years — from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President’s Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president’s most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)