{"id":222262,"date":"2022-10-24T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=222262"},"modified":"2022-10-18T05:03:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T04:03:00","slug":"two-new-books-explore-pernicious-impact-of-u-s-intelligence-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/two-new-books-explore-pernicious-impact-of-u-s-intelligence-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"Two New Books Explore Pernicious Impact of U.S. Intelligence Agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Show how ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence have inoculated public from human suffering meted out in their name.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

[Source: newyorker.com]<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Oct 2022 – <\/em>Credibility is low these days for the U.S. government, politicians and the mainstream media. Sorting through news reports for reliable fact and analysis would make George Orwell weep. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN Sustainable Development Center, decries the fact that \u201cthe world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe\u201d due to \u201cthe failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts.\u201d (\u201cForthright\u201d means honest.)<\/p>\n

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, co-authors of The Untold History of the United States,<\/em> praise Aaron Good\u2019s American Exception: Empire and the Deep State <\/em>(New York: Skyhorse, 2022) as \u201csomething we might call untold social science,\u201d digging deep into \u201cthe pernicious impact of intelligence and security forces and their role in undermining [U.S.] integrity as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Hardcover
[Source: thriftbooks.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

American exception<\/em> and exceptionalism<\/em> are different things\u2014interrelated but distinct. For the first, we can recall the concept of a \u201cstate of exception,\u201d when a government leader suspends normal laws and governs by decree. Exceptionalism, <\/em>on the other hand, is the \u201cnormal\u201d justification for all manner of power mongering and conquest, from the \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d to relieve the Indigenous people of North America of their land and lives, to the \u201cright\u201d to wage U.S. military occupation and constant wars across the globe to protect \u201cdemocracy and human rights,\u201d always for the good of all, no matter how bad it may seem. A working definition of \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d is that European settlers were \u201csent from heaven\u201d to \u201ccivilize\u201d inferior people, and if they resist, heaven\u2019s hosts are justified to subdue them.<\/p>\n

Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong focus on \u201cthe American nation\u2019s roots in slavery, genocide, and corporate theft.\u201d They show how the dominant narratives of American exceptionalism and innocence cause many Americans \u201cto forget, distort, or excuse the crimes of the nation.\u201d They ask: \u201cWhy does the U.S. military have free reign to dictate how other nations conduct themselves, while other countries aren\u2019t allowed to critique the U.S. for the very same actions? And if the U.S. really cared about protecting our \u2018freedom,\u2019 why is nothing done to alleviate the declining living standards of ordinary Americans?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"American
[Source: simonandschuster.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence, the authors say, \u201chave inoculated the U.S. population from making the connection between the death imposed by modern day U.S. capitalism at home and the misery the U.S. military reigns on nations abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors highlight how this plays out for the working class soldiers who are pushed by the poverty draft to join the military. They are \u201cconstantly thanked for their \u2018service\u2019 while the victims of war are stripped of their humanity\u2026Wars are effectively sanitized as heroic operations that defend the \u2018freedom\u2019 and \u2018democracy\u2019 of all. Soldiers\u2026are celebrated for supposedly protecting the interests of Americans from the inferior nations and peoples seeking to harm them.\u201d The authors explain that \u201cinferiority has been a mark placed on communists, nationalists, and most recently \u2018terrorists\u2019 to justify the plunder, power and profit\u201d derived from U.S. military expansionism. \u201cU.S. troops represent \u2018whiteness\u2019 in the form of heroism as opposed to the \u2018threat\u2019 posed by darker nations and peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast to the corporate-sponsored \u201cConcert for Valor\u201d on Veterans Day in 2014, Sirvent and Haiphong cite former Army Ranger Rory Fanning\u2019s pointed questions: \u201cIs anyone going to dedicate a song to Chelsea Manning, or John Kiriakou, or Edward Snowden\u2014two of them languishing in prison and one in exile\u2014for their service to the American people? Will the Concert for Valor raise anyone\u2019s awareness when it comes to the fact that\u2026veterans lack proper medical attention, particularly for mental health issues, or that there is a veteran suicide every 80 minutes in this country?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"The
Rory Fanning [Source: jacobin.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Fanning cites \u201cthe approximately 50,000 war resisters who have joined the military since 2001.\u201d In most cases they entered the military with their eyes wide open, ready to \u201cserve their country, defend democracy and human rights,\u201d and kill the enemy. They came out disillusioned and angry. Fanning thinks \u201cthe potential for veterans who come back to become positive influences in the fight against exploitation and oppression is really high.\u201d Meanwhile the U.S. government prosecutes whistle blowers and hopes to put Julian Assange on trial for \u201cespionage\u201d for having publicized the truth about the war machine.<\/p>\n

Examining Origins<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Aaron Good digs deep to find the roots of the problem. He highlights the \u201cGuardian elite\u201d (a term introduced by Lance DeHaven-Smith)\u2014\u201chigh-ranking officials who are privy to state secrets, who decide what the public may and may not know, and who plan and authorize covert operations, foreign and domestic surveillance, and other espionage and intelligence activities.\u201d This elite \u201cpolices\u2014largely in secret\u2014the political class and the mass public. They serve to allow the state to overcome three potential impediments to the exigencies of empire, namely: America\u2019s moral code, global meta-norms, and the rule of law\u2026Exceptionism<\/em>\u2014the institutionalized suspension of legal restraints\u2014protects them from facing legal consequences stemming from their illicit clandestine activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. [Source: 2day.sweetsearch.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Good traces back the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the modern state\u2019s monopoly on violence to the protection rackets, but on a global scale, as in \u201cthe trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Opium Wars, and overt imperialism like colonialism.\u201d Good says \u201cit is noteworthy that Henry Cabot Lodge, the man perhaps most responsible for steering the U.S. into the Spanish-American war, was descended from Boston Brahmins who had made vast fortunes in the opium trade.\u201d He was a loud proponent of the U.S. \u201copen door\u201d policy, designed for the emerging U.S. Empire to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with imperial Britain, Germany and France in dominating China for a century following the opium wars of the mid-1800s. Lodge opposed U.S. entry into the League of Nations, but his son, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., was U.S. ambassador to the UN from 1953 to 1960, and to South Vietnam from 1963 to 1967.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Henry
Henry Cabot Lodge [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Lodge Junior worked closely with CIA operatives in planning the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. puppet leader of South Vietnam, who was assassinated on November 2, 1963. Three weeks later John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.<\/p>\n

There had been a tug-of-war over the Vietnamese coup plot, between Lodge and JFK\u2019s top military advisers, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor. All this followed Kennedy\u2019s famous \u201cStrategy of Peace\u201d speech at American University on June 10, 1963, which caused alarm on the right and among hawks in the military and CIA. After Kennedy was gone, Good notes that \u201cthe CIA under President Johnson would reverse several Kennedy era policies in several Third World countries, most notably Brazil, Congo and Indonesia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Brazil
LBJ\u2014the CIA\u2019s Man. [Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CIA-Backed Coups and Slaughters on Three Continents<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In Brazil a U.S.-backed military coup overthrew the progressive government of President\u00a0Jo\u00e3o Goulart<\/a>,\u00a0installing a\u00a0military regime<\/a>\u00a0aligned to U.S. interests, which lasted 21 years, until 1985.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the CIA was very busy across South America, helping to overthrow Salvador Allende\u2019s Popular Unity government in Chile in 1973, fostering the \u201cdirty war\u201d against Argentina\u2019s left in the mid-1970s, as part of Operation Condor which the CIA described as \u201ca cooperative effort by the intelligence\/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Operation
Terror in Chile after CIA-backed fascist coup. [Source: newslick.in<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The operation included Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. The results were 50,000+ killed; 30,000 \u201cdisappeared,\u201d and 400,000 arrested and imprisoned.<\/p>\n

\"Operation
[Source: newsclick.in<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Indonesia, the story is summarized in The Jakarta Method<\/em> by Vincent Bevins. <\/em>In 1965, the U.S. CIA helped the Indonesian military kill more than a million innocent civilians. This largely unpublicized slaughter inspired copycat terror programs in other countries. It was widely overlooked, but served as a model for the CIA\u2019s secret interventions elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members rounded up in CIA-backed terror. [Source: jacobin.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Congo\u2014Africa\u2019s second largest country geographically, with a population of more than 100 million\u2014the CIA was involved in the 1961 assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and helped foster a four-year civil war killing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.<\/p>\n

Lumumba\u2019s followers founded a state, the People\u2019s Republic of the Congo, with its capital in the northeastern city of Stanleyville, supported by the Soviet Union and China, as well as Tanzania and Cuba. Che Guevara led a group of 100 Cuban advisers there.<\/p>\n

The CIA supported the government of Prime Minister Joseph Mobutu, who seized power and set up his own state of exception in 1965, with U.S. backing. In 1971, Mobutu renamed the state Zaire<\/a>.\u00a0He was deposed in 1997, in an insurrection led by the Lumumbist<\/em> forces of Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila, who became president of the restored Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n

Since then the Congo has been a scene of ongoing struggle between left and right both internally and internationally. Two rebel movements, along with Rwandan and Ugandan troops, attacked the DRC army in 1998. Angolan, Zimbabwean, and Namibian militaries helped the Lumumbist<\/em> side, which had supported their liberation efforts in the 1970s and 1980s. The Lumumbists<\/em> won, but conflict continues to the present day.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"
The CIA was behind it all. [Source: twitter.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, across the rest of Africa and Latin America, there were assassinations, attempts, and tragic deaths of liberation leaders. Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau was assassinated in Conakry, Guinea, in January 1973 at the age of 48 by political rivals. Samora Machel of Mozambique died in a mysterious airplane crash in 1986 near the South African border. Both Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana, and Agostinho Neto, founder of the MPLA and president of Angola, died relatively young of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Samora
Samora Machel [Source: medium.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Kwame
Kwame Nkrumah [Source: bbc.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Agostinho
Agostinho Neto [Source: blackpast.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

Fidel Castro has the distinction of surviving no less then 637 CIA assassination attempts. Venezuelan leader Hugo Ch\u00e1vez was not so fortunate. Ch\u00e1vez himself speculated that he had been poisoned<\/a>. His successor, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, called it an assassination<\/a>. Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai was nearly assassinated<\/a> when he was en route to the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations in 1955.<\/p>\n

\"Hugo
Fidel Castro and Hugo Ch\u00e1vez in Caracas in 2000. [Source: slate.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"zhou
Zhou Enlai [Source: alphahistory.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A \u201cTripartite State\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Good traces the origins of the modern \u201cdeep state\u201d to the Wall Street-dominated Council on Foreign Relations, which conducted the State Department\u2019s War and Peace Studies Project<\/em> prior to U.S. entry into World War II. The study was largely financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, which Good says \u201crepresented an enormous accumulation of wealth acquired via Standard Oil\u2019s longtime monopoly control of the U.S. petroleum industry.\u201d He cites a number of \u201cfateful instances in which top-down power was brought to bear in the making of history during this period\u201d\u2014the War and Peace Studies Project <\/em>itself; \u201cPauley\u2019s coup,\u201d by which Henry Wallace, FDR\u2019s choice for vice president was defeated by illegal maneuvers at the 1944 Democratic Convention; the dropping of the atomic bombs; and the National Security Act of 1947.<\/p>\n

\"A
Chicago mayor\u00a0Edward J. Kelly<\/a>\u00a0holds up Truman\u2019s arm in a celebratory gesture after Pauley\u2019s coup at the 1944 Democratic Party Convention. [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wallace had rebutted CFR member and media tycoon Henry Luce\u2019s bombastic \u201cAmerican Century\u201d vision by calling for a \u201cCentury of the Common Man\u201d\u2014a vision \u201ccalling for a worldwide \u2018people\u2019s revolution,\u2019 toward which end the U.S. and USSR would work together, championing the cause of labor unions, women, African Americans, and the victims of European colonialism,\u201d as cited in The Untold History of the United States<\/em> by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.<\/p>\n

\"Undoing
Henry Wallace and FDR. [Source: therealnews.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wallace had effectively won the vice-presidential nomination at the 1944 convention, but the Democratic Party\u2019s Treasurer, Edwin Pauley, a California oil millionaire, hatched a conspiracy which he called \u201cPauley\u2019s Coup,\u201d together with major party bosses to choose Truman instead. (Kuznick tells the story in a 2013 Real News Network interview<\/a>, \u201cUntold History: The Coup Against Wallace and What Might Have Been.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n
\"Edwin
Edwin Pauley [Source: findagrave.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

What followed was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the launch of the Cold War anti-communist crusade with the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council and the CIA.<\/p>\n

Good says \u201cthe CIA was willed into being through the efforts and influence of the upper strata of corporate America\u2026Notably, it was a Wall Street lawyer who penned the \u2018elastic clause\u2019 in the National Security Act. Shortly thereafter, the passage came to be interpreted as giving the CIA authority to carry out all manner of illegal covert operations\u2014or \u2018other duties\u2019 in the Act\u2019s oblique language.\u201d The lawyers in question were the Dulles brothers: Allen Dulles, who became CIA director, and John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Eisenhower.<\/p>\n

\"Interview:
The infamous Dulles brothers. [Source: npr.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cVery early on, CIA elements began establishing illicit self-funding operations\u2026Specifically, the CIA\u2019s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) collaborated with opium-trafficking Kuomintang (KMT) officers in Burma and Thailand, ostensibly so the proceeds could fund the KMT\u2019s\u2026effort to retake mainland China.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legendary \u201cFlying Tigers\u201d Civil Air Transport line became the CIA\u2019s principal drug-running operation, changing its name to Air America in 1959. Air America\u2019s slogan was \u201cAnything, Anywhere, Anytime, Professionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its aircraft flew many types of cargo to countries such as Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, from bases in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Burma and China itself. Historian\u00a0Alfred W. McCoy<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0book,\u00a0The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia<\/em><\/a>, stated that the CIA\u00a0was knowingly involved in the trade of heroin in the\u00a0Golden Triangle<\/a>\u2014a term coined by the CIA.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Fear
Flying Tiger planes. [Source: fearoflanding.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
[Source: amazon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

While colluding with the KMT in the drug trade, the CIA also worked diligently to foster separatism and break up China\u2014in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan\u2014setting up long-term operations<\/a> with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and numerous non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n

Former CIA Director and Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted in 2019 that \u201cWe lied, we cheated, we stole\u2026It\u2019s part of the glory of the American experiment.\u201d USAID Director Samantha Power has chimed in to say U.S. policymakers \u201chave been consistently reluctant to condemn mass atrocities as genocide or to take responsibility for leading an international military intervention.\u201d Pompeo and Power have led the evidence-free campaign against Chinese human rights violations in China. They do not mention U.S. violations of human rights.<\/p>\n

Mainstream Media and the Deep State<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
\"Katharine
Katharine Graham [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Good emphasizes that \u201cthe mainstream media must be considered part of the deep state.\u201d He tells the story of Katharine Graham, former publisher of The<\/em> Washington Post,<\/em> who in 1988 spoke at CIA headquarters, \u201casserting that \u2018We live in a dirty and dangerous world,\u2019 and that there were \u2018some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn\u2019t.\u2019 She also stated that \u2018official secrecy is necessary to preserve liberty.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> was \u201cone of the chief newspapers that attacked the work of Gary Webb,\u201d of the San Jose Mercury News,<\/em> in the 1990s. \u201cWebb\u2019s articles revealed the CIA protection of Contra-cocaine traffickers whose profligate operations fueled the Los Angeles crack epidemic that began in the 1980s.\u201d Good says \u201cThough a CIA Inspector General report would later confirm and expand upon Webb\u2019s central allegations, his career and life were essentially ruined by the counterattack of the CIA and its media allies.\u201d Though he suffered two gunshot wounds to the head, Webb\u2019s death was described as suicide.<\/p>\n

\"Kill
Gary Webb [Source: youtube.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The deaths of countless ordinary soldiers, veterans and street people from heroin and cocaine overdoses may not all <\/em>be directly traceable to CIA operations, but some definitely can. And the whole episode provides an ironic backdrop to the so-called \u201cwar on drugs\u201d waged across Latin America and the streets of the U.S., and the resulting mass incarceration of thousands of small-time dealers, and whole populations south of the border.<\/p>\n

Good says \u201cthe security state <\/em>that emerged after World War II was informed by logics of secrecy, hierarchy, and authoritarianism\u2026\u201d He says the notion of \u201ca supranational deep state component of a tripartite state\u201d helps explain \u201cthe decisive power wielded by elites whose interests dominate the security state, the public state, and the economy\u2014and thus society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good clarifies that \u201cthe institutions that comprise the deep state are not uniformly obscured. Some are formally organized and transparent,\u201d like the Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cOther entities like the Safari Club or the Bilderberg group\u2026 are largely opaque.\u201d He provides details of the Safari Club\u2014a group of satellite intelligence agencies in governments allied with the U.S., such as those of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Shah\u2019s Iran, and Morocco. \u201cThe most common account of the Safari Club maintains that it was created\u2026in response to the post-Watergate scrutiny of intelligence operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
CIA agent Theodore Shackley, at left, was a key member of the Safari Club. [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Others argue it began earlier, \u201cin the mid-1970s as a search for new proxies following the debacle that was U.S.-South African intervention into the Angolan civil war.\u201d (It is an adventure in itself to follow Good\u2019s footnotes. He cites Joseph Trento\u2019s Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America\u2019s Private Intelligence Network,<\/em> and John Prados\u2019s and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi\u2019s \u201cThe Rockefeller Commission, the White House and CIA Assassination Plots<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good writes that \u201cU.S. Exceptionism<\/em> is also key to understanding Watergate, since the crimes of the Nixon administration were decidedly minor relative to the various scandals and state crimes that have been documented and\/or suspected.<\/p>\n

Good tells a fascinating story of a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate<\/em> between Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms, in which Helms refused the president\u2019s request for information about the 1962 Bay of Pigs debacle and the 1963 assassination of JFK. According to the story, Nixon \u201cfires\u201d Helms and then appoints him ambassador to Iran, which led to the mobilization of the Safari Club as a CIA proxy, and ultimately to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, according to Good, the CIA deployed the Watergate Plumbers in the \u201cdamningly well-documented burgling of Dan Ellsberg\u2019s psychiatrist,\u201d and \u201cthe disastrous second Watergate break-in.\u201d Good says that, \u201cas with Kennedy, Nixon was undone by his failure to either counter or accommodate powerful factions of the American deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Richard
U.S. President Richard Nixon shakes hands with CIA Director Richard Helms on March 7, 1969. [Source: politico.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The horror stories in American Exception<\/em> go on and on. It recalls the CIA role in toppling the governments of Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954; its intervention in Italian and French elections following World War II to prevent leftist victories; and the use of about $175 million to establish and fund Japan\u2019s Liberal Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

\"Supporters
Formation of LDP in 1955. [Source: nytimes.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The LDP has \u201cdominated Japanese politics for decades, making Japan into a de facto one-party state, firmly pro-U.S. and anti-neutrality.\u201d It also tells of post-World War II use of Marshall Plan funds to \u201csupport Nightingale, a Nazi-created guerrilla army in Ukraine which during the war had carried out thousands of murders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ukraine\u2019s Nightingale Battalion, 1941. [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good adds that, \u201cin Europe, NATO\u2019s Operation Gladio created \u2018stay behind\u2019 armies to resist Soviet occupation\u2026Gladio assets were used to carry out false flag terror as part of a \u2018strategy of tension\u2019 designed to move countries politically to the right.\u201d That strategy of tension can be seen in Ukraine today.<\/p>\n

In Syria, Good writes, \u201cthe U.S. and its allies have been similarly deceptive and lawless. Jeffrey Sachs summarizes: \u2018While the Syrian War is often described as a civil war, it was in fact a war of regime change led by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia under a U.S. presidential directive called Timber Sycamore.\u2019 This U.S.-orchestrated operation has killed around 500,000 people and displaced more than 10 million Syrians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good details the role of the so-called \u201cWhite Helmets\u201d\u2014a supposedly \u201chumanitarian\u201d operation that is really \u201ca devious deep state propaganda operation to legitimate the illegal overthrow of the Syrian government by al-Qaeda-dominated proxy forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"How
White Helmets in Syria\u2014the illusion of humanitarian intervention. [Source: theguardian.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The millions of displaced Syrians, along with similar numbers from U.S. military fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, have created a massive humanitarian crisis in Western Europe, now multiplied exponentially by refugees from Ukraine. It raises the question of how long the U.S. can continue to brand itself as the world\u2019s defender of \u201cdemocracy and human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking for solutions\u2014and comfort\u2014in the face of these grim realities, we can return to Sirvent and Haiphong\u2019s book, which is intended, they say, \u201cto be a tool to help rebuild the U.S. antiwar movement currently on life support. Heroic efforts of groups such as the Black Alliance for Peace and Veterans for Peace have kept the spirit of anti-imperialism alive in a period where it seems like American exceptionalism has won the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sirvent and Haiphong highlight \u201cthe connection between U.S. militarism and movements against racism such as Black Lives Matter.\u201d They add that \u201csocial movements cannot be relegated to a single issue if they are to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

So they call for linking demands against militarism to \u201cthe demand to scale back the mass incarceration dragnet in the U.S.\u201d; that environmental justice advocates should emphasize that \u201cone of the biggest polluters in the world is the U.S. military\u201d; that \u201cfights for $15 an hour and a union\u201d should \u201ctarget the U.S. military for its role in forcing other countries to enact free-market policies that emphasize low wages\u201d; and that \u201cthe movement to preserve public education oppose the targeting of poverty stricken schools for military recruitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, they say \u201cour struggles for collective liberation must always reject the \u2018fake news\u2019 of a benevolent, freedom-loving United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dee Knight is a member of the DSA International Committee\u2019s Anti-War Subcommittee. He is the author of <\/em>My Whirlwind Lives: Navigating Decades of Storms, soon to be published by Guernica World Editions. Email: deeknight816@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – covertactionmagazine.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Oct 2022 – Credibility is low these days for the U.S. government, politicians and the mainstream media. Sorting through news reports for reliable fact and analysis would make George Orwell weep. How ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence have inoculated public from human suffering meted out in their name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":222264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[867,2670,1126,1050,870,70,1594],"class_list":["post-222262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-anglo-america","tag-exceptionalism","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-reviews","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}