The longer one lives the more one appreciates the
old
Greek's statement that "there is nothing new under the sun."
During the confirmation hearings of Senator
Ashcroft for Attorney General the Salt Lake Tribune carried an
article
about the Senator with the headline: "Democrats Zero In on Ashcroft
Speech
Referring to Jesus as King of the U.S."
This is a typical example which
demonstrates how
public opinion is manipulated, because a fair number of readers just
glance at
headlines and then go on to the sports pages unless they have already
read
those first. Politics is not their bag and that is why they don't
bother to
vote. The article, authored by Libby Quaid, and carried by the
Associated
Press, deals with Ashcroft's "six paragraph address" before the
students and faculty of Bob Jones University which is a Fundamentalist
Christian
institution. The article quoted Ashcroft as saying "Unique among the
nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly
and
eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood
that our
source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but
Jesus."
The article did admit that Ashcroft had said earlier that the "American
colonists routinely told emissaries from the king of England, 'We have
no king
but Jesus' when they were asked to pay taxes." The fact that the
audience
was profoundly Christian does put the comment into a different context
which
tends to be missed when one only reads the headline.
For Christians Jesus is indeed their king
and
this got Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna in October of
1938 into
deep trouble when he had the audacity to tell this to Catholic
university
students who had gathered for the annual mass at the beginning of the
school
year. From the pulpit of St. Stephen's cathedral he told his audience:”
we will
especially at this time [5 months after the Nazis had taken over
Austria]
assert strongly and resolutely our faith; to testify for Jesus
our
Fuehrer and master, our king and his
church."
Predictably the Nazis did not take kindly to this affront because there
was
only one Fuehrer of Greater Germany and his name was Adolf Hitler. What
the
Nazis did, thereafter, can be found in War and Mayhem.
Have some of our Democrats now stepped
into the
shoes of the Nazis? Are they also determined to stamp out this
"mischievous superstition" as Tacitus had called Christianity?
March 2001
Whither
Zionism?
Whither Zionism? is now at the publisher and ought to be available within a month or so. It
presents the historical basis of the current Middle East conflict from the Greco-Roman era until
today. But don't worry, it is written in simple language that even our politicians and "public
opinion makers" can understand. Furthermore the information is condensed into only a little over one
hundred pages.
This was done on purpose so that the people in charge of our lives have no excuse of being too
busy for reading the material. The Arab-Israeli conflict is nothing else but a replay of ancient
history with America having assumed the role formerly played by Rome. Since our tax dollars are used for arms and ammunitions in that part of the world, and since the oil spigot can be turned off at a moment's notice,
the history of that region is not an idle academic exercise but vitally important to all of us. One of
my goals in life has always been to deprive myself of excuses and now is the time to do this to our
policy makers. Ignorance is not bliss, it leads to disasters.
April 2001
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Whither Zionism? is now available
through www.trafford.com/robots/01-0067.html.
The site also provides the Introduction and the Conclusion of the book.
Additional excerpts are available here. In view of the deteriorating
situation
in the Middle East the book is exceedingly topical and not only
provides the
reasons for the conflict but also makes some concrete suggestions. If
these
were followed further escalation of the fighting could be prevented and
some
degree of stability might be achieved.
Since neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will be able to
disengage
themselves from the current level of violence the suggestion is made
that the
United States agree that a fact-finding commission, appointed by the
United
Nations, be dispatched to the Middle East. This commission ought to
consist of
members from countries who are truly neutral in the conflict. A White
Paper
should then be published which presents the world with the facts as
they
currently exist but without casting blame. The commission's
recommendations
should then be publicly discussed and a reasonable compromise between
the
wishes of the opposing parties may become possible.
The Israeli government may oppose such a commission as outside
interference
into what are regarded as internal concerns. Nevertheless the precedent
for
such "interference" has been set in the recent "non-war"
with Yugoslavia. Kosovo was and is part of the national territory of
Yugoslavia
but NATO under U.S. leadership felt obligated to bomb the country in
defense of
human rights. The "West Bank" is not part of Israel proper but
represents occupied territory. The American people do not have full
information
on what transpires in the area because Israeli military censorship
prevents it.
Complete disclosure is, therefore, essential so that a solution which
provides
justice for both sides can be arrived at.
The American Jewish community will have a vital role to play now. If
the
leaders of major Jewish organizations support a commission as suggested
above
and bring their influence to bear on the Knesset towards a just and
peaceful
resolution of this tragedy, they will have provided great benefits to
America,
Israel, and the world at large. They will have shown that Jews really
mean it
when they say that the task of Judaism is to be "a blessing to the
world!" If the American Jewish community simply abstains from making
comments this will be taken as tacit support for current policies by
the powers
in Jerusalem, and the slaughter will continue. If the American Jewish
community
were to openly oppose the suggested commission and force the United
States to
veto a resolution in the Security Council for sending an unarmed
fact-finding,
rather than peace- keeping, commission to the area they would lend
active
assistance to chauvinistic circles in the Israeli government. Under
those
circumstances a major war in the area with disastrous economic
world-wide
consequences may well be impossible to avert.
Official American Jewish circles are very concerned about a
re-emergence of
anti-Semitism in this country and are actively soliciting funds to
combat it.
Money cannot solve the problem; only honesty and good will can do so!
This
means, however, that first of all one has to listen to the other side
and
reason has to take precedence over passion. If Jewish passions
(understandable
as they might be) were allowed to overrule reason, anti-Semitism would
erupt in
full bloom.
May 2001
Today's Vienna
This was a rather busy month taken up by attempts
to promote
Whither Zionism?, a trip to Vienna with
a side-tour to Munich, and the dispatch of a manuscript entitled Satan
toFirst Things.
The results of the efforts in regard to Whither Zionism? will
be
discussed in the June segment and the trip to Vienna had a dual
purpose. The
timing had been dictated by testimony in a court case but there was
also the
intent to use the occasion to get some publicity for War and Mayhem
in
my native city. The side-trip to Munich was made in order to meet a
colleague
and his wife for scientific purposes and subsequently another physician
couple
who had expressed interest in translating War and Mayhem into
the
German language.
Apart from this official program I had also looked forward to the trip
in order
to visit with old friends, enjoy the Viennese cuisine and one of the
highlights
was supposed to have been a visit to the Burgtheater.
Anyone
who has read War and Mayhem will recall my fondness for this
institution of classic theater performances. It is Vienna's answer to
the Comédie
Francaise in Paris. The building has been restored from the war
ravages to
its former glory and Weh dem der luegt by Grillparzer
(Austria's most
famous poet and dramatist) was on the program.
Grillparzer has always intrigued me, not only out of
local
patriotism but also on account of some of the verses which stayed in
memory.
For instance in Der Traum ein Leben (The Dream a Life)
Rustan, a
simple boy, dreamt that he was king; but in achieving this exalted
station and
in the execution of his office he had to commit several outrages. Upon
awakening
in the morning Rustan was exceedingly grateful for his lowly stature in
life
and prayed on his knees: Eines nur ist Glueck hienieden. Eins: des
Innern
stiller Frieden und die schuldbefreite Brust! Und die Groesze ist
gefaehrlich.
Und der Ruhm ein leeres Spiel; Was er gibt sind nicht'ge Schatten, Was
er nimmt
es ist so viel! (The only happiness here below is inner peace and
the
heart which is freed of guilt. Greatness is dangerous, glory a
pointless game,
what it gives are merely shadows, what it takes away is oh so much). In
1849
Grillparzer expressed his feelings about the previous year's revolution
in the
guise of Emperor Rudolf's II words during the 30 years war. In the
drama the
dregs of society had risen up and demanded equality, to which Rudolf
answered: bis
alles gleich, weil alles niedrig (till everything is equal because
everything is base)! Our current society is also doing its best to
erase
distinctions of any kind bis alles gleich, weil alles niedrig!
The timelessness of classic literature was also driven home to me
during the
Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I had a vague feeling of having been aware of
a
similar situation but didn't realize the close parallel until I re-read
Grillparzer's Die Juedin von Toledo (the Jewess of Toledo).
It's all
there except that our friend Bill did not require much seduction and
the ending
was different. Rahel-Monica gets killed by infuriated friends of the
Queen,
rather than ending up with book contracts, and the King goes off to
fight the
Moors, instead of traveling around the world making money by giving
speeches to
one and all. Those were some of my associations with the Burgtheater
and the
reason why I looked forward to the evening.
Unfortunately past memories where the classic plays were performed in
appropriate
period decor and where, even during war time, people were dressed in
their
Sunday best when they went to the theater, had to remain locked in the
brain
and could not be revitalized by what was going on in the audience and
on the
stage. I had never seen nor read Weh dem der luegt (Woe to him
who
lies) previously, and as author of "thinkruth.com" was ready for an
interesting morality play. Unfortunately post-modern deconstructionism
has also
hit Europe and what was offered on the stage was a disaster. All one
could say
was: poor Grillparzer; he really didn't deserve that.
The stage setting ranged from primitive to absent e.g. the entire first
and
fifth act had only the huge empty stage with the three walls adorned by
flowery
wallpaper. I found out subsequently that the scene was to have taken
place in a
garden. Apparently the wallpaper was supposed to lead one to that
conclusion!
In the other acts the setting was equally primitive and gave no hint to
the
uninitiated as to what the author's intent had been. As far as the rest
of the
performance was concerned, there was open display of nudity, the
purpose of
which eluded one and rock noises emanated intermittently from
loudspeakers
which drowned out what the poor actors were trying to say. In the final
act
where the play calls for Christian forgiveness of the enemy and secure
passage
for those who had surrendered we were treated to an attempted rape and
a
gruesome killing where the perpetrator seems to tear open the
adversary's
innards and then smears himself with the blood of the victim. All this
on the
stage of a theater which prides itself as the epitome of German
language
culture. At the end I had no idea what the play was really intended to
be all
about. I vowed then and there that I would no longer visit the
Burgtheater
unless they present classic material in timeless form.
In addition, not only were the actors dressed shabbily so was the
audience.
Sweaters, T- shirts and Levis were in and the dark suit I wore was out.
Grillparzer was right: bis alles gleich weil alles niedrig!
Unless you
can play to, and for, the lowest instincts and you profane whatever has
been
held holy you no longer belong to the world of art and culture. You are
simply
"not with it."
I thought that this particular performance may have been a temporary
aberration
and an isolated event but as my friends and colleagues assured me this
is in
fact what is regarded as art even in Vienna, which used to be a beacon
of
culture. The Opera has also been infected by this
"modernity," as I was told. In Beethoven's Fidelio
the helpers of the evil Pizarro wore SS uniforms! Why were they not
presented
as GPU commissars or even more modern as Castro's henchmen? Is evil
from now on
limited to Nazis? These are cheap propaganda tricks which detract from
the
performances rather than enhance them. I had, and still have, no use
for the
Nazis but the current so called art scene does smack of "entartete
Kunst" (degenerate art).
Even in Austria the intellectual elite is thoroughly leftist, sees
itself as
the vanguard of the future and from all the newspapers there is only
the Kronenzeitung
which gives vent to the real feelings of the common people and,
therefore, has
the largest circulation. This is also the explanation of the Haider
phenomenon. It has nothing to do with Nazism and everything with a
revulsion
against the incessant Marxist "avant-garde" drumbeat.
Society has to be reformed in their image. The common folks don't like
it, but
they are intimidated similar to Nazi times, and the children are
indoctrinated.
The color has changed from brown to red and there are no concentration
camps
but genuine free speech and open investigations of the Nazi era,
specifically
of the Holocaust, are not permitted. There are laws against it and one
can be
jailed The book is closed and must remain so.
Having come from the U.S., a still relatively open society (the reason
for the
qualification will become apparent in the June update), I expected that
opinions on history which do not engage in the good vs. evil polemic
could be
openly presented in democratic Austria. Free speech
is, or at
least should be, the hallmark of a democracy. That this is not so I
found out
when I thought it might be a good idea to organize a public discussion
of War
and Mayhem as part of a book promotion. I was, however, advised by
well
meaning friends against it because anything that presents both sides of
the
coin and which might possibly be construed as not rendering sufficient
emphasis
on specifically Jewish suffering during WWII would risk an outcry by
Jewish
organizations.
As a result of the coalition government between the People's Party and
the
Freedom Party with the exclusion of the Socialists, Austria
is
currently on probation and foreign observers watch
every move.
A few weeks prior to my arrival there was a mini uproar in the country
over a
demand by the Chief Rabbi of the Kultusgemeinde for Austria
to admit
10.000 Jews in order to revitalize Jewish life in Vienna. In addition
he wanted
Austria to assume the debts of the Kultusgemeinde which
apparently are
considerable. Schuessel - the chancellor- said in so
many
words he would take about 500 people but the country could not be held
responsible for debts which it did not incur. Since this answer was
regarded as
inadequate and Haider could not resist the temptation
to add
his two cents of populist rhetoric by making a pun on the Chief Rabbi's
name,
the feelings between official Jewry and the population are somewhat
tense at
the moment.
Since I did not want to feed ill-feelings I abstained from the planned
book
promotion but regard it as terribly unfortunate that the people in
charge of
official Jewish organizations don't seem to realize that incessant
demands will
not be met with heartfelt endorsement and that they thereby tend to
encourage
anti-Jewish sentiments. These are, of course, not allowed to be voiced
in
public and one hears about them only privately.
Jewish feelings were, however, only one part of the aborted book
promotion. The
wind blows from the left, as has repeatedly been mentioned and,
contrary to
what happens in sailboat regattas, port tack has right of way over
starboard
tack. Protest against the right is currently de rigeur and Widerstand
(resistance) is the key word for youngsters and elitists. On buildings
one could
see banners Kultur ist Widerstand or Kunst ist Widerstand.
That this cheapens the genuine sacrifices the Austrian resistance
movement made
during the war, where Widerstand resulted in KZ and/or death, these new
generations (we are after all grandparents for some of them already)
cannot or
do not want to comprehend. I was told that every Thursday afternoon
youngsters
march for a while along the Ringstrasse shouting such edifying slogans
like "Widerstand,
Widerstand, Schuessel, Haider an die Wand" (resistance,
resistance,
Schuessel, Haider against the wall). That one is to be shot when lined
up
against a wall goes without saying. Thus the mob hasn't changed,
neither have
the slogans, and the only difference is the perceived enemy. For the
Nazis it
was Juden und Pfaffen (Jews and clergy) who were to
be
hanged. I had intended to watch one of these processions but illness in
the
family required a premature departure from Vienna and return to the
States.
That youngsters are getting a dose of indoctrination in favor of the
left
became apparent when I was invited by the authorities of my former Mittelschule,
from which I had been thrown out by the Nazis as "an abscess on the
body
of the German people" in 1941, to hold a discussion with the students
of
the fourth as well as subsequently the seventh and eighth grade. In
Austria one
attends Mittelschule from age ten to age eighteen and there are,
therefore,
eight grades. I was warmly welcomed by teachers and students and the
discussions, in form of questions by the pupils, went well. In contrast
to my
time there, the school is now co-ed and it was the girls who
participated more
actively than the boys. One key question stuck in mind: "How can we
prevent right wing extremism in the future?" It was appropriate in the
context because we were talking about Nazis but I felt it important to
explain
that left wing extremism is just as dangerous and has to be exposed
with equal
vigor. This is where the danger lies today The students were receptive
but it
seemed to be a new concept because they tend to get mainly one-sided
information. Nazi crimes get the exclusive attention but other outrages
which
had occurred during and in the aftermath of WWII are never mentioned.
This is
not meant to excuse the behavior of the Nazis, which is inexcusable,
but
history should be presented from all sides and not just one.
There were two other surprises. Learning by rote and reciting the
classics has
become a lost art. This is unfortunate for two reasons. One is that
memory is
no longer challenged and trained; the other is that one builds thereby
a
reservoir of information into one's brain which, just like songs, can
be tapped
in hours of boredom or crisis to banish unwanted idle or frustrating
thoughts.
The other surprise was the non-existent dress code; sloppiness of
attire by the
students is just as marked as it is on our schools. Whether or not they
still
stand up when the teacher enters I don't know. These may be regarded as
minor
points but lack of attention to attire does imply lack of respect for
others.
Yet, from lack of respect a good many of the other unwanted
consequences,
including poor study habits, flow. On the other hand there have to date
been no
shootings or knifings in Viennese schools which is a plus.
Now to other positive aspects. For Americans a trip to Austria and
Vienna can
be heartily recommended. Unless one wants to go to the Burgtheater,
which is at
this time not advisable anyway, no language skills are necessary
because
practically everybody speaks English and the people have retained their
friendliness. In Jewish circles there may be some concern about the
proverbial
anti-Semitism of the Viennese but this is not warranted because it does
not
apply to individuals. Anybody, regardless of ethnic or religious
background is
being treated politely unless the person claims special privileges or
throws
his weight around. Under those circumstances one can expect either
sullenness
or a flash flood of verbal insults, but at no time is there any
physical
aggression.
The public buildings have been sandblasted, look practically new, and
even the
private apartment houses are steadily cleaned from the soot of bygone
ages. The
city looks impressive, the abundant parks are well kept, flowers are in
bloom,
and the public transportation system is excellent. Do not attempt to
drive a
car in Vienna, except for getting into or out of town. Even if you have
been
there before you are bound to get lost in the maze of one-way streets.
The city
simply wasn't built for today's traffic. But you really don't need a
car
because, as mentioned, public transportation with trolleys, subways and
buses
is excellent and there are also numerous taxis. The cabbies may be from
Africa,
Turkey, Bosnia or other assorted places but most of the time they do
find their
way around. Some, especially the Viennese ones, may ask you if you have
a
preferred route to your destination but even if you do, decline the
offer
because he/she knows better and will not take advantage of you.
Here is a typical experience. I am not only handicapped on account of
gait
problems but also by my Viennese accent. Everybody in Vienna
automatically
assumes that I have been living there all along and when I have to ask
for
directions or if I make suggestions to a cabbie which may not be
appropriate
due to changed circumstances I get peculiar looks or even "the lip."
Two years ago I had to go to mother's lawyer on account of the estate
settlement and his office was on the Mariahilferstrasse, which is a
rather
broad and busy thoroughfare. The lady took me from the Ringstrasse up
the
Mariahilferstrasse but the problem was that the lawyer's office was on
the
other side of the street. Since I wanted to minimize my walking because
of
serious hip pain where every step felt like hitting a sore tooth (the
hip joint
has been replaced in the meantime with excellent results) I suggested
that she
go up the Gumpendorferstrasse instead and then come down on the proper
side of
the Mariahilferstrasse. This elicited a totally unexpected flood of
anger and
it was apparent that she had what's referred to here as "a bad hair
day." I realized what was going on and instead of biting back I
patiently
explained my dual handicaps. The result was totally surprising. She did
stop on
the wrong side of the street, subsequently insisted that I take her arm
(although I wasn't that crippled), led me across the busy street, gave
me a hug
on the other side, kissed me on both cheeks, and wished me well. Now
that is
what is known as the goldene Wienerherz (the golden Viennese
heart).
If you treat people right they will do so also and a possible flash of
sudden
anger, caused by whatever, disappears right away.
It is also advisable to take a more leisurely approach during your stay
then
let us say in New York. Rather than just rushing around from one of the
cultural sites to the next and taking one's leave within a day or so,
visit the
Vienna Woods with their numerous small restaurants and
hotels.
The Tulbingerkogel, for instance, is only half an hour from
town and
you find yourself in pristine nature with an unimpeded view over the
countryside, while you can indulge in your favorite cocktail and
subsequently
enjoy a perfectly prepared dinner from a large menu. If you do not have
friends
with a car a taxi will take you and the prices are reasonable. Rax,
Schneeberg
and Semmering can also be reached by car within an hour and one gets
there an
idea of the real Austria unaffected by foreign influences. In sum and
substance
visit Vienna and her environs whenever you have a chance to do so, you
will
enjoy it.
June 2001
Metaphysical Guilt
As mentioned previously April and the early part
of May were
also devoted to get Whither Zionism? into the hands of
people
who control our fate. I am a scientist and have few illusions about the
behavior of my fellow human beings, especially of those who are in
power. But
scientists love experiments, even when they think they know the
outcome. Whither
Zionism? was such an experiment. Everyone who has eyes to see and
ears to
hear must know that the current Middle East policies are doomed to
failure and
bound to lead to disaster.
In the February update I mentioned that there is nothing new under the
sun,
when it comes to human behavior as exemplified by the allegations
against
Senator Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings. On p.36 of Whither
Zionism? there is a quote from Josephus in
regard to
events just prior to the onset of the Jewish war against Rome which had
the
result that: "many of the most eminent of the Jews swam away from the
city
[Jerusalem], as from a ship when it was going to sink [II 20:1]." The
June
5, 2001 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune carried an article
headlined
"Moderates Fleeing Middle East" The article starts with: "Worn
down by eight months of violence that shows no sign of easing, many
Israelis
and Palestinians are packing their bags for the United States or
Canada...." Two millennia have made no difference in that part of the
world.
The question arises, therefore, what is the responsibility of
the individual citizen both here and in Israel in order to bring about
a degree
of sanity in that troubled land. We Americans will be held responsible,
whether
we like it or not, because it is no secret that Israel is our client
state. Why
does this bother me personally? Because, as a former citizen of Austria
and
subsequently the Greater German Reich, I am told that I bear personal
guilt for
Hitler's atrocities! This is no exaggeration. Karl Jaspers,
the renowned German existentialist philosopher wrote a booklet in 1946
during
the Nuremberg trials Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur
deutschen
Frage.(The question of guilt. A contribution to the German
Question). In it he explained that there are four types of guilt. 1.
Legal
guilt for criminal behavior, 2. Political guilt for allowing a
repressive
regime to come to power or when in power to tolerate it, 3. Moral guilt
for
personal misconduct, even when under orders, and 4. Metaphysical guilt
which
flows from the demand that every human being is co-responsible for all
the
wrongs and injustices which are being perpetrated in the world when one
knows
about them and simply stands by without taking action. Ergo
in
relation to the Nazis I am absolved from criminal or moral guilt
because I
didn't do anything bad but I am supposed to have political guilt
because I had
to live under them and did not volunteer for an act punishable by death
or
concentration camp. I am also supposed to be co-responsible for their
criminal
acts on the metaphysical plane. Jaspers writes of himself : "Dasz
ich
noch lebe, wenn solches geschehen ist, legt sich als untilgbare Schuld
auf mich"
(the fact that I am still alive I carry with me as inexpungeable
guilt). Please
note the term untilgbar - inexpungeable. Whatever one does
after the
fact is irrelevant for this particular form of guilt and one Jewish
author has
proclaimed that the German people have been stamped with the mark of
Cain on
their foreheads for eternity. This has, of course, practical uses
because
German as well as Austrian citizens can now be collared for financial
retributions in perpetuity. Inexpungeable guilt!
There is obviously some hyperbole in Jaspers' exposition. If one were
to follow
his thoughts to their logical conclusion one would have to say that all
the
citizens of the former Soviet Union had political guilt for allowing
Lenin to
come to power and for submitting to Stalin's crimes. All the millions
of
Cambodians whom Pol Pot drove into the rice paddies and who didn't die
were
guilty for having survived. The more than a billion Chinese are guilty
of still
tolerating the communist regime, not to speak of the North Koreans,
Vietnamese,
or the Cubans who have to make do with Castro on their island. These
are just a
few examples for the difference between philosophic ideas and the harsh
realities of this world.
Nevertheless, Jaspers is correct that when one sees a catastrophe in
the
making, shrugs ones shoulders and says I can't do anything about it
anyway, one
may incur a degree of metaphysical guilt. In a closed society the
individual is
severely limited in his options, but what possibilities exist in the
so-called
free world? To explore these Whither Zionism? was written and
distributed to all the members of the Bush administration, as well as
all the
members of the House and Senate: International Relations Committee,
Armed
Services Committee and Appropriations Committee.
In addition, review copies were sent to all the major daily newspapers
in the
country and the major TV pundits. The Wiesenthal Center,
the Holocaust
Memorial in Washington and the Anti-defamation League
also got copies. Furthermore, Steven Spielberg is
known for
his interest in the fate of the Jewish people and I thought that the
reasons
for the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple when depicted
accurately,
rather than from a propaganda point of view, could provide an excellent
lesson
for chauvinistic hotheads.
The result was, of course, predictable. DreamWorks
returned
the book with the comment that they have a policy to reject all
unsolicited
material and, therefore, the book is being returned unread. I can't
even use it
any more for anybody else because it carries an autograph to Spielberg.
There
were no replies from any of the magazines, newspapers or TV
personalities. As
far as politicians are concerned there was also mostly silence apart
from eight
notable exceptions where I received polite form letters or cards,
including one
from Dick Cheney's office who thanked me and wished
me well On
the other hand our National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice
was too busy to even ask her staff to reply, although she was contacted
on
repeated occasions.
During the Easter recess I tried to get in personal touch with my
senators but
got no further than their secretaries. They are just too busy to bother
seeing
constituents. In olden days you could get an audience even with the
emperor or
give Caesar a personal petition, but no more when "the people" rule!
The irony is that the senators I did vote for didn't give me time of
day but my
Congressman, Jim Matheson, for whom I did not vote,
was
willing to lend me his ears and I could put the book personally into
his hands.
He is new on the job, not yet infected with the disdain for the
constituents
who pay his salary and obviously wants to get re-elected. The senators
have
nothing to fear, their secretaries who shield them know it, so why
bother?
Thus, we have a very effective censorship in this
country for
ideas which do not emanate from well known public figures. In the first
instance a "reputable publisher" will not take your manuscript
because a) the editor may not agree with the contents and possibly more
importantly b) it won't bring in huge quantities of money. In our free
country
one can then take the self-publishing route which gets the book in
print but
that's the end. Papers will not review it and even if you want to give
it to
your local library one lady told me in regard to War and Mayhem
after
leafing through it in a cursory fashion: "We only take books from
reputable publishers." Therefore, unless one has the good fortune to be
a
member of the old boys, or gals for that matter, network your chances
of
getting heard or read are astronomically small.
The same applies, of course to this website. Who in, literally, all the
world
is going to find it, even when it is submitted to all the search
engines. There
is just too much stuff on this "information superhighway" and its
bumper to bumper traffic.
So, what has been accomplished? I have shared my "metaphysical guilt"
with the movers and shakers of this world and deprived them of excuses.
To read
a hundred pages is no chore but to disregard them is a mistake. The
Middle East
continues to drift into chaos and the Mitchell Commission
recommendations -
although well meant - have predictably been rejected by both sides.
Youngsters
who aspire to heaven via martyrdom cannot be restrained by anybody and
to make
their disappearance the precondition for negotiations is a lame excuse.
So is
the necessity for continuing to expand the settlements. Since the
relations
between the U.S. and the UN have soured considerably in the past few
month a UN
commission as suggested in Whither Zionism? may at this time
not have
much chance of coming into being but some unimpeachable third force
seems to be
the only hope for letting intellect overcome passion.
In conclusion I might mention some thoughts of a revered icon of the
twentieth
century on the topic of Palestine which can be found in Churchill
and the
Jews by Michael J. Cohen. Although Churchill had
been
early on an outspoken supporter of Zionism he had begun to develop
second
thoughts later on. There may also have been personal reasons involved
for his
change of mind. His close friend Lord Moyne, Minister
of State
Resident in the Middle East, was murdered in November 1944 by a Jewish
terrorist organization led by Menachem Begin, who
later became
Prime Minister. At the end of WWII during his last weeks in office
Churchill
said:
"I do not think we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of
managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and
criticise...I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever
accrued to
Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else
should have
their turn now..."(p.260).
America has assumed Britain's burden and is now saddled with "managing
this very difficult place" but the prospects for bringing stability to
the
area by the U.S. are no better than they were for the Brits, or the
Romans for
that matter.
In 1946 Churchill said in the House of Commons:
" The idea that the Jewish Problem could be solved or even helped by a
vast dumping of the Jews of Europe into Palestine is really too silly
to
consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon" (p.327).
Well it did happen, the migration was unavoidable, the state of Israel
came
into being and people of good will are now forced to spend considerably
more
time than just an afternoon to deal with the consequences of this
"silly
idea."
July 2001
Palestinians. Homosexuality
To start out on a positive note it is a pleasure
to
acknowledge Alan Caruba's kind review of Whither Zionism? In
the May
installment of his bookviews.com
Caruba wrote that "Rodin asks and brilliantly answers the title
question
in a way that will prove astonishing and insightful to any reader,
particularly
in light of the present problems in the Middle East." I am mentioning
Caruba's comments here because they are especially relevant for what
follows.
The syndicated columnist Cal Thomas usually writes
sensible
reports but on June 5 there appeared an article of his in the Salt Lake
Tribune
headlined: Peace Solution: Israel must rid itself of the
Palestinians
Once and for All. Thomas is clearly sufficiently intelligent
to
realize that this plan cannot be executed; nevertheless he concludes
the
article by saying "The current model of 'land for peace' is not
working,
nor can it work given the objectives of Arafat and Israel's other
enemies.
Eviction is a better avenue of stability. Will it happen? Probably not.
Should
it ? Yes."
There are two aspects to this article which require comment. One is
that
expulsion of the Palestinian population from the occupied territories
was
advocated as "The Only Solution" by rabbi Meir Kahane
in the 1980's. He lost his seat in the Knesset, his political party was
forbidden and Kahane was murdered soon thereafter by a Muslim fanatic.
The
other aspect is that the headline could have come with slight
modification from
any issue of the Voelkische Beobachterduring
the late 1930's as"Germany must rid itself of the
Jews
once and for all." When one knows the history of those years
one
is aware that the Kristallnacht in November of
1938,
which was universally deplored and removed the last vestige of doubt
about
Nazism's malignancy, was preceded by the deportation of Polish Jews
from
Germany in October of that year. The Poles did not want this influx of
her
former citizens either and, among others, young Herschel
Grynszpan's
family was caught in no man's land. When Herschel received word from
his sister
about their unhappy circumstances he vowed revenge. Since he was in
Paris at
the time he wanted to make a statement by shooting the German
ambassador but
when this wasn't possible he made do with Counselor Ernst vom Rath. The
latter
was mortally wounded and when he died soon thereafter Goebbels
unleashed the pogrom in Germany as "the just revenge of the German
people." Further details of the affair are in War and Mayhem.
Since Mr. Thomas seemed inadequately informed about the history and
complexity
of the Middle East problem I sent him a copy of Whither Zionism? but
as expected didn't hear back.
Another long article which appeared in a Sunday edition of the Tribune
was also
of considerable interest. It was written by a Professor of Educational
Psychology and carried the headline: There is no evidence that
homosexuals can change, only evidence of deception. In the
article the
professor took issue with some church leaders, as well as other
psychologists,
that some homosexual individuals can stop this "lifestyle" and adopt
instead a heterosexual one. In spite of his academic credentials the
professor,
who shall remain nameless, is likewise inadequately informed on this
subject.
The fallacy in his argument is that he accepts an either-or stance and
lumps
all people who engage in homosexual activity into one group. This is
biologically unsound and serves only political purposes. Homosexual
activists
need large numbers to exert political pressure and, therefore, anyone
who may
have had one or two homosexual contacts in their lives is counted among
their
flock.
The evidence that homosexual individuals comprise a spectrum
with the more or less effeminate "born homosexual"
person on the one hand and others who adopt this lifestyle for a
variety of
reasons comes, strangely enough, from the Nazis'concentration
camps. Let me emphasize that I harbor absolutely no fondness
for the
days I had to spend under Hitler's rule but the experiences gathered
during
that era should not be disregarded either. While I do not advocate the
methods
which demonstrated that some homosexual persons can indeed change their
behavior, the fact should not be denied.
The data are presented in the autobiography of Rudolf Höss
who
became infamous as commandant of Auschwitz, and his
notes were
penned while in a Polish prison awaiting execution for war crimes. Some
"revisionist" historians take issue with a number of the statements
he made because they were supposedly extracted under torture but this
is
irrelevant for the current topic because Höss had nothing to gain
from making
the points listed here. The book is published in German under the title
Kommandant
in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss
An English
version is available under Death Dealer.The Memoirs of the SS
Kommandant at
Auschwitz at amazon.com.
Höss had led a rather interesting life. At age 16 he managed to
enlist as a
volunteer in the German army during WW I and served in Syria and
Palestine, of
all places. He rose to the rank of sergeant and after the collapse in
1918 he
led his cavalry platoon on a highly adventuresome trip back home. He
managed to
arrive with his people three months later in Germany without having
been taken
prisoner of war, although they had to traverse enemy territory.
Subsequently
Höss became involved in right wing paramilitary activities and,
for
participation in a political murder, was sentenced in 1924 to a
Zuchthaus term,
which was at that time the most severe form of jail. He remained there
for four
years and this stay taught him two things. One was that the worst you
can do to
a prisoner is to leave him totally unoccupied, without any benefit of
books,
writing materials or whatever. Work, any kind of work, but especially
something
which had a constructive purpose was welcomed, because it relieved the
mind of
useless ruminations about one's fate. When he was finally given some
work to do
he breathed a sigh of relief and the slogan "Arbeit macht
frei"
(work liberates) was born in his mind. Later on it "graced" the
entrance of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, it
should not be
forgotten that before the war the concentration camps were indeed labor
camps
for "reeducation" as they exist, for instance, today in China, and
good behavior could earn you a discharge. Even Nazis preferred tax
payers over
tax burdens. The second lesson was in regard to homosexuality
which tends to become rampant when young males are cooped up together.
After the Nazis took over in Germany, Höss volunteered for the SS
in 1933. From
1934-1938 he was deputized first as Block- and subsequently
Rapportfuehrer to Dachau; from 1938-1940 he
served as
Adjutant and Commandant of the KZ Sachsenhausen, and
from
1940-1943 he was in charge of Auschwitz. When
Höss arrived at
Dachau the homosexual prisoners were already a problem, although
initially they
didn't matter numerically. According to Höss the camp commandant
of Dachau had
thought it a good idea to distribute the homosexual prisoners
throughout the
camp in all barracks. Prior to the Olympic Games of 1936 the Nazis
wanted to
put their best foot forward and cleansed the streets not only of
beggars and
vagrants, who were sent for "education" to work houses and
concentration camps, but the cities and spas were also cleared of the
multitude
of prostitutes and homosexuals. They were also to be educated for
useful work
in the concentration camps. By the way, it seems likely that the
Chinese will
follow the example if they are awarded the Olympic Games for 2008. Let
us now
read what Höss had to say about the situation Dachau.
"It didn't last long until reports came in from all quarters about
homosexual relations. Punishment didn't change anything, the Seuche
(contagion) increased. On my suggestion all the homosexuals were now
concentrated in one block and they received a supervisor who knew how
to deal
with them. They were also segregated from the other prisoners during
their work
details. Thus they pulled for a long time a Straszenwalze (steamroller
but
pulled manually).
All of a sudden the plague was eradicated. Even when on occasion these
unnatural relations persisted, they were isolated events. In the
barracks the
homosexuals were supervised so that there was no opportunity....In
Sachsenhausen they were immediately segregated in a special block."
After further descriptions of the type of hard labor the prisoners had
to
perform, regardless of weather in winter and summer, Höss wrote
the following
informative passages
"The result of hard labor which was to make 'normal' individuals out of
them depended upon the difference among homosexuals. It was most
effective and
immediately apparent in the Strichjungen (male prostitute
youngsters)...they were not truly homosexual it was merely their
profession...several of them could be discharged without relapsing into
their
former behavior. This particular lesson was sufficient. There was also
a group
who had become homosexual - bored by sexual relations with too many
women, who
wanted new thrills in their parasitic existence - who could likewise be
educated in this manner, and made to give up their vice. This did not
hold,
however, for those who had by inclination been too deeply imbued with
this
depravity. They were the same as the genuine homosexuals (aus
Veranlagung)
but those were few and far between.
For those individuals there was no help regardless of hard work or
strict
supervision. Wherever there was an opportunity they were in each others
arms.
Even when they were already in poor physical shape they continued to
pursue
their vice. They were also easily recognizable. With a soft girlish
affectedness (Zimperlichkeit) and mannerisms...they were
immediately
distinguishable from those who had rid themselves of the vice and those
who
were in the process of doing so, whose step by step progress could be
readily
observed.
While those who were willing to change endured the hardest labor, the
others
succumbed. Inasmuch as they could not or would not desist from their
vice they
knew that they would never see freedom again...this accelerated the
physical
deterioration. When in addition there was the loss of the "friend"
through illness or death one could foresee the end. Many committed
suicide. The
"friend" meant for these individuals everything in this situation. It
happened several times that two friends committed suicide together."
Höss also said that Himmler had devised a method
in Ravensbrueck
to find out which of the homosexual prisoners had really been "cured"
by bringing them together in an informal setting with prostitutes.
Those who
had been "reeducated" readily succumbed to the charms of the ladies
while the
"Incurables didn't pay attention to these women at all. If they made
advances they turned away with disgust ....The ones who were to be
discharged
were once more given the possibility for homosexual relations but they
refused
the advances of the genuine homosexuals. There were, however,
borderline cases
who used both opportunities. Whether or not one can call them bisexual
I can't
judge. To be able to observe the life and habits of the homosexuals of
all
varieties, in connection with their incarceration, was highly
informative for
me."
While I, obviously, do not approve of the methods used by the Nazis to
effect
this change in sexual behavior it is nevertheless clear that some
homosexual
individuals can be motivated to abandon this "lifestyle." I sent the
Höss information in a letter to the professor but he was
apparently to busy to
respond and seemed to follow the rule: My mind is made up, don't bother
me with
facts.
As mentioned earlier, like most everything else which involves human
behavior
there are gradations in the expression of a given trait and to deny
those can
only serve political purposes rather than lead to an understanding of
the
underlying condition. Numbers translate into votes and this is all that
counts,
never mind the facts. This attitude has also led to the medical
absurdity that HIV-AIDS
which is for all practical purposes, in this country, a preventable
disease by
simply abstaining from unhealthy practices, is actually the only
politically
protected infectious disease for which a cure must be found
immediately. Since
research money is limited this stance comes at the cost of removing
valuable
financial resources from other truly unavoidable and more common
illnesses.
Currently the AIDS epidemic in Africa is receiving a great deal of
attention
and the solution is also to be billions of dollars for research. But
even in
Africa the epidemic is caused by promiscuous sexual behavior. The
plague could
be eradicated worldwide by abstention from homosexual practices, by
engaging in
heterosexual intercourse with one partner only, and avoidance of
intravenous
illicit drug use. In contrast to nearly all other diseases AIDS (with
few
exceptions e.g. children of infected mothers, or recipients of tainted
blood
transfusions) is self-inflicted and preventable by adhering to a
healthy
life-style.
These verities are, of course, highly unpopular. Therefore, an attitude
is
fostered by the political and media establishments where even the use
of the
term homosexual is frowned upon and the word "gay"
has been substituted. This is truly a perversion of language.
Hardly any one of us, regardless of sexual orientation, is gay in the
true
meaning of the word for any length of time. Life has too many
vicissitudes to
allow us "gaiety" for more than short periods. To dignify sexual
practices, which involve acts that are distasteful to the majority of
people in
our culture, with this euphemism is unconscionable. Homosexual
activists may
call themselves whatever they want but the much larger non-homosexual
community
should not be swayed by this misuse of language and call the behavior
by its
proper name.
Nevertheless even here a caveat is in order. To label somebody " a
homosexual" as if this were the "be all and end all "of the
individual's life, is just as uncalled for as using other potentially
pejorative terms without some qualification. For instance, when I
started my
professional neurologic career it was common practice to talk about
"the
epileptic" or "the schizophrenic." I abolished these terms from
my personal vocabulary because they are adjectives and should not be
used as
nouns. Instead I talked and wrote about patients (by
the way,
even this term has lost its meaning, because nowadays physicians, just
like
lawyers, tend to have "clients") with epilepsy or schizophrenia,
or whatever the condition was. This retains the personhood of the
individual
and allows for a change in the condition, which can and does occur at
times. I
had to disagree with one of my professors early on whose favorite
dictum was
"once an epileptic always an epileptic." The statement was not only
pejorative but simply factually wrong. I am glad indeed that my
terminology,
which was news in the fifties and sixties, has now been generally
adopted by my
colleagues.
This brings me to one of the major pitfalls in the thought processes of
the
human race and is clearly illustrated by the two mentioned newspaper
articles.
It is the inappropriate use of the "all or nothing,"
principle as it is called in neurophysiology. The law
refers
to the propagation of the electrical activity in a nerve. Once an
impulse is
strong enough to be propagated, the size of the response, and the speed
of its
conduction will be independent of the intensity of the original
stimulus. Once
fired up the nerve gives its all. This is how the peripheral nervous
system
works. But we also have a central nervous system which allows us to
give graded
responses before we put our nerves into action. In the present context
for Mr.
Thomas there are apparently only monolithic Palestinians who have to be
expelled and for the professor of educational psychology there are only
homosexuals who are incapable of changing. This is the same type of
thinking
which declared "the Jews" enemies of the German people, and which
condemned "the Germans" as "the Nazis" when in fact only a
small subgroup in these categories had engaged in undesirable or even
outright
criminal activities. Unless we stop thinking in terms of classes of
people and
hold only individuals responsible for their actions there will be no
end to
hatred in this world with concomitant injustices.
August 2001
Stem Cells
Apart from the continuing violence in the Middle
East, which
was reported occasionally, there were three items the American media
obsessed
over during the past month. One was "The Case of the Missing Intern,"
another was Global Warming, and the third Stem Cell research.
As far as the first item is concerned the fate of Ms. Chandra Levy and
that of
her paramour Representative Gary Condit has become a boon to cable news
channels, because there is too much air time to fill and the genuine
news are
not sufficiently sensational. The entire story can be summarized in a
few sentences.
Ms. Levy has been missing for about three months. Nobody knows her or
her
body's whereabouts and it becomes increasingly likely that her case
will end up
like that of Jimmy Hoffa's, who also vanished without a trace. Mr.
Condit on
the other hand failed to obey the Prime Directive which ought to govern
human
behavior. Simply put it states: Whenever you find yourself in trouble
tell the
truth immediately and fully, without making excuses. Qui s'excuse,
s'accuse
(whoever excuses himself, accuses himself) the French say and they are
right.
This is the sum and substance of the story over which TV newscasters,
hosts and
guests drool endlessly for hours day in and day out.
The discussion of Global Warming will be postponed for another update.
At any
rate it is supposed to stay with us for at least another hundred years,
so
what's the hurry? I am currently in the process of gathering my own
data in
regard to temperature forecasts and these will be published in due
time.
The third item on the agenda, stem cell research, does merit discussion
today
because President Bush is being pressured by the media to immediately
release
federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. The media bolster their
argument by promising the general public the blue from the sky about
the
benefits the human race will reap from this type of research. The moral
and
religious pro and con arguments are endlessly hashed out but the
legitimate
medical issues which can be raised for or against embryonic stem cell
research
have, to the best of my knowledge, never been aired by the public media
to the
extent that they should have been. We are only being told that this
research
might lead to cures for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease,
diabetes and
a host of other chronic degenerative illnesses. With other words we are
finally
on the way to realize Ponce de Leon's dream. The fountain of youth is
around
the corner and embryonic stem cells will relieve us from all the
burdens
associated with aging. The key word in all of this, which by the way
this type
of propaganda shares with Global Warming, is the word "might." It is
not being taken merely as some faint hope, which springs eternal, but
is
regarded as "will" and action must be taken now, immediately, and by
the federal government or an irretrievable chance will be lost.
In order to find out what the implantation of embryonic stem cells
really does
in the human being I searched the medical literature on the Internet
and came
up empty handed. There are no data! As a neurologist I was, of course,
most
interested in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease but even the animal
data are
so far exceedingly sparse and inconclusive. It just so happened that
the July
issue of Neurology Reviews had a lead article entitled:
"Shooting
for the Moon. Bolstered by a New Research Agenda, Parkinson's
Researchers Aim
High." In this article, which will also available on the web in due
time
under www. neurologyreviews.com, the several techniques which are
currently
under investigation are discussed. These are: transplantation of a)
neural
tissue, b) embryonic stem cells, c) adult stem cells, and d)
xenotransplantion.
Before explaining these terms further in everyday language some
fundamental
facts about Parkinson's disease must first be presented.
The condition results from a loss of nerve cells (neurons) in certain
regions
of the brain which produce a critical chemical called dopamine. This
discovery,
in the early sixties of the past century, led to a Nobel Prize because
dopamine
could be produced in the laboratory and patients could take the drug in
pill
form. The early results were exceedingly exciting but, as everything
else in
life, first love wears off, and the "fine print" becomes noticeable
only after some time. Although improvements in the compound in form of
levodopa
(L-dopa) were made, which is the current preferred form of treatment;
there are
still a great many problems. Not only does the effect of the medication
wear
off after some time but some patients also develop uncontrollable
writhing
movements especially of the head and limbs (dyskinesias or dystonia)
which make
their lives miserable. For this reason the search for "the cure"
continues.
Hippocrates, "the father of medicine" who plied his art on the island
of Cos in the Aegean around 400 B.C. wrote in his aphorisms: "What
medicine [drugs] cannot cure, the knife [surgery] will cure, what the
knife
cannot cure fire [radiation] will cure, and what fire cannot cure is
wholly
incurable." Genetic modification of the organism could not be imagined
at that
time but on the whole the dictum still holds. Since L-dopa failed to
live up to
its promise neurosurgeons began to practice their art by destroying
certain
structures or pathways in the brain with their knives, or by targeted
radiation. This led to some good and some bad results. At any rate the
disease
remained for the most part progressive and only long term follow-up of
ten
years or more would allow one to speak of an arrest or even cure of the
disease. This brings us to the article in Neurology Reviews
and stem
cells. The whole purpose of the exercise is to create neurons which
produce
dopamine in the patient's brain not only in the right amount but also
nothing
else. This statement alone should give one pause, because the problem
is
obviously far from trivial. The solution will not only require funding
but
equally or even more importantly time, measured not in years but
decades! Let
us now look at the upside and downside of the mentioned research
programs.
Neurontransplantation. The good news according to Dr.
Dunnett
of the Brain Repair Group at Cardiff University in Wales is that "There
is
convincing evidence that fetal tissue grafts can have a functional
effect in
animal models of Parkinson's disease" and "When such cells are
implanted
they survive, grow, connect with denervated [have lost their functional
connections] areas, and alleviate some of the simpler motor deficits
associated
with Parkinson's disease. This provides proof of the principle that
dopamine
deficiency can be restored by transplanted dopaminergic [dopamine
producing]
cells."
So far so good. Now comes the fine print. The study involved an "animal
model" rather than the human disease and in contrast to the human
illness
Dr. Dunnett's model produced acute rather than chronic effects.
Furthermore, he
stated that "Fetal cell transplants can work with dramatic efficacy in
some cases but can also seriously go wrong." Even when the method
worked
it should be noted that the beneficial effect on the symptoms of the
animal,
rather than on the brain slices at autopsy, improved "some of the simpler
motor deficits." This leads one to assume that some of the more complex
motor functions on which we depend, were not alleviated.
As far as human results are concerned there is only one relatively long
term
scientifically controlled study mentioned in the article. This involves
the
work of Dr. Curt Freed at the University of Colorado. Dr. Freed's team
transplanted precursors of dopaminergic cells from 6-10 week old human
fetuses
into the brains of 19 patients with severe Parkinson's disease. These
patients
were compared with others who had been sham operated where only burr
holes were
placed in the skull. The study was "double blind" which means that
neither the patient nor the team of examining physicians knew whether
or not
the patient had received a transplant. The result of the follow-up of
"up
to three years," which means that this was the maximum and most
patients
had shorter observation times, was that a "statistically significant
28%
improvement over baseline" was observed. This held true for the total
group, when the patients were not taking their morning dose of
medications.
When the group was subdivided between older and younger patients it
became
apparent that a 38% improvement (highly significant statistically) had
occurred
in the younger individuals while it was only 14% in the older group,
and as
such not statistically significant. Furthermore, even in those patients
who had
benefited the total effect was only comparable to about half the effect
of
their usual morning dose of levodopa. Now comes the bad news. Fifteen
percent
of transplant patients had a recurrence of disabling dystonias and
dyskinesias
in the second or third year after the operation. All of these patients
were 60
years or younger and had experienced these symptoms when on levodopa
but now
had the problem even when the medication was discontinued.
Inasmuch as review articles might be slanted I obtained subsequently
Dr. Free's
and colleagues' original paper which was published in the March 6, 2001
issue
of the New England Journal of Medicine. While the review as cited above
was in
essence correct, the full article did provide additional information.
Embryonic
tissue was obtained with the consent from the mother during elective
abortions
seven to eight weeks after conception. There were initially two groups
of 20
patients each in the transplant and in the sham operation (placebo)
group. One
transplant patient died in a car accident when a tree fell across the
road
during a storm and the outcome of the operation could, therefore, not
be
evaluated at the one year final comparison point. Although some
patients were
followed for up to three years, the figures cited above refer to the
one year
outcome after the code was broken. At that point the sham operated
patients
were given the option to have transplants and 14 patients of the
placebo group
consented. Thus, the figure of up to three years follow-up covers 33
rather
than 19 patients. Apart from the development of dyskinesias, which
occurred
later than the first year, and in some younger patients, there were
also during
the 12 months of follow-up 9 serious adverse events. Although these
were in all
probability unrelated to the transplants it is noteworthy that eight of
these
occurred in the transplant group and only one in the placebo group.
Percentage
wise this would give a difference of 40 percent vs. 5 percent. The
investigators realized that inasmuch as the operation benefited only
patients
under 60 years of age and that younger patients tended to develop
intractable
dyskinesias, they did not suggest the operation to the last 6
individuals of
the remaining placebo group.
We are, therefore, confronted with these facts: Embryonic neuronal
tissue
containing dopaminergic neurons can be transplanted into key regions of
a
recipient's brain. They grow, multiply, and establish connections with
surrounding tissue, regardless of the age of the patient. The growth of
these
cells is, however, not directly reflected in improvement of the
patient’s
symptoms because only younger patients benefited, and the maximum
effect tends
to be essentially only half of what would have been accomplished with a
full
dose of levodopa. The late occurrence of uncontrollable dyskinesias,
even when
levodopa is no longer given, represents a serious and disabling
complication.
The amount of tissue to be transplanted and the best brain region for
the
transplants to be inserted will be the task for the future.
Embryonic stem cells. In contrast to embryonic tissue
containing
dopaminergic neurons, the embryonic stem cells have been called
"omnipotent." This means that these cells, taken from the earliest
stages of human development, can develop into any type of tissue. With
other
words they can become liver, brain, bone, heart or whatever. It should
be noted
that embryonic stem cell studies have so far been performed only in
rodents.
There are no data on higher animals or, of course, humans. While these
cells
can develop into neurons, there is no guarantee that they will do so,
especially dopaminergic ones. In Petri dishes they have so far produced
other
types of neurons as well as glia cells which are the other main
cellular
structure of the nervous system. Dr. Mc Kay of the National Institute
of
Neurologic Disorders and Stroke whose work is quoted in the article
stated that
"we are trying to improve the efficiency of differentiating to
dopaminergic neurons ...in animal studies... [but] we needto
demonstrate that the cells we make will actually work in animal studies."
This is indeed allthat is known
about
the effectiveness of embryonic stem cells to cure diseases. Thus, the
entire
media circus is about a gleam in the eye of some researchers based on
hope and
faith. Are our promoters of public information, who urge immediate
action for
embryonic stem cell research, aware of this paucity of facts? Do they
also know
that these omnipotent cells, when implanted into a brain, might just
continue
to grow and produce tumors? Once implanted they will do whatever they
like and
neither Federal Money nor Federal Regulations will be able to control
them.
Quite apart from moral and ethical considerations this is another
Pandora's Box
which we are about to open.
Adult stem cells. Neural adult stem cells have been
harvested
from nasal passages of cadavers up to 18 hours after death as Dr.
Roisen's
group from the University of Louisville has demonstrated. The
disadvantage of
using adult stem cells is that they get old after some time and lose
their
potency, although they did live longer when taken from an 11 month old
infant.
Whether or not any of these Petri dish neurons could be coaxed to
become
dopaminergic is not yet known. The other argument against the use of
adult stem
cells is that the supply is not as plentiful as for embryonic stem
cells. But
as long as we are dreaming, and this is really what all of stem cell
research
is about at this time, one could readily foresee a scenario where we
donate in
our youth some of our nasal neural stem cells and keep them in a
freezer until
the time comes when we might need them.
Xenotransplants (use of adult animal tissue) have
become
commonplace to repair human heart valves and dopaminergic pig cells
have
already been transplanted into human Parkinson patients. Studies about
their
effectiveness are currently under way in Tampa, Atlanta and Boston.
This might
bring up an interesting religious question. Since orthodox Jews as well
as
Muslims refrain from putting pork into their mouths and stomachs would
they be
willing to have pieces of pig brain inserted into their own?
Additional work is being carried out on Neuroprotective agents
which are supposed to stop the progression of Parkinson's disease and
thereby
obviate the need for implants of any kind. It is, therefore, obvious
that
Parkinson research is alive and well. It will continue to prosper
around the
world, without federal tax dollars and federal regulations. Not only is
there
another Nobel Prize in the offing but drug companies are likely to reap
a
financial bonanza. There is still the question whether government
should
control the research or private industry? The answer is obvious from
past
history. All major advances in medicine were achieved through private
initiatives and personal ingenuity which can only flourish in a free
society.
Those of our citizens who believe that government is the answer to all
of
mankind's woes should really take a good look at the "achievements"
of the defunct Soviet Union, even in the medical field, and compare
them with
what the Free World has accomplished. Furthermore, money is not
unlimited. If
tax dollars go to stem cell research other investigations will
inevitably have
to be curtailed, although they may actually have more immediate
prospects of
success. The argument is also made that only government can enforce
ethical
rules. This is another fallacy. Universities and drug companies, the
only
places where work of this type can proceed, are already tightly
regulated and
in case of serious untoward outcomes there are armies of malpractice
lawyers
chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action.
So what is really at work here with this entire stem cell hullabaloo?
The
overriding goal seems to be politics and expansion of government.
President
Bush is to be maneuvered into a position where he can be attacked
regardless of
whatever decision he takes. He has to be tarred and feathered; his
administration has to be turned into a failure because, according to
some of
our Democrats, he didn't deserve the presidency anyway. The current
interregnum
which the Left reluctantly has to put up with needs to be crippled by a
democratic congressional landslide next year. Subsequently George W.
can be
returned to Texas in 2004 and we are all assured of a socialist
government for
the subsequent eight years. This will then finally usher in the real
millennium
and bring us in line with those European socialist governments who
currently
hate our guts and call us names. The reason for their dislike of
America is
simply that at least some of us still regard ourselves as free citizens
who
want to live and work under our own initiative and thereafter enjoy the
fruit
of our labors, with minimal government interference. Unfortunately the
Bush
administration seems to be singularly inept in explaining the rationale
for its
actions and is thereby leaving the field to its adversaries. As far as
stem
cell research is concerned the facts are really quite simple and if the
President's spokespersons were to present them to the media, in a
manner
similar to what is outlined above, even the most hostile critics might
have to
concede that it would be useful not to rush in where angels fear to
tread.
September, 2001
What is Truth?
President Bush has made his decision on embryonic stem
cell research and has tried to find some middle ground. His
directive
that federal funds can be used only for those research projects which
utilize
existing cell lines, rather than newly created ones, has found some
praise by
his partisans but unhappiness continues to exist on both ends of the
political
spectrum. Nevertheless the entire argument is rapidly becoming obsolete
because, as expected, private industry is jumping into the breach.
There is big
money to be made from selling embryonic tissue, which is readily
available at
the abortion mills around the country, and its subsequent cloning. It
is
probably only a matter of time until new stem cell lines will be
auctioned off
on the Internet. The Left will have to find another line of attack but
the
shrinking estimated budget surplus, the faltering economy and the
prospective
"raiding of the Social Security Trust Fund" will give them ample
ammunition.
The main item for this month's agenda was occasioned by a comment from
one of
my sailing buddies. He is computer savvy and surfs the net. I therefore
encouraged him to visit thinktruth.com but he didn't quite know what to
do with
the title. So I explained "think truth, that's what you're supposed to
do
anyway all the time!" Whereupon he replied "ok, but there may not be
any."
Thus we are back at Pilate's question: What is truth?
When I chose this particular URL for the website I had obviously
underestimated
the relativism which has invaded our culture. For me the situation was
quite
simple. The truth which is discussed on these pages is not absolute or
ultimate
truth in the philosophical sense but simply that aspect of our daily
lives
which is objectively verifiable by independent observers. It is the
opposite of
the lie where the individual deliberately misrepresents facts as known
to the
person. Right now lying is, of course, making headlines on account of Gary
Condit's behavior. The majority of Americans who have seen his
interview with Connie Chung on TV don't believe that his account has
been
truthful. Even if the Congressman were to sincerely believe that his
answers
were forthcoming and complete, a simple check with the Levy family or
the
Washington DC police can establish what the facts were. It may be
argued that
this amounts to a "he says, she says" situation but this is not the
case.
Police records of his interviews exist, they are potentially available
for
public scrutiny and objective data can be established.
President Clinton wagged his finger at us a few years
ago and
told us emphatically: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman,
Miss Lewinsky." Well, we had to take him at his word until the famous
blue
dress appeared, which had not gone to the cleaners in the meantime, and
provided objective evidence for his activities. Clinton subsequently
amended
his statement by trying to imply that Miss Lewinsky had sex with him
but not he
with her or that oral sex does not constitute a sexual relationship.
But
anybody who is not blindly partisan or devoid of all common sense is
likely to
see this as excuses rather than the truth of the matter. The
ex-President even
lied under oath because an oath demands: to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. There is good reason for this because
the most
vicious and most common lie is the deliberate withholding of relevant
information. The fact that Mr. Clinton was impeached but not convicted
sent a
signal that even an oath need not to be taken seriously provided you
are
sufficiently powerful and can afford superb lawyers.
Mr. Condit seems to have drawn an inappropriate lesson from the Clinton
affair.
Stonewalling worked for Mr. Clinton, in my opinion, because the
Democrats did
not want to lose the Presidency and the Republicans were afraid to face
an
incumbent Al Gore in the upcoming 2000 elections. It
was
assumed that a seriously damaged Clinton would be so much easier to
defeat than
an untarnished Gore. That the election turned into such a cliffhanger
anyway
they would not have predicted even in their worst nightmares. Thus all
the
phraseology of "popularity" of the President and not having committed
perjury anyway was pure politics. The Senate trial was a sham as
Schippers has
documented in Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's
Impeachment.
But as far as Mr. Condit is concerned this situation does not apply. He
is
neither rich nor does he have sufficiently powerful friends who will
defend him
regardless of morals or ethics. Furthermore the Democrats can afford to
lose a
congressional seat, if worst were come to the worst and he had to
resign; it is
not the Presidency after all. On top of it we have the missing Chandra
Levy and
her parents are not going to give up their search as well as their
efforts to
have the Congressman come up with the full story and thereby the truth
about
his relationship.
Telling the truth is, therefore, not just some intellectual exercise
for
philosophers but has very practical consequences for our daily lives.
In my
personal opinion Mr. Condit did have, in all probability, a sexual
relationship
with Miss Levy but I sincerely doubt that he had contracted for her
disappearance. Had he immediately informed the parents and the
policevoluntarily
andcompletely of everything he knew he would
not be in
such dire straits today and the case might have been solved. Adultery
is,
unfortunately, a "so what" situation today, so is casual sex to which
we are treated every night on TV. Nobody would have been particularly
upset
apart, perhaps, from Mr. Condit's wife. But she, like Hillary Clinton
might
also have become inured over the years to her husband's constant
philandering
and not lost any sleep over it.
There is a reason why I have become so concerned about truthfulness in
our
daily lives. As is apparent from War and Mayhem I had been an
expert
liar during my childhood and had frequently suffered the consequences.
When
lying was literally beaten out of me by my stepfather I not only
learned that
telling the truth is morally right but it can save you not only grief
but even
your very life, as is also documented in that book. Currently our
society is
steadily being weaned from the truth. We are lied to by politicians,
the media,
advertisers and other assorted folks to such an extent that it has
practically
become the norm. The truth as an intellectual concept seems to have
vanished.
Truth has become personal and is what I believe regardless of what you
think.
There is an ancient precedent for this which was quite unknown to me
until a
few days ago. My next book The Moses Legacy,
which
deals with the problem why Jews have been persecuted since biblical
times, has
not yet found a publisher. But while Moses keeps wandering through the
offices
of various publishing houses I am using the time to polish a few
paragraphs
here and there. In so doing I was puzzled that in Heschel's book A
Passion
for Truth he described an Abraham who bears hardly any
relationship to the
person we know from the Bible. For instance Heschel stated that "This
is
what Abraham did. He forsook community and deception
to live
with Truth in solitude." This was news to me because the Bible tells us
that he moved with his whole clan from Haran to Canaan, subsequently to
Egypt
and back, had a vigorous sex life, was engaged in wars and commerce
etc. This
is hardly what one would expect from an individual who lived "with
Truth
in solitude." The problem is that the relatively recently deceased
Abraham
Joshua Heschel was, and still is, highly respected as one of the most
eminent
orthodox Jewish scholars.
The question arose, therefore, how to resolve this discrepancy. The key
word,
obviously, is Truth. For this reason I looked up the definition of Truth
in McKenzie's Dictionary of the Bible because we are, after
all,
dealing with biblical information. The result was highly surprising. Mc
Kenzie
states "The difference between Hb [Hebrew] and Gk [Greek] speech is
clearly exhibited in the idea of truth; Hb has no distinct word for
true and
truth. These ideas are expressed by 'emet and cognate words
which are
treated under FAITH." The entire subsequent passages
are
too long to be reproduced here but will show up in The Moses Legacy.
In essence McKenzie points out that the real, or truth, was personal
for
Hebrew-speaking people while truth and faith were clearly
differentiated by the
Greeks. We used to follow in the footsteps of the Greeks where truth is
objectively verifiable while faith is subjective and personal. It was
this
difference which made scientific progress possible.
It seems that we are now turning our backs on this fundamental
distinction.
Inasmuch as a theory of relativity exists which pertains to cosmic
phenomena
everything else can also be regarded as relative. This sort of thinking
undermines society at all levels. Law is no longer
based on
long established practices but represents an opinion by a judge, or
groups of
judges, at a given time rather than as what it has been understood for
centuries. These opinions, although binding for a
while can,
however, readily be overruled by other judges because they are, after
all, only
personal opinions, regardless of how precedents have to be massaged in
order to
make them appear to be reasonable. As explained in The Moses Legacy
this type of thinking is directly derived from the Talmud,
where Moses' laws were not only questioned but underwent personal
interpretations. When "Talmudic thinking" (the term
is not my invention) moves from religious to civil and criminal law, as
has
happened in our country during the past few decades, problems are bound
to
arise. When all the established customary landmarks for decent behavior
are
being removed chaos must inevitably result. Is this really the
direction we
want to go, in this new century and millennium? Or should we not return
to some
reasonable and firm rules of conduct the majority can agree on, and
which can
be adequately enforced? Inasmuch as thinking precedes language we have
to
scrutinize first our thought processes so that we can then express our
ideas in
clear and unmistakable language.
What prevents us from thinking truthfully and speaking the truth? Fear!
What
are we afraid of? The myriad of untoward events which might befall us
and which
imagination magnifies out of all proportions! "Du fürchtest
alles was
nicht trifft" (you are afraid of everything which doesn't come to
pass anyway) said Goethe, and he was right. But even if society removes
"the ancient landmarks," to use biblical language, the individual
does not have to do so. The Lord has given us strength and the ability
to adapt
to adverse circumstances, if and when they arrive. Instead of being
fearful of
what might or might not happen in the future let us be grateful for
whatever we
have in the present. With this attitude towards life, and its
vicissitudes,
lying becomes superfluous.
October, 2001
September 11th
On September 11 the world
changed for all
of us in an instant. There is hardly anyone who was not affected to
some extent
by the catastrophe which unfolded within the space of a couple of
hours. The
stunning simplicity of the idea to turn our own jetliners into lethal
bombs
which destroyed the World Trade Center totally, and
the Pentagon
partially, has brought home to us how fragile our lives are. Only the
heroic
acts of passengers on another doomed jetliner prevented a further
disaster of
untold proportions.
Osama bin Laden - if it was indeed his network - has
brought
our country literally to its knees and the country turned to God in
prayer. The
bitter, and in part irrational, fight waged by some for separation of
Church
and State had become irrelevant. The leaders of our country bowed their
heads
in prayers led by Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergymen. The much
vaunted multiculturalism
which pitted our citizens of various ethnic and religious backgrounds
against
each other was shown up as a charade as all of us became simply
Americans
rather than hyphenated ones. The problems discussed in the August and
September
updates: Congressman Condit's affair, federal funding of stem cells
research,
the disappearance of the budget surplus, raiding of the social security
trust
fund have all passed, at least temporarily, from our TV screens as we
were
shown over and over again the pictures of the jets crashing into our
symbols of
superpower status.
Nevertheless the current unity of our people and the high approval
rating of
the President's handling the disaster may evaporate when media pundits
will
begin to clamor for drastic actions with immediately visible results.
This is
the danger because the enemy is not only outside but inside our borders
and we
simply cannot "nuke 'em," as has been proposed. There are some
"journalists" who appear daily on our TV screens who seem to be
unable to grasp the simple concept that you have to investigate
the
causes of terrorism in order to achieve a permanent cure. It
is tragic
that when some well-meaning relatively prominent people advance this
idea they
are being insulted as "peaceniks," "incompetents" or worse.
It is these journalists who need to be educated in the fundamentals of
life
before they fuel the flames of hate and revenge.
The tragedy, apart from loss of life and property, is that some of our
"public opinion molders” actually help the terrorists to achieve their
objective by spreading fear among our citizenry. Life is a precious
gift but we
are doomed to die the moment we are born. This is an incontrovertible
fact. The
only question is what we do with the span of years which is allotted to
us. We can
fritter them away in the "pursuit of happiness" or we can endow our
lives with meaning. Unfortunately the type of meaning which we give to
our
lives differs considerably depending upon our life experiences and
upbringing.
But let there be no doubt: the people who hijacked the planes and those
who
organized this crime firmly believed that they were doing God's
will.
All three major religions involved in this tragedy profess to believe
in the
One God of the universe Who is just, loving and merciful, Yet in actual
practice individuals tend to believe in their tribal deity who will aid
or
avenge them as the case may be. Even Hitler believed
he was
doing God's work when he persecuted the Jews. In Mein Kampf
he wrote "So
glaube ich heute im Sinne des allmaechtigen Schoepfers zu handeln:
Indem ich
mich des Juden erwehre, kaempfe ich fuer das Werk des Herrn" (I,
therefore, believe today that I am acting in accordance with the
intention of
the Almighty Creator: By defending myself against the Jew I am fighting
for the
work of the Lord). The Second World War was portrayed as a battle
between good
and evil on bothsides. This seems
incredible
in retrospect but the German soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front
were
convinced that they were saving Western civilization from Bolshevism,
and on
the Western front they hoped to defeat Jewish-Capitalist interests
which would
enslave the fatherland. At the same time the Americans and British were
saving
that same Western civilization from Nazism. At Placentia Bay, before
the
signing of the Atlantic Charter in August of 1941,
Roosevelt
and Churchill sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" while the Wehrmacht
was fighting the atheistic Soviet Union. To portray a struggle in
apocalyptic
terms makes good propaganda on both sides because it fires the emotions
but it
fosters hate rather than reason. We clamor for justice but most of our
pundits
fail to see that justice is, or at least should be, indivisible.
By aligning ourselves unequivocally with the policies of the state of
Israel we
have turned a blind eye to the injustices which are being perpetrated
against
the native Palestinians in the territories conquered during the 1967
war.
Samuel Johnson wrote in regard to the American War of
Independence, which he thoroughly disapproved of, that patriotism
is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The winner writes
history.
Had George Washington lost he and his most prominent
followers
would probably have been hanged. So it is with terrorism. Yesterday's
terrorists can become Prime Ministers if the struggle succeeds but
remain
condemned if they fail. Terrorism is the
ultimate
weapon of the dispossessed and I am sure nobody wants to be
reminded
that Prime Minister Begin as well as Prime
Minister
Shamir started their political lives as terrorists
against British rule (see Terror out of Zion. The Fight for
Israeli
Independence by J. Bowyer Bell). The axiom that the end justifies
the
means is still adhered to, by both sides, although one doesn't want to
put it
that crudely.
During the past two months I read, among others, three books which are
highly á
propos. One was Barbara Tuchman'sMarch
of Folly,
Gloria Whelan'sAngel on the Square
and Die Rache Gottes. Radikale Moslems, Christen und Juden
auf dem
Vormarschby Gilles Kepel. Tuchman
eloquently
described how nations have acted against their best self-interest by
simply
persevering on a given course when it had become obvious that it would
lead to
disaster. She closed her book with the example of the Vietnam War but
had she lived
longer she might have added a chapter on the policies of the state of
Israel
since the 1967 war. Whelan's book is aimed at adolescents to teach them
the
rudiments of the causes for the Russian revolutions of 1917 and shows
exquisitely how the leading upper crusts of Imperial Russia utterly
failed to
recognize the intensity of the storm which was beginning to brew in
their
midst. The relevance to today's events is that we are likewise blinding
ourselves to the anger of the dispossessed masses in the Muslim world
which
finds its outlet in religious fury.
Kepel's book was originally published in French under the title La
Revanche
de Dieu Chretiens, juifs et musulmans a la reconquete du monde and
it is
now available in English as The Revenge of God: The resurgence of
Islam,
Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World. It is perhaps
noteworthy
that the French word reconquet would best be translated into
German as
Wiedereroberung, rather than Vormarsch, which means
advance,
and in English as re-conquest rather than resurgence. More important
is,
however, the fact that the book was originally published in 1991. I had
bought
it in Vienna in the early nineties but did not take it very seriously
at the
time. September 11 immediately brought the chilling contents back to
memory and
I re-read key sections. In short the author documents the return to
biblical or
Koranic Fundamentalism as a protest movement against
the
secular society the United States is regarded as promoting world wide.
Yet all
three groups have different goals. Evangelical Christians,
steeped in the Revelation of St. Johnthe
Divine,
want to help the Jewish state to build its Third Temple which in turn
would
herald the arrival of the Antichrist and subsequently
Jesus'
second coming. FundamentalistJews
want the Temple built on the original site which would bring the Jewish
Messiah who, obviously, would have no use for the return of an
"avenging Jesus." Fundamentalist Muslims despise the
presence of Christians as well as Jews in the Middle East which they
regard as
their patrimony. Thus the battle lines are drawn among Fundamentalists
of any
of the three versions. There cannot be any compromise because all of
them are
acting in the name of God. The last sentences of the book when
translated from
the German version read: "In the short run the parallel development of
these religious movements, all of which want to re-conquer the world,
has to
lead to confrontation. As such the conflict between the 'believers’,
who make
the resurgence of their religious identity a yardstick for their
exclusive as
well as limited truths, is preprogrammed."
It is obvious that a war of ideas of this type cannot be won by bombs,
rockets
or invasions but only by another idea which unites rather than divides
humanity. The Sharon government insists on meeting
terror with
terror and wants to enlist us into this spiral of ever escalating
violence.
Seductive as the idea is it should be resisted because Israel has tried
this
strategy for the past thirty years at least and is nowhere nearer to a
degree
of peace. While Arafat is far from blameless for the
impasse
to place the entire burden on his shoulders, as is currently popular
here and
in Israel, is not necessarily justified. We are told over and over
again that
not only did he walk away at Camp David from the most wide ranging
concessions
ever offered by an Israeli Prime Minister but in addition answered them
with Intifada
II showing thereby that he does not want to coexist with a
Jewish
state. This opinion was most recently emphasized again by Norman
Podhoretz in the October issue of Commentary.
Yet, let us be honest with each other, Podhoretz concedes that no
minutes of the Camp David sessions have ever been
published
and we have, therefore, no idea what Arafat rejected
and why. Was
the Palestinian state as envisaged by Israel and the U.S. viable or was
it an
assortment of Palestinian and Israeli enclaves in what was supposed to
have
been the state? We simply don't know but we should insist on
seeing the
documents because there does not seem to be any reason for
secrecy in
regard to a failed meeting in our free society. The policy of creating settlements,
in the occupied territories which has been pursued by all Israelis
governments
since 1967 has led to a such a patchwork quilt that
it is
extremely difficult to see how national sovereignty could be
established in
that area. One glance at the map published on page 104 in Whither
Zionism? clearly shows the tremendous difficulty of
establishing a
viable truly independent state in the area even if the partners in the
peace
process were to proceed with the best of intentions. Podhoretz does not
address
the problem and seems to believe that Israel can just continue with its
past
policies and in the long run the Palestinians will see the errors of
their way.
September 11 changed the outlook irrevocably. The entire world has been
affected economically and the genie is literally out of the bottle. If
Prime
Minister Sharon wants to "go it alone," as he has promised, he can do
so but under these circumstances America should not be held hostage to
failed
and failing policies.
What is to be done now? In order to formulate a correct
strategy we must first of all understand what each side to the
conflict really wants. But In order to do so we must see
ourselves
through theeyes of the adversary. We will
disagree
with his perception but that does not make it less real for the
perceiver. Osama
bin Ladin, as the symbol of radical Islam,
sees the
United States as a decadent country bent on the pursuit of material
happiness
in disregard of the moral laws of God, and controlled by Jewish
interests.
America supports and props up the state of Israel as a colonial outpost
in an
area of the world which, apart from the Crusades' era, has always been
Islamic.
Jewish secular culture perverts established morals and customs while
political
Zionism strives for an enlargement of their state. In order to rid the
land of
Palestine from Infidels the power of the United States must be broken.
This is
best achieved by involving America in a drawn out war
especially inAfghanistan where other superpowers of the past
(Imperial
Great Britain and the Soviet Union) have ground out their eye teeth. In
addition the Muslim masses who hate their non-elected secular regimes,
as stooges
of the Great Satan, must be mobilized, especially, if
and when
an Islamic country is invaded by foreigners. The disenfranchised young
people
in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change
and
Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about.
Therefore,
major military action by the United States is a requirement
to
bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation
through
a variety of terror attacks is the only way to
accomplish this
objective.
What does Israel want? Here the answer is less clear
because
there are too many factions in the country. The majority of the people
just
want to live in peace with their neighbors but this is at present
difficult to
achieve. We, therefore, have to ask what the leadership wants.
Obviously it
also wants peace but there are considerable differences of opinion as
to how
this can be accomplished. The governing Sharon
faction
believes that only a hard line military approach will
succeed
while the Peres group has not yet given up on a negotiated
settlement. In addition the country is quite divided as to
what kind
of state it is supposed to be. Is it to be a secular democracy with
majority
rule or a Jewish state governed by ancient Jewish law? Ever since the
creation
of the state there were two major factions which co-existed uneasily.
These may
be called political Zionism and religious
Zionism.
Political Zionism, which founded the country, was secular in nature and
as such
opposed by religious Zionists who felt that the state was illegitimate
because
only the Messiah can bring about the ingathering of the dispersed and
the
erection of the Third and Final Temple. Over the years political and
religious
aspirations were fused by some visionaries in the attempt to create a Greater
Israel beyond the UN established 1948 borders. For them it is
not
Israel which is the intruder onto Muslim lands but Israelis are simply
reclaiming their inheritance, promised by God, which they had lost
temporarily.
This goal has not yet been abandoned as the settlement policies of the
various
Israeli governments prove. Although the settlements have considerable
popular
approval, the problem what to do with a relatively large and probably
hostile
minority Arab population within the Jewish state tends to be ignored.
There
are, however, some fanatics who envision a Final Solution
(to
use a well known phrase) which in their eyes will ensure a permanent
peace. The
autocratic governments of neighboring Arab states such as Syria,
Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt
and may
be Jordan have to be toppled and regimes favorable to
Jewish
values installed. This can only be accomplished by war with the help,
or at
least the tacit approval, of the United States. To achieve this end
terrorism
against the United States can be silently welcomed because it is
expected to
lead to an intensification of hatred against Arabs in the U.S. and
thereby a
further identification of America's goals with those of Israel.
America's current war on terrorism is to be not only fully supported in
its
present stage but needs to be expanded to other Muslim "rogue"
states. With America fully occupied and radicalized by subsequent
further acts
of Islamic terrorism Israel can then finally achieve its borders
promised to
Abraham.
Let me make it unequivocally clear that the overwhelming majority of
Israelis
do not harbor such Machiavellian fantasies and are genuinely distressed
about
the loss of innocent lives on September 11; but it is also dangerous to
ignore
the latent streak of fanaticism in a small minority which pursues only its
goals regardless of the costs to others.
What does America want? There is absolutely no doubt
that the
vast majority of the population just wants to be left in peace to
pursue its
own personal goals in freedom. This why most of us came here in the
first
place. Even our leadership does not want war but to get the economy
moving and
to work for global prosperity. Nevertheless in spite of the current
unity the
country's opinion makers are split on how to set things right in the
world. On
account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a
term
which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews), there are strong
emotional
ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is
urged by
the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group
which
regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media.
This is
bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.
For these reasons a major war against Islamic states
is not
in the best interest of the United States but serves only the
purposes
of Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel. The Eye
for an
Eye policy which has been tried by Israel for decades is
inappropriate
for the United States and a paradigm shift has to take place.
Our country is made up not only of evangelical Christians and Jews but
of a
wide variety of individuals with other belief systems which our
political
leadership needs to take into account. While simply turning the other
cheek is
not an option, judicious pursuit of policies which do not pour fuel on
the
flames is called for and our leadership has indeed resisted to be
stampeded
into precipitous action.
We can be very grateful that the September 11 attack fell into the
first year
of the Bush presidency rather than the last year of Clinton's
tenure. Politics would have dictated a war, Al Gore
would, in all probability, have won the election and the country would
have had
a Jewish vice-President. This is not to impugn Senator
Lieberman's
patriotism but some further tilt to the Israeli side would have been
unavoidable. President Bush is in the fortunate position of not having
to worry
about re-election at this time and even if there were to be no second
term it
would not be a personal disaster for him. He truly serves the country
rather
than political ambition and the same goes for his wife Laura, which is
welcome
contrast to our previous leadership. Thus Mr. Bush and his cabinet can
act in a
statesman-like manner rather than in a purely
political one.
Let me re-emphasize, therefore, in my opinion America has nothing to
gain by
major military actions but only a great deal to lose. We will not only
lose
lives and property but most of all our soul as a free and peace loving
people.
We will foster further hate which in turn begets hate and events are
likely to
spin totally out of control.
What is required of us now in these most difficult
circumstances is steadfastness of purpose with the goal of
bringing a
degree of peace as well as hope for a better future to the impoverished
Muslim
masses. It is obvious that the perpetrators of the
crime
should be found, through international efforts, and
brought to
justice, but this is only one step. We have
to convince
the minds of the people in the region thatwe
are indeed determined to bring justice to all the people in the area
and not
just some. America is still the world's best hope and if we
combine
our economic resources with those of the other developed nations we can
change
the current image of the Great Satan. The road is difficult indeed but
what we
need to do as individual citizens is to keep our heads, don't
give way
to irrational fears and praythat our leadership will
continue
to show forbearance and wisdom.
10-7-2001
The update as it appears above was written between October 5 and 6.
Today the
world has changed again and as may be apparent, from my point of view,
not for
the better. Nevertheless, the sentiments expressed above are, to my
mind, still
true and this is why I am not changing the contents. The bombing
campaign
against Afghanistan which began today will have consequences which are
as yet
unforeseeable and we can only pray that eventually reason will prevail
over
passion.
Since the purpose of these entries is to provide contemporary documentation of
American life or Zeitgeschichte, as it would be called in German,
you are being treated in this installment not only to opinions on current
events but also to some personal information.
In order to escape from the incessant war- and scare-mongering of the national
media my wife Martha and I decided to heed the President's advice, go on with
our lives and stimulate the economy. Since flying and cruising is somewhat
cheaper right now we thought it a good idea to take a long postponed cruise
through the Hawaiian Islands on the good ship Independence
of American Hawaiian Cruises.
We booked our flight tickets separately (to get the cheapest fares) and paid
for the ship with my credit card. One week before going came the call from the
travel agency that the company had fallen victim to bin-Ladin's efficiency and declared
bankruptcy. An immediate call to Merrill Lynch brought the good news
that the $2435 had not yet been cashed and the transaction was red-flagged so
that no money would be paid out. This left us, however, with the discounted
airline tickets which were, of course, non-refundable. Instead of writing off
the six hundred dollars we thought we might as well spend the money, Osama had
saved us, on a hotel in Maui, where we
could enjoy nature and converse with the birds and fish. The Kaanapali
Beach Hotel fit the budget with $1200 for the two of us for one week,
which left the other $1200 for food, drink and excursions. When all was said
and done we actually came out ahead by about $300.
The hallmark of airline travel was that, although Delta provided us with
excellent steaks coming and going across the Pacific, the safety considerations
demanded that we had to eat with plastic knives and forks. Trying to cut a
steak with a terrorist-prove small knife which bends in all directions is a
feat which Martha was unable to accomplish with finger joints ravaged by age,
so she had to return to the ways of our ancestors; simply wrap up the thing and
eat it from her hand. About 500+ years of civilization was gone for reasons of
"security." To enhance our security even further we had, obviously,
to be at the airport two hours earlier but fortunately Salt
Lake City and Maui as well as Honolulu
still had curbside check-in, which avoided interminable lines. Contrary to our
media pundits’ opinions people are still fond of flying and the planes were
full.
On the return trip we would have to have left the hotel at 4 30 in the morning
to make a 7 55 flight from Maui to Honolulu
in order to catch the 10 a.m. flight
to LAX. Since this did not correspond to my idea of a vacation we opted to take
a noon flight from Maui to Honolulu one day earlier (I wanted to see Waikiki
beach and Diamond Head anyway) and leaving the hotel at 7 30 am would
have given us ample time for catching our plane to LA. This was not to be. The
hotel to the airport shuttle people insisted that we have to leave at 7 a.m. in spite of the fact that the trip takes
only 25 minutes. We had to submit to the rules and when we got to the airport
20 minutes later we found people patiently and uncomplainingly waiting in line
to go through inspection for plant and animal material one might have wanted to
bring along as souvenirs. Surprisingly enough there was no movement of that
line and inquiry revealed that they don't open this inspection counter until 8 a.m. Such are the joys of today's travel. The
civilized ways of former days are gone for good in our "Do it
yourself" society which is strictly geared to the young and vigorous.
Mind you I am not complaining, I am simply stating a fact that we are going
backwards in our civilization rather than forwards. On the other hand Maui
was charming and one of my colleagues who had told me before going "you
won't want to come back" was absolutely correct. Sitting on the beach
looking out on the Lahaina Roads (stretch of water between
Maui and the island of Lanai) watching the surf come in, visiting with the
tropical fish and turtles on Black Rock beach, and eventually seeing the sun
set behind Lanai more than made up for the follies we are currently being
subjected to by the people who control our fate.
The contrast between the beauties of nature and human behavior was magnified
when we turned on CNN after dinner and were treated to a daily dose of bombing
Kabul, Taliban
positions and anthrax scares. One asks oneself where
is Homo sapiens - man the wise - when one sees conduct which is
strictly contrary to all good sense. In September when President Bush was
quoted as having said that he wouldn't send a million dollar cruise missile to
hit a mud hut and kick a camel in the butt, I applauded him for his foresight.
Media and other pressures made passion prevail over reason and we are now doing
what he said we wouldn't.
Our Media hounds - and I really have no other word for them - constantly tell
us what the "American people" want. Well, I am one
of the American people and I don't want to bomb mud huts and camels. I also
don't want our commandoes to go on ill defined missions with no adequate
information on where the supposed targets, be they Osama
or Mullah Omar, are really hiding. Our boys are sent into potential
death traps and they deserve better. Some media commentators were surprised
that the Taliban are fighting well. What's the surprise? It's their country and
they have been doing nothing else but fight for decades, if not centuries. The
arrogance, as well as ignorance, of some of these pundits is staggering. The
British fought two wars in Afghanistan
during the nineteenth century and left both times with a bloody nose, the
Russians tried it recently and got out after ten years with the Soviet
Union in shambles. For that I am grateful because I had no use for
their system of government. But why in all the world
should we be more successful? Because we are a high-tech
superpower? Have we forgotten that the ridiculed black pajama-clad boys
with a minimum amount of equipment, no air power but an indomitable will to
succeed, kicked us out of Viet Nam?
Does anybody really believe that Afghans will be any easier
to defeat when we come to introduce our ideas of how the country
should be run?
The American people I talk to are not particularly keen on this war either, but
nobody asks them. I haven't found anybody who has been subjected to one of the
famous public opinion polls. I miss especially a poll which would askallof the 5000 or so families who have lost
one or more of their members in the tragic events of September 11 whether or
not they want a war with Afghanistan.
They are the ones who have suffered and they should be heard. Fragmentary and
anecdotal information seems to suggest that they don't want an eye for an eye.
Gandhi has been credited for saying that the policy of "an eye for an eye
leaves everybody blind" and that is also the truth.
What are we dropping bombs for? Ostensibly to get rid of the Taliban and with
their demise Osama would have no place to hide, except possibly Iraq,
Libya and other
assorted "rogue states" whom we would bomb
thereafter. The world would then be safe from terrorism and in the words of the
fairy tales "everybody would live happily forever after." This is so
naive that I cannot believe anybody in government really believes this. I was
born a European, have lived under Goebbels, and became American by choice. I
am, therefore, sufficiently skeptical of propaganda and even a cursory
knowledge of history shows that most wars and revolutions had ulterior motives.
This gets me back to Hawaii.
The revolution in 1893 was fomented by American sugarcane
growers who saw their profits disappear unless the islands were annexed by America.
The official reason was, of course, the undemocratic behavior of the Queen who
threatened the lives of the American settlers. The Spanish-American war
in 1898 was ostensibly to rid Cuba
of cruel Spanish dictatorship; to extract revenge for the sinking of the Maine
and to bring Christianity to the forsaken natives in the Philippines.
The fact that the Filipinos had been Christians for centuries was disregarded.
Also disregarded was the fact that the Spanish had absolutely no interest in
fighting America
and, in all probability, had nothing to do with the Maine
disaster. The Spanish had to be driven out, not only from the Western
Hemisphere but also the Pacific, because after Hawaii
had been digested it was America's Manifest Destiny to bring
good government to most everybody in the Pacific. In 1917 along came PresidentWilson who believed, with religious fervor, that the world
must be made safe for democracy which could only be achieved by
entering the war on the Allied side. The fact that the Allies were deeply in
debt to America
for all the arms they had to buy and that this debt could never be collected if
the Central Powers had won the war, was obviously irrelevant.
That the world did not become safe for democracy, as Wilson had so devoutly
hoped and prayed for, and that instead another war, even more horrible than the
first one, resulted from it, is ignored. So is the fact that the current Arab-Israeli
turmoil also goes back to WWI and the subsequent
division of the spoils among the victorious Allies. That the British promised,
at that time, the same piece of real estate to the Arabs as well as the Jews
nobody wants to be reminded of either.
When Arabs resist the values of Western culture and are feeling left out from
the benefits which globalism is supposed to bring, when they
see that the poor get poorer and the rich richer they cannot be expected to
become enchanted forever with the carrot which is being dangled before their
noses. If they try to assert themselves they get the stick in form of bombs or
rockets as Saddam Hussein has found out. Increasing social
unhappiness by the masses is bound to lead to unrest and there will always be
educated people to provide leaders. Let us not forget that the leadership of
the proletarian revolutions during the nineteenth and twentieth century was
never in the hands of the working class but in those of intellectuals (Marx,
Engels, Lassale, Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, Adler to name just a few) who took
pity on the downtrodden and promised them the blue from the sky in form of a
socialist utopia. After the demise of the Soviet Union,
socialist dreams have temporarily lost some steam and in its breach stepped
religion which has always been useful to mask imperial aspirations.
Deny it as we might the current war against "terrorism"
is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned
repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan,
Iraq or other
places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated
and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul,
fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla
warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum.
It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Ladin has so far succeeded
beyond his wildest dreams. A $200.000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped
anyway by selling assets on the stock market before its expected crash) has
produced, and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the
American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe
our politicians we are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of
several years. Even if we kill bin-Ladin now he will be a martyr (which is what
he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics
to continue with his work of creating hatred for America
in the Islamic world.
Even we in America
are apparently fighting for religious principles because we
have been told that this is a war of good against evil. Jesus'
words: "Whoever is not against us is with us" have been turned into:
"Who is not with us is against us!" There can be no neutrals now we
are told; the world has to be strictly polarized. This is what the "Judeo-Christian
tradition" apparently means. That Christianity
and Judaism are supposed to operate on different premises
can no longer be openly acknowledged. Jesus was a Jew we are told and,
therefore, adhered to the Jewish religion to the bitter end. The fact that he
changed Judaism fundamentally the moment he told the parable of the Good
Samaritan in answer to the question: "who is my neighbor?" is not
taken into account. This question of the scribe, as reported by Luke, was not
rhetorical because Jews did distinguish very carefully between themselves and
others. Jews were to help each other but they were to shun contact with
foreigners. When Jesus told the scribe that your neighbor is anyone in need of
help, even a despised Samaritan, he violated one of the most sacred taboos. In
addition he had the audacity to tell the Jewish religious leaders that the
Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; to eat with
"sinners," thereby abrogating the sanctity of the dietary laws; and
ultimately going after temple money by overthrowing the tables of the money
changers. This clearly put him beyond the pale of Jewish religious authorities
and required a death sentence. We are now told by some that Jesus was a
fanatical zealot and that is why the Romans crucified him. But this is only an
attempt to exonerate the Jewish ruling circles of Jerusalem
at that time and to foster harmony between Christians and Jews. But a harmony
which is based on a wrong premise can never be lasting.
We must openly admit to the differences between the Jewish and Christian
religion before we can agree on common principles. Judaism was
and for true believers still is, essentially tribal
in its nature. This may sound harsh but the disapproval of intermarriage, the
insistence by rabbinical authorities on separateness and fear of assimilation
are facts of life which cannot be denied. Careful reading of the sayings by the
prophets makes it also undeniably clear that they were nationalists. The
redemption of this world was to be brought about by Jews and the Law,
to which all nations will have to subscribe, will come from Zion.
The famous beating of swords into plowshares in Is. 2:4 is preceded by
"people going up to the mountains of the Lord, to the house of the God of
Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of
Zion shall go forth the law; and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he
shall judge the nations and shall rebuke many people." While Christians
may read this symbolically, fundamentalist Jews tend to think in terms of the
here and now. It is the earthly, rather than the heavenly Jerusalem,
to which all nations will have to flow and it will be the God of Jacob
rather than the Heavenly Father of Jesus who will lay down the
law! These statements may come as a surprise to those who believe that
"Jews are just a quirky Protestant sect" as Stephen Feldman has put
it in Please, Don't wish me a Merry Christmas. But
while that book is clearly polemical, the one by Rabbi Neusner Jews and
Christians. The Myth of a Common Tradition is scholarly,
well reasoned and ought to be required reading for evangelical Christians of
the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell genre.
They also ought to visit the website of a steadily growing subset of Orthodox
Judaism at www.noahide.com. This should dispel any notion that
Judaism and Christianity are simply variants of one common religion like
Catholicism and Protestantism.
Where does this leave our Christian leadership which is engaged in this "Crusade"against terrorism as President Bush has unfortunately called
it. I said "unfortunately" deliberately because the word has a bad
connotation in the minds of Muslims. The Crusaders did not behave like
followers of Jesus' teachings: they murdered, raped and plundered not only Jerusalem
but even Christian Constantinople. The Muslim hero of the Crusades is Saladin,
who soundly defeated and permanently crippled the Christian Crusaders at the
battle of Hattin (A.D.1187). It is his example Saddam and Osama are trying to
follow. I sincerely doubt that some of our fire-breathing media pundits have
ever heard of this epoch making battle and the difference in the treatment of
the inhabitants of Jerusalem first
by the Christian and then the Muslim conquerors. The latter let the population
of the city live while the former "put them to the sword," as the
saying goes, regardless of what religion they belonged to. I am not extolling
the virtues of Islam over Christianity, I am simply recounting historical facts
and when it comes to politics Christianityhas never
been tried ever since it became the official state religion in the Roman
Empire.
The reasons are obvious. Jesus' teachings such as: love those who hate you,
when struck turn the other cheek and my kingdom is not of this world; have no
place in power politics. Jews and Muslims are more honest in this respect
because they make no such demands on the adherents of their faiths. Therefore,
let us leave religious-moral sloganeering out of American propaganda and
concentrate instead on actions which prove to the world at large and Muslims in
particular that Americans, regardless of what faith they profess, do care for
others who do not share their belief system. The month of Ramadan
would be an excellent opportunity to do so. Instead of continuing to bomb and
send commandoes we could use the money and the troops to feed and clothe
the starving hundreds of thousands of Afghans in the refugee camps in Pakistan
and in those areas of Afghanistan
which are not under direct Taliban control. Dropping food from the
air, as well as bombs, makes good propaganda but has little practical value.
The impoverished Afghan people will have difficulty getting to it and when they
are successful the Taliban can always confiscate it "for the good of the
country." In addition, while the ordinary Afghan will have to walk or get
to the drop points - wherever they are - by mule, donkey or camel, the Taliban
who have trucks can get there first.
There is nothing we can do for the people who live under Taliban control at
this time but we have a great opportunity to show our compassion - not through
some nebulous relief agencies but through our troops - by helping, those who
have escaped, with food and half-way decent housing for the upcoming winter
months. That would be a display of genuine Christian charity. Although an
effort of this type would probably be derided by Osama's followers as a
propaganda ploy, the people whose lives we save rather than destroy would be
grateful and the news networks including Al-Jazeera would broadcast the good
news far and wide. It will not deter the likes of Osama but would-be followers
might be persuaded that there is a better way than bombs and killing. To those
who argue that this proposal is unrealistic I can only say: yes, as long as you
don't try it! Actions always speak louder than words and we are judged by what
we do rather than what we say.
Two years ago at Thanksgiving I wrote the final words for War and Mayhem
and it is appropriate to repeat them in part at this time: "The challenges
of the next century, let alone millennium, are going to be enormous. Will our
'opinion makers' and politicians conduct themselves any wiser than in the past?
Will we be able to resurrect a universal moral code and live by it? Will we be
able to meet criticism and differences of opinions without demonizing those who
think differently and try to understand why they do so? Will we be able to look
beyond generalizations to the individuals who make up the groups and deal with
them according to individual behavior rather than preconceived notions which
supposedly characterize the group?" I went on to say that if we could
answer these questions affirmatively there is hope for mankind but if not we
are going to slide into an abyss the magnitude of which can hardly be imagined
at this time.
Our response to the September 11 tragedy does not bode well for the future and
the current November issue ofCommentary
contains chilling information. The lead article by Daniel Pipes: "The
Danger Within: Militant Islam in America,"
depicts a nightmare scenario of Muslim forces taking over our government and
turning us into an Islamic Republic on the model of Iran.
One may laugh about this but Pipes is serious and provides documentation for
his opinion. The second article by Mark Helprin: "What Israel Must Now Do
to Survive," is equally eerie. Not only does Helprin advocate that
Israelis need to arm themselves to the teeth now but he also asks: "Is it
not obvious that now is the time, when American and Israeli interests plainly
coincide, for Israel to destroy [emphasis added] the
laboratories [of weapons of mass destruction], reactors, processing plants and
depots where untold terror might arise?" Helprin concludes "Such a
thing seems perilous, and it is, but hardly more perilous than its
alternative." It seems that it was this type of thinking which caused Secretary
of State Colin Powell to immediately reverse his criticism of the Sharon
government at the time it sent tanks back into Palestinian territory and to
call him “a dear friend" (Salt Lake Tribune, October 25,2001).
The American "public opinion molders" and our politicians who react
to their pressure tend to be remarkably poorly informed about foreign affairs.
This leads to government from crisis to crisis without a long range steadily
pursued goal. This is outright dangerous. When Prime Minister Sharon said
recently that Israel
will go it alone if the U.S.
does not condone his actions we have to keep Sharon's
life history in mind. It is even more important than Arafat's.
The ill-fated invasion of Lebanon
in 1982 was planned and executed by Sharon.
The Reagan peace plan, thereafter, was rejected by
him and the massacre in the Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camp,
although carried out by Christian Lebanese Phalangists, was clearly condoned by
Sharon. He was severely criticized
for it by concerned Israelis and lost his job as Defense Minister. The details
of this affair, as well as other injustices against Palestinians which have
over the years been perpetrated by a succession of Israeli governments are well
documented in Noam Chomsky's book: The Fateful Triangle. The United
States, Israel
& The Palestinians. The book was
published in 1983 and should be required reading for everybody in government
and the media. It is absolutely tragic that no attention has been paid to this
book although the concluding paragraph states: "Meanwhile, at least this
much seems clear. As long as the United States remains committed to an Israeli
Sparta as a strategic asset, blocking the international consensus on a
political settlement, the prospects are for further tragedy: repression,
terrorism, war and possibly even a conflict that will engage the superpowers,
eventuating in a final solution from which few will escape." The first
part of the prophecy is a fact of life now and with Sharon's
finger on the trigger of Israel's
nuclear devices the last words are no longer far fetched either. If Israeli
politicians were to feel themselves pushed against the wall The Samson
Option, as it has been called by Seymour Hersh in his 1991 book, may
well become attractive. Furthermore, if Israeli scientists were to have, in the
meantime, perfected a neutron bomb which kills only people and animals, rather
than destroy property, the world could be in dire straits. The vital oil
installations might remain viable and could switch from Arab into Jewish hands.
What a temptation for any government if it were to feel that its survival is at
stake. The backlash which would subsequently ensue against America
would be both vicious and interminable.
It is in this context that the third article of the current Commentary issue:
"The Wages of Durban" by Arch Puddington needs to be seen. The UN World
Conference Against Racism (WCAR) had concluded a few days before the
September 11 catastrophe. The conference was marred by anti-Israeli and
anti-Jewish polemics, as well as demands for reparations for slavery and
colonial misconduct, by a variety of delegates. Nevertheless it was only Israel
and the United States who walked away from the conference demonstrating to the
world that: whatever you say or do we don't care we go our own way together! If
our fate is truly irrevocably linked to actions initiated by the government in Jerusalem
rather than Washington our war on
terrorism is bound to fail. If we were to win but lose in the process the
freedoms we still enjoy the victory would be a hollow one. What use is it to
gain the whole world if you lose your soul?, the
biblical writer asked. Yes indeed! I personally wish the Jewish people, both
here and in Israel,
well but as I said on previous occasions justice is indivisible
and, difficult as it is, justified grievances by the Palestinians must be
addressed now. Time is running out.
December 2001
War On Terrorism
The collapse of the Taliban in
northern and
central Afghanistan took everybody by surprise and made the Ramadan
suggestions
of the previous month's installment irrelevant. This success was so
stunning
that "On to Baghdad" and let's get rid of Saddam
once and for all is now a common theme in our media. That American air
power
was an essential aspect of the Taliban's defeat is undeniable, but the
territory was taken on the ground by Afghans. Furthermore, nobody,
apart from a
few fanatics, liked the Taliban even in the Muslim world. The situation
may not
be as easy in Iraq.
It is true that most Iraqis are fed up with Saddam and would rather
live in a
democratic society. We should help them to attain this objective; but
bombs or
rockets can achieve this goal only if there are ground forces in place
that do
the actual fighting. Let us not forget that the "Northern Coalition"
was available in Afghanistan to do the dirty work, but whether or not
this type
of insurgent army is available in Iraq remains to be seen. Thus, unless
we can
engineer a relatively bloodless coup d'etat in Baghdad, we are likely
to have a
tough row to hoe. Even as far as Afghanistan is concerned the job is
far from
finished. Taliban fighters are beginning to melt into the abundant
mountains
and the new mujahadeens may harass any government in Kabul for a long
time to
come. For the Northern Alliance to suddenly give up the idea of
translating
their military power into political gains - out of the goodness of
their hearts
- would also be a first in world history.
We are told that our government is split in terms of how to proceed
next. The hawks,
whoever they may be, don't want our military assets,
which sit
in the Persian Gulf, to simply declare "mission
accomplished." I am reasonably sure that our reservists and
National Guard units who are engaged there now would be very happy to
be home
by Christmas, but who is going to ask them?
The "doves" in the administration, whoever they may
be, tend to think about long term political goals and
propose
strategies where bombs and rockets are the last rather than first
resort. They
also listen to responsible Arab leaders like President Mubarack
of Egypt who warned in no uncertain terms that the current coalition in
our war
on terrorism cannot hold together if we attack Iraq without providing
convincing evidence for a direct link between September 11 and Saddam's
government. Germany, and most members of the EU, have voiced similar
concerns
as well as most other nations of the world. A war on Iraq simply does
not have
the same popularity in other countries, apart from Israel, as the one
on
Afghanistan had.
Sergei Khrushchev headlined his article in the current
November/ December issue of American Heritage with "Finding
the
Killers Is the Easy Part." He stated that the fight against
extremism
needs to be pursued on three levels:
The simplest is the police level: finding the terrorists specifically
responsible for the events of September 11. The second level is the
police-plus-intelligence one: cracking the whole terrorist network. But
all
that will be useless if we don't reach the third level: fighting to
eliminate
the extreme dissatisfaction within the [Muslim] society. Without that,
the Arab
world will see our actions as an attack against all of them and their
religion,
and if we catch Osama bin Laden, he will be replaced by someone else.
What is
essential is strong pressure on both sides, on Israelis as well as on
Arabs,
much like the pressure we exerted in the former Yugoslavia. Without
that, all
thoughts of stopping terrorism will be useless.
Mr. Khrushchev is a senior fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Institute of
International Studies, at Brown University and that his views coincide
with
those I have expressed previously in these pages was gratifying. The gangrenous
sore of Palestinian-Israeli relationships must be addressed if
we want
to achieve a modicum of peace in that part of the world and thereby
reduce the
threat of terrorism. Let us not forget that modern terrorism
started
with Palestinians hijacking planes and the massacre
of Jewish
athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, in 1972.Thirty
years later the creation of a viable internationally recognized
Palestinian
state will not necessarily stop all terrorist acts in the world but, as
mentioned previously on these pages, would remove at least one point of
friction.
The American people, at large, are remarkably poorly
informed about the Middle East. On the Opinion page of a
recent Sunday
edition of the Salt Lake Tribune there was an extensive article, which
covered
nearly half the page, entitled: U.S. Guards Its Interests When It Takes
Israel's Side." In the article the lady chided one of those
"peaceniks" and wrote "Permit me to give you and the nation a
lesson in history and the future." In so doing she informed us that Israel
protects the Suez Canal and sees to it that it does not fall
into the
hands of the enemies of freedom. Since we have given control over the
Panama
Canal to the Chinese we should follow the example of the British who
sent their
fleet half way around the world to retain the Falkland Islands and
thereby
guard the route around Cape Horn.
Since this history lesson conflicted profoundly with my information I
sent
immediately a letter to the Public Forum page of the Tribune in which I
explained tat the Suez canal has been in Egyptian handssince
the spring of 1956 and that the British - French -Israeli war
against
Egypt in November of that year, with the goal to retake possession of
the
canal, had to be abandoned as a result of severe pressure by the United
States
and the Soviet Union. This was the final end of British-French colonial
ambitions. The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), which had performed
brilliantly in
regard to territorial gains (all of the Gaza strip and the entire Sinai
Peninsula), also were forced to withdraw as a result of a 65 to 1 vote
in the
UN. The lone dissenter was Israel; England and France abstained from
the vote. Ben-Gurion
was furious. He knew now that he could not rely on America under all
circumstances and embarked full steam, with the help
of
France, on arming Israel with nuclear weapons. This
was the
outcome of the Suez war and what we are now confronted with. I also
informed
the readership of the Tribune that the documentation for these
statements can
be found in Righteous Victims. A History of the Zionist-Arab
Conflict. 1881
- 1999 by Benny Morris and The Samson Option. Israel's
Nuclear Arsenal
and American Foreign Policy by Seymour Hersh.
This correct version of history was not palatable to the editors of the
Tribune
and the article was never published. Nevertheless it was helpful for me
to
refresh my memory and re-read aspects of the two mentioned books. In
the
November installment of Hot Issues I hedged my bets in regard to
Israel's
possession of neutron weapons but this is no longer necessary. Seymour
Hersh
states unequivocally in the Epilogue of The Samson Option:
"By
the mid-1980's, the technicians at Dimona
[Israel's
nuclear facility] had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron
warheads
capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal
property
damage. The size and sophistication of Israel's arsenal allows
men
such as Ariel Sharon [who was out of power at that time] to dream of
redrawing
the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear
force.
Israel has also been an exporter of nuclear technology and has
collaborated on
nuclear weapons research with other nations, including South Africa."
Hersh is not some fly by night journalist but he knows his facts and
has won
more than a dozen major journalism prizes. The book was published ten
years ago
and there is hardly any doubt that Israel has in the meantime continued
to
improve on its nuclear capability. Granted that Israel's
nuclear
arsenal is for defensive purposes, but why should
Arabs,
for whom the existence of Israel's capability is no secret, not
be concerned and develop their own counterweight? Why
do we
read about the threat of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) only in
relation to
"rogue regimes" like Saddam Hussein and there is not a single word
either printed in the papers or mentioned on TV?
Whom does Saddam really threaten? Is he going to ship to us numerous
batches of
Anthrax or other disease germs? Is he going to send us nuclear bombs?
What
would be the purpose? His regime would vanish over night and he knows
it. His
first goal is to hang on to his power and this cannot be accomplished
by
needlessly provoking the U.S. His second goal is to guard himself
against
Israel. Does he want to attack Israel first? This does not seem
particularly
likely because he knows full well that American retribution would be
swift and
devastating. Whatever else he is, he is not particularly suicidal.
Thus, if we
start a major war against Iraq we are not serving primarily America's
interests
but those of Israel.
While checking my facts in Benny Morris' book (he is Professor of
History at
Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba) about the British and
French Suez
canal debacle, which by the way coincided with the
Hungarian
uprising against the Soviets, I came upon a passage which is
also
highly á propos. At a funeral service on April 29, 1956 for the
assassinated
security officer Ro'i Rothenberg of Kibbutz Nahal-'Oz on the edge of
the Gaza
strip, Moshe Dayan delivered a eulogy which goes to
the heart
of the Israeli-Palestinian problem:
Yesterday at dawn Ro'i was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning
blinded
him, and he did not see those who sought his life hiding behind the
furrow. Let
us not today cast blame on the murderers. What can we say against their
terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in the
refugee camps
of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes we have turned
their land
and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into
our
home. It is not among the Arabs of Gaza, but in our own midst that we
must seek
Ro'i's blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at
our fate
and see, in all its brutality, the fate of our generation? Can we
forget that
this group of youngsters sitting in Nahal-'Oz, carries the heavy gates
of Gaza
on their shoulders?
Dayan continued with an admonition for Israelis to be forever vigilant:
"We are a generation of settlement, and without the steel helmet and
the
gun's muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree or build a house." He
concluded with "This is the fate of our generation.
This
is our choice - to be ready and armed, tough and harsh
- or to
let the sword fall from our hands and our lives be cut short."
Forty six years later and in another generation Americans are now
supposed to
"shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at the fate of Israelis
"in all its brutality." Since 1956 Israel has enlarged its territory
and thereby harvested more hatred, which has now spilled over onto our
shores.
The refusal by our media to accept a connection between the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and our current terrorist problem is indeed self-inflicted
blindness.
At the time of this writing two American mediators are in the Middle
East. Their mission seems to be doomed
because Israeli newspapers and Television stations have already
complained that
the person in charge, retired Marine General Zinni, is not Jewish, had
close
ties with the Saudis and is, therefore, biased in favor of the
Palestinians. In
addition Pat Buchanan's column of November 20 on WorldNet
Daily stated that 89 senators had sent a letter to Secretary
of State
Colin Powell with the request not to pressure Israeli towards a peace
settlement.
This development was utterly predictable and this why I had suggested
in Whither
Zionism? that the only possible hope for a diminution, if not
resolution,
of this conflict could come from the United Nations Commission and the
Security
Council. If we veto the resultant implementation of their
recommendations we
have doomed our children and grandchildren to an endless "War on
Terrorism." The Israelis, in the words of Dayan, have
made
a choice to live by the sword. If our government forces us to
follow
their example we can also expect to die by the sword. Advocates of
peace are
currently not only derided as "peaceniks" but also by Michael
Kelly in his most recent editorial as "peacemongers!"
I gladly accept this title and intend to introduce myself to the Lord
in this
fashion when I meet him in the not too distant future. Unless He is
still a
"jealous God (Ex. 20:5)" who "will make Mine arrows drunk with
blood, And My sword shall devour flesh (Dt.32:42)" I don't expect any
problem on that account.
January 1, 2002
THE HOLY LAND - PROPAGANDA AND REALITY
With the beginning of every New Year one tends to
be filled
with hope that things will be better than in the past. The stunning and
it must
be admitted unexpected, phenomenally rapid successes of our military
forces
which resulted in the removal of the Taliban as a government raises
hopes for
future successes on the world stage. Our armed forces and their
leadership
deserve full credit and applause for a job well done. Afghanistan is in
the
process of being pacified, which may, however, still take some time
because the
various factions within the Afghani people have different ideas on how
the
country should be run. Whether or not they will continue to listen to
our well
meant advice is another question.
More troubling is, however, that America still seems to be unwilling to
realistically address one of the root causes for our War on Terrorism,
the
Middle East. The Holy Land continues to be mired in chaos and we seem
to have
hitched our wagon firmly to Prime Minister Sharon's vision of the
future.
'War Has Been Forced on Us' Sharon Says was the headline in
the Salt
Lake Tribune after a spate of suicide bombings committed by
Palestinians in
Israel. The slaughter of innocent civilians is indeed reprehensible and
measures must be taken to reduce these acts of random violence to a
minimum.
But an expectation that they can be stopped altogether, even by means
of the
most intense security measures and repression, is unrealistic and
should not be
fostered.
For me Sharon's words cited above evoked an eerie memory of the Third
Reich. Der uns aufgezwungene Krieg-
the war
which has been forced upon us - was the favorite phrase of Hitler
after the victory over France, when he made a feeble peace offer to
England
which was rebuffed, until the bitter end in 1945. The war was not
Germany's
fault it was Britain and France who had declared war on the Reich and
which led
to all the subsequent events, was the official propaganda line. That
Hitler had
started the war with his invasion of Poland and that the Western Allies
were
duty bound to stand by their guarantees, of which Hitler had been fully
aware,
the German people were supposed to have forgotten.
Any historical similarity must be viewed with caution but it does
behoove us to
look at the facts which have led Israelis and Palestinians to this
dreadful
impasse. Mortimer Zuckerman, Editor in Chief of the
prestigious U.S. News and World Report, kept repeating in a recent
editorial
that Arafat is a hate-filled terrorist who has never kept a promise in
his
life. It is he who has instigated all the Palestinian terrorist attacks
of the
past and who continues to do so now. Zuckerman wrote:
"When Arafat, ejected from Jordan and Lebanon, finally left his
stopping
place in Tunis to come to Gaza, he was essentially given a choice:
either a state
or terrorism. Perversely, Arafat said yes to terrorism and no to a
state. We
saw it again last year at Camp David. Arafat would not accept
the huge
concessions offered by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak and
endorsed by
President Clinton. If he had, a Palestinian flag would be flying today
over a
sovereign, independent, internationally recognized Palestinian state,
and there
would be no Israeli occupation."
This is not idle rhetoric but a firmly held belief by Mr. Zuckerman to
which
Americans should now subscribe or appear unpatriotic.
Let us examine dispassionately some of these statements. The most
important
aspect is that if Israel had withdrawn the occupying forces from the
areas
conquered in the Six Day War, as demanded by the Security
Council Resolution
242 of 22 November, 1967, the problems we see today could, in
all
probability, have been prevented. The Resolution, which was passed
unanimously,
demanded "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territory
occupied in the recent conflict." Israel ignored the
Resolution.
After the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 Israel surrendered the
Sinai
Peninsula and considered its commitment in regard to Resolution 242
fulfilled
because the Resolution did not contain the words "all territory"but
only
"territory." It was actually the word "all" over which
bitter haggling had ensued and its omission prevented an American veto
of the
Resolution. That the right wing of the Israeli public, most prominently
represented by Likud under Prime MinistersBegin,
Shamir, Netanyahu und now Sharon,
had absolutely no interest to withdraw from the West Bank and
Gaza
is exemplified by the party's manifesto for the 1977
election as cited in The Iron Wall by Avi
Shlaim
"The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is eternal, and
an
integral part of its right to security and peace. Judea and
Samaria
[the occupied West Bank] shall therefore not be
relinquished
to foreign rule; between the sea and the Jordan, there will be
Jewish
sovereignty alone. Any plan that involves parts of Western
Eretz Israel
militates against our right to the Land, would inevitably lead to the
establishment of a 'Palestinian State,' threaten the security of the
civilian
population, endanger the existence of the State of Israel, and defeat
all prospects
of peace."
The goal was to create a "Greater Israel" which was
not limited to the armistice frontiers after the 1948 wars. The term
"Western" Eretz Israel is, therefore, potentially highly meaningful. Revisionist
Zionism, of which Likud is the offspring, always
wanted to
incorporate areas to the east of the Jordan River into the Jewish state.
Although further military expansion into Jordan was unrealistic in 1977
the
hope to ultimately bring this dream to fruition, has not yet died. In
the
meantime the territories conquered in 1967 were to be colonized with
Jewish
settlements. To attract settlers state subsidized housing would be
provided at
substantially reduced rates. Palestinian land would be expropriated and
the
civil rights of the Palestinian population in these areas were not
regarded as
worthy of attention. The aim was to create facts on the ground,
including in
East Jerusalem, which would mute any question of withdrawal.
Palestinians who
objected by violent means were jailed or expelled and the rest of the
people
had to submit to military rule. The consequences of this policy were,
of
course, utterly predictable. Yeshahayu Leibowitz (Judaism,
Human Values and the Jewish State) stated in an article, published
in 1988
and entitled Forty Years After:
"What many call 'the undivided Land of Israel' is not, and can never
be,
the state of the Jewish people, but only a Jewish regime of force. The state
of Israel today is neither a democracy nor a state abiding by the rule
of law,
since it rules over a million and a half people deprived of civil and
political
rights. That a subjugated people would fight for its freedom against
the
conquering ruler, with all the means at its disposal, without being
squeamish
about their legitimacy, was only to be expected...We call the acts of
the
Palestinians 'terrorism' and their fighters 'terrorists.' But we are
able to
maintain our rule over the rebellious people only by actions regarded
the world
over as criminal. We refer to this as 'policy' rather than 'terror'
because it
is conducted by a duly constituted government and its regular army."
Leibowitz called for a voluntary withdrawal of the occupation forces
but
"the conscience of Israel," as he was referred to, was ignored. So
were numerous UN resolutions which condemned the continued occupation
and the settlements
on occupied territory as being illegal under the Fourth Geneva
Convention which regulates the rights and obligations of an
occupying
power. Israel felt free to disregard the Convention because in the
views of its
leadership there is no occupation of conquered land. All of it is Eretz
Israel,
and whoever does not like it is simply wrong. The treatment of the
Palestinian
population is Israel's internal affair. The fact that this view is not
grounded
in international law but simply in a biblical interpretation and
therefore a
religious one is not being conceded.
When one reads Shlaim's book, as well as the one by Benny
Morris
which was mentioned in the December installment, it is absolutely
amazing how the
American public has been misled about the real facts. Was it
really
only Arafat who had deliberately sabotaged the Oslo peace process, as
Mr.
Zuckerman and a great many others insist on? The answer is: No!
Right-wing
Israeli politicians among them Benjamin Netanyahu have
been firmly
opposedto the Oslo Accord. Shlaim headed a
sub-chapter of his book with "Declaration of War on the Peace
Process." In it he lists the basic guidelines of the
government
as outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his inauguralspeech to the Knesset in 1996. To quote from Shlaim's
book:
"Those who expected the Likud leader, once elected, to start blunting
the
edges of his opposition to the peace process, found no comfort in this
document. The guidelines were those of an ethnocentric
religious-nationalist government. The chapter on education
promised to
cultivate Jewish values and to put the Bible, the Hebrew language, and
the
history of the Jewish people at the center of the school curriculum.
The
foreign policy guidelines expressed firm opposition to a
Palestinian
state, to the Palestinian right of return, and to the
dismantling of Jewish settlements. They reserved the right to
use the
Israeli security forces against terrorist threats in the areas under
Palestinian self-rule. They called on Syria to resume peace talks
without
preconditions but at the same time ruled out any retreat from Israeli
sovereignty on the Golan Heights. The assertion of Israel sovereignty
over the
whole of Jerusalem was explicit and exhaustive. So was the commitment
to continue developing settlements as 'an expression of
Zionist
fulfillment'. And for good or bad measure, the guidelines made no
explicit reference to Oslo or Cairo agreements."
Is Mr. Zuckerman and those who write similar articles, merely unaware
of
history or does the rule: "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with
facts!" hold? Another aspect of Netanyahu's speech is
noteworthy: "His call on Syria for talks without preconditions [while
having made a precondition himself] was widely seen as an attempt to
dissociate
himself from the verbal promises made by his predecessors. But there
was also
an implied warning that Israel would act not only against
terrorists
but against the sponsors of terror [emphasis added]." What was
implied in 1996 in Israel has become official policy of the
United
States in 2001. President Bush may now remove any government
we do not
like, either by bombing a given country into submission or by fomenting
internal upheavals. That this merely smacks of American Imperialism
dressed up
in humanitarian language ought to be obvious to any unbiased observer
of the
international scene.
Let me re-emphasize that I have never had any sympathy for the Taliban
and
Osama bin Laden's followers. I also have deep compassion for the
victims of the
September 11 attack and want to prevent future disasters of this type.
But if
we merely seek justice for the victims and the prevention of future
attacks we
do not have to antagonize a great many other countries. We
should rely
on Interpol as well as coordination of the various government security
agencies
around the world instead of massive bombing. The fact that
bombing
worked in Afghanistan, is no guarantee that it will do so in other
circumstances. If the Bush administration persists in the belief that
all
governments who have harbored terrorists need to be eliminated we have
a
massive job ahead. We will not only have to install a new regime in
Baghdad but
also in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Iran, Pakistan,
North
Korea, China and various other places around the globe, while we
condone and
support at the same time a repressive government in Israel. Under these
circumstances there will be nothing but war, human suffering, and
further
hatred of American policies.
An objective observer must admit that the Israelis and
their
supporters in the United States have done a superb propaganda
job
while the Arab-Palestinian side has shown a great
deal
of incompetence. This brings me to the oft repeated statement
that Arafat
had walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace plan
and chosen
terrorism instead. At no time have our government, the Israelis, or the
Palestinians published a transcript of the sessions and what the
conditions
were that Arafat was supposed to have accepted. What type of
state
should he have signed on to? Was it truly independent
and
contiguousor was it supposed to have been a
group of
isolated cantons where the access is
patrolled by
Israelis and water as well as power supplies are in Israeli hands? We
have not been shown these documents and, therefore, simply don't know.
The Palestinians
are being chided for not having presented a peace plan
of
their own. Theirs is actually rather simple. It says to Israel: obey
the Security Council Resolutions, dismantle the settlements on the West
Bank
and Gaza,withdraw your armed forces to
the
pre-June 1967 borders and allow refugees to return.
Since Israel is unwilling to do this the blame for the breakdown of
talks has
to be shifted onto the opponent. One cannot fault the Jews for this
strategy
because it works, but American citizens who morally
and
financially support Israel's policies should be given the facts.
There does not seem to be any reason why the minutes of the Camp David
meeting
are being withheld from public view. What is our government
afraid of,
and why do Congress and our media
not demand factual answers? As long as we do not have these answers we
will be
bombarded by propaganda on the one hand and conspiracy theories on the
other.
Why have Israeli politicians proven
to be so intransigent
towards genuine peace? The major reasons were already present in
1948
and 1949 when Ben-Gurion felt in no
hurry to
conclude peace with the neighbors, because he believed that
time was
on his side. Every peace treaty would inevitably
involve some territorial
concessions, and the return of the refugees
into the
Jewish state would create a major political problem. It was preferable,
therefore, to wait until the world would get used to the
existing
borders and eventually forget about the Palestinians.
He was correct in this assumption as far as the world was concerned,
but the Palestinians
refused to be forgotten. An annexation of East Jerusalem (as
was
done), Gaza and the West Bank (which is still hoped for) obviously
makes good
military sense because the current borders are quite illogical. It
would lead,
however, not only to condemnation by the rest of the world, but more
importantly to profound changes in Israeli society. Israel cannot
remain a
"Jewish" state for Jews when it has to harbor more than three million
Arabs as full fledged citizens. The question Israel has avoided
throughout its existence for more than 50 years is what kind
of a state
do the Jewish inhabitants really want?Is it to be asecular constitutional democracy
with equal rights for all citizens regardless of religion and
ethnicity, or
a Jewish state by and for Jews? Throughout their history Jews
have
been masters at avoiding either-or questions and opted for the
as-well-as route
but sooner or later a choice will have to be made. Unless this
fundamental question is answered there can be no peace,
and as long as the U.S. continues to veto Security CouncilResolutions
which demand justice for Palestiniansweinvite
further acts of terrorismon our own people.
Gloria Borger recently (U.S. News & World Report,
December
31, 2001/January 7, 2002) quoted one of President Bush's aides
as having commented "What he says in private these days is very
often what he says in public." This is a laudabletrait and would be a welcome change from some previous
presidents. On the other hand if President Bush really thinks
in the
terms theJerusalem Post has reported
in its December 21, 2001 edition, America and the
rest of the
world may have little to rejoice about in
the coming
year.
"In a meeting last week with seven leading Jewish donors, including
veteran Republican Max Fisher, and National Security Adviser Condoleeza
Rice
present, George W. Bush reportedly said that if he had been Ariel
Sharon he, Bush,
would have acted the same way the prime minister is acting in the face
of the
Palestinian war of terror. Quoted without attribution by the
highly
reliable Nahum Barnea of the Yediot Aaharonot daily, Bush
also said
that Arafat is weak and his regime close to collapse. Proceeding from
there to
the broader Arab world, Bush said that unlike Sharon, who was
democratically
elected, Saudi King Fahd was not elected and it is unclear just who
exactly he
represents.
One participant in the meeting told Barnea that Bush also
spoke
disparagingly about his own State Department, which he said is
'irrelevant,'
and whose Arabists' 'games' the President now intends 'to
bring to an
end.' Finally Bush personally reiterated, according to the
report,
what other American officials said in recent weeks, namely that Hamas
and Hizbullah were terrorist organizations,
and that if
Syria and Lebanon are harboring them, they are no different than the
Taliban.
Be the accuracy of this report what it may, it is clear in Jerusalem
that Bush
has lost all patience for Arafat, whom he now clearly, and
irreversibly, sees
as a liar and terror-supporter."
That Sharon is likewise a terror-supporter,
against whom a criminal investigation is under way in Belgium for his
behavior
in Lebanon, is deemed to be unimportant and not reported by our
mass-media.
Sharon seems to have been given the green light to proceed as he
pleases and
America will have to pay the bills not only in the financial sense of
the word.
Arafat has many strikes against him but the most
serious is,
for the American public at least, that he is neither telegenic
nor
articulate. The suave American educated Netanyahu, who is
likely to be
Sharon's successor if Likud remains in power, can outtalk any
Palestinian any
day. As long as the American public is satisfied with glib one-liners
and
glamor rather than a basic understanding of complex issues we will
continue to
be treated to self-serving propaganda rather than facts.
When Sharon prevented Arafat from visiting Bethlehem on Christmas Eve,
which
Arafat had done regularly since 1995, Sharon showed himself to be a
petty
hate-filled individual whom we have every reason to distrust. This type
of
fanaticism reminds one of the Taliban's destruction of the ancient
statues of
Buddha and tells the world that no other religious sentiments except
one's own
are tolerated in the "Holy Land."
If the Jerusalem Post article, as quoted above, is
indeed correct
the hopes which I had pinned on the Bush
administration in Whither
Zionism?might well have been misplaced.
But it is not yet too late. Therefore I'd like to offer this New Year's
prayer
for our President:
Please oh Lord look kindly upon George W. Bush and his wife, grant them
the
ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood; let them not be
misled by
propaganda which serves ulterior motives and leads to actions which do
not
conform to the principles America was founded upon. Prevent the
President from
succumbing to Hubris which tends to afflict people in their success and
heralds
their downfall. Let him act with wisdom and foresight, rather than
expediency,
to the benefit of America and the world. Thank you Lord.
February 1, 2002
THE GREAT SATAN
The Ayatollah Khomeini bestowed the title "The
Great
Satan" on us after his successful Islamic revolution in Iran. Although
Khomeini is dead his spirit lives and our media as well as politicians
have
never stopped ridiculing the notion. There is good reason for the
rejection of
the idea because "We" as individual citizens are really basically
good natured and don't want to harm anybody else. Most of us will,
therefore,
regard the term as slander. But there are policies, which are carried
out in
our name which, although well meant, not only impinge on the lives and
belief
systems of others but affect them adversely. Let us, therefore, not be
too
hasty and examine the Ayatollah's term somewhat more closely.
Baudelaire is credited with having said: "Satan's
greatest victory was when he convinced the world that
he
doesn't really exist." Yes indeed! Our secular society, which
has
expelled God from public schools, surely does not have any use for His
counterpart either. Although we bemoan the existence of evil
the causes are usually sought in externals and when people are involved
it is"the other" who foments evil. One's own
contributions usually are not considered and if one tries to do so
during our
current war on terrorism one risks being labeled as unpatriotic.
Nevertheless I
invite you for the next few minutes to look at the splinter in our own
eye and
not only the beam in others. Was the Ayatollah totally wrong when he
rejected America's
values and their seductive influence? It is, after all, values
we are
really talking about and supposedly fighting for at this time. Let us
look,
therefore at our current society, not the way we want it to be, but the
way it
actually is and as we are seen by others.
If one were to publicly proclaim that the pillars our society rests on,
and the
forces which shape its course, are thoroughly satanic one would either
be
laughed at, or confined to a lunatic asylum if one were too insistent
about it.
Yet, this merely betrays the ignorance which has come to pervade our
public
lives inasmuch as the Greek word satanas means
nothing
else but adversary. This puts the entire discussion
into a
different perspective. Our legal system prides itself
that it
operates on the "adversarial principle." Truth and
justice are no longer the overriding goals but rather the largest
possible
settlement in civil cases. In criminal law suits the outcome may depend
on who
can hire the most expensive legal team. Our journalists
and media
pundits take pride in their adversarial stance, where
all sides of a given issue have equal merit regardless of the truth
involved.
All members of society are encouraged to take positions against each
other.
Even women have to fight men and vice versa; everyone has to fight for
some
"right" and if the presumed justice is not forthcoming it can be
pursued on an individual or better yet, a "class action basis" where
vast sums of money can be extracted. Fight as well as
Rights
have become the key words, while responsibility
and
cooperation are relegated to the backbench.
Thus the
spirit which motivates our culture at this time is thoroughly
adversarial in
nature. Advocates of peace and understanding are not much sought after.
In addition the quest for financial gain is paramount. Our culture as
represented by Hollywood, with its emphasis on nudity, sexual
licentiousness,
and physical violence is geared to the lowest instincts of the human
race
because that is where most money can be made. Even when a program which
airs
what I still regard as genuine culture, rather than the smut we are
exposed to
on the major commercial networks, the viewer's enjoyment is constantly
interrupted by advertisements. A glaring example might be the
following. A few
weeks ago ABC presented a film "Immortal Beloved." I
did not immediately recognize the significance of the title, expected
the usual
graphic sex scenes, and would not have bothered had I not read the name
Beethoven.
The movie dealt with one of the two most famous notes ever written by
the
composer. In The Heiligenstadt Testament Beethoven expressed
his
distress over his impending deafness while in the letter to the Unsterbliche
Geliebte he poured his heart out to "My Angel, My All, My
I" over the fact that they would probably never be able to be joined in
union as man and wife. The letter bore neither address nor where it was
written, and the date was given only as July 6 without a year.
Speculation has
been rampant ever since who the intended recipient was. In the film she
was
identified as the woman who, through mistaken assumptions, had become
his
brother's wife instead of his. Her son was not Beethoven's nephew but
actually
his own offspring. This was clearly poetic license without any
grounding in
reality but be that as it may. The story was depicted tastefully and
what made
the film great was the skillful interposition of Beethoven's music with
his
life's events. But as soon as one experienced a genuine emotion of
appreciation
one was interrupted by five minutes or more of commercials. Imagine for
a
moment: the final bars of the 9th symphony are played, the
chorus
sings Brüder überm Sternenzelt muss ein guter Vater
wohnen (brothers
above the starry tent there is bound to live a good father), the
picture shows
the star-studded sky then fades to the orchestra and the deaf Beethoven
who
when the music has ended has to be turned to see the standing ovation
because
he can't hear the applause. It was profoundly moving, but without
missing even
a heartbeat the station cut immediately to selling beds, pain killers
and other
paraphernalia. This was truly jarring on account of its incongruity and
we were
immediately confronted by the commercialism which runs our lives. It
may be
argued that we have to pay the piper, we do, but we don't have to do it
in this
obnoxious manner.
Salt Lake City is now eagerly looking forward, with some trepidation,
to the
upcoming Olympic Games. The papers are full of
information on
the events and the massive security preparations. A recent Sunday
edition
showed on the front page a picture of one of America's favorite
downhill racers
as he jumps over a section of the Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbühel
as part of the
qualifying events. What attracted my attention was not merely his good
form but
his ski suit was plastered with advertisements. On his right arm he
sold VISA
in addition to other unidentifiable companies, on the left leg Chevy
trucks, on
the right leg Holland-America line and Sprite. The ear band had another
logo
and so did the band which held his goggles in place, his back could not
be seen
properly but from what could be discerned was also plastered with ads.
This
type of commercialization of the sport is not limited to Americans but
has
become widespread and important international sailing regattas also
display
numerous ads on boats and sails. The remarkable aspect is that hardly
anyone notices this commercialization any more, which penetrates
all levels of our society, and has become accepted as
the norm.
Jesus had advised us that wecannot serve God and Mammon. It seems that our society
has
opted for Mammon.
Thus, to tell the truth, when the Ayatollah Khomeini called America the
"Great Satan" - a rallying call which has now been taken up by other
Muslim fundamentalists - he was not necessarily totally wrong. The
culture we
display and export through our media is indeed inimical to Islamic (as
well as
Christian) values. It is thoroughly understandable that Khomeini did
not want
his country to be swamped by this tidal wave of smut. When our media
ridiculed
the Ayatollah's notion they simply betrayed their ignorance of what he
was
talking about. Trained to look only at the most obvious in material
terms they
failed to see the deeper significance.
Let us, therefore, study Satan for a moment. How the
concept has evolved, what the main properties
are and
what the individual can do in order not to succumb to temptation. To
understand
the satanic it behooves us to go back to the very beginning of the
Bible and
Eve's encounter with the snake. In Christian theology it is called the original
sin while Jews put a different interpretation on it but this
need not
concern us here. What is important to remember is that it was Satan, in
the
form of a snake, who blessed us with "The Knowledge of Good and
Evil." Since good and evil are antonyms one cannot exist
without
the other. What was the motivation of the mythical Eve to yield to
temptation?
She heard only "good" as well as "You will be like God" and
jumped at the idea. It was not just disobedience but the impulsive act
towards
satisfaction of a desire without giving a second thought to possible
consequences. This type of behavior has been reenacted by the human
race ever
since. The excuses are also typical. Some writers simply abbreviate the
name of
the forbidden tree to the "Tree of Knowledge" and insist we should be
grateful to the serpent because by eating the tree's fruit we became
scientists
while God had intended to keep us ignorant. That is not so, it was only
the
knowledge of good and evil, i.e. moral judgment, which was withheld.
There may
have been good reasons because as the subsequent history of mankind
shows, what
is or is not moral has become a major bone of contention.
But there is more to the story. It tells us something about the nature
of the satanic
lie. The warning to Adam was: "in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die." The prohibition was specific "you
must not eat" but either Adam, or Eve had embellished it and she
replied
to the serpent that she wasn't even allowed to touch it. Why do I make
such a
point of this? Because it is a classic example that human beings don't
hear
what is said but what is perceived by the recipient's brain and that is
what
counts. Anyone who has either published or given lectures knows that
what
people tell him he has written or said bears at times little
relationship to
what was presented. Poor Eve was now in a quandary. This was the first
time a
choice had to be made. Should she or shouldn't she follow the serpent's
coaxing? To make a long story short she did and persuaded Adam to
follow suit.
After he had eaten something drastic happened. Their "moral" eyes
were opened to their nakedness and they realized that this was not an
advantage. In addition they had developed a guilty conscience and the
blame
game started. "The woman you [emphasis added] gave me" made
me do it. Don't we hear this over and over again? Not only is it Eve's
fault
that Adam took a bite but it is God's! He should have known better and
not have
given him a gullible Eve in the first place for his "helpmate."
We now come to a key question: did the serpent lie? Ergo
what is
a lie? Answer: The deliberate misrepresentation of
the truth
as known to the individual. The serpent said that they would
not die,
and they did not "in the day thereof." Their "eyes would be
opened," which was also correct and they now knew good and evil. So
where
is the lie? It resides in what was not said. It was the
deliberate
attempt to mislead by withholding information. This is the
reason why
an oath demands :"To tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing
but the truth" and why ex-President Clinton's lame excuse
"it depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is," doesn't wash.
This is also the reason why I became quite concerned when I read an
article in
a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post entitled the "Jewish
Millennium." The author stated that the American people
expressed
"Jewish values" when they continued with high
approval ratings for Clinton's political conduct and that he was not
removed
from office. Economic well-being took precedence over morality and as
far as
the author was concerned rightly so. If these are truly the values
endorsed by
the majority of our population, and not only some members of its Jewish
segment, we are in deep trouble. Other countries may not appreciate the
export
of these "values."
Let us consider now what our mythological ancestors could have done?
Eve might
have said to the serpent: "Wait a minute, I don't understand, are we
going
to be like God in all respects or just in regard to good and evil? What
is this
good and evil anyway?" If the serpent had remained truthful and
explained
what evil meant, Eve would have cut short the conversation. Thus the
deliberate use of the half truth constitutes the satanic lie.
It is
the most vicious, most effective, and most frequently used lie
throughout the
ages by propagandists, unscrupulous politicians, and other individuals
who
regard themselves as being in an adversarial position. Words taken out
of
context is also one of the most common techniques to smear someone
whose views
one disagrees with. I don't want to be hard on Eve because it was Adam
who also
thoroughly failed us. It would have been his job to say: "Evie, what in
all the worldhave you done? I don't
know what's going to happen, so let's find God and ask Him what to do
now." That would have been the rational approach. But we, just like
Adam,
are frequently not capable of thinking rationally when the "forbidden
fruit" is dangled before us. In the numerous generations since that
story
was written we surely should have learned better.
In the Christian religion the devil used to be depicted as a hoofed,
horned, furry
creature which actually bore a close resemblance to the ancient Greek
god Pan.
Apart from his other characteristics he was mischievous and used to
frighten
people who wandered into the woods. Thus we owe the word panic to him.
This
picture of the devil was thoroughly repudiated during the period of the
Enlightenment. We did away with all the ghosties and ghoulies and long
legged
beasties and things that go bump in the night from which the good Lord
was to
protect us. Nevertheless, they still bring in the cash in the form of
horror
movies and outer space creatures. But these are not Satan's
essence.
Among the various mistakes our materialistic society makes the one most
relevant in this context is what may be called the pars pro
toto
attitude. The term is used in grammar when one word stands for a
sentence. The
part is taken for the whole. This is what we are doing continuously in
our
lives whenever we judge something or someone. We don't know the whole,
so we go
by the part we can perceive and deal with itas ifthis
were all there is. What we cannot grasp with our senses is regarded as
non-existent. Goethe's Faust provides an excellent example:
Doctor Faust had been followed by a poodle on his
Easter
holiday walk and when he returned to his study to continue translating
the
Bible, the animal grew unhappy and kept interrupting him. Finally the
poodle
morphed into Mephisto, which led to the famous saying
"Das
also war des Pudels Kern" (so, this was the poodle's essence).
Faust
then asked for the name of the person who stood in front of him. The
devil
initially just poked fun at the question because names are really no
longer
meaningful but eventually he answered: Ich bin ein Teil von jener
Kraft die
stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft (I am one part
of that
force which forever desires evil and always produces good). Faust was
perplexed
and asked: what do you mean with this riddle? Mephisto answered: Ich
bin
der Geist der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht: denn alles, was
entsteht, ist
wert dasz es zugrunde geht . . . so ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung,
kurz das Böse nennt, mein eigentliches Element (I am the
spirit who always
negatesand rightfully so, because everything that comes into
being is
worthy of perishing...everything you call sin, destruction or in short
evil, is
my true domain). Faust is still unsure and says: you call yourself "one
part" and yet you stand in front of me as one whole being? Mephisto: Weil
doch der Mensch die kleine Narrenwelt sich immer für ein Ganzes
hält
(because the human being, this foolish little world, always considers
himself
to be an entirety). This is the pars pro toto type thinking
mentioned
earlier. We always regard that part of whatever we can apprehend,
conceive of,
or desire, as if it were the whole. This is especially true of God but
also of
Science written with a capital S, because apart from Mammon it is
likewise the
current god.
When Goethe credited the devil with wanting evil but nevertheless
achieving
good he had paraphrased Milton who actually was less
charitable in his Paradise Lost:
To do
ought good
never will be our task,
But
ever to do ill
our sole delight,
As
being contrary to
his high will
Whom
we resist. If
then his Providence
Out of
our evil seek
to bring forth good,
Our
labor must be to
pervert that end,
And
out of good
still to find means of evil;
Which
oft times may
succeed, so as perhaps
Shall
grieve him, if
I fail not, and disturb
His inmost
counsels from their destined aim.
The German language has another word for the devil that is quite
fascinating: derLeibhaftige. It is used by the common people
especially in the countryside when they don't want to "paint the devil
on
the wall." There is no single word in the English language which
captures
the meaning; therefore, it has to be explained. The word is a composite
of Leib
(body) and haftig, Haftig comes from the verb haften
which
can be translated as: to cling to, tostick to, or adhere to.The
inherent wisdom of the people has thereby created a word which indeed
provides the
devil's essence. While God is in the German language also
referred to
as the Himmelvater (heavenly father), a term which
encompasses the
material and spiritual realm, the devil is thoroughly and exclusively
wedded to
bodies. The Leibhaftige has no room for the spirit
which has to be denied, and the acquisition of material goods
is to be
the overriding objective.
While the Leibhaftige is German, there exists in the English
language
the word Mephistophelean which is defined as: cynical,
crafty, sardonic, or fiendish. Thus, we do not have to look
far for
its presence among people. The challenge we face as human beings lies
in the
recognition that when we lie, cheat, or hate we create an adversarial
environment and thereby help to keep Satan alive. It is from the lie
that all
the other evils spring. He who lies to himself will inevitably lie to
others
and trust, which can only be gained by truthfulness, has been
destroyed.
Without trust, societies cannot function, regardless of how many laws
are
invented. But trust has to be earned, it cannot be demanded, and it
requires
honesty. In our present-day society this is hard to come by. We are
being lied
to on an unprecedented scale by politicians, the media and commercial
enterprises.
So how do we know the truth of a given statement? In science
we are dealing mainly with relative truth as
available at the
moment. Science, in contrast to religious faith, is work in progress
and new
information can readily invalidate previous concepts. Science is
important for
technologic and hygienic progress but every scientist knows that the
fundamental questions: "why are we here?" and "what is our
purpose?" do not lend themselves to scientific investigation. Philosophical
or religious truths are also subject to modification
as time goes on and conditions change but in spite of this there is an inner
core of realitywhich defies time and is
readily
discernible when one reads literature which originated several
centuries or
millennia earlier. This core can be found in all religions regardless
in what
part of the world they originated. The names with which phenomena are
described
differ but the substance and the message are always the same. Because human
behavior has remained constant over the ages
so
has the advice for achieving contentment in life. Faith in the
ultimate goodness of God, perseverance with planning for the long range
goal
rather than immediate gratification, kindness, helpfulness, friendship,
honesty,
resisting anger and hate, but fostering instead a spirit of gratitude
are just
a few of the virtues human beings have always been told to aspire to. I
have
deliberately avoided the word love. When "making love" means having
sexual intercourse and the word is being equated with lust, which
disappears
upon gratification, we have left the eternal for the temporary.
Furthermore
since love is an emotion, it must arise spontaneously and cannot be
produced on
command. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" goes beyond the capacity of
human beings as history has amply proven. We have to be more modest and
simply
aspire to treating each other with kindness and consideration.
A fundamental difference between the satanic and the divine
is
that God has time! God's truth is still true after
millennia
while Satan's is fleeting. Satan constantly urges us that we must act
now,
immediately, lest we lose out either on revenge or on a tremendous
advantage.
We are thus coaxed to repeat the original sin. By recognizing that Satan
is within us, just as the kingdom of God is, we can a turn a
deaf ear
to seduction. We don't have to hate Satan, and what he stands for,
because hate
is an unhealthy emotion and would serve his purposes. Instead, when we
recognize the inner voice of seduction all we have to say is: "Thanks,
but
no thanks" and concentrate on the task at hand. If we hanker after, or
stew over, an imagined past or a fantasized future, which will never
happen the
way it is imagined, we open the door to Satan's realm. But if we can
stare the
adversary in the face and can say: "no, there is a better way" we
have achieved the victory which a simple denial of his existence cannot
provide.
A few years ago our daughter, who knows of my interest in comparative
religion,
gave me for Christmas The Dhammapadawhich
is
part of the Sacred Writings Series. I already had a fair
amount of
other Buddhist literature so I wasn't immediately interested but in our
"time of war" I picked it up again and found it rather useful. The
book contains the essence of Buddhism in English
translation
as well as in the original Pali with explanations. In the context of
the
current topic verse number I: 5 is most appropriate:
Not by
enmity are
enmities quelled,
Whatever
the
occasion here.
By the
absence of
enmity are they quelled.
That is an ancient truth.
Isn't this what Jesus meant when he told us not to resist evil?
On September 12, 2001 our leadership had a choice. We had been
viciously
attacked and a response was needed. The entire world was with us in
stunned
grief at the outrage which had been committed. A wise
government
which had no ulterior motives in mind could
have
limited itself to promising: 1) with the help of international
police
and intelligence services we will trackdown
and bring to justice the perpetrators. 2) For the families
who have lost loved ones we will appoint a supervisory agency that sees
to it
that they do not suffer financial hardships in
addition to their
grievous emotional loss. 3) We will renew and redouble our efforts to
seek justice
for the oppressed in this world - wherever they are - and try
to bind
up wounds rather than create new ones.
This is what could have been done. Instead we have announced
rather
than declared war, which as it turns out now is a crucial
difference because captured enemy personnel are not regarded
as
prisoners of war, with the rights they would be entitled to. We have
bombed a
country which was already devoid of infrastructure and we have
destroyed the
Taliban government but not the idea behind it. Although there is a pro-Westerninterim government in Kabul at this
time its authority
does not exceed the city limits. The rest of
the
country is in anarchy; people are starving and dying
of
exposure. International relief agencies still cannot get to the people
who
desperately need help because of marauding bands that steal and rob.
If we go through with plans to bomb other countries,
whose
policies we do not like, we will indeed continue to playSatan's role. Our current political conduct is likely
to
create more enemies rather than friends abroad. This in turn will
hamper the
primary goal of our mission: to find and disable terrorist networks
around the
world. For this we need the international community. Unless and until
America
returns to the ideals our country was founded upon and heeds the wisdom
of Washington's
Farewell Address, where he counseled us to avoid foreign
entanglements, we are likely to glory in momentary ephemeral successes
but lose
our integrity. The leaders of our society seem to
have struck
a Faustian bargain: material well-being for the loss
of our
soul. The rest of the world is supposed to do so likewise. That some
members of
Islamic countries will not merely passively accept this idea but rebel
was to
be expected. What would be most helpful now is, instead of widening the
war, to
reflect on our ultimate aim of bringing peace to this world even if we
thereby
have to give up some pet notions that military might, and/or money is
the
answer to all problems.
We have been blessed with a wonderful country let us, therefore, not
destroy itby continuing in an adversarial spirit at home as well as
abroad. Let
us cherish our diversity by learning about and from each other. Instead
of
adversarial conduct let there be cooperation even if we disagree at
times on
philosophical or religious abstractions. If we were to move forward on
this
basis we would have far fewer enemies and a great many more friends.
The article as it appears above was written about a week prior to President
Bush's State of the Union speech on January 29. It contained
an
enumeration of American values all of us can heartily agree with,
including the
goal "to seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror." On
the other hand I felt quite concerned about the methods - seemingly
mainly
military - through which this goal is to be reached. The President also
stated
that this war will occupy at least the next three years of his
presidency and may
extend beyond it. This will involve considerable expenditures for
external as
well as homeland defense. He believes that we can keep at the same time
the
economy growing and the budget deficit under control. The last
president who
had tried the guns and butter approach was Lyndon
Johnson and he failed on both counts. There seems little
reason to
believe that Mr. Bush will do better but time will tell.
Earlier in this update I failed to mention another hallmark of
Satan
namely pride. Our government seems determined to
believe that
only its ways are the correct ones regardless of the viewpoints of
other
nations. In the State of the Union address we received a "pep talk"
the consequences of which, once the fine print is revealed, may not be
to the
liking of the average citizen whose life is going to become
increasingly less
free on account of "security" regulations which will increase
geometrically. What is happening currently here in Salt Lake City on
account of
the Olympics, which are upon us, could well be a harbinger of what the
future
may be like.
March 1, 2002
THE MORMON OLYMPICS
All of Utah and especially the East as well as
West side of
the Wasatch front is breathing a collective sigh of relief. Thank God
it's over
and nothing seriously untoward has happened. When Salt Lake City was
originally
awarded the Games there was jubilation which turned into dismay and
distress
when a letter was leaked which showed that the Salt Lake
Organizing
Committee (SLOC) had greased the palms of International
Olympic Committee (IOC) members. We had not won the nomination
on
merit alone, although we had surely been better qualified than Nagano
to which
we had lost out. Rumor had it that IOC members had been slipped notes
by
abortion activists prior to the final vote not to award the games to
Utah on
account of its anti-abortion stance. Our "bribery scandal" made
headlines all over the world as if this sort of behavior had not been
routine
in the recent past. Apparently one should do these things but not talk
about
them. What made the matter worse was that, in the land of the Saints of
all
places, not only scholarships were given to some children of African
dignitaries but "escort services" were provided for some of the
delegates, who fancied that sort of thing. Inquiries were held, and the
mayor
as well as the governor strongly denied any knowledge of malfeasance,
although
this is somewhat difficult to believe since especially the mayor had
been
heavily involved in the bid process. The two individuals who had done
most of
the work for getting the bid were not only sacked and disgraced but
also
criminally prosecuted, although there was never any evidence presented
that
they had personally enriched themselves. Nevertheless the case is still
in
court. To top it off we found out that the whole affair was massively
under
funded and SLOC was deeply in the red a year and a half before the
Games were
to take place. We, as good citizens of Utah, had happily paid for the
extravaganza with an increase in sales taxes, but apparently that was
far from
enough to cover costs.
To the rescue came Mitt Romney, son of the former
governor of
Michigan George Romney, a good Mormon, or more correctly, Latter Day
Saint. The
official designation of the Church (in Utah when one says Church
everybody
knows what one is talking about) is "The Church of Jesus Christ
of
Latter-Day Saints" and this name should also clarify the
question
whether or not Mormons are Christians. Since they are firm believers in
Jesus
Christ as our Savior they obviously qualify, in spite of some notions
which
might strike outsiders as quaint. The Church obviously couldn't
tolerate this
disgrace of its home state and drafted Mr. Romney who lived in
Massachusetts.
When God calls there are no choices. He came to town, worked like a
beaver and
drummed up the necessary funds from sponsors. The fact that he is not
only
articulate but also immensely telegenic was an additional plus. Our two
senators
and the congressmen also did a yeoman's job in Washington to obtain
funding for
the necessary infrastructures including highway improvements and the
construction of a light rail system to deal with the anticipated
traffic
congestions.
By September 10 of last year we were well on our way to stage a happy
and
successful event. The morning of the next day changed the equation. The
country
was attacked, counter strikes were deliberated, eventually a war
against the Taliban
was decreed and since this was not enough we also had to declare War
on
Terrorismper se so that we could at least bomb any
country
in the world which might harbor terrorists. In as much as one man's
terrorist
is another man's freedom fighter the field is now wide open to do away
with
anybody we don't like. Anthrax spores were sent through the mail to
senators,
and the media were acting as if the end of the world were at hand.
America as
we know it had ceased to exist and from now on we were to be in a
perpetual
state of war. A director of homeland security was appointed, although
it is far
from clear what powers were delegated to him, and the panic that
gripped the
media could be likened to ancient Rome when Hannibal was ante
portas
or, more recently as if we were in London of 1940 when the Blitz
started. This
was the climate in the waning months of last year and there were
serious
discussions whether or not it was appropriate to hold the Olympics
under these
circumstances.
But we live in the land of the Saints where the firm belief is held
that the
Lord will never forsake His own, so there was never a question of
quitting.
SLOC under Mitt's guidance ignored the media tumult and quietly
continued with
its work. But there was also the additional problem of how to secure
the
various venues. Osama's boys would surely be tempted to wreak vengeance
for
having been thrown out of Afghanistan. They would poison the water,
blow up the
Toelle army depot, which is only about 30 miles southwest from us and
contains
more toxins than Saddam could ever dream of, disable the electricity
grid
(which would actually be quite simple), and bring suitcases full of
nuclear
devices in order to kill as many people as possible. Therefore a
massive,
elaborate, and unprecedented security system was put
in place.
We were visited by Mr. Rich, the homeland security chief, Mr. Rumsfeld,
the
Secretary of Defense, and numerous other dignitaries who dished out
over $200
million for security measures. Special attention was, of course, placed
on
airport safety. New baggage inspection devices had to be installed and
Salt
Lake was to become the prototype for airport security around the
country. Since
the rest of the country and especially the world at large do not boast
anywhere
near the safety we now possess, we have the paradoxical situation that
theoretically anybody could bring in his lethal goodies but he couldn't
take
them out. But this is, of course, irrelevant. Eventually Timbuktu
airport will
also meet our standards. The consequences of this policy became
apparent on Monday
after the games were over; but let me not jump the gun. Saddam can now
be happy
that Salt Lake had also become a no-fly zone during the Games.
Unauthorized
private jets with visiting diplomats, or officials, were to be met by a
pair of
F16's who would politely escort them out of the area. During opening
and
closing ceremonies the airport was to be completely shut down for four
hours.
Even the hot air balloon operators who had hoped to attract some
business to
properly show off our fabulous vistas had to close shop for the
duration of the
Games.
Before the media ever arrived here they dubbed the
2002 Games
the "Mormon Olympics." Apparently the journalists and TV pundits
expected dark suited missionary boys to track them every step of the
way, hand
them a copy of the Book of Mormon, politely take their cigarettes from
their
mouths, and if they wanted a drink they would be told that it is not
healthy
for them. They should have Hawaiian Punch instead and for good measure
also a
dish of green mint jell-O (a favorite taunt Mormons have to endure)
which would
keep them in harmony with nature. The supposed inability to get a drink
in
Utah, and the fear of succumbing to proselytizing were apparently
uppermost in
the minds of reporters. There seemed to have been also some latent fear
by lady
journalists to be drafted by a roaming army of polygamists, while their
male
companions might actually have relished the thought of joining that
"peculiar institution" as it was referred to in the 1890's.
I was not privy to the deliberations of the Church as to how to deal
with this
emergency when the world arrived and when it was confronted by Utahns
who are
not necessarily intrigued by "cultural diversity," which translates
into "anything goes." Ours is a conservative state, where the gospel
song of: "Give me that old time religion, It was good for our mothers,
It
was good for our fathers and It's good enough for me " is not being
preached but practiced. President Hinckley, who is also the
Prophet,
Seer, and Revelator of the Church, received a revelation as to
how to
solve this dilemma. An edict came down to the faithful, who comprise
about 80%
of the population of the state, that there was to be no proselytizing
and the
liquor laws would be relaxed for the 17 days in question, so that booze
could
flow more freely than usual. In addition he probably told them: "don't
worry what other people think about you, don't put on any airs of
defensiveness, just be your usual friendly, cheerful selves and all
will be
well. And indeed it was.
When the opening ceremony started in the refurbished
Rice-Eccles stadium 25,000 volunteers of all ages were on hand at the
various
venues to greet and help the visitors. In addition there were thousands
of
national guardsmen in their camouflage suits around plus other security
personnel who remained unobtrusive. The Lord also contributed His share
to the
success. The high winds and inclement weather we had in the morning
cleared up
by the afternoon and all the floats, which had been so meticulously
prepared,
could safely be launched. Had we had one of our usual February storms
which can
dump about a foot of snow within a few hours, chaos would have erupted.
But all
went well except for some display of super patriotism, which lingers
after
September 11, and which some of us felt wasn't quite necessary. The
fact that
President Bush officially opened the Games not from the podium above
the entire
crowd but in the midst of the American team was a departure from custom
foreigners might have winked at, but when he also altered the official
text and
said: "On behalf of a proud and determined nation I declare the XIXth
Olympic Winter Games opened," some eye brows went up. The host
shouldn't
brag, was the feeling. When you invite somebody to your house you don't
want to
start out with showing the guests the pictures of your children and
grandchildren. But everybody knows that he is from Texas, where
everybody is
proud to be a Texan, and that he may yet have to learn the fine art of
diplomacy from his father. On the other hand, how would people in the
West have
reacted if Hitler had opened the Berlin games in 1936
with: On
behalf of a National Socialist Germany, risen from the ashes of defeat,
I
declare etc. It'll be interesting to see what the President of China,
whoever
he may be at that time, will say in Beijing in 2008. Will he take his
cue from
George W. and say: On behalf of the mighty and determined People's
Republic of
China, the most populous nation on earth, I declare....? But Americans
are
different from other people. Would a Chinese equivalent of figure
skater Sharon
Cohen call her mother on the cell phone and when she answers say: "Hi
mom,
here's the President, talk to him!"?
This momentary glitch in protocol, as well as the parading of the
tattered flag
which was rescued from the World Trade Center rubble, to demonstrate
that
America can also rise like the Phoenix from catastrophe, was commented
upon but
no harm was done. The media people were amazed by the friendly smiles
of the
crowd, the stunning backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains and they even got
their
drinks. About seventy thousand people congregated every night downtown
for
concerts and medal distributions. Office hours for the average "working
stiff' who still had to be on his/her usual job in the downtown area
were
shortened so that the employees could leave in the early afternoon in
order to
ease the anticipated evening traffic congestion.
There were, of course, complaints which included even the Great
Salt
Lake. "It stinks!" Of course it does on the shore. Decaying
brine just doesn't smell good but the nose is a marvelous organ and the
sense
of smell adapts much faster than all the others. Within a few minutes
you don't
smell it any more, even on shore. Once you are just a tad away from
shore and
the wind blows, as usual, from the north you don't smell anything at
all. But I
think the biggest surprise and media hit was Gordon B.
Hinckley,
President of the Church. This 91 year old spry, upright, grand
fatherly truly gentle-man impressed everybody with his natural grace
and
sincerity. When a visiting journalist was amazed at how mentally sharp
he was
at his advanced age, a bystander told him: "You should have seen him
when
he was eighty!" That's what clean living and having family values,
rather
than just talking about them, does.
As an aside I might mention that a few days before the Games, on Valentine's
Day, I gave "my Bonnie" a treat and took her to the Home
Buffet. It isn't that I was stingy but she likes the salad bar there,
the food
is good and inexpensive, so that's where she prefers to go and after
fifty
years I don't argue any more. We went there early to avoid crowds but
were
surprised that there was already a fairly long line. The reason soon
became
obvious. When we came to the counter the cashier girl asked us how long
we were
married. When we declared fifty years she smiled, congratulated us and
we were
told that dinner was on the house. They also took our photograph.
Subsequently
we found out that this is a custom on Valentine's Day for this
nation-wide
chain. But I bet that the corporate planners in New York or wherever
hadn't
figured on the cash loss of Utah. Here fifty years of marriage is
nothing to be
marveled at, it's the rule unless one or both die first. When somebody
asks me
how many grandchildren I have (nobody asks do you have grandchildren?,
that's a
given) I answer somewhat embarrassed: "I can't compete, only six."
With a minimum of six or eight children, thirty five and more
grandchildren
tends to be the rule. We were told that we could pick up our photos the
next
day and when we came again a few days later for dinner a whole wall was
plastered with couples who had stuck it out for fifty years or more
with each
other. That's Utah!
The athletic events proceeded smoothly until the pairs figure
skating.
We watched it at home on TV and felt that the Canadians had skated
flawlessly
and deserved the gold medal. The Russians had made a minute misstep but
they
got the gold and the Canadians the silver. This injustice enraged the
crowd and
when it was rumored that the French judge had made a deal with the
Russian
judge as a quid pro quo for the next competition a few days
later the
outrage was palpable. For the rest of the week all the other
competitions were
overshadowed by the scandal, over which the media literally drooled.
The
Canadian Figure Skating Association protested and Olympic
President Dr.
Jacques Rogge was put under intense pressure to nullify the
judgment.
There was talk of exchanging the medals where the Russians would give
the
Canadians their golden one and the Canadians would reciprocate with the
silver
but even Putin would have objected to that, so a Solomonic decision was
taken.
The baby was not cut in half but there were two golden babies. In
addition the
French judge was removed from the panel. The outrage subsided but the
Russian
Federation was unhappy, although the four athletes themselves behaved
marvelously and, at least on the surface, there were no hard feelings.
When I viewed the brewing scandal I was immediately
reminded
that there is truly nothing new under the sun. Several decades earlier
I had
read a story in Herodotus which is highly á
propos. The
Greeks, during the fifth century B.C. were upstarts and the ancient
civilization of Egypt was regarded as the repository of wisdom. You may
be
surprised that even Moses cribbed from the Egyptians, not only in
regard to the
essence of the Ten Commandments but also with other wisdom literature
which is
attributed to him. At any rate, Herodotus tells us that a deputation of
proud
Greeks from the state of Elis went to Egypt and boasted that their
Olympic
games were the best and fairest of all. They thought that even the
Egyptians
would have to admit to that. But the king of Egypt called his council
of wise
men together and when the Greeks had presented their case they asked
the Elians
if their citizens were permitted to enter the competitions. The Greeks
replied:
Of course, the games are open to all Greek citizens, whatever state
they
belonged to. Whereupon the Egyptians declared: "If this were so they
departed from justice very widely, since it was impossible but that
they would
favor their own countrymen and deal unfairly by foreigners." If they
wanted to have true justice the Elians must not be allowed to compete
when the
games are held in their country. It's obvious that the human
race has
not changed in twenty five hundred years and is not likely to do so,
barring some genetic engineering, in the foreseeable future. Judging
of
competitions is inherently subjective and thereby potentially unfair.
Another precedent has been set here in Salt Lake and protests may
become run of
the mill. We may also have opened the door for the legal profession to
ply its
trade on behalf of disadvantaged individual athletes or their national
federations. Will the judges now have to buy malpractice insurance in
case they
might get sued for their personal worth? In our day and age where money
rules,
nothing is too outlandish to contemplate.
Other incidents of suspected doping caused further
unhappiness
on part of the Russians who at one point even threatened
to leave the Games. But President Putin put his foot down and
told
them to forget it. As our son Peter declared: "Putin wants to watch the
hockey game too." Unfortunately for him his Russians lost but he could
take solace in the fact the American winning team had three Russians on
their
roster. Peter who still lives in the Detroit area,
home of the
fabled Red Wings hockey team, told us that they had
given
their players a three week vacation from the ongoing season so that
they could
compete within their own respective national teams in Salt Lake. Thus
it was in
part Red Wings against Red Wings. To be precise: of the eleven Red Wing
players
who participated in the Games three played for Russia, two for the
U.S.A., one
for the Czech Republic, two for Sweden and two for Canada. Now that's
the true
Olympic spirit! The numbers come from the official website of the team
www.detroitredwings.com. The South Koreans were also unhappy about what
they
judged as bad manners by Apolo Anton Ohno who had snatched the gold
medal from
their speed skater. Feelings ran so high that he got hundreds of life
threatening letters. These were turned over to the FBI; Ohno had to
move out of
the Olympic village to undisclosed hotels and was given a special state
trooper
to accompany him at all times.
While Park City and Deer Valley teemed with crowds of visitors, our two
boys
who had come with their families for this once in a lifetime event
found
perfect ski conditions in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon. Brighton,
Solitude,
Snowbird and Alta were practically deserted. No lift lines, beautiful
sunshine
and occasionally even a foot of powder provided a perfect vacation.
Since even
the youngest of our grandchildren is already an accomplished skier, at
the
tender age of five years, I feel that bringing my skis with me from
Austria in
1950 was one of the best ideas of my life.
As far as NBC's TV coverage is concerned I had mixed
feelings.
They obviously concentrated mostly on the American athletes but I would
liked
to have seen, instead of some of the fireside chats by the
commentators, other
events where Americans were not so prominently represented. It was the
world
after all we wanted to see perform. In addition, some of the
commercials were
obnoxious. Every company from Chevrolet through Coca Cola was a "proud"
sponsor of its ads. Pride is currently a greatly overworked word in
this
country. Everybody must feel proud! That pride comes before the fall
hasn't
sunk in yet. At the end of the closing ceremony the entire foothills of
the
Wasatch front exploded in a brilliant display of fireworks. Instead of
waiting
for its beginning the station had to cut back to "proud advertisers"
but thankfully we could see part of it on the evening news. Since some
of the
grenades were launched from right in front of the Hogle Zoo there was
concern
that the animals might not take kindly to all that noise and stampede.
But the
Zebras, Polar bears, elephants and the other members of the animal
kingdom who
live there merely got a little nervous, took it in their stride and
calmed down
when it was all over.
All's well that ends well, as the saying goes. Our kids left on
Saturday and
that was smart. The people who departed on Monday were in for a huge
disappointment. They were told to come to the airport four hours before
flight
time - security and baggage check in - but even so some missed their
flights
and they had to stand in line for up to six hours. The volunteers were
on hand
again distributing hot chocolate, bottled water, gold wrapped
chocolates and
tried to entertain the waiting crowd with song and dance but this could
do
little to assuage some angry feelings. There was nothing SLOC or the
city could
have done about it because the airlines are a law unto themselves. But
all in
all the games were a success and Utahns are so happy that they want the
world
to come back again some time in the future. We ended up in the black
and were
even promised that we will get some of our tax money back. But I won't
hold my
breath for that to happen. Credit for the success must go, apart from
the
athletes, to Mitt Romney and SLOC who have done a terrific job, to
Olympic
President Dr. Rogge for defusing a potentially problematic situation,
to the
Church who by staying in the background immeasurably improved its image
and
that of the state, but most of all to the 25,000 volunteers. These
people were
on their assignments for up to ten or twelve hours a day, regardless of
weather, for the entire period. They received no pay, meager food but
were
simply happy and grateful that they were allowed to show the world in
what kind
of place we really live and what kind of people Utahns really are.
Congratulations and Thank You volunteers, you deserve
all the
praise you can get! You made it the Mormon Olympics in the
best sense
of the word.
April 1, 2002
PALESTINIAN STATE OR ISRAELI PROTECTORATE?
This installment was prepared prior to the suicide
bombing
in Netanya, the subsequent Israeli destruction of Arafat's
headquarters, and
his virtual imprisonment in his office building. Nevertheless, I am
leaving the
original text unimpaired because it does not conflict with the
unfolding events
and I shall merely add two paragraphs at the end.
The past month was an anniversary of sorts and unfortunately a sad one.
Hope
springs eternal and this why I had Whither Zionism?
published last March and why I sent it to all the members of the Bush
administration as well as to the Chairmen and members of all the
relevant
committees in the House and Senate. As documented previously in these
pages
this was, of course, a forlorn hope and the book was ignored. A few
days ago I
received a phone call early in the morning (we are two hours behind
Washington
time) from an aide to one of the senators who thanked me for the
"gift" and asked me what the senator was supposed to do with it? At
first, benumbed by sleep, I wasn't sure what he was talking about but
then he
told me that they have "just received the book" and blamed the
anthrax scare for the delay. Unless it went via the North Pole and
Antarctica
it should certainly have arrived prior to September 11. His question
also
puzzled me. What is one supposed to do with a book, especially when
there was
an explanatory letter included, but to read and act on it?
I am not sufficiently conceited to imagine that had the suggestions
contained
in Whither Zionism? been taken up, and had the U.S. placed
the
Arab-Israeli conflict before the Security Council in the spring of last
year,
the tragedies of September 11 and their aftermath would have been
avoided. I do
believe, however, that the ever increasing spiral of violence in the
Mideast
could have been reduced. Still permeated by the hope that if
the
American people were to be told the truth about the reasons why Arafat
had
rejected the Camp David II plan with its "unprecedented"
offer to return about 96 per cent of the West Bank to the Palestinians,
I
wrote in January of this year an article for the Salt Lake Tribune, in
which I
outlined the reasons for the rejection and a plan that could bring some
semblance of sanity to the area. It took several
communications with
the Editor of the paper until the article was published in full (!) and
unedited (!), except for a change in the headline, by the Tribune.
Obviously
the Tribune is neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post but
the
individual citizen and taxpayer have no other recourse except at the
"grass roots" level. Once it was published I faxed it to our
President, Secretary of State Powell, and Condoleeza Rice. It
probably
ended up in the proverbial circular file.
In essence the article gave the reasons why the Palestinians
had to
reject the Israeli-American proposal for the Final Settlement.
They
were abstracted from the documents section of www.mideastweb.org
and
the updated edition of The Israel-Arab Reader by Laqueur and
Rubin.
The most important features for rejection were:
1) Israeli settlements would remain in the proposed Palestinian
state, albeit concentrated in three blocks; but access roads
would be
under Israeli control.
2) Israel would continue to control the water resources of the
Jordan
River and an Israeli security zone would exist along its west
bank.
Israel could deploy its troops in the Jordan valley at any
time if it
felt itself threatened from the East.
3) The proposed state would not have had contiguous bordersbut
would have consisted essentially of a series of
unconnected
municipalities.
4) The Palestinian areas of Jerusalem which Israel
was willing
to cede would likewise not have had contiguous borders but would
have
remained islands within the Jewish city.
5) Border crossings with Jordan and Egypt would be
under
Palestinian control but under Israeli supervision.
6) The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and alliances
with other countries would be subject to Israeli
approval.
7) Israel would accept some refugees from previous
wars but
the rest would have to be absorbed elsewhere.
In sum and substance Arafat would have become the mayor of
several
unconnected municipalities within an Israeli protectorate.
Since this
plan falls far short from the creation of a viable independent state
the
Palestinians rejected it. If these conditions had been
presented by the
U.N. in 1947 to the Jews in Palestine, for their state, they would also
have
rejected it.
Prime Minister Sharon, with a flair for the dramatic,
has
recently evoked the analogy of Israel being placed into the position of
Czechoslovakia because the Munich agreement which led to the
dismemberment and subsequent disappearance of the state was reached
over the
heads of the Czech government. This is the fate, Mr. Sharon announced,
which
would befall Israel if it were to accede to a truly autonomous and
viable
Palestinian state. The irony of this statement seems to have
eluded him.
It is not the Palestinians who are armed to the teeth with the most
modern
weapons, but it is the Likud government and its sympathizers
who want a
"Protectorate of Judea and Samaria." It would have essentially the
same rights and privileges Hitler had arrogated to himself over "rump
Czechoslovakia" which became the "Reichs-protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia." Hitler's ostensible reasons were security because he
didn't want Soviet planes using Czech airfields. For the Israeli
government
security is also the reason put forth for its demands although there is
no army
in the area which can succeed against Israeli conventional and nuclear
might.
These are no secrets but the Israeli and especially the
American public
have to be told that Israel is in mortal danger of being wiped off the
map, by
the combined Arab forces if it were to make any concessions which would
be
interpreted as weakness. Let's face it this is
propaganda
because the Arabs simply don't have the wherewithal and if they tried
they
would be annihilated by America. What is behind this
scare-mongering?
The status quo has to be retained and somehow or another the
Palestinians
should just disappear, or at least give up their suicidal behavior.
Even one of our currently most esteemed Newscasters endorses this
principle.
Bill O'Reilly repeatedly states on his "No Spin Factor" that
he is "not interested in causes" he simply wants
Palestinians to stop killing Israelis during suicide missions. As a
physician
this stance strikes me as strange. If Mr. O'Reilly, and those
who think
like him, were to suffer from a chronic cough and the physician would
say
"I don't care why you cough, just stop it because you're spreading
germs," the answer would be a malpractice suit! This also
reminded me of my psychiatric training at the Mayo Clinic where I was
taught
the principles of psychoanalytic thought. Among these
was the
admonition that "everything is always the opposite from what it appears
to
be." For instance a good natured jolly, obese person is really consumed
by
deep hatred and depression. In addition we were told that a patient
with some
type of undesirable behavior, be it alcoholism, a sexual obsession, or
whatnot,
would first have to give up his compulsion and then could be taken into
treatment. In my naiveté I thought to myself that if the patient
can do it
voluntarily why does he need years of psychoanalysis?
Little did I know, in the early nineteen fifties, that psychoanalytic
thought would enter world politics. Suicide bombings must stop
before
treatment of the reasons for these disasters can begin, is not only
Israel's
but America's stance! Like everybody else I don't condone
suicide
bombings but when young women join their ranks one really should look
at the
depth of despair which drives these people. What they
need is
not the stern words of "stop it" by our President but
the ingredient without which people cannot live and that is genuine
hope for a better future in freedom and dignity.
Unfortunately this may not be in the cards as the Beirut
meeting
has shown where they were put on the table for everybody to read. Sharon
threatened Arafat with not letting him return if he said one word
Israelis
could disapprove of. This killed the Saudi "vision" as far as
Israel was concerned. But the Arabs also tipped their hand.
They did
not allow Arafat to address the meeting live through remote TV hookup
but only
via a taped recording. Thus the Arabs showed themselves far
from united
in giving aid to the Palestinian cause. Finally it became clear that President
Bush was not seriously interested either in a genuine attempt to
resolve the
conflict. He could have authorized General Zinni to
put Arafat
in a U.S. helicopter, take him to Beirut, and then bring him back again
to
Ramallah. This would have been statesmanship. But this course,
which
would have shown the world that America means business and is indeed an
"honest broker," would have annoyed Sharon and since he is "our
friend" we must not do so.
Thus the Saudi plan, is probably doomed and so is my own
suggestion
contained in the Tribune article. Sharon will take the Arab
disarray
and the tacit approval of his policies by the U.S. as a green light to
go ahead
with re-occupation of major portions of the West Bank and Gaza.
The
Palestinians will have to live under military law and those who don't
like it
will be shot. The Arabs are not likely to answer
militarily,
because they can't win, but they will use the only weapon they
have -
their oil. A boycott of exports to America would have serious
repercussions on our economy, which still reels from the aftershocks of
September 11 in form of increased defense spending both at home and
abroad.
But even if the Israelis were to annex Judea and Samaria, as
some like
to call it, as well as the Gaza strip, what is to be done with the
people?
Contrary to Golda Meyer's opinion of "there are no Palestinians,"
they do exist and will continue to blow themselves up while taking as
many
Israelis as humanly possible with them. For "security" the
Israelis will give up all hope for peace and will end up even more
beleaguered
than they are now. Even if they were able to expel the
Palestinians
from the occupied territories, which is not likely to be condoned by
the rest
of the world, they would have their own Arab citizens within Israel to
deal
with who may create even worse havoc in the state.
My own suggestion as to how to prevent the disasters,
we seem
to be inexorably sliding into, was quite simple. Only
a complete
separation of Jews from Arabs in separate states with internationally
guaranteed borders has any chance of preventing future
catastrophes.
There are about five million Jews in Israel at this
time and
about 15 million in the world. Even if one were to
assume a
phenomenal birth and immigration rate, which is not likely, and
the
country's population were to swell to about ten million in the next
decades
this would still amount only to the population of Rio de Janeiro.
Furthermore, how much land do ten million people who are
predominantly
urban in character really need?Theoretically it
would be entirely
feasible to create a purely Jewish state as a garden megalopolis which
extends
along the Mediterranean shore from Nahariya in the North to the Gaza
strip in
the South. The eastern border could be fixed along the hill country.
This would still give the Jewish state the high ground for defensive
positions
and the state would receive international guarantees for its existence.
The settlements
would have to be disbanded because they will always
be a point
of friction. The Dimona nuclear plant could be reconfigured
to peaceful atomic energy production which would make Israel
largely
independent of Arab oil and desalination plants on the
Mediterranean
could provide the needed water resources. For Jerusalem
the initial U.N. idea of a corpus separatum
could be enacted. The rest of the current state of Israel
could become
the Palestinian state which could under those circumstances absorb
the refugees from the previous wars. A connection
between the
Gaza strip and the rest of the Palestinian state could be
established
by the creation of a tunnel from the south end of the West
bank to the
north end of the Gaza strip. A tunnel is preferable to a road
which
would have to traverse Israeli land and could be disrupted at any time.
With a
tunnel entry as well as exit would be under Palestinian control and
contiguity
of territory would be preserved. Although a tunnel would present an
engineering
challenge a precedent exists in form of the "chunnel" which connects
Calais with Dover. The Golan Heights would return to Syria
and
the remaining enclaves of Lebanese territory which
are still
held by Israel would go back to Lebanon. This
would
immediately produce peace treaties with Syria as well as Lebanon and
the major
friction points, which threaten to ignite the Mideast would disappear. There
is little doubt that all the Arab states as well as the Palestinians
would
accept a solution of this type. Israel will oppose it because it
involves
significant concessions. Neither Israel nor the Arabs can be
expected
to come to a meaningful lasting agreement. The car is stuck in the mud
of
mutual hatred and it needs AAA to pull it out. Only the United States
can do
so.If the Bush administration were to bring a plan
of this
type, with appropriate input from experts for details, to the Security
Council
it would in all probability be adopted because the rest of the world
wants an
end to this conflict, which threatens the welfare of all of us.
Could America bring about a genuine peace solution as suggested above?
Yes, if
the will were there. Butthe will is
obviously
lacking!
As mentioned in the beginning, the situation in the West Bank is
currently in
flux. Nevertheless a picture begins to emerge. Arafat may not
survive
very long and we may never hear the truth as to how he died.
The
Palestinians will probably say that he was murdered by the Israelis,
while the
Israelis may announce that he has committed suicide. But that does not
matter. With
his death Sharon will have achieved his goal of plunging the
Palestinian
Authority into chaos, which will foreclose any peace
negotiations. He does not want a Palestinian state, and
neither does
his likely successor Netanyahu. By creating chaos in
the occupied
territories the Israeli governmentcan
then appoint
"Quisling" type mayors of the various municipalities in the
West Bank and Gaza who will cooperate with the occupation. This, of
course,
will not stop fanatic young Palestinians of either sex to
continue with
guerilla warfare against the "Quislings" as well as the Israelis.
Terrorism will abound and since America not only has done nothing to
prevent
this situation, but obviously supports Sharon, we will be targets also.
This much seems reasonably predictable.
In the United States there is currently only
hand
wringing by the media with "but what can we do?" The
signals Secretary Powell and President Bush are sendingare
inane. To tell Sharon that his actions are correct and Arafat,
who is
virtually imprisoned, must call off suicide attacks is not a
serious
policy. These statements are designed to placate the media
and the
American public, but are otherwise useless. The U.N.
Resolution which
calls on Israel to withdraw its forces has no teeth
and can be complied with, on a token basis, by Sharon. The
United
States need to introduce a Resolution which in principle conforms to
the Saudi
plan,or to that of the mentioned Tribune
article, and
subsequently tell the Israeli government that if they do not accept it,
there
will be no further aid from the United States or NATO countries. An
action of
this type seems to be the only way to prevent further disasters and is
in the
long run the best chance for Israelis to live in peacewith
their neighbors. The reason why America is not taking
constructive
action will be discussed in the next installment.
May 1, 2002
THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE
In the April installment I mentioned that it was
up to
America to enforce a just settlement of the Mideast conflict. We boast
that we
are the only remaining super-power which projects its influence
throughout the
world, yet we allow a small country with a population of less than six
million
people to determine our foreign policy. Surely this should give rise to
thought.
Ostensibly the fight between Israelis and Palestiniansisover land which both sides regard as their own but
behind it
is the Bible. The conflict is at its root religious
on the
Jewish, Christian and to some extent the Muslim side. I am qualifying
the
Muslim contribution because in Palestine the struggle is for national
liberation and as such still secular in its origin. Nevertheless the
"martyrs" believe they will enter paradise which adds religious fervor.
Even at the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century there
was an
alliance between secular Jewish intellectuals and Christian Protestants
in
German and British high society. This enabled Herzl to gain support for
his
dream of establishing a "Jewish homeland." The rationale
for Protestant politicians to pursue a policy which more
sober-minded
people knew would lead to permanent bloodshed in the Mideast, was
a
misinterpretation of biblical prophecies, especially the one
in the Book
of Revelation, more commonly known as the Apocalypse.
This nightmare vision of an unknown Christian-Jewish
author of
the late first centuryis now driving decisions two
thousand
years later in America. If this does not stagger the minds of
rational
people I don't know what will. St. John the Divine,
as the
author of that unfortunate book is called, wrote for the people of his
own time
who were persecuted by a number of Roman emperors. Thedisasters
he "foresaw" had been stock in trade for hundreds of years in Jewish
apocalyptic literature. They had gained increased
importanceduring Jesus' time because the Jews who lived
under
Roman occupation believed that the end-times were near. A Jewish
Messiah from the seed of King David would appear, he would
rout the "idolaters," the unjust world order would
collapse, and the kingdom of God, with its capital at
Jerusalem, would be established under Jewish rule forever and
ever
more here on earth.
But then came Jesus. In accord with the emotional
climate of
the time he was also imbued with millennial
expectations and taught
that the Kingdom of God was imminent. Furthermore he believed,
like everyone else, that biblical prophecies were
indeed forecasts
of the future. He did not know, and could not have known, what
Bible
scholars have demonstrated during the past two centuries that these
"prophecies" were not predictions of the futurebut
the work of theologians in order to justify the past. The
Bible, as we
know it, was not written in the dim past but came into being some time
after
the Jews were allowed to return from the Babylonian exile. The earliest
complete text was written in Greek, albeit based on earlier Hebrew
texts, at
some time around 250 B.C. in Alexandria. What has never been properly
appreciated is that the biblical authors and editors had not
intended
primarily to write a history of their nation, although they
followed
the example of Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides, but to reveal
God's
plan for "His Chosen People." To do so the past disasters,
which the Jewish people had been subjected to, had to be explained and
some facts
from the past were projected into the future as if
the prophets had actually predicted them. In this way
credibility was
achieved. Thus the Bibleisnot
only
a religious, but also a political document.
Jesus had no way of knowing this. He took the prophecies at face value
and so
did his disciples. By applying the verses of the "Suffering Servant"
from, what is nowadays called, Deutero Isaiah he believed that by his
death he
would usher in the kingdom of God. With other words because biblical
prophecy
existed it needed people to make past predictions come true This is how
the Word
became Flesh, to use the terminology of the fourth gospel.
Jesus'
little band of followers kept believing that the second coming was just
around
the corner and only as the decades went by without change did they feel
the
need to put his words on paper which became the gospels. Since the
majority, if
not all of them, were written after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
the words
which have been put in Jesus' mouth in this respect are not necessarily
historical either.
This brings us back to our own time and the imminent arrival
of the
apocalypse which some Christian as well as Jewish circles so
ardently
want to bring about. Jesus had based his prediction of the events
surrounding
the end-times, and the arrival of the Son of Man in glory, largely on
the book
of Daniel. What was not known then, and is not openly admitted
to now
by Evangelicals, is that this book had nothing to do with the era of
Persian
rule, but was written in the second century B.C. by an unknown adherent
to
apocalyptic thought. The events which were projected into the
future
reflect those which had happened previously during the reign of
Antiochus IV
and the Maccabean revolt. The "abomination of desolation"
was the statue of that Greek ruler which had been placed in 167 B.C. on
the
altar of the temple. The duration of persecutions also fits precisely
the
actual time during which the Jewish religion had been forbidden.
The purpose of the book of Daniel had been to bring hope to the Jews of
Greco-Roman times and the same applies to the Apocalypse of
St. John
the Divine The churches in Asia Minor had been
persecuted under Domitian and needed to be
strengthened.
Babylon the "mother of harlots . . . drunken with the
blood of Saints" equaled Rome and the beast
whose number was 666, or in some early manuscripts 616, was
Nero,
depending upon how the name and his title were spelled when Hebrew
letters were
used as numbers. The author's vision was couched in classical Jewish
apocalyptic language so that any interpretation of other details is
limited
only by the fantasy of the reader.
How did these ancient "prophecies" become popular in our age?
In 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of modern Israel's birth, Timothy
Weber explained the situation in an article for Christianity
Today"How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend." It
is available on www.christianitytoday.org.
The article is quite long but deserves to be printed and read
carefully. The
intervening years, and especially the current situation, have only
strengthened
Weber's analysis. He pointed out that not only do evangelical
Christians love the land of Israel because this is where Jesus lived
and died,
but also because of the anticipated end-game in which Israel playsa
pivotal role. In order to reconcile the conflicting ideas of
who was
going to rule the post-apocalypse world: Jesus or an as yet unnamed
Jewish
terrestrial king, an Englishman, John Nelson Darby,
came up in
the mid 1800's with the ingenious idea that the Lord had two
distinct
plans. One for the "earthly people" (Israel) and
another for the "heavenly people" (the church). This idea
which has been called dispensationalism means that some
prophecies
apply to one and some to the other group. For both
groups
the return of the Jewish exiles from the Diaspora is essential.
For this reason Protestant Christians were initially
far more
eager to embrace the Zionist idea, than even Jews themselves
because
the ingathering of the dispersed was the fundamental sine qua non
to
fulfill God's plan. Dispensationalism began to be popular
in the U.S. during the 1870's but the real success
had to wait until the 1920's and especially until after 1948
and the
1967 Six-Day war.
The dispensationist belief system includes:
1) After the "times of the Gentiles" are finished
and the Jews have returned to the Holy Landcivilization
as we know it will unravel. Moral standards, including those
of the
clergy will suffer irreversible setbacks. Wars, political and economic
unrest,
natural disasters including catastrophic weather changes will abound
and
whatever is done to reverse the situation is doomed to failure.
2.) Since God had decided to work with only one of the two mentioned
groups at
a time there will then occur during these times of trial what has been
called the
"Rapture." Jesus will physically remove his faithful from
earth to heaven so that God can then concentrate on the Jews.
3) After the rapture of the church a charismatic leader - the
Antichrist - will appear and head a confederation of ten
European
states. Israel will join and rebuild the
temple.
4) In spite of the Antichrist's inordinate power and the help of a
False
Prophet other nations will rise up against his coalition and eventually
he will
be defeated at the battle of Armageddon. During the
battle Jesus
and his saints will arrive and ensure the final victory. The surviving
Jews will
accept him as the Messiah and he will then rule from Jerusalem for a
thousand
years.
I have omitted several details which can be found on the mentioned
website but
it suffices to show the mind-set of a segment of Christians who
devoutly
believe these prophecies and who now devote their best energies to make
them
come true at the soonest possible time. One may argue that evangelical
Christians are a minority in the United
States, just
as the six million Jews, but this would
seriously
underestimate their superb organizationand
the resulting political clout. For evangelicals, just
as for
Jews, the Palestinians stand in the way and have to disappear somehow.
A peace
deal between Israel and the Palestinians is unthinkable
because it
would run counter to God's plan. There can only be one state
of Israel which encompasses all the biblical lands.
This has also always been the goal of
the Likud
party and is why Netanyahutold an audience
of
predominantly evangelical Christians in April of 1998,
"We have no greater friends and allies than the people sitting in this
room." This occurred during the Clinton era and President
Bush is expected to toe the line also. If he goes against
these
combined Jewish, neo-conservative and Christian coalition votes he is
being told,
by his advisors, that he might as well forget about reelection.
Members of the House and Senate receive the same message
that their
chances in the upcoming midterm November elections are quite
dim unless they resolutely support the policies of the Jerusalem
government.
But this is not all. The American public at large must be
indoctrinated
that Israel is in mortal danger unless the Palestinians
become either
adjusted to perpetual Israeli sovereignty or are eliminated in some
form or
another. This propaganda has been remarkably successful because even
pillars of
the community such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett keep
repeating the
mantra that Arafat has rejected the most generous peace offer ever, and
that
Israel must be supported in the battle for its very life. President
Bush also seems to have accepted this propaganda ploy. After
the visit
of Crown Prince Abdullah he announced that America will not
allow
Israel to be "crushed." But let us look at the facts.
How cansome desperate suicide bombers
"crush" a country which is armed to the teeth with nuclear and
conventional weapons? It is the Palestinians
who are
getting crushed. As of mid-April the death count was 440
Israelis
versus 1620 Palestinians and by the end of the month their civilian
infrastructure lay in ruins. But this toll of human suffering does not
seem to
concern our "Christian" evangelicals
This brings me to the problem of terrorism. When
an
army of a duly constituted state creates havoc upon
the
civilian population of a conquered territory by imposing
unreasonable
strictures on everyday life this is acceptable. When
some of the oppressed, who have no heavy
weapons with
which they could resist, resort to suicide attacks on
Israeli
citizens they are terrorists. It is argued that they
attack
innocent civilians while soldiers limit themselves to military targets.
That
this is clearly not the case has been shown recently by the events in
Jennin
and elsewhere on the West Bank. Why do Palestinians use
suicide
tactics? I believe that if they had bazookas theywould
prefer to disable Israeli tanks and other military equipmentbut
that option is not available. Since they cannot get to
military
installations they go after the civilian population. But let us not
forget that
WWII forever obliterated the distinction between military and
civilian
targets. The carpet bombing of entire cities
affected
the civilian population much more than the war effort. An airman who
releases
bombs from a height of thousands of feet upon cities is regarded as a
hero,
even if there are no enemy planes or antiaircraft guns to hinder him.
On the
other hand desperate, disgusted individuals who try to draw attention
to the
plight of their people by blowing themselves up in an attempt to take
as many
as possible of their enemies with them are regarded as murderers. Let
me
emphasize that I do not condone suicide bombingbut
I
can understand why people resort to it and they should not be
forced
to persist in this behavior by misguided U.S. policies, which clearly
favor
Israel.
Let us now look at the result of Sharon's reoccupation of the
West Bank.
The declared goal was to remove the infrastructure of terrorism. But to
produce
suicide belts one does not need an infrastructure.
They can
readily be made in basements or garages. Hamas,
Islamic Jihad
or the Al Aqsa brigade also won't have to worry any
more about
recruiting for suicide missions. Enough hatred has
been
generated to fill their ranks for years to come. Furthermore
let's
look at the demographics. Of the 6 million
people
who live within the pre 1967 Israeli borders there
are about 5
million Jews and the rest are Arabs. The occupied territories
of the West
Bank and Gaza contain an estimated 3.2 million people
and their birthrate exceeds by far that of secular Israelis. But even
today the
5 million or so Israeli Jews are confrontedwith
somewhat over 4 million Arabswho are thoroughly
exasperated.
What Sharon and people who think that a military solution is the only
way for
Israeli security don't seem to realize is that Israeli Arabs
may soon
join their Palestinian brothers and sisters, with far
better
weapons than are now available in the occupied territories. Sharon
seems to be impervious to this simple fact and he may well
continue to extend his destruction of "terrorist
infrastructure" to the Gaza strip at the earliest pretext,
thereby creating even more hatred. This is precisely the reason why this
strategy must be resisted and Israel must be made to
pull back
now if she wants to have peace.
We have at present in the U.S.this incredible unholy coalition
of
secular Jewish Zionists, Jewish religious fanatics and Christian
evangelicals.
The basis is a promise God was supposed to have made to Abraham in the
distant
past and biblical prophecies which can be interpreted in any way one
wants.
Although the evangelicals, in their idealism, envision
a different final outcome, Jews whose feet are firmly planted on this
earth are
happy for their support. Once all the land is theirs they are not going
to be
unduly worried about Jesus and his heavenly host. I would
like to
strongly urge our Evangelical Christians to visit www.noahide.com
in
order to get a better perspective on some orthodox Jewish thoughts.
President Bush is now in the unenviable position that
he must
choose between a policy which demands equal justice for both sides
of
the conflict, and the pressures from Jewish as well as
Christian groups
who tell him that he must stick with Sharon no matter what. This
accounts for
all the zig-zags of the President's public utterances during the past
month
which make our foreign policy so totally ununderstandable to the rest
of the
world.
There is nothing holy about what is going on in the Holy Land
right now and all the parties to the conflict Jews, Christians
and
Muslims are using the Lord's name in vain when they pursue
earthly
material goals rather than moral improvement. During the election
campaign PresidentBush told us that his "favorite philosopher" was Jesus,
but the essence of Jesus' message, which might be
summed up in
the Golden Rule, seems to have gotten lost in the
shuffle.
American policy should neither be based on biblical prophecies nor on
concerns
about elections but on a rational approach which benefits all rather
than some.
Memorial Day 2002
WE TOO WERE SOLDIERS
The last Monday of May is traditionally dedicated
to honor
and remember America's soldiers who have been killed in the various
wars the
country has been engaged in. This is good and proper but we should not
only
remember those who had given their lives, but also those who had to
live on
with serious and at times massively debilitating injuries. These
soldiers who
had laid their lives on the line and had been spared the fatal bullet
should
also be remembered and equally honored.
But there exists among the living another generation who had faced the
fury of
war and either succumbed to it or emerged in a severely battered state.
Not
only is this generation of soldiers not honored but it is regarded as,
brutes,
murderers, and wanton killers especially of Jews. I am talking, of
course, of
the German Wehrmacht.
When I read the newspapers it is common to find us, and I mean us
because I was
one of "them," referred to as Nazi soldiers, and the
Wehrmacht as the Nazi army. It is true that
we served
in the German army, and the country had at that time a
national-socialist
government but it is not true that we, therefore, agreed with Hitler's
policies
or automatically hated the enemies of the country. Goebbels
did his level best to instill this hatred into us but he failed because
soldiers, especially the front line troops, don't hate. They are too
busy
saving their skin. It's "shoot first before you get shot" and every
soldier who has ever been in a war will recognize this as a fact of
life.
Let me now go back sixty years. At the end of May 1942 I was still in
High
School but my brother, who is two years older, was already in the Wehrmacht
deep inside the Soviet Union and his outfit was on the way to the
Caucasus to
get at the badly needed oil wells. His job was not to kill Jews or
other
undesirables but to change the wide track Russian railroad tracks to
the usual
European ones, which was back breaking work. He was also a kid, drafted
as soon
as he got out of high school, and not yet nineteen years old.
Fortunately he
got a bad case of hepatitis in Maikop, at the edge of the Caucasus,
which saved
his life. He was transported back home and received a desk job after
his
recovery. By the time his fiftieth high school reunion rolled around in
1991
there was no reunion because he was the only survivor of his class. The
vast
majority had been in the Sixth army which was wiped out in Stalingrad,
and
whoever survived tended to be in bad health which did not allow for
longevity.
Now fast forward to Vienna 2002. My brother still lives there and
earlier this
spring there was an exhibit on the Wehrmacht. It was a replay
of
another one which had toured Germany and Austria some years before and
which
had painted the entire German army as a
"murder
machine." The previous exhibit had aroused a great deal of
indignation by ex-soldiers of my generation because faked pictures and
documents had been used. In the current one some corrections had taken
place to
avoid the obvious pictorial distortions but the tenor was the same. The
"Nazi" soldiers had been evil and such atrocities which had then been
committed by them must never be allowed to come to pass again. My
brother went
to see the exhibit and saw that hordes of school children
had
been brought by their teachers to this educational display. When some
of the
kids saw my brother standing there viewing the pictures they came up to
him,
because of his obvious age, and asked him what thought of it. He then
proceeded
to tell them of his personal experiences and that they were being
indoctrinated with propaganda which bears little relationship
to what
had actually happened. He was soon confronted with an irate teacher who
obviously knew better, having been born several decades after the war
had been over,
and who thoroughly believed the current party line. She shooed her
flock away
from this fuddy-duddy who obviously must have been a Nazi. Thus the new
generation is being brainwashed in current political correctness just
as our
generation had been more than half a century earlier.
But I said "we" in the title because I was also one of these
"evil ones;" "one of the Nazi beasts" who
wanted to destroy Western civilization. The summer of
1942 was
spent working on a farm because youngsters had to do productive work,
for the
final victory, the Endsieg, which was just around the corner.
Your
opinions were neither asked for nor valued so the smart thing to do was
to keep
your mouth shut and do what you were told. My army life started in 1943
and I
must admit that I even volunteered. Now this surely must have stamped
me, in
some eyes, as a devoted follower of the Führer. On the contrary,
it was Realpolitik.
I knew that I would be drafted as soon as I had graduated, because that
was a
given, but it was also obvious that I would, in all probability, have
been
assigned to the infantry. This was a fate I wanted to avoid like the
plague. I
never enjoyed hiking long distances, and for living in muddy foxholes I
had no
taste either. First I thought I'd volunteer for the Luftwaffe
because
I had always wanted to learn to fly. But my grandfather, who had been
dead
already for more than a decade, stood in the way. He had been born a
Jew. That
made me a Mischling and as such ineligible for
this
elite outfit. The fact that Goering's second in command, General Milch,
was
also a Mischling didn't matter because it was Goering's
privilege to
choose whomever he wanted for whatever he wanted. Goering had also
expropriated
the phrase "I determine who is a Jew." It had been coined by the
former Mayor of Vienna, Lueger. Before becoming mayor Lueger had
reveled in
antisemitic slogans and when he was confronted by adversaries that he
really
shouldn't have Jewish friends he uttered that previously mentioned
memorable
phrase. Lueger had another one which is highly á propos today
and I have quoted
it in War&Mayhem. Lueger dropped his antisemitism after
his
election because that was, after all, also Realpolitik.
Since the Luftwaffe was out I was at odds with what to do
with myself.
Then fate sent me one of my school friends, during a stroll in the
city, who
said that he was going to volunteer for the Panzer.
Now
there was an idea. Everybody was enamored with Rommel’s daring and here
was
another elite outfit for which I might have been eligible. As must be
obvious
by now, I have nothing whatsoever against elitism, provided the status
is
earned. For me it is not a dirty word, as for some whom I have had the
opportunity to run into in this country, and who accused me of it. So
both of
us volunteered and were accepted. In the fall of 1944 I was on the
front in
Hungary where the Russians had come to meet us, but I was spared the
battle for
Budapest, for reasons that were related in War&Mayhem.
Earlier
this year I received as a gift John Lukasz's Confessions of an
Original
Sinner who experienced it from the other side. But the point to be
made is
that we did not kill any civilians, Jewish or otherwise, and we behaved
like
soldiers do in all armies, which included even an occasional looting of
a watchmaker's
store. Looting was strictly forbidden in the Wehrmacht and
when caught
one could get court-martialed. This happened in fact to my tank
commander but
after I had already been ordered out.
Now comes the next irony. Not only was I in the Wehrmacht but
even in
the SA, which obviously might stamp me now, in some
eyes,
irrevocably as a Nazi. Well to quote the Gershwin opera: "It ain't
necessarily so." After the assassination attempt on Hitler in July of
1944
the army was discredited and had to be Nazified. So my Panzer
Grenadier
Division was stripped of its number and was called instead the Panzer
Grenadier Division Feldherrnhalle. We were also given a
brown,
relatively narrow, armband which proclaimed SA Feldherrnhalle.
This we
had to stitch onto the lower end of the left sleeve of our uniform
jackets. We
were also told that the Russians had a head price on the wearers of
this band,
just as for the Waffen SS. I suppose this was meant to stiffen our will
to
fight. I wouldn't have been necessary because we were determined to
fight
anyway. Our division was completely destroyed during the
Budapest siege.
There were somewhat over 16.000 men in our division when Budapest was
encircled
and 291 of them were eventually able to break through and make it back
to the
German lines. Thus more than 98 per cent were either captured or
killed. After
the war I met two of my comrades. One had lost a leg; the other had
shown an
enterprising spirit after his capture and had joined the Red Army on
its march
to Vienna. If the choice is between Siberia and heading where you want
to go
anyway, the choice is not all that hard.
This brings me to the oft asked question. "But if you weren't a Nazi,
then
why did you fight for Hitler?" The answer is simple:
we
didn't fight for Hitler, or the Nazis, we actually wanted to get rid of
them.
You may not want to believe this but we were also fighting to save
Western
civilization. The threat had come from the "Asiatic hordes,"
"the Soviet beasts," and the "Jewish-Bolshevik
conspiracy" which had dragged the Western world into the war
against its own will. At least that was the party line at the time. We
who
fought in the East had a clear goal. It was to keep the
Soviets at bay
long enough so that the Americans and Brits could get to Austria and
Germany
first before the Russians had a chance to get there. What we wanted to
avoid at
all costs was to live under Soviet occupation and for this we were
willing to
give our lives. Just as the Russian soldier did not fight for Stalin or
communism, but in defense of Holy Mother Russia, so did we defend the Vaterland
and not necessarily its regime. On the Western front the ideological
situation
was more complex because many Austrians did not want to fight the
Western
Allies. It was simply the wrong war. For us the enemy was not
capitalism but
communism. If I had been sent to the Western front in the summer of '44
I would
have made every effort to throw my rifle away, sneak to the American
lines, put
up my hands and say "Hi folks, do you need an interpreter?" But why
did Germans and other Austrians fight on the Western front when the war
was
obviously hopelessly lost?
There were two reasons. One was that the army's oath
encompassed not only "to defend the country" but also Hitler in
person. In those days an oath, even when extracted under duress, was
meaningful
and a lame excuse that "it depends on what the meaning of is, is"
would have been unthinkable. In addition there were Roosevelt's
favorite phrase
of "unconditional surrender" and the Morgenthau
plan which would have destroyed Germany forever. Neither of
these
facts emanated from Goebbels' brain but was official policy of the
Allies at
the time. It was these policies which unnecessarily prolonged the war
and cost
additional millions of lives. Why did FDR promote them? One reason was
that he
simply hated Germans and he also wanted desperately to please Uncle Joe
who
might otherwise have made separate arrangements with Germany. The
Soviet Union
had to be kept in the war to spare American lives and to get rid of
Hitler who
was regarded as the main menace. We wanted to get rid of Hitler too and
had the
Western Allies taken the peace feelers of the anti-Hitler group in
Germany
seriously numerous lives, including those of Jews, would have been
saved.
But the problem was not really Hitler and the Nazis in the minds of
Western
politicians at the time. The problem was the existence of Germany per
se.
As Vansittart had put it: "Hitler is the symptom, Germany is the
disease," to which FDR and his group readily subscribed. To paraphrase
Marcus Cato, Germaniam esse delendam, Germany
must be
annihilated. The fate that had befallen Carthage two thousand years
earlier was
now to be meted out to the Germans. Nazi or not didn't make a
difference! Even
Eisenhower succumbed to this doctrine. When the Wehrmacht
surrendered
in the millions in the spring of '45 the soldiers were no longer
treated as
prisoners of war but as "disarmed enemy forces."
This DEF, rather than POW, statusallowed
Eisenhower
to circumvent the Geneva Convention and to perpetrate a
disaster of
massive proportions on the soldiers who had thought that the Americans
would
treat them in a humane fashion. All of us are more than familiar with
the
horror pictures from the liberated concentration camps, where prisoners
had
died like flies from starvation and disease. But as yet I have
not seen
a single documentary about the conditions German soldiers were exposed
to inAmerican and French camps between August 1944 and December of
1945.
Being a volunteer by nature I avoided this fate and discharged myself
with a
friend from the Wehrmacht on May 4. We simply threw our gear
away and
started walking home. Another friend of mine who had sat for six years
next to
me in school was not so lucky. He had been taken prisoner by the
Americans, was
then given to the French for more than two years of slave labor before
he was
eventually discharged. He had simply been in the wrong place at the
wrong time
and had become a number among millions. I have mentioned earlier that
at the
time of the fiftieth High School reunion my brother was the only one
still
living. For us, born two years later, the situation was different. We
had lost
only somewhat over fifty percent of our class rather than one hundred
percent.
Accidents of where and when you were born, for which no one can be held
responsible, do make a difference.
This chapter of WWII is largely unknown in America and
we owe
it to James Bacque's Other Losses to
have
brought this tragedy to light. But since WWII was a war of "good versus
evil" his book, which exposes evil on the good side, must not become
widely known, let alone serve as a basis for a TV documentary. Myths
must not
be shattered. The same applies to John Sack's Eye
for
an Eyewhich documents the behavior of some former Jewish
inmates of
concentration camps in Poland, when they had become supervisors and
guards of
imprisoned Germans. Lest I be misunderstood let me make it quite clear
that I
do not deny that some members of the Wehrmacht had in fact
committed
war crimes especially in Russia and the Balkans where they were
confronted with
a guerilla war which is notoriously brutal. "Reprisals" were the norm
then and they still are, but these acts do not justify the slander of
millions
of ordinary soldiers who had served their country in the Wehrmacht,
let alone the rest of the civilian population who had lived under the
Hitler
regime.
Thus when we celebrate this and other Memorial Days we should also
remember all
the other victims of wars Americans have fought in regardless of
nationality. The
real enemy all of us face is hate rather than a given nation or regime.
Hate will always surface under different names, be it a Hitler or the
currently
popular ones: Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin or any
other
member of the "axis of evil." What we fail to realize
is thathate when met with hate will only
generate
more hate. While Hitler had to be defeated and Osama, as well
as
Saddam have to be neutralized, the methods to do so should not exceed
the
essential minimum to achieve this goal. In our present war on terrorism
we are
in the process of losing precisely some of those freedoms Americans
have fought
and died for in the past. For the sake of "security," restrictions
are imposed upon our lives which were unimaginable only a few years
ago. Surely
the goal of all wars past and present should be peace. But if
this
peace is achieved by hate, and punitive measures, all past and future
sacrifices of lives and property will have been in vain. The cycle will
merely
go on. The names of the adversaries will
change but hate, with all its consequences, will
persist.
July 1, 2002
MORAL CLARITY
William Bennett, former Secretary
of
Education in the Reagan administration, Co-Director of Empower America,
and
author of numerous books, has for quite some time been regarded as the
moral
conscience of America. He has now published a new book Why
We Fight.
Moral Clarity And the War On Terrorism, which is the
subject of this
installment.
Bennett makes the point that the September 11 tragedy brought about a
moment of
"moral clarity" in America when all people felt a renewed sense of
patriotism and justified anger at the outrage which was committed
against us.
He then warned that this anger must not be allowed to be replaced by
questions
as to why we fight this war on terrorism America is engaged in. We must
persevere until final victory is achieved. Patriotism, which in his
view, rules
out any questioning how our government conducts its foreign and
domestic
policy, also precludes questions how we got into the current war in the
first
place. Well, this is all fine and good because Mr. Bennett is entitled
to his
opinions like anybody else but he then infuses the anger, which by now
has
largely dissipated, with a moral purpose. He points out that
Jesus
was not a pacifist, had no objections to war and that
the
Catholic Church condones a "just war,"which is what we are waging
because we have undoubtedly been attacked.
Let us now take a look at how Mr. Bennett arrived at his opinion. He
admits
that Jesus said "love your enemies," as well as "all who take
the sword will perish by the sword," and that these words "in their
unequivocal aversion to the use of force have resonated down the
centuries with
a clarion purity." Now comes, however, the "but" which Mr.
Bennett condemns when used in relation to our current policies."But as
so
much in the Bible, they are not the only or last words on the matter;
they are not
even Jesus' own last words on the matter." As examples Bennett cites Jesus
praising the Roman centurion "a soldier and a man of violence,"
who had requested the healing of his servant. Furthermore, that Jesus
said he
had "not come to bring peace to the earth but a 'sword;'"
that "at Gethsemane" he had said "'The one who has no
sword must sell his cloak and buy one'." In addition Peter was
rebuked from fighting with the people who had come to arrest Jesus not
because
Jesus was averse to violence but because the arrest was necessary to
fulfill
the will of the Father.
This was the best Mr. Bennett could come up with, but the
context in
which the mentioned words were uttered is all important. As
far as the
Roman centurion, "a man of violence" in Bennett's words, is concerned
the story occurs twice in the New Testament. A short version was
provided by
Matthew in chapter 8:5-10, and an expanded form by Luke in chapter
7:2-10. In
Matthew, Jesus marveled at the faith of the centurion who believed that
a
single word spoken by Jesus would heal his servant and there is no
comment as
to what kind of person he might have been. Luke gives us a fuller
picture.
While in Matthew the centurion had come in person to ask for help, in
Luke's
version the centurion had asked Jewish elders to intercede with Jesus
on behalf
of the sick servant. These elders convinced Jesus that the centurion
was a
worthy man who "loves our people, and it is he who built a synagogue
for
us [7:5]." Thus Luke makes it clear that it wasn't the
centurion's
profession which raised Jesus' compassion but that he was a good person.
When Jesus said that he did not bring peace
but a
"sword" to the world, Bennett admits that it was meant metaphorically.
The subsequent statements that families would be torn apart on account
of Jesus
was simply a recognition of reality and did not require a great deal of
foresight. A teaching which breaks with the
established order,
tells people that they must follow him even to the point of
forsaking
their families is bound to be disruptive. Some family members
converted to the new faith, while others did not with resulting
discord. But
this has nothing to do with condoning war.
In regard to Luke's passage that the disciples should buy a
sword
the context is again allimportant.
Contrary
to what Bennett wrote, the mentioned words were spoken at the end of
the Last
Supper after Peter had declared his fidelity. As we are all aware,
Jesus had to
tell him that before the cock crowed Peter will have denied knowing him
three
times. Subsequently
He said to them. 'When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals,
did you
lack anything?' They said 'No, not a thing.' He said to them, 'But now,
the one
who has a purse must take it and likewise a bag. And the one who has no
sword
must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you the scripture must be
fulfilled
in me. 'And he was counted among the lawless,' and indeed what is
written about
me is being fulfilled. They said 'Lord, look, here are two swords.' He
replied,
'It is enough.' [Lk. 22:35-38].
This surely puts the situation into a completely different
light from
what Mr. Bennett wanted us to believe. Jesus' aversion to the use of
violenceis also attested to by his reaction at the time of the arrest
While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called
Judas,
one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him
but Jesus
said to him, 'Judas is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of
Man?'
When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, 'Lord,
should
we strike with the sword?' Then one of them struck the slave
of the
high priest and cut off his right ear.ButJesus
said, 'No more of this!' And he touched his ear and healed him
[Lk.
22:47-51].
Thus if one wants to find justification for war other sources
than the
words and deeds of Jesus need to be used. The same
applies to
the teachings of Paul which were also used by Bennett to
bolster his
case. After having mentioned Paul's admonition "'Do not repay evil for
evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all. If it is
possible
live peaceably with all. Believers, never avenge yourselves.'" Bennett
goes on "'the authority does not bear the sword in vain' but is
rather 'the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.'"
Thereafter Bennett quotes from "the first letter of Peter,
where that disciple reminds his recipients that human
institutions are
'sent by [God] to punish those who do wrong and praise those who do
right.'"
Now let's look what Paul said in Romans 13 from which the
quote has
been taken out of context. The first four verses are:
”Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is
no
authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been
instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what
God has
appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. For rulers are
not a
terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the
authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive approval; for it
is God's
servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be
afraid, for
the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God
to
execute wrath on the wrongdoer [13:1-4].”
Thus the context is not a justification for war by a ruler but
an
admonition to individual Christians for proper every day conduct.
The same applies to the first letter of Peter. Chapter 2
verses 13-15
are the relevant ones, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for
the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme, Or unto
governors, as
unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for
the
praise of them that do well. For it is God's will that by doing right
you
should silence the ignorance of the foolish." It takes again a wide
leap
of imagination to get from personal conduct to the right to wage a war
by
rulers. I have used The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament
for the biblical quotes. The reason is explained in my forthcoming book
A
Jesus for Our Time.
Now let us consider what has become the scriptural excuse, and I use
the word
advisedly, for the idea of "just war." The concept
was first formulated by St. Thomas of Aquinas' in his
Summa
Theologica. The Summa are an enormous treatise by this
eminent
thirteenth century theologian and Peter Kreeft's A Summa of the
Summa
contains over five hundred pages of text. The "just war" concept was,
however, not deemed important enough by that author to be included. One
is
required to look in the total Summa, which take up over
eighteen
hundred pages to find the three and a half which deal with war. I was
aided in
this search by Darrell Cole's "Good Wars" in the October 2001 issue
of "First Things" who provided the reference. In article 1 of Book II
Part II under Question XL Whether it is Always Sinful To Wage War?
[Emphasis
in the original] St. Thomas wrote :
”We proceed to the first article: It seems that it is always sinful to
wage
war...
On the contrary, Augustine says in a sermon
on the
son of the centurion: 'If the Christian Religion forbade war
altogether, those
who sought salutary advice in the gospel would rather have been
counseled to
cast aside their arms, and give up soldiering altogether. On the
contrary they
were told: 'Do violence to no man ... and be content with your pay!'
(Luke 3.
14). If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did
not
forbid soldiering'.”
St. Thomas had made the servant into a son but that is immaterial. He
then
listed three conditions which allow "for a war to be just." They are:
the authority of a sovereign, rather than of a private individual; a
just cause
and a right intention by the belligerents. It is not my purpose here to
question whether or not these conditions are currently met, but rather
to
explore the gospel authority on which all the rest hangs. As repeatedly
mentioned context is everything and when St Augustine (354-430 A.D.)
said "he
commanded them" one would immediately assume that the bishop
had
referred to Jesus. This was not the case. The words came from
John the
Baptist! After he had called people who came to be baptized
"you
brood of vipers [Lk. 3:7]," they asked him what they should do to be
saved. The full quote of the relevant section is :
”Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him 'Teacher
what
should we do?' He said to them, 'Collect no more than the amount
prescribed for
you.' Soldiers also asked him. 'And we, what should we do?' He said to
them,
'Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be
satisfied
with your wages' [Lk. 3:12-14].”
This is all any of the gospels say about the duties of soldiers and
there is no
evidence thatJesus had ever addressed the issue of
war.
His kingdom was not of this
world andhis name is being misused when political issues, apart
from
paying taxes, are supposedly condoned by him.
As far as righteous anger is concerned, of which Mr.
Bennett
seems so fond, I would suggest to him the books by Seneca On
Anger, which are available in Seneca. Moral and Political
Essays by Cooper and
Procopé. Seneca, a stoic
philosopher, was for several years Nero's tutor and conscience but
eventually
had to pay with his life for this thankless task. As is apparent from
the
content of the books Seneca concerned himself mainly with lingering
resentment
which turns to hate, rather than the sudden surge of anger all of us
intermittently experience. This is why his thoughts are so important
for today.
Seneca wrote:
”Now look at its consequences and the losses which it [anger]
occasions. No
plague has cost the human race more. You will see slaughter,
poisoning, charge and sordid counter-charge in the law-courts,
devastation of
cities, the ruin of whole nations, persons of princely rank for sale at
public
auction, buildings set alight and the fire spreading beyond the city
walls,
huge tracts of territory glowing in flames that the enemy kindled
[1:2,1].”
What accounts for it?
”{Anger is 'a burning desire to avenge a wrong' or, according to
Posidonius, 'a
burning desire to punish him by whom you think yourself to have been
unfairly
harmed' [1:2,3]. There is no need to chastise in anger if error and
crime are
to be repressed. Anger is a misdemeanour of the soul
and one
ought not to correct wrong-doing while doing wrong oneself [1:16,1].
Reason gives
time to either side, and then demands a further adjournment to give
itself room
to tease out the truth: anger is in a hurry. Reason wishes to pass a
fair
judgment: anger wishes the judgment which it has already passed to seem
fair
[1:18, 1]”
”If we wish our judgment to be fair in all things, we must start from
the
conviction that no one of us is faultless For here
is where
indignation most arises - 'I haven't done anything wrong,' 'I haven't
done a
thing!' On the contrary you won't admit [emphasis in the
original]
anything! We grow indignant at any rebuke or punishment, while at that
very
moment doing the wrong of adding insolence and obstinacy to our
misdeeds [2:28,
1].”
”How is it, then, that wrongs by enemies provoke us? Because we
did not
anticipate them, or certainly not on that scale. This is a result of
excessive
self-love. We consider that we ought not to be harmed, even by
enemies. Each of us has within him the mentality of a monarch; he would
like carte
blanche for himself but not for any opposition. So it is either
arrogance
or ignorance of the facts that makes us prone to anger [2:31, 3].”
”'But there is pleasure in anger - paying back pain is sweet.' Not in
the
slightest! The case is not like that of favors, where it is honorable
to reward
service with service. Not so with wrongs. In the one case, it is
shameful to be
outdone; in the other to outdo. 'Retribution' - an inhuman word and
what is
more, accepted as right - is not very different from wrongdoing, except
in the
order of events. He who pays back pain with pain is doing
wrong; it is
only that he is more readily excused for it [2:32, 1].”
How about this moral clarity Mr. Bennett? Was this
stoic pagan
not more of a Christian than those of us who carry Jesus on their lips
but
ignore or pervert his real message?
But let's face it what is really behind most of the hatred against us?
Is it
not also in part our unqualified support of the state of Israel
regardless of
the conduct of its politicians? Even if it were just an excuse by the
Arab
world for their hatred of American policies (mind you they don't hate us,
but merely what is done in our name), should we not remove this excuse
from
them rather than perpetuate it? Mr. Bennett had this to say about the
state of
Israel after he had on a previous page placed our "one-sided" support
of that country in quotation marks, as if he really thought we were
even handed
in this matter. In the chapter "The Case of Israel," Bennett
wrote :
”I want to put it positively. Our essential human kinship with
Israel
is something like our kinship with Great Britain, but it is also more
particular and less blood-related than that. It is a
deep-rooted
feeling of linked destinies, a feeling that echoes back to our
founding and to the earliest conceptions of the American experiment
itself,
that new birth of freedom which our fathers identified with the
Biblical
Israelite's emergence from the darkness of bondage. And I believe it
also has
to do with an understanding, almost religious in nature, that
to our
two nations above all others has been entrusted the fate of liberty in
the
world. That - the survival of liberty - is precisely what our
efforts
to eradicate terrorism are all about.
Keeping faith with
the people of Israel in their still unfinished confrontation with evil
is, to
me, a species of keeping faith with ourselves; breaking faith, a
species of
self-negation. It is exactly that simple, and exactly that difficult,
and
exactly that consequential.”
These are deeply disturbing passages, from a chapter
which is
full of them, especially when they come from a person who is widely
respected
and listened to by our administration. I don't believe that most
Americans feel
a "kinship" with the state of Israel, they might with the people, but
not necessarily the state. Americans may also love the country, for
biblical
reasons, but this does not imply that they, therefore, have to endorse
the
policies which are carried out in that country at the present time. To
link our "destiny" with the policies of a foreign state strikes me as
absurd. The Bible should not be our guide to foreign policy,
just as
it should be impermissible to use the Koran for that purpose by some
Arab
fanatics. I also have a feeling that Mr. Bennett, who seems to be so
enamored
with the ancient Israelites, is unaware that the honor for
having carried out thefirst jihad
in recorded historybelongs to Moses! Wars
have, of
course, always been with the human race but the ancients were more
honest about
them. They fought either to enlarge their lands, take prisoners for
labor
purposes, and enrich themselves; or in self defense. The introduction
of religious
war, ostensibly for the sake of religion, was Moses' idea.
In the book of Numbers we can read that there was
serious
discontent in the Israelite camp about intermarriage and the
introduction of
the worship of Baal. Moses' authority was challenged by a highly
regarded
individual, Zimri, who had married a Midianite wife and was loath to
divorce
her just on Moses' say so. Zimri and his wife Cozbi where then killed
by
faithful Phinehas who has subsequently become a role-model for
religious zeal.
Thereafter Moses launched a full scale attack against the
Midianites.
A fuller version of the dispute between Zimri and Moses can be found in
Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews. It would seem,
however, that
the punitive expedition had the additional purpose of diverting the
people's
attention from the internal problems and concentrating it on an
external enemy.
This is, of course, still common practice today when politicians are in
trouble. Although Moses himself had been involved with at least two
foreign
women, the "Cushite" and Zipporah, this did not matter. Moses was in
charge and intended to remain so. One may also wonder whatever happened
to father-in-law
Jethro - the priest of Midian - who had treated Moses so hospitably,
when the
latter had been a refugee from Egypt where he was wanted for homicide. This
war was not against some foreign enemy whose land one wanted
to
conquer, but against Moses' in-laws andseems
to
represent the first purely religious war. It wasfought
with appropriate fury as Numbers 31: 1-18 testify to. First
the
Israelites killed every male. The cities were burned and the "spoil,"
which included women and children, as well as all the property, was
brought
before Moses. Instead of being pleased he was incensed: "Have ye saved
all
the women alive?" Those were the ones that brought on the trouble in
the
first place "now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and
kill
every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women
children,
that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
Thus the pattern for religious persecution was established and has been
followed ever since. Mohammed used the Arabic word for "holy war,"
but the practice had been established and endorsed by the Jewish
religion more
than a millennium earlier.
And how does Prime Minister Sharon see the future of
his
country? Bob Novak, a conservative commentator, wrote in the National
Weekly
Edition June 24-30, 2002 of the Washington Times an editorial
headlined,
"Sharon rivets senators with his take on the Mideast." The Prime
Minister "Speaking off the record to mostly uncritical American
politicians, the old soldier-statesman was even more blunt. Mr. Sharon
pointed
to no Israeli-Palestinian deal for at least 10 years and
talked of a
hundred years struggles with Arabs. Warning of Egyptian and
Saudi
duplicity, he informed the senators that removal of Saddam Hussein from
Iraq
would be the best way to deal with the Palestinians." Sharon wants to
keep
the West bank and Gaza, because they were promised to the Israelites by
God,
expand the settlements therein and for that purpose hopes to get one
million
Jewish immigrants from France, Russia and Argentina. This is precisely
the
scenario I outlined in Whither Zionism? and why I wrote the
book in
the first place. It is updated in the January and April 2002
installments on
this website Whatever Mr. Arafat or any newly elected
Palestinian
leaders may want or do is irrelevant and to be used only as a
smokescreen for perpetuating and expanding Jewish presence on
Palestinian soil.
Americans are not only to condone this program but finance it as well.
There's moral clarity for you Mr. Bennett! You want us to fight
this
war on terror until victory is achieved, but you fail to define what
this
victory consists of.Since the war is also regarded
as between
"good and evil," there can be no end because evil and good are
intermixed in every human being. You have condemned our
children and
grandchildren to an interminable religious struggle on foreign soil
while we
are losing our religious freedom here. Grade school children must not
be
exposed to the word "God" by their teachers, although they can be
instructed in the joys of sex! This is the Western civilization we seem
to be
defending.
From one Catholic to another I would like to ask you Mr.
Bennett please
reconsider your stance, for the sake of God and our children. Go
to the occupied territories, talk with Hanan Ashrawi, read her book This
Side of Peace, spend a week with ordinary
Palestinians, listen
to them, and then write another book in the light of correct
information rather
than being swayed by religious sentiment and Israeli propaganda.
You
are a decent, intelligent person and can serve our country better than
with the
opinions expressed in Why We Fight.
August 1, 2002
GOD UNERWÜNSCHT
After Hitler had annexed my native Austria
in 1938
one could see signs at public beaches, resort hotels, restaurants and
other
assorted places "Juden Unerwünscht,"
Jews not welcome. It seems that this fate is now to
befall God
in America. The phrase "one nation under God," in the Pledge
of Allegiance, has recently come under attack because the word
God when
uttered at public functions supposedly violates the Constitution.
Yet
anybody who has bothered to read the Constitution and more specifically
the
First Amendment, which is the excuse for banning God from the "Public
Square,"
knows that this a fraudulent claim, regardless how
many judges
agree with it. Here is the full text of the First Amendment
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Since Congress has not passed a law that forbids: school prayer,
singing songs
at graduation ceremonies which contain the word God, or any other
mention of
God at public functions, it is difficult to see why these activities
should be
"unconstitutional." On the contrary when one forbids the use
of the word God one violates the First Amendment by
preventing
"the free exercise thereof," and "abridging the freedom
of speech."
How has this perversion of the intent of the framers ofthe Constitution come about? It is quite recent and
the
article by Alan Mittleman From Jewish Street
to Public
Square (First Things, August-September 2002) is most
enlightening. As some Jews became progressively more
"secular" and left the confines of Jewish enclaves in the major
cities for the suburbs the old traditional bonds were broken. But
suburbia
brought along other problems. Discrimination in
terms of
housing, private clubs, admissions to universities existed and
had to
be confronted. Three organizations were the most
active in
this respect: the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish
Congress and
the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.
It is generally agreed that discrimination on basis of sex, color or
creed is
patently unfair and should not be tolerated in a country which prides
itself in
its Declaration of Independence "...that all men are created
equal..." Had the laudable efforts of the mentioned
organizations stopped at the point where equality had been
achievedwe could all have lived happily for ever after and
would
indeed have become a model for the rest of the world. But some
Jewish
intellectuals simply didn't know when to stop. They still
carried the
long history of persecution in their backpacks when they came from
Europe, and wanted
to achieve not only equality but "safety." To accomplish
this goal there were three possibilities: full assimilation, conversion
of the
country to Judaism, or the abolition of all religious sentiments from
the
public sphere. Complete assimilation was not desirable because it would
threaten the survival of the ancestral belief and to expect that
Judaism would
become the majority religion was, of course, unrealistic. Therefore the
third
option was chosen. In a fully "secularized" country,
which is a euphemism for atheistic, there
could be no
threat to Jews as Jews, anti-Semitism would vanish and the
Messianic
age would dawn. This was the ideal to be worked towards. To quote from
Mittleman's article
"It was from the [American Jewish] Congress and particularly from its lead
attorney, Leo Pfeiffer, that a stream of test cases and friend
of the
court briefs on crucial church-state cases would issue. The Congress
learned
from the NAACP and the ACLU that the courts could effect radical
changes more
swiftly and elegantly than legislatures...It is no exaggeration
to say that the shaping of the church-state separation regime
of the
post-war period cannot be understood without Leo Pfeiffer's activism."
Mr. Pfeiffer was, of course, not alone and anyone who is really
interested in
how God was expelled from public schools and other public functions
should read
also Stephen Feldman's book Please don't wish
me a
Merry Christmas. In this book Feldman also shows why
America
has to be secularized. The predominant religion of the
country
is Christian and as such automatically antisemitic. This may
strike
one as strange but Dr. Feldman is a law professor and here is his definition
of anti-Semitism
"the intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious,
hatred, dislike, oppression, persecution, domination, and subjugation
of Jews
qua Jews for whatever reason or motivation, whether it be religious,
cultural,
ethnic, racial or political."
Feldman explains
"My critical narrative, told from the viewpoint of an American Jew,
reveals the constitutional principle of the separation of
church and
state to be a highly complex social phenomenon that flows
primarily from and helps reproduce the Christian domination of American
society
and culture."
Ergo what should Christians do? Since they are by nature at least
"unconsciously antisemitic," as Feldman declared, it seems the only
way out of the dilemma is that they would have to renounce their
Christian
faith and become atheists. Even if they merely continue to go to church
on
Sundays, their antisemitism will be reinforced, which they will carry
over into
their professional and social lives. Am I exaggerating or is this the
logical
conclusion which is aimed at, but obviously, and for good reason not
voiced?
Lest one believes that I am making too much out of Feldman's book here
are excepts
of the reviews from the back cover, "a wild ride."
"Clearly a superb work of scholarship...the
historical
sweep of the book is impressive." "His ability to understand and
discuss difficult nuances of doctrinal history is impressive." The
conclusion from a review in Booklist states
"At a time when debate rages around issues associated with the
establishment clause of the First Amendment - including school prayer
and
public displays of Christian religious symbols - and at a time of
resurgent
antisemitism, Feldman's carefully reasoned and meticulously
documented
case is particularly welcome."
It did not seem to have occurred to the reviewers that the book
is
profoundly anti-Christian and that the relentless pursuit to banish God
from
public functions is bound to lead to a backlash. These
"intellectuals" fail to consider the law of unintended
consequences and do not realize that their efforts are likely
to
produce precisely what they wanted to avoid: a resurgence of
anti-Semitism. Let
me emphasize, however, that it was not only "non-Jewish Jews,"
to use Deutscher's terminology, who were responsible
for this
slide of our society into "secularism." Nevertheless
that they were in the vanguard of the effort is
readily
demonstrable.
Let us now look at what this relentless drive towards a secular society
has
achieved. Inasmuch as Freud has abolished a conscience,
with
its concomitant sense of responsibility to a higher power, and even
the
so-called super-ego has given way to "do your own thing,"we
now have a "culture," which no longer deserves the name.
When a "joke" by Woody Allen that "the brain is my second most
favorite organ” is heartily approved of; when public education and the
media
gear themselves towards the lowest common denominator, one should not
be
surprised that even the President of this country is reported to have
derived a
great deal of pleasure from a current Austin Powers movie which revels
in
gutter humor. If America were a little island somewhere in the ocean
all of
this would not matter very much. But we are the self-proclaimed "Leader
of
the Free World", "Defenders of Western Civilization" who
broadcast this smut far and wide. Responsible people should,
therefore,
take cognizance and try to return America to the principles the country
was
founded on.
What the American Jewish Congress has accomplished on
the domestic
front, AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee) has achieved in regard to our foreign policy.
The
committee has been, and still is, working exceedingly hard to ensure
that
Congress does not pass legislation which might be construed as harmful
to the
interests of the state of Israel. Seemingly unlimited financial
resources and a dedicated corps of volunteers make surethat
only those candidates for election or re-election to public
office gain
the needed number of votes who are firmly committed to a pro-Israel
line.
This holds true even if a given government in that country
adheres to
policies which are not in the best interests of the United States.
Whenever this happens, as for instance currently in regard to the
Palestinian
issue, the American people have to become convinced by media pressure
(let me
not use the dirty word propaganda) that Israel is our most reliable and
best
friend. Alternative voices to this view can only rarely be heard.
Let me make it explicit at this point that I do not blame
the
mentioned Jewish organizations and other members of
the Jewish
community to pursue their self-interest vigorously
with all
legal means. They deserve to be congratulated to their success and for
having
shown how a small minority can use the democratic process to thwart the
wishes
of the majority. To remedy the situation those of our citizens
who are
not in favor of how the domestic and foreign policy of the country is
being
conducted, should look in the mirror and say mea culpa.
But mea culpa is only the first step. Effective organizations
would
have to be created, which are neither anti-Semitic nor neo-Nazi, but
are led by
responsible citizens from the entire spectrum of the American people
who say:
thus far and no further. The envelope has been pushed to the
limit
and it is time to put the real interests of all the citizens of
this
country to the fore, rather than those of special interest groups
whoever they
are. We have a genuine crisis of confidence in government as
well as
the financial system which has deliberately defrauded millions of our
citizens
which needs to be rectified.
The proposed answers to the problems of: homeland
security,
financial scandals and the dry rot of our culture are more
money and more
laws. Neither of these can solve the problems.
There
is not and cannot be total security for anybody regardless where the
person
lives. Man-made and natural disasters have always occurred and will
continue to
do so. While reasonable precautions can be taken, the creation of a
police
state is not the answer. Not only is it inimical to the American spirit
but in
the long run it will financially and morally bankrupt the country,
without a
chapter 11 protection.
To use the state of Israel as a model for how we should protect
ourselves from terrorists, as is currently proposed,
does not
make good sense. One unbiased look at the Middle East shows
that
Israeli citizens are less secure after about one and a half years of
Likud
government with concomitant repression of the people living in the West
Bank
and Gaza than they were before. No amount of propaganda can hide this
fact. For
us to go down the same road is a guarantee that we shall also suffer
the same
fate. What is needed instead is that on the domestic scene we
should
first of all stop creating more fear. If and when another disaster were
to
occur we should respond to it with measures which limit the impact on
the
innocent victims, while we are pursuing at the same time a foreign
policy which
shows to the entire world that we do not prefer one country over
another when
we try to resolve a given conflict..
In regard to further legal measures for our problems
it should
be obvious that whenever more laws are created the lawyers
go to work and in no time at all they will have discovered
loopholes to
subvert the law so that the rich and powerful can get away
while the
little guy goes to jail. This is not a good way to run a country. Campaign
finance reform is also worthless. Loopholes will be found and
money will
continue to be poured into the coffers of preferred candidates. A
genuine
reform of the electoral process which drastically reduces the election
cycle
should be called for. As long as a Congressman or even Senator has to
worry
immediately upon entering office about creating a "war-chest" for
re-election, he/she cannot be expected to take a rational, reasonable,
long
range stand on controversial topics. Pandering to voters with the
deepest
financial pockets is bound to take precedent. Regardless of the best
intentions
this must be recognized by the public at large as a fact of life. As
long as we do not insist on electoral reform rather than merely
campaign
finance reform nothing will be accomplished. When laws are
created and
subsequently not impartially and promptly enforced they are worse than
useless;
they make a mockery of the very word "law."
And what is the common denominator of all our
problems? Absence
of a sense of responsibility! The rich know that they can get
away, in
some cases even literally, with murder and there is no conscience to
restrain
them. "Greed is good" we have been told in a movie
not too long ago. When CEO's of companies are interested mainly in
enriching
themselves further without regard to the fate of their employees or
stockholders
who get ruined in the process, capitalism will lose its luster as a
model to be
emulated by the rest of the world. So will the secular society which we
are
pushing so hard for in other countries. No human relationships be they
within
the family, in business or government can flourish without trust. But
trust has
to be earned and cannot be legislated. This is the fundamental problem
of our
country. The last few decades of the past century have eroded
trust
on all levels and it is high time to rebuild it, by day to day
behavior
which subordinates personal desires to the needs of others.
This
effort could be immensely aided if trust in God were to be
re-established
because it brings with it a sense of responsibility regardless of high
one's
station in life is. To those who believe, like Nietzsche, that God is
dead we
can answer that Nietzsche forgot one vital characteristic of God. You
can kill
Him but He obstinately refuses to stay dead.
Those of us who still have a conscienceand
believe
that we havean immortal soul for
which we
are responsible to our creator will have to shed our complacency and
cowardice
so that we can indeed work toward America becoming again "one
nation under God," who by the way is non-Sectarian. I said
cowardice on purpose because those who engage in this task can expect
ridicule
by those who "know better," and it is much easier to just keep quiet
and "not make waves." This was an option we had also in Nazi Germany.
In those days you risked your life if you spoke out; today you only
risk
derision or being shunned. But this is precisely what builds character,
a
quality which has been so sadly lacking in high places.
Finally, theperfunctory "God bless America"
which is the routine refrain of our President and some other
politicians with
which they close their speeches is utterly meaningless.
Why
should He? when those in charge of the country don't pay Him
any
respect the rest of the time. The phrase is not even a request but when
not
preceded by a "may," it is an order. Inspire of His infinite patience
He may not relish being ordered around. Thus ourcountry
needs a change of heart and a return to the values which
created it in
the first place. The attempt to replace an internal conscience
by
external laws has failed and will continue to do so. The time has come
to
change the attitudes which gave rise to the headline of this essay to a
sincere: Welcome to America, Lord!
September 1, 2002
OCTOBER SURPRISE?
It is a longstanding political practice that when
the outcome of elections is in doubt the ruling party, of
whatever
designation, tries to change the cards in its favor by creating
aforeign policy crisis. The assumption is that the
nation will
rally around the flag and you just "can't change horses in
midstream." The upcoming midterm elections may well provide a
great temptation repeat this time-tested paradigm. The more so
since
the Republicans have only a slim margin in the House and have lost the
Senate
by one vote. Furthermore it is also a historic fact that the party
which
controls the White House tends to lose rather than gain seats in
midterm
elections. Thus the Republicans are potentially in dire straits and
their hope
ofgaining a solid majority in both houses of Congressmay require a radical foreign policy coup. The
only
one that seems readily available and tailor-made is the ouster of
Saddam
Hussein.
I have been told that, as the saying goes, "It’s
a done deal."On October 15 Saddam's government will
be
taken out by tactical air-borne strikes.U.S. elite
forces
which are already assembled in Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait plus some other
sites, will
drop from the sky onto Baghdadand take over.
The
Iraqi people will cheer like the Afghans did in Kabul and the November
elections will be in the bag. When I told my informant, who is
influential in
Republican circles, that this sounds more like Texas Ranger Walker from
the
famed TV series rather than a realistic plan for battle because
everything
hinges on us knowing where Saddam is staying at a given moment, my
concerns were
dismissed with "oh we know!" Well, I'm not privy to what the
President and his advisors really know, but I do remember that our
mission in
Afghanistan was to "get Osama bin-Laden dead or alive" and that is
still in limbo.
I met my informant, whose right to privacy I intend to honor, during
the early
part of August when I had the opportunity to participate in an
experiment of "grass roots" democracy. As a result of
articles on this website, as well as others which I had submitted to
the Salt
Lake Tribune, I became acquainted with, Maha, a young
woman
who has relatives in Jordan. She and her husband are also deeply
disturbed by
the conditions the Palestinians have to live under in the West Bank and
Gaza.
She is, however, not content to merely bemoan their fate and write
letters to
the Tribune but she is a genuine well meaning activist in the best
sense of the
word. She has organized and participated in candle light vigils
in downtown Salt Lake City and in addition she arranged
meetings with
our Representatives and Senators.
My physical condition no longer permits me to participate in
candlelight vigils
and protest marches but when she called me about joining a meeting with
one of
our senators I was most happy to oblige. I was especially interested
because I
had been prevented from seeing him last year by his secretaries who
vigorously
guard him from his constituents, as mentioned in the June 2001
installment. SinceI had been unable to visit with the senatorIhad left a copy of Whither Zionism?
with the secretaries, urging them to be sure to hand it in
person to
their boss. I even went the extra mile and sent an additional copy to
the
senator's Washington office. I was, therefore, most curious to
find out
what the fate of that little book had been and came armed with another
copy.
As it turned out there were eleven of us who met that
afternoon with
our "junior" senator and he was gracious enough to listen to
everyone. Attempts to meet with the senior senator had been
unsuccessful
because he talks only through intermediaries. But senator Bennett lent
us his
ears although when half an hour had passed the expected knock at the
door came
to let us know that we had overstayed our welcome. Nevertheless we
persevered
and he had to acquiesce in order not to sound too impolite. We informed
him that America's unconditional support of the policies of the Sharon
government is not in the best interest of either Israel or our own
country, thatthe plight of the
Palestinian people is severe and unless
that issue is addressed,security for
Israelis and
Americans is a forlorn hope. Desperate people resort to
desperate
measures. We also told him that what is being done in
that
part of the world in America's name does not conform to the
principles
we as American citizens stand for and that he should be using
his
influence in the Senate to become a voice of reason rather than merely
obeying
the party leadership.
I actually was given the honor by the group to lead off with the
discussion and
my first question was: "Senator, have you
seen
this book?" while holding up Whither Zionism? He
looked surprised and answered: "No." I then
proceeded to tell him of my futile efforts to get this little booklet
into his
hands. I also told him that he ought to have a word with his staff. He
should
inform them that when efforts are made by his constituents to
personally brief
him on issues which are in the vital interest of our country and for
which he
will cast his vote they should be respected. I
subsequently put
the booklet in his hand and said:"Senator, please
read
it on the plane to Washington because that's all the time it takes, and
then
let me know what you think of it!"He smiled, said
that
he would but I have no illusions that he really did so. At any
rate
that was the last I have heard from him but I intend to send him an
e-mail.
Persistency paid off even for the poor widow and the hard headed judge
as we
can read in the gospels.
In concert with some of the others I also told the senator
point blank that military action on part of America to
remove Saddam from power is ill advised. Even if it were to
succeed it
is likely to turn the Arab masses against us. This is not the way to
win the
war against terror but is on the contrary an open invitation for more
attacks
on American lives and property. At that point he became
adamant and
recited the well known mantra that Saddam is a
dangerous
madman and criminal who has poisoned his own people,
has started two wars against his neighbors, has
stockpiles of weapons of mass destructions, is working to get
more, will
have in short order nuclear capability and this must be prevented at
all cost.
He is sure tounleash anthrax, smallpox, the
plague
and other assorted ills against our country which puts us into terrible
danger.
It was obvious that the senator's mind was closed and reason could not
reach
him. But let us look at the facts now and the Encyclopedia
Britannica tends to be a reliable resource for history. When
one
consults it, Saddam looks actually a great deal more rational
than
he is being portrayed currently. What was, however,
the most
surprising aspect is that we owe the Middle East mess to
none
other than our own President Wilson and his famous 14
points.
The Ottoman Empire which controlled the area was to be dismembered,
Wilson told
Congress on January 8, 1918. The non-Turkish nationalities of the
empire should
be "assured of an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous
development." Let us remember, however, that America
was
not even at war with the Ottoman Empire when Wilson already disposed of
it.
When it came to divide the spoils after the war, the British
and the
Frenchhad no use for truly independent
nations and established a series of client states.
Present day Iraq was cobbled together from
the former
Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra but was far
from
ethnically uniform and served mainly British interests. The
borders we
now know were finalized in 1922. These were, of course, arbitrarily
drawn and
the biggest losers for self-determination were the
Kurds. Their tribal area was parceled out to Turkey,
Iraq and
Iran.
The Brits wanted to have a League of Nations mandate over Iraq but the Iraqis
insisted on nationhood and gave the British a hard
time until
independence was achieved in 1932. Initially
the
country was a constitutional monarchy but it was toppled by a military
coup in 1958. A claim by the revolutionary
government
to Kuwait was abandoned in 1961 when Britain
and some
Arab governments opposed it. Another rebellion in 1963brought the Ba'th party ("Revival"
or "Renaissance") to power with Saddam Hussein, our
"madman," as one of its prominent members.
The party advocated Arab nationalism and socialism. Several
other coups occurred thereafter until 1968
when the
Ba'th party took control again and Saddam Hussein,
with a group of armed officers arrested the chief cabinet
minister,
an-Nayif. Contrary to expectations he was not executed but was sent
as
ambassador to Morocco. The president of the Republic,
Al-Bakr, remained in office until 1979 when his
mantle fell on
Saddam as his successor who had
actually been
running most of the government affairs for several years already
because
Al-Bakr was elderly and in poor health. Industries were nationalized,
agrarian
reform initiated and irrigation projects were carried out. A small
private
sector was permitted to exist and there was also a mixture of private
and state
enterprises.
But there were some domestic and foreign complications. The Kurds
tried
on several occasions to overthrow the Ba'th regime and in
1974
they initiated a full fledged war.
They had help
from the Shah of Iran who was interested in the disputed
waterway of
the Shatt-al-Arab. Saddam met with the Shah in 1975
and a
treaty was negotiated which ended the war against the Kurds
because
they no longer had Iranian support.
Saddam started his presidency in
1979 by discovering
a plot to overthrow him whereupon he had 22
conspirators
executed while others were sent to
prison.
This had a salutary effect and Saddam's rule has never been
seriously
challenged thereafter. The reasons for the Iran-Iraq
war
were directly related to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.
Although Iraq recognized the Khomeini regime this was not mutual
because the Ayatollah
regardedthe secular Saddam as a bad Muslimandinsisted on fomenting an Islamic revolution
in Iraq.
There were also some minor border disputes, and skirmishes were
frequent. On
September 17, 1980 Saddam announced that he had abrogated the 1975
agreement
with Iran, because the Iranians had already broken it. Iraqi forces
invaded
Iran on Sept.21-22 and also bombed various targets in that country. The
UN
stepped in and called for a cease-fire. Saddam agreed under
the proviso
that the Iranians did likewise which they were in no mood to do.
From
then on the war dragged on, the Iranians enlisted the
help of the
Kurds again and that is when Saddam, in
order to
protect the northern portion of his country, used chemical
weapons
"on his own people." This solved the problem in the north
but Basra was still threatened.
By the mid-1980's Saddam looked mighty good to the Reagan
administration, certainly better than the Ayatollah, and American
help began to arrive. Another Security Council
resolution in
1987 which urged Iraq and Iran to stop hostilities
and return to their respective borders was accepted by Iraq
but ignored
by Iran. Only when Khomeini saw that the war could not be won
and was
afraid of an internal uprising did he accept Resolution 598 in August
of 1988,
but it took another ten years before all aspects of the resolution had
been
implemented.
During these ten years Saddam tried to raise his
stature in
the Arab world by cooperative agreements with his neighbors and a
non-aggression pact with Saudi Arabia as well as Bahrain. It is
understandable
that he smarted from the Israeli attack on his nuclear reactor
in 1981,
while he was fighting the Iranians, and told the Israelis that
if they
were to attack his country again he would retaliate with
chemical
weapons. This upset the Reagan administration and led to
strained
relationships. Saddam added fuel to the glowing
embers by
making, in typical oriental hyperbole, inflammatory
remarks
about the West's hostile attitude, which paved the
way for the
Gulf War.
Apart from the problem with the Kurds there had been a long
standing
dispute about the legitimacy of Kuwait as a separate nation.
As mentioned
above, Iraq had, even before Saddam's ascension to power, regarded the
country
as one of its provinces. It was the British who had nixed the idea
because they
had their own fish to fry in that part of the world. Not only was there
the
sovereignty aspect, but there was also a dispute about
two strategically located islands at the head of the gulf, and
negotiations between the two countries about their fate went nowhere.
In
addition Iraq was inserious
financial difficulties as a result of the Iran-Iraq war. It owed
$80 billion, half of which was to go to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Saddam,
in his naiveté, had assumed that his
Arab
brotherswould not only forgive the
debt
but, in the spirit of the Marshall plan, help with the
reconstruction
of his country. He may well have thought that they owed him
something
for having saved their regimes from succumbing to an Iranian style of
Muslim
fundamentalism. But Arabs are not Americans and they
not only left
him high and dry, but also increased oil production
which dropped the price and thereby reduced
Saddam's
revenues. The invasion of Kuwait was intended
to solve his financial problemsand help the
cause of
Iraqi nationalism. The decision was made
even easier by a misunderstanding of what the American
ambassador had
said prior to the invasion. She seemed to have implied that
America
had no vital interest in this dispute.
But Papa Bush and Maggie Thatcher said "this will not stand" and the
Gulf war was on. President Bush senior is now being criticized
for "not having finished the job" when he had the chance to
get rid of Saddam. But these connoisseurs of history
fail to
remember that Bush led a coalition and was acting under
an UN mandatewhichdemanded only
the
restoration of Kuwait's integrity. Regime change was not in the cards!
In the aftermath of the gulf war Iraq
was devastated.
The Kurds in the north and the Shiites in
the southtried to get independence from Baghdad but
after our initial encouragement of these efforts we withdrew
support
from the insurrectionists and left them to Saddam's not so tender
mercies.
Apparently our policy makers thought that a weak, ineffectual,
but
geographically intact Iraq would serve their purposes better
than a dismembered one.
Since I have not examined Saddam in person I am not
entitled
to make a psychiatric diagnosis but from the history as presented above
I find
it difficult to believe that the man is irrational. Throughout his
career he has
acted in self-interest, like any good politician,
although he has frequently underestimated his opponents.
This
is a not uncommon mistaketo which even
the Johnson
administration succumbed. Let us also remember that Saddam
is now 65 years old, has not embarked on any military ventures
in the
past ten years, and there is reason to hope that he might have
learned
from the mistakes of his youth. It is unlikely that he is
either going
to "nuke us" now or in the future, nor will he send us chemical
weapons either directly or by proxy. With all the war hype
which is
going on nobody seems to ask the question why he would intend
to attack
us.He is not stupidand knows that
any such
act would be the end of him. He is not even likely to
attack
Israel, which would be the only logical target because
we, if
not the Israelis, would wipe him out and I do not
believe that
he is suicidal. If the Israelis feel threatened they have
ample
military resources to destroy Saddam's regime and I fail to see a
reason why we
ought to do the job for them.
Regardless whether it's October 15 or some other date,
President
Bush seems to feel obligated to finish the job his father had
supposedly left undone. It looks like that he
has
already painted himself into a corner by all the bellicose
rhetoric
and he may now feel that face has to be saved and bombs have to fall. UN
approval is neither regarded as necessary nor
desirable. Allthat is needed now is an event which leads to
some
loss of American equipment or lives, which can be used to infuriate the
public.
But that should present no problem inasmuch as ample
precedents exist how a casus belli
can be
manufactured at a moment's notice. Incidents at the no-fly
zones, for
instance, could readily provide the analogue of a Gulf of
Tonkin
event which served the Johnson administration so well
in its
quest to justify expansion of the war in Viet Nam.
Let us now assume for the sake of
argument
that everything goes miraculously well, it's all over
within a
few days before Saddam can send rockets loaded with biologic weapons to
Israel,
which he would surely do under other circumstances, and there is only
relatively minor "collateral damage" among the civilian population. Saddam
is dead and the Ba'th party gone, then what?We will
install
the analogue of a Karzai regime in Baghdad but it is not
likely to have much control over the rest of the country. The governmentwill be regarded as an illegitimate stooge
for
American interests, and Muslim fanatics, as well as
Iraqi
nationalists will do their best to destabilize it. The Kurds
will in all likelihood want their independencebut
that will create a problemwith our
NATO
ally Turkey because the Kurds may want to have their Turkish
brethren
in their own nation. This is what President Wilson had promised them
after all.
The same secessionist trends apply to the Basra
district. The Shiites living in the area may
want to join their fellow Shiites in Iran and that is likewise
not
in our interest. Who wants to make Iran stronger than the
country
already is? The next "war of liberation" against Iran is then
automatically preprogrammed. Is that what the "Bushies" really want?
The British tried to control the Middle-East with governments
of their
choice. They failed! What is the reason to believe that we will be more
successful? The fundamental problem is that we expect that
everybody
in the rest of the world has to think like us and when they don't they
ought to
be made to do so. It won't work. Oriental traditions are different from
ours
and cannot be shed by an executive fiat from Washington. We also ought
to
realize that Iraq, which basically is the
ancient
Mesopotamia, has produced the first great civilization
this world has known. Americans see only the current situation but
people in
that part of the world have longer memories. They view themselves as
the descendants
of the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians who have ruled their
countries long before there was a Western civilization which is
actually in
part derived from them. Before there was a Moses there was a
Hammurabi
and it was his laws, including the famous eye for an
eye,
which became incorporated into the Bible. If we have
our pride
so do they have theirs.
While I amhighly skeptical of a military
solution
to our fight against the "axis of evil," there is, of course, another
point of view as expressed, among others, by Mr. Podhoretz
in
the current issue of Commentary. He loves the "Bush
doctrine" of pre-emptive strikes and firmly believes that the
"Afghan model" will work. Once Baghdad is liberated
Iran will fall on its own accord, as the next domino, and by
implication so
will the other Muslim regimes we are not fond of. Apparently
the
supporters of al Qaeda will then either see the light of democracy or
just
whither on the vine. Well, anything is possible, what is
likely is
another matter. Itwould,
therefore,
behoove the hawks in our administration, and
especially President
Bush, to remember that it takes only one party to make war but two to
make
peace. Once war starts in earnest there is no way of knowing how and
when it
will end.
Will there be the mentioned October surprise? No one can know
for surebut the world maywellbe
confronted
sooner or later with a fait accompli.
We, the citizens and taxpayers in whose name all of this being done,
have just
as little influence on the actions of our government as the Germans had
under
Hitler. But in contrast to those days democracy allows us to raise our
voices
in warning. If and when the war comes it will hardly be a
surprise for
anyone any more. The only real surprise would be if reason won out over
passion.
October 1, 2002
ONE YEAR LATER
In contrast to politicians and a great many
journalists,
physicians are trained to perform follow-up studies on their patients
in order
to learn whether or not a treatment regimen has been effective. Thus it
is
appropriate not only to remember the dead of September 11, the number
of whom
has now shrunk from 5000 to about 3000, but also what the
American
response to this tragedy has accomplished.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has collapsed
under the weight of bombs as well as the troops of the Northern
Alliance and
victory is being proclaimed by our politicians, who feel free now to
march on
to Baghdad. We have been shown pictures of happy people dancing to
Western
music in Kabul and the faces of women who no longer need to be draped
from top to
toe. But let us pause for a moment and look closer at what was really
accomplished in Afghanistan. We have installed a client regime
in Kabul
but its authority does not extend much beyond the capital, or Kandahar,
and
possibly some other cities. The countryside is far from
pacified,
roving bands impede disaster relief efforts so that people are starving
again
and another winter is in the offing. President Karzai is seen
as a
stooge of the West and has to rely on American Special Forces
for his
personal safety. The locals are still trying to murder him. The King,
of whom
we have heard nothing lately, was supposed to unify the country but
when it
came to elections we didn't want him on the ticket. What he is doing
now is
anybody's guess and he may well look wistfully back to his stay in
Italy where
he was at least safe.
In the fields the poppies are blooming again, the
growth of
which had been banned by the Taliban, and a bumper crop of
opium and
heroin is assured. A British source has stated that
Afghanistan
produces 75 per cent of the world's heroin and 90 per cent of Britain's
supply.
That the British authorities are not thrilled over the renewed influx
is
understandable. The Kabul government as well as ours doesn't want this
state of
affairs and we are trying to bribe the farmers to destroy the crops,
but since
selling the stuff brings a great deal more than what we are offering
the result
is a foregone conclusion. Furthermore, although the Taliban
government
hasdisappeared, this does not mean that their
fighters have seen the errors of their ways and become good
democratic
citizens. As expected they have melted into the mountains and
villages
from which they continue to harass their enemies, be they Afghans or
foreigners. Inasmuch as the people are dirt poor there has also
developed a brisk
trade in Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. We offer the Afghans
some
money to hand them over to us but there are others who pay even more to
get
them smuggled out of the country to Pakistan or elsewhere. Thus a
primitive capitalism
is flourishing and the highest bidder gets the prize. What we do with
our
captives, apart from interrogating them is also a good question. As far
as I
know no one has recently wondered about what is happening to
the
detainees in Guantanamo. Since they are not designated as
prisoners of
war, although we are fighting a war against terrorism, they seem to
have no
civil rights whatsoever. There exists another nasty little fact we are
not
supposed to remember. The most important Al Quaeda leaders
which are in our custody were not captured by our
special
forces in Afghanistan but through the dedicated cooperative
efforts of
intelligence services around the globe. "Bin Laden dead or
alive," which was the President's motto when we started the bombing
campaign,
has also been quietly forgotten.
Our efforts to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban militia,
which
our special forces are still intermittently engaged in, are seriously
handicapped, because we have to rely on local
informers
as to where their hiding places might be. It is assumed that these
citizens
love us more than their own countrymen whom they are supposed to inform
on
which is, however, not always the case. Sometimes they engage in
efforts which
are clearly counterproductive from our point of view. For instance by
calling
in air-strikes on villages which are populated by rival clans but are
quite
neutral in their opinions about the U.S. In so doing we may bomb
wedding
parties or a convoy heading for elections. These sorts of "friendly
fire" mistakes do not endear us to the populace. Nor can one
blame the Canadians for being upset when we bomb them.
On occasion we have also conducted house to house searches.
This seems innocuous enough to us but was regarded as deeply offensive
by the
locals. In the home the women are not veiled and foreigners have no
right to
gaze on their faces. Now we are supposedly first sending Afghans into
the house
to be searched, to ensure proper attire by the ladies. In the
countryside the
Burqa is still the appropriate dress code and men rule the roost
regardless
what our feminists or their local equivalents desire. The promised
aid
to Afghanistan which was to feed the people, reestablish the destroyed
infrastructure, and promote democratic reforms has been slashed
and is slow in coming. We try to pawn the aid efforts off to our allies
because
the impending second Gulf war obviously requires our money and there is
just so
much that can be extracted from the ever patient American taxpayer. In
addition
there is also bound to be a limit somewhere for the steadily increasing
billions of deficit spending.
It is, therefore, obvious that democracy is not going to blossom in
Afghanistan
any time soon. If one looks objectively at that
country today
one gains the impression that we are apparently in the same
situation
as the Soviets were in early 1980. They had installed a
friendly
government, proclaimed freedom from an intrusive religion, replaced it
with
their own secular values and expected peace and quiet on their border.
As we
know it didn't work out that way. The locals liked their own religion
better
than Soviet values and America was most willing to oblige with money
and
material so that the mujahadeens could give the Russians a
hard time.
In the process we created Osama but the ingrate
turned
against us when we established military bases in his home
country
after the Gulf war instead of just packing up and leaving. For
infidels, including women and Jews, to establish a permanent military
presence
in the land of the Prophet was too much to stomach.
This reminds me of an event in the 1980's when I had been invited to
Saudi
Arabia for a lecture tour. On the visa application one had to enter
one's
religion and there was a comment, "Judaism and Atheism not
acceptable." So there! On the plane from Jeddah to Riyadh I had my
usual
window seat and a Burqad lady sat down next to me. The stewardess
arrived
immediately thereafter and ordered me out of my seat. I am by nature
not very
obliging to peremptory commands especially when no reason is given, so
I pulled
out my boarding pass pointed to 14 A looked up at the row number and
there was
14 A. In righteous determination I had no intention of vacating that
seat. A
somewhat animated argument ensued, the stewardess was demanding my
leaving and
I was equally determined on staying. Then a lady, with only a modest
and
attractive head scarf covering her hair, seated in the row ahead turned
around
to me and said quietly: "You are not allowed to sit next to a lady."
Well that explained the situation and I happily yielded to local custom
because
Europeans are taught early on "When in Rome do as the Romans."
This piece of wisdom some Americans have yet to learn. But since we are
now
engaged in world wide "peace keeping," it would seem to be imperative
that our military forces are being taught not only how to handle their
weapons
but also to show proper respect to local customs.
As far as the goal of the Afghan war is concerned we have been told
that it was
to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism and to liberate the Afghan
people
from an intolerable religious regime. An ulterior motive as for
instance a pipeline
construction from Central Asia through Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the
Arabian Sea was, of course, denied publicly but devoutly wished for by
certain
circles in the oil business. Well, the pipeline has remained a pipe
dream for
the time being because nobody in his right mind is going to invest
money in a
country where public safety cannot be guaranteed. This adds
considerable allure
to Saddam's oil reserves. Once he is gone a friendly
regime
can be installed in Baghdad and the oil will flow to the Persian Gulf
without
having to bother with expensive pipeline constructions. That is the
assumption,
what reality will bring no one knows.
It is likely that I will now be accused of massive cynicism and of
disregarding
the noble motives for which we ostensibly are going to topple the
Saddam
regime. President Bush assured us just a few days ago that Saddam
is a
menace to Western civilization not only for our generation but
that of
our children and grandchildren. Mr. President please
pardon my
skepticism about rendering the world safe for our grandchildren. The
only
universally true law of life is change and unforeseen consequences! There
is no way anybody can make our children, let alone grandchildren, safe
by
engaging in wars and "regime change." It has not worked in
the past and will not work in the future.
Let me remind our "hawks" of just one such past effort.
"We believe that our own desire for a new international order
under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind
shall
prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new
order the
world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable
conditions of
existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving
it, we
shall not turn back." Thus said President Wilson on February
11,
1918 in his speech to the Congress. The new order brought
Versailles;
Versailles brought Hitler, who in turn brought the Soviet Union into
the heart
of Europe. Only by waging a cold rather than hot war against her did
that
regime collapse under its own weight without a drop of American blood
having
been shed. Surely this might be a better precedent than continued
military
campaigns.
The main difference between the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and ours
in
regard to world politics is that the new mujahadeen, which
are in the
process of emerging, won't have the resources of the U.S. available to
them.
But what are Pakistanis, Iranians and even Chinese for? Arms deals make
money
and I know of no country which has in the past refrained out of lofty
motives.
Our new found "friend" Musharraf has a similar
problem as does Karzai. He can't trust his people and
has to
rule by decree. While we abhor a dictatorial regime in Iraq and are
inundated
by the dire threats Saddam might pose if he were to get nuclear weapons
our
pundits are much more tolerant of Mush raff’s proven nukes and his
means to
drop them on people whom he doesn't like. Obviously he knows better and
won't
use them but why should Saddam? Thus it is again not democracy
or
humanitarian values which count in the circles that really
make our
political decisions but whether or not a given dictator is
willing to
do our bidding.
One tends not to read the type of information about our Afghan victory,
which
was mentioned above, in our major news media. It is available, however,
not
only on the Internet but also the Christian Science Monitor.
Although I have considerable reservations about Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy's
medical
opinions the worldwide coverage of political events which the Monitor
provides
is indeed a service to democracy because the information is presented
in a fair
and balanced manner. This is not necessarily the case with our major
news-organizations and the media pundits
What has happened at home since 9-11-2001? The stock
market has crashed, the economy
is in
the dumps and the idea of early retirement by some of our baby
boomers
had to be shelved. Some of them no longer even worry about retirement
but have
more immediate problems with either keeping or getting a job. The airline
industry especially is in shambles. Not only
has
flying become a distasteful chore because of the "security” measures
but
their very survival is at stake. A mid East war with an inevitable
spike in oil
prices may well be the kiss of death for some of our airlines which
can't make
ends meet even now. What the laid off employees, from
all the
companies which are busy with "downsizing," are supposed to do does
not seem to concern our happy warriors in
their quest
for our safety. Those are the realities some Americans have to be
concerned
about and I am sorry to say that these worry me considerably more than
Saddam's
WMDs. The question for some of us grandparents is not whether
or not
our grandchildren will be nuked, anthraxed, or smallpoxed but will we
have to
bail them out financially and will we be able to do so?
Another ominous event has taken place in "the land of the free and the
brave." Our Muslim citizens of Mid Eastern descent live
in fear of being regarded as terrorists. Professors in
academia may no
longer voice their opinions freely because they can be blacklisted and
lose
their jobs. Our high tech industry has relied heavily on
foreign
students but now their visas are no longer as readily
available as in the past. Some Saudi students who had green
cards here
and had homes and cars, were not allowed to return after a brief visit
to their
home country. They have been forced into limbo. Other bright Mid
Easterners no
longer get student visas in the first place and will have to go for a
good
education to Europe or states of the former British Empire, which FDR
helped to
dismantle. For those who doubt America's role in the demise of the
British
Empire I suggest A Time For War by Robert Smith Thompson and Churchill
by Clive Ponting.
The war in Afghanistan is not yet over
it has
merely shifted to Phase II, as predicted on these
pages last
year. If Afghanistan is to be the model for
a regime
change in Iraq our administration would have a lot of
explaining to do why the result will be better.
But
it is not in the nature of politicians to look beyond immediate goals. Instead
of explanations and rational debate, fear has to be produced
in the populace so that Congress can cave in and ratify whatever the
administration demands. This recipe has worked in the past and is
expected to
do so again. But fear, anger, and hate (which President Bush
has
admitted to harboring against Saddam Hussein), are not the foundations
upon
which American policy should be conducted.
There seems hardly any doubt that war with Iraq has
already been decided on by the Bush administration. The troops
are being moved to their staging areas and the political
maneuvers at the UN and in Congress are designed to
fix the
blame on Saddam. The strategy for achieving
this goal
has also become clear. We will make demandsto
the Baghdad government which are incompatible
with their national sovereignty and when they are
either
declined or subverted we start with "regime change." This model dates
at least to July 1914 when Austria used it to start a war with Serbia.
Most
recently it was resurrected by Madeleine Albright with the Rambouillet
"agreement" which unleashed our war on Milosevic. The
question seems to be no longer whether or not there will be war but
when. Last
month's installment was called October Surprise? but
since
even Democrats have caught on now it may not be feasible
any
more. The November elections may well turn
into a
referendum on the war and be decided by the susceptibility of
the
American people to propaganda. "The Great Game" as
it used to be called at the end of the 19th century, is still
being played. Empires have to be defended and commercial interests
expanded
which inevitably leads to conflict with those who, to use a
well known
colloquialism, don't want to play ball with us.
October 17,2002
THE SAGA OF TUTANKHAMEN'S SKULL X-RAYS
Before reading further I suggest that you print
this
"Epistle to the World" because I shall refrain from highlighting
special aspects; the details are important and the eleven pages cannot
be
properly digested by cursory glances at a screen. Although I had
mentally
committed myself to monthly installments there are occasions in these
fast
moving times when one feels forced to deviate from this pattern. Too
much is
happening which deserves to be commented upon. The evening of Sunday,
October 6
was one such event when the Discovery Channel presented"The
Assassination of King Tut." In this pseudo-documentary the
English-speaking world finally received the answer as to who had
murdered
Tutankhamen, the last descendant of Egypt's fabled 18th Dynasty. The
mystery of
the king's sudden death, which has puzzled Egyptologists for decades,
was
solved by none other than a pair of detectives from my neighboring
cities of
Provo and Ogden. We were told that a set of skull X-rays had been
released to
them from England for their investigation. These produced "vital
evidence
for the detectives" and allowed them to finger the killer. Now at long
last "justice has been done" for the unfortunate victim and he
"can rest in peace." It had been Ay, the Prime Minister, who in the
waning years of his life, killed the frail handicapped Tut in order to
usurp
the throne. Since I made a more or less "cameo" appearance in this Machwerk
(the word has no direct English counterpart but denotes a piece of fake
artistry), I owe it to my friends and readers to set the record
straight.
I have had a long standing interest in Egyptian history and when I saw
on one
of my periodic trips to Vienna a book by Vandenberg Nofrete,
Echnaton und
ihre Zeit, I bought it right away. What I read in this book during
the
middle 1980's literally set this whole show in motion. It's obvious
that God's
mills grind slowly. The key sentences when translated from German read:
"Radiologic examinations of the mummy revealed that the young pharaoh
did
not die of natural causes and, therefore, urgently needed this tomb
[which had
been hastily prepared and was not originally intended for him].
Tut-ench-Amun
has a hole [Loch] in the posterior portion of his skull [Hinterkopf]
as it might have resulted from a club or spear tip. Did the little king
die
from the hand of a murderer? Many regard Eje [Ay] the 'Father of the
God' and
successor of Tut-ench-Amun, as the murderer; an assumption which has
not yet
been fully validated."
The words "hole in the skull" clearly raised the interest of the
professional neurologist and I immediately decided to follow through on
this.
Where are these X-rays and what do they really show? was the question.
But
Vandenberg had written for the general public and had, therefore, not
provided
references for his statement. There are, however, other sources and the
Cambridge
Ancient History has a well deserved excellent reputation. It
contained a
statement by Cyril Aldred, a highly respected Egyptologist:
"He [Tutankhamen] died in his nineteenth year, perhaps as the result of
a
wound in the region of his left ear which penetrated the skull and
resulted in
a cerebral haemorrhage.
How this lesion was caused must remain a mystery, but the nature and
seat of
the injury make it more likely to be the result of a battle wound or an
accident than the work of an assassin."
Now we no longer have just a skull defect but also
a brain
hemorrhage. Furthermore it is not in the back of the head but in the
region of
the left ear, and young Tut wasn't murdered after all. Where did Aldred
get his
information from? As a scientist he gave the reference which read "The
Times, Science Report, 25 October 1969." A trip to the public library
followed, the article was located and printed. The headline of this
brief note
read "Violent death of Tutankhamen." The essential sentences were:
"Examination of the mummy by Professor R.G. Harrison and Dr. R.C.
Connolly
of the anatomy department at Liverpool University, has revealed wounds
that
resemble brain damage sustained by a violent blow on the head.
X-rays of the pharaoh's head have shown up a thinning of the bone at
the back
of the skull, Professor Harrison said yesterday. His diagnosis is that
the
thinning was caused by a cerebral haemorrhage resulting from a blow to
the
head."
I found out later that the statement was based on a BBC documentary
which had
been shown in the UK in 1969 and will be discussed later.
All right; now we no longer have a skull defect but only a thinning of
the bone
caused by bleeding in the brain. Thus, the question remained what did
these
X-rays really show? But at least there were now two names and an
address. This
is how my correspondence with Mr. Connolly, Senior Lecturer at the
Anatomy
department of Liverpool University, started and which thanks to my
compulsive
nature survived the trip from Michigan to retirement in Utah. He was
one of the
key members of Harrison's expedition which actually had as its goal to
investigate the kinship of Tutankhamen with a mummy that had previously
been
thought as belonging to Akhenaten but is now regarded as that of the
ephemeral
Smenkhare, who was either co-regent or for a short time successor of
the
heretic pharaoh. Precise data are lacking. As a result of their
examinations Harrison
suggested on anatomic and Connolly on serologic grounds that
Tutankhamen and
Smenkhare may have been brothers. This important scientific finding
was,
however, in the public mind overshadowed by the sensation the skull
X-rays had
caused. When I wrote to the Chairman of the anatomy department in the
summer of
1986 my letter was answered by Mr. Connolly who wrote:
"Before Professor Harrison died, we were working on an extensive
analysis
of the x-rays of several Dynastic specimens including Tutankhamun but
this is
still incomplete. I have all the x-rays and am hoping to complete the
study in
the not too far distant future and I shall give you the information
about
publication.
We haven't published anything beyond the 1972 Antiquity but I may
produce a
report before publication of the main comparative study because several
workers
have been seeking information specifically about Tutankhamun."
I thanked Connolly for his information and asked him to inform me about
the
final results of his investigations. I also made a trip to the
University
Library in Detroit and unearthed two relevant articles by Harrison.
One, dated
1971, was hidden away in a journal called Buried History
under the
title "Post Mortem on Two Pharaohs. Was Tutankhamen's Skull Fractured?"
The second article was the mentioned 1972 report in Antiquity
with the
simple title "The Remains of Tutankhamun." This article is a classic
because it provides most valuable evidence about how Carter and Derry's
"autopsy" of the pharaoh in 1925 was really carried out. The details
would take me too far afield now, suffice it to say that due to an
excessive
use of unguents the king's mummy was found to have been solidly glued
to the
bottom of the third coffin and even the gold coffin itself was stuck to
the
bottom of the second coffin. Carter's team had to literally chisel the
mummy
away from the coffin to get at all the artifacts which now grace
museums around
the world. They severed the limbs, sawed the trunk away from the pelvis
and
decapitated the mummy at the seventh cervical vertebra. Mr. Filce Leek,
a
member of the expedition, produced a book afterwards under the title The
Human Remains of Tutankhamen where he details the condition in
which
Harrison's team found the mummy of the king. Unless one has read the
Antiquity
paper and Leek's book in detail no worth-while opinion can be
formulated about
the meaning of the X-rays and a possible cause of death.
While the paper in Antiquity did not enter into speculations
how
Tutankhamen may have died, Harrison did write in the Buried History
article:
"While examining X-ray pictures of Tutankhamen's skull I discovered a
small piece of bone in the left side of the skull cavity. This could be
part of
ethmoid bone which had become dislodged from the top of the nose when
an
instrument was passed up the nose into the cranial cavity during the
embalming
process. On the other hand, the X-rays also suggest that the piece of
bone is
fused with the overlying skull and that this could be consistent with a
depressed fracture which had healed. This could mean that Tutankhamen
died from
a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to his skull from a blunt
instrument.
This evidence taken together with the fact that the pharaoh was only 18
when he
died, and considered against the troubled times during which he lived,
poses an
intriguing question: was Tutankhamen murdered?"
It was this sentence and one other sentence on the mentioned BBC
documentary
which started all the speculations about murder. Without any new
evidence since
1969, Tut's death is now being declared not only a homicide but we even
have
the murderer according to the Discovery Channel.
Yet when one looks at what has been presented so far in regard to the
interpretation of the crucial X-rays we have two different locations
for the
supposed "fracture" and "hemorrhage." One is in the
posterior portion of the head, namely the occipital bone and the other
higher
up in the parietal bone. A scientifically inclined mind might ask: well
which
way is it? Let's give these X-rays to a panel of neuroradiologists and
let them
decide what the proper interpretation of the radiographs should be. Let
us
remember, also, that Harrison was Head of the Department of Anatomy at
the
University of Liverpool and although an excellent scientist he was not
necessarily a specialist in neuroradiology.
The years went by, Martha and I had retired from our jobs, moved to
Utah and I
kept checking the literature intermittently whether or not new
information had
come out from Liverpool about the final interpretation of the X-rays.
When this
was not the case I asked, in December of 1995, my friend and colleague
Dr. Ted
Reynolds, Director of "The Institute of Epileptology" at the Maudsley
Hospital in London, if he could find out who the current Chairman of
the
Anatomy Department at Liverpool University is because as time moves on
people
have a tendency to die. Lo and behold in April of 1996 I received a
letter from
Connolly. It was dated April 1, 1996 and stated:
"Your letter to Dr. Reynolds has been passed to Professor Chadwick, who
passed it to Professor Wood who passed it to me. Reports of my death
have (as
the man said) been greatly exaggerated!
I enclose a positive and a negative print of the original lateral
radiograph of
the badly damaged head and neck of Tutankhamen.
I am afraid there is really nothing beyond our original publications on
the
subject which I can add about these radiographs. They have been
examined
recently by several eminent radiologists, and apart from the obvious
features
referred to in previous publications they really do not contribute
anything
particularly significant either to the procedures for mummification in
the 18th
Dynasty or, more importantly to the cause of death."
The letter ended with the request that in any publication credit should
be
given to the Department and that there is a standard University charge
for
publication in popular magazines or in non-academic books.
I thanked Connolly for his pictures and also mentioned that this view
of the
head has in the meantime already been published by Nicholas Reeves in The
Complete Tutankhamen. In the text Reeves wrote, "Sadly Harrison
did
not live to publish fully his thoughts on this feature [the obvious
bone
splinter in the parietal area], and it is not clear whether he believed
the
damage to have been sustained before or after death, accidentally or
intentionally. That the king was murdered, however, seems increasingly
likely." How Reeves, who was a Curator in the British Museum's
Department
of Egyptian Antiquities, arrived at the likelihood of murder was not
elaborated
on.
Photographs in hand I proceeded to show them to my colleagues Dr.
Richard
Boyer, Head of the Department of Medical Imaging at Primary Children's
Hospital
(Salt Lake City's Pediatric Hospital for the University of Utah) where
I still
worked as a consultant, Dr. Anne Osborn a highly respected specialist
in
Neuroradiology at the University Hospital, and the Medical Examiner of
the
State of Utah, Dr. Todd Grey. This was done on separate occasions to
obtain
unbiased independent opinions. The verdict was unanimous: the splinter
is in
all probability due to post-mortem artifact, there is no evidence for a
skull
defect but unless one had the actual radiographs a final opinion could
not be
rendered merely on photographs. The visit to Dr. Grey was prompted by
the
desire to discuss my own ideas, on how the king might have died, with a
forensic pathologist. In a subsequent letter, dated September 30, 1996,
he
confirmed that they were reasonable. The X-ray information was promptly
relayed
to Connolly with the request that he should continue to keep my
interest in
mind and let me know if and when something new developed.
Something did, but not in Liverpool. I had attended the American
Clinical
Neurophysiology Meeting in Boston and during a break in the proceedings
wandered across the street to the Public Library. Everything was nicely
computerized and not quite knowing what I would be most interested in I
typed
"Tutankhamen." Much to my surprise up came a brief article written by
David Stout for the New York Times June 30, 1996. The
headline was
"The violent Death of King Tut." This was obviously the same as that
of the 1969 London Times article except that irreverent
American
journalists are loath to use the king’s full name. The article stated:
"After studying the X-rays of Tutankhamen's skull, two scientists said
last week that he might have been bludgeoned, and that his death at the
tender
age of 19, might have been slow.
The discovery was made when Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at the C. W.
Post Campus
of Long Island University, asked Dr. Gerald Irwin, a physician and
trauma
specialist at the university, to examine the X-rays of King Tut that
were taken
28 years ago at the boy Pharaoh's tomb.
Dr Irwin said the X-rays showed that King Tut, who ruled Egypt more
than 3,000
years ago, could have died of a blow to the head. And a line on the
skull could
indicate a blood clot, meaning Tut may not have died right away."
Immediately upon returning home a Fax went off to Connolly asking him
whether
or not Brier and Irwin had been members of the team of "eminent
radiologists" whom he had mentioned in his previous letter. The answer
was
that this had not been the case. Brier and Irwin did not even have the
X-rays.
What Brier had done was to enlarge the same photograph Connolly had
sent me
previously, placed it on an X-ray viewing box, "made up to look like an
actual radiograph - which it is not." To add emphasis not was
underlined three times. Well, so much for the integrity of the New York
Times
but it was sad that one of our medical colleagues had allowed himself
to be
used in this spoof. Nevertheless a new wrinkle had appeared in this
ongoing
saga: What was the reason for assuming that Tut's death had not been
sudden but
that he had lingered for some time before succumbing to whatever had
ailed him?
The answer was provided by a Father's Day present from my good and
faithful
wife in June 1998 in form of a book The Murder of Tutankhamen. A
True Story
by Bob Brier, Ph.D. The dust jacket tells us that Bob Brier is one of
the
country's most respected Egyptologists, whose specialty is
paleopathology and
that he has conducted autopsies on many ancient mummies. We are
informed
furthermore that "Now Egyptologist Bob Brier uses modern forensic
techniques and ancient documents to reveal the crime, identify the
killer of
Tutankhamen, and bring the tumultuous world of ancient Egypt and its
young pharaoh
alive."
The historic information Brier provides can be found in other texts on
the 18th
Dynasty but what is new is an explanation for David Stout's article.
Brier
wrote:
"Given the omissions and confusions surrounding Tutankhamen's X rays,
it
was clear that a careful reexamination of the material relating to
Tutankhamen's death was necessary. My first step was to get a copy of
Harrison's X ray, but he had died in 1979. His colleague R. C. Connolly
was
still at the University of Liverpool and he kindly sent me prints of
the X ray
along with a friendly note that was far from encouraging.
'I am afraid there is really nothing beyond our original publications
on the
subject which I can add about these radiographs...Apart from the
obvious
features referred to in previous publications they really do not
contribute
anything particularly significant either to the procedures for
mummification in
the Eighteenths Dynasty or more important, to the cause of death.'"
Brier referenced the letter as having been sent on April 1, 1996. An
attentive
reader of this Hot Issues installment will immediately have experienced
a
profound déja vu sensation and this is the reason why
I have presented
Connolly's letter to me in full which had precisely the same date. What
has
happened here? Connolly is a busy man who has a heavy teaching load, in
addition to his research efforts, and has little time to spare for
numerous
requests from all over the world about Tut's X-rays. So he apparently
sent the
same letter and photos to insistent petitioners. But Brier did
something which
is not quite kosher in scientific circles, especially when he subtitled
his
book "A True Story." He had replaced the statement about the
"eminent radiologists" who had examined the pictures recently with
ellipsis! The reason is obvious because what doesn't fit a hypothesis
is not
allowed to exist. If there is one message in all of this it is: Beware
of
Ellipsis! They can be used to hide the truth and whenever an ellipsis
is
encountered it behooves a scientist to go to the original text and find
out
what has been omitted.
But there is more. Figure 25 shows the by now famous photograph which
is
labeled as "X ray" and an arrow "points to the location of the
possible blow to the back of the head." It is nowhere near the left ear
as
had been suggested by earlier authors and is so close to the neck that
it would
seem highly unlikely for an assassin to strike this spot which is
extremely
well protected by the neck musculature. Figure 26 shows the blowup of
the
photograph on the view-box Connolly had mentioned in his Fax. Brier can
be seen
pointing to the bone splinter in the parietal area (which is regarded
as
artifact), while Dr. Irwin watches attentively. The legend to the
picture
states that "Irwin was the first to suggest Tutankhamen may have
lingered
before dying from a blow to the back of the head."
Irwin's opinion was based on the BBC documentary of 1969 which I had
not seen
until after the interview for the recent Assassination video. In this
documentary, which by the way is excellent, we are shown under what
conditions
the X-rays had been obtained by Harrison's team in 1968. On the film
Harrison
explained in detail the skull X-ray findings in regard to the splinter,
which
he regarded as artifact. But subsequently he added a fateful sentence
when he
described an "eggshell thinning" of the occipital bone, "This is
within normal limits. But in fact, it could have been caused by a
hemorrhage
under the membranes overlying the brain in this region, and this could
have been
caused by a blow to the head, and this in turn could have been
responsible for
death."
Here is now the proverbial "smoking gun" for the cerebral hemorrhage
or more properly called subdural hematoma, in neurologic circles. But
Harrison
was a scientist, as such cautious and not given to apodictic
statements. The
sentence is laced with "could." The only time a definitive
"is" was used occurs in relation to the finding being "within
normal limits." Now let us fast forward to 1998 and Brier's book where
he
wrote in regard to Dr. Irwin's opinion:
"First, I showed him the BBC video of Harrison's explanation of the X
ray.
Then he studied the X-ray print of Tutankhamen's skull. He agreed with
Harrison. There could indeed have been a blow to the back of the head;
the X
ray was evidence [sic] for a hematoma; an accumulation of blood beneath
the
skin. But then Dr. Irwin noticed something else. Inside the skull, near
the
location of the possible blood clot, an area of increased density
showed. This
is what would be expected from a calcified membrane formed over a blood
clot.
Physicians call it a chronic subdural hematoma - a phenomenon that
takes
considerable time to develop."
Although Brier goes on to state correctly that the X ray "does not
prove
he was murdered," because X-rays can't reveal intentions, he had to
justify the title of his book. He, therefore, continued:
"In Tutankhamen's case, two renowned experts saw evidence [sic] of a
hematoma in the skull. Did Tutankhamen trip and hit his head? Given the
location of the hematoma, that is unlikely. By itself, evidence of a
fatal blow
to the back of the skull in a place where an accident is unlikely would
never
convince a jury to convict. But it would certainly be enough to cause a
thorough investigation by the police to see if they could turn up
additional
evidence. They would label the X ray 'indication of suspicious
circumstances.'"
This is where the saga ended for the time being. Although the murder
theory was
not regarded as proven it was initiated by a set of X-rays which had
never left
Liverpool and had never been published in the medical literature so
that the
pros and cons of the various interpretations could have been discussed.
Brier
devotes the rest of the book to his literary detective work with the
final
conclusion that the assassin had been Ay. This would not have come as a
great
surprise to those Egyptologists who subscribed to the murder theory on
the
flimsy X-ray "evidence." I discussed this new "evidence"
again with my radiology colleagues who regarded the idea of a calcified
posterior fossa subdural hematoma as highly unlikely because they had
never
seen one in that location especially in a person of that age. Since my
own
efforts to get the actual X-rays had not been successful I dropped the
matter
and devoted myself to more attainable purposes.
But to paraphrase Shakespeare "uneasy rests the head that wore a
crown." In August of 2001 a call came out of clear blue sky and a lady,
who identified herself in a wonderful British accent as Kate Botting,
asked me
if she could talk to me in regard to Tutankhamen. She was making a
video about
Tutankhamen for Atlantic Productions to be shown on the Discovery
Channel and
would appreciate it if I could give her a few minutes to discuss the
project.
She was in town and could come to our house if this were agreeable.
Obviously
it was agreeable and over a couple of glasses of wine Martha and I
discussed
with Kate, and her camera crew supervisor Lance, all my efforts to find
out
what the X-rays really showed. I also told them that the evidence for
young Tut
having been murdered, as presented in Brier's book, is inadequate and
pointed
to various other more probable scenarios. She was enthused and asked if
I would
be willing to be interviewed for the film. I agreed but only on the
condition
that she bring along copies of the X-rays from Liverpool so that our
experts
could go over them and come to their own conclusions. She agreed and
filming
was set for September 15. But the whole world knows what happened on
September
11. Air travel came to a standstill and the project had to be
postponed.
After several delays Kate arrived on September 19 at 12:30 a.m. and by
8:30
a.m. I had finally at long last 3 X-rays in my hand. They consisted of
the
famed lateral view, a front to back view and one taken from the chin
up. I
headed immediately for what used to be called X-ray department of
Primary
Children's and now has the less descriptive but more flowery name of
Medical
Imaging. As usual Boyer was busy and there was no time for detailed
inspection.
I left the X-rays with him so that he could at least glance at them
prior to
the interview which was scheduled for the late afternoon of the same
day.
Filming took place, most appropriately, in the morgue of the Medical
Examiner's
building. I was first in line and explained for about half an hour the
reasons
why the "evidence" for Tut's murder does not necessarily hold up and
that a key element of Carter's findings may not have been properly
interpreted
in the past. Moisture had damaged not only the second coffin (the third
one was
pure gold) but even the bandages with which the body had been wrapped.
Carter
also reported that the closer to the body one came the worse the
condition of
the bandages and it seemed that the moisture had come from the body
itself.
Carter blamed this moisture on an excessive use of unguents for
religious
purposes and they had over the millennia introduced spontaneous
combustion
which accounted for the massively decayed state the mummy was found in.
Inasmuch as the whole purpose of mummification was to preserve the
deceased in
as intact a state as possible, and the ancient embalmers had been
experts in
their art, I found it difficult to believe Carter's explanation. It
seemed more
likely to me that the body may have been already in the process of
decay by the
time it reached the "House of Vigor" or "Vitality," as the
workshop of the embalmers was euphemistically referred to. Under these
circumstances even experts may have been confronted with an impossible
task.
Desiccation with natron, the usual procedure, would have been no longer
effective and a hasty disposal of the remains may have been imperative.
Anyone
who has had the unfortunate experience of viewing a decaying body knows
that
this process is accompanied by a terrible odor and I reasoned,
therefore, that
the clearly excessive use of unguents, by the bucketful, may have been
to mask
this dreadfully foul smell. I also suggested that there may well have
been an
accident during hunting or fishing in the desert or marshes
sufficiently far
away from the palace and even a few hours in the Egyptian sun can lead
to the
decay of a dead body. Another possibility could be related to the
unexplained,
and now no longer mentioned, nature of "the scab" on the left cheek
which Derry had noted at the original autopsy. It might have been due
to an
insect bite which had become infected leading to sepsis which likewise
hastens
bodily decomposition and makes proper embalming difficult if not
impossible.
This is precisely what I had discussed with Todd Grey in 1996 and he
had felt
that these were reasonable ideas. I did not talk about the skull X-rays
during
the TV interview but left that to Dr. Boyer.
My comments were, however condensed in the movie to two brief snippets
and
since they clearly interfered with the murder idea they were treated
with a
curt statement, "But Cooper and King [the detectives] think it unlikely
that Tutankhamen died in an accident, someone was always looking after
him." On TV, just like in newspapers, the editor always has the last
word
and that is all the public ever gets.
The same mangling of the interviews occurred also especially in regard
to Rich
Boyer's skull X-ray explanations. He spent about twenty minutes
explaining the
various features which were all due to post-mortem artifact but he then
became
attracted to the seeming lack of intervertebral disc spaces. He
interpreted
this finding as suggestive of a congenital condition called Klippel
Feil
syndrome where the neck is fused and movement of the head thereby
limited. This
was precisely what the producers had been longing to hear because with
a normal
skull X-ray the murder theory loses much of its luster. When it was
further
said by Boyer as well as Grey, whose turn had come next, that even a
relatively
minor fall or blow to the head might, therefore, be fatal the murder
story was
again on track and a brand new piece of "evidence" could be added.
The detectives then took over. With the help of a "profiler" and by
visiting the wall paintings of various tombs in Egypt the narrator told
us that
they were able "to right a wrong and nailed a killer." Ay had come
upon the sleeping Tut, lifted his head by the stiff neck and then
smashed it
down. Murder solved!!!
When I saw this fantasy I cringed, but I had been forewarned. Connolly
had sent
me from England newspaper extracts which detailed the contents of the
movie.
Even our own Time magazine had a long article on "Who Killed Tut?"
While my emotional tone was one of annoyance for having been misled in
believing that the movie would be a documentary where the various
possibilities
of Tutankhamen's death would be discussed in a scientific manner, I can
imagine
how Egyptologists must have felt when they saw how previously published
information was used by the producers to declare an old theory as a
brand new
fact. Since it was Bob Brier's book that apparently had been the
inspiration
for this video he may well have been particularly unhappy for not
getting his
name mentioned in the program. Although the content of the film was
misleading
my good Martha, who always finds a rose even among weeds, said: But the
photography was good! That was correct and Lance deserves
congratulations.
A few days after the filming Rich and I went over the X-rays in detail
especially in regard to the supposed Klippel Feil syndrome. The
impressive
fusion of the cervical spine turned out to have likewise been a
post-mortem
artifact due to the resin. The neck was encased in a consolidated mass
of resin
which became apparent when we saw Harrison's original
video-documentary, given
to me by Kate. For this, as well as for bringing the X-rays from
Liverpool I am
grateful. The bone splinter in the skull which had given rise to the
skull
fracture theory is in all probability, as Connolly has pointed out to
me, a
piece of the first cervical vertebra which was dislodged when Derry
stuck some
instrument through what is called the foramen magnum on the
bottom of
the skull to explore the skull cavity. The "thinning" of the occipital
bone is normal and exaggerated by the tilt of the head when the X-ray
was
taken, this applies also to the suspected "calcified membrane," which
was taken by Brier as evidence that the pharaoh had not died suddenly.
Thus the
side view of the skull X-ray, which can be found in books around the
world, is
normal. Detailed explanations of the findings, which have been so
puzzling, are
now being prepared by us for a presentation to the medical community.
So much
for the "groundbreaking evidence" and the "motive for
murder," the video tells the world about.
What can be learned from this adventure in science fiction? The first
lesson is
that persistence pays off even if it takes 15 years to see some X-rays.
The
second is that what you get afterwards may not be what you had
expected, and
the third that you cannot trust what you are being told on TV even from
respected programs which masquerade under the name of History or
Discovery. All
the producers want is ratings which translate into money and that is
what makes
the world go round. By the way I was asked by a friend if they had paid
me for
my performance. Yes they did. I received $300. But Grey and I paid
afterwards
for dinner at an upscale French Restaurant where the entire party of
about
eight people was invited. Since Rich Boyer had to leave immediately
after his
interview he did not receive his $300. I, therefore, gave him half of
my
"honorarium," which he was loathe to take but I felt guilty and
forced it on him anyway. He has a great many more children than I do,
gets only
a meager salary from the hospital, and he can use every penny he so
richly
deserves.
It is obvious that this saga is far from over. Tutankhamen's death will
continue to give rise to further speculations and a new book which
supposedly claims
that he had hit his head against the throne during an epileptic seizure
is to
become available in November. It is, therefore, abundantly clear that
the
meager medical evidence has been distorted to such a degree that I
might even
write a book of my own. I would not only critically examine each one of
the
numerous theories that have been proposed and point out their
shortcomings, but
also discuss how and why the conclusions, which dot the literature,
were
arrived at. This aspect would actually be the most important one
because the
methods by which people are led to believe what they believe have
general
validity and clearly transcend the fate of Tutankhamen.
November 1, 2002
ISRAEL THE FIFTY-FIRST STATE
This installment may be unsettling for some but
please have
patience, curb your emotions and read carefully. It is important if one
wants
to understand America's Foreign Policy and get a
glimpse of
the possible future. Please note that whenever bold print appears in
direct
quotations it has been added for emphasis.
In the October 25, 2002 issue of The International Jerusalem PostShmuley
Boteach who is identified as "a rabbi and best selling author,
who hosts a daily talk radio show syndicated across the United States" wrote
on the Opinion page a lengthy article entitled "Add Israel's
star
to the Union." The accompanying picture features the U.S. flag
with a large six point star in the place of honor leading all the other
smaller
five point ones. Lest one might get paranoid and presume that the
artist meant
this to be the final design of our national flag he placed it on a
rather
barren stretch of beach at the edge of a body of water, which probably
symbolizes the Mediterranean, and with a small hill in the distance.
One can
assume, therefore, that it was meant to represent the 51st
state's flag
rather than our national one. On the other hand the addition of the
Star of
David to Old Glory is not new because Goldberg's book Jewish Power
carries it on the dust jacket although, as a late arrival, it is placed
slightly below the last of the ones we are familiar with.
In case one might think that the author is merely making a Jonathan
Swift type
"Modest Proposal" it behooves one to read the article carefully
because the rabbi details the benefits which would accrue from this
idea not
only to Israel but to the United States as well. The argument proceeds
as
follows:
Americans are now, as a result of the September 11 attack, in the same
situation that Israel has been all along. The rest of the world no
longer has
sympathy for America but the country is regarded
as
arrogant and throwing its weight around, an idea that Jews are
thoroughly familiar with. When America is being accused of trying to
take over
the world, has this not happened to the Jews also? “Jews have been
decried as
condescending to the rest of the world with their trumped-up claim of
being
'the chosen people,' just as America is now condemned for harboring a
holier-than-thou attitude to the world's nations, who are not prepared
to weed
out evil terrorists." The author goes on to say that “Now that the Americans
have become the Jews of the world, I propose
formalizing the
arrangement by making Israel the 51st state in the Union."
This act would immediately solve a number of problems for the Jewish
state
Rabbi Boteach believes. Although Israel has currently the means “to
destroy the
Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and exile Überterrorist
Yasser
Arafat" it is prevented from doing so by international pressure via the
U.S.:
”And so Israel straddles the line. It proceeds with limited actions,
after
which Bush, under intense pressure from American allies, puts in a call
to
Ariel Sharon and Israeli troops have to pull back - until another group
of
Israeli civilians are killed.
This problem would obviously be solved, by statehood because once
Israelis are American citizens any attack on them anywhere would be an
attack
against America.
Then it would be absurd for Bush to be pressured by other world leaders
to curb
the military response. Israeli-turned-American commando units would
finally go
in and remove Arafat's terror regime once and for all, just as the US
changed
regimes in Afghanistan.”
What does America get out of this arrangement? The
author's
answer is equally simple: America needs a permanent base in
the
troublesome Middle East, which is a spawning ground of
terrorists.
America would immediately acquire "a crack
military that is highly experienced in fighting terror.
America would
also be able to watch over the Middle Eastern oil fields,
on
which it is so dependent, from very close range."
For those Jews who feel it would "be crazy" to give up their homeland
which they have been struggling to get for 2000 years, the rabbi
advises
"a reality check." Israel will never be safe because:
"Let's call a spade a spade. The Arabs will only ever be satisfied when
Israel is pushed into the sea, and without an American green light to
get rid
of the Palestinian terrocracy [sic], we cannot be entirely sure that
there will
even be an Israel, God forbid, in a decade. That is, unless Israel
becomes an
American state."
So far so good but how about the Jewish character of the 51st
state? Won't that be a problem?Not
at all
the author reassures us and points to my home state of Utah
as
the splendid example. Three Cheers! Now Utahns can
really be
happy: we had a banner year! In February we hosted the Olympics, which
indeed
went superbly well, in October the world was informed that we have
brilliant
detective profilers who can solve a crime, which may or may not have
been
committed three and a half thousand years ago (see previous
installment), and
now we are the model for a prospective 51st state. In Utah,
the
rabbi writes:
"the Mormons basically have their own state, maintaining cohesiveness
and
a strong religious identity while being patriotic members of the larger
American republic. In fact, they enjoy the best of both worlds.
Their schools are funded by the state, yet attached to every public
school is a
Mormon religious school, funded by the Church, where pupils go as soon
as
classes are over."
I am not telepathic but I can hear the Prophet, Seer and Revelator of
the
Church, President Gordon B. Hinckley, quietly say to this picture of
Utah
"Lord, wouldn't it be nice if it were so! We'd surely save ourselves a
lot
of legal fees for suits brought against us!" But let us continue with
the
rabbi's views a little longer before I shall proceed with my own
reality check
in regard to the Utah fantasy. The rabbi also sees enormous
financial
benefits for the U.S. as well as Israel. No longer will the
Israeli
economy have to struggle because "federal dollars being put to
education
and defense would come in very handy.":
"The US is already pouring billions of dollars into Israel in foreign
aid
each year, and millions more private citizens, a large part of them
fundamentalist Christians, support Israel. Why not change all this and
make it
tax dollars instead?
While the idea of turning Israel into the 51st state might
strike
some as crazy, to me it is self-evident. The US and Israel are both
democratic
nations. Both are deeply religious, founded on the Judeo-Christian
ethic. They
are united in their fight against terror, and are increasingly loathed
by the
world for acting to defend themselves against unrepentant murderers.
Both
require peace in the Middle East as their foremost foreign policy
goals.
Finally, both already have lots and lots of Jews. For two centuries America has been seen by oppressed immigrants
the
world over as a 'promised land.' Why not have America acquire the real
thing
and make it official?"
After having read this article I was still not quite sure: Does the
author
really mean every word he says or is he talking tongue in cheek? But it
doesn't
really matter what I think because I am certain that there will be a
great
number of people who will take him at his word and will either applaud
or exude
venom. Let us do neither and proceed instead with our God-given
intellect
rather than reacting emotionally.
This is necessary because it would not be
justified to
regard the author simply as a crazy dreamer whose views are so
outlandish that they need not be listened to. When Herzl
proposed his
Jewish state in 1896, everybody regarded him as crazy. He knew
it, but
he wasn't concerned about the "Wadlbeisser" as he called his
detractors, of which there were many. The term is a typical Viennese
expression
for which no English equivalent exists. It refers to those nasty little
dogs
that pester you and try to bite your calves while you are out for a
walk or
bike ride. Zionism was regarded as dangerous nonsenseby
the Viennese Jewish community. Herzl's bosses, Benedickt and
Bacher,
at the Neue Freie Presse, which might be regarded as the
equivalent of
the New York Times or Washington Post of that era,
forbade
him to write articles on Zionism in their paper. His diary entry of
September
3, 1897 can serve as an example of how dreams can become reality:
"If I condense the Basel Congress into a single statement - which I
shall
be very careful not to say openly - it is this: In Basel I have founded
the Judenstaat
[there is disagreement whether the term should be translated into
"Jewish
State," or "State for the Jews," both translations are
feasible]. If I were to say this out loud today I would be answered by
universal
laughter."
It took fifty years and two World Wars but persistence paid off. Another
dreamer whose time eventually came was Eliezer ben
Yehuda,
who was born during 1857 in Latvia as Eliezer Perlman, also spelled
Perelman at
times. While Herzl had insisted that "we can't all be expected to learn
Hebrew," that was indeed ben Yehuda's goal. At the end of the
nineteenth
century Hebrew was the equivalent of Latin, spoken only in religious
services
or by scholars. Ben Yehuda realized that one can't have a common
country
without a common language and he started by using only Hebrew
in his
daily communications with his family. He pushed the idea so
vigorously
that eventually the language became officially recognized in
Palestine,
along with Arabic and English, during the British Mandate period.
Let us not laugh at dreamers, therefore, but examine
realistically the premises and logic of Rabbi Boteach's suggestion.
While some
Israeli's may well jump at the idea others are bound to be reluctant
because
it's nicer to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a little fish
in a big
pond. Sovereignty suits them just fine. Furthermore, any attempt to buy
yourself "security" by amalgamation in a larger entity, which is
highly diverse, and at the same time not integrate but insist on your
separateness is a highly dubious enterprise.
Apart from these aspects there are three catchphrases
in the
article which need to be discussed. These are: Israel is a
democracy,
the Judeo-Christian ethic, and the facts about Utah.
Yes,Israel is a democracy in name, but by
Jews and
for Jews. Thecountry has no
Constitution!
A constitution was promised in the Declaration of Independence in 1948
but
never enacted. The government runs on a Basic Law which in turn is
derived from
Emergency Decrees by the British. Over the years some of them have been
made
progressively more stringent in regard to people who might want to
dissent from
government policies for whatever reason. Although Palestinian Arabs,
who are
Israeli citizens within the 1967 borders, have the right to vote, they
are
discriminated against when it comes to any other legitimate aspiration
they
might have. Even such simple things as adding a room to your house can
get
stalled in bureaucratic hassles. To equate Israeli-type
democracy with
American democracy is a propaganda ploy devoid of reality. Let
us not
forget the purpose of the state. It was founded as a home for Jews and
non-Jews
are, therefore, not particularly welcome except as visitors.
If therabbi's suggestionwere
to
become reality some Israeli Jews might not be very pleased because a
Constitution which guarantees equal rights to the Arab Palestinians
would have
to be enacted. All of the four million or so Muslims (which
includes
those living in the West Bank and Gaza who can't all be eradicated as
part of
the "terrorist infrastructure") with their higher birth rates would
have at long last their voices heard and Jewish dominance over
the Holy
Land would come to an end. The rule of law would no longer be
promulgated and enforced exclusively from Zion but also from
Washington.
The Palestinian people, especially in the occupied
territories, on the
other hand, might experience it as a God-send. At long last
they would
have recourse to law courts, there would be a Constitution which grants
them
equal rights, demolitions of their homes and orchards would cease and
so would
the "security arrangements" consisting of curfews and massive
restriction of movement. Furthermore, the 51st state would
obviously
be open to indiscriminate immigration. Not only would the expelled
Palestinians
descend upon this state but so would other diverse non-Jewish groups
who might
want to build another Mediterranean Monaco. What the rabbi is
really
suggesting, apparently without realizing it, is a repeat of the Jews
inviting
Rome to take over their country because they had not been able to
govern
themselves! I have dealt with this historical fact in Whither
Zionism? last year.
The second point is the "Judeo-Christian ethic,"
"heritage," or "tradition" as it is also commonly
referred to. Readers of this website and some of my other publications
know
that I have strong objections to this term. It is inherently
faulty
because it amalgamates Christianity with Judaism and obscures the
essential
differences between the two religions. I have written two
books about
the problem, The Moses Legacy: Roots of Jewish Suffering and A
Jesus for Our Time. Both are still looking for publishers and my
hopes are
growing dimmer by the day, as rejections keep dribbling in. Serious
ideas that
deserve to be discussed in an intelligent, rather than facetious, way
are not
in demand in today's publishing industry which is nearly exclusively
devoted to
the proverbial bottom line.
If the term Judeo-Christian ethic were used simply to denote that
Christianity
arose from Judaism, or that we share the Ten Commandments, there would
be no
problem. But when the two religions are equated for political purposes
I have
to object. The Old Testament is not the book by which I want to live my
life,
although this is currently a minority view. Nevertheless, for
a
Christian the role model is not necessarily Moses but Jesus, and his
message
gets shortchanged when we talk about the "Judeo-Christian ethic." America
used to call itself a Christian country but this is no longer
politically
correct.
Why doIdisagree with the
Old
Testament or the Written Torah as Jews call it? Because it contains a
basic
premise which I cannot in good conscience subscribe to.If
the
original premise is amiss so will be all subsequent actions which flow
from it.
Let me explain. In Genesis Chapter 1 verse 26 of the
Bible we
can read:
"And God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and
let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that
creepeth upon the earth.'"
The quote comes from the Socino Chumash translation of the
Torah. The key
word here is dominion! Man is to be the
ruler and
exploiter of the earth's natural resources. The word was used again in
verse 28
where God is quoted as saying to Adam:
“‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue
it;
and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl
of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.'"
The medieval commentator Sforno (Obadiah Ben Jacob Sforno c.1475-1550)
explained "to have dominion" in a footnote. “Ensnare them by nets and
snares and compel them to serve you.” Thus,
the model
which this view of the world provides is one of dominance by
the
stronger over the weaker. That this applies also to human
beings is
made explicit in verse 16 of chapter III where the Lord God said to
Eve,
"'. . . thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall
rule over thee.'" Instead of mutual cooperation there
is
to be force which soon was extended to political action. Moses
ordered conquest and those who were not part of the "chosen
people" had to have their altars overthrown and their
idols
smashed. This ethnocentric position which shows no
regard for
the traditions and aspirations of others is also the "heritage" left
by Moses. It has precious little to do with what Jesus taught and this
is why I
oppose the term Judeo-Christian ethic, heritage, or tradition, when it
is used
for political purposes.
Now to the idea that Utah could be the model
for a
Jewish 51st state. What the rabbi said about Utah
is in
part true, but what is more important is what has been left out. Utah
does have a constitution which guarantees equal rights to all
citizens. As a matter of fact the church-state separation
criteria are
considerably more detailed and stringent than on the federal level.
Although about 85 per cent of the legislators are Mormons and it is
difficult
to get legislation passed which is not approved by the LDS church,
there is a
recourse. Initiatives can be put on the ballot and the press is free.
Salt Lake
City's major newspaper The Salt Lake Tribune publishes all
opinions.
The letters to the editor are an excellent example of the diversity of
feelings
expressed by this supposedly homogeneous population. The
church, when
it comes to civil actions, does not nearly have the same power as the
religious
parties in Israel for instance. Let me give two examples.
A few years ago a "secular" Jewish student objected tothe school choir singing at High School graduation the song
"Friends." It had been a long standing tradition, but she
insisted that the song violates the mandated separation of Church and
State
because it contained the word "God!" The students
were forbidden to sing it and when they did so anyway, they were
severely
disciplined! As I said in a previous installment God is
officially
"unerwünscht," even in
Mormonland. Events
of this type do not foster religious harmony, but more importantly they
show
that the LDS church caves in when it comes to church-state matters.
The second example is the current legal controversy over an
easement on
Salt Lake City's MainStreet adjacent to the Temple
plaza.
The property had been bought from the city by the Church to provide a
park-like
area around the Temple grounds where visitors would be sheltered from
the
hustle and bustle of traffic. Although the easement, which allows
pedestrian
traffic to flow along Main Street, is now private property, it has been
used by
some malcontents to express their opinions against the Church quite
vociferously thereby vitiating the intended purpose. When they were
politely
removed from what the Church regarded as its property the case was
placed
before the courts under the free speech amendment to the Constitution.
It is
being litigated right now before the appeals court which is
not in Salt
Lake but in Denver, Colorado. Ergo, although the LDS church
clearly
has some power in our state it is limited and in no way parallels that
of the
religious parties which sit in the Knesset.
There is another important difference between Utah and Israel.
When the first group of settlers arrived here during the summer of
1847, Brigham
Young wisely decided not to interfere with the tribal customs of the
natives.
He told his flock that it was much better to trade with the
Indians
than to kill them. This policy of tolerance, which was in
complete
contrast with what happened in other parts of the West, where the
"Indian
Wars" raged, paid off and the state has never experienced racial
upheavals. The only mass killing which did occur was in
1857. A group of emigrants from Arkansas on their way to
California
had behaved obnoxiously during their trek through what is now referred
to as
the "Crossroads of the West." They were subsequently murdered in
southern Utah by a band of Mormon militia and some local Indians. This Mountain
Meadows Massacre, as it is called, was a very unfortunate
event which
still spawns ever so often a spate of books. But it ought to
be seen
within the context of the then existing tensions due to what is
officially
called the "Utah expedition" but locally the "Utah
Invasion."President Buchananhad
dispatched
2500 regular troops, plus auxiliaries, to Utah because
the
Mormons had a theocracy, did not subscribe to the dictum that "the only
good Indian is a dead Indian" and they also adhered to the Jewish
patriarchal custom of "plural wives." The Union tolerated
that men may have several wives in succession via divorce, but not
simultaneously. This "peculiar institution," as it was called, had to
be stamped out. Nevertheless, one can say in retrospect that if
the
Jewish settlers in the early decades of the twentieth century had been
guided
by the Brigham Young principle how to deal with the locals, the entire
history
of the Jewish state including its current dire straits might have been
different. Their Zion might have become as secure as ours is.
But even if we leave all these points aside the proposal,
if
it were adopted, containsanother fatal flaw
which
would lead within a relatively short time to a disaster for the Jewish
people
in the U.S. and abroad. Herzl wrote in his Der
Judenstaat,"The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in considerable
numbers. Where it does not it is brought along [eingeschleppt]
by immigrating Jews." This was true in 1896, was proven
subsequently true in Palestine, and is likely to remain true in the
future.
There is already considerable concern in the America's Jewish community
about a
steady rise in anti-Semitism. This is bound to
increase if the
country were now to officially adopt Jewish goals as its own.
It might
not take very long before the cry "America Awaken," in analogy to Deutschland
Erwache, will no longer be uttered by fringe groups but enter the
mainstream. This is all the more likely because terrorist
attacks
against us, for which there can never be adequate security
unless one
creates a police state á la Hitler or Stalin, are going
to mushroom.
Protest political parties are already on the horizon because neither
the
Republicans nor the Democrats are seen any longer as the true
representatives
of the people at large. This is documented by the fact that slightly
less than
half of the people voted in the last election. Radical populists are
bound to
arise, and with them civil strife. Is this what the rabbi wants for his
people?
He probably does not, but this is what he will get. It may not come in
my
lifetime but come it will because whenever minorities try to force
their
opinions on the majority a backlash ensues. It's a law of life and
anybody who
ignores it will suffer the consequences.
But Rabbi Boteach is no mere dreamer. His
article needs
to be seen in the context of the news reports in the same issue of the
Jerusalem Post. On page 2 under Diplomacy with the subheading Entente
Cordiale we see a large picture of our smiling President and
behind
him a smaller one with an equally happy Ariel Sharon. One might be
tempted to
jump to the conclusion that he represents the power behind the throne,
but I
shall refrain from yielding to it. What is more important is the text
of the
article where we are assured that the recent meeting between
Bush and
Sharon in the White House had gone exceedingly well. “‘It was
an
excellent visit, perhaps the best so far' a senior official
said." In regard to the upcoming Iraq war, "last
week's talks consisted of 'deep strategic coordination'
that
will be necessary in any war, an Israeli official said." So this is
what
the meeting was really all about and as usual the American people who
pay the
bills are not allowed to be privy to what's going on in their name.
“Both US
and Israeli officials are reluctant to detail that coordination,
which
will include early warning of a US offensive." Obviously!
The term entente cordiale is
especially ominous because it recalls the real cause of WWI; secrecy
for the
sake of "national security!" The details of
the alliance between Great Britain and France were hidden
not
only from the public but even from the British cabinet!
This
"understanding," between the general staffs of the two countries, obligated
theBritish fleet toguard the
North Sea and
the Atlantic, while the French deployed their fleet in the Mediterranean.
It was this agreement which forced Britain
into the
war with Germany. Violation of Belgium neutrality
was
good for public consumptionbut was not
the reason. The Germans never understood that any attack on
France,
which in turn was allied with Russia, would automatically involve
England and
thereby ignite a world war. The documentation for these statements can
be found
in the book How Diplomats Make War. On page 52
Francis
Neilson, the author, who was Member of Parliament from 1910-1915 wrote:
"A neutral's hands must be free . . . . There can be
no
impartiality where the policy of a country is fettered by secret
understandings. The phrase 'foreign friendships,'
used so
often of late, is in itself an indictment; and
in connection with France proves how absurd our position as a
so-called
neutral power was all through the negotiations since the murder of the
Austrian
archduke."
This was written in 1915 at which time it had become
obvious that
this fratricidal war was the greatest mistake Europe had made in its
long
history. Our current so-called friendship with Israel, which I
have
discussed in Whither Zionism?, and
now the Entente
Cordiale are a prescription for catastrophe.
They tie
our hands and give a lie to our professed stance as "honest broker"
in the Israeli-Palestinian war. Thus the rabbi is not just
dreaming he
has solid grounds for his suggestion and the final paragraph of the Entente
Cordiale article is the clincher:
"Daschle [our democratic Senate Majority leader] said
that when it comes to Israel, there are no Democrats or
Republicans,
'only Americans.' Sharon wished both parties good luck in the
November
5 elections."
Well here it is. The elections are just about as useful in
regard to
foreign policy as the one recently held by Saddam. As far as
Iraq is
concerned, Congress has abdicated, the three
important
dissenting voices in the UN Security Council: France,
Russia
and China, will be browbeaten or bribed so as not to
cast a
veto and at least abstain from any resolution which might limit George
W.'s
power to go to war. The Ides of October have passed, butaufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben (postponed doesn't
mean
abandoned) as the German proverb says and the war isstill
on the docket for January. As Gwynne Dyer so
accurately remarked in a Tribune article this week "a December
attack could undermine the Christmas retail binge." That
Christmas was supposed to make us reflect on the birth of the "Prince
of
Peace" has, of course, become a fantasy a long time ago.
Since I had never heard of Rabbi Boteach
before, I
looked him up on the Internet andcomplete
information is available via "Google" by simply typing his name. The
short biography on Beliefnet.com to which he is a frequent contributor
is
informative, but even more so is the longer one by the Harry Walker
Agency.
Both sites are worth visiting if one wants to put his Jerusalem Post
article in
perspective. In order give the reader a brief overview I am quoting
here the
introduction from Beliefnet.com:
"Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the director of the
L'Chaim society, a Jewish education organization that hosts
world figures and statesmen lecturing on values-based leadership.
He
is also cofounder, with Michael Jackson, of Heal
the
Kids, an initiative to encourage adults to reprioritize
children. He
is the author of a number of books, including 'Kosher
Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy,' 'Dating Secrets of the Ten
Commandments,' and most recently, 'Why Can't I Fall in Love.'
A winner
of the annual 'preacher of the year' contest sponsored by the Times of
London,
he was formerly rabbi of Oxford University."
My non-bilingual German and Austrian friends will be pleased to hear
that
"Kosher Sex" has been translated into their native language.
Knowing what I now know about the rabbi, who has
also
been described as "a world-famous thinker," I am still
puzzled: did he write in jest or did he mean what he said? You, the
reader,
will have to decide, but the "Entente Cordiale" article is
definitely a deadly serious piece of news. It should not be allowed to
go
unchallenged if the American people want to retain their freedom of
action in
foreign affairs and avoid a potential WWIII.
Let me conclude now with a personal note to
the rabbi.
Dear Rabbi Boteach:
You have been called "a world-famous thinker." Please think
again about your proposal. As mentioned above, I was not sure
why you
had written it but on further reflection I believe that you might have
done so
in order to "test the water." If this was indeed the case I would
like to assure you that you have stepped into Lake Superior and it is
urgent to
get out immediately. No one survives in it for any length of time. Your
premise that Americans have become "the Jews of the world" is
mistaken. Americans are not "loathed" all over the
world, only some aspects of our foreign policy are.
Please do not equate the people with a handful of politicians, that was
a Nazi
ploy, and please abstainfrom remaking us in
your
image. No good can come from this effort, only bloodshed.
Furthermore,
please inform those of your co-religionists both here and in Israel that
attempts to turn the clock back 3000 years to biblical times cannot
produce
peace but only perpetual war, to the detriment of all of us.
It is time to abandon the conquest and "dominion" model,
technology has become too dangerous. Hate has to be removed step by
step rather
than fostered. There are no quick fixes and we
have to
learn to work on the Lord's time table instead of ours. If we
want to
have peace we will have to make a genuine effort to first open our
hearts and
minds to those who disagree with us and then jointly work towards
mutually
satisfactory solutions. It is the only way to save the world from
catastrophe. In
regard to the Holy Land I can think of no better
advicethanthe one given by theBuddha
to his followers twenty five hundred years ago, "Don't repel
each
other, like oil and water; but mingle like milk and water."
Regardless
of what happens in the near future, in the long run the two
sons of
Abraham will have to live together and it should be
America's
role, and especially that of American Jews, to help them do so.
Please
feel free to contact me so that we can discuss this - literally -
deadly
serious problem further.
Sincerely yours,
Ernst Rodin MD
December 1, 2002
WANTED: GOOD JUDGMENT!
The week of November 3-9 was surely a
highlightin our President's life. On November 5 the country
gave him control
of both houses of Congress and on November 8 the UN
Security
Council passed unanimously a resolution to
force UN
inspectors on a reluctant Iraq. The carrot and stick approach as
outlined in
the previous installment worked. Apparently the administration promised
Putin
free hand in Chechnya, trade concessions to the Chinese, and the
Syrians would
have received the stick had they not "played ball."
The question now is: what will our President do with all this
power
which has been bestowed upon him? The measure of his character will
become
apparent in the next few months. By March we will know whether
the
mentioned week was one highlight or a watershed, and the zenith of his
achievements. Judging by the rumblings emanating from Washington it
seems that
our President is intent on a war with Iraq, come what may. Plan
A the
October 15 "surprise" air drop attack was shelved
as too risky, and as it turned out it wasn't necessary anyway. Now
it's
on toPlan B. This seems to combine Plan A
with initial
bombing, ground invasion and generous bribes of local Iraqi opposition
leaders.
It had worked after all in
Afghanistan,
so why wouldn't it work in Iraq? seems to be the
logic.
Buthas it worked in Afghanistan? On
September
14, 2001 three days after the tragedy, I sent a brief
article
to the Salt Lake Tribune entitled "Justice or Revenge?"
In it I strongly argued for the former and against the latter. I wrote
"Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we
obliterate the Taliban regime will that be the end of terrorism? Of
course not.
Fanatics are simply going to move to another 'rogue state' and in
addition
destabilize those regimes in the Middle East which are currently
friendly to
the U.S.
Furthermore, bin Laden's demise will not automatically create
'peace on
earth, good will to men.' There are enough drug lords with
'deep
pockets' who can support any number of groups who carry a grudge
against the
United States. To start a war is easy to end one is difficult
as Lyndon Johnson found out in Vietnam."
Ialso argued that the causes and not only
the
symptoms must be treated and one of them surely is the
unresolved
Israeli-Palestinian disaster. While clearly not the only cause, our
unconditional support of the Likud government and its repressive
policies in
the occupied territories are certainly a contributory factor for the
hatred
some Arabs feel against our government. I counseled reason which
punishes the
perpetrators of the 9/11 disaster while we address at the same time
legitimate
grievances others might have against our policies. Since this type of
argument
ran against the grain of prevailing passions the article was never
published.
Little did I know that this proposed program never had a ghost
of a
chance as the recent book by Bob Woodward Bush
at War clearly demonstrates. Anyone who still harbors
any
illusions about how our government really functions should read this
book.
Even on September 11 Bush had already accepted the premise that the
al-Qaeda
attack was an act of war which can only be responded to by massive
military
retaliation. Limited strikes against the perpetrators combined with
patient
police work to uncover terrorist cells around the world were never
regarded as
an option. Patience is not yet an American virtue. Immediate and
spectacular
action was demanded by the President. The idea was that we wouldn't do
it
"like the Soviets," going in with massive ground forces, but we'd use
our air power and let the locals do the fighting. To this end "Gary,"
our highest level CIA clandestine operations chief was dispatched to
the
Northern Alliance in Afghanistan on September 19 with a select group of
"special ops" and a suitcase containing $3 Million in $100
denominations. He liberally dispensed the cash among the warlords as a
down
payment with another $10 Million to follow. They could use the money
any way
they pleased and he also promised them the blue from the sky how we
would
subsequently rebuild their country on a lavish scale.
As we all know Phase I worked superbly well but we
are
now inPhase II which is, somewhat similar
to
the situation the Soviets found themselves in 1979. The Afghan
government, which they supported, had lost control of the countryside
to the
mujahadeen who thoroughly detested the atheistic practices of the
Soviet style
regime and wanted to establish an Islamic republic. Once the USSR
invaded the
country, the CIA sprang into action with money and equipment. The rest,
as the
say, is history including the creation of our erstwhile friend Osama.
Now fast forward to the end of 2002. We have a friendly
government in
Kabul but Karzai, the President, requires American bodyguards
because
he can't trust his own people to protect him. Although the countryside
is not
yet in open rebellion, the Americans are not seen as liberators but as
another
materialistic culture which exploits the locals for their own gain.
Burqa or
veil is still the traditional garb for women; definitely outside Kabul
and to
some extent even in the capital. As a female Afghan Supreme
Court
Justice found out:democracy has limits.
When she
returned to her country after having been photographed at the
White
House with President Bush, without wearing a veil
she
was promptly sacked by her government. Afghanistan
is after all officially an Islamic State and the
Commission which
is to write a new constitution is headed by a judge who is in favor of sharia,
Islamic law. When a group of about 2000 students
recently
protested against their miserable living conditions in the
dorms (e.g.
broken windows, massive overcrowding, no heat, no electricity etc.),
they were
met with gun fire which killed three and wounded several
others. As
one student ruefully commented, "We thought
this
was a real democracy. We didn't know we could be killed for
demonstrating. Otherwise we wouldn't have done it."
Thus nation building, an idea our President
thoroughly
denouncedwhile still a candidate
for office, is stillnot to his liking.
Our
resources instead of being used to build up what we helped smash are
being
diverted against Iraq. We are thus paving the way not only for
another
Afghanistan quagmire, but a similar one in Iraq when Saddam has been
successfully deposed. Apparently the idea is that we'll let
our allies
pick up the pieces afterwards.
The average person keeps asking oneself: why this obsession
with Iraq?
It not only threatens to ruin any hope we may have for rebuilding
Afghanistan
in the near future, but is also bound to destabilize the Mid-East. This
is
where Bob Woodward's book comes in again. Immediately after 9/11 Bush
was urged
to go not only after the Taliban and Osama who is referred to in
Washington
circles as UBL (first name Usama) but also Saddam Hussein. Bush
correctly
resisted because he feared that this loss of focus might not resonate
with the
American people. He wanted first UBL's head. After
that was
done and the Taliban were finished it would be Iraq's turn.
This
decision was already made in the first two weeks after 9/11.
The order
to go after UBL's head was taken literally, if we can trust Bob
Woodward. Cofer
Black, the CIA's Director of the Counterterrorism Center ordered
advance team
chief Gary with his $3 million suitcase to bring him bin Laden's "head
in
a box." When Gary was surprised because this violated the rules the CIA
had been operating under and questioned the order, he was told by
Black,
"I want to take it down and show the president." Woodward continues
that when Gary signaled the team's safe arrival in Afghanistan "mindful
of
Cofer Black's request about bin Laden's head, he added a line to the
cable requesting
some heavy-duty cardboard boxes and dry ice, and if possible some
pikes."
Is that really how our highest level administrators see their jobs or
did
Woodward fall for a joke that was played on him? We don't know, of
course, but
what is not a joke is that our buildup in the Gulf
for the
upcoming war with Iraq proceeds according to the Afghan model
and we are buying ourselves now an Iraqi opposition army of
Kurds.
But the army we are buying ourselves is not wanted by other
Iraqis
and our latest opposition leader beneficiary is, according to the
Christian
Science Monitor, the ex-General Secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party,
Ballahadeen Nouri. Never mind, that ordinary Iraqis neither trust him
nor any
other opposition leader. Marching on we must because our
Commander in
Chief says so and as Woodward wrote: his decisions are not to
be
questioned. As he told Woodward personally, “‘I’m not a textbook
player. I'm
a gut player.' “He also stated, “‘I’m the commander - see, I
don't
need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things.
That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody
needs to
explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I
owe
anybody an explanation.'"
Well, I guess that attitude seems to take care of the Gettysburg
address.
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people" may become
obsolete as we enter the era of unending war against terrorism and
"Homeland Security." The measures designed to "protect us,"
and which are already on the books, will give the government unfettered
access
to complete information about our private lives. Lady Liberty may soon
wonder
about what has happened to the country whose entrance she guards.
It is reasonable to ask now who this President we elected 2
years ago
is.Chris Matthew's recent book American
presents us with aquote of candidate George
W. Bush
from December 1999, "Let us reject the
blinders
of isolationism, just as we have refusedthe
crown of empire. Let us not dominate otherswith
our poweror betray them with our indifference.
And let
ushave anAmerican foreign policy
that
reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility
of real
greatness." Is that the President we have now?
It seems that during the run-up for election Mr. Bush wasn't quite sure
what he
would do with his presidency if he won, but 9/11 gave him an
opportunity which
is now being relentlessly exploited. He decided right
then and
there that he would be "a war time president" and
this would be the all consuming direction of his administration. The
war is
limitless and will stretch even beyond his term. I guess the speech
writer who
was responsible for the above cited quote is out of a job now.
Since the President seems determined to have his war
it'll
only need the pretext, as mentioned in previous
installments.
This can be readily manufactured because on the one hand the conditions
imposed
on Saddam are sufficiently stringent that any minor breach of
compliance can be exploited and on the other hand the "no
fly zones" are ready made for excuses not only to bomb but to create
incidents when needed. We in the U.S. have accepted the "no
fly
zones" as our right conferred upon us by the UN Security council.
Little
do most of us realize that this was supposed to have been a temporary
arrangement in 1991 for humanitarian reasons. They were intended to
prevent Saddam
from punishing the Shiite rebels in the south and the Kurds in the
north, when
his regime was threatened in the aftermath of the first Gulf war. That
has, of
course, fallen by the wayside a long time ago and we, jointly with the
Brits,
are now happily bombing air defense installations in preparation for
the
upcoming war. This one will, of course, also be fought for humanity's
sake
because the "monster" and "madman"
who has WMDs and has gassed hisown people
must be eliminated. That our money bought him the gas and that the
Reagan
administration was not averse to Saddam's use of it against the
Iranians and
their allies the Kurds in the Iran-Iraq war must not be remembered.
Neither
should we remember that the icon of the 20th century, Winston
Churchill, also had no compunction about advocating
the gassing of people, although he was in favor of
non-lethal
agents. Geoff Simon quotes Churchill in Iraq: >From Sumer to
Saddam
as having said, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use
of
gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against
uncivilised
tribes." This was at the time when the Kurds were in open
rebellion against the British Empire which had shouldered the "White
Man's
Burden" and was intent on bringing Western values to the dismembered
Ottoman Empire. Wing Commander Gale of RAF Squadron 30 in Iraq
is also quoted to have said after the bombing campaign, "If the
Kurds hadn't learned by our example to behave themselves in a civilised
way
then we had to spank their bottoms. This was done by bombs
and
guns." For the British Empire "to behave in a civilized way" was
"do as you are told" and forget about any aspirations of nationhood,
which had been implanted into their minds by our very own President
Wilson. The
British found out the hard way that their
type of
nation-building didn't work in the long run, either in
Afghanistan or
in Iraq, but Tony Blair is eager to forget the past
and hopes
that the U.S. will do better. That this hope is
hardly
justified by history and the currently existing facts doesn'tseem to bother the Bush-Blair "Axis of Good."
In the second paragraph I have mentioned that the next few months will
tell
what kind of a man George W. Bush really is. The jury is still out and
this is
why I have composed this little poem in the style of Aeschylus
To
Our King
George II
A bush
thou art,
Alas no tree.
Yet
Fortune lifted
thee
High
above all other
men.
Power
undreamed of
eons before
Is
yours; but not forever more.
Two
years, or maybe
six,
And
you'll return to
Texan sticks.
What
deeds you do in
this allotted span;
The
choices made,
for good or ill of man,
Are
yours alone, with no one else to blame.
Let,
therefore, this
your warning be:
Brute
force does
serve expediency;
Yet in
its wake the
victimized
Will
shout for vengeance; always highly prized.
Unless
obstinacy
does to wisdom yield,
And
friendly
counsels rule the field,
The
seeds you sow no
good will bring.
And of
your downfall
future bards will sing.
January 1, 2003
DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA
This time of year usually leads one to look back
as well as
forward. We want to know how we got where we are and what the likely
near
future will be. But Americans tend to have a short memory.
This is why George Bush I, for instance, could
confidently
talk about creating a "New World Order,” a course
which
his son is now eagerly pursuing, because Dad had supposedly left the
job unfinished.
Only those of my generation who have lived in Europe know and remember
that Neue
Ordnung was the slogan under which Hitler fought
his WWII
and pursued the extermination of Jews. He was actually more modest than
Bush
father and son, because he limited his announced efforts to Europe. Europeans
who have experienced the disaster which Wilson's
evangelism has foisted on the world are also highly
dubious of
the results the new Wilsonianism, which currently emanates
from
Washington, will bring.
When I look back at the country I came to in the late summer
of 1950
and compare it with the winter of 2002-2003 I hardly recognize it now.
Nobody forced me to come; I did so exercising my free will and
volunteered to
become a U.S. citizen. I saw goodness, a spirit of
cooperation,
willingness to help and kindness to the stranger. That was the
country
I wanted to live in. But I also saw New York. Although
the skyscrapers
were imposing so were the drunks sleeping on the
sidewalk
right off 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. The jostling
and
rudeness of the pedestrians and cab drivers, the filth
of certain sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx also made me wonder what
was
going on and Goethe's words, "Wo viel Licht ist, ist viel
Schatten" came to mind. Indeed where there is a great deal
of
light there is also deep darkness. It wasn't that city life itself
repelled me,
because I had come from a big city, but it was the arrogance of "we are
the biggest and the best" by some of its inhabitants who thought that
when
they went across the Hudson into New Jersey they had gone slumming.
Just as I had to leave Stalin behind in Vienna there was the
determination this
is not for me, there had to be a better place. I found it first on
Staten
Island because, although a borough of NYC, it had a semi-rural
character in
those days. The real America, however, was
in
Minnesota and the rest of this vast country where people
didn't throw insults at each other but lived in peace with their
families and
neighbors. There was the opportunity to grow and develop. As
the Mayo
brothers, who had stamped out a world renowned medical center
in the
cornfields had said, "Here is an opportunity, what you do with
it
is up to you." That was the spirit and the challenge. You had
a
chance and no one else to blame for your under achievements. We had
different
opinions on a variety of subjects but didn't insist that our own was
the only
correct one. We addressed strangers by Mr., Mrs. and Miss. or whenever
appropriate by our academic titles. It wasn't snobbishness but in so
doing we
showed good manners and respect for each other. "Every Tom,
Dick
and Harry" was a byword if one wanted to refer to uneducated or nasty
people. God was a reality in people's lives and honesty a virtue. People
knew what the word "shame" meant. When Senator McCarthy
started slandering people his career was finished with one sentence by
the
defense counsel, "Senator have you no sense of decency left?"
Little did I know in 1950-51 that in New York I had seen the
future
and that there was no escaping from it. The "elites" of the
crooked axis: New York, Washington and California have imposed their
stamp on
the country and now the rest of the world is supposed to followed suit.
But what does this Western civilization, which we are defending really
look
like? Yes, I can still write and say what I do but one wonders how
long? The Homeland
Security Act and the Patriot Act maysoon
regard opinions which dissent from the
"party
line," and there is no doubt that we have one, treasonous.
People are already afraid to openly discuss certain taboo
subjects.
You can revile God, slander the Catholic Church, teach sex in school
rather
than religion, question whether or not we ever did go to the moon, but
there is
one subject which remains holy and that is the Holocaust and
the safety
of the state of Israel. These have become
inextricably linked.
It wasn't always so.
I have two editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The full
24 volume set of the 1960 edition and a CD
ROM of 1999. A comparison is instructive. In the full
set
neither the word Holocaust nor Auschwitz appears as a subject.
The persecution
and destruction of European Jewry is covered in one paragraphunder
Hitler where it says, " in German-occupied Europe
between
4,500.000 and 5,500.000 had been killed by the end of the war
as the
only solution in Hitler's view to the Jewish 'problem.'(This
approximate total
is a compromise between the 6,000.000 quoted during the Nuremberg
trials and
the 4,500.000 later admitted by German sources). The sufferings of
other races
were only less when measured in numbers killed. Such barbarism was
indiscriminate, even where, as in the Ukraine, Hitler might have
encouraged
nationalist feelings to his own advantage." The 1999 CD
reports in
a long article devoted to the Holocaust that 5,700.000 were killed
and
there was no longer any reference to the suffering which had been
inflicted on
"other races." In the Auschwitz article the world is
now told that in this particular concentration camp estimates of death
"from all causes vary greatly, usually cited as between
1,000.000
and 2,500.000 but sometimes reaching 4,000.000." Yet, the November
25, 1947 edition of The New York Times stated
in a
report on the Cracow trial of Auschwitz KZ guards and officials that
they had
been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 prisoners.
Does it matter how many people were "really" killed? No, but what
does matter is that the more time elapses the larger the figures grow.
What is more
important, however, for people who live in
a
democracyand believein the
freedom to
investigate historical events as objectively as possible is that the
Holocaust
is off-limits. In Europe there are laws against it
and one loses not only one's reputation but can be sent to jail even if
one
simply wants to scientifically examine the methods which were used in
the
perpetration of this crime. One may now say: Well, that's Europe. But
how long
will it be before such a law is being passed here? The leaders
of the
Jewish community seem to believe that by elevating and magnifying the
Holocaust,
and by stifling all dissent, the people of the world will
developmore compassion for Jews. This is unrealisticbecause the policies of the current
government of the
state of Israel produce hatred rather than pity.America
is seen
as aiding and abetting these policies and, therefore, European
anti-Jewish sentiments will inevitably arise here also. The current
issue of Foreign
Affairs shows a picture of an antiwar demonstration in
Paris from
October 2002 where a somewhat morose looking young lady holds
up a
placard. It has a picture of Hitler, with his
familiar bullet
proof uniform cap, in the top center who says "grâce
à Sharon
& Bush ma reléve est assurée!" This
sentiment that
"thanks to Sharon and Bush my revival is assured" is unfortunately
not a fantasy and appeals to the Holocaust, or law suits will not
prevent it.
The extent to which the Bush administration is beholden
to the Sharon government is perhaps best exemplified by the
fact that Bush's
"road map to peace," which he touted during the fall, is
being kept secret and was not released to
the press
when Sharon expressed his displeasure. This does not go
unnoticed by
the rest of the world and it is only a matter of time till anti-Jewish
sentiments will spill over onto our shores. The policies of our
administration
make it inevitable. This is a tragedy and I am especially disappointed
because
I had put such high hopes on the Bush administration. I had voted for
the man
and was delighted when he was finally confirmed by the famous single
vote of
the Supreme Court. I had been deeply disenchanted with Clinton's
performance in
office and breathed a sigh of relief that now honesty and sanity seemed
to be
returning to Washington. I wrote and distributed Whither Zionism? in
the assumption that our politicians might benefit from a brief history
lesson
on the Middle East which was obviously the powder keg about to explode
further.
It was ignored and events proceeded from bad to worse. Prior to 9/11
our
president seemed singularly disinterested in foreign policy, until the
wake-up
call came. On September 11 he was confronted with a
choice between vengeance and justice. He chose
vengeance
and we have not yet seen the outcome of that decision. Let there be no
doubt,
Bush's reaction to Osama's challenge was not foreordained. It was a
deliberate,
conscious, but possibly impulsive choice. He announced that war had
been
declared on the United States and the rattlesnake motto,
"don't
tread on me" was invoked. Bush would show the world whom they
were dealing with. Are we rattlesnakes, or human beings?
When
one considers the size of our country and its economy, the 9/11 tragedy
can be
compared to a mosquito bite. Bush has elevated it into blood poisoning
with an
ever increasing drain on lives and resources.
In last month's installment I mentioned Bob Woodward's
statement that
Bush characterized himself as a "gut player." This
assessment was repeated in the current issue
of Time
magazine. In the article "Double-Edged Sword" the
relationship between Bush and his Vice President is discussed. "Bush
had the zeal to make the war on terrorism his mission; Cheney provided
the
theology.'With
Bush,
it's all gut; its visceral,'a White House official says.'He hates
Saddam. He's
an evil guy who tried to assassinate his dad, and he's gonna get him...
'"Do we have a Captain Ahab at the helm of our ship of statewho
will go after his white whale, come hell or high water? This
surely is
a chilling thought. His crew of Cheney, Rumsfeld and their supporters
keep cheering
him on and there is only the lonesome General Powell who is likely to
be swept
aside in the events of the next month.
Barring divine intervention the war with Iraq seems all but
inevitable.
Obviously the Lord has a number of options which range from helping
Iraqi
colonels assassinate Saddam, a massive devastating earthquake that
levels the
center of Washington and gets rid of all politicians, an invasion by
space
aliens and the like. But apart from the first one these seem rather
unlikely
and fate will take its course. At some point in the next 6 weeks the
inspectors
are likely to be ordered out of Iraq, regardless of what they do or
don't find,
just as happened in 1998 when Clinton sent a few rockets. This time it
won't be
just rockets but boots will follow. This is inevitable because one
cannot possibly assemble such a vast invasion force in the Gulf States,
as we
are doing now, and then tell the troops, "Thanks for coming, but it's
time
to go home!" This is so preposterous that it need not be
discussed
further.
The only question is the date when the sky over
Baghdad will
be raining bombs again. Our president may have to coordinate
this with
his "good friend" Ariel. Sharon has an election
coming up on January 28 and is likely to win. His
opponent the
well-meaning mayor of Haifa, who runs on the sensible platform of
disengagement
from the occupied territories, will probably get beaten. Sanity is not
in
demand; neither here nor in Israel. Once Sharon is firm in the
saddle
again there is nothing that can stop the war because the map of the
Middle East
needs to be redrawn in Israel's favor. There are already
rumblings
from Jerusalem that Sharon is not happy about the Lebanese who had the
audacity
to drill a well in their own country which diverts water from the
Jordan river
upon which Israel depends. They also tolerate Hizbollah which
intermittently
sends some rockets into Galilee, and since they wouldn't do so without
Syrian
support this state which "harbors terrorists" will also have to be
democratized by military means. Furthermore, this could be finally the
opportunity to get rid of the Palestinians who can be expelled into
Jordan and
this country will likewise become a democracy under joint Israeli-U.S.
protection.
Then the dream of a Greater Israel, some Zionists had longed for since
the
establishment of the state, will have been realized. This is not total
fantasy
because we have been told that the U.S. and Israeli Chiefs of
Staff are
coordinating their plans for the upcoming war.
There is no doubt that all of this is militarily feasible
because the mentioned states are simply no match for our "precision
weapons" with their "depleted" uranium war heads which smash
through whatever is in their way and subsequently leave it as a
radioactive
health hazard for ever and ever more. That this is a fact of life is
testified
to by the remainder of Iraqi and Serbian tanks in their respective
battlefields. All right, we have achieved our military
objective, now
what? We are going home and let the rest of the world clean up
the
mess we have left behind? This seems to be the thinking of our
planners. But Mars
has a nasty habit that once his door has been opened he enjoys
himself
to such an extent that he is loath to go back and
have the
door shut on him again. The above painted scenario assumes that after
we've
"democratized" the mentioned states we are free to go after the
junior partner of the axis of evil, Kim Jong Il, get rid of his bomb
and then
liberate the Iranians from their ayatollahs. Oil will flow in
abundance, the
economy will boom and re-election is in the bag. The Wilsonian dream
has been
achieved, the world is safe for democracy, the messianic kingdom has
arrived
and will endure as Pax Americana forever. Is this really how
the
people who are responsible for our future see the world?
The fly in the ointment is those nasty Muslim
extremists who are supposed to stay quiet and keep Musharraf, as well
as all
our other clients in the area, in office. They may not be
inclined to
do so and are bound to extract their price from us by
continued
terror attacks. Regardless how many laws and restrictions are
being
passed there is simply no way to make us "safe."
Again, Israel is the model and the warning. They went
this
route since 1967 and are currently worse off than they were before that
war.
This is a lesson one doesn't want to hear about and will, therefore,
have to be
relearned.
But back to the title of this essay and Deconstructionism
because this is what our leadership and intellectuals are engaged in.
The word
did not exist as a concept in the 1960 Encyclopedia Britannica but it
does show
up on the mentioned CD ROM. When I looked for it, the article on Nietzsche
appeared. He was the father with his Umwertung aller Werte,
transvaluation of all values, which his as well as Freud's
disciples put into practice. The phenomenalirony
is that Nietzsche's evil genius was released by microscopic
worms,
spirochetes, which slowly but surely ate up his brain. We have
to
thank a prostitute for this gift to the world. Had he not lost, due to
syphilis, the function of parts of his frontal lobes, he would not have
shown
this phenomenal lack of inhibition and he would not have produced the
books he
became famous for. Die Geburt der Tragoedie, Morgenroete ,Froehliche Wissenschaft
and
whatever else he had published prior to 1883 wouldn't have made a
ripple among
intellectuals. It was Zarathustra and what followed
thereafter,
written in a manic state, which cemented his fame.
It surely makes one wonder what runs this world.
Maybe Empedocles
had the answer twenty four hundred years ago. He posited
the
cyclical dominance of one of two forces: Love and Strife.
While Love
is constructive, Strife tears apart. In the
nineteen-fifties
we still had Love in this country, it degenerated into Lust and now
Strife
rules. How long will it be before Love has a chance to return?
February 1, 2003
RHETORIC OF WAR
In contrast to magazines which routinely predate their issues by several days, these essays are
indeed sent to the web on the mentioned date. This means, however, that in these fast moving
times events may occur which were unexpected and have to be commented upon. The Columbia
shuttle explosion which happened this morning was one of those. What might have been simply a
national tragedy, similar to the Challenger disaster, has potentially the makings of an
international catastrophe. One of the crew members was an Israeli Air Force officer and the
hopes of his entire country were flying with him. He was the shining star in the midst of gloom
which was suddenly extinguished in a mass of disintegrating debris. Since mission command had
lost contact with the shuttle crew 15 minutes before impact, while the shuttle was still at an
altitude of 200,000 feet, any type of terrorist action initiated from the ground is highly unlikely.
Nevertheless, there is hardly any doubt that conspiracy theorists will immediately go to work,
especially since the Israeli officer had piloted one of the planes that bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor
in 1981. It is clearly too early to gauge Israeli and American reactions to this tragedy and I shall
abstain from speculating. The following article was written during the past two days and
inasmuch as today's tragedy does not invalidate any aspect of it I shall leave it in its original
form.
This was the week where the course for the current decade and possibly beyond was set.
Sharon was, as expected, re-elected and has already spurned an offer by Arafat to enter into
negotiations about the conditions the Palestinians are forced to live under. There will, therefore,
be continued stalemate and further bloodshed in that country. As predicted in the April 1,
2002 installment Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate, Sharonhas in the meantime
indeed re-occupied the West Bank and major portions of Gaza, although he has so far
refrained from martyring Arafat. To foresee events like these does not take special prophetic
powers. All one has to know is the character of the leaders of a given nation and their actions
become predictable. Any hope for an early peace in Israel has been destroyed by Sharon's
re-election and the situation will continue to have to go from bad to worse. Eventually the Israelis
may wake up, say enough is enough and follow Mitzna's disengagement plan which actually
dates back to 1968 as pointed out in Whither Zionism?. Unfortunately the majority of Israelis
are not yet ready to face these harsh facts of life and continue to believe that Might makes Right,
that fear will spawn hate, and hate combined with military force will eventually triumph.
That was also Hitler's fantasy.
The fate of Israel would not necessarily be of major concern to Americans had our politicians not
yoked us, apparently irrevocably, to Jerusalem's policies for reasons which were spelled out in
the Unholy Alliance article of May 1, 2002. President Bush seems to have a rather simplistic
view of the world. There is only good and evil. He has declared after 9/11: Who is not with
us, is against us. The inhabitants of this world are now being divided by Washington into those
who are good, i.e. they agree with America's point of view; or evil, namely those who disagree
and especially those who oppose us by means of terror. States who pursue an independent
nuclear policy are "rogue states" and have to be dealt with by the American military. We
are after all "the only superpower" and have the best trained army in the world. As the former
Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, reportedly told the generals who were reluctant to get
entangled in Balkan politics: what good is it to have such a wonderful military if you don't want
to use it? Now we have a President who does want to use it because it has been reported that he
sees himself as an instrument of Providence to rid the world of evil. An inner belief of this type
should raise concern because it brings inevitably past history to mind.
In his State of the Union speech our President made it clear that he feels America has been
chosen by history to rectify evil throughout the world, but most urgently in Iraq. "America
and the world will not be blackmailed . . . . A brutal dictator with a history of reckless
aggression, with ties to terrorism, and great potential wealth in a vital region will not be
permitted to threaten the United States." He has "shown utter contempt for the United
Nations and the opinion of the world . . . . It is up to Iraq "to account for what happened to the
"25,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulism toxin, the 500,000 tons of sarin, mustard
and VX agents" as well as the "30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents." The
"high strength aluminum tubes" capable for developing nuclear weapons were also referred to
although an hour earlier the Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector, Mohamed El Baradei, had told us
in a TV interview that the aluminum tubes had nothing to with atomic weapons, and that his
experts have so far been unable to detect anything that would raise concerns. The President then
asked the rhetorical question what all of this arsenal is good for. "But why? The only possible
explanation, the only possible use he could have for these weapons is to dominate,
intimidate or attack." He could "resume his ambition of conquest and create deadly havoc in
this region . . . . Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy and
it is not an option." Subsequently the President enumerated again the major sins Saddam has
already committed. He used poison gas "on whole villages leaving thousands of its civilians
dead, blind or disfigured." He, tortured "children while their parents watched." Saddam's CIA
personnel poses as scientists and the real scientists are forbidden to talk to UN inspectors on pain
of death, which includes their families. In Saddam's prisons tongues have been ripped out, skin
burned with acid and there is rape. The President declared that "If this is not evil, then evil
has no meaning." He went on to say that "We fight reluctantly, we strive for peace," but "if
war is forced upon us we will fight in a just cause with just means, sparing the innocent,"
but we will "fight with the full force of the American military and we will prevail."
Although God has been banished from U.S. schools He seems to be alive when needed and the
President concluded with the assurance that He will help us and finished with the familiar refrain
of "God bless America."
I have recited the essence of this speech in such detail because Central Europeans of my
generation have heard this type of language before when an attempt was made to create
enthusiasm for war, which was notably lacking by the populace. The year was 1938 and the
evil person, for Germany was in those days Mr. Benes, the President of Czechoslovakia. In the
middle of September the Sudeten crisis was in full bloom. Chamberlain had twice,
unsuccessfully, met with Hitler who had kept upping the ante and war seemed imminent. Hitler's
September, 26 speech in the Sportpalast gave the signal for, and the cause of, the impending
war. As everybody knows he was, like Fidel Castro, exceedingly loquacious and his speech -
reprinted in Domarus' Hitler Reden 1932-1945 kommentiert von einem Zeitgenossen - takes up 8
pages even in shortened form.
Before going any further let it be understood quite clearly that I am not comparing the
person of President Bush with Hitler; or that of Saddam Hussein with Benes. All I intend
to do is to show how the rhetoric which is used to whip up enthusiasm for war is timeless,
the same the world over, and can be used by anybody.Here aresome key morsels from that
speech but I am somewhat handicapped by Domarus excerpts' because the main hate tirade
against Benes was omitted. Domarus merely mentioned that it had occurred. Nevertheless what is
printed is enough to give the flavor. The following are direct quotes when translated from
German. "The question which has so deeply concerned us during the past months and weeks is
well known: It is not so much: Czecho-slovakia, it is: Mister Benes," whom Hitler called "the
father of lies, responsible for the slaughter [niedermetzeln] of thousands of Germans."
Hitler then went on to recite, what Domarus appropriately calls, the "Parteierzählung," namely
his regularly repeated mantra of how he, the poor orphan and unknown soldier, had been led by
Providence to first head the party, then the Reich and now, after the incorporation of Austria,
Greater Germany. But eventually he got back to Benes who had created this state
(Czechoslovakia) from a lie because he promised a Swiss type model where all the minorities
were supposed to have had equal rights. This never came to pass "he started a regime of
terror!" When members of the three and a half million German minority protested they were
"shot down . . . . Mr Benes had decided to slowly but inexorably exterminate the German
population . . . . He has succeeded to a certain extent. He has thrown innumerable human
beings into the deepest despair. Through unabashed use of his terror he has succeeded to
silence and frighten these millions while at the same time the international obligation of this
state became clear. Thisstate[CSR]is now used by Bolshevism as its entry door," and it
represents an airbase which threatens all of Germany. Benes' enslavement of the people by
the military leads "to gruesome figures: in one day 10,000 refugees, on the next 20,000, one day
later now 37,000, again two days later 41,000, then 62,000, then 78,000, now there are 90,000,
137,000, and today 241,000. Entire districts are being depopulated, villages are being
burned down; with grenades and gas one attempts to smoke out Germans [ausräuchern] . .
. . The time has come for plain talk . . . . If anybody has that amount of patience as we have
had in the past one can surely not say that we are eager for war." Hitler ended the speech
with the statement that he had given Benes his outline for a peaceful solution, which included
incorporation of the German speaking areas of the CSR into Greater Germany. "The decision is
now in his [Benes'] own hand! Peace or War! He will either accept this offer and give the
Germans at last their freedom or we shall bring about this freedom by ourselves . . . . We are
resolute! Mister Benes may choose now!"
Let me re-iterate, there is no doubt that Hitler not only exaggerated but used outright lies,
especially when he declared in the same speech, that once the Sudeten question has been settled
in his favor he has no further territorial demands in Europe and specifically, "we don't want any
Czechs." His motive, however, was not the plight of the Sudeten Germans but
Czechoslovakia had to disappear so that he could then proceed with his march to the East.
Lest there be a misunderstanding I want to state once more that President Bush and his speech
writers acted in good faith but the point is that rhetoric has consequences and in this
respect the two speeches are a good example for how to inflame public opinion at home and
abroad. Hitler's war against Benes was avoided at the last minute by the Munich conference,
which is now universally condemned as appeasement. Nevertheless, it had its value at the time
because neither England nor France could have helped the Czechs in 1938, just as they could not
help the Poles a year later, when they did declare war on Germany. The year England gained
enabled her to build up the RAF and defeat the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain another year
later. Chamberlain deserves better than the "bad rap" he is currently receiving. While
Churchill pushed for war in 1938 and is now held up as the paragon of wisdom it must be
admitted that although he won the war he lost the empire as a result of it. The outcome of wars
tends to be quite unpredictable.
But back to the President's speech and the comparison. In both instances, the adversary is
depicted as an individual consumed by utter evil. In both instances figures are trotted out,
to demonstrate that an intolerable situation exists. In both instances it is emphasized that if
the condition is not immediately rectified the most dire results will occur and in both
instances the choice between peace or war is attributed to the adversary. The danger in
Hitler's case was the threat of Bolshevism, which had served him exceedingly well throughout
his career, and in the current instance it is the specter of atomic or biochemical annihilation of
our cities by terrorists. Although Hitler did not use the phrase "this war which has been forced
upon us" on this occasion it was regularly employed after the victorious Poland campaign, when
he saw no reason to continue the war with the West. He wanted to go East because that was
where the empty spaces and material resources lay which he coveted.
Bush's premise is that America is in mortal danger from this "madman," Saddam, and
immediate action to disarm him is required. But just as in 1938 there is a hidden agenda.
Disarmament is clearly not enough. It needs "regime change" and unless there is a coup inside
Iraq, or Saddam were to be willing to go into exile with his family, as well as the top leaders of
the Ba'th party, this can only be accomplished by American military ground forces. But we don't
want just "any regime," we need a client state in the area because there happens to be the
proverbial elephant in the living room in the region of whom nobody talks about here. It is
Israel, who as our friend and not just ally, needs friendly regimes as neighbors. Neither the Turks,
the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Saudis and maybe even the Kuwaiti seem to be particularly afraid
of Saddam's WMDs. So it does boil down to Israeli politics, the regional nuclear superpower.
Bush's rhetorical question why Saddam needs his WMDs has another answer. They are
Saddam's life insurance and not necessarily intended for the purposes mentioned by the
President. His nuclear reactor was bombed once by the Israelis and he may want to make
sure that if they attempted to interfere again in what he regards as his own internal affairs
they would suffer the consequences.
Now let us take this point a step further. Granted that Saddam has no conscience and will do
anything to stay in power. Granted further that he has some WMDs, does it follow that he
will use them to antagonize us on purpose? I have dealt with this question in the December,
2001 installment on War on Terrorism and can find no reason from his past behavior that
he is suicidal. The total annihilation of his country would be assured if he indeed launched germ
or chemical warfare against us without a prior invasion. Let us in addition think unpopular
thoughts and place ourselves in his shoes. The President has declared that "trusting in the
sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not an option." What would you do if you were to be
devoid of a conscience, your life is on the line, and your country is invaded by a superior
force? Would you not want to use whatever WMD is in your arsenal and in addition give
some left overs to known terrorists? Thus our policy instead of decreasing the threat of
terror might actually increase it geometrically.
This leaves aside the unrest which is likely to be spawned in other Arab and Muslim nations,
who have a vast revoir of human suicide bombers. Our announced policy to stomp out evil in
the world wherever it exists cannot succeed. It assumes a static world, where we can enforce
our will wherever we want. This assumption is fundamentally flawed because the laws of
physics assure us that for every action there is a re-action. We also know from history that there
are no "final solutions." "A New Order" in the world by rearranging borders has always had a
short life span. It was pursued by Hitler in Europe, by Japan in East Asia, and most recently by
the President's father, who promised that he would "bomb Bagdhad back into the stone age." The
only universal law of life is change and Fukuyama's "End of History," in the sense of absence of
wars and revolutions, will never arrive as long as there is a human rather than humane race.
It seems clear, to me at least, that whatever we do in the Middle East cannot lead to
permanent peace in the area unless the Palestinian problem is addressed. It is this purulent
wound which poisons not only the region but our active support of Israeli policies,
threatens our own future and that of our children. Last year the President chided the UN for
not enforcing its decisions on Iraq and he did so again this week. But Iraq and North Korea
are not the only states which thumb their noses at the UN. So does Israel and the silence
from our part in this respect is truly deafening. Nevertheless, the rest of the world sees what is
going on and will accuse us, not without good cause, of hypocrisy. Hiding behind noble words
and calling opponents to Likud policies anti-Semites is not likely to succeed forever and we
are squandering whatever good will America has built up in the world over the past century.
Neither is it correct to assume that all the people in this country, and abroad, who oppose a
war against Iraq at this time are professional protesters and "cooks." We have faith-based
groups both here in Utah, as well as the country at large who do not believe that the current
situation meets the Christian theologic preconditions for a "just war." Abroad, Germans are
chided for being opposed to the war, because they should toe the American line. After all, we
have liberated these ingrates once, and the French even twice. That Americans have insisted
after WWII that Germans change into pacifists is not to be remembered. Furthermore,
citizens of the former Greater Germanyhave their collective noses utterly full from,
"Führer befiehl, wir folgen." They didfollow their leader, blindly trusting in his good will,and it destroyed their countries. Questions about the wisdom of leaders should not be ridiculed
or snuffed out but honestly debated. This debate should take place in broad daylight rather than
behind closed doors.
The most important question is: Why Now? This is the first question every physician asks when
a patient comes with a chronic illness. Our Secretary of State will give the answer to the world
next week. But, General Powell please pardon me for being skeptical. If we had unequivocal
proof for Saddam's imminent threat to our shores we would have no hesitation sharing it
with the rest of the world. The fact that the President himself did not announce it this week
seems to indicate that he wants to gain some additional time. The Turks should cooperate with an
invasion from the north and the buildup of military forces in the Gulf. seems to have progressed
slower than expected. There may also have been some procurement snags with the protective
suits against toxic agents. But as the President said, "We are talking weeks and not months."
This is the point where Rhetoric of War comes back to haunt us.The President has painted
himself with his own words into a corner from whichhe will find it very difficult, if not
impossible, to extricate himself. Words have consequences and once they have left the mouth
of the speaker they assume a life of their own.
In the February 2002 installment The Great SatanI have made the point that when one is
faced with a difficult decision whether to act immediately or consider first the potential
consequences, one should keep in mind that God has time! The good and the true will still be
available to us after deliberation and consultation with others. Only "satan," the adversary,
lacks time and urges us into precipitous action. When we are told that "time is running out,"
we have both the right and the duty to ask "Why?" A reasonable course of action would be to
allow the UN inspectors whatever time they require to do their job. Saddam cannot be an
immediate threat as long as they are in his country and we can use the time to address
other more pressing issues.The economy needs to be rescued here at home, rather than
stressed further with a war and a prolonged occupation of Iraq. The war against terrorism
needs to be continued with international cooperation of police and intelligence services. The
job in Bosnia, Kosovo, rump Yugoslavia and especially Afghanistan has been left
unfinished. We promised these people better lives but have failed to come through with the
necessary action. To promote HIV-AIDS relief for Africa is laudable but hardly deserves the
priority assigned to it by the President when we have so many other pressing problems and a
massive, steadily growing, budget deficit. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, we
should use the time gained, by allowing the inspections to proceed, to finally use our
influence to bring the Palestinian tragedy to a reasonable conclusion. By showing genuine
impartiality towards Jews and Arabs alike we may be able to turn world opinion in our favor
again. We should not allow the perception to continue that Israel's policies determine those of
Washington. The elephant in the living room has to be addressed. If we don't do it ourselves
the Arabs will, but in a manner we are not going to like. Concrete actions which promote
peace and good will should now be the order of the day rather than Good and Evil rhetoric
and "My way or No Way."
March 1, 2003
FROM HOMO SAPIENS TO THE NAKED APE
In the middle of the 18th century the
botanist
Carolus Linnaeus bestowed the title Man the
Wise
on our species and genus. This sense of pride and optimism seemed to be
justified because of the phenomenal strides which were being made at
that time
in the sciences and humanities. It was the era of the Enlightenment
which laid the foundations for our modern world. The fundamental laws
of
physics, discovered in the previous century by Newton and Huygens, were
refined. In medicine Boerhaave introduced bedside teaching; Halle wrote
the
first modern textbook of physiology; Morgagni introduced the anatomic
concept
into the diagnosis and treatment of illness; Réaumur not only
invented the
thermometer but also showed that the first stage of digestion results
from the
action of stomach acid, rather than fermentation or contraction of
muscle walls
as had been assumed previously; Galvani demonstrated that muscle can
contract
as a result of electricity, and these are just a few names from a long
list.
It was, however, the social philosophers starting
with Locke,
and subsequently Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire who led
the
fight for reason over religious dogma. All of the then current
knowledge was compiled in a seventeen volume encyclopedia to make it
available
for the people at large. As Diderot one of the editors remarked, "Our
children,
better instructed than we, may at the same time become more virtuous
and
happy." D'Alembert, the other "encyclopedist," remarked:
"Our century is the century of philosophy par excellence. If one
considers
without bias the present state of our knowledge one cannot deny that
philosophy
among us has shown progress." It was probably no coincidence that at
the
same time harmony was added in musicto
the previously prevalent polyphony, and in the decorative
arts what was termed rococo, which stood for
lightness,
grace and elegance, became dominant.
Nevertheless the fact that all was not well with Homo sapiens
was
hinted at in politics, which went on as usual.
Frederick II of Prussia, who became known as Frederick
the
Great, started his "preventive war" in 1756.
He had previously exploited Austria's weakness after the death of
Charles VI by
taking Silesia away from the young Maria Theresia who had inherited her
father's empire. Austria's coalition with France and Russia in 1756 was
supposed to have rectified that situation and to put Frederick in his
place.
But nobody expected that it would last seven years. Whender
grosze Fritz (Hitler's model) had finally won
with the assistance of British money and the fortuitous death of the
Czarina,
which removed Russia from the alliance, the face of the world
had
changed. France had lost most of her
overseas
possessions in America as well as India to the Brits and was
financially exhausted. Austria had not only
permanently lost Silesia but the House of Habsburg
which had
supplied the German Emperors for the past several centuries was now
challenged
by the Hohenzollers of Prussia. The conflict between Berlin
and Vienna
as to who was to have the dominant voice in German
affairs had
begun and found its culmination on March
15,
1938 when the German army paraded before Hitler over Vienna's
Ringstrasse.
The ultimate symbolic irony was that the reviewing stand had been
erected in
front of the monument to Maria Theresia who had led the fight against
the great
Fritz. She had to stare at Hitler's rear end who represented everything
that
was abhorrent to the Austrian spirit.
Apart from Prussia, the other winner
was Britain
because the foundations for her empire, which lasted
somewhat
less than two hundred years, were laid with this treaty of
Paris in
1773. While they basked in glory for a few years they soon
found out
that the American colonials were now no
longer content
to remain colonials but in the spirit of the enlightenment
wanted their
say-so in the London parliament. British arrogance refused to
talk
to these uncouth upstarts with the American War of
Independence the
outcome. It was a given that the colonists could not have won
their
war against the British had the French not smelled a chance for revanche
and supported Washington. All the rest is, of course, known but if
one
were toask any American High School graduate today
what role
Montesquieu had played in this whole dramaone would
get a
"Monte who?" Yet it was he, who in his The Spirit of
Laws had laid down the principles how a state should be governed.
It was
precisely this document that gave rise to the American Constitution,
which is
so sadly abused today.
To return to the consequences of the 1773 Paris' treaty.
While
in the short run theBritish prospered,
it laid
in the long run the foundation for the demise of their empire.
They had
nurtured Prussia into a semi-great power but the Hohenzollerns
were
not satisfied with that and when they demanded full equality with the
British.
This had to be denied to them because the Kaiser was "evil." The
result was WWI, which led in turn directly to the second one. The other
phenomenal
irony of history is that Hitler actually wanted to
help
preserve the British Empire because it held the "inferior
races" in their place and because he was a man of the infantry rather
than
a sailor. Overseas possession could be safely left to the Brits as long
as they
acquiesced to his taking the European East for German colonization. ButChurchill, the navy man, was suspicious and wanted
to
preserve the empire under American protection. That Roosevelt
had no use for empires, except his own, dawned on him too late
when
England was no longer in a position to refuse American demands. Churchill
had survived the war, one really shouldn't say won, but
he had lost his job and the empire. The real winners
were
America and the Soviet Union. Our President should ponder this fact of
history
when he contemplates the picture of his hero which supposedly hangs in
his office.
He might also keep the fate of both Churchill and that of his own
father in
mind. After they had been successful in their wars, they were removed
from
office!
By 1789 and 1793 when kids started playing soccer with decapitated
heads in the
streets of Paris under the name of liberty, equality and brotherhood
some
doubts as to the perfectibility of our species were bound to arise. As
the
sciences progressed Lamarck developed the concept of evolution
in form of a ladder. At the bottom resided the ameba and Homo
sapiens
was still on top. Darwin subsequently substituted the
ladder
for a tree and established the close kinship between man and apes.
Interestingly enough he called his epochal book the "Descent"
of Man rather than "Ascent" and as history has proven
subsequently this was amply justified. Even more apt was the date when
the book
was published. The Franco-Prussian war had also started in 1871. The
quick
victory with the resultant unification of Germany under the Prussian
king, who
became German emperor, pushed Austria irreversibly into the Balkans and
was as
such another cause of the Great War slightly over forty years later.
The
humiliated French wanted revenge, the Brits didn't like the arrogance
of Cousin
Willie, and the Russians had no use for the Austrians in the Balkans.
Nationalism had become the rallying cry of
the age.
Nations had to be liberated from their "oppressors,"
and the way was paved for what Grillparzer (Austria's
greatest
19th century dramatist) called, "from humanism,
through
nationalism to bestialism." Small wonder that Nietzsche
appeared
on the scene a few years later with the Uebermensch as the
solution to
the problems of the human race. The will to power
where the
stronger dominate, and if necessary exterminate, the weaker in
perpetual
warfare provided the justification for the events of
what has
been called the "execrable" twentieth century.
Although Darwin had already disabused us of the
notion that human
beings are something special and had shown that our emotions
find their
counterpart in other animals it was up to Professor Desmond
Morris to finally put us in our place. Homo
sapiens was gone and The Naked Ape emerged in
1967.
The book with the same title was an instant bestseller and it is still
rightly
regarded as a classic. In it Dr. Morris detailed with great care how all
of our behavioral traits in regard to: child rearing,
exploration,
fighting, feeding, and comfort seeking are in no way unique but simply
the expression of our animal heritage.
As a zoologist Dr. Morris did not address himself to the problem of
verbal and
written language, our proudest achievement. For a neurologist like me
language,
and its function in health and disease, is of course of paramount
interest and
it has become obvious that the abuse of language is
nowadays the
greatest danger to our civilization. The spoken and written
word
allows us not only to express our desires, fantasies and opinions but
it has
also enabled the naked ape to create a truly staggering array of lies,
with
which he threatens and deludes himself as well as others. This brings
us to our
current century which has all the hallmarks of
becoming even
more "execrable" than the one we have left behind.
Why should this be so and why do wars repeat in endless
cycles? The
simple answer is that human passions have never
changed and only the excuses for war have.
As is
apparent to anyone who has a grasp of history wars never solve
a
problem they simply pave the way for the next one.
In
addition the last century has shown that warshave
become increasingly vicious and that the lines
between
combatantsand the civilian
population
have become thoroughly blurred. When cities are
bombed and the
infrastructure for the population is destroyed in order to eliminate
the enemy
one should not be surprised that adversaries who lack military power
will use
guerilla tactics, which have never differentiated between civilians and
soldiers. When the "terrorist" leader
of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, Menachem Begin, blew up the King
David hotel
in Jerusalem in 1946, because it was the headquarters of the
British
mandate forces, and killed 91 people the end, namely
the
creation of a Jewish state, justified the means. By
1977 he was Prime Minister of Israel and in 1978
he
received the Nobel Peace prize, jointly with Anwar
Saddat. The
fact that he was in violation of numerous UN Security Council
resolutions
urging Israel to vacate the territories conquered in the 1967 war
(which was
likewise waged for "preventive" reasons) was obviously of no concern.
One need to choose one's "friends" wisely and when one has the
backing of the United States one can safely ignore the UN.
Saddam Hussein was not so lucky. He
thought
that he could get away with an invasion of Kuwait but that was not to
be
condoned and our erstwhile friend and ally against the Ayatollah of
Iran became
the "Butcher of Baghdad" who not only had to be give up his
ill-gotten gains but has been under quarantine ever since. Currently
the Bush
administration regards it as imperative that he be removed from power
within
the next few weeks, come what may. As is obvious from the foregoing power
politics are as old as civilization. What is
somewhat
new is that it is no longer admitted to but couched
in
moral language. Saddam is not just
another
despot, with a long history of others of his ilk, but
he is profoundly evil and it is this evil
that our morality requires us to lead a "just war"
directed towards his removal.
At this point Homo sapiens has fully abdicated
and
the naked ape has come into his own. Some of today's newspaper
headlines are telling, "The True Ethical Position Is
to
Give War a Chance and Vanquish Evil;" or "Time to Go
to War and Exterminate the Evil Butcher of Baghdad." Although
Saddam has no means to significantly harm the United States while Kim
Il Jong
of North Korea does, we are told that it is "moral" to remove
Saddam but it would be "immoral" to apply the same
treatment to little Kim. The latter could
retaliate
and cause significant casualties while our losses in Iraq, apart from
"collateral damage" to Iraqi civilians are likely to be minimal. With
other words it is moral to go after a weak bully but you
better stay
away from one who could significantly hurt you. This is the law of the
jungle
and has nothing to do with morality.
In order to make an Iraq war palatable the American public
is
currently being subjected to an incessant barrage of fear and
hate.
During the "hadj" our government had decreed that we have to live
under "code orange" of serious danger and which is only one step
removed from code red, where presumably the whole nation comes to a
grinding
halt. This alert sent people scurrying to stores for duct tape and
plastic
sheets to make their homes terrorist proof. Two days ago the risk was
reduced
to yellow which indicates only "significant" threat conditions. Since
yellow is a color which is in the popular mind not particularly
associated with
heroism, Osama can congratulate himself on how our leadership has taken
and
continues to take his bait.
As far as hate goes the same author, who wants to "exterminate"
Saddam also wrote this week that "Bush Must Bring Hammer Down
on
Militant Muslims in our Midst." In the previous installment
"Rhetoric of War" I have mentioned that Hitler and President Bush
used the same type of language to influence their respective audiences.
Now Cal
Thomas, the author of the two mentioned pieces, chimes in with phraseology
right out of the Goebbels kitchen. In
1938
we could have read in theStuermerthat
"We must smash the Jewish Danger in Our Midst." By the way Mr.
Thomas regards himself as a Christian, whose wish
for
the Israelis to expel all the Palestinians from their homes in
the West
Bank and Gaza so that the Jews might finally enjoy most -
Jordan and
Syria would still be missing - of their promised land, was
discussed in
the July 2001 installment.
There is no doubt that a small number of militant Muslims who plan to
wreak
havoc exists in our country. But who defines a "militant"
Muslim?What must he have done to earn the label of
terrorist
suspect, let alone terrorist? This is the slippery slope we
are on and
which allows the government through hasty legislation to undermine the
freedom
the fathers of this country have fought for and which the majority of
the
people want to see preserved. But this becomes impossible when a
climate
prevails where "The Virtue of Hate" is advocated. An
article under this title appeared in theFebruary
issue of First Things and the author, a rabbi,
declared
that, according to the Talmud, a Jew is "obligated to hate" a
"hopelessly wicked" individual. I happen to know that the
Talmud is an encyclopedia where you can find anything whatsoever to
prove your
point and I know also that Jesus did not die for the Talmud!
Furthermore who
is going to play God, and certify someone as "hopelessly wicked?"
Our current war against terrorism is as I have
mentioned
repeatedly a war of religious opinions and we must
now be
honest and specific. Osama bin Laden as a self
appointed
representative of Muslim fundamentalism has at his goal to bring his
brand of
religious fundamentalism to the Muslim world. After the recent tape was
made
public I received an e-mail which stated that Arabic speaking people
got a completely
different impression as to what bin Laden had actually said. I followed
up,
typed "bin Laden tape" into Google and presto there was his speech
as reported by the BBC. I have a fondness for this
network
which dates back to my youth when, as reported in War&Mayhem,
I
sat glued with one ear to the radio in the afternoons to hear: Hier
ist
London mit der Sendung fuer die deutsche Wehrmacht. Had I been
discovered
it would have meant KZ but it was the only way to get correct
information as to
how the war was going. It is gratifying to know that at least the BBC
can still
be trusted so many decades later.
At this point I shall let him speak for himself rather than putting
words in
his mouth. But I will only give brief excerpts because anyone
interested can
readily find the full text on the net. Bin Laden emphasized
that "fighting should be for the sake of the one God," ratherthan for "championing ethnic groups,
or
for championing the non-Islamic regimes in all Arab countries,
including Iraq." Osama has no use for Saddam and his
"socialist" regime but the "mujahadeen brothers in Iraq"
should not be afraid of the American weapons because the Americans are
fearful
of engaging in hand to hand combat and trench warfare. He also
exhorted"honest Muslims" to "incite, and mobilize the [Islamic]
nation, amid such grave events and hot atmospheres so as to liberate
themselves
from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by
the United
States . . . to establish the rule of God on earth." The
states
which fell into this category were listed as "Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria,
Pakistan, the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia], and Yemen."
He
also urged "patience" during the fight because Americans are known to
have little, and "martyrdom" because there is no effective defense
against it. Furthermore, "fighting in support of the
non-Islamic
banners is forbidden" and "Socialists are infidels
wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden."
The
support of Saddam is, therefore, simply a marriage of
convenience just as the one between Churchill and Stalin wasduring
WWII. The enemy of my enemy is my friend was the slogan and as
Churchill put it at the time, "If Hitler invaded hell I would even find
kind words to say about the devil."
Apart from infidel Arab regimesthe other
main enemy
of Osama is the state of Israel. Let us remember that
the
entire raison d'êtrefor
the re-establishment
of the stateafter two thousand years in the Middle
East,
is a supposed promise to the Hebrews by the same one God of
Osama.
That this promise exists only in a book written by Jews for Jews is of
no
concern for fanatics who cherish dogma more than reason. The
predominantly
Christian U.S. is involved because of our unquestioned support of
Israeli
policies to the detriment of Palestinian Arabs. Instead of
Christians
acting as peacemakersthe evangelical group,
to which
according to a recent book by his erstwhile speech writer David Frum -
author
of the infamous "axis of evil" phrase - President Bush belongs, supports
the Israeli side as outlined in the May 1, 2002 installment
under The
Unholy Alliance.
With oil as the final prize for some,
and religious
fervor by others, war seems all but inevitable in
spite of
the fact that our administration's rush has in the meantime hit some
speed bumps. Dr. Blix, head of the UN
Inspections
team, has proven less pliable than our hawks had hoped;
the French and Germans have voiced serious
reservations, and even the Turks were not
entirely happy to have their country used as a staging area
for
invasion. They not only wanted guarantees that the money we bribe them
with for
their cooperation will really be forthcoming but also that they have a
sizable
military contingent to take part in the invasion under their own
officers. We
chided them, of course, because all we really want to do, we say, is to
defend
them from Saddam, but nearly ninety percent of Turks are more afraid of
our
intentions than his. There is also the delicate issue of the
Kurds
who don't want the Turks to come in and they already threaten
with war ifthey Turks do.
In
addition within the Kurdish political groups we have the Iranian
Shiites on the
one hand and secular ones on the other who also vie for who gets first
to the
oilfields near Mosul. But our administration believes that all these
are minor
details which can be handled with money and threats. The fact that we
are
confronted with an increasing budget deficit also does not
enter into
the equation because as soon as the oil starts
flowing in
abundance our financial worries are supposedly over.
Nevertheless, apart from the street demonstrations at
home and
abroad there are additional voices of discontent
which include
among others the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.Furthermore,
our regular military forces do not have
sufficient
personnel and the reserves as well as the National
Guard are
being mobilized to be sent abroad. This has a serious
impact
on families because these people hold jobs
which in
the current economic climate, may or may not be available when
they
come back. In addition many of thesereservists
are either in law enforcement or firefighters and as
such in the first line of defense if a catastrophe were to happen here.
This leads to the absurdity that wedefend
our country byinvading Iraq while at
the
same time reducing the forces we need for "Homeland Security."Women are also going to war overseas now and
as one
little kid cried: "Why does mommy have to go? Why can't daddy?" Yes
indeed! This little one has to thank Ms. Friedan, Steinem and others of
their
ilk with the idea that a woman's first priority has to be herself
rather than
her children. But in some instances both mommy and daddy have been
called up
and left. Who will take care of these little ones who are left behind?
The
grandparents, if they are so lucky to still have them. Furthermore since
the professional military, evenwith
the reservists and National Guard, is seriously
understaffed to meet the global excursions we intend to embark upon
it
becomes likely that the draft will sooner or later have to be
re-introduced. At that point peace marches will erupt
to an extent that may dwarf the Vietnam era and the entire so
called
"Foreign Policy" of this administration will collapse. This
is the real state of our country and all the war propaganda cannot hide
these
facts.
The evening of February 25 was also instructive.
First we saw
a speech by President Bush to a selected audience
where he
laid out his vision for the future and about an hour later we
were
show an interview Saddam Hussein had granted an American reporter. As
we know
our President believes that Saddam presents an acute
and
growing danger, which must be eliminated before anything else can be
done. Once
the Iraqi regime has been removed the liberated people will joyfully
cooperate
with the necessary American occupation and the Iraqi oil
revenues will
flow into their pockets. Since the Palestinians will
no longer
enjoy Iraqi financial and emotional support they will give up
suicide
bombings and the Israelis feeling secure
will stop
building settlements and agree to the creation of a peaceful
Palestinian state.
President Bush is an honest man but if he really believes this
fantasy
he is grievously mistaken. Iraq is currently contained, has no
means
to successfully attack its neighbors - we are told that the Iraqi army
is only
a third of what it was before the previous Gulf war - and it
is
precisely the Palestinian problem which keeps fueling the anger in the
region.
The president seems toharbor the illusion
that there
will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad, when the GI's arriveas
was shown on our TV sets when the Taliban were routed from
Kabul.
But the Afghans are no longer dancing, some of them
are taking
potshots at our peacekeepers and Karzai needs American Special Forces
for
protection. That is the reality. It is the long range effect
which
counts not the first few hours or days.
The interview of Saddam Hussein by Dan Rather was also
revealing. The Iraqi president handled himself in a
calm and
deliberate manner and was careful not to give cause for offense.
A
telling small detail was when one of the Iraqi interpreters translated
a
sentence about the former President Bush as "Bush," Saddam
interrupted and said that he had said Mr. Bush, he didn't say president
because
he was no longer president, but he was Mister Bush. Saddam knows the
media, how
they will pounce on a small detail and subsequently distort it. This he
wanted
to avoid. His claim that his people will follow him to the death
because they
had given him recently a one hundred per cent vote of confidence was,
of
course, baseless. On the other hand his suggestion to publicly
debate
President Bush via satellite hook-up so that the world could
judge the
actions of these two leaders was a shrewd one.
The debate idea was, of course, immediately nixed by Washingtonbecause the non-compliance of Israel with UN
resolutionsand the obvious double
standard
which the Bush administration is applying vis á vis
Israel and Iraq would
have been brought up. Furthermore, Saddam might have
gone even
a step further and explained that he would gladly disarm and
keep the
inspectors in his country indefinitely if Israel got rid of its WMD's
under UN
inspection. Inasmuch as this is, of course, highly unlikely to
ever
happen continued warfare is assured. This is also
obvious because
our administration is unwilling to talk directly not only with "The
Butcher of Baghdad," but also the "loathsome pygmy" who is in
charge of North Korea. Thus the naked ape will persist with
what
Barbara Tuchman has called the March of Folly. By
not talking
to adversaries because they are beneath contempt and inherently evil:
pride,
greed and delusions will be the real reasons why history will have to
repeats
in endless cycles of ever increasing violence.
This is the point where we need to part with the naked ape and
allow Homo
sapiens to re-emerge from the shadows. We
ought to
say to our politicians: stop and listen, there is a better way. Yes,
we
have all the characteristics of other species' within us but we also
have
something in addition. This is the tiny spark of reason which
can lead
us to conduct ourselves not merely as lying, deluded naked apes but in
the
manner we were intended to act. Our geneticists have
now told us that we share more than ninety
per cent of
genes with mice. Are we, therefore obligated to
behave like
mice?Even if geneticists were to tell us in
the
future that one hundred per cent of our genes are identical
with
those of some anthropoid apes we can still say: So
what? A whorehouse, as well as a cathedral are built with stone, wood
and glass
but they surely have different purposes. We have
been
given free will and we can choose where we
want to
spend our mental time: in the gutter or in company of the divine?
But the
divinity that lives in some of us does not label
others as
good or evil who need to be rewarded or punished but
who sees homo sapiens both
as an
opportunity and obligation to strive towards a higher goal which unites
the
inhabitants of this planet rather than sets themagainst
each
other.
Once upon a time Homo sapiens
lifted
his voice in ancient northern India and declared: "think of
pleasurable objects, and you will become attached; from attachment will
come
desire, when desire is thwarted you will become angry, when you are
angry your
mind becomes confused and you lose sight of life's purpose. This fundamental
psychological insight was also formulated as the
Buddha's
first and second noble truth: Life is full of Suffering, and the Cause
of
Suffering is Craving. This is as valid today as it when it
first
uttered twenty five hundred years ago, but it is ignored. Yet ignorance
is not
bliss and will inevitably lead to further suffering even for those who
literally call the shots today on both sides of the fronts.
Our country is in great danger, not from the currently
identified enemies, but by being led down a road which
threatens to
destroy our soul and lead to despotism. The old proverb "the
road
to hell is paved with good intentions" is again proving true. Those of
us
who feel that the impending war against Iraq is a serious mistake also
know
that this is just the warm-up. After Iraq's defeat comes the turn of
all the
other "rogue-states" and there is no end to the corruption of our
souls. But in spite of all the fear and hate-mongering Homo
sapiens is not yet extinct in America. As
one
protester who took to the streets put it recently: "Bush must really be
screwing up to bring out the mainstream." We, as individual
citizens, are not likely to be able to change the course of history but
that
does not mean that we have to follow blindly and willingly to wherever
a given
administration wants to lead us. Homo Sapiens
differs
from the Naked Ape in this respect and will direct
his efforts
toward a reduction of suffering rather than inflicting more in the
mistaken
assumption of doing good.
March 15, 2003
IDES OF MARCH
This article had been submitted to the Salt Lake
Tribune but
since publication is far from certain it is presented below.
The Ides of March are upon us again and decisions are made which will
affect
our lives as well as those of our children and grandchildren for
decades to
come. Let us, therefore, step back for a moment and reflect upon the
origin of
these words. On March 15, 44 B.C. Brutus, Cassius and other Republicans
murdered Caesar in the Capitol because they wanted to rescue Rome's
republic
from incipient despotism. What did they get? Mark Anthony’s fiery
funeral oration
precipitated a brutal civil war between the followers of Caesar and
those of
the Senate. Two years later Brutus and Cassius committed suicide when
they were
defeated by Octavian and Mark Anthony. A shaky coalition between the
victors
lasted for a few years but by 30 B.C. it was open warfare again. Mark
Anthony
lost, committed suicide and Octavian became Caesar Augustus, the
undisputed
ruler of Rome. What Caesar's murder was supposed to have prevented came
to pass
anyway. But, as they saying goes nowadays, this is ancient history and
our
college students tend to be told "it's all about dead white males"
anyway, so why bother?
There was, however, another March 15 which changed the world and I
witnessed
it. This was the day when Hitler proclaimed from the balcony of
Vienna's
Hofburg the annexation of Austria. The Greater German Reich was formed
on that
day and with it began the road to WWII. Without Austria, neither
Czechoslovakia
nor Poland could have been invaded. The Greater German Reich was
supposed to have
lasted a thousand years but made it only for seven. If a Cassandra or
Jeremiah
had told the cheering crowds on that day that seven years later
American bombs
would ruin their city, that the Red Army would occupy it, and Stalin
instead of
Hitler would be calling the shots they would have declared her/him as
insane.
But that was precisely what happened. The consequences of violent
political
acts are always totally unpredictable and unexpected. This brings me to
the
current situation.
Those of our citizens who believe that a "preventive" war against
Iraq is wrong are now labeled as "Ideologues" of
"appeasement," as Mr. Lavender recently put it. Bill O'Reilly on his
"no spin zone" is even more outspoken. While he reluctantly tolerates
dissent from the current party line he has made it clear that if
demonstrations
against the war persist after the shooting has started the participants
are
"bad Americans." Let me now go back again to March 11, 1938. On that
morning I awoke as a "good Austrian." Although I was only twelve and
a half years old my family was conservative and had no use for Nazis.
We looked
forward to the plebiscite which was supposed to have been held the
coming
Sunday, March 13, and we were sure that the government would win the
declaration that Austrians want to have a free and independent country.
Since
Hitler knew that this would be the outcome, the plebiscite was not
allowed to
take place. The Schuschnigg government was forced to abdicate, a Nazi
government was installed during the night of Friday 11, and by Saturday
morning
we awoke to the roar of the Luftwaffe which had come to "liberate"
us. This was the phrase which was given as the reason for the invasion.
At that
moment I had, in official parlance, become a "bad Austrian" because I
was not in favor of this liberation. By the following Wednesday morning
I had
become a "bad German" because Austria no longer existed. I had not
changed my views from Friday to Wednesday. They had remained the same
but
politics, over which the individual citizen has no control, decreed the
difference in classification. The details of these events are
documented in a
book I published a few years ago.
Eventually I came to America because I wanted to breathe the air of
freedom. I
became a citizen and on the day I received citizenship my wife and I
celebrated
with champagne. We were and are good Americans. The Clinton scandals
deeply
disturbed us and we voted for the Governor of Texas in the hope that he
would
bring honor and sanity to the White House. But since his administration
seems
to be in the process of dismantling the very foundations which made
America
great and to which I swore allegiance, out of my own free will, I am
now in
danger of being labeled a "bad American."
Mister Lavender's article which caused me to write this reply quoted
from
Thomas Friedman's book that "When it comes to thinking about Middle
East
politics, the American liberal mind is often chasing rainbows. They are
living
in a world of delusion." This is correct as far as it goes except that
the
word liberal needs to be omitted. It is a conservative administration
which
tells us that when Iraq is defeated, democracies will spring up all
over the
Middle East, the Palestinians will get their state, Israel will be safe
and for
all practical purposes the messianic age will have arrived. This is the
delusion for which we are now asked to shed innocent blood and deplete
our
economic resources.
In August of last year about a dozen of us Utahns saw this imminent war
coming
and were granted an audience with Senator Bennett. We didn't bring
placards but
reason and laid out why a war with Iraq, before the Israeli-Palestinian
tragedy
is resolved, cannot bring peace but only greater disasters. We were a
cross
section of law abiding citizens ranging from descendants of Mormon
settlers to
immigrants like myself. Unfortunately we were met by a closed mind. The
senator
listened politely but answered all of our concerns with the
administration's
stock mantra: Saddam is evil, he has weapons of mass destruction which
he may
give to terrorists, he has invaded neighboring countries and gassed his
own
people. I called it a mantra here because it is mindlessly repeated
over and
over again without ever considering the context in which these actions
occurred. I pointed out to the senator that Saddam was 65 years old and
this is
not an age where one willfully engages in political adventures. It is
in their
forties and fifties when politicians are most dangerous. By the middle
sixties
a peaceful life in security and splendor is much more desirable even
for
dictators. But as mentioned our presentations were of no avail.
We are also frequently told that Saddam is a "madman," and as such
his actions are totally unpredictable. After having watched the Dan
Rather
interview I can confidently say that this is not the case. He is a
shrewd,
calculating, ruthless dictator who will do whatever is necessary to
remain in
power. Arming terrorists to hurt America does not fall into that plan,
because
it would be self-defeating. We are being told, furthermore, that we
have to go
to war because we have to liberate the Iraqi people from an evil
dictatorship.
As mentioned I have been "liberated" twice. First by Hitler from
Schuschnigg and then by Stalin from Hitler. It took Austria ten years
and the
death of Stalin before the country was really free again and decades
more to
repair all the damage those ides of March 1938 had caused. The lost
lives can,
of course, never be replaced.
When we are told that Iraqis will dance in the streets of Baghdad when
GI Joe
and Jane come walking in, just as they danced in Kabul, we should
remember that
they are not dancing in Kabul any more. Potshots are taken on American
peacekeepers and President Karzai has to have American Special Forces
protecting him because he can't trust his "liberated" people.
So what should our administration have done? We should have agreed to a
continued inspection process, if needed indefinitely, because as long
as the
inspectors are in the country Saddam's ambitions are hamstrung. To
leave the
inspectors in Iraq would be infinitely cheaper in blood and resources
than
first destroying the country and then occupying it for years to come.
In
addition we should have impartially worked for a genuine peaceful
solution to
the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. This would have required respect for
the
rightful aspirations of both sides and would be the only way to bring
finally a
just peace to the Holy Land. This is what should have been done and
this is
what some of us have been and are working towards. We are not
"ideologues" but people who know war and the concomitant tragedies.
It is not the goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power we disagree
with, just
the means to do so. Although it seems that our efforts are not going to
bear
fruit in the near future we still owe it to our children to have
insisted that
there is a better way than the brutality of war.
Now some additional thoughts. It is obvious that as far as the real
reasons for
this war are concerned, and the behind the scenes maneuvers of the
administration, we are to be left in ignorance. Where
are the
Woodward and Bernstein's who would tell us, for instance, what really
went on
in the meetings on energy policy held by Vice-President Cheney in 2001?
Why are
taxpayers not allowed to know who the members of this elite group were
which
met behind closed doors and why the minutes are such highly guarded
"national security" secrets, that even members of Congress are not
allowed to get a peek at them?
For clear thinking Americans the moral posturing in regard to Iraq and
the
questioning of the relevance of the Security Council, because Saddam
ignores
the resolutions, is bound to sound hypocritical. Israel has refused to
meet UN
demands to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories in the
West Bank
and Gaza since 1967, and America has never hesitated to use its veto in
the
security council when Israel's interest were at stake. Now France and
Russia
are not supposed to do so when they follow their financial or strategic
advantages.
It has also become apparent that our love for democracies around the
world is
limited and we infinitely prefer pliable dictatorships like those of
Musharraf,
for instance, over those countries where freely elected parliaments
follow the
will of their constituents and object to pre-emptive wars.
As of this writing our president has kindly agreed that he will give
diplomacy
"one last chance" and delay the UN vote and/or war until next week.
We are being told that this is done in order to give Prime Minister
Blair more
time to come up with a resolution the British parliament can accept.
The deal
is sweetened further by the belated discovery of the Palestinians'
plight who
are promised a road map to their very own state. That this road map is
doomed,
because the Sharon government has absolutely no interest in allowing a
viable
Palestinian state to emerge, neither PM Blair nor President Bush are
willing to
acknowledge. As usual it will be the fault of the Palestinians, when
the talks
break down because they will be unable to rein in their extremist
elements. By
insisting on Israel's security (defined as no suicide attacks) before
giving up
the settlements and achieving a functioning Palestinian economy is
putting the
cart before the horse again. Inasmuch as this is, of course, no secret
to
administration officials the public is to be pacified by these
gestures.
While keeping Tony Blair in power is one reason for the postponement of
the war
there is also the nasty problem with the Turks. Plan A, the kidnapping
of
Saddam in October of last year by Special Forces, was shelved as too
risky.
Plan B was a two pronged attack from Turkey as well as Kuwait. The
Turks have
unfortunately asserted their democratic right to disagree with American
war
plans and it may turn into Plan C. Our troops are supposed to halt in
front of
Baghdad and Special Forces will "leapfrog" north to capture the oil
fields of Mosul and Kirkuk. Since this is obviously a more chancy
adventure,
because the Kurds might get there before we do, the carrot and stick
approach
is still vigorously wielded to bring the Turks on board. In addition
the
wavering Security Council members are being subjected to intense
pressure so
that the so-called "coalition of the willing" has now been dubbed the
"coalition of the billing!" American taxpayers, including Congress
have so far not had the opportunity to find out how much the
destruction of
Iraq and its subsequent rebuilding is likely to cost us. The question
as to who
are the companies which stand to gain from this human disaster, must
also not
be asked because it might involve "national security." The idea that
we might be considerably more secure without inciting further terrorist
attacks
by this war is also frowned upon in public debate. Furthermore, there
has been
remarkable silence in our news-media about Israel's request for a
handout by
Congress to the tune of 12 billion dollars this year. This surely
suggests that
"we the people" are no longer in charge of our country but are
instead ruled by a monarch who yields to an unelected oligarchy and
where
questioning the wisdom of the country's policies by its citizens is not
desired.
In the previous installment I mentioned Montesquieu’s Of the
Spirit of the
Laws, but there are also the Persian letters (published
anonymously in
1721) which are highly á propos. By the way it may
soon be unpatriotic
to use such French expressions since even "French fries" have already
been renamed in government cafeterias and a boycott of French products
is
advocated. In letter 94, dated Paris 1716, Montesquieu wrote:
International law is better known in Europe than in Asia, yet it can be
said
that royal passions, the submissiveness of their subjects, and
sycophantic
writers have corrupted all its principles. In its present state, this
branch of
law is a science which explains to kings how far they can violate
justice
without damaging their own interests.
Kings are gone, or have their powers severely curtailed, the people
supposedly
rule but those two sentences are as valid today as when they were first
penned.
On a more cheerful note it was gratifying to hear that Salt Lake City
made
again national and international news this week. The odyssey of the
missing
girl, Elizabeth Smart, has had a happy ending when she was found
wandering the
street in company of her "abductors" right here in our very own Sandy
City. The case is surely bizarre and has led to numerous speculations.
How can
an adolescent from a good home and loving family spend nine months with
vagrants without making any attempt to escape or contact her family?
The first
four months were even spent here in Salt Lake where posters of her face
could
be seen everywhere. Yet the trio "Emmanuel," his wife, and Elizabeth
mingled undetected in public places and were even photographed
attending a
party. All she had to do at that time was to take her veil off and say:
"Help me folks, I'm Elizabeth, I want to go home!"There
was no possible danger to her and the only conclusion is that she
stayed
willingly with Mr. Mitchell and his wife. This is also attested to by
the fact
that at the time of her arrest she lied initially and pretended to be
the
daughter of the Mitchells. These are the meager facts and we will
probably
never hear the full truth because the parents have every right to
shield the
privacy of their daughter and let her recover from this strange
episode.
Psychologists are now spending their time on TV explaining that she was
probably a victim of the Stockholm syndrome where hostages begin to
identify
with their captors. But before there was a Stockholm syndrome
Laségue and
Falret (again those nasty French, why do they have to be so smart?)
introduced
in 1877 the term folie á deux, which
was later
enlarged to folie á trois, when
three people were
involved. This seems to be what has happened here. A
dominant
male in the grip of a delusional system converts a submissive female
who lives
with him to share his delusions which are, not uncommonly, religious in
nature.
Initially it was the wife, Wanda, who succumbed but she in turn then
found a
substitute for her own daughter, who had run away from home as a
teenager, in
Elizabeth. As a good Mormon in an impressionable age Elizabeth then
began to
identify with the religious delusions of the other two and was all set
to save the
world.If psychologists and psychiatrists can be kept
away
from her, the prognosis is excellent because once removed from the
environment
people always come to their senses again in short order. This applies
also to
wife Wanda. To send her to prison for at least twenty five years, as
has been
suggested, makes no sense at all and neither does the death penalty
(which we
still have in Utah) for "Emmanuel." The man is psychotic and as such
good and evil, the terms which are so freely bandied about even in this
case,
simply do not apply.
Let us hope that reason will prevail and Elizabeth will be left in
peace again.
Unfortunately this flies in the face of our commercial culture and I'm
sure
there will be books written about her and her likeness will star in a
movie.
April 1, 2003
THE NEOCONS' LEVIATHAN
When I told friends and family that "The Neocon's
Leviathan" would be the title of the next installment on this site they
had no idea what I was talking about. The terms are not yet household
words
especially in their juxtaposition. This article was prompted by one of
the
weekly phone conversations with my brother in Vienna, where we not only
discuss
family affairs but also the reasons why continental Europe has
undergone such a
seismic change in its opinions about America. On September 11,
2001 all
of Europe and indeed the world grieved with us and today our policies
are met
with universal incomprehension and by some with fear and hatred. How
did this
come about?
As always there is no single cause for a given
occurrence but a
confluence of physical events which bring latent
ideas to the
fore. There can be no doubt that as Dr. Ullman
(who
has been credited with coining "shock and awe" as
the method of choice in future wars) has written that
if
Saddam had exported bananas instead of oil we would hardly have
undertaken the
first Gulf War, of which the second is merely the continuation.
Oil
is, of course, a factor but not necessarily
the only
one because we could buy it and make sure that the prices
stay
reasonably low. But something else happened and that
is the
Euro. Petrodollars have to be converted into a genuine
currency and up
to recently the U.S. dollar ruled the roost. Lately, however, with
theweakening of the American economy, the dollar has lost against
the Euro
so that prior to the onset of the war one needed $1.10 to buy 1 Euro
(it rose
temporarily at the beginning but is currently falling again). Thus the
dollar
seemed no longer entirely secure and people began shifting to the
alternative.
From an American point of view this is, of course, intolerable and since
the only physical commodity which can prop up the economy is oil,
its exploitation must be removed from the locals and placed
into American hands. That was at least one
assumption which led us into this war.
The other one is about the role America is
supposed to
play in the 21st century and this is where the
"neocons" come in. Irving Kristol, father
of the better known Bill Kristol, published in 1995 Neoconservatism.
The Autobiography of an Idea in which he wrote:
"Is there such a thing as a 'neo gene? I ask the question because,
looking
back over a lifetime of my opinions, I am struck by the fact that they
all
qualify as 'neo.' I have been a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist,
a
neo-socialist, a neoliberal and finally a neoconservative. It
seems
that no ideology or philosophy has ever been able to encompass all of
reality
to my satisfaction . . . . One 'neo,' however, has been permanent
throughout my
life, and it is probably at the root of all the
others. I
have beenneo-orthodoxin my
religious views
(though not in my religious observance)[bold print was added in this
and all
subsequent direct quotes]."
These sentences are extremely revealing because they show that the neo-conservatives
as opposed to those for whom it has been a life long creed are
actually
struggling against their religious beliefs which they transport into
the social
arena. I am saying this because of what Mr. Kristol had been
taught in
the yeshiva (the Jewish counterpart to the Muslim madrasa).
"Discipline was strict - if we misbehaved in any way, the rabbi
would order us to stand up and then give us a stinging slap in the
face. He also
taught us to hate the goyim and to
spit
whenever we passed a church." It is to Mr. Kristol's credit
that
he abandoned these practices, but as a Catholic I was never encouraged
by our
religion teacher to hate Jews or spit when we passed a synagogue.
This brings me to my brother's question "Who is Kagan?"
I had never heard of the man but in my quest for the truth I headed for
the
Internet and found the article which had upset the Europeans. It was published
in June 2002 in Policy Review by the respected Hoover
Institution on
War, Revolution and Peace under the title "Power and Weakness."
One needs to know furthermore that Robert Kagan is also the co-founder,
with the mentioned Bill Kristol, of
the
"Project for the New American Century and he contributes
not only to the neocon Weekly Standard
and
the New Republic but also to the more influential Washington
Post. Furthermore, Kagan is a Senior Associate for
the
Carnegie Endowment and the Director of its "U.S.
Leadership Project."
In thementioned articleKagan
polarized the world and the first sentences set the tone:
"It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans
share
a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world.
On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the
morality,
the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are
diverging. Europe
is turning away from power into a self-contained world of laws and
rules and
transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering
a
post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the
realization of Kant's 'Perpetual peace.' The United
States,
meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising
power
in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are
unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a
liberal
order still depend on the possession and use of military might.
That
is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans
are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. They agree on
little and
understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not
transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic
event.
The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development,
and
likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities,
determining
threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign
and defense
policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."
These are indeed remarkable statements, especially
when one
considers that they were published in June of 2002 a
time when
our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, tried to elicit European
support
for disarmament of Saddam Hussein. Thus it is clear now that he
was undercut at the same time by the neocons (Richard
Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, Norman
Podhoretz, to
name just a few of the most important ones) who had
gotten the ear of Vice President Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and President Bush
and who demanded regime change. This fundamental
difference of
opinions manifested itself outwardly in what the world regarded as the
incoherence of American foreign policy. At that point the Europeans
balked. Although they agreed with disarmament,
thereby removing a potential threat, they did not want to
enter on the
slippery slope of regime change, because who decides what
regime needs
to be changed when, and how.
But let us return to Mr. Kagan, his polarization of the world and the
attribution of his views to all Americans. At this point I have to
admit that I
hadno idea what he meant with "anarchic Hobbesian
world" and "Kant's "Perpetual peace." In order to
correct this ignorance one has to go back to the 17th and 18th
century for what Hobbes and Kant had really said. Since their writings
are
voluminous and in part difficult to understand I also had to rely on my
old
stand-by Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The
following was
taken for Hobbes from the Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of
the
Western World, while the original German language Kant article
resided in
the Marriott library of the University of Utah.
Thomas Hobbes, the son of a Protestant Vicar, was born
in 1588
and it has been reported that his mother had been so frightened by the
impending invasion of the Spanish armada that she gave birth
prematurely. This
is why Hobbes commented later that he was born "a twin with
fear" and why he "abominated his country's enemies and loved
peace." This is not irrelevant for current circumstances
because a
person whose life is dominated by fear is also likely to hate and the
political
views will be flavored by these emotions. Hobbes was a
convinced
monarchist but by 1640 it was obvious that the position of Charles I
had become
untenable and Hobbes fled to France. While there he published his claim
to
enduring fame, Leviathan, an exposé of
how the state
resembles an artificial man, and the rules that should govern
the
commonwealth. Since he vigorously attacked the Catholic Church
in the
fourth part of his book he was forced to flee from France in 1651,
return to
England and submit to the hated parliament which ruled the country at
that time.
This about face found its repercussion in his book. Nevertheless by
1666 he was
persona non grata again and parliament threatened action
against the Leviathan.
Hobbes was no longer allowed to publish on political subjects so he
devoted
himself for the rest of his life to his other hobbies: the translation
of Homer
as well as geometry. In the latter field he managed to come up
with a
theorem which squared the circle. He was serious about having
solved
the unsolvable which brought him ridicule rather than renown. By the
way,
squaring the circle is still figuratively attempted by his followers.
Hobbes
died at the ripe old age of 91 and these aspects of his life must be
known to
understand Leviathan.
Leviathan is long, the language somewhat archaic but
the central
tenants are contained in his "Review and Conclusion" as well
as in the chapter by Bertrand Russell. They can be summarized as
follows: Man
is brutish and desires only self-preservation.
War
is, therefore, decreed by nature and in it force
and fraud are the two cardinal virtues. For
the sake of protection, people form a commonwealth
(or state,
as we would say today) and choose their sovereign. Once
he is established he is no longer
responsible
to the citizenry because they are his subjects who have to
obey his
will for the greater good. Peace results from submission to
authority
and since the prime reason for a commonwealth is to protect the
individual
citizen it is indeed in his best interest to submit. Property rights
pertain
only to the people among themselves but the sovereign is not
subject to
the civil law. Since anarchy is the only alternative it has to
be
avoided even by stringent measures and all attempts at revolution must
be
suppressed. If, however, a sovereign
has been
deposed he is no longer in a position to protect the
individual and obeisance to the new sovereign has to be made,
because even civil authority comes from God as the
apostle
Paul had declared. There is no difference between sovereignty and
tyranny.
Tyranny is simply another name used by those who hate the sovereign and
thereby
the commonwealth because he is its soul. As long as a
Christian
sovereign does not compel his subject to forego his faith in Christ all
his
actions are lawful and have to be obeyed. If
the
sovereign were to forbid the faith the subject
has two
options: one is to dissemble by submitting
in public
but not in private, and the other to accept martyrdom.
Dissembling
is lawful because a biblical precedent exists in the
Old
Testament.
What Hobbes in fact is telling us
that, to
put it into a modern context, my
fellow
Viennese citizens behaved correctly on the morning of March 11, 1938
when they
supported the Schuschnigg government because it was lawful at the time,
but
they behaved equally correctly when they welcomed the new rulers on
March 12,
because the power had shifted. Hitlerwas
also correct in his actions because the sovereign is supreme
and has no
obligations to his subjects. According to this view George
Washington and the other "founding fathers" of our republic should
have been hanged, but once they were victorious they were to
have
obeyed. This Hobbseian concept found its most recent counterpart in President
Bush's remark as quoted by Bob Woodward, "I'm the commander -
see, I don't need to explain. I do not need to explain why I say
things. That's
the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs
to
explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe
anybody an
explanation." Students of history will, of course, immediately
remember Louis XIV and "L'état
c'est
moi" (I am the state). But if we endorse this
point
of view why should we condemn "the butcher
of
Baghdad?" He is the lawful ruler of Iraq and for Hobbes it is
irrelevant how the sovereign got to where he is. The ruler has no one
to answer
to any more except his god who has put him into power. For
Hobbes
gaining and holding power is all that counts!
Now on to Kagan's counterpart. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in
Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and was in his thirties during the Seven
Years War
when the city was occupied for a time by Russia, a fate which has
befallen it
again since 1945. This event as well as the subsequent European
disasters led Kant to believe that there must be a better way than
perpetual
war. The article, Zum ewigen Frieden,
to which
Kagan refers was published in 1795 and should
be seen
in the context of the French revolution. By 1792 Europe was at
war
again with France on one side and a coalition of Britain, Austria,
Spain and
Prussia on the other. In France Louis XVI was beheaded on January 21,
1793 as
part of what was then called le terreur instigated by the
Jacobins,
which also consumed to some extent the original leaders of the
revolution like
Marat and Danton. By 1794 even Robespierre had shared the fate of all
the
numerous others whom he had sent to the guillotine. In 1795 the
"directorate" was appointed in Paris which paved the way for Napoleon
who kept Europe in perpetual war until 1815. What should intelligent
people,
who were either conscripted into these wars or had to stand by
helplessly, have
done but suggest possible means to end all this useless bloodshed?
This was the political background to Zum ewigen Frieden.
It is also obvious that translations cannot do justice
to
multiple meanings of what Kant called "A philosophical Entwurf."
The word defies accurate translation but tends to mean a first draft of
a
project, or idea, which one wants to put up for debate. The first
sentence of
the introduction indicates that the inspiration came from
a satirical panel over the entrance of a Dutch Inn "Zum
Ewigen Frieden" which portrayed a cemetery.
The
intended pun tends to be lost unless one knows that the German word for
cemetery is Friedhof, courtyard of peace. Kant also requested
that his
little treatise should not be used for bösliche Auslegung,
evil
misconstruction, a request which Mr. Kagan's article ignores.
Kant is difficult to read and at times impossible to properly translate
but the
following key elements deserve to be highlighted:
A peace treaty should be designed only as a treaty of
peace if
it does not contain the idea of revenge. Otherwise
it is just an armistice. For wars to be
avoided
countries should have a republican form of government.
Standing
armies should be abolished. States should
not incur
internal debts to settle external strife. No state should
forcefully
intervene in the constitution and government of any other!!!No
state should allow itself during war those means
which make subsequent peace impossible (e.g. assassination of
leaders,
instigation of treason etc.). Kant recognized the Bösartikeit
der
menschlichen Natur, the evil inherent in human beings, and
for
this reason universally agreed laws have to be put in action
to keep the beast in check. These laws should be subscribed to
by a
federation of states. "If a powerful and enlightened nation
can
form itself into a republic (which by nature has to be inclined to
constant peace),
it can provide the center for a federal type union of other states [Völkerbund],
around which they can gather and thereby guarantee the freedom of the
states in
accord with international law. and expand thereby gradually farther and
wider."
Thus Kant was in fact the father of the defunct League of Nations and
now its
successor the moribund United Nations because Völkerbund
was indeed
the German name for the League of Nations.
This gets us back to Mr. Kagan's article. Like
Hobbes
he seems to be "a twin of fear" and sees power
as the only solution to the world's ills. This power has
to be wielded by the United States who is responsible to no one.
America is currently the strongest military power on earth, therefore,
every
effort has to be made that this remains so. Since multilateral
international agreements hinder rather than enhance, the use
of power
America should not be bound by them. Europe
on the
other hand is weak and can, therefore, find its security
only in a system of laws which protect the weak.
Since Kagan's
view of power is strictly military Europe should rapidly re-arm.
Inasmuch as
American military power is used only for the good of the world it would
behoove
the Europeans to contribute their share. With other words Europeans
should see themselves as an additional resource for American might.
Kagan ends his article by saying, "their [America's and Europe's]
aspirations for humanity are much the same, even if their vast
disparity of
power has now put them in very different places. Perhaps it is not too
naively
optimistic to believe that a little common understanding could still go
a long
way."
The latter statement is laudable but needs to be seen in the context of
another
article Kagan published jointly with Bill Kristol in the Weekly
Standard on September 3, 2001 a scant eight days before
the 9/11
catastrophe. The title was, "A Green Light for
Israel." In the article the authors argue that the
way to
end the Israeli-Palestinian war is for America to give up its
"evenhandedness."
The authors raise the rhetorical question, "What ifwe
made it clear that, far from pressuring Israel, we
planned to
back its right to defend itself, and trusted our ally to do
the right
thing in the very difficult situation in which it finds itself?"
Thus the two articles really complement each other and explain Kagan's
view of
the world. Israel is the country which lives
in the
"Hobbesian anarchic world" against which it needs to defend
itself to the utmost, by massive military power. The tragedy
of 9/11has subsequently been used to convince
Americans that
Israel's dilemma is now their own and that they
should behave
like the Likud government. This stance ignores that
the Likud
policies, which America is supposed to adopt for the world at
large,
have been a dismal failure. Israelis are less secure
now and
their economy is in worse shape than in 1996 when
some of our
neocons under the leadership of Mr. Perle wrote a position
paperfor incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The
title was "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the
Realm."
As far as foreign policy is concerned the article
advocated regime
change in Iraq and Syria as well as Iran because the latter
two
countries support Hezbollah which fires intermittently rockets upon
targets
within Israel. This objective was to be achieved with at leasttacit
approval if not overt help of the United States. A missile
defense
system has to be pushed because, "Not only
would
such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible
physical threat
to Israel's survival, but it would broaden
Israel'sbase of support among
many in
the United States Congress [italics in the original but
not bold
print] who may know little about Israel, but care very much about
missile
defense. Such broad support could be helpful in the effort to move
the
U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem." Furthermore, "Prime
Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes
he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping
into themes of American administrations during the Cold
War
which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain
propositions that
require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is
before
November, 1996."
Thus there was to be no "peace dividend" but
Americans were to become part and parcel of Israel's perpetual
war
against its neighbors and the Palestinians. One year latersome
members of the same group founded "The Project for
the
New American Century" which pursues the policies outlined in "The
Clean Break," and the two Kagan articles, right here in our
midst, where Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith have risen to leading positions
in the
Bush administration. Mr. Perle was forced to hand in his resignation to
Secretary Rumsfeld this week (conflicts of commercial interests), but
the
Secretary would also have done well to follow the advice of his friend
Jude
Wanniski. On October 9, 2001 Wanniski, founder of
Polyconomics, wrote a letter to Rumsfeld "re: The Monkeys on
your
Back" under the headline "Fire Paul Wolfowitz."
The letter is available on the Internet and deserves to be read in
toto. As we
now know from Bob Woodward's book the 9/11 tragedy was literally a gift
from
heaven for Perle, Wolfowitz and their friends. Wanniski concluded his
letter
with Wolfowitz "is a menace and one
of the most dangerous men in the world as long as you
[Rumsfeld] let
him play Defense Secretary. HE MUST BE FIRED [bold
print and
caps in original].
This is how our administration and the American people were
literally
"conned" into the Iraq war and Mr. Rumsfeld is likely to be
the "fall guy" when the war does not go according to plan. One can
also feel genuinely sorry for Mr. Carnegie and past-President Hoover
that parts
of their Foundations have been hijacked from their noble purpose of
achieving
peace through laws. Americans now have the
choice
which of these two visions they want to follow: the Kantian
system of
laws or the Hobbseian autocracy and perpetual war. Maybe the
choice
will be easier if we return to the origin of Leviathan.
I don't know why Hobbes chose that title but it is a reasonable guess
that as
the son of a Protestant minister he was steeped in the fire and
brimstone
rhetoric of the Old Testament. In the King
James
Version the name leviathan shows up four times.
Once
in Job, twice in Psalms, and once in Isaiah. Leviathan does not make an
appearance in the New Testament and that is why Catholics are largely
unaware
of the properties of this animal apart from the fact that it's supposed
to be
big and swim in the ocean. I shall leave Job for later because of the
extensive
description of this mythical beast. In Psalm 74:14 we
are
told, "Thou breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,
and gaveth him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." On
the
other hand in Psalm 104:26 he tends to be more
benign,
"There go the ships, there is that leviathan, whom
thou hast
made to play therein." But in Isaiah 27:1 we
are
confronted with evil again, "In that day the Lord
with
his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan
the
piercing serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that
is in the
sea." Admirers of the Old Testament like to believe that the Lord who
does
the slaying is Yahveh but the biblical authors simply
cribbed from an older Ugaritictext which
says,
"If thou smite Lotan, the serpent slant, Destroy the serpent tortuous, Shalyat
of the seven heads." In this instance the slayer was Baal and
although it may seem a stretch from Lotan to Leviathan the names become
easier
to reconcile when one recognizes a) that ancient Hebrew has no written
vowels
and b) that Leviathan is merely the English rendering of livyatan where
the lot
morphed into liv while the yat remained. But this is a minor point
except that
it emphasizes again: only the names change while phenomena and myths
remain
constant.
More important is the description of the
animalin Job 41 where the entire 34 verses are devoted to it
in
order to demonstrate the power of God over such a loathsome and
powerful beast.
The chapter is too long to be reproduced here but should be read in
toto by
those who believe in raw power as the solution to the world's ills.
Some
samples will have to suffice, "his scales are his pride
.
. . . out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out .
. . .
out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron .
. . .
his heart is as firm as stone . . . . when
he raiseth
himself up the mighty are afraid . . . . he esteemeth iron as
straw
and brass as rotten wood." Verses 33 and 34 are the punch line, "Upon
earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
He
beholdeth all high things; he is a king over all the children
of
pride."
Yes indeed and one is reminded of the last
sentence in
Perle's position paper for PM Netanyahu, "Israel - proud, wealthy,
solid
and strong - would be the basis of a truly new and peaceful Middle East.This was the vision which
was sold to
the Bush administration and they bought it. Now is the time
when the
rest of America is supposed to chime in.But
this vision
is born of fear and its adherents would be well advised to
remember
another passage from Job 3:25, "For the thing which I greatly
feared is come upon me."When, and I am not
saying if, theneocons' policies
begin to unravel
scapegoats will be sought and since a great many of
them are
Jewish, all Jews will be blamed. This is also part of Kant's
"evil residing in human nature."
This is your choice America: you can puff
yourself up
like leviathan, or you can recognize that pride is a sin and that
genuine
security results from cooperation rather than domination.
Nothing is
fore-ordained, the future still remains to be written; but those
who
place their faith in the leviathan's military might would do well to
remember
that he was always subject to the Lord,whose ways
are mysterious
and inscrutable. They should also remember
that if
there is only one God, as we have come to believe, it doesn't
matter by
what name different people refer to Him: Baal, Yahveh, Zeus, or Allah.
America is, however, not only a place on a map it is her citizens - you
and I -
and it is up to us to make this choice, each person individually. There
is a
story that when Thomas Jefferson left the Constitutional Convention a
passer-by asked him, "Mr. Jefferson; what kind of
government do we have? A Monarchy or a Republic?" Jefferson answered,
"A Republic, if you can keep it!"
Personally I feel that this should be our primary duty.
We
should re-establish the separation of powerbetween
the three branches of government and reject an
Imperial
Presidency or Imperial Supreme Court. We should demand
of
Congress to be genuinely responsible to "We the People,"
rather than special interest, and become transparent as well as
accountable to
the taxpayers. Senators and Congressmen, rather than their
secretaries,
should meet with their constituents and listen to their suggestions.
We should also demand a stop to the secrecy that surrounds
government,
in the name of national security, which has made us less secure than at
any
time in our history. Above all we should relinquish the failed
Israeli
Likud model of Might Makes Right. In this effort to reclaim
our
republic we also need the help of those of
our Jewish
citizens who reject the siren songs of their current spokesmen and
opt
for a saner, more just, world. Examples to follow might be the editor
of Tikkun,
Rabbi Lerner, whose central creed is
"Love
thy Neighbor," or those orthodox rabbis who started
a protest by burning the Israeli flag which currently
represents
oppression instead of freedom. Our Jewish citizens,
in order
to avoid the looming fate outlined above, should publicly
dissociate
themselves from their pride-, fear- and hate-mongers and thereby
destroy the false monolithic image of "the Jews."If
this were done we could have a genuine regime change right here at home
in
November 2004 and the world might become a better place to live in for
all of
us.
May 1, 2003
POWER POLITICS OR STATESMANSHIP?
While looting was still going on in "liberated"
Baghdad, and her citizens lingered without water and electricity, our
Pentagon
neoconservatives were already busy talking about the next
liberation.
We were told that Syria is now therepository
of a massive arsenal of WMD's which has in addition been
bolstered by
Saddam's cache. This is why we a) couldn't find them in Iraq and b) why
Syria
has to be eliminated. Iran, as another source of
chronic evil also
has to be dealt with immediately before the mullahs get the
bomb.
Little Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, has to be treated
diplomatically, rather
than militarily, because we assume he already has the potential to do
us
significant harm. It thus becomes obvious that we chose our evils
wisely. We
use our military against those states we can readily defeat but become
considerably
more cautious in our ambitions when the stakes are raised.
In the previous installment on "The Neocons' Leviathan"
I have detailed the reasons why the mentioned people think the way they
do and
how the fruits of their thoughts are carried out in actual practice.
The key
word was "Power" and by that these
thinkers mean only military power. The power of the
human
spirit eludes them and one is reminded of Stalin's
quip:
"How many divisions does the Pope have?" Stalin's successors
found out, and the legions of the Prophet
our neocons
are inadvertently recruiting are likely to be
increasingly
heard from. It'll just take time but that is precisely what
our
"policy makers" don't seem to have. This is not altogether
unreasonable because in a republic like ours there is always the
specter of an
election which might send a given group of oligarchs out to pasture in
order to
be replaced by another one. Nevertheless one idea seems
to be common
to Republicans and Democrats alike: America is at the
zenith
of her powerand this power must be preserved and
secured come
what may.A Pax Americana
will now be imposed upon the world and whoever doesn't like it
will be
made to feel the consequences.
Although I had read the literature which gave rise to last month's
article I
was still somewhat hesitant to believe that the course laid out by the
neoconservatives and their friends will indeed be followed. I was,
therefore,
genuinely puzzled when I read in The Salt Lake Tribune
a brief
note under the headline: "Poland. $3.5 billion deal
for
F-16 is biggest defense contract since Cold War." The short
blurb
stated in part,
"Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who attended the signing ceremony, said
the
package reflected 'our partnership with the United States in political
and
military areas, but also in the economy.' With its complexity and
scope, the
package underscored strong U.S.-Polish strategic ties, reinforced in
recent
months by Warsaw's help in the war in Iraq."
When I read this note I wondered "what is this all about?"
As a reward for sending a couple of hundred hapless young Poles into
battle in
Iraq the Polish people are now allowed to buy themselves with their tax
money
F-16 s? To put this bargain in perspective let us remember that already
in the
year 2000 (the last year for which I have readily available figures) Poland's
economy was in shambles with a per capita
income of
$6,500 and a trade deficit of $14.3 billion. Due to the world-wide
recession
since then the numbers can only have gotten worse and the current unemployment
rate stands at 18 per cent. Under those circumstances one is
surely
entitled to ask: What do the Poles need fighter jets for?
Against whom are they to be used, since their traditional enemies the
Russians
and the Germans are no longer a threat?
For the answer to that question I am again indebted
to my
brother who had sent me as an Easter present the German edition of a
book by
the French author Emmanuel Todd which was published
in 2002
and has already been translated into 11 languages. The original title
was Après
l'empire. Essai sur la décomposition du systéme
américaine, which
might be literally translated as: "After the empire. An essay
upon
the disintegration of the American system." The German
translation carried the title Weltmacht USA. Ein Nachruf,
which could
be rendered as "U.S. world power. An obituary." Well, it's obviously
too early to write an obituary but that isn't quite what the Frenchman
had said
anyway. Nevertheless, his thesis is so striking that amazon.com has so
far not
put an English translation on the market.
Todd says that America is no longer at the
zenith of
her power but has begun the downhill slide. Although her military
might is currently undisputed, her economic
strength has been eroded and she hides this
weakness
by throwing her military weight around in the world. America has become
a
debtor nation with a massive trade imbalance, and internal
deficit,
while Europe is recovering from the disasters of her
two civil
wars, WWI and WWII. Europeincluding
Russia as well as Japan, China and South Korea are net exporters of
goods while
America has been relegated to the role of consumer. This, in
the long run, is incompatiblewith
America's continued role as the world's only remaining
superpower.
Thus, a balance between the combined strength of Europe and Asia and
that of
the Americas is likely to evolve in the future.
Now the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and the emphasis
on military power by the neoconservatives
and their
allies all of a sudden makes perfect sense. If
one
sees America as the empire which is destined
to
enforce its values around the globeone must
do
everything in one's power to prevent other countries from
gaining the
possibility to challenge one's rule. This means that Europe
must not be allowed to unite but the "new Europe"
has to be set against the "old Europe." The
Euro, which has steadily been gaining strength and now trades
again,
after the dollar's brief rally during the Iraq campaign, about ten
percent
higher than the dollar, must be weakened. Poland's
entry into
the Euro zone is undesirable and the country has to be kept tied to the
dollar.
Petro-dollars will also have to become
greenbacks
again. Russia, practically a continent with immense
potential
natural resources, must be left in economic doldrums
and
chastised as being undemocratic. Every effort will also have to be made
to
create unrest in China because this colossus of more
than a
billion and a quarter intelligent people is bound to challenge, in the
long
run, America's hegemony over East Asia. This can only be avoided when,
under
the banner of "human rights violations," the Soviet Union's
fateis meted outto Chinaand
shesinks again into competing
fiefdomsof warlords. Divide et impera,
divide
and conquer, served the Romans well and the idea seems to be that what
worked
two thousand years ago will work just as well now.
Under these circumstances Poland being forced to buy herself
fighter
jets makes also perfect sense. The American
economy has to be stimulated and there isn't all that
much
manufactured paraphernalia we have to sell. Computers, cars
and other
technology one can buy cheaper from Asia but in military
hardware we
are unsurpassed. That is also the reasonwhy
Kagan, in his article which was mentioned last month, insisted
that Europe needs to re-arm. Why? I asked myself, when I read
it. Whom
are the Europeans supposed to shoot, kill, and bomb? Al Quaeda
terrorists, the
IRA, Basques? The answer is now obvious. It doesn't matter that the
Europeans
are sick of war, have no external enemies, and don't really need a new
arsenal.
What does matter is that they buy our lethal equipment and thereby not
only
stimulate our economy but also create fear, dissension and instability
around
the world.
There's only one problem where the new Rome and its Pax
differ fundamentallyfrom the old one.
Neither
Hannibal, Mithridates nor any of the other enemies of Rome had the
bomb!
It can no longer be de-invented and we have to live with it. This ought
to be a
sobering thought for would-be imperialists. Pakistan has the bomb and
its
"democracy" is unstable. China has the bomb and Russia's arsenal is
also still relatively intact. We have no monopoly on power
politics and
if we want to "pre-empt," sooner or later others are bound to do so
also. We will then indeed have an Armageddon of unheard of
proportions. But it is highly doubtful that at the end of it Jesus is
going to
arrive with his army of Saints and set up an enlightened despotism. Yet
this
seems to be precisely what some of our fellow citizens seem to have in
mind.
If America continues to pursue the political course
she has
embarked upon and continues to use the September 11 tragedy as
a mask
to hide imperial ambitions there cannot be even a semblance of peace in
this
world. The chimera of a messianic kingdom where one power
rules
eternally is a bedtime fantasy for children. It cannot come to pass on
this
earth because the laws of physics and motion are against it. Force
produces counter-force and the only constant is eternal change.
Statism has never existed and can never exist on this planet.
In previous installments on the "Deconstruction of America"
and "From Homo Sapiens to the Naked Ape" I have already documented
how far America has strayed from the path she had set out upon in 1945
at the
height of her glory. It was America who had proposed,
although subsequently not endorsed, the Kantian principle of a League
of Nations under Wilson, and its successor the United
Nations
under Roosevelt. Recently I re-read the Preamble of
its
Charter and there is hardly anything else that needs to be said in
order to
show how far we have departed. Here are just a few highlights to jog
our
collective memories,
"We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has
brought
untold sorrow to mankind, and
To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth
of the
human person, in the equal rights of men and women
and of
nations large and small, and
To establish conditions under which justice and respect for
the
obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law
can be maintained, and
To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom, and
for these ends
To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one
another as
good neighbors, and
To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
To insure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of
methods, that
armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest,
and
To employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and
social
advancement of all peoples, have resolved to combine our efforts to
accomplish
these aims [bold print added]."
Although the U.S. has not yet repudiated the UN and its
principles de
jure it has done so de facto.In
last
year's speech before that body our President made it quite
clear that the UN is relevant
only as
long as the member nations agree with and help carry out, our policies.
America's right to act independently of the UN
was
also enshrined in a document signed by President Bush on September
17,
2002 entitled "The National Security Strategy of the
United States of America." While the introductory letter pays
lip
service to international cooperation the document itself spells out
quite
clearly that we shall use international cooperation on our
terms only
and reserve the right to initiate military policies without regard to
international agreements when we feel that it is in our interest.
The same
applies to international treaties which deal with other global
matters
such as the environment or the International Criminal Court.
It is obvious that the UN has never lived up to its high principles but
no
human institution has ever been able to live up to lofty ideals. Power
politics
has prevented it and is likely to continue to do so. Nevertheless, to
abandon
the road of international law, as we seem to be in the process of
doing, can
only bode ill for the future. The UN, flaws and all, is still the only
representative organization where all countries big or small,
democratic or
authoritarian have a forum and their concerns can first be listened to
and
subsequently, hopefully, acted upon with the blessings of the majority
of that
body. We seem to be tempted to walk out on the UN because our
wishes
can be vetoed in the Security Council. But if we do
so we sign
its death warrant and the real WWIII (I
don't agree
with the Pentagon's assessment that the Cold War represented WWIII) becomes
inevitable. This is the reason why European scholars, like
Emmanuel
Todd, regard America as the most dangerous country in the world today.
No
longer able to dominate economically she has to do so militarily and
thereby
violate the established legal international order.
True statesmanship would require the insight
that no
empire is immortal and that the strength we
still
possess should be used to create, by peaceful means, conditions
around the world which take the wind out of the sails of would-be terrorists or "rogue states."
Our political moralizing, which divides the world
between the
good and the evil is not only hypocritical but harmful because it is bound
to backfire. We cannot live up to the image of goodness we are
trying
to project, for a variety of reasons. But one which is paramount in the
eyes of
the Arab world is ourunwillingness and/or
inability
to solve the Palestinian question. President Bush has
announced that
after the Iraq war he will not only unveil, but in concert with the EU,
Russia
and the UN, enforce his "road map for peace" in that
troubled region of the world. He may genuinely believe that he will be
able to
do this but the experience of his father in this respect should tell us
that
this outcome is far from assured.
Let us step back to spring and summer 1991. In a
spectacular
100 hours campaign the Iraqi army was routed from Kuwait and President
BushI enjoyed an unheard of
popularity
rating. This was not limited to the American public but
represented a
widespread feeling around the world. The invasion of another country
had been
stopped and UN values, which do not allow for annexations through
force, had
been upheld. President Bush then tried to translate this
military
success into a political one by bringing an end to the
Israeli-Palestinian war.
While Secretary of State, James Baker, worked
feverishly to bring Arabs and Israelis together for
theMadrid conference, the American Israel Public
Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) was working just as hard to
convince
Congress to give Israel a$10 billion loan guarantee
to help with the absorption of the new
immigrants from the Soviet Union. Inasmuch as this "loan
guarantee" - a polite word for donation - would likely have been used for
the creation and expansion of settlements in the occupied territories
the elder Bush balked. Arabs would obviously have been in no mood to
negotiate
when we are seen as blatantly favoring Israel at that critical
juncture. Bush
was not against the loan guarantees per se
but
he did want a postponement of 120 days. Inasmuch as AIPAC's
efforts
were, however, all but assured of success President Bush gave on
September 12,
1991 a special press conference where he went over
the heads
of Congress. J.J. Goldberg in his book Jewish
Power.
Inside the American Jewish Establishment relates what
happened. After Bush
had made his pitch for Congress to delay action on the bill
"he said, that he was 'up against some powerful political
forces'
bent on thwarting his will. Congress, in fact, appeared on the
verge
of approving the loan guarantees without him.
'I heard today there were something like a thousand lobbyists
on the
Hillworking the other side of the question,'
the
president barked, pounding his fist on the podium with an anger usually
reserved for foreign despots and congressional Democrats. 'We've got one
lonely little guy down here doing it.'
The 'political forces' confronting the president at
that moment
were about thirteen hundred leaders of local Jewish
organizations from
across the country."
Goldberg tells us that this was merely the culmination of AIPAC's four
months
long campaign and Bush saw himself threatened to have to use "the first
veto override of his presidency." Bushwon
that
battle. Support on the Hill dwindled but he was
made to pay a bitter price. The White House was
deluged with
angry letters and phone calls from irate Jewish citizens who
felt that
their right to petition Congress had been infringed upon and within
five days the
President had to write an apologetic letter to Ms. Shoshana
Cardin of
Baltimore who was at the head of "the powerful forces." The apology
was grudgingly acceptedbut the damage was
done and efforts
began immediately to deny President Bush his re-election,
which had
seemed all but assured. Goldberg writes,
"On November 5, 1991, seven weeks after Bush's
fateful
press conference, America went to the polls for an off-year
election
that should have held few surprises. The one interesting race was a
shoo-in contestin Pennsylvania, where a
U.S. Senate
seat had been opened up the previous spring by the accidental death of
John
Heinz, an attractive, moderate young Republican. The GOP's
candidate
was the popular ex-governor, RichardThornburgh,
another moderate and one of President Bush's closest allies.
.
. . His Democratic opponent was a little-known
college
professor, HarrisWofford, who had
once
served in the Kennedy administration. As of September 17,
Thornburgh
was forty-four points ahead in the polls."
Within one week after President Bush's press conference the
flow of
money began to reverse course in the Pennsylvania electoral campaign.
While on October 16 Thornburgh still had a two to one fund-raising lead
the situation
reversed itself completely in the final weeks before the election. "Donors
with Jewish surnames who had made up nearly 10 per cent of Thornburgh's
October
16 filing, were almost totally absent from his final report. .
.
.What had happened was that from
all across the country, outraged Jews(and some
passionately
pro-Israel Christians)were focusing their anger at
George
Bush on his friend Dick Thornburgh. The accidental beneficiary
was
Professor - soon to be Senator - Harris Wofford."
After his loss at the polls Thornburgh told
Bush
that he was the sacrificial canary Pennsylvania coal miners use to
check the
air in the mine shaft. Goldberg relates the conversation, “‘Mr.
President, I'm your canary. You've got a leak, and if you don't do
something
about it, it's going to get you too.’” Well we know what
happened
thereafter. President Bush dragged Prime Minister Shamir screaming and
kicking
to Madrid which later on led to the ill-fated "Oslo peace process,"
and by November 1992 Clinton was voted in as the next President
of the U.S. The official story line was that Bush had lied to the
American
people about not raising taxes, when he found himself pressed to
repudiate his
promise, and that the economy was in dire straits. While these were
some factors
they were not necessarily the determining ones. As the currently well
known James
Carville, who was then Wofford's campaign manager
and
who went on to be Clinton's thereafter, is quoted as saying "the
press conference did indeed 'hurt Thornburgh bad.' . . . It
hurt Republicans in Jewish fund- raising. And we started
raising a lot
more money.' "
When the 1992 votes were tallied Bush
had
received 12 percent of the Jewish vote, Perot 10 per
cent and Clinton
78 per cent. One may argue that Jewish voters favor Democrats
anyway
but in the 1988 election Bush had received 35 per cent
while
his opponent governor Dukakis, who even had a Jewish wife, was
relegated to 64
per cent. Obviously it is not the individual American Jewish voters who
swing
an election but the fund-raising efforts and the allegation of
anti-Semitism
against those who don't toe the line, can surely have an impact.
This little lesson of historymay not be
lost on
George W. The current $9 billion loan guarantee had smooth
sailing in
Congress but that does not make the "road map to peace" any
easier. Jewish voters are still, by and
large,
adamantly pro-Israel and so is one of the President's
core
constituencies the evangelical right. If President Bush
wants to avoid the fate of his father he cannot afford to
alienate
either of these two groups and "leaning on Israel" does not seem to
be a viable option. This is the political reality in America.
In Israel the situation is hardly different. Although
Israelis
are sick of war they want peace on their terms rather than a solution
which is
equitable for both sides. Prime Minister Sharon has recently said that
a
Palestinian state is inevitable, and that painful concessions will have
to be
made, but it seems apparent that these words are for public consumption
rather
than indicating a genuine change of heart within his party. The Likud
party programwww.jewishsf.com/bk990514/iparties.shtml
prior to the 1999
elections which swept Sharon into office stated,
"PEACE PROCESS
Likud rejects the creation of a Palestinian state west of the
Jordan
River. The party will honor all international agreements
signed by
previous governments. The party will work to strengthen
settlements and
prevent their dismantling.Jerusalem will remain the
united
capital. There will be no negotiations over the
city's future.
There will be increased Jewish settlements in all parts of
Jerusalem.
No diplomatic activities will take place in Orient House [Palestinian
Authority
headquarters in Jerusalem]. The Israeli police presence in
eastern
Jerusalem will grow."
This was the platform Sharon campaigned on and which led him to win two
elections. In spite of the fact that this party program is in
direct
violation of the UN charter and International Law it was adhered to.
Jewish settlements in the occupied areas, including east Jerusalem,
proceeded
at a rapid pace so that the Palestinians now have to live in
disconnected islands. They cannot readily go from one town or
village
to another without crossing specified checkpoints and the main
highways
in the West Bank, the so-called "bypass roads," are for Israelis
to travel on but off limits to Palestinians. The
difficulties
Bush's "road map for peace" is confronted with can be readily
appreciated when one looks at a genuine tourist road map
as
advertised in the Jerusalem Post. Characteristically the map
is called"Carta's Map of Judea, Samaria & the Gaza
Strip,” because Israel refuses to
acknowledge
the UN principle that acquisition of territory by military power is
illegal.
First the term "occupied territories" was abandoned in official
Israeli parlance, then the word "territories" also disappeared, and
now there is only "Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip!" It was hoped to
create facts on the ground which will make a meaningful contiguous
Palestinian
state for all practical purposes impossible. The Carta map, which shows
on its
title fold a nice shiny car traveling along a modern highway between
hills
dotted with trees and settlements, reveals the success of these
policies and
the resultant break-up of Palestinian lands. It is highly
regrettable
that this map is not shown by the American media, including television,
because
the American public is thereby kept in ignorance of the true facts
and
can readily be misled by skillful propaganda. Once the "road map to
peace" collapses, just like the Oslo peace process did, the blame will,
in
all likelihood, be placed again at the feet of the Palestinians for
their
stubborn refusal to appreciate Israeli generosity and for the
persistence in
their fight for liberation from occupation.
Our current President loves to think in terms of "good and
evil" but he might be well advised to remember what
happened
to Adam and Eve when they gorged themselves with “the
fruit of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil." They lost their
paradise
and since our president regards himself as a
"born again Christian" it might also be
useful for him to recall Satan's temptation of Jesus.
In the
wilderness Jesus was promised power over all the kingdoms of the world
if he
were to fall down and worship Satan. Our president now has this power
for a
fleeting moment of history. Will he give in to the seducers
around him who offer even more glory? Or will he say
"No, enough bloodshed! Henceforth we
go
the way of cooperation with others rather
than
that of domination?" That would be
statesmanship!
AlthoughMr. Bush is not likely to ever read
these
linesI do havea suggestion for him.
On one of his Sunday mornings at Camp David he might want to sit down
in the
woods with a copy of the New Testament and ponder Luke
11:24-26.
We know that he quoted the preceding verse 23, "He that is not with me
is
against me,” but the subsequent ones are of even greater personal
importance
for his soul. They contain the story of a man from whom an unclean
spirit had
gone out. After this particular demon had wandered around restlessly he
decided
that he might as well visit his former host again and found the house
"clean and garnished. The he goes and takes to him seven other spirits
more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the
last
state of that man is worse than the first. " I am not saying that our
president will resort to the solace of alcohol again, from which he
regards
himself as having been redeemed by Jesus; but I am saying that he finds
himself
now in dire danger of some so-called friends and advisers who will try
to use
him for their pet projects. History is not only made by social forces,
as Marx
claimed, but by people whom fate has thrown up into executive positions
with
vast powers over the rest of us and that is where Satan and his guile
becomes
relevant. The frequently cited words of Lord Acton "power
corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," ought
to be the warning to be heeded.
June 1, 2003
CHURCHILL AND HITLER
The topic of this installment was prompted by two
events
during this lull between military campaigns in our war on terrorism.
The first
one was that I had come across the recently released new edition of Sir
Charles
Wilson's war diaries Churchill at War 1940-45. The second was
a TV
miniseries Hitler The Rise of Evil, which was shown in the
middle of
last month. These coincidences made me wonder if there will be a future
Plutarch who will write an objective assessment of these "Parallel
Lives." It is not possible at this time because even if it
were
written it would not be published, and if it were published, it would
not be
reviewed and the book relegated to oblivion. The myths which have grown
up
around these two personalities must be preserved or the entire current
political world-view of that era, and its consequences, would collapse.
Yet it
is a fact that the fate of these two people was so intertwined that neither
would have become what he was without the other. In the
following
pages I shall give a skeleton outline how these parallel lives led the
one to
greatness and the other to ruin.
Sir Charles who wrote the above cited book was Churchill's
physician from June of 1940 until his death in 1965. He
accompanied
him on most, if not all, conference trips abroad and was elevated in
1943 to
"1st Baron Moran of Manton" for his services. As he
reports, this puzzled a young Russian interpreter no end on one of his
trips to
Moscow. "You are Lord Moran, and he is Mister Churchill?" was a
discrepancy this poor Soviet citizen could not fathom. The diaries
provide us,
however, not only with an intimate glimpse of Churchill
but
also of the other major leaders of the day, although remarkable enough
Hitler
hardly figures. The book ends with the diary entry of July 27, 1945 the
day
after Churchill had lost the election by a landslide to the Labor
government
and Attlee had become Prime Minister. Yet these are only the first 308
pages of
an 848 page book Churchill. Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran,
published in 1966, which I found at the Marriott Library of the
University of
Utah.
While Churchill at War reinforces the picture of the solitary
war time
hero who had stood up to evil against all odds, the complete book gives
a
considerably more rounded picture, and I shall rely on this publication
for the
subsequent analysis. It shows that Churchill's life basically fell into
three
major portions: up to May 1940 when he became Prime Minister at age 65;
the war
years until he was voted out of power; and the subsequent slow decay,
in spite
of re-election in 1951, until his death at age 91 in 1965. But even
within the
war, the height of his glory, there are clearly three phases. The first
from
May 1940 to December 1941 when America was drawn into the war, the
second ended
essentially with the Teheran conference, while the third lasted till
his
landslide defeat by the Labor Party in July 1945.
Immediately prior to WWIIChurchill
was out
of a job and had a very dubious reputation. He had switched
parties
twice and his political colleagues did not trust his judgment.
He was regarded as a flamboyant adventurer and the Gallipoli disaster
in 1915
which had cost 20,000 lives was laid at his feet. He was never allowed
to live
it down before WWII. Although he is regarded as a brilliant
orator
public speaking was not his natural forte. His speech was
halting, he
lisped and he dreaded major speeches, even during the
war.
Some of his most famous ones, which he gave in Parliament, were read
on
the BBC by an actor. His strength was thewritten
rather than spoken word and he carefully prepared his
speeches, filing
key phrases and, like Hitler, practiced them before a mirror. But
unlike Hitler
his speeches never aroused the passions of his colleagues in Parliament
and as
Moran wrote,
"Winston had no idea what was going on in their minds. He said a piece.
It
was a kind of one way traffic, he thought more of the sound of his
words than
their effect on his audience. It was rather a cold-blooded business, I
suppose,
the words picked so deliberately as in some fine balancing act, the
sentences
built up with cool deliberation in his own bedroom. The speech from
beginning
to end had been contrived beforehand, every word typed out, the very
pauses
marked in the script. Even his expression as he mouthed his carefully
polished
periods had been observed and studied before the looking glass."
Churchill's warnings about the danger Hitler
presented to the established order might have gone over better with
responsible
circles in government had he not used marked exaggerations,
which were patently false, andvindictive
language.
Some othersimilarities between Hitler's and
Churchill's opinions have already been presented in War
& Mayhem. These included: passionate love for war, a
disdain for
"colored people," the necessity for eugenic efforts, the
establishment of "labor colonies" for "tramps and
wastrels," so that they be "made to realize their duty to the
state." He bullied others and could reduce grown men to submit to his
will
by shouting matches. Humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties in
war did
not exist for him. He intended to float down mines in the Rhine river,
was in
favor of terror bombing of cities to demoralize the civilian
population, and in
1944 approved the manufacture of 500,000 bombs capable of delivering
poison gas
and anthrax to decimate the German population. But these projects were,
fortunately, never carried out.
These aspects of his character were known in Britain but are relegated
to
oblivion now. Had Churchill lost the war he would have been
tried and
convicted for war crimes. Moran, who obviously liked and
admired
Churchill, was nevertheless, puzzled by the internal contradictions of
what he
called on one occasion "this strange creature." He records a
characteristic exchange in a diary entry of August 12, 1956 between
himself and
Sir John Anderson (Viscount Waverley; former Lord President of the
Council and
in 1943 Chancellor of the Exchequer)
"Moran: "If Winston had died in 1939, before the war
what would history have said of him?"
John (becoming very serious): "he had been wrong about so many things:
India for example, and he was wrong on finance, and wrong on Gallipoli
. . . .
And he wasn't a very good Home Secretary. Then when he was in
opposition he was
isolated and Winston needs advisers, who will say to him; 'Winston you
are
making a fool out of yourself.' . . . . Left to himself, Winston's
judgment was
a menace. No, if he had died then he would have gone down as a
failure."
Moran: "What about the war?'
John: "Well, he had this wonderful gift for inspiring people.
He was, too, astonishingly fertile in ideas; some were hopeless, of
course, but
something came out of others. And he was, as you know, a
wonderful
mouthpiece of the nation. No, I agree he couldn't place
people, and he
was no good in administration unless somebody held his hand. But his
imagination was his most valuable gift. And there was something . . . "
(John hesitated for the word) ". . . something selfless about Winston;
if
an idea got hold of him he would follow it up with endless
enthusiasm
and energy, quite regardless of whether it would help him
personally."
These were the characteristics which made the British people accept
Churchill
as a leader during war but reject him as soon as the war was won. For
the
British, dictatorship was a necessary evil during war but not to be
perpetuated
in peace-time when other qualities were called for. Churchill's
re-election in
1951, in-spite of failing health, was essentially a reward for his
war-time
services and to assuage the guilt for having dismissed him at the
height of his
triumph. This had been a severe blow to him and exacerbated his
tendency to intermittent
life-long depressions which he called the "black dog
business." Although he was mentally no longer up to the job he stood
for
election because the need for power was in his blood
and he
just couldn't let go. This posed a dilemma for Moran, the physician.
Should he
have told him point blank? "Winston [they were good friends and on
first
name basis], stay in retirement, enjoy the world-wide accolades you are
receiving,
you are no longer the man you once were and another term as PM is not
the best
thing for the country." But Moran knew that out of office Churchill's
purpose in life would have vanished and the man would have sunk into
even
greater depressions than he was already experiencing. As a doctor who
considered his patient above all else he encouraged him to run for
office. A
series of minor strokes and a major one disabled Churchill to an extent
that
four years later he was forced to resign by his party.
In this connection Moran also commented on Roosevelt's
appearance at
Yalta, "The president looked old and thin and drawn; he had a
cape or shawl over his shoulders and appeared shrunken; he sat
looking
straight ahead with his mouth open, as if he were not taking things in.
Everyone was shocked by his appearance and gabbed about it afterwards."
On
another occasion Moran commented that "Winston became impatient with
the
President's apathy and indifference [at Yalta]. He did not seem to
realize that
Roosevelt was a very sick man." When one looks at the famous Yalta
photograph of the "Big Three" it is obvious thatRoosevelt was dying and I personally have a feeling
that he
had cancer because cerebro-vascular disease alone would not account for
this
obvious weight loss. But diagnosis aside, there is a more important
problem.
Roosevelt should not have been allowed to run for a fourth term in
1944. During
a time when momentous decisions had to be made the country required a
sound
mind at the helm and the only positive aspect that came from that
election was
the appointment of Truman as Vice President. Truman could not undo all
the harm
that had been done in Teheran and Yalta but at least he prevented
further
inroads by Stalin at Potsdam and thereafter. Thus, the question
remains for the physician who is in charge of
the
leader of a country, "where does your duty lie?" Should the
will of the patient, and his "court camarilla," override the good of
the country? I cannot answer it but in our age where the fate of the
world can
be decided by the push of a button the question needs to be
discussed
openly and guidelines issued.
As mentioned, Churchill saw the potential nightmare scenario
unfolding
after the Teheran conference and became deeply concerned about
not
only how his war for the honor and glory of England had turned out but
also the
ultimate fate of the world. He sincerely detested communism and said on
one
occasion in 1947 in a private conversation,” If ever it comes to the
triumph of
the Communists, I hope that some people will have the guts to resist. I
am
prepared to commit a crime" - he spoke more quickly and with emphasis -
"to throw a bomb among the most subversive people. I am not afraid of
death." Clemmie, the good wife knew how to handle him when he had
worked himself
up, just said," Have a little more brandy, Winston." In a 1954 speech
at Woodford he said, "Even before the war had ended, and while the
Germans
were surrendering by the thousands . . . I telegraphed to Lord
Montgomery
directing him to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack
them so
that they could easily be issued again to the German soldiers whom we
should
have to work with if the Soviet advance continued." The comment created
a
furor in the press; the mentioned telegram has never been found and may
never
have been sent. But it does represent Churchill's genuine feelings
about the
state of post-war affairs. As an aside I might mention that, as
reported in War&Mayhem,
we, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, would only have been too
happy to
join the Brits and Americans in order to send the Russians from Central
Europe
back to their own country.
"Poor England," Churchill kept repeating after the war
and especially after the existence of the atomic bomb had become known.
In 1946
he felt that a pre-emptive war against the Soviet Union should
be
launched within the next few months before Stalin got the bomb.
It is
also remarkable how his attitude to the German people changed after
they had
been thoroughly defeated and the Soviets were in charge. During the war
he had
routinely referred to the Germans, even in private conversations, as
"The
Hun" and had countersigned the Morgenthau plan, which would have
reduced
Germans to subsistence levels, but in 1954 he was all for rearming
Germany. "They
are fine fellows. That is the element which has been the strength of
England
for a thousand years; responsibility, constancy." When Moran asked him
in
the same year on another occasion, "what would happen to Germany if
there
was war between Russia and the United States?" "Poor lambs, they
would be over-run and our neutrality would not save us. I wanted
America to
have a show-down with the Soviet Republic before the Russians had the
bomb."
On the other hand when Stalin died and Malenkov took over,
Churchill
was eager to make peace. He repeatedly urged Eisenhower to
arrange for
a three man summit conferencebutran
into a
brick wall. Neither Ike nor Foster Dulles wanted to even
explore the
changed realities. Churchill had to resign himself to another failure.
Now only
the goal to leave the most admirable picture of his life for posterity
remained. "History will be kind to me, because I shall write it,"
he reportedly said. As Moran noted, Churchill became obsessed in the
last years
of life how the press wrote about him and became very upset over
negative
comments. Moran closed his diary entries in March 1960 with a cruise
they took
on Onassis' yacht to the Caribbean. The last five years were simply
slow,
progressive mental decay which needed not to be chronicled.
But as mentioned earlier Churchill's days of political glory
were actually limited to three of his 91 years,
between 1940 and 1943. From then on his, and England's,
influence was
permanently eclipsed by America. "Poor England," he kept muttering
but he also said that "I will not be the grave digger of the British
Empire." Nevertheless, when one views his decisions objectively, that
was
indeed his role. He saved England but lost the empire.
The
fact that he sensed it himself is attested to by a comment to Moran
when he
mumbled, "I ought not . . . I must not . . . be held to account . . .
for
all . . . that has gone wrong." The fate of the
empire,
which had been tottering even prior to the war, was sealed at
Teheran.
Since this conference was pivotal for the rest of the war and post-war
history,
although it has been largely ignored by the popular media, I shall now
present
the essence.
When Churchill made his defiant speeches in June and July of 1940, he
knew that
eventually America would come to the rescue, just as in WWI, and all he
had to
do was to hang on long enough for America to be able to do so. While he
still
had considerable influence on the conduct of the war up to 1943 it had
become
apparent to him by the time of the Teheran conference that the
center
of gravity had shifted and decisions were no longer
made in
London but Washington and Moscow. Churchill's personal
influence on
Roosevelt had also declined to an extent that the latter didn't even
want to
talk to him any more because their goals had diverged. Churchill had
fought the
war for the preservation of the British Empire while Roosevelt's goal
was
"free trade" throughout the world, and the abolition of all colonies,
regardless of whether they were British, French, Dutch or whatever. At
Teheran
Roosevelt side-lined Churchill and negotiated directly with Stalin.
Harry
Hopkins (FDR's most intimate advisor) told Moran at that time that in a
"heart-to-heart talk" the President,
"made it clear that he was anxious to relieve the pressure on the
Russian
front by invading France. Stalin expressed his gratification, and when
the
President went on to say that he hoped Malaya, Burma and other British
colonies
would soon 'be educated in the arts of self-government' the talk became
quite
intimate. The President felt encouraged by Stalin's grasp of the
democratic
issue at stake, but he warned him not to discuss India with the Prime
Minister.
Stalin's slit eyes do not miss much; he must have taken it all in.
As I listened to Harry, I felt the President's attitude will encourage
Stalin
to take a stiff line in the conference. But Harry is not worried.
Things are
going fine he said."
When one looks back nearly sixty years later one is appalled
what this
unfortunate conference and Roosevelt's plus Hopkins' naiveté
have brought us. Europe
was cut in half, for nearly fifty years; Africa became one vast
disaster zone
with tribal wars and accompanying famine; China became communist; Burma
is a
dictatorship, India and Pakistan are at each others throats over
Kashmir; and
the other South-east Asia countries Hopkins mentioned are fertile
spawning
grounds for Muslim extremists. Roosevelt thought that
he
would bring democracy to the world but in fact hebrought
us chaos. It is truly terrible to see that our current
government
seems to be pursuing a similar disastrous course.
But to return to Churchill. As Moran makes clear, up to the summer of
1943
Churchill still had a fair amount of influence on FDR. He persuaded
Roosevelt
to make the war in Europe the number 1 priority with the Pacific
theater the
secondary one. He also convinced Roosevelt, over General Marshall's
objections,
to postpone the invasion of France in 1942, which Stalin urged. Instead
the
North African and subsequently Italian campaign was pursued which had
only half
hearted support from Roosevelt and none from Stalin. After 1941Churchill's conductof the war was driven
by three major considerations. One was to get Rommel
out of
Africa and secure the Suez Canal; the other to drive through
Italy,
Trieste and Yugoslavia for Vienna, thereby saving the Balkans
for the
West; and in addition he was deathly afraid of a
repeat of the
trench warfare of WWI. The GermanWehrmacht
had to be bled white first in Russia, and
the
American infantry had to be steeled in battle against lesser forces before
the channel was to be crossed. But Roosevelt's
nightmare
was that Stalin would come to a separate
arrangement
with Hitler, if he saw that the West, whom he never trusted,
was
dragging its feet. If Stalin dropped out and Roosevelt was to be
confronted
with Japan as well as Germany the military equation would have looked
rather
differently. Since neither Roosevelt nor Churchill, in contrast to
Stalin and
Hitler, were dictators for life but had to worry about elections, this
concern
was very real. It is in this light Roosevelt's demand for
unconditional
surrender in Casablanca needs to be seen. It was meant
to
reassure Stalin that the West would not make a separate peace
but
would stay with him for the duration. All he had to do was to hang on
and he
would be rewarded thereafter. This is also the reason why FDR acted in
1943 at
Teheran the way he did. Stalin had mentioned to Churchill that the Red
Army was war-weary and it was, therefore, essential
to keep
them fighting not only with the firm promise of a
second front
in France by 1944, but also of post-war
rewards.
As far as Stalin was concerned, he admitted to
Churchill at
Teheran not only the mentioned "war-weariness" of the Red
Army but also that “Without America we should already have
lost the
war." To make sure that Roosevelt would stick to his
promises,
Stalin also pledged at Teheran that he would enter the war against
Japan as
soon as Germany was defeated. America was the key and this key
Hitler
had so badly misjudged.
Although the producers of the Hitler TV miniseries
had made a
concerted effort to minimize the cartoon picture of Hitler as a
boisterous
buffoon they could not resist it altogether because the Zeitgeist
demands it. Yet if Hitler had indeed behaved mainly in
the way as presented by Mr. Carlyle he would
hardly have impressed Lloyd George, the Duke of Windsor,
Halifax,
Mussolini, a variety of European monarchs as well as
other statesmen.
Even Stalin stood up for him. In the book Summit
at
Teheran by Keith Eubank one can find that in December 1941 Stalin
said to
Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary,
"Hitler had proved himself a man of
extraordinary
genius. He had succeeded in building up a ruined and divided
people
into a mighty world power, within an incredibly short space of time. He
had
succeeded in so regimenting the Germans that all elements were
completely
subservient to his will. 'But,' Stalin added he has one fatal defect.
He does
not know where to stop.' “When Eden smiled Stalin added that, 'I will
always
know where to stop.'"
But stopping a war is not as easy as starting one. Whenever Hitler did
want to
stop the war, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, there was
Churchill
who would not let him. Sumner Welles wrote in Seven Decisions
which Shaped
the World, "When Roosevelt commented that Hitler was
mentally
unstable, Stalin dissented - 'Only a very able man could accomplish
what Hitler
had done in solidifying the German people, whatever we thought
of the
methods.' “
But the myth makers have succeeded and Hitler
will
continue to be portrayed as evil incarnate, a madman, who wanted to
conquer the
world and kill all Jews. This picture must remain paramount
and any
genuine understanding of who the man was and what he really wanted to
accomplish is not allowed to be shown on TV screens. Yet this is the
main
source the vast majority of the American people rely upon for
historical information.
Although the mentioned mini-series was certainly politically correct
there were
two CBS affiliate stations in Texas which refused to show the film. Any
potential understanding of the man is to be feared and must not come to
pass.
Although historical accuracy was for the most part preserved the film
failed to
show, or at least emphasize, the reasons why Hindenburg had no choice
but to
appoint Hitler chancellor. Furthermore, while the April 1,
1933 boycott
of Jewish stores and professionals was shown, the fact that
this was a
response to the call for a boycott of all German goods by
America as demanded
by Jewish organizations in the United States and reported in the New
York Times was ignored. Thus the American public is
always fed
half-truths because what is left out is equally important as what is
reported.
I have absolutely no intention to defend Hitler's crimes
because they are indefensible, all I intend to do is
to correct
the most glaring misinterpretations of his intentions. First
he never
wanted to conquer the world. Had this been his goal he would
have
insisted on building a navy. But he was a man of the infantry, not a
sailor
like Churchill or Roosevelt. This is why he was quite willing to sign
the Naval
agreement with England in 1935 which limited the German fleet to a
third of the
British. The idea that he wanted to attack America is,
of
course, ludicrous. He didn't even have the
navy to
successfully launch a cross-channel invasion of England and
that is
why he abstained from the effort. Furthermore, if he had any such
ambitions he
would not have left the French their fleet as part of the 1940
armistice.
Churchill on the other hand genuinely misunderstood Hitler and shot
some of the
French battle ships to pieces at Oran, causing considerable casualties
among
the French sailors.
Hitler's foreign policy goals were limited to Central and
Eastern
Europe. He didn't even want the colonies back. These demands
were
simply a bargaining chip. But the other clauses of the Versailles
treaty had to
be undone. All the German speaking people had to be united in one Reich
which
also included not only the 1919 Austria, but that of the 1914 monarchy
with
Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Poland. Poland would have to cede, in
addition,
the corridor she acquired in Versailles which separated East Prussia
from
Germany proper. Furthermore, if feasible, the USSR would be smashed in
order to
gain its phenomenal natural resources. "Blut
und
Boden," blood and soil, was the slogan. As
Hitler also put it "the German plow will follow where the
German
sword has conquered." That was the plan from which he never
deviated. To put it into operation he had to re-arm but the thrust was
to the
East rather than the West. Churchill on the other hand insisted, in
contrast to
Prime Minister Baldwin for instance, that Hitler was a
military menace for the West which was simply not true.
For his plans to succeed Hitler also
needed
allies. France and Russia did not enter into consideration,
because of
historic enmity against the first and Bolshevism in the second. But Italy
and England he thought would qualify, which was the first
serious miscalculation. As an Austrian he should have known
that
Italians, even under Mussolini, are not necessarily natural allies and
their
talents lie in areas other than military prowess. The idea of England
as an
ally was dictated by his racial notions and the precariousness of the
British
Empire. He admired the British for their ability to control nearly a
third of
the world population and since the empire kept the non-whites in check
he was
all for it. He did not necessarily want to attack France either because
there
was nothing to colonize there. But he knew that England and France
might not
approve of his "New Order" in Europe and that is why he built the West
Wall-Siegfried line. Defense in the West, offense in the
East was
the plan.
But there was Churchill who nixed it.
Although in opposition, rather than the government at the outbreak of
the war,
he had sufficiently agitated against the appeasers that Chamberlain was
honor
bound to declare war when Hitler invaded Poland. Germany's occupation
of Denmark and Norway was due to Churchill's plans to deny Hitler
Sweden's ironore which was shipped through Narvik
and was
a genuine pre-emptive strike. The invasion of Yugoslavia and
Greece was
forced upon him also by Churchilland
the
military inaptitude of the Italians who had gotten bogged down
in the
north of Greece, while the British landed in the south. An exposed
flank
immediately before the Russian campaign could not be tolerated. The North
African front was also forced upon him by the
weakness of the
Italian army which had to be bailed out. In spite of the fact,
that
Mussolini had become a liability instead of an asset Hitler continued
to show
him loyalty throughout all his subsequent misfortunes.
Why were Churchill and some others in the
West so
adamantly opposed to come to an understanding with
Hitler?
The propaganda machine had already painted himas
such
an ogre that any lasting political, rather than
military
solution, would have been out of the question, and it was the
treatment
of the Jews in Germany which provided grist for the
mill.
Soon after the Anschluss I found in my father's library a
book Hitler
in der Karrikatur der Welt. It showed how Hitler
had been
portrayed in the German and foreign press between February 1924 and
spring
1933. When I first saw these cartoons I was flabbergasted: How could a
book
like this which contains genuinely vicious diatribes
be
published in Germany? I wondered. But as the title page also displayed
it was,
"vom Fuehrer genehmigt" (approved by the Fuehrer)
and the publication date was May 1938. The infamous cartoons
in the Stuermer,
which were equally vindictive, differed only in the person of
the villain;
Jews in the one, Hitler and the SA in the other. The
caricatures
showed Hitler either as an incompetent ninny who wouldn't last; a tool
of
bankers, the army, or monarchists; a vicious tyrant or bloodthirsty
menace who
would unleash a disastrous war. In the summer of 1938 we knew that the
first
aspects were clearly wrong but that a war was only a little over a year
away
nobody would have believed. After the war I looked for the book but it
had been
gotten rid of by my parents before the Red Army arrived. I was,
therefore, very
glad to find another copy in a second-hand bookstore in Vienna later
on,
because it is an important document which resides now in my library.
The point
is that we have here a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As mentioned, Hitler did indeed want war but
a limited
one rather than a world-war. Churchill on
the other
hand could not win a war against Germany after
June
1940 and the rest of the world had to be recruited.
Germany's mal-treatment of Jews was the ideal
pretext.
"See what this monstrous tyrant is doing?" was used to mobilize the
world against Hitler. Did Hitler intend to kill all the Jews
all along,
as has been alleged?No, he wanted them to
emigrate
and didn't care where to. I have already mentioned some of these
aspects in War&Mayhem
but they are so important that a brief outline is essential here. What
needs to
be clearly understood, and what is not taken into account now, is that for
Hitler Jews were not a religion, but a nation. This
nation
within the German nation had, in his opinion, usurped rights which it
was not
entitled to by being successful in all aspects of public life.
This success,
which denied Germans rightful positions within their own country, had
to be curtailed. This was the purpose of the Nuremberg
laws
and why there were also contacts with Zionist organizations.
Initially Hitler had no objections to send large numbers of German Jews
to
Palestine, but the British were adverse because of Arab hostility. During
the war he wanted to cultivate Arab friendship against the
British and
thought that Madagascar, for instance, might
have
served as a German "mandate." The European Jews, who were to be
shipped there, would have had complete sovereignty in all internal
aspects but
no standing army or independent foreign policy. This seems to be the
model
Sharon envisions now for the Palestinian state. The Madagascar
plan fell apart because neither the finances nor the
transports were
available. Furthermore, the British were unwilling to cooperate. This
is what
led to the Holocaust. With the Polish and
subsequently Russian
campaign Hitler had acquired a large number of Jews in the East. As a
separate
nation Jews were even officially "enemy aliens." A few days prior to
Hitler's invasion of Poland Chaim Weizman, as
spokesman for
International Zionism, had pledged full support to the British cause in
a letter
to Chamberlain. It was published under the headline"Jews
to fight for Democracies"in The
Times
of London on September 6, 1939. As enemy aliens Jews were
segregated
first in ghettoes then in concentration camps. With America in the war,
steadily mounting losses on the Eastern front and increasing
civilian casualties due to the relentless bombing
campaign,
revenge took overin Hitler's mind. When
valuable
German blood was being spilled, those who were really responsible for
the world
wide extension of the war, the Jews who had agitated for it, should not
escape
their just punishment. They needed to bleed also. Since he could not
get at the
American and British Jews who had agitated against him he would take
his ire
out on those who were in his power within Europe. In this way
the
cartoons had become grim reality.
Let me now return to Churchill and how he was really seen
by his contemporaries. The following is a series of statements
from
Moran's book. They are valuable in this context because anybody who has
read
authentic biographies of Hitler cannot fail to be impressed by
similarities
between these two politicians. Prior to 1939 Churchill was regarded "a
brilliant failure." Then came June 1940 when he demonstrated an "indomitable
will to conquer" "Never, Never give in,"
became the obsession. There was a demonic element in
him and
an extraordinary concentration on one purpose - victory. He had an
extraordinary sense of mission and said, "This cannot
be
accident, it must be design I was kept for this job." He was pugnacious
and seemed to frighten people. But it was also
theatrics "I can be very fierce when I like," he said. He governed
as a dictator, wanted people to listen to him rather than
argue with
him. He didn't want criticism, but reassurance. General Marshall said,
"some of his projects were positively dangerous had they been carried
out." Moran also mentioned that Churchill was "ignorant of
human behavior. Where people are concerned he lives
in an
imaginary world of his own making." He was largely
self-educated and virtually stopped reading when he went into
politics. He was regarded as a soldier of fortune with the
mind of an
artist. His planning was all wishing and guessing. War
was his
hobby. Moran also called him, "that improbable man. A genius
trampling down like a bull elephant everything that got in his way." Attlee
felt that he was, "Fifty percent genius, fifty percent bloody fool."
How did Churchill see himself? As Joan of Arc!
June 1940 was the month when the two parallel lives permanently
intersected.
With the fall of France Hitler stood at the height of his glory.
England might
well have made peace with him. As Sir Charles Portal,
Chief
Air Minister during the war commented later, "They say there was no
danger
that we should have made peace with Hitler. I am not
so sure. Without
Winston we might have." After June 1940 Hitler went down to
defeat and ignominy, while Churchill's star rose to mythical heights.
What was
a will for power by each one of the antagonists became an epic struggle
of good
versus evil by the myth-makers. But morality in politics is an
oxymoron.
It is a superb propaganda tool yet has never
had a
place in the real world. What these two lives should
really
teach us is that when hate is met by hate death, destruction, and chaos
are the
outcome.
We have been told that Churchill is President
Bush's
role model and that he ever so often contemplates the bust
which sits
in his office. What was June 1940 for the one is September 11 for the
other. He
would, however, be well advised to look at Churchill's entire life and
how
contemporaries, who knew the man rather than the myth, really saw him. Will
Bush also have to mutter some years from now, "I ought not . . . I must
not . . . be held to account . . . for all . . . that has gone wrong."?
July 1, 2003
PRESIDENT BUSH'S CHOICE
Our President has told us that the major military
operations
in Iraq are over. He has not mentioned the long haul, and the
inevitable finger
pointing especially since Saddam's feared WMD's have so far eluded
detection.
Some, who don't particularly like George W, even raised the question
from the
Nixon era, "What did the president know and when did he know
it?" It behooves us, therefore, to inquire how America got
into
this foreign policy conundrum she finds herself in today.
Every physician knows that there is no one single
cause for a given disease or symptom only a confluence of
adverse
circumstances which bring the patient to the doctor. The same applies
to
politics. It is true that the ultimate order to invade Iraq was given
by the
President but it is equally true that it was not his will alone that
led him
into this fateful decision. When one investigates a great variety of
available
sources it becomes apparent that there were three major
factions
at work which exploited the 9/11 tragedy for their pet projects. These
were the
Neocons, the Oil Industry and President Bush himself. As
mentioned in "The
Neocons' Leviathan" this group of people thought that the difficult
situation the state of Israel finds itself
in isequally applicable to the United Statesand
Israel'smethods to deal with the Palestinians should now be used in an
overall
war against world-wide terror. This would supposedly lead to
the
security not only of Israel but the world at large. Needless to say this
is a fantasy. Every cough is not tuberculosis or lung cancer
and every
national liberation movement is not automatically a danger to the rest
of the world.
This type of thinking mistakes the method for the purpose and can lead
to
nothing but tragedies. Under those circumstances our war on terror can
never
end because aggrieved, obsessed individuals, who have no compunction
about
creating havoc will always exist. This war is just as
unwinnable as the
war on poverty. "The poor you will always have with you,"
Jesus said nearly two thousand years ago and he was right; Lyndon
Johnson's
"Great Society" not withstanding. The civilian Pentagon group who
ordered the military, and State Department, around has succeeded in
alienating
us from the rest of the world and although the troops performed
brilliantly in
Iraq we are now stuck with the not so brilliant aftermath.
It is no secret that if Saddam had merely sat on sand without oil
underneath,
he could have tortured his people all he wanted, as some dictators do
in
Africa, and our policy makers would not have gotten particularly
excited. But the
world, not just America, runs on oil and it
is
regarded as intolerable that some miscreants can control some of the
spigots.
Even if America were not dependent on Middle East oil the rest of the
world is
and if the global economy were to fall into a 1930's type depression
America
could not escape from it either. So the idea was thatsincewe can't trustthis "madman,"
Saddam has to be gotten rid of and we will take over the flow
of oil
for the benefit of the rest of the world. That Vice President Cheney's
as well
as President Bush's friends are standing to make a hefty buck in the
process is
just icing on the cake.
All that might, however, not have been enough if someone else but Bush
had sat
in the Oval Office. For him it was personal. Saddam had to go. The son
had to
finish what the father had supposedly left undone twelve years earlier.
In
addition Saddam "had tried to kill my daddy." Whether or not that
piece of intelligence was true, or belonged into the realm of the
babies who
were thrown out of their incubators when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, no
one knows.
But the truth is irrelevant because people act on their beliefs and the
dictum
is: don't confuse me with facts! For Bush his mission in life
was
clear, "crush Saddam." In this obsession, because that is
what it was, and that is why the WMDs were merely a convenient pretext,
he
followed the model of his hero Sir Winston to whom I devoted the June
installment. Up to September 1939 Churchill had been
floundering but when he became Prime Minister he defined his mission, "I
have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much
simplified thereby." Getting rid of Hitler was a worthy
enterprise but by what means and at what cost? Churchill's stated
method was,
"to set Europe ablaze." When Churchill said in November of 1942 "I
have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the
liquidation of the British Empire," he had no idea
that
this would be precisely the outcome of his policies. Hitler
knew it,
Stalin knew it, Roosevelt knew it but poor Churchill didn't. He was
obsessed
with Hitler and nothing else mattered until Teheran in 1943 and
especially
Yalta in 1945 when he got an inkling of what he had wrought.
This brings me to the title of this installment. It was no accident,
because in
my readings I had also come across a book by Churchill
published in
1937 entitled Great Contemporaries.
One does
not find Stalin there but Adolf earned a short chapter,
"Hitler
and his Choice." It is worth while reading, as is all the
literature written by foreigners and published in non-German countries
prior to
September 1939. The post-WWII literature tends to be dominated by the
Jewish
tragedy and, therefore, presents only a partial picture of pre-war
Germany.
Churchill starts his chapter with
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has
attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life work as
a whole
is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong
deeds,
history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by
employing
stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when
their life
is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives
have
enriched mankind. So may it be with Hitler.
Such a final view is not vouchsafed to us today [an asterisk states
"written in 1935"]. We cannot tell whether
Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world
another war
in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go
down in
history as the man who restored honour and peace to the great Germanic
nation
and brought it back serene, helpful and strong, to the forefront of the
European family circle. It is on this mystery of the future that
history will
pronounce. It is enough to say that both possibilities are open at the
present
moment If, because the story is unfinished, because,
indeed,
its most fateful chapters have yet to be written, we are
forced to
dwell upon the darker side of his work and creed, we must never forget
nor
cease to hope for the bright alternative."
Apart from the flowery rhetoric we must keep in mind that the year was
1935
when he made the following allegations,
"It was not till1935 that the
full terror of this revelation [that Hitler had begun to
re-arm
Germany] broke upon the careless and imprudent world,
and Hitler
casting aside concealment, sprang forward armed to the teeth,
with his
munition factories roaring night and day, his aeroplane squadrons
forming in
ceaseless succession, his submarine crews exercising in the Baltic, and
his
armed hosts tramping from one end of the broad Reich to the other.
That is where we are today, and the achievement by which the tables
have been
completely turned upon the complacent, feckless and purblind victors
deserves
to be reckoned a prodigy in the history of the world, and a prodigy
which is
inseparable from the personal exertions and life-thrust of a single
man."
This review of the past is important, because this is
precisely how history is made. We can take the
statements
printed above as those of a o prophetic visionaryor
as self-fulfilling prophecies. By this I mean that Churchill
would do his level best to prevent "the bright alternative" from
coming to pass. For Churchill the problem with Hitler was just
as
personal as Saddam was for Bush. Let us, therefore look in
more detail
at the facts as they existed in 1935.
If
Churchill had read Mein Kampf, which would
have been
his duty as a statesman who wants to understand the other side, he
would have
known that the abolition of the Versailles treaty was
the number
one priority in Hitler's program. Not only did Germany's pre
1914
borders have to be reconstituted but all German speaking people in
Central Europe
had to be incorporated in the new Reich. Furthermore, Hitler
was quite
explicit that he did not expect this to result from the good
will of
other countries. It was bound to involve armed struggle
for
which the nation had to be fully prepared. But the thrust,
as
he repeatedly emphasized, was to the East where Lebensraum
was to be found. All he wanted from the West was to be left
alone in
the pursuit of this goal. These plans were no secrets,
they were known to anybody who wanted to know since 1925.
The statement that by 1935, or even 1937, the tables
had been turned on the victors by the military might of Germany was
false.
The Franco-British-Czech- Polish alliance, even leaving aside
the
Soviet Union, was far superior to anything Hitler could put into the
field as
late as 1939. As far as the roaring munitions
factories
are concerned Hitler had at the beginning of the Poland
campaign
munitions for no more than about a month. Even in May of 1940
only
about 15 per cent of German industry was specifically devoted for arms
procurement. Hitler did not plan for a long war! The "exercising
submarines" consisted of a total of57
in September 1939 and in 1940 only 22 were operational in the North
Atlantic.
While propagandists and politicians keep, on the one hand, exaggerating
Hitler's early military might they keep repeating on the other hand the
idea
fostered by Churchill that he was the lone voice in the wilderness
whose pleas
were ignored while "England slept." When one reads Clive Ponting, for
instance, it becomes obvious that England did not sleep during
Hitler's
arms build-up. The British government had made a decision to
gear its
level of armaments to the likelihood of a major war within the next ten
years.
This policy was adopted in 1919 and extended to another ten years in
1929. But in
1933 when Hitler took power in Germany the pace was increased
and Britain
was made ready for war within six years i.e. April 1939. There
was
good reason for this type of thinking. Timing was essential.
If the country was fully mobilized too early the equipment would become
obsolete and in the other case one would be unprepared. As it turned
out the
Brits guessed right.
But this was, of course, not just a lucky guess it was based on solid
knowledge. The basic fact was that Hitler
had to start
from scratch in 1933 because Germany had been forcibly and
completely
disarmed as a result of Versailles. The French, the Italians, the
Czech, and
others not only refused to cut their post 1919 forces but kept building
more
and more modern arms. This was the imbalance Hitler was confronted
with. In
1933 he had an army of 100,000 men. There was no heavy
artillery, not a
single tank and no plane. It was clearly impossible to defend
the
country, or to gain the respect of the world, and enforce legitimate
demands
with this type of an army. In addition, the heavy industry to
build new
arms was not yet available either. Although the Reichswehr
had bypassed some of the Versailles restrictions by training pilots and
tank crews
in the Soviet Union even prior to 1933 nobody, not even
Hitler, could
create a modern army, within two years, of the proportions Churchill
talked
about. It was pure propaganda to scare the British public.
What the fear of weapons of mass destructions is
today was
long range bombers in the nineteen thirties. It was actually
Hermann Göring
who had proposed the idea of "Shock
and
Awe," because he believed that the war of the future would be
won
within hours or days by overwhelming air power. This was one of his
typical
bragging, blustering statements which was proven wrong. So was the one
that he
would build such air defenses that no enemy bomber could ever penetrate
German
skies, and in 1942 that he could supply the encircled troops in
Stalingrad by
air. To Westerners he kept bragging in the thirties about the strength
of his Luftwaffe,
which did not correspond to the facts but was, of course, grist for the
propaganda mills on both sides of the channel.
Churchill began to spread the fear in the House of Commons as
early as
1934 when he announced that the Luftwaffe
would be able to threaten London with massive bombing within 18 months.
This
would have put it into the fall of 1935! The serious buildup
of the Luftwaffe did not start until spring 1935and
there was a shortage of everything, planes, equipment
to make them, and most of all trained pilots which
led to
marked accident rates early on. In July of 1934 Churchill
declared that
by 1936 the superiority of the Luftwaffe
planes would be such that Britain would never be able to make up this
lead.
On November 28 of that year he
stated that by
1937 the Luftwaffe size would be double that of the RAF.
This was nonsense. Although the RAF was numerically somewhat
inferior
in planes to the Luftwaffe in August
of 1940,
it had more and better trained pilots. In addition German
fighters
could stay over southeastern England for only about twenty five
minutes. The
RAF on the other hand was fighting over home territory and could,
therefore,
recover the pilots who had to bail out as well as repair damaged
aircraft, an
option which was not available to the Germans. Furthermore, the Luftwaffe,
in contrast to the RAF, was designed primarily to support the troops on
the
ground rather than for long-range bombing of cities. As such
it was inadequate
for the task when the decision was made to bomb London, rather
than
continue with the destruction of airfields, during the Blitz. Hitler
was goaded into this mistake by Churchill who had started bombing
Berlin.
I am mentioning all of this because the real history of WWII
and its
antecedents are being supplanted by myths, and myths rather than facts
are the
staple of politicians and media hacks who control our fate.
How many
of us still remember the "missile gap" between the Soviet Union and
the U.S. with which Kennedy squeezed out a narrow victory over Nixon in
1968?
It was non-existent; but who wants to be reminded? This brings us right
back to
Saddam and his WMDs which in all probability fall into the same genre
of
misinformation for ulterior motives.
So where do we stand today and what is Bush's choice?
Although Churchill stated that Hitler had a choice in 1935 this was
only
partially true. Hitler had made too many powerful enemies abroad which
would
not let him execute his program, even at the cost of a world war. In
addition
his vindictive and ultimately self-destructive character stood in the
way.
These aspects do not apply to President Bush. Nevertheless, after the
Iraq
invasion he has to make a choice in regard to his future
foreign policy. He can take the easy way out let
things slide
and basically run for re-election on his successes.
When the
road map collapses, as it inevitably will, the Palestinians can be
blamed
because I sincerely doubt that no further attacks on Israelis are going
to take
place even within the proposed three months truce. This will let Bush
off the
hook and he can wash his hands of the affair to the applause of his
main, but
narrow, constituency. If by September2004
either the economy is still in trouble, orsome
other
unforeseen disaster occurs he can, egged on
by Karl
Rove and the neocons, initiate another "pre-emptive war"
to assure electoral victory. I do not believe that the President lied
to us
about Saddam's WMDs. He was honestly misled by people whom he should
not have
trusted. It was a mistake and a mistake can be forgiven but persisting
in
mistakes can not.
The other choice is considerably more difficult and would
require
strength of character Bush may or may not have. He
would have
to put thoughts of re-election totally out
of his mind
and look objectively at the situation the U.S. finds itself in
vis á
vis the world as a result of his two and a half years in office.
The required
course of action would then become apparent.
He would
come to realize that a small high tech army can win against a
third
world type military force but is insufficient to secure the peace.
This
is why the Chief of the German General Staff, von Seeckt, had argued in
1933
not only for a small professional army which could quickly conquer
enemy
territory, but an additional militia which subsequently performs the
occupation
duties. He was overruled by Hitler who was enamored with vast numbers.
Nevertheless, the concept was correct and this is now Bush's
and the
Pentagon's dilemma in Iraq. The neocons insisted that America
can go
it alone when it comes to winning wars. But now when our troops are
facing a
guerilla type war they want others to help out. All of our high
tech
weaponry is useless for an occupation which the locals want to get rid
of. This
should have been the lesson of Israel's experience on the West Bank and
Gaza
but nobody, including our president, wants to admit to this.
If Max
Boot's article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs is
correct that
we have only 10 full time active duty divisions in the army and the
rest of
manpower, apart from the Marines and the other services, has to be made
up by
the National Guard and reservists, our "pre-emptive" wars can never
be successful in the true sense of the word. We can devastate
countries
but we can not occupy them and turn them into democracies. The required
manpower is not available. Reservists and National Guard unit
members
have civilian jobs and will not be enamored to act as "peace keepers"
for extended tours of duty. Army enlistments are also likely to fall
off when
the goal of the soldier is clearly defined as: to wage war! This means
"to
smash things and kill people," rather than a cheap way to get a college
education and "be all that you can." Under these circumstances the
draft may look mighty appealing to policy makers although the Vietnam
experience would strongly argue against it. Americans are not
militaristic by
nature and to turn out the necessary legions in order to change regimes
on a
world wide basis will not be to their liking. This is where
the analogy
to Rome breaks down and the inherent weakness of our superpower status
is
exposed.
Keeping the foregoing in mind Bush would have to repudiate the
neocons'
idea of the "Hobbesian anarchic world" which requires perpetual
wholesale regime changes. He would have to pledge to
workwithin the framework of the UN to defuse, by diplomatic means,
the
looming genuine threats to international security. He would
have to separate
the war against terror from local wars of liberation and, most
importantly, tone down this constant
belligerent
rhetoric which threatens everybody who does not share our views.
The
war against international terrorist networks is, as has always been
maintained
in these pages, a job for international police and intelligence work,
and our
military cannot be expected to win this type of war. It's not the job
they are
trained for. This international police effort requires,
however, good will from the rest of the world and if
we keep
treating other countries in the way we have during this past year, they
may
simply say: If you want to do things your way go ahead, we can't stop
you, but
don't expect us to bail you out when you're in trouble. President Bush
would
also have to come to realize that International Law exists and
just as
no person can be above the law, no country should be either.
A
Nuremberg type court which hangs the defeated but ignores the crimes of
the
victors will not do in the long run. Instead of harping on our
standing as the only superpower, which enforces its will upon the rest
of the
world, we should be satisfied with the status of primus inter
pares.
Finally there is the "road map" to which the
president supposedly has committed himself but his heart isn't in it.
He was
dragged into it by Tony Blair to get the Iraq "coalition" going. There
is no evidence that Bush truly understands the plight of the
Palestinians and
unless he begins to do so no peace is achievable in the Holy Land.
A
disjointed Palestinian state which retains major Israeli settlements
and cedes
large portions of the Jordan valley to Israel will never be acceptable
to the
locals. At best such a Versailles type "peace treaty" will be an
armistice. The only genuine peace would require steps which have
repeatedly
been mentioned in previous installments on this site. They include the
creation
of a contiguous Palestinian state with full sovereignty over the West
Bank and
Gaza, direct access through Palestinian rather than Israeli territory,
and
complete evacuation of all Israeli settlements which have been built on
Palestinian land since 1967. Nothing else has a genuine chance for
peace. Last
year Bush chided the UN for not enforcing its
resolutions
against Iraq. Now he would have to take Sharon to task for ignoring the
numerous UN resolutions against Israel. Neither Sharon nor
any other
Israeli government will ever voluntarily agree to the steps outlined
above in
order to secure genuine peace for Israel. Bush would have to
go before
the nation, tell the American people the unvarnished truth about what
really
goes on every day in the occupied territories of Palestine and then
announce
that unless and until Israel fully conforms to the existing UN
resolutions no
further American tax money will be forthcoming. Americans
are
a fair minded people and when the facts are presented to them
truthfully they will respond and support him
in this
effort, certain special interest groups notwithstanding.
This
would show the world that the president is a man of
his word.
American prestige would be restored and international
cooperation would
blossom again.
Time is running out, another election is around the corner and the
president must make a decision, which is actually quite
straightforward: continue on the present course for the sake
of not
alienating his main constituency or put principle above electioneering.
We are told that he already has more money for the election than all
the other
Democratic candidates combined and if he were to show himself a
statesman by
taking at least some of the steps outlined above his personal
popularity, which
has remained high, may well let him overcome the hostile criticism
which is
bound to arise.
Mister President: Although I am going to fax this
article to
the White House I have no illusions that your staff will allow you to
read it.
Nevertheless, I must remind you that you have been told"The
truth will make you free!" Try it, it'll work for you
personally
and the good of the world. On the other hand you can follow
the dictum
of Winston Churchill who said that, "In wartime, truth
is
so precious that she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of
lies."
Under those circumstances you will allow the country to be
inundated in
the next year and a half with a continued flood of exaggerations, if
not
outright lies, geared to create fear in the hearts of
Americans and
the world. This in turn will in the long
run pave the
way to a general and much more devastating war.Das habe
ich nicht
gewollt, I did not want that; the Kaiser said when he saw what his
1914
policies had contributed to. Neither had Hitler wanted a world war in
1939 but
that is what he got. One does not unleash the dogs of war
without
running the risk of getting severely bitten oneself, is the
main
lesson history provides. Therefore, the overriding question of our time
is: Are
you and your advisors willing to learn this simple truth?
August 1, 2003
THE NIGER FORGERY
In all civilized societies forgery is a
crime,
and when committed by a private person leads to jail sentences of
varying
durations. Afficionados of mystery stories also know that crimes
are
solved by considering three factors: Motive, Means,
and
Opportunity. When it was reported that the attempted sale of
uranium
from Niger to Iraq, which found its way in a shortened version into the
President's State of the Union speech, was a forgery, the question
immediately
arose in my mind: who had done the forging? Remarkably enough the
question has,
to the best of my knowledge, never been raised in our country by the
media.
The motive for the forgery is obvious. Iraq
had to be
presented as an imminent threatto the world.
A
nuclear armed Saddam Hussein was regarded as intolerable and it would
have been
the obligation of the "only remaining superpower" to remove his
regime. The U.S. had, therefore, to be sent to war against Iraq. Now
comes the
next question who had an overriding interest in the fall of
Baghdad?
There were three potential candidates. One was the Iraqi
exile group under Ahmed Chalabi, the other the
neoconservative
civilian group in the Pentagon, who believed that American
security
was so intimately tied to Israel that the latter country had to be
protected by
any and all means, and the third was the state of Israel itself.
Israel is, since 1948, still officially at war with Iraq. Peace
treaties have
been signed with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon but not with Syria and Iraq.
Although Israel and Iraq do not share a common border there was fear
that
Saddam might put his enmity against Assad of Syria aside and their
combined
armies would indeed represent a considerable threat to Israel. Iraq's
military
power had to be eliminated and what better way than letting others, and
especially the US, do it? So much for motive.
Means required a facility which is used to turning out
fake
documents and that leaves mainly the various secret service agencies of
the
world. When one considers motive it is unlikely that the French, the
British,
Germans, Russians etc. would have forged those documents. It is also
unlikely
that the CIA would have done so, unless it was a rogue operation. The most
likely candidate seemed to be theMossad,
Israel's counterpart to the CIA. Having reached that conclusion, which
so far
has not yet even been hinted at by the media and since my information
about the
Mossad did not exceed that of the average educated citizen my interest
was
piqued to learn more about that organization.
The first stop is, of course, always on the Internet and when typing
Mossad
into Google up came prominently, "FAS Intelligence Resource
Program." It was graced by the picture of a spy, the Israeli
flag, and a menorah surrounded by Hebrew characters. The headline
was, "Mossad. The Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks
[ha-Mossad le-Modiin ule-Tafkidim Meyuhadim]." Since the
second
page of this short document lists only Israeli sources I regarded it as
authoritative. It states that the agency was established by Prime
Minister
Ben-Gurion in 1951 who gave its primary directive as, "For our state
which
since its creation has been under siege by its enemies. Intelligence
constitutes the first line of defence... we must learn well how to
recognize
what is going on around us." We are told furthermore that Mossad
has eight departments. These are: Collections
Department
responsible for "espionage under diplomatic as well as unofficial
cover;" Political Action and Liaison Department which
conducts "political activities and liaison with friendly foreign
intelligence services and with nations with which Israel does not have
normal
diplomatic relations; Special Operations Division -
Metsada -
"conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary, and
psychological warfare projects;" LAP (Lohama Psichologit)
Department"is responsible for psychological warfare,
propaganda and deception operations." In addition there are
the Research
Department responsible for intelligence production and the Technology
Department. The
latter
is "responsible for development of advanced technologies for support of
Mossad operations."
Of greatest interest in the current context was LAP with its
psychological
warfare, propaganda and deception operations. The vigorous
propaganda
campaign against Iraq, before and especially after September
11, fits
perfectly with LAP's duties. Some of us may remember that our
Defense
Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, intended to have a similar unit at his
disposal in
the Pentagon but it was shot down by Congress. On the other hand that
does not
necessarily mean that the project was totally abandoned since the
American
people, supposedly for their security, must not know what is being done
in
their name.
Armed with this information I then went to amazon.com and two books
came up
prominently. One wasIsrael's Secret Warsby Ian Black and Benny Morris, the other Gideon's
Spies
by Gordon Thomas. Since it is bad scientific practice to rely on only
one
source I ordered both books. These led me to the book by Victor
Ostrovsky, a former
Mossad case officer and whistle blower, ByWay
of Deception. The subsequent information is culled from
these
three sources and for anyone interested I can cite page numbers.
The Black and Morris book is an extensive treatise of 528 pages and an
abundance
of notes as well as source references which will be read mainly by
seriously
minded scholars. The one by Thomas will appeal to the general public.
It is
shorter and based on firsthand interviews with the movers and shakers
in Israel
and to some extent the US. Ostrovsky gave his personal story why a
convinced
Zionist who had joined the Mossad in good faith was turned off by its
practices
and left the organization. Although all three books cover much of the
same
material they are definitely worth reading if one really wants to get
an
appreciation of what is going on inside the Mossad and how its
operations have
impacted on the United States.
The Motto of the Mossad is, "By way of
deception
thou shalt do war." As mentioned, Israel is indeed still at
war
at least with Syria, and with the other neighbors there exists only,
what might
be called, a "cold peace." Internally there is in addition the war
against the Palestinians in the occupied territories which is
officially
labeled as a war against terrorism. As mentioned previously in these
pages for
Israel there are no occupied territories only Judea, Samaria and Gaza
which
constitute part of Eretz Israel promised by God to Jews. It
has been
said that "all is fair in love and war," or as Black and Morris put
it, "A la guerre, comme á la guerre." Thus lies,
murders,
"false flag" operations, are the stock in trade and the only crime is
being caught. The essence is: what is good for Israel is good
for the
Mossad. As Ostrovsky wrote whenever something happened anywhere the
only question was, "'Is it good for Jews, or not?'
Forget about policies or anything else. That was the only thing that
counted.
And depending on the answer, people were called anti-Semites, whether
deservedly or not." Since what is good for Jews, or
more
specifically the policies of the state of Israel, is not
necessarily
good for America, conflicts have arisen and will
continue
arise.
The Pollard spy operation, which was called by Black
and
Morris, "a gold mine," is just one example. It was
good for Israel to get secret American documents but, according to
Thomas, it
was bad for the CIA which found its operations destroyed in South
Africa and
the Soviet Union when Israel turned some of the material over to these
countries. Thomas also wrote, "One note taker at the Sunday cabinet
meeting in Jerusalem claimed that 'listening to Admony [Mossad director
1982-1990] was the next best thing to sitting in the Oval Office. We
not only
knew what was the very latest thinking in Washington on all matters of
concern
to us, but we had sufficient time to respond before making a decision."
Even if this "note taker" had exaggerated the fact remains that a
serious breach of security had occurred. There was also wide-spread
concern that
Pollard had received some of his orders, which demanded specific
documents that
were not in his ordinary purview, through some other highly placed
source in
the White House.
This brings up another unique feature, which is
specific for
the Mossad. The paid staff of case officers, field
agents, and
informers is rather small because it can
rely on a
large number of sayanim - helpers.
These are Jews who come from all walks of life and for whom
the
survival of Israel is of prime concern. When they are
approached by an
agent who paints an imminent threat to their spiritual home in the
darkest
colors they are only too willing to lend their hand in providing
information as
well as, on occasion, tangible material. For instance the theft of
about one
hundred pounds of uranium from the nuclear facility Numec in Apollo,
Pennsylvania, to get the Israeli nuclear program started. The motives
of the sayanim
are beyond reproach. They believe that by helping Israel they help
making the
world a better place. Unfortunately that is a delusion. But this is the
reason
why the American Jewish community was so upset when the Pollard case
broke
because it brought inevitably the question of dual loyalty to the fore.
Wolf
Blitzer, the respected journalist and TV commentator, discusses this
aspect to
some extent in Territory of Lies.
While the Pollard affair is widely known in this country, events during
the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon in 1982and thebackground
of the Iran-Contra scandal have not receivedmuch
media
coverage. Lebanon is important in the
present context
becauseourcurrent Iraq
dilemma was
precipitated by the same misuse of intelligence and wishful thinking as
Israel's disaster in Lebanon.
Here is
a brief summary of the underlying rationale
for the invasion. Palestinian guerillas regularly shot rockets into
Galilee
from the south of Lebanon and also made hit and run attacks on Israeli
citizens. Since there was a civil war in Lebanon at the time, Prime
Minister
Begin and Defense Minister Sharon decided on an invasion of Lebanon.
The ultimate
goal was to destroy Muslim power as well as the PLO in that country and
establish a friendly Christian Maronite government in Beirut which was
expected
to make peace with Israel.
There were two invasion plans, "Little Pines," a forty kilometer
incursion
of the Israeli army to eliminate Palestinian strongholds on the border.
This
was for public consumption and favored by segments of the IDF (Israeli
Defense
Forces). "Big Pines," an advance to the north of Beirut and cutting
the Beirut-Damascus highway was Sharon's and Begin's plan. When Sharon
was
asked how long the army would have to stay in Lebanon
"to
assure the emergence of a new Phalange dominated regime? Sharon
thought
six weeks. Saguy [IDF intelligence chief]
was less
optimistic and believed it would take no less than three months."
As it turned out eighteen years had to pass before the last
Israeli
soldier came home from Lebanon. The withdrawal was ordered by
then
Prime Minister Ehud Barak to end the guerilla war against his troops
and Hizballah
has now taken over the PLO's job to harass the Israelis.
The Lebanon invasion was Israel's Vietnam and it was not based merely
on faulty
information provided by the Intelligence community but on wishful
thinking of
the politicians. Although the Christians were initially glad to be rid
of the
PLO, they soon became disenchanted. They were after all Lebanese and
their
desires did not necessarily coincide with those of Israel. In addition
the
Israelis soon found themselves involved with very unhappy Shiites who
still
provide cover for Hizballah. This seems to be exactly the scenario
which played
itself out prior to our invasion of Iraq and how long we will have to
stay
there fighting a smoldering insurrection only the future can tell.
But the Lebanon invasion also showed the split between Israeli
and
American interests. Israel wanted peace with Lebanon
so that
it could concentrate on eliminating the threat to the settlers in the
occupied
territories, which it intended to retain. President
Reagan,
on the other hand, wanted a global peace arrangement which
included an
Israeli withdrawal from them Although this would have been in
the long
term interest of Israel as well as America it was anathema to Begin and
led to
the disastrous truck bombing of the Beirut Headquarter of the
Marines'
Expeditionary Force in 1983, causing the loss of 241 American
lives.
Mossad has excellent spy services and can infiltrate any organization
it wants.
Israelis are multiethnic, speak several languages and can blend with
the population
of any country without undue fear of sticking out. It was
known to the
Mossad that a Syrian sponsored group had planned a major suicide attack
with a
blue Mercedes truck. Since they did not know its final
destination
they were shadowing it. The question was how
much to
tell the Americans about it. A decision was made
at
the highest level that the Americans should be given only, as
Ostrovsky
wrote, "the general warning, a vague notice that someone may
be
planning an operation against them. But this was so general
and
commonplace,it was like sending a weather report;
unlikely to
raise any particular alarm or prompt increased security precautions.
Admony,
in refusing to give the Americans specific information on the truck,
said 'No we're
not here to protect the Americans, They are a big country.
Send only
the regular information.' At the same time, however, all Israeli
installations
were given the specific details and warned to watch out for a truck
matching
the description of the Mercedes." The purpose was obvious: American
public
opinion had to be inflamed against Arabs.
This failure to share vital information with one's
benefactor
and most important ally played itself out also in the Beirut
hostage
crisis. Among the group of Western hostages was the CIA
Station Chief,
William Buckley, and the US was desperately trying to get him back.
Although
Prime Minister Peres assured President Reagan of his full cooperation
the
Mossad played by its own rules. No specifics were provided and
the
Americans were led down the garden path. As Ostrovsky wrote,
"Many people in the office said the Mossad were going to regret it
someday. But the majority were happy. The attitude was, 'Hey, we showed
them.
We're not going to be kicked around by the Americans. We are the
Mossad. We are
the best.'"
Had the Mossad indeed cooperated fully
the Iran-Contra
affair might have been avoided. While the US was supplying
weapons to
Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war the Israelis were busy shipping some of
our
weapons to Iran. The logic was impeccable. The longer the war lasted
the more
exhausted the combatants became and the better it was for Israel. On
July 29,
1986, with the hostage crisis still unresolved, then Vice-President
Bush met
secretly with Prime Minister Peres' Chief Security advisor, Amiram Nir,
at the
King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Ostrovsky wrote, "Nir told Bush the
Israelis 'activated the channel. We gave a front to the operation,
provided a
physical base, provided aircraft.'" Bush was also told, in contrast to
President Reagan's later assertions, that the Israelis were dealing
"'with
the most radical elements [in Iran because] we have learned they can
deliver
and the moderates can't.'" When the Iran-Contra affair became known
Congress started hearings. Nir, who was the most important witness, had
promised to give full testimony which would have severely hurt the
American as
well as Israeli government. This was not allowed to come to pass and he
supposedly died in an unexplained Cessna crash in the wilderness of
Mexico.
Ostrovsky speculated that he may have been bought off, had plastic
surgery to
alter his facial features, and lived happily for ever after.
This brings us to the present and the Niger forgery.
Michael
Isikoff and Evan Thomas reported in the July 28, 2003 edition of Newsweek
that
it may have started with a break-in at the Niger embassy in
Rome on
January 2, 2001. There was nothing significant stolen,
"but someone had apparently rifled through embassy papers, leaving them
strewn about the floor." Some months later the Italian
intelligence service received a stack of official looking documents
from an
African diplomat. They were signed by officials of the Niger government
and
purported to show that Saddam Hussein wanted to buy some 500 tons of
pure uranium
which can be used for making atomic weapons. The Italians
notified the British and the CIA. As it turned out the
documents, which consisted of letters dated from July to
October 2000,
were crude forgeries. They were known as such
at least
a year and a half before the famous 16 word sentence was uttered by the
President. Now the blame is being shifted to the British and
most
recently the French but who fed it to them in the first place? It was
probably
the Mossad, which is known for its "False
Flag" operations and had the most to gain. For Bush the
information, regardless of its provenance and veracity, was icing on
the cake
in his determination to go to war. But why would the Mossad
engage in
such a clumsy fabrication when it surely has the means to do a
better
job?
For the answer to that question we have to turn to the previously
mentioned
highly traveled and respected reporter Gordon Thomas
of Gideon's
Spies. In my search for the truth I had found some minor
discrepancies
between his book and that of Black and Morris. Since he does have a
website,
Globe-Intel, I contacted him and found him most forthcoming. My first
letter
was immediately answered and so were the subsequent ones. I am,
therefore,
happy to publicly express my thanks because such cooperation is far
from
commonplace. He told me that the Niger documents came from the
Mossad
and were fed to MI6 (British intelligence) via Rome and when they
received them
"The documents were originally taken as 'the kind of stuff you would
expect with sloppy Third World people.'" In this way the
Mossad
could cover its tracks and as we know the operation achieved its
purpose.
Unfortunately there is more and we are not likely to
hear the
truth from official channels. There is good reason to believe
that the
Mossad had some fore-knowledge about the impending 9/11 attack, but
failed to
share all its information with the CIA and FBI analogous to the Beirut
truck
bombing and the Buckley capture. A radicalization of the
American
public against Arabs and the Muslim world in general is obviously good
for
Israel but is it good for America? Congress is not likely to get the
full truth
because the White House stonewalls and the documents which are handed
over are
in part censored.
There is, however, another reason, apart from
elections where
the Jewish vote is regarded as vital, why the role of the
Mossad must
remain unmentioned. I believe that we are heavily
dependent on
"The Institute," as it is also referred to, in the current Iraq war,
which is far from over. Only Israelis can readily mingle with
Arabs,
pose as Iraqis and get information which is not necessarily available
to the
CIA, or military intelligence in the field, because our guys simply
lack the
necessary language skills. Even if they were to know Arabic
they would
not be able to communicate in the local patois and would
become
sitting ducks. This does not apply to Israelis but
since they
are interested first and last in Israel, as they should be, we
may not
necessarily be able to trust the information we receive. This is the
bind into
which our troops have been placed but it is not likely to be debated
publicly.
When one reads the mentioned books one feels
that one
is staring into an abyss. Regardless of motives, the
means are
reprehensible and violate all strictures of human decency. In
essence we
are paying for government supported Mafia operations. The fact
that
it is not only the Mossad which behaves in this manner but
to
some extent all the so called "Intelligence" services of the world
makes the situation even more grim. This is also another
example of
the misuse of language. What the spies provide is not intelligence but
information. The difference is vital because it would require
intelligent
people to evaluate this mass of data. But intelligence which is not
biased by
wishful thinking is a difficult commodity for anyone, let alone
politicians and
their supporters in the media.
As mentioned the full truth of the antecedents to 9/11, from
which all
else flowed, is currently being hidden. But "We the
People" and especially the families of the victims have a right to know
what really happened. Congress should not tolerate
stonewalling by the administration and if key
documents are
not forthcoming they should hold the responsible people, even
if it were
the President, in contempt. Continued secrecy and
cover-ups do
not serve the American people. Deception, whether
willful or
inadvertent, needs to be shunned. When mistakes are
made they
have to be publicly admitted to, common decency demands it. But regardless
of who was behind 9/11, the Niger forgery, and the Iraq invasion the
major fact
that has emerged is that trust in our government and the media has been
eroded.
We no longer know whom we can trust and that is the death knell for a
free
society. Without trust we will create a police state and we
will end up
not much different from the regimes we are so eager to topple. That is
the
tragedy of today's events and this is why people of good will need to
speak
out.
The true revelations will have to come from the inside of the
"secret services," including our own. This why I shall give
Victor Ostrovsky the penultimate word. He was there,
got
disgusted and tells us why. In the Foreword he wrote,
"It
is out of love for Israel as a free and just country that I am laying
my life
on the line by so doing, facing up to those who took it upon themselves
to turn
the Zionist dream into the present-day nightmare." In the Epilogue one
finds,
"The Intifada and resultant breakdown of moral order and
humanity
are a direct result of the kind of megalomania that characterizes the
operation
of the Mossad. That's where it all begins. This feeling that you can do
anything you want to whomever you want for as long as you want because
you have
the power. . . . It's a diseasethatbegan with theMossad andhas
spread
through government and down through much of Israeli society.
There are
large elements inside Israeli society who are protesting this slide,
but their
voices are not being heard. And with each step down, it gets easier to
repeat
and more difficult to stop.
The strongest curse inside the Mossad that one katsa [case officer] can
throw
at another is the simple wish: 'May I read about you in the paper.'
It might be the only way to turn things around."
Although these words were published in 1990 the passage of time has
made them
only truer. Now the disease has spread to our government.
Unless
we face up to it we will go the way of the Israeli state: disliked
around the
world and embroiled in perpetual warfare with concomitant deceptions.
This is
not what the founders of our republic had in mind.
September 1, 2003
FOR THE GOYIM THEY SING
The topic to be discussed here is so emotionally
charged
that it needs to be read in sequence lest wrong opinions are formed. I
shall,
therefore, refrain from using bold print, which would lend itself to
quotes
taken out of context. About two months ago I came across a book by
Haddon
Klingberg Jr., Professor of Psychology at North Park University,
entitled When
Life Calls Out To Us. The Love and Lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl.
The Story behind Man's Search for Meaning.
As discussed in War&Mayhem Dr. Frankl, whose lectures on
neurology
at the Poliklinik I attended in 1948, became a role model not only for
my
professional life but also in the personal sphere. What impressed me
most at
the time was not only his exemplary teaching style but that as a Jewish
survivor of concentration camps the man exuded only profound humanism
without
any trace of hate or resentment. Klingberg's book was, therefore, of
great
interest and I can strongly recommend it to anyone interested in
Frankl's
lifework.
I had always been puzzled why Frankl had not achieved greater
recognition by
leading Jewish authorities. Wiesenthal is known by everybody but
Frankl's name
does not have the same resonance among average persons. As an example
of
discrimination against Frankl I might mention that he was clearly
entitled to
the Chairmanship of Vienna's renowned Neuro-Psychiatric University
Hospital
when the position became vacant in 1949. It went instead to another
Jewish
neurologist, Hans Hoff, who had spent the war years first in Palestine
and then
New York. More about Hoff can be found in War&Mayhem.
After reading
Klingberg's book the reasons for the difference in the treatment meted
out to
Wiesenthal or Hoff versus Frankl became apparent.
Although not stated in these words, Frankl had committed four cardinal
sins in
the eyes of the Jewish establishment. One was that he refused to hate
the Nazis
for what they had personally done to him and his family. Rather than
looking
backward at past suffering he looked instead forward to the new
challenges life
had in store. The second sin was that he spoke out against collective
guilt,
even in 1945, and advocated reconciliation rather than en bloc
condemnation of entire groups of people, which he regarded as Nazism in
reverse. Individuals who had committed crimes should be punished but
the global
condemnation of "the Germans" or even "the Nazis," was not
appropriate. His was the voice of the physician who examines individual
people
and tries to find their positive characteristics which can help them to
overcome their negative ones and thus lead to more appropriate behavior
patterns. This stance is, of course, anathema to politicians and media
people
who want to first create and then sway "public opinion." The third
sin was that his psychotherapeutic treatment method of "Existential
Analysis," also referred to as "Logotherapy," (website: http://logotherapy.univie.ac.at)
was seen as serious competition for Freudian psychoanalysis, which
essentially
reduced the human being to a sex driven organism. Frankl saw the soul
and its
yearning for meaning in life. This is why he called his first book, the
manuscript of which was destroyed in Auschwitz, Aerztliche
Seelsorge.
The title, which is most appropriate in German, defies a succinct
translation
and the English title The Doctor and the Soul does not
capture its
essence. It could be rendered as: how the physician can provide care
for a
patient's soul. In German the word Seelsorge is regarded as
the domain
of priests and ministers but Frankl broke through this barrier. He said
essentially: Yes, priests should do their job, but physicians also have
a role
to play when they are confronted with patients whose problem is
basically a
spiritual one. WhileFreud, the materialist, had
derided
religion as an illusion, Frankl saw, felt, and acted on the human
being's
spiritual essence. This simply did not sit well in our "secular
society." The fourth sin was that, although Frankl had never renounced
his
Jewish faith, he had married, in a civil ceremony, a Catholic woman.
For Gentile readers these aspects may all be "so what," but for some
influential segments in the Jewish community they are indeed pretty
near
traitorous. For these sons of Jacob (I deliberately do not call them
sons of
Isaac because Esau, Isaac's first born, has a decidedly bad name in
Jewish
religious circles) there still exists a tribal mentality of a
beleaguered
"us versus them." This brings me to the title of this essay. Frankl was
fond of jokes and one of his favorite ones, as quoted from Klingberg's
book
was, "An old Jewish man who had emigrated to Berlin is walking in the
famous park there. Then a bird appeared overhead lets its droppings go
and they
land right on the old man's hat. He takes off his hat, looks at it, and
says,
'For the goyim they are singing.' "
Obviously one laughs at the joke but as Freud told us jokes can have
deeper
meaning and in this instance it reveals a basically paranoid attitude
bred by a
history which emphasizes intermittent persecutions in some parts of the
world
rather than periods of relative well-being. Gentiles, or goyim, as
non-Jews are
referred to in private Jewish conversation with a connotation that is
somewhat
akin to the "n word," will never understand the deep trauma some Jews
labor under. When Gentiles either ignore it, or are trying to make up
for past
sins, they tend to merely perpetuate a mind-set which is inherently
unhealthy.
This is one facet of Jewish life which deserves be recognized and
openly
discussed.
Paranoid type of thinking exemplified by - because we have been
persecuted in
the past we are ordained to be persecuted in the future until the
Messiah
arrives - can be compensated for by a feeling of superiority over
others. This
combination of mental attitudes is a major contributing factor to the
hostility
Jews have encountered intermittently throughout history. To understand
this
very delicate, difficult, but terribly important subject I'd like to
discuss
first my professional experience with paranoid patients. Paranoia does,
in
general, not start out with ideas of persecution but with an experience
which
the individual regards as extremely important and which the rest of the
world
should share. When others who fail to appreciate that need, either
ignore or
ridicule the person, the sense of "I am right and the rest of the world
is
wrong" is born. When the person then not simply retires into his own
fantasy land but actively endeavors to recruit others into his belief
system he
will encounter resistance and at that point active retaliation by
society,
which does not want to conform to the wishes of the individual, will
occur.
This is the typical sequence when paranoia is limited to one person.
The family
steps in, the patient will be taken to a psychiatrist and a treatment
course
will be instituted. A problem for society at large arises if this
particular
person is "charismatic," intelligent, intact in all other mental
functions and can rally others into his personal belief system. Under
those
circumstances events are set in motion which have incalculable
consequences.
The group then feeds on myths of superiority, which are denied by the
rest of
society. The resultant ill will by society has two consequences. One is
the
increased cohesion of the in-group in face of actual or perceived
danger and
the otheractive and at times violent hostility by
the larger
overall society. In this way antisemitism was born and this is why it
is so
difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate.
These thoughts are not purely academic at present, but have very
practical
consequences which affect the lives of all of us. The state of Israel
was
created as a reaction to European antisemitism. It was Herzl's, and
like-minded
others', belief that when the Jews leave Europe and build a prosperous
state in
Palestine, antisemitism would lose its raison d'être
and all the world
would then be happy and grateful for the benefits Jews are providing to
the
world. The fatal flaw (both literally as well as figuratively) in this
assumption
was the non-recognition of the existence of an indigenous population in
Palestine. The slogan under which Zionist colonizers flocked to
Palestine in
the late 19th and especially early 20th century was "A land
without people for people without a land." This is a classic example of
how a wrong assumption has to lead to wrong results. People did live
there.
They were in the vast majority Arabs and they acted exactly in the
manner
Sultan Abd ul-Hamid II predicted. When Herzl wanted to acquire
Palestine for
the Jews with the promise of providing financial help to the ailing
Ottoman
empire the Sultan replied, through a mutual friend, "If Mister Herzl is
indeed such a good friend of yours, as you are mine, then advise him
not to
take even one more step in this matter. I cannot sell a single foot of
my land,
because it doesn't belong to me, but to my people. My people havefought
for this empire with their blood and have fertilized it with their
blood. We
shall have to cover it again with our blood before one tears it away
from us .
. . The Jews should save themselves their billions [Milliarden]. If my
empire
is parceled out, they might get Palestine for free. Only our cadaver
can be
partitioned. I do not agree to vivisection [Herzl Tagebuch
entry of
June 19, 1896. Translation is mine]." One can only wonder about how
much
past as well as future misery might have been avoided had Herzl been
able to
take this advice to heart and had indeed abandoned his project.
History's wars
are not foreordained but result from wrong assumptions and the Zionist
dream,
which is turning into a nightmare for all of us, is just one of them.
But Herzl was obsessed, and he as well as his followers, could not and
still
cannot, abandon the quest for Eretz Yisrael, which
encompasses for
some at minimum the current state plus the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
The
maximalists dream of the restoration of King David's borders, which are
actually quite nebulous if one asks historians. The failure of American
administrations to recognize this quest, which can bring only further
bloodshed, has led us into the current impasse in the Middle East.
Under the
slogan that we have to fight terrorism and secure the survival of "the
only democracy in the Middle East," America has been led into the war
with
Iraq and if Likud supporters, both here and in Israel, had their way we
would
also eliminate Syria and Iran as potential threats to Israel. Let me
emphasize
that the threat to Israel was not the only reason for our invasion of
Iraq but,
to deny that it was a contributing factor would also be inaccurate.
Now we come to the problem: How can a small nation of six million
people, of
whom about one million Arabs are partially disenfranchised even within
the pre
1967 borders, prosper in the face of ever growing hostility? To answer
this
question we have to look at how Jewish intellectuals think about
themselves and
what methods are employed to gain support from inside and outside their
own
community. As far as self appreciation is concerned I would now like to
quote
from a few Jewish sources. One is a recent letter I received from the
Simon
Wiesenthal Center which starts out,
"Dear Friend,
I'm writing you today with news about a frightening trend that is
sweeping
across the European continent.
Since October of 2000, the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada II,
the Simon
Wiesenthal Center has been tracking with growing alarm, a dramatic rise
in hate
rhetoric and hate crimes targeted toward Europe's Jewish population . .
. . The
situation has grown so serious that Simon Wiesenthal, now 95, told me
that
'there is more antisemitism today than we experienced in the 1930's.'"
The
message is that Jews not only in Israel but also in Europe are in
serious and
growing danger and must rally to the meet the threat. Financial support
for the
Wiesenthal Center was requested; as if the problem could be solved with
money.
To highlight the threat to Israeli Jews the tax-exempt organization
FLAME
(Facts and Logic About the Middle East), which advertises in a number
of newspapers
and magazines, argues vigorously against the creation of a Palestinian
state.
It is claimed that the state would never remain demilitarized, continue
to
threaten Israel's very existence, and eventually lead to a nuclear
holocaust.
One of the "facts" cited in support of this thesis is that a
Palestinian state is unjustified "because there are no distinct
'Palestinian' people. The concept of a Palestinian state came about
after the
Six-Day War in 1967." Well, this is simply untrue, and the writers of
FLAME must know it. Palestine was the official name for the country
under the
British Mandate; ergo the people living there were Palestinians
regardless of
what religion they professed. The division of Palestine into a Jewish
and an
Arab state was first suggested by the Peel Commission in 1937 and
officially
adopted by the UN in 1947. The argument whether the Arabs living in
Palestine
were really "Palestinians" reminded me of the story of a an old man
in the Sudetenland, "When I was born I lived in Austria, then I lived
in
Czechoslovakia, then I lived in Germany, now I live in Czechoslovakia
again and
I have never even set foot outside of my village." Since the FLAME
article
reflects the current Israeli government's position it is obvious that
the "road
map" never had a ghost of a chance to succeed. Regardless of what the
Palestinians did or did not do the will from the Israeli side simply
wasn't
there. In spite of the so called truce Israeli settlements continued to
be
expanded and the construction of the "fence" which in part separates
Palestinian farmers' villages from their fields was started. All of
this is
done in the name of security for Israel, which reinforces the basically
paranoid mind-set into which Americans are now being recruited.
But as mentioned earlier for paranoia to flourish it needs not only the
threat
of persecution but also a sense of entitlement. In order to understand
this
aspect one has to read Jewish literature and the book by Max I. Dimont The
Indestructible Jews. An action-packed journey through 4,000
years of
history, is a
good
example. He divides Jewish history into three acts. The first one, "The
Manifest Destiny", covers the era from the patriarchs to Jesus; the
second, "The Existential Dilemma" deals with the period from Jesus to
Ben-Gurion, and the third act, "The Paradox of the Diaspora" is being
played out now. Dimont believes, and he may well be right, that the
Jews are
what he called "the surfboard riders of history." They attach
themselves to one rising civilization infuse it with their belief
system and
when that civilization is in decay, they catch the next wave. For this
reason
they need both the Diaspora as well as the state of Israel as its
spiritual
center. Let me now quote some key passages to get a flavor of Dimont's
thinking.
"The Jews will not worship idols, be they religious, secular or
scientific. A consequence . . . is that of the Jews as skeptics, who
never
accept the say-so of anyone not even God . . . They are a people of
law. They
are a people born with a pontificating finger, moral busybodies, who
are
forever telling the world what is right and what is wrong . . .
Finally, Jews
have always supported education and general welfare. . . the Jewish
ethic
rallies round the flag that symbolizes what is noblest in man."
In regard to Jewish Diaspora Dimont wrote,
"Each Diaspora interaction enriched Judaism, giving it a new virility,
verisimilitude, and a broader spectrum of intellectual activity. But
its inner
core always remained distinctly Jewish. No matter how much the Jews
borrowed,
they did not doubt the superiority of Judaism itself. . . . With each
new
challenge, with each successive enlargement of the Diaspora Judaic
ideas were
indelibly imprinted on each host civilization. This 'Judaization' of
the world
that has imperceptibly coursed below the surface of history in our
second act
is destined to surface in the third."
Dimont then asks, "Will it be the destiny of the Jews in the third act
to
proselytize the universalistic aspect of their faith to a diasporized
world
sick unto its scientific soul, ready, perhaps, at last, to accept their
prophetic message? Is it possible that Christianity, Mohammedanism,
communism
have been but stepping stones to make it easier for diasporized man to
cross
over into a universal Judaism? . . . . At the end of the first act,
Jesus
proclaimed a religious brotherhood of man in heaven. At the end of the
second
act Marx proclaimed an economic brotherhood for man on earth. What will
be
proclaimed at the end of the third act? Will the Christian Jesus
reappear as
promised by the Gospels, or will a Jewish Messiah appear as promised by
the
prophets? Thus in the third act, man himself will be faced with an
existential
choice. Should he choose the Christian paradise in heaven, with an
avenging
Jesus returning to end mankind with a Judgment day, or should he choose
the
Jewish paradise on earth brought about by a messianic concept of
brotherhood?"
Dimont then addresses the question,
"How could these forthright Zionist agnostics [who had settled in
Palestine prior to nationhood] claim to be heirs to the messianic
ideal? How
could they deny God and yet proclaim the chosenness of the Jewish
people?
Perhaps Ben-Gurion best resolved this dilemma when he said
'My concept of the messianic idea is not a metaphysical but a
social-cultural
one . . . I believe in our moral and intellectual superiority, in our
capacity
to serve to serve as a model for the redemption of the human race . . .
"
Dimont concluded,
"Perhaps this is why God chose the Jews, if there was indeed divine
choice. He could count on them. As one scholar so perceptively summed
it up -
'In Judaism, God turned to man and said, 'Finish the job for me,' and
man said
'I will.' In Christianity, man returns to God and says 'I cannot do it,
finish
the work for me,' and God says 'I will'. In essence the Christians are
unable
to fulfill the task assigned to man by God, and slough the job back to
God via
Jesus. . . . As long as the Jews stick to the ethics of the Torah and
the
ideology of the Prophets they will remain indestructible. When all men
embrace
this ethic and ideology, they, too, will symbolically become 'Jewish.'
There
will then be only man."
I have quoted so extensively from my 1973 edition because these are the
ideas
over which the current war in Israel as well as the more general war
with
Islamic fundamentalists are fought over. Let me highlight just a few
points.
Dimont tells us that the Jewish vision of morality is the only correct
one. It
has to be pushed onto the rest of the world, which has to be
"Judaized." "Diasporized man" is a neologism and I doubt
that people of other nations or religions feel that they live in a
"Diaspora." A "universal Judaism" is an oxymoron. Judaism, strictly
speaking, is a set of laws given by Moses to the Israelites to form a
nation
which sets them apart from the goyim! The messianic concept of
brotherhood was
always limited to members of the twelve tribes. When one reads the Old
Testament carefully, Gentiles could join but would have to undergo
conversion
to Jewish law, which for males includes circumcision. The expansion of
some
aspects of Judaism into a universal religion was due to Jesus martyrdom
and
mainly St. Paul's missionary trips to the Gentiles. It is they who
should get
the credit. I have discussed these aspects in my next book Understanding
Jesus. A Medical Perspective which, as of today, is still looking
for a
publisher. When it comes to "moral and intellectual superiority," I
thought that this concept of the inherent superiority of one racial or
ethnic
group over another was buried with Hitler in the bunker, but apparently
not.
The ethics of the Torah and the prophets, which should be accepted by
the rest
of the world is also a catch phrase without meaning but mindlessly
repeated by
numerous Jewish authors. The Torah is not only the first five books
attributed
to Moses in the Old Testament but the entire body of Jewish written and
oral
law, which most Jews do not adhere to anyway. The prophets were
nationalists
who showered doom and gloom upon all their neighbors as well as the
wayward
Jews. This vision hardly lends itself to a peaceful future. Thus to
call upon
the world to adopt the "universal aspects of the Torah and the
prophets," but in the same breath deny the existence of God strikes me
as
less than honest. Furthermore the truly universal aspects of the moral
law
antedated Moses. It would be most wholesome for writers like Dimont to
read
Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East. This collection of
documents from
the beginnings of our civilization ought to remove chauvinistic
preconceptions
and provide respect for those ancients upon whose words the laws and
wisdom
literature of the Bible was based. A great many of the commandments the
Israelites were ordered to adhere to in the Torah were actually
literally
copied from Hammurabi's [ca. 1728-1686] laws. He received them likewise
from
his god whose name was, however, Shamash not Yahweh.
The statement that "there will then be only man," is a concept not
even religious Jews subscribe to and an effort to turn the entire world
into
atheists must create resistance. Yet it is precisely these ideas which
are
being pushed in America and which the world receives through
television. These
fuel the hatred not only against Jews but Americans as their protector.
Small
wonder that some Muslims will say in so many words: not over my dead
body.
Lest one assumes that it is merely one author who harbors and promotes
these
thoughts one needs only to read Jewish newspapers, magazines,
as well
as a variety of books by Jewish authors. Dimont, and those who think
like him,
also have a profoundly distorted view of what Christianity is, or
should be,
all about. Just as many Christians, especially Evangelicals, harbor an
idealized view of Judaism and the state of Israel which has no
counterpart in
the real world. Thus Dimont's writings are typical for a paranoid
mind-set
which consists of an exaggerated sense of self importance masking the
unspoken
fear of the "avenging Jesus." The dead Jesus and the possibility that
God might exist haunt some Jewish intellectuals and this is the reason
why not
only Christianity but all religions have to disappear. The claim that
Jews as a
whole rally to the flag which stands for "what is noblest in man"
also sounds quite hollow when one considers Jewish behavior vis a vis
their
Arab citizens and to the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Security
will never be achieved by brutality and each escalating reprisal will
merely
lead to more bloodshed. There are indeed some responsible Jews in
Israel as
well as here who argue against these policies but they are the
proverbial voice
in the wilderness which gets drowned out by the clamor for revenge and
"security."
On the other hand there is one point where I have to agree with Dimont.
The
"Judaization" of America has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of
Jewish immigrants after WWII. Even our foreign policy is currently no
longer in
the hands of the professionals in the State Department but is run by a
small
civilian neoconservative group in the Pentagon who turn Israel's goals
into
those of America. This is the tragedy of the beginning century because
the
American people, by and large, do not realize that they are being used
for
ulterior motives.
We now have to address the question how is Dimont's vision to be
accomplished.
The answer is already partly in his book and in last month's essay on
"The
Niger Forgery". "Thou shalt wage war by deception" is not
limited to the Mossad; it now permeates all aspects of our society. To
get by
with deceptions the responsible officials can either lie or stonewall,
by not
releasing pertinent documents and Congress' as well as the media's
acquiescence. Even the minutes of Vice President Cheney's meeting on
energy
policy in early 2001 are not allowed to be released because they would,
in all
probability, throw a rather different light on the administration's
response to
the 9/11 disaster. While secrecy and outright lies are one mechanism,
the
spread of fear by exaggerating possible dangers is the other, as
exemplified by
the rhetoric which led up to the Iraq invasion, and expressed also in
the
letter from the Wiesenthal Center as well as in FLAME.
One year ago I wrote in the essay "October Surprise?" that I had been
told in August by a person who was privy to administration information
that the
decision for war had already been made and that our efforts to convince
Senator
Bennett to act as a voice of reason in Washington were fruitless. I had
no
possibility at that time to verify the information but corroboration
came in an
article from The Guardian. The British have appointed an
independent
commission under Lord Hutton to examine the recent suspicious death of
Dr.
Kelly who was the country's foremost expert on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. The Guardian wrote in its August 23, 2003
edition under
the headline, "Emails show how No 10 constructed case for war," that
Tony Blair was told on September 8, 2002 by President Bush at Camp
David that
the invasion of Iraq had been decided on. It was Blair's job to make
the
British people come on board and the flurry of e-mails under discussion
was to
provide the justification for the war rather than an attempt to avoid
it.
"The sense that the decision had been made is also echoed by the former
cabinet minister, Clare Short, who opposed the war and who told the
Commons
foreign affairs committee that she had been informed by three senior
people -
believed to be another cabinet minister, an MI6 chief and a top civil
servant -
that war was inevitable. One of them told her to stop fretting because
it could
not be stopped."
Evidence how the American people were hoodwinked into the war can also
be found
on the Internet in an interview with Ray Mc Govern by Will Pitt on June
26,2003
(www.truthout.org).
McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, had served under seven Presidents
beginning with Kennedy and ending with Bush I. His job was to brief the
highest
administration officials, and as he relates the motto of the CIA,
chiseled in
marble at the entrance, is "You Shall Know The Truth, And the Truth
Shall
Set You Free." In those days CIA officers did indeed present truthful
analysis results to the policy makers and were not interfered with,
regardless
whether a given administration liked or did not like the data. The CIA
was an
independent agency which could go after facts. This changed profoundly
in the
run-up towards the Iraq war. President Bush II had ignored the briefing
on
August 6, 2001 which had its title "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in
the
US." Condoleeza Rice, our National Security Advisor, admitted after
September 11 that she had not looked at her predecessor's, Sandy
Berger, file
on terrorism. As she said, "It was still on my desk when September 11
happened." According to McGovern the driving force in the exaggeration
of
the potential Iraqi threat, which justified the invasion of the
country, was
the Vice President as well as the civilians in the Pentagon especially
Wolfowitz. Mc Govern, also told his interviewer, "When the decision was
made last summer that we will have a war against Iraq, they were
casting about.
You'll recall White House Chief of Staff Andy Carr saying you don't
market a
new product in August. The big blast off was Cheney's speech in
Nashville, I
think it was Nashville anyway, on August 26. He said Iraq was seeking
materials
for its nuclear program. That set the tone right there."
This is what seems to really have happened, the tragedy of 9/11 was
used as the
excuse to pursue other goals by manufacturing non-existent threats
against the
U.S., supposedly emanating from Saddam Hussein. Fear had to spread and
our
moral superiority over the rest of the world had to be proclaimed. This
policy
has now committed us to an indefinite guerilla war in Afghanistan as
well as
Iraq and possibly other places around the world. Although the CIA as
well as
the FBI analysts in the field had done their level best to detect and
warn of
imminent dangers they were ignored by their higher-ups. Problems of
this type
will neither be solved by an additional layer of bureaucracy called
Homeland
Security Office nor by a Patriot Act which allows the government to
snoop on
its citizens at will.
What can be done now? First of all the press and television have to
demand a
truly independent investigation of the events leading up to 9-11-2001
and the
administration's response to it. Public pressure for an accounting is
needed
before Congress will react and take the appropriate steps. Senators and
Representatives have re-election on their minds and will not act unless
the
public is truly aroused and it is the media's job to keep government as
honest
as possible. Stonewalling by the President as well as the Vice
President in
regard to crucial documents should be condemned and brought before the
judiciary. If judicial orders are then denied on grounds of "national
security" the responsible people should be held in contempt. Nothing
but
the disclosure of the full truth will ever get us out of this quandary
we have
gotten into during the past two years. Our national security is not
served by
secrecy but only by a fully informed citizenry.
As far as Iraq is concerned the predictions about the consequences of
this
invasion, which have been made during the past year in these pages,
have sadly
come true. The guerilla war in Iraq against everyone who cooperates
with
Americans, as urged by bin-Laden in his tape recorded message prior to
our
invasion, is now also a reality. I presented excerpts in the March,
2003 essay
"From Homo Sapiens to the Naked Ape." The most recent highlights are
the tragic attacks on the UN headquarters and even the most revered
Shiite
mosque in Najaf. Ayatollah Mohammed Baquir al-Hakim had advocated
accommodation
with the infidels and this was not to be condoned. Attacks upon the
Kurds are
likely to be in the offing next. At this late stage everybody in the US
now
wants the UN to assume a greater role. But this cannot be achieved in
the way
Charles Krauthammer wants it. The headline of his essay on the last
page of Time
September 1, 2003 was, "Help Wanted. Why America needs to lean hard on
its
allies to lend a hand in Iraq." This reflects precisely the sense of
arrogance which is discussed above. First we tell the world that
regardless of
what they want we will go it alone, and when that didn't quite work out
as
envisioned they should come and bail us out. But we intend to keep the
major
contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq and the anticipated future
profits. People
who think this way forget that our allies are not our servants, they
are free
people and the scenario as outlined above is not likely to find their
approval.
Only when we demonstrate that we are willing for them to share not only
burdens
but also rewards is help likely to be forthcoming.
To the Jewish people and their sympathizers I suggest that they take
the
contents of Whither Zionism? and of "The Neocons'
Leviathan," which was published here in April of this year, to heart.
Please recognize the failure of the neoncons, as well as Likud's,
policies and conduct
yourselves according to the high ethical principles your writers
proclaim.Place
yourself into the shoes of the Palestinians in the occupied territories
and
consider what the world-wide Jewish reaction would be if the roles were
reversed and Palestinians treated Jews the way Palestinians are being
treated
now. Remember that the Golden Rule works both ways, "You will
be
treated the way you treat others." Realize, furthermore, that when a
total
of about 14 million people want to convert a world of more than 6
billion to
their belief system - be it religious or secular - it cannot work; it
must
backfire. Complaining about antisemitism, spreading further fear and
drumming
up money will not help.
The answer to the challenges ahead is honesty and conduct commensurate
with
universal, rather than parochial, human values. Goethe has summed them
up in,
"Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut." The human being's
task is to be noble, helpful and good! This is everyone's duty and not
limited
to a given religious, national or ethnic group. Frankl, a Jew, has
shown that
it can be done even when a tremendous personal loss has taken place. So
have
other Jews both here and in Israel. But misguided Jewish zealots, who
have
converted some Gentiles to their cause, are dragging us down the wrong
road. It
will be up to individual responsible Jews to publicly and vociferously
speak
out against this type of "leadership" because goyim cannot do this
job for them.
October 1, 2003
IGNORANT ARROGANCE
September was the month when the races for
political power
started to gather steam. In California we saw a
popular
attempt to recall the sitting governor blocked by a three panel judge’s
vote.
But that vote was overturned a few days later by 11 judges and the
recall
election is on again for October 7. The mere fact that a few appointed
judges
have the potential power to nullify the constitutionally guaranteed
expression
of the wishes of 1.6 million Californians should give us pause to
reconsider
what kind of a republic we have become. Needless to say our current
President
was actually also anointed by one vote of a Supreme Court Justice, and
that it
is the Supreme Court, made up of political appointees, who decides what
the
"law of the land" is at a given moment.
Nevertheless some of us, including myself and most members of my family
who had
actually voted for Mr. Bush, welcomed this particular Supreme
Court
decision because we thought he would bring to the White House: honesty,
common
sense and a foreign policy which works in concert with the UN on the
problems
of this world. This illusion was fostered further by the people
governor Bush
surrounded himself with. The designated Vice-President, Secretary of
Defense
and Secretary of State seemed to be men of experience and substance who
had
served honorably in his father's presidency.
But appearances were deceiving. We did not know at
that time
that Mr. Cheney's interests seem to have remained wedded to the oil
industry,
and it became apparent that Mr. Rumsfeld's defense policies did not
originate
within himself but reflected the views of a small group of neocons
whose
political outlook equates the policies to be adopted by the United
States with
those of Israel, as has been pointed out here in "The Neocons'
Leviathan." This group disdained the professionals at the State
Department
and General Powell, as a good soldier, took his
orders from
his Commander in Chief, who had also fallen under their spell. This led
to the
sad spectacle earlier in the year where Powell presented evidence to
the UN
about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction which neither he nor CIA
director Tenet,
who was there for moral support, probably fully believed in. What we
saw on
that day was what might have been regarded as a lack of Zivilcourage,
namely standing up for one's principles of truth and integrity and
refraining
from making allegations based on dubious evidence. Although General
Powell had
resigned from the army and the president could no longer order him
around he
failed to draw the consequences from the fact that his position had
become
untenable because foreign policy was made in the Defense rather than
the State
Department. Had he quit his job he might well have put the rush to war
on hold,
especially if the General had given open and full testimony before
Congress how
his position had been undermined by the civilians in the Pentagon. The
fact
that he chose instead to support the administration, possibly against
his
better judgment, makes him, unfortunately, co-responsible for the
current
tribulations of the "liberated" Iraqi people, the deaths and injuries
of our soldiers, as well as of thousands of innocent Iraqis, loss of
America's
prestige throughout major portions of the world and the staggering
financial
burdens Americans are now saddled with.
The ultimate responsibility for the conduct of
America's
foreign policy lies, of course, with the president,
and it is
no secret that he has little use for diplomacy but favors the approach
advocated by the group of Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz etc. Had the
9/11
terrorist attack not occurred he might have served out his presidency
with little
fanfare, because Americans are not a belligerent people. Live and let
live
tends to be their maxim, in addition to being generous to those who are
less
fortunate than us. A foreign policy which defies international law and
invades
other countries in a "pre-emptive" manner tends to be against the
image they have of themselves. There is a caveat, however, because our
politicians have always played by the rules of power while cloaking
them in
moral phraseology. The Spanish-American war which set
America
on the road to empire was ostensibly over the Spaniards sinking our
battleship
Maine in Havana harbor, although the inquest failed to establish
Spanish guilt
in this naval tragedy. The reason for invading Cuba was not merely the
"liberation of the Cuban people from a ruthless dictatorship," as
advocated by what was then called the yellow press. It is also worth
while
remembering that before there ever was a "Butcher of Baghdad,"
the American public was introduced to "Butcher Weyler,"
who was the Spanish general in charge of rooting out the insurgency. In
1896
the Hearst press showered him also with epithets such as, "a fiendish
despot, a brute, the devastator, pitiless cold, an exterminator of
men."
The rebellion of nationalist Cubans, who used what is now called terror
tactics, severely interfered with the profits of the sugar cane
industry and
that could not be tolerated. In addition some political circles had for
a long
time cast a desirous eye on the island and even Thomas
Jefferson
had written, "I have ever looked at Cuba as the most interesting
addition
which could ever be made to our system of States." Since American
public
opinion always rooted for the underdog the invasion of Cuba
was preordained regardless of the steps Spain took
subsequently to ameliorate the situation. But Spain also had other
overseas
colonies especially the Philippines and those folks
had to be
liberated too in order to receive the blessings of Christianity. The
fact that
the vast majority were already Catholics was apparently unknown. But
who can
blame President McKinley who, although a very well
meaning
person, couldn't even find the Philippines on a map. Just as Cuban
exile groups
in New York had urged America's entry into their war, Philippine exile
groups
entreated Admiral Dewey, who happened to be in Hong
Kong with
his fleet, to sail into Manila Bay destroy the Spanish fleet and then
hand a
freed country over to them. Dewey did the first part but could not
follow
through with the second. The "splendid little war,"
as John Hay, U.S. ambassador to London, had put it in a letter to Teddy
Roosevelt in the summer of 1898, was soon over in the Caribbean with
little
loss of American lives. But it turned subsequently into a prolonged
bloody
battle in the Philippine archipelago which lasted for six years until
peace was
established. America's goal in the Philippines as outlined by President
McKinley was to create a government "designed not for our satisfaction
nor
for our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace and prosperity
of the
people of the Philippine islands." This language strikes one also as
eerily familiar. But the Muslim Moros in the island of Mindanao wanted
no part
of infidel rule in 1904 and kept on fighting intermittently. It took
about
fifty years before the liberated Filipinos were deemed worthy to run
their own
country and lo and behold a hundred years later we are still, or again,
fighting Muslim terrorists in those islands.
The information and quotes mentioned above can be found in Ivan
Musicant's Empire
By Default. The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American
Century.The
American people were goaded into
empire building by claims of Spanish villainy and a threat to our
shores, just
as the so-called attack on our ships in the gulf of Tonkin led us into
an
expanded Vietnam war. Now the charge that Saddam was in cahoots with
terrorists, who would unleash weapons of mass destruction on us at any
moment,
brought us into Iraq for an unforeseeable period of time.
The rhetoric of creating fear, which has to be overcome by a determined
course
of forceful righteousness, has remained the same and so has the
ignorance of
how other people live and what their real aspirations are. Uncle
Sam
knows best and his views have to be enforced. When others, as
for
instance some ingrate Europeans, like France and Germany, demur they
are being
given the stark alternative of "if you are not with us, you are against
us."
In the self-proclaimed war on terror there is no middle ground and
people who
do not see "the moral clarity" of our cause are not only potential
enemies but also evil. Thus one should hardly be surprised over
headlines
"France: Friend or Foe?" and "Saudi Arabia: Friend or
Enemy?" Simplifications like these are to be expected when one
considers
the background of the people who write these articles, or as in the
case of our
president write his speeches. Now we come to a remarkable observation. President
Bush is apparently disinclined to read even newspapers or
magazines in
order to form his own opinions. As he said in a recent interview with
Brit Hume
of Fox News, "I glance at the headlines just to kind
of a
flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by
people
who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleeza, in her
case,
the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the
participants on the world stage [www.foxnews.com]." Leaving the mangled
syntax
aside this is surely a remarkable statement by the "leader of the free
world." He tells us in essence that he relies entirely on precooked and
pre-digested ideas of others who feed him what they think he should
know and,
what is worse; he seems to have no inclination to get independent
verification.
I believe that this explains his foreign policy conduct and how he came
up, for
instance, with the idea that "Sharon is a man of peace."
Yes, but on whose terms?
Since Bush's staff shields him from people with
divergent
views and the president himself has apparently never been out of the
country as
a simple tourist his views of the world are severely restricted. When
one adds
to this the fact that he regards himself as a "born again
Christian," we can understand why he could so easily fall prey
to
those elements in the government who seized on the 9/11 tragedy to
enact their
foreign policy ideas which are in essence those of the Likud
party
in Israel. When this is coupled with a Bush-Cheney background in the
oil
industry it is hardly surprising that Iraq had to be invaded regardless
of
whatever cooperation Saddam may or may not have extended to UN
inspectors. It
was literally a "done deal" by last September and it has been
reported that Halliburton (whose CEO Mr. Cheney was before he assumed
his
present job) had already received in November 2002 a "no bid
contract" to rebuild Iraq's oil industry after the war. The entire UN
performance in the fall and winter of last year was not designed to
prevent the
war but merely to get UN approval for something that had already been
unilaterally decided on.
The president prides himself on being a strong leader
and he
certainly reads the speeches, prepared by unknown writers, quite well.
It is,
however, highly instructive for a neurologist to watch his body
language and syntax when he is speaking spontaneously during
rare
press conferences or interviews with members of the media. While trying
to a
give a strong impression and making positive statements his head turns
at the
same time not up and down in the manner of saying yes, but from side to
side
which seems to negate what he is saying. This body language is, of
course,
totally unconscious and raises a question of inner insecurity hidden
behind a
facade of official bravado. When his detractors pointed out, prior to
the
November 2000 election, that he may not possess the stuff that is
required for
a president of the country, we dismissed the idea as malevolent gossip
but in
retrospect it may well have been correct.
The president seems to be a simple person with oversimplified ideas and
thereby
became the ideal tool for others who have more complex and occasionally
devious
minds. This is where his main constituency the "Christian
Right" comes in. I suggested earlier this year in "President
Bush's Choice" that he had to choose between statesmanship and running
for
re-election. These are mutually incompatible goals. When I wrote the
installment I sensed, of course, what his choice was likely to be and
now there
is no longer any doubt. Re-election demands that Evangelical Christians
must
not be alienated. This means in turn that any "leaning on Israel" to
grant the Palestinians their rights is out of the question. One of the
leaders
of the Christian Right, Pat Robertson, recently gave
an interview
which was published in part in the September 19, 2003 edition of The
Jerusalem Post. The headline was "Cross his heart. When US
televangelist Pat Robertson talks, millions of Americans listen. And
what he's
telling George W. Bush is to beware of dividing the land of Israel and
creating
a Palestinian state." In the introduction to the interview we find,
"As far as Robertson is concerned Bush is playing with fire, and making
what he considers to be a 'terrible mistake.' To the interviewer's
question
"do you think that American Christians in 2004 should take that [the
division of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state] when deciding
whom to
vote for into consideration?" Robertson replied diplomatically, "I
think they will, but the problem is between two people." Robertson
explained that if Bush's opponent is going to be a liberal Democrat who
"is as bad or worse on Israel than he [Bush] is," the evangelicals
will have no choice but to stick with Bush regardless of the road map.
The
unspoken conviction is that they will make sure it won't go anywhere
any time
soon.
In regard to Saudi Arabia, Robertson regarded the Wahabi as "vicious"
who have to be dealt with "forcefully." One may wonder what that
means, bomb Saudi-Arabia? To the question "How can American citizens,
particularly American Christians, support Israel in this difficult
time?"
Robertson answered, "The best thing is to discuss the legitimacy of
Israel, the legitimacy of Israel's claims to the land on a biblical
basis. I think
that for the American Christians and for Israel itself, the strongest
claim to
integrity rests strongly in the Bible. The Land was given by God."
Well,
it really is as simple as that: the Bible is God's
inerrant
word and ought to bethe basis of America's
foreign
policyin the Middle East. The fact that Muslims
will never agree to this interpretation is irrelevant
as far
as the good reverend is concerned. But since the land was, according to
the
Bible, deeded by the Lord to all of Abraham's offspring and Ishmael
(purported
ancestor of the Arabs) had arrived on the scene before Isaac "moral
clarity" would seem to require that they have an equally good claim to
at
least parts of the land. Furthermore, one truly wonders about whatkind of Christianity this is when one turns a blind
eye to the
oppression of Palestinians and concentrates exclusively on the
suffering of
Jews and their God given rights. For Christians, Jesus is supposed to
be the
final arbiter and his message does not include land grabs and
expropriation of
other peoples' property. The effort to remake American Christians in
Pat
Robertson's image can only result in further disasters. The Good
Samaritan
parable seems to have been bypassed by these "born again" Christians
who prefer the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament.
This would not matter much if the fate of the world did not hang on
these
arrogant notions, proclaimed by people who are ignorant of other
civilizations
and their rightful aspirations to live in peace within their own
culture. There
is no universally agreed way on dress codes, sexual mores, what the
rights and
duties of males versus females are, and in certain societies even
capitalism is
not regarded as the highest good. When we try to impose our values on
other
cultures we can expect serious troubles. When our soldiers come
crashing into
homes in rural Afghanistan or Iraq in search of terrorists and frighten
the
women who don't want to be seen unveiled by strangers, humiliate the
fathers by
having them kneel blindfolded in front of their children, we should not
be
surprised when new "terrorists" spring up.
While President Reagan has been called "The
Great
Communicator," president Bush would surely
qualify as "The Great Simplifier." By
misinterpreting method for goal and labeling all insurrections against
existing
power structures as terrorism, he is lumping national struggles for
independence with religious Mafia type criminals. This is a serious
mistake for
which the American people are already paying a bitter price and it is
likely only
to get steeper in blood and resources. It is also hardly surprising
that a speech,
like the one the president delivered before the UN
last week
did not evoke resonance from the rest of the world community. He asked
for help
from the UN, but on his terms. The speech was also laced with what
other
countries "must" do but there was no hint to what extent he is
willing to share revenues if and when they were to become available
from the
sale of Iraq's oil and gas wealth. This approach is not likely to work
and to
label those who won't buy into these grandiose plans as either "evil"
or enemies, will also not be helpful.
There was another interview on the Fox News channel
last week
which also fully fits the title of this essay. Bill O'Reilly,
whose "no spin zone" has currently the biggest ratings among cable
news programs, interviewed Dick Morris who was
President
Clinton's intimate political advisor several years ago. While Clinton
could
survive sexual indiscretions, Morris did not and now freelances his
services,
probably to the highest bidder. The remarkable aspect was that he
suggested in
all seriousness that if Bush wants to get re-elected
next year
he has to launch a war against Iran. The issue of
potential
nuclear proliferation will be the pretext to remove this "rogue
regime" which breeds terrorists. If Bush simply sits on his haunches
during the next year without any dramatic new foreign wars the
unfinished
business in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the potentially still
sagging
economy will come to haunt him and he can shelve the re-election dream.
O'Reilly, who is not given to bashfulness and is a strong Bush
supporter, did
not want to believe this scenario but failed to contradict Morris with
a more
reasonable approach. Should one be surprised, therefore, that when
non-Americans read or see this they come to believe that America is
indeed
currently the most dangerous country in the world? This perception
needs to be
changed but platitudes by the president about bringing freedom,
democracy and
peace to the rest of the world will not do. Actions speak louder than
words.
Two years ago I published in these pages under the
title "September
11th" an opinion as to what the various key players in the
post
9/11 world really want. As far as bin-Laden is concerned he wanted to
engage
America into a prolonged war with Muslim countries. This would weaken
America's
stature in the Middle East and rally the masses to the flag of radical
Islam.
Bush obliged and so far Osama has gotten his wish. We
are
bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, we may or may not bomb Iran and
each
passing day further antagonizes Arabs and Muslims. The fact that we
seem to
have again adopted a hands off policy towards Israel and vetoed a UN
Security
Council resolution which condemned Israel's decision to either kill or
exile
Arafat does not get us bonus points in Arab eyes. In addition Bush's
crusade
puts a terrible strain on an already weakened economy and it is
doubtful that
even Congress has a stomach for further military adventures unless
another
catastrophe occurs which can be laid at the feet of Syria or Iran. That
neither
of these countries has a wish to tangle with the U.S. does not matter
because
the mere charge of "harboring terrorists" is nowadays sufficient for
a "pre-emptive strike" to bring about a regime change.
Sharon also got his wish. The West Bank is
re-occupied; there
are running battles in the Gaza strip, and by identifying the
Palestinian
struggle for statehood with America's war on terrorism he has succeeded
in
getting America's unqualified support. He has eliminated Iraq as a
potential
threat, without firing a shot, but Syria and Iran still need a little
more
work, and so does breaking the will of the Palestinians to resist
Israeli
occupation.
As far as America is concerned I was
mistaken in one
assumption only. I wrote that "even our leadership does not
want
war, but to get the economy moving and to work for global prosperity."
This supposition was grounded in the basic goodness of the American
people and I
was not aware that war had already been decided on by September 12, 2001
as documented in Bob Woodward's book. On the other hand I was not blind
to
realities as the very next sentences prove,
"Nevertheless in spite of the current unity the country's opinion
makers
are split over how to set things right in the world. On account of the
so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term which, by the way, is
rejected by
observant Jews) there are strong emotional ties to Judaism and the
state of
Israel. Powerful military action is urged by the majority of
journalists.
Currently in the minority is another group which regards war as folly
but has
as yet no strong support from the media. This is bound to change if and
when
body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.
For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in the best
interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of Radical
Muslims
and proponents of a Greater Israel."
The neocons got their war and there is no end in
sight. Even
if Bush is voted out of office next year the legacy he leaves this
country will
be difficult to overcome. Democratic contenders for
the
presidency, who belatedly see the failures of the Bush foreign policy,
are
trying to define themselves. But so far none of the nine have been able
to
inspire a great deal of confidence in their ability to steer the
country into
calmer waters. We know, as yet, too little about the
latest
and tenth arrival on the scene, General Wesley Clark,
to allow
for an educated guess as to what he might really stand for and be able
to do.
As argued previously in these pages what is needed is a
paradigm shift;
away from ignorant arrogance and towards a policy which is grounded in
a
thorough understanding of history, which in turn leads to a genuine
respect for
other people's rightful aspirations and traditions. General
Clark may
possess these qualities but whether or not he can clearly formulate not
only
his aspirations, but also the ways to achieve them remains to be seen
in the
coming months. Right now it is too early to tell because all we have so
far is
rhetoric.
Finally we must face the real problem of our society.
Ignorant
arrogance is not limited in our country to
politicians; it is wide-spread among the people. Most, if not
all of
us, fall prey to it intermittently. It is a cardinal sin which needs to
be
guarded against. "We are the biggest and the best," is a pervasive
attitude. Yes, we have the biggest economy and great technology which
allows us
to reduce any country to rubble. But as the past two years have proven
although
we can destroy in a flash, winning hearts and minds cannot be
done by
bombs. This simple truth must first sink into the minds of the people
in our
media and then the general public. Only a truly educated
public can
generate an educated leadership which it can follow in good conscience.
All
politicians on the local, state, and national level, as well
as all
candidates for public office stress their devotion to
education
but hardly any one asks them what they mean by that word. When asked
the answer
is, as for everything else, we need more money for a
variety
of worthwhile projects. But the problem of ignorance cannot be solved
by money.
Educational reform, to be meaningful, would have to realize
that what
is being taught in our schools, from elementary through college, is
more
important than how it is taught. This
is the
real problem which ought to be faced and publicly acknowledged.
November 1, 2003
WOLFOWITZ - MAN OF THE YEAR
It is not often that one finds one's views confirmed by independent knowledgeable sources but this
was the case this past month. I have always maintained that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not a
direct threat for the United States. Israel was in the potential line of fire and it was,
therefore, in Israel's interest to eliminate Saddam. This had been a priority for the supporters of
that country ever since the inconclusive Iran-Iraq war, which had left Saddam with a modern
army and chemical as well as biological weapons. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was designed to
get rid of the vast debts he had accumulated during the war with Iran. But he had no designs on
Saudi Arabia as had been claimed by our media in order to justify not only sending but keeping
our troops there. This was known to the Israeli government (Israel's Secret Wars; Black and
Morris), but whether or not this information was passed on to the CIA and the first Bush
administration has never been revealed. Saddam's military might was severely decimated in the
first Gulf war, and the international sanctions thereafter led to the decay of the infrastructure of
the country we are now faced with. But although he was not regarded as a threat by his direct
neighbors (none of whom, apart from Kuwait, condoned our March invasion) his continued
existence in power could not be tolerated by the Likud government and some members of the
Bush administration.
Saddam stood in the way of Greater Israel by encouraging the Palestinians' use of force, including
rewarding suicide bombers' families, thereby thwarting Likud's plans to quietly annex as much of
the West Bank and Gaza as possible. For the Bush administration oil was a major factor but in
addition there was the personal issue of Bush II who had to prove that he knew better how to deal
with tyrants than his dad. Thus, the neocons (see April 1, 2003 The Neocons' Leviathan) were
chafing at the bit and saw immediately in the 9/11 tragedy an opportunity to make tabula rasa in
the Middle East. Afghanistan was a side show for the neocons who from day one had argued
that Iraq, Iran and Syria have to be dealt with in line with the document prepared in 1996
for the incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, "A Clean Break. A New Strategy for
Securing the Realm" (also April 1, 2003). The connection between this document and our
present situation is that it was written by the same people who rose to power in the U.S. after
the November 2000 elections. They are now the chief architects of our foreign policy which is,
at least as far as the Middle East is concerned, no longer in the hands of the State Department but
in that of the civilians in the Department of Defense and the Defense Advisory Board. Within
these groups Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are the most
important people. They managed to recruit the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
Vice-president Cheney and in due course our President to their cause. It is, therefore highly
appropriate that The Jerusalem Post of October 3, 2003 should have on its title page the face of
a joyful Wolfowitz and the caption, "Rosh Hashana 5764 Paul Wolfowitz. Man of the year."
One article which details why he deserves this honor is prefaced by, " No question: this was Paul
Wolfowitz's year. On September 15, 2001 at Camp David, he advised President George W. Bush
to skip Kabul and train American guns on Baghdad. In March 2003, he got his wish. In the
process, Wolfowitz became the most influential US deputy defense secretary ever - can you so
much as name anyone else who held the post? And he's on the shortlist to succeed Colin Powell
as secretary of state." A second article entitled "Invasive treatment" is prefaced, "In 1979 [sic] he
warned that Iraq would invade Kuwait. In 2001, he told the president to train his sights on
Baghdad, not Kabul. Now Paul Wolfowitz is getting his way. Will he be proven right?" That
indeed is the question and the newspapers as well as the Internet are currently full of pictures of a
rather shaken Wolfowitz after the rocket attack on the Al Rasheed hotel earlier in the week where
he narrowly escaped from being hit.
But Wolfowitz should really have shared the honor with Mr. Perle as became apparent in a
"Frontline" documentary, "truth, war and consequences," aired by PBS. The transcript is
available on the Internet (www.pbs.org/wghb/pages/frontline/shows/truth/etc/script.html). Several
highly revealing statements how American foreign policy was made since September 11 can be
found there. Perhaps the most dramatic one was the casual way in which some people with
influence can put words into our president's mouth and thereby make national policy. Here is
an excerpt of the broadcast,
"NARRATOR: Ever since the end of the Gulf war a small group of influential policy makers has
wanted to rid the Middle East of Saddam Hussein. But going to war to achieve it was not
politically feasible until after September 11th, 2001.
RICHARD PERLE: Well I believe there was a strong argument for looking at Iraq before
September 11th. What September 11th taught us is that we can wait too long in the presence of a
known and visible threat.
NARRATOR: On the afternoon of September 11th, Richard Perle, phoned one of President
Bush's speechwriters, David Frum.
RICHARD PERLE: I had a conversation with David.
NARRATOR: And what was the content of that?
RICHARD PERLE: That we are not going to deal effectively with global terrorism if states
can support and sponsor and harbor terrorists without penalty.
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts.
NARRATOR: At 8:30 that evening, President Bush spoke to the nation. He laid out his
policy, echoing the words that Perle had suggested to his speechwriter earlier in the day.
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: We will make no distinction between the terrorists who
committed these acts and those who harbor them."
The full interview with Mr. Perle (July 10, 2003) from which these excerpts were used for the
Frontline program is available at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perle.html. During that interview Perle
repeatedly made the case that if the Iraqi National Congress (INC) under the leadership of
Ahmad Chalabi had been given a free hand by the State Department most, if not all, of the
present problems in Iraq would have been avoided. Mr. Perle kept insisting that Chalabi is "quite
brilliant. He is a Ph.D. in mathematics, with a background at the University of Chicago and MIT.
He's a Shi'a, committed to secular democracy." According to Mr. Perle the State Department
refused to accept Mr. Chalabi's qualifications as future leader of Iraq and actively
sabotaged the Defense Department's efforts to create a stable Iraq under Chalabi as soon as
the Saddam regime had been deposed. In the interview Mr. Perle also asserted that what is being
called a separate intelligence operation within the Defense department under Wolfowitz and his
deputy, Douglas Feith, had become necessary because the CIA simply did not want to see all the
damning evidence against Saddam which they had no problem finding. But more about this later
when we return to the October PBS broadcast.
There is one additional statement from the Perle interview which I found revealing. After the
interviewer had asked Perle point blank: "If you had your choice, he [Chalabi] would still be the
person we should be backing," Perle gave him an unequivocal yes. When the interviewer
followed up with, "People say that we should listen to people who actually lived in Iraq
during the regime," he got this irate reply, "Oh, this is complete rubbish. It would be hard to
imagine a sillier argument. Iraq was a place where, if you were an opponent, you were dead.
Now how are we supposed to find people in Iraq that we can talk to, and whose judgment we can
repose any confidence in? People who kept secret and managed to survive their opposition to
Saddam all theses years? What are we talking about?"
This answer shows that either Mr. Perle is "spinning," to make a case for his protegé, or that he
has no idea how people, who do not agree with government policies, survive in dictatorships. I
happen to know something about this because Hitler was no joy to live under either when you
were one of the many who loathed his government. We were not all killed provided we kept our
mouths shut and our noses to the grindstone. People put on blinders, concentrate on the tasks
daily living requires and stay clear from any political statements. This is the uniform response
regardless what the name of the country or the dictatorship is. Survival comes first and to state
that anybody who managed to survive inside the country is automatically disqualified from leading
a post-Saddam government is either blinded by dogma, or has some other ulterior motive.
Now that we know how Mr. Perle feels about Dr (?) Chalabi let us look at the man through the
eyes of BBC which aired a program on October 3, 2002 "Profile: Ahmed Chalabi," also
available on the Internet. An excerpt reads as follows,
"Ahmed Chalabi is one of the best known Iraqi opposition figures in the West.
As leader of one of the foremost opposition movements, the Iraqi National congress [INC], the
57-year-old former businessman has even been tipped by some analysts as a possible successor to
Saddam Hussein.
A Shia Muslim born in 1945 to a wealthy banking family, Mr. Chalabi left Iraq in 1956 and has
lived mainly in the USA and London ever since, except for a period in the mid-1990's when he
tried to organise an uprising in the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The venture ended in failure with hundreds of deaths. Soon after, the INC was routed from
northern Iraq after Saddam's troops overran its base in Irbil. A number of party officials were
executed and others - including Mr Chalabi - fled the country.
Chequered career
A seasoned lobbyist in London and Washington, who studied mathematics at Chicago University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr Chalabi is often described as a controversial
figure, charismatic and determined but crafty and cunning at the same time.
Mr Chalabi has been accused by some opposition figures of using the INC to further his own
ambitions.
There are also allegations of financial misdemeanours. In 1992, he was sentenced in absentia by
a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labor for bank fraud after the 1990
collapse of the Petra bank, which he had founded in 1977.
Although he has always maintained the case was a plot to frame him by Baghdad, the issue was
revisited later when the State Department raised questions about the INC's accounting
practices.
Cometh the man?
In recent interviews Mr Chalabi has discounted the possibility he will take a role in any future
government.
'Personally, I will not run for any office, and I am not seeking any positions. My job will end with
the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's rule,' he is quoted as telling the German weekly Die Zeit. . .
He has strong backing among some sectors of Congress and the Pentagon, but is thought to have
little grassroots support in Iraq and a number of opposition groups have sought to distance
themselves from the INC.
Mr Chalabi subscribed to the 'three-city plan', which called for defectors to capture a number of
key areas, isolating and surrounding Saddam.
But the plan had little support from Arab governments, which said they would not allow Mr
Chalabi to run a liberation army from their soil.
In 1998, the then US president, Bill Clinton, approved a plan to spend almost $100m to help the
Iraqi opposition - principally the INC - to topple Saddam.
But only a fraction of the money was ever spent, and the INC subsequently suffered leadership
infighting. Mr Chalabi now says the movement is united. But many people are sceptical.
According to the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan, Mr Chalabiand his movement 'are failures
and are not even qualified to run a grocery shop [bold print added].' "
This report leaves us with a choice. Do we believe Mr. Perle, who has an obvious agenda, or the
BBC, which has a well deserved reputation for excellence in reporting? There are several
interesting aspects in this article. Although Mr Chalabi did study at Chicago and MIT he
apparently does not hold a doctorate as intimated by Mr. Perle. Furthermore, it is now apparent
why the State Department and the CIA washed their hands of Mr. Chalabi after the failed
Kurdish uprising and his questionable accounting practices. In addition it may have been this
"three-city plan" which my informant in August of 2002 had in mind when he told me about the
removal of Saddam which was to take place as the political coup of the year just prior to the
November 2002 mid-term elections (see October Surprise?, September 2002). As far as Mr.
Chalabi's promise is concerned that he would not seek political office after Saddam had been
removed it was technically correct. He did not have to "seek" it or "run for office" because Mr.
Perle's friends in the Pentagon appointed him and he is currently in charge of Iraq's Governing
Council.
Now back to "truth, war and consequences" in order to learn how the information was
obtained upon which the president led the country to war.
"NARRATOR: When it came to Iraq, the special intelligence office [the group who worked for
Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith] didn't trust what the CIA or even their own Defense
Intelligence Agency had to say. Theydid apparently listen to Ahmad Chalabi. According to
one Pentagon source, he visited once every other month. Across the Potomac, Greg Thielmann
had analyzed intelligence for the State Department for seven years.
GREG THIELMANN, U.S. Dept of State (1977-02): That office was largely invisible to us in the
intelligence community because they didn't-- they didn't play in the - - in the normal bureaucratic
process of making intelligence assessments and reporting on those assessments.
MARTIN SMITH [interviewer of Richard Perle in July 2003]: What did you understand that
office to be about?
GREG THIELMANN: I am still trying to figure out what that office was about. The office
wasn't big enough for them to really have the expertise in-house and the mere creation of the
office was odd, since the secretary of defense had the entire Defense Intelligence Agency at his
disposal. So it's a little mysterious what exactly they were doing.
RICHARD PERLE: Let me blunt about this. The level of competence of the Central
Intelligence Agency in this area is appalling. They had filtered out the whole set of possibilities
because it was inconsistent with their model. So if you're walking down the street and you're not
looking for hidden treasure, you won't find it.
MARTIN SMITH: Conversely, if you look for something, you will find it simply because you are
looking. And the nature of intelligence is -- is very often vague, and things can be interpreted one
way or another.
RICHARD PERLE: Of course. There's no absolute truth in this."
This was the way how we got into Iraq. In the neocons' view all the professionals in the
State Department, the CIA, the FBI and the Defense Department were incompetent
because they could not come up with evidence that Saddam was linked to Al-Quaeda and
thereby 9/11, had WMD's, and was an imminent threat to the United States.A handful of
specially selected people had to go over old data from the mentioned agencies as well as
unverified information supplied by Chalabi to provide a "true picture" of the danger we
were in. This was the version which was fed to the Vice-President as well as the President
who used it to convince the country of the necessity to invade Iraq.
But there is more to this tug of war between the State Department and the defense neocons as the
PBS program revealed. While the Pentagon group was busy trying to find justification to bring the
country to war the State Department was planning for the aftermath. It established in thespring of 2002 the "Future of Iraq" project because the decision to go to war had already been
made by president Bush in March. Since Saddam's army was no match, the outcome was never in
doubt, only the pretext had to be found and allies recruited.
The State Department gathered 200 Iraqis to form 15 working groups. These were concerned
with how to get everyday functions up and running once Saddam had been deposed. As
Edward Walker from the State Department said "There are committees set up to consider each
aspect of the future life of Iraq and how you could deal with it in the immediate days thereafter. It
involved an awful lot of very bright people, many of whom have the credentials in economics and
banking and agriculture and so on . . . ." But Chalabi and the INC were not interested and felt
that a committee structure would turn into a debating society which was not the way to solve the
problems. They wanted to be recognized as a government in exile. This notion went against the
grain of other opposition groups, as well as the State Department, because it was felt that agovernment should consist mainly of local Iraqis rather than a group coming in from the
outside. In this tug of war between Chalabi and the Pentagon on one side, and the State
Department on the other, the president came down firmly on the Pentagon's sidein January
2003, when he gave it the authority for post-war reconstruction All the work the "Future of
Iraq" team had done was disregarded and Lt. General Jay Garnerwho wasput in chargehad to start from scratch. During the invasion in March 2003 Chalabi was flown with an "army"
of 700 supporters to Iraq where they intended to participate in the march on Baghdad. Since his
reception by the locals was far from gratifying, and there was opposition to starting a democracy
with an image of a warlord arriving, the U.S. army sidelined him. He didn't get to Baghdad until
five days after the city had fallen. General Garner and his crew also had to twiddle their
thumbs in Kuwait because the situation on the ground was regarded as too unstable to have
the reconstruction team come in. Thus, there was no authority whatsoever, because the
American troops were stretched too thin and in addition had no orders to intervene with
the looting.
We cannot blame the troops on the ground. The fault lies with the arrogance of the
civilians in the Defense Department who ignored all the warnings from the professionals.
They first relied on Chalabi who fed them rumors, obtained from paid defectors, which they
promptly sent on to Cheney and Bush bypassing the traditional channels. Since the war needed to
be justified to the country and the world at large anything that made Saddam a supposed threat to
the United States was touted far and wide while the usual qualifiers of genuine intelligence were
omitted. Thus, the war was based entirely on wishful thinking while disregarding professional
advice.
The immediate post-war chaos including massive looting was predicted on basis of actual
experience. Robert Perito who had served on the National Security Council Staff, during 1988 -
1989 gave a presentation to Pentagon officials, upon invitation of Mr. Perle, where he warned
about the potential post-war violence. Talking about the experience in Panama he said in the
mentioned PBS program, "As soon as the fighting ended, mobs went into the streets of Panama
City and destroyed Panama City, looted the city, did more damage to the Panamanian economy
than the conflict did. And so my presentation was largely about the kinds of forces that we would
need in order to deal with that kind of violence. And those lessons were ignored." But the
post-war looting was of no concern to Rumsfeld because as he told us, "Stuff happens!"
There was an additional report about the pre-war search for justification. In the October 27, 2003
issue of The New YorkerSeymour Hersh wrote an article, " THE STOVEPIPE. How conflicts
between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq's
weapons." It confirms what has been reported above but there was also an item which was of
special interest to me in regard to the forged documents purporting the sale of enriched uranium
to Iraq. In The Niger Forgery (August 1, 2003) I discussed the question who might have
had the means, motive and opportunity to commit this crime. It seemed reasonable that the
Mossad's LAP department whose task is "psychological warfare, propaganda and deception"
might have had a hand in it. Since I do not have access to classified information I merely put forth
the suggestion for someone who is "in the loop," or an investigative reporter, to follow through
with getting at the truth of that forgery. It had, after all, found its way into the president's State of
the Union Address in January of this year. Here is Seymour Hersh's assessment,
"The F.B.I. had been investigating the forgery at the request of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. A senior F.B.I. official told me that the possibility that the documents were falsified
by someone inside the American intelligence community had not been ruled out. 'This story could
go several directions,' he said. 'We haven't got anything solid and we've looked.' He said that the
F.B.I. agents assigned to the case are putting a great deal of effort into the investigation.
But 'somebody's hiding something, and they're hiding it pretty well.' "
President Bush was elected on the promise to bring common decency back to the White
House, which had been sullied by the private conduct of its former occupant. But decency
requires first of all honesty. Yet, this administration has been highly secretive. The Cheney
deliberations on the country's energy problem have not been allowed to become public.
Documents pertaining to the run-up of 9/11 are not being released to Congress, and the FBI is
stymied in its pursuit of the truth in regard to a forged document which was used to paint the
picture of an impending mushroom cloud over our country. Since this conduct is even worse
than that of Mr. Clinton because it involves all of our lives, and not just private sexual
gratification, the American people and Congress should take note and demand an accounting.
Eventually the truth will come out and the president is doing neither himself nor us any
good by hidingbehind "national security" or "executive privilege." We are all grown-ups,
we can handle the truth whatever it is, and we should not be treated like children who can't be
trusted.
The last word should go to Mr. Thielmann. When asked in the mentioned PBS program "Were
we told the truth?" he answered, "The administration made statements which I can only
describe as dishonest." Since the Iraq situation is in the near future only going to go from bad to
worse scapegoating will soon start. Mr Rumsfeld may come in for hard times first. But theproblem did not start with Rumsfeld. He succumbed to a siren song by Perle, Wolfowitz
and others of their belief system. It is indeed tragic that hardly any one in a position of
responsibility is as yet publicly facing up to, "you cannot serve two masters." When the interests
of the ruling party of the state of Israel are identified with those of the United States no good can
come of it. President Eisenhower's defense secretary, who had been CEO of General Motors and
was nicknamed Engine Charley Wilson, said "what's good for GM is good for the country," and
he genuinely believed it. Now we have people in charge of decisions which not only affect our
country but the entire world, who genuinely believe that what's good for the policies of Likud
is good for America. It is this delusion which has to be exposed so that we can get an
administration which works for the good of all and not mainly special interests, especially those
which benefit a foreign country to the detriment of ours.
December 1, 2003
PROMISE AND REALITY
Last year's December 1 headline
was "Wanted:
Good Judgment." During the week of November 3 - 9, 2002 our
President had been given by Congress the power to invade Iraq, if he so
desired; his party had won the midterm elections; and the UN Security
Council
had passed a resolution to force weapons inspectors on a reluctant
Saddam
Hussein. I therefore wrote, "The question now is: what will our
President
do with all the power which has been bestowed upon him? The measure of
his
character will become apparent in the next few months. By March we will
know
whether the mentioned week was one highlight or a watershed, and the
zenith of
his achievements. Judging by the rumblings emanating from
Washington
it seems that our President is intent on a war with Iraq, come what
may."
I also wrote a little poem for him and the last verse was
Unless
obstinacy
does to wisdom yield,
And
friendly
counsels rule the field,
The
seeds you sow no
good will bring.
And of
your downfall future bards will sing.
All of us know what happened. The warnings from the
State
Department were ignored; Rumsfeld acceded to the neoconservatives in
the
Pentagon; Iraq was "liberated;" our troops are now caught in a
hostile environment; some - as well as the liberated Iraqis - get
killed on a
daily basis; there are more world-wide terrorists attacks which kill
the
innocent; and the U.S. is saddled with a massive financial debt, which
the
taxpayers of this country will have to shoulder. I do not have the gift
of
prophecy but all of these events were foreseeable as
has been
documented prior to the Iraq invasion in these pages. All that is
required is
to know history as it really evolved, rather than the myths which have
been
spun around it, and the fundamentals of human behavior which have
remained
constant throughout the ages.
Unfortunately these simple truths have not yet found their place in the
minds
of the decision makers in Washington which include the speech writers
of
President Bush. The president gavetwo major
speeches
during the past month. One before the United States Chamber of
Commerce
- Endowment for Democracy, and the other at
Westminster
Palace. The speeches were not excerpted or commented upon to a
great
extent in the press but Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek
November 17,
2003) wondered how to explain
"the churlish reaction among so many Democrats, Europeans and
intellectuals to the president's speech on democracy in the Middle East
last
week? Whatever the problems - and I'll get to them - as a speech it
stands as one
of the most intelligent and eloquent statements by a president in
recent
memory. (Don't take my word for it: read it at
whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html.) If it marks a
real shift
in strategy, it will go down in history as Bush's most important
speech."
Mr. Fareed ascribed the negative reaction to the
Chamber of
Commerce speech as, "A visceral dislike for the president
is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they
cannot
bring themselves to agree with anything he says." Since I never
"viscerally disliked" the president, voted for him, but
thoroughly disagreed with his post 9/11 foreign policy here was a
challenge. I
took Mr. Fareed at his word and read the speech carefully. In
the
first part the president recalled that president Reagan had also been
vigorously denounced in Europe for his vision to bring freedom to the
captive
people in the Soviet sphere of influence; but he succeeded
nevertheless.
Subsequently he mentioned "the progress of liberty is a powerful trend.
Yet we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost."
There is no doubt about that and no one will quarrel
with it. Neither
is "freedom is worth fighting for, dying for and standing for,"
controversial. But when it comes to "Our commitment to
democracy is tested in countries like Cuba and Burma and North Korea
and
Zimbabwe,” one is beginning to wonder. Are we
supposed to
invade and liberate them also?
The president then turned to the Middle East and
assured his
listeners that Muslims can indeed appreciate democracy and that those
who do
not feel so as yet will soon see the error of their ways. But he also
rang a
note which sounded disturbing. "Dictators in Iraq and Syria
[emphasis added] promised the restoration of national honor, a return
to
ancient glories. They've left instead a legacy of torture,
oppression,
misery and ruin." People who are used to reading between the
lines
will immediately note that here is a potential opening shot of
the next
war against Syrians, who are known to "harbor
terrorists" and who have already been subjected to economic
sanctions by the US. "The good and capable people of the
Middle
East all deserve responsible leadership." Yes indeed but that cannot be
imposed from Washington!
The President subsequently lectured the Palestinians
that
their "only path to independence and dignity and progress is the
path
of democracy. . . . The Palestinian leaders are not leaders at all . .
. . They
are the main obstacles to peace, and to the success of the Palestinian
people." One might now have expected some advicefor
his "friend" Ariel Sharon, but neither that
name nor the state of Israel was mentioned at all. It is
agreed that
Arafat has his faults, but to omit the role the Likud government is
playing in
fueling the flames of Palestinian hatred, is a violation of good sense
and
turns this "most intelligent" speech into a travesty. The additional
fact that there was not a single sentence about how he intends to solve
the
Middle East problem - including the self-inflicted Iraq wound - is
ample reason
to label the speech as full of good
intentions but
without definitive substance. As we all know "the way
to
hell is paved with good intentions" and that it is the means
to the goal which count.
The president then told us, and if he means it this is important, ". .
.
we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization.
Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own
cultures.
They will not and should not look like us. . . . We've taken a 200-year
journey
toward inclusion and justice - and this makes us patient and
understanding as
other nations are at different stages of this journey." Patience and
understanding are indeed called for but it is difficult to forget that
the
president had called himself a "patient man" around this time last
year and a few months later the tanks rolled. But since of all us are
capable
of learning, we can hope that there may more patience next
time.
The second speech at Westminster Palace was in
the
same vein. He tried to flatter the British with our common
heritage
and values, but couldn't help inserting a dig at the French.
"President Wilson had come to Europe with 14 Points for Peace. Many
congratulated him on his vision; yet some were dubious. Take for
example, the
Prime Minister of France. He complained that God, himself, had only Ten
Commandments. Sounds familiar." The president did not mention that it
was
not only Clemenceau who made a shamble out of the 14 points but was
ably
assisted by Lloyd George of Great Britain and Orlando of Italy. It was
this
threesome who created a "peace to end all peace," in the words of
Field Marshall Wavell.
The president continued, and stated that it was the failure of
the
League of Nations to reign in dictators which led to WWII.
This
statement is interesting for several reasons. 1) The Carthaginian
dictates of
Versailles (Germany), Trianon (Austria-Hungary), and Sèvres
(Ottoman Empire),
which humiliated the vanquished and produced profound resentment, were
not
mentioned as contributory elements. 2) The fact that Congress never
ratified
the Versailles dictate, and that the US never did join the League, it's
very
own brainchild, was also omitted. 3) And this is the most telling for
the
disconnect we are exposed to; the successor of the League, the United
Nations,
has been totally ignored in the decision making before the Iraq
invasion.
The lesson that Wilson's idealistic stand at Paris foundered on
the
granite rocks of old fashioned imperialism was thoroughly disregarded.
That he came home a broken man should be forgotten because we must
charge ahead
bringing the gospel of democracy to all the rest of the world.
The president also told the Brits that we are pursuing "a
forward
strategy of freedom in the Middle East," but left undefined what that
consists of. Except that "our will is firm, our word is good
and
the Iraqi people will not surrender their freedom." The last part of
the
sentence surely rings true. The majority want us out of their country
in short
order, not just the military but also Halliburton and associates. Mr.
Bush then
repeated in several paragraphs hisadmonitions
to the Palestinians.But since he wasout
of
the country and not on the campaign trail, he allowed
himself
to add a sentence, "Israel should freeze settlement
constructions, dismantle unauthorized outposts, and the daily
humiliations of
the Palestinian people, and not prejudice final negotiations with the
placement
of walls and fences." That would have beennice
had he said it in the Chamber of Commerce, and even more importantly if
he had informed Sharon in no uncertain terms that this must be done as
a first
step, or else no more money! That means none of the 9 billion
dollars
in loan guarantees, and no further funding of Israeli defense policies.
Withholding $389.4 million is not a serious policy. The president
concluded the
Westminster speech by congratulating his hosts with, "The British
people
are the sort of partners you want when serious work needs to be doing.
The men
and women of this Kingdom are kind and steadfast and generous and
brave."
Yes indeed they are brave; a crowd, estimated by the police between
100,000 and
110,000 had turned out not to hail the Great Liberator but to
demonstrate
against his policies. He was not allowed by his "handlers" to
address Parliament, because he would have been heckled and had
to be transported by helicopter to and from Buckingham Palace
so that
he would not see the unpleasant reception. We need to remember that these
are the precautions the "Leader of the Free World" had to be
subjected to.
On November 22 The Salt Lake Tribune published an article
headlined,
"Even in wee town, Bush can't escape protests." It
printed the above quoted number of the protesters in London, whom Bush
never
saw, and the "wee town" was Blair's country residence. While Mr. Bush
obviously lives in a bubble, shielded from the real world, this extends
unfortunately also to his wife Laura who is
likewise
shielded from the truth. She is quoted as saying, “I don't
think the
protests are near as large as everyone was predicting before we got
here. We've
seen plenty of American flags, we've seen plenty of people who were
waving at
us - many, many, more people in fact, than we've seen protesters."
That's
true, but the reason is simple; she wasn't allowed to see the
protesting
crowds. The article was also accompanied by a picture
which shows a confident Bush striding to his
helicopter on the
lawn of the Palace. He is accompanied by a rather glum looking
queen
and when I first saw the picture I wasn't sure of the reason for her
unhappiness. It became apparent later. Not only had three helicopter
pads
savaged her beautiful lawn, her roses some of them dating back to Queen
Victoria did not survive the prop whirl, and even her flamingoes which
had been
evacuated, because of the expected noise apparently refused to come
back. Well,
"sacrifices have to be made" as the president assured us.
But let us return to the end of the Chamber of Commerce speech
where the president assured his audience that the "freedom we
prize is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all
mankind." Yes that is correct, but how do we achieve
it,
by patient diplomacy and balancing the needs of all parties, or
invasion of the
lands of those who do not see the wisdom of our ways? Freedom is the
great
slogan today but our politicians and media pundits don't seem to
understand
that it cannot be imposed from above. When one does so one tends to get
anarchy
which is likely to prevail in Iraq for the foreseeable future. If and
when we
leave there may well be civil war from which another dictator is likely
to emerge.
That is also the lesson of history. The problem is not that the people
of Iraq
are not ready for democracy but a tribal society with religious
animosities
cannot be expected to rally around a government which lacks legitimacy
in their
eyes as the current Governing Council demonstrates. Neither they, nor
our other
prime example of liberation, Karzai in Afghanistan, can show themselves
outside
government compounds unless guarded by Americans. This shows, more
clearly than
anything else, the bankruptcy of our post 9/11 foreign policy.
Unless this is openly admitted to and constructive steps are taken,
which may,
unfortunately, already be too late, the brave rhetoric by our
administration
will remain just that. Even Goethe wrote at the end of Faust II "das
ist der Weisheit letzter Schlusz: Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie
das Leben,
der taeglich sie erorbern muss." This is wisdom's final
conclusion:
only he deserves freedom as well as life itself who has to reconquer it
on a
daily basis. Freedom cannot be brought on a platter it must be
worked
for by the people who want to be free.
The 22nd of November was also the40th
anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination and the
History
Channel devoted an entire week to that event. Numerous conspiracy
theories and
witnesses supporting each one of them were procured and in the end one
remained
just as confused as before. Although the official government
pronouncement is still that the lone deranged Oswald
killed
the president with rapid fire of 3 bullets from his
Mannlicher, the
idea is highly doubtful. The Zapruder film clearly
shows that
the president was hit twice. With the first shot he stiffened and
raised his
arms to his throat while the second and fatal one exploded the right
posterior
portion of the skull. For a physician this is troublesome. If the fatal
bullet
was fired from the 5th floor of the Book Depository
building, as the
government steadfastly asserts, the entry in the back of the head
should have
been small, and the exit would large. This is axiomatic in forensic
medicine.
The only reasonable explanation seems to be that the bullet came from
the front
and exited in the rear. This is why there was such massive damage to
the back
of the head. Since this would invalidate the lone assassin theory and
indicate
a conspiracy of what ever size and by whomever, the government is loath
to
admit it. Everybody can readily understand that in the panic and danger
of the
moment in November 1963, at the height of the Cold War, any
idea of
a conspiracy might have had a profoundly negative effect and this is
why the
"patsy," as Oswald called himself to reporters at the Dallas police
station, had to be pronounced guilty.
But forty years have elapsed, the Cold War is over, and
the government still refuses to open the files to independent
investigations. This
is the additional tragedy and points out how unreliable official
history really
is. If we are not allowed to learn the truth about such an
important
event, as President Kennedy's murder, which had profound
consequences
including the Vietnam War, there is something deeply wrong
with our
government. As mentioned repeatedly we are also denied the
truth about
the events leading up to the 9/11 catastrophe, about who forged the
Niger
documents, and numerous other aspects leading to the Iraq invasion.
November 19 was the 140th anniversary of theGettysburg
address where President Lincoln said that "these dead shall
not
have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of
freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for
the
people shall not perish from the earth." One hundred
and
forty years later "this nation under God" is not allowed to
mention the word God in public schools and we have a country
that is governed by a handful of people who are not
necessarily elected and beholden not to the citizens
at large
but a to variety of special interests which dish out
enormous
sums of money for their pet causes.
But there is a ray of hope and it comes, of all places, from
California. Arnold
Schwarzenegger was sworn in as governor and runs now the
most
populous state in the Union. This is a truly remarkable phenomenon. A
boy from
a small place in Austria decided to make something out of him and
started with
body-building. He succeeded, got to America, found his way into the
movies as
Conan the Barbarian (which always irritated me, because I thought that
Austria
deserved better representation), and then realized the ancient
Austrian
dream. There is a Latin sentence all of us learned in history
about
how the Austrian empire came into being, "bella
gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube." Others wage war, you
happy
Austria marry! The empire was not built by war; as a matter of fact the
Austrians lost most of them, but by strategic marriages. To a boy from
Thal in
Styria to marry into the Kennedy clan surely must have seemed the
"impossible dream." But he succeeded. The recall election,
which was bitterly denounced by the incumbents, was indeed by
the
people for the people and an expression of grassroots democracy.
Will
the entrenched powers allow him to achieve his current goals as
governor? We
don't know yet, but he has made an excellent start. With Maria Shriver,
JFK's
eloquent and attractive niece at his side he can woo the Democrats, and
his
moderate Republican stance, which actually shades over to the liberal
side
anyway, allows him to govern from the center. When one adds to this a
style
which tends to make friends rather than enemies he should have a good
chance, although
Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoon can't let go of Arnold's
past
history of petting desirable young women and demands an accounting.
Trudeau was
considerably less perturbed about President Clinton's escapades, but
that's
politics. The problems of California including its
massive
budget deficit are truly daunting but when one considers
what Schwarzenegger had to overcome to get to where he is, he
might be
able to meet even this challenge and he deserves our best wishes.
Finally November is also the month of Thanksgiving
and it
might be appropriate, especially for our so called "secular citizens"
to remember what this last Thursday of the month is supposed to be
really all
about. The last paragraph of the Proclamation as signed by
George Washington
on October 3, 1789states,
"And also that we may then unite in most humbly
offering
our prayers and supplications to the great
Lord and
Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our
national and
other transgressions; to enable us all,
whether in
public or private stations, to perform our several
and
relative duties properly and punctually; to render
our
National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a
Government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discretely
and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all
sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us),
and to
bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote
the
knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the
increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant
unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows
best."
That was the prayer of the first president of our republic, and in
the
current climate of intense strife nothing seems more important than to
devote
ourselves to the realization of that goal. We cannot leave it
up only
to God; the work must be done by ourselves.
January 1, 2004
TODAY’S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
On Wednesday afternoon December 17, 2003 I
received an
e-mail message from David Irving inviting me to a next
evening’s dinner
meeting at a nearby local restaurant where he would be talking
about
comparisons between World War II events and the current situation in
Iraq. I
had met Mr. Irving several years ago when I had attended one of his
annual
conferences on “Real History” in Cincinnati and since I was not
particularly
impressed with the qualifications of the speakers I had not returned.
But this
is how I got on his e-mail list and since the meeting was only 15
minutes from
our home I decided to go and hear what he had to say.
I knew, of course, that David Irving has aroused the ire of
Jewish
officials because he has publicly questioned not only the number but
also the
manner in which Jews were killed at the infamous Auschwitz death camp.
For this
he has been labeled a “Holocaust denier,” which is currently
the most
powerful epithet to use if one wants to destroy someone’s reputation.
The label
“anti-Semite” no longer seems to be strong enough, especially since
some Jewish
authorities insist that any critique of the policies of the state of
Israel
amounts to anti-Semitism. Inasmuch as this now involves the entire
Muslim world
as well as numerous European countries, “anti-Semites” seem to have
multiplied
to an extent to make the term meaningless. Therefore, “Holocaust
denier” had to
take its place.
David Irving acquired this title in a book by Deborah Lipstadt Denying
the
Holocaust. The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, published by
the
Penguin group in 1994. The book received high praise from The New
York Times
Book Review, New York Newsday and major newspapers from
around the
country. It is an impassioned plea to fully accept the current version
of holocaust
history and to abstain from further questions about details. I shall
not go
into a discussion of Professor Lipstadt’s book because she is a
professional
student of this tragedy occupying the “Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and
Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta,” although I have
reservations
about how she presents some of the data.
Since Mr. Irving felt that Ms. Lipstadt had unfairly slandered him he
initiated
a libel suit in Great Britain against her as well as Penguin books, the
publishers. For reasons known only to him, Irving chose to act as his
own
attorney, while several high priced lawyers represented Lipstadt and
Penguin
books. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.
The dinner meeting was supposed to start at 6 pm with coffee in a room
separate
from but adjacent to the main dining area on the main floor of the
restaurant
When I arrived promptly at the stated hour there was only one other
person
present apart from Mr. Irving and members of his family. Therefore, I
had a
chance to talk to him in an informal manner and get a feeling of the
kind of
man he really is. He talked in a very rapid manner, with a somewhat
clipped
British accent and seemed to be preoccupied, looking nervously at the
outside.
Since my hearing is no longer quite what it was five years ago I had at
times
some difficulty understanding everything he said. This was compounded
by music
from the main dining area because the glass doors, which separated our
room
from the other guests, were open.
At the time of the mentioned Cincinnati meeting Irving stated that he
would
appeal the negative court decision and I was, therefore, curious about
what had
happened in the meantime. He told me that several appeals had been
turned down,
and that British authorities had also raided his home and confiscated
all his
archival material. His books, which had been his major source
of income,
havenot only been removed from all major bookstores but
even
libraries, so that he is in serious financial difficulties. His appearances
before groups, like the one I was presently attending, have been disrupted
by protesters and he has been deported from Canada as well as
Austria and
been denied entry, among other countries, to Australia, New Zealand,
South
Africa and Italy. In England his printer’s office was firebombed. I
was
rather surprised and did not want to believe this because the man is
not a wild
eyed radical. He simply espouses and presents unconventional views,
which
should be tolerated in democratic countries where free speech is valued.
There is no evidence that he ever advocated violence. Since I am by
nature and
profession a skeptic I thought that he was either exaggerating or
paranoid.
This feeling was reinforced by his furtive glances to the outside,
which seemed
to continuously distract his attention, and where I could not detect
any
problems. By 7 pm some individuals as well as a group of people flocked
in and
we had dinner. There were hardly more than a dozen people present and
with one
exception, a Vietnam veteran, they were all in their twenties or early
thirties.
After dinner, the glass doors to the main dining area were closed and
Irving
started his talk. He drew a comparison about President Bush’s shifting
reasons
for the invasion of Iraq and those of Chamberlain and subsequently
Churchill at
the onset of WWII. America’s reasons from imminent threat by WMDs,
through:
connections to Al Qaeda, regime change, deposing a vicious dictator and
establishing democracy in Iraq are, of course, known to everyone who
reads the
papers or pays attention to the news. The WWII events as seen from the
British
side are less well known. Irving explained that Chamberlain declared
war on
Germany because he had given a guarantee to the Polish government that
if
Germany attacked the country, England would come to its assistance. By
the
beginning of October of 1939 that question was moot because Poland no
longer
existed. It had been partitioned between Hitler and Stalin. Although
Stalin was
clearly a partner in the destruction of Poland, Chamberlain did not
declare war
on him because that was not feasible militarily. For England to reject
Hitler’s
peace offer of October 6 and continue with the war there had to be a
new
reason, and that was “the defense of the British Empire.” But this was
an
excuse because Hitler had no intention to rob the British of their
Empire; on
the contrary he wanted them to keep it so that the Nordic Brits would
hold the
“inferior races” around the world in check. When Churchill took over
the
government in May of 1940 he knew that England could not possibly win
the war
by itself and that he needed the Americans for that purpose. WWI had to
be
replayed. But since Roosevelt had absolutely no interest in defending
the
British Empire, and on the contrary would do everything in his power to
abolish
it, another reason for the war had to be advanced. This was the final
one, “to
rid the world of a megalomaniac dictator who would destroy Western
civilization.”
All of this was no news to me or anyone else who has lived through
WWII,
although it does conflict with what people are being taught today as
the
history and origin of that war. Actually it occurred to me at the time
of this
writing that it wasn’t Hitler who had initiated the war on September 1,
1939.
It was his partner, Stalin, when he had agreed to the partition of
Poland on
August 23. Had Stalin not entered into the non-aggression pact with
Hitler and
told him instead that he would oppose any change in Poland’s
territorial
integrity, Hitler would have abstained from his September invasion. A
war
against Russia, England and France was clearly beyond his military
capabilities
in 1939. But this is an aside, which belongs to subsequent thoughts
rather than
the events of December 18, 2003. Irving’s talk was then interrupted with a message that the manager
of the
restaurant wanted to see him. When he returned a couple of minutes
later he
apologized that he has to cancel the meeting because the manager had
ordered
him to do so. I couldn’t believe that this could happen in our very
own
Sandy. That somebody was not allowed to give a quiet presentation to a
dozen
people was unimaginable. I, therefore, told him and the group to just
sit tight
while I talked to the manager in order to find out what was
going on. I
could only get the assistant manager who told me that there had
been
complaints about Mr. Irving’s presence and a group outside the
restaurant was
distributing leaflets to warn potential guests to stay away. When I
looked
outside I did not see a group and none of the diners in the main area
seemed to
be upset in any way. Nevertheless she was flanked by a deputy
who I
thought might be one of “Sandy’s finest,” but it turned out that he was
in
charge only of the complexwhere the restaurant was
located.
I told the deputy that Irving was giving no offense, any group
which
might have been there earlier must have left, the man wasn’t going to
start a
riot, so what was the harm to let him talk for another three
quarters of an
hour. Restaurant assistant manager and deputy seemed to agree,
that
as long as no employees entered the room it would be ok to continue for
the
stated period of time. I went back with “mission accomplished” and
told
Irving he could carry on with his presentation. He did, but not for
long. He
was called out again and came back with the message that it was indeed
curtains. This attitude clearly aroused my feelings again because I
am,
after all, a resident of Sandy, a citizen of the United States, had
patronized
that restaurant before, and free speech was surely one of the reasons
why I had
come to the U.S. in the first place. Again I went out and demanded
to speak
with the general manager of the establishment. We talked on the
phone; I
explained my views and so did he. The problem was that the leaflet
group had
threatened to tell The Salt Lake Tribune that he was allowing a
Holocaust denier to use his restaurant and this would surely drive
potential
future customers away. I pleaded again for another half hour
reprieve and
he said that if Irving does not call him personally within the next
thirty
minutes the deputies in charge of the complex were empowered to evict
us.
I returned to the group explained what had happened and Irving
continued in an
obviously distracted fashion for another ten minutes or so when all of
us
thought it might be better to quit before the place was raided and his
books,
which he was trying to sell, were confiscated.
The January 1, 2003 installment of the Hot Issues was entitled
“Deconstructing
America” and I discussed in it the changes that have taken place in our
country
since I arrived here in 1950. I was, therefore, no longer quite
naïve but the
event described above was surely unexpected and had I not personally
experienced it I would not have believed it. Are these the values our
troops in
Iraq are fighting and dying for? We must remember that this event took
place
not even in Salt Lake City with a more diverse population mix but in
quiet,
mostly Mormon, Sandy! Irving was not paranoid, he had reason to fear, and leaflets
had
indeed been passed out by a group, which listed itself only as “The
Holocaust
History Project” with an Internet address www.holocaust-history.org.
The
group had apparently come after my arrival but the mentioned Vietnam
vet with
whom I had exchanged war stories gave me his. Under the title “Who is
David
Irving?” we find statements attributed to the London Times,
“Britain’s
leading anti-Semitic lunatic;” to Vice President Al Gore, “ That awful
falsifier;” and to Judge Gray, “… he is an active Holocaust denier; …
he is
anti-Semitic and racist and he associates with right-wing extremists
who
promote neo–Nazism.” These are just some samples, giving the reasons
why Irving
should be regarded as an “Unwelcome Guest.”
Since Irving had told me earlier in private that a letter had been sent
out by
special interest groups to libraries requesting that his books be
removed from
their shelves I checked the website of the University of Utah library
and
indeed none of his books which were published after 1989 are available.
When I
looked at amazon.com only the 2002 hardcover update of Hitler’s War
was
available to be shipped within several weeks, others were listed as
either out
of stock or out of print. The Salt Lake County library system likewise
has none
of Irving’s books that were published after 1990. The greatest surprise
came
when I looked at the Library of Congress’ catalog. Hitler’s War
is
available in 1977 and 1990 editions but not in that of 2002. Rommel.
The
Desert Fox exists but the books about Goebbels and Hess do not.
Furthermore, and most astounding, was that his book Nuremberg. The
Last
Battle is on the shelves but only in its German translation! Irving
is now
forced to self-promote through the website www.fpp.co.uk/books,
and personal appearances which lead to the result described above.
I regard this entire situation as a terribly sad commentary on the
current
state of America’s democracy. Regardless of what one may think
about Mr.
Irving personally, or his views, there is a principle at stake. Freedom
of
speech and freedom of the press are the most fundamental hallmarks of
our
constitution. It is true that groups have the right to pass out
leaflets
protesting a given person’s presence. It is also true that the manager
of an
establishment has the right to ask guests to leave when he is afraid
that they
might interfere with future earnings. But it is, furthermore, true that
a
climate of fear has been created in this country that effectively
silences voices
that challenge the currently accepted versions of history. This is athrowback to the Catholic church of the early renaissance when
the dogma
of the sun rotating around the earth was not to be doubted because the
Bible
said so. Scientific evidence was irrelevant. Nearly 500 years later we
have
advanced to the point where we no longer burn dissenters at the stake
we just
deprive them of their livelihood and ostracize them. The ancient Jewish cherem, which was pronounced against
Spinoza, has
now taken the place of papal Bulls. The “Index of Forbidden
Books” also
seems to have been resurrected and is enforced by Jewish pressure
groups
rather than the Catholic Church. Let me make it clear that Jewish
groups
have a right to protest, like everybody else, but the fearful
submission
of the vast non-Jewish population to the demands of small pressure
groups is
truly appalling. It is also most remarkable that anyone is free to
deny the
virgin birth of Jesus, his stature as Son of God, or any other
religious dogma
but the Nazi holocaust has to be written nowadays with a capital H and
is
absolutely taboo. Scientific investigations are not allowed. The book
has been
closed, the canon set in cement!
I have used the word cherem, which stands for
excommunication of members from the Jewish community, and it may be of
interest
to read an excerpt of the formula, which was pronounced over
Spinoza in
Amsterdam on July 27, 1656. It starts with:
“Having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza
they [the
governing body] have endeavored by various means and promises, to turn
him from
his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and,
on the
contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the
abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his
monstrous deeds
. . . the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the
people
of Israel . . .”
“By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we
excommunicate,
expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God,
Blessed be
He, and with consent of the entire congregation . . . Cursed be he by
day and
cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he
when he
rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes
in. The
Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his
jealousy shall
smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this
book
[Torah] shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name under
heaven.
And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of
Israel,
according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this
book of
the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one
of you
this day.”
I am indebted to Professor Lindemann of the University of California
Santa
Barbara campus for having provided me with the article by Asa Kasher
and Shlomo
Biderman: Why was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated? which served as the
basis
for the quotes. As one says in the German language: Kommentar
ueberfluessig;
the text speaks for itself.
Let me reemphasize that I am not talking primarily about Mr.
Irving’s fate,
regrettable as it is, but about the nature of our democracy and what we
are
allowing it to become. Discerning readers may already have noted
that I
borrowed the title of this essay fromde Tocqueville’s Democracy
in
America first published in 1835. It is therefore of interest to
read
what this French world-traveling aristocrat told his contemporaries. He
was a
cautious optimist who predicted the spread of democracy throughout the
world :
“The good things and the evils of life are more equally distributed in
the
world: great wealth tends to disappear, the number of small fortunes to
increase; desires and gratifications are multiplied, but extraordinary
prosperity and irremediable penury are alike unknown . . . Each
individual
stands apart in solitary weakness; but society at large is active,
provident,
and powerful: the performances of private persons are insignificant
those of
the state immense. . . . There is less perfection, but more abundance,
in all
the productions of the arts. The ties of race, of rank, and the country
are
relaxed; the great bond of humanity is strengthened . . . A state of
equality
is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice
constitutes its
greatness and its beauty.”
De Tocqueville also warned:
“That men living in aristocratic countries may, strictly speaking, do
without
the liberty of the press: but such is not the case with those live in
democratic countries. To protect their personal independence I trust
not to
great political assemblies, to parliamentary privilege, or the
assertion of
popular sovereignty. All these things may, to a certain extent, be
reconciled
with personal servitude. But that servitude cannot be complete if
the press
is free: the press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom. .
. . I
perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off, - mighty
evils which
may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the
belief,
that, for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous, they
require but to
will it.”
More than a century and a half later democracy is indeed spreading
throughout the
world and its strengths and weaknesses are becoming more apparent on a
daily
basis. We are currently losing our freedom of the press, the only
guarantor
of personal freedom, and fear instead of confidence rules. Fear of
losing
income, prestige, or job, allows small groups with access to the press
to
muzzle those who do not toe the prescribed line. Those of us who do not
agree
with this increasing trend need to speak out. David Irving is not alone
in his
plight to get his books circulated. Gordon Thomas, the author of Gideon’s
Spies, has also run afoul of the Anti- Defamation League.
Barnes&Noble withdrew its support for his latest book Seeds of
Fire
and his book promotion interviews on national radio and TV were
cancelled. The
facts which led up to this event can be found on his website www.gordonthomas.ie under “The
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith.”
One truly wonders what has happened to the citizens of this country who
were
told in the past, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our media
are full
of praise for having rescued the Iraqis from the fear of Saddam, yet
hardly any
attention is being paid to the fear that is generated at home. The
word fear
is, of course, shunned. It has been replaced by the
German angst,
spelled with a lower case A, apparently in an attempt to hide the real
situation. Benjamin Barber has recently published a book, which I
became
acquainted with in its German translation. Imperium der Angst.
Die USA
und die Neuordnung der Welt is its title in German. The
original
English language title was Fear’s Empire. Terrorism, War and
Democracy.
Our neoconservatives believe that they can rule the world through
military
power. First come intimidation and subsequently, when the opposing
country
is weak, occupation. This seems to be the new morality and
those who are
in charge of our policies act surprised when they find that the rest of
the
world is no longer enamored with America. Jewish authorities
complain about
rising anti-Semitism but fail to understand that actions like the ones
described above will not make people any fonder of Jews.The
dozen or so
people who were at David Irving’s meeting were not neo-Nazis or
rabid
fanatics, they were simply curious to hear another version of
history and
subsequently debate its merits or flaws in a civilized manner. Should
it be
surprising when some of these people may subsequently feel animosity
against
“the Jews,” and not distinguish between militant zealots and the common
Jewish
people who likewise feel concern about these tactics of intimidation?
The end
should not justify the means.
There is perhaps no better final comment on today’s situation in
America than
the cartoon from Singapore that appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune
a few
days ago.
February 1, 2004
RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION
This is an anniversary of sorts
because it
has been three years since the Hot Issues were first started. As such
it is an
appropriate time to look back not only in terms of what has transpired
but also
to find out where my opinions have been proven wrong.
The most glaring error was, of course, my faith
in the
incoming Bush administration but it would have required a
personal
acquaintance with the president to foresee how he would really conduct
himself
in office. Furthermore, ordinary citizens who are far distant from the
levers
of power, could not have predicted the 9/11 catastrophe. On the other
hand the
probable results of the policy decisions after this tragedy could be
inferred
by reasonable people. Thus, the Hot Issues clearly fall into two
sections. The
first one deals with events from February - October 2001 and the second
part
with those that occurred thereafter. They demonstrate clearly how one
Bush
voter was first full of hope and then became progressively more and
more
disenchanted with the conduct of our current administration. This is
important
not because of my vote, which does not matter in the large scheme of
things,
but the reasons for my disenchantment have wider implications as will
become
apparent later on.
For now let us start, however with the first essay entitled "The
Ashcroft Nomination." In it I defended the appointment of
Senator
Ashcroft to Attorney General of the United States against attacks by
Democrats.
They had complained about Ashcroft's statement that "Jesus is our
King," because he thereby violated the separation of the Church and
State
amendment of the Constitution. Ashcroft had done so in a setting of a
speech
before students at a religious university with an unusually strict
moral code
and I did not regard it as objectionable in that setting. As matter of
fact it
brought to mind the same phrase uttered by Cardinal Innitzer from the
pulpit of
St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna in October 1938, after he had seen
what Hitler
and the Nazis really stood for. But this is also the point where the
comparison
ends. Innitzer had held worldly power prior to March 13, 1938 and lost
it
thereafter while Ashcroft ascended to it in 2001. Innitzer became a
genuine
Christian by helping victims of Nazi persecutions, while Ashcroft
became a
persecutor especially after 9/11. I don't doubt his personal devotion
to his
faith but his life merely shows that it is difficult, if not
impossible, to
follow Jesus' teachings while holding political office.
Let us stay with John Ashcroft for a moment. Even if he had not
personally
crafted the so called "Patriot Act," he condoned it
and now continues to defend its practices. The very name of this piece
of
legislation is inaccurate and simply a propaganda tool because true
patriots
guard our liberties rather than destroy them in the name of national
security.
We do not need laws which allow the government to enter our homes
without a
search warrant, to find out which books or videos we check out from
libraries,
to arrest and hold us incommunicado without charge for an unspecified
time and
similar insults simply because somebody thought that we might be
"terrorists." Mr. Ashcroft has even seen fit to allow the
establishment of a concentration camp, which is obviously not
called
by that name. Everybody knows that "Camp Delta" exists inGuantanamo, just as we knew in Nazi Germany that
Dachau
existed. But neither did we know then what really went on in Dachau nor
do we
know now the conditions of the prisoners in Guantanamo. As a matter of
fact
Himmler did allow the Red Cross to visit Dachau and Theresienstadt
after they
had been spruced up for the visit. Mr. Ashcroft has yet to do so. Not
only are
the Red Cross and Red Crescent barred but so are the media. The main
difference
between Camp Delta and the Nazis seems to be that the fences are not
electrified and the prisoners are not worked to death, just caged. In
both
instances the prisoners are regarded as undesirables and national
security
risks by the government. In the Nazi era they were considered opponents
to the
regime either on religious or political grounds, while here they are
labeled
"Taliban," "Al Quaeda" or simply "terrorists."
The names of the people who are held in Guantanamo or the actual crime
they are
accused of having committed have never been published and they are
simply held
under the mentioned generic terms, just as Jews or communists could be
sent to
KZs (as they were called) not for anything they had actually done but
simply on
a "pre-emptive" basis.
The German and Austrian people have been, and to some extent still are,
accused
by some that they tolerated the repressive unjust regime, and
especially the
concentration camps, without speaking out. The people who do so have
never
lived under a totalitarian system of government because it would have
meant
volunteering for KZ or death by guillotine which had been renamed "Fallbeil."
What I find so remarkable, however, is that in our country where
we still
have some freedom of speech there is hardly anyone in the
media or even
among Democrats in Congress who brands Guantanamo as a disgrace on
America's
honor. Consider for a moment the massive outcry that would
have
resulted if the prisoners were Jews instead of Arabs. There is a double
standard in regard to human rights and we must face up to it. Once you
label
somebody his fate is sealed, his individuality and with it all civil
rights are
gone. To order or even condone these abuses of power is incompatible
with the
Christian religion and this is the tragedy of Attorney General
Ashcroft's
tenure.
The second mistaken belief on my part was that I thought
politicians in our country are reasonable people who
listen to
their constituents. This is why I published Whither
Zionism?
as a short booklet, which provides facts that they can read on the
plane to and
from their constituencies. This would allow them to cast intelligent
votes on
matters pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict which was bound to get
worse
unless the United States made its weight felt. To make sure that they
had
access to the publication I put my money where my keyboard was and sent
it to
everyone in power. The result was, of course, predictable. The booklet
got
intercepted by the various staffs and promptly disappeared in the
proverbial
circular file. But even if you have the good luck to be able to see
your
Congressman or Senator in person and hand it to him he'll still ignore
the
contents as documented in the June 2001 issue "Metaphysical Guilt,"
and the September 2002 issue "October Surprise?."
Nevertheless these efforts were not totally in vain because losing
illusions
and facing reality is always helpful. There was another aspect where my
prognostications have not yet come true. Yassir Arafat
has
proved more resilient and Sharon less determined than
I had
assumed in April 2002. The Israelis abstained from killing or deporting
him
although they were on course in regard to the other aspects mentioned
in that
article entitled "Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate." Arafat
clearly proved himself a survivor and if Sharon were indeed to lose his
job
over the bribery scandal, which wends its way currently through the
Israeli
legal system, he would have outlasted yet another Israeli Prime
Minister. One
is reminded of Castro in this respect. They stare down their respective
superpower for decades and retain the loyalty of a fair proportion of
their
people in spite of providing mainly misery for them.
The Afghan invasion, which I regarded as unfortunate has
not brought about the result the administration had hoped
for.
The Taliban are regrouping and although the Afghans now have a
Constitution on
paper, Karzai is still mainly the mayor of Kabul and international
relief
agencies are weary of going into the provinces, which are ruled by
warlords.
The Iraq predictions were unfortunately on
target
and the outcome of that experiment to bring democracy to the Arab
people is
still highly doubtful.
In all of these events the Bush administration has shown its true
colors. In
retrospect it has become obvious that our president had no
intention to
ever bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the peace table
and that
he espoused a hands-off policy, which has turned into a disaster for
all
parties concerned including us. Our policies are now hated by most of
the Arab
world because our "honest broker" stance has been exposed as a sham.
In addition it has become obvious that we really have no use
for
genuine democracy in the Arab world not even in Iraq. A caucus
system
of election, as espoused by our government and resisted by the Iraqis,
is no
substitute for one person one vote, cast in secrecy, which is the true
hallmark
of democracy. We don't want democracies in the Middle East; we
want
client states that do what they are told, especially in regard
to
their oil resources. In addition we are very happy to have a dictator
like
Musharraf in charge of Pakistan rather than democratically elected
Mullahs who
would then have their fingers on atomic weapons. The administration was
also
not very pleased with Turkey's democracy when their lawmakers refused
to allow
our troops to invade Iraq from the north. While the White House
justifies its
conduct with "bringing democracy to the oppressed"
it has become obvious that this is merely a slogan in
order togain public approval. To tell the truth to the
American people
about the much more mundane reasons for invading other countries or
pressuring
them by other means into obedience is simply not feasible politically.
You
can't get elected to public office, or if appointed retain it, when you
speak
the truth as you see it.
This brings me to David Suskind's bookabout
the
experiences of the former Secretary of the Treasury Paul
O'Neill.The Price of Loyalty has received some praise
in
Democratic circles and vituperation from Republicans especially in the
weekly
journal Human Events. Although not all the details and
impressions contained
in the book may be accurate there are important aspects,
which
shed light on the Bush administration in general and the
president in
person. According to the book Mr. O'Neill was about to retire
as
Chairman of the Board of Alcoa when he was approached by his long-term
friend
Dick Cheney to join the Bush administration. O'Neill had served with
Cheney
under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Bush senior but was reluctant to enter
public
service again. He had a good job, made lots of money and his wife was
against a
move back to Washington. His main reluctance stemmed, however, from the
fact
that he was an outspoken person who told the truth as he saw it, did
not mince
words and he didn't know how this would work in Washington's
politicized
climate. As it turned out he should have listened to his wife because
his
tenure lasted only two years. The reason why was so unceremoniously fired
by Dick Cheney in December 2002 was a profound
disagreement with the administration aboutfiscal
policy. O'Neill and his long-standing friend Alan Greenspan,
Chairman
of the Federal Reserve Board, were fiscally conservative. They disliked
deficit financing and were never enthused about the Bush
tax-cuts, to
rescue the economy from the doldrums. They did not trust the fanciful
projections
of massive surpluses over the next ten years and suggested that if
taxes were
to be cut provisions should also be enacted that if the surplus
projections
were proven wrong the cuts would no longer be continued. When O'Neill
stated
that he saw no reason for a further tax cut after the November
2002
election, especially with the Iraq war on the horizon, he had
exhausted the president's patience with this "maverick."
As it so happens The Salt Lake Tribune published last week
the actual
surplus and deficit figures from 1970-2004 as well as the projections
for
2005-2008. There were only four years of surplus from 1998-2001 and as
expected
from the administration's response to 9/11 the deficit
not
only resumed in 2002 but is expected to soar to 477 billion
dollars
during the current fiscal year. A Secretary of the Treasury is
supposed to be prudent but that was not tolerated by Bush, and the
conservative
Human Events praises the new Treasury Secretary Snow for going
along
with the wishes of the administration. Some of the tax cuts slated to
expire
soon are, according to the president's recent State of the Union
speech, to be
made permanent in spite of the fact that we may not be able to afford
them. A
federal tax cut, which not only leads to higher state and local taxes
but also
progressively higher interest payments on the massive debt can't be
good for
the average tax payer. But politicians are not swayed by reality;
electoral
votes count and John Q Public is not supposed to think.
All of this would not necessarily have raised substantial Republican
ire had O'Neill
abstained from giving his impression on how our president governs and
compared
it with the habits of previous presidents he had served under. Mr.
Bush
II's stature as chief executive of the US does not come off well even
in
comparison with his father. Although there may be a case of
"sour
grapes" in his assessment there are nuggets which suggest the type of
person our president really is.
O'Neill had not known George W. Bush personally before he was summoned
to
Washington by Dick Cheney in December of 2000 to meet with the
President-elect.
The message was clear: O'Neill's concerns were noted but dismissed and
the $1.6
trillion tax cut Bush had promised during the election campaign was
carved in
stone. "You've got to pursue what you said you're going to
pursue. And I I'm not going to negotiate with myself. I don't do that."
Keeping
promises is obviously an admirable trait,
and so
is steadfastnessbut when it turns into obstinacy,
an inability to change one's mind when circumstances demand a different
approach it becomesdangerous in a
chief
executive and especially when he is president of the United States.
O'Neill
allowed himself to be persuaded to take the job in the hope that he
might be
able to steer the new and relatively inexperienced administration onto
a
responsible course. The second time he met the president was in the
Oval Office
on January 24, 2001 where he was confronted with reality. O'Neill had
known
about the president's penchant to affix nicknames on
everybody
but to be greeted with "Pablo" was somewhat of a shocker.
Although it may have been meant as a gesture of friendliness it was
inappropriate because it showed lack of respect for a
person
who was clearly his senior in age as well as professional experience in
the
field. Henceforth he was Pablo until a year or so later
he became the "Big O" which was likewise no
compliment because it is the trade mark of an automobile tire
company.
Little things like that matter; they allow one to take the measure of a
person.
O'Neill reported that he had come prepared for the January
meeting
with answers to questions he had expected to be asked but none were
forthcoming
from the president. Bush sat impassively listened to his
Treasury
secretary's monologue for more than fifty minutes and when the
hour
was up the meeting ended with Bush telling O'Neill: "Get me a plan on
global warming." Global warming had simply been an afterthought on
O'Neill's mind to fill the time for the last five minutes of what was
supposed
to have been a discussion on how to best manage the country's economy
and
finances. Sure, global warming is important and has financial
implications but
it really was in the bailiwick of the Environmental Protection Agency
under
Christie Whitman.
The president's defenders attacked O'Neill for his characterization of Bush
being aloof during meetings and leaving the cabinet
ministers
in doubt about what he was really thinking, but I am inclined to
believe
O'Neill because his experience with Bush as related above was identical
to mine
with our Congressman as reported here in the June 2001 installment on
"Metaphysical Guilt." I was granted an interview where I explained to
Mr. Matheson that America's policy toward Israel is short-sighted and
he should
take the contents of Whither Zionism?, which I put in his
hand, to
heart. He sat impassively like a Buddha for twenty minutes, then
thanked me and
that was it. There was not a single question why I thought the way I
did or on
anything else. This was the attitude of my congressman, but I thought
that the
president at least would be more inclined to a give and take exchange
of views
with his cabinet officers who after all are supposed to have the
expertise he
cannot be expected to have in all areas. That he did not do so is
troubling.
So is Mr. Bush's management style. As reported
previously he
is disinclined to read newspapers and magazines but relies on "Condi"
or "Dick," as the case may be, to feed him the information he is
supposed to have. Independent verification of their opinions does not
seem to
have a priority for our president. At the first National
Security
Council meeting on January 30, 2001 the president announced: "Condi
will
run these meetings. I'll be seeing all of you regularly, but I want you
to
debate things out here and then Condi will report to me. She's my
national
security advisor."
This stance ishighly problematic.
The president
is responsible for the security of the United States, not
a
political appointee regardless of how gifted she or he may be.
Not to
know first hand the discussions which these meetings are supposed to
provide
and to rely on a filtered version may border on dereliction of
duty.
I believe this may be the basic reason why the White House is
not
releasing pertinent documents to Congress and the Independent
Commission which
has been created to elucidate the antecedents of the 9/11 tragedy.
The
administration is also dead set against extending the term of the
commission,
which is supposed to have its report ready during the spring of this
year.
Under those circumstances the American public cannot expect to have the
truth
revealed because under the guise of National Security documents are
withheld
and underlings blamed. Who makes the decisions, apart
from
the president, as to which documents can and should be
released? As
far as we know these persons are: Dick Cheney, Condoleeza
Rice, Karl
Rove and possibly Karen Hughes. Each one of these people has
their own
agenda and divulging the truth to Congress or the media may
not be on
the list.
This situation carries even greater danger in the current election
campaign where the main Republican issue is
likely to
be a "proven strong national security policy." If
vital issues of national security and the economy are indeed ideology
driven,
as Suskind's book suggests, a second term for the
president
may lead to even greater difficulties for the country
than we
are experiencing already. Secretary of State Powell
has
indicated that he may not want to continue in another
Bush
administration, which given the facts as they have evolved over the
past three
years is perfectly understandable. It has also been reported in the
press that Paul
Wolfowitz may be his likely successor. This
would be
in all probability a disaster because he has little or no credibility
abroad.
When one looks at the current field of Democratic contenders
for the Presidency there is also reason for concern. Senator
Kerry seems to be a decent and competent person but to what
extent he
would pursue as president the leftist positions he
has
espoused in the campaign is an open question. My colleague, Dr.
Dean, has in my eyes disqualified himself
by
his inappropriate outburst in Iowa. He had come in third and acted like
a coach
whose high-school football team had just had just won a game and they
are now
on the road to a national title. Senator Edwards is
not likely
to get any votes from physicians because as the foremost trial lawyer
specializing in suing them he will not win friends in those circles.
More
importantly, his political position seems to be even further
to the
leftthan that of Kerry.
General Clark,
the latecomer, did not handle himself well in the New
Hampshire debate
among Democratic contenders. The question why he became a Democrat
after having
previously supported the Republicans could have been answered in a
straightforward manner. All he needed to have said was, that the
Republican
Party had been highjacked by the neoconservatives and led down a road
many
Republicans cannot condone. The question why he did not distance
himself from
Roger Moore, when the latter asserted that president Bush had deserted
from the
National Guard during the Vietnam war, could also have been answered
more
cogently. The issue arose from a report that Bush had not shown up for
duty
when he was supposed to have; but this report has never been followed
up.
General Clark could have pointed to that report and said: "I don't know
if
this report is true or not, but I shall inquire and let you know what
the facts
are." Those answers would have given him credibility,
which the General currently lacks. The other three
remaining
candidates: Senator Lieberman, Dennis Kucinich and the Reverend
Sharpton are
not in serious contention and are likely to drop out from the race
within the
next month or so.
In sum and substance, the U.S. voter will be confronted with a very
difficult
choice. The Bush administration with its hallmark of secrecy, the
manner how
vital decisions are reached and false assertions to get the country
into the
Iraq war does not inspire confidence. Unless the Democrats
manage to put forth a candidate and a goal most
Americans can agree with, the turnoutin
November may be even lower than in past elections.
In the meantime promises will be made by both sides, the
country will be allowed to drift and the oligarchy in the White
House will concentrate on re-election. If
the
outcome were to be in serious doubt the country
and
the world might even have to brace themselves for another
foreign
policy adventure.Going gently into the night does
not seem to
be the White House's style. I am saying this because of two
small
items in Suskind's book. There seems to be a vindictive streak in the
administration which the country has usually associated with President
Nixon's
enemy list. Suskind reported in the Epilogue that the former head of
the
"Faith-based Initiative" John Dilulio had sent him a memo:
"articulating his concerns that the administration lacked even the most
basic policy apparatus and was being run by the 'Mayberry
Machiavellis,' his
description of the political operation directed by Karl Rove." This
memo
formed the centerpiece of an article Suskind had published in Esquire.
As a result of that publication DiIulio received calls from the White
House and
retracted the statements he had made calling them "groundless and
baseless," which were the identical words White House Press Secretary
Ari
Fleischer had used earlier in a press conference. Suskind related the
story to
O'Neill with the obvious implication how he would react when
pressure
was put on him by the powers for the statements he had made to Suskind
about
the administration's modus operandi. O'Neill reflected and
then said
to Suskind: "'But here's the difference. I am an old guy and I'm rich.
And
there's nothing they can do to hurt me.'"
After the book was published O'Neill gave an interview on Sixty
Minutes, where
he repeated the statements made here. I saw the interview and felt that
he had
handled himself in a somewhat detached manner to the extent that he
even waved
a document before the camera which had "Secret" stamped on it. Next
day the storm broke. He was threatened with a law suit for distributing
secret
government documents, and the former Secretary who thought that he had
nothing
to fear for telling the truth as he saw it, recanted. As we said in our
family
when we discussed the situation: "They got to him!"
March 1, 2004
THE SILLY SEASON
What has been dubbed "the silly season," namely the quadrennial circus of presidential election
campaigns is in full swing. Sordid charges and countercharges fill the airwaves as well as the
print media, while the real business governments are elected for has to take a back seat. Neither
side wants to offend its core constituencies, which leads to the postponement of unpopular
decisions. This may not be so easy this time because America can hardly afford in this day and age
to waste practically the rest of the year on internal squabbles, which will become progressively
more vicious and each side will blame the other for "negative" campaigning and "dirty tricks."
The world will, however, not take a vacation until Americans have decided who is going to lead
them for the next four years. On the contrary, America's perceived turning inwards is likely to
encourage others to take advantage of this seeming vacuum at the topand may make the
rest of this year one of the more dangerous ones for the world. The Middle East is in turmoil.
Sharon has a green light to do whatever he wants until the end of next January, or possibly
beyond if Bush wins, and he will surely use this once in a lifetime opportunity. He is building his
wall on occupied land, raids Palestinian banks and as a matter of policy assassinates leading
Palestinians all under the name of fighting terrorism. Iraq's occupation, with concomitant loss
of lives and property will have to continue even if we stick to the July deadline of turning
power over to the Iraqis because a nation, especially one based on tribal loyalties, can't be rebuilt
in a few months or a year.
The real problem is that America's 9/11 catastrophe was a Godsend to certain circles because
President Bush turned what was a crime immediately into a war. This was a fundamental
mistake and has opened the door to all the disasters that have already followed and will continue
to come to pass. Even if there were to be a "regime change" in Washington next January the clock
cannot be turned back to September 10, 2001. Events have been set in motion that can no longer
be undone. I have always maintained that the 9/11 tragedy was a crime rather than an act of war
because private organizations cannot make war. They can rob, kill, maim, and destroy property
on a previously unprecedented scale but war has always been the final outcome of a dispute
between states. A state has to commit aggression for war to ensue. The pretext for invading
somebody else's country because it harbored terrorists has in the past been regarded as a
prerogative of empires run by an aristocracy, or after their demise that of totalitarian
dictatorships. "Democracies don't make war" has been the slogan dutifully recited at least since
Wilson and this is why the "world has to be made safe for democracy." The Bush administration
has taught us that this was merely rhetoric and that whoever has the power in a given arena will
use it for perceived gain, regardless of what the electorate wants.
While the rationale for even the Afghan invasion was not quite as lily white as administration
supporters made it out to have been there was no question that the Taliban government did indeed
harbor Osama and his Al Qaeda fanatics. But as subsequent information has proven Afghanistan
was a sideshow. The goal had always been Middle East oil. This was one of the reasons why
Saddam had to be removed from power by the Bush administration even if there had never
been a 9/11.Israel's security and a personal hatred by Bush jr. for Saddam were the other
two essential ingredients. It was a personal vendetta against the man who had retained his power
in spite of a devastating defeat while the victor, Bush senior, lost his job. This was not allowed to
go unpunished as Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty. Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of
Deceit in the House of Bush tells us. Weapons of mass destruction and atrocities by Saddam
were excellent pretexts for the war but not the cause of it. The coming together of these three
ingredients: Oil, Israel and Personal Revenge made the Iraq invasion foreordained. Although
9/11 was the catalyst, it was neither the necessary nor sufficient cause.
In the process of writing these lines another war against a country which harbored terrorists
came to mind. It was none other than the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As mentioned in War and
Mayhem private secret nationalistic terrorist groups in Serbia, the Narodna Odbrana and the
Black Hand, dedicated themselves to the destruction of their powerful neighbor in the north and
were responsible for theassassination of the Archduke and his wife on June 28, 1914. But the
ruling circles in Vienna used this crime as apretext to declare war on Serbia although the
government of that country had not been involved in the crime and had actually made
wide-ranging concessions to cooperate with the investigations to bring the culprits to justice. We
know the outcome of that pre-emptive war against a state harboring terrorists and all our current
troubles can be laid at the feet of the decision makers in the summer of 1914. But the war could
have remained limited to Europe, had England stayed out of it. Although Germany's invasion
of Belgium was officially proclaimed as the reason for England's entry into the war, it was not the
real cause, and her overseas empire made it into a worldwide war.
As Niall Ferguson writes in Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the
Lessons for Global Power: "[Germany's invasion of] Belgium was a useful pretext. The Liberals
went to war for two reasons: first, because they feared the consequences of a German victory
over France, imagining the Kaiser as a new Napoleon, bestriding the Continent and menacing the
Channel coast." Ferguson then goes on to state that even if the fear was legitimate both political
parties of the time, the Liberals and the Conservatives, should have acted earlier to prevent a
potential German menace. But the second reason, and this is where we enter familiar territory,
was that: "By 1914 Herbert Asquith's government was on the verge of collapse. Given the
failure of their foreign policy to avert a European war, he and his Cabinet colleagues ought indeed
to have resigned. But they dreaded the return to Opposition. More, they dreaded the return of the
Conservatives to power. They went to war partly to keep the Tories out."
These are some of the real reasons why countries went to war then, why they do so now and why
the rest of this year is potentially so dangerous. To understand this danger we need to look at
the men behind Bush. I do indeed mean men in the sense of male because although "Condi" had
influence in the past she seems to have at best been a reluctant player and has already announced
that she will be leaving the administration in January regardless of who wins the election. Prior to
July 2002 there was another woman in the White House to whom Bush listened and who ran the
show for him. She was Karen Hughes who had guided, together with Karl Rove, his election
campaigns in Texas and for the White House. She got high marks from everyone who had been in
contact with her but she left the administration at the mentioned time. The ostensible reason
was that her husband and teenage son were quite unhappy in Washington and everybody wanted
to get back to Texas. These are noble sentiments which probably did play a significant role but my
clinical mind suspects that there may have been another reason. She must have seen the inexorable
push toward the Iraq war which was hyped by Karl Rove for winning the November midterm
elections. If she was indeed as smart as people report, she may well have had second thoughts
about the wisdom of this enterprise and quietly left the scene before shouldering part of the blame
for this experiment in first ruining a nation and then putting it back together in whatever fashion.
In July 2002 Ron Suskind published an article in Esquire (available on the Internet): "Mrs.
Hughes Takes Her Leave," which is well worth reading. The caption states in bold print: "The
single most influential adviser to the president of the United States is going home to Texas
with her family to live a simpler life. Perhaps Andy Card, the White House chief of staff,
says it best: Oh, God.'" The reasons why her departure was regarded by knowledgeable people
with such a sense of foreboding are as follows. Suskind quotes Card: "She's irreplaceable. The
cost of her absence will be huge. . . . Listen, the president's in a state of denial about what Karen's
departure will mean, so is the First Lady, and so is Karen herself. The whole balance of the place
[the White House], the balance of what has worked up to now for George Bush is gone. My
biggest concern? Want to know what it is? That the president will lose confidence in the White
House Staff. Because without her, we'll no longer provide the president what he needs, what he
demands. Karen and her family, will be fine. It's the president I'm concerned about. . . . She's
leaving when the president has one of the highest approval ratings on record. From here it can
only go down. . . . The key balance around here has been between Karen and Karl Rove. . . .
That's what I've been doing from the start of the administration. Standing on the middle of the
seesaw, with Karen on one side, Karl on the other, trying to keep it in balance. One of them just
jumped off. . . . Karl will miss Karen. He may not want to admit it to the level he should, but he'll
miss Karen a lot. . . . It's like she's a beauty to Karl's beast."
When the "beauty" resigned the "beast" was left in charge. Suskind explains the difference
between these two people who were: "the president's right hand and his left. Rove is much more
the ideologue, a darling of the Right, who often swings a sharp sword of partisanship on matters
of policy and politics. Hughes always more pragmatic, mindful of how to draw the most support
across a balkanized political terrain, somehow figures how to beat that sword into a
plowshare. That is at the core of what has worked so well politically for the president. Both have
been with Bush for many years - Rove first met the president twenty nine years ago - and are
ferocious personalities."
Well, Card was correct. Karen Hughes was irreplaceable. Karl Rove was now in complete charge
of policy and although he won the November 2002 elections for Bush the subsequent downhill
slide in the president's approval, shortly interrupted by the early Iraq success, began and is likely
to continue. Suskind's article also explains the difference between the president's rhetoric during
the campaign of being "a uniter and not a divider" and his subsequent actions in office, which
polarized the country even further. It seems that Karen Hughes was actually the uniter, rather than
the president, and it was she who smoothed out the sharp ideologic bent of Rove.
Which brings us to the next question. Who is Karl Rove? There are two recent books about him:
Boy Genius. Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of Georg W. Bush
by Dubose, Reid and Cannon; and Bush's Brain. How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush
Presidential by Moore and Slater. The portrait which emerges from these books is that of a
political consultant who is highlyintelligent but also totally ruthless in pursuit of his goal. This
can be summarized in the desire to create a conservative political majority in the country which
will outlast a given president and endure for at least a generation. It is to be achieved by
handpicking personable, conservative candidates for public office, be it on the state or federal
level, and overseeing their election to the desired job. The borders of Congressional districts may
be redrawn to maximize his candidate's chances and no effort is spared to annihilate the opposing
candidate even to the point of character assassination. His guiding light is Machiavelli's The
Prince and since he is in charge of the current election campaign he will do anything
whatsoever to ensure the president's victory. In as much as this may even include starting
another "preemptive" war his dealings must be exposed and should be legitimate targets for the
Democrats. To focus on Bush who is a likeable person but a political lightweight is, in my
opinion, mistaken. The opposition should instead concentrate on the people who really run
the show. Their conduct should be scrutinized in a non-malicious but thorough manner.
Democrats should: expose Rove's dealings and dirty tricks; expose Cheney's current
connections to the oil and military procurement magnates; expose Rumsfeld's early and
relentless push for war regardless of justification; and expose Wolfowitz's as well as Perle's
connections with the state of Israel. If all of this were brought to the attention of the general
public not just in books, which only a few people read, but on the TV talk shows, the Bush
presidency would be finished. But who has the courage to do so?
Are the Democrats really capable of defeating Rove? One may wonder. The field of candidates
has narrowed down to two since last month. Lieberman, Clark and Dean have called it quits and
although Kucinich and Sharpton are still theoretically in the race they have no chance of winning
and they know it. Even Edwards is not likely to get the nomination because Kerry has won so far
all but two primaries or caucuses while Edwards won only once. Although he denies it, he may be
running for the Vice-presidency.
Conventional wisdom has it that Kerry will be the nominee at the Convention in Boston and will
give Bush a run for his money. This will be difficult because Bush has already twice as much as he
could possibly need and Karl will spare no effort to dig up whatever dirt he can on the gaunt
senator. One effort to smear him as a Clinton clone with an intern scandal has already failed but
that will hardly be the last. We are just warming up for the "silly season." Although Kerry will
have the votes of all the "progressives" this may not be enough to get him over the top,
especially since Ralph Nader has rediscovered his indispensability for the welfare of the
American people. The Bushies could not be more delighted and Karl may buy him a dinner in
November.
There is potentially another scenario if Kerry were made to stumble or implode. Gore has
committed political suicide by first endorsing Dr. Dean, without even telling his former running
mate Joe Lieberman beforehand, and then by putting on, in all seriousness, an imitation of Dean's
Iowa performance which was painful or hilarious to watch depending on one's political viewpoint.
This leaves us with the junior senator from New York our former First Lady. No one has any
doubt that a return to the White House with Bill as First Husband in tow is Hillary
Clinton's abiding dream and she, like Karl Rove, will do anything to make her dream a reality.
Right now it is assumed that she will be running for the presidency in 2008 when after eight years
of Bush the country will be ready for her. On the other hand if there were to be a major stumble
by Kerry she might "consent" to being "drafted" during the Democratic Convention. This would
be a desperation move by the Democrats, because she can't win this time around. On the other
hand the Democrats might want to write this election off and give her a chance to test the waters
for the real event in 2008.
This is how politics are played in our country and the article by Günter Nenning in Vienna's
Kronenzeitung, supplied to me by my brother, entitled "Three Cheers for America!" (Hoch
Amerika!) is premature. Nenning, an old Social Democrat in both senses of the word,
congratulated us to the self correcting powers of democracy. He told his readers that Americans
first elected the wrong guy but now comes Kerry, the new hero, to the rescue. This is his hope
anyway. But not so fast Dr. Nenning: remember Stalin; both of us do. One of his classic
statements was: "It doesn't matter who votes what matters is who counts the votes." As we
have seen in the fall of 2000, no truer words were ever spoken. Vote counting is likely to become
a major issue in the upcoming election. There are no uniform standards across this vast country of
ours how the votes are being cast in the first place and then tallied. It'll all be high tech in most
states where you merely touch the name of your candidate and/or your party of choice on a
computer screen and presto your vote is registered. What senior citizens' trembling fingers and
poor eyesight will really accomplish in this way is a good question. What glitches will there be in
the computer programs that can either invalidate your vote or send it to some other candidate?
Let us remember Miami in 2000 where an inordinate number of Jewish voters endorsed Pat
Buchanan whom they regard as anathema. The issue of the actual voting process and who the
company is which writes the software has not yet been publicly addressed to the best of my
knowledge. Nevertheless, it is likely to become a major point of contention. Unless Karl Rove
sends us into another war this election may well turn into another cliff hanger and might
again be resolved by judicial fiat rather than the will of the people.
April 1, 2004
MEL GIBSON'S PASSION
"Were you there, when they crucified my Lord? . . . . Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble,
tremble . . ." is an old gospel hymn, which has somehow gone out of favor. But Mel Gibson took
us there and produced what I regard as a Rorschach test. Each viewer saw what his
preconceptions and conditioning led him to see and the criticisms, which were so vigorously
expressed simply prove the point. How else are we to understand a review in The New Yorker
which called it, "a sickening, unilluminating, and ignorant show . . . . It's a deeply angry film, and
one wonders how believers can react to it with anything but guilt, fear, or loathing." On the other
hand a Christian lady, as reported in U.S. News & World Report, felt: "'It's hardly more graphic
than the junk many adults allow their kids to see on TV. And this violence', she said, 'has a
purpose.'"
The most vociferous protests came from some Jewish intellectuals of the secular as well as
religious variety who felt that the film depicts anti-Semitism and would lend fuel to currently
increasing anti-Jewish sentiments around the world. But Christian theologians and biblical
historians also found fault with the film apart from its excessive violence. They complained that
Gibson was loose with the facts because he picked from the four gospels those aspects which
suited his aim and thereby violated their historicity. But most of all he neglected to drum into the
audience that Jesus was a Jew who suffered his fate because the Romans didn't like Jews and
especially Jesus whom they regarded as a rabble rouser. It was also argued that Pilate, a cruel
autocrat, was portrayed as wishy-washy, which does not conform to the picture drawn by ancient
Jewish historians such as Josephus and Philo.
Although I am not a theologian I did acquaint myself fairly intimately with the Old as well as the
New Testament during the years after retirement from professional duties, and I also devoted
myself to studying historical sources dealing with Greco-Roman times. This was brought about by
my attempt to understand anti-Semitism, to which I had been personally exposed during Nazi
times. The first result was War&Mayhem, which gave my version of the events of WWII and why
the leaders in the various countries did what they did. Since this personal history conflicts to some
extent with what is officially taught in schools and in the media the book failed the publishing test.
It was rejected not only by editors of major publishing firms but even agents did not want to
expose themselves to unorthodox views. In as much as I felt sufficiently strongly about the topic I
went subsequently the print on demand route. At the same time I began working on The Moses
Legacy because in my opinion the Second World War would probably not have achieved its world
wide dimension and attendant atrocities without the Nazis' persecution of Jews.
These books were written because I do not share the simple minds of others who merely declare
anybody they don't like as "evil" and be done with it. As a scientist and student of human behavior
I want to know why people do what they do. This included Nazis and why they hated Jews with
such vigor. In The Moses Legacy I traced anti-Jewish sentiments from biblical and extra-biblical
sources throughout the ages and demonstrated their reasons. But the legacy of Moses did not end
with Jews, it led to Christianity and subsequently to the Muslim religion. This puts us squarely
into the current Middle East dilemma and our War on Terrorism which cannot be understood
without its biblical background. Therefore, while Moses made his rounds to publishers, I began
working on the next book "Understanding Jesus," which brings us to Gibson and his film. The
Jesus book was finished for preliminary viewing by friends and acquaintances in January of 2003
and I also sent it to a senior editor of a New York publishing firm with whom I had personal
contacts. By the middle of last year the Gibson film was already being talked about and I tried to
convince the editor that since the movie would be regarded as highly controversial it would be
appropriate to publish the book around the time of the film's release because it would then be able
to get additional publicity. He thought it over; months went by and when reminded he told me
that he needed the advice of one of his colleagues. By early winter the final rejection arrived. Now
both Moses and Jesus sat peacefully together in my computer and went nowhere.
Inasmuch as the Jesus book is a sequel, the decision was reached to self-publish Moses first and
then partly rework the Jesus book to incorporate some valuable suggestions by friends who had
really read the book rather than scanned it. As matters stand now Moses is likely to become
available to the public some time in April.
After this preamble which was intended to give my credentials for saying what I am going to say
we can now discuss the criticisms leveled against Gibson's film. As has been pointed out by others
they are really not so much against Gibson but the gospels and their historical truth. The crux of
the problem, and there is no pun intended, is Jesus. He is probably the single most controversial
person in human history and in the Introduction to the Jesus book I provided a multiple choice
test for the reader. "The word Jesus refers to: A) an expletive when one is angered or distressed.
B) a prophet of God. C) a deluded itinerant Galilean preacher and miracle worker. D) a dangerous
false prophet. E) the savior of mankind." These choices exist and it is up to the individual which
one is subscribed to.
Let us now examine some of the criticisms from the Jewish and the Christian community. The
main one from Mr. Foxman's Anti-Defamation League constituency is that "the Jews" are being
blamed for Jesus' death. This is regarded as anti-Semitic slander because it was really "the
Romans" who did the crucifying. Matthew's verse 27:25 "His blood be on us and our children!"
was also found so offensive that Gibson relented and took it out of the final version. Our current
religious-political climate demands that Jews are exonerated in Jesus' death, for fear that
otherwise anti-Jewish sentiments might be rekindled. In the article entitled: "The Real Jesus. How
a Jewish reformer lost his Jewish identity," U.S. News & World Report wrote: "Some say he was
the Messiah, some say, a prophet. But Jesus was, indisputably, a Jew." Now that finally settles it!
In The Moses Legacy I have devoted a full chapter to definitions including the ones dealing with
the word "Jew." It is, therefore, appropriate to ask: In what sense was Jesus "a Jew?" When one
places oneself into first century Palestine there were various national groups which can be listed
when going from South to North as: the Idumeans, the Judeans (Jews), the Samaritans, the
Galileans and then the Syrians. Although some of these people shared, to varying degrees, the
mosaic religious code they were not necessarily "Jews" in the modern sense of the word. Thus, a
statement such as, "Jesus was a Galilean who was brought up in a mosaic religious milieu" would
have been more appropriate. The "Jews," which were so vigorously condemned, especially in the
gospel of John, were the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea, or more correctly their religious
leadership and mob following. This is why we also read in the pre-resurrection story by John that
Jesus' disciples (most of whom, if not all, were Galileans) were afraid of the "Jews." To insist
today on Jesus having been foremost a Jew is like saying that Buddha was a Hindu, St. Paul was a
Pharisee and Luther was a Catholic. Yes they were, until they saw the abuses of their respective
religions, decided to do something about it and moved into a totally different realm.
Those pundits who pride themselves on "historical accuracy" commit, in my opinion, a
fundamental intellectual error. To look for historical facts in religious history is futile. There is no
history; there are only historians and each one brings his one bias to the topic. Right now we can't
even ascertain what our President did or did not know about the impending 9/11 attacks; so how
are we going to know what "really happened" 2000 years ago? It can't be done and each historian
will take those data that fit a given stereotype, especially when one deals with faith rather than
facts.
Let us now agree that in the eyes of the populace on Palm Sunday Jesus was hailed as the
Messiah. This meant in Jewish tradition that he was to be a redeemer of all who lived under the
law of Moses and establish a Jewish kingdom forever. This was and still is the job of the Messiah!
It is obvious that they misjudged Jesus whose "kingdom is not of this earth" and when they found
out that he was unwilling to lead a rebellion against Rome, as was expected of the Messiah, they
had every reason to be furious. They felt that they had been duped and that he was merely one of
many other pretenders to messiahship. Caiphas really had no choice either. For a Galilean to admit
that he was the "Son of the Most High" was the ultimate blasphemy, which deserved a death
sentence. When the gospels relate that the Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to Pilate because
in John's words 18:31 "it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death," someone bent the truth. The
death penalty did exist in various forms, as discussed in The Moses Legacy, and different methods
for different crimes were in place. Blasphemy required stoning as was carried out for instance
with Stephen and reported in The Acts of the Apostles.
But let us now put ourselves into that particular Passover week in Jerusalem. How can you stone
a blasphemer who has been hailed as the Messiah by the crowd a few days earlier? What options
did Caiphas have? If he just arrested Jesus and hid him away somewhere until the holy days had
passed he would have had a riot on his hands because the crowd would have wanted to know
where their Messiah was. To hand this troublemaker over to the Romans, as a troublemaker, was
really the only valid alternative. Jesus became under these circumstances no longer a Jewish but a
Roman problem.
Pilate, the procurator, was in town precisely to either avoid or put down a riot by the inflammable
mob, wich tended to occur especially around holy days. Pilate's goal in life was simple: to get his
tour of duty over with, while fleecing the populace as much as possible and to put down rebellions
whenever they occurred. Gibson's portrait of Pilate, which is merely that of the gospels, is not
inherently unbelievable when one reads all of Josephus rather than the excerpts we are currently
being treated to, which show him as a brutal fore-runner of Saddam Hussein. In Chapter III of
Book XVIII of The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus describes in great detail how Pilate backed
down when the Jews threatened him with rebellion for having brought Roman ensigns into
Jerusalem which had "Caesar's effigies." Pilate relented for religious demands but when it came to
health problems such as Jewish protests over financing an aqueduct with temple money he
brooked no interference and cut down the mob.
The experts of our day who get quoted in the media about Pilate's villainy also refer to Philo's
opinion about that man and it may be useful, therefore, to give a full excerpt of what Philo wrote.
It can be found in the chapter "On the Embassy to Gaius." Gaius, better known as Caligula, had
intended to have his statue erected in the Jerusalem temple and his friend Agrippa warned him in a
long letter that this would inevitably lead to a war with the Jews. In the letter Agrippa told
Caligula how previous emperors had dealt with the restless province of Judea. When Pilate
violated Jewish religious law by having "dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod in the
holy city," the Jewish leadership petitioned him to remove this offense.
"But when he [Pilate] steadfastly refused this petition (for he was a man of very inflexible
disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate), they cried out: 'Do not cause a sedition;
do not make war upon us; do not destroy the peace which exists. The honour of the emperor is
not identical with dishonour to the ancient laws; let it not be to you a pretence for heaping insult
on our nation. Tiberius is not desirous that any of our laws or customs shall be destroyed. And if
you yourself say that he is, show us either some command from him, or some letter, or something
of the kind, that we, who have been sent to you as ambassadors, may cease to trouble you, and
may address our supplication to your master.
But this last sentence exasperated him in the greatest possible degree, as he feared least they
might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor and impeach him . . ."
Although the two historians don't agree on the nature of Pilate's offense both state that he gave in
to pressure from the crowd. Thus, when the mob yelled that if Pilate did not condemn Jesus to
crucifixion he was "no friend of Caesar," this was indeed the ultimate threat. It was well known
that Tiberius was profoundly paranoid by that time and when there was a choice to be made
between a poor Galilean's head and his own, it surely was not difficult. What was one more
crucifixion anyway?
This little episode brings up another question. I am not a professional Bible historian but if I can
unearth these data why don't the professionals who criticize Gibson and the gospels for historical
inaccuracy? I believe the answer is simple and deals with our socio-political climate where
accuracy has to take a backseat in order to placate a vociferous minority. In addition, only a
person who no longer works for money and is not beholden to any institution can freely speak the
truth as he sees it when it goes against the prevailing political wind.
It is true that Matthew's verse 27:25 has brought great harm to the Jewish community throughout
the ages because it has been interpreted in a literal sense. This is also the reason why we have
such difficulty to understand Jesus intellectually, especially as depicted in the gospel of John. Only
when we realize that we are dealing with spirit rather than flesh will he come to life for us and
then we begin to understand that, while the person Jesus can be killed, the spirit which animated
him is immortal and immune to all insults and suffering. To kill Jesus was expedient and
everybody had a hand in it but Jesus knew that only by his suffering all insults, and ultimately a
cruel death, might mankind be reconciled to God and mend its ways. How did he know? I
discussed this in Understanding Jesus in detail but believe that it was a personal decision which
grew into a conviction from which there was no return.
Jesus intended to wash away the sins of all generations, past - present- and future with his blood.
The idea of the cleansing power of blood was deeply ingrained in the Jewish religion, except that
it was animal rather than human blood and limited to Israel's tribes. Exodus 24:8 reports that after
reading the words of the covenant: "Moses took the blood [of the slaughtered oxen], and
sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made
with you concerning all these words." But while Moses thereby sanctified the tribes of Israel,
Jesus went further and proclaimed that his blood was shed not merely for one nation but for all
nations and all individuals therein. From that point of view we might even hope that the cleansing
power of his blood can come upon the children of Jews so that they too will at long last find rest
from persecution and persecuting. But for a person to sacrifice himself for another, let alone the
rest of the world, was a distinctly un-Jewish thought. Its parallels and antecedents come from the
Hellenic and Buddhist world. It is in that world where one also finds the essence of Jesus'
teachings.
But what does this mean for us today? Everything! The question for everyone of us is not
necessarily Hamlet's, "To be or not to be?" But, "Who am I?" As Kipling has put it in his novel
about the Great Game, which is currently being re-enacted again, "Who is - Kim - Kim - Kim?"
Who is this that says "I" to itself and what is its purpose? This is the fundamental question of
mankind from which it always runs away so diligently. Nevertheless, the question remains, at least
for some of us, and keeps nagging until an answer is found. When the answer comes we see the
world in a new light. We can then truly say not only with Socrates: "Anytus and Meletus may kill
me; they cannot harm me," but also with Jesus: "Father forgive them they know not what they
do."
Gibson tried to bring us into contact with ourselves because Jesus did not seek his death merely
for the sins of Jews but for the evil which lurks in every one of us. Did Gibson show us too much
brutality? Yes; but on the one hand he is Mel Gibson after all and can't jump over his shadow, and
on the other hand we do inflict brutality on others on a daily basis. We just don't want to be
reminded of everything that is being carried out in our name. Condemning the film because it
might provoke anti-Semitism is blinding our eyes to the real causes of anti-Jewish sentiments
which sweep this world now and which we fan by our government's blind endorsement of
Sharon's policies. These are infinitely more harmful than any film Gibson or anybody else can
make.
I believe that The Intermountain Catholic was correct when it suggested that "The Passion of the
Christ" should have a sequel called "The Resurrection of Christ." It will be considerably more
difficult to produce because to put Spirit on the screen rather than bleeding flesh will require
artistry which may not be readily available. In addition Spirit doesn't sell tickets as readily as
violence does. Nevertheless, unless we move from flesh to Spirit we have failed in our prime task
and Jesus will indeed have been a deluded fool whose suffering was in vain. This is where the
multiple choice questions come in again. It may come as a surprise to some readers that the
choice "a prophet of God" is the official teaching of the Koran, while that of "a dangerous false
prophet" is the firm belief of a group of ultra-orthodox Jews. The followers of the Lubavitcher
Rebbe also declare unequivocally that Jesus had to be killed according to the Torah which had
warned of false prophets. This information is readily available on the Internet at
www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm and one wonders why the people who so fervently argue for Jesus'
Jewishness do not take note of it. For those who are so eager to make Jesus conform to their
image of a Jew it might be better to come to terms with him and live up to his message. This
would not require conversion but simply a change in personal conduct. It would make his sacrifice
meaningful for everyone and put all enmity to rest for ever.
Jesus showed us the way from a human to a humane society. Looking at the world objectively we
must say that so far he has failed. But it is up to us whether or not this failure is permanent.
Whether we will continue to nail him and ourselves to the cross or if finally critical mass will be
achieved and people will say: no more hate, no more torture, no more killing,. It may take several
more hundreds of years or even millennia for this to come to pass but this ought to be our task: to
graduate from the human to the humane race.
May 1, 2004
THE GREAT LIBERATOR
The past month provided us with the opportunity to
get more
information on how our leadership really thinks and works. First we had
Dick
Clarke’s book Against All Enemies and his testimony before
the 9/11
Commission. Clarke was president Clinton’s Chief anti-terrorist officer
who had
been retained by the Bush administration but had lost his access to the
president and was effectively sidelined. In essence Clarke said that
the new
administration was so absorbed by its preoccupation with Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq
that they ignored, or at least put on the back burner, the gathering
threats
posed by Osama bin Laden. When the president was briefed on August 6,
2001,
while vacationing on his ranch in Texas, and was told that Osama
planned to
strike at the homeland this did not raise any particular concerns
because, “the
threat was not specific enough.” August is vacation time anyway one
might add.
The administration, especially in the person of
Condoleezza
Rice, vigorously denied that they had been asleep at the switch or that
concerns about terrorist attacks were not taken with the seriousness
they
should have deserved. Clarke, similar to former Treasury secretary
O’Neill, was
duly vilified as another disgruntled ex-employee and the Bush people
thought
that this would suffice. It might have worked but another problem arose
with
Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, which essentially corroborated
what Clarke and O’Neill had said. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld’s Defense
department were indeed obsessed with Iraq to the exclusion of
everything else
in foreign affairs. Woodward’s book will be discussed later because
other
events occurred before its publication.
The Iraq war was not going well, the 9/11 hearings
were a
potential disaster for re-election, so the decision was made to trot
the
president out for a news conference where he would present his
vision
for the future. Since Mr. Bush is not particularly articulate when it
comes to
spontaneous speech his staff thought it best to immunize him as much as
possible by first having him read a 17 minute declaration and then prep
him for
all the potentially embarrassing questions he might be asked. The
speech can be
summarized in a few words: We will not yield to terrorists, we will
stay the
course and we shall prevail. He fully presented a picture of the resolute
leader who is embarked on a mission, which has been thrust on him
and from
which there is no flinching. This is precisely the image Karl Rove
has
designed for him as will become apparent in the discussion of
Woodward’s
book. But image is not substance and the real Bush emerged when he was
asked by
a reporter, “had he had made any mistakes?” The question was open ended
and
could have referred to 9/11, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Bush was visibly
embarrassed, complained that he had not been warned previously that
this
question might come up, tried to find an answer and eventually said
apologetically that he was not quick on his feet. He then asserted that
he couldn’t
think of a single mistake.
In the meantime the “Silly Season,” as
discussed in
the March issue, continued in full swing. Florida is
regarded as a
must win state by the Bush people and no effort is being spared to
obtain
that state’s electoral votes. This led to a disaster for the
Palestinians
and an absurdity for cruising sailors.
Sharon is in considerable trouble in
Israel. His “unilateral
withdrawal plan” from Gaza is vigorously opposed by other members
of his
own party and in addition he is facing a possible conviction for a
bribery
scandal. His good friend George immediately rode to the rescue. In a
press
conference right after the meeting with the Prime Minister he
congratulated him
to this courageous and historic step. Although not all of the
fine print
of that unilateral withdrawal is available as yet enough is known to
indicate
that a fundamental shift in American foreign policy has
occurred. Up to
that news conference the fiction of America’s evenhandedness in regard
to the
Israeli-Palestinian war - we have to call it that because it is now
more than
just a conflict - could be tenuously maintained. This fiction
disappeared when
Bush gave Sharon a green light for whatever he wants to do in the
occupied
territories. In Gaza certain Israeli installations will remain; air and
coastal
waters will be under Israeli control and so will be the border between
Gaza and
Egypt. In the West Bank the illegal
wall, which in part annexes Palestinian territory, will continue to be
built
and only a few settlements in the northern part will be removed while
the main
ones in the heart of the West Bank will stay put. Although Jerusalem
was not
mentioned the “realities on the ground” will make sure that the
Palestinians
can shelve any plan for ever having a substantive presence in that
city. They
can also forget about hopes that DP’s of the 1948 wars, or their
descendants,
may ever return to their former homes. All of this is, of course,
contrary to
international law and numerous U.N. resolutions. Having made these
concessions
Mr. Bush asserted that, “the United States support the
establishment
of a Palestinian state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign and
independent.”
It seems not have occurred to him that he had just torpedoed this
idea
because Sharon’s plan, which he had so vigorously endorsed a
moment
earlier, isdesigned precisely to prevent this from ever
happening.
For the Palestinians, whose only task, as far as Bush is
concerned, is
to eliminate terrorism against Israel this is the analogue of Munich,
where Chamberlain and Daladier signed away Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
Although
these two men are now chastised for their cowardice they had at least
an excuse
because Hitler had threatened them with war for which they were not yet
prepared. They did declare war on him one year later. Bush does not
have this
excuse. Sharon cannot make war on us and the entire despicable performance
was merely to gain the Jewish vote for re-election.
But Jews are not the only large swing bloc in
Florida
which has to be wooed; there is also the Cuban vote that needs to
be secured.
Now we are really in the theater of the absurd and unless one
is a
sailor who subscribes to Cruising World or Sail one
would never
know the height of foolishness this administration will go to in order
to win
votes.
What follows has not been reported by any of the
major news
outlets and I found it only in the May 2004 issue of Cruising
World.The Editor’s Log states under the title of Bushwhacked:
“On February 26, 2004, in language that American
sailors can
only describe as stunning, President George W. Bush issued a decree
that is
unprecedented in both its scope and purpose. Citing his
all-encompassing war on
terror as the principal impetus behind a proclamation fired straight
across the
bows of that unlikely band of terrorists – cruising sailors! - Bush
granted
the Secretary of Homeland Security the immediate power to seize any
vessel, at
any time, anywhere in the territorial waters of the United States, if
for any
reason officials believe ‘it may be used, or is susceptible of being
used, for
voyage in Cuban waters.’”
This is bound to have been the brain child of
Karl Rove
who unearthed what is called The Espionage Act of June 15,
1917; two
months after the U.S. had declared war on Germany! The language
cited above
comes from that Act. Only the “Whereas” justifications were rewritten
specifically for Cuba and the power to board and confiscate vessels
is no
longer in the hands of the Treasury Department but that of Homeland
Security.
Since cruising sailors are negligible as a voting bloc but Miami’s
Cubans are
not, the “Freedom of the Seas” has just been cancelled. Since
this act
applies not only to U.S. citizens but to “any vessel in any U.S. port,”
my
Canadian friend Roger, who keeps his catamaran in the Bahamas, better
sail
directly to Cuba henceforth rather than stopping off in the Florida
Keyes where
he could lose his boat. The Great Liberator who promises to
free the
world can now liberate anyone of us even from our own boats!
But the prime event of the month clearly was Woodward’s
book and during the week of the 18th – 25th
there was
not a single day where he did not appear on at least one of the TV talk
shows.
This attention was justified, and to his credit he stuck to his guns
even under
tough questioning. Although he did not present much that was news, at
least to
me, he gave detailed quotes from the key actors and had the
documentation to
back them up. What emerged was a president who had made up
his mind
to bring Saddam down as early as November 21, 2001. On that day
Bush
collared Rumsfeld and told him in utter secrecy to prepare a military
plan
against Iraq. Instead of following through with the stabilization of
Afghanistan, money and military resources were to be diverted to the
preparation for an invasion of Iraq.
Woodward is careful throughout the book to point
out that
Bush had not actually made a firm decision to go to war at that point
but he
wanted to have the option. Nevertheless, Bush had clearly resolved
to bring
about “regime change” in Baghdad “one way or another.” The
justifications for
doing so and the means were left to the future. It was not a matter
of “if”
but only “when and how.”
There are so many nuggets in this book
that it is
difficult to select some of the most significant ones but European
readers
especially will be interested to learn how the “axis of evil”
phrase got
into the president’s 2002 State of the Union speech. Mr. Bush has a
whole
stable of speech writers among whom Michael Gerson and David Frum were
the most
prominent. The speech was meant to put the world on notice that America
will no
longer wait for attacks to occur but will act preemptively in the
future. It
was clearly directed against Iraq because as mentioned above military
planning
was already on its way. On the other hand Bush couldn’t just single out
Iraq
because that would void all the secrecy so some other way had to be
found. This
was the problem for which Gerson sought help from Frum. It is not
surprising
that Frum, who is Jewish, would have come up with the phrase “axis of
hate,”
since axis and Nazis are synonymous. But Gerson, the evangelical
Christian, is
not supposed to hate. He is much more concerned, just like the
president
himself, with evil in this world which has to be eradicated. Thus, the
word
hate was exchanged for evil. Iran as well as North Korea was added to
deflect
intentions from the real goal. That is how phrases which galvanize the
world
come about.
In regard to the chief players in the run up to
the Iraq war,
Condoleezza Rice comes across as having been over her head in
the power struggle
between Colin Powell on the one hand and Cheney-Rumsfeld on the other.
Rumsfeld sounds like a bureaucratwho loves to throw out
questions
but answers few. When he does, the answers tend to be convoluted or
“Greenspanesque.” Cheney on the other hand is the Sphinx
who has the
answer to all the riddles,rarely talks about them in public
but when he
does he forecloses options. For reasons, which Woodward has not yet
explored, Cheney was always firmly bent on war and openly so since his
speech
in Cincinnati on August 26, 2002. He was dead set against involving the
U.N. in
a diplomatic solution, favored by Powell, and did his level best to
undercut
it.
Powell was handicapped by his military
backgroundand inherent loyalty to the Commander in Chief. When Bush
confronted him
on January 13, 2003 point-blank with his plan to invade he raised some
warning
thoughts, but when asked, “Are you with me?” saluted mentally and said,
“Yes,
sir, I will support you. I’m with you Mr. President.’” Woodward feels
that Powell
thought he might still be able to deflect the inevitable but this was,
of
course, a forlorn hope. It is my opinion that had Powell emerged to his
position from civilian, rather than military, life he might have said,
“I’m
sorry Mr. President I can’t,” and handed in his resignation.
This leaves us with Bush whom Woodward
presents in a
sympathetic but puzzled vein. He clearly likes the man but it seems
equally
clear that he cannot subscribe to his policies. Bush is not the
European
caricature of the “cowboy” but conforms more to the picture of
the
idealized movie version of the Texas sheriff who rides into town to
bring order
out of lawlessness. He doesn’t shoot for the heck of it. He is
concerned
about civilian casualties, but he is on a mission from which nothing,
except
electoral defeat, will deflect him. Bush believes, as he has said also
in
public, that he has been sent by God at this time in history to
confront and
root out the evil in this world, which is summarized in the word
terrorists. When asked by Woodward if he had had any doubt before
engaging into
the war he denied it. No doubt whatsoever. “Had he discussed the pros
and cons
of the decision with his father?” “No.”
That answer may surely strike one as strange, because the son was
embarking on
the same war his father had led a decade earlier, but it does make
sense when
one sees the real human being instead of the “Persona” which is paraded
before
us.
Karl Rove whose only goal in life at this
time is to
get Bush re-elected gave him a power point presentation at the
ranch during
the Christmas holidays in 2002. He wanted Bush to get started on
fundraising but the president waved him off with, “We got a war coming,
and
you’re just going to have to wait.” As Woodward notes the first slide
of the
presentation as to how Bush was to be portrayed was entitledPERSONA and it listed in bold letters,
“Strong Leader; Bold Action; Big Ideas;Peace in World; More Compassionate America; Cares About People
Like Me;
Leads a Strong Team.” This is the background for the “photo-op” on
May 1 of
last year where the president emerged in full flight combat gear from a
Navy
jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and gave his
speech
under the sign “Mission Accomplished.” The intended campaign ad will
now be
fodder for the Democrats.
For those of us who grew up under Hitler this
evokes eerie
reminiscences. Rove’s phrases were exactly the same
Goebbels showered
us with and one has to realize that “Leader” translates, of course,
into
Führer. All that is missing now is the additional adjective of “heissgeliebte”
(ardently loved) and the picture is complete. Fortunately this is still
America
and it won’t come to that. But this is precisely the reason why
Europeans are
so skeptical about our president’s intentions. They’ve been there, seen
the
disasters “strong leaders” with “bold ideas” create, and want no part
of it.
But as mentioned earlier this is all
sham and for
public consumption because the real Bush does not conform to it. We
saw him
in the mentioned press conference where he was flustered when asked
about
mistakes because nobody had told him that this would be coming. We saw
it also
when it was announced first that he would not testify before the 9/11
commission at all but later had to relent under public pressure to the
point
that he would, but only in presence of Dick Cheney! That takes care of
the
persona right there and his insecurity is also the reason why, in all
probability, he did not discuss the intention to go to war with his
father. He
knew that the father might try to talk him out of this adventure and
that was a
risk he was not willing to take.
So the American public has to be treated to the fictitious
Rove persona who is convincedthat ithis destiny to
“bring
freedom to the world.” This will have to be accomplished within
maximally five years, because a third term was, thank goodness,
eliminated
by Eisenhower. In addition there are limits as to who is to be free. As
we
found out above Palestinians are not necessarily included
and the
Afghans are also no longer of concern. They have been
handed over
to the tender mercies of the warlords who profess to fight the Taliban
and al
Quaeda. Neither are the citizens of a well functioning
democracy such as
Taiwan assured of their freedomif they wanted to vote
for independence
from China. They were warned recently to abstain from such dreams.
Although
we would lodge a protest against China if she were to take military
action
against the island that would be the extent of our involvement.
So what does all this amount to? The president
is
motivated by religious fervor, which he actually shares with
fundamentalists of other persuasions. The people around him play Realpolitik
and use him for whatever suits their purposes. These tend to be the old
fashioned ones: lust for power, couched in flowery rhetoric.
Unfortunately the Democratic
contender falls into the same mold. Not to be outdone by Bush
in the
grab for the Jewish vote he also immediately embraced the Sharon plan
and
thereby disqualified himself from being a genuine hope for the future.
He
stands now exposed as just another politician who will say and do
anything to
get elected. This is a tragedy because America surely deserves better.
But the world does not stand still for our
election antics.
While the political parties engage in smearing each other’s candidate
the situation
in Iraq goes from bad to worse. Our ex-Trotskyite neoconservatives
can
surely congratulate themselves. They have succeeded in molding us in
the image
of the state of Israel and we now have our very own West Bank and Gaza.
Our
troops have been trained by Israelis in counterinsurgency and are using
the
same methods as the IDF with the same abysmal results. Doors are
smashed in,
prisoners hooded, adults humiliated in front of their children and
homes
bulldozed. Due to the lack of security foreign contractors are
leaving, the
electricity grid is not being improved and a hot summer without
adequate
air-conditioning is in the offing. That tempers are going to flare and
violence
is bound to get worse rather than better is utterly predictable.
Our government says that we shall turn
sovereignty
over to the Iraqis on June 30but we have our own definition of
the word,
which does not conform to what is found in a dictionary. We’ll let them
do some
chores under our supervision but the power will remain in U.S. or, its
euphemism, “coalition” hands. This is not likely to work because although
we
pay lip service to have the U.N. involved we want to keep the contracts
and,
therefore, the oil, which is the main problem. We would have to let
go of
the dream of developing the oil resources through Halliburton et al.
and really
give it back to the Iraqis. It’s their oil after all and not ours.
So far we have not shown the slightest
indication that we
are indeed willing to make the Iraqis full partners in the
reconstruction of
their country. Regardless of rhetoric about freedom and democracy
“facts on
the ground” are created, which tell the Iraqis that we have every
intention to
continue to run their country from behind the scenes. The largest
U.S.
embassy is being built in Baghdad which, we have been told, will
house up
to 3000 employees, although the most recent numbers have been reduced
to 1000
Americans and 700 Iraqis. What does Mr. Negroponte need all these
people for?
Another fact is the contracts, which are bound to irritate the locals.
On the
Internet one can find a document from the U.S. Department of Commerce
on Prime
Contracts and Subcontracts awarded for fiscal year 2004, dated March
26, 2004. Of
the 52 Prime contracts listed, 45 went to American firms, 3 were joint
U.S./U.K
ventures; 2 went to Israel, 1 to the UK and 1 to Jordan. The
Israelis are
supposed to procure armored vehicles and the Jordanians are allowed to
deliver
fuel to southern Iraq. These are actions Iraqis and the world see, even
if the
average American doesn’t pay attention to them. This is why we are
hated in
that part of the world, and why the U.N. is not eager to help us out of
the
mess our government has created for us.
There seems to be only one honorable exit
strategy.
The Iraqi army and police have to be reconstituted and given power
to
establish internal security. If we were indeed willing to turn
security in
Falluja over to the locals this would
be a good start in the right direction, as long as we don’t
insist on
having “joint patrols” in that city. American soldiers are regarded as
an
irritant and if the Iraqis can handle the situation we would be well
advised to
keep a low profile. If the Falluja experiment were allowed to work it
could
serve as a model for other “hot spots” where local Iraqis should be
fully
empowered to provide law and order. The Iraqi interim, and
eventually
permanent, government would have to be given power to award the
contracts
for reconstruction of their country to companies of their choosing
rather than
ours. They will need money and some oversight that it doesn’t go
into
corrupt hands. We have distributed literally hundreds of millions of
dollars in
cash to buy ourselves Iraqi informers before the war; surely we could
spend a
fraction of that amount to let the Iraqis re-build their infrastructure
which
we helped destroy during it. The Iraqis are proud, intelligent, and
educated
people. They have the ability to rebuild their country and will
do so if
we treat them as equals rather than demanding that they do our bidding.
When the Iraqis see that we are serious, in our desire to turn their
country
over to them good will can re-emerge. The violence will subside over
time and
eventually all of our troops, with the reservists and National Guard
first, can
come home. This is the way to support our troops and not blind
obedience to the
dictates of Cheney-Rumsfeld and their neoconservative friends.
Unfortunately this is likely to be pie in the sky
because in
the real world greed rules and tends to bring the best meant plans to
ruin.
Nevertheless, it would seem that our great would-be liberator of the
people of
this world may still have a chance to extricate himself and us from the
problems he has created. To do so he would have to abandon his
crusading
spirit, which has nothing to do with genuine Christianity, relieve
Wolfowitz
and company of their jobs, and begin to listen and act on the advice of
the State
rather than the Defense Department. He may well find himself unable to
do so.
But under those circumstances he is likely to suffer the same fate as
his
fore-runner Woodrow Wilson who had entered the war ostensibly to create
democracy around the world. He won the war but lost the peace at
Versailles
where he was forced to sacrifice his ideals to the rapaciousness of
Clemenceau,
Lloyd George and Orlando. Wilson’s example: from being hailed as a
savior in
November 1918 to a ridiculed irrelevancy a few months later, should
surely give
our president some food for thought.
May 26, 2004
DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL
This issue appears a few days earlier than usual because next week I shall be attending a scientific meeting in Europe. The key event of this month was the public airing of photographs, which documented the scandalous behavior of some members of the U.S. military in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Although
everybody, Republicans
and Democrats alike expressed immediate shock and outrage the political
polarization of the country soon took over thereafter. Defenders of the
administration labeled the incidents as shameful and regrettable but
insisted
that it was simply the behavior of some “bad apples,”
relatively junior people, who acted out their sadistic impulses. The
Democrats
who want to win the upcoming election used the scandal as another
example why
thorough house cleaning is needed in Washington on Tuesday November 2.
When one looks
at the published
pictures, and I have no interest in seeing more, it is quite apparent
that
especially Pfc Lynndie England and Spc Charles Graner thought
that the
type of behavior they showed in the photos was a joke and they had a
good time
documenting it. As Pfc. England testified, [it]
was basically us fooling around.” Yes indeed but England and
Graner didn’t come up with these ideas by themselves. They were put up to it and that is
where the “few bad
apples”
explanation loses validity. We are now told that the abuse
of prisoners was designed to “soften them up” to get information that would lead to
a suppression of the ongoing insurrection. We have also been told that
the pictures
were to be used to show other detainees what would happen to them if
they did
not divulge any and all information about ring leaders, weapons caches
etc.
This seems reasonable and clearly puts the entire situation into a
different
light.
The Bush
administration was
increasingly frustrated by the way the Iraq invasion had turned out.
Weapons of
mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the attack, could not be
found and
the Iraqi people were no longer overjoyed by the anarchy the US army
had brought
in its wake. Some began to rebel against the Americans while others
settled
intra-Iraqi scores.
From the
Defense department’s point
of view, which is encumbered by tunnel vision, this problem was simply
one of
inadequate intelligence. If detainees were properly, or improperly as
it turned
out, grilled they would lead our troops to the hidden weapon’s
treasure and the nasty people who might use them. This was the fantasy
and, as
usual, it totally ignored the realities of human behavior.
If one really
wants to understand
the Abu Ghraib problem one has to go back to the Afghanistan
invasion and the
decision that captured Taliban and Al Qaeda members are not prisoners
of war
but “unlawful enemy combatants” and as
such not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.
This is
where the problem started and why it will continue to fester
unless and until this issue is addressed. The president has
declared
that we are in a war against terrorism and since the terrorists don’t wear
uniforms they are not soldiers and can only expect the same treatment
as they
inflict on others. This is a repudiation of all the principles
civilized
societies are supposed to stand for. Yet it is still official policy of
the
United States. The detainees in Guantanamo, for instance, have
no
civil rights and we have no idea what goes on there, except that “useful
information has been obtained.” But what this useful information
consisted of we have no
idea. Furthermore, journalists, the supposed guardians of our
democracy,
arenot allowed to visit. Since General Miller, who
was in
charge of Guantanamo, had initiated procedures in that facility
which
supposedly led to confessions, he was the person chosen to bring
these
practices to Iraq. Thus, the ultimate responsibility lies with
the
persons who authorized the policies to extract confessions by
physical and
mental abuse and not only with the underlings who did the dirty work
and in
their ignorance enjoyed it.
This whole sad
affair brings back memories
of WWII and shows that people the world over when put into similar
circumstances will behave in a similar way regardless of sex, religion,
ethnicity or nationality. Since behavior of this type does not conform
to the
norms society expects, it is shrouded in secrecy. I personally knew
that Dachau
existed and that the prisoners in that facility were not treated
kindly. But
this is where my information ended and I had no interest in pursuing
the matter
further because it would have led to a long term first hand
acquaintance with
that place. But is the average American really interested in
knowing what
goes on in Guantanamo today, or in Abu Ghraib, or any of
the other
places where we hold prisoners?
Martha and I
live about 10 miles
northeast of Bluffdale, which is Utah’s
state penitentiary but we
have not faintest idea
how the prisoners are being treated. Since Utahns are good God-fearing
people
one assumes that nothing bad can happen there. But The Salt Lake
Tribune
reported recently that two of the Abu Ghraib prison guards (not
directly
involved in the scandal) were from Utah, had served in Bluffdale, and
stated
that humiliating naked prisoners is routine procedure there. It
is
obvious, therefore, that human beings, whenever they are given absolute
power
over others may well be prone to abuse that power. This is a fact of
life and
the existence of sadism, in most of us needs to be recognized. This is
what
civilization is supposed to be all about: to curb our negative traits
and
enhance the positive ones. When the rules of civilized behavior are
officially declared as non-applicable and provisions of
the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” one is encouraging sadism. It’s as simple as that.
Leaving
morality aside, now comes the
next question: how useful is the information obtained under these cruel
circumstances? This is the real problem, which has so far not been
properly
aired. Even when detainee and interrogator speak the same language fear
and
pain can lead to useless confessions as any criminal lawyer will
readily testify
to. But with our Arab or Taliban prisoners we have a profound language
barrier. The question arises, therefore, who are these
interpreters and “civilian
contractors” we rely on? What is their background and
what are their
motives to serve in this capacity? It seems obvious that they are
volunteers
because if they were drafted their interpretations could not be
trusted. But
even under the best of circumstances how do we know that what is being
interpreted is what the prisoner really said?
We don’t, and that puts the utility of the whole
interrogation
process into question. The language problem has additional
ramifications,
which directly impact on the military conduct of the
current guerilla
war. We rely on informants to lead us to enemy strongholds in Iraq as
well as
Afghanistan but they may deliberately mislead us to attack innocents.
This has
occurred in Afghanistan and may have happened recently on the Syrian
border.
Patriotic Iraqis and Afghans have only one primary goal: to get us out
of their
countries. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that they may
intermittently
feed us false information and when civilians get killed America stands
exposed
as a brutal oppressor.
President
Bush expressed
outrage and said that the
Abu Ghraib behavior
“is not
the America I know.” Yes, that’s
probably true but had he cared to inform himself about the seamy side
of
American life he would have been less surprised. In the May 20 edition
of The
Christian Science Monitor one can read, “‘Simply stated, the culture of
sadistic and malicious
violence that continues to pervade the ... prison system violates
contemporary
standards of decency.’ That conclusion written by Judge William
Wayne Justice,
does not describe Abu Ghraib in Iraq last fall, but the Texas
prison system
in 1999 when George W. Bush was still governor there.”
The president could also have benefited from having read about the behavior
of some
American troops in Germany after the end of WWII. Ways to bypass
the
Geneva Conventions had their precedent in the spring of 1945 when
General
Eisenhower was confronted with millions of German soldiers who had
surrendered
to the Americans. Their numbers were augmented by a deliberate
Wehrmacht policy
to leave only a relatively smaller force in the East in order to delay
the
Russian advance. The intention was to save the bulk of the men from
destruction
and allow the Western Allies to occupy the country rather than the
Soviets. In
this way more than five million soldiers ended up in American
captivity. James
Bacque, a Canadian, chronicled the events in Other Losses,
An
investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of
the
French and Americans after World War II. This book ought to be
a “must
read”
for all
those, including the president, who insist that Americans are, by
nature,
morally superior to people of other nations.
On March
10,1945 Eisenhower
requested from CCS (Combined Chiefs of Staff of Britain and the
USA) thatprisoners of war taken after VE day not be accorded POW
status but
identified as “disarmed enemy forces
(DEF),”
which placed them outside the limits of the Geneva
Conventions. The request was approved, but only for prisoners
in
American hands. The British refused to go along with it. The
ostensible
reason for Eisenhower’s request was simple: he did not want to
feed the millions
of prisoners he expected. That was supposed to be left to the German
authorities, although he must have known that in the post-war chaos
German authorities
would not exist because all organizations, including those concerned
with
social welfare, had been run by the Nazi party. The real reason for the
request
was punitive and part of the Morgenthau plan, which was to guide America’s
post-war conduct towards Germany. The plan was designed to return
Germany to
the pre-industrial age so that the country could never again play a
leading
role on the world stage. Since the DEF status clearly contravened
international law it was kept secret from the public.
Bacque reported
that, “On
a trip
to Europe in the summer of 1944, Morgenthau [Roosevelt’s
Treasury secretary] discovered that the Allies under Supreme Commander
Dwight
Eisenhower had some first-rate plans for getting into Germany, but no
idea of
what to do once they got there. Foreign Secretary Eden read to him from
the
minutes of the Teheran Conference the discussion of the proposed
dismemberment
of Germany, but no one had figured out how to carry this out.
Morgenthau could
not understand the lackadaisical British.” The only person who impressed
Morgenthau was “Eisenhower, who, Morgenthau said, wanted
to ‘treat
them rough,’ when he got to Germany.” When Morgenthau
reported to Roosevelt
that “‘No-one
is studying how to treat Germany roughly along the
lines you wanted;’” the reply was “‘Give me thirty minutes with Churchill
and I can correct this. We have got to be tough with Germany and I
mean the
German people, not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate
the
German people, or you have got to treat them in such a manner
that they
just can’t go on reproducing people who want to
continue the way they
have in the past.’” This attitude was the groundwork for the
catastrophe which
descended on the Wehrmacht soldiers who had surrendered in good faith
believing
in the ideals America is supposed to stand for. They were to be sorely
disappointed.
By April
1945 the U.S. army had
already set up huge detention facilities for the masses of
soldiers who
surrendered. These consisted of barbed wire enclosures in open
fields
without any form of shelter, exposed day and night to the elements.
There
were no sanitary facilities and only minimal food rations.
While U.S.
troops received about 4000 calories a day the allotment for the
prisoners was
officially set at 1150 calories per day for non-workers and 1,850 for
workers.
As Bacque notes, “This was sentencing them to death in a
fairly short time,
especially considering the lack of shelter and clean water.” Although
the German civilian population was eager to help feed their captive
soldiers
they were not allowed to do so. On May 9, 1945 Eisenhower issued a
proclamation which expressly forbade civilians to provide food. “Those who
violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade
to allow
something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being
shot.”
This
order also applied to American troops who felt pity for their
incarcerated fellow human beings. “Private Martin Brech, a guard at
Andernach in spring 1945, was told by an officer, ‘that it
is our policy that these men not be fed.’” He was also informed that disobeying
this order would lead to court martial.
While the food
and water situation was
terrible so was in some instances the space allotted to the prisoners.
The official
figure was 175 square feet per person but at times the enclosures were
so
crowded that people couldn’t even lie down. But even when
overcrowding was not the
issue absence of protection from the weather was the most pressing
problem
apart from lack of food and water. As one prisoner, who had
a PhD, put
it in his notes, which he penned on toilet paper, the only
available
material, “Our only wish is finally after six weeks
to get a roof over
our heads. Even a savage is better housed. Diogenes, Diogenes, you
at least
had a barrel.”
Bacque puts
the blame for these
conditions clearly on Eisenhower and
makes the point that while other generals like Patton and Mark Clark
discharged
their prisoners within a few weeks Ike did not. He even transferred
some of the
ex-soldiers, who already had discharge papers issued, to the French
where they
lingered in captivity and forced labor for several more years. In
addition
while German POW’s were allowed to get mail through the
International Red
Cross in the British and French occupation zone after a few weeks,
those in the
American zone had to wait for over one year for this privilege. The
American
public gets a steady dose of Nazi atrocities in TV documentaries but it
is
deliberately kept in the dark about those which the American government
instituted during those years because that would shatter the carefully
maintained
myth of America’s moral purity. Why was Eisenhower so
punitive towards the
German people? There may have been a number of reasons but as he wrote
in a
letter to his wife in 1944 he “hated Germans.”
Thus, the Abu Ghraib scandal is new only in the methods used for harassment and intimidation
of
prisoners, but not in its purpose which is to break down the morale of
the
adversary by whatever means available. The pronounced sexual
humiliations of
the current scandal are clearly a legacy of our popular culture, which
continually promotes sex in all its forms on our video screens. So is
the role
of women. They must no longer be depicted as caring mothers but
gun-toting,
physically aggressive amazon warriors. Should one be surprised that
other
cultures, especially those dominated by the Muslim religion, want no
part of
this type of democracy?
By calling
the punitive
expeditions on the Taliban and Al Qaeda a war on terror president Bush
has
opened the door to the abuses we witnessed.
Furthermore, some defenders of the war do not hesitate to call
the
current situation World War III and insist, along with the
president, that
it may go on longer than the previous wars. If this is what they want
they will
get it but they may not like the eventual outcome, which can
only be a further
brutalization of our society. I will never forget listening to Goebbels’ speech
in February of 1943 when
he asked the attendees in
Berlin’s
Sportpalast, “Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?(Do you want total war?)” And the
crowd roared Yes! Whereupon he followed up with “Wollt Ihr
in totaler und radikaler als sich irgend ein Mensch in Deutschland
heute noch
vorstellen kann? (Do
you want it more total
and more radical than anybody in Germany can even imagine today?),
which
was likewise answered by a resounding: Yes!What their
country looked
like two years later they really could not have imagined.But
that is
what war brings and why those of us who have seen war first hand
are so
dead set against its repetition.
Hitler
and Goebbelstold
us that the war they had initiated, and that had gotten
out of hand,
was one of “Sein oder Nichtsein”(existence or nonexistence). The Asiatic
hordes
must be prevented from overrunning Europe and the German soldier
was the
only bulwark which stood in the defense of Western civilization. Hitler
was
chosen by providence to fulfill this historic role as defender of the
Western
world. As Goebbels wrote in his diary on January 23, 1943, “All of us
know that if Germany were to lose this war Europe would become
Bolshevist and
the Reich would, of course, also be lost.” Please note that this was not
propaganda in Goebbels’ mind but knowledge, “wir wissen.”What
does our president tell us? He believes that he has been chosen
by God
to lead the American people in the defense against evil terrorists, who
intend
to destroy our nation. This can only be done by pre-emptive strikes
against
nations “who harbor” them because the alternative of further
and more devastating
9/11 attacks is too terrible to imagine. What Bolshevism and the
Jews were
for the Nazis, Islamic terrorists have become for the Bush
administration.
Let me emphasize that Bush is no Hitler but he uses the same
rhetoricand
is also convinced of its truth.
This
is the point where genuine democracy must come into
play. In Nazi Germany we had to keep our collective mouths shut and
do our
assigned tasks, but thanks to the founders of this republic we are
allowed to
play by different rules. Not blind obedience to a Fuehrer is
required now
but a thorough investigation into motives and means with which the
present war
in Iraq was initiated and is being conducted. The Abu Ghraib
scandal could
become the catalyst for a scrupulous soul searching. Reprehensible
as the
conduct of the prison guards was, they did not create the climate in
which they
operated. That originated with decisions made in Washington. It will be
interesting to see if our media are up to this task and really follow
through
with investigating how this stain on our national honor came about.
Will they
be content with parading salacious photographs and the court martial of
a few
misguided low level “bad apples,” or will they be able to expose all the
secrets about 9/11
and the administration’s response to it. There is no doubt
that the American
people have been deceived. The question still is: by whom and why?
American
prestige around the world has never been as low as
today and the only way we can salvage our integrity is by honesty,
which has to
emanate from the highest levels. Pep talks as given by the president on
Monday
will not suffice. We cannot trust our government at this time and
it is the
media’s responsibility to uncover how and why
our country has lost
its way. This has nothing
to do with
partisanship and everything with what kind of a country we want to live
in.
This airing of facts needs to be done not only in some books or
magazines, which few people read, but in the mainstream daily press
and not
just on cable but also the regular TV networks. When larger
segments of the
public become fully informed they will demand action from Congress and
genuine
nonpartisan hearings can follow.
We are
involved in a guerilla war in Iraq as well as
Afghanistan and it will not be won by “staying
the course.” We have sufficiently aggravated the
Muslim world that mere
words will no longer “win the hearts and minds of people.” This administration
and/or the next must come to understand that peace in the Middle
East cannot
be achieved unless there is peace in Palestine. As long as Muslims
are
denied access to the third holiest shrine, in Jerusalem, religious
fanaticism
will flourish and casualties will mount on both sides. A genuine
non-punitive
armistice between Israelis and Palestinians is essential and long
overdue. It
will not automatically usher in peace in the rest of the Middle East
but it
will allow moderate Arab governments to survive and gradually institute
democratic
reforms.
Unless America renounces its unconditional support for Israel’s
current policies, there is grave
danger that moderate Arab
governments will not be able to survive and will be swept away
by
religious fanatics. What are we going to do if the Saudi monarchy falls
and
Osama becomes their Ayatollah Khomeini? What are we going to do if
this
sets off a reverse domino effect and the Kuwaitis get rid of their
Emir and
the Pakistanis of Musharraf? Bomb all of them? Invade their countries?Those
are the nightmare questions, which have to be put before the
American
public, not just in these pages but shouted from the rooftops.
We cannot
postpone facing them because an election is at stake. The fate of the
country
and the world hangs in the balance and that is the reason why our
democracy is
on trial right now.
July 1, 2004
THE MOSES LEGACY
Just like the book, the title of which appears in the
headline, this report comes in two parts. The first deals with the book itself and
the second with the legacy of Moses as it is currently unfolding in the Middle
East.
After several years of writing and another few years of
trying to find a publisher The Moses Legacy; Roots of Jewish Suffering
is now finally available through Internet
commerce. It had to be published through the “print on demand” medium
because I no longer have a life expectancy that will allow me to pursue
reluctant publishers or agents for several more years. In as much as the
content of the book does not conform to current political ideology editors of
well known publishing houses are reluctant to tackle a topic that is not only
highly emotionally charged but also
presents both sides of Jewish-Gentile relations.
On the other hand I do feel sufficiently strong about the
ideas expressed in the book that one should be willing to “put one’s money,
where one’s mouth” is and make them available to the public. This attitude has
to do with my upbringing where I saw injustices being done to the Jewish
members of our society and was unable to do anything about them. I shall never
forget the sense of shame I felt one day while traveling on the Stadtbahn in Vienna
during WWII when I saw a Jewish girl of my age with a downcast demeanor and the
Star of David on her overcoat, as was required by law. I did not decide then
and there to rectify injustice all over the world wherever it might exist but
the impression was lasting, kept resurfacing intermittently throughout my life
and the question kept nagging me why such hatred against Jews could have
existed.
After retirement from executive duties, and seeing patients,
time was available to study the “Jewish question” with the book under
discussion the result. After reading a considerable amount of Jewish literature
it became apparent that the problem of
anti-Jewish attitudes is an ancient
one and there were reasons why people felt the way they did. I shall refrain
from using the European term antisemitism, spelled currently anti-Semitism in America,
for their feelings because the term implies a racial homogeneity which is
inappropriate. When people express dislike or hatred of Jews it is directed
against Jews, regardless of racial background, and not Semites in general.
Thus, the book
stresses first of all clarity of
language. Imprecise language is associated with muddled thinking and
subsequently inappropriate behavior. This will be discussed further in the
second part of this essay. It may seem strange to connect a religious figure
like Moses with 21st century politics but when one reads the book
the reasons will become obvious.Without
the figure of Moses there would be no Judaism, no state of Israel,
no Christianity and no Islam. Historians and theologians can argue whether or
not Moses existed as an individual, what laws he promulgated and what benefit
accrued thereby to the world. For the purposes at hand these questions are not
relevant because The Moses Legacy
deals only with ideas which are expressed in Jewish literature about Jews and
their place in the world. The book is about Gentile-Jewish relationships since
the inception of the Jewish religion.
Currently it seems to be no longer polite in official
American society to speak of a Jewish
tradition and a Christian tradition.
The two religions have been amalgamated
under the term Judeo-Christian thereby blurring the differences between
them. It may, therefore, come as a shock to some well meaning Christians that
observant Jews not only reject the term but one of them has even regarded it as
“an antisemitic lie.” As Neusner has
pointed out the “the two religions …
really are totally alien to another.”
Thus, the purpose of the first part of
this book was to explore how such a fundamental misunderstanding between
well-meaning people had come about.
One of the
fundamental misconceptions Christians harbor about Judaism is that it is a religion like others and has no political implications. Yet
Moses intent was not to create a religion but to make an enduring nation out of
the diverse group of people he had led out from Egypt.
Again it doesn’t matter whether or not the Exodus is a historic reality, it has
become so by being enshrined in the Bible and millions of people around the
world believe in its veracity. The purpose
of Moses’ Law wasto set the Hebrews
apart from the rest of their neighbors and to makethem into a “holy
nation [Ex. XIX.6];” “a kingdom of
priests” and as such a society unto themselves. But inasmuch as the
Hebrews, and later on their descendants the Jews, always lived in the midst of
people who worshipped other deities not only was constant strife foreordained
but so were increasingly more stringent regulations over all phases of daily
life. Once the Jews lost Jerusalem
and the Temple the rabbis were
confronted with a massive problem how to keep their people together in the
Diaspora. The answer was the creation of the Talmud, which has become the
“central pillar” of authentic Judaism.
Christians have very
little, if any, information on the
Talmud and this ignorance has given
rise to the misconceptions about the essence of Judaism. The importance of
the Talmud for Gentiles lies not necessarily in its religious doctrines but in
what has been called “Talmudic thinking,” which differs markedly from that of
the Gentile world. Only when one is aware of this fact can one understand Ben
Gurion’s comment about the British. He explained to some of his friends that,
“You can do many things with an Englishman but you cannot change him into a
non-Englishman. The Englishman does not see things with Jewish eyes, he does
not feel things with a Jewish heart, and he does not reason with a Jewish
brain.” The term Englishman referred to a specific situation but really means
Gentile in general and perpetuates a theme of separateness.
The Moses Legacy
shows why Ben Gurion’s statement is true and the consequences that flow from
it. As mentioned the book is divided into two sections. The first part starts with definitions so that all of us know what
is being discussed at a given moment. This is necessary because “Talmudic thinking,” which assigns the meaning of a word to whatever a
given person wants it to mean at a particular point in a discussion,
pervades the literature. This has to be shunned in a scientific exploration of
a topic. The chapter on definitions is followed by what is known about the
origins of the Bible, the cornerstone of the religion. Its importance for
current political events cannot be stressed enough. This is the reason why
various key biblical figures are subsequently examined for their actions and
their capacity to serve as role models for behavior in our day and age.
Specifically it is shown what type of conduct has been reported, who was
rewarded or punished by God and for what reasons.
As a result some rather surprising findings became apparent
and demonstrated how the past, present and future intersect. Since the present
is based on the past the future is not totally unknowable. It can be predicted
to a certain extent, barring divine intervention, if one knows the character
and motivations of key players. The first part of The Moses Legacy ends with a discussion of the Pharisees and the
essential features of the Talmud. This section demonstrates how Jewish authors
during the first century A.D., prior to the establishment of Christianity,
responded to attacks. The means with which they defended their views will be
found remarkably similar to present day practices.
The second part of
the book shows how the world-view, which was derived from the biblical stories and the Talmud, has now been put into practice in America. Its influence on the domestic as well
as foreign policy of the United States
is documented by quotes from contemporary Jewish authors. It explains why the
Constitution of our country is currently constantly re-interpreted and why
aspects of American life, which have been constitutional for two hundred years
or so, are no longer tolerated. The prime example is the vigorous enforcement
of separation of Church and State and re-interpretation of the “free speech”
amendment. These are largely driven by “secular” Jewish legal professionals
(i.e. atheistic, or “non-Jewish Jews” as Deutscher called them), although
atheists coming from other religions have also joined the fray.The subsequent chapters deal with Jewish
perceptions of the past and future, attitudes on justice and death, and Jewish
power. As mentioned these observations are presented in discussions of relevant
books by Jewish writers, and show how these authors perceive the difficulties
their people are confronted with and the ways to overcome them. But as the
final chapter, “Are anti-Jewish attitudes curable?” demonstrates the proposed
remedies fall short of the mark. The chapter, therefore, presents suggestions
which, if adopted, would not require state or other legal intervention. They
would cost nothing and simply make us humane beings who work for the benefit of
all rather than persisting in a “them and us” attitude where “us” is obviously
favored over “them.”
The book clearly reveals that a great many Jewish authors
see their people as a beleaguered minority in a hostile environment, which has
to be either shaped to conform to their views or, whenever feasible, opposed
militarily. The examples presented make it quite apparent that militant
nationalistic Jews operate on different assumptions from Christians, Muslims
and members of other religions. Fanatic, radicalized Muslims are currently
regarded as the greatest threat to the U.S.
and the world but the equally grave potential danger not to but by the state of Israel
is not being addressed publicly. The main reason seems to be that the
“Judeo-Christian tradition” puts us into the same boat as the Israeli
leadership and any criticism immediately leads to cries of anti-Semitism by
well organized Jewish organizations. Anyone in professional life can ill afford
a label of this sort and the injustices perpetrated by Israeli policies against
the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, for instance, are only
rarely commented upon by the media and ignored by our political establishment.
The book can be obtained through amazon.com or
booksurge.com. Excerpts are available on this site and by simply clicking on
the book cover on the Contact page a direct link to booksurge is established.
This brings me to the second part of this essay. Our current
War on Terrorism is a classic example of inappropriate language.
The term serves only to arouse passions but hides the true battle, which is
going on behind the scenes. This obfuscation is useful for politicians but a
disservice to our citizens, who pay in blood and money for this war. Terrorism
is a means towards an end rather than an end by itself. A war on a tool makes
no sense and in reality we are dealing
with a war between ideas. This cannot readily be admitted to because ideas
cannot be defeated militarily and that is the way this war is being conducted.
In order to deflect attention from this war of ideas we are
being told, in print and on the TV screens that people around the world hate us
because we are rich and powerful, which has always led to resentment and
jealousy. But this is not the real cause of America’s
current dilemma. It is, instead, how we are using our resources and the fact
that the Bush administration has created the world-wide impression that
Americans are above the law and do not have to abide by internationally
recognized norms. Unless this perception is rectified, not by propaganda but
concrete actions which the world can see and agree with, the very real war we
are engaged in cannot be won.
We are also being told that this is a war between good and evil where good must triumph regardless of
length of time or cost. But good and
evil are philosophical concepts and no
agreement can be reached on this basis because good is “us” and evil is “them”
regardless which side of the conflict you find yourself on. Mohammed Atta,
the purported leader of the 9/11 attack, did not regard himself as evil. On the
contrary he prayed to God that “all doors may be opened” to him while carrying
out his mission. This consisted of delivering to sinful America,
which is promoting “secularism” over spiritual values, a foretaste of the
punishment it deserved.
Our leadership, politicians and media people, will also have
to recognize that the idea of the “One
God” is putting us into a dilemmavis á vis the
Muslim and Jewish world. The Muslim
creed, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His prophet,” establishes unequivocally the unity and
identity of God for all three monotheistic religions. For an American
general to tell his Muslim counterpart that “My God is bigger than your god”
betrays utter ignorance. Unfortunately this ignorance is pervasive and bodes
ill for the future. To cast this war into apocalyptic terms makes good
propaganda but cannot lead to a satisfactory resolution of the conflict. The Jewish creed (Shema) which is to be
recited twice daily also asserts, “Hear,
O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This establishes
the unity of God and theoretically all three monotheistic faiths should have
equal access to the “One.” But if the emphasis in the Shema recitation is on “Our”
all non-Jews pray to the wrong deity. They are idolaters and as such
unacceptable.
This is the
interpretation given by some of the
settlers on the West Bank.
One of them told Jeffrey Goldberg (The New YorkerMay 31, 2004), “All my ideas are formed from the
Torah. It’s not complex. This land is ours. God gave it to us. We’re the owners
of the land.” This mentality leads also to the destruction of Palestinian olive
groves, which as Goldberg points out, is a grave sin in Judaism even if the
trees belong to an enemy. When Goldberg confronted the rabbi of the settlement,
whose youths were carrying out the destruction he said, “I’m not hearing you.
I’m not hearing what you’re saying. You don’t understand me. I’m not hearing and
I will continue not to hear.” Another person from the settlement when asked
about the cutting down of the trees was more concerned with access to Joseph’s
tomb. “What is an olive tree compared to the burial place of Joseph, the son of
Jacob?” When Goldberg pointed out that those trees are the livelihood of the
farmer and his family, the reply was, “But the farmer is an Arab [italics in the original]. He
shouldn’t be here at all. All this land is Jewish land. It is meant for the
Jews by God Himself.” Thus, the God of Israel is not the God of the Muslims and
the settlers in the occupied territories are right while everybody else who
disputes this is wrong! Can peace occur
with a mindset of this type?
But the internal Palestinian
problem is not the only festering
sore which infects body politics. There is also the concern of Israeli politicians with external security. There is no doubt that every nation has the
right to internationally guaranteed secure borders. There is also no doubt that
Israel is a
small country and vulnerable to assaults from the neighbors. It is, therefore,
equally understandable that in the 1950’s Ben Gurion wanted to have a deterrent
against aggression from Arab countries by developing a nuclear bomb. The
details about how this was accomplished can be found in Seymour Hersh’s 1991
book The
Samson Option. Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.But what may have made sensein the second half of the previous
century when even Soviet missiles could be targeted on Tel Aviv is now becoming an increasingly dangerous
liability.
This brings us back to today’s events and nuclear
proliferation. We are currently in Iraq
not because Saddam was a threat to U.S.
security but he was a potential threat to Israel.
This is not yet admitted to in public but it may be only a matter of time
before it will be. When I published the essay “The Neocons’ Leviathan” in
April, 2003 on this website hardly anybody had heard about “neocons” and what
they stood for. Now everyone knows and although their ideas stand discredited
because of the Iraq
problems, the full implications have not yet been drawn. Israel’s security concerns are still identified
with those of the U.S.and although we have been willing to remove the Iraqi threat we are now supposed to eliminate potential
threats from Syria and Iran. Neither of these countries
presents a danger to America
and even the threat to Israel
appears exaggerated. The Syrian army is no match against the IDF and Iran
does not share a common border. Even if Iran
were to acquire nuclear weapons the country could not use them against us
because we would obliterate Tehran
in an eye blink and the mullahs know it. The idea that because they support
terrorists they will, therefore, send a bomb via willing helpers to our shores
also does not make sense. These men are not stupid; they know that nuclear
terrorism cannot destroy America
and that the retaliation would be unacceptable. So why do they seem to be
willing to build themselves a bomb? One reasonable answer may be that they regard
it as the “great equalizer” against Israel’s
arsenal of WMDs. Once we have nuclear capability, they might reason, we can no
longer be shoved around by the Americans. This is likely to be also the
rationale for the North Koreans. Let us remember that we have officially
branded these countries as members of an axis of evil. The United
States has declared a preemptive war
strategy and followed through by invading the first of the three evil ones.
They may thus think that they need bargaining chips to assert their
independence, just as France
did when she developed her bomb and then took a leave of absence from NATO in
the nineteen-sixties.Since Israel is
determined that no rival nuclear power will be allowed to exist in the Middle
East the risk for a showdown is becoming increasingly higher. There is no doubt
that the Iranian Mullahs represent a highly repressive regime and the world
would be better off without them. The question is not whether or not they
should be put out of office but only how. Bombs and/or military occupation will
not work. The change must come from within the country, even if it takes longer
than impatient American policy makers would like.
In the current issue of The
New Yorker (June 28, 2004),
Seymour Hersh writes aboutIsrael’s “Plan B” in Iraq.
According to Hersh Israel had warned
the United States
early last summer to seal the border against Iran
because Iranian intelligence officers and foreign fighters were crossing at
will in increasing numbers. The border remained open and the Iraqi insurgency
gathered steam. One may ask why the U.S.
military did not follow through with the well meant advice but one likely
reason may be that we simply didn’t have enough boots on the ground to do
so.Israel’s
preoccupation with security against a potential Iranian threat has now led to a
highly dangerous “Plan B.” Hersh stated, “Israeli
intelligence agents and other military operatives are now quietly at work in
Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and most important, in
Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria.”
It seems obvious that the Israeli government is not doing this for love of the
Kurds, so that they may enjoy a Greater Kurdistan, which encompasses all the
Kurdish people who have been parceled out between Turkey,
Syria, Iraq
and Iran. It is
simply using them to destabilize Syria
and Iran. But
in the process the Israelis are likely to undermine America’s
effort to establish a democratic Iraq
in its current borders and bring a semblance of order to the region. The Kurds
are already concerned that they will lose rights once a strong central
government is installed again and demands for autonomy, if not outright
secession, are going to become increasingly louder. But the establishment of an
independent Kurdish republic will be opposed by Turkey,
Syria and Iran
out of fear of uprisings within their own Kurdish population. While we can
ignore Syria’s and Iran’s concerns, Turkey is a NATO partner and if it were to
get involved in major military operations against the Kurds we would have a
real problem on our hands. Israeli
actions of the type reported by Hersh are clearly against the best interests of America. The newly installed interim
government ofIraq
will also need all the help it can get to hold the country together rather than
encouragement of separatism. Furthermore, if Turkey,
Syria and Iran
were to get involved militarily innocent Kurdish people would again be
slaughtered just as they have been in the past.
There is another
potential tragedy brewing in the Middle East and
America stands by helplessly. We have an
election coming, while the Israeli government is stirring the pot in Iraq,
and no one can tell Jerusalem to
“cease and desist.” Yes, Israel
should be able to live in security but the current security concerns are
exaggerated. There is no army that can invade the country and if a missile were
to strike one of its cities not only Israel
but the United States
would retaliate. The fear-mongering needs to be curbed by responsible Jews both
here and in Israel
so that a degree of sanity can finally emerge in political conduct. A second Auschwitz,
Israel’s recurrent
nightmare, is not around the corner unless irresponsible Israeli politicians
yield to paranoia, or religious fantasies of a Greater Israel, and initiate
policies which will escalate the dangers rather than defuse them. While the turning
over of even limited authority to the Iraqis two days prior to the promised
date is cause for hope meddling with the Kurds is surely not what America
and the new Iraqi government need.
August 1, 2004
HERZL’S DREAM
It may seem incongruous that after a month during which such
major events occurred as: the turnover of “full
sovereignty” to Iraq, the Senate’s report on the “intelligence” failure leading up to the Iraq invasion, the 9/11
Commission’s report and the Democratic convention in Boston, that I should
instead devote an essay to happenings, which transpired more than a hundred
years ago. But as will become apparent, all of the past month’s events are to
some extent related to thoughts hatched in Vienna
during the end of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth century. Events were
set in motion at that time, which will affect not only us but our grandchildren
and great-grandchildren.
I have put full sovereignty and intelligence in the previous
paragraph in quotation marks because they represent typical examples of the misuse of language that was discussed
extensively in The Moses Legacy. The
secret services of various countries around the world do not produce
intelligence, they produce information. It would have taken intelligence to
sift facts from fancy, but that quality was sorely lacking in our leadership.
Full sovereignty is, of course, another euphemism for what has happened in Iraq.The name of the person Dr. Allawireports to is Negroponte and the U.S.
wouldn’t be building its largest embassy in Baghdad if it didn’t have the
intention to retain its influence over Iraqis regardless whether they like it
or not.
Now what has all of this to do with a Viennese journalist
who was hungry for fame as a playwright? And why does he have to be remembered
at this particular time?It just so
happens that this July was the one
hundredth anniversary of Herzl’s death and a
Symposium was held at Vienna’s City
Hall to commemorate the event. I have a certain affinity with Dr. Herzl (he had
a law degree from the University of Vienna) because 1904 was not only the year
he died but also when my mother was born and my grandfather opened his first
leather goods store in the Währingerstrasse, a few blocks from Haizingergasse
29 where Herzl used to live.
Herzl, whose parents had come from Hungary,
was deeply perturbed about his
Jewishness and the anti-Semitic sentiments he encountered at the university
as well as elsewhere. Initially he thought that the cure for anti-Semitism
would be complete assimilation. But try as he might he found out that there was
no escaping from being regarded as a Jew by others. This fact of life
subsequently led him to the opposite extreme by embracing nascent Jewish
nationalism and over a period of about eight years he became its most fervent
apostle. He traveled from one end of Europe to the other
to drum up support from the ruling circles of the day for his intent to solve the Jewish question, as
it was called, by an organized mass exodus of European Jews to the land of
their ancestors. From rich assimilated Jews he wanted money for his project;
from Germany and England he wanted guarantees that the Jewish state he
envisioned would not only be accepted but also politically protected; from
Russia he wanted exit visas for the millions of the “huddled masses” that were
to be the backbone of the emerging country, and from Turkey’s Sultan he wanted
to buy the land.
With the assimilated rich Jews he struck out immediately.
They obviously saw no reason to give up the privileged positions they had
finally attained, even in spite of anti-Semitism. In addition they regarded the
idea that Jews are a nation rather than merely a religion as highly dangerous
and grist for the mill of anti-Semites. The Sultan was equally adamant. As
mentioned in the September 2003 issue (For the goyim they sing) he let Herzl
know that the land his ancestors had fought for and conquered with their blood,
was not for sale and that the Jews should keep their money.
Anybody else might have given up when it became apparent
within the first year oftrying that
persevering with this dream would not gain one fame only notoriety, and might
actually bring harm to oneself as well as others, but Herzl soldiered on. When
no money was forthcoming he convened the first International Zionist Congress in Basel.
In Munich, where he had really
wanted to hold it, the local Jews told him that he and his ideas were not
welcome so the venue had to be changed to the more hospitable climate of Switzerland,
where there were hardly any Jews and no Jewish problem. The Congress resolved
that the Jewish people needed a Heimstätte in Palestine and its
creation was the goal of political Zionism. I am saying political Zionism to
mark the contrast with religious Zionism, because religious Jews, as
individuals, were always allowed to live and die in the Holy Land if they so
desired. The word Heimstätte, a term
which is only partially translatable into homeland, was chosen because the word
state would have lead to political repercussions the Congress wanted to avoid.
“National home” became also the official term in the Balfour declaration of
1917, although everybody knew that a state was really meant rather than a place
where Jews would live on ancient soil under the sovereignty of the Ottoman
Empire. Living as Jews with Jewish customs was already possible in
the Pale of settlement in Russia but there were, of course, intermittent
pogroms and those Jews from the Pale who wanted to escape from its restrictive
environment and enter Holy Mother Russia proper did not find a warm welcome
there. These were the sentiments Herzl banked on.
But the idea of political
Zionism did not originate with Herzl. He
hadseveral fore-runners
although he claimed to have been unaware of them. One of the most interesting
ones was Moses Hess who published in 1862 a treatise Rome and Jerusalem. A study in Jewish Nationalism.The book was inspired
by the emergence of European nationalism and for Hess Rome was the symbol for
the unification of Italy Garibaldi was engaged in. If the
Italians could get their state why not the Jews?seemed
to have been the thinking. There are several points in the book which deserve
to be quoted because they reflect how the idea of Jewish nationalism was to be
sold first to Jews and then to the Gentile world. Hesswrote:
“Fortified by its racial
instinct and by its cultural and historical
mission to unite all humanity in the name of the Eternal Creator, this
people [the Jews] has conserved its nationality, in the form of its religion
and united both inseparably with the memories of its ancestral land. No modern
people, struggling for its own fatherland, can deny the right of the Jewish
people to its former land, without at the same time undermining the justice of
its own strivings. …
The great teachers of the knowledge of God were always Jews.
Our people not only created the noblest
religion of the ancient world, a religion which is destined to become the common property of the entire civilized world,
but continued to develop it, keeping pace wit the progress of the human spirit.
And this mission will remain with the Jews until the end of days …
The Jewish race is one of the primary
races of mankind that has retained its integrity, in spite of continual
change of its climatic environment, and the Jewish type has conserved its
purity through the centuries. …
The pious Jew is
above all a Jewish patriot. The ‘new
Jew,’ who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a
deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race
and even to his family….
In reality, Judaism
as a nationality has a natural basis which cannot
be set aside by mere conversion to
another faith, as is the case in other religions. …“
When one reads these words not from a Jewish point of view
but that of a German of the second half of the nineteenth century it is
understandable that they would raise eyebrows among the educated and create
anger and hate in the mob. Let us summarize what we have been told here. In
contrast to Count Gobineau’s books, published in the
previous decade, which had extolled the virtues of the Aryan race as the main
bearers of culture, Hess had asserted that it was the Jews who had been the
major benefactors of the world. Classical Greece
and Rome, which had found a
renaissance in German culture was not the inspiration of the Western world but
Judaism. Furthermore, not only are Jews primarily a race rather than a religion
but their religion nevertheless is destined to become the one acknowledged as
the true one throughout the world. The assertion that a pious Jew is a traitor
to his people if he does not accept membership in the Jewish nation also had to
immediately raise questions about loyalty to the countries Jews were citizens
of. When one is aware of this aspect of Jewish literature it should come as no surprise that the Nazis took these Jews at their word and regarded race as
the determining factor in legislating who is a Jew.
But Hess, Pinsker, Birnbaum, and others who wrote in this vein during the last
half of the nineteenth century were ignored until Herzl came along and
energized the masses. While Birbaum’s pamphlet Die NationaleWiedergeburt des jüdischenVolkes in seinemLande, alsMittelzurLoesung der Judenfrage (the national rebirth of the Jewish people
in its country as a solution to the Jewish question), published in 1893, had no
resonance - Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (1897), saying
essentially the same all the others had previously said, did make an impact. The difference was that while the others had
been content to publish their thoughts, Herzl created an organization and relentlessly pursued his course to the
detriment of his health as well as his personal and his parents’ finances. He
was scrupulously honest and it was this reputation, as well as his position
with the NeueFreiePresse, which inspired trust and gained him access to
high political circles. This particular newspaper was the equivalent of The New York Times or the Washington Post and as such respected
throughout the world
As mentioned above, before Herzl became what one may call a
professional Zionist he wrote plays. While still in Paris
as foreign correspondent for his newspaper he wrote in 1894 during 17 hectic
days and nights what was to be his last
play, Das Ghetto. The play, which
has been renamed Das Neue
Ghetto (the new ghetto), is of considerable interest in the current context
because it was Herzl’s first attempt to tackle the Jewish question publicly.
The action of the four act drama took place in contemporary Vienna.
The protagonist, Dr. Jakob Samuel, is an honest, just
married young Jewish lawyer, who devotes himself to progressive social causes
and defends the less fortunate in court. He is obviously modeled on Herzl’s
view of himself. His major antagonist, Rittmeister von Schramm, is an aristocratic cavalry officer
who had insulted Samuel on two occasions. Once for a minor altercation but when
he accused Samuel of cowardice and for having been responsible for his
financial ruin Samuel lost his temper and slapped him on the cheek. This insult
required satisfaction obtainable only by a duel in which Samuel got killed.
Herzl used this condensed plot to highlight the Viennese Jewish scene of the
day. Samuel’s best friend, Dr. Wurzlechner, is a
Christian of impeccable character, who as Samuel states had been his model how
to conduct himself in upper class society, took leave of him before going into
politics because after Samuel’s marriage he had become too involved with his
Jewish family. By maintaining their close friendship Wurzlechner
would be seen by his political enemies as a friend and lackey of Jews (Judenknecht),
which would have been harmful to his career. While Samuel’s parents were
honest, middle income, hard working God-fearing people, the family he had
married into represented Jewish upper class wealth with money as their main
concern. Hermine, Samuel’s wife who called him
Jacques instead of Jakob, was also more concerned
with clothes and jewelry, which Jakob couldn’t afford
to buy her, than her husband’s work. In addition there is a Mr. Wasserstein,
the quintessential parody of the Jewish venture capitalist who is obsequious
when down on his luck but arrogant once he had made money again on the stock
market.
What has all this to do with the ghetto and the events of
the first decade of the twenty first century? The ghetto resides in Samuel’s mind. He knows that the external
walls of the medieval ghetto have disappeared but in spite of emancipation Jews
are still segregated, although not quite so overtly any more. As he sees it
there are two barriers. One is external as represented by anti-Semitism but the
other is internal and resides within the minds of Jews themselves. The external
barrier can be removed by working with well-meaning Gentiles but the internal
can only be overcome by Jews themselves. The play ends when the mortally
wounded Jakob floating in and out of consciousness,
surrounded by his family and Wurzlechner, who had
been his adjutant at the duel,murmurs;
“Mother forgive me this pain … (kisses his father’s hand) You will
understand father! You are a man! ... (With stronger voice) Jews, my brothers,
one will only let you live again - when you … Why do you hold me - so tight?
(murmurs) I want – out! …(With very
strong voice) Out – Out from the ghetto!”
The drama is, therefore, both the end of one phase and a
prologue for the final phase of his life. He would bring the Jews to the
Promised Land, cost what it might, thereby ending anti-Semitism and earn the
gratitude of the world.
But this dream had a
fatal flaw it ignored reality on two counts. One was the Jewish people
themselves whom he saw as an idealistic brotherhood who would follow his call
towards a better future and the other that he regarded Palestine
as an empty land. He also assumed that the few Arabs who did live there would
welcome the Jews as bringers of modern civilization and accompanying
prosperity. Jews were to be the colonizers, the Western bulwark against Asiatic
hordes and at the same time providing the gateway for the West, especially England,
to India. The notion that nationalism might not be
limited to Jews but could also affect Arabs, Herzl was not willing to entertain.
He did create a Jewish state but its present condition is a
far cry from his imagination in 1902 when, in his novel Altneuland, he foresaw a
prosperous state in which the deserts bloom as a result of technologic marvels
and most importantly where Jews and Arabs live in peace and harmony together.
In the conclusion of this novel, people recount their good fortune after the
funeral of one of their revered elders who had passed on in peace.
“In this mood Friedrich Lőwenberg
raised a question which each one answered in his own manner. The question was:
‘we see here a new, a truly happy way of cooperation among people – who is
responsible for this?’
The old Littwak said: ‘Distress’ [Die Not. The word could also be
translated as necessity or grief].
Steineck, the architect, said:
‘The reunited people.’
Kingscourt said: ‘The new means of
transportation.’
Dr. Marcus said: ‘Science’ [Das Wissen. It could also be translated as knowledge].
Joe Levy said: ‘The will’.
Professor Steineck said: ‘Nature’s
forces.’
The British pastor Hopkins said: ‘Mutual tolerance.’
ReschidBey
said; ‘Self-confidence.’
David Littwak said: ‘Love and
suffering.’
But the old rabbi raised himself solemnly to his feet and
said: ‘God!’’
It is noteworthy that Herzl
put “mutual tolerance” into the mouth of the Christian rather than the Arab
who stressed “self-confidence.” It is obvious that this hoped for state of
affairs did not arrive and if Herzl were
to return today he would be appalled at what he had wrought and say, like
Wilhelm II at the end of WWI, “das habeichnichtgewollt” (I did not intend this). Herzl’s goal
was to “have a state, not according to the European model, but a community
joined on a voluntary basis with mutual cooperation.” A state of this type does
not exist anywhere in this world. Although Herzl didn’t mention it, the idea
behind the creation of the United States of
America might have come closest to it. But
as we all know our country is also sorely rent apart with conflicting
interests.
Three and a half years ago when the Bush administration
arrived I was still hopeful that a solution to the perennial problems of the
state of Israel
could be achieved with America
acting as the impartial arbiter between Arab and Jewish claims. This is why I
wrote Whither Zionism?and
sent it to the powers who control our lives. It was not of no avail. Today we
in the U.S.,
the Israelis, and other countries around the world are worse off than in
February 2001.
Even in Israel
the Jews have not escaped from the
Ghetto, as Herzl thought they would. They continue to live now not only in
their mental ghetto, but are actually in the process of building a physical one
by the creation of a wall to separate themselves from Arabs. This wall is
regarded as essential for the security of the country. Although it defies
international law some writers like Mr. Zuckerman,
editor of U.S. News and World Report,
supports it with articles like “Good
fences make good neighbors.” If Israel
were to build its ghetto wall within the pre-1967 war borders nobody would
object. But if Mr. Zuckerman’s neighbor were to build a wall which takes in
part of Mr. Zuckerman’s backyard he would surely take the neighbor to court.
This is the problem in a nutshell. As
long as Jewish writers and politicians see only expected benefits for the
members of Jacob’s tribe and ignore the
legitimate aspirations of others, the Jewish people and their benefactors are
condemned to dislike, hatred and ostracism.
Why has America,
which was admired four years ago, sunk so low in the eyes of the world? The
true answer, which no one wants to admit to, is our unconditional support for Israel’s
policies. It is this support in addition to a quest for oil and a personal
vendetta of President Bush against Saddam Hussein which has driven us into the Iraq
war. Now we are stuck with a failed dream, just like the Israelis, and are
hated for it.
What I am writing now
will never be admitted to by the Bush administration even if it were re-elected
because it would offend their “base.” But the Democrats can’t say it either,
at least during the election campaign, because they would be tarred and
feathered as anti-Semites. This is America’s dilemma and this is what Herzl’s followers did to us. It
was the neoconservatives in the defense department who hatched the Iraq
strategy on the model of Herzl’s dream: we will bring culture to a civilization
which actually preceded ours by millennia and our soldiers will be welcomed
with open arms by happy Iraqis. As mentioned in the essay on “The Neocons’
Leviathan” (April 2003) the foreign policy of the Bush administration did not
originate from its legitimate source, the State Department, but from the
Defense Department’s ex-Marxists. They first wrote for incoming Prime Minister
Netanyahu a document “Defense of the Realm” and subsequently they simply
exchanged the word Israel
for United States of America.
They were the ones who brought us “angst” and as long as our main friend is a pariah nation we cannot succeed.
Senator Kerry
gave an excellent acceptance speech and there was no “angst” during the
convention. All of the participants brimmed with optimism for a bright future
and great expectations. But for those to be translated into reality senator
Kerry, if he were to be elected, would need the same courage he has shown on the battlefield at his desk
in the Oval Office. He would have to recognize the existence of “the Jewish
brain,” as ben-Gurion has called it, and deal with it
in a constructive manner. This would include a full disclosure of the
sources which led the British, the Russians and Americans to believe in
Saddam’s weapons of mass destructions. The Senate’s report did not address this
question and Americans are led to believe that the Mossad, the best spy agency
in the Middle East if not the world, had no role. As
mentioned in “The Niger Forgery” (August 2003) I don’t know whether or not it
did, but to hide behind “sources” only feeds conspiracy theories and these are
anathema to a well functioning informed democracy. Indeed, much is at stake in
the November elections and it is a sad fact of life that the most important
issues cannot be publicly discussed at this time.
August 26, 2004
PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY
This installment appears a few days earlier than usual
because we will take a week of vacation visiting the Caribbean.
As the November elections finally draw nearer the American
public is deluged by claims and counterclaims from the two major parties. These
tend to leave the average citizen in a state of bewilderment, unless one is a
faithful party hack who does what one is told. But for those of us who like to
think for ourselves the question of: what is fact and what is fiction? does become important. I shall deal with the dilemma of the
American voter, which results from this problem, in next month’s installment
and intend to limit myself here to how we perceive reality or, if you like, the
truth. This is the fundamental issue from which all else flows.
In May of 1980 I published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease an article on, “The
Reality of Death Experiences. A Personal Perspective.”It was prompted by a rash
of publications on near-death experiences, which were taken as proof for
survival of the soul after death. The question whether we are simply
electro-magnetic-biochemical machines, which have to decay and perish, or
whether there is an additional element in the human being which survives the
destruction of the body is obviously important for how we conduct ourselves in
our lives. Inasmuch as the idea of “ashes to ashes” as the end all and be all
has always been unpopular, religious thinkers and philosophers have come up
with various models of an afterlife. In our skeptical and agnostic society
these ideas have lost credence because scientific evidence for retention of
consciousness after destruction of the brain is lacking. The near-death
experience by survivors of catastrophic life situations was, therefore, hailed
as the long sought proof. Reputable physicians and psychologists published
books on the narrations of these obviously sincere people who stated that
during the time when they were regarded clinically dead, or were in extreme
life-threatening circumstances, had been aware that they
had died. They were welcomed by deceased relatives or other helpers, but were
eventually told to return to earth, which they reluctantly agreed to. The
near-death experience (NDE) had all the intensity, if not more, of waking life
rather than dream consciousness and became the ultimate reality for the
particular person. It affected future conduct because fear of death was lost
and the people directed their lives with foremost regard to the benefit of
others, rather than strictly selfish purposes.
I would not have written the article had I not experienced
earlier in life the knowledge of, “I am dead, I am free,” accompanied by an
indescribable feeling of bliss. The circumstances under which this arose are
detailed in the paper (reprint available on request) and need not be repeated
here but the important aspect is the word “knowledge.” I did not “believe” that
I was dead; I “knew” that I was dead and it was wonderful. The subsequent
awakening in a hospital bed, wracked with pain, was a severe disappointment. I
never talked about it to anyone except for my wife, Martha, who stood at the
bedside and heard me say as my first words, “let me die, let me die.”
The experience convinced me that the people who claimed to
have had a NDE were indeed truthful and had experienced something that is out
of the realm of the ordinary; but it also demonstrated the fallibility of human
knowledge. The knowledge of that moment, which I will remember for the rest of
my life, was wrong because I had not died I only thought so. Life altering as
the experience was it also confronted me, as a neurologist, with: what do we
call knowledge or reality? If absolute knowledge, experienced as beyond any
shadow of a doubt, can subsequently be proven patently wrong it behooves us to
look for the reasons. I tried to come to grips with the problem in the
mentioned paper because it was obvious that the NDE phenomenon cannot be taken
at face value for survival of the soul after death.Although the experience occurs under clearly
altered brain function, the brain is not dead and the question what
consciousness, if any, survives a dead brain remains unanswerable.
This problem is, however, not urgent and is likely to remain
unsolvable in the foreseeable future. The question of how we perceive our
internal and external environment can be examined, however, and conclusions can
be drawn. In the mentioned paper I made a distinction between: subjective
reality, shared subjective reality and objective reality. In my own situation I
was dead subjectively but alive objectively to everybody else. Thus, subjective
and objective reality can be vastly different and should not be confused. In
everyday life we tend not to make this distinction. Subjective impressions tend
to be relegated to dreams, daydreams and fantasies and we act as if they were
unimportant. The fact that our subjective reality, unconscious bias resulting
from previous life experiences, flavors how we perceive objective reality is
only rarely fully acknowledged. We believe that we act on objective reality, or
facts, when we actually conduct our lives on shared subjective reality. This
fundamental point needs to be grasped and kept hold of.
As mentioned we like to think that we conduct ourselves in
an objective, dispassionate, manner most of the time, but this is a fallacy.
Unless we are engaged in a specific task which requires fullest concentration
our thoughts wander into daydreams and fantasies.
These tend to reinforce each other and provide the background for how we meet
the next life situation.Thus the
question arises: how do we know when something, anything, represents objective
reality? The term is defined here as an observable fact, which does not involve
judgment, and is verifiable by anyone with a healthy central nervous system who
uses the same means by which the particular fact was arrived at in the first
place. For instance the content of this essay is my subjective reality, which
you may or may not share, but that it contains a definable number of words can
be verified by anyone and is objective reality. This is, of course, what
science strives for but this is not how we live our daily lives because it
would require pure reason and that commodity is not readily used by the human
being most of the time.
This brings up another question: how do we know what we
think we know? As a result of the experience mentioned above I began to examine
my thoughts in the waking as well dreaming state rather carefully and the
result was quite surprising. In general we do not accord to dreams the same
reality as to waking consciousness. So: how do we know that a dream is “only a
dream” rather than waking reality? Recently the movie “Oh God,” with John
Denver as a supermarket assistant manager and George Burns as God, was shown again on television and I was struck by the
following conversation:
Denver: “How do
I know that you are real and I’m not just dreaming this?
Burns: “What color are my eyes?”
Denver: “Blue”
Burns: “Do you dream in color?”
Denver: “No.”
Burns: “So, there you have it.”
Well, for me and some others this type of reality testing
would not work as the following example shows. I dreamt that it is a Saturday
morning. I am heading down the pier at the marina to my sailboat to get ready
for the race when the thought hits me, “could this be a dream?” Then I look up
and say to myself, “No; the sky is so blue, the clouds
are so white, I feel the wind on my cheek; this can’t be a dream.” When I woke
up eventually I found out that it wasn’t Saturday after all and I had to go to
work. Thus, this type of reality check doesn’t work. With continued examination
of my dreams I found out that during the dream it is impossible to draw a
distinction between waking and dream consciousness. Whatever test one may
devise is futile as another example shows: It is a Thursday afternoon and I
find myself walking around in my neighborhood rather than being at work. I have
no memory whatsoever why I am not a work and this raises serious concerns. The
neurologist then confronted himself with two possibilities: either I have a
serious brain disorder or I am dreaming. I concluded that I was dreaming, woke
up contentedly in the knowledge of having dreamt and got up to shower. But even
this was merely a continuation of the dream as I found out when the alarm went
off at 7 a.m.
There are also sometimes so called “lucid dreams” where the
dreamer realizes in the dream that he is dreaming. This has happened to me on a
few occasions and was actually quite hilarious. For instance: I am talking with
a group of people when the knowledge hits me: this is a dream! I then proceed
to tell the bystanders that they don’t really exist; they are just pictures in
my brain. You can readily imagine the expressions on their faces that resulted.
This fundamental fact of life that we cannot tell during the
dream whether we operate on dream or waking consciousness has profound
repercussions for our last moments of life. The distinction that “it was a
dream” becomes apparent only upon awakening, but when we die there is no awakening,
at least not on planet earth, and whatever pictures our brains choose to
conjure up during the process of dying will be taken as objective reality
although it exists only in our heads. This leads to the remarkable conclusion
that we are indeed immortal to ourselves. By definition the human being cannot
experience unconsconsciousness. Even if the thought, “I am unconscious” were to
occur it would be a conscious experience. Since we are subjectively immortal to
ourselves the content of consciousness during our dying moments may be of
crucial importance but that is for each individual to ponder about.
The reason why we cannot distinguish objective from
subjective reality in our dreams is probably due to relative absence of
activity in what is called the prefrontal lobes. These portions of our brains
are the latest acquisition in human development and are present only to a rudimentary
extent in the monkey. They endow us with foresight, judgment, concentration,
critical thinking and what is generally called executive function. The
prefrontal lobes, rather than the rest of the brain, enable us to act
potentially as Homo sapiens. The tragedy of the human race is that they are not
always put into gear. We tend to operate on automatic pilot and this is where
perception comes in.
When a sensory impulse travels from its specific peripheral
receptor organs via specific pathways to the specific central receptor stations
it does not remain there but gets subsequently relayed to a variety of other
brain structures. These may or may not allow the sensory impression to reach
consciousness. It could be shown experimentally that there are two types of
responses in the brain to a peripheral stimulus. These have been called the
primary and the secondary. While the primary is limited to the specific brain
sensory area, the secondary response is widespread and can be changed by
conditioning. Pavlov has shown this in his animals more than a hundred years
ago on a behavioral level and we can now study its electrophysiological basis.
Conditioning is not limited, however, to producing salivating dogs at the ring
of a bell but goes on constantly in our brains. This is how habits are formed
and this is the grist for the mill of politicians who want to us to think the
way they do. Conditioning proceeds in an entirely unconscious manner and there
is nothing we can do about it unless we are fully aware that it is indeed
happening to us. Once this insight is reached we can act in a rational rather
than impulsive, conditioned, manner. We stop being, in the words of our
President, “gut-players” and put our prefrontal lobes into gear.
How can this be done? Buddhist philosophy provides the
answer. The seventh point of the “Eightfold Noble Path” is “Right Mindfulness.”
I have always had a problem with the precise meaning of the term until I came
across a book by Nyanaponika Thera. The
Heart of Buddhist Meditation (available on amazon.com) is a superb example
of how a Ceylonese monk, who explains two thousand five hundred years old
thoughts, can benefit modern Americans. The first and most important aspect is
the effort needed to “Know Thyself;” an admonition which also graced Apollo’s
temple at Delphi. Only when we understand how we as
individuals operate can we hope to understand others by noting the similarities
and differences. To achieve this goal the Buddha has proclaimed the “Four
Foundations of Mindfulness.” They deal with the accurate perception of one’s
internal world. Namely: one’s body, one’s feelings, one’s state of mind, and
the pictures the mind produces. Once this has been accomplished one can deal
appropriately with the external world. For the purposes of this essay only the
first three aspects dealing with action will be discussed at this time. These
are: bare attention, clear perception of purpose, and clear perception of
suitability of means for achieving that purpose.
Bare attention exhorts us to register only the primary sense
impression without jumping immediately to the conditioned secondary responses
which are judgmental. For instance when one is stuck in traffic one is not
supposed to get exercised over the consequences of being late to wherever one
is headed but instead register the fact and direct one’s attention to the car
ahead of one. Its color, its make, its license plate and so on can be examined
in detail. All of this is to be done in a objective
way as if one were expected to report it to someone else. In essence: look at
each event as it occurs with a scientific, detached mind and move on when the
situation changes. Immediate judgment, which is the conditioned response, needs
to be held in abeyance. This is also what “living in the present” really means.
When a new action needs to be initiated, the second principle ought to be
adhered to and one should ask oneself immediately: “what is the purpose?” Once
that question has been examined and a decision has been made to move ahead the
final question arises: are the means to be employed to achieve this purpose
really appropriate?
When we look at our world in this manner we can immediately
see how wrong the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 tragedy was. Had
our leadership been reared on the above stated principles instead of the Old
Testament they would have spared us and the world untold suffering. Bare
attention would have registered as: Two buildings were completely destroyed,
one partially, four commercial jets were lost and nearly three thousand people
were killed. Those were the facts and our so-called Judeo-Christian heritage
cried out for vengeance. Not on the people who actually committed the crime,
because they were dead already but on those who had sent them on their mission.
Some response was obviously required and this is where the next two aspects of
mindfulness should have come into play.
The prime purpose of a reaction should have been to a)
compensate, to the extent possible, the victims and b) take measures that will minimize
the chances of a recurrence. A fund for the victims was indeed set up but the
measures to prevent a recurrence did not take “suitability of means” into
account. The appropriate means to deal with bin-Laden’s
organization would have been through international cooperation to deprive it of
its finances, as well as limited specific special forces operations to destroy
his sanctuary in Afghanistan, and make life difficult for him, wherever he
moved to subsequently. Only the financial route was pursued but for the rest
ulterior motives came into play. The Taliban regime had to disappear and for
good measure the whole Middle East has now to be turned
into reliable American satellite states under the name of democracies. Clear
perception of purpose and especially “suitability of means” would immediately
label these fantasies as serious delusions.
This brings us back to shared subjective reality. Since the
vast majority of the American public has only limited awareness of Buddhist
thought it can easily become prey to propaganda which feeds feelings of
vengeance, fear, and pride. Our reality is not supposed to be dominated by
rational thought but by emotions and conditioned reflexes. This is the true
evil in our society and it will destroy us unless taken cognizance of.
The next two months may become some of the most dangerous in
the history of our republic. If the “swift boat” attack on Senator Kerry
misfires, Karl Rove may yet push for some Iran
mission to save his boss’s re-election, or engineer some homeland disaster. The
way he has been described is that for him winning is everything and defeat is
“not an option.” The book Bush’s Brain by
James Moore, which depicts the workings of Rove’s mind, has now been made into
a movie and one hopes that it will be widely shown. Only when the bright light
of public awareness is directed into the murky shadows of the corridors of
power, where policies are hatched in secrecy, can we hope that a more reasoned
approach to world affairs will emerge. In this way reality perception will
stick closer to observable facts and we can rationally develop proper solutions
to our problems.
September 29, 2004
A VOTER’S DILEMMA
This installment appears again a few days earlier because I
shall be attending another international conference on clinical neurophysiology
later this week. The main advantage of these meetings is that it keeps the mind
grounded in science, which is conducive to realistic rather than wishful
thinking. The disadvantage of this particular one is that I shall be literally
in the air, flying over Quebec,
during the first of the three Presidential debates.
As every one knows the upcoming election is one of the most
crucial ones Americans have faced in the past fifty years. Yet, it is also one
of the most polarized and voters can find significant problems with either of
the two main contenders. These render an intelligent decision so difficult. Let
us, therefore, look at the two candidates in the light of what we know rather
than how they wish to be seen.
When President Bush came into office on January 20, 2001 he stated in his inaugural
address, “And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of
justice and opportunity. . . .We will
reclaim America’s
schools. . . .We will reform Social
Security and Medicare. . . .We will reduce
taxes. . . .We will build our defenses
beyond challenge. . . .We will confront
weapons of mass destruction.. . .I will live and lead by these principles: to
advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with
courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for
responsibility and try to live it as well.”
This was the agenda of “compassionate conservatism” Governor
Bush had campaigned on. The speech dealt entirely with domestic issues and the
problems of foreign policy were notably absent. No other country was mentioned
by name and neither was the word terror or terrorism.
The President’s lack of interest in foreign affairs became
soon apparent when he refused to engage constructively in the Middle
East’s hot spot – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Furthermore,
as Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s chief advisor on international terrorism
noted, “al Qaeda just wasn’t a priority.” When the President was briefed on
August 6 about bin Laden’s plan to attack the “homeland” the message was
disregarded and he continued with his vacation for the rest of the month. While
everyone is entitled to a vacation there is hardly any American who can afford
to take off for four weeks. Even if it was a “working vacation”, as it has been
billed, one might have expected that he would call the man with the greatest
experience in the area of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, to the ranch in
Crawford; order him to get to the bottom of that threat and provide
recommendations as to what should be done about it. There are no records to
indicate that the President did so.
With the tragedy of 9/11 the country rallied and we were for
one brief moment indeed “one nation under God.” This was the opportunity to
look into the causes of the disaster; to come up with a measured response that
fit the crime and begin work that would minimize the chances for a reoccurrence
of a similar one. This course was not pursued. Instead a policy of “liberating
countries that harbor terrorists” was initiated.
Afghanistan’s
Taliban leadership was rapidly eliminated and a regime friendly to the U.S.
installed in Kabul. This would have
been fine had the President subsequently concentrated on pacifying and
rebuilding the country. This was not done because the neoconservative agenda,
the President and Vice-president had endorsed, demanded pre-emptive wars on the
model of Israel
to “secure the realm” (see The Neocons’ Leviathan on this site). Thus, the
focus shifted immediately to Iraq. The reasons for this shift in policy have
been discussed at length in previous installments and sad to say practically
everything I have written from October 2001 on has come to pass. Afghanistan
is still a battle zone and its main export consists of opium and heroin. This
keeps warlords in business and finances international terrorist organizations.
We are told that Afghans will be able to vote for a democratic government next
month but what powers this government is going to have in the provinces is far
from clear. In Iraq Saddam sits in jail but there is also for all practical
purposes a guerilla war going on against which our “smart weapons” are useless.
The current chaos in Iraq
was entirely predictable and the President was told beforehand, not only by our
state department but even by his friends the Saudis, that an invasion of Iraq
would be a serious danger to the region. The BBC News of February 17, 2003 (available on the Internet)
carried the headline, “Saudis warn US over Iraq
war.” The article quoted Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud-al Faisal as saying
that “any unilateral military action by the US
would appear as an ‘act of aggression.’ . . .‘Independent action in this, we don’t believe is good for the United
States. It would encourage people to think .
. . that what they’re doing is a war of aggression rather than a war for the
implementation of the United Nations resolutions. . . . If change of regime
comes with the destruction of Iraq,
then you are solving one problem and creating five more problems. . . .If the choice is you destroy Iraq
in order to get Saddam Hussein, it is a self-defeating policy, isn’t it? I
mean, you destroy a country to get a person out – it doesn’t work. We are
living in the region. We will suffer the consequences of any military action.’”
This well meant advice was ignored and so was bin Laden’s
exhortation as to how the Iraqis should meet the imminent military threat. His
taped message published by BBC on February
12, 2003 encourages Iraqis to first let the Americans roll over
them and then start a guerilla war in the cities because that is what Americans
are afraid of. The Iraqis should also “build trenches.” He cited the
effectiveness of this strategy during the battle for Tora Bora, “We were about
300 mujahideen. We dug 100 trenches that were spread in an area that does not
exceed one square mile, one trench for every three brothers, so as to avoid
huge human losses resulting from the bombardment.” He continued saying that in
spite of the most intense around the clock bombardment by America’s
most sophisticated weapons the attack was a complete failure. According to bin
Laden only 6% of his people were injured and, “If all the world forces of evil
could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small
number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces
triumph over the Muslim world?”He then
used this event as an example for the “mujahideen brothers in Iraq.”
“The smart bombs will have no effect worth mentioning in the hills and in the
trenches, on plains, and in the forests. They must have apparent targets. The
well-camouflaged trenches and targets will not be reached by either the smart
or the stupid missiles. There will only be haphazard strikes that dissipate the
enemy ammunition and waste its money. Dig many trenches.”
He stressed also “the importance of martyrdom
operations.”“Whoever supported the
United States, including the hypocrites of Iraq or the rulers of Arab
countries, those who approved their actions and followed them in this crusade
war by fighting with them or providing bases and administrative support, or any
form of support, even by words, to kill the Muslims in Iraq, should know that
they are apostates and outside the community of Muslims. It is permissible to
spill their blood and take their property. God says: ‘O ye who believe! Take
not the Jews and the Christians for friends and protectors: they are but
friends and protectors to each other.’ And he who turns to them [for
friendship] is one of them.”
I have quoted extensively from bin Laden’s tape because it
is crucial to our understanding of the events as they are now unfolding not
only in Iraq
and Afghanistan
but in wider regions of the world. The quoted sura from the Koran (5:51) should be seen in its historic context.
The prophet Muhammad had been forced to flee from Mecca
to Medina. The Jewish members of
that city supported him initially but when it was besieged by a superior force
from Mecca in 627 AD they switched
sides. This betrayal had a terrible consequence. When the besieging army
retreated to Mecca, after what is
regarded as a miraculous victory by the prophet, only a few Jews were granted a
pardon. The vast majority was, according to Karen Armstrong, “tied together in
groups and beheaded.” Her book: Muhammad.
A Biography of the Prophet deserves to be read by everyone who wants to
understand the times we live in and especially by media pundits and
politicians. Bin Laden’s exhortation to “build trenches,” also dates from that
period. It was trenches that enabled the faithful to withstand the siege.
But our President is not well versed in history and refused
to listen to advice by those who were aware of it. We are now facing the
results of that ignorance that led to wrong choices. It is abundantly clear
that the foreign policy of the President was based on a series of mistaken
assumptions and has left our country without any real friends in the world. As
I said earlier in these pages: to make mistakes is human, unavoidable, and
mistakes can be forgiven but they must be owned up to. To deny them, to persist
that one was right all along and promise to continue on the same course with
“strong leadership” is tragic. It reveals a subjective reality that cannot be
squared with the facts as they appear on the daily news. Even if bin Laden were
to be captured now, a few weeks before the election, it would only be a
propaganda victory. The seeds he has sown have borne abundant fruit and the
extremist Muslim jihad is going to continue even if he were killed. With the
9/11 attack he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because he is
bankrupting our country. Our resources are being spent on foreign and domestic
“security” and regardless who is voted in, or appointed as the case may be
again, this process is now irreversible.
This is the legacy the President has left us with on the
world scene. What has he achieved domestically? He did cut taxes; he signed the
“no child left behind” bill; a prescription drug benefit bill for seniors was
passed, and most recently he has begun to deploy a “missile defense shield” in Alaska.
The civility he had promised for his administration has been notably absent and
those who disagree with his views tend to be denounced as “leftist liberal
extremists” or even unpatriotic Americans.Although testing for academic progress was mandated for public schools,
the program was not appropriately funded. Even if it were it would not address
the most fundamental problems of the public schools. These are: poor quality of
teachers, inadequate curricula, rampant drug use and sexual activity. This
happens not only in inner city schools but the parents of our own school age
grandchildren are forced to send them to private schools at great financial
sacrifice. While Martha and I only had to pay for the college education of our
children they now have to pay from practically grammar school on for theirs. Is
this the progress and promise of America?
The prescription drug benefit is also a fraud. We are seniors and the deduction
the drug cards offer are in percent of the cost of the drug. This leaves the
pharmaceutical industry free to manipulate their prices upward so that even the
same drug might now cost more with the deduction than it did before. So is the
missile defense deployment. The interceptors have not yet been adequately
tested and even the “patriot” missile has been shown to have serious problems.
It shoots down our planes or explodes on some other target, yet this deficiency
is not discussed in Congress or the media. This is the record upon which
President Bush wants to be re-elected and in his acceptance speech before the
Republican Convention he promised essentially the same domestic agenda as he
did in his inaugural address. Although he likes to drape himself in the mantle
of Ronald Reagan he cannot afford to ask the voters Reagan’s question of 1980
in regard to Jimmy Carter’s policies, “Are you better off then four years ago?”
The answer from practically all of us would be a resounding: No!
How does Senator Kerry stack up? He is well versed in
foreign affairs, has lived abroad and is acquainted with the views of the world
outside the U.S.This is a plus he banks on in his assurances
that he would be able to bring more allies to help us out of the Iraq
quagmire. Domestically he is being portrayed as a leftist “tax and spend
liberal” who will ruin the economy; he will appoint “progressive” judges to the
Supreme Court who will re-interpret the Constitution according to their
socio-political ideas and he will put the country on a thoroughly socialist
course. In addition we are told over and over again that he is a “flip-flopper”
who can’t be trusted because he adjusts his positions to whatever is
politically opportune at a given moment. There is also controversy about his
conduct during the Vietnam
era. Everybody agrees that he volunteered for service, performed well under
fire, but some of the purple hearts he won for having sustained wounds in
battle are questioned.Were they severe
enough to merit the decoration or were they simply a way to get back to the U.S.?
He is also being harshly attacked for having joined and led the “Veterans
against the Vietnam War” organization after his discharge from the Navy. What
galls some of his detractors most was his Senate testimony where he supposedly
accused the U.S.
servicemen for committing atrocities and war crimes in Vietnam.
These are not trivial issues because they go to character and deserve public
airing.
There are several books out that deal with Kerry’s past,
most of them blatantly partisan. The one I found most helpful in understanding
the man was: John F. Kerry. The Complete
Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best. The
book places the Vietnam
situation in perspective. Kerry volunteered for Navy service, although he had
doubts about the wisdom behind the war, because his group of close friends did
so and it was unthinkable that they would not go together. Dick Pershing, the
grandson of General Pershing who had commanded the American forces during WWI,
was Kerry’s closest friend, and while Kerry was on a frigate in the Pacific
heading for the Gulf of Tonkin
he was told that Pershing had been killed in action. This had a profound impact
on Kerry and may well have flavored his subsequent conduct, including the
desire to get out alive as soon as possible from that hell hole. It also led,
in all probability, to his vigorous anti-war stance thereafter which brought
him to public attention and the testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on April 22, 1971.
It is now used to stamp him as a disloyal person who smeared his comrades and
helped the North Vietnamese to win their victory. I don’t know how many people
who use these catch phrases have actually taken the time to read the transcript
of that hearing, which is available on C-Span.org. If they had they would be more
circumspect in their judgment. The testimony covers 35 pages and I shall
present only some highlights.
The meeting was for the purpose of “Legislative Proposals
Relating to the War in Southeast Asia” with Senators
Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Aiken, Case and Javits in attendance. In the
opening statement the Chairman, Senator Fulbright, said that he was glad to
hear from Kerry and some of his fellow protesters because, “These are men who
have fought in this unfortunate war in Vietnam.
I believe they deserve to be heard and listened to by Congress and by the
officials in the executive branch and by the public generally. You have a
perspective that those in government who make our Nation’s policy do not always
have and I am sure that your testimony today will be helpful to the committee
in its consideration of the proposals before us.” Fulbright added, “I want also
to congratulate Mr. Kerry, you, and your associates upon the restraint you have
shown, certainly in the hearing when there were a great many of your people. I
think you conducted yourselves in a most commendable manner throughout this
week. Whenever people gather there is always a tendency for the some more
emotional ones to do things which are even against their own interests. I think
you deserve much of the credit because I understand that you are one of the
leaders of this group.” This set the tone for the meeting and the crucial
question was: how do we get out of this war, we shouldn’t be in anyway? This is
also the reason why we have to face Vietnam
again today.
Kerry started out with recounting a meeting that had been
held in Detroit during the previous January where, “over 150 honorably
discharged and many highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed
in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to- day
basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command .” He went
on to detail stories of people who “had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off
heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the
power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed
villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun,
poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnamin addition to the normal ravages, and the
normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power
of this country.” These are the charges that are now held against Kerry
although he merely recited what he had heard and some of it may well have been
exaggerations.
The essence of his testimony was that Vietnam
was not a threat to the United States;
that the South Vietnamese lived under an unpopular government; that the war was
part of a longstanding national liberation movement and the Americans were
simply seen as successors of the French whom the Vietcong had defeated a few
years earlier. It was impossible to tell friend from foe, body counts were
inflated and unimportant battles over hills that were evacuated a few weeks later
were hailed as military triumphs. The war cannot be won the way it is waged, it
is unpopular here and abroad, innocents are dying daily for no good cause and a
country is being destroyed “in order to save it.” Those who sit at their desks
in Washington and order our
troops into battle where atrocities are unavoidable are the real culprits and
not the soldier on the ground who fights for his very life and gets at times
carried away by his emotions.
What was the reaction of the senators? Did they condemn him
for speaking out? No! When Kerry had finished his testimony he thanked the
panel for listening and for having, “put a resolution on the floor, to help us
in the event we were arrested and particularly for a chance to express the
thoughts that I have put forward today. I appreciate it.” Fulbright’s response
was, “You have certainly done a remarkable job of it. I can’t imagine their
[Vietnam Veterans against the War] having selected a better representative or
spokesman. Thank you very much.”
This was the testimony the senators were grateful to hear at
the time and for which he is put through the wringer in the current campaign.
Arrest was clearly a danger because Kerry was investigated by Nixon’s staff for
his conduct. He did urge an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam
because we would eventually have to leave anyway and further sacrifice of life
and property was useless. We all know what happened: within a couple of years
Congress cut funding for the war; Nixon resigned before being impeached and
removed from office; the South Vietnamese were no match against the North; the
country was overrun; a massacre ensued in Cambodia and today we have friendly
relations with a still communist united Vietnam.
And what does Kerry do with this part of his past? He tries
to write off his Senate testimony as due to anger and immaturity. I believe
this to be a mistake on his part and regard it as evidence that he listens too
much to his advisers rather than standing on his own two feet. It would be so
simple. All he would have to say is, “Yes, I was angry and I had reason to be.
If you had seen what I saw in Nam
you would have been too. That the war was sold to the American public under
false pretenses (the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution) is a fact everyone agrees on nowadays. I did not castigate the
soldiers who committed acts which violate the Geneva
conventions, because they were under duress. I did chastise those who ordered
them into those situations where acts of the type described by some, rather
than the majority of individuals, are bound to occur. This is what I was
against then and this is why I am against the Iraq
war now.”
This simple statement would have gone a long way to define
his character. Instead he has unfortunately chosen to play it safe and go the
“Me too” route. He is trying to outBush Bush and his campaign up to now could
be summed up in the simple statement from Annie Get Your Gun, “Anything you can
do, I can do better.” I admit that he has finally said most of the things about
the Iraq war
and America’s overall
foreign policy I have published here for the past couple of years but he, just
as Bush, has failed to come to grips with the Israeli problem which fuels the
hate against us in the region. The reason is obvious: he has been told that
this will cost him votes. Yet this may not be entirely true. The American
people want to hear the truth and the equation of criticism of Likud policies
with anti-Semitism should no longer be tolerated.
This is terribly important because the next act of war,
against Iran,
is already preprogrammed. Iran’s
budding nuclear reactor has to be destroyed. The official reason is that the
mullahs would export the bomb to our shores because they hate us, when they
actually might want to have a counterweight against the nuclear threat from Israel.
Instead of insisting to make the entire Middle East
(including Israel)
a nuclear free zone it has just been reported that we are exporting “bunker
busters” to Israel.
You couldn’t possibly give a greater present to bin Laden and his followers as
proof for the sura he quoted from the Koran.
Kerry’s promised domestic policies also seem to outspend
Bush, who has verbally adopted most of the traditionally democratic agenda.
Kerry might yet win the election if he would really show us strength of character.
Here is a small example of what he might have done last week. The Republicans
have just come out with a new TV ad which shows Kerry constantly tacking back
and forth on his windsurfer to indicate that he just keeps “flip-flopping.” The
ad is cute, effective, and the Democrats are fuming. Instead, Kerry might have
immediately countered with something like, “Yes I am a sailor and a windsurfer!
But both of these take skill and require one to learn to read the weather
properly. The sailor knows that you can’t sail directly into the wind.
Sometimes you have to tack, even back and forth, to get to where you want to
go. I have always kept the goal of the journey in mind and brought whatever
boat I was captain of, including its crew or passengers, safely back to port.
This is who I am; I am a sailor and you can accept or reject these qualities!
But, you can also pick an analogue of Captain Edward John Smith who ordered his
ship on her maiden voyage to go “full steam ahead,” even after he had been told
by his officers that there was fog and icebergs ahead. He ignored the warning
because he wanted to make history and break a trans-Atlantic record. He did
make history, but not in the way he had imagined. He lost his ship, his life,
along with more than 1500 others who had been entrusted to his care, and I
don’t have to tell you the name of that ship. My opponent claims leadership,
but true leadership is not a stubborn refusal to listen to experts and plowing
ahead regardless. True leadership is not ordering other people around. True
leadership is the example you set so that others will follow willingly and this
is what I shall provide.”
This is what Kerry might have said. If he did, it wasn’t
reported.Instead there were only
complaints about dirty politics. Kerry’s next and final test will be the
debates and we’ll see how he handles himself there although they are already
highly scripted. But Kerry has an additional burden. Not only will he inherit a
massive financial and economic problem, which is bound to limit his abilities
on keeping domestic spending promises but there is another ghost of Vietnam
that will come back to haunt him. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate he
had also said, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
It was relatively easy to tell President Nixon to pull out of an unpopular war
in Southeast Asia but how do you, as President, get out
of a war in the Middle East that was clearly a mistake,
when there are not only lives at stake but oil and the entire global economy?
This is what he faces and why he may not at all be enamored by the prospect of
having to become responsible for the mess a previous administration has created
and from which there is no easy way out.
So what are our choices on November 2? We can vote for
whomever we consider less harmful regardless of flaws; cast a protest vote for
Nader; or stay home altogether because under the current electoral system our
vote is meaningless anyway apart from “battleground states.” Maybe one way to
register our dissatisfaction would be to vote for the Presidential ticket of
one party and for Senators and Representatives from the other. This would
mitigate the damage either branch of government can inflict upon us and is
after all the reason why the framers of our Constitution so wisely insisted on
a separation of powers.
Buckle your seatbelts; we are in for a rough ride. Who knows
what kind of “October surprise” Karl Rove might have up his sleeve if
re-election were to become doubtful. There is even some talk about postponing
the elections in case of an assumed or genuine terrorist threat. As they say,
“stay tuned.”
November 2, 2004
ELECTION CAMPAIGN OBITUARY
Thank goodness the seemingly interminable election campaign
that lasted more than a year is now finally over and Americans are heading for
the polls. We also have to be grateful that there were no last minutes real
nasty October surprises such as a heralded Iran
bombardment. Instead we were treated to a Television visit from Osama bin Laden
but more about that in another issue.
Whether or not the administration ever seriously considered
an aggressive act against Iran
prior to the elections I don’t know, but on October 25 I received an e-mail
from a Canadian colleague to that effect. It was distributed by a Canadian
organization, “The Centre for Research on Globalization,” and featured an
article by Wayne Madsen entitled,
“A Bush pre-election strike on Iran.
White House Insiders report ‘October Surprise’ imminent.” In the article Mr.
Madsen asserted that he had been told by White House Insiders that the Bush
administration was poised to bomb Iran’s
nuclear reactor at Busher, as well as other targets throughout the country. The
article also stated that the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy was deployed
to the Arabian Sea in order to coordinate the attacks.
This brought up the question: who is Mr. Madsen and how does
he know what he says he knows? All answers are provided on the Internet and
when one punches in his name one is informed that he
is a “Senior Fellow of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) a
non-partisan privacy public advocacy group in WashingtonDC” and that he also works as a free-lance
journalist. In addition he has written the Introduction to Forbidden Truth. U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy
and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden.This particular book, available
through amazon.com, was published by two Frenchmen J. Brisard
and G. Dasquie in 2002. How reliable Mr. Madsen’s
sources are I have no way of knowing.
Apparently even Karl Rove might have thought that bombing Iran
a week or so before the election was not a good idea because it might backfire
and the plan was put on hold. But as we say in the German language aufgeschobenistnichtaufgehoben - to
postpone doesn’t mean to abandon – and we as well as the Iranians can look forward
to it after the election. If Bush were to lose he might even give it to Kerry
as a final good bye present in the waning days of his administration. If he
wins it is full steam ahead anyway.
But back to the past month’s campaign which was certainly the
nastiest I have witnessed in the past 54 years. As mentioned in the previous
installment, I was arriving in Montreal
during the first Presidential debate and saw only the tail end, although I did
have access to the full version upon returning home. Nevertheless, even what I
saw on that Thursday night made me embarrassed for our country. The “Leader of
the Free World” was so inept that one felt one had to apologize for being an
American citizen while in a foreign country. On Saturday Toronto’s
Globe and Mail had an Editorial
headlined “The Evil of the Lesser Two,” which certainly hit the nail on the
head. Although Kerry appeared considerably more “Presidential” the substance
one might have expected from him simply wasn’t there. Another interesting
feature was in an article that had come out from an American research group
which analyzed the language level the two candidates had used during the
debate. Bush spoke at a 6.8 and Kerry at a 7.3 grade level.This may not be meaningful for readers
outside the U.S.
but translates into the speech patterns of 12-13 year old teenagers. The
article also mentioned that Kerry had deliberately “talked down” because this
is the level the American electorate understands. If this is not an indictment
of our current “culture” I don’t know what is.
Prior to the second Presidential debate Bush apparently was
told by his “handlers” that smirking and grimacing doesn’t work because it
makes the contrast to Kerry even starker and that he has to show more
“leadership.”He took the advice to
heart. We saw him running around the stage and at one point shouting the poor
moderator down, which is generally regarded as a no-no. I taped the debate and
when I played it back on fast forward to catch a certain segment it really
became hilarious. Our President
appeared precisely as, what some of us had suspected since 9/11, a puppet on a
string. If you happen to have access to a tape of this debate please watch a
segment on fast forward because as the Chinese said,”a picture is worth a
thousand words.”
The Vice Presidential debate was meaningless and so was the
third Presidential debate.The
candidates simply answered whatever question was asked with a hand-me-down
well-worn mantra, which frequently had nothing to do with the question that had
been asked. There was only one memorable phrase uttered by the President in
regard to what he would do to create more jobs in the country. Believe it or
not, he replied that the “No Child left Behind” school
project was the answer to the problem. This is what he told college graduates
whose jobs disappear due to “’outsourcing,” “downsizing,” or bankruptcies!
Apart from this gem, Bush insisted throughout the campaign
on having shown strong leadership, which is an absolute necessity for winning
the war on terrorism and that it would be outright dangerous to entrust the
country to Kerry because the Senator would ask the United Nations for
permission to go to war in case America were to be threatened by a “rogue”
state. This is what he, Bush, would never do. Kerry’s mantra was that he would
do better than the President if we were to elect him. He promised not only to be
strong in regard to the defense of our country but that he would also create a
genuine alliance from nations around the world to establish a stable and
peaceful Iraq, which would allow us to bring our troops home within the next
four years. In addition he intends to spend billions of dollars to improve the
various domestic problems he will inherit. A seasoned observer, steeped in
realism, can only say, “Good Luck” to that.
The reasons why intelligent people, who are not dogmatic
party hacks, find themselves unable to vote for Bush, even if they are more
comfortable with conservative rather than “progressive” ideas, have been
abundantly explained in previous installments. But what about Kerry? In the
previous issue I have already touched on some of his liabilities. The most
outstanding appears to be that he seems to have lost the fervor of his younger
years when he spoke from the heart, especially in his 1971 Senate testimony. He
now relies on what his handlers tell him as to what he should or shouldn’t say.
This is potential poison for a person’s soul. He played it “safe” and avoided
direct answers to Republican attacks. In regard to interviews on national cable
TV he did not accept the challenge thrown at him by Bill O’Reilly, host of the
“No Spin” evening news program. This was a mistake, and as O’Reilly keeps
hammering:not showing up on his show
cost Al Gore the election. This may or may not be so but it is a fact that
O’Reilly has the largest audience in the country, as far as journalists go. It
is also true that the “no spin” exists only in O’Reilly’s and his partisans
mind because he is frequently rude and acerbic to his guests on the program,
when they disagree with his very firmly set views. But Kerry would surely have
had the stature and intellect to put him in his place and answer questions
forthrightly rather than with canned statements. Kerry missed this chance.Regardless whether or not one likes O’Reilly
the fact is that he does have a nightly audience of an estimated 3 million
viewers most of whom vote in the election.
Kerry missed another chance to show substance. As his
Vice-Presidential running mate he chose John Edwards, the junior Senator from North
Carolina. This was also a mistake. I have been told
from family members who live in that state that Edwards ran for President only
because he would have lost this year’s re-election to the Senate. He has made
his reputation and millions of dollars as a trial lawyer who specialized in
suing physicians for malpractice. During the campaign he defended himself by
asserting that he really didn’t go after the doctors but only the insurance
companies when he achieved millions of dollars settlements. This is misleading
on two counts. First of all there is the common misconception that “the
insurance company will pay anyway.” Yes, the insurance company pays first but
then drives up the rates so that malpractice insurance coverage becomes nearly unaffordable
and the individual physician has to deal with that. The other point is that
Edwards’ specialty was to sue obstetricians when a baby was born with cerebral
palsy. This was regarded as the physician’s fault, which is incorrect. In most
instances there are prenatal or unavoidable perinatal factors at play and the
physician has no role in their causation. The malpractice problem is currently
a massive one around the country. Not because we have so many negligent
physicians but frivolous law suits are filed on a daily basis. These drive
insurance rates up and responsible physicians out of high risk specialties. Who
suffers as a result? The patient of course! As physicians we were used to
thinking of the patient first but medical practice has changed since I first
came to this country. Now, the thought of potential law suits is ever present.
Defensive medicine is being practiced, which not only drives up the costs but
in some instances puts an additional mental barrier into play. Not only do you
have to worry about whether the medical insurance company will pay for what you
think the patient really needs, but in addition you have to be concerned about
how the case will look in court if and when you get sued. It is actually no
longer an if but only a when and that is no way to
practice good medicine.
Edwards and Kerry promise tort reform but we know how
pre-election promises compare with post-election legislation.Since Edwards may not even carry his home
state in the election, does not bring significant domestic or foreign policy
experience to the ticket and carries the above mentioned baggage, Kerry has
gained nothing from his choice and lost the potential support of a number of
well-meaning practicing physicians.
Within the last two weeks it also became apparent that there
is not enough influenza vaccine to cover all the people who want to have
preventive inoculations. The immediate reason was that vaccine batches from a
major supplier in the UK,
to whom the production had been outsourced, were contaminated. Why couldn’t we
produce the vaccine here? Ask Senator Edwards! The “deep pockets”
pharmaceutical industry is a prime target for litigation. Since vaccines have
potentially the most dangerous side-effects from all pharmaceutical products
the industry simply abstains from producing them. It’s a free country after all
and the buck rules.
While we are on medicine let us not forget that stem cells
have also emerged as a campaign propaganda tool. When Christopher Reeve died
last month from complications of his debilitating spinal cord injury, the stem
cell proponents went into overdrive. I have nothing against stem cell research
and actually wrote an article about it on this site in August of 2001. At that
time I mentioned not only the hyped benefits but also the state of the art and
that it will take not only years but may be even decades before we really know
how to use their potential constructively and safely. Although the article is
three years old it is still correct and can be read profitably.
As mentioned, the Republicans kept insisting that Kerry
cannot be trusted. Not only was he portrayed as weak on national defense but
also as being unable to make up his mind and “flip-flopping” on every issue.
Since I was blessed with a classical education in high school, even during the
Nazi years, a historic analog, Fabius
Cunctator, immediately came to mind. Let me explain. When Hannibal
invaded Italy,
after crossing the Alps with his elephants, he found the
Romans totally unprepared. In the spring of 217 B.C. he promptly defeated a
Roman army under the consul Flaminius near Lake Trasimeno,
which is only about 80 miles north of Rome,
as the crow flies.Faced with this
calamity the Senate put Quintus Fabius Maximus, a prudent man, in charge of the
Roman army. Instead of giving battle he simply followed the Carthagenians
around the country thereby depriving them of the opportunity for other cities
to flock to their victorious banners. This earned Fabius, as he was referred
to, the anger of the masses. He was regarded as a coward and given the nickname
Cunctator, the Hesitator. But QFM, as
we might call him, knew what he was doing. He realized that the outcome of
battles was never guaranteed and by avoiding losses he would eventually triumph
because Hannibal would run out of
steam in a hostile country. This policy did not sit well with the impatient
Romans. They appointed a new general, Varro, who promptly attacked Hannibal
and suffered a massive defeat at Cannae (216 B.C.). Hannibal’s
tactic of encirclement has become a text book example for military strategists
that has been followed by generals ever since. It even appeared last week on
the History channel. To appreciate the magnitude of this catastrophe one needs
to know that from a Roman army which consisted, according to Plutarch, of
88,000 men, 50,000, including a considerable number of senators, lost their
lives and 14,000 ended up as prisoners. As an aside one might mention that in
those days the officials who were responsible for war were really leading their
soldiers into battle rather than remaining safely behind desks.
With this catastrophe at hand the Romans recalled Fabius who
managed to stabilize the country. He was helped in this effort by Hannibal’s
decision not to follow up on his victory and march on the defenseless Rome.
Fabius again employed his strategy of merely harassing Hannibal
rather than attempting to throw him out if Italy.
This went on for more than ten years. Understandably the Romans attributed
Fabius’ conduct to his advanced age and a younger more aggressive spirit was
called for. The plan by Publius Cornelius Scipio to bring the war to Africa
rather than fighting it in Italy
was, therefore, approved by the Senate over Fabius’ objections. The
Carthaginians recalled Hannibal to
defend the homeland in 203 but apparently he was also no longer in his prime
and was decisively defeated at Zama, one year later. A
proverbial Carthaginian peace was imposed by Rome
and became the foundation for the emerging Roman Empire.
Fabius did not live to see the triumph of his rival but he was buried with full
honors at public expense.
This little excursion into history may not be irrelevant for
our Senator who wants to be President. Prudence can indeed stave off disaster
but when carried to excess people get tired after ten years and demand more
dramatic action. Thanks to the wisdom of President Eisenhower our Constitution
now limits to eight years the maximum time a given President can create harm.
There is one additional aspect one might have considered in
one’s vote for President and one can learn potentially a great deal by looking
at the women political candidates are married to. We were able to get to know
them to some extent because they were drafted to appear on the campaign trail.
Laura Bush came across as a very nice, pleasant lady whom
one would want to have as a neighbor any day. But she is not likely to provide
counsel on important political decisions. She is neither being asked nor does
she want to. As she has reportedly described herself in the past, “I read, I
smoke and I admire.” She has probably given up smoking in the meantime but she
still admires and a balancing role to check the messianic fantasies of her
husband cannot be expected.
Teresa Heinz-Kerry on the other hand is spun from different
cloth. Born into a physician’s family in Mozambique,
educated in Switzerland,
fluent in several languages, married to Senator Heinz, she has seen the world
in all its splendor and poverty. She gave up professional life for raising her
children but when her husband was killed in a tragic plane accident she took
over the Presidency of the Heinz philanthropic foundation, which dispenses vast
sums of money for humanitarian purposes all over the world. In 1995 she married
Senator Kerry who does not appear to be in the least disturbed by her strong
will and outspokenness on any and all issues. It is to his credit that he
doesn’t try to dictate to her what she should say on the campaign trail,
because as he said, “nobody tells Teresa what to do or what to say.” Kerry’s
opponents obviously had a field day with her off-the- cuff remarks but she is a
woman of substance and if she were to run for President rather than her husband
I’d have absolutely no problem voting for her. Teresa is just as important an
element in Kerry’s life as Maria Shriver is in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. These
women can take the rough edges off their men and guide them into reasonable
channels. In both marriages there is bipartisanship because Teresa is basically
a Republican and Maria a Democrat. This has to reflect on the candidate’s
behavior and we are much more likely to see cooperation with the opposite
political party under those circumstances than when only one party exists in
the marriage or one party dominates the Executive as well as Legislative branch
of government.
So where do we stand today? As far as Utah is concerned my
vote for President is irrelevant because the state is so heavily Republican
that not even Senator Bennett, who is up for re-election bothers to campaign.
The electoral system guarantees a Bush victory. All one can do is register a
protest vote for Kerry, Nader or any of the Libertarians which does not effect
the outcome of this election. It was, therefore, rather comical that The Salt Lake Tribune, which has been
reasonably honest in its political coverage, found it necessary to officially
endorse Bush in an Editorial. What was surprising, however, was the reaction of
the readership. Numerous Letters to the Editor were published in response which
denounced the paper and several of the writers officially canceled their
subscription. This was heartwarming because it shows that there is a
substantial segment of voters, at least in the SaltLake area, that has no use for the
direction Bush has taken the Republican Party and is ready to cast a protest
vote. The editorial was actually written somewhat tongue in cheek and it seemed
that the writer had done so under duress from the owner of the paper. Freedom
of speech ends when your job is on the line. This is just as true in democracies
as in dictatorships.
Today the good citizens of our country obediently trot to
the polls and an unusually large turnout is expected. But don’t hold your
breath that we’ll know the outcome by tomorrow morning. An unprecedented army
of lawyers is standing by in the various states to challenge the election
results unless there were to be an unexpected landslide victory for either
side. The polling stations will be manned by numerous overseers, especially in
the so-called battleground states, who will challenge some prospective voters
for their credentials and then provide them with provisional ballots until
their bona fides are established. How long it will take to count those votes is
anybody’s guess. In Florida extra
precautions are taken. We have been told that representatives from 15 nations
will watch the goings on and may be Vladimir, who is busy reassembling the
pieces of the old Soviet Union, will also have his
deputies there. Florida actually
is again one of the battlegrounds par
excellence and we have already been told that tens of thousands of absentee
ballots that had been sent out never reached their intended recipient.
As mentioned in an earlier installment there is also the
problem of the complexity of the actual ballot that is to be cast. In some
instances, as reported last week, the candidate’s name and the hole to be
punched don’t line up and are in reversed order. The voting machines differ
from state to state and with some there is no “paper trail” that would allow a
recount. There is also no possibility for outside monitors to check on the
accuracy of the computer programs that tally the votes and the door to
intentional or unintentional fraud is wide open. It’ll be an interesting month
and it may be December 1 before we’ll know who won or was appointed as the case
may be. If the 2000 election is a precedent it may even take till Christmas or
whenever.
December 1, 2004
WHY BUSH WON
The concerns expressed in the last paragraph of the previous
installment, that we may have to wait till Christmas before the election
results are final, were fortunately unfounded. Kerry conceded defeat with remarkable
speed and the country seems, so far, to have been saved from court battles. The
reason for the cautionary note will become apparent when you keep reading.
When one considers the record of Bush’s first term in an
unbiased manner one is forced to conclude that a chief executive who:
squandered the world’s good will towards America; allowed the dollar to drop to
unprecedented levels against the Euro; embroiled the country, on false
pretenses, in a war; and turned a substantial surplus into a massive deficit, ought
to have been fired. The election was really Kerry’s to lose rather than Bush’s
to win. Kerry probably lost because he failed to meet the criticisms that were
leveled at his character, with vigor and honest, plain speech. Suggestions as
to what he should have done were made in previous essays and need not be
repeated here. They can be found under the key word “Kerry” in the compilation.
The most important reason for his loss may, however, have been a lack of desire
to take on an inheritance that would cause him only grief and, as mentioned
previously, would also bring him into direct conflict with his Senate testimony
of 1971. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” would
have been the words that could have been thrown in his face. There simply was
no plan how to end the war in Iraq.
Just as Nixon could not have gotten out of Vietnam
unless he turned the South Vietnamese over to a victorious North, Kerry would
have been saddled with an unpopular war that cannot readily be brought to a
successful conclusion. In his heart of hearts Kerry may well have concluded
that Bush brought this misery on by himself so let him eat the broth he has
cooked.
When one reads the papers and listens to newscasters one is
told that Bush won for two main reasons. One is that he is a “strong leader”
who will protect us from future terrorist attacks and on whom one can rely in
times of war. The other is that he stands for “moral values,” which is the code
word for denouncing the permissive society we have become. These are important
aspects and deserve to be discussed separately. The “strong leader” image comes
straight out of Karl Rove’s power point presentation on the ranch during the
Christmas holidays in 2002. As mentioned in the essay on “The Great Liberator”
(May 1, 2004). Karl Rove’s
winning strategy was to portray Bush’s “Persona” as: “Strong Leader; Bold
Action; Big Ideas; Peace in World; Cares about People Like
Me; Leads a Strong Team.” This was indeed the image, which dominated the
propaganda waves during the campaign while Kerry was painted as a “waffler” and “flip-flopper,” who cannot be trusted in these
dangerous times.
That this so called Bush Persona had no basis in reality was
irrelevant. Every skilled propagandist knows that whatever you say long enough
and vigorously enough becomes the truth that people will buy into. I was
especially intrigued that during the campaign Democrats and others who saw Bush
as he really handled himself rather than what he ought to be, in Rove’s mind,
never took him to task for it. The slogan that “he kept us safe from terrorism”
was never repudiated by the simple fact that 9/11 happened on his watch and not
on somebody else’s. From the propaganda one was led to assume that Bush had
been inaugurated on September 12 rather than January 20, and that his conduct
during the preceding months was really of no concern, when the opposite was
true. He ignored the bin Laden threat and the resulting 9/11 tragedy was not
“unforeseeable” as Condi Rice testified to before the Senate. If Bush had taken
the August 6, 2001 briefing
seriously, as a responsible leader should have, he might have knocked heads
together at the CIA and FBI to get at the bottom of the threat. He did not do
so and it is this failure which should have been brought out in the election
campaign. From it everything else flowed and the consequences will haunt us for
years to come.
There were indeed “Bold Actions” and “Big Ideas,” which
essentially boiled down to “bringing democracy” to the Middle East
at the point of a gun. That this does not tend to work well has not yet sunk
in, in spite of the fact that by following Israel’s
Likud model we now have our very own West Bank and Gaza
problem in Iraq.
This is not hindsight but was entirely predictable. “Peace in the World” is
farther than it has been even four years ago. But “Cares for People Like Me” was a real hit. It was boiled down to a simple
question the proverbial Joe Six Pack can readily understand, “Who would you
rather have a beer with: Bush or Kerry?” When this is the level upon which the
“Leader of the Free World” is supposed to be chosen, the country is in trouble.
Nevertheless, the slogan resonated and worked.
This brings us to the second aspect, “moral values.” These
have attained unexpected prominence when it was reported that exit polls ranked
the item as the number one concern why people voted for Bush. There is indeed a
considerable groundswell of unhappiness in Middle America
that our society has lost its bearings but this is hardly the main issue that
mattered. The finding confronts us, therefore, with the science and magic of
exit polling. As mentioned on another occasion it doesn’t matter so much who
you vote for but how the votes are counted and winners are projected.
Projection is the key word and it relies on exit polling the results of which
are then forwarded to the TV networks and the Associated Press. There was the
nasty flap in the 2000 elections when the crucial vote of Florida
was first awarded to Gore then to Bush and finally
settled by the Supreme Court’s single vote. The networks vowed that this would
never happen again. Projections for a given state would no longer be made until
all the precincts had closed their doors and in addition a new company would be
hired to conduct the polls and provide the results to all the networks. This
much is readily known but as usual the devil is in the details and for those
one has to go to the Internet.
The exit polls of the November elections are currently
regarded as seriously flawed because they predicted Kerry as the winner,
especially earlier in the day. Yet the same exit polls are used to document America’s
fondness of moral values in its quest for President. This incongruity led me to
investigate how exit polls are conducted. This is not a trivial post hoc
exercise but shows how election results are actually obtained nowadays. Since
it is unlikely that exit polling will be abolished by executive fiat we might
as well know what happens in the real world.
The company responsible for exit polling is the so-called
National Election Pool. It is run by a partnership of Edison Media Research and
Mitofsky International and has a well deserved reputation for producing
reliable results. So how does the process work? The company sends out letters
to professors of various colleges and universities and asks them to engage the
help of some of their students to hand a questionnaire to x number of people in
a random fashion as they emerge from the voting booth. The precincts from which
the samples are obtained are carefully pre-selected for known demographics in
order to get as accurate and divers a sample as possible. One may immediately
object that the students, well meaning as they are, may not be truly random in
their handing out of the questionnaires because hippy type students may prefer
similarly attired voters and vice versa, but these preferences tend to come out
in the statistical wash. On the other hand there can be a bias as to who
accepts a questionnaire and who runs out of the precinct in order to get back
to work or home as soon as possible, especially after a long wait. But again,
past experience has shown that this factor is negligible.
The next item is the questionnaire itself. I was so far
unable to get a sample of one that was used in November but I do have one from
the New Hampshire 2004 Primary which apparently served as the model. It
consists of boxes to be marked for questions labeled A-Z, starting with “1
Male, 2 Female,” and ending with “2003 total family income,” where 1 is “under
$15,000” and 6 “$100,00 or more.” Column C has the names of the presidential
contenders and column H is the crucial one from which the “moral values”
emerged in first place. For the November election the column read, “Which One
Issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for President.” There were seven
choices that were listed in the sequence shown and I have added the percentage
results in brackets: Taxes (5), Education (4), Iraq
(15), Terrorism (19), Economy/Jobs (20), Moral Values (22), Healthcare
(8). Although moral values did indeed land on the top of the heap and 80% of
Bush voters checked that box; Economy/Jobs were a close second. They were
Kerry’s forte who got his 80%.
These data were subsequently tweaked to assuage the grief of
the losing Democrats who pointed out that “moral values” is an ambiguous term
anyway and if one were to combine Economy/Jobs with Iraq and Terrorism those
concerns would clearly appear on the front burner. Thus, multiple choice
questions are not necessarily the best way to get at true answers. It has also
been pointed out that when the question was open ended as in an October Harris
poll only 1% of prospective voters volunteered moral values as their prime
concern. But be that as it may; there are more important issues at stake in the
exit polls.
We are told that the complete sample, depending upon which
site you visit, consisted of 11,027; 13,531 or 13,660 respondents. This fairly
small number is, however, not the main issue because there is some indication
that something happened with the data later in the day to bring them more in
conformity with actually tabulated votes. We don’t know what happened but one
set of figures was clearly out of line with the other. The margin of error
between projections and actual results tends to be rather small and ranges in
general around 1-2 percentage points. But there were instances during the
November elections were the early results reportedly differed by 12 or 14
percentage points, which is practically unheard of. This information comes from
www.globalresarch.ca under
“Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam” by Michael
Keefer and I have no independent information to prove or disprove his claims.
At any rate Keefer says that in Ohio
the exit poll data reported by CNN at 7:32 p.m.
EST favored Kerry as leading Bush by a little more than four
percent. But by 1:41 a.m., when the
final exit poll had been updated, Bush was leading Kerry by 2.5 percent. Many
of us saw on TV the long lines of voters during the evening of November 2 and
it is difficult to believe from their appearance that they were all staunch
Republicans. But appearances aside something else had happened that defies
logic, if the mentioned report is accurate. To quote from the report, “At 7:32 p.m. EST there were 1,963 respondents; at
1:41 a.m. on November 3, the final
total consisted of 2,020 respondents. These fifty-seven additional respondents
must all have voted very powerfully for Bush – for while representing only a
2.8% increase in the number of respondents, they managed to produce a swing
from Kerry to Bush of fully 6.5 percent.” A similar event occurred in Florida,
the other key state. At 8:40 p.m. EST
exit polls showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat, but by 1:01 a.m. EST the final poll gave Bush a 4 percent lead
over Kerry. Now comes the clincher, “The number of exit polls respondents in Florida
had risen only from 2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a
powerful numerical magic was at work. A mere sixteen respondents – 0.55% of the
total number – produced a four percent swing to Bush.” Thus the question
arises: were the exit poll projections completely wrong or was the actual vote
count interfered with to provide a victory for Bush? Furthermore, was The
National Election Pool forced to massage their data for the final update in
order to retain credibility for the future? Something happened but we don’t
know what.
One may now say, so what, forget about exit polls and just
count the votes. But it’s not as simple as that.First of all exit polls are regarded as so
accurate that their numbers are taken at face value when elections are
monitored in third world countries. If the counted votes (remember Stalin:
never mind who votes, what’s important is who counts the votes) differ markedly
from the exit polls the vote count is suspected of having been fraudulent. This
is especially á propos in regard to the Ukrainian vote which is making headlines
all over the world at this time. The good people of Kiev, and we must really
congratulate them, defied miserable weather to protest an election result that
showed Yanukovich as having won the election by 49.4 percent over his rival
Yushchenko who supposedly garnered 46.7 percent. The exit polls, on the other
hand, had essentially the same result of 49.7% versus 46.7% but in favor of the
opposition candidate, Yushchenko!Now
back to the critical state of Ohio
and the 7:32 p.m. EST exit poll
before the data had undergone a miraculous transformation. At that time Kerry
had a four percent lead and on that basis he should have won the election.
The question arises therefore, how the votes that had been
cast were counted. At this point we must thank the Internet for keeping
democracy alive. If one types “US
elections 2004” into Google one is overwhelmed with articles about
irregularities and outright fraud. Obviously Internet sites cannot necessarily
be checked for accuracy, and there are some very disgruntled citizens around,
but it is possible to glean some rather surprising facts. The most important
one is that 2 companies: Diebold Election Systems (DES) and Election Systems &
Software Inc. (ES&S) were responsible for registering and counting about 80
percent of our votes. Now comes the real surprise:
those are not completely separate entities but are run by the brothers Bob and
Todd Urosevich, second generation immigrants from the Ukraine.
While Bob is responsible for Diebold, Todd’s major contribution is the
touch-screen voting machine that runs under the name of Accu-Vox-TSx. The
company advertisement states that the equiment
“represents a major leap forward in voting technology. Our reliable system
accurately and securely captures each vote.” Is this true?
To examine this claim one need to know that Diebold and
ES&S use the same software which is Windows based and can readily be hacked
into. Diebold found itself in major difficulties after the California Primary
in March of 2004 where the machines malfunctioned to an extent that according
to The San Diego Union-Tribune of May
1, 2004 California’ Secretary of State asked the State’s Attorney General to
open a criminal investigation on charges of fraud and deliberate misleading
advertisements. The Attorney General did not bring criminal charges but went
the civil court route in September of 2004 and Diebold settled with the State
for 2.6 Million dollars on November 10.
These were the same touch-screen systems that had been used
in about one third of the votes cast on November 2 around the country. It has
now been reported that some of the touch-screen voting machines recorded the
wrong choices. When voters checked their vote against the review screen at the
end, some found out that their vote for one candidate had been changed to
another. When they tried to correct the error the obstinate machine refused to
do so and when supervisors were notified of the problem they promised to fix
it.
How widespread were the voting irregularities on November 2?
This is a difficult question to answer because Internet information tends to be
highly anti-Bush on this topic and one does not know what to credit and what to
discount. One of the somewhat more objective articles is by William Rivers Pitt
in the November 8 edition of www.truthout.orgSome of the “strange things” that did happen
were that in Broward County Florida, a Democrat stronghold, machines started
counting backwards after 32,000 votes had been cast. In one of Ohio’s
precinct in Franklin county Bush got 4,258 votes to Kerry’s 260 but only 638
voters had actually cast ballots. In another Democratic stronghold LaPorte
County Indiana “the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only
had 300 votes.” Thus, for more than 79,000 registered voters only 22,000 could
be counted. The list goes on and the article is well worth reading.
It is apparent, therefore, that widespread and to some
extent systematic irregularities favoring Bush over Kerry seem to have occurred.
We also know that they were predicted as early as the spring of 2004.Lynn Landes published on April 28, 2004 in www.onlinejournal.com a fascinating
article. She wrote, “Voters can run, but they can’t hide from these guys. Meet
the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and
ES&S, will count (using both
computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80 percent of all
votes cast in the upcoming U.S.presidential.election. . . . The ability to rig an
election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. . . . And don’t
count on recounts to save the day. In most states recounts of paper ballots
only occur if election results are close. The message for those who want to rig
elections is, ‘rig them by a lot.’ . . .
There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority or oversight of the
voting machine industry. . . . The 2004 election rests in the hands of the
Urosevich brothers who are financed by the far-out right wing and top donors of
the Republican Party. The Democrats are either sitting ducks or
co-conspirators. I don’t know which.”
On 10-10-04
William Thomas wrote an article “Rigged.” It starts out with “GW Bush has
already won the Presidential election. It doesn’t much matter that the actual
vote has yet to be held . . . “ Thomas based this conclusion on the fact that
as mentioned around 80% of the votes are registered and counted by Diebold and
associates while the remaining are divided between Sequoia and SAIC. Sequoia
was, according to the article involved in a corruption case that led to jail
sentences of some top Louisiana state officials, while SAIC also has “a long
history of fraud charges and ‘security lapses.’ in its electronic system.” Articles
of this type may explain why Karl Rove had not presented us with an anticipated
last minute October surprise. He may not have needed it when the election was
already in the bag.
There is another interesting aspect to this story. Our media
report diligently on suspected vote fraud in the Ukraine
but there is hardly a word about the Internet furor in regard to our own
problems. The Boston Globe wrote a rather non-committal
article on November 17 entitled “Media accused of ignoring election irregularities,”
but it did not address some of the major issues that were raised here. We
might, therefore, add to their headline the words, “for now.” The 2004 election
chapter seems far from closed and the Kiev
protesters may actually help our democracy here.
But regardless of what happens in the future about the
election results for now we have Mr. Bush who has claimed to have been given a
mandate (some of his supporters even say that it came from the good Lord
Himself) and promised us that he will “spend the capital he has earned.” He
feels vindicated and we know, therefore, what we can expect: more of the same.
While reformatting his cabinet he is turning it into an echo chamber. He is
separating, in biblical fashion, the sheep from the goats where the sheep have
to bleat in unison and the goats are banished to outer darkness. This could
have worked in an authoritarian state but we still have a democracy where it
can’t. There are responsible moderate Republicans in Congress who will try to
make their voices heard.
While Bush seems intent to pursue a domestic agenda, such as
tax and social security reform, he is likely to be hamstrung by foreign events
that are not under his control and will sap his ability to spend money the way
he wants. If he tries to nominate ultra-conservative judges to the Supreme
Court the Democrats will filibuster and he does not have the necessary two
thirds majority in Congress to overrule them. In
foreign affairs he will be confronted by the fact that there is precious little
he can do about Korea’s
nuclear weapons or Iran’s
nuclear ambitions. He doesn’t have the troops to invade the rest of “the axis
of evil.” “Bombing them back into the stone age,” as his Dad promised the
Iraqis in days gone by, will likewise not bring peace on earth and good will to
men. If and when elections are held in Iraq
they will probably not bring the democracy Mr. Bush envisioned and a victorious
“exit strategy” is also likely to remain elusive. Although he now proclaims his
willingness to bring about a viable Palestinian state it is in all probability
too late for that. The chance was in the spring of 2001 and that was missed.
Arafat was not the major problem as the accord between him and Rabin showed.
But the Likud party, first under Netanyahu and thereafter under Sharon
was just as intent on preventing a Palestinian state from arising as some
Palestinian factions are on the disappearance of Israel.
Regardless what the new Palestinian leadership does, they are likely to get
only words from Jerusalem while the
deeds will consist of wall building and increasing the settlements in the West
Bank. Sharon holds all
the cards and he has no interest in allowing this Bush vision to come to pass.
As if that was not enough of the problems our “strong
leader” will face there is also still Osama around whom Bush vowed to capture
three years ago “dead or alive.”In
October we saw him on our TV screens. Not only did he look remarkably healthy
but outright regal in his flowing gold-braided robe. This was not the picture
of a hunted fugitive who hides out some place in a cave or hut on the
Afghan-Pakistan border, as popular propaganda has it. I also used to subscribe
to this opinion but not any more. The man looked too well cared for. So, where
he does he live at present?The Pakistanis gave up looking for him last
week and I believe with good reason. Although I have no inside information
common sense provides an obvious answer, which has in all probability also
occurred to others including members of the Administration who do have facts.
Bush’s words that, “we will pursue the terrorists wherever they hide out and we
will hold the countries which hide them responsible” ring very hollow indeed if
my suspicions are correct.
Ask yourself for a moment what you would do if you were the
son of one of the richest families in Saudi
Arabia and you find yourself with a price of
$25 million on your head? Where would you go and who could you trust? I believe
that the answer is obvious: you go home where the family ties are strong and
nobody would dare to deliver you to the enemy. This obviously occurred also to
the Saudi Royals who are hanging on to their monarchy by the skin of their
teeth. They would be more than happy to make some quiet arrangement with the
Mullahs for whom Osama is a hero, while expressing “plausible denials” abroad.
In Saudi Arabia,
in the bosom of his family and likeminded friends, Osama can now wait patiently
for the fruits of his labors to ripen. If I am correct in my assumption about
Osama’s whereabouts we are not likely to hear much about him from our
administration because there is absolutely nothing it can do. What the Arabs
have going for them is patience. This is what we lack and that is what they
know and bank on.
Osama doesn’t have to send terrorists to the US
any more. Our government is doing all the terrorizing of the population by
itself with intermittent alarming news and increasing strictures on our lives
to promote “security” and thereby produces further drains on our resources.
Our intelligence services are now blamed for the 9/11
failure and the Iraq
debacle. A brand new super agency is about to be created which will consume
considerable amounts of money and will be even more unwieldy than what we have
at present. It is also predictable that if it were to come up with facts which
don’t fit the purposes of Bush&Co. they will be ignored again. While some
reform of the CIA and more collaboration with the FBI may well have been
appropriate, the current effort seems to have as its main purpose to divert
attention from the person who was really responsible for getting us into this
fix, the President.
Let us wish the President and his family a happy Christmas
season but the way things look this may be the only peace he is likely to enjoy
for some time to come. If even only half of what we are told on the Internet is
true the resulting scandals, if they were allowed to hit the major media, may
well dwarf ENRON and Watergate. Let us remember that President Nixon had won
the election by a landslide in 1972 and by 1974 he had to resign in
disgrace.There are now more than enough
scandals in the administration to potentially bring both Bush as well as Cheney
down, if the media were to follow up on them. Even John Edwards, who is
currently out of a job, and who has promised us that he’ll make sure that every
vote will be counted might find his calling and he will be difficult to ignore.
The hand-picked new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, may
not be able to provide immunity for the administration either. Although the
President had praised him with, “His sharp intellect and sound judgment have
helped shape our policies in the war on terror,” Gonzales’ advice to disregard
the Geneva Conventions was not particularly enlightened. The resultant abuses
in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have
brought him sufficient enemies that each and every one of his actions will be
examined with a fine tooth-comb, even if the appointment were to be confirmed
by the Senate. Finally, if the administration keeps insisting on having been
elected to provide “moral values,” for our country the American people may well
demand them from those who govern us. When that happens our leadership is likely
to be in deep trouble, because morality goes beyond what has been called
“pelvic issues.”
January 1, 2005
LOVE YOUR ENEMY
This is the season of the year when
hope is rekindled and resolutions are made to do better than in the past. It is
not easy to be optimistic nowadays when one looks at the world realistically and
watches all the natural as well as man-made disasters unfold. Nevertheless,
giving in to despair and/or resentment does not solve problems it only makes
them worse.
Let us, therefore, separate the
natural disasters such as hurricanes and now the devastating tsunami, over
which we have no control, from the man-made ones that are our
responsibility.Nature’s upheavals may
well become worse because our climate is changing. We don’t know the cause for
certain. We don’t know how much is due to industrial pollution and what is the
role of a wobbling earth, changes of solar emissions or a shifting of magnetic
poles. But that does not absolve us from the duty to study our climate and take
prudent rather than excessive action. Inasmuch as natural catastrophes are
likely to become increasingly costly it would behoove us to husband our
financial resources to be able to meet the demand when it arises.
Prudence and foresight ought to be
the key words that allow us to meet the challenges nature as well as our
politicians create. They are the antidote to fear with which those who are in
power over our lives in the economic and military sense try to rule us. We are
being told, for instance, that we are confronted with mortal danger to our way
of life by an evil ruthless enemy and unless he is defeated, regardless of the
cost to ourselves and others, civilization as we know it will perish. Some
authors even prophecy as the goal of Islamist revolutionaries the creation of a
United Islamic Republic of America. This is not my fantasy; I read it in the
pages of the conservative Jewish publication Commentary. It is an old axiom that you can rule people, like
donkeys, with carrots and sticks. When there are not enough carrots to go
around then you have to frighten them into submission. Remarkably enough this
has worked for millennia and puts into question the theory of the
perfectibility of the human race as a whole rather than merely of some few
gifted individuals.
We are currently living in a truly
paradoxical age. One the one hand we want to spread secular democracies around
the world and on the other hand we are doing this in the name of protecting our
Judeo-Christian heritage. What is even more astonishing is that these policies
are promoted and enacted by people who regard themselves as “born again
Christians.” With other words, from our President on down, these individuals
believe that they have found Christ in their lives who has saved them from evil
and it is their duty to now bring this good news to the rest of the world
regardless whether the world wants it or not. But who is this Christ or
personal Jesus they have taken to heart and why did he get himself crucified?
I am not about to engage in
theological speculations about unprovable assumptions
so let us look instead at comparative religion and history as recorded in the
holy books. This is a wholesome enterprise because it shows how the American
people are being misled by skillful propaganda. Furthermore, many of the people
who are doing so are acting in good faith and are simply not aware of the
profound differences between the Jewish and the Christian religion which are
patched over under the term Judeo-Christian. I have discussed some of these
differences in The Moses Legacy but
this is a book that tends not be read. I shall, therefore, attempt to profile
here the essential distinctions between the teachings of Moses and those of
Jesus. This is not merely a theoretical exercise but involves choices by what
principles we intend to live our lives.
Moses, as he comes across in the
Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible ascribed to Moses), is relatively
easy to understand. He took a diverse group of people who had lived in Egypt,
united them under a single God and in the name of that God gave them a law code
that set them apart from all other nations. The laws were designed to create a
warrior ethos that would allow a numerically inferior group to overcome the
people living in the country which they were to conquer and occupy. For the
natives of the land no mercy was to be shown. They had to be exterminated in toto because
their customs would deflect the immigrants from the worship of the true God to
whom alone they were responsible. Thus, there was to be no fraternization, no
sharing of meals and, of course, no intermarriage.The conquerors were to live in a world of
Israelites ruled by Israelites for the benefit of Israelites. Under those
circumstances the Lord would shower blessings upon them but if they reneged on
the contract with the Lord, which they had entered into at Sinai, supposedly
voluntarily, severe long lasting punishment including the expulsion from the
land would follow. Since Moses’ laws were stringent, backsliding was to be
expected and this is why the most terrible calamities that would befall them in
that case were listed in Deuteronomy, which is essentially a summation of the
first four books. Moses ruled by fear and the last verses of Deuteronomy make
this quite clear. It is stated that there has not been a prophet in Israel like
Moses “whom the Lord knew face to face; in all the signs and the wonders, which
the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his
servants, and to all his land; and in all the mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses wrought
[emphasis added] in the sight of all Israel [Dt XXXIV
10-12].”
The Israelites or Jews as they were
later called were people like everybody else. They could neither live up to the
lofty admonitions nor were they capable of exterminating all their enemies and
were, therefore, conquered and dispossessed twice from their land. Now they are
engaged in a repeat performance in Palestine.
Since their leadership has apparently not drawn the appropriate lessons from
the past failures this experiment may well end up the same way as the previous
two. Whenever one disregards the rights of others and attempts to remake an
existing society into one’s own image one is asking for trouble. This is the
lesson that has not yet sunk in but pertains equally to the leadership of Israel
as well as to some Jews in the Diaspora.
This is what we know about Moses: a
thoroughly autocratic, even tyrannical, flesh and blood ruler of a reluctant
people. Now, how about Jesus? Here the situation is considerably more complex
because we don’t have one account of his life but four, which differ in a
number of details. Furthermore, the gospel of John is mainly a theological
document, which takes Jesus out of the realm of humanity and places him into
that of the divine.But let us again
leave theology aside and concentrate on the essence of Jesus’ teachings.
We don’t know for certain what
Jesus said and what the evangelists have put into his mouth. Since he spoke, in
all probability, Aramaic rather than Hebrew, Greek or Latin and no written
publication of his is extant we are dealing with translations of translations.
All of us who have played silent mail as children know what can come out under
those circumstances. This problem was attacked by a group of academics, the
so-called Jesus Seminar, who met ever so often and discussed what words that
have been ascribed to Jesus he might actually have uttered. Their final report
entitled:TheFive Gospels.
What did Jesus really say? was published in 1993.
The seminar consisted of 76 eminent
professors from North American and European religious colleges who devised a
rigorous scientific protocol where the words attributed to Jesus by the gospel
writers could be graded for presumed authenticity. Each gospel, including that
of Thomas, was examined and a color code was assigned to every one of Jesus’
sentences. A colloquial way to define the words for authenticity as proposed by
one member was: red for, “That’s Jesus!,” pink for, “Sure sounds like Jesus,”
grey, “Well, maybe,” and black for, “There’s been some mistake.” A vote was
cast by each member of the seminar and a probability score was assigned to each
color: Greater than 75 percent for red, between 50 and 75 percent to pink,
between 26 and 50 percent for grey, and 25 percent or less for black. When the
scores were tallied it was found that of the more than 1500 passages only 90
received a red or pink score, and only 10 were unequivocally placed into the
red column! I have a feeling that even the members of the seminar may have been
surprised at the outcome of this academic exercise.
What does this tell us about Jesus?
The answer seems to be that he lives in the minds of beholders; but even so a
minimalist consensus is achievable. Regardless of the academicians’ scientific
problems what do we, ordinary people, associate the Christian way of life with?
I believe that it deals with love, forgiveness, repentance and sacrifice of
self for others. Furthermore, and this is the essential difference to Judaism,
these virtues are to be extended not only to members of one’s ethnic or
national group but to everyone we come into contact with. St.
Paul’s doctrine: In Christ there is “not Jew nor
Greek, not slave nor free, not male and female [Galatians 3:28];” did away not only with national and class
distinctions but also repudiated the Jewish national concept of separateness.
If we are all one then we have to truly treat each other as members of one
family where when one falls ill all feel the pain and come to each others’
help. The parable of the Good Samaritan was the illustration where Jesus broke
with Jewish tradition which had limited the concept of “neighbor” to members of
the tribe. Thus, there are fundamental differences in the authentic (biblical)
Jewish and Christian view of the relationships that should govern our conduct
to “the other.”
Although the Jewish rituals were
demanding they were not in conflict with basic human nature. An eye for an eye,
namely retribution for ills that have been suffered, is infinitely easier than
letting bygones be bygones. Deuteronomy is quite specific. For instance: the
tribe of Amalek that did not let the wandering
Hebrews pass through the land, but attacked them, has
to be held in perpetual dishonor. The slight must never be forgotten (XXV: 19].
A malicious murderer who has escaped to a city of refuge needs to be tracked
down. “No pity” shall be shown and he has to be placed “into the hand of the
avenger of blood that he may die [XIX 12-13].” Vengeance is, therefore, not
only sanctioned but encouraged and this keeps the cycle of revenge and
counter-revenge going. This is not only ancient history but explains,
what others may regard as, the fanatical obsession with past Nazi war crimes
towards Jews and the continued reprisals against Palestinian suicide attacks.
Jesus, who grew up in a milieu of
intense civil and religious strife, saw that violence and resultant retribution
only perpetuate violence and without forgiveness there can never be peace in
this world. He found himself, however, not only in direct conflict with Jewish
orthodoxy but also of human nature. A “Father forgive them, for they know not what
they do” uttered when nailed to a cross is not part of it. This requires a
degree of other-worldliness hardly any one of us is capable of. So does the
exhortation to not only love our neighbor but also our enemy, to do good to those who hate us and pray for those who abuse us.
Nevertheless this is the only authentic Christian message and those
“Christians” who preach and practice vengeance, for the 9/11 tragedy for
instance, do not act in accordance with Jesus’ teachings.
Precisely because the Christian
message is more difficult it should be followed to the extent we are indeed
capable of. Muscle is strengthened by exercise and spiritual muscle is no
exception to that rule. Of all the demands the Christian religion places on us
“Love your enemy” is surely the most difficult to follow. But let us not be
trapped by semantics. As mentioned earlier the sayings of Jesus represent
translations of translations. We don’t know the word he used for love, but we
do know the word that occurs in the original Greek New Testament and
subsequently in the Latin Vulgate. Our language has become impoverished because
we no longer distinguish between erotic love, the love of family members
towards each other, and the love for music or any other artistic enterprise.
The Greeks did and they had several words for what is now lumped under a single
one. The word agapao,
which was used in the biblical context, denoted not only the love for family
but also the concept of esteem. The same applied to the Latin diligete. What
this means is that Christians are not necessarily ordered to hug and kiss Osama
bin Laden for instance, but we are to see him as a fellow human being, albeit
misguided. We can ask ourselves: what does this man really want? and what can he teach us in regard to our own shortcomings?
Under those circumstances progress is possible. It is foreclosed when we simply
regard him as an evil monster whose actions are beyond comprehension and if he
were to be caught and done away with our problems would be solved.
As long as we adhere to this what
may be called Old Testament ideation we will stumble from one disaster to the
next because our actions, determined by righteous anger, will provoke equal
anger on part of those whom we harm in our pursuit of a goal as elusive as instant
secular democracy in Iraq.
It is not the end that justifies the means; it is the means we employ which
determine the outcome of whatever we do. Breaking down doors in the middle of
the night and terrifying Iraqi families may be in the interest of finding
suspected insurgents but is hardly the way to bring us good will in the long
run. Shock and awe is apparently still the motto and our leadership seems to be
oblivious to the fact that although you can shock somebody with brute force
that doesn’t mean he will be awed by it and will willingly do whatever you want
him to. The ill-will the battle for Fallujah has created and is still creating
among the former inhabitants of this currently uninhabitable city is likely to
simmer for a good long time. We believe that if we just give them money to
rebuild their destroyed homes that will solve the problem. It is not likely to
in that part of the world where the same tribal loyalties as in Israel
hold sway. Blood needs to be washed away by blood is the law and our failure to
understand this fundamental doctrine will be the reason why our Iraqi
experiment in nation building on secular democratic principles is likely to
fail.
The current issue of Time magazine has our President once
again as “Person of the Year” on its front cover. There is also extensive
reporting about him and what is called the “Bush dynasty” in the inside pages.
Although slightly cautious the overall tone is one of approval. I happen to see
him differently and after 9/11 I couldn’t help being reminded of Goethe’s
Faust. There is a scene where Mephistopheles appears in Faust’s study and when
asked by Faust who he is he said, “I am a part of that force which forever
desires evil and yet creates good.” With our President it seems to be the
opposite. I believe that he truly desires to do good
but the means that are employed create evil. Does he know or care how many
innocent Iraqis we have killed, maimed, deprived of their homes and livelihoods
or that as a result of our liberation of Iraq
from a secular dictatorship he seems to be paving the way for a religious one?
As The Christian Science Monitor
reported recently, Christian families are beginning to leave their country
because they are afraid of a Muslim resurgence. This is the tragedy of our
time: good Christians pursue noble goals with means that come out of the Old
Testament rather than the New. A truly Christian foreign policy, which places
the wishes of others on the same level as ours and subsequently achieves a
mutually agreeable solution, would truly be a first in human affairs. This may
be an impossible dream but it needs to at least be put on the table. Precisely
because it is the most difficult thing to do, because it goes against human
selfishness, it needs to be worked towards on a case by case basis.
We are being told that the
President reads the Bible on Sundays. My only wish is that he would devote
himself to the study of the New rather than the Old Testament because there is
an additional aspect of the Jesus story which can transcend sectarian and
personal strife. Christians are taught to regularly recite “The Lord’s prayer.”
I have a suggestion which can even be turned into a New Year’s resolution for
anyone. We do not need to regard the sentences contained in the prayer simply
as a request to the Deity but as commandments how to treat each other!
Non-Christians might want to delete
the introductory statement of, “Our Father who is in heaven” but, “hallowed be
thy name” can be applied. It can be taken as a request not to slander each other,
call each other names we don’t want to have applied to ourselves, and refrain
from using Jesus’ name as an expletive. The words, “Thy kingdom come” order us
to create circumstances on this very earth of ours where help is gladly
extended to everyone who is in need, where suffering is reduced to its bare
minimum and where we abstain from actions that will produce it. “Thy will be
done,” when confronted with a reasonable request and it is in our power to
grant it we should do so. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we should see to
it that the hungry are indeed being fed; but in addition when Jesus used the
word bread he also meant spiritual sustenance. This is what we frequently fail
to give to each other. Not only our bodies but our souls require nourishment
and we should provide it. “Forgive us our trespasses” is surely something we
can and should do. “Lead us not into temptation” is perhaps today the most
urgent in our secular capitalistic society. We are being bombarded by promises
of instant gratification of most of our desires. Advertisements on billboards,
radio, TV, the Internet that play on our greed and sexual urges are only one
part. The entire “entertainment industry” tends to be geared now towards
emotional, especially sexual, gratification. There is active incitement of our
baser qualities to the neglect of the intellectual and spiritual needs of the
human being. Neither you nor I can change the industry but we can change the
emotional climate in our families and we can make every effort to protect our
children from this barrage of falsehood. “Deliver us from evil” follows from
the foregoing. Let us carefully consider our actions not only in respect to the
hoped for outcome but how the means we employ will impact on others. If this
had been done by our leadership we would not be faced with the current daily
tragedies to innocent families of Iraqis as well as those of U.S.
troops.
In these perilous times lip service
to Jesus’ words will no longer suffice, we must take the message to heart including,
“Fear not!” In regard to “loving” our enemies the first order of business ought
to be to reduce their numbers rather than increase them by ill considered
actions. As to those who are determined to harm us we should take them as
individuals and examine their personal motives and capabilities rather than
lump them under amorphous names such as the Taliban or al Qaeda. In regard to
these people we don’t even know how many there are who want to harm us rather
than establish religious regimes in their own countries. It is up to those
countries how to deal with them. We ought not to be the sheriff of the world
where “My will be done” rules. The Cold War strategies where we defended
ourselves against nations are currently inapplicable because we deal with
probably quite small groups of individuals who may or may not have state
support. To use those strategies i.e. reliance on superior military power, is
not only fruitless but counterproductive.
For our “Christian” leadership to
deserve that name it would have to abandon the old ways of tit for tat and the
reliance on fear to maintain power. Instead we should engage in selfless
cooperation with the peoples of the rest of the world. There ought to be no
favorites but impartial justice towards all and for those nations whose
leadership violates international law the United Nations is the appropriate
forum to settle disputes. The money we save on useless military expenditures
could be set aside not only to restore fiscal balance and domestic programs but
also to create a fund for the inevitable natural disasters that are bound to
occur in the future.
Unless we follow the road, as shown
in the New rather than the Old Testament, Jesus will have died in vain as a
deluded idealist. The theology that has grown around the person of Jesus need
not deter us. He is honored in the Koran as well as in Buddhist literature and
it is now up to us to grant him the stature he deserves. When we truly do what
Jesus asked us to, as expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, everybody will benefit.
You will tell me that what I have proposed here is not likely to ever come to
pass. I know that it won’t for the people who currently are in power but we can
adopt these suggestions as our personal New Year’s resolution.
February 1, 2005
ROOTS OF EVIL
Before
entering into the topic at hand a word of explanation is required. This is the
fourth anniversary for this website and just like everything else in life it
has evolved beyond its original conception. Not only have the essays gotten
longer but there are now three books instead of one which I hope to bring to
the attention of the readership. The purpose of the books is to present a view
of the forces shaping our society which differs from what is generally
available and hopefully makes the reader question conventional wisdom. This is,
however, not popular in our day and age and there is little incentive to read,
let alone buy, this type of material especially in the United
States. I have, therefore, decided to make The Moses Legacy and its companion piece
Whither Zionism? available
in .pdf format so that they can be readily viewed by anyone with computer
access. They will, however, also remain on the market and can be ordered
through this site.
Now to the
problem of evil, which will not be discussed in a
metaphysical-philosophical context but in a very practical one.
Furthermore, I shall limit myself only to those evils that are wrought by man
rather than unreasoning nature over which we have no control. Like Socrates I don’t
believe that most people who create evil desire to do so for the sake of evil but
it is the outcome of the desire for some good that is expected to result from
their action. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions and some
examples from recent as well as past history will illustrate this principle.
Among
man-made evils war can surely be regarded as the greatest. Yet American
politicians seem to be fond of “War”, not necessarily in its general military
sense where it is a disaster to individuals, but as a cause to engage in.
Europeans are sick and tired of war and don’t even want to hear the word but
since America has never suffered the serious consequences of it, and on the
contrary experienced prosperity and increasing stature on the world scene, the
word War is popular. Since the 1960s we had a War on Poverty, a War on Cancer,
a Cold War, and now a War on Terrorism, apart from those that are fought by the
military. It may be time to ask ourselves what these wars have accomplished and
how useful these metaphors really are.
When Lyndon Johnson declared a War
on Poverty and announced as his goal the creation of a Great Society he surely intended
to do good. As he said early on in his Presidency, “I want to be the President who
is loved by all the people!” When I heard this I said to myself: good luck and
Machiavelli immediately sprang to mind, “It is better for a prince to be feared
than loved!” One of the aspects of the Great Society was that children from the
suburbs needed to be bussed to the inner cities and vice versa in order to
achieve racial balance. The idea was that every child would learn more and
better in integrated schools and the public good would be enhanced. The old
proverb, “birds of a feather flock together” was, and still is, disregarded by
social planners. The result of bussing was exactly the opposite of its
intentions. People are mobile and when laws are forced upon them with which
they disagree they move to areas where their children get the best possible
education rather than what is provided in inner cities. “White flight” began,
the inner cities were abandoned in the 1960s, their tax base was eroded, and
they decayed. I happened to work in Detroit
at that time and we saw first hand the fruits of government idealism. Forty
years later we still have a public school system which is a disgrace and
American children tend to score poorer on objective tests than their
counterparts in, what are called, the developed nations. President Bush’s “No
child left behind” act is also in the process of creating more problems than it
will solve because it does not address the causes of poor schooling. These are:
inadequate preparation of the teachers for the subject matter they are supposed
to transmit to their pupils, wrong teaching methods, and lack of discipline in
the classrooms. No amount of money that is thrown at schools for smaller class
sizes, computers, teachers’ salaries or whatever, will succeed unless the three
R’s are properly taught in elementary school and the foundations are laid there
for future intellectual growth.
Let us stay with Lyndon Johnson a
moment longer because he provides an excellent example of a failed presidency
and of good intentions gone awry.His
foreign policy, admirable in its goal to prevent the spread of communism in South
East Asia, turned into the disaster of the Vietnam War. Why did America
lose that war? The reason is rather simple: the ideas of the locals conflicted
with ours. We saw the war as preventing enslavement of the South by the Communist
North while a substantial portion of the Viet Cong did not fight for communism
but for an end to colonial domination. We were seen simply as the successors of
the French and had to be dealt with accordingly.
When South
Vietnam’s President Diem imposed his own
totalitarian rule on his portion of the country Buddhist monks took their
master’s parting words, “Make of yourself a light,”
literally and started immolating themselves in public places. Under those
circumstances our government thought that a “regime change” in Saigon
was necessary. Our ambassador colluded with some generals who first arrested
and then murdered Diem. By the way all this happened already on Kennedy’s watch
rather than Johnson’s who merely continued with the mistakes. Madame Diem, the
President’s widow, told the U.S.
government in no uncertain terms that no good would flow from this murder and
she was right. Kennedy was killed about three weeks later and religious people
might wonder about divine justice, which differs considerably from the human version.
The rest is, of course, as the popular phrase goes “history.” We tried to prop
up a series of unpopular generals to rule a country that just wanted to be left
alone and in the end had to abandon our embassy via helicopters among scenes of
appalling confusion and outright horror.
We had the
best intentions but the highest ideals when pursued with wrong means are bound
to come to grief. Our current President seems to ignore these nasty facts of
history and believes that he can accomplish in Iraq
what the Brits failed to do about three quarters of a century earlier. When one
reads his second Inaugural Address it becomes apparent that he seems to be
afflicted with what one might call the “Wilson
complex.” He does not seem to realize that Wilson’s
presidency was an even greater disaster for the world than Johnson’s was. If
the President follows through on his promise to end tyranny all over the world
he will not only suffer profound personal disappointment but leave the country
and the world even worse off than it is now.
Although historians know it, the
general public is not aware of the forces that propelled America
into the First World War, which in turn created all the difficulties we find
ourselves in today. There are two recent books dealing with the subject which
are very worth while reading. One is The
Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and the other The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming. Students of the history
of WWI can also profit from www.firstworldwar.com,
which provides primary documents. These sources present a considerably more
objective picture than what we are treated to by the media about what Ferguson
has called, “nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.”Ostensibly
Wilson entered WWI to end all wars
and to “make the world safe for democracy.” Yet, he unleashed even greater
evils than those committed up to
April 1917. Had the U.S.
remained on the sidelines it is likely that the Western Allies and the Central Powers
would have fought themselves to a stalemate and a compromise peace might have
been achieved. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was
certainly eager to drop out in 1916 already when it had become obvious that the
ill fated decision to punish the Serbs militarily had gone sadly awry. When
Franz Josef died in November of 1916 Karl, the 29 year old nephew of the
murdered crown prince Franz Ferdinand, inherited the crown. In his Ascension
Proclamation he said, “As I implore Heaven’s grace and blessing for Myself, My
House as well as My beloved Peoples I vow before the
Almighty, to faithfully administer the realm my ancestors have bequeathed to
Me. I shall do everything to banish the horrors and sacrifices of war at the
earliest opportunity in order to return the sorely missed blessings of peace to
My Peoples, as soon as the honor of our arms, the living conditions of My nations and their faithful allies, as well as the
defiance of our enemies allow it.” As Shakespeare said in other context, “Ay
there’s the rub.” It takes only one to start a war but at least two to end it.
Karl also promised the nations which comprised the monarchy that, “I shall be a
just and loving Sovereign to my peoples. I shall carefully preserve their
constitutional freedoms and other laws including equality before the law for
all. . . . Permeated by the faith in Austria-Hungary’s indestructible vitality,
animated by the deep love towards My peoples I shall
devote my Life and all My strength to this noble task. [ReichspostNovember 22, 1916].”
Karl meant every word he said, but
events had spun out of control. Although he tried his level best and sent out
peace feelers to the Entente they came to naught. Italy
became the stumbling block. She had been bribed by London
with secret promises during the previous year to join in the war.
These consisted of considerable territorial acquisitions, the most important of
which could only be gained by a complete defeat of Austria.
Although Austria
had given her no offense in 1915, there was the promise of hay to be made and
why not, “strike when the iron is hot?” The government of Italy
was not evil just greedy.
But Italy’s
entry into the war in 1915 had another consequence no one had thought of at
that time. The Italian army didn’t win any battles and in November of 1917 it
suffered a massive defeat at the hands of combined German and Austro-Hungarian
troops. The government was in disarray and there was fear that if Italy
lost the war she would be dismembered. In the context of November 1917 this
fear was quite realistic. As a result of Russia dropping out of the war German
divisions could be removed from the East and thrown to the West as well as
South where they could help the Austrians who weren’t good at winning any
battles either. There was universal war weariness among the people of Europe
and with Russia
out of the picture the West was in danger of losing the war. America
had to come to the rescue.
While America’s declaration of war
against Germany on April 2nd, 1917 was in part due to German
submarines sinking American merchant vessels, Wilson’s request to Congress in
his State of Union speech of December 4, 1917 to declare war against
Austria-Hungary had nothing to do with any misdeeds the Austro-Hungarian
government might have committed. On the contrary Emperor Karl had assiduously
courted the American ambassador in Vienna
in the hope of keeping America
at least semi-neutral. He had warned the German government against the
resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and desperately wanted to separate
his monarchy from that of Wilhelm’s. Instead of recognizing Karl’s desire for a
separate peace, Wilson acceded to
incessant Italian demands during November of 1917 to enter the war against the Danube
monarchy. First greed by the government of Italy
then fear became co-responsible for prolonging the war with its accompanying
miseries for the peoples of Europe.
The average American obviously had
no quarrel with the Habsburg monarchy and probably hardly knew of its existence
so the question how to sell the extension of the war, rather than making peace,
became acute. To tell Americans that they should die for Italian ineptness
would not have worked. Wilson,
therefore, produced a rhetorical masterpiece in his address to Congress that
deserves to be carefully studied because it became a model for how to
successfully camouflage the real reasons for going to war. I shall, therefore
quote the relevant portions as they refer to Austria-Hungary
from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of
the Presidents. First he placed the blame for the war clearly at the feet
of the “sinister masters of Germany.” They had been greedy, not content with
the rightful powers they had enjoyed before August 1914, and the world was now
confronted with “this intolerable thing of which the masters of Germany have
shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now
see so clearly as the German power, a thing without conscience or honor or
capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed.” Then there would be the
permanent peace of, “No annexations, no contributions, no
punitive indemnities.” This peace,
“must deliver the once fair lands
and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and
the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also the peoples of Austria-Hungary,
the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia,
from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial
autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves,
to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own
life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to
dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left
in their own hands, in all matters great or small. . . .
What shall we do, then, to push
this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must
clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success, and we must make
every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole
capacity and force as a fighting unit.
One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in
our way is that we are at war with Germany
but not with her allies. I, therefore, very earnestly recommend that the
Congress immediately declare the United States
in a war with Austria-Hungary.
Does it seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument
I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of
what I have said. Austria-Hungary
is for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the German
Government.
We must state the facts as they are
and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The government of Austria-Hungary
is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings
of its own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its
force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be
successfully conducted in no other way.
The same logic would lead also to a
declaration of war against Turkey
and Bulgaria.
They also are tools of Germany,
but they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our
necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us.
But it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical
considerations lead us, and not heed any others.”
Let us examine these words in some
detail because the relevance to our own time ought to be apparent to anyone.
The adversary who is portrayed as totally evil and depraved must be crushed.
But the enemy is only the government and not the governed. The people yearn to
be free and they will receive this freedom from a gracious America
which is unselfishly shedding her blood towards that goal. This establishes the
moral high ground. The fact that you can’t crush a government without killing
its citizens and destroying its economy, did not enter
into the equation.
Only the German government was
greedy and Italy,
which had entered the war strictly for territorial gains and had become the
cause for the declaration, was never mentioned. Neither were the efforts of
Emperor Karl to get out from under the wings of the German eagle. It is a
perfect example of what results from the “good versus evil stance.” It
precludes consideration of the concerns the other side might have. If Wilson
had made the effort to talk to Emperor Karl personally he might have learned
how unrealistic his ideas were. He would have found out that not interfering in
the internal affairs of Austria-Hungary
in one sentence and yet championing the principle of “self-determination of
nations” were incompatible with the continued
existence of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Needless to say this
wonderful phrase also flew in the face of all colonial powers including Britain.
What would the British government have done had Wilson
insisted on free elections in India
for instance? Even more close to home the Irish certainly wanted to be free
from their domination by the Brits and for their aspirations Wilson
showed not a shred of concern. Germany’s
unrestricted submarine warfare, which was designed to starve England
into submission, was a crime against humanity in Wilson’s
eyes but the fact that a British blockade of Germany
existed for the same purpose ever since 1914 was never mentioned.
There was an additional sleight of
hand in Wilson’s distinction
between Austria-Hungary,
upon whom war must be declared immediately, and the rest of the Central Powers
where this necessity did not exist. The rhetorical device oftalking about an ”instrument” of German power
on the one hand and “mere tools” on the other strikes one as a distinction
without a difference. Nevertheless, it served its purpose to camouflage the
real reason. Congress approved and on December 7 Wilson
issued the Proclamation wherein he announced the war against Austria-Hungary.
In it he simply stated that “Whereas the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian
Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the
people of the United States
. . .” None of them were detailed because, to the best of my knowledge, none
had occurred. Thus, the declaration was issued not because of a high moral
reason but out of fear that Italy
might drop out of the war enabling Germany
to win.
With the fall of Russia
in December 1917 there was a brief moment for achieving a negotiated peace but
it was missed. The evils of war had to continue because a misguided idealist
had fallen victim to the propaganda of the press and a messianic vision of
himself. A wiser person, who had no ulterior motives, but had only the well
being of all at heart, might have seized the opportunity by throwing his
considerable weight on the scales of peace rather than those of war. Wilson
won the war but lost the peace and the world has not yet overcome his fateful
legacy. Even the current war in Iraq
has its roots in the colonial ambitions of the British Empire.
There was a corollary to Wilson’s
fear that Germany
might win the war. A similar fear by Roosevelt led him
to announce the “unconditional surrender” demand during the January 1943
conference with Churchill in Casablanca.
Roosevelt was deeply concerned that Hitler might once
again come to some arrangement with Stalin and the Western allies would be left
holding the bag. He knew that Stalin was deeply unhappy with Churchill’s
opposition to an immediate second front in France
and he regarded the Mediterranean campaign, justifiably so, as a side show.
Stalin had to be kept on board and Roosevelt would do
whatever it took to reach that goal. The side-effect of the unconditional
surrender formula was to stiffen German resistance and thereby prolong the war.
It may now be argued that there was
a profound difference between what Hitler represented and what Wilhelm II had
stood for. Wilhelm was just a fool while Hitler was thoroughly evil. But this difference evaporates when one reads
how the West including America
had described “the Kaiser” during the war years. The same epithets were hurled
at him, with considerably less cause, as were against Hitler thirty years
later. When one reads the old newspapers one is impressed that there is not a
shred of difference in the language used to describe the enemy. Since Hitler,
apart from the “Butcher of Baghdad,” is nowadays regarded as the
personification of evil he provides us with an example how evil evolves and
there can be no doubt that the concentration camp system with its systematic
industrialized killing of “undesirable” human beings represented an evil of the
first magnitude.
Hitler surely did not see himself
as evil and neither did those around him. He was a man on a mission who had to
restore the German greatness she had been robbed of by the evil democracies –
plutocracies who in turn were run not by their people but by Jewish
capitalists. Jews were not a religion but a race and a nation. As such they were
aliens in Germany
(regardless of how long they had lived there) and had to conform to German laws
for aliens. Germany
was for Germans and there was to be no room for aliens, i.e. Jews, in leading
positions. That was the Nazi faith and as any other faith it was to be accepted
and not to be reasoned with. By the spring of 1939 Hitler’s image in the world
differed considerably from that of his followers for whom he had provided
tangible benefits. Yet, he felt he could safely disregard world opinion because
he was put into his job by Providence
who guided his steps. The high point of his career was not after the fall of France
in 1940 because there was still recalcitrant England,
but at 4 a.m. on March 15, 1939. After having bullied President
Hacha of Czechoslovakia
into placing his country “under the protection of the German Reich” Hitler met
his two secretaries in private and asked them to give him a peck on each of his
cheeks with the statement, “Children, this is the greatest day of my life. I
shall enter history as the greatest German.”
He had indeed accomplished, without
shedding one drop of blood, a unification of most of the Hohenzollern and
Habsburg Empires. Germany
was now the strongest power in Central Europe. That he
had set himself on a collision course with England which had never tolerated one
dominant continental power regardless, whether it was France under Napoleon,
Germany under Wilhelm II, or now under Hitler did not occur to him. While
Hitler saw himself as the crusader for German rights the West saw him as a
menace and robber baron who had to be, in Wilson’s
words, “crushed.” Hate escalated on both sides with the outcome of the total
destruction of German cities on the one hand and Auschwitz
on the other.
Last week saw commemoration
services at that death camp and ElieWiesel, the most prominent survivor, wrote in an article
for the Los Angeles Times, “What made Auschwitz
possible? How could a nation known for its culture and education have dreamed
up such a place? . . . Most of the questions that I had 60 years ago . . .remain unanswered.
Even if there is an answer I refuse to accept it.” Auschwitz has indeed become
a defining symbol but I believe that the proper lessons have not been drawn as
long as one sees evil only in “the other.” I have discussed this aspect in War&Mayhem but I doubt that the
explanations provided will satisfy those who have made the Holocaust their
profession. The key aspects how this tragedy could have happened were: the
dehumanization of the adversary, the desire for revenge, the capability to
extract it, and perhaps most importantly: secrecy.
Secrecy is the key word where the
past, present and the future merge. Can anyone conceive that Hitler could have
done in public what he ordered to be done in secret? This is the heart of the
problem. The desire for gain resides in every human being. When it is
accompanied by fear that the means to obtain it might conflict with commonly
accepted mores, it is carried out in secret and camouflaged under a variety of
excuses. These excuses become outright lies when they are challenged by others.
This process is part of our human nature and, unfortunately, we find it at work
even in our own government at the present time.
Democracies are not immune from
government secrecy and “oversight by Congress” or the media are profoundly
deficient. The country was led into the Iraq
invasion under false pretenses and one would sorely wish that Nixon like tapes
came to the surface that presented us with the conversations between our
President and his Vice-President starting with February 2001. The American
people now, just like the German people during the first part of the twentieth
century have no idea what is being perpetrated in their name. When the
Abu-Ghraib photos first emerged, which showed the degradations Iraqi men were
subjected to, an attempt was made to hide them, when that failed their
importance was minimized and the blame is still being laid on a few sadistic
soldiers. This is wrong because it ignores the culture under which these abuses
occurred.
This is the evil that should be
addressed but it is not and continues to flourish. Seymour Hersh wrote in “The
Coming Wars” (The New YorkerJanuary 29, 2005) that the war on
terrorism will be placed under the Defense Department. “The President has
signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando
groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against
suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle
East and South Asia.” These can be “run off
the books – free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.Under current law, all C.I.A. covert
activities overseas must be authorized by a presidential finding and reported
to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.” In other words Congress has
no business knowing how the administration conducts its war on terrorism, which
is likely to include its extension into Iran,
and its duty is simply to put up the money for the costs. What we can now
expect is that all questions will be stonewalled with the mantra of “national
security” or “executive privilege.” Since our “interrogators” in the war on
terrorism overseas and at Guantanamo can do whatever they want to get
“information” we should not be surprised at all when practices will come to
light that are clearly beyond the standards of decent behavior. Yet we are
paying for it and by our silence become co-responsible.
Hersh’s article has profound
implications but has, of course, been called unreliable and is quietly hushed
up. Condoleeza Rice was confirmed as Secretary of State and she has told
Congress that now is the time for diplomacy rather than military actions.
Theoretically it is, but is she capable of carrying out the wishes of the more
rational State Department or those of a President who is clearly on a mission
just as were some of the other people mentioned above? She was appointed
because Bush likes her, respects her and appreciates her loyalty. But the
country demands loyalty not only to a given President but to the principles it
was founded upon and these do not include the excesses that are currently being
perpetrated. Dr. Rice is well educated, she knows history but does she have the
stamina to become what Thomas Becket was to Henry II? The King thought he’d get
a toady and wound up with a moral force he could not control. For the good of
the country we can hope that this will be so because unchecked our President is
likely to continue to follow in Wilson’s
footsteps with potentially even more disastrous results. The same statements
apply to our newly confirmed Attorney General who, in his capacity as counsel
to the President, had labeled provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”
So what are the roots of evil? They
are: 1) To desire more than what you have or is freely given; 2) To conduct
your actions designed to fulfill your desires in secret; 3) To ignore the legitimate
aspirations of others and pursue a course of “My will be Done.” Ultimately it
boils down to a relationship to “the other” regardless who “the other” is. If
we show respect and understanding all is well and cooperation will ensue. If we
feel that we can force our will upon others nothing but grief will ensue.
Whatever high moral phrases our President and his followers may continue to
utter they will ring just as hollow as those of his fore-runner about whom the
French President Clemenceau said in 1919, “He thinks he is another Jesus Christ
come upon earth to reform men.”
March 1, 2005
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
When one read the newspaper and
magazine headlines of the past month one was led to believe that spring is
finally here, after a long hard winter, and freedom and democracy were breaking
out all over the world. The Palestinians had a free election and “Sharon
extends an olive branch.” The Iraqis had an election of sorts and “U.S.
Senators in Iraq
optimistic.” “Iraqi leader says violence won’t divide the nation,” and the
subheading proclaims, “Suicide blasts: Fifty-five die in the attacks on the
Shiite holy day, but the number is far less than last year.” We have also been
told that, “Israel’s
parliament approves plan to remove Jewish settlements.”
The Bush administration is
currently engaged in a charm offensive. First Condi Rice was sent to Europe
and the Middle East to assure their leaderships that the
wind that is blowing from the West is changing to a gentler breeze and
subsequently our President himself followed up with a quickie trip to Brussels,
Mainz and Bratislava,
of all places, where he met with Mr. Putin. In spite of all the charm that is
currently exuded there were also stern warnings what Iran, Syria and Russia
“must “ do in order to keep enjoying spring-time weather sent by the U.S.A. The
American public laps it up because unless one is motivated to pursue the facts
and has Internet access that’s all the news one gets. Time magazine had a most
revealing statistic that demonstrates the type of information the average
American is exposed to. It was a short blurb under “Numbers” and cited diverse
figures from a 57% increase in AIDS in Africa, through
157,281 illegal immigrants shipped back to Mexico,
to $452,800 as the winning bid for one of Kennedy’s maple desks. The item under
discussion reads, “6 min. 21 sec. Amount of time a typical half-hour local
TV-news broadcast devotes to sports and weather. 38 sec. Amount of time a
typical half-hour local newscast devotes to U.S.
foreign policy, including the war in Iraq.”
The rest of the time is spent on advertisements and local mishaps. Is it any
wonder that with this type of information the average proverbial Joe-six-pack
gets a distorted view of the factors that will impinge on his life in the long
run? What is even worse is that he has been trained not to care because
high-schools do not teach world history as a compulsory subject in any degree
of depth. Under those circumstances it is no wonder that people are satisfied
with headlines and catchy phrases.
But let us look at the facts which
remain as unpleasant as they have been for the past several years. Mahmoud
Abbas who is now a genuinely elected leader of the Palestinian government can
do all the reforms he wants but it will not get him anywhere unless Sharon
gives him more than a smile, a handshake, the release of a few prisoners and
the dismantling of some settlements, which he really doesn’t want anyway,
especially in Gaza. The bedrock of Palestinian demands namely genuine freedom
from Israeli occupation, removal of the major settlements, rather than some
ram-shackle ones, the rights to their water and air space, and East
Jerusalem as the seat of their internationally recognized
government are still non-negotiable. But as long as these are not met and olive
trees are cut down to expand current settlements and to permit the building of
the “wall of separation” no “olive branch,” will have credibility. As mentioned
in “PalestinianState
or Israeli Protectorate?” (April 1,
2002), Sharon does not
want an independent Palestinian state he wants the equivalent of Hitler’s
“Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” That means they can have their own
police, postage system, currency, sewage removal etc. but they have to toe the
line and do what Berlin, or in Israel’s case the Knesset, wants them to do.
There can be no Middle
East peace under those circumstances and this is where the second
part of this month’s headline comes in. Sharon,
even if he wanted to, which is doubtful, cannot accede to the Palestinian’s
demands because not only would it lead to the fall of his government but
possibly even to some sort of civil war within Israel
itself. This is the point where his freedom to act ends. Barring massive
demonstrations in Israel which demand the total withdrawal from the occupied
territories and for granting the Palestinians their rights, there is only one
group of people who is, theoretically at least, indeed free to act in this
sphere and bring an end to the bloodshed and the waste of our tax payers’ money
in Palestine. As has been repeatedly pointed out in these pages it is only the
leadership of Jewish organizations in the U.S.
who enjoys this freedom. Neither Congress, nor our President is free to enforce
their own wishes in this thorny problem unless the grassroots Jewish population
in our country demands from their own Jewish leadership a change of direction
and the granting to the Palestinians all the rights that they have been
deprived of for so many years. Although the Jewish people in our country are
considerably better educated and interested in world affairs than our average
citizens, they have not yet confronted this challenge. This may become one of
the greatest tragedies of this century because without genuine peace in Jerusalem
there cannot be peace in this interconnected world.
The freedom loving American
taxpayer who reads only headlines and gets snippets of world news on TV doesn’t
realize that it is our money that keeps the Israeli government afloat. First we
pay for the military buildup, then we pay for the settlements, now we will pay
for the removal of some settlements from Gaza
and we pay for the wall. I will be challenged on this because we really don’t
pay directly for these items but we do so indirectly. Creative book-keeping on
the Israeli side assures that while the letter of the law is obeyed, the spirit
is, in good Talmudic fashion, disregarded. Unless one knows, what may be
called, “the Talmud mentality,” negotiations with the Jewish leadership is
likely to run on parallel tracks which meet in infinity. This is the reason why
I wrote The Moses Legacy and made it
freely available. Please download it at your leisure and read the chapters on
the Talmud as well as on Jewish Power.
The Iraqi elections, although important,
are a side-show. The freedom in which they were conducted was severely hampered
in the Sunni part of the country and when we heard at first that the Shiites
won about 67 per cent of the vote it seems that Bush the son decided to emulate
his father in this particular situation by silently vowing “this must not
stand.” Mr. Negroponte had to get into the act. The data were massaged in what
was called a “recount” and the Shiites 67 per cent majority shrunk into a more
manageable 48 per cent. That this, now elected but still interim, government is
free to write the constitution it
wants rather than what is compatible with U.S.
demands is questionable. What would have been the purpose of our invasion if we
abolisheda secular Iraqi dictatorship
where women and Christians had guaranteed rights provided they kept their
mouths shut and did not agitate the pot, to an Islamic one that is governed by
the law of Sharia? What if that government were to become friendly with Iran
and to make matters worse if both of those countries were to decide to sell
their oil not for dollars but the Euro? Why should the oil producing countries
continue to pay with dollars when our currency has been devalued considerably
over the past years? Those are the questions an educated American government
ought to ask itself, an educated Congress should debate, and an educated public
take part in.
What is the reason for our
belligerency against Iran
and the demand that it must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons? Who are
the mullahs really threatening if they have the bomb? Are they going to
annihilate, Rome, Paris,
Berlin, Moscow,
or Vienna? Hardly, but Tel Aviv and
possibly Jerusalem, would surely be
on the list. Even the achievement of peace with Iran
depends, therefore, on the interests of the mentioned key players in Jerusalem
and Washington. Nuclear
proliferation is obviously undesirable and we should have less of those weapons
rather than more. A sane American foreign policy, which would be
enthusiastically supported by the Europeans and the rest of the world, would
not only demand that Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions, but that Israel
destroys its nuclear arsenal as well as its assorted other WMDS under
international inspections. It is that arsenal and Israeli nuclear subs in the Mediterranean,
the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean
that give Teheran the shivers. Unless and until Americans learn to put
themselves into the shoes of others and begin to see the problems from both
sides there will not be peace in our time.
Consider also some other headlines
that tell us about our “overflights” of Iranian airspace and that a Syrian
intelligence officer admitted to training Iraqi insurgents. How would we feel
if the Iranians had the capability to spy on us either via satellites or drones?
What are our CIA and other operatives currently doing in Iran
(see previous installment) and possibly Syria
if not to foment rebellion? Do the Mossad and their agents just sit on their
hands? When foreign governments try to protect themselves this potential
freedom from interference into their internal affairs is intolerable to our
government.
These are the fundamental problems
our President should have discussed with the European leadership but he played
it safe. Smiles and partially conciliatory words were to take the place of
substance. When I read the President’s itinerary I had to laugh. While Kennedy
had met with Khrushchev, at the height of the Cold War, in Vienna Bush went to Bratislava
for his meeting with Putin. Americans don’t know this but every Viennese of my
generation is familiar with the “Preszburger Bahn.” Preszburg, or now Bratislava,
being about 18 miles to the east was regarded more or less as a suburb of Vienna
and connected during the monarchy by light rail- the Preszburger Bahn, similar
to the Badner Bahn (still in existence) that connects the center of Vienna
with that spa resort. The local analogy would be if the President were to visit
Utah but eschew Salt
Lake City because of its potentially more cantankerous
populace and head instead to the safety of the Mormon bastion Provo.
What did the President really
accomplish during his visit with Mr. Putin in that new democracy of Slovakia,
which actually was given its very first birth through the good graces of Hitler
when he disassembled Czechoslovakia
in 1939? Is “Vladimir,” whose soul
he had looked into a few years earlier and found spotless, now less willing to
support the Syrians and Iranians? Did he promise to grant the Chechens their
freedom and allow American style smut on his state-run television? Obviously
not; Russian democracy has limits and her citizens are left in no doubt about
it. But so does ours, only that we don’t talk about it and nobody else is
supposed to point it out to us. Fortunately The
Salt Lake Tribune and especially its Opinion page cartoonist Pat Bagley are
at times still willing to risk their freedom by voicing some dissenting notions
as the cartoon from February 24, reproduced with his permission at the bottom
of the essay, shows. The subtle truth about the President’s real opinions, which
is contained in the change of one vowel, may, however, escape the attention of many
readers.
Let us now leave the present for a
moment and step back into the past, the cradle of democracy Athens,
and see how people felt about it at that time. Fortunately we do have the
contemporary voices of Thucydides and Plato, who paraphrased Socrates. America
is commonly likened to the Roman Empire but this is not
quite correct because a) we don’t have obligatory emperor worship as yet and b)
we don’t have the legions. The Athenian League and its rise as well as its
demise might be the more appropriate analogy. Thucydides, who served in some of
the campaigns, informs us in Chapter IV of The
Peloponnesian War about Athens’
“progress from Supremacy to Empire.” For the Greek city states Athens’
naval victory at Salamis over the
Persian fleet and the subsequent route of the Persians at Plataea
by the Spartans was the equivalent of America’s
victory in WWII. While the Spartans, a continental power, were content to go
home after a while the Athenians, who had relied on their navy, exploited that
success and “liberated” several Aegean islands and Ionian cities from their
Persian overlords. That liberty came, however, at a price. The members of the
“Athenian League,” as it was officially called had to contribute taxes and/or
ships. When they were no longer willing to do so, and joined instead the
Peloponnesian League dominated by Sparta,
punishment was brutal, swift and effective. After some decades it was no longer
love for Athens but fear of
retribution that held the League together. Athens’
high-handed conduct led to fear and loathing and became co-responsible (apart
from the foolish greediness of the leadership in Corfu
and Corinth) for the outbreak of
the Peloponnesian war that finished Athens’
years of glory.
To what extent was Athens
a democracy in her prime and what were its virtues? First of all the vote was
limited to free, native born, male citizens who made up only a minority of the
total population. A person like Socrates who challenged popular wisdom was
tolerated for a while but when he preached his ideas to youngsters of the
establishment class he was put on trial and convicted of not honoring the
time-honored gods as well as of seducing the young. The judges would have let him
pay a fine but Socrates, ornery as he was, suggested such a ridiculously low
one that they were forced to let him drink hemlock juice for his insolence.
From Plato’s account it is obvious that Socrates wanted to die in this manner
because not only was he already 70 years old, he had a nagging wife, sons who
may or may not have been wastrels, and the future had only slowly progressive
physical and mental decay to offer. While Caesar, when asked what kind of a
death he wanted, said “a quick one,” Socrates opted for a noble one and both
got their wish.
What was Socrates’ opinion of
democracy and what does it tell us about human behavior? It is no secret that
he was not enamored with the rule of the people by the people. His first choice
was philosopher kings: rulers who were skilled in the art of public service as
well as war. This was essentially Sparta’s
model where there were two kings; one presided over domestic affairs and the
other led the army in foreign campaigns. But since everything in life degenerates
the next best idea of government was “timocracy,” which means rule by honor.
When the most honorable and meritorious citizens were in charge the city-state
would be well administered. But again human nature does not lend itself to this
blessed state very long so oligarchy – rule by a few – comes next, which is a
further degradation of the art of government. People then become dissatisfied
with having no voice and demand democracy which is next to the worst form of
government on the Socratic scale, because its excesses of freedom lead to the
destruction of morals and eventually anarchy. Since people can’t live in an
anarchic society a strong leader emerges who then becomes a tyrant and that
completes the cycle. Thus, very little has changed in the intervening
twenty-four hundred years.
It becomes positively funny when
one reads subsequently how Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, describes
Athenian democracy. Here are excerpts from Book VIII of The Republic with Socrates as the speaker:
“The good which oligarchy proposed
to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth-am I
not right?
Yes.
And the insatiable desire of wealth
and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money gathering was also
the ruin of oligarchy?
True.
And democracy has her own good of
which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?
What good?
Freedom I replied; which as they
tell you in a democracy is the glory of the State –
and therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign well.
Yes; the saying is in everybody’s
mouth.
I was going to observe, that the
insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change
in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.”
Socrates then details some of the changes
he and the audience have observed. With unlimited liberty:
“anarchy
finds its way into private houses. . . . the father
grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the
son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either
of his parents . . . .
In such a state of society the
master [teacher] fears and flatters his scholars [pupils], and the scholars
despise their masters and tutors, young and old are alike; and the young man is
on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in words or deeds and
the old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they
are loath to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the
manners of the young. . . .
. . . at length they [the citizens]cease to care even for the
laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them. . . .
Such my
friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs
tyranny.”
In addition
to these evils Socrates found it intolerable that slaves should have the same
rights as free men. That women should have the same civil rights men and even
animals could do whatever they wanted on a public road thereby menacing
passers-by.The statement about animals’
rights brought to mind a little incident that occurred at the time when Clinton
was liberating the Yugoslavs from Milosevic by bombing the citizens of Belgrade.
The good wife, Martha, who loves all living beings, had received in the mail
from the Animal Legal Defense Fund a bumper sticker, “Abuse an animal . . . go
to jail!” My immediate next thought was, “bomb a city . . . become a hero!”
When we
look at the state of our democracy we’d hardly know that 2400 years have gone
by since Plato penned those words. Among other aspects the enforced equality
and concomitant lack of respect have become all pervasive. First academic
titles were abolished when addressing someone, subsequently Mr., Miss, or Mrs.
before last names, thereafter last names, and now we are all Tom, Dick, and
Harry’s. I am not sure that President Putin relished being referred to as
Vladimir in public. The sad part is that people in our country don’t even know
any more that this is disrespectful and breeds dislike rather than friendship.
In Europe and elsewhere in the world the use of first
name by others is a privilege that must be granted rather than a right to be
usurped. But it seems that in parallel with an excess of freedom - coupled with
disrespect - we also experience increasing coercion. This is justified by the
so-called War on Terrorism for which we are now supposed to sacrifice our
lives, liberty and fortunes. The invasions of Afghanistan
and subsequently Iraq
were supposed to have gotten rid of this evil but now we are told in another
headline, “Intelligence, military officials say the U.S.
faces a growing terror threat.” What have we been paying all these billions of
dollars since 9/11 for and why have we invaded other countries when this does
not achieve the stated aim? The answer is, of course, obvious, the reasons we
are being given are not reasons but excuses to justify policies that are
hatched in secret for the benefit of a few rather than the citizens of our
country or those in the rest of the world.
This brings
me to the final question, “What freedom does the individual citizen have
regardless of the type of government one lives under?” This will be explored in
greater detail in the April installment. For now it is important to state that
absolute freedom does not and cannot exist for the human being. Statisticians
introduced the useful concept of “degrees of freedom,” and those also apply to
people living in a given society. In authoritarian states personal degrees of
freedom are restricted but can be retained as long as one does not belong to a
persecuted minority and does not criticize the government in word or deed. In
our democracy we are given greater latitude but we still have taboos that must
not even be discussed, lest one is in danger of losing one’s job.
When
our President talks about bringing “Freedom and Democracy” to the rest of the
world he would be well advised to look back on history and see the cyclical
progression rather than expect that democracy will be the end all and be all.
But as Mr. Pat Bagley so astutely noted in his cartoon, this is really not what
it’s all about and readers of this essay will be well advised to look beyond
the obvious humor to the deeper message. Nevertheless, we are witnessing a
moment of hope but Lady Opportunity has restless legs and unless she is firmly
grasped now she may take her leave again for a long time.
April 1, 2005
PAIN AND SUFFERING
In last month’s essay I discussed
the political and external freedoms a human being possesses under different
forms of government and had intended to follow it up with a discussion of
internal freedom. This is the ability of the human being to deal with the
vicissitudes of life in a constructive fashion regardless of external
circumstances. Two events transpired subsequently which made this decision
highly topical. The first one was the airing of the movie “Million Dollar Baby”
and the other the Schiavo tragedy. They present different aspects of suffering and
serve as good examples of how our society reacts to dying.
Martha and I hardly go to the
movies any more because the fare tends to be atrocious. Furthermore, as a neurologist
I have a high respect for the brain and don’t enjoy watching people, especially
women, beating each other into unconsciousness.But “Million Dollar Baby” had good reviews, Clint Eastwood is an
excellent actor and a surprise ending was promised, so we went. By now the
story is well known and I’m not giving away any surprises by summarizing it.
Clint Eastwood, as Frankie, ran a training gym for would be boxers and a young
woman by name of Maggie begged him to take her on as a student. He was reluctant
to do so but eventually relented and she became a star on the women’s boxing
circuit, earning considerable amounts of money. She had come a long way from
her trailer home upbringing, and subsequent work as a waitress, to enjoy wide
acclaim and the respect she had craved all her life. It had been her own
achievement through grueling and punishing years of painful work of which she
was justly proud. But when she thought that her mother would be grateful for
the house she had bought for her she was rebuffed because all
the woman wanted was money to spend rather than a decent house to live
in. At the pinnacle of her career for the world championship fight Maggie was
dealt a vicious and illegal blow that sent her crashing into a chair, which
severed her spinal cord at the highest levels. When she regained consciousness,
several days later, she found herself on a respirator and permanently
quadriplegic. Frankie, who had become the father she never had, promised that
he would always be taking care of her. He did in fact provide the assistance
she needed, and the encouragement to make the best of a disastrous situation.
She seemed to respond but when the family arrived and they only wanted her to
sign her money over to them, something snapped. She lost her will to live and
begged Frankie to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself namely terminate,
what was for her, an intolerable existence. When he refused she severely bit
her tongue so that she might choke but prompt medical care prevented the
desired outcome.
Frankie had been a severely
troubled person for several years who carried a burden
of guilt for reasons we were not told. He went to mass daily but also annoyed
the young priest no end with theological questions for which there were no
genuine answers. Maggie’s’ request added to his spiritual dilemma. He felt that
he was responsible for having made her into a star by giving in to her wish but
he had also rendered her now a permanently disabled person dependent on
artificial life support. Frankie tried to discuss Maggie’s wish with his priest
but this particular caretaker of souls was not yet old and wise enough to be
able to express anything other than standard theological platitudes that only
added to Frankie’s guilt. Eventually Frankie sneaked into the hospital at
night, terminated Maggie’s life in a loving manner and then disappeared
forever.
The film has a profound impact on
viewers because it raises the inevitable question of what we would want to have
done for us by others, who indeed have our best interests at heart, when we are
no longer in charge of our bodies. This is the point where our ultimate freedom
comes in. We still have choices, limited as they are. We can do what Maggie did
and what a great many of us in her situation might also do,
or we can use the steely resolve that she exhibited in her boxing life to lend
purpose even to a tragedy of this magnitude. Christopher Reeves comes to mind
immediately. But when one puts one’s hopes entirely on regaining lost physical function,
which is currently medically impossible and is likely to remain so for years to
come, one will suffer inevitable disappointment. Even if stem cell research
will yield positive results in this respect in future decades it will be too
late for all the quadriplegic, ventilator dependent, patients who are ill now.
The fictional Maggie’s case and the
real life quadriplegic patients are faced with a spiritual problem and the
individual patient as well as society at large will have to come to recognize
it as such and not pin hopes entirely on physical recovery. Furthermore,
we have here a clear example of the difference between pain and suffering.
Maggie had no pain, before she severed her tongue, but she surely suffered.
Although we commonly tend to lump pain and suffering into one phrase as if they
were synonymous, they are not and this neglected distinction needs to be kept
in mind. Pain is a physical sensation in one or more parts of one’s body which
does lead to suffering by its perception and mental elaboration. How much
suffering is associated with pain is not merely due to its intensity but also, and
perhaps in our daily lives most importantly, the mental burden we add to it.
At this point I would like to
invite the reader to the August 2004 essay on “Perception of Reality”. It discusses
the difference between sensation and perception on a physiologic level and
explains the basis upon which suffering arises and what can be done to reduce
it. As mentioned at that time, sensory impulses from our bodies, or the
external world, trigger responses in the appropriate area of our brain. These
responses consist, in the normal individual, of two types: one is the primary,
which is specific to the area that is stimulated and the other, a secondary one
which elaborates on it and relays it to distant structures. It is the latter,
which is tied to perception and adds the emotional quality. When the sensation
is one of discomfort and/or pain it also gets relayed to the prefrontal lobes,
those parts of the brain which make us truly human and which exist only in a
rudimentary state even in the monkey. The prefrontal parts of our brain allow
for planning and foresight, but are also responsible for ruminative, obsessive
thinking. When our thoughts are allowed to dwell exclusively on past events or
future expectations suffering will become inevitable. The remembered past was
never as happy or unhappy as our imagination paints it and the unknowable
future is likewise just that – unknowable. We tend to dwell on fantasies,
regard them as reality, and poison our present lives to the detriment of the
future.
Let us stay with the fictional Maggie
for now. She had intact prefrontal lobes and instead of ruminating over the
loss of functions, and past glory which was gone forever, she might have put
them to use with Frankie’s help. There are things, even ventilator dependent
quadriplegic patients can do. For a person with strong religious faith this may
be easier but the human spirit need not be limited by theology and a broader
spiritual perspective, above and beyond conventional religions, is potentially
available even to agnostics. It simply needs the will to recognize this
possibility and act on it. What might have been done in Maggie’s case? She had
two options. If there was a shred of a will to live left it could have been
nourished by spiritual sustenance with the help of an experienced guide. Indian
philosophy which emphasizes, “I am not my body,” or appropriately modified to
“I am not only my body” could have been helpful, especially if she had been
provided with training in the control of the mind. The emphasis should have
been not only on physical rehabilitation but also on that of mind and spirit. If
on the other hand she was absolutely determined to die she might have asked
Frankie to bring her a lawyer; dictate a living will, demand that no further
efforts be made to save her life, that artificial respiration be discontinued,
and that her money was to be given to a charity of her choice. This was her
right as an autonomous human being and would have removed the burden of guilt
she had placed on Frankie. I don’t know if such a step would have been
successful if it were argued in the courts, but I am suggesting it because “the
right to life” versus “the right to die” peacefully is currently not only a
personal but legal and political problem especially because of the Terri
Schiavo case.
Here we were faced with a real
person who presented us with a medical, moral and legal dilemma. The tragedy of
the case was not only what happened to Mrs. Schiavo but that the American
public is inundated on hourly basis with allegations, rumors and conflicting
opinions that did not allow the truth to emerge. The real problem is that we
have been given too few facts and, therefore, too many opinions, most of which
are based on emotion rather than reason and now on politicians’ desires.
Let me summarize what is actually
known. The Internet is full of opinions, many of them quite spiteful, but there
are also some facts to be gleaned. I shall rely now on Dr. Jay Wolfson who was
appointed by the Court as Guardian ad Litem for Mrs. Schiavo and his duty was
to provide a report and make recommendations to Governor Jeb Bush as to lifting
an injunction against the removal of Terri Schiavo‘s
feeding tube. The report can be found under http://jb-williams.com/ts-report-12-03.htm.
Although it is somewhat dated no new medical facts have come to light to
invalidate any aspect of it and it presents the most precise summary of the
case.
Terri Schindler was markedly obese up
to age 19 when under appropriate medical care she reduced her weight from 250
to around 150 pounds. At that time she met and later married Michael Schiavo
(1984). Since they desired children but Terri failed to get pregnant she and
her husband went to an obstetrician, for counseling and fertility services,
three years after the marriage. Terri’s weight had by that time dropped to 110
pounds and she was proud of her stunning figure. During the early morning hours
of February 25, 1990 she
suffered from cardiac arrest for reasons that are still being debated. By the
time emergency medical crews arrived and she received a tracheotomy as well as
artificial respiration her brain had been sufficiently long without oxygen to
produce permanent irreversible damage. The cause of her cardiac arrest was a
potassium deficiency. She had been engaged in an aggressive weight loss regimen
with inadequate diet and drinking 10-15 glasses of iced tea each day.
Terri remained comatose with
intermittent epileptic seizures and then emerged from coma into what used to be
called “apallic syndrome” (absence of a functional cerebral cortex) but was
renamed in the 1980s to “persistent vegetative state.” Since she was unable to
chew and swallow, nutrition was provided by a gastric feeding tube. In June of
1990 her husband was appointed by the court as her legal guardian and there
were no objections from the Schindler family. On the contrary excellent rapport
existed between the two families and Michael as well as Terri’s mother were
intimately involved in her care. When attempts at rehabilitation, were
unsuccessful and a firm diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) had been
made Michael took her in the fall of 1990 to California
for an experimental treatment which consisted of the implantation of a
“thalamic stimulator” into her brain. Deep brain stimulation was abandoned
after several months when it was found ineffective and the Schiavos went back
to Florida where Terri resided
since in nursing homes. She had received excellent care as evidenced by the
absence of bedsores during an illness that has lasted for 15 years.
The good relationship between the
Schindler’s and the Schiavos broke down after Michael won a malpractice suit he
had initiated against the obstetrician who had treated Terri for the
infertility problem (1993). The settlement consisted of more than $750,000 for
Terri – which was placed in a trust fund – and $300,000 for Michael. This was a
watershed for the two families and the Schindlers instituted court proceedings
to have Michael’s legal guardianship revoked. They also insisted that Terri was
not in PVS in spite of having previously acknowledged the presence of that
condition. The Schindlers’ petition was denied by the court on repeated occasions;
because there was no evidence that Michael was negligent in Terri’s care.
In as much as there was no hope for
his wife’s recovery Michael entered in May of 1998 a petition to have Terri’s
feeding tube withdrawn. He had in the meantime begun a long-term relationship
with another woman whom he wanted to marry and Terri had become a hopeless
impediment. The court appointed a Guardian ad Litem, Richard Pearse, to review
the request.His recommendation was that
unless the court found convincing evidence to the contrary the feeding tube
should remain in place and a permanent Guardian ad Litem be appointed. Michael
appealed this suggestion, Mr. Pearse withdrew from the case and the battle over
guardianship and the feeding tube grew increasingly more acrimonious.
In February 2000 after having
reviewed the available evidence Judge Greer ordered the removal of the feeding
tube. The Schindlers fought the decision but the court set April 24, 2001 as the date on which the tube
was to be removed. Court actions by the Schindlers persisted but on the
mentioned date the tube was clamped rather than completely removed and the
Schindlers filed a civil action as “natural guardians.” A temporary injunction
was issued and the tube unclamped. The court also agreed to an additional
medical review where both sides would select two expert physicians
(neurologists or neurosurgeons) and agree between them on a fifth. If no
agreement could be reached the fifth physician would be appointed by the court.
The neurologists provided by
Michael had good academic credentials in their profession. The Schindlers
provided one neurologist (Dr. William Hammesfahr) and a “radiologist/hyperbaric
physician.” Since the families could not agree on the fifth neurologist he was
appointed by the court. These three neurologists “presented scientifically
grounded, academically based evidence that was reasonably deemed to be clear
and convincing by the court,” while the evidence presented by the Schindlers
expert witnesses was regarded as “substantially anecdotal.”
Another appeal resulted but the
court ordered that the tube be removed on October 15, 2003 on which date the tube was disconnected
for the second time. The Schindlers then appealed to the Florida legislature,
which passed a bill on October 21, 2003 “to stay the disconnection of the
artificial feeding tube and required, among other things, the appointment of a
Guardian ad Litem to produce this report.” The tube was re-inserted the same
day and the battle between the families, and now the general public, resumed.
Dr. Wolfson concluded in his report
to the Governor that the weight of the evidence indicates that Theresa Schiavo
“is in a permanent vegetative state with no likelihood of improvement,” and
that the Florida court was
clearly within its legal rights when it ordered removal of the tube. He also
recommended that the Guardian ad Litem appointment be extended until a final
resolution could be achieved.
This was not done, the battle
persisted, increasingly absurd claims have come forward and the case reached
its climax during the past weeks when another date for the removal of the tube
was set. The U. S Congress got into the act and the President had to leave his
beloved Crawford ranch abruptly on a Sunday night to sign the legislation that
the case again be referred to the Florida Federal Court system. Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist also forgot that he was a cardiac surgeon rather than
neurologist and showed that he was foremost just another politician.The case then went all the way to the Supreme
Court who mercifully refused to get involved. The gastric tube was removed but
intensive public lobbying by the Schindlers continued with renewed efforts to
get the Florida legislature, as
well as the Supreme Court to reconsider their decision and have the tube
reinserted. In spite of truly frantic efforts by the Schindler family, with
massive collusion by the media, their attempts failed and Terri was pronounced
dead on the morning of March 31.
What we were witnessing during
these past weeks on TV was a society that had lost its rational bearings and it
must have left the ordinary citizen thoroughly bewildered. We don’t expect to
get the truth from politicians or lawyers any more but one might have expected
it from religious authorities and bio- ethicists. On the other hand even these
individuals cannot provide valid opinions unless the facts are clear.
This brings us to the crucial
question: How can physicians who are supposed to know what a persistent
vegetative state is and what recovery, if any, can be expected disagree to such
a marked extent? The answer is simple. Those neurologists, of good standing in
their profession, who have actually examined the patient, are in agreement that
Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and needlessly postponing death by
keeping the feeding tube in place was not indicated.
Precise guidelines as to diagnosis
and treatment of patients with PVS have been published by the AmericanAcademy of Neurology, which is the
main voice for neurologists in the country, and they specifically mention that
continuation of artificial feeding through a gastric tube, after the patient
has been definitively diagnosed as being in PVS is not indicated.Terri’s condition clearly fell into those
definitions so why should there be disagreement by neurologists, as reported in
the press and on TV, about Terri’s diagnosis? The answer is that there was no
disagreement by specialists who had actually examined the patient apart from Dr.
W. Hammesfahr who had been seen Terri on request of the Schindler family.
I happened to see him being
interviewed by Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, who has done an
outstanding job in misleading the public. He introduced Dr. Hammesfahr as a
famous neurologist who has done such outstanding work that he had been
nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine. Mr. Hannity could hardly let a
sentence pass without informing us about this honor. His counterpart Alan Colmes
who is supposed to provide the “fair and balanced” part was also so awed that
he forgot to ask the most important questions as to who had proposed him, what
had happened to the nomination and what the academic credentials of Dr.
Hammesfahr were. At any rate Dr. Hammesfahr told us that he carefully examined
Terri over a ten hour period, while others had spent only one hour; that a four
and a half hour video was taken during the examination which documented that
Terri was intermittently aware of her environment and could respond with
voluntary action. The interview was frequently interrupted with showing the
same few seconds of the video which purports to demonstrate that Terri smiled
at her mother and that she followed a plastic balloon with her eyes.
Since I had never heard of Dr.
Hammesfahr before I tried to look him up in the Directory of the American
Academy of Neurology but found his name missing. I subsequently contacted the
Academy office and they told me that he neither is nor has ever been a member.
This is certainly curious for someone deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize in
medicine. Thereafter I checked for his scientific work on PubMed, which is
maintained by the National Library of Medicine and one of the positive aspects
of our tax dollars at work, but came up again empty handed. He does not have a
single publication in any peer reviewed medical journal in any field. He does
exist, however, on the Internet. In his biography he is listed as having had
training in neurology and neurosurgery, that he was Board certified in
Neurology and has published medical information on an Internet journal. He is
in private practice and not associated with a University. I can’t blame Judge
Greer for having preferred the information provided by the other three Board
certified neurologists, as well as that of the Guardian ad Litem Dr. Wolfson
who testified to the absence of voluntary activity on Terri’s part. The only
other neurologists who appeared on on our television
screens were Dr. Cranford who has published extensively on PVS and Dr.
Bambakidis. The latter was the court appointee and is certified not only in
neurology but also clinical neurophysiology. Both physicians recommended the
removal of the feeding tube.
The Schindler family and their
supporters have succeeded to sow doubt and confusion but unfortunately they
have not been of any help to their daughter or to the numerous other patients
who linger in PVS all over the industrialized countries of the world. PVS is
not a naturally occurring illness; it is a medically induced condition that
resulted from our technology which enables us to keep death at bay for a given
period of time. It is a disease created by our society and society will have to
face up to its consequences.
Let us examine what really happened
and why. The moment one dials 911 for emergency medical assistance the
so-called “health care industry” shifts into high gear. The patient loses
his/her autonomy and becomes a number. The EMS
technicians are duty bound to apply resuscitative measures and thereby initiate
a series of events that are difficult to reverse. Advanced medical directives
e.g. living wills, tend not to be available in young adults and a loving family
will initially insist on continuing life support which includes artificial
respiration and nutrition. If the family after some time agrees to the futility
of the effort all is well, support is withdrawn and the patient is allowed to
die. But here is the problem; family members may not agree among themselves,
especially when money is involved, as was the case in the Schiavo situation.
Although both sides to the dispute probably had the best interests of the
patient in mind one cannot help but wonder whether the case would have assumed
such proportions had the malpractice suit either never been filed or been
denied. With the husband as legal guardian whatever is left of Terri’s trust
fund would probably go to him or if he had lost guardianship, as the Schindlers
desired, it would have gone to them. Churchill said that, “In war the first
casualty is the truth,” and this is what we have also witnessed in this case.
It was money that drove the families apart and will continue to do so. This is
also the common denominator between the fictional Maggie and the real Terri.
But otherwise they present a completely different aspect of pain and suffering.
Quadriplegic patients can be in pain and they certainly suffer, PVS patients
cannot feel pain and cannot experience suffering. If this simple distinction
would come across for the “right to die,” versus “right to life” proponents we
would have made a step forward towards a rational society.
Let me now explain what I would
have done, above and beyond a clinical neurological examination and CT or MRI
scans, had Terri been admitted to the hospital where I was in charge of the
electrophysiology laboratory. I would have made sure that the EEG was not
contaminated by movement of the patient, as had been alleged by Dr. Hammesfahr,
in Terri’s case. Subsequently I would have performed evoked potential
recordings in the same manner as I reported in an article on “Brainstem Death”
in 1985. An absence of expected responses would have provided objective
evidence for the cessation of higher cortical functions. I have not come across
any information whether or not evoked potential recordings had been carried out
in Terri’s case. But these relatively simple tests, rather than a PET scan
which is only available in very few facilities, could have gone a long way to
settle the doubt whether or not cognition existed. They could also have been
repeated in any competent teaching hospital, if another opinion had been
requested. This would have settled the question whether or not Terri was in any
position to have wishes.
Recently we were told that Terri intended
to say “I want to live.” This assumption
was based on repeated coaxing to utter that phrase and a grunt of “AahWah” resulted. This was
interpreted by the family as, “I want to live.” Did she really? Would you want
to live in a totally incapacitated situation, dependent on others for every one
of your bodily needs? Would you want to live with a minimum of consciousness
that makes you aware of your condition and its hopelessness? I doubt it, but
that is precisely what the advocates for prolonging Terri’s PVS were asking
for.
Can some good come out of the
Schiavo tragedy? Yes, under several provisos. We should discuss with our family
members our wishes in regard to the care we want to receive if we were to be
rendered unable to make them known when tragedy strikes. A living will alone,
important as it is, is not enough unless there is agreement within the family. The
will can always be contested and lawyers are not in the least averse to making
a buck. If we do not want to end up on a respirator after cardio-respiratory
arrest we also need to inform the people we live with not to make the 911 call
that mobilizes the EMS and automatically triggers
artificial life support. It is more difficult to remove these systems once they
have been started and full functional recovery is highly unlikely. If there is
agreement within the family on these important matters of life and death and if
in addition financial aspects are agreed on beforehand we don’t need lawyers,
politicians or ethicists to ensure a death with dignity and a minimum of
suffering. Death is a normal, natural and inevitable event that needs to be
stripped of the fears surrounding it, as well as the potential secondary gain
by others. Once this premise is accepted all else will fall into place.
Can Terri and her case now finally
be laid to rest? Hardly; law suits will be filed, Congress will pass laws to
further interfere with good medical practice, books will be written, movies
will be made, lawyers will make money, an industry providing “do not
resuscitate” dog tags or bracelets will spring up and Terri will become the
Patron Saint of the extreme wing of the right to life group.
The fact that her illness had been
self-inflicted by a desire to lose weight that had gone to absurd proportions
will not receive much attention by the media. Yet this is the crux of the case
and of the suffering she has thereby inflicted on her and her husband’s family.
This was the original cause; her celebrity status resulted from a fight over
money between the Schindlers and the husband. Greta van Susteren,
who follows the Hannity and Colmes show on the Fox News Channel, had on March
30 the attorney who had won the malpractice suit for Michael as her guest. Here
we learned for the first time that the Jury had regarded the physician as being
at fault for only 30% of her condition (not having recognized that she suffered
from bulimia), while 70% was due to Terri’s behavior. If this were publicized
it might put a dent into the efforts of some people to turn her into a martyr.
What this case really proves is the
truth that was enunciated 2500 years ago. Suffering is caused by desire! Since
we can’t live without desires I would like to reformulate it to “craving.” It
is the small mental step from “I would like to have,” to “I have to have,” that
starts the process of suffering. At first it is limited to the person who
craves but subsequently grows inevitably to involve family, friends and in
extreme cases even entire societies because of ill considered actions that are
supposed to remove suffering. As has been mentioned repeatedly in these pages,
we can’t do anything about what lawyers, judges and politicians do to us, but
we can and should avoid in our lives the above mentioned small change in our
mental attitude. This is the only way to achieve peace of mind regardless of
circumstances.
May 1, 2005
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
The past two installments
discussed the “rights” Americans are supposed to possess. The debate over the right
to life versus the right to die has become increasingly acrimonious and our
politicians and ethicists are straining to define when a fetus starts to
deserve this right, and under what circumstances an adult has the right to end
a life that he/she has come to regard as intolerable. In addition we are in the
process of exporting these “human rights” all over the world and our
administration feels compelled to force those on other cultures regardless
whether or not they want them.
I grew up at a time and in a country where instead of
“rights,” obedience to parents, teachers and the law was stressed as well as
one’s duty toward society at large. These concepts were reinforced by a
conscience that produced a sense of guilt and shame when one could not fully
adhere to them, as well as rapid, effective punishment. Now they have not only
become obsolete but are regarded with disdain. But when people don’t have a
conscience where the ultimate judge of good or bad behavior is God, and when even
the word conscience has been replaced with a nebulous “super-ego,” the fabric
of society begins to tear. This is what we are witnessing in our country and
why there is now a “culture war.” This is supposedly fought between what is
erroneously called “people of faith” versus the equally misnamed
“progressives.” In an inversion of historical precedent the Democrats, who in
general have always espoused more socialistic types of ideas, which would have
entitled them to the color red, are now painted in blue and the Republicans who
stood for private property and limited government are the reds. Since the
“people of faith,” which is the euphemistic title of the extreme right wing of
the Republican party and the “progressives” who
represent the extreme left wing of the Democrats make up when taken together
probably no more than about forty percent of the total population, the majority
of us is currently not properly represented by our political system.
Nevertheless our politicians pretend to know what’s good for us and judges have
no problem inventing new rights that are supposed to guarantee and increase our
well-being if not happiness.
For a non-aligned detached observer
of the political scene this brought up the question where do all these supposed
human rights, which are proclaimed so vigorously, come from. One might
obviously think that they are anchored in the Constitution but one will search
in vain for a right to abortion or equal societal rights for homosexual couples
to those who have married a member of the opposite sex. The founders of the
republic would never have entertained such thoughts; therefore a right to
“privacy” had to be stretched to allow for the former and a right to “equality”
for the latter.
So where do all these rights, which
are so liberally bestowed upon us by a benevolent Congress and Judiciary really
come from? The answer to that question makes an excursion into history
inevitable, regardless of how irrelevant the younger generation thinks history
really is. The Declaration of Independence tells us,
“We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed: that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . .”
The Declaration goes on to list the
sins George III had committed against the colonists by his tyrannical rule and
that in view of his transgressions against the laws of free people, the
colonies “are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.” As a first
generation immigrant to this country I was not steeped in American history and
although the slogans of equality, life and liberty have since been taken up by
other nations, pursuit of happiness seems to have remained uniquely American and
I was curious how that phrase became enshrined in the founding fathers’ first
official document.
Paul Johnson informs us in “A History of the American People” that the
task for writing the declaration had been delegated to a committee of five men
who agreed that Thomas Jefferson was the best person to do so and after he had
produced his draft version the committee was justly delighted. Benjamin Franklin
changed only the words “sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident,” which removed
any taint of what one might call “churchiness.” Since
the members were also products of the Enlightenment they shied away from the
word “God” although no one had any doubt as to who was meant by the Creator.
But in as much as these “self-evident truths” and “unalienable rights” were not
seen as such by the mother country, which still believed to some extent in the
divine right of kings, war was the inevitable outcome. This outcome was foreseen
and the language of the document was crafted to be a perfect rallying cry for
which to pledge one’s “life, fortune and sacred honor.”
It is true that George III who
suffered from a serious illness, which is believed to have been porphyria and
may have intermittently affected his reasoning faculties, behaved as an
autocrat in his islands and regarded himself above Parliament. His ministers
were appointed by the Crown and Parliament, not too dissimilar from our current
Congress, was expected to rubber stamp the decrees and procure the money for
whatever purposes George deemed appropriate. It is also true that the colonists
labored under severe economic hardships in terms of taxes, import duties and
restriction of trade, which could be conducted only via British ships. The
colonies were supposed to procure the raw materials which were to be shipped to
England and the
manufactured goods thereof were re-imported to America.
This was, of course, a prescription for disaster because free born Englishmen
would never stand for such limitations to growth. As another tidbit of British
rule one might add that South Carolina had petitioned against further
importation of slaves because the colonists felt that they might become too
numerous for them to control. Their request was denied because the slave trade
was simply too lucrative to be abandoned. If we look at the situation of 1776
objectively it is apparent that apart from liberty there were serious
difficulties in acquiring and keeping one’s property at home rather than having
it siphoned off to England.
Thus, the American War of Independence was also, to a considerable extent,
about money. But since people are in general not inclined to undertake the
pledge mentioned above simply for Mammon they had to be inspired with a creed
of honor and divine sanction.
This leaves us with the question
where and when did this divine right of the people originate and in searching
for the answer I am indebted to William and Ariel Durant’s “History of Civilization.” The “divine right
of kings” had received a severe blow in 1649 when the executioner’s axe
separated Charles I’s head from his neck. He had unwisely,
thought that he could rule as absolute monarch but was mistaken on two counts.
First he didn’t have the money to raise an adequate army equal to that of the
Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. Secondly his Catholic wife and his lenient
treatment of Catholics had raised fears of a counter reformation where not only
blood would flow but where there would also be a massive redistribution of
wealth from Protestants to Catholics.
Nevertheless, it was not
necessarily an easy matter for the Parliament to execute their king, rather
than using some other expedient to curb his power. The civil war between the
forces supporting the king and those in favor of his removal had led to his
capture and Parliament had to decide what to do. The fascinating aspect in
connection with our topic is that Parliament in January of 1649 consisted of
only fifty-six members, from the original 650 that had been voted for in 1640.
The rest had fallen victim to repeated purges during the civil war. This
remainder consisted, in the overwhelming majority, of Cromwell’s soldiers and
other Puritans who had no love for the king’s Catholic leanings. It was this
“rump parliament” that declared it had been “treason for a king to make war
upon parliament” and called for his execution with a majority of six votes. The
House of Lords rejected the ordinance stating that the Commons had no authority
for such a bold statement,” whereupon the Commons resolved the people were,
‘under God, the original [sic] of all just power’; that the Commons as
representing the people, had the supreme power in this nation.’” It is worth while considering that “the people”
whose supreme power was asserted consisted of 31 men, because 25 of the
delegates had either voted nay or abstained.
One hundred-thirty five
Commissioners were then appointed to try the king and when one of them told
Cromwell that they had no legal authority to do so Cromwell had enough of the
affair and cried, “I tell you, we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.” When the votes were tallied 59 judges had voted for
execution. Although this did not amount even to a simple majority the divine
right of kings died on that day, that of “the people” was born, and Louis XVI of
France would have been better off, had he remembered the precedent. So how did
“the people” rule thereafter? Cromwell became Lord Protector and ruled as an autocrat
just as harshly as Charles had done except in the name of God and the Puritan –
Calvinistic – religion. Since this did not allow “merry old England”
the fun it had been accustomed to in former times the people soon soured on the
benefits they had expected from the new regime. Wars with foreign powers
continued, this required taxes even beyond what Charles had demanded. “Taxation
without representation or parliamentary approval, arrest without due process of
law, trial without jury, were as flagrant as before; and rule by the army and
naked force was still made more offensive by being coated with a religious
cant. ‘The rule of Cromwell became as hated as any government has ever been
hated in England
before or since.’”
Like Caesar, Cromwell refused the
crown when offered and personally continued to live the simple life. But unlike
Caesar he managed to escape several assassination attempts and died wracked
with illness in his bed in 1658. Nevertheless, in good monarchical fashion he
appointed his son Richard as his successor. Similar to some sons of anointed monarchs
he proved to be incompetent and had no desire for a life of politics. Within a
year Parliament was recalled; Richard resigned and went to France.
Another year later the son of Charles I crossed the channel in the opposite
direction and started his reign as Charles II. The monarchy was restored and
universal happiness reigned again in England
as well as on the Continent over this turn of affairs.
But the story which has a direct
bearing on today’s America
is not over. After the death of Charles II his son inherited the throne as
James II. His pursuit of personal happiness as well as for his people soon
discovered the pleasures of absolutism and in addition he started to re-Catholicize the country. The birth of a son who was to be
brought up in the Catholic faith was the last straw and the Protestants turned
to William of Orange for help. He was happy to comply and arrived in England
with an army. James resisted, was outgunned and fled to France. But Parliament
had learned its lessons. Prior to being crowned as William III former members
of Parliament assembled in a Convention (February 1689) and promulgated a
“Declaration of Right” which was accepted by Parliament in December of that
year as the “Bill of Rights,” which in turn became a model for the Americans
not quite a hundred years later. Like our Declaration of Independence it listed
the trespasses of James II in language fairly similar to what was used in America,
but then entrusted the government to the new king under the proviso that he
would also remove forever any taint of Catholicism from his realm. Although we
keep talking in America
of our “Bill of Rights,” there was originally the assumption that the
Constitution would suffice for that purpose. The proponents of this idea were
overruled and the Amendments to the Constitution took its place, but even in
that document “pursuit of happiness” no longer figured.
We might stop at this point with
our historical excursion had not the past month riveted all eyes on St. Peter’s
Basilica and the changing of the shepherd of Catholics around the world. The
fact that this magnificent edifice was actually the proximate cause of the
Protestant Reformation is hardly appreciated. Leo X (1513-1541) had inherited
upon his ascendancy to the throne of St. Peter full coffers and a clergy that
was in part fonder of the good life than the monastic virtues of chastity,
poverty and obedience. Instead of putting a stop to the abuses that had
occurred within “the body of Christ,” as a Medici, son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, Leo’s personal preference was also for “la dolce vita.” Since he was not only bishop of Rome
but also in charge of Florence he
spent lavishly on the arts as well as on wars to keep the Papal
States intact from the rapacious French. Furthermore, there was
the construction of the Basilica which had been started under his predecessor because
the original church, built under Constantine
in the fourth century, had fallen apart. But to create as magnificent a
renaissance building as we now see required a great deal of money since the
builders and artisans did not work pro
bono. Within two years the Vatican
was bankrupt and money had to be extracted from the reluctant emperor, kings
and other potentates. This obviously did not sit well with the rulers of the
various countries and provinces who would rather have kept their money at home
than sending it to Rome in order to
support a splendid life-style.
Since one couldn’t get money for
what were regarded as frivolities a Crusade against the Turks was proposed. The
German Emperor Maximilian and Francis I King of France were supposed to lead
the army, while England,
Holland, Spain
as well as Portugal
were to provide the navy. The goal was to sail into the Bosporus
take Constantinople and get rid of the Turkish danger to
Christendom once and for all. The danger was actually quite real because a few
years later Soliman the Magnificent (also spelled Suleiman) arrived with an
army of about 270.000 men before the gates of Vienna
(1529).For the benefit of those who
felt a few years ago that Saddam’s rhetoric with “the mother of all battles”
was somewhat over the top I am going to translate here, from WienChronik, excerpts
of Soliman’s proclamation which demanded the surrender
of the city. He introduced himself as,
“We, Sultan Soliman, God on land
and water, Almighty Emperor and Sultan of Babylon [now come several other regal
titles] . . . king of precious metals in India, a preserver of the gods and
sovereign and guide from sunrise to sunset. Guardian of Muhammad’s earthly
paradise, providing comfort and salvation for Turks and heathens, and a
destroyer of Christendom; a protector of the sepulcher of the crucified god and
king of Jerusalem:”
Thereafter he promised Ferdinand of
Austria, who was at that time also in charge of Bohemia,
Moravia and parts of Hungary,
“I shall, god on earth, send you and all your helpers in the most miserable way
we can think of to your death. You might as well know that we shall shortly besiege
and occupy all of Germany
– our empire - with our might.”
Well, it didn’t quite work out that that way. Soliman
lost the battle for Vienna and a
second attempt by Kara Mustafa in 1683 also failed. Christendom in Europe
was saved for the next several centuries only to be endangered now by
secularism and a new, albeit peaceful, incursion from Turkey.
When one is aware of these historical facts it is apparent why America’s
desire to have Turkey
speedily admitted to the European Union is not met with equal enthusiasm in Europe.
They were very happy to have finally driven “the Turk” completely out of Europe
- apart from a foothold in Constantinople, renamed to Istanbul
- after the First World War. Although the Europeans current Christianity is not
reflected in visits to the churches this does not necessarily make them any
fonder of Muslim ways and customs which are infiltrating their countries. This makes
it also understandable that the new Pope Benedict XVI will not look with favor
on a speedy integration of Muslim Turkey into what he feels should be at heart
a Christian civilization, which needs to be brought back into the fold. A
conflict with America
in this area seems foreordained. Europeans feel towards Turkey
just about like Americans feel toward Mexico:
good neighbors yes, but everybody should stay on their own turf. Ronald
Reagan’s, “mi casa su casa” is not in the cards for
the immediate future.
But Leo’s Crusade against the Turks
did not materialize in the first years of his rule because the various potentates
had their own quarrels and preferred to fight each other rather than a common
enemy. Thus by 1517 Leo was again in dire financial straits. The money that had
been collected from Germany
for the Crusade did not arrive in Rome
and especially “Frederick the Wise”
of Saxony lived up to his title. He withheld the
contributions until there was actually a Crusade. No Crusade no money, which
left Leo high and dry. But the Church was not quite without resources because
it could always extract funds from the faithful by promising remission of sins
for an outstretched palm. These “indulgences” were reasonably lucrative and in
March of 1517 Leo issued the most famous of all in order to get his building
funds, which led to the irrevocable split of Western Christianity. The
Archbishop of Mainz, who had bought himself the office from the Pope, entrusted
the task of collecting the funds for St. Peter’s to the Dominican monk Johann
Tetzel. But in his marketing zeal the good friar promised more than he could
deliver. He not only promised remission of past sins but also of all future
ones and at death “the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the
paradise of delight shall be opened.” The idea that by buying this indulgence
one could then live merrily to one’s heart’s content without contrition was
already tough to swallow for the true believers but Tetzel apparently went even
a step further. He promised that one could also release the souls of loved ones
who were lingering in purgatory with a financial contribution which led to the ditty,
“As soon as the money rings, the soul from purgatory’s
fire springs.”
This is where the drama began. Frederick
the Wise refused permission for Tetzel to peddle his indulgence in Saxony.
Nevertheless, some curious citizens of his realm visited with Tetzel at the
border and then brought these indulgences to the Professor of Theology at
Wittenberg University, Martin Luther, to have them examined for theological
correctness. When Luther, a man of strong convictions and equally strong
language, saw these documents one can readily imagine the expletive he used. When
this was relayed to Tetzel he called Luther “immoral” and the fight which
continues to this day was on. There was simply no way that Luther would
tolerate such outlandish promises especially in regard to souls in purgatory,
for whom even the Pope could only pray rather than
redeem. This required a reply and he issued it in form of the famous 95 theses,
nailed to the doors of Wittenberg’s
Cathedral, which served as a bulletin Board. By doing so on October 31 he
ensured wide circulation because on November 1, All Saint’s Day, it was
customary to put holy relics on display for the people to view, which always
drew a crowd. To make absolutely sure that his opinions would be heard he not
only had a German translation circulated among the people but he also sent a
copy to the Archbishop of Mainz, Tetzel’s immediate superior.
The theses were meant as an
invitation for discussion to clarify the power of indulgences but since both
sides to the conflict stood their ground no agreement could be reached. For the
German princes this was a gift from heaven because now they had a good local
theological excuse for no longer having to send their money to Rome
but could keep it under their own wing. “Los von Rom,” became the rallying cry
under which the Reformation was fought with fire and blood. It might have
fizzled had Leo understood the seriousness of the problem because disobeying
the Pope was not an easy undertaking and the various Christian kings had
serious reservations, since it involved risking one’s immortal soul. But things
became a great deal easier when Henry VIII’s wife,
Catherine of Aragon, failed to deliver a male heir to the throne. For Henry
this was a necessity because the house of Tudor was still on shaky ground and
could be challenged at any time. Petitions for annulment of the marriage were
sent to Rome but Leo refused. This
was not due to obstinacy but he was in the hand of the German Emperor Charles V
who had driven the French out, and Charles was also the nephew of Catherine who
would not tolerate this insult to his aunt. Thus, there was a stalemate and when
Anne Boleyn arrived on the scene Henry fell head over heels in love with the
maiden. He became obsessed with her and when it came to a choice between the
Pope and sex, with the intent of procuring an heir, and there was in addition
the precedent in Germany
that one could disobey the Pope but remain a good Christian the outcome was
obvious. Kings no longer needed papal and, therefore divine sanction; they
could receive their mandate directly from heaven and could run their kingdoms
to their hearts content as heads of the local Church, which was subservient to
their wishes. Henry’s pursuit of happiness in the arms of Anne also soured when
from her offspring only Elizabeth
survived and Anne had to pay for that failure with her blood under the
executioner’s axe. The rest is, as they say, history.
What does all of this teach us? It
is quite apparent that the pursuit of happiness by secular or ecclesiastic
princes tends to lead to profound unhappiness of a portion of their
constituents and in most people of the countries they make war on. We have also
seen that there is always a handy excuse by invoking the name of God for their
enterprises and when God is out of favor it becomes the “Will of the People”
that provides the sanction. Whatever government people live under it is always
a small oligarchy that feels itself entitled to rule in the name of the
governed. This is swept under the rug and one can bask in moral superiority
over the benighted other.
In private life the pursuit of
happiness is equally fraught with complications. If one looks back at one’s own
life one can count the unmitigated experience of happiness in moments, the
experience of pain and distress in days, months or years, and run of the mill
tedium interrupted by some joy in decades. If this were not so there would be
no market for all the religions as well as self-help books all of which pursue
the same goal: to increase the individual’s contentment if not outright joy in
this tumultuous world human beings keep creating for themselves.
Happiness can be likened to a
butterfly; one can pursue it and it will elude one’s net. Even if we catch it
what do we do? We can spear it and put it into a collection to show the dead
fading beauty prideful to others. But what have we really gained thereby? On
the other hand we can sit still and the butterfly may, out of its own volition,
settle for a while on one’s leg or arm. We can admire its delicate beauty and
wish it well on its further journey. There are moments in life when we
experience what is called the “Grace of God.” It is a sudden, spontaneous, and
uncalled for sensation of a “yes” to the world combined with a sense of intense
gratitude. This is what Schiller was talking about when he said “death is not
too high a price for having lived one moment in Paradise.”
The reasons why we are unable to hang on to those moments will be explored in
the next installment.
June 1, 2005
LIVING WITH DUHKHA
As mentioned in the previous essay,
happiness is a state of mind that can be experienced for relatively brief
moments but not retained for any length of time. Philosophers and theologians
have grappled with this fact of life throughout recorded history and numerous
reasons have been adduced. For the ancient Persians it was simple because they
believed in a dualism of the forces of light versus those of darkness where
sometimes one side and then the other would win. This cosmic battle involves
all of nature and includes the human race.
The situation became more complex
when Jewish monotheism rejected the idea of dualism and instead postulated one
Almighty and benevolent God. This did not change the facts of life and misfortunes
persisted. The Jewish answer to the vicissitudes of life was the concept of
sin. The person had disobeyed the will of God and needed to be punished. This
notion also had its merits but fell short of the mark because disease and other
tragedies befall even saints. The attempt of Jewish theologians to address this
problem is the well known Book of Job. When Job questioned why the Lord was
piling more and more miseries upon him the answer he got was not particularly
satisfactory. To put it simply, “Who are you to question Me?” may well reflect
the state of our insignificance in the context of the cosmos but it is of no
major help to a person in distress. But all was not lost for Job because the
Lord did provide a happy ending of sorts when Job got more than all of his previous
property back including brand new sons and daughters. A more modern answer to
Job’s question was provided by the well known author Rabbi Kushner, who had
also been confronted with a personal tragedy of major proportions. It is
contained in his little book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Since the
Lord’s answer to Job did not address Dr. Kushner’s justified anguish he fell
back on the ancient Greek notion of Moros
(fate or destiny) against which even Zeus was helpless. This idea may also have
its merits but it does conflict with that of an Almighty God. Since it is
important, however, to end one’s contemplations on the problems of mankind on an
optimistic note Dr. Kushner assured us that the Lord will never put more
burdens on us then we can carry.
St. Paul
solved the problem by expanding the concept of sin to include newborn babies.
According to this opinion all of us come into this world tainted by the
disobedience of Adam who brought death into this world. By firmly believing in
Jesus who by his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection has atoned for
all past, present and future sins we overcome death and enter into an eternal
life of the blessed. The “original sin” concept was subsequently elaborated on by
Christian theologians and as a genetic defect it had to be expunged by
baptizing the newborn. Unfortunately baptism early or later in life did not
lead to prolonged states of happiness by the believers. The imminent arrival of
the Kingdom of God
announced by John the Baptist, Jesus, St. Paul
and others did not materialize either. On the contrary the Jews lost whatever
meager independence they had in Jerusalem
and Judea for nearly two millennia. Christians, ignoring
the teachings of Jesus, delighted in that historical fact and regarded it as
the just punishment of the nation by God for having been stubborn and denying
that Jesus had been the promised Messiah. Since this denial persists to this
day and both can’t be right, conflicts between the two religious systems of thought
are unavoidable.
Christianity fared better as a
religion but only by initially accommodating itself to the secular power
structure and later on developing its own. The persistence of evil even in
nominally Christian realms did require further explanations so the ancient
Persian Ahriman as adversary of the god of light was
resurrected under the Greek name of Satan. His main reason for existence is to
torment the human race and especially the believers when they stray from the
straight and narrow. The name and concept were taken over by the Muslims where
he is referred to as Shaitan.
In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance Satan was a very popular excuse
when bad things happened and Luther, especially, was tormented by him
throughout his life. Satan’s wiles, which included the Church of Rome, and
subsequently the Jews when they failed to listen to him just as they had to St.
Paul, had to be resisted. These efforts made him quite pugnacious but did
little to promote personal happiness. Jesus’ admonition, “resist not evil” had
found no echo in his soul. Since this particular commandment goes directly
against the very fiber of humanity, which demands retribution for genuine or
perceived misfortunes, it continues to be ignored in the private as well as political
arena to the detriment of all of us.
With the so-called period of
Enlightenment, “secularism” arose. The emergence of empirical science first did
away with the “ghosties and ghoulies” which had tormented our ancestors, and
then their boss the devil. In as much as further scientific endeavors showed
that some of the teachings of the Bible were in conflict with emerging facts,
the role of God came into question. But when you do away with God you not only
remove sin but also the moral conscience that has been built up around it as
the foundation and preservation of Western civilization. For “God given” laws “man
made” ones were substituted. This process had two disadvantages. One was that
it created armies of lawyers whose main function is to find ways to circumvent
these laws, while new ones are created on a daily basis. The other is that the
absence of a helping or punishing hand from above has left a vacuum in the
human mind. I use the word mind instead of soul because when you do away with
the concept of God that of the immortal soul also tends to disappear. By the “secularists”
this vacuum is now either ignored or filled by the restless “pursuit of
happiness” in the material or emotional sphere. This has in turn created rising
crime, the drug culture and sexual promiscuity with its attendant dangers to
the health of the individual as well as its ill effects on society at large.
The so-called “culture war” in the U.S. is the attempt to turn the clock of
time back to an era where God reigned supreme and His laws were supposedly
obeyed. Since one cannot uninvent science, and its most destructive outgrowth
the bomb, these efforts will prove futile and mankind is likely to stumble from
one disaster to the next always blaming someone else for misfortunes that are
bound to occur.
The Western outlook on life is
based on thoughts that were largely hatched in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
The ancient Indians who lived in the foothills of the Himalayans developed
different ideas about the origin of the vicissitudes of life. Although the
Hindus had a vast pantheon of gods, some good and others bad, they also
produced the Upanishads as a basis for moral living. These documents are in
some ways opposite in spirit to the Old Testament. While Moses’ laws were
intended to create a nation that would conquer territory and amass material
fortunes the Indian sages concentrated on the inner life of human beings and
the question how harmony can be achieved within a given person. The nation was
of no concern. It would take are of itself if all the individuals that make up
the nation would behave according to the precepts laid down.
As in all societies eventually the
will to power became dominant in some people and so did the critical faculty which
gave rise to a splintering of the religion into numerous sects.Conflicts between the two ruling classes the
Brahmins - guardians of the faith - and the Kshatyras
– the military, secular arm of government – became inevitable and the misery of
the common people persisted. At some point between the 6th and 5th
century BC a spiritual revolution took place under the leadership of Siddhartha
Gautama who became known to the world as the Buddha – the Enlightened One. This
is another interesting confluence of terms. In post-Renaissance Europe
the “philosophes” found the concept
of God unappealing and substituted science under a term that had been coined
two thousand years earlier by a different civilization of which they did not as
yet have solid notions. Siddhartha had also thought deeply about the reasons
why human beings are subject to suffering and had found that putting the blame
on the gods was not an adequate way to reduce the problems that living entails.
All the human being can do with gods, or God as the case may be, is to ask for
forgiveness and beg for help which may or may not be granted. Although he did
not put it in these words the concept as expressed in the German language, “Selbst ist der Mann!” arose. The
Brahmins had argued endlessly about the “Self” what it is and what it is not but
the consensus was that it was Brahma, the ultimate reality and therefore God, as
well as its extension in every human soul. Siddhartha who had been endowed with
a thoroughly practical mind abhorred religious speculations and tried living by
the precepts of the various sects which were then prevalent in India.
None of these efforts led to inner peace and the solution to the question why
there is so much suffering in this world. At last the answer came with utmost
simplicity which is always a hallmark of truth. Suffering is a fact of human
existence, it has a cause and when the cause has been eliminated suffering will
cease. The way to make suffering disappear is outlined in the Eightfold Noble Path.
So far so good; but when we read
that the cause of suffering is desire, it does become more complicated. The
human being constantly wants something and the mind flits about like a monkey,
desiring now this and immediately thereafter that and if the end of suffering
can only be achievedby giving up
everything, including the needs of one’s body, the Western mind has difficulty
accepting a philosophy of this type. The rewards of a Nirvana, which when
translated literally simply means extinction, are also not particularly
appealing.
As an educated European I had a
nodding acquaintance with Buddhism but as the lines above indicate it was
another “so what” experience until I was invited by Japanese colleagues to go
on a lecture tour about various aspects of epilepsy. I was treated royally by
my hosts and although the schedule was exacting I shall always be grateful for
the courtesies that were extended to me. The tour also took me to Nara
the very first capital of Japan
and in the evening after dinner I found in the drawer of the nightstand a book
“The Teachings of Buddha.”It had been
placed there by the Buddhist Promotion Society of Japan just as the Gideons
place Bibles into hotel rooms and Mr. Marriott the Book of Mormon in some of
his hotels. When I began reading the book and found the theory of the supremacy
of the mind over everything else, the neurologist perked up and decided that I
needed to study this book in detail. I was tempted to keep it but then I
thought, “No, you don’t start your acquaintance with Buddha by stealing” and
reluctantly put it back in the drawer before going to sleep. The next morning
on the way to breakfast I passed the gift shop and there was the book on
display for purchase. I gladly paid the nominal price and it has become a
valuable companion on the trip through life from then on.
On that particular day in Nara
there was no lecture scheduled and my local hosts, including one of my former
students and the Professor of Neurology with his charming wife, took me to the Deer
Park which houses one of the oldest Todaiji temples in
Japan and has
fortunately survived the ravages of WWII. Inside was a colossal bronze statue
of a seated Buddha who stared serenely at the crowd. I was told that it was
cast around the 8th century is 53 feet high and weighs 500 tons. The
left hand is depicted with the palm up and I was informed that this expresses
his infinite compassion, although an open palm tends to have another
connotation in the West.Since Siddhartha
had to beg for his food both ideas are probably right because the giver
receives a blessing in return. The right hand is raised in the manner of a stop
sign and signifies that it wards off evil.
While I took all this in I also saw
a huge wooden post, somewhat off to the left side of the statue, which extended
up to the ceiling of the building. It had a relatively small hole in the bottom
and little Japanese kids had a great deal of fun crawling through it. It was
explained to me that the hole is the size of the Buddha’s nostril and whoever
gets through it is saved. But it wasn’t only children that availed themselves
of this opportunity adults participated likewise and my hosts, concerned about
my spiritual well being urged me to try. Obviously I resisted because there was
no way a nearly 6 foot frame of 170 pounds would fit through that narrow
tunnel. But they insisted and since I didn’t want to disappoint them I took my
jacket off and to the great delight of the on looking crowd laid down on one
side with an outstretched arm to demonstrate that this simply wouldn’t work
because I was stuck. Never underestimate Japanese perseverance. While I was
trying to shove myself through and get a hold of something in that tunnel with
my fingers, eager little Japanese pushed at my feet with all their might. The
moment my outstretched hand appeared on the other end another group of
onlookers grabbed it and with pushing and pulling I emerged eventually to
joyous laughter and congratulations, although the work had been theirs rather
than just mine. It was a demonstration of Buddhism in action, the hallmark of
which is compassion.
I can’t say that there was some
kind of spiritual revelation associated with that scene but I was glad to have
provided my friends with some moments of happiness and laughter. Nevertheless,
a seed was put into the ground on that day and I decided to learn more about
Buddhism and Siddhartha, its founder. The words “suffering” and “desire” had
turned me off when I first read about Buddhism but when I learned that the word
which is translated as “suffering” is “duhkha”
in Sanskrit the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Although duhkha does mean suffering it has
considerably wider connotations and in the Dalai Lama’s little book, “The Opening
of the Wisdom Eye” these are explained in an endnote. To quote from the book:
“DUHKHA- a very
important term. Often rendered as ‘suffering,’ it is then inadequate and
we [the translators of the book] have preferred either the cumbersome but more
accurate ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or else to leave the word untranslated. Duhkha
may be physical (pain) or mental (anguish), it refers to the facts of ‘birth,
old age, disease and death,’ to the common enough ‘grief, lamentation, pain,
anguish and despair,’ to being ‘conjoined with what one does not like’ and ‘being
separated from what one likes, not to getting what one wants.’ The very
components of our personality are, because we grasp at them (as ‘I’, as
‘mine’), bound up with Duhkha. ‘Duhkha should be understood’ within one’s ‘own’
mind and body and when it is understood one will know true happiness. Phrases
in parentheses in these notes are quoting the words of the Lord Buddha.”
In view of this expanded meaning of
the term I shall leave it untranslated in the future. We can now see that duhkha instead of being due to external
events is part of our beings and there is no escaping from this companion.When the roots of the Sanskrit word are
explored one finds that it is a composite of “dur” which means “bad” and “kha,”
which means “state;” ergo a bad state. When I read this another thought from
Egyptian mythology immediately came to mind. It was assumed that every person
consisted of two elements: one was the visible body and its actions, the other
his “Ka.” This twin was born with
him, acted as his invisible “Doppelgaenger”
and guardian angel. At death it preceded the person to the Western realm. If we
were to render this idea into a modern context we might regard the Ka as a series of computer files which
are created by our actions (The Hindu-Buddhist Karma) and which are delivered
at death to some central registry which may or may not render a judgment. Thereafter
the function of the Ka was to inhabit
the statue of the deceased in his mortuary temple, thereby guaranteeing the
continuation of life. The soul of the person was the Ba and depicted as a little bird that was released from its earthly
bounds. I have often wondered whether the ancient most holy Muslim shrine, the
black stone cube in Mecca the Ka’ba, has any connection to these Egyptian
ideas.
But leaving these theoretical
speculations aside the concept of duhkha can have considerable implications for
daily living. First of all we will come to “expect the unexpected” not out of
pessimism but simply as a fact of life that will be with us in some form or
other as long we are on this planet. When it comes as minor annoyances we can
shrug it off by saying “duhkha” to ourselves and in case of major disasters we
will recognize our obligation to deal with the consequences in a constructive
manner. The favorite American “blame game,” where everything bad that happens
is automatically somebody else’s fault, stops when duhkha is incorporated into
one’s daily life. The aggrieved person knows that loss is part of life, can
never be fully restituted, and as the saying goes “it’s time to move on.” If
more people were to adopt this attitude the numerous lawyers who at this time
engage in litigations of genuine or assumed grievances would have to find
themselves another profession.
This brings me to the second word I
had problems with, “desire.” What is meant is not the wish for ordinary aspects
of daily living, but craving and clinging. It is the mentality of “I have to
have” regardless of object. When this attitude is abandoned mental freedom is
achievable even under adverse circumstances. The advantage of practicing Siddhartha’s
insight of the four noble truths and the eightfold noble path is that it does
not require a change of one’s religion. They can be lived by a Jew, Muslim or
Christian just as much as by an agnostic or atheist. There are no “thou shalts” and there is no prerequisite for belief in a
supernatural force that dispenses good or evil.All that is required is the will to tame the vagaries of one’s mind. The
practice does not come easy, however, it needs considerable mental effort and
there is no instant Zen. On the other hand it can round out our lives in the
West. We tend to be “this world oriented” and ignore what one could call “the
eyes closed state” where our fears, hopes and aspirations reside. If we are
equally comfortable within ourselves when we are not engaged in frantic
activities chasing after the “American dream” of material well being then our
conduct in the eyes open state including our scientific pursuits will be in
harmony and that ought to be a worthy goal.
The philosophical system called Buddhism
has grown quite complex over the centuries. But this is equally true of what
one may call the Christology which has arisen over the person of Jesus. Yet
when one compares the teachings of Siddhartha and Jesus it is quite apparent
that considerable parallels exist, although they did start from different
premises, which were conditioned by the milieu they had grown up in.
Nevertheless the goal was the same, namely to free the individual from what was
called mental stains by Siddhartha and sin by Jesus. It is also interesting to
note, that the concept of duhkha as an aspect we are born with has its
counterpart in the original sin. The fundamental difference between these two
world views is, however, that the Christian religion sees the human being as a
tainted fallen creature which has to be redeemed by faith and certain rituals. For
the Buddhist the human being is the most desirable state to be born into
because only the human brain can apprehend the infinite and strive for the full
development of one’s mind which in turn leads to an amelioration of suffering
for others.
This point needs to be emphasized
because there exists even in learned Christian circles some misunderstanding about
what the Buddha tried to accomplish. Pope Benedict XVI,
was reported to have referred to Buddhism as “auto-eroticism,” while he was
still Cardinal Ratzinger and in charge of defending Catholic dogma. If this
report is correct nothing could be further from the truth. Although the
Buddhist does spend a great deal of time in meditation this is not solipsism
for personal gratification. Auto-eroticism implies love of self but this is
precisely the opposite of what the Buddha taught. In Buddhism there is no Self.
There are only constantly changing aggregates, which include the human body and
mind, and it is therefore foolish to cling to a notion of self. Meditation is
performed for the sole purpose of gaining mastery over one’s mind in order to
better understand oneself and thereby others. This in turn enables the
practitioner to provide genuine help to all. This is, by the way, also the basis for the
Greek admonition on the temple in Delphi, “Know
Thyself.” The Christian and Jewish religions demand that “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself.” But love cannot be commanded; it is
spontaneous emotion and when absent the commandment becomes either a duty or
worse, hypocrisy. The Buddhist knows this. He is not ordered, “thou shalt have
compassion” but the emotion arises as a direct consequence of his mental
training and is therefore genuine.
Let us consider now how our world
would be different if the principle of duhkha and its causes had been
incorporated into the lives of our political leadership. Apart from clinging,
the root causes are: greed, ignorance and delusion. Let us be honest with
ourselves. What was the invasion of Iraq
really all about? Saddam sat on about half the world’s supply of oil and we
wanted it. That was greed because other arrangements for obtaining some of his oil
could have been made. The idea that we would be welcomed as liberators was
based on ignorance because our neocons who also pushed for the invasion, for
reasons of their own, did not have the
faintest inkling how much dislike the U.S. government has earned in the Arab
world during the past decades. There were two reasons for the hatred of America
among fundamentalists. One was the establishment of military bases in Saudi
Arabia, the Muslim Holy Land, which was seen
as a precursor to a penetration of Muslim society with the moral decay as
presented in our movies and TV shows. The other was our constant unilateral
support of the policies of the state of Israel.
The fact that we vetoed every single UN Security Council resolution that would
have forced the Israeli government to adhere to international legal standards was
ignored here but not by the Arabs who see our government simply as an extension
of the one that sits in Jerusalem.
But in spite of this ignorance of Muslim sensibilities our Iraq
policy was pursued with a fervor that can only be called delusional as
subsequent events have proven. There is enough duhkha in this world due to
natural causes we don’t have to add man made ones.
While personal duhkha resulting
from illness, accident or loss of life and property is serious enough, that
produced by politicians is immense. This is the reason why governments need to
be held accountable. Simply voting the ruling circles out of office is not
enough. Accountability should be ongoing while they are in charge of the
government. Only under those circumstances can the average person say that we
live in freedom and democracy. We would then no longer need to export it by
force for “our security” because others will be happy to emulate it on their
own turf and under their own cultural values. We also need to look at the
forces that control our economy and popular culture. They are based on the
precise opposite of the teachings of Buddha. Instead of limiting desires we are
egged on to want more and more in the material and sexual fields. That this
does not promote happiness but merely increases duhkha, because every
unfulfilled wish will create unhappiness in the person, has yet to be learned.
But since this is the death knell for capitalistic society, which is ultimately
based on greed, this learning experience will be a long and arduous process.
July 1, 2005
WORLD WAR III
The middle of June brings Father’s Day and the
family tends to honor me on that occasion with some books. The first one
arrived from our daughter by mail and was Thomas Friedman’s Longitudes &
Attitudes. Exploring the World after September 11. After glancing at it I
knew that I had to discuss it in these pages. But I had also heard that he has
a new one out called The World is Flat so I had to get that one too. I
felt a little stingy and thought I’d get a copy from the library but was told
that although they have altogether 54 in the Salt Lake County Library system 95
people were on the waiting list. When I mentioned this to Martha and said that
I’ll go to amazon.com for it rather than waiting for several months I got a
stern: “No!” Then she went to a cupboard and pulled out a brand new copy which
she had intended to give me on Sunday. The good wife truly anticipates my every
wish. But since she never gives just one book I got another one on Sunday: Collapse.
How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. This particular
tome has 575 pages and I haven’t gotten to it yet because I’m still on Mr.
Friedman.
Changes in Longitudes
reminds, of course, every sailor worth his salt of Jimmy Buffets song, “Changes
in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” which is in a considerably lighter vein. We
like Tom Friedman because he calls the shots as he sees them and is not afraid
of offending his Jewish co-religionists by telling them that Israel needs to
evacuate the settlements not only in Gaza but also the West Bank, which is the
only logical way for any semblance of peace to arise in that part of the world.
The book consists actually of some bi-weekly columns he wrote for The New
York Times from December 15, 2000 up to July 3, 2002. In order to flesh it out he added some excerpts of his travel diary during those days. He
called these 84 pages, “Diary: Travels in a World without Walls” but they add
little new information to what is in the columns. I believe that he chose this
particular title because it feeds directly into the theme of The World is
Flat, which celebrates the Internet society where there are no borders.
I’ll deal with this particular notion later; for now we have to address his
opinions on the post 9-11 world.
Newspaper columns have to be
written several days before publication date and the editorial that appeared
under the September 11 dateline was called “Walls.” Friedman was in Jerusalem at
the time where Intifada II was in full swing. Although the so-called “security
fence” or “wall of separation” that is supposed to keep Palestinians from
sending suicide bombers into Israel, was not yet being built, Friedman comments
on the many private walls that existed to protect Jewish settlements from
snipers and most of all the mental walls which prevent a constructive dialogue
between Palestinians and Israelis. He realized that a just solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict is imperative if there is ever to be a what one might
call “cold peace” in the region and, as mentioned, he even favors Israel’s
withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 war.
In this connection I was surprised
to read that an educated and knowledgeable person, as Friedman obviously is,
keeps repeating in some form or another the mantra that: Arafat walked away
from the best deal Israel had ever offered at Camp David and answered Israel’s
and America’s demonstrable good will with suicide attacks. For instance, in the
February 8, 2001 column he wrote about Barak: “He offered Mr. Arafat 94
percent of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, plus territorial compensation
for most of the other 6 percent, plus half of Jerusalem, plus restitution and
resettlement in Palestine for Palestinian refugees.” If this were true why
should anybody, including Arafat reject such an offer? But the offer never
existed in this form.
I have presented some of the facts that
led to the rejection of the proposal in the article “Palestinian State or
Israeli Protectorate?” in April of 2002 on this website. If I, as a private
citizen, can get them surely Mr. Friedman with access to infinitely more
sources must also have been aware that this “offer” was a propaganda ploy and
never meant to be enacted. The information for that essay came from www.mideastweb.org and The Israel-Arab
Reader by Laqueur and Rubin.
I am calling those Camp David “negotiations” a
propaganda ploy for two reasons. One of the ground rules was that “nothing is
agreed until everything is agreed.” This statement comes directly from Bill
Clinton after the failed talks on July 25, 2000. Under those circumstances the
stronger will dictate to the weaker and you get a Versailles of WW I memory.
The second reason was Jerusalem. Before Ehud Barak left for Camp David he
issued a statement which can also be found in the mentioned Israel-Arab
Reader in which he said among other aspects:
“If there is an agreement, it will only be one that
will strengthen the security of Israel, its economy, and its regional and
international standing. Otherwise, there will be no agreement.
If there is an agreement, it will only be one
that will comply with the principles to which I committed myself before I was
elected, and principles that I have consistently and clearly stressed:
--A united Jerusalem under Israeli
sovereignty;
--The 1967 borders will be amended
[in Israel’s favor]
--The overwhelming majority of the
settlers in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip will be in settlement blocs
under Israeli sovereignty;
--No foreign army in the entire
west of the Jordan River;
--A solution to the problem of
refugees outside Israeli sovereign territory.
These are the principles – these
and no others.”
The entire tone of the message
was: We are in charge, we will remain in charge and if you don’t like it: tough
luck. Under those circumstances why go through this charade unless you want to
make political points to blame your adversary. But there is more to the “most
generous offer” that emerged from these 14 days of “negotiations.”
1) Israel would have retained its
authority over the Jordan valley, control of its water resources and could
re-deploy its troops there at any time it felt threatened.
2) The access roads to the
settlement blocks would have remained under Israeli control.
3) There would not have been
contiguous borders within the proposed Palestinian state, which would have
consisted of a series of disconnected municipalities and the same would have
applied to Jerusalem. Palestinians would have lived on islands within a Jewish
city.
4) Border crossings with Egypt and Jordan
although under Palestinian control would be under Israeli supervision.
5) The Palestinian state would be demilitarized
and alliances with other countries would be subject to Israeli approval.
Although Israel would accept some refugees from previous wars the rest would
have to be absorbed elsewhere.
In essence: The so called Palestinian state would not have
had contiguous borders and Arafat would have become mayor of an assortment of disconnected
Palestinian municipalities. Even in Jerusalem there would not have been contiguity
for the Palestinians because they were only granted some islands in a Jewish
city. One may legitimately ask: would any Jew have accepted such a state if it
had been offered by the UN in 1947? The answer is obvious!
What is so remarkable about this
propaganda ploy is that the Jewish people in Israel and abroad have deluded themselves
with the notion that they are granting favors when they propose to adhere
partially to international law. This conduct flies in the face of the UN
charter which specifically prohibits territorial acquisitions by war. It also
disregards the UN Security Council resolution which demanded that Israel
withdraw from territories she conquered in 1967 as well as those which
repudiated the annexation of East Jerusalem and declared the settlement
policies as illegal. It is even more remarkable how well the Jewish leadership
has succeeded to convince the majority of the American people, and certainly
its political and intellectual leadership to accept their point of view. By
waving the twin banners of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust they have
effectively silenced public opposition including the media.
We may now ask why spend all the
effort on these 14 days at Camp David when the outcome was doomed from the
start? The answer is politics. Barak knew, or should have known that the
conditions he had laid out in his speech on July 10, 2000 would be unacceptable not only to the Palestinians but the Arab world at large. “A united Jerusalem
under Israeli sovereignty” is incompatible with peace in the 21st
century. The clock cannot be turned back to David and Solomon or the Maccabees!
The sooner the Jewish world realizes this, the better off all of us will be. So
why make the demand in the first place? There was an election in the offing and
by speaking of “painful concessions,” Barak tried to create a local climate where
he would be seen as peacemaker while at the same time taking the wind out of Sharon’s
sails who wanted no part of any concessions. It was a smart move and it worked.
Knowing that the Arabs had to reject the plan the onus would be shifted from Israel
to them.
Why did Arafat go to Camp David? He
had no choice. Had he refused outright he would have personally offended Bill
Clinton and would have been seen by the whole world as intransigent.
Why did Clinton instigate the talks
in the waning days of his Presidency? There were probably mixed motives. Maybe
he was genuinely uninformed about how the situation had changed since Jimmy
Carter’s Camp David breakthrough, which he may have thought to emulate. With an
eye on the Nobel Prize he would surely be remembered for that rather than the
Lewinsky affair.
What would have happened had Arafat
done the impossible and signed on to the Barak-Clinton dictate? He would have
signed his death certificate and he knew it. He would have been murdered by his
people, just as Sadat was and there would have been civil war among the
Palestinians.
Although the “peace process” was
not entirely dead after July 25, 2000 it was dealt its final blow by Sharon who
wanted to win the upcoming election. His visit to the Temple Mount, as it is
called by Jews, and Haram al Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) by Arabs, was a
deliberate provocation and the Arabs swallowed the bait. This incident which
led to Intifada II has been downplayed in the American media. Even Friedman
makes only one passing reference when it deserves to be discussed in full
because this event and not just the rejection of the Camp David talks was the
cause of our ongoing troubles. For what happened on September 28, 2000 we cannot rely on the “spin” that has grown up around it but we have to go on the Internet
either to CNN.com of September 27 and 28 or the BBC of September 28.
Sharon was explicitly warned on September 27, 2000 that if he were to go through with his intended visit to the Temple Mount
the next day, it would be seen as a deliberate provocation not only by the
Arabs but also the peace faction within Israel and it would for all practical
purposes kill the peace process. But that is precisely what he wanted. He never
had any use for the Oslo accords and he was engaged in a power struggle with
Netanyahu for the leadership of Likud. In addition, he knew that if the
Palestinians reacted the way he expected them to and responded with violence he
would defeat Barak in the upcoming election. This is precisely what happened.
The BBC report states:
“The violence began after a highly
controversial tour of the mosque compound early this morning by hardline
Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon. Under heavy guard, Mr. Sharon entered the
compound with a right-wing Likud party delegation. He crossed from the west
side of the compound to the east and back again, to the sound of enraged
protests from demonstrators outside. BBC correspondent Hilary Andersson said
the visit was clearly intended to underline the Jewish claim to the city of Jerusalem
and its holy sites. . . . As he left the compound Mr. Sharon denied the visit
was a provocation, insisting he had come ‘with a message of peace.’ ‘I came
here to the holiest place of the Jewish people in order to see what happens
here and really to help the feeling that we are now ready to move forward,’ he
said.”
“Move forward” they did. Violence
started immediately after Sharon and his party left. The Palestinians hurled
stones and whatever else they could pick up; the Israeli police retaliated with
tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets. As they say: The rest is history.
For the election campaign Barak had
outlined his idea of the future: Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount compound
as the Israeli capital; Al Quds (Arab name for Jerusalem) with undefined
geographic borders as the Palestinian capital. This was not good enough for
Sharon and Likud. Any deal with the Palestinians had to be negated and as Sharon
said in a letter to Madeleine Albright on October 20, 2000: “The united city of Jerusalem, which you are all very familiar with, as well as the Temple Mount,
are under full Israeli sovereignty. Neither I, nor any Israeli citizen, need to
seek permission from the PA or from any foreign entity to visit there or any
other site which is the sovereign territory of the State of the Israel.” That
Israeli sovereignty was unilaterally usurped, rather than internationally
agreed to, did not play any role in Mr. Sharon’s thinking because he firmly
believes in “facts on the ground.” He subsequently assured Mrs. Albright that
he remains “fully committed to achieving peace with all our Arab neighbors
including the Palestinians” but it must be “based first and foremost on
complete negation of violence.” The message to the Palestinians was clear they
have to put down whatever arms they have and Israel will dictate the conditions
under which they will subsequently live. Small wonder that the more militant
factions of the Palestinian society did not agree with this type of peace Sharon
had in mind.
The statements cited above come
from contemporary documents and yet even Tom Friedman tries to whitewash Sharon’s
role in provoking Intifada II. Since al Haram al-Sharif is for Muslims the
third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina, and belief has it that the Prophet
Muhammad ascended to Paradise from there it is obvious that exclusive Jewish
control of the Al Aqsa compound and the Dome of the Rock is unacceptable to
Arabs.
Friedman seems to have blinded
himself not only to this aspect of history but also to the extent to which
American policy is co-responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. This is
exemplified by a fictitious letter from President Bush to the key members of
the Arab League which Friedman published on February 6, 2002 under the title: Dear Arab League. As such it represents Friedman’s rather than Bush’s views:
[Bush telling the
Arabs] We are just bystanders. You’re the ones with the power to reshape the
diplomacy, not me. And here is my advice for how to do it. You have an Arab
League summit set for March in Lebanon. I suggest your summit issue one simple
resolution: ‘The twenty-two members of the Arab League say to Israel that in
return for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines – in the
West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and on the Golan Heights – we offer full
recognition of Israel, diplomatic relations, normalized trade, and security
guarantees. Full peace with all twenty-two Arab states for full withdrawal.’ .
. .
Sharon was unelectable in Israeli
politics. What allowed him to reemerge was Arafat’s rejection of the Barak plan
and the Clinton plan, and then the launching of an Intifada with suicide
bombings of Israeli pizza parlors. Did Sharon provoke the Palestinians by going
to the Temple Mount? You bet. But he wasn’t Prime Minister at the time. Barak
was. How could you let Sharon provoke you and lose the best opportunity for a
Palestinian state?
In these excerpts the secular
Friedman shows that he seems to be unfamiliar not only with America’s
complicity in Israel’s political conduct but also the religious sensitivities
of Muslims and Jews. The statements “We are just bystanders” and “You’re [the
Arabs] the ones with the power” are not grounded in historical facts. America
has supported the Jewish state from its inception economically, financially and
militarily. We have spent hundreds of billions to equip the Israeli military
and to prop up the country’s economy. Between 1972 and 2004 forty-seven
resolutions critical of Israel’s conduct have been introduced in the Security
Council and the U.S. vetoed each single one of them. This is not the role of a
bystander who does not have power.
The Saudis did put forth a “peace” plan in Beirut
a month later but as I discussed in the mentioned April 2002 installment it was
doomed to failure. Not only did Sharon reject it out of hand but the Arabs
were not fully committed either and Bush was preoccupied with his forthcoming
invasion of Iraq, which in his mind would have solved not only all the Mid-East
political problems but also America’s oil shortage. As a result the situation
got worse instead of better. Crucial time was lost and America’s resources are
bled in a futile Iraq enterprise.
This brings me to the title of this installment
which is taken from Friedman’s first post 9-11 column published on September 13, 2001, which was called “World War III.” The phrase was picked up by Osama
bin-Laden later, and this week even President Bush repeated it. In that article
Friedman wrote, “Does my country really understand that this is World War III?
And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means that there
is a long, long war ahead.” His suggestions as to how to win this war were: 1) we
have to “put our best minds to work combating them [the Muslim fanatical
terrorists] –the World War III Manhattan Project – in an equally daring,
unconventional, and unremitting fashion.” 2) “A country like Syria has to
decide: Does it want a Hezbollah embassy in Damascus or an American one? If it
wants a U.S. embassy, then it cannot play host to a rogue’s gallery of
terrorist groups.” 3) “We need to have a serious and respectful dialogue with
the Muslim world and its political leaders about why many of its people are
falling behind.” Friedman did not neglect the Palestinian problem but
reiterated that “the United States put on the table at Camp David a plan that
would have gotten Yasir Arafat much of what he now claims to be fighting for. That
U.S. plan may not be sufficient for Palestinians, but to say that the
justifiable response to it is suicide terrorism is utterly sick.”
When one knows that this was written in Jerusalem
the emphasis on Hezbollah and Syria is understandable but they had nothing to
do with Osama and his grievances which led to 9-11. I would suggest that
readers compare Friedman’s analysis with mine which was published on this site
in October 2001 under the title “September 11th.” What I said then
is still true today with one exception. I had greater expectations for
President Bush’s potential statesmanship and was severely disappointed therein.
He has identified with Israel’s desires to the detriment of America’s
overriding national interests and it has been downhill for us ever since. This
did not have to happen. The Bush administration used the 9-11 tragedy to
advance the goals of a small group of neoconservatives and members of what
Eisenhower had called the “military-industrial complex” with our Vice-President
at its head, seconded by our Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld. They got us
into the hole we are in and instead of trying to get us out they dig it deeper.
The suggestions Friedman made are reasonable and
suicide bombing is not the answer to the Palestinian’s problems. But let us not
fall victim to war rhetoric. Europeans know what WW II was like and they have
absolutely no interest in igniting or sponsoring a WW III. This is one of the
fundamental differences between Europe and America. For America wars have up to
now been mostly good business but if we were to fall into what I like to call
the “Goebbels trap” namely believing our own propaganda and truly regard the
current situation, bad as it is, as WW III we will sink into real desperate
straits. Right now the genuine WW III is still avoidable but it will need
unconventional thinking and most of all foresight. Although the spark might
come from Israel, especially if there were to be an attempt by Jewish fanatics,
aided by Zionist Christians, to destroy Haram al-Sharif in order to build the
third temple, WW III will not be just between Arabs, or Muslims in general, and
us. The genuine WWIII will have the U.S. on one side and China with or without Russia
on the other. This is the real nightmare of the future and not some suicide
bombers even if they were to set off an atomic blast in one of our cities. Just
as in the 9-11 situation it is not the act which causes the final disaster
but the reaction to it.
The situation in Iraq as well as in Israel is
out of control and is likely to go from bad to worse unless the U.S. changes
course, which Bush is unwilling to do. We are being told that it will take
years, if not a decade, before the Iraqi army will be ready to fight and win
against the insurgency. I beg to differ. They know how to fight but they don’t
want to fight for us and that is the difference. They know how to build their
infrastructure. But they don’t want it to be done by Halliburton. That is the
crux of the problem and unless Americans realize this we will continue to pour
money and resources into this black hole.
I mentioned unconventional thinking. Serious
analysts of the foreign scene already speak of the growing might of China and
the problems it is likely to create for the U.S. in the next decades. This is a
considerably greater problem than Osama and his gang will ever be and requires
rethinking of what America’s role in this new century should really be.
Attempting to create democracies by bombs and tanks will not work and
insightful diplomacy is the only chance for averting the real WW III. Unless
the CIA succeeds in undermining the Chinese regime, so that the country breaks
up again into feuding fiefdoms, China will challenge America’s interests in the
Far East. We now have a choice. We can either make the Chinese full fledged
partners - with no ifs ands or buts – or we can treat them already as the enemy
they might potentially become. If the latter course is pursued we are likely to
get WW III the disasters of which will dwarf those of WW II because atomic
weapons will in all probability come into play.
The Associated Press reported
recently from Singapore that, “Defense Secretary Rumsfeld issued a blunt
challenge to China at a regional security conference today, questioning its
recent military buildup and saying Beijing must [emphasis mine] provide
more political freedom to its citizens.” Rumsfeld said: “‘Since no nation
threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?’” This is merely
another example of the arrogance of the Bush team. Who are we to tell a huge
country like China what they “must” do? What are we going to do if they aren’t
frightened by Mr. Rumsfeld and company? We have proven that we can’t even
occupy Iraq successfully so what are we going to do with China? Are we going to
cut off trade relationships and ruin our economy, or “nuke” them? We behave as
if we had the power to enforce our will on the world when we are actually a
country that is deep in debt to foreigners and have a populace that is highly
averse to military adventures. In addition there is the obvious double standard
that we regard ourselves as entitled to develop any and all types of atomic
weapons for the sake of “our” security, but when others want to emulate our
example that’s a no no. This attitude of false pride may well ruin us.
What should be done to avert WW
III?
Iraq: to merely “stay the course,”
as the President promised us on Tuesday will not work. We can’t “cut and run”
either but we can show the Iraqis and the world, including the Chinese and
Russians, that we have no ulterior motives in that country and we can engage
them, through the Iraqi government, in competitive bidding for the contracts to
rebuild the infrastructure of the country. As long as Halliburton and their
friends are in charge nobody is going to believe that we are there only for the
good of the Iraqis. Trust in our government is currently sorely lacking and
this has to be rebuilt in small steps. When the rest of the world sees us as
genuine partners who are willing to share rather than dictate we are giving “peace
a chance.”
Israel and Palestine: the situation
has now become even more desperate because Abbas will not be able to hold on
unless there is some give on Sharon’s part. But Sharon is now hamstrung by his
own creation. It was he who was responsible for the settlements which are a millstone
around his neck. We have already seen the difficulties that accompany the proposed
relocation of a few thousand settlers from Gaza. What is he going to do with
the hundreds of thousands he has placed, as housing minister, into the West
Bank? The idea of Israel’s peaceful return to the 1967 borders is obsolete.
Unless the US and the international community were to enforce and supervise,
with fully adequate boots on the ground, the UN resolutions which call for the
status quo ante in regard to Israel’s 1967 borders I am afraid that there will
be a civil war in that country. Israeli politicians and the Jewish leadership
in our country need to recognize the facts of the 20th century rather
than live by biblical myths and legends. The State of Israel arose from a 1947
UN vote and its God Parents were Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin. Israel cannot
legitimately remain in the UN and defy its wishes without creating animosity
within the world body. If Israel feels that the UN is dominated by
anti-Semitism and does not want to play by international rules it can leave
that body just as Japan and Germany left the League of Nations in the 1930s and
thereby paved the way to WW II.
The Palestinians also need to change
their strategy. Targeting civilians with suicide bombers is reprehensible. Their
legitimate grievance should be aired by weekly (after Friday prayers) massive
peaceful protests which are broadcast throughout the world, hopefully even by
CNN and Fox News. This would put the Israeli government on the defensive and
eventually achieve the Palestinian’s goals without further massive bloodshed.
America: We need to strengthen,
rather than weaken the UN and this is why the Bolton nomination sends the wrong
signal. Only by full cooperation of the five members of the Security Council
can WW III be avoided and the “War on Terrorism” be brought to a successful
conclusion. This is a task for the entire civilized world and we cannot go it
alone. WW II was avoidable had America joined the League of Nations and brought
its power to bear rather than standing aloof until it was too late. The future
of the world depends now on how we handle Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian quandary
as well as Russia and China. This is a tall order for any president and it may
well be too tall for Mr. Bush. But regardless of who is President as long as
AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) retains its marked influence
over the executive and legislative branch of our government, as documented in
the recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg: “Real Insiders” (The New Yorker,
July 4, 2005), the above suggested changes are not likely to come to pass.
Finally let us return to Tom
Friedman and his books. I have mentioned his current one “The World is Flat,”
where he deals with the global access we enjoy through the Internet, as well as
its consequences. But as George Orwell once said: “some are more equal than
others.” While global access is easy for him, the average person has at times
serious difficulties getting one’s e-mails answered, let alone to give one’s
ideas wider circulation. To expect replies from politicians is hopeless and the
same applies when one tries to contact our major media pundits. One might have
expected that this would not be a problem among scientists where no ulterior
motives should come into play. That this is not the case will be demonstrated
in the next installment which will deal with Tutankhamen’s recent CT scans and
which continues the “Saga” originally presented here on October 17, 2002.
August 1, 2005
THE PLAME AFFAIR
The good intention of discussing
Tutankhamen’s CT scan, as expressed in last month’s installment, ran
temporarily aground and it will require time for the tide to lift it off. Contrary
to Tom Friedman’s opinion, walls are not coming down, instead new ones are
created every day and although the Internet allows instant letter sending this
does not translate into timely replies nor does it guarantee any reply at all.
This pertains even to the scientific arena where one might have expected that
what was once regarded as “common courtesy” would prevail. Since I am still
waiting for some key answers a continuation of the Saga will be postponed until
they have either arrived or it has become obvious that further waiting is fruitless.
While this pertains to private
individuals it is, of course, worse when it comes to politicians. Some examples
of how our elected officials shield themselves from their constituents have
been presented earlier on this site especially in the “October Surprise?” issue
(August 1, 2002). I know by
now that it is hopeless to try to see one of our Congressional Representatives
or Senators in person but we are encouraged, as good citizens, to write to
them. Here is an example of what happens if you do so.
Orrin Hatch is the senior Senator
from Utah and the country as well as the worldmight soon hear more about him because he may be in line for the Supreme
Court Chief Justice position once the ailing Justice Rehnquist relinquishes his
job. If I were the President I would surely nominate Mr. Hatch because you
can’t have a more conservative person than a life-long
devout Mormon, and it would be very difficult for the Democrats to filibuster
one of their peers who has been in his job longer than most can remember. But
be that as it may. The question arose how to send him some of my views which he
is free to disregard thereafter. When one visits his website one is overwhelmed
with news about all the good he is doing for our state but there is also
contact information and “mail policy.” It starts out that “we love to hear from
you” but if you are not from Utah
don’t expect an answer. You do get an answer on “Email Me” after you have dutifully
filled out an identification form, chosen from a list of topics the one you are
concerned about and compressed your message to less than 10,000 characters. I
don’t object to any of that but the exercise is futile because you get back a
form letter. It thanks you for your effort, appreciates your support and goes
on with the Senator’s accomplishments in the area you have listed as being of
concern to you. All of this comes straight out of a can that gets periodically
updated and has very little to do with what you wanted to achieve. I am not
singling out the esteemed Senator it’s just typical for how the leadership of
our country insulates itself from the common people and their concerns.
This applies especially to the current
occupants of the White House and it is small wonder that many people don’t
trust them any more. Mr. Bush has isolated himself to an extent where only a
small coterie of devotees has access to him, they feed him the information he
likes to hear and reading is not his forte. When outsiders attempt to find out
what happened in the inner sanctum they are stonewalled with “executive
privilege,” “national security” and similar words which in plain language mean
“leave me alone, you bother me!” If that happens to become impossible because
the media have created a stir that cannot be ignored the fallback strategy is
to “shoot the messenger.” With other words the person who has made a nuisance
of himself has to be discredited even when the message he wanted to get across
was correct. A typical example that started to bubble during the last month was
the Valerie Plame leak. Let me explain, especially for my non-American readers,
what happened and what is at stake.
In February of 2002 rumors had
reached the White House that Iraq
either had been or was in the process of buying uranium from Niger.
The Vice President’s office then contacted the CIA to find out what that was
all about. The CIA didn’t know but Valerie Plame, one of their undercover
operatives, had a desk job at Langley
as one of the experts on WMDs. As such she had a secret identity and her name
was not to be divulged. Neither the neighbors nor her kids knew what mommy was
really doing. It just so happened that her husband was Joseph Wilson who had
been an ambassador to various African countries, had previously been in Niger
for the National Security Council, and had contacts with current as well as former
Niger government officials, When Ms. Plame was told by her bosses about the Niger
question it was natural that she would point out to her superiors that her
husband was familiar with the country and its politicians and they might want
to talk to him about it.
Talk they did and a few days later
they sent him to Niger
to get a first hand look at what’s what. His expenses were paid but he received
no other remuneration. In Niger
he met with the American ambassador who told him that she had also heard about
that rumor but in the embassy’s opinion there was no substance to it. First there
is an International Consortium that has control over the mines, which in turn
reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency, rather than the Niger
government. Secondly Niger government officials, even if they could lay their
hands onthe quantities that were
alleged to have been sold to Iraq, would not be so stupid as to endanger
American aid with such a foolish venture. Wilson
then interviewed the former officials under whose tenure that transfer was
supposed to have been carried out and they all denied that anything of that
sort had happened. Wilson told the
ambassador, went back to Washington
where he was debriefed by the CIA and expected that they would inform the White
House and especially the Vice President, who had started that whole thing, on
what the facts were.
This should theoretically have been
the end of it but it wasn’t. The White House, especially the Vice President and
Condi Rice as national security advisor, kept hyping the nuclear threat from
Iraq in spite of the fact that those yellow cake documents had in the meantime been
exposed as forgeries. In spite of the CIA having known that there was no
nuclear threat from Iraq
the President was given the famous 16 words to utter in his 2003 State of the
Union speech. Mushroom clouds were just too tempting to frighten the American
people with and thereby create war fever.
When Mr. Wilson heard this he
became an activist because it was obvious to him from personal experience in
February of 2002 and from what he had learned subsequently that the charge was
false and that the country was being deceived to condone an unnecessary as well
as dangerous military adventure. First he did so in private with government
officials he knew but when that did no good and it was clear that at least some
Iraqis had not agreed with our President’s May 1, 2003“Mission Accomplished” assessment, the
ex-ambassador went into overdrive. He wrote an article for the New York Times: “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”
which was published on July 6, 2003.
The article is worth while to read. I will quote only the second paragraph
which has relevance to what Michael Barone wrote in a recent U.S. News and World Report article to
which I shall return later.
“Based on my experience with the
administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to
conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s
nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
This bomb shell could not be
ignored. Reporters immediately contacted the White House for clarification and
the “outing” of Ms. Plame began. As of now we don’t know who the “high level
source” was who leaked her name although Karl Rove and the Vice President’s Chief
of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, have been mentioned. The immediate response by
the White House was in line with Mr. Rove’s previous tactics whenever Mr. Bush
found himself in some kind of trouble either as candidate for Governor or the
Presidency. The best defense is offense; and when the facts are undisputable the
bearer of bad news has to be discredited. This was done by suggesting that the Niger
trip was instigated by Wilson’s
wife implying that there was some sinister motive behind it. The problem was
that the wife, as mentioned above, was working undercover for the CIA and to
knowingly reveal the name of one of these agents is a criminal offense. This is
what the ongoing Grand Jury investigation by the Special Prosecutor, Patrick
Fitzgerald, is all about. Who was the person, or persons, who leaked Ms Plame’s
name to the press and was he/she aware that she was still an undercover agent?
Now back to Mr. Barone’s article
from August 1, 2005. U.S. News and World Report lists itself
as “Rated the Nation’s Most Credible Print News Source” and in small print “by
the PewResearchCenter for the People and the
Press.”I have not yet investigated how
the PewResearchCenter obtains its facts but that
is not important right now. Mr. Barone, and what he wrote under the title:
“Bush Bashing Fizzles,” is:
“Now the unsupported charges that
’Bush lied’ about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key witness for the Democrats
and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Unfortunately for his
advocates, he turned out to be a liar. A year after his famous article appeared
in the New York Times in July 2003
accusing Bush of ‘twisting’ intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in
a bipartisan report, concluded that Wilson lied when he said his wife had nothing
to do with his dispatch to Niger and Chairman Pat Roberts said that his report
bolstered rather than refuted the case that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq sought to buy
uranium in Africa.”
This sent me to the Internet and
MSNBC from July 9, 2004 has
the full text of the Conclusions of the “Report on the prewar intelligence
assessments” by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It starts with:
“Overall Conclusions Weapons of
Mass Destruction
(U) Conclusion 1. Most of the major
key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by the intelligence
reporting. A series of failures, particularly in the analytic trade craft, led
to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.”
If one were to take the liberty to
exchange the polite word “mischaracterization” for the more commonly used
falsification or as Wilson said twisting, one would not be far off the mark.
Some people deliberately duped the country and the real question is who did so
rather than who sent Mr. Wilson to Niger.
This problem is deftly side-stepped by Mr. Barone as well as the rest of the
media and the political establishment. The Commission’s Conclusions also go on
to say that there was disagreement between some analysts in the CIA versus
those from the State Department:
“(U) Conclusion
13. The report on the former ambassador’s [the official reference to Mr.
Wilson] trip, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analyst’s
assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information
in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence
and Research (INR) believed that the report supported their assessment that
Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
(U) Conclusion 14. The Central
Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policy
makers that it had sent someone to Niger
to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger deal and should have briefed the Vice
President on the former ambassador’s findings.”
Conclusion 13 implies that there
were no facts and it was up for grabs whom you wanted to believe which strikes
me as political whitewash. The blame was put on the CIA rather than where it
actually belonged; the Neocons in the Pentagon. Conclusion 14 stretches our faith
in the truthfulness of government. Is it really credible that the CIA sends
somebody to Niger
on the request of the Vice President’s office and does not tell that office
what the result was?
Michael Barone would like us to
believe that his assertion that “Wilson
lied” came from the bipartisan report. It did not. Instead it was contained in
an addendum of 2 conclusions that the Democrats had not put their signature to.
The addendum as presented by the Republican Chairman Pat Roberts is quite
explicit:
“Despite of our hard and successful
work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the
Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should
agree that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s public statements were not based
on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should
conclude that it was the former ambassador’s wife who recommended him for his
trip to Niger.”
Ergo, they did not agree. These
Conclusions are not in the bipartisan report but represent a political
statement by the Republicans and the American public is again being deceived by
statements in Mr. Barone’s article. Furthermore, Mr. Barone fails to let us
know that ex –Ambassador Wilson took exception to this formulation and wrote a
letter to that effect to Senators Roberts and Rockefeller. One may now feel
that this is much ado about nothing, because who cares who had sent the former
ambassador to Niger.
But the foregoing represents only the tip of the iceberg and the bipartisan
Committee report to the public is heavily censored as shown by repeated fat
black stripes through key words or portions of sentences. One may, therefore,
legitimately ask: Who is being shielded by this censorship? It can’t be the CIA
because that agency is obviously made the scapegoat; it can’t be the State
Department because its dissent is listed. It can’t be the Brits either because
in his State of the Union Address the President publicly cited them as part of
the source for that disavowed statement. So who is the real source for the
forged documents that sent Joe Wilson on his trip? Whatever is being written
now about that trip and the “outing” of Wilson’s
wife seems to be an attempt to avoid this crucial question from being aired in
public.
That these documents were indeed
forgeries and that the State of the Union sentence, which was based on them,
should not have been uttered is now agreed to by the bipartisan Commission and
the White House. One would have expected that the Commission would have
addressed the crucial question as to the authorship of the forgeries, but they
did not. In the “Niger Conclusions” one can read:
“(U) Conclusion
12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the
forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was
reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq
may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.
(BLACKED OUT) In March 2003, the Vice Chairman of the Committee, Senator
Rockefeller, requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
investigate the source of the documents, BLACKED OUT the motivation of those
responsible for the forgeries, and the extent to which the forgeries were part
of a disinformation campaign. Because of the FBI’s current investigation into
this matter, the Committee did not examine these issues.”
There is a proverb in the German language
which when translated says: God’s mills grind slowly but inexorably. Two years ago
in the August 1, 2003 Hot Issues installment I discussed “The Niger Forgery”
which had just reached public awareness and I would recommend that the reader
consult this document for details because I shall only summarize it here. I regarded
these forgeries as a crime and whenever a crime is committed we are informed
from TV shows that the detective looks at: motive, means and opportunity. When
one puts these three aspects together a logical mind is led to the conclusion
that there seems to be only one Intelligence Service in the world that fits the
bill. This is the Mossad whose maxim is: “By way of deception thou shalt do
war.” Israel
was at war with Iraq
ever since 1948 and its government had the most to gain by removing Saddam
Hussein. In order to live up to its mentioned motto the Mossad does have among
its various divisions one that is specifically devoted to: psychological
warfare, propaganda and deception operations. Thus, all of the mentioned three
requirements coalesce. As documented in the previously mentioned article the
statements about the Mossad come from Israeli sources.
One can’t blame the Israelis because, right or
wrong, they see themselves in a life and death struggle with the Arab world and
“all is fair in love and war.” I do wonder, however, why our media and
politicians so obediently trot the Israeli line which is not in our best
interest, as has been pointed out repeatedly in these pages. Israel
is not part of the Union; it is a foreign country which
deserves the same respect but also the same caution that we exhibit in dealing
with other countries with which we have friendly relations. Let me ask,
therefore, again: Who is being protected by the blacked out portions of the
Commission’s report? I don’t expect to hear an answer or even public mention of
this question in the near future; but the question needs to be raised. More
than two years have passed since Senator Jay Rockefeller had officially asked
for the FBI investigation but if it is going on at all then it’s at a snail’s
pace and the media don’t seem to be interested.
Although the Committee stated that
the CIA obtained the forgeries only in October of 2002 somebody is likely to
have been aware of them earlier because Mr. Wilson would not have been sent by
the CIA to Africa in February of that year. This
suggests the following scenario which is, however, strictly my personal opinion
without support of publicly available reliable information. There seems to be
hardly any doubt that the Vice President was heavily invested in gaining access
to Iraq’s oil
reserves which, when in our hands, would significantly reduce our energy
problem. When his office heard about the possible uranium sale from Niger
to Iraq it was
obvious that this could be the looked for casusbelli if it panned out. This is why the
Vice President’s office was ultimately the reason for Mr. Wilson’s trip to Africa.
The problem was that he didn’t find what the Vice President had hoped for. This
is why the trip was disregarded and the Vice President now states that he had never
heard of Mr. Wilson or his wife. Although this may well be technically correct
it is not likely that mere underlings had acted on their own account to
initiate the contact with the CIA that had set the whole affair in motion. But
the Vice President as well as Karl Rove are the main
driving forces of the current administration, with Condi Rice only an affable
policy administrator rather than an independent voice. As such they have to be
protected at all costs. Regardless how diligent the Special Prosecutor and his
Grand Jury are the full truth is not likely to come out in the foreseeable
future because it would bring this entire White House down. To take the country
to war under false pretenses is obviously an impeachable offense.
There are some Internet sites that
try to re-enact a Nixon scenario and advocate impeachment of the President.
There are, of course, some similarities to 1974. We are engaged in a fruitless
war that is becoming increasingly unpopular and what brought Nixon down was not
the Watergate burglary but the cover-up of White House involvement. It was
Nixon’s loyalty to his subordinates, who had acted on some general directives,
which led him to deny White House complicity and got him branded as a liar in
the media. That there is currently a cover-up going on in the Bush
administration, only the most ardent Bush supporters are likely to deny.
Furthermore, it is well known that the President not only demands loyalty from
his subordinates but also extends this courtesy to them,
But 2005 is not quite 1974 and here
are the reasons why I believe that serious efforts to remove Mr. Bush from
office will either not be undertaken at all or fail. Nixon had a Democratic
Congress while Bush has a Republican majority in both houses, although this may
change in November of 2006. Furthermore we have to keep in mind that an
impeachment of the President would elevate Mr. Cheney to the Presidency, which
is every Democrat’s worst nightmare. In Nixon’s case the Vice President, Spiro
Agnew, who was loathed by the media, had to resign on bribery charges in
October of 1973 and Nixon had appointed the good natured Gerald Ford, a person
Democrats could readily live with. Thus, Dick Cheney would have to be indicted
for malfeasance first which, considering his record, might actually not be too
difficult to do. But under these circumstances there is no way of knowing whom
George W might appoint as Vice President and the Democrats might be even worse
off than they are today. Since all of this has nothing to do with justice but
everything with politics I believe that the Democrats will abstain from an
impeachment effort.
What can we reasonably expect now from
the White House and the Special Prosecutor? Last week the President made a
surprise announcement nominating Judge John Roberts for the Supreme Court
vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. This was a
shrewd move because it keeps the media busy. In addition the Senate, before
adjourning for August vacation, passed an energy bill on July 28, the merits of
which can also be expected to be debated endlessly. How the senators could have
read and digested all of the more than 1700 pages of this bill within a couple
of days is a mystery. But this is how the country is being governed and we the
tax payers will now be saddled with billions of subsidies for the oil and gas
industry without seeing any return on our investment in regard to energy
prices. But this wasn’t the purpose anyway, the media have to be kept occupied
and their energies deflected from Iraq
and the White House’s problems.
The Special Prosecutor’s
conclusions are also not likely to yield any fundamental surprises. We know
that it was syndicated columnist Robert Novak who was the first to mention
Valerie Plame’s name. We also know that he is a faithful defender of the
current administration’s policies and has apparently struck some kind of a deal
with the Special Prosecutor that keeps him out of jail. The New York Times reporter Judith Miller was
not so lucky. She stuck to journalistic ethics, did not divulge the name of the
source for her article and now sits in jail on a contempt of court charge. These
two morsels of information tell us where this investigation is likely to go. First
of all, if this were a serious effort to get at the truth of the matter and if
the President had indeed fully cooperated, as he had promised he would do, it
wouldn’t have needed two years and a Grand Jury. Any CEO in private business,
worth his salary, would have called the key players together and told them: “’Fess
up, or you’re out of here.” Eisenhower had promised an administration “clean as
a hound’s tooth” and when the press found out that his Chief of Staff and
personal friend, Sherman Adams, had accepted a Vicuna coat as a gift he asked
him to resign. Mr. Bush apparently chose not to go this route but may have
followed that of Nixon and, as mentioned above, will probably get away it. The
outcome of the investigation is, therefore, likely to follow the Abu Ghraib
model. Some expendable pawns may be sacrificed but people who set the policy
will remain unscathed.
Where does this leave us with our
most pressing problem Iraq
- that swallows numerous lives on a daily and billions of dollars on a monthly
basis? Since there is no solution in sight every effort will be made to “show
progress” although everybody knows that sooner or later we will be forced to
leave because the effort is unsustainable. We should take our example from the
British who knew what to do when the Empire had become a drain rather than a
benefit. First they ditched Churchill immediately after he had won the war for
them because a war time leader is not necessarily the best one to deal with
post-war problems. Then they relinquished their Palestine
mandate to the UN in 1947. It had become amply apparent that the conflict
between Arabs and Jews was irreconcilable; the Balfour declaration had become
“inoperative” and they were now caught in the middle of a fight without being
able to effect any positive changes. Thereafter they dismantled the empire bit
by bit because it had simply become unaffordable and concentrated on making
their islands as prosperous as possible. They showed us that this worked
although Tony Blair’s unstinting support of the Bush policies, against the
wishes of his people, has now contributed to the recent London
tragedies. Nevertheless the Brits demonstrated again how to deal with
disasters. The stiff upper lip prevailed and so did efficient police and secret
service work. If our administration had done this after 9-11-2001 the country and the world would have
been infinitely better off. The British cousins have only a couple of islands
and they prospered by giving up their major oversea assets. We have a continent
and think that we still need military bases all around the world and especially
in that most volatile region of all the Middle East.
This type of policy is not based on reason. Pride, ignorance and greed rule at
this time. Until these fundamental human flaws are corrected in our government
and the media we will not see peace.
September 1, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH’S DILEMMA
Our President and his policies have
fallen on hard times because he is now confronted with the unintended
consequences of his past actions as well as inactions. He cannot undo the past
and neither can he simply “stay the course” for any length of time because the
country will not let him do so. When he thought that he could get away from his
problems and have a quiet vacation at his Crawford ranch this hope was dashed
by a determined Ms. Cindy Sheehan who had lost her son in Iraq.
She parked herself practically on his doorstep and vowed not to leave until the
President explained to her in person why her son had to die in this war. If Mr.
Bush did not want to do this she would endure the Texas
heat till August 31 when it’s time for the President to go back to Washington.
She was soon joined by other war protesters as well as a group of pro-war
activists and the idea of a leisurely August on the ranch was no longer
feasible.
It was time for the President to go
on the road and explain himself to the people at large rather than Ms. Sheehan
in person. But he is very cautious in his choice of places to visit and the
audiences he speaks to. So the White House picked SaltLake for him to address the Veterans
of Foreign Wars National Convention. What could possibly go wrong in the most
Republican state of the Union that had re-elected him by
70 per cent? Well, there was this pesky mayor of SaltLake, Rocky Anderson, who put his
convictions before politics and sent an e-mail to a variety of people to
encourage them to attend an already planned protest meeting at which he would
also be present. Undaunted, the President literally stayed the course reciting
the successes in Iraq;
that it is better to fight 9/11 type terrorism over there than here at home;
all is going well and we just need to be patient. The veterans cheered while
the outsiders jeered. A repeat performance was staged in our neighboring Idaho
where he likewise preached to the choir and where the dissenting voices were
kept at a distance.
We were told that the President
intends to continue giving speeches of this type for the next week or so but it
is highly doubtful that the steadily rising number of people who disagree with
his Iraq policy
will decrease significantly if he persists in the same vein. This ought to send
up warning flags in the White House that business as usual might no longer be
practical. More of the same is not going to work and I have a feeling that the
majority of Americans would love to hear him read a speech that addresses their
concerns directly. The events of the past week, namely the proposed
Constitution for Iraq
and the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, would provide him with a
perfect opportunity. Since he doesn’t personally write his speeches anyway I
have taken the liberty to write one for him:
My Fellow Americans:
During the past
week we witnessed two events, one in Iraq
and the other here at home, which suggest that a reappraisal of our foreign and
domestic policy is appropriate. It is my purpose tonight to acquaint you with
my current thoughts and feelings.
Last year I was asked by a reporter what the
biggest mistake was that I had made after 9/11 and what lessons I had drawn
from it. I was taken aback by the question because I had not been prepared for
it and under the glare of the camera lights could not think immediately of a
good answer. I, therefore, said, “I can’t think of one right now,” which was
true at that moment. Since that time I have given a great deal of thought to
this question because it is a vital one and deserves an honest answer.
As events over the
past two years have shown I was misled into believing that by invading Iraq
and toppling the Saddam Hussein regime we would bring stability to the Middle
East and our chronic energy problem would thereby also be
significantly reduced. I ignored the advice of those whom I should have trusted
like Tony Blair of Great Britain
and the leaders from Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi
Arabia as well as Turkey,
who had felt that an invasion of Iraq
was neither in the best interests of the United
States nor those of their own countries.
Instead I relied on the views of a small group of people in the Pentagon and
Iraqi exiles who assured me that Saddam Hussein presented an imminent danger to
our country, that our troops would be greeted as liberators and a stable
democratic government friendly to the United
States could be established in the immediate
aftermath of the invasion. We now know that this was a mistaken assumption. I
allowed myself to be misled and in so doing I misled you, albeit in good faith.
A second mistake
was that upon taking office I had not sufficiently appreciated the threat Osama
bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al Qaeda, posed to our country, although
the warning signs had been there. Whether or not timely intervention on my part
could have prevented the full force of the 9/11 tragedy I do not know for
certain. I do know, however, that regardless of how we got into the current
difficult situation ruminating over the past will not make it go away. The
lessons to be drawn from these mistakes need to be addressed instead.
As you well know I
have up to now advocated a policy of “staying the course” in Iraq until that
country has a stable democratic government that is beneficial to all its
citizens, rather than only certain subgroups, and does not pose a threat to its
neighbors. Recent events have proven, however, that this goal will not be
achievable within the next few months and we do not know how many years will
have to pass before the dream of a peaceful unified Iraq that is a beacon for
democracy in the region can come to fruition. These are facts you and I must
face and from which we have to draw the consequences.
We now have
several alternatives for our future Iraq
policy. Immediate and complete withdrawal of our brave troops who have fought
and bled so honorably for us as well as for Iraqis is not a viable option. It
would plunge that country into further greater chaos and vitiate all the good we
have tried to accomplish.
To completely
quell the insurrection that is currently going on would require methods that
are also abhorrent to the American people. We would have to follow the examples
set by well known dictators and fully saturate Iraq
with our troops. They would have to not only seal all of the country’s borders,
which is a tremendous task by itself, but also fully
occupy all the major cities, establish martial law, and govern by military
decrees. In order to do so we would have to re-institute the draft because our
volunteer army and National Guard do not have the manpower to accomplish these
goals.
But a rule through
force and fear both here and abroad is alien to the spirit of the founders of
our country and is, therefore, likewise no durable solution. We set out to win
the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq
and the broader Middle East. This was and is a noble
goal but cannot be achieved with the methods outlined above. It has also become
clear that our past efforts have not been sufficiently successful to justify
hope that keeping on the same track will bring better results in the future. A
more precise strategy needs to be adopted.
Changing hearts
and minds will have to begin at home because only a united country can hope to
emerge successfully and with honor from the present difficulties. I have
promised you at the beginning of my Presidency that I shall conduct myself as a
uniter rather than divider but have so far not been able to live up to this
promise. Our country is increasingly splintering and changes in the
administration’s policy have to be made. I shall outline now the immediate and
most important ones:
1) I have accepted
Mr. Donald Rumsfeld’s request to step down as Secretary of Defense. He has
served the administration faithfully but has now become identified with the
current Iraq
problems and a fresh start is needed. I shall consult with the chief military
leadership as well as the members of the responsible branches of Congress as to
who his replacement should be.
The function of
the Department of Defense will be reorganized to serve foremost the security of
the homeland rather than to plan for future preventive wars abroad. This will
include an orderly withdrawal of our troops from Iraq
on a timetable that suits American needs and is not dictated by events in
foreign countries over which we have no control. In order to accomplish this
goal I have requested from the Defense Department and the Armed Services
Committees in the House and Senate a detailed plan how this can be implemented
during the next three years. I envision that we bring the members of the
National Guard home first. They and their families have suffered great
hardships and have earned the right to be the first ones to be greeted here and
to resume their civilian occupations. The federal government will not only
honor their service but also help financially wherever help is needed. Next in
line for coming home will be those members of the military reserve who have
already spent time in Iraq
on previous tours of duty. They have also earned our gratitude and they should
be allowed now to return to their families and jobs. Our professional military
and first time reservists shall be withdrawn thereafter in an orderly manner.
This policy will
not only bring relief to our brave military forces and their families, but will
also signal to the Iraqi people that they have to take their fate into their
own hands. We have helped them to prepare a Constitution for their country
which, although not ideal from our point of view, is, nevertheless, a first
step towards democracy. The Iraqi people are now free to accept, modify, or
reject it. America
neither can nor will dictate their future form of government to them. We do not
desire further bloodshed in the region and will help, short of military
intervention, in any and all ways. We are engaged in a battle of ideas and
since ours are based on personal freedom and justice they will be emulated in
time by others without the force of arms. This brings me to the second point.
2) A solution to
the vexing problems of our world can no longer be achieved by military means
but requires the patient exercise of international diplomacy. This is the
primary function of the State Department. As you know I have entrusted the
Foreign Policy of our country to Dr. Condoleeza Rice who has my full
confidence. Her life is a vivid example of what America
is really all about and that the ideas of personal freedom and justice for all
are not merely slogans in our country. As an African American woman she has won
the respect not only of our people but also that of foreign leaders who
appreciate being dealt with in an amiable but decisive and straightforward
manner. Her achievements were possible through the guidance and sacrifices of
devoted parents as well as unstinted personal efforts. As such Dr. Rice stands
for what is best in our country and she will be listened to.
Since the Iraq
situation is no longer solvable by military means I have asked Dr. Rice to
convene a conference of the Foreign Ministers of Iraq’s neighbors and those of
the five permanent members of the Security Council to develop, jointly with
members of the Iraqi government, a political and economic plan that can bring
peace and stability to this long suffering country. The purpose of the
conference shall be to achieve a Resolution which can then be submitted for
approval to the Security Council. Although Security Council Resolutions have
been disregarded in the past we shall work for unanimity among the permanent
members and subsequently enforce their decision. We do not expect to find
instant solutions to a problem as protracted as this one but by showing the
world that we are indeed serious in a truly cooperative rather than unilateral
approach we take the wind out of the sails from those who intend to harm us.
The
other most troubling area in the Middle East is the long
standing Palestinian-Israeli conflict which affects all the other countries of
the region and beyond. I have, therefore, asked Dr. Rice to push ahead also
with the implementation of the road map for peace which I have outlined two
years ago. We congratulate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his courageous
withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza
and parts of the West Bank in the face of significant
protests by a vocal minority in his country. But this needs to be followed up
with helping the Palestinians in Gaza
and the West Bank to establish a viable economy which
provides a living wage and allows parents to educate their children towards
success in a profession of their choice rather than condemning them to a life
of misery and the goal of martyrdom.
The past month has
also shown how difficult it will be for Israel
to divest itself from its conquests in the 1967 war which is demanded by UN
Resolution 242 of November 1967. While about 8,500 settlers could be relocated,
albeit with a great deal of heartbreak but without violence, this task will be
infinitely more difficult for the more than 400,000 Israelis who live in
annexed parts of Jerusalem and the West
Bank.
The people of the
State of Israel, just as the Iraqi people, are at a crossroad and they have to
decide what type of country they want to live in. The UN charter forbids
territorial acquisitions by war and if our world is to survive in this new
century with its dangers from atomic and chemical warfare we shall now have to
abide by it and enforce it. Let me also make clear that those extremists who
believe in God given rights to force their will upon others, regardless whether
they deduce these rights from an inappropriate interpretation of the Koran or
the Bible, will find no support from my administration.
3) The war on
terrorism will also be pursued differently. Instead of relying primarily on our
military we shall continue to search out terrorist cells both here and abroad
by full cooperation with the security forces of other governments around the
world. The terrorist threat is universal and requires a universal collaborative
coordinated effort. This will bring terrorists to justice without harming
innocent civilians.
In order to
prevent further terrorist attacks on the homeland we will secure our borders
against illegal immigration and the transport of illicit materials. I shall first
meet with the governors of our Southern Border States
and together we shall plan a program that will stem the influx of migrants
which has risen to intolerable proportions. Nevertheless, patrolling the
borders will not be enough. As you are aware Congress is about to discuss
legislation for a temporary guest worker program, which I have proposed
earlier. But a genuine solution to the problem will also require the active
assistance of the Mexican government. I shall meet with President Vicente Fox
and discuss the best ways to achieve a mutually beneficial result. The illegal
coyote traffic which exploits poor people who seek a better life and who are
then left stranded in our deserts or forced to work under inhuman conditions
will no longer be tolerated.
Our northern
border has different problems and these will be dealt separately with the
governors of that region. But we have a country that is bordered by two oceans
as well as the Gulf of Mexico and complete security will
not be achievable because it takes only one boat to land on any of our beaches
to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. While I cannot promise you, therefore,
absolute security I shall, however, do everything in my power to prevent such
an event from occurring. In order to limit the destructive potential, if such a
disaster were to occur, we shall make adequate preparations while at the same
time ensuring that our constitutional rights are not violated.
4) This week we
have witnessed the terrible destruction Hurricane Katrina has wreaked on the
Gulf coast. Cities and townships have been devastated and beautiful New
Orleans is under water. Tens of thousands of our
citizens are without the necessities for life and lawlessness has made its
appearance. We shall meet the current problems with the combined forces of the
federal and state governments as well as your generous help to the victims of
this unprecedented disaster. Reconstruction will begin immediately as
circumstances permit but it will be a long process and your patience will be
required.
Dreadful as this
calamity is it may not be the last because even this year’s hurricane season is
not yet over. We are all aware that our climate has gotten warmer. We can
debate the causes, but the progressive melting of glaciers is there for
everyone to see and warmer oceans can produce stronger winds. As you are aware
my administration has rejected the Kyoto Climate Accord and there were good
reasons for doing so. But the time has come to reappraise our policy towards
the natural environment we live in. All of us are passengers on spaceship earth
and it behooves us to take care of our planet the best we know how. This will
require a global effort and America
will be a full time partner in it. What is preventable we shall prevent and
what is not we shall deal with when it comes.
Apart from the
steps outlined above there is one additional aspect you need to know. I am
aware that I have been criticized for taking too many vacations and being away
from Washington too often. While
I do regard a healthy life style as important, none of you can take five weeks
of vacation and neither should your President, especially in times of war. I
shall, therefore, devote myself henceforth full time to your concerns. This
means also that I shall not engage in fund raising efforts around the country
for my party but I shall remain at my desk in the Oval Office to serve the
needs of all the people of our nation in this crucial and difficult time. As
you well know the needs are many and I have mentioned only some of the most urgent
ones. The doors to the Oval Office shall remain open to all members of
Congress, regardless of political affiliation so that we can jointly arrive at
durable solutions for the numerous problems that beset us.
I cannot guarantee
you success of the plans as outlined above but only my best effort. While I
genuinely regret past mistakes, I would now like to ask for your forgiveness of
these human weaknesses and your help and prayers for the future.
Thank you for your
attention.
A speech of this type would solve
the President’s current dilemma and instantly boost his popularity rating. But
will he do so? I doubt it because from what we have seen so far it does not
appear to conform to his character. Nevertheless, he should be told how average
Americans feel and I shall send this article to the White House as well as some
members of Congress and our major news media. Patriotism should not be equated
with flag waving and “Fuehrer befiehl wir
folgen.” Blind obedience to a leader is not what America
is all about. If we want to preserve our democracy the people need to speak up
when their vital interests are at stake and when they do so the leadership
needs to listen to their concerns and address them in a responsible manner.
Calling war protesters “nutcakes,” as our senior Senator Orrin Hatch did during
the President’s visit to SaltLake,
will not do. A remark of this type only shows his current mindset and how much
he has yet to learn even about his own constituents. But that would require
reading and answering his mail which he is not in the habit of doing as
mentioned in the previous essay on The Plame Affair.
October 1, 2005
THE DARK SIDE
In theearlypart of last
month Martha and I went to see Star Wars III which is supposed to wrap up the
series and to explain how a noble Jedi warrior became the evil Darth Vader. The
attraction was actually not only curiosity but also money. We couldn’t resist
the lure of paying only $3 for the both of us when it would have cost us more
than three times that had we gone earlier to the neighborhood Megaplex. These
are the market forces in action. The Megaplex gets the initial run of the
movies and is usually, after the first 3 weeks or so, three quarters empty. A
smaller chain then picks up the same movie and sells the tickets for a flat
rate of $1.50 regardless of age. People learn to wait and the cinema was
packed.
Apart from
the hundreds of flying objects shooting at each other for no ostensible reason
Mr. Lukas did manage to get a lesson across which may, however, not have been
picked up by most people in the audience. For those who have not seen the film
let me summarize the essence. Under the wise and diligent leadership of middle
aged Obi-Wan Kenobi, young Anakin Skywalker grows into an extraordinarily
morally good and physically superb Jedi who will do anything to defend the Republic
from the forces of looming authoritarianism. But after hearing that the woman
he dearly loves will die when she gives birth to his son, Luke Skywalker, he
becomes desperate. The evil Chancellor of the Republic who aspires to Caesarism
seduces Anakin by promising him that if he were to use not only the Force of
light but also that of darkness he could overcome death and his beloved would
live. Although the good and kind Anakin struggles valiantly against this idea,
his love for the woman overcomes his scruples and in the ensuing inner battle
the handsome Jedi loses and turns into the gruesome Darth Vader.
The phrase
that “only by combining the forces of darkness and light can you achieve
complete power” might not have struck me had I not composed a few weeks earlier
a little poem about a water Lilly while spending a weekend morning at our
ponds.It was in German and I shall not
reproduce it here but simply give its content. We admire the beauty of the
white flower among its green leaves but don’t realize that this beauty depends
on the roots which are grounded in the muck. Dry out the mud and the flower
dies. Thus, the forces which literally require darkness for their work to come
to fruition are not to be shunned but are vital.On the other hand if there were no sunshine
the mud would freeze and there would likewise be no flower. Thus it is true
that only the combination of light and dark are essential for life as we know
it and the “dark side” is not to be shunned but patiently and cautiously
explored.
As
mentioned in War & Mayhem it was
Schopenhauer who pointed out our natural inclination to: “dislike thinking of
things that are injurious to our interest, pride, or wishes. How difficult is
the decision to subject them to exact and serious investigation.” Nietzsche
then picked up the thought and wrote: “A genuine Physio-Psychologist has to
fight with unconscious resistances in the heart of the investigator; it goes
against the grain.. . . Wherever one
not only sees, but wants to see hunger, sexual desire and vanity as the
original driving forces of human actions there the lover of insight should
listen to very carefully.” Freud made it his life work but he and his followers
remained stuck in the mud - the libido - and neglected to consider in their therapeutic
efforts the spiritual dimension of the human being.
This
failure was remedied by Viktor Frankl whose 100th birthday is
celebrated this year and whose work I have already mentioned previously (September 1, 2003: “For the Goyim They
Sing”). His method of Logotherapy recognizes the power of instinctual forces
and works towards directing them to a higher meaning in a difficult life
situation. Once the purpose and meaning of that situation has become clear,
life can proceed in a healthy and integrated manner. What made his life and
teaching authentic is that he had survived nearly three years of Nazi
concentration camps without hate or rancor. He was a physician who had devoted
himself to treat the psychiatrically and neurologically ill before deportation
and he returned to these tasks thereafter. Although initially physically
shattered by the effects of his ordeal - which had also cost him his wife,
parents and brother - he overcame all these difficulties and reemerged a
stronger and better person. This might not have come about had he not met, a
year after his return, a young nurse at the Allgemeine
Poliklinik who gave him the unselfish love he was in desperate need of at
the time. They married had children as well as grandchildren and as Frankl
himself put it she had turned him from a homo
patiens - a suffering person - into a homo
amans – a loving person. He died in 1997 at the ripe old age of 92 years.
Although physically frail his spirit had remained undaunted.
Frankl‘s work has found world-wide acclaim but in the United
States it is still eclipsed by Freudian
disciples of various sects. I use the term advisedly because Freudian type of
psychoanalysis is a secular religion which you have to subscribe to lest you
will be cast out. The reason why the names: Sigmund Freud, Simon Wiesenthal and
Eli Wiesel are known to everyone in the U.S. but that of Viktor Frankl to only
relatively few tells us something about our culture which we also ought to face
up to. Wiesenthal’s death and funeral in Vienna
last month gave rise to articles of praise even in The Salt Lake Tribune but Frankl‘s 100th
birthday in March of this year has gone unnoticed by our media.
But let us
return to Star wars III because there is another lesson about the nature of the
dark side. What did the “evil ones” want? The answer is simple: power! Why do
people want power? Because they are afraid of losing something, whatever that
something might be. It might be fear of loss of property, life of a loved one
or ones own, illness, prestige, one’s “good name” and so on. This fear creates
greed and these two evils combined appear to be the driving forces of our
current culture.
“Know Thyself,” said the old Greeks and it’s still the best advice
one can get. But, as mentioned, we don’t want to face our inner demons and when
something goes wrong there is always “the other” who can be blamed.The events of the past month are no
exception. Hurricane Katrina revealed the dark side of America
for all the world to see. We knew of its existence but
didn’t want to face the consequences. The fact that the vast majority of
Katrina’s victims were of African descent makes the “dark side” even literally
true. This led to the inevitable charge of racism, which is, however, again
only an attempt to deflect blame. There was no ill will, just inertia and
incompetence at all levels of government, in addition to the inability to
anticipate as well as well as to cope subsequently with the disaster. Within
less than a week the myth of the “Homeland Security Department” was dispelled
and it had become obvious that the creation of that office was actually a
hindrance rather than help for victims of natural or man-made disasters. FEMA,
the Federal Emergency Administration, had worked infinitely better before the
creation of Mr. Chertoff’s office and the billions of
dollars which have been spent on this useless bureaucracy have been wasted. In
the tradition of government, regardless which party happens to be in control,
it is inevitable that more money will be thrown after bad.
Creating programs with layers over layers of newly created departments is after
all the only way governments know how to deal with self-created problems.
While
racism was not an issue in this disaster this does not mean that negative
attitudes between Blacks – as they referred to themselves in the 1960’s and
1970’s – and Whites don’t exist. It subsequently dawned on the Black leadership
that the word is actually only the English translation of the Spanish word
Negro and they advocated a name change to African-American which is now the
officially sanctioned term. But changing a name does not change an underlying
substantive issue. It is a fact that poverty and concomitant crime are
widespread in this segment of our society and that the Whites’ fear of the
Blacks and vice versa is deeply rooted in the history of this country.
Know
thyself demands that we also face up to this topic and I am aware that I was no
exception to this wide-spread fear. Martha and I used to live from 1958 - 1990
in Lilly white Grosse Pointe but worked in downtown Detroit.
We, therefore, had a front row view of the progressive decay of this city. It
had started with a massive influx of poor blacks from the South into the inner
city. White business owners became nervous and relocated to the suburbs. Lyndon
Johnson’s “Great Society” program exacerbated the problem. When racial
integration of the public school system became the law of the land parents drew
the line. The white population of Detroit
refused to have their children transported by bus from their local
neighborhoods into the inner city and voted with their feet. They moved as far
away as possible into suburbia. The city lost its tax base and the riots of
1967 accelerated the slide into further decay. This is another example of how a
well meant idea which ignores human nature leads to the opposite of the
intended result.
First the
businesses on Kercheval, which was my snow emergency route when Jefferson,
the main east west artery, was clogged, began to be boarded up. The houses were
vacant and yards overgrown with weeds. One morning a few minutes before eight
when I drove by MartinLutherKingHigh School
on Lafayette Street I noted
that the pupils on the way to school, all black, didn’t have backpacks or
books. It surely surprised me. “Don’t they have any homework?” I wondered.
Decades later our current President asked in his usually mangled syntax: “Is
our children learning?” Unfortunately the only answer we can give him is a
resounding: No! You can throw all the money you want on buildings, computers
and other gadgets but unless children are motivated and forced by parents and
teachers to learn the basics rather than be allowed to engage in frills there
will be no positive results.
There are
two other Detroit vignettes that bear
mention. We used to go with the children downtown to the movies. “Willard” was
the last one we saw there and that dates it to 1971. We had been slightly late
and the theater was already dark when we sat down. After the lights had come
back on and we were beginning to leave we noted with surprise that we were the
only white faces in a sea of black ones. Nobody bothered us but we did feel
uneasy and a sense of not belonging here. I experienced this sensation in spite
of the fact that my nursing staff, for instance, was predominantly black and we
enjoyed excellent working relations. This provided a lesson: we don’t mind
individual relationships with people of different color or backgrounds but we
fear the aggregate – the masses.
The other event occurred two years
later. I had to attend Circuit Court sessions and when I parked the car at a
nearby lot I didn’t believe my eyes. In the shack where a white fellow handed
me my ticket there leaned against one wall a rifle, against another a shotgun
and in the open desk drawer there was a revolver. In amazement I asked him: “Is
this for real?” “Where d‘you think, you are man? You’re in downtown Detroit!”
was the answer. Well, here it is; crude fear and willingness to kill.
In the
meantime Detroit, under a succession
of black mayors, has deteriorated further. It is now at least 80% black and on
my last visit two years ago I noted with dismay that even on Jefferson, in what
used to be nice neighborhoods, many stores are boarded up, others have been
torn down and nature reasserts itself with weeds. Our daughter in law told me
that, when a visitor had come across the river from Windsor,
Canada, and saw these
conditions she asked in amazement: “Has there been a war?” No, not yet; but
with this disparity in living conditions between the city and the suburbs, and
with a populace that is armed to the teeth it is likely to be only a matter of
time before there is a major explosion. This may not be limited to Detroit
but affect many inner cities of our country which have been turned into what
used to be called slums. This is the dark side of America
which we usually don’t show our visitors or on TV.
But let us
not blame the looting we saw in Detroit
and Los Angeles during the riots,
in New York during the blackout,
and now New Orleans, on the black
population of those cities. Iraqis looted Baghdad
and even my dear Viennese looted numerous stores, including that of my mother,
during the few days after the Nazis had left and the Russians had not yet taken
over. Once they were here they also had their share of it but that was
expected. Thus looting and other crimes are bound to take place in any country
anywhere in the world and should be expected to occur whenever there is no
civilian or military police that enforces order. The Nazis knew how to prevent
looting in the aftermath of bombing raids. Looters were shot on sight and that
was a highly effective deterrent. This was easy to do under a regime whose
slogan was: “der Einzelne
ist nichts, das Volk ist alles.”
The individual meant nothing the nation everything.
In America
we tend to adhere to the opposite extreme. Individual lives must either be
saved, or prolonged as the case may be, sometimes even under circumstances that
will never permit the person to become a functional member of society. These
are philosophical differences the merits of which can and will be endlessly
argued. As in all other situations the extreme positions ought to be shunned
and the golden mean of well thought out reason ought to rule. Unfortunately
this is not yet the American way. Nevertheless one ought to work towards it and
instead of attempts at global solutions by Congress; local ones should be
pursued with experimental demonstration programs before they are mandated for
the country.
While these
comments addressed the dark side of our nation they are still only shades of
grey because the real darkness remains for the most part under lock and key in
the deepest recesses of our own individual minds. This is where our ultimate
fears, which are of a very personal nature, reside. For everyday life they can
safely remain there in the otherwise mentally healthy individual. There are
good reasons why we shy away from our innermost fears and when we need to deal
with them it should be done, as mentioned above, carefully. The inner demons,
who reside in all of us, should not be trifled with because once released they
can overwhelm the mind and lead to psychosis. This is also the reason why
Freudian type psychoanalysis can be dangerous for the patient as well as, in
some instances, the psychiatrist.
Who and
what are these demons? There are two ways to approach this question.One is through classic literature and in the
West especially Greek mythology. Here we find all the superhuman and subhuman
creatures the human mind was capable of conceiving. The other is through
biology. Let us deal with mythology first because it provides the forms and
combines the supernatural with the natural.
The ancients knew of the dual
nature of the sacred: its goodness and its horror. The Greek word daimon from which our demon is derived
had several meanings which we regard today as opposites. Among them were:
divine being, guardian spirit, evil spirit, devil, specter, demon, fate, evil,
death. Thus, when Socrates talked about the demon that drove him on he referred
to the inner divinity whose voice he had to obey even at risk of death. This
dual aspect of the holy was preserved in the Latin language in the word sacer.All my professional life was devoted to
understanding the mystery of morbussacer, the holy illness, which we currently call
epilepsy.Sacer
does stand for: sacred, holy, and consecrated; but also for: accursed, devoted
to destruction. These apparent paradoxes resulted from a view of the world
where people lived in nature and who saw it in its creative as well as
destructive aspect. For them all of nature was not only alive but had inherent
spirits which were given different names. In order to tame the unfavorable
aspects and to express gratitude for the favorable ones various rituals evolved
but there was never any doubt about their divinity because mankind was aware of
its relative weakness over the forces surrounding it.
We deride the naiveté of the Greeks
for anthropomorphizing their gods and attributing to them all the human
emotions we experience and where the only difference was that gods could do
everything we do and more, in addition to having gained immortality. When we
realize, however, that Greek mythology also insisted that gods and men were
derived from the same substance, except that the former came first, then there
is no longer need for derision. When Agamemnon started his prayer on the plain
before Troy with: “Father Zeus who
rulest in Ida” this was not some abstract mental conception like our current “Our
Father who art in heaven.”No, he
regarded himself literally as the great-great- etc. son of Zeus and so did all
the other Greeks. With the triumph of the Jewish religion where fatherhood is
attributed to Abraham we have lost this inherent knowledge. This in turn paved
the way towards a purely materialistic view of the world from which demons are
to be banished by executive fiat. That this did not work is obvious to anyone
who wanders around our world with open eyes.
In regard to biology the principle that
phylogeny repeats ontology is taught in all our schools but the possible
consequences are not considered. It is true that in embryonic life the human
being like all other mammals goes through the phases of ameba, fish, reptile,
monkey and it is tacitly assumed that there is no mentation that accompanies
these various aspects. The fact that we don’t remember it does not necessarily
mean that it did not exist. When I say mentation I obviously don’t mean
“thought” in either visual or verbal form but rather some crude awareness of
comfort, discomfort and later on at birth: pain and fear. Freud spoke of the
“birth trauma” and he may well have been correct. Vaginal birth is no pleasure
for either mother or baby and memories are being laid down. Subsequent early
childhood experiences shape the personality and when unfavorable can have
lasting detrimental effects. This occurs through the establishment of neuronal
circuitry and their conditioning which are unconcious processes. Although
positive experiences usually outweigh the negative ones the latter don’t vanish
they just get filtered out. But filters are not necessarily tight they can be
porous and when the early animal nature of the human being comes to the fore
either as a result of illness, drugs, dreams, or through voluntary dabbling
there can literally be hell to pay. What was inchoate before will now have
shapes and forms that are no pleasure to behold. They need not be the gargoyles
on our churches or the fantastic creatures of Hieronymus Bosch, threatening
appearances in human form suffice. It is the accompanying emotion which counts
which is usually fear and in its extreme stark horror.
This is the realm of our minds
where the “sacred” lives and from where it will reemerge in our final hours as
I have briefly mentioned in the August
26, 2004 issue: “Perception of Reality.” The Tibetan Book of the Dead or its more accurate subtitle The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo
Plane, according to Lama KaziDawa-Samdup’s
English Rendering is of great interest in this context. It is of value not
only to the student of esotericism but also to the neuroscientist. Since I
belong professionally to the latter group I shall try to summarize the contents
briefly from a modern Western standpoint. According to Buddhist belief the
deceased, unless he was a highly accomplished Lama, will go through various
stages for a period of 49 days after which rebirth occurs. The purpose of the
book was to explain to the person who had just died all the visions and
accompanying emotions he is going to experience on the Bardo plane which is the state between death and rebirth.
The person is told that immediately
after the last breath has been exhaled he will initially experience the
“Primary Clear Light” of radiant consciousness unencumbered by any form and
accompanied by the sensation of pure bliss. The person is urged to use all his
powers of concentration to remain in this state because this is the ultimate
final liberation. Although this boon is potentially available to all of us we lack
this power to concentrate laser-like, one-pointedly and begin our way through
the Bardo. During the first seven
days “peaceful deities” are encountered but with each image the deceased is
admonished to disregard them and instead concentrate on the light. The person
is told over and over again that these images have no reality by themselves but
are merely emanations of ones personal consciousness.
If the person is unable to do so,
because of lack of concentration on the task, the next seven days will be filled
with the appearance of the “wrathful deities.”While the “peaceful deities” are accompanied by a subjective feeling of
comfort and pleasure, the wrathful ones provoke fear and terror. But again, and
this is the key element for our discussion, the deceased is earnestly entreated
by his guru: “Oh nobly- born fear not, flee not, be not awed, know it to be the
embodiment of thine own intellect.” If the person is able to do so liberation
will be achieved. With each passing day the visions and accompanying physically
painful as well as mentally terrifying subjective sensations will increase but
if the person is able to recognize them merely as products of his own mind he
can still attain liberation.
Inasmuch as this recognition
requires intense mental training while the person was alive most individuals
are unable to do so and continue to wander on for the rest of the 49 days
towards rebirth. Nevertheless even at this late stage liberation is still
possible through intense concentration on the words of the guru. If that fails
a rebirth which allows the individual to grow towards the goal that has been
missed during the previous life is to be looked for. Human life is regarded as
a great privilege (therefore the guru’s address: “Oh nobly-born”) because it is
the only way for the intellect and spirit to grow and that is what our purpose
on this planet should be.
This is neither the time nor the
place to engage in the scientific pros and cons of the events as outlined
above. Suffice it to say that from the neurologic point of view the insistence,
that these phenomena are the workings of one’s own mind rather than due to
outside occurrences, is eminently sound. When we furthermore condense the 49
days into 49 or so seconds we might even arrive at a scientific basis. During
my days in training at Vienna’s Neuro-PsychiatricUniversityHospital
I had come across a book which mentioned a rather macabre experiment that had
been carried out during the French revolution when the guillotine was working
overtime. Someone had measured how long the severed head’s eyes would roll to
the side from which its name was called. As I recall it was about 38 seconds
which seems reasonable from all we know about cerebral functions. What went on
in this person’s mind during those seconds is, of course, anybody’s guess but
it reinforces the Hindu-Buddhist idea that there is nothing more important in
our life than our last conscious thought.
This brings us back to the question
that was posed earlier. How did the noble Anakin Skywalker become the evil
Darth Vader? He wanted to harness the powers of the dark side to do good; but he wanted power over the fate of others rather
than his own. That is not given to the human being and as religion tells us
even Satan can’t give life on his own, he needs our free will to cooperate and
subsequently merely uses us as tools for his pleasure. Thus the question is:
what do we want the power we are seeking for? If it is to bend others to our
will then the best advice is to abstain from the attempt because the outcome is
not in our hands. On the other hand if power, even from “the dark side,” is
sought to understand our place in this universe we can do so, but carefully! We
will be confronted by terror, especially in our dreams. Under these
circumstances we need another human being whom we can trust implicitly and with
whom we can discuss what is happening. In everyday life it would be best if
this were our marital partner who has no other vested interest than our
well-being. Under these circumstances the need to exercise power over others
will disappear and both partners will grow intellectually as well as
spiritually.
November 1, 2005
TUTANKHAMEN’S CT SCANS
In July of this year I mentioned
that I would discuss Tutankhamen’s CT scans in the next Hot Issues article but
I had to admit in August that Tom Friedman’s theory of the “Flat earth,” i.e.
unlimited instant access to information, applies only to some privileged people
rather than to most of the rest of us. Since I was unable to fulfill my promise
in August I wrote instead “The Plame Affair,” which has now become grist for
the mills of the mainstream media and TV pundits. I also mentioned in August
that I shall discuss the CT scans either when more definitive information has
become available or “it has become obvious that further waiting is fruitless.” This
is now the case. Although the drama which is currently unfolding in Washington
would deserve discussion this can wait until December.
In “The Saga of Tutankhamen’s Skull
X-Rays” (October 17, 2002) I presented in considerable detail the difficulties
we had encountered in obtaining a copy of the X-rays that had been taken in
1968 by a team from the University of Liverpool under the leadership of the
late Professor Harrison. The reason why I had persevered over a long period of
time was because the X-rays were purported to have shown a skull fracture
and/or subdural hematoma (blood clot on the brain). This in turn had given rise
to a widely reported theory that the pharaoh had been murdered by a blow to the
head.
After having had an opportunity to
study the actual X-rays, rather than photographs, upon which a book which
endorsed the murder theory had been written, my colleagues and I concluded that
the X-rays were normal, apart from post-mortem artifacts introduced by the
ancient embalmers as well as by the Carter-Derry autopsy in 1925. These
conclusions were published in The
American Journal of Neuroradiology in the June/July 2003 issue and this was
the first time that an assessment of these radiographs had been presented to
the medical community. Previous publications by Dr. Harrison had addressed
themselves to the general public or archeologists.
Although skull X-rays can
demonstrate bony changes they cannot determine possible soft tissue damage
which might be apparent on a CT scan. When I learned that Professor Griggs of BrighamYoungUniversity
in nearby Provo had a license from
the Egyptian authorities not only to perform archeological excavations but also
DNA analyses on mummies with his colleague Professor Scott Woodward, I visited
with them. I was told that they had not only obtained samples from a large
grave site at El -Faiyum but they
had also been able to obtain some from royal mummies in the Cairo
museum in order to establish possible lineages within members of the XVIIIth
dynasty and they planned to examine Tutankhamen. I suggested immediately that when
the sarcophagus is opened for that purpose we ought to also obtain a CT scan to
settle the head injury question once and for all. This suggestion was well
received and I was asked to write a proposal to that effect because funding and
permissions would have to be obtained. I prepared a document that outlined the
need for the investigation as well as potential funding sources and submitted it
to Dr. Griggs on 0ctober 3, 1996. There was no reply but since the
archeological season in Egypt
is limited to the winter months he may have already been in Egypt
on other excavations. Nevertheless, the hope remained that we might get
something done for the next season. But although I kept calling Dr. Griggs over
the next few years on a regular basis nothing came of the attempt because there
were either other priorities or some hurdles from the Egyptian authorities.
Nevertheless, I was assured that the project was not dead it would just take a
little longer than what had been hoped for. After a while phone calls were no
longer returned and I issued a mental death certificate for it.
Then in the fall of 2001 the events
which are documented in the “Saga” took place and as mentioned the scientific
paper was published in 2003. At that point I thought I was done with Tut because
I felt that the political conditions in Egypt
simply were not conducive to good scientific work, especially since a scan
would have to be obtained at the tomb in the Valley of the Kings
because a transport to Cairo seemed
unrealistic. But January of this year brought to my great surprise the news
that a CT scan had been performed on the pharaoh’s mutilated remains under the
auspices of the Secretary General of Egypt’s
Supreme Council for Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawass.
The early reports indicated that the
project had been funded by the National Geographic Society and Siemens of
Germany had made the scanner available, but as Dr. Hawass kept re-iterating the
actual work of data gathering and initial interpretation was all done by
Egyptians and only Egyptians. On March
8, 2005 there appeared the official Press Release where the world
was told that the scientific team, headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass, had reviewed over
17,000 images and that it had included radiologists, pathologists and
anatomists under the oversight of Dr. Madiha Khattab, Dean of Medicine at CairoUniversity. Important aspects of
the report were that the team found no evidence to support a murder theory; the
king was about 19 years old at time of death; of slender stature about five and
a half feet tall; well nourished and in good general health. The slight
curvature of the spine that had been noted in Harrison’s
X-ray was within normal limits and had probably resulted from positioning at
the time of embalming. The missing sternum (breastbone) was probably the result
of Carter-Derry’s removal of the famous mask which had be firmly glued to the
body, rather than having resulted from a crushing injury to the chest as had
been posited by Dennis Forbes in 1992. The only disagreement among the
scientists was the nature of a fracture of the lower end of the left femur
(thighbone). Some regarded it as a wound that had occurred during life and
might have been a cause of death because open fractures would lead to infection
and blood poisoning which was untreatable in those days. Others felt that the
fracture was another post-mortem event and the question was not resolved.
So far so good but as usual the
devil is in the details and these already appear on the first page of the
report.
“Lead radiologist Dr. Marvat Shafik
and the rest of the team requested that three international experts, two from Italy
and one from Switzerland,
be permitted to review the images. ‘We need our opinion to be international,
since people all over the world are waiting for the results of this important
scan,’ said Dr. Shafik,”
But Dr. Hawass did not seem to be
enthused about international cooperation because the report goes on to state:
“Dr. Hawass also said: ‘The
Egyptian team worked on the images for two months. The foreign team came for
several days at the end to review the work of the Egyptian team. The foreign
consultants confirmed the results of the Egyptian team, and joined us to make
the announcement internationally. All of us are proud to announce these
findings, the first CT examination
of a securely identified royal mummy from ancient Egypt.
I believe these results will close
the case of Tutankhamun, and the king will not need to be examined again. We
should now leave him at rest. I am proud that this work was done, and done well,
by a completely Egyptian team.”
When we strip away exalted language
one gains the impression that the Europeans were not regarded by Dr. Hawass as
full partners in the assessment of the data but they may have been expected to
merely rubber stamp the findings of their Egyptian colleagues.
Inasmuch as Dr. Boyer and I had a
long standing interest in actually examining the CT scans rather than merely
taking somebody else’s word as to what they do or do not show a new chapter in
the Saga began. My main problem was that the report had not addressed itself to
two aspects of Derry’s findings. One was the nature of
the “rounded depression, which has slightly raised edges, the skin filling it,
resembling a scab” on the left check and the other the “pronounced bulging of
the left side of the occiput [back of the head].” In addition there was, of
course, the unresolved question of the possible left femur fracture.
The press release did provide the
names but not the addresses of the members of the Egyptian as well as European
team. There were 3 radiologists on the Egyptian team and 1 on the European. The
latter was Dr. Paul Gostner from BolzanoItaly. But
every Austrian knows that Bolzano
used to be called Bozen, was the capital city of South Tyrol
and our esteemed President Wilson had handed the entire province to the
Italians after WWI. Self- determination of nations, as proclaimed in his 14
points, had its limits when it came to the vanquished ones. The Austrians of
South Tyrol were abandoned to the Italians and those of the Sudetenland
to the Czechs. Wilson’s motive was
to get his League of Nations approved by the Brits,
French and Italians regardless of the cost to actual people who suddenly lost
their homeland. This tit for tat was also part of the cause for WWII. There
were obviously bad feelings for some time between Austrians and Italians on
that score but these were overcome in subsequent decades and amiable
relationships exist now between the two countries.
At any rate, I felt a sudden sense of
kinship and the potential to get more information about the scans. I did not
have Dr. Gostner’s e-mail address but most of us have scientific articles to
our names and PubMed is one of the best examples of our tax dollars at work. It
is available to the general public and comes up immediately on search engines. Thereafter
one needs only the last name and the initial of the author and all the papers
arrive within milliseconds. The first paper on the list was authored by Dr W.
Murphy from HoustonTexas
with the title: “The Iceman: Discovery and Imaging” and was published in Radiology in 2003. The abstract also had
Dr. Murphy’s e-mail address and he was kind enough to immediately supply me
with that of Dr. Gostner which led to a very fruitful correspondence. He told
me that he had read our report in the AJNR before going to Egypt
and it was fully vindicated by the CT results. A scientific publication of
their findings was planned but it needed the cooperation of the Egyptians which
was slow in forthcoming, and that he would be happy to collaborate with us in
any further data evaluation.
This took place at the end of June
and since Europeans have the good sense to get out of their hot cities during
the summer we postponed further discussions until the fall. In the meantime I thought
that since National Geographic had put up the money, and as a long time member
I had partially paid for that scan too, they should be able to put me in touch
with the Egyptians so that one might be able to expedite the situation
somewhat. I sent off an e-mail to the Magazine requesting the address of A.R.
Williams who had written “The New Face of King Tut His Life and Death” for the
June issue. Back came four pages of “Thank you for contacting the National
Geographic society …” and this was followed by links to frequently asked
questions which obviously were not related to my problem. But the message also
mentioned that questions which do not appear on the form would be answered
within two weeks. Lo and behold a week later the assistant to Ms Williams wrote
back stating that “The Society and Siemens have an explicit agreement with the
Supreme Council of Antiquities that the CT data is theirs to use as they see
fit. Thus all we can suggest is that you take your case directly to Dr. Hawass
and the SCA.” She then provided the contact information and an e-mail address.
This was on July 21 and the following day I wrote to Dr. Hawass explaining why
we would like to see the scans and offered any help in publication of the data,
that he might desire. The message did not come back as undeliverable but there
was no reply.
As a sailor I took another tack and
tried to establish contact with one of the Egyptian radiologists who had worked
on the scans. Dr. Essam Ismail, an Egyptian radiologist who currently works in Kuwait,
was very helpful in establishing contact with Dr. Ashraf Selim, Professor of
Radiology at CairoUniversity,
who was a member of the examining team. Dr. Selim wrote a very pleasant letter
back stating that he had also read our paper agreed with its conclusions and
“I'd love to communicate and share our knowledge.”
When I replied I mentioned not only
the reasons why we would be interested in seeing the scans but also that it
might have been useful to obtain DNA samples at the time of the scanning. Dr. Selim agreed that:
“DNA tests would have been definitely useful
for answering many questions but unfortunately we work under the supreme
council of antiquities who rejected this idea. . . . . Regarding the
issue of sending some of the CT pictures to you I personally agree
but I have to take the approval of Dr. Hawass first according to the
protocol of confidentiality that we signed with him before taking any further
steps.”
Since this still looked promising I
replied that “May be I could write to Dr. Hawass personally, if you think it
were to be useful.”The answer came back
immediately:
“Dear Dr. Rodin:
I really don’t think it's necessary now, let me contact him first and then we
decide what to do, regards.”
Well, it
doesn’t take much imagination to ascertain what happened here. The abrupt
change in tone clearly suggests that word came down from the top: “don’t get
involved with foreigners.”This
impression was confirmed in the subsequent correspondence with Dr. Gostner.
Earlier last month he told me that he and his two other colleagues had
repeatedly tried to continue the collaboration with the Egyptian scientists in
order to proceed with a publication but their efforts were thwarted. He also
told me that Dr. Frank Ruehli of Switzerland
(Anatomist and Paleopathologist, ZurichUniversity, and member of the
evaluation team) had suggested a presentation at the Anthropology Congress in
March 2006 and had sent a preliminary abstract for approval to Egypt.
After some delay he received this response from Dr. Hawass: “as a matter of
fact we can not make a kind of lecture in conference now. I am waiting to read
the first report of the two parties.” As Dr. Gostner mentioned to me it is
quite unclear what Dr. Hawass meant by this statement but it is apparent that a
publication or presentation is not in the immediate offing. All of us who have
submitted abstracts to national and international meetings know that there are
deadlines for when abstracts have to be received by the organizing committee
and these are usually at least six if not nine months prior to the meeting.
Thus any delay jeopardizes acceptance.
We have, therefore a situation that
is not readily understandable on scientific grounds. The European and the
Egyptian scientists are eager to collaborate further but apparently a political
decision has been reached to prevent this from coming to pass in the near
future. Dr. Hawass has currently the exclusive rights to the scans and for
reasons only known to him he apparently refuses to allow further studies. I
believe this attitude to be ill advised and would like him to reconsider his
stance.
Dr Hawass
has said in a recent speech that Tutankhamen “belongs to the world,” which is
true. Although everyone agrees that the artifacts found in the tomb as well as
the mummy belong to Egypt
this should not be extended to scientific data derived from them. The
scientific community is international and true scientists have only one goal,
which is to extract the maximum information from a given set of data. This is
why we have international societies for our various specialties and
international meetings where we can discuss in public as well as in private the
data we are most interested in.
Since I am
writing for the general public let me now explain why this international
collaboration is so vital. Let us be honest with each other; even if Dr. Hawass
were to give the Egyptian members of the team authority to publish a paper on
their own it would run into resistance from peer reviewers, if it were to be
submitted to a reputable international journal. They would immediately ask why
the European members of the team were not included and to what extent they
agreed with the conclusions that were expressed.
There is a further point. When one
has 17,000 pictures to review it is difficult if not impossible to do justice
to the data within a few days and that is all the time the members of the
European team had at their disposal. Furthermore, even in everyday clinical
practice we require a referral slip for a given examination. This may be for a
CT scan, an MRI or as in my case EEG/MEG which tells us what area we should pay
closest attention to. Digital technology has the tremendous advantage that the
data are stored as megabytes or gigabytes and these can be examined at leisure
from various points of view. Whenever I am not writing for general publication
I do just that with electrical and/or magnetic brain activity which was in part
collected several years ago. New observations are made with improved data
analysis programs and published. They can then point the way for better data
assessment in the future. But this takes time which overburdened clinicians
usually don’t have. On the other hand those of us who have reached retirement
age do have the time, know how and interest and are happy to pursue these
investigations for everybody’s benefit.
This brings
me back to Dr. Gostner and the iceman because it is an excellent example why
international collaboration is so vital. Oetzi, as he is affectionately called
because he was found in the Oetztaler Alps, was discovered in 1991 and has been
extensively investigated first by an Austrian and subsequently an Italian team.
Since there are no border guards on a glacier it was initially assumed that the
body was still on the Austrian side and it was taken to Innsbruck, but when it
was finally determined that that part of the glacier was already on the Italian
side of the border he was removed to Bolzano where he now resides in a special
museum. Although the Austrians did perform a CT scan no definitive cause of
death could be established. Since some of the ribs were “distorted” as if they
might have been fractured it was hypothesized that the man might have been
attacked, for some reason or another, escaped to higher altitudes and then
froze to death. A replica of his face, similar to that of Tutankhamen, was made
and the matter rested.
But Dr.
Peter Vanezis a forensic pathologist of Bolzano
did not. He was not happy with what had been called the “disaster theory” and
found that the body had not always lain in the position it was found. The ice
had apparently melted to some extent at some time and the body moved to a
slightly different location. When the water froze again the chest was partially
crushed which accounted for the deformed ribs. Thus, the disaster theory had to
be revisited and the cause of death was again undetermined. With this question
hanging in the air Dr. Eduard Ergarter Vigl, the curator of the mummy in Bolzano,
decided in June of 2001 it was time for another X-ray. This was done and the
films were given to Dr. Gostner, head of Radiology at Bolzano
GeneralHospital,
for evaluation. As soon as Dr. Gostner saw the chest X-ray he noted a foreign
body near the left shoulder. On close examination it was determined to have
been an arrow head and, therefore, a likely cause of death.
For the
Austrians this was major embarrassment. They had previously had the body for
several years, had performed a CT scan and had missed detecting that metal
fragment. Professor Horst Seidler from the University
of Vienna stated in a BBC interview:
“that has been the shock of my life.” Why had they overlooked the arrowhead in
the CT scan? Well, sometimes you can have too much information and the
proverbial needle in the haystack doesn’t jump out. When Dr. Wolfgang Recheis
loaded up the scans again on his work station in Innsbruck now knowing where to
look the object not only showed up clear as daylight but with further study and
newer data analysis tools the arrowhead could be completely reconstructed. This
is a perfect example for international cooperation how to get at the bottom of
a scientific problem. Oetzi had been shot in the left shoulder, escaped from
his pursuers to higher ground, pulled out the arrow, which was found in the
general vicinity, died of his wounds and the body froze.
Let us now
return to our Pharaoh and what should be done. The most obvious immediate
action should be to make the CT scans available to the European team so that a
preliminary scientific report on the data can be presented. There are so much
data on hand that the scans should subsequently be made available to qualified
specialists around the world upon their request. Different scientists have
different areas of interest and a series of papers, including a monograph,
could be published. This can readily be done and requires only the “go ahead”
from Dr. Hawass.
But a CT
scan can also give only a partial picture and more information might have been
obtained had a DNA sample been taken which opens another chapter of this Saga. In
response to Ms William’s report Ann Marie Ackermann of Boenningheim,
Germany wrote a Letter to
the Editor of National Geographic: “Although your article on King Tut was
fascinating, it contained an omission. Were any DNA samples taken and, if not,
why not?” The answer from the magazine was: “It is the policy of Egypt’s
Supreme Council of Antiquities not to do DNA testing on mummies. Some experts
believe such tests are not yet accurate enough for ancient remains and would
only open the door for speculation.
Although this is true it is not the
whole answer. Drs. Griggs and Woodward had, as mentioned above, obtained
samples even from pharaohs during the 1990s but for reasons beyond their
control never did get the go ahead to obtain samples from Tutankhamen. Furthermore,
when I reviewed Internet data for this article I found to my surprise that Carolyn
Hawley had reported from Cairo for
BBC News on November 11, 2000:
“Tutankhamun to undergo DNA tests.” The article stated in part
“A Japanese team, working with
local experts, will conduct DNA tests on Tutankhamun’s mummy, which has lain
undisturbed in its tomb in Luxor [sic] since it was last X-rayed in 1969 [sic].
The results will be compared with
tests on the mummy of the man thought to be his grandfather, Amenhotep III, now
in the Egyptian museum.
But mummy expert, Nasry Iskander,
cautions that DNA analysis on ancient remains is still a hit-and-miss affair
and that Tutankhamun’s mummy may be in too poor a shape to yield conclusive
answers.”
CNN.com reported on December 5, 2000 that a team of
Japanese experts was expected to arrive in Egypt
“this week” to obtain DNA samples. We don’t know at this time what happened but
apparently Dr. Iskander was overruled and the Japanese never got their samples.
This is a
very unfortunate situation. It is true that lineage may be difficult to
ascertain and that there are considerable technical problems. The difficulties
in regard to lineage are compounded in the case of royal mummies because, apart
from Tutankhamen, all have been removed from their tombs in antiquity and one
is working on bodies whose precise identity may be in doubt. This also applies to
the mummy of Amenhotep III. But lineage, important as it may be, is not the
only reason why an adequate DNA sample should have been obtained as mentioned
in my correspondence with Dr. Selim. The cause of the pharaoh’s death is
unknown and the skeletonized dismembered remains may not yield full answers in
regard to the cause of death but the viscera might provide additional
information. They were found by Carter in canopic jars in the tomb and
transported to Cairo at that time.
They ought to reside somewhere in the Cairo
museum. I am saying “ought” and “somewhere” because a physician, Dr. Bucaille,
who wrote a book for the general public in which he severely criticized
Carter’s handling of the mummy, stated that he could not find the canopic jars
in the museum. Thus even if someone were to look into the various nooks and
crannies of this vast building and were to find canopic jar contents labeled “Tutankhamun”
one would never know for sure whether these labels were indeed correct. If we
had DNA from the mummy, the contents of the jars might be properly identified
and one might be one step further in unraveling the mystery that surrounds the
young king’s unexpected death. Dr Hawass has been quoted in an interview on March 8, 2005 (MSNBC.com) as having
told the Associated Press: “I have two theories – that he may have died from
natural causes or that he was poisoned. We are going to look at the viscera to
see if his organs show any signs, but it is virtually impossible to prove how
he died.”I agree with the last part of
the last sentence but how is Dr. Hawass going to establish for certain, without
DNA confirmation, that the viscera really belonged to Tutankhamen?
Thus the
Saga continues. The last word has not been spoken with the Press Release and it
behooves us to find a way that allows proper scientific research of at least
the CT scans to proceed. But it is not only the fate of the CT scan that is at
stake. If Dr. Hawass were to insist that he has the right to control all
scientific publications resulting from excavations in Egypt
the entire field of Egyptology is in peril. This is why I wrote this article
and why I shall give it wide circulation. Inasmuch as I could not get a private
reply from Dr. Hawass I am now writing to him in public.
Dear Dr. Hawass
During the
past months I have made several attempts to contact you through private
channels but my efforts were unsuccessful. Since the topic is vital for the
current state of Egyptology I feel obliged to write to you in this forum. It
seems that the scientists who have evaluated the CT scans of Tutankhamen are
currently prevented from publishing their findings in the scientific
literature. I do not know the reason, but I do know that they are seriously
interested in doing so because Press Releases cannot do justice to the many
questions that are still unanswered.
As a first step I would like to
request that you make the entire set of scans available to all members of the
scientific team. This should be done electronically so that the scientists from
the different disciplines can independently investigate these scans at their
leisure rather than in a hurried manner. They can then discuss their agreements
and disagreements among themselves, arrive at sustainable conclusions and
publish the data. Thereafter a Symposium could be arranged at an appropriate
International Congress where the scientific community at large is given an
opportunity to see the data and review the conclusions derived from them. You
might want to give the keynote address at that Symposium. This is how science
proceeds in all other areas and the CT scan data should not be an exception. At
present the scans are of no benefit to anyone including you because they
require specialized expertise for further evaluation.
You have
recently received from the AmericanUniversity
in Cairo an Honorary Degree of
“Doctor of Humane Letters” and I appeal to you to regard this not only as an
honor but also as an obligation. You cannot shut out the international
scientific community because you depend on it for your future work. By not
releasing the scans you are not only hurting the scientific community at large
but also and especially your Egyptian co-workers who have spent a great deal of
time on evaluating the scans and have a right to see their results published.
Furthermore, without the help from the U.S.
and Germany the
scans would never have materialized in the first place. While pride in the
achievements of one’s country is thoroughly understandable it should not turn
into chauvinism because this has always led to disaster.
You have mentioned repeatedly that
you have enemies and that the forces of Seth are arraigned against you. This
may well be so but please feel assured that the scientific community is not
your enemy but is only interested in a search for the truth, regardless where
it ultimately may lead to. I would, therefore, like to urge you not to provide
those with whom you have differences with more food for animosity; which
secrecy surely breeds.
Those of us who love and respect
the magnificent culture your ancestors have given to the world would be
severely disappointed if this tradition of sharing, which has characterized
them in the ancient world were to be abandoned now. I, therefore, urgently
request that you reconsider your decision and follow the suggestions made above.
In American parlance this is a “win-win” situation where nobody loses and everybody
gains.
Sincerely yours,
Ernst Rodin MD
December 1, 2005
ALBERT WOHLSTETTER’S DISCIPLES
The purpose of these essays is
to elucidate the behind the scenes maneuverings which shape current political
events; or in other words, to present information that anticipates what are
likely to become the headlines of the future. The title of the current one was
prompted by a cryptic remark in a “Dear Judy” letter that was sent by I. Lewis
“Scooter” Libby to the New York Times reporter
Judith Miller who sat in jail for refusing to divulge the name of her source in
the Valerie Plame “outing.” The letter expressed surprise that she had not
taken him up on his earlier offer to waive his right to confidentiality and
ended with,
“You went into jail in the summer.
It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide
bombings, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens
will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them
[italics added]. Come back to work – and life. Until then, you will remain
in my thoughts and prayers.
With admiration, Scooter Libby.”
Judy Miller
took the advice and named Scooter as her source. He was indicted by Patrick
Fitzgerald’s grand jury and she thought that she would be welcomed with open
arms by her newspaper for having defended the freedom of the press. This hope
didn’t last long because it had become apparent that she had simply used the New York Times as a mouthpiece for the
administration in its justification for the Iraq
invasion. The Editor-in- Chief did not take kindly to this abuse of her
credentials and she was suspended from her job. The Times had been confronted with other shills in the recent past and
wanted to regain its image of respectability. Thus “Scooter’s” enigmatic words
were indeed prophetic and the connected roots are gradually being recognized.
This is why
the American public has to get to know Professor Wohlstetter and his little
band of devout followers. His biography reveals an illustrious career.
Wikipedia (free on line encyclopedia) states that he was:
“One of the world's leading nuclear
and national security strategists. His studies led to the
"second-strike" and "Fail-Safe" concepts for deterring
nuclear war. These and other methods reduced the probability of accidental war.
Wohlstetter was affiliated with institutions such as the European-American
Institute, the Hoover Institution, and PAN Heuristics Services. He received the
Medal of Freedom for his contributions toward national security. He earned
degrees from ColumbiaUniversity
and later taught at UCLA and UC Berkeley and then for many years at the University
of Chicago’s Political Science
Department. It was in this capacity that
he became the inspiration for a number of students who subsequently rose to
prominence in the Reagan and the current Bush administration [italics
added].”
In an obituary on January 16, 1997 his friend Jude
Wanniski wrote:
“Albert never had a serious
challenger at the top of the intellectual pyramid, right up until the end of
the Cold War. He remained unknown, except to the inner circles of power in our
country, because he saw no need to become a public man when his function was to
design the grand strategy that would bring military victory over the Soviet
Union without a nuclear shot having to be fired. . . . For all practical
purposes every editorial on America’s
geopolitical strategy that appeared in The
Wall Street Journal during the last 25 years was the result of Albert’s
genius. If Henry Kissinger was the leading leader of the ‘dove team’ in foreign
policy over much of this period, stressing diplomatic stratagems, Wohlstetter
was the undisputedleader of the ‘hawk
team,’ which stressed military moves of breathtaking creativity and
imagination. . . . . President Reagan’s ‘end game’ with Moscow in the Cold War,
replete with ‘Star Wars’ initiatives and the idea of targeting Soviet missile
silos with inexpensive ‘smart bombs’ that were chemical, not nuclear, were all
advanced as part of the bag of tricks Albert and Roberta [his surviving wife,
historian, and co-recipient of the Medal of Freedom] brought to the table.”
Wanniski listed as some of the
people who were most influenced by Wohlstetter not only Richard Perle, Paul
Wolfowitz, Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Robert Dole but also Margaret
Thatcher. Well, that was eight years ago. Today the senators and Maggie are in
retirement but among others of Wohlstetter’s admirers the unlikely name of
Ahmad Chalabi would have to be included.
I now intend to piece together,
from a large group of diverse Internet articles as well as the book Pretext for War by James Bamford, how a
coalition of devoted Jewish Zionists and a secular Arab Shiite managed to
recruit not only our government, but also the media for their purposes. This
“cabal,” as they “mockingly” called themselves, according to The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh
(May12, 2003) has led us into Iraq
and now intends to reshape the rest of the Middle East
in their image with “Wohlstetterian” methods.
When the Cold War ended and the
rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief the neocons found themselves not
only out of power but also bereft of a target to which they could apply their
belief system. But since the membership of that unofficial group is composed of
people who have strong emotional ties to the state of Israel
it was natural to attempt to direct American public opinion to the threat Arab
terrorists posed for that country. This was done not only with the help of
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which lobbied Congress for
favorable legislation (“Scoop” Jackson was their foremost benefactor), but also
either by becoming the dominant force in existing “think tanks” or forming new
ones. Numerous groups with a variety of names and acronyms began to sprout and
it would take several articles to discuss all of them. I shall, therefore,
limit myself only to some of the most influential. Among these are: The
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA). It should not come as a surprise that many of the
people involved in these two organizations are members of both because the
goals are currently the same. To put them succinctly: American and Israeli
interests are identical in regard to the Middle East and
the current regimes have to be replaced by democratic ones. This will not only
provide security for the state of Israel
but also unlimited access to the Middle East’s oil
supply for the U.S.
The driving force behind AEI was
Richard Perle and his role in the creation of the position paper for incoming
President Netanyahu in 1996 has already been discussed in The Neocons Leviathan
(April 1, 2003). The idea to completely reshape the Middle East was first put
forth as a strategy for incoming President Netanyahu in 1996 under the title “A
Clean Break: A new Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The document advocated as Israel’s
foreign policy: regime change in Iraq,
Iran and Syria;
a missile defense system, and to lobby for the move of the American embassy
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “Prime
Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in
language familiar to the Americans by tapping into the themes of American
administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel.”
Among the participants in this Study Group on "A New
Israeli Strategy Toward 2000” we find listed not only “Richard
Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader,” but also
“Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates; David Wurmser, Institute
for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies; Meyrav Wurmser, Johns
Hopkins University.”Mr.
Perle has become somewhat embattled over the years because of financial
improprieties but he remains the power behind the throne, Douglas Feith quit
his law practice with Mr. Zell and became deputy to Paul Wolfowitz in the
Pentagon, while David Wurmser, whose wife Meyrav is an Israeli citizen,
ended up as principal Middle East advisor in Vice President Cheney’s office.
Let us remember that this strategy
paper was written by American citizens to the Prime Minister of a foreign
country. For Perle and like-minded friends this was, however, only a trial run
and to implement their goals they had to ensure that these ideas not only
became Israel’s
policy but also of America’s.
For this purpose another think tank was created in the spring of 1997 which
called itself “The Project for the New American Century.” It is listed as “a
non-profit educational organization whose goal it is to promote American global
leadership.” The Chairman is William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and son of Irving Kristol, the original
Neoconservative. The goals were simple: America
is the only remaining superpower; it must increase rather than decrease its
military strength in order to ensure that this status will be preserved for
decades to come. Any perceived threat should be met in a “preemptive” manner by
overpowering military force, with
allies when available without them when not, and democracy needs to be spread
throughout the world. This “hawkish” view was not popular in the Clinton
administration of 1997 but became the “Bush doctrine’ in 2001.
Another influential group is the
“Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs” (JINSA). It was actually
established in the wake of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 when Kissinger fell from
grace with some members of the Jewish community because he brokered the
armistice deal between Israel
and Egypt which
prevented Sharon from marching to Cairo
and forced him to withdraw to the Israeli side of the Suez Canal.
The organization lists itself as “non-profit nonpartisan” and the goals are:
“1)To educate the American public about the importance of an
effective U.S. defense capability so that our
vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded; and
2) To inform the American defense and foreign
affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering
democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.”
It is noteworthy that JINSA’s
first executive director was Michael Ledeen, of whom more will be said later.
Some of the other former advisory board members were: Dick Cheney, John Bolton
(currently America’s ambassador to the UN), Richard
Perle and Douglas Feith.JINSA together
with AEI became the leading force for the Iraq invasion.On September 13,
2001
JINSA published a position paper under the title, “This Goes Beyond Bin Laden.” The key sentences are:
“A long
investigation to prove Osama Bin Laden’s guilt with prosecutorial certainty is
entirely unnecessary. He is guilty in word and deed. His history is the source
of his culpability. The same holds true for Saddam Hussein. Our actions in the
past certainly were not forceful enough and now we must seize the opportunity
to alter this pattern of passivity.
In response to the attack on September 11, 2001 JINSA calls on the
United States
to:
Halt all purchases of Iraqi oil
under the UN Oil for Food Program and to provide all necessary support to the
Iraqi National Congress, including direct
American military support [emphasis in the original], to effect a regime
change in Iraq . . .“
Phase one
of the Neocons program to reshape the Middle East, by
first eliminating Saddam Hussein, was now within grasp. Saddam had been a long
standing irritant and the 1991 Gulf War was regarded as a botched enterprise
because it had left him in power. The goal now was to remove Saddam by military
intervention and establish a proxy regime that is not only friendly to the U.S.
but also to Israel.
This is where Perle’s and Wolfowitz’s
long standing friend Ahmad Chalabi came in who had been introduced to them by
Albert Wohlstetter.
Dr. Chalabi has a long and rather
checkered career. He was born into a wealthy Iraqi Shiite family that had held
prominent posts in the government until the socialist Baath party took over.
From then on he has lived abroad mainly in London,
where he obtained UK
citizenship, and the U.S.
He studied mathematics at the University
of Chicago and MIT, received a PhD
in that field and became a professor of mathematics at the AmericanUniversity of Beirut.
He then moved to Jordan
where he established the Petra Bank in 1977. The bank collapsed in 1990,
Chalabi fled the country under mysterious circumstances and was sentenced in
absentia to 22 year in prison by a Jordanian court for embezzling vast sums of
money. Chalabi has always maintained that he was falsely accused and the plot
to discredit him was organized by Saddam. It is not known when his first
contact with the CIA was established but it may even have been when he was a
student at MIT or Chicago. I am mentioning this as a possibility because during
the Cold War the CIA was in the habit of contacting foreign students for
information about their home country and I had some chats with one of their
agents during my post-graduate training at the Mayo Clinic. I was never spy
material but I can’t blame them for trying to recruit me.
Chalabi, however, had an ax to
grind and while in exile in London
he founded in 1992 the Iraqi National Congress (INC) which would allow him to
topple Saddam. The money obviously came from the CIA and the goal was to repeat
the mujahideen scenario that had so effectively driven the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Chalabi returned in the middle 90’s to the Kurdish northern part of Iraq
where he allied himself with one of the two Kurdish separatist parties, with
the hope that members of the Iraqi army would defect and rally to his cause.
Not only did this fantasy not pan out, but the other Kurdish faction, who did
not like Chalabi and his supporters, invited Saddam’s tanks to come in. They
made short shrift of this enterprise and Chalabi had to flee the country a
second time. This ought to have told our policy planners something about
Chalabi’s effectiveness when actions rather than words are required.He again maintained that it was the CIA’s
fault for not having supported his efforts sufficiently. But the Clinton
administration was hardly interested in starting a war in the Middle
East, which would have been the inevitable outcome.
The CIA not only lost its
confidence in Chalabi because of his lack of military talents, but there was
again the problem that he couldn’t properly account for all the money they fed
into the INC. Nevertheless, whatever one may want to say against the man he is
not only a survivor, but also a highly determined individual who doesn’t take
no for an answer. When the CIA cut him loose, his friends at AEI did not desert
him and he became their poster boy for lobbying efforts in Congress. The crowning
success came with the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which Clinton
reluctantly signed because, as a result of the Lewinsky affair, he was in no
position to pick a fight with Congress. One hundred million dollars were
allocated to the INC and, although only some was actually distributed, it was
never quite clear to the State Department where the money actually went and
what good it did. It seems that Dr. Chalabi not only lacks military prowess but
also fiscal responsibility. The idea of a swift overthrow of Saddam by INC
forces, although vigorously supported by the AEI as well as AJNS, was
thoroughly discredited in a January/February 1999 article written by Daniel
Byman, Kenneth Pollack and Gideon Rose for the authoritative magazine Foreign Affairs under the title: “The
Rollback Fantasy.”
But when the Bush administration took over in January of 2001 and
members of the “cabal” had moved into the seats of power Chalabi’s INC was
again in the pink. The money now flowed freely for an intelligence gathering
program through his friends in the Pentagon to the tune of a monthly stipend of
$335,000. It is common knowledge today that most of this “intelligence
information” was bogus but it served the purposes of the AEI as well as AJNS,
and Chalabi defended it after the invasion with the simple statement that:
Americans are in Baghdad now.
A key point in gaining the support of Congress and the public for the Iraq invasion was Saddam’s purported possession
of WMDs and his work on reconstituting a nuclear program. This information, as
we now know came from a small group of people in the Pentagon which Douglas
Feith had created under the name of “Office of Special Plans.” Its task was to
sift from existing CIA, State Department and the Defense department’s
intelligence gathering agencies, those data that fit their purposes and discard
qualifiers which the official agencies had inserted in their reports. In
addition Chalabi’s INC presented data from defectors much of it was
unsubstantiated and had been discredited by the official spy agencies. But that
was not all.It has also been reported
that Prime Minister Sharon had set up a similar group under his own auspices in
Israel which could bypass the Mossad, work
directly with the Feith group, and become a straight “pipeline” via Wurmser and
Libby to the Vice President.
As mentioned the September 11, 2001 tragedy was literally a gift from heaven
for the people who had a longstanding interest in reshaping the Middle East and they wasted no time to use this human
tragedy for their purposes. The American people had to be scared with visions
of a mushroom cloud over American cities that would be created by Saddam unless
he was immediately removed from power. This is where “The Niger Forgery” (August
1, 2003, on this
site) played such a crucial role and why the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury
investigation is so important. Defenders of the administration belittle the
prosecutor’s efforts because after nearly two years he could indict only Libby
and not even for the crime of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent but
“only” for perjury and obstruction of justice.As Mortimer Zuckerman Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News and World Report
wrote under the headline: Foul-ups – Not Felonies: “To impugn the integrity of
our leading officials and poison the atmosphere in which this country is
fighting a war is irresponsible politics, and it ought to be stopped.”
This is not so, unless the American people are told the full truth by
its leadership, there can be no trust and without trust the President cannot
effectively represent us at home or abroad. The names of the persons in the
White House who leaked secret information are actually not as important as how
these forgeries were perpetrated and then became the casus belli. For
that answer we have to go to Dr. Michael Ledeen (currently Karl Rove’s foreign
policy advisor and first CEO of JINSA) which surprisingly leads us back to the
Regan administration’s ill fated Iran-Contra affair.
The Jewish Virtual Library informs us that:
“Israel’s involvement was stimulated by separate overtures in 1985 from
Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar and National Security Council (NSC)
consultant Michael Ledeen, the latter working for National Security Adviser
Robert McFarlane. When Ledeen asked Prime Minister Shimon Peres for assistance,
the Israel leader agreed to sell weapons to Iran at America’s behest, providing the sale had high-level
U.S. approval.”
Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad
officer, provided a more detailed view of that affair in his book By Way of Deception. Radical Muslims
were kidnapping Westerners in Beirut,
including the American CIA station Chief, William Buckley, and the Reagan
administration wanted them freed. Initially the Mossad was contacted and
although Prime Minister Peres promised full cooperation, Nahum Admony, the
Mossad director, was not particularly eager to do so. Peres then decided to use
his personal counter-terrorist advisor, Amiram Nir, as go between. Nir
contacted Oliver North, brought him together with
Manucher Ghorbanifar and the deal was on. We sold missiles to Iran,
some hostages were released and money was diverted to fund the anti-Sandinista
Contras. Israel
also turned a profit by “secretly selling about $500 million worth of arms to Iran’s
Ayatollah Khomeini.” Further details are in the mentioned “Niger Forgery”
article.
This happened in 1986 and the
sequel took place in 2001. The Bush administration had already decided to use
the 9-11 tragedy to enact the program of the AEI and JINSA to reshape the
Middle East and a viable excuse was needed. Michael
Ledeen, who holds a doctorate in History and Philosophy from the University
of Wisconsin, was the perfect
person to lend a helping hand. He was the Rome
correspondent for the NewRepublic
from 1975-1977, had developed excellent contacts there, knew all the people in
the Italian intelligence community, and had stayed in touch with them. This is
the point where the forged Niger
documents come in. During the New Year’s holiday of 2001 a break-in had
occurred at the Niger
embassy in Rome. The office was
messed up but nothing was stolen except some letterheads and official seals.
The Italians investigated but no conclusions were reached. In December of that
year, Ledeen organized a meeting in Rome which was attended by him, Larry
Franklin (then working under Douglas Feith in the Pentagon and currently
indicted for spying for Israel), Harold Rhode (works for Feith’s Office of
Special Plans and as liaison to Chalabi), Manucher Ghorbanifar (the Iranian
arms dealer), as well as from the Italian side Nicolo Pollari (head of the
Italian CIA equivalent SISMI) and Antonio Martino (Italy’s Minister of Defense,
but apparently unrelated to Rocco Martino who will figure later). What these
people discussed is not known at this time but that Iraq,
as well as possibly Iran,
was on the agenda does not require a leap of faith.
But Ledeen had other contacts in Italy
as well, and two of these were Francesco Pazienza, an Italian felon and forger
who had been kicked out of SISMI, and Rocco Martino who had contacts with
French intelligence sources and was engaged in peddling the forgery to the
highest bidder. The Italians are still investigating this whole affair as well
as other CIA operations that were illegal under Italian law. The current
official explanation by the FBI is that Rocco Martino had acted independently,
solely for financial gain and no further investigation is needed. Who did the
actual forging is still unknown, and Martino’s bogus information peddling is
not likely to be the whole truth.
While our media intermittently
report on the new Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury, there is a parallel
investigation going on of which the American public is hardly informed. For the
past several years United States Attorney Paul McNulty has conducted a grand
jury investigation into the unauthorized release of secret documents from the
Pentagon to Israel.
On August 4, 2005 Larry
Franklin (member of the Ledeen Rome meeting) was indicted for that offense and
in November two key members of AIPAC,
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were
added. In other words: Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans for which Franklin worked is now potentially exposed as a spy
ring for the State of Israel. Although the Fitzgerald and McNulty
investigations proceed separately they do involve the same “cluster of aspens,”
to use Libby’s words and this ought to be headline news. The fact that it is
not tells us something about how our media still toe the government line. As of
now we don’t know how far the two prosecutors will be allowed to proceed. They
do report, after all, to the Justice Department and Alberto Gonzales, their
boss, is hardly a disinterested bystander. He worked for the Bush White House
and is responsible for providing the legal cover that allowed the torture of
captives (Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) in the War on Terrorism.
An honest investigation into the past is, however, not an
academic exercise but essential because the same people who pushed this country
into the Iraq
war are now fomenting another one with Iran
and Syria. In the first flush of “Mission Accomplished”
JINSA published an address by Michael Ledeen on May 6, 2003 entitled: “Time to Focus on Iran – the Mother of Modern Terrorism.” His
concluding remark was: “the time for diplomacy is at the end [sic]; it is time
for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon.”
Ledeen is serious about this and in order to understand the man one
needs to read his book: The War against the Terror Masters. Why it happened.
Where we are now. How we’ll win. The book was
originally published in 2002, prior to the Iraq invasion and the paperback edition was
updated in 2003. According to Ledeen the way to success has been mapped out by
Machiavelli 500 years ago and his methods need to be adopted by the U.S. He emphasizes 5 points of the Machiavelli
doctrine: “1) Man is more inclined to do evil than good. 2) The only important
thing is winning. 3) If we have to do unpleasant things, it is best to do them
all at once. 4) It is better to be feared than loved. 5) Luck can wreck the
finest plans.” These ideas were appropriate to suggest to the Borgias of Florence as well as folks like Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and most recently Saddam; but is this what the
American people want from their government? Let me emphasize that these are
only some of the views held by the person who advises Karl Rove. For the full
flavor one needs to read the book and it is obvious
that whatever he wrote there was followed to the letter via Rove by the
President.
Since Americans are currently not inclined to invade Syria and/or Iran unrest has to be fomented in theses
countries so that the people will overthrow their rulers by themselves with the
CIA’s help. Saudi Arabia is also on Ledeen’s list because it
finances Madrassas which recruit terrorists. For the “cabal” the key to success
in Iraq resides still in Chalabi and the State
Department as well as General Garner (our first Iraqi administrator) are criticized even by the Vice President for not having
installed him as America’s Vice-Roy as soon as our troops entered Baghdad. That Chalabi’s “Free Iraqi Forces” happily
participated in the looting that went on in those days, we are not told. In
2004 his fortunes waned again. He was accused of spying for the Iranians, his
generous stipend was cut off and an FBI investigation against him is under way.
This did not deter him from becoming a Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq earlier this year and to visit the U.S. in November. His AEI and JINSA sponsors are
still working full steam and he was enthusiastically received at a speech
before the AEI as its invited guest at the most appropriate venue: the WohlstetterConferenceCenter. The transcript of that speech is available
on the Internet and it is obvious why he is the darling of the neocons and the
Vice President. He says all the right things including privatization of Iraq’s oil industry. This is of course music to
Mr. Cheney’s and his friends’ ears because it is obvious that it won’t be the
Europeans or Russians who will get the contracts. The same applies, of course,
to the rest of rebuilding Iraq’s battered infrastructure. Carpetbaggers,
similar to what went on here after the South had lost its war of independence,
are already flooding the country
Chalabi’s trip to the U.S. was obviously a fund-raiser for his
campaign to become Prime Minister of Iraq, which is in direct conflict with his
repeated assertions that he regards his job as finished when Saddam is
overthrown. The fly in the ointment is Machiavelli’s point 5. Luck has a
tendency to run out. Although Chalabi is a superb snake oil salesman he will
not be able to govern a truly democratic Iraq even if he were to be elected later in the
month. His past record speaks against him. There are three likely scenarios:
assassination, flight if it were to become imminent, or ruling the country á la
Saddam. Democracy does not seem to be in the cards for the long suffering
Iraqis in the near future.
It is obvious that in spite of the official party line which proclaims
as our only goal the liberation of the oppressed from tyranny, there are more
mundane motives. The goal apparently is twofold 1) to create client states in
the Persian Gulf area, 2) to export our brand of unbridled
capitalism. While Pizza Huts, Starbucks and Radio Shacks are innocuous, the
sales of arms and exploitation of local resources for our benefit is not.
Americans don’t see themselves in this light but the rest of the world does.
The idea, as currently practiced in the U.S., that the value of human beings is to be
determined by the rise and fall of stock market shares, rather than the quality
of work they produce, should not be the world-wide future of humanity. Even in
our country we ought to find a median between the excesses of capitalism, which
operate exclusively on greed, and those of socialism which force human beings
into an undifferentiated mass that stifles freedom of thought and ingenuity.
The American people are finally beginning to realize that they have
been misled in the justification for the Iraq war, but they do not yet know the full
extent of the conspiracy of this small group of Wohlstetter’s disciples that
has been running the foreign policy of our country as an extension of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. There are, however, some
hopeful signs. The State Department under Condi Rice is re-assuming the role
that was wrested from it by the Pentagon in previous years. She is to be
congratulated for the breakthrough in regard to the opening of the Gaza border which is a first step in the right
direction. Since Israel will have elections next March it is unlikely that anything else can
happen in regard to the West Bank
in the meantime. At home even Congress seems now to be willing to re-assert its
role as a separate branch of government. In view of the Fitzgerald and McNulty
grand jury deliberations it should start its own truly bipartisan investigation
of the “Office of Special Projects” and the associated spy scandal. With next
year’s mid-term elections in the offing, Republicans would be well advised to
fully cooperate with their Democrat colleagues in this endeavor before they
also completely lose the trust of the voters. In the meantime our main hope
will have to be that Fitzpatrick and McNulty will be allowed to bring into the
open this den of deceit that has been allowed to take over our government.
The Wohlstetter disciples present a
classic example of how behavior patterns that were once adaptive become
maladaptive when circumstances change. The Soviet Union
is gone and a military threat from a major world power, for which a military
response might be required, is currently not present. To fight the so-called
War on Terror with Wohlstetter‘s ideas is totally inappropriate. Circumstances
change, and unless we adapt our responses so that they conform to the new
realities we are inviting disaster.
In last year’s December installment
I mentioned that the President’s re-election joy is likely to be short lived
because there are too many failed policies and too many scandals which cannot
be hushed up forever. In September of this year I suggested a speech for him on
how to bolster his tattered reputation by announcing, among other aspects, a
gradual phased troop withdrawal from Iraq
after the mid-December election. He did not do so but it will now be forced
upon him by Congress where mid-term elections will dictate his agenda.
Unfortunately our President’s character has so far not allowed him to see the
world realistically and although he now admits that “mistakes haven been made,”
he still claims that “I will settle for nothing less than complete victory.” But
he has not yet defined what he regards as “complete victory” and the methods to
achieve it. Unless and until he does so he will preach to the choir and
continue to lose the trust of the rest of the country.
January 1, 2006
WHEN PRESIDENTS LIE
Among the
plethora of books which Christmas tends to bring, there were two which
attracted immediate attention. The one by Eric Alterman carried the title of
this essay and its subtitle is “A History of official deceptions and its
consequences.” In view of the Bush administration’s mendacious conduct I read it
immediately. Another one of equal interest “Soviet Policy in Austria
1945-1955 Documents from Russian Archives” was published by the AustrianAcademy of Sciences. This was a
joint effort of Austrian and Russian historians and carries the original
documents in the Russian language on the even pages and the German translation
on the odd ones. Although I have not yet had the time to study the more than a
thousand pages of this tome a quick perusal of key items made it clear that
some of the contents as to the origin of the Cold War support Mr. Alterman’s
views as expressed in his book.
Alterman
limits his investigations to four Presidencies: Roosevelt-Truman and the Yalta
conference; Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Johnson and the Gulf
of Tonkin Incidents; Reagan and the
Iran-contra Scandal. “George W. Bush and the Post-Truth Presidency” receives
only 20 pages because it is still on-going and simply forms the Conclusion of
the book. The essential thesis is that when Presidents do not tell the truth to
the country they do so for very personal motives which basically boil down to a
fear of losing political support and an attempt to appear better than the facts
warrant.
It is now
generally agreed that the Yalta
conference in February of 1945 was a disaster for Europe
because Roosevelt had handed over major portions of Central
and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkans apart from Greece,
to the tender mercies of Uncle Joe. While we in Europe,
who knew the facts on the ground, were appalled at that cave in by the Western
powers the American Press had vigorously applauded FDR for his diplomatic
skills. He enjoyed a brief spurt of Wilsonian type
glory for having brought peace and democracy to the world but it was cut short
by his death a few months thereafter. The lie, as Alterman saw it, was that he
did not tell Congress and the American people all the concessions he had to
make to Stalin to achieve this piece of paper and the creation of the United
Nations. FDR realized these shortcomings but as he is reported to have said, “it was the best I could do.” This was true in a way because
the major concessions had already been made at the Teheran conference in 1943
and Roosevelt could not go back on his word to Stalin.
Although he was in better health at the end of 1943 than at Yalta,
when he was obviously ill, he had been motivated by the fear that Stalin would
make once again a deal with Hitler. If Stalin had dropped out of the war the
U.S and Britain
could not have invaded Europe and a compromise peace
would have to have been achieved. This was also the reason for the demand of
“unconditional surrender” which prolonged the war and caused so much misery. But
it was the Realpolitik of the time and the idea was that “we’ll fix it later.”
Truman had
been in the exact opposite situation from Dick Cheney. While the latter is
apparently the de facto President who makes policy which George W ratifies,
Truman was kept entirely out of the loop. When the enormity of the consequences
in form of population dislocations where millions of people lost their homes
dawned on him in Potsdam there was
nothing he could do about it. As Alterman maintains it was not Stalin who went
back on his word, he didn’t need to, but the U.S.
when it became obvious what was happening in Europe
after Potsdam. We knew at the time
that Hitler and Stalin were soul mates and driving out the devil with Beelzebub
doesn’t solve any problems, but the American media never understood either one
of them. This fundamental lack of knowledge coupled with America’s conviction
of its moral mission in the world and the consequent belief in the
invincibility of its rectitude led in a direct line from WWII to the Cold War,
the missile crisis, Vietnam, Iran-Contra and now Iraq.
For the American people
communism was monolithic, authoritarian, bent on world revolution and therefore
a direct threat that had to be crushed. What Americans, by and large, were not
told was that there were actually two competing ideas in the Soviet
Union about how to achieve the triumph of socialism over capitalism. This was the basis for the struggle between
Trotsky and Stalin, which was in a way pre-ordained by their different
backgrounds. Lev DavidovichBronstein
who was born in 1879, came from a middle class Jewish family, was arrested for
revolutionary activity, sent to Siberia, escaped and
fled to England
with a forged passport under the name of Trotsky. The name is meaningful in the
German language (just as stein is) and translates into “defiance.” Joseph VissarionovichDzugashvili was also
born in 1879 as the son of a poor shoemaker. His devoted mother wanted him to
become a priest and he received his education at a seminary in Tbilisi
from which he was expelled later for his revolutionary activities. He fell
under the spell of the nine year older Vladimir IlyichUlyanov, better known as Lenin, which led him to
adopt the name Stalin – steel. One may wonder about my penchant for bringing up
the birth names of these politicians but I am firmly convinced of the truth of
the German dictum: Man musz das Kind beimrichtigenNamennennen; which means that the child should be called by
its proper name. This is not an academic exercise because the etymology of names,
as well as words in general, can provide insights into meanings that might
otherwise remain obscure.
The fight
between Stalin and Trotsky was inevitable not only because each one wanted
power but Jews tend to have a global world outlook while Russian orthodox
seminarians tend to be more parochial. Thus, after Lenin’s death, when the
struggle for succession became paramount, Trotsky was convinced that the
triumph of socialism could only be achieved by world revolution while the
pragmatic Stalin insisted on “socialism in our country first.” It was
internationalism against nationalism. This fundamental difference led to
Stalin’s campaign against “rootless internationalists” which was the cover word
for “Jews,” and which was interpreted in the U.S.
as anti-Semitism. Jews in the U.S.
and Europe held an international world view and when it
came to a choice between socialist systems they sided with Trotsky. His brand
of communism became the only one that was espoused until the Hitler invasion
forced them to come to terms with Stalin for the sake of the endangered party.
This analysis makes the Hitler-Stalin pact perfectly understandable because
both were nationalists as well as socialists at heart and thereby found common
ground against international capitalism. FDR may or may not have been aware of
this commonality but his fear of Stalin jumping ship, who was not very happy
that his Russians were bleeding while the Americans dallied with opening a
second front in France
where it counted, was very real.
After this
digression, we can return to 1945 and the start of the Cold War. Americans did
not understand Stalin’s nationalism and saw his brutal dictatorship in the
countries conquered by the Red Army as a betrayal of democratic principles which
he had ostensibly espoused. That the word had a different meaning for Stalin
than for Americans escaped them. Stalin saw himself, just as Hitler did, as the
embodiment of the will of his people and Russia
had to be restored to its Czarist greatness. He was, therefore, engaged in
building a cordon sanitaire around
his country and in essence tried to restore the Russian sphere of influence, as
much as possible, to the August 1914 borders in Europe
and in Asia regaining the territories which had been lost
to the Japanese in the 1904-1905 war. He had no other interests in Europe
or Asia and certainly, just as Hitler, none in America.
But Americans did not see Stalin’s goals, they saw Trotsky’s and this
fundamental misunderstanding, which created fear, made a meaningful dialogue
impossible. While Stalin was not averse to providing other communist parties
around the world with financial assistance he had his hands full with
rebuilding the Soviet Union which had been thoroughly
devastated by the war. America
on the other hand had emerged not only virtually unscathed but triumphant and
this spirit of “the greatest generation” which had liberated the world from
evil and will continue to do so into the distant future has become enshrined as
official history and policy.
As Alterman
points out FDRs unwillingness to admit to the country that it was really the
Russians who had borne the major burden to assure the victory over Hitler,
created an unwarranted sense of superiority here. Furthermore, abominable as
the Soviet political system was it did not directly affect the well being of
Americans unless we made it so. The mistaken equation of communism with world
revolution was the cause of the Cold War and its hot offspring the Vietnam War.
Alterman points out that if Kennedy had admitted that the missile crisis was
not solved, as our media proudly proclaimed, because “Khrushchev blinked,” but
that it was in fact a “tit for tat” much evil, including possibly the Vietnam
War, could have been avoided. Kennedy had not stared Khrushchev down but a deal
was reached where we agreed to pull our missiles out of Italy
and Turkey in
exchange for the Soviets taking theirs out of Cuba
in addition to our guarantee that we would not invade the island. This fear had
been the purpose of sending the missiles in the first place. Moscow
believed that Castro was on shaky grounds and although the Bay of
Pigs landing had misfired, another invasion appeared imminent. On
the other hand this was not just a Kremlin fantasy, but a plan under active
consideration by members of the Kennedy administration.
This attitude of having stood up
successfully to the mighty Soviet Union was part of the
reason why Lyndon Johnson allowed himself to be sucked into the Vietnam
quagmire. As Alterman explains, Johnson, having suddenly had Kennedy’s mantle
thrust upon him, was surrounded by Kennedy’s “brain trust” whom he tried to
please by continuing the Kennedy policy in Southeast Asia.
He remembered the outcry that had followed when China fell to Mao, the McCarthy
hearings, the constant drumbeat of having to be tough on communism because “that’s
the only language they understand” and the hubris about having gotten
Khrushchev to knuckle under. Consequently he was not about to give his enemies on
the Republican side of the isle, and even those in his own party, any
ammunition. He would have his Great Society and a small enough war in Asia
that could easily be managed. He would not lose Southeast Asia
to the communists, as China
was lost, because America
wins wars and doesn’t lose any.
Just as Truman did not know that
Stalin was a nationalist at heart, Johnson didn’t know that Ho Chi Minh was a
Vietnamese first and a communist second. Washington
had it backwards and this led to tragedy. There was no South
Vietnam in the national conscience, just as
there were no East or West Germans and there still is basically only one Korea.
These divisions are lines drawn at a table by politicians. They assign people
to different political overlords who are protected by Moscow,
Beijing or Washington
but that does not erase the people’s sense of past common history and of
belonging together.
The Saigon government
never enjoyed popular support and since John Foster Dulles knew that in a free
election Ho Chi Minh would have gotten the votes, the election as agreed to in Geneva
in 1954, was not allowed to take place. This made the second Indochina war as
it is officially called (the first one had ended with the victory over the
French) inevitable. By 1964 it had become apparent that the generals who had
usurped power in the South could not effectively govern and they had to be
propped up with increasingly more military and financial aid. This much is
widely known but the role the CIA played in the Gulf
of Tonkin incident is not. Yet it
is this incident that launched the Joint Resolution by Congress to give President
Johnson essentially carte blanche to
pursue a full scale war. When one realizes that President Bush’s Iraq
authorization followed the Johnson model of the Tonkin
resolution, which was passed in the Senate with only two nays, it needs to be
re-examined. It is full of righteous indignation and because of its relevance
for today it is reprinted below for a new generation of Americans from The
Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 3, pp. 722
Text of Joint Resolution, August
7, Department of State Bulletin, 24
August 1964, p. 268:
"To promote the maintenance of international peace
and security in Southeast Asia.
"Whereas naval units of the communist regime in Vietnam, in violation
of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international
law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels
lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious
threat to international peace; and
"Whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign
of aggression that the communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging
against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective
defense of their freedom; and
"Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of Southeast Asia
to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political
ambitions in that area, but desires only that these peoples should be left in
peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it
"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and
supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all
necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United
States and to prevent further aggression.
"Sec. 2. The United
States regards as vital to its national
interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security
in Southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of
the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with
its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United
States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all
necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or
protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting
assistance in defense of its freedom.
"Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the
President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably
assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or
otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of
the Congress."
* * *
This is an
amazing document. To promote the peace you have to make war and as the common
saying went in those days: to save the village you have to burn it. The first
justification in the “Whereas” was based on false information. There had indeed
been a confrontation in the Gulf of Tonkin
during the morning of August 2, 1964
between the U.S.
destroyer Maddox and 3 Vietnamese PT boats, but who fired first has never been
established. The USS. Maddox was not just on a
peaceful cruise in the Gulf but was on a spy mission to survey the North
Vietnamese coast. It zig-zagged throughout the night of
August 1- August 2 under orders to stay
at least 8 miles from shore and 4 miles from the offshore islands. When the PT
boats appeared from behind the island of Hon Me, which was under North
Vietnamese sovereignty (seven miles offshore), the Maddox turned to the open
sea. When the PT boats kept up the pursuit, Captain Herrick radioed the Ticonderoga
which sent up four jets. They sank one of the PT boats and disabled the other
two which limped home. Only one round of machine gun fire had hit the Maddox
and nobody was injured. The entire
affair was over in twenty minutes. The so called second attack never did take
place and resulted from a nervous sailor who mistook engine noises for incoming
torpedoes. That was the evidence on which the joint resolution was based. Now
ask yourself: What would the U.S. Coast Guard have done if a Russian destroyer
began zig-zagging 8 miles off the New
Jersey coast in 1964?
It gets worse. Neither Congress nor
the media were told that two days prior to the first incident South Vietnamese
commandoes under American direction had landed on that island in an attempt to
destroy its radar installation. They were repulsed and it is hardly surprising that
the North Vietnamese were on their guard thereafter to prevent a recurrence.
Thus the first “whereas” was clearly false. For the second there was likewise
no appreciable evidence because the major infiltration from the North into the South
began only after the American bombing campaign which was the answer to the
Maddox incident. The third “whereas” which stated that we
only desire to have the people in the area work out their destinies in their
own way, ignores the fact that we prevented free elections ten years earlier.
The statement that we have no “political ambitions in that area” was equally
untrue because we were busy propping up a regime that would do our bidding
rather than that of Moscow or Beijing.
Thus the Vietnam War was based on a fraud and it set a precedent. The President
could get the potential power of going to war from Congress without an official
declaration of War, and in absence of consultation with the United Nations,
whose Charter forbids unilateral war making by nations. There is a principle at
stake here: as long as we are a member state of the UN we have to abide by its
rules. If we don’t like the rules then we can leave the UN, just as Hitler left
the League of Nations, but under those circumstances any
hope for future peace in the world is lost.
It has been argued that Lyndon
Johnson who rushed this resolution through Congress within a few days did
actually not want to widen the war but merely intimidate Ho and his comrades by
demonstrating American might and will. It backfired because Asians have
infinitely more patience than Americans. They were willing to fight on their own
soil against Americans as long as it took just as they had been willing to
fight the French a few years earlier. That was the real reason why we lost this
war and why we will not be able to win militarily in Iraq.
The way the Vietnam
disaster was created and how it played out should have been a lesson for our
politicians but they seem to be incapable of learning because George W Bush
used the same technique to stampede Congress into the Iraq Resolution 38 years
later. In 1964 Congress acquiesced because its members believed that we had
indeed been attacked and in 2002 they voted to give the President latitude so
that his voice might be more authoritative when he addressed the United Nations
and demand action from that forum. It is not clear whether they really wanted a
ground war in the desert, just as their predecessors didn’t want a ground war
in the jungle. What they may have wanted in both instances was “war on the
cheap.” Namely bombing the Vietnamese or the Iraqis, as “Bush 41” once so
eloquently put it, “back into the stone age.” That this is not the way to
spread democracy and win the hearts and minds of the oppressed has not yet
fully registered.
Congress and the American people
have again been deceived. The Iraq
invasion has not panned out the way it had been sold to Congress and the public
and the major unresolved question remains: what do we do now? Last month’s
election is played up as the latest indication that the situation is now
finally getting under control. But there is also a precedent in a New York
Times article of September 4, 1967
“United
States officials were surprised and
heartened today at the size of the turnout in South
Vietnam’s presidential election despite a
Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon,
83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday.
Many risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has
long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the
growth of constitutional processes in South
Vietnam.”
One is tempted to paraphrase our
current President’s mangled syntax: Is our politicians learning? Obviously not. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was worried about the
November election where he had to appear as a decisive but peace-loving leader
against the belligerent Barry Goldwater. In 2002 George W. Bush was worried
about midterm elections and how to consolidate Republican gains in Congress.
This year elections are coming around again and they are likely to hinge on Iraq.
These domestic events drive policies regardless of what the facts are and what
the public is being told. Although the President keeps assuring us, in repeated
speeches during the past couple of months, that there is no time table for
troop withdrawals from Iraq, it is obvious that it is highly unlikely that
there will still be more than 150,000 of our troops in Iraq on Election Day in
November, regardless of what happens in Baghdad and the rest of that
unfortunate country.
We have read already in the local
paper a headline “Signs point to major pullout. In Iraq,
Rumsfeld talks up hand-over of military mission.” The idea of “war on the
cheap” namely getting most of our boots out and returning to the air war to
bomb the insurgents into submission, is again being floated (Up in the Air by
Seymour Hersh. The New Yorker, December 5, 2005).This disregards the fact that all the bombing
in Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia,
which exceeded the tonnage dropped during WWII, could not prevent the victory
of the communists
The Bush administration finds
itself in the situation of Churchill in 1921 when he took over as Colonial
Secretary. Rebellions had broken out in Mesopotamia, Kurdistan,
Palestine and Transjordan.
Arabs wanted “Arabia for the Arabs,” then and they want
it now. The British occupation of the Middle Eastern countries after WWI was
bankrupting the Empire and cost cutting was the top priority. The way to achieve
this, as Churchill saw it, was to govern Mesopotamia
from the air and with some armored cars. Fromkin in “A Peace to End all Peace”
quoted from Gilbert (Churchill: The
Stricken World): “A few well protected air bases (he wrote at the time)
would enable the Royal Air Force ‘to operate in every part of the protectorate
and to enforce control, now here, now there, without the need of maintaining
long lines of communications eating up troops and money.’” Churchill succeeded
in cutting costs by 75 percent per annum but he didn’t bring peace and
prosperity to the region. When he saw that success was elusive he wanted to
unburden the problem onto the Americans but they were smart enough in those
days to resist the lure. In 1922 Churchill lost his seat in the Cabinet and in
the Commons. His career seemed finished until Hitler helped him to a
renaissance and ultimate glory.
Churchill couldn’t solve the Middle
East problem in 1922 and there is little likelihood that George W,
and whoever his successor is going to be, will fare better. To create a nation in
Iraq out of
tribes which hate not only each other but especially foreigners will take
considerably longer than a few years and Americans are simply not cut out for a
task like that. In addition the idea that there can be peace in the Middle East
by regime changes in Damascus, Teheran and other places, while Israel continues
not only the Palestinian occupation but also expands its illegal settlements by
expropriating Arab lands is so fantastic that one wonders why it is entertained
at all.
The hypocrisy and mendaciousness of
our politicians is perhaps best exemplified by our relations with Israel.
Ostensibly we invaded Iraq
because Saddam not only had WMDs but because he had defied numerous UN
Resolutions. There were no WMDs in Iraq
as we now know, but there are numerous ones in Israel
and that country has also continuously defied, with American help, UN Security
Council Resolutions. If Israel
does not like the UN it could withdraw from that body and if Israel
were to be seriously concerned about creating peace in the Middle
East it could offer to dismantle its nuclear arsenal in exchange
for an iron-clad guarantee that the Muslim countries would do likewise. Under
those circumstances we would “give peace a chance,” but that is a forlorn hope
and the lying will continue.
The question now is how long will the
American people condone the lies we are subjected to on a daily basis and where
does this leave us for the upcoming year? At each New Year one is supposed to be
optimistic, but 2006 is bound to be a year of more turmoil. It’ll be time to
shorten sails and batten down the hatches for all of us. The pigeons may be
coming home to roost in the White House when the numerous scandals that have
been mentioned in the December installment will become grist for the mill of the
major news media. But there is an additional one that has so far been swept
under the rug. Throughout his Presidency George W Bush has acted as if he had
been inaugurated on September 12, 2001
instead of January 20. His current insistence on his right to use any and all
means to protect us from terrorists rings hollow. Where was he in August of
2001 when the catastrophe was brewing? We know the answer; he was vacationing
in Crawford and had ignored the Security Brief of August 6. Not only has he
never admitted to his potential co-responsibility for the 9/11 catastrophe but
he has used it, and continues to use it, for political gain. It now appears
that even this landmark of history requires re-examination.
I am not a fancier of conspiracy
theories but I know enough about human nature to realize when I am being lied
to. The Internet is full of sites on 9/11, many of them scurrilous, but there
are also serious ones that need to be taken into account. While it is agreed
that the North and the SouthTower
were hit by two separate planes their steel construction should have withstood
the damage. It is argued that the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission is wrong
because for steel to melt higher temperatures are required than burning jet
fuel can provide. While the Towers were damaged, they should not have collapsed
at the time and in the manner they did. In addition Building 7, which was not
hit by a plane, also imploded into dust and ashes. It is well known that
President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission for more than a year
but eventually the victim’s families forced the issue. The supposedly
bipartisan and non-political Commission was, however, seriously flawed. Its
Executive Director Philip D. Zelikow was a friend of administration officials and
had co-authored with Condi Rice a book in 1997 on the Reunification of Germany.
He was a member of the President’s transition team, and in 2005 he became a
member of the State Department as Senior Advisor to Condoleeza Rice. These
facts have raised doubts about his impartiality towards the administration.
I am not a physicist, nor an
architect who can verify the claims about the conditions required to melt
steel; but the video, which can be accessed below, is sufficiently convincing
to warrant the conclusion that the events of September 11, 2001 need to be re-investigated.
If this were done, by international experts, in a truly scientific and unbiased
manner the country and the world may well be in for a considerable surprise.
The whole world was affected by our response to 9/11 and, therefore, the whole
world has a stake in the clarification of what really happened on that fateful
day.
February 1, 2006
OUR PRESIDENT’S WORLD
All of us live in two worlds but
not all of us are aware of it. The outer world sees our façade and judges us by
our demeanor and actions, the inner world which shapes the outer is hidden and,
apart from dreams, most of the time even from ourselves. This is why we really
never fully know another person and why unpleasant surprises can occur even in
longstanding relationships. This is
especially true when we have never met an individual who has a profound impact
on our lives by virtue of his station in life as is the case for our President.
Commentators have frequently mentioned that he lives “in a bubble” or an “echo
chamber” where only those opinions penetrate that are in conformity with his
preconceived ideas regardless of the reality as seen by the rest of the world. His
supporters see this as a definite plus because all great Presidents have been
visionaries who see beyond the limited horizon of ordinary people and it is
their duty to steadfastly lead their flock in the desired direction. Other
individuals with greater life experience know that visionaries are not
necessarily right and the harm they can inflict on their way to their goal can
be immeasurable.
It behooves us, therefore, to attempt
a look behind the smiling, and occasionally smirking, façade Mr. Bush presents
us with. I have often noted this inappropriate smile, bordering on a smirk,
during his public speeches and again yesterday in his State of the Union
Address to Congress. Inasmuch as we have no direct access to our President we
can only judge by his body language on TV, especially in unguarded moments, and
how well his words match his deeds. These are limitations that even the authors of
most books have to contend with and their opinions are also molded by their own
inner worlds. I am referring especially to one by Justin Frank M.D who
presented us in: Bush on the Couch a
psychoanalytic interpretation of the President’s conduct.
Although I am neither a disciple of
Freud nor of Melanie Klein, who served as Dr. Frank’s mentor, there are some
aspects in that book about our President which are not widely known. Barbara
Bush, the President’s mother, appears to have been a dominant and emotionally
distant mother who ruled by fear, instead of the benign grandmotherly image
that came across our TV screens. Since father Bush was frequently away for long
periods this relationship was also troubled and Dr. Frank wrote an entire
chapter on “Oedipus Wrecks.” Dr. Frank believes that this family constellation,
which was further complicated by the loss of a sister at an early
impressionable age, prevented the development of a mature personality
structure. The young George, who was expected to grow up in his father’s image,
developed various coping mechanisms. These included: becoming the jokester in
the family, excessive use of alcohol, as well as a sadistic streak. The latter
is documented by some examples which need not be repeated here because they are
based on hearsay.Dr. Frank believes
that this latent sadism is directly linked to Bush’s penchant for war. While
this may or may not be the case, one incident as reported by Mr. Bush himself
struck me because his action was precisely the opposite of mine when confronted
with a teenage party in our house that had gotten out of hand. Frank quotes
from Bush’s autobiography: “‘I may have been a candidate for Governor, but I
didn’t have much status at my house. I will never forget one night in 1994.
After a long day on the campaign trail, I went to pick the girls up at a party
at eleven PM, well past my bedtime.
They had ordered me, ‘Do not come in,’ so I sat outside waiting and waiting as
other parents walk in and out to retrieve their children, until mine finally
came to the car thirty minutes later.’” Frank points out that the girls were 13
years old at the time and that 11 PM
was beyond the father’s bedtime rather than theirs. This episode is telling
because it deals with character. For me this shows not only that did he not
fulfill the role most other parents would have played but that he seemed to actually
have been somehow proud of it. The most recent coping mechanism of his life,
after he had renounced alcohol, is religious righteousness.
While the
Frank book has some polemical overtones, the book by Peter Singer: “The President of Good & Evil. The Ethics
of George Bush,” is written in a style one is used to from academia. Dr. Singer
is a professor of bioethics at PrincetonUniversity’s Center for Human
Values, and has published extensively on various contemporary ethical issues
including stem cell research. One sentence in the Introduction appeared to hit
the nail on the head: “When I have told friends and colleagues that I am
working on a book about ‘Bush’s ethics,’ some of them quip that the phrase is
an oxymoron, or that it must be a very short book.” Actually the book is 270
pages long and might have benefited if it had been kept shorter. Singer’s
conclusion is that the President’s words and deeds diverge to such an extent
that we simply cannot trust what he says.
Since I did
vote in good conscience for Mr. Bush’s façade in November of 2000 and was
sorely disappointed by his conduct in office thereafter I became curious why I
had misjudged this man so profoundly. The reason was simple. President Clinton
had disgraced the office; he had looked me in the eye through the TV camera
lens, wagged his finger at me and said emphatically: “I did not have sexual
relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” This was a blatant lie which he
repeated under oath. He then tried to excuse his conduct by redefining what the
word “is” means and that sexual conduct does not include fellatio. In addition
it had become known that Miss Lewinsky had performed her services for him in
the Oval Office during business hours. The clean cut Mr. Bush and his rhetoric
of bringing dignity back to the White House seemed to be the antidote. The fact
that he had surrounded himself with people who had honorably served in previous
Republican administrations and brought the experience the newly appointed
President lacked, was also relevant. I use the word “appointed” advisedly
because the election was decided by one vote of the Supreme Court rather than
through the usual voting process. We now know that the country was thoroughly misled
about Mr. Bush the first time and although some of us saw behind the façade by
2004 it was too late. I was not alone in my deep disappointment because even
Pat Buchanan admitted last night in the post State of the Union discussions
among TV pundits that he had voted only once for Bush. That this couldn’t have
been in 2004 is obvious.
What I, and others, had thought of
as a seasoned team with Vice-President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
in charge turned into the opposite of what we had anticipated. Cheney and Rumsfeld
were steeped in Cold War mentality and the executors of the ideas of a then
unknown group of ex-Trotskyists who had restyled themselves as
“Neoconservatives.” General Powell, who was supposed to lead the Foreign
office, submitted to the Pentagon’s usurpation of foreign policy and became odd
man out. Condoleeza Rice, the National Security advisor, whose role would have
been to present the various differing opinions on critical subjects to the President,
was out of her depth when confronted by a united Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz
team. The Neocons, as they have become known carried the day from behind the
scenes and the name is most appropriate because they did succeed to “con” not
only the administration but the entire country. The Iraq
war, with shades of Vietnam,
can be squarely laid on their shoulders.
But where was the President in all
of this?As it appears now he didn’t
know what to do with this Presidency that had been bestowed upon him, through
the efforts of Karl Rove who had engineered all his political campaigns, and
was content to let Uncle Dick tell him what to do. Since they had similar
backgrounds, from the oil industry, there was mutual trust and the good ship USA
embarked on its journey into the new century in the spirit of Cold War triumphalism: We have licked the communists; we are the
only superpower, and now we can enforce our will on the rest of the world. When
Osama bin Laden sent a rude reminder that other people have different ideas the
Bush administration reacted in the way Osama had hoped it would and we are now
in the midst of a war the end of which is not in sight. This statement is not
just Monday morning quarterbacking but it was obvious by October 2001 when I
wrote in these pages in response to the 9/11 tragedy: “The disenfranchised
young people in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for
change and Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about.
Therefore, major military action by
the United States
is a requirement to bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation
through a variety of terror attacks is the
only way to accomplish this objective [emphasis in the original].” If this
was obvious to me, who am not clairvoyant, it was obvious to others in our
country who could have acted more prudently.
This brings me back to our
president because the ultimate responsibility is, of course, his and this is where
character comes in. From what has been written about his character in the
meantime and what we have been able to glimpse from his personal appearances on
TV it has become apparent that he lacks some essential ingredients to make him
into the person he pretends to be. The foremost aspect is that he came of age
in the rebellious climate of the 1960’s. He imbued that lifestyle including the
idea of knowing better than his elders. He wasted his years at Yale and failed
to get a solid education in the humanities, social sciences, and business. This
lack of education could not be made up later because the motivation wasn’t
there. Subsequently all his business ventures failed and he had to be bailed
out by family connections. Whenever one doesn’t know what to do with oneself
one can always go into politics especially when one has name recognition as the
son of a Vice President. Karl Rove discovered a malleable, friendly, good
looking young man and put him first into the governorship of Texas
and then the White House.
Although he had obviously yearned
for greatness he had no good idea how to accomplish that and he essentially
wasted the first half year of his term. The only topic on which he addressed
the nation was stem cells and then he went on vacation. This is the reason why
the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 911 hurt so much and why Moore
had to be bedeviled beyond need.Let us
now look closer at what the President said he would do with the high office
that had been bestowed upon him and the results.
In his
Inaugural Address on January 20, 2001 the newly elected President not only gave
the “all purpose” political speech that any candidate will make but there were
also some specifics that deserve to be remembered. One dealt with the scars the
Clinton Presidency had left on the public conscience, and the fight which had followed
the Florida election debacle
which had embittered the partisans of both candidates:
“And sometimes our differences run so
deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country. We do not accept this,
and we will not allow it … And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a
single nation of justice and opportunity.”
Sad to say
but in February of 2006 our country is even more divided and polarized than at
any time during the past century as James Q Wilson has documented in a recent
article (“How divided are we?” Commentary February 2006). Wilson
lists a number of causes, some of which are beyond anybody’s control. But since
Wilson also still believes in the
righteousness of the Iraq
war and our ability to control the events in that country by military means he
urges the country to pull together at least in that regard. This is, however, also
wishful thinking and the country will not be able to come together until we
have weathered the aftermath of that ill considered invasion of somebody else’s
country.
The
President went on to say on that occasion:
“Today we affirm a new commitment
to live out our nation’s promise through civility, courage, compassion and
character … And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded
traveler on the road to Jericho we will not pass to the other side … America, at
its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected …
Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats; it is a call to
conscience … I will live and lead by
these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public
interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for
responsibility and try to live it as well … What you do is as important as
anything government does …I ask you to
be citizens; citizens not spectators; citizens not subjects; responsible
citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.”
These were
words the country longed to hear in January of 2001 but what came of them? Let
me take Luke’s parable of “The Good Samaritan” first because it shows that the
President was either ignorant of the message Jesus tried to convey or used it
simply as a catch phrase. Since this parable contains the essence of
Christianity vis a vis Judaism we should take it more
seriously. Although the parable itself is, of course, a by word in our culture
the context is usually ignored even by the President. Let us remember the situation
as related in Luke 10:25-37. A lawyer tried to “test” Jesus by asking what he
needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus then asked the lawyer: “What is
written in the law?” whereupon the lawyer recited: “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as
yourself.” In so doing he had quoted first Deuteronomy 6:5 and then added a
modified version of Leviticus 19:18. The translation of that passage reads in
the Hebrew Torah: “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against
the children of thy people [emphasis
added], but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.”Jesus congratulated the lawyer to his reply
but lawyers are hardly ever content with plain words and continued with the
question: “And who is my neighbor?” This was indeed the critical one under
existing circumstances in Palestine
of those days, and still is currently.
These were
the circumstances that led up to the parable. It is actually found only in Luke,
who was a Greek convert, and the parable reflects the Greek sentiment of
universality against the Jewish one which limited charity and benevolence to
members of the Jewish people. By choosing this parable Jesus forced the lawyer
to admit that only the despised Samaritan had shown mercy and had thereby acted
like a neighbor. The discourse ended with Jesus telling the lawyer: “Go and do
likewise.” At the present time the Jews living in the state of Israel
are again confronted with neighbors in their midst whom they’d rather not have,
but as Jews they are under no obligation to act according to Jesus’ teachings.
But we, who call ourselves Christians, and especially those members of our Church
who regard themselves as “born again,” are commanded to do so. This is the
crucial fact our President has either ignored, or willfully disregarded.
I believe
that it is this remarkable ignorance of classic literature, even the Bible
which he stated he reads regularly, combined with a profound lack of interest
in opinions other than his own have turned his good intentions into the
disasters his Presidency has spawned. By closing his eyes in 2001 to the plight
of today’s Samaritans in Palestine,
i.e. the non-Jewish population, he has not only violated the fundamental
principle of the Christian religion but by calling Sharon “a man of peace” he
has opened the door to further repressive policies against the Palestinians.
Today they can’t even travel that short distance from Jerusalem
to Jericho without passing through checkpoints
with accompanying humiliations by the soldiers manning them. We should not
blame the Israeli government; they are Jews and live by a different code which
places the perceived needs of the nation above those of the individual,
especially when the individual is one of the goyim. The rest of the world sees
these scenes on their TV sets but our media are complicit by not showing them
to us. This is the proverbial beam in our own eye that needs to be removed
before casting stones on others but this is not an example our President sets.
The
President also encouragedus to be
“citizens,” not “subjects,” but anyone who tried to warn the leadership of
mistakes about to be made or make suggestions how to remedy some of those that
had already been committed ran not only into a stone wall but could expect to
be vilified. We are at war, we are now told; in war the rules have to be bent
and incursions on civil liberties are necessary. This includes violation of
international law as for instance holding foreign nationals without trial at Guantanamo
for several years without any attempt to set a time limit on their detention. Not
only are the opinions of common people disregarded but the President has not
even treated some members of his inner circle as equals whose views should have
been valued. They were also treated as “subjects” who were expected to yield to
superior wisdom.
September
11 was in a perverse way a dream come true for Osama bin Laden as well as
George Bush. The successful attack on the symbols of American power provided
the basis for potential greatness to both of them. The President, who had
floundered, now found his goal: A group of vicious, evil people encouraged and
supported by “rogue states” had declared war on America and he would retaliate
not only in kind but seven fold; he would be remembered by history as the
President who rescued America from its darkest hour; he would punish the forces
of evil to an extent that they would never ever dream of harming us and he
would bring freedom and happiness to the oppressed; the means don’t matter the
goal counts. This was the messianic vision he initially pursued by eradicating
the Taliban’s haven for terrorists in Afghanistan
and subsequently by liberating the Iraqis from their dictator. Freedom, which
he equals with democracy, which in turn is in his mind only characterized by
relatively free elections, will rule the day and free people don’t make war.
This was his Credo and as of yesterday’s speech still is.
While
watching last night’s State of the Union speech I made notes of key passages
and printed out the speech for accuracy this morning. In the following excerpts
I shall limit myself to foreign policy pronouncements:
“We seek the end of tyranny in our
world … Dictatorships shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and
seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope,
respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight
against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer,
and so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause… We are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory …
Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning … Ultimately,
the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeattheir dark vision of hatred and fear by
offering the political alternative of political freedom and peaceful change …
liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is
the right and hope of all humanity.”
These are the messianic goals the
President believes in but he doesn’t seem to know the realities on the ground
and how to achieve his vision. There will be no “victory” in Iraq
or the war on Terror in the conventional sense where our soldiers come home to ticker
tape parades on Fifth Avenue.
The best outcome that is likely to be achievable in Iraq
is through sitting down individually with the various insurgent groups, discussing
mutually agreeable goals and then abiding by them. This idea is not pie in the
sky but according to this week’s Newsweek
edition is being put into action by some of our military commanders at this
time.
To succeed in the battle against terrorism
the President will also need to adopt a different strategy. Immediately after
the Inaugural Address “autopsy” by the pundits, PBS showed its “Frontline”
program where the topic was international terrorism and especially how it
affects Europe. One learned to one’s surprise that not
only is the U.S.
not helping the European efforts but by going its own way is actually hindering
the prosecution of suspects. We are holding people, who could serve as
witnesses in European criminal prosecution cases, incommunicado in Guantanamo
or shiping them off to other countries where
confessions are obtained under torture, which are invalid in European courts.
We can ask ourselves now: does our President know this? What is his plan for
achieving the victory he is talking about? Does he know that Al Qaeda’ s basic
ideology has become a virus that can readily replicate itself even if Osama and
other top leaders were killed or captured now? The proverbial cat is out of the
bag and there is a potential reservoir not only of thousands but hundreds of
thousands disenchanted young Muslims who can now get training in Iraq,
just as Osama and his early followers got theirs in Afghanistan.
It is another irony of history that we, who were delighted by the success of
the mujahideen over the Soviets in Afghanistan,
are now on the receiving end of that same ideology in Iraq.
Our President also promised us last
night that his administration will see to it that our children get a better
education in math and science. This is a laudable goal but in addition they
need a better education in the humanities, geography and history to compete in
the world they are growing into. But since our President is personally
uninformed in these subjects one might hope that he might be willing to at
least partially remedy these deficiencies on weekends and when he is on
vacation. He might also benefit, as had been suggested last September, by
staying at his desk in the White House rather than traveling around the country
and making campaign speeches.
Unfortunately this is not in his
character; he seems to have restless legs and apparently does not like staying
in Washington. He enjoys the
trappings and the perks of his office but not the onerous day to day grind and
chores. Thus, we seem to have in the President a person who has been elevated
to a position beyond his capabilities. He seems to be aware to some extent of
his shortcomings because he appears obviously ill at ease whenever he has to
talk in an unscripted manner. To overcome these problems he has now created a
defense system around his “vision,” which cannot be breached by rational
argument. The question does the President lie and to what extent seems to be
irrelevant because from all appearances he is honestly deluded. He believes
what he says is true and that makes it true regardless of facts. That this is
potentially a highly dangerous state of mind in a person who has his finger on
the proverbial button is obvious.
While the public has come to see,
to some extent at least, that the country is on the wrong course we can’t
expect much help from the Democrats. They have shown their ineptness again last
night. In the response to the President’s speech the Governor of Virginia did
not address the points the President had made but read a speech of his own, or
written for him, which was irrelevant. Our hope will have to rest with
disaffected Republicans who see that their party has been hijacked by the
Neocons’ philosophy and who have the courage to lead a revolt in Congress.
Elections are coming up again in
November and Karl Rove’s strategy for victory is to stoke the fear of terrorism
and to hammer away that “the President has created a safer world during the
past four years.” It has worked in the past and he hopes that a gullible electorate
will let him get away with it again. He might, unless the wheels of justice
that are grinding interminably slow will eventually catch up with his
Machiavellian policies and all the scandals the administration hides, under the
mantle of national security, come to light.
Thus, my wish for the President is
that he begins to devote himself to the message of the New Testament rather
than that of the Old. The Father of Jesus and the God of Moses are different
concepts and a choice has to be made by whoever speaks in religious terms. He
doesn’t have to take my word for it, which is available in The Moses Legacy, but he could read the more popular Harold
Bloom’s: Jesus and Yahweh. The Names Divine.Christians have been told to pray in secret and to conduct our affairs
in the open because: “Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the
light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from
the housetops [Luke 12:3].” Unfortunately the President has turned Jesus’
message into its opposite: he prays openly and conducts business in secret. Somebody
ought to point this out to him and penetrate the wall of self-delusion he has
created for himself, so that reason and good will can find a home again in our
country.
February 15, 2006
UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST
PART I
PRIVATE GRIEF BECOMES PUBLIC OUTCRY
This essay has been the most
difficult to write and took the longest time. The topic is so laden with emotion
that a person searching for the truth steps into a minefield that has to be
navigated very carefully. To arrive at objective truth, which is the purpose of
this website, one needs to look at the motives and
actions of both sides to a controversy in a dispassionate manner and one must
not be swayed by either. “Without fear or favor,” should be the motto for an
exploration of this type. Furthermore, since the subject must not be
trivialized it requires more than one installment because otherwise it would
become too lengthy. This is also the reason why I had to break with precedent
and not stay with the self imposed “first of the month installment routine.”
Inasmuch as the Nazis’ “Final
Solution” of the Jewish problem has occurred more than 60 years ago one may
wonder why the subject should be raised now. The reason is that there is a
strange phenomenon occurring in our society; the more time elapses since the
event, the more is published about it, although no new facts have emerged. If
one types “Holocaust” into Google one is rewarded within 0.09 seconds with
about 63,200.000 entries. This is surely a prodigious number and no one can be
expected to absorb this ocean of data. Choices have to be made and in the
search for my own understanding of this phenomenon I broke the subject down
into three aspects: What prompted the Nazis to attempt their “Final Solution of
the Jewish Problem [Endlősung],” how did they proceed in actuality, and
how is the outcome reported. Since I have already discussed the subject to some
extent in War&Mayhem, as well as
in The Moses Legacy, I shall proceed
here not from the past to the present but from the present to the past.
But this does not quite answer why
this topic should be discussed in February of 2006 when there are so many
others that could be addressed. The reason is that we may be standing on the
brink of another war, this time with Iran
over its determination to acquire nuclear weapons. Since it has also been
reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadhas recently stated
that the Holocaust is a lie and the State of Israel, which arose from its
ashes, has no right to exist, we have been confronted again with what is now
called “Holocaust denial.” These are serious matters which deserve serious
answers and the usual excuse of mental illness, or pure evil that seems to
afflict everyone whose opinions differ radically from what is generally
accepted, will not suffice.
In addition there was the flap in
regard to when a book should be called a “novel” and belongs thereby into the
“fiction” category or an “autobiography” which would place it into the
“nonfiction” bracket. This was precipitated by James Frey’s: “A Million Little
Pieces,” which purported to be a true account of Mr. Frey’s life of crime and
drug addiction. The book had been selected by America’s
talk show queen, Oprah Winfrey who can make and break literary careers, for her
book club and sales soared into a multi million dollar figure. Although our
press is somewhat less than vigilant we do have the Internet and the site www.smokinggun.com published an article
in January entitled “A Million Little Lies.” It pointed out that far from being
an exact account of his trials and tribulations, Frey had been not been
truthful and that Oprah had been duped. Ms Winfrey, who had at first defended
Frey, subsequently became furious and called him on the carpet in one of her
later shows.
The matter might have rested there
had Oprah not immediately thereafter endorsed the new translation of Elie
Wiesel’s Night as her next book club
selection. This reopened the question posed above: when is an account a memoir
and as such regarded as fact or a novel inspired by autobiographic events?
Since Night deals with Mr. Wiesel’s
experiences, first in Auschwitz and subsequently Buchenwald,
this book has assumed an importance which far outweighs any of the other book
club selections. When we consider further that Mr. Wiesel was the person who
popularized the word “Holocaust” in the context of the “Final Solution”
andhas dedicated his life to keeping
the memory of this tragedy alive, it is obvious that our quest for the truth
will have to start with him.
Elie, short for Eliezer, Wiesel had a very
distinguished career and inasmuch as he was the chief spokesman for Holocaust
survivors President Jimmy Carter appointed him in 1978 Chairman of the
President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Its final report called for, among
other aspects, the creation of a National Holocaust Memorial/Museum in WashingtonDC, an Educational Foundation that
disseminates Holocaust information throughout AmericanHigh Schools and Universities, a
Committee on Conscience, and Holocaust Memorial Days. In 1985 he was awarded
the Congressional Medal of Freedom and in 1986 the Nobel Prize for Peace. He
has been Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at BostonUniversity, was inducted into the Academy
of Achievement in 1996; and was
invited to give a speech in the East Room of the White House on April 12, 1999 as part of the
Millennium Lecture Series hosted by President Clinton and his wife Hillary. It
is, therefore, obvious that Mr. Wiesel commands unparalleled moral stature in America
and is a person not only the public but Presidents listen to.
Although I had read Night decades ago and was appalled by
the humiliations, brutalization and outright murders that had occurred at Auschwitz
I also felt that some details might have been embellished. The book was not
written in the style of Frankl’s Man’s
Search for Meaning but in a tone one is accustomed to from historical
novels. This didn’t bother me because survivors of concentration camps had
every right to present their experiences in any form they wished. But when the
Oprah story hit the news and brought with it not only a resurgence of “Night” but also a reclassification from
novel to memoir by Barnes&Noble as well as amazon.com my interest in this
piece of literature was rekindled.
The Internet informed me that Night, which was published first in
French as La Nuit (1958), was based
on an account of nearly 900 pages written in Yiddish and published in Argentina
under the title “Un die Velt hot
geshvigen.” Although I do not speak Yiddish the language is sufficiently
similar to German, having been derived from it, that I thought it would be interesting
to compare the four versions: the original one which had been significantly
shortened to 256 pages prior to its publication in Argentina with the French
one of 178 pages, the first English translation from 1960 and the new one from
2006. Since the French and Yiddish editions are not commercially available here
I thought I might get them through my niece in Vienna
who works in the book trade. When she asked me if I can read Hebrew I was taken
aback and lectured her that there is a difference between Yiddish and Hebrew
and my ignorance of Hebrew is irrelevant for this purpose. Well, as it turned
out she was right and I was wrong. Since no help was forthcoming from Vienna
I did what I should have done in the first place; contacted the Marriott Library
of our University and lo and behold both
La Nuit and Un die Velt hot geshvigen were available
on the stacks. But to my great surprise the universally referred to “Yiddish”
book is actually in Hebrew, reads from back to front and only the title as well
as the publishing firm (Buenos Ayres, Tsentral-Farband
fun PoylisheYidn in
Argentine, 716, 1956, in the series Dos PoylisheYidentum) are in Yiddish.
Well, I had struck out on that one
but there was La Nuit and the Preface
by François Mauriac, which I could compare with the two English translations.
To get those Martha and I went to the neighborhood Barnes&Noble which was
busy selling numerous copies. When I asked the clerk for the original edition,
which I no longer had, he told me that I might as well buy the whole trilogy
because it’s the same price. Although I didn’t want to I couldn’t resist the
bargain and now I had Night, Dawn and The Accident.In retrospect
I am, of course, grateful to that clerk because the three books really belong
together but I shall deal with the other two later. There are some differences
between the two English editions of Night
in addition to the Preface by Elie Wiesel for the current one as well as
Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. The 2006 translation by Wiesel’s
wife is somewhat more concise and in colloquial American. While Stella Rodway
tried to stay as close as possible to the more poetic language of the French
original, the new translation is at times less so by cutting out parts of
sentences which had been used originally for further emphasis.
It is now necessary to point to the
importance of Maitre Mauriac, as he
was referred to by everyone in France
at that time, for the life and subsequent fame of Elie Wiesel. There are two
versions of what went on when Wiesel interviewed Mauriac in 1955 for the Tel
Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. One
is by Mauriac in the Preface to La Nuit and
the other in an interview by Wiesel for the Academy
of Achievement. I shall deal with
Mauriac’s first. He had received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1952 and was
rather tired of interviews but as he wrote, “the young Israeli (Israëlien) inspired from the outset a
sympathy in me against which I couldn’t defend myself for any length of time [my
translation].” The conversation soon became personal. When Mauriac mentioned an
event his wife had witnessed at the Austerlitz
train station of wagons filled with Jewish children (wagons remplisd’enfantsjuifs), which had disturbed him profoundly,
Wiesel said: “I am one of them.” The shocked Mauriac continued, “he had seen
his mother, a little sister whom he had adored and his entire family [tous les siens],
apart from his father, disappear into an oven fed with living creatures.” The
new edition has changed Mauriac’s words to “except his father and two other
sisters.” Although Wiesel commented on another occasion that his two older
sisters had survived he seems not to have mentioned that to Mauriac. The
Preface then continues with portions from La
Nuit and especially the now famous and often repeated passage,
“Never shall I forget that night,
the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven
times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small
faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent
sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed forever my faith. Never
shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
will to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my
soul, and turned my dreams into ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God
himself. Never [2006 translation].”
These were powerful words and the
deeply religious Catholic Mauriac, whose novels dealt mainly with the evil in
man especially towards children, was profoundly moved. He went on quoting more
passages from La Nuit which described
Wiesel’s loss of faith in God and regretted that he could not find words of
consolation at the time. He mentioned that he should have said that the Jewish
nation has risen from the ashes of the dead, that we don’t know the worth of a
single drop of blood, of a single soul and that all is grace. “But I couldn’t
do anything except embrace him weeping.”
Such was the beginning of Elie
Wiesel’s career because it was Mauriac, who had encouraged him after this
interview to put his thoughts to paper which led to the mentioned publication
in Argentina
one year later, and La Nuit in 1958.
To what extent Mauriac was responsible for the final form of the French
publication, which reduced the Yiddish-Hebrew version from 256 pages to 178 and
rendered it into poetic French we may never know. Wiesel only mentioned that
Mauriac had become his lifelong friend thereafter who did everything in his
power to get the French manuscript published even to the extent of visiting
personally numerous reluctant publishers.
But everyone experiences the same
event somewhat differently and here is Wiesel’s account from an interview after
his induction into the Academy of Achievement.
As mentioned he was a journalist for the Israeli paper and had intended to
interview the then Prime Minister of France,
Mendès-France, who was also Jewish. He was unsuccessful in this endeavor but he
had heard that Mauriac was “his guru” and hoped that he might help him to see
the Prime Minister. This is how the interview came about as Wiesel tells it,
“We met and we had a painful
discussion. The problem was that he was in love with Jesus. He was the most
decent person I ever met in that field - - as a writer, as a Catholic writer.
Honest, sense of integrity, and he was in love with Jesus.
Whatever I would ask – Jesus. Finally, I said ‘what about
Mendès-France?’ he said that Mendès-France, like Jesus was suffering. That’s
not what I wanted to hear. I wanted, at one point to speak about Mendès-France
and I would say to Mauriac, can you introduce me?
When he said Jesus
again I couldn’t take it, and for the only time in my life I was discourteous,
which I regret to this day. I said, ‘Mr. Mauriac,’ we called him Maitre,’ ten
years or so ago, I have seen children, hundreds of Jewish children, who
suffered more than Jesus did on his cross and we do not speak about it.’ I felt
all of a sudden so embarrassed that I closed my notebook and went to the
elevator. He ran after me. He pulled me back; he sat down in his chair and I in
mine, and he began weeping. I have rarely seen an old man [Mauriac was 70
in 1955] weep like that, and I felt like
such an idiot. I felt like a criminal. This man didn’t deserve that. He was
really a pure man, a member of the Resistance. I didn’t know what to do. We
stayed like that, he weeping and I closed in my remorse. And then, at the end,
without saying anything, he simply said, ‘You know, maybe you should talk about
it’ [italics in the original].
He took me to the elevator and embraced me. And that year,
the tenth year, I began writing my narrative. After it was translated from
Yiddish [sic] into French, I sent it to him. We were very, very close friends until
his death. That made me not publish, but write.”
Those are
all the facts we can ascertain at this time about the genesis of La Nuit.In the same interview Wiesel explained how he had come to use the
word Holocaust to describe the Jewish concentration camp tragedy.
“Take the
word ‘Holocaust.’ I am among the first, if not the first to use it in that
context. I was working on an essay, a biblical commentary, and I wrote about
the sacrifice, the binding of Isaac, by his father Abraham. In the Bible, there
is a Hebrew word ola, which means burned offering. I thought the word
‘holocaust ‘was good: fire and so on. In the Bible, it was the son who almost
died, but in our case it was the father who died, not the son. The word had so
many implications that I felt it was good. Then it became accepted, and
everybody used it and then I stopped using it because it was abused. Everything
was a holocaust all of a sudden. I once heard a sportscaster on television
speaking of the defeat of a sports team and he said, ‘Was that a holocaust!’ My
God! Everything became a holocaust.”
Yes indeed
and the victims, as well as the descriptions of the atrocities, keep growing in
the genre of La Nuit. Although the
emphasis now is on the extermination of human beings and especially Jews by
gassing, rather than burning, Wiesel does not mention having witnessed that
atrocity in the book. Instead there is another powerful passage that describes
his experience in Auschwitz after the selection by Dr.
Mengele, who by the way was supposed to have worn a monocle which is unlikely
for an SS officer. While being marched in the direction of a ditch he was told
by another inmate that they were to be killed,
“Not far from us flames, huge flames,
were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close
and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own
eyes . . . those children in the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since
then, sleep tends to elude me?)”
As the procession of men moved forward
toward a larger ditch for adults, people prayed,
“’Yisgadal,
veyiskadashshmeyraba . . . May His Name be celebrated and sanctified . . .’
whispered my father.
For the
first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The
Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent.
What was there to thank Him for?
We
continued our march. We were coming closer and closer to the pit, from which an
infernal heat was rising. Twenty more steps. If I was going to kill myself,
this was the time. Our column had only some fifteen steps to go. I bit my lips
so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten more steps. Eight.Seven. We were walking
slowly, as one follows a hearse, our own funeral procession. Only four more
steps. Three. There it was now, very close to us, the
pit and its flames. . . . [2006 translation]”
Two steps before reaching the ditch
they were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into barracks. The
narration continued with the previously cited “Never shall I forget” passages.
I have mentioned these details
because an account of this type does not show up in other Holocaust literature.
After selection, those that had been destined for labor were led directly to
disinfection, where they were also robbed of all their remaining belongings,
and then sent to their barracks; the others simply disappeared. The dramatic
countdown of steps towards the ditch also occurs in the subsequent publication Dawn in another context. The report of babies
being thrown into a fiery pit, which Wiesel emphatically claims to have seen
with his own eyes, has not been corroborated by credible witnesses. This part
of the story immediately brought to my mind the behavior of Egyptian overseers
who tore little children from the arms of their mothers handing them to the
fathers to use as bricks for building pharaoh’s “store cities.” I have
described that legend in The Moses Legacy
because it forms part of the Talmud, which Wiesel said he has been studying
diligently.
It seems, therefore, very likely
that poetic license had been taken which would have been perfectly
understandable especially when one considers the circumstances under which this
book first appeared in print. But on January
16, 2006The New York Times
reported in an interview with Wiesel, “’But it is not a novel at all,’ he said.
‘I know the difference,’ he added, noting that ‘Night’ is the first of his 47
books, several of which are novels. ‘I make a distinction between what I lived
through and what I imagine others to have lived through.’ As it is a memoir, he
said, ‘my experiences in the book - A to Z -must be true.’ He continued: ‘All
the people I describe were with me there. I object angrily if someone mentions
it as a novel.’”
Well, there may be a difference
between “what must be true” subjectively and what can be objectively verified;
a topic which I have discussed in “What is Truth?” (September 2001) and
“Perceptions of Reality” (August 2004). We need to remember at this point that
Wiesel was 15 years old when he was transported to Auschwitz
and 16 when he was liberated from Buchenwald.
Adolescents, even when they have been brutalized, tend to go on with their
lives and while they will not forget their experiences they usually don’t dwell
on them to the extent Wiesel did. The possible reasons for doing so will be
discussed after we have looked at the other two semi-autobiographic books.
For now it seems that the contents
of Night had undergone several
changes before they appeared in the form we now know. A document that may have
originally been an attempt at soul cleansing was turned into one that is
gripping, but which may not be correct in all aspects. This assumption finds
some validation in Dawn and The Accident (L’Aube and Le Jour in the original French), which followed shortly after Night.
Dawn, is also written in the
first person singular and deals with young Elisha, who had been liberated from Buchenwald
and sent to Paris. There he was
recruited by a member of the Irgun, the illegal terrorist organization for the
struggle to liberate Palestine from
the British, so that the Jews could build their own state. The novel, apart
from flashbacks, takes place within one house during one night and centers on
Elisha’s conflict with his conscience when he is ordered to execute a British
captain in retaliation for one of their terrorist brotherhood who was to be
executed by the British on the same morning. The word terrorist is, of course,
applied to different people today but it was freely used and morally justified
in Dawn. Elisha had no scruples
participating in raids against the British where people got killed, that was
part of war, but murdering your “enemy” face to face, whom you didn’t even hate
is quite different. Wiesel used two devices to dramatize the situation further.
There is a countdown from ten seconds to one before he fires the fatal shot,
which is quite reminiscent of the twenty paces to two in Night and there is also the presence of the ghosts of his parents,
friends, and acquaintances who have all perished in the camps, as well as
himself as the young boy he had been previously. This assembly appears to be
saddened by what he is about to do because it will turn him into a murderer for
the rest of his life. This in turn would make murderers out of them because
they had made him into what he had become.
Biographies of Wiesel state that he
was associated with the Irgun but as a reporter for their newspaper. Since
Wiesel does not talk about this aspect of his life we don’t know what he did or
did not do at that time but the actions of the “Stern gang” and subsequently
the Irgun under Shamir are well documented in Terror out of Zion.
The Fight for Israeli Independence by J. Bowyer Bell.
Wiesel’s third book The Accident [Le Jour] grapples with Hamlet’s existential question: “to be or not
to be.” The narrator, whom we know mainly as “I,” (he uses the name Eliezer
only once in connection with his mother’s name Sarah) was nearly killed by a
taxicab, while crossing Times Square with his girl
friend. It may, however, not have been a pure accident but an unsuccessful
suicide attempt by not moving away from the oncoming cab. He was initially in
critical condition but recovered after several months of hospitalization. The
long months in the hospital, while flat on his back gave him time to reminisce
and come to terms with his inner demons. The accident itself and the
hospitalization are true but what thoughts he had formed can only be
conjectured.
Although it is acknowledged that Night would never have been written and
published without the help of Mauriac, the influence of Albert Camus on
Wiesel’s literary work has received less comment. Yet, for anyone who has read
some of Camus’ plays, essays, and novels it is apparent that Camus had a powerful
influence not only on Wiesel’s writings but mental outlook. Perhaps the most
important one was La Peste (The Plague). The theme of La Peste is: the sense of total
abandonment, in a city the gates of which had been closed because of a raging
epidemic; the coping mechanisms of its citizens which include indifference and
apathy towards those who were dying around them; the accusation of God for
permitting such disasters and especially the killing of innocent children. But
while Camus stressed the universality of human suffering, its reasons and how
to overcome it, Wiesel honed in on the specific Jewish aspects as seen through
the lens of Hasidic legends, Torah and Talmud.
While traces of La Peste can be found in all of Wiesel’s
writings and speeches, Dawn bears a
close resemblance to Les Justes (The Just Assassins). It likewise
contains one woman and four male terrorists in a single apartment who plot the
assassination of a representative of an oppressive regime for the greater good.
The difference is that Camus placed his terrorists into imperial Russia.
The victim is the Grand Duke and the terrorists, the
word appears as such in both books, are revolutionary socialists rather than
patriotic Jews. The similarity between the character of Ivan (Yenka) Kaliayev,
who kills the Grand Duke with a bomb and Elisha who executes Captain Dawson is
quite striking. So is the similarity between Dr. Paul Russell in The Accident with Dr. Bernard Rieux in The Plague. The existential problem
whether it is better to live rather than commit suicide was also extensively
discussed by Camus; first in the 1942 essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and
subsequently in “The Rebel” (1951).
These observations allow us a
glimpse into Elie Wiesel’s personal torment and how he tried to exorcise the
ghosts of his past. The key word became “memory,” which had to be kept not only
alive but aflame. The flames of the crematories, or the ditches, of Night became the focus of his life,
giving rise to the much abused word Holocaust that now divides our world. But
as mentioned one might wonder whether Wiesel had in fact personally seen
everything he reported or whether he had heard about some aspects from other Auschwitz
inmates. This is not a trivial question because it is to be expected that
rumors were rife in the concentration camp environment and human beings are
known to embellish misfortunes. It is also known that in criminal trials
eyewitness testimony is not always entirely reliable and needs to be
corroborated by objective evidence. I shall return to this aspect later in the
context of what is now called “Holocaust Denial.” Although the Holocaust and
the Final Solution are dependent upon each other their totality may be best
viewed as two sides of a coin and as such are not identical. Objective truth
about the Final Solution might be found in official documents while Holocaust
truth seems to be based mainly on the subjective experience of the victims.
Let me now give my personal view on
how the Holocaust concept came into being. There can be no doubt that the
adolescent Eliezer, was thoroughly traumatized by the events he had to endure
from spring 1944 to May 1945. He told us that he had been interested in
studying the Cabbala but his father had discouraged the idea because he was too
young for that. One studies mysticism as an adult after one has mastered all
the practical subjects that get one through life, he was told. Yet, his very
name Eliezer, was also that of the founder of Hasidism, Israel b Eliezer better
known Baal Shem Tov (master of the divine name) or Besht for short, so how could he be expected not to be drawn to
that subject? Very little is known about Wiesel’s inner life and the emphasis
has always been placed on atrocities committed by the Nazis, which undoubtedly
occurred. About his activities in Palestine,
which he refers to in Dawn we know
nothing. But even if we exclude Dawn
and concentrate only on Night there
are likely to exist undercurrents of personal guilt feelings in Wiesel’s mind
if what he wrote had indeed happened.
It is well known that relationships
between father and son, especially in adolescence, can be quite complex and do
not require Freud’s Oedipus complex for explanation. But we have been told
little about the feelings between father Wiesel and son prior to deportation.
In Night Wiesel only stated that the
father was, “a cultured person, rather unsentimental (un hommecultivé, peusentimentale). No display
of affection, not even within the family (Aucune effusion, même en famille).”
The terseness of the sentences is telling and is followed by the statement that
the father was more interested in the affairs of others than the family. Thus,
the relationship is likely to have been distant and one of duty rather than
cordiality.
He gives two examples in Night of untoward behavior of sons towards their fathers during his
concentration camp days but he may not to have come to grips with his own
feelings. We are told that he had urged his father to take the family to Palestine
when there still might have been an opportunity, but the father had refused. Is
it so far fetched to assume that there could have been some lingering
resentment towards the father, who in a way had become responsible for the
son’s subsequent suffering? In addition we are told that the father-son roles
were to some extent reversed in the camp and the son became responsible for the
father; a burden he may not have always relished. We are also told that they
could have stayed at the Auschwitz infirmary to await
the liberating Russians but on the boy’s urging they did not. In this way he
had indirectly contributed to his father’s death in Buchenwald.
It would be surprising if this had not led to profound guilt feelings
thereafter.
There is additional potential
evidence that Wiesel is still haunted by the father’s death. In the Preface for
the new edition of Night he mentions
some passages from the Yiddish [sic] version that deal directly with this
topic,
“I remember that night, the most
horrendous of my life: ‘Eliezer, my son, come here . . .I want to tell you something . . . Only to
you . . . Come don’t leave me alone . . . Eliezer . . .’
I heard his voice, grasped the
meaning of his words and the tragic dimension of the moment, yet I did not
move.
It had been his last wish to have
me next to him in his agony, at the moment when his soul was tearing itself
from his lacerated body – yet I did not let him have his wish.
I was afraid.
Afraid of the
blows.
That’s why I remained deaf to his
cries.”
This has the ring of truth and if
it were to be the truth it would explain a great many aspects of his subsequent
life. A Catholic boy could have gone to confession poured out his soul to the
priest and would have received absolution, because that was what was called
for. To the Jewish boy this avenue was denied because only God can forgive sins
and his faith in God had been profoundly shattered. Father and God became
synonymous; in his mind he may have believed that he had killed both.
This may be the tragedy of Wiesel’s
life for which he has tried to atone. His personal guilt and hatred for his
perceived cowardice, at a crucial moment, could only be directed towards the
perpetrators of the situation he had innocently been placed in. Their crimes
must never be forgotten and even their graves must not be visited because the
Jewish people who had been brutally murdered did not have graves they could be
remembered by; their bodies went up in smoke. Some of us still remember
Wiesel’s violent opposition to President Reagan visiting the cemetery at
Bitburg, upon invitation of Chancellor Kohl, because among the hundreds of
soldiers who had died in previous wars there were also some members of the
Waffen SS. As a Catholic I couldn’t understand at that time what I perceived as
hate beyond the grave but when one looks at it in this context it does make
some sense. This becomes even clearer when one is aware that cremation is
unacceptable in the Jewish religion.
This psychological drama may well
afflict other Jewish concentration camp survivors. What they had to do in order
to stay alive cannot be described but can remain a life long burden on their
conscience. By focusing on the atrocities inflicted upon them and devoting
one’s life towards their future prevention it was hoped that a degree of mental
equilibrium might become achievable for the survivors. In Wiesel’s case this
seems not to have worked very well. When one looks at his most recent
photograph in TIME, January 30, 2006 one is reminded of what Mauriac has
described in the Preface to La Nuit,
“the gaze of a Lazarus risen from the dead yet still [pourtanttoujours] held captive in the somber
regions into which he had strayed, stumbling over desecrated corpses [2006
translation].
This is Elie Wiesel’s personal
tragedy, which still haunts him and cannot be overcome by honors, fame, or
money. From these feelings the word Holocaust, in its current connotation, was
born. The fact that an originally religious term has been secularized and is as
such not acceptable for this purpose to some observant Jews is disregarded. The
Greek word appeared first in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Torah
where it refers to “whole-burned offering” or simply “burnt offering.” This
produced a quandary for truly religious Jews because under those circumstances
the murders committed by the Nazis would have been a sacrifice to God, which
was hardly the intent. Some observant Jews prefer, therefore, the term shoah for the “Final Solution,” which
simply denotes “devastation” or “catastrophe.” But that word also has its
problems because it is regarded as too general and does not emphasize the
uniqueness of the event, vociferous proponents of the Holocaust insist on. It
may also remind people of Al-Naqba
(the catastrophe), which is the term Palestinians use for the expulsion from
their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel. This was clearly
an event in Jewish history not too many Jews, both here and in Israel,
want to be reminded of but it is now inextricably entwined with the Holocaust.
Arabs cherish their memories too.
To sum up: the transition from the
“Final Solution” to the “Holocaust” was based on a semi-autobiographic account
by a young Elie Wiesel that accused the world of silence in face of a
catastrophe that had befallen the Jewish people. To the best of my knowledge Un di Velt hot geshvigen has never been
translated into English but since it is the forerunner of La Nuit and Night, which
has become required reading for our children and grandchildren, this should be
done. Under those circumstances we would get to know the genuine Eliezer Wiesel
rather than the one who is presented to the world via Mauriac. This comparison
is essential if we want to get at the truth of Wiesel’s thinking because the
consequences, which will be discussed in next week’s installment, affect all of
us.
February 21, 2006
UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST
PART II
DOGMA AND SKEPTICISM
In the previous installment I
discussed how an ancient religious term was given new meaning by Elie Wiesel
and his reasons for doing so. We now have to confront the question how the “Final
Solution” of the Nazis Jewish problem, which had originally been treated within
the context of other German war crimes committed during WWII, achieved such a
unique stature that Norman Finkelstein has felt himself compelled to write a
book which he called, The Holocaust
Industry.This installment will
explore the possible reasons for the more than two decades delay before the
Holocaust came to be regarded as a unique event in human history, its
subsequent promotion as such, and the resistance it has encountered.
In May of 1945 some of the
survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, like Victor Frankl, went back to
their home towns and attempted to restart their lives which had been so
brutally interrupted and in part destroyed by the loss of their family members.
But since most of them did not come from central or Western Europe
and the Soviet Union was now in charge of their
homelands an exchange of one tyranny from which they had miraculously just
escaped to another one was not a desirable option. They therefore became “DPs”
(displaced persons) who continued to be housed in camps until countries of
permanent residence could be found. Peter Novick, whose scholarly treatise The Holocaust in American Life, which
ought to be read by everyone who wants to be educated on this topic, explains
this aspect,
“In the immediate aftermath of V-E
Day there were more than ten million displaced persons in Germany
and Austria, of
whom only a tiny fraction were Jewish camp survivors.
Before the end of 1945 the great majority had been repatriated, but there
remained nearly two million DPs. They included former POWs and forced laborers
who preferred not to return to their homes in the East, Volksdeutsch [sic; e missing], who had been expelled from Eastern
Europe, Baltic and Ukrainian German auxiliaries and their families, and various
others who, for whatever reason, preferred a precarious life in the DP camps of
Germany to whatever awaited them at home.
While the number of Gentile DPs
decreased rapidly after the end of the war, the number of Jewish DPS increased
over the next year and a half, though they remained a fraction of the overall
total. In the first few months after liberation, almost all Jewish camp
survivors from Western Europe, as well as many from the
East, returned to their countries of origin. There were perhaps no more than
50,000 Jewish DPs in Germany
in late 1945. But over the next year their ranks swelled as Jews returning to Poland
confronted not just the total devastation of their communities but murderous
Polish pogroms. The largest single addition to the ranks of Jewish DPs were
those Polish Jews who had found refuge in the Soviet Union during the war, and
who, after a brief stopover in the Jewish graveyard that was postwar Poland,
usually continued their journey westward. . . . By the end of 1946 the number
of Jewish DPs (mostly in Germany, smaller numbers in Austria and Italy) was
estimated at about 250,000 [footnote 14 provides a reference]. Perhaps a fifth
of these were survivors of the camps, but all were in one or another
sense survivors of the Holocaust.”
These aspects must be taken into
account when we consider the totality of the massive tragedy that had befallen Europe
as a result of WWII. Lives had to be rebuilt from scratch, which also included
those of the people of Germany
and Austria.
Refugees had to be absorbed, cities rebuilt brick by brick, currencies were
devalued and reparations had to be paid. Having personally lived through the
aftermath of the war I know that life was tough. But the emphasis was directed
towards the future rather than ruminating over the past. This was a luxury one
could indulge in when conditions had achieved a degree of normality again
The Holocaust phenomenon, as we now
know it, started in America
and initially there were widely differing opinions within the Jewish community
as to how the memories of the survivors should be treated. Up to the 1960s America
had other priorities, and Jewish problems were not high on the list. American
Jews did not press the issue because they still felt insecure and were
concerned about a possible anti-Semitic backlash if they became too vociferous.
Israeli Jews were engaged in wars with their neighbors and in addition fostered
a self-concept that differed considerably from that of their American
relatives. While the key word for Americans was “victimhood,” “heroic
resistance” was promoted in Israel.
The memory of the Final Solution was, therefore, treated differently in the two
countries. This is also exemplified by the full title of Israel’s
Yad Vashem. As Novick points out it
is called “Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, and the full
name of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom
Hashoa, is “Day of the Holocaust and Heroism.” Thus, the Holocaust and Israel
are inextricably entwined, as had been mentioned in the previous installment
and in essence deal with the fundamental question of Jewish
self-identification.
When attempts were made to publish
Holocaust data during the late 1940s and up to the 1960s authors had difficulties
doing so. Even Raul Hilberg, whose The
Destruction of the European Jews has become the standard for scholarly
research, had to go begging for sponsors to subsidize the publication of what
really was his PhD thesis. In his latest book, The Politics of Memory, he pointed out that he had thought that the
costs could be split between the Columbia University Press and Yad Vashem but the Israeli authorities
refused to do so. This might strike one as strange but had its roots in the
previously mentioned Jewish identity problem. Hilberg, the scholar, had failed
to take this overarching phenomenon into account. I shall discuss this in more
detail in Part III, which will deal with the antecedents and execution of the
attempted Final Solution from the German point of view. It will suffice for now
to point out the difference in Jewish interests between Zionists and those who
favored assimilation. The former needed Jewish immigration into Palestine,
which would be hastened, the assumption was, if anti-Jewish sentiments became
more virulent in Diaspora countries, while the latter wanted to live in as much
peace as possible wherever they resided. Stirring up trouble unnecessarily, by
bringing up old grievances including the Final Solution was not their idea of
peace and prosperity.
Hilberg, who had no political ax to
grind and was only interested in establishing the full truth of how the
destruction of European Jewry had come about, was caught between these two
competing and actually mutually exclusive ideologies. He committed furthermore
a cardinal sin in the eyes of some of the leading functionaries in the Jewish
community. The dictum is that: Jews should write about Jews in a manner that is
good for Jews. As such an open unbiased approach, which shows that Jews had actually
not only, by and large, not resisted the onslaught which befell them but had
indirectly contributed to its success by following the advice they had received
from their community leaders - Judenräte
- could neither be condoned in Israel where heroism was called for, nor in
America where it might sully the picture of the pure victim.
By 1961 Hilberg had finally found a
publisher as well as the needed money and his dissertation appeared as a three
volume document. The timing was fortuitous because Adolf Eichmann, who had been
portrayed as a vicious sadistic monster responsible for the death of 6 million
Jews, had just been abducted from Argentina
and brought to trial in Jerusalem.
As Novick points out it is interesting to note that the reaction among American
Jews to this event was also far from unanimous because some law abiding Jewish
citizens felt that to abduct somebody from foreign soil and then try him by the
enemy was not exactly fair play. It was, furthermore, argued that since he had
not committed any crimes within or against the State of Israel he should be
tried in Europe where they had actually taken place.
With other words the legitimacy of Jerusalem,
to act not only in a high-handed manner but also to speak for all Jews of the
world was questioned.
The Eichmann trial can be regarded
as the first watershed in the American attitude towards the Final Solution. It
received wide attention and was extensively written up in a series of articles
in The New Yorker by Hannah Ahrendt,
who subsequently published the book, Eichmann
in Jerusalem. The Banality of Evil.” Her reports and the book created
a furor in high placed Jewish circles and she was denounced as a “Self-hating
Jewess.” The reason was that she did not portray the captured Eichmann as an
arrogant, vicious, sadistic, anti-Semitic murderer but as a pathetic bureaucrat
who under ordinary circumstances might never have come to anyone’s attention.
There was an additional fact. Her reports made clear that the Nazis had been
far less efficient than they had been portrayed, and that their successes
depended on the cooperation of the conquered countries. This news was not
particularly welcome although it had been Hilberg’s thesis all along. On the
other hand, who reads a three volume thesis which has the facts but lacks the
hate? Ahrendt later admitted that she had freely used Hilberg’s data for her
own book, although the latter disagreed with her characterization of Eichmann.
Leaving these disputes aside one
aspect struck me in her book and that was the fate of the Jews of France versus
those of Romania
and other nations under German occupation. When Europe
was “combed” from West to East in search of Jews, the French had no problem
with giving their refugee Jews, who had come to France
prior to 1940 and were as such stateless, back to Hitler, via Eichmann. But
when Eichmann in his Pflichtgefűhl
(sense of duty) subsequently also wanted French citizens of the Jewish religion
they drew the line and simply refused to go along. According to Ahrendt’s book
more than 300,000 Jews resided in France
at the outbreak of the war. This number was subsequently augmented somewhat by
Jewish refugees from Holland and Belgium.
In the spring of 1940, there were about 100.000 stateless Jews who could
theoretically have been deported. But even this did not work because the
Germans made a mistake after the deportation of 27,000 of these unfortunate
people. For the sake of efficiency, because it was race that counted rather
than citizenship, they began to lump stateless Jews with French citizens in the
transports. The French didn’t see it that way and refused further cooperation
altogether. In this way about 250,000 Jews survived the war in France.
These numbers, just as most others
dealing with the Final Solution are in dispute. Gerald
Reitlinger’s book, The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of
Europe, which was first published in the UK
in 1953, listed a total of 500,000 Jews in conquered France of whom 57,000 were
deported to Auschwitz. But these differences are not
important. What matters is that, as far as France
and some other European countries were concerned, even the attempt towards the
Final Solution was far from final. The example also showed that when the Nazis
saw that they were frustrated in their endeavors in one country they turned to
others where there was less resistance to their efforts of gaining free labor
and wealth. As Hitler said in one of his Tischgespraeche,
“We’ll deal with the [remaining] Jews after the war.”
What the Eichmann trial did accomplish
was that it brought more eye witness testimony of the atrocities that had
occurred in the camps, back into memory. Yet the time still was not right for
the Holocaust to achieve the prominence it has in today’s America.
It needed two more wars in Israel
and the beginning of the “counter-culture” here. The successful 1967 war which
led to the conquest of all of Palestine
including the Sinai and East Jerusalem, temporarily
erased the mental victim status Jews had fostered in the Diaspora. The Israeli
victory raised the self-confidence of American Jews because they could now
point to the accomplishments of their relatives. That this 1967 victory was a
Pyrrhic one is not yet fully acknowledged. It presented the Israelis with
Hitler’s problem. Now they had too many Arabs but even an attempt at a “Final
Solution of the Arab Problem” is no longer possible. The current “unilateral
disengagement” plan is in my opinion probably too little and too late.
While the 1967 war had an indirect
positive effect on the self-identification of American Jews the influence of
the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights struggle and change in America’s
culture during the late 1960s and early 1970s should also not be
underestimated. Individual Jews, as well as Jewish organizations had supported
the Civil Rights Movement, and especially the baby boom generation was no
longer content to just sit back as their elders did. It is no secret that the
intellectual leadership of the campus unrest during the Vietnam War and of the
“counter-culture” rested to a fair extent in the hands of young Jews who
rebelled against everything the establishment stood for. While these events
paved the way for greater outward Jewish assertiveness, the Holocaust was still
not an issue that would grip Gentile America.
The 1973 Yom Kippur war again
brought a change in Jewish self-perception. The initial setback took Israelis
by surprise. Although they soon recovered more territory than they had lost,
the initial shock had left a distinct mark not only on the Israeli psyche. The
aura of invulnerability that had been cherished after 1967 was now damaged and
old fears of total annihilation were rekindled. Novick wrote,
“In the wake of the Yom Kippur War,
American Jewish leaders were confronted with an agonizing problem, which was
summed up by Leonard Fein, editor of the Jewish magazine Moment [September
1975]:
‘A complex fear has taken hold of
us since October 1973. Its roots lie in our renewed awareness of Jewish
vulnerability, now widely perceived as permanent, perhaps even ultimate. . . .
The terrible isolation of Israel,
the dramatic ascendance of the Arabs . . . Israel’s
near total dependence on the United States
– all these are aspects of our present gloom.’”
The
answer to this “gloom” was found, as Novick writes, by two top leaders of the
Anti-Defamation League Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein and he quotes from
their book,
“’For a long while after World War
II, sympathy for the six million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide . . .helped to open doors long closed to Jews here
and abroad. Certainly the State of Israel was one direct beneficiary of world
empathy with the Jewish victims of Nazism.
In the postwar world . . . the time
during which the non-Jewish world continued to view Jews as oppressed was
incredibly short. Within twenty-five years after the photographs of the
bestiality in the concentration camps shocked the world. . . Jews had ceased being victims.’”
Forster and Epstein were not the
only ones who had recognized the desirability of victimhood and the best avenue
to achieve this status would be to resurrect the shameful atrocities of the
Nazis attempted Final Solution. From these political considerations a new dogma
was born. It might be formulated as:
Out of pure hate the Nazis’
efficient killing machine had brutally murdered six million Jews, in order to
extinguish the Jewish people forever. Because of all pervasive anti-Semitism,
Gentiles did little or nothing to prevent the crime in the first place and did
not interfere with its execution subsequently. The Jewish people are again in
mortal danger which can only be averted by keeping the guilt for the moral
turpitude of the non-Jewish world constantly before their eyes and be ever
vigilant against any stirring of anti-Semitic notions.
A concentrated effort to this
effect was launched with President Carter’s “Commission on the Holocaust,”
which was discussed in Part I, as the first step. Not only did Holocaust
Museums rise up in American cities but an avalanche of books, and to some
extent movies, was loosened which fostered this interpretation and became the
“Holocaust Industry.” As Finkelstein has documented this was highly profitable
financially for authors, lawyers and Jewish organizations but hardly anything
trickled down to the few real victims who were still alive.
But we live in a skeptical age and
not everybody was willing to accept this dogma on its merits, especially when
it was promoted with religious zeal and was turned from belief into fact which
everybody had to subscribe to. The laws of physics, under which all of us live,
state that every action leads to a reaction, and a revival of the Holocaust
memory, decades after the events when most perpetrators and victims had already
died, could not be an exception. Initially the number of 6 million who had
perished was questioned. This was not totally unreasonable because it is not
entirely clear how this number was arrived at. Most likely it comes from the Nuremberg
trials which will be discussed in the next installment. But that initial
exaggerations had occurred, especially in regard to how many people were killed
in Auschwitz,
was documented by Reitlinger in his previously mentioned book. In the chapter
entitled, “The End of Auschwitz” Reitlinger wrote,
“The Red Army did not arrive till
January 26th. They found 2,819 invalids in the three camps [Auschwitz
proper, Birkenau and Monowitz] whom they spared no pains to nurse back to
health. In due course the Soviet State Commission arrived and on May 12th
the world was presented with its findings [footnote 29 refers to the Nuremberg
document IMT VII, 127].
‘However, using rectified
coefficients for the part-time employment of the crematorium ovens and for the
periods they stood empty, the technical expert commission had ascertained that
during the time that the Auschwitz camp existed, the German butchers
exterminated in this camp not less than four million citizens of the U.S.S.R.,
Poland, France, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Holland, Belgium,
and other countries.’
The world has grown mistrustful of
‘rectified coefficients’ and the figure of four millions has
become ridiculous. Unfortunately Russian arithmetic has blurred the stark and
inescapable fat that little less than a million human beings perished in Auschwitz,
its gas chambers and its camps.”
Reitlinger, who cannot possibly be
labeled as an anti-Semite, subsequently did his own calculations from available
deportation transport documents and came up with 840,800. Nevertheless, the
number 4 million was initially engraved in stone at Auschwitz.
In 1995, after the fall of the communist regime in Poland,
it was revised to the now “official” number of 1.5 million people of all
countries and religions. That this is also not the final figure is apparent
from various websites. But it is fruitless to enter into this controversy. It
is not the numbers that count but the fact that people were brutally sacrificed
in pursuit of a chimerical greater good of a nation.
While initially only the numbers of
victims were questioned some people, for various reasons of their own, then
began to challenge the means that were employed. They asserted that the gas
chambers, in what has become known as the extermination camps, were used only
to disinfect clothing rather than murder people. This became the basis for what
is currently called “Holocaust denial.” It is now the most serious charge that
can be leveled against anyone because it leads not only to loss of reputation
and professional career, but also to criminal prosecutions in Germany
and Austria. Germany
has passed a specific law to that effect and in Austria
the British author David Irving, is currently jailed in Vienna
on the charge of spreading neo-Nazi ideology. Under § 3 of the Austrian Verbotsgesetz, which was passed on May 8, 1945 and reconfirmed in 1992,
he received yesterday a 3 year prison sentence.
As mentioned in “Today’s Democracy
in America”
(January 2004) I have met David Irving on two occasions and although he holds
some views that are clearly unconventional and irksome his current fate seems
beyond necessity. His dilemma is, however, in part self-inflicted. He started
out with writing biographies of important WWII figures, especially German
Nazis, and came to the conclusion that the history of that period does not take
the views of the vanquished into full account. As such he became an idol of
some groups that harbor resentment for Germany’s
defeat. He did nothing to dissuade them from some of the more outlandish
opinions but endorsed some of them in a flippant, offhand manner. This included
the statement that the Nazis had not carried out human gassing in the camps. He
thereby engendered the wrath of Deborah Lipstadt who labeled him in her book, “Denying the Holocaust. The Growing Assault
on Truth and Memory,” as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. He became persona non grata in respectable
society, his books began to vanish from bookstores and his income started to
dry up. He then decided to fight back and sued Lipstadt as well as Penguin
books for libel. While he might have won that law suit in a British
Court he made a fundamental mistake by appearing
as his own attorney. Lipstadt had several highly paid ones, who poured over
every sentence the man had ever written, or reportedly said, to prove their
point. Irving did not help himself
by his offhand and arrogant behavior in court and especially by stating that
there was no proof for homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz.
At that point the Judge had heard enough and branded him officially as an
anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. This led to complete financial ruin and he
had to support himself by giving talks to small groups and selling his books
from his van. Several countries, among them Austria,
banned him from entry but he went anyway and was arrested in Styria on his way
to Vienna in November of last year.
The Austrian government really had no choice in the matter because had they let
this “Holocaust denier” proceed the Jewish community would have been outraged
and since the Austrians have already enough problems of this type they didn’t
need another one. Why did Irving
risk arrest? I believe that he knew full well what was going to happen to him
but he sees himself as a spokesperson against the established views and was
eager not only to rehabilitate himself but also for the glare of the spotlight
that a trial would bring.
Dr. Lipstadt, to her credit, was
not in favor of his being sentenced but stated that Irving should be allowed to
go back home because there is no sense making a martyr out of him. I agree but
there are some problems with her book, which is now part of the Holocaust
legacy. Although she is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies
at EmoryUniversity
her book is not written in the detached style of academia but in a more
passionate and somewhat polemical one. She is not in favor of being questioned
about details in regard to how the Final Solution was carried out and seems
somewhat too ready to relegate all these questioners to the ranks of anti-Semites
and Holocaust deniers. While there is no doubt that some of them fit this label
others do not and painting everybody with the same brush is not helpful to her
cause. She is also highly critical of those whom she regards as adversaries to
her views but has a considerably less critical attitude towards what is
currently regarded as the official history, written by the victors of WWII.
I do not intend to enter into Dr.
Lipstadt’s belief system because that is personal, what I do want to discuss is
the subtitle of her book with the key words, “Truth” and “Memory.” I shall stay
with memory because it is the basis on which personal truth rests. Again I am
indebted to Dr. Novick’s book that discussed this aspect and the work by
Maurice Halbwachs on “Collective Memory” of which I had been unaware. I did not
doubt Novick’s statements about Halbwachs’ fundamental ideas but since they are
so important I wanted to be one hundred per cent sure which necessitated
another trip to the Marriott Library for this book, and am happy to report that
what Novick wrote is accurate. What makes Halbwachs especially relevant in the
present context is that although his insights were published originally in the
1920s they are completely vindicated now. Halbwachs’ fundamental thesis, as
explained in the Introduction by Lewis A. Coser to his translation of
Halbwachs’ book On Collective Memory,
states that “the past is a social
construction mainly, if not wholly, shaped by the concerns of the present
[emphasis added].”
As everybody knows individual
memory is subjective and only partially reliable. In addition it gets steadily
worse the greater the distance is from the original event which laid down the
trace in our brain. In regard to the Holocaust there are very few people with
personal memories left and we are now dealing with Halbwachs’ collective
memory, which gets constantly reshaped for the needs of the moment. I believe
that this is indeed the clue to understanding the Holocaust as it is presented
today. Individual memories of extremely traumatic personal events, as well as
hearsay have become conflated and now constitute “The Holocaust,” which is no
longer open to question. But every concentration camp survivor saw only a small
piece of the total event, just as soldiers remember only a minute fraction of
what they experienced during a given war.All the rest is subsequently collated from other sources and becomes the
final memory which in turn undergoes constant change because the proteins that
made up the engram and the neuronal connections that lead to its recovery are
no longer the same.
As far as America
is concerned the Holocaust has mainly become collective memory, because nearly
all of the camp survivors are dead. A typical example for collective memory,
that fits the current context, comes from the Halbwachs monograph and deals
with Masada. For about two thousand years the siege of
that fortress and the collective suicide of the defenders, instead of surrender
to the Romans, was a non-event in Jewish history. It does not show up in the
Talmud or other Jewish scripture. But in 1927 a young Lithuanian immigrant to Palestine,
Yitzakh Lamdan, created a poem praising the heroic resistance and resilience of
the Jewish people with Masada as the shining example. A
visit to Masada is now a must for every tourist to Israel,
just as a visit to Yad Vashem is. But
what happened at Masada in 73 AD is reported only by
Josephus, who did not have kind words about the morals of the Sicarii defenders, and he based his story
exclusively on the reports of two women who had hid with five children in order
to escape the massacre. Josephus is not always a reliable historian and we
don’t even know whether or not he interviewed these women in person, had simply
heard, or made up the story. This is not important; what matters is the usage
that has been made of it for the purpose of creating an image that should befit
the twentieth rather than the first century. The image has become fact!
As far as personal memory is
concerned I was also so intrigued by Novick’s footnote in regard to the memory
of survivors that I got the original article “Memory as History” (Richard
Ketchum, American Heritage; Nov 91, Vol.42 Issue 7), from which he quoted. It
deals with the personal memories of participants in the 1775 Battle of Bunker
Hill which ushered in the American Revolution. When the cornerstone for the
Monument to commemorate the event in 1825 was laid, 40 ex-soldiers of the
Revolutionary Army who claimed to have taken part in the battle were in
attendance. Their recollections were collected in 3 volumes but when these were
critically examined by a commission in 1842 it became evident that the contents
were,
“’most extraordinary, many of the
testimonies extravagant, boastful, inconsistent, and utterly untrue; mixtures
of old men’s broken memories and fond imaginings with the love of the
marvelous. Some of those who gave in affidavits about the battle could not have
been in it, nor even in its neighborhood. They had
gotten so used to telling the story for the wonderment of village listeners as
grandfathers’ tales, and as petted representatives of ‘the spirit of ‘76,’ that
they did not distinguish between what they had seen and done and what they had
read, heard, or dreamed. The decision of the committee was that much of the
contents of the volumes was wholly worthless for
history, and some of it discreditable, as misleading and false.’”
Well, so much for Bunker
Hill but how about the Holocaust. Novick relates that,
“A few years ago the director of Yad Vashem’s archive told a reporter
that most of the twenty thousand testimonies it had collected were unreliable:
‘Many were never in the places where they claim to have witnessed atrocities,
while others relied on secondhand information given them by friends or passing
strangers [footnote refers to a statement by Shmuel Krakowski quoted in Barbara
Amouyal’s article. ‘Doubts over Evidence of CampSurvivors” in the Jerusalem
Post of August 17, 1986].
Primo Levi one of the most renowned survivor-witnesses has described this
phenomenon:
‘The greater part of the witnesses
. . . have ever more blurred and stylized memories, often, unbeknownst to them,
influenced by information gained from later readings or the stories of others .
. . A memory evoked too often, and expressed in the form of a story, tends to
become fixed in a stereotype . . . crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing
itself in the place of the raw memory and growing at its expense’ [footnote
refers to Primo Levi’s book The Drowned
and the Saved, published originally in Italy in 1986 and its English
translation which was published in 1988; ellipsis are in the original].”
In summary it appears that the
Holocaust, as currently portrayed, is no longer based entirely on history but
has entered the field of collective memory and is deliberately used for
specific purposes. As such, there should be room for skepticism, when expressed
in a scholarly manner, and if further investigations are called for, they ought
to be allowed to proceed by internationally recognized experts in their
respective fields. Next week’s installment will conclude this series with
reflections from the German side, some personal experiences with the Nazi power
structure, and lessons to be learned.
March 1, 2006
UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST
PART III
THE FINAL SOLUTION IN CONTEXT
“In the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So starts the
gospel of St. John and this is also
the most apt introduction to our topic. The Holocaust was the outcome of a gigantic
struggle between two opposing views that was initiated by words and cartoons.
It is the latter, which makes it so relevant for the 21st century
because 20th century terminology and ideation dominate again.
Let me paraphrase St.
John, “In the beginning was the word and the word
became god . . . and became [burning] flesh.” There were two gods in the
first half of the past century, both were jealous gods and did not tolerate
other gods besides them. That was the tragedy. Hitler’s strident, vituperative
language in Mein Kampf especially,
but not exclusively, against Jews became the hallmark of his campaign for
absolute power in Germany.
It thoroughly frightened the world wide Jewish community and it responded in
kind. The war of words and pictures which preceded WWII is largely forgotten
today but the atrocities of WWII could never have happened had the soil not
been plowed and the seeds diligently sown. This installment will bring these
memories back which only few of us have.
Historians have debated as to when
the Holocaust began to take shape. Some date it to the Kristallnacht, while others bring it in relation to the invasion of
the Soviet Union. Still others put the date at January 30, 1933 when Hitler was appointed
chancellor of Germany.
I believe they are correct because on that day an internal German event became
the concern of the Jewish community throughout the world.
In order to understand the second
quarter of the 20th century, the consequences of which will continue
to haunt us for decades to come, we have to look at Mein Kampf because this was the book that initiated the disasters
which followed. The final version as distributed first to the faithful, and
then the German people at large consisted of two parts. The first one was
written by Hitler during the summer and fall of 1924, while he was imprisoned
at Landsberg am Lech for the failed
November 1923 Putsch and had the subtitle, “Eine
Abrechnung,”while the second part
bears the date of 1927 and has the subtitle, “Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung.” While the first part was mainly
a historical review how he in person and Germany in general got into the
situation they found themselves in, the second part was a programmatic
statement what the NS movement stood for and what it intended to accomplish in
its domestic and foreign policy. The two parts differ somewhat in their tone.
The first one is filled with venomous rage, while the second part is slightly
less so. Hitler’s inflammatory rhetoric does not lend itself to proper English
translation but some of it is necessary for comparison with the language used
by his American Jewish adversaries who did write in English.
Why did Hitler express himself the
way he did in 1924? It was the rage of a person who would be called in German a “verkrachte Existenz.” Imagine a 35
year old male who had intended to become a great painter, would have settled
for an architect but couldn’t achieve that because out of personal willfulness
had neglected his studies and failed to finish High School; hated the country
he was born in because of its “multiculturalism;” admired Germanic greatness but
was penniless as well as profoundly enraged when Germany not only lost the war
but was saddled with exclusive guilt for its start. Add to this situation that
everything the common people had stood and fought for was now vilified by the
new ruling class; hyperinflation ruined ordinary citizens while others
profiteered; the French who had not been satisfied with regaining Alsace-Lorraine
and massive reparation demands which could not be met occupied the Ruhr,
Germany’s industrial heart, in 1923. The uprising in Munich in which Hitler was
supposed to have been supported by the Bavarian government and which was meant
to be the beginning of a march on Berlin (similar to Mussolini’s a year
earlier) in order to “throw the rascals out,” had in fact been thwarted by the
very people who had pledged support; units of the Reichswehr and the police
shot and killed 16 of his compatriots who only wanted to restore German freedom
and German honor. Now he was sentenced to five years in prison; the party he
had built was forbidden and dissolved; he was a nobody
who had failed miserably!
Those were the circumstances under
which Hitler wrote Part I. Somebody must have been at fault and since he
completely lacked insight the fault lay with others and especially those who
had contributed internally to the German collapse of 1918 and who now ruled Germany:
Marxists-Bolsheviks and Capitalists. These in turn were controlled, in his
opinion, by Jews whose only aim was the destruction of the Aryan race so that
they could rule the world according to Old Testament promise. This was Hitler’s
Weltanschauung, his personal fervent
belief, which he poured out in the book. He was what one may call the “Great
Simplifier” because everything could be brought on a common denominator: purity
of the race will ensure strength, and strength is needed to combat your enemies
because it is a law of nature that the strong eat the weak. Everything he did
flowed from there. He even abstained from talking about the Jews, in the plural,
because one might make differences among them; no it had to be “The Jew” in the
singular, and to encompass not only German Jews but those of the rest of the
world there was “das internationale
Judentum,” international Jewry, who really controlled the lives of all the
nations. This power needed to be broken and he would spare no effort to do so.
One other aspect needs to be
remembered in regard to Mein Kampf.
The first part was written to define himself for himself and for his party’s
faithful. It was not expected that ordinary Germans, let alone the rest of the
world, would pay much attention to it. This is why he constantly used words which
don’t lend themselves very well to English translation. For instance Schmarotzer is only inadequately
represented by “sponger,” because it does not carry the same definitive
derogatory message as the German word. For this reason I won’t translate all
the flowery terms Hitler used to insult his enemies, especially “the Jew,” and
only a few samples will suffice: “vermin that needs to be exterminated (ausgerottet), tyrannical bloodsuckers,
the great hater who demands total destruction of the German people, noxious
bacillus, needs the lie just as people living in northern climes need warm
clothing.” Nobody in his right mind took this sort of prattle seriously except
the Jews whom he had insulted in this manner.
I believe that the Jewish
leadership in Germany
and elsewhere committed a mistake in the early 1920’s which had its terrible
revenge in the 1940’s. Instead of letting him bark and concentrate on getting the
economy into decent shape so that people could have jobs and income again they
responded in the same manner thereby giving Hitler more attention than he and
his meager following of convinced fanatics really deserved. Another mistake was
made by the Bavarian government when they released Hitler after only eight
months instead of letting him serve the five years he had been sentenced to.
This allowed him to reorganize the party, and the continued attacks in the
Press in word and picture helped to attract the attention he required.
In a previous installment I have
mentioned that I have a book “Hitler in
der Karrikatur der Welt” in my library. It was published by the NSDAP in
1938 and carries Hitler’s nihil obstat,
approved by the Führer, on the cover. The book contains cartoons about Hitler
and the Nazi party from April 1, 1924
to June 1933 and allows one to gauge how he was presented in the Press during
the years before he became Germany’s
dictator. The first one, on April fool’s day, shows him riding a white horse with
the Brandenburg gate of Berlin in back, a cupid holding a victor’s wreath over
his head, a Valkyrian banner carrying knight on his left, a Roman soldier type
with blade in the right hand holding with his left a pinstriped suit wearing man
who had been thrown to the ground and was about to be beheaded, while another
grim looking pinstriped capitalist is chained to the horse’s bridle. Well, when
it was published in the Munich of 1924
with Hitler sitting in jail it was a joke, or was it?
After this cartoon came a four
year’s gap and the pictures continued in January of 1928. The first cartoon
predicted that the Nazi party would split itself so often that only Hitler
remained and than he would ax his own head in the middle from top to chin.
Subsequently between 1928 and December 1932 they show variants of Hitler as: a
buffoon; a tool of bankers and aristocrats; afraid of governing; mongering for
war and sitting on the tombstone of the German people. With one exception from The Daily Advertiser of TiffinOhioU.S.A.,
which shows Hitler in WWI uniform, a sword on his side imitating Napoleon and
Mussolini, they are exclusively from German sources especially, “Der Wahre Jacob” of Berlin.
This was the political climate in Germany before Hitler became chancellor and
judging from the cartoons, they spread both fear of him as well as the hope of his
being incompetent and, therefore, inconsequential.
The situation changed in February
of 1933. Now the vast majority came from abroad especially: France,
England, the U.S.,
and the Soviet Union, there are also some other
countries represented such as: the Netherlands,
Denmark, Turkey,
Egypt, Spain,
as well as a rather mild one from Austria.
While a few still stressed incompetence, the rest predicted disasters brought
on by war for which Hitler would be the cause. The last date of the cartoons
was June 19, 1933 and came from the London
Daily Express, It showed a captive Germany bowed down by a huge swastika
tied to her back and the caption reads ”Whither?”
One may now say that the cartoons
which predicted war and death were prophetic but one should also consider
another possibility. Could the disaster have been averted had fear of it not
constantly been drummed into people before Hitler had even come to power? This
is an unpopular thought but the vigorous Jewish reaction in the West to Hitler
becoming chancellor, before he had even issued his first decree, was not
helpful to the potential cause of peace. The role the American Press and
especially The New York Times played
in the creation of a climate of fear tends to be underreported and hardly
anyone knows that the infamous April 1,
1933 German boycott of Jewish stores and offices was precipitated
by a call from Jewish circles in New York
for boycotting German goods. The New York
Times of March 21, 1933
carried on its front page the news that the German Reichstag will meet “to give
Hitler full control as dictator” and somewhat further down on that page is a
long article headlined, “Jews demand Washington
action.” Inside the same issue is another article with the headline, “Boycott
Advocated to Curb Hitlerism. W.W. Cohen says any Jew who buys goods made in Germany
is a traitor.” The article quoted Mr. Cohen as saying,
“’Any Jew buying one penny’s worth
of merchandise made in Germany
is a traitor to his people. . . . I doubt that the American Government can
officially take any notice of what the German Government is doing to its own
citizens. Our only line of resistance is to touch the German pocketbooks.’
Referring to the difference of
opinion between Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Joseph M. Proskauer at the overflow
indignation meeting at the Astor Sunday night, the speaker said both were
right. He agreed with Dr. Wise that, ‘we must make ourselves heard all over the
world’ and with Mr. Proskauer’s argument that mass demonstrations would add to
the difficulty of German Jews. The added burden must be borne temporarily, he
concluded, while the mechanism for the final curbing of the oppression was made
to function.”
The article continued with an
announcement for a parade on Thursday and the adoption of several resolutions. For
Hitler this was obviously the “Weltjudentum”
which he had been talking about all along and something had to be done. On
March 26 he called a meeting at the Berghof
where the plans for the Saturday April 1, boycott of Jewish stores and offices
were worked out. It was to be limited to one day, then there was to be a pause
until Wednesday and resumed thereafter unless the Jews abroad got the message
that he had a fair amount of hostages at his hands and wouldn’t mind dealing
with them in any way he saw fit. Orders were given to the party that their
functionaries who enforced the boycott were not to manhandle German Jews and
especially foreigners.
There is no doubt that in the
immediate aftermath of Hitler’s January 30 triumph some members of the SA went
on a rampage and brutalized Jews as well as others with whom they had a score
to settle. But these were personal acts of violence and not state ordered
pogroms. After a revolution, which Hitler’s ascension to power certainly was,
“stuff happens,” as our Secretary of Defense has so eloquently put it in
another context.
For what really went on in the
German Jewish community in those days we have to turn to the diary of Victor
Klemperer, which he kept from 1933-1945 and subsequently continued under the
East German communist regime. He was Professor of Romance languages at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden
and since his wife, Eva, was Aryan he could survive the war in Germany
including the air raids on Dresden
by the Allies. What is apparent is the profound fear for what the future was
expected to bring rather than brutalization of himself or his Jewish friends.
The friends who were in exposed positions, especially journalism and the film
industry or the legal profession immediately lost their jobs. In essence the
Nazis embarked on what one may call a “de-Judaization” of what they regarded as
important positions in the State and as such were fore-runners of
de-Nazification and de-Baathification. They set the precedent which has been
followed ever since.
Klemperer could carry on with his teaching
assignments and saw his audience dwindle. But in spite of meager finances they
were able to continue with building their little house in nearby Dőlzschen.
They also retained the use of their car. Friends who wanted to emigrate did,
including to Palestine, but
Klemperer thought himself as too old for that. On July 9, 1933 he wrote, “Whoever goes there [Palestine]
exchanges Nationalism and Confinement [Enge]
for Nationalism and Confinement. In addition it is an immigration land for
capitalists. It is supposed to be of the size of the Province
of East Prussia. Residents: 200.000
Jews and 800.000 Arabs.” On November
2, 1933 he commented, “I can’t help myself, I sympathize with the
Arabs whose land is being ‘purchased’”
With this as the background on the German
Jewish reality of 1933 we can now look at how it was portrayed in America.
On August 7, 1933The New York Times reported on the
return of Mr. Samuel Untermeyer from a trip to Europe.
While there he had “presided over the International Jewish boycott conference,
held in Amsterdam last month, and was elected president of the World Jewish
Economic Federation, formed to combat the Hitlerite oppression of Jews.” The
paper not only gave excerpts of Mr. Untermeyer’s speech in that article but the
full text, which covered three columns of nearly the entire page, was also printed.
Here are some salient excerpts,
“The nightmares of horrors through
which I have passed in those two weeks in Europe,
listening to the heartbreaking tales of refugee victims, beggar description.
I deeply appreciate your
enthusiastic greeting on my arrival today, which I quite understand is
addressed not to me personally but to the holy war in the cause of humanity in
which we are embarked. Jews and non-Jews alike, for we are equally concerned
that the work of centuries shall not be undone and that civilization shall not
be allowed to die. . . .
Now or never must all the nations
of the earth make common cause against the monstrous claim that the slaughter,
starvation and annihilation, by a country that has reverted to barbarism, of
its own innocent and defenseless citizens without rhyme, reason or excuse is an
internal affair against which the rest of the world must stand idly by and not
lift a hand in defense. . . .
But why dwell longer upon this revolting
picture of the ravages brought by those ingrates and beasts of prey, animated
by the loathsome motives of race hatred, bigotry and envy. For the Jews are the
aristocrats of the world. From time immemorial they have been persecuted and
have seen their persecutors come and go. They alone have survived and so will
history repeat itself. . . . “
I believe this is sufficient to
give the flavor. Jews and Nazis were at war long before the first shots were
fired on September 1, 1939.
On September 6, 1939The Times of London
published a letter by Dr. Weitzman to Mr. Chamberlain under the headline, “Jews
to Fight for Democracy.” It was written on August 29, before Hitler’s invasion
of Poland, and
in it Dr. Weitzman, as president of The Jewish Agency for Palestine promised
that “the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the
democracies.” This was occasioned by the bitter division over the immigration
quota to Palestine the British had
imposed and these differences were now to be laid aside until the anticipated
war was over.
Although Dr. Weitzman had no
jurisdiction over German Jews the Nazis immediately regarded them now as
potential members of a “fifth column” against which measures had to be taken.
Obviously it didn’t need Weitzman’s letter because anybody who did not share
the Nazis' philosophy fervently hoped for a rapid Allied victory. This is not
the point, but the Nazis could, thereby again refer to the Weltjudentum which desired Germany’s
defeat and made their “defensive” struggle absolutely essential. Anyone who did
not see it this way was a traitor who had to be either sent to a KZ or
otherwise disposed of.
Up to March of 1938 German Jews,
although subjected to the Nuremberg laws, were not incarcerated for being Jewish
but only if they engaged in what was regarded as anti-state activities, which
included membership in the Communist party or if they were Socialist activist.
This changed with the invasion of Austria
because as mentioned on other occasions Austrians, and especially the Viennese,
had considerably greater anti-Jewish feelings than Germans.I have discussed the reasons in War&Mayhem and it needs only to be mentioned here that the
proportionally greater representation of Jews in the media, the arts and major
professions had aroused envy. An additional area of resentment was the attempt
to introduce to a Catholic conservative people what is now called “modernity,”
which included the change in sexual mores.
March 15, 1938 was a watershed for Jews in what was now
the Greater German Reich. Immediately after the Nazi took over trains went from
Vienna to Dachau
which held not only functionaries of the previous regime but also so called “Prominente,” namely those Jews who had
been in the cultural limelight. To the best of my knowledge, the inscription “for
Aryans only” on park benches, and other chicaneries, appeared first in Austria
rather than Germany and Austrian Jews who traveled to the “Altreich,” were surprised at the relatively more lenient situation
German Jews lived in as compared to what they experienced at home. The
situation changed, of course, first after the Kristallnacht (which was
precipitated by a young Jew assassinating a member of the German legation in Paris)
and especially during the war for the reasons stated above. But for the sake of
historical accuracy I would like to emphasize that hate for hate’s sake was not
the motivating force in the general public. In essence it was a get rich quick
mentality because now a previously wealthy upper class had overnight become a
lower class and could be exploited. As such it was more of a universal human
phenomenon rather than a specific characterologic defect of Austrians and
Germans.
Another misconception is that once
you were in a concentration camp you were kept for life. The reason for it is
that the picture the word concentration camp evokes is that of 1941-1945. Prior
to that time Jews who had committed no other offenses against the state could
be discharged especially if they intended to emigrate. Before the war the
official anti-Jewish policy was emigration, rather than extermination.
This needs to be emphasized because Hitler’s Mein Kampf ranting of “ausrotten,”
which tends to be used to indicate that this had always been the goal, did not
become government policy until the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Let us now try to do the impossible
again and consider what Hitler’s thoughts might have been in the spring and
summer of 1941. He was saddled with a war against England
that he had never wanted but could not end because Churchill wouldn’t let him. This
attitude, according to his Table talks, was incomprehensible to him because it
would result in the demise of the British Empire for
which he had strong positive feelings. The Brits were Aryans and knew how to
keep the inferior races in their place. That the British would act against
their best interests, as he saw them, could only be the work of Jews who with
the help of their American relatives would drag that country into the war
against him also.
What to do? He had tried to come to
an arrangement with Molotov in the fall of 1940 by getting the Soviet
Union on his side with the promise that they could have free hand
in Asia, especially India
and Persia if
they just let him do what he wanted in Europe. Molotov
didn’t bite and it was known in Germany
that conversations between the British and the USSR
were under way to have Stalin join their side. Under those circumstances
Hitler’s war would be lost. He felt that he had to attack first, before Stalin
attacked him and once the wobbly Soviet Union was
finished he would have his fortress Europe that would
have been unassailable by the Brits and would have given Roosevelt
second thoughts about entering the war on their side.
It is my personal opinion that the
absolute hate and ferocity the campaign against the Soviet Union
engendered was the ultimate watershed for the Jewish people towards the Final
Solution. In Hitler’s mind “the Jew” had frustrated him again in all his
efforts and now was the time to keep the promise he had made in his speech of January 30, 1939. After he had
discussed and dismissed the international “Hetze
[vehement agitation]” against Nazi Germany he had said as a warning, “If
international finance Jewry within Europe and abroad were to succeed to throw
nations once more into a world war, the result will not be a Bolshevization of
the world and thereby the triumph of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish
race in Europe.”
It is obvious that he had wanted
his war with Poland
and the Soviet Union in January of 1939 but he had hoped
to limit it to the East rather than be confronted with all the rest of the
world. At some time in 1941 when he had millions of Jews under his control, who couldn’t all be machine gunned, he may well have
remembered another one of his ideas from Part II of Mein Kampf. At that time he
had written, in connection with the inner decay of Germany’s will to win during
the first world war, “If one had at the beginning of the war or during it, held
twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebraic corrupters of nations [Vőlkerverderber] under poison gas,
as hundreds of thousands of our very best workers of all segments of society and
professions had to suffer in the field, the sacrifices of the millions on the
front would not have been in vain.” Thus, it became obvious that gassing would
indeed be the fastest, most economic, and least emotionally traumatic way, for
the perpetrators to deal with the huge numbers that were now involved. Moral
considerations no longer came into play and the distinction between soldiers
and civilians had been obliterated by the systematic destruction of cities
where women and children also perished in fire storms. After December 1941
Hitler must have known in his heart that the war was lost because the Japanese
pursued their private war in the Pacific, rather than helping him against the Soviet
Union as he had hoped when he declared war on America.
Since he could no longer enter history as “the Greatest German” he might as
well be remembered as “the Greatest Criminal.” If he were to win, against all
odds as the “Grosse Fritz [Frederick
II, his model]” did, nobody would ask the victor any questions and if he lost
there would be the bullet in the brain of which he spoke repeatedly.
That millions of people perished in
the Final Solution cannot be doubted, neither can be that murder by gassing had
been carried out. The dispute over the Holocaust, by reasonable people, is only
about numbers, methods, motives, and uniqueness in human history. The Nuremberg
trials produced the most salient documents but unfortunately they were flawed
on two accounts. One was inherent in the problem when the victor judges the
vanquished and especially when the prosecutor for crimes against humanity was a
citizen of the Soviet Union, which did not have a
reputation for strict adherence to the truth. In addition the trial was carried
out in haste and its purpose was to punish the guilty.
Article 18 stated that “The
Tribunal shall confine the Trial strictly to an expeditious hearing of the
cases raised by the charges.” Article 19 reads, “The Tribunal shall not be
bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest
possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any
evidence which it deems to be of probative value.”
Thus, some documents may have been
given a different interpretation than might have been warranted had they been
studied with less haste. I am saying this because I came across on Wikipedia
the so called “Hőfle telegram,” which was sent “from SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on January 11,
1943 to SS-ObersturmbannführerAdolf Eichmann,” and
“gave death tolls” for the Aktion
Reinhard camps through December 31, 1942. The camps in question were:
Lublin-Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, the total number was given as
1,274,166. Impressive as this number is there is some doubt as to the
translation. A facsimile of the original telegram is available and “Zugang [entry]” was used instead of “Abgang” or some similar word that might
have been used if one wanted to camouflage the word death. Further details in
the telegram which give the previous 14 day Zugang
for the individual camps simply don’t make sense if the word was used to
indicate how many murders had been accomplished during that time. Thus, the
telegram stated, in all probabilty, how many prisoners were admitted to these
camps in the specified periods rather than killed. Let me emphasize that I do
not doubt for a moment that people were deliberately killed but some of the
evidence for the numbers of murders can be legitimately questioned.
While this may be of interest to Holocaust specialists it is not a very
important aspect in the current context. Considerably more important for our
time are the questions why the German people tolerated this crime and to what
extent hate existed as the motive, in the minds of the average citizens. These
go to the heart of the collective guilt aspect that is supposed to exist. Let
me now pose this question to the average non-Jewish American citizen: Assume
that in the post 9/11 environment further decrees are issued against a group of
people who are regarded as holding an inveterate hate against us and want to
destroy our way of life. Assume furthermore that if one is discovered of
“aiding and abetting” any member of that group not only the person who does so
will be sent right away to Guantanamo, or a similar facitlty, but so will be
members of the immediate family (Sippenhaftung).
How many parents would willingly risk their lives and those of their children
for that group of people with whom they have had only marginal contact
previously?
That was the situation during the war in the Nazi Germany I lived in. What
kept us in line was the fear of instant massive retaliation and that is a
common denominator for all human beings. Did I see hate against the Jews? Not
really; you heard off and on comments that could be interpreted in that way but
they were just that rather than an enduring passion. As a Mischling (Jewish grandfather) I was potentially on the “endangered
species” list and as mentioned in War&Mayhem
I was expelled from my High School in December of 1941 by the Superintendant of
Vienna’s schools as “an abscess on the body of the German people [Eiterbeule am deutschen Volkskőrper].”
This was Nazidom in action and they must surely have hated me, I thought at the
time. But this was rhetoric, as I found out later when I read the note on my
report card by the director of our school. I still have the document and it did
not accuse me of loathsome, nefarious activities. It simply stated that I was
expelled “for educational reasons” and against admission to another school “ist nichts einzuwenden [there are no
objections].” After proper repentance for youthful stupidity, that had pushed
against the limits of what Nazi Germany would tolerate, I was readmitted within
three weeks to another school and could graduate a year later. The
“educational” measure surely worked. I had been bone lazy previously but that
experience taught me how to study. Higher education was not a given for a Mischling under the Nazis but when I
applied for admission to Medical School the application was granted. Had I
applied for Law school or Journalism I might well have been turned down.I am mentioning these personal aspects only
because had the average Nazi been indeed as ruthless, at the time the Final
solution was in progress as he is portrayed, my fate would have been
considerably different. This is not to be taken as an excuse for that system in
any form or fashion, and I am very glad that Hitler lost the war, but I do not
believe that emphasizing past or current hate will solve any of our problems.
This brings me to the present where fear and hate are again used to
motivate people for political purposes. Rhetoric is revved up and the War on
Terror is supposed to be against abysmal haters who want to destroy our way of
life. Phrases I heard in my youth are commonplace again, except that it is now America
that is in imminent danger of being taken over by Muslim extremists who want to
destroy Western civilization. Our ally, Israel, is of course, in even greater
danger because the Arabs are planning to kill all the Jews in that country.
Although the time is not yet quite ripe the identification of “Arab” with “terrorist,”
is well on its way. The offensive cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad, in the Jylland-Posten was not just happenstance
by some free lancer who wanted to have some fun and make a few bucks. There is
more to that story and it brings me to the lesson we should learn from the
Holocaust.
The cartoon was initiated by the culture editor, Flemming Rose, of the Jylland-Posten who, as he said, had sent
letters to 25 Danish cartoonists to “draw Muhammad as you see him.” This was
supposedly an attempt to attract attention to the self-censorship of Danish
newspapers in regard to Islam. He received 12 replies and these were published.
Some were innocuous but others inflammatory. We can speculate about Mr. Rose’s
motives but in the current climate of animosity against Muslims Mr. Rose’s
project was certainly ill considered unless it was a deliberate attempt to
aggravate an already existing difficult situation. If that had been the case it
would have been reprehensible.
Cartoons can be a powerful propaganda weapon, as has been discussed earlier,
and in the previously mentioned book there were two that were most striking in
the context of the Holocaust. Both were published soon after Hitler’s
appointment as Chancellor. The one reproduced below appeared on March 17, 1933
in the Leningradskaya Prawda.The Russian
caption, when translated from German, reads, “The meatgrinder has become
operational.”
One might ignore this as just another example oftypical Soviet propaganda but when one sees
the second one published soon thereafter on April 5 in New York, as well as
others of a similar nature, it is obvious that one is not dealing with isolated
incidents but a deliberate attempt to arouse disgust and hatred against the
Nazi regime.
Regardless of how much one may dislike the newly elected leader of a
country, this depiction is uncalled for. Again one can say in retrospect that
these cartoons were prophetic but in the context of early 1933 they were
totally inappropriate and clearly suggested to the Nazi hierachy that this must
have been the work of the Weltjudentum.
Hitler, when cornered as he was by the end of 1941, may well have said: If
that’s who they say I am; ok; I’ll show them!
Thus, the only lesson, I believe, that can be drawn from the Holocaust
should be: avoid inflammatory rhetoric and inflammatory cartoons; they do more
harm than good and in the end may backfire! Using the same methods as your
adversary will draw you down to his level and from hateful words and pictures
to bullets and bombs is just a small step.
I sincerely doubt that keeping the flames of the Holocaust in the forefront
of awareness will make the Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere safer. Collective
memory, as explained in the previous installment, is just too different between
Jews and non-Jews even for my generation. When an attempt is made to force
Jewish collective memory on others it may have an initial positive result but
when the effort becomes persistent it will be resented and is likely to have
the opposite effect. If we really want to avoid the next looming catastrophe we
will have to cool passions, and if our adversaries commit atrocities which
demand a response we must not stoop to their level. Christians in our government
and the media, should remember Jesus’ admonition of not repaying evil with
evil; Jews could remember, “Venegeance is Mine, saith the Lord;” while atheists
and agnostics should keep Marcus Aurelius’ dictum in mind, “The best revenge is
not becoming like your enemy.” Our age is much too dangerous to fan fear and
hate. If we want to survive the next decades without a WWIII we will have to
work diligently and patiently with moderates on the side of our opponents, deal
with their viewpoints as well as grievances, and not be swayed by radicals especially
those in our own midst.
April 1, 2006
9/11 AND IRAQ
During the past month we have
witnessed a further decay in the nation’s confidence towards its leadership.
Instead of following some of the suggestions made in the September1, 2005 essay
about how our President could regain the good will of the majority of the
American public, the White House has pursued the opposite strategy. Not only is
Mr. Rumsfeld still Secretary of Defense, but troop withdrawal in the
recommended orderly sequence (1st National Guard, 2nd Reservists, 3rd
the professional military with previous tours of duty in Iraq)
is also not even discussed. A recent Zogby poll showed that 72 per cent of our
troops in Iraq
want to come home during the current calendar year. That 89% of the Reserves
and 82% of the National Guard want to leave Iraq
can be expected, but that 58% of Marines want to do so likewise should give
Pentagon planners food for thought.
These numbers are not surprising
because every intelligent person must ask him/herself what we are really doing
there. The official answer is that if we pull out completely now - which no one
has suggested - the country would sink into further chaos. This is probably
true but an orderly troop withdrawal needs to be publicly discussed not only on
the domestic scene but internationally with the neighboring countries and the
members of the Security Council. Nobody wants a full blown Civil War in Iraq
and everybody has a stake in a reasonably successful outcome of that
ill-advised and ill-considered venture. But this would require more compromises
in regard to the future economic reconstruction of that country, by having
other nations participate in the contracts, and a complete shift in our posture
vis a vis the rest of the world from “forward leaning” to rational discourse
among equals, which the current administration seems to be unable to consider.
There were other fascinating
numbers in that poll. Eighty five percent “said the U.S.
mission is mainly ‘to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,’ 77%
said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was ‘to stop
Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.’”
Although the White House has in the meantime officially denied a Saddam – al
Qaeda connection this does not seem to have filtered through to the President.
In one of his rare Press
Conferences on March 21 Mr. Bush did something nearly unprecedented by calling
on veteran reporter Helen Thomas. He had studiously avoided her for 3 years
because she is portrayed by the media as an arch-left-liberal who asks the hard
questions. I watched that news conference on TV and it was embarrassing to see
how the President conducted himself in this unscripted exchange.
The question by Ms. Thomas in
regard to Iraq
was, “Why did you really want to go to war?” After having stated that “To
assume I wanted war is just – is just flat wrong,” he continued, “I – my
attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th.
We – when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my
disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that
day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and
previous diplomacy. But we realized on September
the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent
life. And I’m never going to forget it. And I’m never going to forget the vow I
made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect
our people. Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to
provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq.”
Ms. Thomas’ follow up statement was
obvious, “They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.” The President
then seemed flustered, “Hold on for a second -- let me -- look --excuse me for
a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe heaven for Al Qaeda. That’s were
Al Qaeda trained, and --“ at that point Ms. Thomas interrupted him and said
“I’m talking about Iraq.”
The President then backtracked and switched to Afghanistan
as the training camps. “That’s where they plotted. That’s where they planned
the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.” As far as Iraq is
concerned he stated that he had hoped to solve the problem diplomatically, that
is why he went to the Security Council and had Resolution 1441 passed, “And the
world said, ‘Disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences . . . and when he
chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the
difficult decision to make to remove him, and we did. And the world is safer
for it.”
These words are revealing because
they explain the poll numbers from our troops in Iraq
as to why we are there. For the President, a complicity of Saddam in the 9/11
tragedy seems to be a fact. Against this speaks, however, that whatever Al
Qaeda camps may have existed in Iraq
they were not sanctioned by Saddam. From all we know they were in the Northeast
corner of the country in the Kurdish controlled area. Our “no fly zone” was
operative there and Saddam had no access to it. If the President had been
serious about removing only Al Qaeda training camps a few cruise missiles would
have readily done that job for him without all the chaos which the invasion of
the country engendered.
His explanation that Saddam did not
sufficiently cooperate with the inspectors as demanded by the Security Council
resolution is also incomplete. The Security Council in November 2002 did not
authorize the invasion for March 2003. It merely demanded that UN inspectors be
allowed to return to Iraq
and be given full access to whatever facility or documents they wanted to see;
absent thereof there were to be “serious consequences.”The inspectors were to provide a report and
the Council, “Decides to remain
seized of this matter.” Translated from legalese it says we’ll watch the
situation and act whenever further action is needed. The inspectors went in,
didn’t find any significant number of WMDs but since the Iraqis continued to
drag their feet Dr. Blix wanted more time before “serious consequences” were
contemplated. Thus, the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN but precipitated
by the Bush administration and the timing depended on military necessities
rather than on what Saddam did or did not do. Since this unprovoked war against
Iraq has not
only cost us thousands of dead and wounded, the Iraqis at least ten if not
hundredfold more; destroyed their infrastructure and is bleeding our treasury
white we have to hold our administration accountable. Glib rhetoric by our
President, as noted above, should not be condoned. Neither should an excuse
that he “meant well” or was “not fully informed,” be tolerated forever more.
The mistakes and bad faith are now clear for everyone to see and it is urgent
that someone educate the President on his misconceptions.
Since this war was a war of choice rather
than imminent necessity and had
not been sanctioned by the UN the Nuremberg
trials came to mind because German generals were hanged at that time for having
committed crimes against peace. The purpose of the Tribunal was to set a
precedent that even preparing plans for invading another country – in that case
Poland – on
orders of the head of state is a criminal offense. “Following orders” was no
longer to be tolerated as an excuse. I shall deal with this problem in a
subsequent essay, for now it is merely important to find out how our commanding
General, Tommy Franks, prepared for and then executed the Iraq
war. For that I went to the library and got his book “American Soldier,” co-authored with Malcolm McConnell. The book was
published in 2004, after his retirement from the army, and the Epilogue is
dated to the summer of that year at which time it had become clear that things
were not going as had been anticipated. The book showed that General Franks was
not only a good, competent soldier who never asked questions about the legality
of this war but also firmly believed in the 9/11 connection. He was in Crete
on September 11, 2001 and
saw the disaster on TV. As he describes it,
“I had no doubt that we were going to war. And
it would be a war like none ever fought. . . . Sitting back in the hard plastic
chair on the hotel roof, I reflected on that talk I’d given to the CENTCOM
intelligence staff the previous Friday. America
was in deep shock, reeling from the images of airliners smashing into buildings
and those proud towers collapsing like flaming tinsel. Would my fellow citizens
now be persuaded to abandon their hard-won individual freedoms to earn a bit
more security in a clearly insecure world?
As I stood up, another thought
struck me. Today is like Pearl Harbor.
The world was one way before today, and will never be that way again. We stand at a crease of history [italics
in the original].”
I have quoted this passage for two
reasons. One is that it reveals the mindset and the deep trauma that day has
caused in the American psyche. It was “like Pearl Harbor,”
we were attacked for no reason whatsoever and now we’ll show them that America
is not to be trifled with. A false belief in a bubble of “invulnerability” had
been punctured and a reality, which had been known to Europeans for ages, that
no country is safe at any time in history, was driven home. We who have seen
our cities flattened and hundreds of thousands innocent women and children
burned in the rubble took a more realistic view of the situation. Al Qaeda was
not Japan or Germany,
countries that could be defeated with superior military and economic power, but
some amorphous group of fanatics whose destruction could not possibly be
accomplished by military means. This is not hindsight because I said so on this
website in October of 2001.
The second point is that if we
allow this war to go on in the manner the administration has in mind we will
lose further civil liberties and martial law may be proclaimed on whatever
pretext seems handy at the time. This is the profound danger we face because no
one will be able to prevent another terror attack, of possibly greater
magnitude, on our soil.
Although even the wisdom of the Afghanistan
invasion can be questioned it was supported by the international community and
although the problem is far from solved it is currently not relevant. We are
dealing with Iraq;
how that war was planned and executed. I have previously discussed Bob
Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, which
covers the topic and it was gratifying to see that the essential facts between
General Franks’ recollections and those of Woodward are in agreement, although
the latter did not hesitate to quote the earthy language the General had used
when he was told on November 27, 2001 to prepare plans for an Iraq invasion,
while he was still busy with Afghanistan.
The next critical date was December
28 when General Franks had to present preliminary plans for a military campaign
in Iraq at the
President’s ranch in Crawford. To quote again from Franks’ book “The President
seemed pleased with the thoroughness of the briefing. ‘Tommy,’ he said after
I’d concluded, ‘heck of a job.’ [this sounds familiar
after Katrina] He stacked his briefing charts. ‘Don,’ he told Rumsfeld, ‘keep
working on this concept. It’s headed in the right direction.’”
Although no date was set for the
beginning of hostilities the preparatory work was well under way. The plan, as
presented in Crawford, called for 4 phases. “Phase I – Preparation, Phase II
–Shape the Battlespace, Phase III Decisive
Operations. Phase IV – Post-Hostility operations.” Condi Rice interjected, “the
timelines are all hypothetical, aren’t they?” Franks replied,
“I see the phases beginning with
N-day, which is indicated as ‘POTUS Decision.’ She was right: The conceptual
timeline moved along a continuum starting with N Day, the moment when President
Bush would authorize the military build-up in the region, and we would alert
troops and prepare their transport from American bases to the region. From
there, the continuum ran to C Day, when the flow of forces would begin; to
A-Day, the beginning of air operations; from there to G Day when ground
operations would be initiated; to the end of major combat operations and the
launch of Phase IV-reconstruction.”
At the ensuing news conference with
the media Iraq
was not mentioned because that was, to use German parlance, “GeheimeReichssache.”
The General stressed throughout the book the need for secrecy and that no leaks
were allowed in this republic of ours. I also failed to find a date for “N Day”
in the book although it seems that some preparations began immediately. The
next meeting took place on February 7,
2002 in the White House Situation Room where Franks explained the
type of resistance our forces might encounter at various times of the year,
which included weather conditions. When all factors were taken into account the
General felt that “optimum operational timing would be from December to
mid-March.”
The next meeting with the President
was also in the White House at some time in August, but no date was given.
During that briefing Franks presented a chart where “the anticipated duration
of the first three phases of the overall operation was revised to a 45-90-90
timeline.” It was assumed that it would take 45 days for deploying forces while
launching an air campaign to target Iraq’s
suspected WMD sites, Republican Guards formations and command and control
facilities. While the troops were arriving initial combat operations would be
carried out in a limited manner for 90 days. “And our ‘decisive offensive
operations’ would then be conducted for a maximum of three months, to ‘complete
regime destruction.’” Phase IV of unknown duration would follow thereafter.
Franks also brought up the potential problem of what he called “CATASTROPHIC
SUCCESS.”Namely what he should do if
the regime collapsed suddenly as a result of a military coup inside Iraq
or early uprisings occurred by Shiites or Kurds. Rumsfeld answered the question
with, “We would continue the operation to restore and maintain order until the
Iraqis can govern themselves.” Thus it was clear in August that come what may
we would occupy the country and this now explains what my informant of our
fruitless mission to Senator Bennett in August of 2002 had told me, “It’s a
done deal!” [October Surprise?September 1, 2002].
The next meeting with the President
was at Camp David on September 7 where a Five Front
invasion plan was presented by Franks. The main effort would come from Kuwait
and from the NE Kurdish area. In addition there were to be Special Forces
operations in the West, South West and East. The attack on the West would come
first because Scuds could be launched against Israel
from that area.
An official request to the
President for the deployment in the Gulf of 128,000 soldiers, airmen and
Marines, prior to N Day was made by the General in November and this buildup
was to be completed by February 15. Keeping the concept of a “running start” in
mind the force would be augmented as soon as a Presidential decision for N Day
had been made at which time the Special Forces would begin their work. The
total force would also be increased to 210,000 no later than March 20, 2003.
Although Franks insists that all
of the above was merely contingency planning which would have allowed the
President to call off the operation at any time, he also left no doubt that he
was thoroughly in favor of this war which he regarded as retaliation for 9/11.
Although this was the popular opinion at that time we should also remember
Chapter 1 of Bob Woodward’s Plan of
Attack. Woodward wrote that in early January 2001, prior to George W.
Bush’s inauguration Dick Cheney told the outgoing Defense Secretary Cohen, “’We
really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things, Cheney said,
adding that he wanted a serious ‘discussion about Iraq and different options.’”
As far as the Vice President was concerned Iraq
should be “topic A” for the incoming administration, which Cheney regarded as
“unfinished business.” It is a reasonable assumption on my part that his
subsequent secret meetings on energy policy in February of 2001 had Iraq’s
oil high on the list, with the proposed pipeline through Afghanistan
possibly a close second. Thus, there seem to be very good reasons why these
meetings have to remain carefully guarded secrets. It is, furthermore, apparent
that 9/11 was an excellent pretext to set the Iraq
plans in motion.
The Iraq
war D-Day (opening of major hostilities) was ready to start on schedule with a
final Video Teleconference on March
19, 2003. As Franks reports he received the order from the
President as “’All,right.
For the sake of peace in the world and security for our country and the rest of
the free world . . .’ he paused; his advisers listened intently. ‘And for the
freedom of the Iraqi people, as of this moment I will give Secretary Rumsfeld
the order necessary to execute operation Iraqi Freedom.’” He ended with “’May
God bless the troops.’”
I had always wondered what the 48
hour ultimatum for Saddam and his sons to leave the country had been all about
because it was a foregone conclusion that he would not abdicate and we would
invade regardless. The reason had been a request by Franks to have 48 hours of
warning in order to get the Special Forces into Western Iraq
and “close the Scud baskets.” G Day when ground forces entered the country went
off without a hitch, our tanks arrived on schedule in Baghdad
and Saddam’s statue came down on April 9
The invasion had been successfully
completed and victory had been won. Unfortunately it was a Pyrrhic one. Phase
IV which should have started immediately after the fall of Baghdad
had been built on false premises. There were no greetings with flowers; the
decent people barricaded themselves in their homes while in the absence of a
power structure mobs roamed the streets, looted everything in sight and settled
private scores by killing their enemies. Our Pentagon planners, although they
had ample warnings from the State Department, had banked on Chalabi who had no
credibility among the locals. This lack of foresight brought on the tragedy we
are still confronted with 3 years later and from which we have a great deal of
difficulty extricating ourselves.
The rest of Franks’ book is not
relevant for the present purpose but interspersed were comments on how to
conduct War and he referred to Clausewitz as well as Sun Tzu. I had bought Clausewitz’sOn War several
years earlier but had forgotten everything he said except for the famous dictum
that “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” This is why I
pulled it from my bookshelf and re-read the relevant portions (Penguin Classics
1968. Carl von Clausewitz On War). I was surprised to note that I
had originally ignored the Introduction by the Editor Anatol Rapoport. This
should have stuck in my mind because Rapoport was one member of the triumvirate
with Ralph Gerard and Jim Miller under whom I worked in the Mental Health
Research Institute at the University of Michigan from 1955-1958. The
Introduction, written in 1967 when the Vietnam War was beginning to penetrate
the American consciousness, is of utmost importance for today. Rapoport
emphasized that the Clausewitz doctrines, while valid for conventional wars
between states, lose their relevance when it comes to “asymmetric warfare,” where
all the power is concentrated in the hands of one force and the opposing side
is weak. This is, of course, the case in our “unipolar” world where different
strategies are called for. I shall not go into the details of Clausewitz‘s and
Rapport’s presentations except to say that if our Commander in Chief of the
Armed Forces had read the book he could have spared the world a great deal of
grief. It should be required reading for every incoming President, Vice
President and Secretary of Defense.
So should be The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Shambala Classics Boston&London
2002). This Chinese General who lived approximately 2,300 years ago has advice
which is followed today by the insurgents in Iraq
and is bound to be followed whenever we will engage in a protracted military
engagement with China.
The fundamental aphorism in regard to the enemy is,
“The military is a Tao of
deception . . .
When he seeks advantage lure him.
~
When he is in chaos, take him . .
.
When he is strong, avoid him.
When he is wrathful, harass him.
Attack when he is unprepared.
Emerge where he does not expect
it.”
Some other of Sun Tzu’s aphorisms are:
“If victory takes long, it blunts
the military and grinds down its sharpness.
If soldiers are long in the field,
the state’s resources are insufficient . . .
One who does not thoroughly know
the harm from employing the military cannot thoroughly know the advantage from
employing the military . . .
One hundred victories in one
hundred battles is not the most skillful. Subduing the
other’s military without battle is the most skillful . . .
Invincibility is defense. Attack
and one is insufficient . . .
When I am few and the enemy is
many, I can use the few to strike the many because those with whom I do battle
are restricted! . . .
In the military more is not better
. . .
Knowing the other and knowing oneself, in one hundred battles no danger. Not knowing the
other and knowing oneself, One victory for one loss.
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself, in every battle certain defeat.
This is precisely the advice Osama
bin Laden gave to the true believers in Iraq
prior to our invasion of that country. “Build trenches, melt into the
background, fight where the enemy is weak and all his ‘smart weapons’ will be
useless. The Americans are impatient; you have time on your side.”
When one considers this
information, which is readily available, it becomes painfully obvious how
incompetent and dangerously frivolous the Bush administration conducted itself.
We can absolve General Franks “he just followed orders” and as a military man
he did his job well. His civilian superiors failed him, the country and the
world.
This brings us back to the
perception of the troops that we had to remove Saddam because he was involved
in the 9/11 tragedy. The sad fact is that we still don’t know exactly what
happened on that fateful day. The administration’s explanation that: 19 fanatic
Muslims had hijacked four airliners, smashed two into the twin towers of the
WTC, which collapsed as a result and killed thousands of innocents, another
plane crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth one went down in Pennsylvania
while some passengers struggled with the hijackers for control of the plane, is
no longer credible. There are serious problems with this scenario which are
detailed on various Internet sites and let me emphasize that not all the people
who gathered this information are “conspiracy freaks.”
Let me mention just a few glaring
discrepancies. As far as the twin towers are concerned it is true that each one
was hit in short succession by two separate aircrafts which exploded in
fireballs. But at the time of their collapse the fires were largely under
control and it is reported that there is not a single steel constructed
building that has collapsed because of fires although they had burned for
considerably longer time than what was the case in the twin towers. It is
stated on the Internet that Jet fuel creates a maximum temperature of 1800
degrees Fahrenheit, while steel requires about 2500 degrees to melt.
Furthermore, the videos from official news organizations show that the towers
collapsed at the speed of “free fall” and anyone who has bothered to look at
these videos realizes that these pictures are typical of a controlled
demolition by previously placed explosives, just as happened with WTC 7 which
had not been hit by a plane. While the planes were responsible for damage to
the twin towers and some loss of life, it seems likely that the major
catastrophe, their collapse with the loss of more than two thousand, was a
deliberate act carried out by Americans rather than Muslim fanatics.
This is a terrible thought to
contemplate and one does not want to accept its validity but there are other
strange events in relation to the two other hijacked planes. As far as the
Pentagon attack is concerned the hole made by the plane appears to be too small
to accommodate a 757. The plane supposedly disintegrated completely because no
major debris was found and the so called engine that was photographed does not
resemble one that is used by 757s. Although numerous security cameras existed
and took pictures of what happened, these videos were reportedly immediately
confiscated by the FBI and have not been shown to the public. As far as the
plane that supposedly went down in Pennsylvania
is concerned it had likewise disintegrated completely with no remaining parts
and it is reported that the coroner, who had been called to the “crash site,”
gave up after twenty minutes because there were no bodies. Events like these
are unprecedented in airline disasters.
I have previously mentioned (January 1, 2006. When Presidents Lie)
that these reports cry out for an impartial, international investigation of
what really happened. It needs to be international because unfortunately we
cannot trust the objectivity of our government at this time. This is urgent
because another terror attack may occur at any time and under those
circumstances martial law is likely to be imposed and our republic would be
turned into a dictatorship. Just as the Reichstagsbrand
allowed Hitler to push his enabling act through the Reichstag, 9/11 has spawned the Patriot Act which may merely be a
herald of things to come if we don’t rise up in protest.
The danger does not come from
terrorists; whatever attack were to occur, the country could weather it. As
with 9/11 the danger comes from an unscrupulous exploitation by the government
for political purposes. As American citizens it is, therefore, our duty to
expose, to the best of our ability, the deceptions the Bush administration
practices. We who do so do not “hate Bush,” as is alleged, we are simply
concerned about how our country is governed and we are also mindful of Mark
Twain’s words:
“A Patriot supports his country
always and his government when it deserves it.”
Our current government does not and a peaceful “regime
change” is necessary.
May 1, 2006
WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING?
During the
past month some of the information which had hitherto been relegated to the
Internet has finally come to the attention of the mainstream media. Seymour
Hersh published an extensive article in the New
Yorker entitled “The Iran Plans,” in which he detailed the various options
the White House is considering to prevent Iran
from acquiring nuclear capabilities. The title of this essay comes from that
article. Our President in his usual blunt manner has told the Iranians that we
will not condone even their intent to pursue research in the nuclear area and
vigorously rattled the saber of America’s might. What he didn’t do was to lay
out a plan how to prevent the Iranians from achieving their goal.
Seymour
Hersh did it for him and provided us with the thinking that goes on in the
Defense Department on that topic. In essence it ranged from “a sustained
bombing campaign” which will “humiliate the religious leadership and lead the
public to rise up and overthrow the government,” “sabotage and other
clandestine activities, such as ‘industrial accidents,’” to fostering
insurrections by the Kurds and outright covert on the ground activities not
only by the CIA but also the regular military which is now being trained for
just such tactics. The goal is not simply to remove a potential nuclear threat
but, just as in Iraq,
“regime change.” Hersh also mentioned that his sources informed him that these
were not just some fantasies by zealots, who include the use of tactical
nuclear weapons in pursuit of their goal, but these are “operational plans” and
planning proceeds at a “hectic” pace. “Some operations, apparently aimed in
part at intimidating Iran
are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from
carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated
nuclear-weapons delivery missions - rapid ascending maneuvers known as ‘over
the shoulder bombings’ – since last summer . . . within range of Iranian
coastal radars.”
One might
be inclined to dismiss Hersh’s reporting as “over the top” but his past
performance by uncovering the My Lai massacre, publishing The Samson Option (Random House 1991) which details the development
of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and more recently the bringing to light of the Abu
Ghraib scandal give him solid credentials. His is not only a voice of reason but
also of warning that if the Bush administration is allowed to proceed on its
course a major war with Muslim nations will be the inevitable outcome. It is my
belief that this war will not be won “on the cheap” as the administration seems
to believe but has indeed the potential to ignite WWIII. The fact that the
administration vigorously denounced Hersh’s article merely proves the saying:
no rumor is true until it is officially denied.
As
mentioned, the title of this installment is a direct quote from one of Hersh’s
informants. It is most á propos not only in relation to the Iran
plans but also in regard to Iraq
and even to events of 64 years ago as will become apparent later. As far as Iraq
is concerned the Salt Lake Tribune
published an article recently, “Baghdad
embassy: The whole 104 acres.” While Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war we
are currently building “the largest US embassy of its kind in the world, the
size of Vatican City with the population of a small town.” It will have its own
defense force as well as self contained power and water supply. It is obvious,
therefore, that neither Iran nor Iraq can be seen in isolation but these two
countries (apart from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) form the center of the Middle
East oil supply and as is apparent the U.S. is determined to control the region
for the indefinite future from Baghdad. This is also borne out by an article in
last week’s Newsweek, which pointed
out that not only are we building the monster embassy but we are also expanding
the Balad airbase, which with its “27,500 landings and takeoffs a month . . . is
second only to London’s Heathrow airport in traffic worldwide.” Thus, an exit
strategy from Iraq
is not even discussed but the current idea is that we shall remain there for
decades to come. There will be a pliable government and we will control the
country from a few hardened bases with airpower which delivers its ordinance by
remote control from Las Vegas.
Although the latter statement might strike one as science fiction Newsweek assures us that this is the way
it’s done already and only takeoff and landings of the drones which carry their
lethal equipment is handled at Balad.
The
unrealistic ideas of a quick and dirty war with Iran
have been clearly delineated by Hersh but what is the current situation in Iraq
that justifies these building projects and especially that of the embassy? As
of last week Iraq has a Prime Minister but even 4 months after the elections there
is not yet a government that can control the city of Baghdad let alone the rest
of the country. There is wrangling over cabinet posts, which hopefully will be
resolved by the end of this month. But even after this has been accomplished from
where will this government take the power to unify the country under a
democratic leadership? This has never happened in the past because chaos, as it
reigns in Baghdad today, has always
been supplanted by a dictatorship. The administration’s hope is, obviously,
that we will either get a Weimar
type of republic or a dictator who will do our bidding, but this far from
assured.
The summer is upon us and in Baghdad
it will be accompanied by unbearable heat. Under normal times, and that
includes by now Saddam’s regime, the people could escape from the heat in the
evenings where they could do their shopping and visit with friends and
neighbors. This will not be in the offing as long as an 8 p.m. curfew is in place which forces people to remain indoors
during stifling heat with no air conditioning and only intermittent
availability of electricity. The streets are patrolled by marauding rival
militias which settle private scores, rob and murder people they disapprove of
for the sake of power as well as just for the fun of it. When in addition bombs
go off at unpredictable intervals, water supply is intermittent and sewage
piles up with its resulting health hazards, popular unrest is bound to
increase. Any reasonable person would say that under these circumstances it
makes absolutely no sense to build this super-embassy at this time but we ought
to wait until the dust literally settles there and then we could build whatever
is appropriate for the circumstances.
As far as patrolling and pacifying
the country from the air is concerned this is precisely what the Brits had
tried in the 1920s and that attempt failed. Furthermore, as long as we keep
military bases in the country any Iraqi government will be seen as illegitimate
by fanatic Muslims and with shouts of “Allah Akhbar,” they will blow up
refineries, pipelines and other aspects of the country’s infrastructure. Even
the smartest Predators won’t be able to prevent that sort of chaos. Although
the Kurds are still paying lip service to a unified country the smart ones, who
are looking to the future, see no use for Baghdad
and are quietly building up their part of the country towards eventual
independence. Oil is the key and as the Christian
Science Monitor reported they are offering attractive terms to companies
that want to take the risk. The Norwegians and Canadians are already interested
and announced that they will begin pumping oil by early 2007. If you were a
Kurd who had experienced nothing but grief from Baghdad
wouldn’t you want to wash your hands of that city which has nothing to offer
and go your own way?
Truly “what are they smoking?” in
the Bush administration to indulge in the fantasies outlined above while at the
same time the Salt Lake Tribune has
already downsized the word “victory.” A recent headline announced: “Safe return
from Iraq a
victory for the 115th [Utah National Guard Company].” When one has
been blessed with a long and eventful life official Washington’s
current thinking brings up an eerie parallel with the summer of 1942. In August
of that year Hitler was at the peak of his power. He controlled continental Europe
and in Africa Rommel, who had beaten the British back to El Alamein,
was in striking distance of Alexandria
as well as Cairo. In Russia Army
group B was advancing towards Stalingrad with the aim of
destroying its armament production and closing the Volga;
while Army group A (which by the way included my brother) proceeded to the Caucasus
to gain the oil centers at Baku.
Victory seemed to be in Hitler’s grasp and it is instructive to read his
thoughts during the Russian campaign. They are available in two versions, but
unfortunately both of them are somewhat incomplete. The English version which
is more extensive is called, “Hitler’s
Secret Conversations 1941-1944”(Octagon
books 1981) while the German one has the more descriptive title, “Hitlers Tischgespräche im
Fűhrerhauptquartier” (Hitler’s table talks in the Fűhrer’s
Headquarter by Henry Picker. Bibliothek der Zeitgeschichte 1993). During lunch
and dinner Hitler was in the habit of giving long monologues to his military
and other co-workers during which he expanded on whatever came to his mind. He
did not allow recording devices to take down the contents verbatim but this was
done in shorthand by Ministerialrat Heinrich Heim for the period from July 21, 1941 to March 11, 1942. When some of the information
was leaked to the press this practice was stopped and notes
were taken in a more surreptitious manner, with Borman’s (Hitler’s Chief
Secretary) approval, for March 21,
1942 to July 31, 1942
by Henry Picker. Thereafter they are somewhat more sporadic and Borman edited
the material we have today.
Although we don’t have the pure
unadulterated Hitler in these talks and they are chronologically incomplete,
they do form valuable insights into the type of thinking he indulged in before
the fortunes of war turned permanently against him. Contrary to popular belief
the fate of the Jews did not concern him all that much. The most extensive
entry is the first paragraph from the talk on the evening of July 25, 1941 where he stated:
“From the rostrum
of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that in the event of war’s proving
inevitable, the Jew would disappear from Europe. That
race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of the first World War, and now already hundreds of thousands more.
Let nobody tell me that all the same we can’t park them in the marshy parts of Russia!
Who’s worrying about our troops? It’s not a bad idea,
by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews.
Terror is a salutary thing. The attempt to create a Jewish state will be a
failure.”
The entry from
this date is missing in Picker’s book but there exists a German version of this
paragraph on the Internet and instead of “parking them in the marshy parts of Russia”
it simply says “send them to the morass” (in
den Morastschicken).
There is also no mention of “public rumor,” only, “it is good if we are
preceded by the dread that we exterminate Jewry (wennuns der Schreckenvorangeht, dasz wir das Judentum
ausrotten). The sentence “terror is a salutary thing” is missing.
Regardless of these differences what he meant is obvious: he would deal with
the Jewish problem in any way he saw fit and the less said, the better. The
interesting aspect and why I quoted the entire paragraph is the last sentence,
because it bears a direct relationship to our Middle East
policy including its dilemma. It has become quite apparent that without
continued American material and financial support the State of Israel would
probably have succumbed by now.
Instead of worrying about the Jews Hitler
devoted considerably more time to what he would do after the war with the
Church. The entire evening talk of December
13, 1941 was devoted to that topic and it is only one of many where
he dealt with it:
“The war will
be over one day. I shall then consider that my life’s final task will be to
solve the religious problem. Only then will life of the German native be
guaranteed once and for all. . . . I
don’t interfere in matters of belief. Therefore I can’t allow churchmen to
interfere in temporal affairs. The organized lie must be smashed.”
For accuracies
sake it should be pointed out, that Hitler was not an atheist. He did recognize
a higher power or Vorsehung
(providence) which guides human beings. His problem was with organized
religions of any kind because they are based on unverifiable premises and
interfered with his plans. His stance was that the state is responsible for the
well being of the living Germans and the role of the Church should be limited
to concerns for the souls of the dead ones.
But more
important for our present topic are Hitler’s ideas in the summer of 1942 about
how he would deal with the conquered land in the East. He intended to build an Ostwall from Archangelsk to the Caspian
in analogy to the Roman’s limes.
German towns would be created within that vast area all connected by Autobahnen. He even specified the width
as 11 meters with three lanes: slow moving trucks on the right, normal traffic
in the center and a fast lane on the left. The thousand kilometer stretch from
the Reich to the Crimea would easily be covered within
two days at 80 km /hour. Partisanen
(guerilla fighters) would be no problem because it’s good for the German soldier
to always have direct combat experience rather than merely training exercises. He
also had great plans for the South Tyroleans, whom he
had abandoned to Mussolini in exchange for the latter’s acquiescence to the
annexation of Austria.
They would be shipped via the Danube to the Crimea
where they would live happily in a wonderful climate. Germany’s
dependence on foreign raw material and food would be solved and all that would
be needed from abroad would be coffee. England
would see the error of its policies, the Churchill government would be replaced,
the British Empire would flourish with German military
help and there would be peace. Those were his ideas in the summer of 1942 while
the Soviet Union and the Brits were still undefeated and
America was
gearing up for battle. The fact that he didn’t have the required number of
boots on the ground to not only sustain the two pronged attack that was under
way in Russia and subsequently to hold the conquered territory didn’t seem to
bother him. Providence was guiding
him! Again we must ask: What were they smoking?
This was
presented as a reminder how rapidly the fortunes of war can change and how
incredible our current foreign policy may look a decade from now. But there is
more to the analogy. Our President also believes to be guided in his decisions by
a higher power and dislikes to hear opinions that are contrary to his own, the
quest is likewise for oil and self-sufficiency and the limits on American boots
to fulfill the ambitious Middle East program is also
painfully obvious. Furthermore, Hitler’s war against Poland,
which started the entire catastrophe of WW II, was also clearly a war of choice
and as such it was condemned by the Nuremberg Trials. Article 6 of the Charter
of the International Military Tribunal states under a)
“CRIMES AGAINST
PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of
aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or
assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the
accomplishment of any of the foregoing.”
It is somewhat
ironic that one of these trials is currently enjoying a revival on cable TV with
reruns of the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Spencer Tracy portrayed the
American Chief Justice who oversaw the trial of German judges and Marlene
Dietrich was the widow of one of the German generals who had been hanged by the
Military Tribunal one year earlier. The general in question was probably Alfred
Jodl (Chief of Operation staff of the Wehrmacht), who had insisted that he had
simply stuck to his oath as an officer who was under the command of Hitler as
his superior. This is of relevance in regard to the so called “Generals’ Revolt”
which we witnessed last month. Four retired generals spoke out against Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld’s conduct of the Iraq
war and publicly demanded his resignation. Two facts are of interest: 1) they
did not criticize the invasion per se, which was illegal under international
law, but they merely objected to the inadequate planning for the war’s
aftermath. 2) Newsweek in its
reporting of the affair stated, “Actually, it was not the job of a uniformed
officer, even a high-ranking one like Newbold [Marine Corps Lt.General]
to challenge the President’s decision to invade Iraq. That’s a political
judgment: it’s up to the president and Congress to decide whom to fight. The
military’s job is to win the fight.”Yes
indeed, but that was exactly the defense at Nuremberg
and it carried no weight at that time, although Jodl has since been officially
exonerated.
The Judgment at
Nuremberg movie is also ironic in
regard to its main thesis that the German justice system had collapsed under
Nazism and the various judges should not have followed orders which were
incompatible with international norms. Yet the Bush administration has ever
since 9/11 continued to violate international as well as American law. Our
chief law enforcement officer, the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, saw no
problem with illegal domestic wiretaps on suspected terrorists and on torturing
prisoners who are regarded as terrorists although no proof was required that
the persons involved had indeed committed criminal acts. Our president seems to
regard himself as above the law and he “decides what is best,” according to his
own statement. His prime demand is loyalty which also brings to mind the motto
of the SS “Loyalty is My Honor!” Loyalty is praiseworthy but when it conflicts
with common standards of morality the latter need to take precedence.
Nevertheless,
this principle is currently in jeopardy in our country. Abuses by the
government have to be hushed up by government employees and the public must not
be allowed to know what is being done in our name. Even people who have retired
from government service are afraid of speaking out publicly and that is why
reporters have to withhold the names of their sources. The CIA presented us
with an example of what happens if one has a conscience and is appalled by
government abuses. Mary McCarthy was a senior CIA officer who supposedly
informed the Washington Post that the
CIA was “outsourcing” some of its terrorist suspects to certain countries in Eastern
Europe who have no strong scruples about using interrogation
techniques that are shunned in the Western world. She denied the allegation but
supposedly flunked one question on a lie detector test and was summarily
dismissed. Further actions against her may be pending at this time.
Regardless,
whether it was Ms. McCarthy or someone else, who “blew the whistle” on this
travesty of the justice system the interesting aspect is how the media treated
the affair. Supporters of the government vigorously argued that CIA officers
sign an affidavit of secrecy and the agency would not be able function if
anyone of its employees were allowed to go the press whenever they felt that some
improprieties had taken place. The correct course of action would be to go
through channels, if necessary all the way to the top namely CIA director
Porter Goss, and/or the Intelligence Oversight committees of Congress. Again on
can say: what are they smoking? Anyone who does so can kiss his/her career good
bye and even if the person were to be willing to retire from the service and
then testify he/she would still be hounded and vilified as the example of
former ambassador Joseph Wilson in the infamous uranium from Niger affair
involving his wife Valerie Plame, who was “outed” by the administration, shows.
Unfortunately
we can not rely on Congress to set things right because its members are already
more concerned with the November elections than pushing for government reforms.
We, therefore, have only the media to broadcast the scandals which keep
accumulating. By coincidence Mark Felt who, as the “Deep Throat” source for Bob
Woodward, brought down the Nixon administration is currently publishing his
memoirs and gets praised for his clandestine activities. Whatever Nixon did
with the “plumbers” to secure White House leaks and the Watergate burglary did
not rise to the level of what the current administration is doing. Nixon wanted
to get us out of a war that he had inherited, with keeping American honor reasonably
intact, while the current White House occupant has gotten us into two wars and
seems to be actively planning a third one. Our international image and good
will have been shredded by a “forward leaning unilateralism,” which is simply
another word for: I do what I want and if you don’t like it tough luck.
Nevertheless
there seems to be some change in the air. Even the President appears to have
realized that when only about a third of the country’s people approve of the
way he is running the country something needs to be done or the nightmare of a
Democratic victory in November might come true. This election will be vital
because if the Democrats were to win they would be in charge of committees with
subpoena power, which they lack at this time. All the sordid scandals that have
been documented here and elsewhere might then see the light of day. The White
House is aware of the danger signals and now tries to reform its image by
rearranging the furniture. The White House Chief of Staff, Andy Carr, has been
replaced by another insider Joshua Bolten who is regarded as a more aggressive
team player and will weed out slackers. The unhappy Press Secretary, Scott
McClellan, who had valiantly tried to defend the indefensible was let go and in
his place the telegenic Tony Snow from Fox News will now conduct the briefings.
Although a supporter of the administration he is regarded as an honest person
and we will have to see how often he will be forced to bite his tongue vis á vis his colleagues. Karl Rove has supposedly had his
feathers clipped by having had to give up his job as overall policy manager but
I believe that far from this being a demotion it is the recognition of the
potential November disaster which will require all his well known skills in
that arena to avert it.
But whatever
the President tries to do on the domestic scene Iraq
is the millstone around his neck and by now even the firing or resignation of
Rumsfeld would be too late for influencing Iraq’s
future. Therefore, the biggest question today is: does the President believe
that a war with Iran
would solve his problems and elevate his stature to that of other successful
wartime presidents? If so not only will
the oil prices, which have soared in recent weeks, continue to climb but what
we are experiencing in Iraq
will pale against what the future will bring. When respected journalists such
as Seymour Hersh and now even Thomas Friedman warn of the dangers the
President’s policies are bound to produce it would be time for the White House
to listen.
Friedman who
can’t be labeled as a left wing radical or an enemy of Israel
has recently published an article which breathes realism. “Take your pick:
Nuclear Iran or Iraq II” was the title and in the article he made it clear that
although a nuclear armed Iran is not a desirable event the alternative is
clearly worse. This brings us to the crux of the matter and the ultimate evil:
nuclear war. Once the first bomb was
built and dropped on Hiroshima,
with the second one on Nagasaki,
proliferation of nuclear technology was inevitable. To believe that we can
control who is and is not allowed to possess nuclear weapons belongs into
fantasy land. Our invasion of Iraq,
which did not have nuclear weapons and having refrained from doing anything
drastic about North Korea,
which does, has sent a powerful message to weaker countries, especially if they
have oil. It consists of: You better buy yourself some nuclear insurance as
fast as you can because otherwise the Americans may take over your country.
This is especially cogent for the Iranians who see themselves surrounded by
American forces on practically all of their frontiers because even the Persian
Gulf is regarded as private property of the American fleet. If you
were an Iranian wouldn’t you be concerned, regardless of what political or
religious party you belong to? Would you not also remember the 1953 CIA
engineered overthrow of the Mossadegh government? This was the first time America
practiced “regime change” and the details of that operation can be found under
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html.
The
Iranians have long memories but they are not stupid and even the mullahs have
more intelligence than to send nuclear tipped rockets to Israel,
which would be the only reasonable target to attack. Although our press reports
that Iranian rockets can also reach Europe, this is
clearly a scare tactic to make sure that the Europeans follow the American lead
in the Security Council and condemn Iran
for pursuing a nuclear option. The hypocrisy vis a vis
Israel is, of
course, apparent to everyone who has no particular bias. We have no qualms
about Israel’s
proven WMDs including what has been called “the ultimate capitalist weapon,”
the neutron bomb which simply kills living beings but keeps the property
intact. This is surely an inviting tool for get rich quick thinkers. You get
rid of Arabs or Persians, as the case may be, but keep their refineries above ground
and the oil below intact. I am not suggesting that such plans are being
actively pursued currently but since the thought is obvious it would also have
occurred to some of our war planners.
It is clear,
therefore, that the spread of nuclear weapons will be unavoidable but we can
attempt avoid their use by a nation state. The UN should outlaw the use of
nuclear and biologic weapons just as the use of poison gas has been prohibited.
Further development of nuclear weapons, which include “bunker busters” and
other ordinance that uses “depleted uranium” should also be prohibited because
we have more than enough of such weapons to annihilate any country that might
threaten us. This will not avoid the possibility of terrorist groups detonating
such a device in our country but this is a problem we will have to live with
and preventive measures can be taken. As pointed out previously one or even a
few suitcase type nuclear bombs cannot destroy America,
only we can do that by reacting inappropriately and excessively to inflicted
damage. The danger to our country does not come from the outside but from our
own politicians who will use scare tactics to abolish our freedoms and
establish a dictatorship. This is the future of this country if we let it
happen.
Intimidation
already exists on an unprecedented scale as shown above and only a free press
could prevent further excesses by our government. Unfortunately our press is no
longer free to publish “without fear or favor,” because the single most
important subject, namely the coordination of American Middle East policy with
the desires of the State of Israel, is taboo. In late March of this year a professor
of political sciences from the University
of Chicago and one from
international affairs of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard wrote jointly
a position paper, “The Israel Lobby.” Although they are Americans the paper
could not be published here but had to appear in the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html).
Those of us who are Internet fans knew about the stir this created in certain
circles although the professors had only stated common knowledge. Minor errors
were castigated and an attempt was made to ruin the authors’ reputations. There
was only Molly Ivins, a
Texas syndicated
columnist of solid left wing credentials, who was not cowed and her article: “Professors
have the audacity to examine Israel’s
lobbying in U.S,” appeared last week in the Salt
Lake Tribune. She wrote, “One of the consistent deformities in American
policy debate has been challenged by a couple of professors, and the reaction
proves their point so neatly it’s almost funny.” In her final paragraph she
stated, “To the extent that our interests do differ from those of Israel,
the matter needs to be discussed calmly and fairly. This is not about
conspiracies or plots or fantasies or anti-Semitism - it’s about rational
discussion of American interests.” Yes indeed, and the sooner the better. The
“Lobby” led us into the Iraq
war and is now leading the charge against Iran.
Elections
are coming up again and the influence of the “Lobby” on American foreign policy
needs to be discussed openly now. Only under those circumstances will candidates
for political office cease to have to be afraid of certain defeat unless they
toe the Israeli line. If this does not occur we will only get more of the same
and under those circumstances our democracy will be a sham.
June 1, 2006
QUEST FOR PERPETUAL WAR
When I began to think about the
content of this month’s essay the most appropriate title that came to mind was
“Empire in Denial,” since this was the logical sequel to last month’s “What are
they smoking?” The United States
as the “only superpower” is in fact an empire with world wide military bases and
global influence but our government as well as the nation at large do not admit
to it openly.
But before committing myself to the
title I thought it wise to check on the Internet whether or not someone else
had used it before lest I might be accused of plagiarizing the title. In so
doing I found myself in good company because the well known British historian
Niall Ferguson had indeed published, “An Empire in Denial. The Limits of US
Imperialism,” in the fall of 2003 which was reprinted by the Harvard
International Review. I had not been aware of this article but it has been my
experience during my scientific career that at given times thoughts seem, so to
say, hang in the air and different people who think alike will come to
identical conclusions.
Since Ferguson
has already said most of what was on my mind I can simply summarize the salient
features and then continue with what had remained unsaid. In his six page
article Ferguson spelled out the reasons why the U.S. is indeed today the
world’s empire par excellence but it denies this fact officially and hides it
under high sounding principles such as bringing liberty and rule of law to the
downtrodden, which had, of course, been the slogan for the British, and all
other colonial powers, in the past. He also emphasized the dangers which result
when facts which everybody else agrees on are officially denied. He quoted a
famous joke from Queen Victoria’s
heyday “that the British had ‘conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of
absence of mind’,” and commented that, “in acquiring their empire, the United
States had followed this example.”
Subsequently he went on to explain
why this posture is dangerous.
“The problem with an
empire that is in denial about its own imperial nature is that it tends to make
two mistakes when it chooses to intervene in the affairs of lesser states. The
first is to attempt economic and political transformation in an unrealistically
short timeframe. The second is to allocate insufficient resources to the
project. As I write, both of these mistakes are being made in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
. . . To put it bluntly, the United States
is acting like a colossus with an attention deficit disorder engaged in
cut-price colonization. . . .It
underestimates the need to act in partnership with allied great powers. And its
efforts at nation-building are both short-term and under-funded.
Gary Dorrien had published a
similar article on March 8, 2003
during the run-up to the Iraq
war, “Axis of One: The ‘Unipolarist’ Agenda” which has the additional advantage
of naming the major people who are behind this drive towards America’s
perpetual dominion over the rest of the world. The interesting aspect is that
the same handful of names keeps coming up over and over again in this context.
I shall return to them and their methods later. Their basic idea is that America
defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War which presents
a unique historic opportunity. The power
that has thus been acquired must not only be used to solidify the gains but
expanded to the extent that no nation on earth will ever be able to rival it
for the rest of this century. In this spirit of empire and unilateralism it has
already been dubbed, “The American Century.”
Only from this point of view
namely, “We are the boss and you do what we tell you to do,” can one understand
the pronouncements of our leadership. For instance Mr. Rumsfeld chided the
Chinese on a recent visit for pushing their arms program when “there is no
enemy who threatens China,”
and Mr. Cheney, scolded the Russians for backsliding on democracy. While he was
in Latvia (a
country which used to belong to Czarist Russia and later on to the Soviet
Union) he also chastised Moscow
“for its use of oil and natural gas as ‘tools for intimidation and blackmail.’”
To emphasize his point that we are in charge of what goes in the “New World
Order” he went to Kazakhstan, another member of the defunct USSR, on the
following day in order “to promote export routes that bypass Russia and
directly supply the West [The Salt Lake Tribune. May 6, 2006].”
What angered our vice President was that they ship their oil,
via pipelines, west to a Russian port on the Black Sea
and east to China.
That sort of thing is, of course, anathema to our supposedly non-existent
empire.
To keep and expand an empire one
obviously needs a state of the art military. The difference between the Clinton
and the Bush administration could not be starker in this respect. At the end of
the Clinton years I was concerned
in War and Mayhem that our army was
being ruined by social experimentation and suggested the Roman motto: sivispacempara bellum. Little did
I know then that the forces, which not only wanted to prepare for a possible future
war but were positively eager to start one, were already waiting in the wings. What could not be known then either was that they
would become the tutors of our incoming President who urgently needed an
education in history, geography and international relations. This is described
in a new book by James Mann, Rise of the
Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.
Since we live in a high-tech age
the military forces of the US
are being remodeled to fit new demands. As part of this plan ground forces are
de-emphasized and technology which consists of rather expensive “smart weapons”
carries the day. In addition, the sky is no longer the limit, when it comes to
military spending, but outer space is also fair game for our Air Force. The US
Air Force Transformation Plan of November 2003 which can be found on the
Internet http://www.af.mil/library/posture/AF_TRANS_FLIGHT_PLAN2003.pdf - states:
“The mission of
space control is to ensure the freedom of action in space for the United
States and its allies and, when directed, to
deny such freedom of action to adversaries. . . . The Air Force is the primary
Service charged with achieving this objective. Achieving space superiority is
the essential component of this objective.”
Assume now that you do not have the
good fortune to be a citizen of the US but one of China or Russia how would you
feel when big brother is not only watching you from the sky but is in the
process of deploying laser and other weapons that can incinerate not only your
satellites but your house? Melissa Rossi wrote in “What Every American Should Know about Who’s Really Running the World”:
“Other countries
are livid: After four decades of agreements not to weaponize space, they don’t
want the United States
to turn our last frontier into a battleground.
Pressure is on the
U.S. government
to sign a treaty for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS),
which essentially every country in the world except the United
States and Israel
supports, but the Americans don’t want to touch it. It’s a huge issue, causing
countries around the world to once again call the United
States a hegemon, but as usual, the Bush
administration doesn’t much care.”
Another aspect that hasn’t fully sunk
into the American psyche is where our tax dollars really go to. According to Rossi’s
book the proposed 2006 budget allocated $ 443.5 billion to Defense including
Homeland Security. The US
dominates the field in the percentage of global military spending with 47%, Japan
is a distant second with 5% while China
spends an estimated 2% and so does Iran.
National defense is important but I doubt that we need nearly half a trillion
dollars to deal with assorted Taliban, bin Ladens, or al- Sadrs
in our “War on Terror.” Furthermore, all this gadgetry is totally useless when
it come to the so called asymmetric “colonial” wars we are really confronted
with, as in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
The question arises therefore: do
we have a paranoid government which genuinely feels itself threatened by
everybody or are other factors at play? I believe that there are three elements
that have brought about a confluence of interests and account for our present
situation. This becomes apparent when one studies the list of names that have
been provided in the previously mentioned article on, “Axis of One.” These people
labor in so-called thinktanks and show up ever so often on cable TV as pundits
and on the print media’s editorial pages. Some of them carry exalted titles such
as “Senior Fellow,” “nationally renowned expert” and the like. This leads one to
believe that these thinktanks are part of universities where rigorous academic
rules of scientific discipline apply. Nothing could be further from the truth
as Brian Whitaker shows in his article: “US
thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html.”
It appeared in the Guardian on August 19,
2002 while the war drums for the invasion of Iraq
were being pounded. The thinktanks which run under impressive names such as “The
Heritage Foundation,” “American Enterprise Institute,” “The Middle East Forum,”
etc are private institutions and to put it bluntly propaganda machines. They
are not bound by the rules which govern academia and some have even their own
printing presses where their thoughts can be dispensed to wide audiences.
Viewers of news programs on cable
TV, and readers of the major print media frequently encounter the same
“experts” and this is also not happenstance. While preparing this essay I rediscovered
an article by Max Boot which had appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of the
prestigious journal Foreign Affairs,
to which I subscribe. I had kept the article because I felt that the hubris it
exuded was unjustified. The article was called: “The New American War” and
dealt with “Waging Modern War.”In it
Mr. Boot provided numbers as to how the efficiency of the American military had
increased between the first and the second Gulf War. Total casualties for U.S.
and allied forces were 365 versus 150, the duration 46 days versus 26 and the
cost $50 versus $20 billion. In bold print one could also read “The U.S.
victory in Iraq
makes the German blitzkrieg positively incompetent by comparison.” We were told
in addition that “the occupation of the entire country was completed on April
14, when marines rolled into Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. The hard task of ‘nation-building’
lay ahead, but the bulk of the military campaign was over.” Three years later
our troops as well as Iraqis are still getting killed, our death toll nears
2500 and the financial costs stand currently at somewhat more than $284 billion
and are climbing steadily. A running total can be found on http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182.
Thus, this New American Way
of War does not seem to be all it has been cracked up to be but is still
advocated and that’s where our money goes. Imagine how much oil we could have bought
ourselves for this money and how much good we might have done with it instead
of investing in killing and maiming people.
The first question when one reads
an article like the one by Boot is obviously: who is this person? Foreign Affairs listed him as “Senior
Fellow in National Security Studies on Foreign Relations.” This sparked my
interest further and with the help of Wikipedia one learns that Max Boot was
born in Moscow in 1971 and came
with his family to Los Angeles in
1976. His academic credits are a bachelor’s degree in history from the University
of California, Berkeley
(1991) and a master’s degree from Yale in diplomatic history (1992). After
graduation he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor,
and in “2004 was named by the World’s Affairs Council of America one of the
‘500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign
policy.’” This is truly a meteoric career and one wonders what this World’s
Affairs Council that bestows such honors consists of. WACA, its official
acronym, lists itself on the Internet as the largest International Affairs
non-profit organization in the United States,
it asks you to become a member and to make a donation. As such it is another
private organization which has no credentials other than money and pushes those
people whose viewpoint they want to be heard into the forefront of the national
consciousness.
When one pursues the career of Mr.
Boot further one finds that he is being featured as speaker by Benador Associates,
a public relations firm with offices in New York City,
Washington, Paris
and London. On the website www.benadorassociates.comone is greeted by the picture of a good
looking young woman, Eleana Benador, the CEO of the firm, which was established
in 2001. This lady likewise had an astounding career for one so young. The
website states that she was born in LimaPeru, is Swiss-American,
and spent most of her life in Europe where she studied
at the Sorbonne in Paris, in Vienna,
as well as Geneva. She is fluent in French, English, German and
Spanish, understands and speaks Portuguese, Italian and Dutch, reads Hebrew and
some Russian. In essence she runs a speaker’s bureau, organizes meetings, and
publishes books dealing mainly with the Middle East. Since she was able to
build her membership within the short space of two years one may wonder where
the start-up captial came from.
The political outlook is not only mainly
hawkish but also leans towards the policies of the state of Israel.
Although Ms. Benador does not list her religious affiliation she seems to
adhere to the orthodox or ultra-orthodox persuasion of Judaism because she refers
to the deity as G-d in the announcement regarding the birth of her son Gabriel.
As such Palestinians can take little comfort from the workings of her group
although she does have some Arabs and one dissident Iranian, Amir Taheri, as members.
Mr. Taheri, a journalist by
profession, was executive
editor-in-chief of Kahyan, Iran's main daily newspaper, from 1972-1979
but lost his job with the fall of the Shah and has since lived in the West
where he contributes to major newspapers in France, Germany, the UK and the US. He is also a frequent commentator on CNN
and works extremely hard. The Benador website lists for the month of May 2006 twenty
articles in various newspapers as well in the publication by Benador
Associates. As an expatriate, by force rather than choice, he has every right
to want his country’s government to be democratic in the Western meaning of the word but one may also be
allowed to take some of his views with a
grain of salt. Political refugees may have an ax to grind and can do more harm
than good with their efforts. The siren song ofAhmed Chalabi which lured us into Iraq and then failed to pan out is
just the most recent example. The Iraq
disaster has, however, not in the least discomfited Ms. Benador and some of her
members because it’s now full steam ahead towards preparing the American public
for war with Iran.
But thinktanks are only one tool to
push the American people in the desired direction because there is an even more
influential semi-governmental agency which advises the Defense Department. According
to the official website its full designation is: Defense Policy Board Advisory
Committee (DPBAC) but it is more commonly referred to as Defense Advisory Board.
The members are selected by the Under Secretary of Defense and consist
primarily of private sector individuals with distinguished backgrounds in
national security affairs. There are approximately thirty members but no more
than four are allowed to be government officials. The functions of the Board
are to “serve the public interest by providing the Secretary of Defense, Deputy
Secretary and Under Secretary for Policy with independent, informed advice and
opinion concerning major matters of defense policy. It will focus on long-term,
enduring issues central to strategic planning by the Department of Defense and
will be responsible for research and analysis of topics, long or short range,
addressed to it by the Secretary of Defense.”
This sounds
innocuous enough and the DPBAC had played a relatively minor role in the
formulation of foreign policy during previous administrations but the Vulcans
changed that too, as the Wikipedia article on DPBAC explains under the headline
“Controversies.” Richard Perle, whose desire for regime change in Baghdad
had antedated the Bush administration, was made Chairman and like-minded others
were also appointed. The Board not only has members who are linked in spirit to
Israel’s ruling
circles but also some who have “strong ties to private business, especially
defense contractors. Members disclose their business interests with the
Pentagon, but they are not made available to the public, leaving only the
Pentagon [i.e. Mr. Rumsfeld] as the ethical arbitar
[sic] of the Board.” After Seymour Hersh exposed some of Mr. Perle’s potential
conflicts of interest in the March 17,
2003 issue of The New Yorker
the latter resigned his position as Chairman but remained on the Board.
When it became apparent that the Iraq
war was not going as planned its chief architect Paul Wolfowitz, who had been Deputy
Secretary of Defense, was rewarded with the Presidency of the World Bank and as
mentioned earlier became the Jerusalem Post’s Man of the Year (Hot issues November 1, 2003). Wolfowitz’s right
hand man, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, who was the
direct pipeline via the indicted Lewis Libby to the vice President’s office and
who also had strong ties to Israel’s
leadership, was likewise replaced. Wolfowitz’s job went to Gordon England
and Feith’s to Eric Edelman. Mr. England
had a distinguished career in the U.S. Navy and in the private sector defense
industry.
Mr. Edelman,
on the other hand, comes with some baggage. He had served under “Scooter” Libby
in the vice President’s office and Senate approval of his nomination had
initially been held up by Senator Levin of Michigan
for the White House’s failure to release pertinent documents. Our President was
not concerned about such trifles and made a “recess appointment.” He is legally
entitled to use this device for emergency purposes but it has become a habit
how to get around the Senate. Our ambassador to the UN is another example and
most recently the appointment of Peter Flory as Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Mr. Flory likewise had not escaped
the watchful eye of Sen. Levin and on April
7, 2006 the Senator’s office released a memo which expressed his
displeasure about how the President treats Congress. As he wrote, “At the core
this is an issue of the executive branch refusing to provide the Senate with
documents that are relevant to the confirmation proceeding.” The problem was
the disconnect between the official intelligence community i.e. CIA, NSA and
State Department which did not find a substantial link between Saddam and
al-Qaeda versus the version peddled by Douglas Feith et al. that was acted
upon. At stake is the role played by Mr. Flory at that time. Levin wrote that
after much prodding Secretary England
released a considerable number of documents but “that there were 58 additional
documents the Department would not release.” Carl Levin is not just another
senator but he has been in his job since 1978 and is the senior Democrat on the
Armed Services Committee. If Congress is to play a role in our republic the
executive branch would have to start treating it as the co-equal partner the
Constitution intended it to be. Our president has apparently no intention of
doing so and when forced will employ the Richard Nixon tactic of invoking
“executive privilege.”
In the international arena there
seems to be a dispute within the administration about what to do with Iran’s
nuclear ambitions. The hawks want some type of military intervention, of
whatever kind, while more reasonable people point to the Iraq
problem as an example where unilateral action can lead to. This precipitated a
letter from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to our President. The
“18-page letter” was immediately dismissed by the White House and our Foreign
Secretary informed us that the letter covered “history, philosophy and
religion.” She stated furthermore, "There's nothing in here that would
suggest that we're on any different course than we were before we got the
letter." The President chimed in with "It looks like it did not
answer the main question that the world is asking, and that is, 'When will you
get rid of your nuclear program?' "
The letter itself had not been
published by the major print media at the time and the impression was given
that it merely consisted of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic rant as the cartoon
published in The Salt Lake Tribune,
and pasted below, shows.
Anyone who was not satisfied with this
offhand government dismissal could find the letter, in its English translation,
immediately on the Internet. The first surprise was that the usually quoted
18-19 pages shrunk to 9 and that the tone of the letter was respectful,
addressing our President at one point as “Your Excellency.” It consisted mainly
of a series of questions to Mr. Bush that relate to how one “can be a follower of
Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him)” and pursue a foreign
policy that brings war and misery to people?
The letter was written from the
point of view of a devout Muslim who believes that all of us, including
Presidents, who profess adherence to one of the three monotheistic religions, will
face a judgment not only by people on earth but by God. This judgment is to be
feared rather than the fears that are spread by the US.
Whatever other purpose Ahmadinejad had in mind the letter was intended to
address our President’s conscience and to show him the disconnect
between his words and his actions as it is perceived in the rest of the world.
He concluded that “Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to
help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. . .
. Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the
Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”
Indeed there was nothing “new” in
the letter it simply summarized the complaints the rest of the world has
against our government and its hypocrisy. This is not what our ruling circles
like to hear and that is why the letter had to be ridiculed. I don’t know if
the Iranian President was aware that he had actually followed a precedent set
by President Roosevelt on April 14,
1939 when he wrote to,
“His Excellency Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of
the German Reich, Berlin,
Germany
You realize, I am
sure, that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living
today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars.
The existence of
this fear – and the possibility of such a conflict – are definite concerns to
the people of the United States
for whom I speak, they must also be to the peoples of the other nations of the
entire Western Hemisphere. All of them know that any
major war even if it were to be confined to other continents, must bear heavily
on them during its continuance and also for generations to come. . . .
On a previous
occasion I have addressed you in behalf of the settlement of political,
economic, and social problems by peaceful methods and without resort to arms.
But the tide of
events seems to have reverted to the threat of arms. If such threats continue,
it seems inevitable that much of the world must become involved in common
ruin.”
Since FDR also listed 31 countries,
including “Iraq,
the Arabias, Syria,
Palestine, Egypt
and Iran,” Hitler
was supposed to promise not to attack; his answer was the Reichstag speech of April
28 which was greeted with hilarious laughter as recounted in War and Mayhem.
The outcome of that rejection is
known and one of the results of the ensuing war was the creation of the state
of Israel which
has become a major destabilizing factor for the entire world. WWII did not lead
to the ruin of America
as FDR had feared in his letter. On the contrary it led to the greatest
prosperity and power the country had ever enjoyed but it is now in dire danger
that a belated judgment for the violations of international law our government
is committing and supporting, will befall us.
There is still time to give
Ahmadinejad’s letter a chance for consideration and the article in the May 29,
2006 issue of The New Yorker by Hendrick Hertzberg entitled “The Letter,” is neither
dismissive nor vituperative. There is room for talking rather than shooting and
killing.
We may now ask the final question:
What drives this quest for perpetual war by America?
As mentioned earlier, there seem to be three converging streams. These are: the
financial interests of defense contractors, those of the oil industry and the
promoters of Israeli government policies. All three overlap in the same
individuals while others have only one or two of the mentioned concerns on
their minds. On the whole their number is, however, relatively small yet they
were able to neutralize the State Department under General Powell. To what
extent our new Foreign Secretary will be able to take a broader view on what is
good for our country remains to be seen. Her reaction to the Iranian
President’s letter to Mr. Bush was not particularly encouraging but there’s
still hope although time is running out.
Ahmadinejad was right when he said
that liberal democracy has failed so far but radical Islam is not the answer
either. A synthesis needs to be struck under a system where individual rights
are respected and unbridled greed, which currently rules our country, is
curbed. Let us remember also that WWI, which is the cause of all our troubles,
did not start on June 28, 1914
with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It started from an unprecedented
arms build-up during the first decade of the 20th century to insure
“security.” In the Introduction of the English translation of Clausewitz’s On War, Col. F. N. Maude wrote, “Europe
is an armed camp, and peace is maintained by the equilibrium of forces, and
will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists, and no longer.” This was
written in 1908. In 2006 America
is initiating another arms race even into outer space and sad to say it’s not
for security, as officially pronounced, but for money. Our major exports appear
to be related to military equipment because everything else can be produced
cheaper abroad. How else can we explain that the Czech
Republic and Poland
are supposed to become anti-missile sites by 2011 to “ward off possible attacks
by Iran [The Salt
Lake Tribune; May 22, 2006].”
This is the dilemma America
faces: fear is spread around the world to create and sell weapons systems which
are useless in addressing the real adversary, namely some benighted fanatics
who try to goad us into just such actions. Today’s terrorists are not a
monolithic group but different people with different motives. To lump all of
them under a War on Terror is not only disingenuous but harmful and cannot lead
to peace for the world. These groups need to be addressed individually, their
potential grievances taken into account, and dealt with appropriately. But if
we continue on the current path and invest in military spending, rather than redirecting
our major heavy industries towards peaceful purposes, the inevitable outcome
will be a repeat of 1914 and 1939 from which this country will not escape as unscathed
as before.
July 1, 2006
SOLZHENITSYN, JEWS AND CO-RESPONSIBILITY
The topic
of this month’s essay was prompted by four books I have read during the past
couple of months. The first one, Wolfgang Freisleben’s: Das Tor zur Hoelle (The Gate to Hell), had been sent to me by one
of my High School friends, and deals with the harassments the Palestinian
population are subjected to on a daily basis by the Israeli military
occupation. This was news to the German speaking public because any negative,
or even realistic, depiction of the conduct of Israelis is not condoned by the
media in Austria
and Germany and
he wanted to hear my views on the topic. The American public is also largely
ignorant of the “facts on the ground” because our public media are likewise
rather silent in this regard. The only newspaper which does report honestly
about the situation in occupied Palestine,
without engaging in polemics, is The
Christian Science Monitor which has a very limited circulation.
As a member
of “Utahns for a Just Peace in Palestine”
I was familiar with most of what Freisleben had presented but the references he
provided were helpful especially for the book by Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide. The Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon,
which in turn acquainted me with Amos Oz’s, The
Land of Israel. At the same time I became also aware of the most recent book by
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years
Together, which deals with the fate of Jews first under the Czars and
subsequently in the Soviet Union. Americans, unless they
are devoted Internet surfers and interested in Jewish affairs, will not know
about the existence of this book because it has not been translated into
English. At present it is available only in its original Russian as well as
French and German. The book comes in two parts, a fact of which I had been
unaware when I ordered it from amazon.de. Although the price was substantial I
received only Part II, The Jews in the
Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is a very hefty tome of 538 pages which
fully justifies the price. The book does not read easily because it is akin to
a PhD thesis with extensive documentation.
When I read
the Introduction I immediately found myself in familiar territory because many
of the thoughts I had expressed in The
Moses Legacy, appeared here as independent verification from Russia.
As Solzhenitsyn pointed out two man traits of Jewish conduct became evident
after the February and October Revolution of 1917. They consisted of an
overbearing attitude towards Gentile Russians and what can be called
“cronyism.”The revolutions opened the
doors for Russian Jews not only to complete equality but also to positions of
power. The Bolsheviks had eliminated, and in part “liquidated,” the previous
ruling class which created a void in the bureaucracy that was needed to run the
country. The only ones they could really trust to take their place were the
previously oppressed Jews who were only too willing to step into the breach.
They subsequently arranged for appointments from their own circles as
co-workers which produced a marked ethnic imbalance in the political and
cultural sphere. There was also a massive migration of Jews from the country
into the major cities which led to the demise of the traditional shtetls. This
move was aided, furthermore, by the initial prohibition on all private
enterprise, including small stores which had provided for the livelihood of the
shtetl dwellers. While there had been intermittent pogroms under the Czars the
Shtetl communities (a la Fiddler on the Roof) could nevertheless continue in
the traditional manner but this era was now at an end.
In the early stages there were two
parallel movements in the Jewish community. One consisted of secularists who
shed all vestiges of their religion and adopted Russian-sounding names while
the other group emphasized their ethnicity and demanded the right to be
regarded as a separate nation within the USSR.
In contrast to Central and Western Europe where the Jewish population denied
that they represented a nation and insisted only on the same rights as
wereaccorded to other religious groups,
Russian Jews had always regarded themselves as a nation suigeneris; albeit in exile until the arrival of the
Messiah.
This split in desires led to two
consequences after the fall of the Czar. Those Jews who had left the fold and
had become members of the government including the dreaded Cheka were now hated
because they had become agents of a terrorist oppressive regime, while at the
same time the ethnically conscious population thought it best to separate
itself from the goyim and establish its own state. Since Jews had always
asserted that they were driven into the positions of merchants, and sometimes
usurers, because ownership of land was prohibited to them the state now tried
to create a Jewish agricultural community in the Crimea
and in Eastern Russia. These enterprises were heavily
subsidized by American Jewish philanthropists but ended in failure. Jews simply
did not regard themselves as farmers and moved back into the cities. Gentile America
was also of inestimable help in the consolidation of Soviet power. Although the
government did not recognize the USSR
there was a brisk trade which helped the industrialization of the country.
Lenin’s quote when he was confronted with this double standard towards the
hated capitalists has since become proverbial: “We’ll buy the rope with which
we’ll hang them.” Solzhenitsyn pointed out that without the help of Jews the Soviet
Union would have collapsed in infancy because of lack of
government officials and finances.
The
attitude of American Jews towards the new Soviet Union
was largely one of enthusiasm. A new leaf had been turned, the old order had
been swept away; dawn had come to oppressed Jewry first in Russia
and then the world. Lenin’s and subsequently Stalin’s terror, which was
indiscriminate in regard to its victims, was ignored, because its main thrust
was not against Jews but first the propertied classes and then “enemies of the
State.”As reported by S. P. Melgunow and quoted by Solzhenitsyn during the Red
Terror:
“’By means of a single verbal order
of one man [Dsershinskijs] many thousands ofpeople were sentenced to immediate
death.’ In case that there was a trial it was openly decreed (M.Lazis in the
Bulletin “The Red Terror” of November 1, 1918 and in Pravda of December 25,
1918) ‘In the inquest don’t look for documents and proof that the accused has
acted in word or deed against the Soviet power. The first question you have to ask
is which class he belongs to, who is he descended from, what education has he
received and what is his profession. These are the questions which have to
decide the fate of the accused.’ . . .In an article by the editor Lew Krajnij we can read: ‘The old principles
of humanity and morality, which the bourgeoisie had invented, don’t exist for
us any more and can’t exist.’ Immediately a certain Schwartz echoes: ‘The
proclaimed Red Terror has to be realized in a proletarian manner. . . . Should
it become necessary to exterminate [ausrotten]
all the servants of Czarism and the Capital, in order to cement the proletarian
dictatorship in the whole world, we shall not shrink from the task.’”
This was
Karl Marx’s specter of Communism that haunted Europe of
which he had written in 1848 and had come to fruition in 1917. Revolutions were
attempted in Berlin under Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, in Bavaria
under Kurt Eisner but both failed. The one under Bela Kuhn in Hungary
was temporarily more successful and the memory of that regime lent a
considerable impetus to anti-Jewish sentiments. These came to the fore during
WWII and facilitated the Auschwitz transports from that
country. Since there was never any doubt in the rest of Europe,
that Jews were not only overrepresented but also in leading positions in the
communist hierarchies the image of Jewish-Bolshevism was born. In order to
understand all the subsequent developments including Hitler’s rise and revenge
we need to bear the above quotes in mind. But let me hasten to add that these
are only a minuscule portion and Solzhenitsyn’s book is full of names and
quotes that demonstrate what really went on. This information is currently
withheld from the English speaking public.
After
Lenin’s death there was a power struggle for succession from which Stalin
emerged victorious. Initially this brought no appreciable changes in Jewish
fortunes but as time went on and he had consolidated his position, Jewish
influence waned gradually. But Stalin was smarter than Hitler. He never attacked
Jews as Jews but camouflaged his measures with more innocuous sounding terms
such as: Theater Critics, Cosmopolitans and finally the doctors’ plot.When in subsequent years Jews began to lose
some of their privileged positions shouts of anti-Semitism began to be raised.
Initially they found little resonance but the Israeli victory in the 1967 war
produced a marked upswing of Jewish pride in all quarters of the world and not
least in the Soviet Union. Demands for emigration to Israel
were raised but since nobody was supposed to leave that country anyway,
ordinary Russians felt discriminated. To paraphrase the sentiment: “Why should
the Jids be allowed to leave and nobody else?” The reason why the Jews
succeeded in their demands was the heightened self-awareness of American Jews
after the1967 war who now began to identify with Israel
in a way they had not previously. The Jackson-Vanik amendment was passed in
Congress in 1974 and signed into law by President Ford in 1975. It denied
normal trade relations to certain countries that restricted emigration rights
but was enforced only in regard to the Soviet Union.
Waivers were granted in the late 1970s to China
and subsequently Vietnam
(Wikipedia).
1967 was a
hinge of history for the Jewish people especially the younger generation. In Russia
they agitated for emigration while in the U.S.
they were in the forefront of the revolutionary movement of the late sixties. Israel’s
victory had emboldened them and we can date many of the less desirable changes
that have taken place in our country since then to this Pyrrhic victory of the
Israelis. I call it Pyrrhic because although they clearly won a decisive battle
they had failed to use the opportunity to subsequently make a genuine peace
with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. This is where the history
of the early Soviet Union found its repetition. Just as
Jewish functionaries had lorded over the downtrodden Russian population, they
now gloried in victory over the Arabs and the ill advised settlement movement
began in the occupied territories. Ostensibly the settlement process was
designed to provide military security and house new immigrants from Muslim
countries and the Soviet Union. We can now leave
Solzhenitsyn, temporarily, and turn our attention to Kimmerling’s Politicide.
This
important book which details Ariel Sharon’s role in the settlement process and
the conditions the Palestinians have to live under was first published in 2003
and updated in 2006. It is available only in paperback and has not received
much publicity. Without Freisleben’s book I would not have known about it.
Readers’ comments are enlightening: Tragically out of date; Propaganda,
anti-Semitic myth making – not history; Confused Identity; Nonsense; are the
titles of some while others congratulate Professor Kimmerling for his efforts.
As such these comments give an insight into the divergence of opinions on the
topic. Kimmerling’s thesis, briefly stated, is:
“Israel
under Ariel Sharon became an agent of destruction, not only for its surrounding
environment, but for itself as well, because its domestic and foreign policy is
largely oriented toward one major goal: the Politicide of the Palestinian
people, By Politicide I mean a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the
dissolution – or at the very least, a great weakening – of the Palestinian
people’s existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity. From
this perspective, the result will be a double Politicide – that of the
Palestinian entity and, in the long run, that of the Jewish entity as well
because the two are so interdependent that destruction of one will necessary
[sic] involve the destruction of the other.”
In other words the goal, not only
of Sharon but also like-minded others, is to grind down the Palestinians by
increasingly onerous restrictions on their lives to the point where they will
capitulate to Jewish power and accept whatever conditions the Israelis impose
upon them with supposed fatalistic Islamic submission. Whenever some
Palestinians rebel, collective military punishment will be meted out and any
emerging political leadership will be liquidated, to use the well known term,
by “targeted assassinations.” “Peace” talks can continue, ostensibly promising
an independent State of Palestine. But the fact that these so-called
“negotiations” are in effect a dictate of the Versailles
variety to which the Palestinians will grudgingly have to sign on to, is hidden
especially from the American public which pays the bills. The plain fact is
that the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with because the Israelis, with
our backing, hold all the cards. But Israel
is not of one mind and Kimmerling expressed the same opinions I published in Whither Zionism?
“This [Israel’s]
collective identity includes two basic orientations which both complement and
conflict with one another, in fact, almost mutually exclusive: the one is a
primordial or tribal identity, a mixture of religious and nationalistic orientations;
the other is a civil identity based on concepts of universal human and civil
rights. . . .
Participation in the primordial
polity depends on ethnic and religious identity. The boundary of legitimate
society encompasses all Jews (including those in the Diaspora), but excludes
all non-Jews as equal members of the state. . . . The world is perceived as a
binary order of “us” (the Jews) versus “them” (the rest of the world), the
latter being a homogenous and hostile entity. An eternal and inevitable struggle
for survival is a basic characteristic of the cosmic order. There are no
substantial differences between all the historical enemies of the Jewish
people, such as the Assyrians, Romans, Christians, Nazis and Arabs. All are
inscribed in the Jewish collective memory as having genocidal intentions. While
war should be postponed, it is nevertheless inevitable. In this view, Jewish
survival is also threatened by an inherent urge toward self-destruction that
leads Jews to abandon Jewish culture and embrace hedonistic gentile cultures like
Hellenism, Christianity, the Enlightenment, and modernism, thus threatening the
Jewish people with moral decay and cultural erosion.”
This is the side of the Jewish
settler soul Americans are not supposed to see because it is obviously the same
as the Nazi creed. Instead we are treated exclusively to the humanistic
universal side of Judaism which in essence is an idealized America
where everybody lives equally under the same laws pays the taxes and shares
both benefits as well as burdens under a democratic government. But this is not
the rule in the occupied territories which, as mentioned on other occasions,
have already been given their biblical names of Judea
and Samaria to further indicate
that these are in fact legitimate provinces of Eretz Israel
where Palestinians have to be tolerated for the time being but are not welcome.
Instead of continuing with second-hand information by Kimmerling I shall now copy
and paste some passages directly from the Internet.
“What's really happening in the West Bank? March 2006
Using the roads of the West Bank is an
ever-worsening nightmare. Total separation has now been achieved between
roads that Jews are allowed to use, and those for Palestinians, roads
mostly unpaved, where driving is difficult, sometimes dangerous.
"Them" - the people who live under
a cruel occupation, who are assassinated without trial, whose lands are
seized under court sponsorship, whose houses are demolished and livelihood
injured, and whose basic human rights we disdain - are now finding out
that the little freedom of movement they still had, is rapidly
disappearing. The Bantustans are already in
place - and what hasn't yet happened awaits us in the very near future.
Contrary to the publications about fewer
checkpoints, deep in the West Bank, far from the
Green Line, the checkpoints are multiplying. There
are now hundreds of permanent checkpoints, temporary checkpoints, and
barriers blocking access to villages, not to block Palestinians from entering
Israel, but to prevent
them from going from one village to another in the West Bank, and from the
villages to the large towns.
Every large town in the West Bank is completely
surrounded by checkpoints. Only a few Palestinians still try to take the
bypass roads to get from one town to another, but there's is no certainty
that they'll reach their destination. Only a few lucky people receive
transit permits and no one in fact knows why are granted this extra right.
The
checkpoints prevent Palestinian residents of the West Bank from
obtaining medical care and education, having a normal family and social life.
They have destroyed the economy and any option for conducting a proper
democratic political system. Some 'diet'….”
This information does not come
from an Arab or anti-Semitic website but from the little known “Machsom Watch”
which I learned about only through Freisleben’s and Kimmerling’s books. Machsom
(which stands for Checkpoint) Watch consists of a small group of middle-aged
and elderly Israeli women who have taken on themselves the onerous task to
uphold what they had been taught were Jewish values. They were ashamed of what
they knew the military was doing in the occupied territories and decided to
watch, in regular shifts, the soldiers’ behavior at some major checkpoints.
They intervene, when possible, to lighten the difficulties of the Palestinians
trying to cross and regularly publish their reports on www.machsomwatch.org.These courageous ladies receive no gratitude
from their fellow citizenry and are on the contrary in part reviled as being
unpatriotic or even traitors. Yet they persevere; standing in the heat of the
day with Palestinians who simply want to go to school, their job, a hospital,
or visit with relatives. They do this out of a sense of human decency although
their job gets increasingly more difficult as checkpoints begat, in true
biblical fashion, new ones. The map of checkpoints from Machsom Watch is pasted
below.
There are two terms in the
Machsom article that may require an explanation. Bantustan is derived
from the apartheid policies of South
Africa and refers to splitting
Palestinian neighborhoods into isolated enclaves with the goal of preventing
the establishment of a genuinely contiguous and viable independent Palestinian
state. “Diet” was used by Israeli politicians to express their displeasure over
the results of the Palestinian election which brought Hamas to power. The idea
was that by stopping all financial transactions and for practical purposes
starving the Palestinians they would topple Hamas and at long last act
according to Israel’s wishes.
Anyone who has a modest
understanding of human behavior knows that this is a fantasy which has no
chance of coming to pass. It will only make Palestinians, especially the
younger generation, angrier and the Intifada is likely to grow. Peace and
security are not likely to be achievable in this manner. Let us be honest with
each other: is it conceivable that if Jews anywhere in the world were subjected
to the conditions they currently impose on the Palestinians, that there would
not be a huge world-wide outcry of anti-Semitism? Obviously not; immediate
drastic sanctions against the offending country would be passed by the Security
Council. In the present case the world is silent and America condones
this type of behavior as inevitable in the “War on Terror” which has become an
excuse by our government for a variety of human rights abuses.
In addition we have come to adopt Israeli methods of
prisoner interrogations. I cannot recall that in any previous war prisoners had
a sack put over their heads at the moment of capture, but this was the practice
in the Middle East as part of
the Arab-Israeli war. Likewise torture of prisoners was a routine in those parts
of the world but does that mean that we have to do so likewise? Especially when
it is known that information obtained by torture is unreliable. We, Americans as
well as Israelis, are being judged not by our words but by our conduct. When
the latter fails to meet expected international norms those of us who see the
damage that is done thereby to our respective countries have to voice their
dissent. This is the principle America was founded
upon and we are duty bound to uphold.
While Freisleben and Kimmerling concentrated on the
occupation and expropriation of Palestinians, Amos Oz provided us with an
in-depth look at overall Israeli society and some feelings towards Diaspora
Jews. Although the book was written in 1983 and updated in 1993 it is still
essential reading not only for the general public, especially Jews and Zionist
Christians, but also for our politicians who operate on false premises. The
book consists of conversations the author had with a cross section of Israelis
and Palestinians during the fall of 1983. Here are some small vignettes.
The first conversation was with a teacher at one of
the ultra orthodox yeshivas in Jerusalem (the
corollary of Islamic madrassas) where young Jews are educated in biblical
studies but not in the natural sciences. “We don’t have that. Our sages have
written, ‘Don’t bite off more than you can chew.’” “Do they teach general
history?” “God forbid. Let the goyim study goyishkeit.”
“Do they celebrate Israel Independence Day here?” “And what’s to celebrate? Nu,
has the Messiah come?” In these schools young Israelis are, therefore, being
educated as religious Jews rather than citizens of the state of Israel and they
regard themselves as the “remnant” that will welcome the Messiah. But one
doesn’t have to go to Jerusalem to see them,
a visit to Brooklyn’s Lubavitcher community would
be sufficient.
The next interview took
place at Bet Shemesh, one of the settlements in the West Bank. The
speakers were Sephardic Jews who had been brought into the country by the
previous Labor governments. They were initially treated strictly as a needed
source for manual labor and as second class citizens. They subsequently
rebelled and formed the block that put Begin in charge. Here are some opinions
of how they felt about the Labor government.“They gave us the dirty work; they gave us education, and they took away
our self-respect. What did they bring my parents to Israel for? … You
[Oz is regarded as a representative of Labor] didn’t have Arabs then, so you
needed our parents to do your cleaning and be your servants and laborers. And policemen too. You brought our parents to be your
Arabs.”
The next chapter
represents the views of Ashkenazi settlers at Tekoa, south of Bethlehem. It is
mainly a “bedroom community” with the breadwinners working in Jerusalem which is a
half hour commute. Menachem whose family had come from Aden and his
wife from America saw the
solution of Israel’s problems
in massive immigration. “How is this supposed to come about?” “Something like
the Six-Day War, another victory will inspire the Jews and bring people
together. That will give them pride. Because of the Six-Day War . . . I (the
wife is speaking) immigrated.” “You hope for another war?” “It doesn’t have to
be a war. It could be some great catastrophe for the Jews in the Diaspora. So that the affluence would end.Or
persecutions. Then they’ll come here. But victory would be much
better.”. . .“And what should we do, Harriet, if the Arabs
offer us a compromise and a peace treaty now?” “We should tell them flat out:
Sorry too late! [This last was in English.] We should even start a war so they
don’t persuade the sissies among us” Menachem was more conciliatory, having
lived among Arabs he didn’t fear them to the extent his wife did and could see
both parties living together.
A discussion with two
young Arabs in West Bank Ramallah followed. Oz is told “Write that the
situation is bad. Best of all write for peace . . . peace that will be fair.
But I think that maybe there’s going to be another war. . . . Another hundred
wars. . . . In the end maybe they’ll get tired. Maybe they’ll get some sense.”
Hassan then made a distinction between Jews and Israelis. “Our elders would
say, What is a Jew? Somebody pitiful, put upon,
praying and crying, but with a lot of sense. More than the Russian has. More than the Englishman. Wise, he’s got a heart in his
heart. Wouldn’t kill a fly. The Jews were much smarter
than the Arabs. But the Israelis – when they got power they lost their sense.”
Oz then asked what would happen if Arafat were to get half of Palestine wouldn’t he
want more after that? “If he makes demands, the war will start again. They’ll
die for nothing. And he also knows that America holds Israel like her
baby. That’s the situation between Jews and Arabs here. . . . Don’t write ‘the Arabs.’ Write ‘the
Palestinians;’ that’s more correct. And don’t write: ‘They are all murderers.
Write from your common sense. Write from the heart Tell the Israelis power
won’t help them Power is like money – today it’s mine, tomorrow it’s yours, the
day after it’s his. They have to end the war with sense, not with power. Justly. Write for the peace!”
I shall now give an older Arab man who had also been
sitting at the table, but didn’t talk until the end the last word for the
Palestinian side:
“In good Hebrew and a voice tinged with sadness, he
says ‘You took everything from us. How can you sleep at night? Don’t you fear
God? You took everything! But we were wrong too. Guilty.
You know, it used to be that our people would kill Jews for nothing. For no
reason! Now we’ve got our punishment. You’ve been punished by God too. Write in
the Israeli newspaper: What was is over. Finished.
Everyone wants to live on the land. All the Jews and Arabs want to live. Write
that the land doesn’t belong to the Jews or to the Arabs. The land is God’s.
Whoever finds favor in His eyes will receive His land. God alone decides. And
whoever evil will pay the price: God will pass over him and forget him. And
write in the Israeli newspaper that Abu-Azmi sends his regards to Mr. Cohen –
that’s a good man.”
Amos Oz did, and he did so
without “fear or favor.” There is, of course, much more in the book which
should be read in it entirety. American Jews could profit also from learning
how they are viewed by certain segments of Israeli society. Oz presents the
voices of passion and reason but, as events are showing, passion and lust for
power are again winning over reason.
This brings me back to Solzhenitsyn and his point
that the Jews did not make the Russian revolutions but they eagerly
participated and supported it in word and deed. As such they became
co-responsible with the Russians for the crimes of that regime. Although some
individual Jews have acknowledged this responsibility, the overwhelming
majority has not and prefers to write about the crimes of the Nazis rather than
also of those that were committed by members of their people during the years
of the Red Terror. But terror is upon us again and we now must admit that not
only Israelis and Arabs are co-responsible for the current unfolding tragedy in
the Middle East but also American Jews by their unstinting
support for the bellicose stance of the Israeli government. In addition so are
we, the rest of the citizens of this country of ours, for supporting the
slaughter, by an imposed code of silence.
The old Arab, Amos Oz had met, asked, “Have you no
fear of God?” The answer he receives from those in power will either be “What
God?” or “He doesn’t exist anyway!” Whoever or whatever God is, the concept had
a major civilizing effect because it teaches shame, guilt, and mercy instead of
pride and lust for power. Has it been abused? No doubt, but that does not
invalidate it. As I write these lines events are out of control again in Gaza. Another
war may be on the horizon, and the yearning for peace is not yet strong enough
on either side. The liberation of one Jewish soldier who was kidnapped in order
to start negotiations for the release of imprisoned Palestinians was the excuse
to escalate Kimmerling’s Politicide. It may even lead to a wider war with Syria. That
bombing the Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza will not
bring the Israelis peace or security should be obvious to anyone. There are
more than a million people crowded into this small strip of land. Apart from
women and children there is also a huge reservoir of adolescents and young
adult males who are largely unemployed. They will be enraged and become
“freedom fighters” in their words or “terrorists” in ours. This is not the road
to peace but to hell!
The Bush administration now needs to show that it
can bring some modicum of order into this evolving chaos and if it fails to do
so shame on them and shame on us who let it happen.
August 1, 2006
SOWING THE WIND
The still unfolding tragedy in
the Middle East was utterly predictable ever since the start
of the Bush II administration, as has been repeatedly noted in these pages. In
the beginning of 2001 there was still a chance for America
to become an honest broker to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This
hope prompted me to write: Whither
Zionism? and send it to the Bush cabinet as well
as all the relevant members of the House and Senate. This effort was, of
course, useless because the President, the Vice-President and the powers behind
the throne did not have the slightest interest in urging Israel
to make meaningful concessions towards the Palestinians legitimate grievances.
On the contrary, Arafat and his people continued to be painted as terrorists
with whom one does not negotiate but who have to be brought to heel by military
force.
This
seeming lack of understanding that the key to peace in the Middle
East is the equitable solution of the Arab - Israeli conflict,
which is so obvious to most everybody else, is certainly puzzling. Our military
commanders surely knew it. General Tommy Franks reported that when he took over
CENTCOM his predecessor, General Zinni, told him that there would not be any
peace in the area of his command until this vexing problem was solved. But the
Bush administration had a different view which came fully to the fore after
9/11. Just as the current crisis was not caused by the abduction of an Israeli
soldier in the Gaza area by Hamas
militants and the subsequent kidnapping of two others by Hezbollah on Israel’s
northern border, 9/11 was not the cause for America’s
aggressive stance in the Middle East but only the
precipitant.
For the
causes of Bush’s foreign policy we have to go all the way back to the Nixon era
which first brought together the players who are now ruling our lives. This
part of history has recently been discussed in considerable detail by James
Mann in his book: The Rise of the
Vulcans. The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.
“Vulcans” was the nickname a group of six people applied to themselves whose
task it was to teach the presidential candidate, George W, the rudiments of
foreign affairs, which had never been an area of interest to him. These were in
alphabetic order: Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza
Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Condi Rice, who served as foreign
policy coordinator for the Bush campaign, had been raised in BirminghamAlabama where, as Mann wrote, “a mammoth
fifty-six foot statue of Vulcan on a hill overlooking downtown paid homage to
the city’s steel industry. This image of the Roman god of fire and metallurgy appropriately
expressed the ideas of the group which aimed at making America
supreme over the rest of the world and to create a military machine of such
power that would render any arms race by other nations futile.”
Their ideas
came from Leo Strauss one of many German Jewish refugees who had found shelter
in America’s
academia. Together with the previously discussed Albert Wohlstetter (Albert Wohlstetter’s
Disciples, December 1, 2005)
he became the mentor, among others, of Paul Wolfowitz who dominated the
intellectual scene of that little group of Vulcans. Strauss’s idea, which
resulted from Hitler’s persecution of Jews, was quite simple: There is the
biblical good and evil without any middle ground. Let me now quote some key
sentences from Mann’s book which explain how current American foreign policy
came into being
“Strauss
spoke of the need for an elite group of advisers, as in Plato’s Republic, who
could impress upon a political leader and upon the masses the need for virtue
and for strong moral judgments about good and evil.
For America’s
relation with the world, Strauss’s ideals carried a number of implications.
First, his ideas stressed the importance of a leader who was especially strong
in his actions, firm in his beliefs and willing to go against the grain to
combat ‘tyranny’ (Strauss frequently
used the word tyranny rather than the more modern word dictatorship). Strauss and
his followers revered Winston Churchill; during the Reagan administration and
for years afterward, Straussians in Washington
convened on Churchill’s birthday to sip brandy and smoke cigars [reference
provided]. What attracted them to Churchill was his willingness to stand up to
Hitler. In a eulogy of Churchill, Strauss wrote, ‘The tyrant stood at the
pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous
statesman and the insane tyrant – this spectacle in its clear simplicity was
one of the greatest lessons which man can learn, at any time [reference
provided].’”
That the
situation was far more complex than Strauss’ and his followers’ simplicity
would have it was already discussed in these pages on July 1, 2003 (Churchill and Hitler). But the above
quoted paragraph also explains America’s philosophical moralist in residence,
Bill Bennett, whose book “Moral Clarity” I have also discussed previously in
relation to the justification for the “War on Terrorism (July 1, 2002). Later
in life Strauss turned his animosity towards the Soviet Union
and thus became the father of Reagan’s much quoted “Evil Empire.”
As mentioned above, some of the
people who now command the news got their first government jobs during the
Nixon presidency. It was he who appointed Donald Rumsfeld as Head of the Office
of Economic Opportunity. But before Rumsfeld took the position, which he
regarded as rather unimportant, he had insisted that he be officially named “as
an assistant to the president with cabinet-level status and an office in the
White House.” As Mann explained further, “One of Rumsfeld’s first actions in
the Nixon administration was a seemingly minor personnel decision the impact of
which reverberated for decades. Rumsfeld was looking for a right-hand man to
help run his office. He found and hired a twenty-eight-year-old Capitol Hill
staff aide and graduate student named Richard Cheney.” A firm friendship
developed and they have functioned as a team ever since with alternating roles
between who is boss at a given time.
Another early player was Paul
Wolfowitz who also got his first job in government during the Nixon
administration as a member of the U.S. Control and Disarmament Agency. Senator
“Scoop” Jackson had become disenchanted with Kissinger’s policy of détente and
felt that we had given away too much and received too little in return. He demanded
of the embattled Nixon, who was already fighting the losing Watergate battle,
to replace the Chief of that agency. Fred Iklé, a Wohlstetter disciple, was
appointed and he in turn brought in brand new staff members with Wolfowitz, who
had been recommended by Wohlstetter, as his most trusted advisor. As such,
Wolfowitz wrote key position papers aided by his friend Richard Perle, another
one of Wohlstetter’s protégés, who was then a Senate staff member and has since
remained a highly influential person. The Iraq
invasion can clearly be laid at the doorstep of these two friends. The battle
between the Kissinger point of view, which could basically be regarded as a Realpolitik of “live and let live,” and
the Strauss-Wohlstetter group of moral superiority and U.S. supremacy, began in
those days and has influenced America’s foreign policy ever since.
Another event occurred in 1976 which
can be regarded as a “preview of coming attractions.” In those days the
question was whether or not the CIA and other intelligence agencies were underestimating
the threat the Soviet Union posed to America.
At stake was the defense budget and as such money! George Bush senior was then
in charge of the CIA and in order to counter the criticism that his agency was
somehow less than vigilant he appointed an outside commission to study the
question. The chairman was Richard Pipes, another Jewish refugee from Hitler’s
ire, who was working on the Disarmament Commission. His son, Daniel Pipes, is a
well known Neoconservative author who specializes in Middle East
affairs. Wolfowitz earned his spurs by contributing heavily to the final Commission
report. It should come as no surprise that this team B, as it was called,
concluded that the Soviet Union was a dire threat.
Because of its implications for today’s conflict let me quote Mann again.
“The
team concluded that it was possible to interpret the available intelligence
data as showing that the Soviet Union was striving for military superiority
over the United States and that it viewed détente as a means of achieving this
goal. All the evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to what is
euphemistically called the ’worldwide triumph of socialism’ but in fact
connotes global Soviet hegemony, the report said. It criticized the CIA for
relying too much on satellites and other technology and for failing to give
enough weight to what Soviet leaders were saying.”
Team B and its report was the
forerunner of the private intelligence channel which Wolfowitz and Douglas
Feith were running at the Pentagon to provide the rationale for the Iraq
invasion. This information was fed via “Scooter” Libby to Cheney and from there
to Rice and the president. That even the British were concerned about how U.S.
intelligence reports were manipulated to fit policy is documented by memoranda
to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Some of them were recently published by Mark
Danner in: The Secret Way to War. The
scenario of Iran’s
imminent threat to our well-being also follows this pattern.
Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who
had never personally seen war, represented the Straussian good and evil point
of view, while Armitage and Powell had laid their lives on the line in Vietnam.
They knew the realities and brutalities of military action and were deeply hurt
by America’s
defeat. Of the two, who had also become close friends over the years, Armitage
showed, to my mind, more interesting personality characteristics. While Powell
had chosen to remain in the military because it offered bright, young, poor
African-Americans the opportunity for advancement in a society that was just
beginning its march to equal civil rights for all, Armitage was a soldier’s
soldier and sailor.
While serving on a Navy destroyer off
the coast of Vietnam
he heard the guns of the Tet offensive in January of 1968 and wondered what he
was doing on his ship when there was a war to be fought. He volunteered for
duty in what was then called “the brown water navy,” of which we became more
aware recently during the Kerry campaign. They patrolled the muddy rivers and
backwaters of South Vietnam
in their “swift boats” thereby being exposed to danger on a daily basis. But
Armitage did more than Kerry; he learned the language of the people and fell in
love with the country. While in Vietnam
he may also have been associated with the CIA’s Phoenix
program which carried out covert operations against the Viet Cong, which is a
polite way of describing what amounted to assassination squads. Armitage
insisted that he never participated in the actual killings but only served in
an advisory capacity. Be that as it may what intrigued me personally, as a
sailor, was his conduct after the fall of Saigon. By
April of 1975 Armitage was back in civilian life when he received a call from a
friend and former superior asking him to go back to Vietnam
and help with the evacuation and/or destruction of U.S.
military equipment before it fell into the hands of the victorious North
Vietnamese. As it turned out the North Vietnamese were faster in their advance
than had been anticipated and the rescue of people rather than equipment became
the overriding priority. Let me now quote again from Mann for what followed
“Near
Con Son, the South Vietnamese navy had assembled about ninety ships. They were
occupied by at least twenty thousand South Vietnamese fleeing their country,
most of them naval personnel and their families, including Vice Admiral Cang.
The ships had little food or water and some of them were barely seaworthy.
Armitage was the U.S. Navy’s sole representative to the Vietnamese in the
flotilla.
Armitage decided to try to sail the
ships and the refugees to the Philippines,
a distance of about a thousand miles. Most of the ships weren’t seaworthy
enough to make the voyage. At least sixty of the vessels were scuttled, in some
cases with the help of gun fire. The 20,000 Vietnamese were packed into
thirty-two boats; three boats originally used by the U.S. Coast Guard, each of
which usually carried a crew of170, were loaded with 1,500 Vietnamese apiece.
Armitage sent urgent cables to the Defense Department, which succeeded in
getting food and water brought to the boats. From May 2 to May7 Armitage’s
Vietnamese convoy, protected by three American ships, sailed to Subic
Bay in the Philippines.
Amid the overcrowding, fights and even gunfire broke out on board.”
Armitage succeeded to get his
people to the Philippines
but once there Ferdinand Marcos, the President, and his government tried to
prevent the little convoy’s entry into their territorial waters because they
were flying the South Vietnamese flag. Armitage solved the situation by having
them hoist the Stars and Stripes and at least for this group of people
including Armitage the Vietnam War was finally over.
As a result of the Vietnam
defeat, which both Armitage and Powell deeply resented, they vowed: never
again. First: choose carefully whether or not you want to go to war but when
you have you have decided in favor of war go with such force that will ensure an
overwhelming victory. Although Armitage and Powell shared the goals of Cheney,
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, namely to make America
invulnerable against an enemy attack and, therefore, building up her military
strength, they did not share the gung ho messianic good and evil approach. This
difference reflected itself decades later when Powell was Secretary of State
and Armitage his executive officer, versus the stance taken by Cheney and the
Pentagon in the run-up to the Iraq
war. The split in the opinions about the wisdom of invading Iraq
between these two sets of people stemmed from the difference between soldiers
who had participated in action while the others simply decided to send people
to death in the illusion of creating a better world.
One may now ask where is the sixth
Vulcan, Condi Rice, who held these diverse people together? As an
African-American who had been brought up with conservative views she clearly
had an affinity not only with Powell but also other members of the previous
Bush administration. Because of her expertise in Soviet affairs she became the
protégé of Brent Scowcroft, GHW Bush’s National Security Advisor, who provided
her in 1989 with her first stint in the White House during the dramatic transition
from Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Just as Scowcroft and Bush senior, she was closer to
a Realpolitik type outlook than that
of the messianic Neoconservatives. As such she was clearly caught in the middle
between the Wolfowitz and Powell outlook on what American foreign policy should
be. It was, and still is, a battle between the Leo Straus ideas and those of Henry
Kissinger who had drawn different lessons from their lives in Germany.
And where is our President in all
of this? It is obvious that he had no specific ideas about the world that
existed beyond the confines of the State of Texas
and, sad to say, could as such be manipulated into the highest office of the
land by astute politicians like Karl Rove. Furthermore, his conversion from
alcohol to “born again Christian” could be exploited by the Straussian good and
evil crowd. We are now seeing the “leader of the free world” as an image that
had been created by Strauss. What fascinates me personally about the Strauss picture
of the strong resolute leader who is always right and has been adopted by Rove
to portray his candidate (The Great Liberator. May 1, 2004), did not stem from Churchill whom the Brits
never regarded as such. It came from the pen of Joseph Goebbels who had created
the Fuehrer image for which so much blood had to be shed. Unfortunately for our
country and the world George Bush jr. appears to have been promoted beyond his
level of competence and we can only hope and pray that he will not engage in
further “preemptive” adventures of the Iraq
type.
We have now come full circle how
the past explains the present and are faced with the agonizing question what do
we do now? The battle for the mind of our administration is still going on. One
would think that the Straussian Neocons would have learned their lesson. Afghanistan
is still in shambles and we, together with NATO, are experiencing a resurgence
of the Taliban. Iraq
is sinking daily further into anarchy and instead of being able to withdraw
troops more are required. The goal of bringing democracy to the Middle
East on the American model has failed for all who have eyes to see
and ears to hear. When free democratic elections were carried out in the
Palestinian territories the people voted “the rascals out.” Fatah, under Arafat
and later Abbas, had been unable to extract meaningful concessions from Israel
and was regarded as corrupt. The people, therefore, voted for “change” and this
brought Hamas to power. Although this organization is portrayed simply as a
bunch of terrorists, many of the Palestinians didn’t see them as such. They saw
an organization which was relatively uncorrupted, and provided welfare services
as well as the will to fight for an independent State of Palestine.
This was anathema to the
Jerusalem-Washington axis. The freely elected Palestinian government had to be
ostracized and the people starved into submission. “Terrorist” is the key word
which currently excuses all actions against nations and organizations. But when
the terror bombs come from planes instead of the ground they are simply a just
retribution against evil. Israel
and her supporters have learned nothing from the disasters they have inflicted
via the Bush administration. To the contrary they seem to see the current human
catastrophe in Lebanon
as a further stepping stone to settle scores with Damascus
and Tehran and are apparently
oblivious to the fact that they are further radicalizing the Muslim world.
All the rest of the world agrees
that an immediate cease-fire is required in Lebanon.
But our administration, which represents the only country that can make it
stick, first procrastinated, and then made impossible demands, i.e. Hezbollah
has to be disarmed first. I am saying impossible because there was obviously no
one who could make them do so. In addition the administration sent “on an
expedited basis” bunker busting bombs to Israel.
As such we are guilty of promoting the slaughter of innocents on both sides of
the border rather than making every effort to stop it in its tracks. The deal
of sending bunker buster bombs to Israel
was approved by Congress last year and the unstated assumption was that the
Israelis would use them against Iran’s
budding nuclear program. This way, our politicians thought, we could wash our
hands from the carnage and if things went sour one could always blame the
Israelis for not having exercised proper caution. But on July 22 of this year
the New York Times reported that “
The Bush administration is rushing a delivery ofprecision-guided bombs to Israel which
requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign
against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.” Although this bit of information has not
been broadcast widely in the U.S.
it did make headlines around the world because it reemphasizes not only America’s
tolerance of the slaughter in Lebanon
but our active complicity in its execution. One has to read British sources to
find out that these bunker busters, officially known as GBU-28, apparently
contain “degraded” uranium, and that some Brits were not all that happy about their
being shipped via Scotland.
Even the UK’s
Tony Blair is privately perturbed about U.S.
policy and made a special visit to his friend George but had to leave
empty-handed. At their joint press conference the proverbial “stiff upper lip”
prevailed and they showed “shoulder to shoulder” solidarity. How long the
British public and Parliament will endorse this stance is a good question.
Condi Rice made another trip to Israel
over the past weekend. But since she was not authorized to negotiate an
immediate cease-fire proposal the Lebanese Prime Minister asked her not to come
to Beirut when the extent of the
Qana tragedy became public knowledge
For Ms. Rice this is now the hour
of truth. Does she have an independent opinion about how the situation can be
remedied immediately or does she choose to remain simply a mouthpiece of the
administration and keep providing cover for Israel?
This is not a trivial question because as the Drudge Report informed us last
week there is a “Dump Condi” campaign going on in Washington.
The Neocons under the leadership of Bill Kristol and Richard Perle feel that
our Foreign Secretary does not understand the Middle East, does not rely enough
on the (Jewish) Middle East experts but has been talking to the likes of
Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel who fully appreciate the seriousness of
the situation and want to avoid a wider conflagration. We, thus, see a replay
of the Strauss-Kissinger battle with Condi supposedly beginning to lean toward
the Realpolitk side which is abhorred
by the Straussians who want a wider war with Syria
and probably Iran
as well.
This leaves us with the behind the
scenes president of the U.S.
namely Mr. Cheney and where he will put his not inconsiderable weight. From
Mann’s book he comes across not as a fervent ideologue but more as a Mr. Fixer
who gets things done. My personal opinion is that he is fully in favor of at
least a protracted Lebanese war because he is a business man and there is money
to be made. Every missile and artillery shell will have to be replaced and that
brings money. When oil becomes scarce, this is all to the good, because profits
will be soaring. Exxon Mobile has just reported a second quarter profit of more
than $10 billion and the other companies are not far behind. Let’s face it: war
is bad for people but good for the folks who are in charge and this is why wars
are instigated and allowed to continue.
While Lebanon
is being hammered to bits, its infrastructure destroyed, and its people
indiscriminately maimed and killed humanitarian aid is being requested from all
over the world. The U.S.
has pledged $30 million but one may ask: for what? First of all it is a drop in
the bucket and secondly as long as we support the continuing war the money may
not even reach the needy. If we had a responsible Congress it would demand an
immediate cease-fire, enforced by the statement that we shall no longer supply
arms and money to the conflict. In addition one could tax the oil companies as
well as other defense contractors for windfall profits. These should then be used
for the reconstruction of the war ravaged countries. But the unfortunate fact
is that our Congress is not up to this task and the American “man in the
street” doesn’t care as yet.
We have to realize that all wars
and this one in particular, are fought on two fronts. One is on the ground
where people’s lives are destroyed and the other is propaganda to keep people motivated.
The U.S. media have
until recently portrayed a largely one-sided picture, which highlighted the
suffering of Israelis who have been attacked again for no reason and who have
to fight for their very lives. The rest of the world gets a broader view, which
we can glimpse from the Internet where information may not always be reliable.
This refers now specifically to the precipitant of the current Lebanese human
catastrophe.
We have been, and continue to be,
told that Israel
had to retaliate with Operation “Just Reward,” which was later renamed to
“Operation Change of Direction.” The sum and substance which is drilled
steadily into the American psyche is that Hezbollah, a terrorist organization,
has invaded Israeli territory and Israel
has not only the moral right but also the duty to defend itself. We are not
told what the other side says because one does not talk or even listen to
terrorists. Let me now say at the outset that I do not know the true sequence
of events that occurred during the morning of July 12 because there are
conflicting reports. Probably the earliest and, therefore, possibly most
authoritative comes from an Agence France
Press (AFP) report of July 12.under the headline “Hezbollah affirms to have
captured two Israeli soldiers.” The text cites an announcement by Al-Manar (TV
station in Beirut with ties to Hezbollah) that “According to the Lebanese police
force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the
area of Aïta Al-Chaab [the UNIFIL map spells it Ayita ash Shab], near the
border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in the middle of the
morning.” The Bahrain News Agency of 7-12-06
stated in addition, “Israeli aircraft were active in the air over southern Lebanon,
with jets bombing roads leading to the market town of Nabatiyeh, 60 kilometers
south of Beirut.”
If true, this suggests that Israel
had sent a commando group into Lebanon
to force a showdown with Hezbollah. Hezbollah responded as expected and
captured two of the Israelis in the hope of achieving an exchange with Lebanese
prisoners held by Israel.
This was not the case but taken as a pretext to attempt the destruction of the
Hezbollah organization. The initial attempt to reach the LitaniRiver and clear out Hezbollah
positions to the south of it has so far failed. The indiscriminate bombing of
largely civilian targets has led to world-wide protests against Israel
and in part against America
because we are seen as aiding and abetting that country. As of July 31,
Hezbollah has more sympathizers than ever before, a fact which ought to give
our war planners pause to think.
What would need to be done? A Security
Council Resolution is urgently needed which demands an immediate cease-fire
followed by the dispatch of a multinational military unit, which makes sure that
Hezbollah’s troops vacate the area up to the Litani river. Israel
is likely to oppose the immediate cease-fire demand but it is America’s
duty to stop the carnage and an American veto would be catastrophic. To expect
any nation to send its troops into an area where there is still active fighting
is unrealistic and the statement by Condi Rice that “a lasting settlement can
be achieved this week,” sounds more like propaganda than realism. For a lasting
settlement of the Lebanese problem Israel
would have to give up its hope of rendering the military wing of Hezbollah
ineffective and in addition vacate the disputed Sheba Farms area of which we
hear nothing in the U.S.
It belongs to Lebanon
but is still held by Israel
even after its withdrawal from the country in 2000. Furthermore, “a sustainable
peace,” as President Bush called for again yesterday, would have to include a
just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But this cannot be
achieved by an administration which sees only terrorists rather than people
with grievances. An additional task for the UN would be the appointment of a
fact finding commission to establish the truth about the sequence of events on
July 12.
If Condi Rice were to be the person
of character, she has been portrayed as, she would have to realize in her heart
of hearts that the current Bush policy is not only ineffective but downright
dangerous. We are told that she is a close friend of the president. Under those
circumstances she needs to warn him that he is leading the country and the
world into even greater difficulties. If he were to ignore her advice she
should resign and go public with the truth about American foreign policy as she
has personally seen it evolve. I have suggested earlier that Colin Powell
should have done so in regard to the Iraq
war pretenses (Ignorant Arrogance. October
1, 2003), but he was at heart a military man and as such used to
taking orders. Ms. Rice is under no such obligation and if she fails in her
task, either through lack of character strength or misguided loyalty, she will
become responsible for further tragedies that are clearly on the horizon.
Finally the American people must
be told that the “good and evil” propaganda is indeed propaganda and not a realistic
foreign policy. It is harmful because it prevents us from talking with our
adversaries and unless we talk with them an agreement cannot be reached.
Unconditional surrender, as in America’s
Civil War or WWII, is not an applicable policy because a guerilla force,
motivated by an ideal, cannot be defeated with high-tech weaponry. This has
been repeatedly pointed out and is demonstrated daily in the streets of Iraq.
Israel now
believes that it can achieve a victory with a massive ground offensive. But
whatever success it may gain will be temporary and at the cost of further
destruction especially in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah will simply underground and redeploy some time later. At the moment
of writing these lines there is danger of a wider war and President Assad of Syria
has asked his army to raise its alert level because Israel’s
full intentions are at present unknown. Right now more wind is sown and we
should not be surprised if we will reap a hurricane, which will leave no one
unscathed.
September 1, 2006
WHY U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICY FAILED
It has by
now become apparent, even to the mainstream media, that the Bush
administration’s Middle East policy is a resounding
failure. This installment will explore the reasons and what might be done about
it.
As usual there is not a single
cause but a confluence of several events that led to the currently undesirable
state of affairs. Nevertheless, there is one underlying principle that has been
ignored, and continues to be ignored. This is, as I have pointed out on
previous occasions, the wisdom of Buddha’s “Eightfold Noble Path.” The sequence
starts with “Right View” and from it everything else flows. The Bush
administration has seen fit to divide the states of our world into good and
evil ones rather than recognizing that states, and groups within states, act in
what they regard as their best interest. For some, these interests conflict
with ours and some of them use terror as a means to attract our attention to
their problems. Nevertheless, the Bush administration lumped all of them under
the name of terrorists. A “Global War on Terrorism” is currently being pursued
with inappropriate means and since one cannot defeat the enemy militarily, and
does not negotiate with terrorists, because it will embolden them, a dead end
has been reached. This policy was based on ignorance of Middle East
facts and disregarded the opinions of the majority of the people who live
there. It limited itself only to the concerns of the ruling party in the State
of Israel and as such did not represent “Right View.” For a more accurate
appraisal of what is happening in the Middle East, and
why, we have to consider not only the interests of all the countries in the
region separately but we should have in addition at least a rudimentary grasp
of the religious and social differences between Shi’is and Sunnis. To ignore
these is just as dangerous as to regard all Muslims as potential terrorists.
Several decades ago I had bought
three books, which, can be of considerable help in understanding the Middle
East situation. One is a series of essays edited by Juan R. I.
Cole and Nikki R. Keddie published in 1986 under the title: “Shi’ism and Social Protest.” The other
two were by Raphael Patai called: “The
Arab Mind;” and “The Jewish Mind,”
published in 1973 and 1977 respectively. These latter two books highlight some
of the differences in thought processes and conduct between these two ethnic
groups who claim to have descended from a common father, Abraham, with a common
patrimony to the land of their ancestors. But Jews trace their lineage to Isaac
as Abraham’s legitimate son from Sarah, and Arabs to Ishmael who, although the
first-born, is regarded as illegitimate. Since Sarah had, as the Bible tells
us, been barren until ripe old age Abraham and Sarah had agreed that one of
Sarah’s handmaidens, the Egyptian born Hagar, would be recruited to provide the
needed heir. Otherwise the property would have gone to one of Abraham’s
servants as was the law of the times. When Sarah subsequently did become
pregnant and produced Isaac the seeds of conflict, which reach to our day, were
laid because Sarah claimed all of her husband’s property for her son and the
handmaid plus son had to be expelled. With a legend of this type, which is
regarded as truth by the descendents of Isaac as well as Ishmael, the conflict
between Judaism and Islam was fore-ordained.
Contrary to
some writers’ opinions the Koran does not condemn Jews and Christians as
infidels who have to be eradicated but expresses respect for the “People of the
Book” provided that the members of these groups adhere to the teachings laid
down by Moses and Jesus respectively. Muslims do not fear these religions per
se because the Koran makes it abundantly clear that Islam is based on the two
previous ones. What they do fear is the relative absence of religious awareness
in the daily lives of Jews and Christians. Patai has pointed out that a
“separation of Church and State” as practiced in the Western world by Jews as
well as Christians is anathema for a devout Muslim because his entire life is
supposed to be centered on submission to the “Will of God” as expressed in Holy
Scripture. This does not preclude, as our administration does not seem to
understand, that the ruling circles of the “Umma”
(the Islamic community) can be democratically elected and as such their nations
can qualify as democracies. That the Constitutions of these various Islamic
countries may differ from what Montesquieu and Jefferson had in mind should
come as no surprise because they are based on different historic backgrounds.
It should also not be surprising that members of Muslim countries may react
adversely when the latter type of democracy is foisted upon them by military
means, or when a “regime change” is engineered by foreign powers.
As Patai said in regard to the Arab
mind, “The crucial difference is not doctrinal but functional, what Muslims
fear from Westernization is not that it will cause their co-religionist to
abandon Islam in favor of Christianity, but that it will bring about a
reduction of the function of Islam to the modest level on which Christianity
plays its role in the Western world.” In other words what they fear is being
overwhelmed by secularism. Having a secular state, Israel,
in their midst which nevertheless traces its legitimacy to a religious promise
is intolerable to some. Others might be willing to make a compromise if the
Israelis were to live up to at least the Ten Commandments. When they violate
especially the “Thou shalt not covet Thy neighbors house” and willfully
expropriate Palestinian property the locals cannot be faulted when they rise up
in resistance. The Israeli answer, that “neighbor” referred only to the sons of
Jacob and that the spoils of war have always been legitimate, is no longer valid
because the United Nations Charter has outlawed territorial acquisitions by
means of war. Since the use of terror has always been, apart from Gandhi, the
main method to make one’s grievances public it is inappropriate for the Bush
administration to lump national struggles for self-determination together with
some fringe groups of radicals which, inspired by precedents, pursue their own
goals in an independent manner.
There are additional aspects in
Patai’s book regarding Arabs that should be taken into account. He pointed out
that the Muslim faith was grafted onto an existing Bedouin culture and the
characteristics of the latter still provide the bedrock especially for the
rural population. These consist of, “kinship, loyalty, bravery, manliness,
aversion to physical work, and a great emphasis on honor, ‘face,’ and self
respect.” The Muslim faith added the central factor of accountability. Man does
not only live for himself and his immediate community but is responsible for
his conduct to God Who sees all, judges every action, and Who will mete out
reward or punishment at time of death. When one considers these aspects it
becomes apparent that the West’s seductive materialistic culture will be met
initially with suspicion and when forcibly imposed with outright
hostility.
Patai had greater difficulty
analyzing the Jewish mind. It starts with the problem of even defining: who is
a Jew? This does not arise in relation to Arabs because they are a relatively
homogeneous group whose mother tongue is Arabic. Jews on the other hand have
for most of their history lived as minorities in other cultures and have
adopted not only their languages but also thought and behavior patterns. Even
in Jesus’ time the Jews of Palestine spoke Aramaic rather than Hebrew. The use
of the Hebrew language in every day discourse is an early twentieth century
phenomenon. There is no need to discuss Patai’s ideas on Jews further at this
time because I have already devoted “The
Moses Legacy” to this topic and it can be downloaded free of charge.
Suffice it to say that the hallmark of Jewish behavior is what may be called
“tribal.” It consists of generosity and helpfulness towards those who are
regarded as members of the tribe, but wariness of and at times outright
hostility towards outsiders. Since the Jewish people have always lived as
minorities in other cultures, which applies even now to the relationship of the
State of Israel with its neighbors, a defensive mentality has developed. When
this is coupled with a penchant for exaggerations, which Jews have in common
with their Arab relatives, disagreements can be blown up into major
catastrophes. Most of us remember Saddam Hussein’s warning that “the mother of
all battles” would take place if Bush senior’s coalition forces attempted to drive
him out of Kuwait.
It was a boast one could laugh at but it is not laughable when boastful
rhetoric is deliberately portrayed as imminent danger.
There are two examples which
highlight this point. When Iran’s
Ayatollah Khomeini came to power he declared that the State of Israel must be
wiped off the map. Well, that was more than a quarter of a century ago and Israel
still exists. President Ahmadinejad repeats this rhetoric now, giving the
deceased Ayatollah full credit for it, but he knows fully well that this
project is not feasible at this time. So do the Israelis; but they use it to
frighten not only their own people but also the trusting and largely gullible
Americans to support their policies as “legitimate defense.”
It is true that Israel’s
neighbors and its occupied Palestinian population can make life miserable for Israelis
but the current threat is not existential and requires different methods to be
met.
Another example for exaggerated
rhetoric is the supposed existential threat to America
posed by militant Islam. One of our Middle East experts, Daniel Pipes son
ofRichard Pipeswho was mentioned in the August 1, 2006 installment, published in
the November 2001 issue of Commentary
an article, “The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America.”Its goal was to warn Americans of what is
going on in their midst in the aftermath of 9/11. Pipes took the rhetoric of a
few fanatics and generalized:
“Cumulatively, however, by
whittling away at the existing order, they would change the country’s whole way
of life – making Islam a major public presence, ensuring that both the
workplace and the educational system accommodate its dictates and strictures,
adapting family customs to its code of conduct, winning it a privileged
position in American life, and finally imposing its system of law.”
What struck me here is not only the
fear-mongering but also the phenomenon of “projection” which Freud has
described in his encounters with patients. The patient’s thoughts are projected
onto the physician as if those were indeed the latter’s rather than the former’s. When Pipes talked about
the privileged position Islamists aspire to he apparently failed to see that
this is actually what Jewish activists have already achieved in this country.
Christian symbols can be defaced and ridiculed in the name of “art” and
“freedom of expression,” but when utterances critical, of even the policies, of
the State of Israel are made one may be confronted with the charge of
“anti-Semitism.” This has negatively impacted on our foreign policy because
members of Congress know that they will have difficulty holding on to their
seats if they do not go along with the wishes of Jewish organizations.
There can hardly be any doubt that
the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the unresolved Palestinian problem at its
heart, was one reason for the excessively militant stance of the Bush
administration after 9/11.Our Middle
East “experts” were to some extent Jewish and as such managed to
persuade first the Bush administration and then the American public at large
that America
was after 9/11 in the same boat as Israel
and our survival as a nation was at stake. This false idea led us first into Afghanistan,
subsequently Iraq,
to the support of Israel’s
recent Lebanon
war, and may now lead to an aggravated conflict with Iran
and/or Syria.
Our Jewish experts received invaluable help from President Bush’s Christian
evangelical and fundamentalist base in whose imagination the State of Israel is
seen through a rose colored prism that does not correspond to the existing
realities. When they, and others, hold up Israel
as a model democracy in the Middle East they are either
unaware of or they deliberately ignore that the foundation of a democracy does
not merely reside in going to polls and electing political parties but in a
Constitution. The State of Israel does not have such a document and is not
eager to adopt one because it would provide, at a minimum, full equality to its
Arab citizens, which in turn would endanger the privileged status of the Jewish
majority.
As a result of these wrong ideas
and exaggerated rhetoric we are now in a “Global War on Terror” where
“Islamofascists” are the enemy although no one has ever defined what is meant
by this term and how they can be defeated. From a historical perspective it is
interesting to see how the term “Fascism” has mutated in meaning since
Mussolini created the Fascist party in 1919. Nobody in the West had any
problem with the party as such and Mussolini was even credited with having made
“the trains run on time.” The problem arose not from fascism per se but from the
Duce’s imperial ambitions; first in Ethiopia
and then toward other ancient provinces of the Roman Empire.
The equation of Nazism with Fascism was made by writers in the Soviet
Union who came up with the term Hitler-Fascists. The reason was
obvious. The party’s formal name was Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP, national socialist German workers party)
and from “National” the abbreviation Nazi was derived. This was contrasted with
Sozi, the abbreviation for the socialist parties of Germany
and Austria.
But the Soviet Union as the self-appointed beacon for socialism and
representative of the workers of the world could not stomach National Socialism
and since there was an alliance (shaky at best) between Italy and Germany the term
fascist was generalized not only to include Germany but also subsequently Franco’s
Spain. It now seems to cover all populist national liberation movements which
are organized around a central leadership and are disapproved of by some ruling
circles in the West. Since the term Fascism is automatically equated in the
popular mind with Nazis, Holocaust, and gas chambers it is a very useful tool
for propagandists.
Just as “the Jews” were held
responsible by the Nazis for all the ills of the world in the 1930’s and early 40’s
we now have “Islamofascists” as if such a group really existed. This is where
the book with the essays on Shi’ism can be of great help in our understanding
of the Muslim world. Just as in Christianity the Muslim religion is not
monolithic. Among the different sects Shi’is and Sunnis are the most prominent
and their conflict has now erupted into open warfare on the streets of Iraq.
Although the religious differences may seem subtle to outsiders they are,
nevertheless, fought for with the same intensity as Catholics fought
Protestants and vice versa during the years of Reformation and
Counterreformation in England as well as on the Continent. Since Shi’is worship
at tombs and shrines, asking for intercession of saintly ancestors with God,
they are not regarded by some Sunnis even as Muslims. This is especially true for
the strictest group, Saudi Arabia’s
Wahhabis. This explains also why we now have the spectacle of Muslims murdering
other Muslims which is forbidden in the Koran.
Religion, as usual, is, however,
only a cloak for a power struggle and the Shi’is traditionally held the short
end of the stick. They formed a minority in all Muslim countries, except for Iran,
and were as such profoundly discriminated against. This led to social protest
movements which the ruling circles either suppressed or patched over. These
aspects are important for our understanding of the current Middle
East situation. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution changed
the situation and Shi’is in other countries began to become more assertive,
especially in Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia,
and after the first Gulf War, in Iraq.
Since Khomeini was surrounded by Sunnis he downplayed the differences and
appealed to all Muslims in a jihad against Western imperialism which, of
course, included Israel.
But this was not happenstance. Iran
had been the pawn in what was called the Great Game in the 19th and
early 20th century between Russia
and Great Britain.
When the Brits lost their empire after WWII, the U.
S. stepped in their place and the Great Game
continued. The democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh (also
spelled Mussadiqh), was overthrown by the CIA with British help in 1953,
because he had nationalized the oil industry and was suspected as having
harbored a fondness for the Soviet Union. In the climate
of the Cold War this could not be tolerated. The Shah had left the country
because of incipient civil war but since he was regarded as a more pliable tool
for the West a successful military coup brought him back from Italy.
Mossadegh was arrested, tried for treason and spent the next three years in
jail.
But the Shah made the fundamental
mistake of holding all the power in his own hands and thus had to use coercive
methods to keep other forces, including the religious ones, in line. When President
Jimmy Carter made adherence to human rights the center of his foreign policy
the Shah’s position was correspondingly weakened. The Security police, SAVAK,
was no longer feared to the extent it once was, masses could pour into the
streets forcing the Shah to abdicate, and Khomeini could return in triumph from
his exile in Paris. Richard Cottam,
in the chapter on the Iranian Revolution, pointed out that Khomeini
successfully manipulated symbols and populism to achieve his goal on the
domestic scene, rather than proclaiming a fixed ideology. His foreign policy intended
to “rid the Third World of oppressor power domination
including and especially the local agents of that domination.” In spite of all
the rhetoric about reestablishing the Muslim empire to its heyday where it held
even Spain in
its grip, the goals were more modest and limited to Muslim countries,
especially in the Middle East. Nevertheless, since this
is the major oil producing area of the world it has profound implications if
and when the various states refuse to play along with the Western powers and
assert their national rights.
The Iran-Iraq war was not merely
due to greed on part of Saddam but Iran
was actively exporting its revolution to Iraq
and his regime was in danger. But this war should have taught today’s American
politicians a lesson. Iraqi Shi’is did not desert Saddam’s army but fought and
bled just like the Sunnis. Nationalism prevailed over religious differences. This
point is important because it invalidates the assumption of the Bush
administration that we are dealing with a united front of “Islamofascists.”
The second country which was
profoundly affected by the Iranian revolution was Saudi
Arabia, where the next drama may well be
played out. Not too many of us realize that the major Saudi oil fields are in
the eastern part of the country and that region is populated by Shi’is rather
than Sunnis. There had been serious clashes between the two groups in the past and
by 1980 Shi’is were ready to start an open revolt. They were encouraged by
radio broadcasts from Tehran which
declared that a monarchy is incompatible with Islam and asked “where are the
Molotov cocktails?” to overthrow this corrupt regime. The Saudis proved more
adept than the Shah to rectify legitimate Shi grievances and the oil continues
to flow for the time being. I am mentioning this part of the story because it
demonstrates how precarious the Saudi monarchy really is and why it has bred an
Osama bin Laden although he is Sunni rather than Shi. Currently we hear very
little in our media about this potentially disastrous situation but in the War
on Terror we are already achieving the opposite of what we had intended and the
next domino to fall may well be the Saudi monarchy.
The third country, Lebanon
is in the headlines at present. It has a major Shia population and as such
enjoys the good graces of Iran.
Again, just as in other Middle East countries, Shi’is
were an underclass; initially in the rural parts of the country and during the
Civil War, which lasted from 1975-1990, also in the slums of Beirut.
Power had been held early on by the Druze and subsequently the Maronite
Christians. The country’s Sunni Muslims achieved a degree of power in the late 1970’s
and the Shi’is remained largely in limbo. Although Lebanon
has democratic elections, the distribution of seats in Parliament was, and
still is, biased. Seats are allocated on basis of religion and up to the Civil
War the 99 seats were divided into 54 for Christians and 45 for Muslims. This
did not reflect demographic realities and was a cause of the Civil War. The war
was ended by the Taif agreement which retained the religious basis for seat
allocation but expanded the number to 128. They were then divided equally
between Muslims and Christians on a basis of 64 seats each. Muslims comprise currently
about 70% of the population and this makes this seat allocation unrealistic for
a genuine democracy. Furthermore, the Shi’is percentage of the Muslim population
is estimated to be between 35-40 per cent and is as such a significant factor
which cannot be ignored. Although our government paints Hizbollah (this is the
currently used international spelling) as a stooge of Iran
their members regard themselves as patriotic Lebanese Muslims and have no
interest in the country falling again into civil war or being dominated by
outsiders. A partition of the country along religious and ethnic lines, as may occur
eventually in Iraq,
appears improbable in Lebanon
because Shi’is reside in three major centers: the Beeka valley, Beirut,
and the area south of the LitaniRiver.
As a result of the 1947
Israeli-Palestinian war and the 1967 war, Lebanon
was flooded with Palestinian refugees and members of the PLO continued to
harass Northern Israel from Lebanese positions. During
the Civil War Israel supported the Maronite Christian faction, although it was neither
popular nor the dominant one, and hoped to establish a client state on its
northern border. Israel’s
1982 invasion was successful largely because the local Shi’is in the south had
their fill of arrogant PLO members who acted as if they owned the country and they
greeted the Israelis as liberators. When the liberators overstayed their
welcome for nearly twenty years the locals began to support Hizbollah whose
members were seen as freedom fighters. They were expected to do what the Beirut
government was incapable of doing namely to push the Israelis back into their
own country. Success came in 2000 when Israel,
under Ehud Barak, evacuated the occupation zone and withdrew to a UN agreed
Blue Line. But the UN was unaware of a local problem when they drew the line. There
is a small rural enclave in the east called Sheba
(also spelled Shebaa or Shaaba) Farms which officially belongs to Syria
but is claimed by Lebanon.
The border goes back to the French mandate period and why should one care about
a tiny patch of grassland. Well, shepherds do and their sheep don’t recognize
international borders either. The Israelis regard this pasture as part of the Golan
Heights which they captured from Syria
and in their minds they have completely withdrawn from Lebanon.
But since these are Lebanese shepherds who live there they and their sheep intermittently
cross this line. They do this, however, at their own peril because they are greeted
with rifle fire from the Israeli army. Hizbollah regarded its task, of
expelling the Israelis from every inch of Lebanese soil, as unfinished and
continued sending rockets and other assorted ordinance, including stones,
across the Israeli built border fence.
Thus, the border area remained
volatile and the 2000 member UNIFIL detachment, which has the thankless task to
oversee the truce, was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Its
commander regularly sent reports about the situation every six months, which carefully
detailed the armistice violations as carried out by both sides. These also
included constant over flights by the Israeli air force which apparently felt
that it owned the sky over Lebanon.
UNIFIL regarded these as provocative and there can be no doubt that Hizbollah
shared that sentiment.
In the previous installment I
mentioned a discrepancy between the Agence France Press report and most other
news media as to how the war between Hizbollah and Israel
started. The UNIFIL documents clarified the question. Their report states that
on July 12, “At 9 a.m. local time Hizbollah fighters crossed the Blue Line into
Israel and
attacked an IDF patrol. Hizbollah captured two IDF soldiers, killed three
others and wounded two. The captured soldiers were taken into Lebanon.”
It is, therefore, clear that Hizbollah did start this round of the war but this
is not the full story. Hizbollah’s aim was to initiate an exchange of prisoners
rather than an invasion of Israel.
As Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hizbollah forces stated recently that if
he had known Israel
would launch such a furious, massively destructive reprisal he would not have
ordered the attack.
This brings up the questions: why did
Ehud Olmert, Israel’s
Prime Minister, authorize this war and why did Condi Rice drag her feet when
the rest of the world had demanded an immediate cease-fire? This aspect of the
war is not discussed to any appreciable extent by our major media but is
crucial for our understanding of these events and their implications for the
future. In the middle of July an e-mail came from a Canadian colleague with a
thread to http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AND20060719&articleId=2753.
The article by Dean Andromidas entitled,
“Cheney Unleashes the Dogs of War” asserted that, “This
latest war was planned at a secret meeting between Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and
Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, during a conference organized by the
American Enterprise Institute in June at Beaver Creek,
Colorado. . . .
Netanyahu came back from his
meeting on the weekend of June 17-18 with Cheney at Beaver Creek, and announced
that Israel must reject any form of negotiations with the
Palestinians, and instead reassert its military ‘deterrence.’"
I did not put this information into
last month’s issue because I could not verify some aspects of the source but
the confirmation came from Seymour Hersh, one month later, in the August 21
issue of The New Yorker. Although
Hersh did not mention the Beaver Creek meeting, and the statement by Andromidas
that the abduction of the Israeli soldiers had occurred on Lebanese soil was
shown to have been wrong, the essence of Andromidas’ contention, namely that
this was another war of choice agreed upon by Cheney and the Israelis, was
correct.
As Hersh reported, Israel
had wanted to totally destroy Hizbollah for a long time and the Israelis, as
well as the Bush administration, also wanted to nip in the bud Iran’s
nuclear ambitions. As is well known air strikes on Iran’s
nuclear facilities were in the planning stage but Israel
as well as the U.S.
was concerned that if such were carried out Iran
would retaliate by using Hizbollah to create havoc in Israel’s
Northern provinces. Therefore:
first things first. The idea was to use any kind of pretext to get rid of
Hizbollah and then move against Iran.
The Israeli’s thought that they could use the “Kosovo model” to achieve their
goal. In their minds the NATO Kosovo war was decided by 70 days of air
bombardment and the threat of a land invasion. They would do likewise but
intended to be even swifter and thought they would need only 35 days. Our administration signed on to that plan.
Although Israel would have preferred to start this war in September or October
because the army was not quite ready, a fact known to Hizbollah, Cheney pushed
for the earliest opportunity because the current administration has only two
more years in office and the sooner the Iran operation is getting done and over
with, the better.
Hersh’s information is reliable and
shows the deep complicity of our administration in the carnage which took place
in Lebanon and
amounted under international law to a war crime. It also shows the continued
complete misunderstanding of the limitations of air power and the wrong
conclusion which was drawn from Kosovo. That particular war did not end because
of bombs or threat of invasion but by intervention of the Russian President,
Vladimir Putin, who told Yugoslavia’s
Milosevic that he could no longer support him. Diplomatic pressure ended the
war rather than bombs and threats. Inasmuch as Israel
had promised to get the job done in 35 days, and the White House had agreed
with the plan, Condi Rice was hamstrung and had to drag out the UN negotiations
over a cease fire. The war ended after 34 days, rather than the 35. It resulted
in massive loss of life and destruction of property, especially on the Lebanese
side but left Hizbollah intact to fight another day. Israel
had miscalculated because in contrast to 1982 southern Lebanon
was no longer defended by Palestinian foreigners who were disliked by the
locals, but by well trained and armed Lebanese Hizbollah fighters who were
thoroughly entrenched on their home turf. At this time Hizbollah also still
holds the IDF prisoners from the July 12 incursion and Israel,
nolens volens, will have to negotiate
for their return.
There is currently soul searching
going on Israel as to what went wrong and Hizbollah is also re-assessing its
priorities but our administration acts as if we had been innocent bystanders. As
Hersh’s as well as the Canadian information prove this was far from the case.
The rest of the world knows it and American prestige has suffered another black
eye.
To sum up: our Middle
East policy is a dismal failure because 1) we have identified Israel’s
political interests with our own. This is inappropriate and harmful because it
limits our options to deal with Muslim countries in general and Arab ones in
particular. 2) We have deliberately misrepresented members and leaders of
national liberation movements as “Terrorists” with whom one does not negotiate.
3) We have not recognized that any interference into the internal affairs of a
country, whose leadership we disapprove of, and especially the avowed goal of
regime change, will be regarded as Western imperialism. In this way the Bush
administration has turned Teddy Roosevelt’s admonition of “talk softly and
carry a big stick” into its opposite with the resultant failures in Afghanistan,
Iraq and now Lebanon.
What should be done? The mass media
should inform the American public of what is going on behind the scenes and
bring the genuine data, which exist mainly on the Internet, to public
awareness. An honest debate of our foreign policy in regard to Israel,
which does not consist of name calling, is urgently needed. Israeli security
concerns differ from ours and require different, especially non-military
responses. We also need to let go of false pride and negotiate not only with
our friends but especially with our adversaries in face to face talks. They are
human beings and at least some will show themselves amenable to reason when
they are treated as equals, when they see a willingness to understand their
concerns, and when their national honor is preserved. Prisoner exchanges are a
time honored tradition and there is no reason why this cannot be continued. The
only alternative to talking is killing, and as the past months and years have
shown this is the least desirable option.
The American public has lost and continues
to lose faith in its government. When the mayor of the largest city of the most
conservative state in the Union – Utah
– feels obligated to actively participate in a protest meeting on the day the President
of the country arrives, to address the American Legion Convention in Salt
Lake City, there is really something rotten in America.
Part of the problem is also that this is the first time in the life span of our
Republic when we seem to have two Presidents: A de facto President, Dick Cheney, who makes policy and a de jure President, George Bush, who
rubber stamps it. This is not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind
and it is high time for the voters to realize this situation and rectify it.
October 1, 2006
THE 9/11 COVER-UP
The fifth
anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy brought in its wake a spate of memorial events
and speeches, a “docudrama” on TV, an Oliver Stone movie but alas no clarity as
to what really happened on that fateful day. We are still led to believe that
19 fanatic young Muslims succeeded in hijacking four of our commercial planes, and
with only rudimentary pilot training ram two of them into the twin towers and a
third one into the Pentagon. Only the fourth plane did not reach its Washington
destination because heroic passengers overpowered the hijackers and it crashed
in Pennsylvania. Al Qaeda, a
privately financed terrorist organization, was so superbly organized that the
most elaborate air defenses of any nation, in the most heavily guarded areas of
the country i.e. New York City and WashingtonDC, were powerless to meet this danger. The
only competent people on that day were the hijackers and a few passengers on a
doomed plane. Everyone else in America,
including the people we elected and who took an oath to defend our country from
“all enemies, foreign and domestic” was either inept or otherwise preoccupied
with more urgent matters.
To this must be added that two
high-rise steel structures, the North Tower (WTC1) and the South Tower (WTC2) succumbed
to the fire, which had resulted from the aircrafts’ impact and neatly crumpled
into dust and ashes within seconds into what is called “their own footprint,”
thereby limiting the damage to the World Trade Center complex. So did Building
7 (WTC7) which had not been hit by a plane. This official version of the
events, regardless of several serious questions that can be raised about its
plausibility, has been enshrined in the findings of the 9/11 Commission. It is
the basis for the “Patriot Act,” the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security, the War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan
as well as Iraq.
We are continuously told by our President, Vice President and other members of
the administration that “9/11changed the world,” with the implicit assumption
that the destruction of the WTC, damage to the Pentagon, the loss of four
airplanes and nearly three thousand innocent civilian lives necessitated the
response as outlined above. Those of us who have maintained from the very
beginning, in the fall of 2001, that the 9/11 events were the result of a
crime, perpetrated by Al Qaeda, and that it should be responded to by finding the
guilty and putting them to trial were shouted down because revenge had to be
exacted. We have had our revenge and the result is best expressed in the title
of the book by Thomas Ricks “Fiasco.”
Although this particular book deals only with the Iraq
war the title is appropriate for all the other actions our government has taken
since 9/11 in the foreign and domestic arenas which use 9/11 as the excuse.
The American people are still kept
in the dark about what our government did and did not do on that September day
and whoever dares to question the official story is relegated to “conspiracy
theorists” or the “lunatic fringe.” While this has worked for some time it
cannot do so forever because there is by now sufficient information available
to anyone who is willing to avail him/herself of it. Unfortunately one has to
be diligent in unearthing it because the major news outlets still stay with the
official version. One is relegated to the Internet to find additional
information and one also needs for the most part the Internet in order to
discover the books which have been published on this topic because most of them
are not being reviewed by the official media. Let me summarize, therefore, why
I believe that the Bush administration has covered-up essential 9/11
information and continues to do so to the detriment of our country. In contrast
to the administration, which asks you to take their pronouncements on blind
faith I would like to ask you to please spend some time reading the books that will
be discussed here. This will allow you to form your own opinion on the data.
For starters please obtain “The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon
the United States,” and its companion
volume which appeared this year, “Without
Precedent.” These two books belong together because the first one
represents the official version of the events, while the second one, which was
written by the two Chairmen of the Commission, Thomas Kean (Republican) and Lee
Hamilton (Democrat), tells us how the Commission got started in the first
place, the obstacles it had to overcome in its work and what the final report really
represents.
The book’s title, “Without
Precedent” is actually prophetic when one sees the total context and the
headline of the first chapter, “Set Up To Fail,” is
even more a propos. Although the authors want to convince us that the
Commission, in spite of all the difficulties it encountered, succeeded in its
task a careful reading of these two books will reveal that the Commission actually
failed to answer the most vital questions: “What happened on 9/11 and Why.”
Let me emphasize at the outset that
both Kean and Hamilton did their best under difficult circumstances and that
they indeed tried to get at the truth but they were thwarted in this attempt by
all levels of the administration from the President on down. If the President
had been as careful a steward of our well-being, as he professes, he would have
immediately appointed a truly independent commission to investigate what really
happened. Not only did he not do so but he actively resisted its creation until
he was forced by the families who had lost loved ones in the collapse of the
twin towers. Altogether more than a year had to pass before Bush signed Public
Law 107-306 which established the 9/11 Commission. One can legitimately ask why
this delay? The official answer by the President was that national security
matters were at stake which must not be leaked to the press and since the House
and Senate Intelligence Committees were already investigating the tragedy,
further inquiries were not needed and could actually be harmful
But even if Congress had tried to
get at the full truth it could not succeed. First of all the scope of the
Congressional inquest was limited to the Intelligence failure that allowed the
events to happen. In addition since Republicans controlled both Houses of
Congress, the Chairmen of the committees, as good Republicans, loathed incriminating
members of their own administration. Finally when that particular report did
come out it was heavily censored and as such lacked full credibility.
The 9/11 Commission was supposed to
overcome these problems. It was to be independent and bipartisan, which would have
taken it out of the realm of politics. But this could not be accomplished. The
Chairman of the Commission was appointed by the President and the Vice-Chairman
by the Democratic minority leader of the Senate. Of the remaining eight
Commission members four were Republicans and four Democrats. Since the Republicans
were interested in protecting the administration from potential blame they had
to be at odds with the Democrats who would want the opposite. Thus, the Commission
from its very onset was part of the political process and thereby could not fully
achieve its objective, “to investigate facts and circumstances relating to the
terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001.” Although the Preface to the final report, of July 22, 2004 stated that, “We have
endeavored to provide the most complete account we can of the events of
September 11, what happened and why,” it also included the sentences, “Our aim
has not been to assign individual blame. Our aim has been to provide the
fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify lessons
learned.” Thus, organizations were held to be at fault but the individuals in
control of them were to go blameless. This made a mockery of the whole concept
of individual responsibility for one’s acts of commission and omission which
are the foundation of a moral government.
The “what happened and why had it
happened,” especially in regard to the collapse of the twin towers, was
obviously of utmost concern to the families who had pushed for the
establishment of the Commission but for the Commissioners those questions were
already solved and what mattered most was to come up with recommendations how
these terrorist plots could be foiled in the future. To paraphrase the famous
1992 Democratic election slogan: “It’s Al Qaeda, stupid.” Since this was regarded
as the only cause for all that had happened, including the total collapse of
the towers rather than mere damage to them, the Commission investigated only
why Osama bin Laden (OBL) and Al Qaeda had been successful and what new
agencies and civil defense programs should be instituted to prevent a
recurrence. With this premise the possibility that other factors than merely OBL
might have been operative was simply not taken into account. The government
premise was: since OBL had declared war on Americans in his 1998 Fatwa, now was
the time to make war on him as well as on all those countries that harbor
terrorists. With this type of mindset it was impossible to reach objective
conclusions because the administration could not only always invoke “executive
privilege” for not providing relevant documents but could also stamp everything
they did not want to become public as “Secret.” In wartime “national security”
trumps everything and dissent is tantamount to “aiding and abetting the enemy.”
To change what had really been a massive crime into an act of war, and
comparing it immediately to Pearl Harbor, was an
exceedingly clever device the fatal consequences of which we are still reaping.
As mentioned the Bush
administration had absolutely no interest in creating the Commission and when
forced to do so did its level best to sabotage it. I realize that these are
harsh words but let us look at the facts as presented in Without Precedent. When the Commission was finally established its
term was limited to 18 months and its budget to $3 million. Even this short
time frame was already a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. The
Republicans had wanted it to be over with in one year; the Democrats held out
for two, but since they were in the minority they had to split the difference. It
was obvious that both the time frame and the money were inadequate. To put the dollar
figure into context one needs to remember that the Bush administration had
allocated $50 million for the investigation of the Challenger disaster. Furthermore,
the appropriation for the Iraq
war which was before Congress at the same time and caused by Saddam’s supposed
involvement in 9/11 was for more than $80 billion. Thus one can justly ask:
what were the priorities of this administration? Was it to first find the truth
and then take appropriate action or to use the tragedy to justify preconceived
plans? After a great deal of begging the dollar amount was raised to a total of
$14 million and after much wrangling they had also received a two months extension
of the original deadline from May 22 to July 22.
The magic number of 18 months for
the duration of the Commission’s work was due to the Republicans insistence
that the inquiry not run into the election campaign of 2004, which would have
been the case with the requested two year timeline. Finding the truth had to be
subordinated to the political desire to win an election. Had the investigation
continued over the summer and the fall of 2004 unpleasant facts might have
appeared in the media. These might have endangered the President’s re-election
campaign which was based on his ability to keep our country safe. By having this
time limit the White House could simply run out the clock. Every document had
to be diligently fought for and executive privilege as well as national
security was invoked at every turn. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (our current
Attorney General, who has no particular qualms about allowing torture during
interrogations of enemy “unlawful combatants”) initially refused to allow the
National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to testify in public under oath
before the Commission and it took months before this could be accomplished. It
would never have happened had not Richard Clarke (President Clinton’s counter
terrorist “Czar”) gone public on 60 minutes and published a book, “Against All Enemies,” where he took the
Bush administration to task for not having paid enough attention to the threat
posed by OBL. Not only was Clarke a credible witness but he also took the
unusual step of offeringa public and
sincere apology for his failings, instead of reading a prepared statement that
would have exonerated his conduct, as most of the other witnesses did.
This forced the White House to
allow Condi to appear under oath as a rebuttal witness several weeks later but
she dutifully toed the party line. As far as she was concerned, there was
nothing to apologize for; they had all done their level best and the
administration was above reproach. That some of her statements were in fact
inaccurate, as well at least one by CIA director Tenet is only hinted at in the
Commission report and one needs the Internet for the full story. Kean and
Hamilton do point out, however, that the Justice Department under Attorney General
Ashcroft did not regard the Commission’s work as sufficiently important to give
it priority and cooperation. The same applied to the FAA which was not
forthcoming with its documents, as well as the Defense Department and
especially NORAD which was responsible for the security of our air space.
Neither was the City of New York cooperative and their officials felt put upon
to have to explain their actions on that day since everybody was expected to know
that they had done their utmost under the heroic leadership of Mayor Giuliani. Governor
Pataki as well as the new Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, was also
impatient for having to waste their valuable time on such a trivial function as
testifying before the American public as to what had happened on their turf on
that day. During these hearings members of the families became increasingly incensed
that the Commission did not ask of the officials the hard questions they had
expected and vented their disgust, but to no avail.
A battle royal also had to be
fought over access to the PDBs (Presidential daily briefings) which bore
directly on the famous question to President Nixon during the Watergate
scandal, “what did he know and when did he know it?” Again a compromise was
reached: not all Commissioners would be allowed access but only a select review
team for a select number of PDBs. Furthermore, the documents had to be read on
the premises of the NewExecutiveBuilding where they were kept under
lock and key, and “you often had to leave your notes – or portions of your
notes – in the reading room as well.” This led to the absurd situation where Commission
members had to consider subpoenas to get their own notes in order to share them
with the full Commission.
One might also have expected that
our Chief Executive would have wanted to testify before the Commission and
explain what he did before, during and after the attacks. As all of us know
this was not the case. When the Commission asked him to do so he first insisted
that he would only meet in private with the two Chairmen and not under oath.
When the Commissioners rejected this restriction he eventually relented but the
meeting had to be in the Oval Office in presence of the Vice President and not
under oath. Note taking or the use of recording devices was not allowed. Again
one might ask oneself: why this reluctance to tell the country the truth as the
President saw it? The Vice President likewise could not be interviewed
separately and as Without Precedent states
he hardly contributed to the session, although his role during the day of
September 11 is far from clear. This reluctance to testify contrasted with that
of ex-President Bill Clinton and
ex-Vice President Al Gore who were eager to share their knowledge.
Thus the work of the Commission was
not only impeded at every step of its way but it was also under intense time
pressure to ready its final report before the deadline. One needs to know,
furthermore, that for the Commissioners this was not a full time job and Chairman
Keane for instance spent about one day a week on it except when hearings were
scheduled. These consumed altogether 19 days of the 18 months! The actual work
was carried out by hired staff under the direction of Philip Zelikow who, as
has been mentioned previously (When Presidents Lie; January 1, 2006), had strong ties to the Bush
administration. Although the staff, according to the official report, “reviewed
more than 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 1200
individuals in ten countries,” the final report did not even reflect all of the
testimony obtained from the 160 witnesses during the public hearings. The
reason was a decision by the Chairmen and/ or Zelikow that the final report
should be unanimous and directed to the general public. Its style was to be easily
readable, as a sort of novel. Furthermore the contents should not have aspects
which the administration might find sufficiently objectionable that would result
in black stripes to hide censored information as had been the case in the
Congressional report. To make matters worse the report had to be “cleared”
prior to publication by White House lawyers. Under those circumstances the
intent of the Commission to be “independent, impartial, thorough and
nonpartisan” could hardly be achieved. The truth was sacrificed to bipartisan
unanimity. Thus, the final report left
many questions unanswered and proved fertile ground for “conspiracy theorists.”
It would have been considerably
more preferable if a) the Commission had been given adequate time and financial
resources and b) if two reports had been issued. The main report could have
contained the complete testimonies of the witnesses and could also have
included dissenting opinions from Commissioners. It would have been for scholars
to assess the validity of the conclusions reached. The other one could have
been prepared as a “Reader’s Digest” version for the general public.
Up to this point I have presented
only the official side of the report and for dissenting voices one has to go to
the Internet. As one might expect one finds there the full spectrum which
ranges from genuine “Bush haters” and flights of fancy to people who simply
don’t want to be lied to and who present scholarly objections. Among the numerous
books one finds there is David Ray Griffin’s, The 9/11 Commission Report. Omissions and Distortions.Griffin is a Professor of
Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, at the Claremont School of
Theology and clearly does not like being lied to by the current administration.
The book is actually based on the one by Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline. Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A
Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 – and America’s Response. This is an exceedingly
valuable and detailed piece of work because the data are taken from official
news media and the sources can readily be checked on the Internet for veracity.
Another book which should be
consulted in conjunction with the previous two is Painful Questions. An Analysis of the September 11th
Attack, by Eric Hufschmid.
Although chapters 8-13 fall into the conspiracy theory bracket, the first seven
chapters are exclusively devoted to the destruction of The World Trade Center.
The accompanying photographs with analysis of details cast serious doubts on
the prevalent theory about the reasons for the collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2
and 7. Hufschmid also regarded the destruction of the towers as a crime rather
than an act of war and had the administration done so different results would
have flowed from the event. The difference between crime and war had very
important immediate practical consequences. Had the WTC area been regarded as a
crime scene from the moment the smoke had cleared an immediate investigation of
the cause of the collapse of the towers would have begun. The questions would
not have focused only on the hijackers, and their motives, but how did two solidly
constructed steel towers collapse after having burned for only 56 and 103
minutes respectively? The towers had withstood the initial impact of the planes
and especially in WTC2, which crumpled first, there
were no major fires at the time of collapse. It has also been pointed out that
no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire before, even after having
burned much longer.
As Hufschmid as well as Griffin
comment, by not treating the tower collapse as a crime valuable evidence was
removed without investigation. Griffin
wrote, “Virtually all of it [steel] was quickly removed from the scene, before
any forensic investigation could be carried out, then sold to scrap dealers and
exported to other countries such as China
and Korea. This
fact is possibly significant because, if explosives had been used to break
these steel columns, these columns would have had tell-tale signs of the impact
of these explosives.” These questions are not trivial because they go to the
heart of the matter. If the buildings were only damaged by the planes and the
fire they could have been restored or subsequently subjected to controlled
demolition without loss of life as in the case of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building
in Oklahoma City. That building was
burned to a shell from fires due to a truck bomb but remained standing until it
was deliberately imploded some time later.
The question why WTC 1, 2 and 7
collapsed is, therefore, the most crucial one for the 9/11 tragedy. If explosives
had been used to bring the buildings down this would have required pre-planning
because placing explosives in a precise manner takes time and this would have
to have occurred prior to September 11. The 9/11 Commission completely
side-stepped this issue and limited itself to simply stating that the buildings
had collapsed. Subsequent reports by NIST (National Institute of Standards and
Technology) adhere to the theory mentioned earlier but to the best of my
knowledge nobody has explained as yet how steel structures can disintegrate
within 10 seconds and how cement can be pulverized into a cloud of dust by
fire. This is clearly a question physicists should demand an answer to but when
they do so they are in danger of losing their jobs.
This is what happened at BrighamYoungUniversity
in neighboring Provo. Steven Jones
is Professor of Physics, a good Mormon who takes his Christian religion
seriously, and doesn’t like to be lied to. He investigated the NIST theory
about the collapse of the WTC buildings, found it wholly unbelievable,
and presented his opinion in a paper entitled, “Why indeed did the World Trade
Center Collapse? [Originally published in February 2006 but the website
disappeared; now available in Journal of
9/11 Studies. Vol. 3].”He concluded that it was indeed due to
controlled demolitions and began to give lectures on his findings. He also
became co-Chairman of a group which calls itself Scholars for 9/11 Truth
[www.st911.org], “a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and
scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs,
psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing
truths behind 9/11.” It would seem that this is an appropriate function for
university faculty and students but on September 7, he was placed on paid leave
which deprived him of the use of his laboratory. I don’t know if his research
had tread on sensitive toes or if he had used university time for work on
Scholars for 9/11 Truth. In the latter case a stern warning by the Dean that he
needed to use after hours or weekends for these activities would have sufficed
and he could have continued with his work on producing evidence for the
presence of thermite and sulfur (ingredients which cut through steel), which is
urgently needed. I am not a physicist and cannot enter into the pros and cons
of a deliberate controlled explosion versus simple collapse of the WTC buildings,
but the pictures in Hufschmid’s book do require a better explanation than what the
government has produced.
The most recent conclusions by NIST
were: “(1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns,
dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel
columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the
subsequent unusually large, jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires weakened the now
susceptible structural steel [http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm].”
Is this theory, indeed compatible with the
videos all of us have watched where the towers appear to suddenly eject
material outward in huge mushroom like clouds and then disintegrate within
about ten seconds? The pictures reproduced below come from Hufschmid’s Painful Questions pages 53 and 60 respectively
and seem to require a better explanation than what has so far been provided by
the government. The exploding SouthTower
is on the left and the NorthTower
on the right. The red arrows are intended to point to horizontal ejection of
dust and other material.
National elections are only six
weeks away and Republicans are again running on the slogan that their party is
the one which is best equipped to fight the War on Terror. They point out that
there have been no attacks on the homeland since 9/11, 2001 and use this as proof
that their policies are working. This is not so. As I pointed out in the
October 2001 essay on this site OBL’s goal for the 9/11 attacks was to involve America
in a land war with Muslim countries. President Bush has done him the favor and we
are now creating more terrorists on a daily basis than we are killing, by our
actions in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Five years have passed and not a single one of the real 9/11 masterminds has as
yet stood trial in an American court of law, although our President had promised
us on that day five years ago that the guilty would be brought to justice. Furthermore,
as a result of conflicting testimony we still don’t know what really happened
on that day.
With so many questions remaining
about the events of 9/11 one would think that the Democrats would be eager to
take on this task but there is as yet no sign that they are willing to do so.
They need not hurl unfounded allegations but merely insist on what SaltLake’s Mayor Rocky Anderson had demanded
during the rally in LibertyPark
on August 30: Give us the Truth [www.sltrib.com]! This is really all we want;
“The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, so help me God,” as used
to be the required formula before court testimony. Unless responsible citizens
of either party, especially those who want to be elected or reelected, speak out
on this most vital issue we cannot hope to emerge from this quicksand into
which our country is sinking.
What needs to be done now? A truly
independent commission of experts should investigate the gaps and
inconsistencies of the 9/11 Report. This would require separate working groups
because the various questions raised need different areas of expertise for answers
to the many puzzling questions. The investigators should have subpoena power
and the determination of the true cause of the complete destruction of WTC1, 2
and 7 should be a priority. This was the event where
most of the innocent lives were lost and all of us, but especially the families
of the victims, finally deserve an honest answer.
November 1, 2006
DIEBOLD TO THE RESCUE?
In another
week we will be dutifully trotting to the polls again, although it’s a mid-term
rather than Presidential election and by all rights one would think that the
time has come for the proverbial “change.” If one believes the newspapers and
TV the Democrats are poised to regain at least the House if not, for good
measure, the Senate although they have fought a rather lackluster campaign.
Apparently they hope that harping on the obvious failings of the Bush administration,
especially in Iraq,
will be sufficient to carry them over the top. They have again found themselves
unable to come up with a good plan to set things right and as such left
themselves open to the Republican charge that the election of a Democratic
Congress would be the greatest disaster that could befall our country. Once in
power they would legalize homosexual marriages, raise taxes, cut and run in Iraq,
and the country would be wide open to future terrorist attacks. The Republicans
tell us that the country needs the steady hand of proven leaders like George
Bush and Dick Cheney who will avert these disasters and keep us on a moral
course.
It is a
fact, however, that even some Republicans have finally become disenchanted with
the Bush administration and its foreign policy failures. The “loathsome pigmy,”
as our President once had referred to his North Korean counterpart, has
exploded a nuclear device last month to inform us that this member of the “axis
of evil” is still intact and wants to be talked to personally rather than
through proxies. This initially produced denial because we hadn’t verified that
the test had indeed been nuclear in nature and when that could not be
maintained, because radio-active material was found in the atmosphere, its yield
was regarded as rather minor. The media did, however, take a more dim view of
the affair and Newsweek produced an extensive article on October 23 as to how
we got to this undesirable point. The review revealed the attempts previous
administrations had made to persuade the North Koreans not to embark on
creating a nuclear bomb and that, contrary to current propaganda, there had
actually been a good chance that Kim Jong Il might
have desisted had he been given appropriate incentives. Colin Powell was eager
to continue the openings Madeleine Albright had provided with her visit to Pyongyang
and her talks with the “Dear Leader,” but as the article stated, “he had forgotten to check with his boss.” Although the
official reason given was that the North Koreans don’t honor their promises and
can’t be trusted, the real one was buried in one brief sentence of the article.
“There was at that time, a hostile ‘anything but Clinton’ tone in the White
house, and Kim Jong Il was also a handy villain to have around to justify the
centerpiece of Bush foreign policy, the expensive missile defense program.”
To put it
mildly this attitude is reprehensible and makes us directly responsible for the
potential nuclear arms race that may develop in East Asia.
Peace in our world, if and when it may eventually arrive, will not come about
by reliance on high tech weaponry and a missile defense program which will
never be able to live up to its stated goal of “making America safe.” It can
only come about by shedding our prejudices, our air of arrogant superiority,
and by sitting down with our adversaries to discuss how we can remove rather
increase tensions. When the President says that ensuring America’s
security is his prime concern, he fails to consider the security needs of other
countries. To say that the North Koreans are paranoid may well be true but they
have reason for it. After more than fifty years we still have not signed a
peace treaty with that country, the division of which is simply a left over of
WWII and the Cold War. American troops are staring North Koreans in the face
across the DMZ and except for China’s
deterring power we could annihilate the country in an instant. We say “trust us
we have only your best interest at heart,” but after the Iraq
invasion, and the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, this is no longer credible
by regimes we have put on our enemies list.
Countries
which don’t like us will be forced to buy themselves insurance in form of
nuclear capability and instead of limiting nuclear weaponry our policies are
producing the opposite effect. This also goes, of course, for Iran
which finds itself surrounded by American troops on its borders and the U.S.
navy in the Persian Gulf. Although the Iranians state
that they are building their reactors only for peaceful purposes they would be
negligent if they did not attempt to acquire the technology that could provide
a credible deterrent if push were to come to shove.
But neither
Bush nor Cheney seem to comprehend these simple facts of life and see the world
only through their narrow blinders. As far as Iraq
is concerned the Woodward book, “State of
Denial,” seems to have made some impact on our
President. He recently admitted for the first time that he wasn’t “satisfied
either,” with what has been accomplished in Iraq.
He no longer vowed “to stay the course” but said instead that we are changing
our tactics to adapt to changing circumstances. The goal, however, remains
victory and, “We’re winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is
done.” Instead of talking about an “exit strategy” and “timelines” he
emphasized that Washington would
set “benchmarks” for the Iraqi government to achieve security and well being
for Iraqis. This stance omits the realization that we have no way to ensure
that the Iraqi government can meet these “benchmarks.” Events have acquired a
momentum of their own and whatever Washington or the Iraqi government in the “Green
Zone” does may not be able to prevent the further slide into full-blown civil
war, from which some kind of dictator is going to emerge in the end.
Jeffersonian democracy is not in the cards for the Iraqis in the foreseeable
future.
With Bush’s
foreign policy in disarray the domestic scene does not look all that much
better. The Republicans point with pride to a surging economy, lower
unemployment figures and a record breaking Dow-Jones stock market index but
this does not translate into income gains for ordinary citizens. Job security,
which is one of the overriding concerns for working people does not exist any
more even for the middle or upper middle class. Downsizing, the euphemism for
closing places of employment, is the rule of the day and whoever does not lose
one’s job outright will be forced to work longer hours for the same pay to
ensure profitability for the company. The profits upon which Wall Street
depends may drive the price of market shares and the income of CEOs up but at
the cost of reducing the quality of life for their employees.
The promises Bush made after his
reelection in 2004 in regard to rescuing the social security system and
providing genuine prescription drug benefits have also fizzled. Apart from
approving two Supreme Court Justices, the Republican Congress accomplished
basically nothing and its approval rating stands at 19 percent. This is surely
not a record to be proud of and one would think that Karl Rove, “the architect”
of the Republicans winning strategy, might have reason to worry. Especially
since a Democrat controlled Congress might finally open investigations into all
the secret deals the administration has engaged in. Yet, Karl maintains his
supreme confidence in a favorable election outcome and there is reason to
believe that he may be justified in this assumption.
Elections
in our country have always had their share of irregularities but, thanks to
technology, they may now be reaching a heretofore unknown magnitude. In the
December 2004 installment (How Bush Won) I mentioned how the electronic voting
machines, which were supposed to make elections more reliable, have produced
results which in some instances defied the laws of physics. I also mentioned at
that time that the Diebold systems that were used in key precincts were under
the control of the Urosevich brothers who are heavy contributors to Republican
coffers. It is well worth to re-read this article for its relevance to next
Tuesday’s elections when a great many of us will be voting on Diebold machines.
The Florida
“hanging chads” debacle of the 2000 election prompted Congress to pass the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, which mandated that future national elections will
have to be conducted with electronic machines rather than punch card or lever
systems. The idea was that this would create greater reliability of the results
and it was funded to the tune of $650,000,000. Like most good ideas by
politicians it was poorly thought out and in June 2004, a few months prior to
the Presidential election Michael Shamos, Professor of Computer Science at
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, testified before Congress on the
state of affairs. Excerpts are as follows,
“The system we have for testing and
certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken but is virtually nonexistent. It must be re-created from scratch
or we will never restore public confidence. I believe that the process of
designing, implementing, manufacturing, certifying, selling, acquiring,
storing, using, testing and even discarding voting machines must be transparent
from cradle to grave, and must adhere to strict performance and security
guidelines that should be uniform for federal elections throughout the country.
. . .
The Federal Voting system Standards
(FVSS), formerly know as the FEC Standards, are incomplete and out of date. . .
.
For example, one of the principal
election security worries is the possibility of a computer virus infecting a
voting system. Yet the FVSS place virus responsibility on the voting system
vendor and do not provide for any testing by the Independent Testing Authority
(ITA). Furthermore, the standards do not even require that a voting system
contain any virus detection or virus removal system at all. . . . It is hardly
reassuring to have the fox guarantee the safety of the chickens.
Even if there were suitable
standards, it is a significant question how to assure the public that a
particular machine meets them.”
To understand the problems one has
to realize that these vaunted voting machines are nothing else than small,
portable, general purpose computers, which run on Windows with specialized
election software provided by the manufacturer. The software is proprietary and
as such cannot be independently evaluated for potential flaws. The machines can
easily be hacked into and everybody who has ever used a computer knows the
troubles that this invention is heir to. There need not be malicious intent to
make a given precinct election unreliable. Ordinary run of the mill sloppiness,
poor training of election workers and unfamiliarity of voters, some of whom will
be meeting a computer for the first time in the voting booth, are sufficient to
invalidate results. Yet these were the systems portions of the country voted on
in 2004 and most of us will be using next week.
Let us now look at what actually
happened on the local scene as reported by http://utahcountvotes.org/BlackBoxVoting.php.
Black Box voting is an independent citizens’ watch group, based in the State of
Washington, which keeps track of
how well or badly the election process works around the country. Last year the State of Utah
bought us Diebold machines for $27 million and shipped 40 of them on December
27 to EmeryCounty
for this year’s elections. Mr. Bruce Funk, who had been running elections there
for 23 years, was not enamored because he didn’t think he needed them for his
259 voters and he had concerns about Diebold’s dependability. As mentioned in
my essay of two years ago the State of California
had sued Diebold for misrepresenting the reliability of their machines. The Company
accepted blame settled for $2.6 million, promised to fix the system, but
problems remained. This was no secret and Mr. Funk had every reason to be
worried. But the mandate had come from the State and there was nothing he could
do about it except to make the best of a bad situation.
When he tested the system with help
of Diebold technicians several problems arose immediately. Two of these
supposedly new machines didn’t work at all and had to be sent back. The others
had a variety of defects: the paper feed which prints out the ballots (similar
to a grocery store receipt) was crooked and jammed, memory card bay doors
didn’t open or close, parts got stuck or broke loose. Funk then noted some
other odd features.Most of the machines
had 25 MB of memory, others had only 7 MB and one 4 MB, but it takes about 7.9
MB for the backup election file that is generated by the machine. Since it was
unclear why brand new machines should have such memory defects he contacted
Black Box voting for help. Inasmuch as the problem was likely not to be limited
to a small rural county in Utah,
but generic across the country, specialists were dispatched to help analyze the
machine. The reason for the low memory could not be definitively ascertained
but it appeared that some of the machines were not new and may have been
rejects from other states with previously stored data that could not be gotten
rid of. In addition there was the possibility that the memory storage device
used by Diebold degrades over time and there is the chance that some of these
machines may have been at the end of their life cycle. As the article stated
this would be “like buying a new car with 100,000 miles on it.” Harri Hursti who
investigated one of Funk’s machines in detail also found major security
problems and when these findings were published nation-wide the previously
mentioned Professor Shamos called it “the most serious ever discovered in an
electronic voting system.
One would now think that Bruce Funk
deserved a medal for good citizenship having alerted the State as well as the
country at large that there are serious problems with the Diebold machines
which need urgent attention. Glen Warchol, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune who has been keeping an eye on the election
process and who kindly supplied me with the articles he had published on this
topic, wrote on June 2 that the opposite was the case. Bruce Funk lost his job
because he had allowed outsiders, i.e. Black Box computer specialists, to investigate
his machines after his appeals to State government had been useless. As Warchol
wrote, “During a turbulent meeting that followed his unilateral decision to
allow Black Box voting to inspect a machine, Funk told state, Diebold and EmeryCounty commissioners he would
resign. But Funk retracted his words within hours, and instead put in writing
that he intended to finish his term to ensure the integrity of local elections.
County officials countered that they had accepted the oral resignation and
changed locks on Funk’s office.” Funk protested, Black Box voting provided him
with a lawyer and the case is in litigation.
June of this year was the trial run
for the upcoming elections because Primaries were held across the country with
the electronic systems in place. Since Mississippi
voted earlier a Utah delegation
flew to Jackson Miss., to observe a Democratic primary election because they
used the same systems as Utahns would a few weeks later. Glenn Warchol wrote of
their experiences in the Salt Lake Tribune,
“Educationally, it was a worthwhile
trip; because a fair number of Mississippi’s
electronic voting experiences were bad to the point of absurdity. Despite small
turnouts, the state saw problems in its so-called dress rehearsal in nearly
every county. Some problems took hours to resolve or never were. Many polling
places fell back to paper ballots. . . . In one polling place the workers had
plugged in the machine’s memory cards upside down. At another, workers couldn’t
find the keys to the voting machines. . . .”
All in all the Utah delegation left
reassured, because the problems were mainly due to poor training of election
workers and they would make sure that this didn’t happen on June 27 in Utah.
They were right. The primaries went off without a hitch until it came to the
question of recounts. There were no uniform guidelines across the state for how
to recount challenged elections and to what extent the “yard long paper
backups” needed to be used.As of
October 19 the question was resolved. A directive came from the Lt. Governor’s
office that “Utah counties will
do a hand recount of 1 percent of their electronic ballots, comparing them to
paper backups, to ensure the accuracy of new touch-screen voting machines.”
This would surely inspire confidence in the voting public if we didn’t know
what happened in Cuyahoga County, Ohio
during the May 2006 primary election. To understand the importance of that
event we need to recognize that CuyahogaCounty encompasses the city of Cleveland
which was a hotly contested battle ground in 2004. As such it is much more
representative of what happens in a large urban environment than in our sparsely
populated Western state.
In order to get the November
election right the CuyahogaCounty
election commissioners hired the service of the Election Science Institute (ESI)
and on August, 15 the Project Director, Steven Hertzberg, rendered the verdict
which is available on the Internet. The report emphasized that,
“Any assessment of the election
system must include an evaluation of administrative procedures, pre-election
programming and testing of the voting machines, voter and booth worker
interaction, and counting and auditing procedures.” . . .The current election system, in its entirety,
exhibits shortcomings with extremely serious consequences, especially in the
case of a close election. . .. Relying
on this system in its present state should be viewed as a calculated risk in
which the outcome may be an acceptable election, but there is a heightened risk
of unacceptable cost.”
The Executive Summary of the report noted, “After three months of exhaustive research, empirical
evidence supports the key definitive
finding: The machines’ four sources of vote total – VVPAT [Voter Verified
Paper Audit Trail] individual ballots, VVPAT summary, election archive, and
memory cards – did not agree with one
another[Emphasis added].” Among the major problems were: booth
workers had difficulty setting up the machines and/or closing them out at the
end of the day; there were differences between what they had learned during
training and what they found in actual practice; they did not have enough hands
on training prior to the election and when they tried to call the command
center for help only about a third of them “were able to speak to someone on
the first try.” The summary stated in addition that, “The current system, if
left unchanged, contains significant threats to inventory control of mission,
critical election assets, error free vote tabulation, and tabulation
transparency.” With other words the results can be fixed in any way one likes
without anybody ever being the wiser!
This aspect was more extensively
covered in a report issued by a PrincetonUniversity computer science group
on September 13 which examined specifically the Diebold system.The full text is available on http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting
and I shall limit myself only to the four main findings:
“1. Malicious software running on a
single machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The
malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept
by the voting machine, so that careful forensic examination of these records
will find nothing amiss.
2. Anyone who has physical access
to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a
machine can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as
little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others have unsupervised
access to the machines.
3. AccuVote-TS machines [these are
the ones in current use] are susceptible to voting-machine viruses that can
spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine
during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a
demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration
vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.
4. While some of these problems can
be eliminated by improving Diebold’s software, others cannot be remedied
without replacing the machine’s hardware.”
These reports finally caught the
attention of some mainstream media. On September 21 Lou Dobbs posted an article
on the CNN website, “Voting machines put U.S.
democracy at risk.” He mentioned not only the Princeton as well as the ESI
study but also experiences in Columbus, Ohio where a machine added nearly 3,900
votes to Bush’s total in 2004 when only 638 people had actually cast a vote. More
recently in Montgomery County, Maryland,
workers did not receive access cards to operate the Diebold machines for the
county’s 238 precincts on time. About 12,000 voters had to use provisional
paper ballots which ran out quickly and some were told to come back later and
vote. Dobbs concluded that “As of right now, there is little assurance your
vote will count” and “that is simply unacceptable. . . . When voters lose
confidence in our elected representatives we can vote the bums out. But what is
the recourse if American voters lose confidence in our electoral system?”
Eventually The Wall Street Journal also got into the act and reported some of
the problems mentioned above under the headline, “New Voting Systems Face
Midterm Exams” on October 26. The article also mentioned that Diebold had
dismissed the Princeton study because “it was based on
an early model with old software” and that it ignored the normal security
procedures which would have alerted election workers of the break in. Diebold’s
marketing manager was quoted as saying, “These things are tested to the hilt.”
Well, it’s a marketing director’s job to praise his product but that simply is
not good enough to satisfy the scientific community and the general public. We
are supposed to take Diebold’s word on faith without being able to verify it
and with Diebold’s track record this should not be acceptable to the people who
are responsible for our election system.
Last Sunday, October 29, Lou Dobbs
had an hour-long report on the current state of electronic voting. The
transcript can be found on http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.03.html
and is a thorough indictment of the yet to be held elections. In addition to
the problems already discussed it was reported that in some instances poll
workers, who are volunteers and do not have to pass special muster, were told
to take their machine home, store it and then bring it to the station at time
of election because the county had no money for a central secure storage
facility. Edward Felton then demonstrated how easily malicious software can be
installed in a mock election where a volunteer cast three ballots for George
Washington and one for Benedict Arnold. The machine registered two votes for
Benedict Arnold and one for George Washington. When at the end of the Election
Day this card, which contains the virus, is taken out and sent to the central
computer it can then infect the entire system.
I have focused mainly on Diebold in
this report because it is the most widely used system in our country, the
company has known ties to the Republican Party and is, therefore, not
necessarily unbiased. But there are three other voting machine vendors whose
systems will be used. Two of them are minor but the second largest, Smartmatic,
has the potential for what one might call “equal opportunity fraud.” The CNN
broadcast revealed that Sequoia Voting Systems, the original producer of the
machines, had been bought by Smartmatic. The company is technically located in Boca
RatonFlorida but its actual headquarters
and most employees are in Venezuela.
The city of Chicago has 19,000 of
these machines and when election officials ran into trouble during the March 21
primary election Venezuelan technicians showed up on the scene. One needs to
know, furthermore, that these were also the machines used in Venezuela
during the 2004 controversial recall election which transformed a 41 to 59 exit
poll loss for Hugo Chavez into a 59 percent victory for him. Thus, we are in
the process of not only “outsourcing” our major industries but also our
elections.
With this being the state of
affairs at least one elected official, who is computer savvy decided that it
was time to get back to basics. Brady Wiseman, a software engineer and representative
at the state legislature in Montana,
succeeded in getting a law passed which required paper ballots for all
elections. He explained on CNN that we have basically two sets of ballots and
if there is a dispute “you’re going to believe the paper ballots so what you’re
doing is buying a $5,000 computer to mark a piece of paper when the proper tool
for the job is a pencil.”
When one keeps all of the above in
mind we can safely predict that the upcoming mid-term elections will be a
shambles. Many people will vote for the first time on touch screen computers. They
may find the process confusing which is bound to lead to longer lines,
especially in metropolitan areas. Some may just give up and go home instead.
Add to this that poll workers will not be fully trained in all instances and bewilderment
is likely to reign. In some races in key states the election results will be
extremely close, necessitating recounts. The paper trail left by the machines
is difficult to read because of small print and it will take many hours if not
days or weeks until a final winner will be declared. The loser may then take
his problem to the courts. The hope for definitive results by the morning of
November 8 is likely to be as spurious as for expecting victory in Iraq
within the next year.
The upcoming election is, of
course, the dress-rehearsal for 2008 and it may well show that the reliance on
electronic voting machines was just another mistake by Congress which spent
more than half a billion dollars on a voting system that is fundamentally
flawed and cannot be trusted. We may have to go back to the true and tried
paper ballot where “x marks the spot” and if we don’t
get the result before going to bed on Election Day that’s less of a problem
than having armies of lawyers deciding for us whom we elected. A Bill (HR 6200
IH) demanding paper ballots for Presidential elections was actually introduced
in the House but has, as of yet, not been acted upon. Since large amounts of
money are at stake, not only for voting system vendors but also Congressional
appropriations, a simple solution like returning to paper and pencil may not
find much favor. But we are not helpless. David Dill has founded
VerifiedVoting.org which dedicates itself to “Election Transparency.” The site
encourages volunteer participation in the observation and reporting of all
levels of the voting process and the results can subsequently be brought to the
attention of the major media and elected officials.
The December 1 installment will
present an autopsy of the November 7 results and discuss the efforts that can
be made to remedy a broken system so that the 2008
vote outcome will be more trustworthy.
December 1, 2006
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN
The
elections of November 7 provided a glimmer of hope that democracy might yet be
re-established in our country. Our “King George,” to whom I had devoted a
little poem in the December 2002 issue, had received what he personally called
a “thumping.” Even the voting machines functioned after a fashion. Although
there were some “fender-benders,” major catastrophes did not take place. That
does not mean that the machines always worked as they were supposed to as one lady
here in Utah reported. She had
voted a straight party ticket but was sufficiently conscientious to check what
AccuVote had done with her ballot. Well, it wasn’t all that accurate because
she noted that for one of the local races her vote had been switched to a
candidate of the opposite party. She corrected that mistake but who knows how
many other votes were switched and what had happened after that correction.
Although the national races were decided within a couple of days some local
ones are still hanging in the balance in our State and laborious hand
re-counting is going on. We were also told that there will be far too few
voting machines in 2008 when a massive turnout is expected and we’ll have to
buy ourselves more machines from State taxes. This is, of course, the opposite
of what was said two years ago. The shift from punch cards to electronic voting
was supposed to have been covered with federal money. At any rate we are stuck
with Diebold now and will just have to make the best of it.
Although I’m, generally not fond of
re-reading what I have written years ago the mentioned December 2002 article
“Wanted: Good Judgment!” was accurate and very a propos. It did not require the
gift of prophecy; knowledge of human behavior was sufficient to allow a prediction
of what was likely to happen if the President kept to his course. In the
article I stated that the reaction to the 9/11 tragedy was a mistake because
even if we expel Osama from Afghanistan there are plenty of other “rogue
states” and drug lords with “deep-pockets” who can support world-wide
terrorism. Furthermore, although Phase I had worked in Afghanistan
and Karzai was President he did not have the support of the country at large
and needed American body guards. Funds and troops that should have gone to the
reconstruction of the country we, and the Soviets before us, had smashed were already
diverted to the upcoming war with Iraq.
I also wrote, “We are thus paving the way not only for another Afghanistan quagmire, but a similar
one in Iraq when Saddam has been
successfully deposed.”
We now have that quagmire, not only
in Iraq but
also in Afghanistan
where the Karzai government is on increasingly shaky ground and NATO
peacekeepers are getting killed. It is common nowadays to hear talk, especially
by Republicans, about the 20/20 vision of hindsight, and there is insistence to
look for solutions in Iraq
rather than mulling over how we got there in the first place. But what these
people fail to recognize is that unless the thinking behind a given decision is
re-examined the same mistakes will be made again. They also do not take into
account that whether or not a given thought is put into action depends upon the
character of the person in charge. In December 2002 I had to leave the question
of our President’s character somewhat open. There was still hope that he might
be persuaded from abstaining to invade Iraq
although I had my doubts, as the beginning of the little poem “a bush thou art,
alas no tree,” testifies to. The doubts were justified but hope springs
eternal.
After his re-election in 2004 our
President boasted of his mandate and the “political capital,” he would spend.
Spend he did. He is now the emperor without clothes
and it no longer takes a little child to see that. Immediately after his “thumping”
he did what he should have done years ago, dismiss Rumsfeld and he also made
some pro forma gestures of good will towards the incoming Democratic
leadership. But it does not appear that a genuine change of heart has taken
place. He still dislikes the day to day work behind his desk in the Oval Office
and instead travels around the world attending conferences and meetings with
foreign officials, as if he had any standing among them. They will listen
politely but then go on with whatever they decide because, at present, America
is hamstrung. These trips are not just useless but counterproductive. Foreign
policy should be not conducted initially at the highest level, but by the
Secretary of State. Condi Rice should be the person to go abroad, cajole reluctant
friends and adversaries and when the first attempt fails she can go back and
try again. But when the President fails options, which might have existed,
become foreclosed.
The incoming Democrats will have a
tough row to hoe and we’ll see if all the talk about good will and
bipartisanship can be translated into action. Whatever domestic programs they
may be able to enact will inevitably be overshadowed by Iraq
for which no one has a solution. The fact that electioneering for the 2008 Presidency
has already begun makes the situation even worse. Whatever position is taken by
either Democrats or Republicans is guided not by the facts as they exist today
but by, “how will this affect my candidacy two years hence.” Under those
circumstances it is truly a no win situation. If the Democrats push hard for troop
withdrawal, and the chaos in the country worsens, the Republicans will
gleefully state: we told you so! If the McCain group succeeds in placing more
troops into that lost cause more of them will die and be maimed. Inasmuch as
the goal of “a stable Iraq,
which is no threat to its neighbors and can defend its borders,” is not likely
to be reached before our next election, an increased military effort will
likewise be denounced by the opposition.
Congressman Charles Rangel’s call
for re-instating the draft will hopefully fall on deaf ears. Sending draftees
into Iraq and Afghanistan
would surely bring back the Vietnam
scenario with massive street demonstrations. It would also raise another
interesting question no one has addressed so far. What will our feminists do?
They have successfully argued for women to be fully integrated into the Armed
Forces; will they also say yes when it comes to the draft of females? It is
difficult to maintain that equal participation in fighting is needed for a
volunteer army but not for one that has to resort to conscription. Mothers may
give up their sons for their country, because that’s the way it has always
been, but they would surely draw the line at their daughters.
Not quite 2500 years ago
Aristophanes was also fed up with a war his fellow Athenians had eagerly voted
for and then couldn’t end. He, therefore, wrote the play Lysistrata in which
the Grecian women got together and decided that they would not submit to their spousal
duties until their men had quit the useless fighting. The play has a decidedly
modern context. In 431 BC, when the war started, Athens
was at the height of her glory. It was the age of Pericles, Socrates and Plato
which ushered in what we now call Western civilization. Athens
controlled the Mediterranean and thought it could
enforce its will upon the Spartans. Theoretically the Peloponnesian war was
between democracy as represented by Athens
and the military dictatorship of Sparta.
But in practice hegemony over the Greek speaking world was the goal. The war
went on for decades and after the Athenian’s defeat in Sicily
(413 BC) a peace movement grew in Athens
which led to the mentioned play by Aristophanes in 411. His suggested strategy
never came to pass. The Athenians fought on for another 7 years until they had
to accept Sparta’s victory and that
was the end of Athens as the
dominant power.
Where is the parallel? It is in
what the Greeks called Hubris which can be summed up as: We are on top, we can
do anything we want and if the rest of the world doesn’t like it we will use
our military and economic power to make them submit to our demands.This mentality hadn’t worked for the Persians
under Darius and Xerxes, it hadn’t worked for Athens,
it hadn’t worked for Hitler and it won’t work now for Bush and company. There
will always be the “other” who will resist with whatever means are at his
disposal at a given time. History repeats because people don’t change.
So let us look at Iraq
again and how we got into this unfortunate war. It can clearly be laid at the
feet of the so-called neoconservatives whose main members I have previously
discussed, starting with “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 1, 2003). During the Clinton
years they had been relegated to the sidelines but in George Bush they had
found a sufficiently gullible person who initially had no idea what he wanted
to accomplish during his presidency. As such he could be readily seduced to
dreams of glory after the 9/11 tragedy. The neocons’ goal was to cement
exclusive American world power for the 21st century under the banner
of spreading democracy around the globe. Israel’s
security was also on top of the list and the road to that end was seen as
starting in Iraq.
The rest of the Middle East would fall in line like the
supposed dominoes of the Vietnam
era, and peace and prosperity would reign thereafter. This is why Afghanistan
was neglected, and Iraq
was placed into the forefront of the “War on Terror.”
Our pundits and commentators now
ask why there was no plan for how to govern Iraq
after the fall of Saddam. But the neocons, who were running the Pentagon and
Cheney’s office, didn’t want the State Department’s plan because they had their
own. The man of the hour was to be Ahmed Chalabi; the U.S.
educated Shiite mathematician and banker. He would accompany our victorious
troops with his militia and his government would, as one of its first order of
business, make a peace treaty with Israel.
In other words he’d be our Quisling! The fact that the Norwegians didn’t want
any part of Quisling under the German occupation had apparently eluded those
planners of “The American Century.”Richard Perle, the spokesman for the neocons, who has been mentioned
here repeatedly, was quite dismissive about entrusting the government to
competent local anti-Saddam Iraqis because “they don’t exist.”That Chalabi had no credibility anywhere,
apart from members of the American Enterprise Institute, was ignored by the
ruling circles.
But the neocons’ dreams went awry
from the start. The Powell strategy of using overwhelming force when you begin
a war had been ditched for that of Rumsfeld who believed that modern wars will
be won with high tech weapons and a minimum of boots on the ground. That was
the first and primary mistake from which everything else followed. The few
troops we had in Baghdad couldn’t
control the looting and didn’t even have the authority to do so if they had
wanted. Our commander General Tommy Franks didn’t let the civilians under
ex-General Jay Garner into Baghdad
until some sort of order had been established. When Chalabi arrived his militia
happily joined in the ongoing looting and killing. Thus, valuable time was lost
and these false calculations haunt us to this day. To top it off there was a
mini-war in the administration as to how Iraq
should be run. The moment Garner had set foot into Baghdad
he was already told that his tenure was limited and within a month he was
replaced by Paul Bremer who promptly undid everything Garner had started. This
total incompetence of the American government, which as the Iraqis now say,
“could send men to the moon but can’t provide essential services for the
country,” damaged our image for years to come in that part of the world.
I never thought that I would have
to pay the Soviet Union a compliment but truth compels
me to do so now because there is another historical parallel. On April 2, 1945 Stalin issued a
“Directive to the Supreme Commanders of the Second and Third Ukrainian Front in
regard to measures to be taken at the arrival of the Red Army in the territory
of Austria (Sowjetische Politik in
Österreich 1945-1955. Dokumente aus
russischen Archiven. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wien
2005). The key instructions were:
“A proclamation
was to be issued immediately that the Red Army is not waging war with Austria’s
people but only with the German occupation force. The Red Army is not coming as
conquerors but only to destroy the ‘German-fascist troops and liberate Austria
from German dependence.’ The population was to be told to remain at their
domiciles, continue with their peaceful jobs and support the official organs of
the Red Army in their efforts to allow for normal work in industry, commerce
and other civilian enterprises.
Rumors that the Red
Army will annihilate (vernichten) all
members of the National-Socialist party shall be denied and it be declared that
the party will be dissolved, but ordinary members will not be affected as long
as they conduct themselves in a loyal manner towards the Soviet forces.
The mayor of the
city of Vienna shall be informed
that the Soviet Kommandatura
will not prevent the establishment of an Interim Government for Austria
in which all democratic forces participate.
Soviet troops
within Austria
are to be directed not to insult the local population, to conduct themselves in
a correct manner and not to mistake Austrians for German occupiers.
In the various
communities military commanders are to be appointed who in turn shall appoint
from the local population provisional mayors and community leaders.”
When one reads this today one asks
oneself where was our “Commander in Chief” and “War President” in March of
2003? Had it ever dawned on him that General Tommy Franks could have benefited
from similar instructions? Does he even realize it today? The fact that
individual members of the Red Army did not follow Stalin’s orders in regard to
the treatment of civilians (see War &
Mayhem)does not negate the
overall intent. Furthermore, the Red Army had what Tommy Franks obviously
lacked. They had the manpower to search for weapons not only in each house but
in each apartment. After an initial period of lawlessness, people went back to
work, started cleaning up the rubble from the streets and rebuilding the bombed
country literally from the ground up. In regard to the establishment of the new
political system the Soviets did not entirely rely on Austrian Communist
refugees in the Soviet Union but acceded to the request of Karl Renner to be
allowed to form a broad based provisional government. Renner was an old
Austrian Social Democrat and President of the first Austrian republic who had
been allowed by the Nazis to remain at home in retirement, while other future
government members had returned from concentration camps. This government was
sworn in on April 27; fourteen days after the last German troops had withdrawn
from Vienna, and while Hitler was
still alive in his bunker.
. Although Communists, who had
returned from Moscow and Tito’s Yugoslavia,
were over-represented in the provisional government this was corrected in the
genuinely free elections of November
25, 1945. The communists got all of 174,257 votes which entitled
them to 4 seats in the national assembly; the conservative People’s party got
nearly 50% of the votes and 85 seats, while the Socialists received 45 % and 76
seats. Stalin was disappointed but with the excuse of insufficient
de-Nazification he could drag out the withdrawal of the Red Army for another 10
years. Austria
had become a pawn in the Cold War. The US
wanted to integrate the western occupation zones into NATO while the Soviets
wanted to keep their troops in the eastern part of the country. Only when
Bulganin and Khrushchev came to power and the Warsaw
pact had been formed, which gave the Soviets the legal right to keep their
troops in neighboring Hungary
and Czechoslovakia,
did Austria
finally get her freedom. On October
26, 1955 the last Soviet soldier left the country to a profound
sigh of relief by all concerned parties.
Why do I bring up this “ancient
history” now? It is intended to be a warning for the neocons in regard to
offensive plans towards Iran
and/or Syria.
Unless one has the ground forces, rather than airpower, and one is willing to
lose a significant number of combat troops, any invasion is doomed to failure.
The Rumsfeld doctrine is nonsense and needs to be abandoned if one wants to
achieve a military victory over any given country. Furthermore reliance on
émigrés is ill advised. They have their special ax to grind and are not familiar
with the local situation. In addition they don’t have the confidence of the
people who have stuck it out in the country under adverse circumstances and who
now want to rule rather than be ruled. Finally, even a benign occupation will
be resented in the long run and “liberated” nations will insist that their
“guests” go home when they have outworn their welcome.
Where does this leave us with
options for Iraq
at this point in time when it seems that whatever we do is wrong? It is a
classic situation of too little – too late. When even Henry Kissinger admits
that a military victory is no longer possible any increase in troop strength is
now self-defeating. My suggestions are essentially the same as I have outlined
in a speech I wrote for our President and which he never saw (September 1, 2005. President
Bush’s Dilemma). As a result of his “thumping” he did what had been
suggested in the first point, the immediate dismissal of Rumsfeld, but he has
so far not acceded to the phased troop withdrawal. The Baker-Hamilton
Commission is likely to recommend part of point number 2 of that speech namely
direct talks between the US
and Syria as
well as Iran. I
had, however, envisaged a larger conference of Foreign Ministers where Iraqis
would participate with those of all the neighboring countries as well as those
from the five permanent members of the Security Council. This could have
provided a basis for an agreement which could have subsequently been
implemented with international backing.
This suggestion was reasonable at
the time and may still be our best option. Unfortunately events have acquired
further momentum during the past year and may no longer be controllable from
the outside. We are now beginning to find ourselves in the situation President
Reagan faced in Beirut. The central
government, which the Marines were supposed to protect, had collapsed and
individual members of the Lebanese army had joined their respective religious
groups in a civil war. The Marines were simply caught in the middle and,
therefore, called back home as the only reasonable alternative. It seems to be
rather obvious that the same situation is now evolving in Iraq.
We can train the Iraqi army and police until kingdom come, but we cannot make
Shiites obey orders to fire on Shiites, and Sunnis on Sunnis, when those orders
are handed down from a government which has neither credibility nor enforcement
powers. To send other 20,000-30,000 troops into Baghdad,
as is currently being proposed, is futile because the time for such an endeavor
has passed. The only thing we can do is to minimize loss of life by hunkering
down on reasonably secure bases while proceeding with the phased withdrawal as
outlined in the September 2005 article. Iraq
is in civil war and from it the country will either splinter or some dictator
will emerge and establish order by brute force. Eventually, it is likely that
we will have to totally withdraw from all our bases, except for possibly in the
Kurdish area, because the new Middle East President Bush and his gurus have
tried to create will be nationalistic and/or Islamic. Condi Rice talked about
the birth pangs of a new Middle East. This is true but
the baby may well arrive with a turban on its head and may have no use for
Westerners dictating what it should or shouldn’t do. The era of colonialism is
over.
These thoughts apply also to the
point I made in the September 2005 article in regard to Israel
and the Palestinians. Israel’s
most recent war with Lebanon,
which was intended to eradicate Hizbollah, has failed. It has destabilized the
fragile Lebanese government and has placed the Christians and Druze in a
precarious situation because they are clearly outnumbered by Muslims. A genuine
democracy would give the vote to Muslim parties rather than the shaky coalition
which exists at present. This has also repercussions in regard to an attempt to
re-activate the so-called road map for a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Neither the Bush administration nor the Democrats will touch this hot potato
because AIPAC is still a dominant force in our country and 2008 votes are at
stake. In this republic of ours staying in power, or acquiring it,
unfortunately trumps everything else with potentially lethal consequences.
Apart from Iraq
the other foreign policy problem which will not wait till 2008 is Iran
because Israel
feels threatened by that country’s nuclear program. There was a very telling
quote in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker
article of November 27 by Israel’s
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh who said:
“The danger isn’t
as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a
dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction . . . Most
Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here
with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid
Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button.
That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all
costs.”
This is the problem in a nutshell
because the other reason given for the necessity to prevent Iran’s
acquisition of a nuclear bomb, that it would make Sunni Arabs want to build
theirs, is not necessarily valid. The Sunnis already have the Pakistani bomb
which can be shared with the brothers in faith, especially when and if the
Musharaf regime falls. The urgency to halt Iran’s
nuclear program is indeed mainly about the viability of the Zionist dream for
which we are to sacrifice lives and property. This brings us to the fundamental
question: should this dream be adhered to for evermore in spite of its obvious
failure to achieve what had been intended; or should the experiment be
terminated voluntarily in an orderly manner before the proverbial mushroom
cloud rises over the Middle East? This is the question which
nobody even dares to utter here but which ought to be faced; most of all by
insightful Jews in our own country. It is up to them to guide their Israeli
relatives to reason. The goyim can’t do it because they will simply be
denounced as anti-Semites.
Political Zionism was built on two
assumptions both of which turned out to have been wrong. These were: 1) the
vast majority of the world’s Jews would migrate to a Jewish state in Palestine
and this would make anti-Semitism disappear. 2) The Arabs who lived in the
region were of no consequence; they were few in number and would welcome the
economic benefits the Jews would provide for them. As we know only some Jews
moved to Palestine and later to Israel,
while the overwhelming majority preferred to live abroad. In addition Jewish
nationalism collided with Arab nationalism. Although initially Jews had the
money and powerful friends, the Arabs had oil and rediscovered Islam as their
basic belief system to counter Western, which includes Jewish, secularism. As
of this week Prime Minister Olmert has made a belated effort to reach out to
the Palestinians and even agreed to a two state solution. But we have not yet
seen the fine print and it is doubtful that Olmert has the power, even within
his own government, to make the concessions which are needed to create a truly
viable and independent Palestinian state. To his credit former President Jimmy
Carter has just published a book on the Palestinian problem and has presented
his opinions in a clear and concise manner on various cable news outlets. With
the provocative book title which contained the word “Apartheid” he tried to
start the long overdue discussion on this topic but I am afraid that in the
short run his effort will run aground on the scramble for Jewish votes in 2008.
Until the time comes when our Jewish citizens begin to see the need to change their
opinions in regard to Israeli policies it will be unlikely that a genuine shift
by our government towards a truly balanced approach will take place.
Since the Christmas season is upon
us I may now be permitted to present my personal wish list. In regard to the
Democrats I wish that they would not get bogged down in bickering and in
advancing far-fetched social programs that have no chance of passing with the slim
majority they enjoy on Capitol Hill. I would be happy to see reasonable
investigations into the various aspects of misconduct by the Bush
administration, especially in the area of civil liberties. Habeas corpus is
fundamental and must be adhered to, regardless of who the presumed enemy is.
Listening to private phone conversations when US
citizens make calls abroad because the other party might be a terrorist should
be abandoned. The inane security regulations at airports, where everyone has to
take off one’s shoes, as if one was walking onto holy ground, and where we are
not allowed to bring our favorite toothpaste should be rescinded. That is not
the way to prevent 9/11 type catastrophes. The cover-up of what really happened
on 9/11 (see October 1, 2006)
should also be on the agenda.
Investigations of our
Vice-President’s conduct starting with his closed-door energy conferences in
the spring of 2001 are also on the wish list, but are not likely to get very
far. The Democrats may not want to pull off a Spiro Agnew type removal from
office. This would give Bush a chance to appoint a new Vice-President, who
would then be in a strong position to give Democrats trouble in the 2008
Presidential elections. Even if Cheney were removed from office he would surely
get a Presidential pardon from George W. For a replay of the Nixon scenario,
namely to get rid of the Vice-President first and then the President, it is
clearly too late. Although grounds for impeaching Bush are as ample as in the
Nixon era, the Democrats have already ruled it out because they would be
saddled with President Cheney; a scenario which nobody wants. Although I don’t
expect much to come of a Cheney investigation I would, nevertheless, be glad to
see it not only for getting the facts of history straight. It would also keep
him occupied and prevent further disastrous dabbling in international policy.
This function should return to the State Department rather than the
Vice-President’s office in collusion with the Pentagon. The Department of
Defense should really live up to its name and renounce the planning of
offensive wars which are, at any rate, illegitimate under the UN charter.
From the Republicans I wish for a
spirit of cooperation with all reasonable projects the Democrats propose. This
should not be a time of stone walling, digging in one’s heels, and run out the
clock till the next election. I would also like to see that they abandon their
neoconservative dreams, respect the people’s voice of November 7, and return to
what the Republican Party really stood for: limited government, fiscal
conservatism and a foreign policy which does not trample on the rights of other
countries.
For our President I wish that when
he goes to his favorite church on Christmas Day he decides in his heart and
mind that henceforth he will live by the words of Jesus rather than merely
regarding himself as a “born again Christian.” The parable of the Good
Samaritan should become his guiding light. I wish furthermore that during the
holiday week he would invite ex-President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn to
the ranch in Crawford for extended discussions of the Middle East’s
problems. President Carter is not only a man of intelligence and wisdom but he
is also intimately acquainted with the area and has the respect of most of its rulers.
If President Bush were not only to listen to his sage advice but also put it
into action much good could come from it. Under those circumstances he would
abstain from further military adventures and instead devote his last two years
in office to genuine efforts of bringing peace to this world of ours. I know
that this is wishful thinking but this is, after all, the Christmas Season
January 1, 2007
THE YEAR OF THE MIDDLE EAST
During the past month there were
two events which foreshadowed what we are going to witness in 2007. The Iraq
Study Group presented its report which was a clear indictment of the
administration’s Middle East policies. The first
sentence, “The situation in Iraq
is grave and deteriorating,” provided a dose of realism and in order to make
the best of a bad situation 79 detailed recommendations were offered. These
were divided into external and internal ones. One part of the external
recommendations was to immediately open a dialogue with all of Iraq’s
neighbors including Syria
and Iran in
order to create a united front for the internal security and economic stability
of Iraq. This
was to be followed by the creation of an International Iraq Support Group to
assist Iraq
with national reconciliation and freedom from outside interference. The
internal recommendations dealt essentially with means to strengthen the current
Iraqi government including its police and army. Incompetence and corruption
needed to be curbed and integration of the various competing ethnic and
sectarian groups endeavored. It was argued that an immediate withdrawal of
American troops from that country would be harmful; it should be done on a gradual
basis so that no U.S. Combat troops remain there “by the first quarter of 2008,
subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground.” On
the whole the report portrayed a sense of urgency and it was emphasized that
this was a package deal, rather than what chairman Baker called a “fruit salad”
from which one might pick and choose.
The Commissioners, under the
leadership of Baker and Hamilton, subsequently made the rounds on TV talk shows
to drum up popular support and for a brief moment it seemed that even the White
House might listen. This hope was promptly dashed when our President, who had
at first voiced guarded approval, subsequently postponed his policy speech to
later in the month and thereafter to some time in January. It became obvious
that he is not inclined to accept the package, and he will simply persist
wishing with fervent hope for the miracle which will bring democracy to bloom
in Iraq.
Instead of endorsing a gradual reduction of troops starting immediately, there
is consideration given for an actual “temporary” increase in the level of
troops. The rationale is that one more (last ditch?) all out effort to secure
the streets of Iraq
would now succeed with another 20-30,000 military personnel although all the
previous ones have failed. The question what to do thereafter is not being
discussed by the White House. Since, realistically speaking, there are no good
options how to terminate this war, the search for the least bad one is on. In
the meantime the President went to Crawford for the holidays and Iraq
continues in chaos.
There were two additional points in
the Baker-Hamilton report, which deserve special emphasis. One is buried on p.
92 under “U.S. Personnel,” where we learn that “Our embassy [Baghdad]
of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency.”
This is nothing short of disgraceful. What information do these people rely on
in their decision making processes? Even well meaning interpreters can get
their messages confused and since we are in a country where the majority of the
population no longer wants us to be there, we are liable to be subjected to a
great deal of disinformation. There is an additional problem. U.S.
born Arabic speaking individuals may be suspected of harboring sympathies for
Muslims and if we import Israelis, many of whom are bilingual, we can run into
the opposite cultural bias. This is where the insularity of the American
educational system comes to haunt us. Languages are taught in the most
rudimentary way and their study is not compulsory. History classes are largely
limited to that of the US
and as such our youngsters are ill equipped to shoulder the burdens our
politicians are thrusting upon them, in the pursuit of “the American century.”
There was another sour note for the
administration on pages 54-56 of the report where it unequivocally linked the Iraq
problem with that of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The United
States will not be able to achieve its goals
in the Middle East unless the United
States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli
conflict.” This linkage, although obvious to everyone who has ever taken the
Arab point of view into account, is shunned by our policy makers because it
would mean a return to the more even-handed approach of some previous
administrations. Yet this is precisely what AIPAC, and American Zionists of the
Jewish as well as Christian denomination abhor.
This brings me to the second
interesting event of the past month. Ex-President Jimmy Carter had published
his latest book: Palestine Peace Not
Apartheid at the end of November and had made the TV rounds during early
December. The word Apartheid, which
Carter had chosen deliberately to attract attention to the conditions the
Palestinians in the occupied territories are currently living under, created a
problem for the interviewers. They experienced a mental short-circuit and
chided Carter for implying that Israel
is an apartheid state. Carter took great pains to point out that he wasn’t
talking about the Israel
of the pre 1967 war but only about what is left of Palestine
which lingers under Israeli occupation. When Larry King asked the ex-President
what he thought about the article Alan Dershowitz had published about the book
Carter admitted to not having read it. Larry King then presented him with some
choice morsels from that article, which in the main argued for massive bias on
part of Carter and disliking “Israel or Israelis,” which Carter simply brushed
aside as rubbish. Since everybody knows that Carter is a thoroughly decent
person he didn’t think he needed to answer that type of invective.
This brief flurry of attention on
Palestinians coincided with a talk given at the Salt Lake City Library by a
young Jewish-American lady who had recently visited the occupied territories
and was appalled by what she saw. There was a large turnout and Tom Wharton of The Salt Lake Tribune wrote a lengthy
factual report on it. In a separate notice the newspaper requested comments on
the topic from readers, but wouldn’t you know none, including mine, were ever
published. When I wrote to Mr. Wharton and congratulated him to his report he
said that he had been “happy to get a different perspective.” It is obvious,
therefore, that the American public, including journalists, is not informed about
the true situation in the occupied territories and efforts are made to keep it
that way. If we did not have access to the Internet, or selected small
circulation publications such as The
Christian Science Monitor, we would not know about the true state of
affairs as it pertains to the Middle East. This is why
Jimmy Carter’s book is so important for Americans to read. His goal was to draw
attention to the deplorable state of affairs in Palestine,
which the rest of the world knows about, is shown daily by Al-Jazeera to its
Arab viewers, but is largely banned from our TV screens.
The question now is will Jimmy
Carter be allowed to succeed? The group which does not want this to happen does
not as yet have a name by which it could be readily identified. It would be
wrong to lump it under “Jews” or “Israelis” because not all of them want the
perpetuation of the unsatisfactory status quo. I shall, therefore, use the term
chauvinistic Zionists because this is where the problem resides. Chauvinism is
usually defined as: “militant glorification of one’s country,” or “unreasoning
attachment to one’s race, group, etc.” It is the “group” and “etc.” I am
referring to, because not all Zionists belong to the same nation, race or
religion and it is the “unreasoning attachment” to an idea I am concerned
about. The common bond which holds this diverse group of people together is the
idea that the Jewish people as a nation, rather than religion, need a land of
their own and are entitled to it by biblical prophecy.In the case of Christian Zionists the
situation is even worse because they fervently believe that the return of the
Jews to the land of Israel
is the prerequisite for Jesus’ second coming and the establishment of the kingdom
of God. This idea is being pursued
in an intensely emotional rather than intellectual manner. That this is hardly
the way to create a modicum of peace in the 21st century would seem
to be obvious but it is not as the following examples will show.
As mentioned above, Alan Dershowitz
published a blistering article in The New York Sun (November 22, 2006). The first paragraph sets the tone
for the next three pages of the article:
“Sometimes you can really tell a
book by its cover, President Jimmy Carter’s decision to title his new
anti-Israel screed [for those of us less erudite than Professor Dershowitz the
word is defined as “a prolonged tirade, harangue”] ‘Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid’ (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His
use of the loaded word ‘apartheid,’ suggesting an analogy to the hated policies
of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment
buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on
in Israel today ‘is unlike that in South Africa – not racism, but the
acquisition of land.’ Nor does he explain that Israel’s
motivation for holding on to land captured in a defensive war is the prevention
of terrorism. Israel
has tried, on several occasions to exchange land for peace, and what it got
instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned
land.”
When I read the article I had a
profound sense of déjà vu because its tone and content are very similar to
Josephus’ Contra Apionemwhich I have discussed in The Moses
Legacy (available for downloading on this site). The striking phenomenon is
the absence of change over a 2000 year period when it comes to dealing with
unwanted facts. The main technique is to disregard the message that is to be
conveyed; instead the messenger is denounced as either intellectually and/or
morally deficient. This is then demonstrated by examples from his writings, at
times taken out of context, which are either ridiculed, or shown as seriously
biased and followed by half truths. In Josephus’ case the adversary was the
Alexandrian grammarian Apion who had made negative comments about the Jewish
religion and had led a delegation to Caligula about the Alexandrian riots which
had broken out between Jews and Greeks in 38 AD. I am bringing this up at this
time because the current situation is eerily reminiscent of these days which
ended a few decades later with the revolt in Judea and
the destruction of the temple. The Jewish attitude in those days was that our
rights have to be not only safeguarded but expanded, which in turn gave rise to
the mentioned clashes in Alexandria,
which had a large Jewish minority population. After the murder of Caligula the
new emperor, Claudius, had to write a stern letter, which is reprinted in The Moses Legacy and very worthwhile
reading in today’s context. It declared unequivocally that both sides to the
conflict had to stop what they were doing or else Rome
would be forced to step in and establish order.
Thus, when one reads the article by
Dershowitz one is impressed that chauvinistic Zionists have learned nothing
from history and are steering the same course towards disaster as in 68 AD and
the even more catastrophic revolt of 132-135 under Bar Cochba.In the minds of chauvinists, regardless what
cause they espouse, the fault for an unsatisfactory situation always resides
exclusively with the opponent, who is to be bedeviled and genuine compromise is
not to be sought. There is an additional irony in Dershowitz’s first sentence
which seems to have escaped him. The picture on the cover, above the title,
shows a pensive Carter looking from the Palestinian side at the concrete
barrier which separates Jewish from Palestinian land. Unhappy Palestinians are
demonstrating on their side of the border, while there are some lawns and trees
on the other. It is a symbolic picture, and meant as such, but this symbolism
has escaped not only Dershowitz but all of Carter’s detractors. The current
situation is indeed apartheid
(Afrikaans: apartness) for the Palestinians who are separated in enclaves which
impede them from moving even between their villages and towns in the West
Bank.
To gauge the opinions of the
American public on the Palestinian question it is useful to read the reviews of
Carter’s book on amazon.com. There are three editorial reviews. The one from Publishers Weekly is brief and factual. Booklist confined itself to stating
that, “it is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.” Jeffrey
Goldberg, who wrote for The Washington
Post’s Book World, on the other hand, wrote a long article in the style of
Dershowitz. It claims that Carter is hostile to Israel.
“Carter’s title notwithstanding, Israel
is not actually an apartheid state.” Carter doesn’t recognize that the purpose
of the “security fence” is “to prevent the murder of Jews.” These sentences are
again examples of the Josephus’ technique. The word Palestine
has been omitted from Goldberg’s mind and substituted by Israel.
Furthermore, nobody would have objected to a “security fence” if Israel
had put up the wall or a fence within its own pre 1967 borders. But I believe
that Mr. Goldberg would be outraged if his neighbor were to put up a wall that
sits on Goldberg’s property. Even the Berlin
wall, abhorrent as it was, was erected on East rather than West German land.
This is the crux of the question which is so studiously avoided by people who
think like Dershowitz and Goldberg.
In regard to the settlements in the
occupied territories, which are one of the chief obstacles to peace in the
area, Goldberg writes
“. . . the people of Israel
have fallen out of love with the settlers, who themselves now know that they
have no future. After all, when Ariel Sharon abandoned the settlement dream –
as the former prime minister did when he forcibly removed some 8,000 settlers
from the Gaza strip during Israel’s
unilateral pullout in July 2005 – even the most myopic among the settlement
movement’s leaders came to understand that the end is near.
Carter does not recognize the fact
that Israel, tired of the burdens of occupation, also clearly wants to give up
the bulk of its West Bank settlements (the current prime minister, Ehud Olmert,
was elected on exactly this platform) because to do so would fatally undermine
the thesis of his book. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is being marketed as a
work of history, but an honest book would, when assessing the reasons why the
conflict festers, blame not only the settlements but also take substantial note
of the fact that the Arabs who surround Israel
have launched numerous wars against it, all meant to snuff it out of
existence.”
This excerpt is presented as
another typical example of how facts are mingled with fallacy. Yes, substantial
segments of Israel’s
population want to shed the burdens the settlers impose on the country but when
Sharon gave up the occupation of
the Gaza strip and removed the
Jewish settlers therefrom, the main reason was that the strip provided no
benefit to Israel
and it was too costly for the military to guard these 8,000 settlers. He did
not give up on the settlement idea but continued to expand them in the West
Bank. Even in the Israeli peace proposals of Camp David II it was
understood that settlement blocks would merely be consolidated within the
Palestinian state, rather than removed. Olmert, in spite of what is said in the
above quoted statement by Goldberg, also has not only expanded settlements,
especially in the Jerusalem area,
but as of December 27, 2006
authorized the creation of a new one in the West Bank.
The fact that these settlements are illegal under international law is probably
not unknown to Mr. Goldberg, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead he
refers to previous wars and implied security concerns which are irrelevant in
the context of what are in essence land grabs. If there is to be any peace in
the Holy Land the settlements will have to disappear
from the future Palestinian state. Everybody, including Prime Minister Olmert
knows this, and to settle Israelis who were removed from Gaza
into the West Bank is irresponsible. Unless Israel
does opt for apartheid instead of peace these unfortunate people will have to
be uprooted again.
Carter is repeatedly chastised for
having presented a biased view of the history of Israel
but his detractors are also unilateralists who are convinced that only their
opinions are the correct ones. They fail to see that the Zionist chauvinistic
dream is historically of recent vintage and that there have always been voices
raised, even from the Jewish side, about its inherent dangers. It is,
therefore, useful to remember under what circumstances the Balfour declaration
of 1917, which set this whole process in motion, came about. It was not the
Zionists under Chaim Weizmann who by themselves managed this feat but British
Christians, especially the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his
foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, pushed the plan through, over
considerable opposition by members of the War Cabinet and some prominent
British Jews.
In this connection it is of
interest to read Lloyd George’s Memoirs
of the Peace Conference. Although he has also been faulted for some memory
lapses on certain details, the memoirs are an important highlight of the
circumstances under which this fateful document came about. The essential point
Lloyd George made was that in the fall of 1917, when the Declaration was
issued, the outcome of the war hung in the balance. The Allies were nearly
financially and physically exhausted, Russia
was in turmoil, Romania
had been conquered by the German army, the Italians had suffered a massive
defeat at Caporetto, and there were no American troops as yet in the trenches.
The upcoming year was regarded as the decisive one for the war and a massive
propaganda effort was put in place. It was designed to demonstrate that the
Western Allies were fighting this war not for imperial gains but to liberate
the oppressed people who lingered under authoritarian regimes. This appeal to
nationalism included not only the people of Europe but
also Arabs and Jews. The latter were regarded as especially important because
it was feared that they might swing their financial power to the German side
since the Zionist movement had, after all, originated in Austria
and was regarded as a German product.
In Lloyd George’s words the Jews
were felt to be a “powerful people,” and it was thought that a Declaration in
favor of a Jewish homeland would not only energize the Jews of Russia to keep
that country in the war on the allied side but,
“It was believed, also, that such a
declaration would have a potent influence upon world Jewry outside Russia,
and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America,
their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost
exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases.
Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British
Government towards making a contract with the Jews.”
Apart from the political
considerations it must be added that Lloyd George was a profound believer in
Old Testament prophecy and he regarded as his greatest achievement having been
able to return the Jews to their ancient home. As has been described in Whither Zionism?there
was no unanimity on the wisdom of the Declaration in Britain
or America. It
was feared that the status of Jews in the West would be jeopardized if
henceforth they were to be regarded as citizens of Palestine-Israel rather than
e.g. England, France
or America. For
this reason the text of the Declaration had to be watered down from the
original Zionist version of, “ Palestine should be reconstituted as the
national Home for the Jewish people,” to “the establishment in [emphasis added] Palestine of a
national Home for the Jewish people . . .it being clearly understood thatnothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights
of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.“ This change in wording was
essential for its acceptance by the War Cabinet and since it created mutually
incompatible goals between nationalistic minded Arabs and those Jews who
regarded the Zionist version as official, it was the source of the subsequent
unending conflict. Many Jewish writers, even today, ignore the official
Declaration text, which left the size and borders of the “national Home” open,
and insist that not only the entire area west of the Jordan river was promised
to them but all of the Palestine British mandate which originally included
Transjordan, today’s Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.
A similar situation exists today in
regard to UN Resolution 242 which was adopted after the 1967 war and stipulated
“Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent
conflict.”The Security Council members
had wanted the document to include the word “all” before territories which
would have made it unambiguous but since the U.S.
threatened to veto the resolution if this were done, this compromise was
reached. It now leaves it at the discretion of Israel
how much of the territories it will in the end be willing to cede.
At the Peace Conference it was
immediately apparent that President Wilson’s idealism in regard to the self
determination of all the nations liberated from the destroyed Austro-Hungarian
and Ottoman Empires would run aground on the rocks of Allied imperialism.
Additionally, in the Middle East more had been promised
than could be delivered because the Zionists and the Arabs wanted the same
strip of land. Furthermore there was antagonism between the British and the
French. While the Brits were committed to the return of the Jews, the French
were dead set against the idea of turning the cradle of Christianity over to a
people who have no use for the Christian religion. Wilson
thought he could mediate by appointing a Commission which would go to Palestine
and ascertain the wishes of the locals. The French balked, the Brits withdrew
likewise and only two Americans formed what was called the King-Crane
Commission. Since this is a relatively unknown chapter in the post WWI history
of Palestine, I shall quote some of
their most salient observations which they reported to the Peace Conference in Paris
on August 28, 1919,
“We recommend in the fifth place,
serious modification of the extreme Zionist Program for Palestine
of unlimited immigration of Jews, looking finally to making Palestine
a distinctly Jewish state. . . .
[After having listed Wilson’s
Principle for self determination] . . . If that principle is to rule, and so
the wishes of Palestine’s
population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine,
then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine
– nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist
program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population
of Palestine was more agreed than
upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and
to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross
violation of the principle just quoted and of the people’s rights, though it
kept within the forms of law.
It is to be noted also that the
feeling against the Zionist program is not confined to Palestine,
but shared very generally by the people throughout Syria,
as our conferences clearly showed. . . .
The Peace Conference should not
shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine
and Syria is
intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the
Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by
force of arms. . . . That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the
injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish population of Palestine
and Syria. . .
. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they
have a ‘right’ to Palestine, based
on occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.”
The Recommendation of King-Crane
was that there would be “no reason why Palestine
could not be included in a united SyrianState.” The sense of the report was
that Jews would share the privileges of other citizens in Syria-Palestine,
could develop their culture and practice their religion but the establishment
of a Jewish State in Palestine
would be a mistake. Since these recommendations ran afoul of British promises
and Zionist interests, the proposals were promptly shelved.
As far as the Zionists were
concerned they fell into two groups which may be called: the incrementalists
and the maximalists. Although differing in methods both had the same goal of
establishing a Jewish State based on maximal free immigration on maximum
available territory. They differed on the tactics. The incrementalists, among
whom were foremost Weizmann and Ben-Gurion, tried to reach as much of an
accommodation with the local Arabs as circumstances permitted, while the
maximalists under Vladimir Jabotinsky pushed for the immediate establishment of
a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. Jabotinsky’s view was that the
goals of Arabs and Jews are diametrically opposed; there can never be peace
between the two nations unless the Jews build a “Wall of Iron” with military
strength which will separate them permanently from the neighborhood.
This is not “ancient history;” the
current and future wars in the Middle East are directly
related to the decisions made in the aftermath of WWI and subsequently WWII. As
it turned out everybody was right. Ben Gurion’s incrementalist stance gave him
the State of Israel within 1948 borders, which were gradually enlarged as a
result of subsequent wars. Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” is physically being built
at this moment and King-Crane’s warning that a Jewish State in Palestine
could only be maintained by military force, was also proven correct.
These are some of the historical
facts chauvinistic Zionists are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize,
and this is why such vicious attacks against Carter’s book have been launched.
I have already mentioned the editorial reviews as they appeared on amazon.com.
In addition, as of December 30 there were more than 300 readers’ reviews, and
the book got a 3.5 star rating. The headlines of the reviews frequently tell us
more about the reviewer than the book itself and here are some samples pasted
from amazon.com.
“A refreshing summary
of the current situation.Great Book.Not
likely to get a fair shake in America.jimmy carters
foolishness.Courage
from a very dedicated public servant.Revisionist Historian.Fall of a man's integrity.Nothing But The Truth...So help Me God !!A strange book written by a strange man.Particularly rough toilet
paper.A
much-needed book for our troubled time.Well done Jimmy!!!.God Bless Jimmy Carter.what a brave
man.long
overdue book - thanks for having the guts to write it.A Timid Book.An Outdated Analysis from an
Out of Touch Politician.Master Of Worthless Peace Treaties.Failed President writes a failed book.Finally, it's in the mainstream.”
It is,
therefore, obvious that Americans are far from united how they view the
Palestinian situation and that we have some rather vicious people among us who
will readily engage in character assassination. Goethe said: EdelseiderMensch, hilfreich,
und gut. The human being is to be noble, helpful and good. Jimmy Carter
incorporates these qualities. This made him a mediocre chief executive at the
White House, where these characteristics are not in demand, but allowed him to
become the best ex-President of the 20th century. Congratulations President
Carter for breaking the code of silence towards the Palestinians which pervades
our country; may your book remain on the best-seller list for a long time to
come and bear the fruit of peace most of us are hoping for.
Finally there was one more event
last week. Ex-President Gerald Ford died at a ripe old age. He was likewise a
good and decent human being who never got the full recognition he deserved.
This upcoming year is likely to be dominated by events in the Middle East and
in order to navigate successfully through the coming storms it would help if
our leadership were to adopt Jerry Ford’s maxim, “We may disagree, but never be
disagreeable” Following this simple rule would go a long way towards a peaceful
world for all of us.
February 1, 2007
AMERICANS SPOKE – BUSH LISTENED
This
headline is likely to raise eyebrows among readers because it is well known
that the November election was a referendum on the Iraq war and that the majority
of Americans want to extricate themselves as soon as possible from the disaster
that we have created in that country. The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study
Group advocated a program that would have allowed us to gradually turn over the
country to its rightful owners and it seemed for a few days that the proposal
might actually have had a chance of being accepted by the White House. That
this was not likely was apparent a few days later, as reported in the January 1
installment, when the President decided that he would not announce his strategy
in December but at some time in January. When he did so on January 10 it bore
no resemblance to Baker-Hamilton and instead announced a “surge” in Iraq
with additional “more than 20,000” troops. These were to pacify Baghdad,
create security for the citizens and thus allow reconstruction of the country
to proceed. No wonder that the American public, as well members of Congress
were dumbfounded because instead of getting out, we were getting in even
deeper. The newspapers and TV didn’t tell us what was behind this change of
heart and to find out what happened we have to go, as usual, to the Internet.
The Neoconservatives in the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) were deeply concerned about how their plans
for the Iraq
invasion, which they had engineered and were responsible for, had misfired.
Since the idea that the entire plan was misconceived and doomed to failure had
never occurred to them and that they might be co-responsible for the disaster
was likewise foreign to their mindset. Since they were right, according to
their opinion, but the situation had turned out wrong it must have been
somebody else’s fault. The guilt was, therefore, laid at the feet of the CIA,
the State Department and to some extent the Pentagon for not having adhered to
the winning strategy they had devised.Had these organizations rallied behind the leadership of Perle,
Wolfowitz and Feith we would immediately have brought in Ahmed Chalabi with his
exile brigade to set up a government. He would have been our Vice-Roy and the
Iraqis would dutifully have said: Thank you! This fantasy has never been
abandoned and is directly responsible for the one that the members of AEI are
currently engaged in.
While the Hamilton-Baker Iraq Study
Group was preparing its report Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the AEI
was busy with devising an alternative. This was presented to its membership as
a PowerPoint slide show on December 14. Dr. Kagan (he has a PhD in Russian and
Soviet Military History) was unknown to me and at first I thought that he might
be the Kagan my Viennese brother had asked me about and which had led to the April 1, 2003 installment on this
site, The Neocons’ Leviathan. But the
Kagan who had upset the Europeans so much at that time was his brother Robert.
He had chided them for being pacifists and relying for their security on the
good graces of the American taxpayer instead of creating their own military
machine, which would help America
in its quest for the Pax Americana.
The December 14, PowerPoint
presentation, which can be viewed at the AEI’s site on the Internet, had as its
title, “Choosing Victory. A Plan for Success in Iraq.”
The Executive summary starts out with,
“Victory is still an option in Iraq.
America, a
country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1
million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq,
a state the size of California
with a population of 25 million and a GDP under a $100 billion.
Victory in Iraq
is vital to America’s
security. Defeat will lead to regional conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and
increased global terrorism.”
After having rejected the
alternatives, which listed only immediate withdrawal, engaging Iraq’s neighbors
and increasing embedded trainers of the Iraqi army, which are bound to fail, he
provided his own plan of which the key elements were,
“We must change our focus from
training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing rising
violence. . . .
We must send more American combat
forces into Iraq
and especially Baghdad to support
this operation. A surge [emphasis
added] of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clean-and-hold
operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be
sufficient.
These forces, partnered with Iraqi
units, will clear Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods, primarily on the
west side of the city.
After the neighborhoods have been
cleared, U.S.
soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to
maintain security.
As security is established,
reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through
Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.
The ground forces must accept
longer tours of several years. National Guard units will have to accept
increased deployments during this period. . . .
The president must request a
substantial increase in ground forces and strength. This increase is vital to
sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the
way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer
to fight in the decisive conflict of this age.
Failure in Iraq
today will require greater sacrifices tomorrow in far more desperate
circumstances.
Committing to victory now will demonstrate
America’s
strength to our friends and enemies around the world.”
Well, it’s obvious our President
did what he was told “he must” do and all of us now know whom he listens to.
Kagan was, of course, not satisfied with just one PowerPoint presentation and
on December 17, he published an article with retired General Jack Keane in The Weekly Standard as well as the Washington Post, under the title, “The
Right Type of Surge. Any Troop Increase Must Be Large and Lasting.” They warned
that for the surge to succeed it would require an additional “some 20,000
combat troops” and a “reserve of at least one brigade (5,000 soldiers) to
respond to unexpected developments. . . . . It is difficult to imagine a
responsible plan for getting the violence in and around Baghdad
under control that could succeed with fewer than 30,000 combat troops beyond
the forces already in Iraq.”
The full plan was unveiled for a
select audience around noon on
January 5 at the most appropriate venue, the WohlstetterConferenceCenter
of the AEI (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25396/pub_detail.asp). For
readers who do not know who Wohlstetter was, and what he stood for, I suggest
you go to the
December 1, 2005
installment on this site, “Albert
Wohlstetter’s Disciples.” This essay is also informative about another
drama which currently plays out simultaneously with the Iraq
war in a Washington Court room and to which I shall return later. The AEI
announcement was headlined, “Iraq:
A Turning Point with reports from Iraq
from Senators John Mc Cain and Joseph Lieberman.” The schedule was for Kagan
and Kean to present for an hour, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq”
and after a 15 minute break McCain and Lieberman would spend another hour and
15 minutes for their presentation.
The Kagan-Keane slide show was
extensive, can be viewed on the Internet
(http://www.aei.org/docLib/20061219_ChoosingVictory.pdf), and presented
colorful pictures on how the pacification of
Baghdad
should proceed. January 5 was a Friday; the speech writers went to work and on
the evening of Wednesday the 10th a serious and rather wooden
looking President read from the Teleprompter,
“The situation in Iraq
is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. . . .
It is clear that we need to change
our strategy in Iraq.
So my national security team, military and diplomats conducted a comprehensive
review. We consulted members of Congress from both parties, our allies abroad,
and distinguished outside experts. We benefited from the thoughtful
recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former
Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In our
discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq.
And one message came through loud and clear: Failure in Iraq
would be a disaster for the United States.”
What the President did not tell us
is, that he discarded all of the advice he got from the mentioned sources and
that the plan he laid out on January 10 as well as in his State of the Union
speech was concocted by members of the AEI who have a very specific agenda.
They work in close cooperation with the government of Israel
and their propaganda, via “The War on Terror,” has been successful in
instilling into the American public the belief that America’s
security is identical with that of Israel.
This is the group of people the President listens to. When one looks at the
roster of AEI members and resident scholars one finds not only some well known
neoconservatives but even Lynn Cheney, the Vice-President’s wife. Although this
information is in the public domain on the Internet average Americans will not
know about it because the mainstream media do not report to whom the President
really listens.
The “surge” plan has probably very
little chance of success. General Petraeus who has been sent to enact it is a
very capable person and distinguished soldier but he is confronted with an
impossible task and wrong assumptions. The Kagan plan, because we need to call
it by its rightful name, is a typical example of the German saying: Er hat die Rechnungohne den Wirt gemacht. That
is, he calculated the bill without considering the innkeeper. In the present
case there are two innkeepers he has not taken into account, the Iraqis and the
American public. The underlying assumption for the plan is that there is a
functioning Iraqi government which has the support of its army and its people.
This is, at present, not the case. For the Iraqi army to fight, as it did against
the Iranians in the 1980s, there would have to be a leadership they respect, a
sense of belonging to a country, rather than a religious or ethnic
denomination, and in absence of those aspects the fear of a gun behind their
back as was the case for some units of the Red Army. These preconditions don’t
exist in Iraq
at this time and are unlikely to exist in the foreseeable future.
Even if the “surge” were to be
carried out as planned on Kagan’s PowerPoint slides the insurgents have plenty
of time to go home for a while and then come back with a vengeance once the
American troops leave again. The Arabs have what Americans sorely lack, namely
patience. They know that time is on their side and that we will have to leave
eventually regardless of what shape the country is in by that time. In
addition, since the “surge,” isn’t a surge at all but a gradual buildup of
forces which concentrates on Baghdad,
the guerilla forces can simply move into other provinces to create havoc. As
the LA Times reported on January 3, 2007, “A promising Iraqi
province is now a tinderbox.” The article showed what had happened when the
Americans moved out of Diyala and Baqubah and the Iraqi army moved in.
Bullying, stealing from homes and cars, kidnappings and torture were the rule
until the Americans stepped in again and re-established some sort of order. But
how long can they do that? When I read on January 14 in The Salt Lake Tribune, “Kurdish brigade trains for Baghdad,”
I said to myself: That’s an excellent prescription for a genuine civil war.
Kurds who currently are engaged in ethnically cleansing their province
of Sunnis will surely not be met
with open arms in Baghdad. One can
feel sympathy for General Petraeus because he is forced to violate the very
principles he had laid down in his book on Counterinsurgency Warfare. These
required a large occupying force, considerably larger than what he will have
available, and a long indefinite stay.
This will not be permitted by the
second innkeeper, with whom Kagan has not reckoned either, the American people.
When a massive peace rally takes place in front of the Capitol and demands an
end, it is clear that Professor Kagan (he taught
military history at West Point) and his pupil, George W. Bush, have miscalculated.
Although the precise number of participants has not been revealed it is
noteworthy that the protests in Washington
and around the country were similar to those of the Vietnam
era. They are even more remarkable because in contrast to those days we don’t
have a military draft at this time. Furthermore, Congress has also lost
patience and even Republicans are beginning to reflect on how their stance will
resonate with the public when they run for re-election in 2008.It is simply too late for the Kagan plan.
What might have been possible in the first few months after the invasion is no
longer achievable. Times have changed and local attitudes have hardened against
us. I don’t deny that miracles can happen, but experience teaches that they are
quite rare.
There is an additional fallacy in
Kagan’s thinking. Victory is not a choice, as his rhetoric implies, because the
outcome of a war is never determined by one side alone. There are too many
imponderables and if will power were to be the decisive factor Hitler would
have won WWII because he had plenty of that. A guerilla war, which is what we
are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is very difficult to win for a democracy
because success would not only require a massive number of ground troops, as
well as the acceptance of large numbers of casualties, but also methods which
are no longer tolerated and are regarded as war crimes.
At this time we are witnessing the
beginning of the end of the American military adventure in Iraq.
Plan A has failed; this is Plan B and there can’t be a Plan C. We now have to
ask ourselves: Is a failure in Iraq
really the catastrophe that Kagan and colleagues as well as his supporters in
Congress and the White House expound? No, if we draw the appropriate lesson.
This would require, among other aspects, that the people who concocted “the New
American Century,” the AEI, and other similar think tanks, are shown the door
and foreign policy is again made by professional diplomats where it should be,
in the State Department. The idea that we can dictate to other countries what
they need and must do will have to be abandoned because it cannot lead to
peace; only mutually agreed covenants can succeed.
Currently the State Department is
still under the thumb of the White House and Condi Rice has been relegated to
the role of the proverbial “Girl Friday” who runs errands but has no say so in
the decision making process. This was exemplified last summer by her delay in
supporting an armistice in Lebanon
and now by not engaging in talks with Syria
and Iran as had
been suggested by Baker-Hamilton. In an interview with the German News Magazine
Der Spiegel on January 22 she said in regard to talks with Iran and Syria,
“Of course, the only reason
to talk to us would be to extract a price; and that's not diplomacy, that's
extortion.”She had it backwards, the
Iranians and Syrians do want to talk to us but we won’t. Obviously diplomacy is
give and take but at present we insist on the taking rather than meeting mutual
concerns upon which lasting agreements can be reached. This attitude of, “what
we say you must do” is also exemplified by the stance of the Israeli government
towards the Palestinians which will be discussed in relation to the failed Oslo agreement in another
installment. Unless you treat your negotiating partner with respect you can
only achieve a Versailles and we know what happened thereafter.
While Iraq obviously dominates the news,
there is the additional drama which is unfolding in form of the Libby trial.
The wheels of justice are surely grinding slow in our country and who did what,
in the White House in the early summer of 2003, is now being testified to in a
Washington Court. The issue is the “outing” of the CIA operative Valerie Plame,
ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife. It was widely seen as revenge for Wilson’s op-Ed piece in TheNew
York Times where he stated that the Uranium sale from Niger to Saddam was bogus and he
implied that the country had been dragged into the Iraq war under false pretenses.
Details on this topic were presented in previous installments (August 1, 2003 The Niger Forgery; April 1, 2005 The Plame Affair; December 1, 2005 Albert Wohlstetter’s disciples).
These reports are worth reading in today’s context because the Libby trial is
now finally under way. The prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has emphasized that
the trial is not about the Iraq war but only the perjury which Mr. Libby
(former Chief of Staff for the Vice-President) is alleged to have committed in
testimony before a Grand Jury about his role in the “outing” of Ms. Plame.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore the context in which the alleged crime
has been committed and the White House as well as the Vice-President’s office
is bound to come under scrutiny. This cannot be good news especially for Mr.
Cheney because he is expected to be called as a witness and hopefully he will
have to testify under oath.
As yet the Libby trial is
overshadowed in the media by the “surge” debate. That there is another trial
set to begin in the summer of this year is not reported at all, except for a brief
note in the Wall Street Journal of January 16, 2007 under the title,
“Ex-AIPAC Executives’ Trial Set for June.” While the Libby
trial is a threat to the Vice-President, which he may or may not survive, the
McNulty spy trial endangers the entire neoconservative community and the
“special relationship” with the State of Israel. I have mentioned the McNulty
investigation in the “Wohlstetter” report and here is a summary of the affair
with a January 2007 update. For some of the early background I have relied on
the article by Stephen Green (www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html),
“Serving Two Flags. Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration; as well as the
one by Jim Lobe, “Spy Probe Scans Neocons,” which appeared on LewRockwell.com on September 1, 2004. Both individuals are investigative reporters who have a
PhD degree.
The bare bone facts, of what is currently
called on the Internet “The AIPAC espionage scandal,” are: a former Pentagon official,
Larry Franklin, was indicted in May of 2005 by a Federal Grand Jury for
providing classified documents to Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior
members of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), whose indictment
followed in August of that year. Rosen was the AIPAC’s policy director at the
time and Weissman the senior Iran-analyst of the organization. Although AIPAC
denied that any spying had taken place both individuals were fired. Franklin
pleaded guilty and was sentenced on January
20, 2006 to 12 years, 7 months in prison and a fine of $10,000 for
passing classified information to AIPAC and an Israeli diplomat. He has,
however, remained free for now because of the pending Rosen-Weissman trial.
That trial was supposed to have started in early 2006 but as The Wall Street Journal reported, “has
been weighed down by deliberations over which classified materials should be
admissible in court, according to the attorney.” The new date for the beginning
of the trial is supposed to be June of this year.
If we truly
lived in a free country, as is proclaimed, and this trial were allowed to go
forward it could lead to a profound change in American policy towards Israel
and, therefore, the Middle East. AIPAC would stand
exposed as a lobbying firm for a foreign government it would lose its tax
exempt status and would no longer be able to lavish financial support for
members of Congress who seek election or re-election as it does at present.
While the Libby trial focuses on malfeasance by the Vice-President’s office and
only indirectly touches on the Iraq
war, the AIPAC trial would go to the heart of the matter. Larry Franklin
reported directly to Douglas Feith (deputy to Paul Wolfowitz) who was in charge
of the “Office of Special Plans” in the Pentagon, which “stovepiped” false
information via Libby directly to Cheney and thus provided the rationale for
the Iraq
invasion. Although the witness list is likely to be curtailed, one may hope
that Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Michael Ledeen would have
to testify under oath. Under those circumstances the American public would
learn for the first time from the mainstream media what had been going on
between various administration officials, AIPAC and Israel
for the past 30 years or so. This would include illegal sales of advanced
military technology to Israel
and its resale by Israel,
for some of it, to China
and other countries. Some of the material was bootlegged and ended up on the
black market. But hardware was only one aspect of this lucrative trade. A U.S.
developed case-management software program, which is used to monitor and track
files, was acquired by Israel’s
MOSSAD then resold, with some modification, to other foreign intelligence
agencies. Jim Lobe also wrote that the MOSSAD version was fitted “with a ‘trap
door’ that permitted the seller to spy on the buyer’s own intelligence files,
according to a number of published reports.”
The FBI had
been investigating these activities for the past 30 years (the Iran-Contra scandal
figured in part the same players) but criminal actions were never allowed to
proceed. Will it be different this time? For the sake of the country and the
world one must hope that it will.Although the Iraq
disaster will be winding down, one way or the other, the neocons will not rest
until the war has been widened to Iran
and Syria.
Michael Ledeen is not, as yet, a
household name but he is one of the major AEI ideologues who vigorously pursue
this goal. Who is Dr. Ledeen? For that answer we have to go to JINSA (http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=742)
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, of which he was a founding
member, and where he is lauded as “one of the world’sleading authorities on contemporary history
and international affairs.” He
is also a resident scholar of AEI. Ledeen’s book, The War Against the Terror Masters. Why it
Happened, Where We Are Now, How We’ll Win, to which I have referred in the
Wohlstetter article, reveals both his Credo as well as the means with which he
pursues it. Written in the winter of 2002, to encourage the looming Iraq
war, and updated in the spring of 2003 after the fall of Saddam, he argued that
too much time had been allowed to elapse between the Afghanistan
campaign and the Iraq
invasion and that further prompt action was urgently required. The concluding
paragraph states,
“The war against terrorism was
never limited to a single country, or to a single strategy. We have defeated
Saddam, now we must spread freedom in the heartland of the terror masters in Iran.
If we do, we will find it much easier to deal with Syria
and Saudi Arabia.
If we fail to act decisively, we will permit the mullahs to define the near
future and we will have lost a major battle in the war.”
This was written in the first flush
of “Mission Accomplished” and to bolster his case he stoked fear of Iran’s
nuclear weapons. He asserted that Iran’s
nuclear program was very far advanced and “by early summer, the CIA concluded
that the mullahs were likely to have the bomb by year’s end.” That was 2003!
Four years later we are again bombarded with the rhetoric of a nuclear armed Iran,
which will not only threaten the Middle East but the U.S.
and Europe. In the intervening years everything Ledeen
had written about Iraq
had turned out to have been false and we really should take one of his quotes
to heart, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!” The neocons
have discredited themselves, but our President still listens to them and it is
high time that the American public be informed about the behind the scene
forces which direct our foreign policy.
The propaganda that our security
depends on the security of Israel
needs to be shown for what it is, namely propaganda. It is understandable that Israel
is concerned about Iran
going nuclear, but there are other means of dealing with this potential threat
than military ones. To exaggerate the threat by continually invoking the
Holocaust, as was done in a recent article by Israeli historian Benny Morris in
the German newspaper Die Welt, merely
instills further fear, and can paradoxically produce the result that was feared
in the first place. As Job exclaimed, “For the thing which I greatly feared is
come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me (3:25).”We should not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear of what might happen. The
future is unknown and to prejudge it on basis of past real or imagined
disasters poisons the present and thereby the future.
It is obvious that our eventual
withdrawal from Iraq
will have some wide-spread adverse effects but they need not be catastrophic if
we act wisely. If on the other hand we allow ourselves to be stampeded into an
Iran/Syrian war the disaster will be greater still. Thanks to the neocons we
are no longer welcome in that part of the world except when we come as
individuals with a tourist visa. The assertions by the administration that we
will be overrun by terrorists in our country if we leave Iraq
can be proven wrong if we take prudent measures here at home and work in
concert with the rest of the nations of the world. This could be done by
changing the course from confrontation to cooperation but would require a
complete regime change at home.
AIPAC and the rest of what I have
called last month the chauvinistic Zionists know that the Rosen-Weissman trial
is bound to be major problem for them and since they have the financial as well
as the political clout they will do everything in their power to hush it up.
Whether or not they will succeed in this effort will depend upon the American
media and surprisingly enough on Rosen and Weissman. They had expected that
AIPAC would cover their legal costs because, after all, they had simply done their
duty for the organization. This was not the case; AIPAC disowned them and
Rosen-Weissman have sued the organization.As the Forward
of December 23, 2005
reported AIPAC now perceives Rosen and Weissman “as acting ‘like Samson trying
to bring the house down on everyone.’” Inasmuch as the AEI and AIPAC are
leading the charge against Iran
at this time, with the goal of widening the war in order to make withdrawal
from Iraq
impossible, it is important that the Rosen-Weissman trial be allowed to proceed
at the earliest moment. Only full disclosure of what goes on behind the scenes
will prevent further disasters. This would be the duty of the mainstream media
but it is, unfortunately, obvious that they are tightly controlled and I shall
cite relevant examples in next month’s installment.
March 1, 2007
BARAK IN SALT LAKE CITY
No, this is
not about Obama who aspires to the presidency, but about Ehud who has been the
leader of his nation, saw himself as a Prince of Peace, and only brought
further disasters on the Palestinians as well as his own people. His Prime
Ministership is a classic example of good intentions having gone wrong because
they were based on false assumptions and a personality structure, which
prevented successful negotiations.
The University
of Utah has recently established a
“World Leaders Lecture Forum” and Barak was the first person to be invited to
give a talk on “The Middle East – Today and Tomorrow.”
The venue was Kingsbury Hall which ordinarily serves as the university’s center
for the performing arts and is essentially a theater with a stage hidden by a
curtain. In front of the curtain was a lectern and to the side of it a table
for dignitaries. I am mentioning this only because first impressions are always
the most lasting. At the appointed time Barak emerged from behind the curtain
with two representatives from the university and what struck me was what can
only be described as a smug grin which he wore throughout the introduction. It
was this grin that probably had given rise to a statement about him in Clayton
Swisher’s book, The Truth about Camp
David. He quoted a “veteran U.S.
intelligence officer, who had been intimately involved in the Oslo
process and was charged with assembling a leadership profile” of the newly
elected Prime Minister. The officer “was alarmed by the picture that emerged,
and summarized this assessment to Washington
via outgoing cables
Among Israeli intelligence
officers, the election represented a contest between Bibi and Barak – the
‘hated’ guy and the ‘idiot.’ One boyhood friend remarked that Barak is
intelligent, but not as intelligent as he thinks. People within the military
establishment are not very impressed with him . . . Barak is confident,
arrogant, and prone to make decisions on his own, preferably without consulting
others.”
Swisher’s book is based on
extensive interviews with the major participants in the Israeli-Arab peace
process and can be recommended to everyone who is seriously interested in
finding out why things went wrong at Camp David II. It supplements the account
by Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace. The Inside
Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, which is, unavoidably, in part
self serving.
When Barak started his lecture the
grin disappeared but it did re-emerge intermittently when he discussed the
lighter side of issues such as being for the first time in our city and feeling
immediately “right at home where a Jordan River brings
fresh water into a dead lake” and “the biggest local bank is named ‘Zion.’”
In honor of our Great Salt Lake I must mention, however,
that it is far from dead. The lake harbors myriads of tiny brine shrimp, which
are harvested as fish food for aquariums and as such supports a lucrative
industry. Our Jordan River also has the good sense to
bypass the Great Salt Lake and continues unimpeded on
its travels to the South.
The substance of Barak’s talk was the
predictable mantra we have heard over and over again about why Israel
is beleaguered. He agreed that there has to be peace between Israel
and the Palestinians, but the latter are not ready for it. Arafat could not be
trusted because he was a terrorist and had remained a terrorist. The problem is
not the occupation of the West Bank but terrorism and
Arafat had rejected even “as a basis for negotiations” when over 90 per cent of
the West Bank was offered. With Hamas in the Palestinian
government there is nothing to negotiate because there’s no sense talking to somebody
whose aim is to destroy you. The Palestinians need a Sadat who is willing to
make bold decisions even at the risk of his own life. Eventually the two sides
will have to separate completely but for peace to come to the region will take
decades. In the meantime Israel
will have to continue to look for its security, fight terrorism and nuclear
proliferation, especially by Iran
and North Korea,
which cannot be tolerated. Iran
is the deadlier of the two because not only will it threaten the whole Middle
East but also Europe and the US.
Furthermore, it will also lead to bomb building by other Middle East
countries such as Turkey,
Egypt and Saudi
Arabia But the biggest danger is that nuclear material will fall into the hands
of terrorist groups and they will have no compunctions about using it. Barak’s
suggestion as to how this horror scenario can be avoided was, surprisingly
enough, for the US
to stop its efforts at democratizing the world and instead cooperate fully with
China and Russia
because without these countries nothing is achievable. His message was: don’t
look at their abysmal human rights record but concentrate on how to get some stability
into our world by lifting the economic conditions all over the world. This is
indeed a program one can subscribe to and at the end of his talk he received
the customary standing applause.
Then came the questions from the
audience and the first one was very direct: “Israel
has never signed the nuclear proliferation treatment, why not? And does Israel
have a nuclear bomb?” Straightforward questions which require a yes or no are,
of course, a nightmare for politicians but they are trained to deal with such
nastiness. Barak went into a long discourse that Israel
lives in a bad neighborhood, has to protect itself, and as part of that
protection will keep its cards close to the vest. A second direct question in
regard to Jimmy Carter’s book about the occupation of the West Bank
and the treatment of the Palestinians was also deflected. The sum and substance
of the longish answer was: the measures are justified because of terrorism.
The purpose of Barak’s visit to our
State was, however, not solely educational but as Matthew LaPlante of the Salt Lake
Tribune informed us there was an additional private dinner talk for the purpose
of fundraising. Mr. LaPlante didn’t tell us who was to benefit from the funds
but since he mentioned that Barak has launched his campaign to regain the
leadership of Israel’s
Labor Party it is likely to be used for that purpose. Barak had briefly mentioned
in his speech the various investigations about improper conduct by high
officials, which are going on in his country, so one may wonder to what extent
the use of American money for political campaigns will be tolerated in Israel.
Before discussing the reasons for
Barak’s failed Premiership let me just mention why I think he was wrong in his
demand that the Palestinians need a Sadat with whom Israel
can make peace. The analogy does not apply. Sadat was President of a country
which had an army and as such was feared as well as respected by the Israelis.
He insisted that Israel
honor Security Council Resolution 242 in its entirety and return all the land Israel
had conquered from Egypt
in the 1967 war. Israel’s
Prime Minister Begin was willing to pay that price and he got peace with Egypt.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin intended to follow the same route in regard to Syria
but was murdered before he could bring this plan to fruition. The Syrian
situation was akin to that of Egypt
because the country had an army which could potentially do serious harm to Israel.
This is where the analogy in regard to the Palestinians breaks down. They have
nothing; they are dirt poor and have no army. As such they have nothing to
offer to the Israelis except for appealing to universal human rights and
justice as well as the promise to abstain from shooting some ineffective
rockets and conducting suicide attacks. This massive imbalance of forces is the
fundamental reality which guides Israel’s
behavior. Barak did not want a Sadat at Camp David he
wanted a Quisling. Arafat was unwilling to assume that role. This is why he had
to be labeled as an unreconstructed terrorist and ostracized.
Barak’s current angling for funds
in the US is
not a new Israeli strategy. The Clinton
administration had tried to help Shimon Peres win over Netanyahu in 1996 but
burned its fingers in the process. “Bibi” won with a minuscule margin but he
lost again within three years to Barak, who had the help of our very own James
Carville. The latter was instrumental in the Clinton
victory of 1992 and the author of the famous: It’s the economy, stupid! The Clinton
administration was delighted when Barak won by a landslide because they had
gotten nowhere with Netanyahu. After the Lewinsky debacle President Clinton
wanted to redeem his legacy and with Barak’s ostensible desire to make peace
with Syria, Lebanon
and the Palestinians this was the time when all the pieces could have fallen
into place. Nobel peace prizes seemed ready to be grasped.
The problem was that the American
enthusiasm for Barak was not shared by the Palestinians. After Barak had formed
a very broad coalition government which excluded Likud but contained other extreme
right as well as left wing parties, he gave a speech before the Knesset on July 6, 1999.In it he declared his intention to work with
Arafat “in partnership and respect, in order to jointly arrive at a fair and
agreed settlement for coexistence in freedom, prosperity and good
neighborliness in this beloved land where the two peoples will always live.” So
far so good but there was the inevitable qualification, “but without
compromising on Israel’s security needs and most vital interests, first and
foremost among them, a united Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel under
our sovereignty [Laqueur and Rubin. The Israel-Arab Reader. A documentary history of the Middle East
Conflict].” This is a condition no Arab is likely to agree to in the
foreseeable future. When Barak then gave the ministry for housing and
development to Yitzhak Levy, the head of the “settlers” party, the Palestinians
knew that there wouldn’t be any real change in government policy. Settlements
on unilaterally expropriated land would continue as they had under Netanyahu,
in spite of the Oslo agreement, and
Palestinians would be squeezed out from “Greater Jerusalem.”
During the election campaign Barak
had also promised that he would pull the Israeli army out of Southern
Lebanon by 2000 and conclude a peace treaty with Syria.
To the dismay of the Palestinians, whose living conditions were steadily
getting worse, Barak gave first priority to the Syrian track. In Barak’s view Syria
was the potentially greater threat and the Palestinians would just have to wait
some more. Barak feared that if he fulfilled the Lebanese troop withdrawal
promise without having a peace treaty with Syria
it would be seen as a unilateral move. Hizballah, Syria’s client, would claim
victory, take over at the border andSharon’s 1982 operation “Peace for Galilee,” which started the Lebanon
invasion in the first place, would finally have collapsed completely. If he
could show that he had obtained peace with Syria,
Hizballah could have been reined in and Israel’s
northern border would have been secure.
This was reasonable as far as it
went because Hafez Asad, Syria’s
president, was willing to make peace if Barak gave up the Golan
Heights and withdrew to the June
4, 1967 borders. Asad ‘s reasons were simple; he was seriously ill,
intended to turn his job over to his son and didn’t want him to be burdened
with unfinished business, which included bad relations with the US because of
Israel.
The Clinton
administration initially had some misgivings about the Syria
first policy, because the occupied territories were increasingly restive and
deserved immediate attention. Barak had strung Arafat along with promises which
were not fulfilled and when the Palestinians saw that their rights continued to
be ignored as well as compromised they grew increasingly upset and distrustful.
Under pressure from Barak Clinton
finally agreed to the Syria first strategy and on Barak’s insistence convened a
secret meeting in secluded Sherpherdstown, West Virginia, which is only a
little over an hour from Washington by car. This meeting between the Syrian,
Israeli and American delegation was important because it revealed for the first
time Barak’s character and negotiating strategy. Barak set the agenda for the meeting
and every American proposal had to go through him before it could be shown to
the Syrians. There was to be a minimum of a paper trail and the Syrian’s sine
qua non for any agreement, namely Israel’s
troop withdrawal to the June 4, 1967
border, was not to be broached up front but left for the “endgame.” With other
words, put what is most important last and maybe the Syrians will relent. But
the Syrians saw only delays and concluded that Barak wasn’t serious.
The Americans were handicapped on
two fronts. Although Clinton wanted
a peace treaty very badly our chief negotiator was Dennis Ross whom the Syrians
had come to mistrust over the years. Not only was Ross Jewish, but he was also
known to be very pro-Israel and, according to Swisher, in some instances his
positions went even farther in favor of Israel
than that of the Israelis. The second handicap was internal politics in Israel.
Barak’s coalition was on shaky grounds and it was feared that unless America
gave Barak complete freedom of action his government would fall, Sharon
would take over and all hopes for peace would be gone. This is also the reason
why Barak was not up front with the June
4, 1967 border because if his agreement to relinquish the Golan
Heights were leaked before an agreement was signed he would be in
serious political trouble. But Barak’s problems did not interest the Syrians.
All they saw was procrastination and the US
siding with the Israelis. The Syrians went home empty handed and felt that they
had been brought to the US
on false pretenses.
But Barak didn’t give up
thereafter. He kept pressuring Clinton;
told him that he would abide by the June
4, 1967 border and a direct meeting between Clinton and Asad was
the only solution. As mentioned, Asad was seriously ill and reluctant to leave
his country but that did not concern Barak. He promised what Clinton
understood as giving up the Golan Heights and asked him
to present this assurance to Asad in a face to face talk. Clinton
then agreed to meet with Asad in Geneva
in March of 2000. Again Barak tried to set the timetable. Clinton was scheduled
to visit India and Pakistan, who were at that time close to a possible nuclear
war, and did not have unlimited time for the extended Geneva negotiations that
Barak had in mind. When Ross told him so Barak blew up and apparently felt that
the president of the US
was supposed to do his bidding at all times and under all circumstances. Ross
achieved a compromise that Clinton
could stop in Geneva on his way
home from Asia. But in order to bring Asad to Geneva
Clinton needed a firm commitment from Barak on the June 4, 1967 border which could be conveyed to Asad
directly by a trusted intermediary. This task was entrusted to Prince Bandar of
Saudi Arabia
who had served in this function previously and who was on good terms with Asad.
Bandar was assured by the Americans that they had Barak’s agreement and if Asad
were to come to Geneva the
guarantee would be delivered in person. Asad agreed and the meeting was set for
March 27, 2000.
In the meantime, unbeknownst to the
Syrians the Ross-Barak haggling over what constituted the June 4 border
continued. As it turned out, according to Ross, there existed no map which
showed this border. There was one from colonial days in 1923 which depicted the
border between the French-Syrian and the British-Palestine mandate, and did not
give Syria
direct access to Lake Tiberias, or LakeKinneret as it is known by the
Israelis. There were also aerial photographs of the lakeshore from 1967 but in
the meantime there had been a drought and the lake had receded. Ergo from the
Israeli point of view there was no fixed border and everything was negotiable.
The Syrians who had been used to having been in control of the eastern
shoreline of the lake before 1967 didn’t concern themselves with such
subtleties and insisted that the land was theirs the water was Israel’s.
This was not good enough for Barak who wanted to control a strip of land on the
eastern shore and this basic misunderstanding wrecked the Geneva
talks.
Hasad had not come with great
expectations to Geneva because Shepherdstown
had thoroughly disillusioned him about Barak’s intentions. After some initial
pleasantries Clinton proceeded to read slowly a position paper which had been
drafted by Ross and Barak which said that the “The Israelis are prepared to
withdraw fully to a commonly agreed
border [italics in the original].” whereupon, according to Swisher, Asad
asked, “is this line of June 4, 1967?” When Clinton
continued with “Israel
will retain sovereignty along Lake Tiberias and a strip
of territory . . .” Asad had heard enough and said “The Israelis don’t want
peace! There’s no point in continuing.” For Asad it had always been “full
peace, for full withdrawal” and he had not come for haggling. Ross’s version
differs slightly because he didn’t see how “a commonly agreed border” could be
a stumbling block. In my opinion Ross did not realize that Asad had come for a
signing ceremony rather than negotiations, and that Asad who was terminally ill
(he died a few months later on June 10) was no longer in the mood to play games
with anyone. Clinton’s pleas that
he consider Barak’s delicate political situation fell on deaf ears because that
was not Syria’s
problem. The summit was a fiasco. It accomplished nothing except for increasing
the bad relations between Washington
and Damascus by laying the blame on
Asad’s inflexibility.
It is reported that Barak might
have been willing to make more concessions on the Lake Tiberias
issue, which was in fact all about control of water resources, but it was a
fallback position. Had he been up front and not engaged in what was regarded by
the Syrians as duplicity, success might have been achieved. This aspect is
important because Barak pursued the identical strategy during Camp
David with the same result.
As mentioned above the Palestinians
had good reasons not to trust Barak. When they saw that Barak instead of
addressing their problems first but instead devoted his time to the futile Syria
strategy they felt themselves being treated as “the other wife.” When he
finally turned his attention to their concerns he again did so on his terms,
rather than abiding by previous agreements. In October of 1998 Netanyahu and
Arafat had signed the Wye River Memorandum which was to be a further step to “final
status negotiations” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel
to end the decades’ long conflict. Among other aspects it called for a three
step phased redeployment of Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Phases one and two were completed with some delays but there was to be no phase
three and settlement building proceeded unabated.
Barak tried to persuade Arafat that
instead of phase 3 one should proceed immediately to a final agreement on all
aspects which would make all interim agreements obsolete. Although this sounds
fine in theory it neglects the human factor. Agreements to be meaningful have
to be precise and built on trust. Over the years the Israelis had given the
Palestinians little chance to develop that trust because they preferred vague
formulations which could then be interpreted in Israel’s
favor. The insistence by Israel to the US that the Security Council Resolution
242 omit the definitive word“the” in
regard to “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in
the recent conflict,” and leave it only with “withdrawal from territories,” is
perhaps the most glaring example. This gave the Israelis an “out,” because they
felt that it allowed them to decide at what point they had complied with the Resolution.
Had the Security Council stayed with the original formulation the US
would have used its veto. Since the UK
violently disagreed with the change in wording a secret understanding was
reached between the UK
and the US
which retained the famous “the” in relation to future negotiations but this did
not rise to the level of the official UN document and could be ignored by the
Israelis.
While
Arafat wanted a step wise approach that honored previous commitments, Barak was
in a hurry. He wanted the Palestinians to knuckle under but needed Clinton’s
help for that. But chastised by Geneva
the president was not particularly enthused about having potentially another
failed summit at hand. This is where Mr. Fixer, Dennis Ross, came in again and whose
role in the Clinton US Middle East policy fiasco should not be underestimated. He
had served the first Bush as well as the Clinton
administration as special envoy for the Middle East and
had racked up innumerable frequent flyer miles during his decade of shuttle
diplomacy. There is some question who he really was supposed to report to and
since he preferred the direct route to the President, Sandy Berger (National
Security Advisor) and Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State) were
intermittently miffed about what they regarded as him having gone behind their
backs. At any rate Ross, who was by now distrusted by the Palestinians, as well
as some people in our own administration, succeeded in persuading Clinton that
Barak was sincere and that this opportunity should not be wasted. Arafat tried
to tell Clinton that the scenario
was far from as rosy as it was presented to him by Barak and Ross. His fear was
that a precipitate summit which aimed to come up in a few weeks with a “final agreement”
to an intractable problem that had poisoned the atmosphere for decades could
not possibly succeed and that failure would make a bad situation worse. The
only thing he asked for was that if the talks failed, he would not be blamed
and Clinton gave him this
assurance.
The summit was doomed before it
even started. On the eve of his departure for Washington Barak made it clear to
his Israeli audience on July 10, 2000 that, the following principles would have
to be adhered to: A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty; an amendment of
the 1967 border, the overwhelming majority of the settlers in “Judea, Samaria
and Gaza” would remain in consolidated blocs; there was to be no foreign army
in the entire area west of the Jordan River and a solution to the refugee
problem was to be outside Israeli sovereign territory. “These are the
principles – these and no other.”It is
understandable that with these preconditions for negotiations Arafat had no
interest in this type of summitry. His stance was: if the Israelis could offer
to Sadat and Asad that they would go back to the June 4, 1967 border they
should be willing to do the same for him: full peace for all the land the
Palestinians had been living on prior to the 1967 war. He regarded this as
their inalienable right as stated in Resolutions 242 and 338. Arafat was concerned
that he would be pressured into agreeing to a retreat from the international
resolutions and have to agree to vague promises which would subsequently not be
honored. This fear was also expressed by the Chairman of the Palestinian
negotiating team, Saeb Erekat, to Madeleine Albright on the eve of the summit.
Erekat told Swisher in May of 2003:
“I said to Albright, ‘Madeleine
please don’t make it sound like a one-time summit.
Don’t make it sound like people should expect white smoke from Camp
David. We’re not ready. You’re not ready. The Israelis are not
ready. Unless you want to blame it on us this will backfire! Make a series of
summits. Don’t tell Palestinians and Israelis that it’s either/or. . . .
I told them. You have a difficult
situation on the ground. The lack of further redeployment; the lack of prisoner
release, the lack of hope – it’s a pressure cooker situation. It will explode!
. . . . Some Americans said later, ‘Oh
they were planning the intifada!’ You know? We knew it was coming – we knew it
was coming! All of us knew!”
This was the Palestinian assessment
of the context of the talks. From the American side one needs to remember that
2000 was an election year and that Hillary was running for the Senate in New
York which has a considerable Jewish population. Bill
Clinton could not embarrass his wife’s candidacy by appearing to “lean on the
Jews.” Especially when her opponent, Rick Lazio, was already promising to push
for the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is
an absolute no no for Arabs because it would legitimize
Israel’s unilateral annexation of the city. As Swisher wrote the summit “was
set up to fail.”
But Clinton had persuaded himself
that a summit was the right thing to do and he even swallowed Barak’s other
demands, which were not made public at the time and included: a financial
package to the tune of $35 billion over several years as well as “a formal
mutual defense agreement including a commitment by the US to come to the
assistance of Israel in the event of attack in the future, enshrined in a
treaty to be ratified by Congress and the Knesset. This treaty would be fully
like the American treaty relationship with its NATO allies, and thus include a
nuclear umbrella commitment by the U.S, i.e., an American promise to respond to
a nuclear attack on Israel with America’s nuclear forces [Bruce Riedel www.bitterlemons.org July 15, 2002]” In
addition Barak wanted some of America’ most advanced defense technology, the
transfer of which was possibly illegal.
Clinton
supposedly accepted the fiscal part of this package, probably feeling that if
you can buy yourself peace it’s still cheaper than war. In view of the
staggering costs of President Bush’s current Iraq
disaster this seems actually reasonable. But the Americans were not prepared
for the difficulties of a summit and to the chagrin of the Palestinians about
two thirds of the American delegation was Jewish with various degrees of
pro-Israel leanings. Thus the Palestinians were at a distinct disadvantage and could
only insist on their rights as enshrined in International law and International
agreements.
As far as Barak was concerned he regarded
himself as the person in charge and used the same delaying tactics as at
Shepherdstown. Nobody knew what his bottom line was and when he eventually
revealed it to Clinton it was a
nonstarter for the Arabs. Although he agreed to return about 90% of the West
Bank and Gaza to the
Palestinians; sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old
City of Jerusalem, as well as over some other areas where Arabs lived, he
insisted that the Haram al-Sharif, TempleMount, be under Palestinian “custodianship”
rather than sovereignty. This was a point Arafat could not possibly agree to
because a) it would legitimize Jewish control over one of the Arab’s holiest
sites and b) it was not even in his power to grant it because this would have
required consent by representatives of the entire Islamic world. As Arafat
remarked to Madeleine Albright when she pressured him, “The Palestinian leader
who will give up Jerusalem has not
yet been born. I will not betray my people or the trust they have placed in me.
Don’t look to me to legitimize the occupation! . . . Our people will accept
nothing les than their rights as stated by international resolutions and
international legality.”
The Americans didn’t believe
Arafat’s stance and thought it was simply obstinacy that could be overcome by
pressure from friendly Arab leaders. But as Ned Walker, who had been an
ambassador to Israel as well as Egypt and was then Deputy Coordinator for the
Middle East in the State Department, told Swisher, “The [world’s Arab leaders]
were all totally in the dark. . . . When the president at the eleventh hour
asked them to press Arafat to accept a compromise on Jerusalem,
he got a resounding silence.” This silence becomes even more understandable
when one reads that in the phone calls from Camp David
with MuBarak, as well as Prince Bandar they were requested to intervene with
Arafat but when they asked what the offer was they were told, “Sorry, we can’t
tell you that as yet.”As Ned Walker
also said, “The guys who were running it [Camp David] .
. . when they told me what they were talking about in terms of Jerusalem
it just seemed like a joke to me! I mean, they seem to think that, first of
all, it was this theory that Jerusalem
was only the third most important site for Islam,
therefore it’s not as important as the Western Wall is to the Jews their first most important site [italics in
the original]. How that thinking got started I don’t know.” Regardless how it
got started it is regarded as a fact by the Israelis with literally fatal
consequences.
When the summit broke down the spin
started. Clinton and Barak blamed Arafat for the disaster while the
Palestinians cheered Arafat for having stood up to pressure. Barak was under
severe criticism at home for having intended to give up parts of Jerusalem
and in order to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount Sharon
held his provocative “visit” there. The Palestinians regarded this as an insult;
stones flew from their side, rifle fire came from the other and the second
intifada started. Our media place the responsibility for the renewed outbreak
of violence on the Palestinians and omit to inform us about Security Council
Resolution 1322 of October 7, 2000
which was adopted unanimously with one abstention (the US).
It “deplores the provocation carried out at Al-Haram-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28
September 2000 . . .condemns acts of
violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians . . .
Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal
obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative
to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 . . .
calls for the immediate resumption of negotiations within the Middle East peace
process on its agreed basis with the aim of achieving an early final settlement
between the Israeli and Palestinian sides. . . .
Further “peace proposals” were indeed
put forth by Clinton in the last
few weeks of his presidency but were ineffective because Barak’s government had
fallen, Sharon was on his way in
and so was Bush. Oslo was dead and
the carnage accelerated. Half-hearted road maps or the current belated efforts
of Condi Rice notwithstanding, nothing can be accomplished at this time in the
Israeli-Palestinian war because Ehud Olmert is neither interested in a genuine
peace deal nor does he have the support from his constituents to do so if he
wanted. In addition the fight between Hamas and Fatah suits the Israelis
perfectly well because they believe it demonstrates to the world that the
Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves. That Israel
has colluded in this situation by not giving Mahmoud Abbas the help he had needed
early on, Israel
and its supporters are not likely to acknowledge.
What can we learn from this debacle
wrought by Barak’s Prime Ministership?
1) For a leader of a nation to make permanent agreements he
must have the trust not only of his own people but also that of the adversary. Yet
trust cannot be demanded it must be earned by previous conduct. Furthermore,
especially with Jewish negotiators, one has to be aware of the difference
between the truth as most of us see it and “technical truth.” As Ross pointed
out he had learned the distinction from Rabin, “he would never lie but also not
reveal.” Ross used it in connection to a leak of secret talks that were held prior
to Camp David II. The press had reported that negotiations were going on in Stockholm,
but since they were actually in Harpsund, 90 minutes outside Stockholm,
the report could be denied. The Palestinians have over the years learned this
distinction and that is why they insist on precise language. Unfortunately most
Americans are still unaware of it.2)
When problems as intricate, as the status of Jerusalem, are tackled, sufficient
groundwork has to be laid, which will have to include not only politicians from
various countries but also religious leaders of Judaism, Islam and
Christianity. As a result of Camp David II, and what followed thereafter, the
conflict has achieved an additional religious dimension which can no longer be
ignored. 3) Summits should be reserved for signing ceremonies rather than
protracted negotiations because their failure leaves the world worse off than
before.
This is Barak’s legacy and if he
were to gain the Prime Ministership again we would be well advised to remember
these past experiences in order to avoid the previous mistakes.
April 1, 2007
PEACE ON EARTH
This month’s title may sound
like an April fool’s joke because nothing is further from the minds of our
leadership than to work for peace rather than wider expansion of the existing
war. At the time of writing these lines two aircraft carrier groups are holding
“maneuvers” in the Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian shore line, to
demonstrate “America’s might.” The unspoken purpose appears to be to provoke
the Iranians to some kind of incident which could be used as a pretext to bomb
the country in retaliation. The idea that other people don’t want to be bullied
does not enter into the minds of Cheney-Bush and company. In addition to
provoking the Iranians they also intend to put missiles on Russia's
doorstep in Poland
and the CzechRepublic
and President Putin is supposed to accept this without taking countermeasures. What
would be the administration’s reaction if Russia
were to place missiles again into Cuba,
or the Chinese held maneuvers 20 nautical miles off our Pacific coast while the
Russians were practicing war games off our Atlantic coast? Yet this is what we
and our friends the Brits are doing at this time in the Persian Gulf.
It is no wonder that the world doesn’t trust us and even if we proclaim that we
only want what’s best for all; our actions speak louder than words.
The reason
why I chose the title is because this is Easter season, when hope springs
eternal, and it commemorates the Encyclical Pacem
in Terris of Pope John XXIII which was issued on April 11, 1963. The Pope who was already gravely
ill at the time and died two months later intended to leave a program which
contained sufficiently realistic material that it could be enacted by “Men of Good
Will.” It was precipitated by the Cuban missile crisis of the previous October
which had brought the world to the brink of all out nuclear war. Kennedy and
Khrushchev had pulled back in the nick of time and with the declaration of
détente and “peaceful coexistence,” there was a glimmer of hope that the world’s
leadership would put reason before passion and that from détente could come
peace. This hope was, however, cruelly dashed a few months later with the
murder of President Kennedy. A brief moment of golden opportunity was lost
because Kennedy and Khrushchev had learned to trust each other. There had been
a chance that the American “advisors” would be withdrawn from Vietnam
and a peaceful solution to the problems of that unfortunate country could have
been worked out. It was not to be, the forces of hate in our country were
stronger and the real culprits of the Kennedy assassination and their motives
still await disclosure.
There was no immediate reaction to
the Encyclical but in February of 1965 “An International Convocation on the
Requirements of Peace,” sponsored by the “Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions,” was held in New York City. It was attended by the most
outstanding people of the time from all over the world and had the explicit
purpose of discussing the Holy Father’s Encyclical in order to see what kind of
agreement might be reached. The problem was regarded as urgent at the time
because the nuclear stand-off continued; there was dissent about how to deal
with the war in the Congo,
and the U.S.
was intensifying its military build-up in Vietnam.
The cold war was heating up and to make matters worse during the week of the
Convocation the UN General Assembly was deadlocked over how to deal with the Soviet
Union which refused to pay its dues for supporting “peace keeping”
forces in the Congo.
There was a fundamental
philosophical difference between the US
and the USSR in
regard to the emerging new nations which resulted from the disintegration of Europe’s
colonial empires. The people in these former colonies aspired to independence
and nationhood, but they were too weak to immediately stand on their own feet.
The US and the USSR,
therefore, wanted to draw them into their respective orbits by installing
regimes of their choice, which were not necessarily the ones desired by the
people. What we called “communist aggression” the Soviets called “wars of
liberation.” How to end these “proxy wars” and the nuclear standoff was the
goal of the Convocation.
But before we discuss the specifics
there are further points in regard to the history of what may be called the
“peace movement” that are of interest. In “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 1,
2003) I have already discussed the difference between the Hobbesian and Kantian
views of the world and also mentioned Kant’s short pamphlet Zum ewigen Frieden.
When Kant wrote this “philosophical sketch” on eternal peace in 1795 there was
also a very brief moment in time when reason could have triumphed over passion.
The French revolution was successfully completed; le terreur was over; an oligarchy ruled France
under the name of a directorate, and with Prussia
having signed the peace of Basel
earlier in the year the European war against France
seemed to be winding down. But Kant couldn’t have known that Napoleon was
already waiting in the wings for his chance to change the world and that Europe
wouldn’t see peace for another twenty years.
When I wrote about Kant’s ideas in
2003 I had found them in a volume of his complete works and was unaware of
another separate publication on it by Karl Vorländer: “Immanuel Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden.Entwicklung des Friedensgedankens”
(On eternal peace. Development of the peace idea).I discovered it in the Marriott library of
the University of Utah
and what struck me was the date of publication of the first edition: November 9, 1913. The author wrote in
the Preface, “The present time which is filled with war and danger of war seems
inappropriate for the first modern special edition of Kant’s Peace pamphlet.
But ideas as expressed here by the philosopher do not age. The publication may,
therefore, go out into the world and gain the result which it deserves.” The
catastrophe of WWI came less than a year later. On May 1, 1919 Vorländer published the second edition and
mentioned in the Preface that there had been no need to change what he had written
earlier and that the tragedy of the worst war in human history had only made
the acceptance of Kant’s thoughts more urgent.
As Vorländer pointed out Kant’s
inspiration had actually come from a French member of the clergy the Abbé
Charles IrenéeCastel de
Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) who had published a tome of 3 volumes entitled: Projet de la paix perpétuelle. The Abbé
had been secretary to the French peace delegates at the treaty of Utrecht
(1712/13) which ended the wars of Spanish Succession and wondered how this
treaty could be made permanent. His key suggestions were: 1) The 24 Christian
sovereigns of Europe were to pledge themselves
to an everlasting Peace Federation to which, if possible, Muslim princes would
be invited to join. 2)The Federation would
not interfere into the internal affairs of its members. 3) No state was to have
a standing army of more than 6000 men. 4) Further territorial changes would
henceforth not be allowed to take place. 5) All disputes were to be settled by
a court of arbitration.
These points were incorporated and
expanded in Kant’s preliminary and definitive theses. The preliminary ones
were: 1) No peace treaty should be regarded as such when it is concluded with
the secret intention to become the material for the next war. 2) No existing
state should be acquired by another one through inheritance, barter, purchase
or gift. 3) Standing armies should be gradually abolished. 4) No state should
incur debts in its own household by entering into external disputes. 5) No state
should interfere by military force into the constitution and government of
another state. 6) During war no state should be allowed to use means in its
hostility which make mutual trust during the subsequent peace impossible.
Examples were: assassinations, fomenting of treason etc. As Kant explained,
these are dishonorable stratagems and “a war of extermination, where both
parties are affected can only lead to the perpetual peace of the cemetery (Friedhof).
The definitive theses were: 1) Each state should have a republican constitution. 2)
International law should be based on a Federation of free
states. 3) The right to be a World citizen (Weltbürgerrecht) should be limited to
hospitality. Kant assumed that only autocrats make war and that the citizens of
a country which has a republican form of government would not consent to
bearing the burdens in lives and treasure which any war inevitably brings
about. Although he recognized what he called the Bösartigkeit (inherent evil) of human nature he did not consider
the problem that even republics are not governed by the people at large but by
representatives. These form an oligarchy which can readily be bribed and
bought. This situation, unfortunately, exists in our own country at this time
as, among others, the book by Greg Palast, “The
best Democracy that money can buy,” testifies to.
This brings us to the Pope’s
Encyclical and we may now ask what had been accomplished in regard to peace
efforts since these thoughts were first voiced in the 18th century.
Wars have obviously persisted, become increasingly violent and now threaten to
utterly destroy major portions of the world and make them uninhabitable for
future generations. This is not a record to be proud of. On the other hand some
baby steps have been taken towards peaceful conflict resolution. The Abbé’s and Kant’s Federation of States has taken shape to
some extent in the United Nations and a World Court exists, but these
organizations do not have enforcement powers and all the other prerequisites
for peace are also still lacking.
Pacem
in Terris was supposed to focus on what could and should be accomplished. As
mentioned it addressed itself not only to Catholics but to “All Men of Good
Will” and is an extensive document which in the English translation from the
original Latin makes 168 points. In contrast to the two previous authors who
concentrated only on peace among States, the pontiff started with the
individual. Wars originate in the minds of men and this is also where peace has
to start. It is obviously impossible to discuss all of his points in detail and
I shall, therefore limit myself to some of the key aspects. Inasmuch as the pope
wanted to reach the world at large theological comments were kept to a minimum,
although the acknowledgment of God as the creator and sustainer of the universe
was regarded as fundamental. For peace to be established in the world there has
to be order among human beings in their respective societies. This order requires
that each human being, regardless of race, sex, or national origin is regarded
as a person with inalienable rights which in turn engender the acceptance of duties.
This fundamental principle must be upheld because everything else flows from
that. There needs to be an attitude of responsibility and social life should
only be conducted in “Truth, Justice, Charity and Freedom.”
He went on to say that governmental
authority needs to be based on the appeal by rulers to the individual
conscience of the citizens, with every person contributing voluntarily to the
common good. The reliance on threats or intimidations is to be shunned and laws
which are passed in contravention of the moral order have no binding force. The
pope also stated that, “the attainment of the common good is the sole reason
for the existence of civil authorities.”
These principles which govern human
behavior in their respective societies need also to be observed in the
relations between States. States must deal with each other in “truth and
justice.” Truth demands the “elimination of every trace of racial
discrimination, and the consequent recognition of the inviolable principle that
all States are by nature equal in dignity.” Justice demands the recognition of
mutual rights and the fulfillment of respective duties.
The pontiff then discussed the
causes of the arms race, the need for disarmament and that “nuclear weapons
must be banned.” He realized that the goal of a lasting peace among mankind
cannot be reached in one giant leap but only by small steps and steady effort. He
also quoted Pope Pius XII that, “Nothing is lost by peace; everything is lost
by war.” He concluded that since “the common good presents us with problems
which are world-wide” they can only be solved by “some general form of public
authority.” He warned, however,
“This general authority equipped
with world-wide power and adequate means for achieving the universal common
good cannot be imposed by force. It must be set up with the consent all nations.
. . . The forcible imposition by the powerful nations of a universal authority
of this kind would arouse fears of its being used as an instrument to serve the
interests of a few or to take the side of a single nation, and thus the
influence and effectiveness of its activity would be undermined. For even
though nations may differ widely in material progress and military strength,
they are very sensitive as regards their juridical equality and the excellence
of their own way of life.”
He praised the United Nations
Organization for its efforts and added that it “may be able progressively to
adapt its structure and methods of operation to the nobility of its task.”
This was the document to which the
Convocation devoted its time in February of 1965 and some excerpts of the
Proceedings have been published and edited by Edward Reed. What struck me most
on reading this book was the essential unanimity of all participants, from the
most diverse backgrounds, on the fundamentals. Everyone, including the
representatives of communist governments, praised the pope for his initiative
and whenever disagreements on some points arose they were uttered in a
respectful non-hostile manner.
It is again impossible to deal with
this document in detail and I will simply present some key points. The major
disagreement was on the Vietnam War. Everyone including the American delegates
regarded that war as unjust and as a catastrophe for the Vietnamese people.
Only Vice President Hubert Humphrey defended America’s
actions in that country and he could hardly have been expected to do less. But
he used half truth in doing so. He stated:
“In 1954 the Geneva Accords were
ratified, guaranteeing the independent status of South
Vietnam. Today in Vietnam
that freedom is endangered by the systematic attempt of foreign-backed
subversives to win control of the country. Today peace in Southeast
Asia can be obtained if the violators will cease their aggression.
Our
policy is clear. We will continue to seek a return to the essentials of the
Geneva Accords of 1954. We will resist aggression. We will be faithful to a
friend. We seek no wider war. We seek no dominion. Our goal in Southeast
Asia is today what it was in 1954 – what it was in 1962. Our goal
is peace and freedom for the people of Vietnam.”
What Humphrey had not said was that
the Geneva Accords had required free elections in all of Vietnam
by 1956. We, as well as the South Vietnamese government of the time, refused to
allow these elections to proceed. It was felt that completely free elections
were impossible with a communist government in the North and it was a foregone
conclusion that Ho Chi Minh would win. We wanted to freeze the status quo in Vietnam
similar to the two Koreas.
Humphrey also failed to mention that the South Vietnamese government did not
have popular support and would have fallen if we failed to prop it up. These
facts are important because the current Iraq
war is a repeat of the mistakes made in Vietnam
and Americans are still not fully informed in spite of the fact that
authoritative books are available. The best one I have seen on Vietnam
is by Stanley Karnow: Vietnam. A History.
Karnow was there most of the time and since he was fluent also in French he
could interview most of the key players on both sides as well as the ordinary
people whose lives were devastated by the war.
There were other aspects of
Humphrey’s speech which are relevant today. He announced that we and the Soviet
Union had agreed “not to station weapons of mass destruction in
space.” “This was a vital step toward preventing the extension of the arms race
into outer space.We seek to make outer
space a laboratory, not a battlefield.” In this respect the Vice President was
sincere but ever since President Reagan’s Missile Defense Shield program, aka
Star Wars, we are using outer space for military purposes as discussed in “The
Quest for Perpetual War” ( June 1, 2006).
Paul Tillich, the well known Protestant
theologian and philosopher, took the pope to task for having addressed his
Encyclical to “All Men of Good Will.” He pointed out that it should have been
addressed instead to “all men,” because man incorporates good as well as evil.
“I see human nature determined by the conflict between the goodness of man’s
essential being and the ambiguity of his actual being, his life under the
conditions of existence.” While the pope had declared that all wars need to be
abandoned and thus did away with the concept of the “just war,” Tillich argued
that, “there are situations in which nothing short of war can defend or
establish the dignity of the person. Nothing is more indicative of the tragic
aspect of life than the unavoidable injustice in the struggle for
justice.”With this statement Tillich came
dangerously close to “the end justifies the means,” a stance which has been
thoroughly repudiated by the civilized world. My personal opinion on the
question of “just war,” can be found in “Moral Clarity” (July 1, 2002). That headline was prompted by the
title of Bill Bennett’s book in which he defended the War on Terrorism as a
Christian moral imperative and he tried to bolster his argument by scripture. I
don’t know how he feels today about the morality of this “just war” but most
people have come to agree that the current Iraq
war is as immoral as the Vietnam War was.When what was “just and moral” becomes unjust and immoral within the
short span of 5 years one is entitled to question the underlying assumptions.
Tillich found himself, however, in
the minority and most of the other participants sided with the pope although
the question of “wars of national liberation” had to remain unresolved. The
participants agreed that the UN was the essential tool to provide for peace in
the world although some reforms were needed. The key question was in regard to
national sovereignty and this where the Americans and the Soviets split.
Understandably the Soviets regarded non-interference into the internal affairs
of any nation as a sine qua non, while the Western world delegates felt that no
country could be given a blank check in regard to how to treat its citizens.
The delegates from the newly
emerging nations made the point that they do need external economic and
scientific assistance but they did not want it to come from a specific country,
which was bound to have strings attached, but instead it should be channeled
through the UN or other international organizations. The suggestion was also
made that the UN needs a fact finding center, which is independent of the
propaganda apparatus of specific countries. Furthermore, the veto in the
Security Council should be abolished. The representative of Jordan
to the UN raised the concept of freedom, for which most of the new wars are
fought. He stated, “In our concept of peace we envisage freedom - freedom in
its widest sense - freedom from supremacy of one nation over another, and from
one policy over another. This statement was echoed by Robert Buron, the
Chairman of the National committee on Productivity of France, who said, “The
dangers lie not in the political colonialism of yesterday but in the
‘intellectual neo-colonialism’ and ‘social neo-colonialism’ of today.” Yet, this is precisely our administration’s endeavor.
We are trying to shape the Middle East in our image but
the locals have different opinions.
Another highly relevant point was
made by the author and critic Marya Mannes in regard to rhetoric. “The
vocabulary goes something like this: ‘negotiation’ is surrender and
appeasement. ‘Disarmament’ is equated with total naiveté. ‘Socialism,’ of
course, is communism. . . . Our ‘honor’ is in some strange way transmuted into
retaliation. ‘Peace’ is something that beatniks march for, and ‘security’ is
nuclear superiority. This is the vocabulary of no return.” Let us remember now
that this conference was held in 1965 and more than 40 years later we are being
exposed to the same rhetoric to justify the ongoing and possibly expanding war.
This brings me to the final point
of the Conference. Is it realistic for a country to renounce war as a means to
settle a given conflict? Kenzo Takayanagi, Chairman of the Japanese Cabinet
Commission on the Constitution, told the assembly that “Article 9 of the
postwar Constitution of Japan of 1946 contains a provision renouncing war as a
sovereign right of the nation and banning the maintenance of armed force in all
forms. This apparently fantastic provision originated not in Washington
but in Tokyo.” The full article 9 states:
“Aspiring sincerely to an
international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever
renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat of the use of
force as a means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of
the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war
potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state
will not be recognized.”
Under pressure from Washington,
which needed a Japanese military force as an ally against China,
a “Japanese Self-defense Force” had to be created. This resulted in a legal quandary
and as Mr. Takayanagi explained, “The present legal position of the Japanese
Self-Defense Force is a compromise between the ideal enunciated in Article 9
and the international realities. Though the forces are now generally held
constitutional, they cannot be dispatched abroad. This article has, moreover,
served to reduce military budgets to the minimum.”
The Convocation ended with an
address by the Secretary General of the UN, U Thant, who agreed that the
organization needed to be restructured to reflect the changes that have
occurred since its foundation in 1945. Especially Chapter VII of the Charter,
which deals with actions of the Security Council when a threat to peace exists,
no longer conformed to the new realities the world was confronted with. The key
problem as U Thant saw it was:
“ We are now witnessing the
beginning of the great debate – whether the big powers in unison, through the
agency of the Security Council, should take exclusive responsibility for
maintaining international peace and security while the General Assembly
functions as a glorified debating society in political matters, or whether an
attempt should be made to secure a fair, equitable, and clearly defined
distribution of functions of the two principal organs, in the light of the
changing circumstances, and , particularly, bearing in mind the increase of the
membership from 50 in 1945 to 114 in 1965.”
This was and still is the crucial
problem and goes to the heart of the pope’s message: Should all people and all
nations, large or small, have an equal share in the decisions which affect the
fate of all of us or should it be business as usual where the high and mighty
rule and all the rest of us have to submit?
Let us now look back at what has
been accomplished in the intervening 42 years and what still needs to be done.
The pressing problems in 1965 were, apart from Vietnam
and the Congo,
the unsettled state of affairs in Cyprus
and most seriously of all Berlin,
the question of German reunification, and the role of Europe
in general. Most of these problems have been solved, albeit with a great deal
of bloodshed in Southeast Asia. Germany
has been reunited; the European Union has become a fact and although still
beset with problems it has proven itself a constructive rather than destructive
force. Its currency the Euro is sound and stronger than the dollar. China,
which disdained détente in 1965, has emerged as a full partner in the global
economy although its internal domestic policies do not conform to the
principles the pope has laid out. These are achievements on the road to peace
which should not be minimized.
On the other hand, in some ways, we
are worse off than in 1965. Nuclear disarmament has not occurred and there is a
move afoot in the US
to make “tactical” if not “strategic” nuclear arms respectable. Although we try
to limit nuclear proliferation by other countries we show not the slightest
willingness to foreswear their use on our part. The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict has been allowed to grow into a major disaster for the Palestinian
people and is part of the reason for the current Middle East
wars. A historic opportunity for world peace was lost in the early 1990s after
the collapse of the Soviet Union and we in the US
have to shoulder the blame. We chose the way of power politics as usual and
gloried in the myth of the “only superpower,” which could arrange the world to
its liking. We neglected the pope’s admonition that each person has inherent
dignity and needed to be treated in that manner. Instead we did precisely the
opposite. We pretended to know what is best for others. Those who disagreed and
fought back for their goals with the only means at their disposal were labeled
terrorists and/or unlawful enemy combatants. As such they were no longer human
beings and one could deal with them in any way one wanted. States whose
policies we did not agree with became “rogue states,” and if they were regarded
as weak, such as Serbia,
Afghanistan and
Iraq, they were
invaded. But the hypocrisy is blatant; if a State has “nukes” we are
considerably more circumspect as the examples of North
Korea, Pakistan
and, of course, China
show.
At this moment our country is
violating all the measures that have been advocated since the early 1700s,
which could have a modicum of success for gaining peace in the world. We use
the suggested World Federation, the UN, only when it suits our purposes and
ignore it when it does not. We freely and massively interfere into the internal
affairs of other countries. Although our army is relatively small, the navy and
air force are not. We have the largest arsenal of WMDS, keep enlarging it, and
are the major exporters of lethal weapons. Although we do not acquire new
territory we do subject small countries around the world to our will especially
if they have oil or natural gas underneath their soil. We do not settle our
international disputes by recourse to the World Court
or some other means of arbitration. We do not regard the opinions of the World
Court as having any validity for us and even the
Geneva Conventions to which we are signatories have become “quaint” and need
not be adhered to. We are running up a huge internal debt to finance our
military efforts and the way we treat the civilian population in the countries
which are under our military control is more conducive to create further hate
rather than love and respect for us.
These are the current realities and
the tragedy is that the citizens of our country are not properly informed about
the malfeasances our government is engaged in. Although the information is
available in books and on the Internet, there is apathy and a feeling that:
since I can’t do anything about it I might as well keep my nose to the
grindstone and ignore the rest. As
it says in Johann Strauss’ Fledermaus:
Gluecklich ist, wer vergisst, was doch
nicht zu aendern ist. Happy is he who forgets about what can’t be
changed anyway. Unfortunately this type of happiness cannot last because events
are brewing right now which will lead to an accounting for our sins of
commission as well as omission. Some examples of our actual, rather than
professed, behavior and suggestions how to remedy this situation will be
presented in the next installment.
May 1, 2007
OBSTACLES TO PEACE
In the
previous installment, Peace on Earth (April 1, 2007), I discussed the
prerequisites which would allow for a semblance of peace to come to our world
as well as the fact that current US policy is in direct contravention of them.
I also mentioned that I would present in the current issue some details of our
actual conduct around the world rather than the well worn rhetoric of defending
freedom and democracy. In his Farewell address to the American people on January 17, 1961, President
Eisenhower had already warned us of the “military-industrial complex” which has
by now indeed become the engine that drives America’s
economy and quest for global power. It is also inextricably linked to the
political structure of our country. Former captains of industry assume high
government posts and on return to the private sector they reap the financial
rewards of their government contacts. In other instances, Secretaries of
Defense, such as Robert McNamara or Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz become
presidents of the World Bank. Our economy depends on this symbiosis. We have
“outsourced” most of our major manufacturing industries except for the
production of military hardware, while consumer goods are imported from all
over the world. This in turn results in a huge trade deficit and a massive
foreign debt. Although we are being assured by our government that this is not
a problem, we were also told that the Iraq
war would pay for itself but the opposite has happened. We are hemorrhaging in
blood and treasure with no end in sight and trust in the government has been
shattered. We are now reaping the fruits of empire building; an empire which we
can neither fully control nor have the wisdom how to divest ourselves from it.
To
understand how we got to this impasse, without resorting to outlandish
conspiracy theories, there are several books available which tell the story. I
shall discuss mainly two which complement each other. “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins provides the
inside story of how America’s
global empire was created through economic pressure, while Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis represents the military
counterpart.
When John
Perkins was a youngster he didn’t know what do with his life and when he was
approached by the National Security Agency (NSA), via his uncle Frank, he took
the required exams to become a spy. He was opposed to the Vietnam War, which
was in progress at the time, and the NSA job would have provided an alternative
to military service. But he did have a social conscience and after listening to
a recruiter for the Peace Corps he joined that organization instead. The
decision was made easier when he was told that in the Amazon rain forest the
people still lived like the Native Americans before the Europeans came and this
excited his sense of adventure. Uncle Frank, who remains a somewhat shadowy
figure in the book, was all for it. He told him that the area “was loaded with
oil,” and that “we’ll need good agents there – people who understand the
natives.” Furthermore he added, “you might end up
working for a private company instead of the government.” Young John had no
idea what the uncle was talking about but it was the start of his career as an
EHM (economic hit man), as they privately referred to each other.
After his
tour of duty for the Peace Corps in Ecuador,
where he not only learned the language of the country but also grew to love its
people, he was hired by Chas. T Main Inc. (MAIN) to provide economic
assessments of the growth potentials of various countries. All of us know that
the World Bank extends loans to underdeveloped nations but most of us have no
idea how this process works in actual practice. This is the reason why Perkins
book is important and deserves to be widely read.
MAIN
was an international consulting firm and although its primary business was
engineering its biggest client, the World Bank, required that MAIN
kept economists on its staff who would produce
forecasts of a given country’s growth of the Gross National Product (GNP). These
forecasts would determine the feasibility and magnitude of engineering
projects. While this seems rather straightforward there was a darker side to
it, which was a direct outgrowth of the CIA’s overthrow of Iran’s
Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1951 and the installation of the Mohammad Reza Shah
Pahlavi as our pawn. It was the CIA’s first attempt at empire building but
since it was a government agency and thus susceptible to Congressional
oversight a more subtle route was required for the future. The answer was:
Privatization!
By the
1960s international agencies such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), which are in effect controlled by the US,
were already in place and the various spy agencies of our government simply
recruited suitable young people who would be employed by private corporations
to do their work for them. In this way our government’s hands would remain
pristine clean and when things went wrong there was “plausible deniability”
because it was all up to private industry to police itself. Although people
like Perkins never drew a government check they were in fact in the front line
of empire building as our economic soldiers. When they failed to have a given
third world country submit to US demands, they were followed by the “jackals.”
These were operatives who engaged in assassinations and other ways to topple a
given government. When this likewise failed, for some reason or another, the
military moved in with uniformed soldiers on the ground. Afghanistan
and Iraq are
only the latest examples of this process. Our efforts in Iran
are currently at stage II.
Perkins’
first job was in Indonesia.
By 1971 the outcome of the Vietnam War was in doubt and the Indonesian domino
could not be allowed to fall into the communists lap. As Perkins wrote, “MAIN’s
electrification project [for Indonesia]
was part of a comprehensive plan to ensure American dominance in Southeast
Asia.” Although everybody would agree that bringing electricity to
rural areas is a good idea, the methods employed deviated, however, from what
one might expect. When Perkins arrived in Jakarta
and Bandung MAIN’s engineers, who had come earlier, were already studying “the
amount of energy and generating capacity (the load) the island
of Java would need over the next
twenty-five years.” Since electric demand is correlated with economic growth
Perkins, as an economist, was to develop that projection. There were, of
course, no reliable figures, to allow a scientific analysis; guess work was
called for. But on this guess depended the amount of money Indonesia’s
government would have to ask from the World Bank and thereby determine the
amount of debt the country would incur.
This by
itself is no trivial task, but it gets worse when one knows, that the EHMs were
encouraged to make their estimates as high as possible, rather than err on the
low end. As such a given country, and Indonesia
is merely one example, would be saddled with a debt it was not likely to be
able to repay and would thereby remain under the thumb of the US.Needless to say, the higher the projection,
the more kickback arrived at MAIN from the lending
institution. This in turn resulted in promotions and financial benefits for the
EHM. Thus, not only did the profits of this scheme remain at all times in
American hands but the receiver countries were also dependent upon American
companies to provide the critical technical help, hardware and replacement for
worn out equipment.
Let me now
give some excerpts of how the game was played. For Perkins to get his data on
which to base the forecasts he would make appointments with various business
and government leaders. But he couldn’t just walk in and have conversations;
instead he had to wait for quite some time until the respective individual
would see him. He was then given folders with charts and graphs which provided
the most optimistic picture about the country’s incipient massive economic
growth. At no time was he given any information which might raise questions. In
addition he noted that he was treated with suspicion and would be introduced to
others with terms such as “inquisitor” or “interrogator” in the native Bahasa
tongue, which he was not supposed to understand. It was obvious that the
leadership he had to consult with was not free to discuss the real facts but
acted under orders from above. As he wrote,
“It occurred to me that everything
I was doing in Indonesia
was more like a game than reality. It was as though we were playing a game of
poker. We kept our cards hidden. We could not trust each other or count on the
reliability of the information we shared. Yet, this game was deadly serious,
and its outcome would impact millions of lives for decades to come.”
Another eye opening experience was
when he was taken by an Indonesian colleague, Rasy, whom he had come to trust,
to one of the famous puppet plays (Dalang)
in Bandung. I’ll now let Perkins
again speak for himself.
“It was a remarkable performance,
combining traditional legends with current events. I would later learn that the
Dalang is a shaman who does his work in trance. He had over a hundred puppets
and he spoke for each in a different voice. It was a night I will never forget.
After completing a classic
selection from the ancient texts of the Ramayana, the Dalang produced a puppet
of Richard Nixon, complete with the distinctive long nose and sagging jowls.
The U.S.
president was dressed like Uncle Sam, in a stars and stripes top hat and tails.
He was accompanied by another puppet, which wore a three-piece pin-striped
suit. The second puppet carried in one hand a bucket decorated with dollar
signs. He used his free hand to wave an American flag over Nixon’s head in the
manner of a slave fanning a master.
A map of the Middle and Far
East appeared behind the two, the various countries hanging from
hooks in their respective positions. Nixon immediately approached the map,
lifted Vietnam
off its hook, and thrust it to his mouth. He shouted something that was
translated as, ‘Bitter! Rubbish. We don’t need any more of this!’ Then he
tossed it into the bucket and proceeded to do the same with other countries.
I was surprised, however, to see
that his next selections did not include the domino nations of Southeast
Asia. Rather, they were all Middle Eastern countries – Palestine,
Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Iraq,
Syria, and Iran.
After that he turned to Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
Each time, the Nixon doll screamed out some epithet before dropping the country
into his bucket, and in every instance, his vituperative words were
anti-Islamic: ‘Muslim dogs’, ‘Mohammed’s monsters,’ and Islamic devils [the
crowd became agitated] . . . Then Nixon said something that made my scalp tingle
when Rasy translated it
‘Give this one to the World Bank.
See what it can do to make us some money off Indonesia.’
He lifted Indonesia
from the map and moved to drop it into the bucket, but just at that moment
another puppet leaped out of the shadow. This puppet represented an Indonesian
man, dressed in batik shirt and khaki slacks, and he wore a sign with his name
clearly printed on it.
‘A popular Bandung
politician,’ Rasy explained.
This puppet literally flew between
Nixon and Bucket Man and held up his hand.
‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Indonesia
is sovereign.’
The crowd burst into applause. Then
Bucket Man lifted his flag and thrust it like a spear into the Indonesian, who
staggered and died a most dramatic death. The audience members booed, hooted,
screamed, and shook their fists. Nixon and Bucket Man stood there, looking out
at us. They bowed and left the stage.
‘I think I should go,’ I said to
Rasy.
He placed a hand protectively
around my shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘They have nothing against you personally’.
I wasn’t so sure.”
Afterwards they went to a
coffeehouse where Perkins received additional insights as to how the locals
really felt. When he told them that he wasn’t working for the World Bank but the
Asian Development Bank and the United States Agency for International
Development, he was confronted with “’ aren’t the really all the same?’” He was told that, they regard the world’s
countries “’just like a bunch of grapes. You can pick and choose. Keep England.
Eat China. And
throw away Indonesia.
After you’ve taken all of our oil’ another woman added.” Perkins tried his best
to defend our country but was told that Vietnam
is just “a stepping stone,” and that the real target was the Muslim world. When
Perkins protested that the US
is not anti-Islamic he was told that the “real war in the next century would
not be between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims.”
Since this seemed outlandish to Perkins he was informed that the Soviet
Union has no spiritual base and will collapse because of that
fact. The Muslims have their faith and that is why they will endure.
Furthermore, this wasn’t their idea in the first place but it had been
published decades earlier by Toynbee. When Perkins was stunned he was told that
he should read Civilization on Trial
and The World and the West.
Let us now remember that this took
place in one of Indonesia’s
provincial cities in 1971! Sukarno who had been named president for life in
1966, and was suspected of pro-Soviet leanings had been replaced in 1967 by
General Suharto who reoriented the country towards the West. The Time 2006 Almanac informs us that under
his rule “Indonesia’s
economy improved dramatically and national elections were permitted, although
the opposition was so tightly controlled as to virtually choke off dissent.” In
our announced quest for Freedom and Democracy we had bought ourselves a
dictator whose opponents had a limited life expectancy. The mentioned popular Bandung
politician who had stood up to Nixon in the puppet show was killed by a
hit-and-run-driver a few days after the performance.
As mentioned, Indonesia
was merely one example. Perkins did what was expected of him; wrote glowing
forecasts, got promoted and became wealthy. But he had a conscience which made
him feel guilty for enjoying his life style while ruining that of others. In
this connection one needs to know that even correct forecasts of GNP numbers
are misleading. They only show the average per capita income of a given country
rather than the median. When our policies make the rich richer and the poor
poorer this is still reflected in an increase of the GNP and we are not told
what the actual median income of a family in the less well developed countries
is after our blessings have been bestowed upon them. For the real facts one has
to consult specialized articles rather than rely on our mainstream media. Indonesia’s
economic miracle didn’t last very long. According to UN sources the median
monthly household income in Jakarta,
the capital, is $114 and in Bandung
$112 www.unchs.org/programmes/guo/guo_databases.asp
After Indonesia,
Perkins plied his trade in Panama
whose leader, in 1972, was General Omar Torrijos. The general was wise to the
ways of the EHM and told him bluntly that he did want MAIN’s
help but on his terms; no inflated costs! This was agreed to but when Torrijos
subsequently negotiated with President Carter the return of the Panama
Canal he became persona non grata in certain Washington
circles. Many of us remember the outcry against Carter in those days but we
didn’t know the Panamanian side of the story. We didn’t know that the Canal
Zone was a country within a country. Our people were exempt from
Panamanian laws and taxes and lived luxuriously in a self contained enclave,
which ordinary Panamanians were forbidden to enter. Furthermore, since our US
citizens had no particular regard for the locals, whose language they did not
speak, they were resented. An additional irritant was the “School of the Americas”
and the US
Southern command’s tropical warfare training center which were located in the Canal
Zone. These were facilities where Latin American presidents and
dictators were invited to send their sons and military leaders to in order to
learn “interrogation and covert operational skills.” These were to be the tools
to fight communism in their countries as well as to protect the oil companies
and other US private
assets.
Another source of aggravation was
the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). This is an evangelical missionary
group which works in various countries around the world with the officially
stated goal: to study, record and translate indigenous languages. As usual
there was more to it than meets the eye. The organization also worked in
collusion with the oil companies and other private US
enterprises. Wherever there was a high probability of oil to be found the
natives were “encouraged” to move onto missionary reservations where they would
receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment and missionary-style
education. This was, for instance, the fate of the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon
basin area. But not all Huaoranis were happy with this arrangement which
despoiled their land. Some fought back with their spears and the president of Ecuador,
Jaime Roldós, eventually expelled the organization in 1981.
But by that time Jimmy Carter had
been replaced by Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Nationalist and/or populist
governments were no longer tolerated in the fight against the Soviet
Union’s “evil empire,” which was portrayed as having its claws
everywhere around the globe. Roldós died in an airplane crash a few months
after the SIL expulsion. Under the aegis of his successor, Osvaldo Hurtado, the
SIL was allowed to return and business as usual continued. Roldós “accident”
happened on May 24 of 1981 and Panama’s
President Torrijos immediately realized that he was a marked man. He had
refused to renegotiate the Canal treaty, which had included the removal of the
School of the Americas
as well as closure of the tropical warfare center, and he had also expelled the
SIL. His fatal plane crash followed on July
31, 1981. He was replaced by Manuel Noriega our CIA man in Panama.
He lasted, however, only as long as he didn’t have ideas of his own and when
this was no longer the case George H W Bush invaded the country. This was a
great success but we have never been told the number of civilian casualties that
occurred, nor the amount of destruction that was inflicted. News reporters were
barred from the scene.
Perkins’ book, although somewhat
redundant with mea culpas, provides the details how the empire was built and
how its expansion proceeds. It should be read by everyone who cares about the
future of our country. He stated, “The global empire . . . is the republic’s
nemesis. It is self-centered, self-serving, greedy, and materialistic, a system
based on mercantilism. Like empires before, its arms open only to accumulate
resources, to grab everything in sight and stuff its insatiable maw. It will
use whatever means it deems necessary to help its rulers to gain more power and
riches.”
Before we discuss Perkins’
counterpart, Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis,
there is an additional element our economic prosperity is based on which
likewise has not received the attention it deserves. I vividly remember the
October 1992 three-way presidential debate where President Bush was
surreptiously looking at his wristwatch, apparently thinking, “how much longer
do I have to sit through this?” while Ross Perot forecast the “giant sucking
sound” that would accompany the movement of our industries to Mexico if the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were to be enacted. I did not
remember all the details but found them on the Internet and here is the
relevant Perot quote,
“Well, everybody's nibbling around
the edges. Let's go to the center of the bull's-eye, the core problem. And
believe me, everybody on the factory floor all over
this country knows it. You implement that NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement,
where they pay people a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no
pollution controls, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and you're going to hear a
giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country right at a time
when we need the tax base to pay the debt and pay down the interest on the debt
and get our house back in order http://www.debates.org/pages/trans92c.html.”
NAFTA was enacted in 1994 and Ross
Perot’s prediction came true with the growth of the Maquiladora industries. It
consists of factories which have sprung up mainly in Mexico but also in other
Latin American and some Asian countries which, according to Wikipedia, “import
materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly or
manufacturing and then re-exports the assembled product, usually back to the
originating country.”The people who
work in these factories conform to the picture Ross Perot has painted. They get
substandard wages for long hours, without the benefit of health insurance or
other social benefits. In addition, “NAFTA also made it illegal for nations to
pass laws that infringe on a corporation’s ability to make a profit, which
means that labor and environmental protections are eliminated. This lead to
high- paying, environmentally-regulated jobs in the United
States being converted into low-paying,
environmentally-unregulated jobs in Mexico,
and has been blamed in part for the rise of undocumented laborers crossing the Rio
Grande for jobs in the United
States.”
It has been reported that Mexico
has lost nearly 30% of its farm jobs since NAFTA went into effect and the
number of illegal immigrants has risen from 3.9 million in 1992 to 11.1 million
by March 2005. It has kept growing and we are now following the Israeli example
of building a wall to keep the Mexicans out, albeit on our side of the border
rather than theirs. The living and working conditions in the maquiladoras have
been documented in Maquilapolishttp://www.maquilapolis.com/project_eng.html.” The film tells the story of “.
. .a border city where it takes an hour
of drudgework inside a poisonous factory to earn enough to buy a jug of potable
water. Where it takes two hours to earn a gallon of milk.”
The film was shown in 2006 on PBS but is now relegated to obscurity. Corporate
greed has consequences and we may not be able to rig the next Mexican elections
in our favor the same way as has apparently happened last year.
Let us now look at Perkins’
counterpart, Chalmers Johnson. His appropriately titled book: Nemesis. The Last Days of the American
Republic is actually the final one of a trilogy. First came, The Sorrows of Empire and then Blowback. In Nemesis Chalmers Johnson documents the military aspect of
Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. The book details: the extent of the
global reach of our armed forces, the existence of a secret government which
holds itself unaccountable, the increasing use of covert activities as well as
the existence of huge ‘black budgets” which never show up in official
documents, and our quest for military domination of outer space.
He also points out that we no
longer manufacture much except weaponry. “We are without question the world’s
greatest producer and exporter of arms and munitions on the planet. Although we
are going deeply into debt doing so, each year we spend more on our armed
forces than all other nations on Earth combined. . . . We now station over half
a million troops U.S.
troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on more than 737 military
bases spread around the world . . . in more than 130 countries, many of them
presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in
the decision to let us in.’
These bases are disliked by the
locals because their governments have to sign a Status of Forces Agreement
(SOFA). While this sofa is very comfortable for us to recline on it is
frequently an unwelcome burden on the host country. As part of the agreement
the bases are extraterritorial, similar to the Canal Zone,
and our people are exempt from the laws of the host country. Since not all
members of our society, at home or abroad, are law abiding, conflicts are
unavoidable. The most common problems involve rape, which has created serious
anti-American bitterness among the populace, especially in South
Korea and Japan.
The local national governments are reduced to protests which fall on deaf ears
in Washington.
In the April 1, 2007 essay I had mentioned that Japan’s
Constitution allows for only a small self defense force. This is no longer in
the interest of the defenders of our empire, who see China
as a growing threat, and Japan
is now being pressured to become militaristic again. The country is supposed to
assume the role of our aircraft carrier in the Pacific which has been assigned
to the British in the Atlantic. This is another example
of how our mercantilism really works. One the one hand we feed China with
technology, reaping the financial benefits therefrom, and on the other hand we
arm Japan, likewise for money, because we know that sooner or later the Chinese
will come to the conclusion, “Asia for Asians,” and will not be happy with our
continued presence in that part of the world. Our politicians are either unable
or unwilling to grasp that the famous “staying the course” will no longer work
and that a complete reorganization of our national priorities is in order.
Since politicians react only to
public pressure it is incumbent upon us to demonstrate to the world that Americans
are not merely a bunch of greedy capitalists who want to subjugate the world
but that we have people with a conscience who see what is going on and want to
remedy the situation. It will not be easy but we have to put before the nation
the stark choice: either we live by the vision of the Founding Fathers of the
country who created a republic where government is responsible to its citizens,
or we let things slide the way they are. The first course would require a
change in national habits. Time spent on Television viewing of soap operas and
other entertainment would have to be replaced by reading relevant books and
other information that is available on the Internet. This is the first and most
fundamental step. A democracy cannot function without an educated citizenry.
Once we are informed about what goes on behind the scenes which are played out
on the public stage, we will demand accountability and if it is not forthcoming
the leadership needs to be changed.
If we fail to do so, continue in
the laissez faire policies, enjoy a spurious stock-market growth and close our
eyes to the inhumanity that is being perpetrated abroad in our name we must
accept some facts. Empires need an emperor, or at least a group of oligarchs.
These rulers are neither concerned about, nor responsive to, the wishes of the
citizens who have become their subjects. Furthermore, a large military is
required which makes the draft inevitable. This is what is bound to happen
because empires have to grow in order to perpetuate their existence.
If there are parallels in history the current
era does not reflect the 1920s and 1930s, as the neocons would like to make us
believe, but the era of 1900-1914.WWI
was fought for the economic resources of the world, as is the case now. Behind the
“Global War on Terror” is nothing else but the ruthless attempt to subjugate
the rest of the world, including outer space, to our desires. This is Hubris,
written in capital letters and bold print on our foreheads for the rest of the
world to see. Nemesis, daughter of the night and goddess of divine retribution,
will return and her visit will not be pleasant. Neocons relish the thought that
the current era is WWIII. As a member of the WWII generation I can only tell
them, “You don’t know what you are talking about. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Those of our children and grandchildren who
will survive the real WWIII will not have to worry about global warming because
nuclear winter will have replaced it.
Now is the time to stand up for
them and bring forth candidates for political office who
see clearly what is ahead. They will have to have the courage to renounce the
empire in favor of the republic and use the savings which accrue therefrom to
create a just society where its citizens will not have to go into bankruptcy
when illness strikes and where quality education is available to all who apply
themselves. This is the only way to a more peaceful world. Americans pride
themselves of being a “can do” people; so let’s do it!
May 10, 2007
IS ZIONISM MORAL?
As the
saying goes, “this is a loaded question!” The mere fact that it immediately
elicits a visceral reaction should give us pause and make us reflect. In the
current era of our “War on Terrorism” where our leadership drapes itself
constantly in the mantle of morality and where Zionism is one of the principal
bones of contentions, it behooves us to address this question forthrightly.
There exists so much misinformation on this topic that it is difficult to sift
facts from fancy and the topic is further complicated by the frequently used
cynical statement that, “there is no truth, but only opinion.” Nevertheless,
truth can be found if one applies oneself diligently to its pursuit, and as
mentioned on another occasion, its hallmark is that it stands the test of time.
If one can agree with what has been written decades, centuries or even
millennia earlier and still say yes to a given statement then it contains a
truth about mankind which should not be ignored.
Political Zionism, rather than
religious Zionism, has a history which is somewhat over a hundred years old and
in this essay I shall limit myself strictly to the political aspect because the
purely religious one, which remains in a person’s heart, is of no concern to
others. I have already discussed this topic in books and several articles so
one may ask what is the need for another one, and especially one with such a
provocative title? The reason is that I have recently come across an article on
the Internet entitled: The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs) – Ze’ev Jabotinsky
1923. It was the date, 1923, which makes it of utmost relevance because as
mentioned, if what was written decades ago is still correct we have met the
truth. The article was placed on the Internet by Likud,
Canada, and as such has
impeccable credentials (http://www.likud.ca/site_files/Articles/TheIronWall.htm).
In the early years of the Zionist
enterprise, immediately before and after the Balfour Declaration, which
committed the British government to establish “a national home for the Jewish
people in Palestine,” there were
two factions in Zionist circles as to how this should be accomplished. One was
what I have previously called the incrementalists under David Ben-Gurion and
the other the maximalists under Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. The goal, namely a
Jewish State which covered the entire area of the original Palestine Mandate on
both sides of the Jordan,
was identical.The only difference
between the two factions was that Ben Gurion had opted for gradual colonization
while Jabotinsky wanted immediate massive immigration.
In order to achieve a Jewish state,
which was camouflaged under the term of “national home,” Jews had to attract a
great number of settlers which in turn brought them into inevitable conflict
with the local Palestinian population. It needs to be remembered that in 1919
the King-Crane Commission, which has been referred to previously (The year of
the Middle East. January
1, 2007), estimated that Palestine
had a population of 647,500 of which 65,000 were Jews i.e. somewhat over 10% of
the total. The obvious question what to do with the indigenous population in a Palestine
that was all of a sudden to become as Jewish as “England
is English and France
is French,” was unavoidable.
Jabotinsky’s views, which are the
only ones we shall consider for now, had evolved over time as one of his
biographers Raphaella Bilski Ben-Hur has documented in Every Individual a King. Prior to the Balfour Declaration
Jabotinsky espoused the then prevailing European colonial attitude, which
regarded Arabs and others of non-European descent as inferior who needed to be
guided into Western civilization, while remaining under European tutelage,
presumably for ever. One way to do so was, as Bilski Ben-Hur wrote, through
Jewish schools which were springing up in Palestine
during the first decade of the 20th century. She quoted Jabotinsky
as writing,
“The children must become accustomed to the thought that
everything comes to them from the Jews: both physical and spiritual culture. .
. . In general, we must, methodically, win over the Arabs. . . . It seems to me
that the bad habit of acting boorishly towards the Arabs has developed among the
settlers. This must be strictly avoided. We must treat the Arabs with strength
and friendliness, without violence, without any injustice whatsoever; we must
impress them with our external and internal culture, because that is what
subdues wild people.”
This benevolent but patronizing
attitude could not succeed in the long run because the natives of even then
existing colonies had become restive as for instance in India.
In the wake of WWI Arab nationalism was also on the rise. Jewish immigration of
any size or magnitude was resented and armed clashes between settlers and the
indigenous population resulted. This led Jabotinsky to reappraise his views.
The 1923 article is a seminal document which deserves wide distribution because
it is unusually honest on the subject. His major point was: stop beating around
the bush; nobody will believe the fiction of a homeland because we want a state
with a solid Jewish majority where the Arabs are treated with dignity but
without political power. In order to get the flavor of Jabotinsky’s thoughts I
shall now excerpt the most relevant quotes and invite the reader to compare
them with the original to make sure that they are accurate. After having stated
that the then prevailing idea that he is an enemy of the Arabs is not true
Jabotinsky wrote,
“My emotional relationship to the Arabs is the same as it is
to all other peoples – polite indifference. My political relationship is
characterized by two principles. First: the expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine is absolutely impossible in any
form. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me,
provided the Jews become the majority. . . . Our credo is completely peaceful.
But it is absolutely another matter if it will be possible to achieve our
peaceful aims through peaceful means. This depends, not on our relationship
with the Arabs, but exclusively on the Arabs’ relationship to Zionism. . . .
That the Arabs of the Land of Israel should willingly come to an
agreement with us is beyond all hopes and dreams at present, and in the
foreseeable future. This inner conviction of mine I express so categorically
not because of any wish to dismay the moderate faction in the Zionist camp but,
on the contrary, because I wish to save them from such dismay. Apart from those
who have been virtually “blind” since childhood, all the other moderate
Zionists have long since understood that there is not even the slightest hope
of ever obtaining the agreement of the Arabs of the Land of Israel to
“Palestine” becoming a country with a Jewish majority. . . .
Any native
people – its all the same whether they are civilized or savage – views their
country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete
masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a
new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in
our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can
be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers
who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I
flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500
years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of
will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences. We can talk as much as
we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is
not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and
true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his
prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of
Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them
is infantile. . . . It is of no importance whether we quote Herzl or Herbert
Samuel to justify our activities. Colonization itself has its own explanation,
integral and inescapable, and understood by every Arab and every Jew with his
wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs
this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that
nature is impossible. . . .
Thus we
conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their
voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an
agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say
“no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted,
must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native
population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under
the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall
which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy
towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.
Not only must
this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour
Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested
power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local
population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts.
All of us,
without exception, are constantly demanding that this power strictly fulfill
its obligations. In this sense, there are no meaningful differences between our
“militarists” and our “vegetarians.” One prefers an iron wall of Jewish
bayonets, the other proposes an iron wall of British bayonets, the third
proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad’s
bayonets – a strange and somewhat risky taste’ but we all applaud, day and
night, the iron wall. We would destroy our cause if we proclaimed the necessity
of an agreement, and fill the minds of the Mandatory with the belief that we do
not need an iron wall, but rather endless talks. Such a proclamation can only
harm us. Therefore it is our sacred duty to expose such talk and prove that it
is a snare and a delusion.
Two brief
remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is
immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is
immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before
we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the
affirmative.
We hold that
Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just,
justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree
with it or not.
There is no
other morality.
The article
was first published in Russian on November
4, 1923 (Jabotinsky hailed from Odessa),
in English in the South African Jewish Herald on November 26, 1937 and “transcribed & revised by Lenni
Brenner” for the Internet. The revisions were apparently not substantive
because the text can also be found on other Internet sites. Let us now look at
the various points Jabotinsky made. An attitude of “polite indifference” could
be maintained when one lived mainly in the West, as Jabotinsky did with only
occasional prolonged visits to Palestine.
It was another matter for the Jewish settlers who were in daily contact with
their Arab neighbors. As every one knows some people get along with each other
while others do not and there were many points of friction, especially when one
side regarded itself as “cultural and spiritual” superior.
The main point that Palestinians
could not be bribed to voluntarily give up their land has been proven correct
but the assumption that they do not have “our endurance or our strength of
will,” has been proven wrong. In some way or another Palestinians were supposed
to have either disappeared or at least have willingly submitted to Jewish rule.
In spite of intense pressure from the Jewish state they have tenaciously clung
to their land regardless of expropriations and other daily chicaneries. The
fact that they will continue to do so into the foreseeable future is the
Zionists’ major problem and has now also become ours.
Jabotinsky was, furthermore, correct
in asserting that the Jewish state can only be maintained by military force.
This was supplied initially by the British Empire and
the task has now shifted to its heirs, the US.
Yet no state can exist indefinitely if it is not carried on the shoulders of
the people living in the country and its neighbors. Whether or not Zionists
like it, Jews have only a tenuous majority in the area under their control, a
point to which I shall return later. After the Suez
debacle in 1956 Ben-Gurion saw that he could not rely on European bayonets
anymore to keep his state from being overwhelmed by the neighbors and this is
why he started to develop his nuclear deterrent. It made sense at the time,
just like the Zionist idea initially, but times change and what seemed to be a
good idea at one point may turn into a disaster later.
Israeli politicians still act in
the manner that was so vigorously denounced by Jabotinsky: double talk! The
phrase “Israel
will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East,”
uttered again as recently as 3 months ago to my own ears, (Barack in Salt
Lake City. March
1, 2007) is just as duplicitous now as the phrase “national home,”
instead of state, was then. Jabotinsky would not have tolerated it. He would
have said, “Yes, we have the bomb; and not only the bomb but also sufficient
quantities of chemical and biologic weapons with the means of delivery to blow
all of you to smithereens, if you fuss with us.” But such straight talk is not
likely to be forthcoming from politicians on either side of the Atlantic
because speaking with “forked tongue” is part and parcel of the
“Judeo-Christian tradition.” The Native Americans learned this in the 18th
and 19th century and the Arabs in the 20th.
This brings us to the question of
morality which was raised in the headline of this article. Jabotinsky’s
assertion that “Zionism is moral and just” needs to be dispassionately
re-examined because wars are fought over it and people are dying. Even at the
time the statement was made it was self-serving because it would have been
vigorously denied by the Arabs. If something is “moral and just” for one side
only, the premise needs to be questioned. In order to do so we have to
categorically state one simple fact: Zionism is not Judaism! Not all Jews are
Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews! The equation of anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism is a propaganda tool and devoid of truth. There is one excellent
example for this statement: Iran.
Although the country’s current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is threatening
the Jewish state and is widely denounced as an anti-Semite he has nothing
against Jews per se if they behave as good citizens. As the Christian Science Monitor reported
recently (April, 27, 2007)
the Jewish minority in Iran
is not molested by the mullahs and can go about their business without onerous
restrictions. Muslims are supposed to treat the “People of the Book,” with
dignity as long as they do not raise their hand against fellow Muslims. It is
the Zionist state, which is the problem for Muslims, not individual Jews.
Having stated what Zionism is not,
it also needs to be clearly stated what it is: a political action program to
obtain as large a portion of historic Palestine
as possible for a Jewish state, regardless of the wishes of the locals or the
neighborhood! Remember what Jabotinsky said: Zionism is moral and just,
“regardless whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it.” This is
the crux of the problem! Morality, therefore, simply does not enter into the
picture. Politics have always been power politics where the stronger dictates
to the weaker. This is a brutal fact of human nature and this is how countries
as well as empires are built and maintained. The denial of this fact of life
leads to hypocritical moralizing, which is immediately recognized as such by
the adversary. Morality does not apply to a goal but depends upon the means
with which it is pursued. The means to the end are the relevant factor! If
these adhere to internationally recognized norms they will be applauded, if
they do not they will be condemned.
The tragedy of the Zionist
enterprise is that it not only came too late but it was not even supported by
the majority of the Jewish people. It was an attempt by a subgroup of Jews to
remedy a perceived need by creating a European colony at a time when
colonialism was breathing its last gasp. Herzl and his immediate followers
couldn’t have known that but it was apparent soon after WWI and especially
WWII. In order to justify the enterprise, when the original reason had outlived
its usefulness, subterfuge and myths have to be resorted to. Among these are
that the Balfour Declaration had promised all of Palestine
to the Jews and the British had no right to close Transjordan
to Jewish immigration. This is a deliberate misrepresentation as can readily be
verified by anyone who reads the Declaration and consults Article 25 of the
Mandate.
The ambiguity in the text “national home in Palestine” as
well as the qualifying phrases that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice
the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,
or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country,” was
not the work of gentiles but of British and American Jews who saw their
position in their respective countries threatened if they were to be all of a
sudden declared citizens of Palestine rather than the countries they were born
in or had migrated to. This fact is known to anyone who reads the history of
the Declaration but it is swept under the rug now. The fiction that all of Palestine
was promised to the Zionists is maintained even today as the map, reproduced
below shows.
The map depicts correctly the
British Mandate for Palestine
before Transjordan was split off in 1922 but it is wrong
to label it, “Eretz Israel.
The Jewish National Home,” because the area allotted to the “national home in Palestine”
had never been officially defined.
All human relations among
individuals as well as nations have to be based on trust, which in turn
requires honesty. Zionist propaganda, and the map reproduced above is just one
example, has been brilliantly successful by taking sentences out of context and
omitting qualifiers. But the Palestinians have come to know this technique and
now insist on clarity and seeing the fine print before signing final agreements.
In the essay on Barack in Salt Lake City
I have already shown why Arafat could not have signed the “most generous offer
ever.” Yet in spite of the fact that the documentation on which the article was
based is readily available to any literate person, Zionist propagandists
continue to blame Arafat and Palestinians for refusing an agreement which would
have left a dismembered and impotent Palestinian entity rather than a viable
state. In this connection it is of interest to remember what happened in 1937. The
British had appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the causes of
Palestinian unrest. It concluded that there was no hope of Arabs and Jews ever
living peacefully together in Palestine
and the only solution was a partition of the country into a Jewish and an Arab
state. The Arabs rejected it and so did the Jews. The book by
J.M. Machover, Jewish
State or Ghetto.Dangers of Palestine Partition. Royal Commission’s Proposal Examined,
provides the reasons. Partition was felt to be unworkable because complete
ethnic separation could not be achieved in the way the Commission had outlined
and in addition Britain
had kept zones involving the Holy Places for itself. Here is an excerpt from
Machover’s Summary and Conclusions.
“Palestine, as it exists now, is a small
country, and its prosperity is entirely the result of the great Jewish effort
on behalf of the Jewish National Home. The Jews are certain that if they are
given an opportunity, they will be able to develop the country economically to
such a degree that it would be able to support under good conditions a
population of several millions.
The ‘Jewish Area,’ which in all the circumstances, can
obviously be only a fraction of Palestine, divided into several fragments by
Corridors, cut off from Jerusalem and Haifa, from the two most important,
historical, administrative and economic centers in the country, will be so
seriously crippled economically and politically that it will hardly be able to
absorb any large number of Jewish settlers, and therefore the figure of two or
three million Jews in the Jewish State plus a couple of million Arabs, who
would probably by that time reside in the ‘Area,’ is as remote and fantastic as
the plan itself.”
Both sides were correct in
rejecting the plan because as the map shows (included in the book), the borders
were unrealistic. On the other hand we now have the equivalent of a plan that
Jews have categorically rejected for themselves in 1937, presented by them to
Palestinians. Americans who are in general not well versed in history do not
know these antecedents and can, therefore, readily fall prey to propaganda
about a “most generous offer,” to the Palestinians.Regardless of current lip service to the “Two
State Solution,” the Likud party (Jabotinsky’s successor) and others do not
want two states in Palestine but
only one with a Jewish majority.
But this brings up the second
problem Zionists close their eyes to because the reality is too painful to
perceive. They have failed to persuade the majority of the Jewish people to
move into the Jewish state once it had been established. The state of Israel
has a demographic problem it will not be able to solve by military means. With
the 1967 war Israel
has created for itself a situation which only statesmen rather than politicians
will be able to resolve. For all practical purposes Israel
has de facto annexed the West Bank, as the ancient lands
of Judea and Samaria,
and it is also exerting full control over the Gaza
economy in spite of the military withdrawal. Regardless how ill treated the
local Palestinian population is they have staying power and a Jewish majority
even in the truncated British Palestine Mandate, to the west of the Jordan
River, cannot be maintained for any length of time and may even no
longer exist. Exact figures of the current ethnic distribution in the area of
the British mandate west of the Jordan
are difficult to come by, because they vary depending on the source that is
being used. Jewish sources give significantly higher numbers for Jews and lower
ones for Palestinians while CIA figures,www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html,
show near parity. The projection for
July 2007 (made on April 17, 2007) gives a total population of 6.426,679 for Israel with the Jewish proportion of 76.4 per
cent. If one were to subtract the 23.6 per cent non-Jews one would end up with
4.910,002 Jews. When one adds the settlers in the West Bank the
Jewish total comes to 5.341,103 individuals. The estimated combined non-Jewish
population, including the Gaza strip, is 5.103,906 persons. There is no need to
quibble over exact numbers. The fact seems to be that the two populations are
near parity and it is known that Palestinian mothers have higher birth rates
than secular Jews. This will inevitably slant the ethnic distribution towards
non-Jews in the near future.
This brings me to the final point.
How much land do 5-6 million Jews really need for a
State of their own? The Zionist dream of the majority of the world’s Jews to
move to Palestine has not been
fulfilled and it is safe to say that it never will be. Throughout their history
Jews have always been a minority in Syrio-Palestine and there are no
indications that this is likely to change. To this fact we have to add that
Jews are an urban rather than rural people. At present 92 per cent of Israel’s
Jews live in urban communities.
It would, therefore be perfectly
feasible and rational to develop the Mediterranean coastal plain from the
Lebanon border to the Gaza strip into a flourishing Jewish megalopolis, while
leaving the hill country and the Jordan valley to the Palestinians. This would
give both ethnic groups contiguous borders once arrangements to connect the Gaza
strip to the West Bank are made and an outlet to the sea
would, thereby, exist for both states. A solution of this type would, in all
probability, be subscribed to by Palestinians as well as the other Arab states.
Formal peace treaties could be signed and the existence of the Jewish state within
these borders would be guaranteed by the UN. The money saved from military
expenditures could be turned, among other aspects, to desalination projects,
which would make the country independent of the need for water from the Sea
of Galilee and the Jordan.
Furthermore, since eighty per cent of the settlers are in the West
Bank because of cheap, subsidized housing they would have no
objections if similar facilities, at similar cost, could be provided for them
within the new borders. Those settlers who would not want to move would lose
their current privileged position but they could continue to live in the same
way as Jews live at present in other Muslim countries. Jerusalem
would need to be internationalized; taken out of the political equation and
become strictly a religious center for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Under
these circumstances the city would at long last be able to live up to its name:
city of peace and shed its bloody history.
This type of a solution would be
both moral and just but it is obviously too good to come to pass in my lifetime
because passion rather than reason rules the human mind and “he who has” is not
willing to part with it, even when it is demonstrably to his own detriment.
Nevertheless, it is a plan to work towards because the only alternative is ever
increasing violence. Fortunately there are some Jews in our country, as well as
Israel, who see
the injustice which is currently perpetrated in and by Israel
but these voices are stifled by very effective Zionist lobbying efforts. These
lobbyists are unaware that they are acting to the detriment of their own people
as well as the rest of us. Their demand for unconditional, unquestioned support
by our politicians of Israel’s
policies should give way to a more nuanced approach which takes international
law and the needs of the Palestinian people into account. This would be the
only way that could bring lasting peace.
As a final note I would like to
mention that this installment appeared earlier than usual because I shall be
spending the rest of the month in Europe, where I shall
also have an opportunity to ascertain how people in that part of the world
really feel about us and our policies.
June 8, 2007
VIEW FROM ABROAD
As mentioned in the previous
installment I spent most of the month of May in Europe.
The purpose of the trip was to attend a joint meeting of the German, Austrian
and Swiss sections of the International League against Epilepsy and present
some of our data at that conference. In addition, it provided the opportunity
to spend some time with colleagues in their laboratories and discuss areas of
mutual scientific interest. The official language of the conference was German
which also gave me the opportunity to immerse myself again not only in the
language but also the culture of the three named countries.
The first
stop was in Munich which could be
reached directly from Atlanta and
since the friend and his colleagues whom I intended to visit had his office in
a little town about 35 miles southwest of the city a taxi was called for. This
provided the first surprise; the cab driver was not Bavarian but hailed from Hanoi!
This unusual situation was a result of the now defunct German Democratic
Republic (DDR) which had attracted people from Communist societies and since
living conditions are still somewhat harsh in former East
Germany enterprising people gravitated to
wherever living was best. From all German provinces Bavaria
is tops and its neighbor Baden-Wuertemberg not far behind. The rest of Germany
still suffers from problems related to reunification.
Although
few people shed any tears over the demise of the DDR it did have some
advantages which may well become important in the near future. The biggest
loser of the two world wars was the German language and thereby the cultural
heritage enshrined therein. While English has the advantage of being easier to
learn it suffers from the fact that native languages have to be translated and
translations can never provide the flavor of the original. For instance: I have
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the original German and in an English translation.
There is a passage where the prophet comes down from the mountain into a little
town and the people are watching a high wire artist delicately traversing a
rope. This leads Zarathustra to muse,“Der Mensch ist ein Űbergang und ein
Untergang.” The translator, who shall remain unnamed, rendered the
phrase as, “Man is an over going and a down going.” This is the sort of
translation one finds nowadays generated by computers and is, of course,
nonsense. A better one might have been, “Man is a transition as well as
perdition.” Languages have nuances which at times simply defy adequate
translations.
This is
where the lack of education in the current leadership of our country becomes so
important and tragic. President Bush will never understand Putin and thereby
create a potential catastrophe which will be discussed later. On the other hand
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Putin can get along famously because
due to her upbringing in the DDR she is fluent in Russian and he, having been
stationed as KGB officer in the DDR is fluent in German. As such they don’t
need translators and as the German saying goes; “Also jetztlassenwirunseinmal
Deutsch miteinanderreden,”
which means that we will refrain from diplomatic double talk and present our
views as we really see them. So we may have to be grateful for the DDR after
all.
Since cab
drivers represent the genuine voice of the working people I always like to sit
next to them and have a discussion while we are going to wherever the
destination might be. With my Hanoi
counterpart I didn’t get very far because I was too hung over from the previous
day and subsequent night spent on planes and the eight hour time difference
didn’t help either. So I don’t remember much of our conversation but the next
one is vivid. It was from the train station in Basel
to the hotel which had been assigned to me by the Congress Bureau. As usual I
asked the driver what he thinks about America
and he immediately exploded with, “Die gehoerenjaalleumgebracht - they should all be done away with.”
This was a knee jerk type reflex and before I could say anything he corrected
himself by stating that he meant only the politicians because the people
themselves are good and he likes them. He was from Sarajevo
and deeply resented what had happened to his people. He felt that the war had
been instigated by America
because it wants only small countries which are powerless so that it can
dominate them. As he saw it there was no hatred between the various ethnic or
religious groups in Yugoslavia.
They all got along and intermarried; just as now after the war, Muslims and
Christians, Serbs and Bosnians visit with each other again without rancor.
Similar sentiments, although not as
vigorous, were expressed by another Bosnian cab driver on another occasion who
explained that after Tito’s death the new President tried to gradually ease the
country towards democratic reforms with concomitant improvements in the
economy. He said that although there were only few consumer goods in Yugoslavia,
its currency, the Dinar, was on a par with the Austrian Schilling and they
would go the few miles to the border where shopping centers had sprung up and
they bought themselves whatever they wanted. The American push for economic
globalization and the wars ended all this. Now Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as Serbiaare dirt poor again and the social safety net, which
had been one of the best in Europe, was also destroyed.
The Kosovo conflict which was supposed to have been solved by our Madeleine
Albright, first by bombing the Serbs and then NATO occupation, still simmers
and all hell is likely to break loose again in the near future. The constant
refrain from everybody I spoke to was, to put it colloquially, “keep your
cotton-picking fingers out of our affairs. You only make things worse because
you don’t know what you are doing.”
This
sentiment was also expressed later by an Iranian cab driver in Vienna
who was concerned about what we are thinking of doing with our bombs to his
relatives in his home country. He didn’t like the current regime there, but the
people can go to work without being blown up, they don’t get kidnapped and they
have gas for their cars as well as electricity. Yes, they can’t criticize the
government but why make a bad situation worse and the example we have set with Afghanistan
and Iraq, their
immediate neighbors, surely doesn’t deserve to be followed.
If one were
to get the impression that I disdain public transportation and rely exclusively
on cabs this would be in error because in the cities themselves i.e.Basel,
Zurich and Vienna
public transportation is excellent with an extensive network that gets you
everywhere in short order. Furthermore the Swiss as well as the Viennese have
remodeled their streetcars so that the elderly and handicapped no longer have
to make a giant first step up into the tram but it is now at street level. When
the cars are in motion the step either folds up or retracts. Furthermore, the
Swiss, and to some extent the people in Vienna’s
streetcars, are exceedingly polite and immediately jump up and offer their seat
to an older person. The reason for the difference is that in Basel
as well as in Zurich you mainly
meet the locals in streetcars while Vienna
is being overrun by other ethnic groups with different mores.
Another
noteworthy feature of streetcar travel in Basel
was that at each station there was a neon sign which told you the time at which
the tram that would take you to your destination would arrive. If it says for
instance 08:34 it will indeed be 08:34 rather than 08:35
or 08:33. Swiss punctuality can be
expected not only from trains but also within their cities. Vienna
has tried to emulate this system to some extent but Gemütlichkeit interferes because who wants to be run by a clock!
In Basel
I had been assigned to the Hotel Krafft which faces the RhineRiver and has a proud tradition of
which I had been unaware. All hotels offer spiritual sustenance to the weary traveler
usually in form of a Bible but Hotel Krafft was a notable exception. It
featured a bound copy of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. This unexpected anomaly
was due to the fact that Hesse’s girl friend, whom he later made into an honest woman by marrying her for
all of three years, lived there and he had written part of Steppenwolf at the
Krafft. By the way, the Bavarians as well as the Swiss and Austrians have no
use for the entire Bible and instead present you with the New Testament in
German, French and English. I appreciated this feature because, as mentioned
above, each language differs in the translation of the same material and I was surprised
that the German version used considerably harsher expressions in some instances
than the French or English. I shall discuss this aspect in a separate issue.
The
Congress was very well attended, and my presentation of the data, which are
currently rejected by the scientific powers in the U.S.
because they go against the grain of the establishment, was well received.
Furthermore, several important contacts with younger European co-workers, who
can carry on after my demise, were established. People who are not actively
involved in scientific research tend to have the opinion that scientists are
free from original sin and live in the rarified world of truth. This is far
from being the case and in this area of human endeavor politics also rules the
roost. One gets ahead by being a good boy, engaging in back slapping, and
conforming to current scientific dogma. When one fails to do that and tries to
chart one’s own course one can expect grief. Inasmuch as Science with a capital
S is the new god this aspect will also be more extensively covered in a separate
essay. Suffice it now to say, that none of the great scientific medical
breakthroughs of the 19th and 20th century could have
occurred under current regulations.
From Basel
I went to Zurich to work for a day
in the lab of one of my friends before going on to Vienna.
But since the Congress ended on Saturday I had the Sunday to myself in Zurich
and used the time for a cruise on the lake which can be highly recommended. It
was wonderful to see all the little towns where the highest man made structure
is the church steeple and where people congregate outdoors in lakeside
restaurants, a feature which is typical for Europe and
sadly lacking in the U.S.
There was one ominous feature, however, it was middle of May and there was hardly
any snow on the mountains. Another item of interest was the Sunday newspaper. Politics
and the arts from all over the world were extensively covered and the sports
section featured an article headlined, “Der
RussederfürUtahzukreativist. Andrei Kirilenko, dervielseitige NBA-Europäer, hat esbeimHalbfinalistenschwer – The Russian who is too creative for Utah,
Andrei Kirilenko, the many faceted European, finds himself in difficulties in
the semifinals.” The article on the Utah Jazz, our main claim to fame, apart
from Mormon missionaries, was well written and again highlighted the difference
which exists between our two continents. Europe admires
individual creativity while America
insists on team play. The latter involves all areas of life from politics,
through science to sports and obviously religion. The fact that individual
creativity could also help the team has not yet properly sunk in here.
Instead of
flying from Zurich to Vienna
I took the train, which is the only civilized way to travel nowadays. European
trains are comfortable, not particularly expensive, and you can enjoy the
country side that passes by your window. But if you prefer to work on your
laptop you can do so without running the battery down because electric outlets
are provided for every seat. It’s an
eight hour trip and you essentially spend the day sightseeing and having a good
meal in the dining car. I had brought a book along but didn’t need it because
the scenery is so pretty that in watching it time flies by. It is a trip into
the past as well as the future. One still sees cows grazing contentedly,
looking for the choicest greenery, or just lying down chewing the cud instead
of being locked into tiny cubicles where they are automatically milked and fed
with God knows what while waiting to be slaughtered. The train heads east and
since Switzerland
is not part of the EU there is a border control when you enter Austria
but looking out the window there’s no difference. As long as you are in
Vorarlberg and Tirol the mountains are the same, so are
the cows and the church steeples also have their needle like characteristic.
This changes when one gets to Salzburg
and beyond where the mountains become hills and the onion dome steeples take
over. Usually it’s just one onion, sometimes two and on the return trip from Vienna
to Munich I saw one in Bavaria
which outdid all its rivals by having four. But again there was evidence of
climate change. The glaciers were practically gone and white snow has been
replaced by grey moraine. Further harbingers of the future were high rises in
the bigger cities as can be seen anywhere in the world lacking indigenous
culture. On the other hand the fortress Hohensalzburg, which can be seen from
the train has been rejuvenated and is now gleaming white.
I arrived
in Vienna one day before Czar
Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Putin, as he was referred to in the Vienna
papers, and the day thereafter Bill Clinton as well as Sharon Stone came to
town. Photographers had been instructed to avoid taking any pictures of Bill
and Sharon together but, it’s obvious that they couldn’t resist and a montage
appeared which showed the film star in the center, a somewhat smiley Putin to
her right and a rather animated Bill to her left.While Bill Clinton came to pick up a $1
million check for whatever purpose, Putin came accompanied by three of his
billionaire oligarchs to do business. The talks went well beyond local
expectations; oil and gas were to continue to arrive for the next 15 years and
the newspapers talked about the Geldregen – rain of money - that had resulted from the
visit. But something more important for the long run than money had also
happened. Plans were formulated to extend the wide track Russian railroad
system via Bratislava to the doors
of Vienna. This means Vienna would
reassume its old role as gateway to the East and Western goods could be
directly transported all the way to Vladivostok if need be.
Let us now compare this with what
Bush intends to bring to Europe this week. The Czechs
are supposed to get radar installations and the Poles a missile defense shield
against a threat which obviously doesn’t exist. Putin was right when he said it
would be laughable if it were not so tragic. The Bush administration is
accusing Putin of Cold War rhetoric and seems to be oblivious to the fact that
is they who started this ill begotten scheme of putting missiles on his
doorstep. Let us also not forget that it was the Kennedy administration which
had provoked Khrushchev in 1962 by putting our missiles into Turkey
before he put his into Cuba.
While our press reported at the time that “Khrushchev blinked” it failed to
mention that the resolution of the missile crisis was a tit for tat. The
Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba
and we removed ours from Turkey.
But the current situation is even worse not only is an Iranian nuclear threat
to Europe a figment of the imagination of our neocons but the fabulous missile
defense shield doesn’t even work, and won’t work for decades if ever!
The Viennese are fun loving people
and they used the Putin-Clinton visit to crack jokes. Below is a translation of
an article that appeared in the magazine profil on May 21 by Rainer Nikowitz, (rainer.nikowitz@profil.at)
RUSSIAN DEFENSE
Wladimir Putin and
Bill Clinton are in Vienna this
week –
For a fireside chat
like this one there will probably not be enough time.
Clinton:
First of all I want to make it absolutely clear that I did not have sexual
relations with that woman.
Profil: I’m happy
to hear that, but which woman are you talking about?
Putin: Probably
his own.
Clinton:
First of all this is outrageous and second how d’you know this?
Putin: One learns
a lot at the KGB
Profil: As long
as we have such two important persons in regard to world politics in Vienna
then …
Putin: Who is the
second one?
Clinton:
Now listen, if you insist on insulting me I’d rather play a round of golf with
Don Rumsfeld.
Putin: But it’s
correct anyway; you’re only a pensioner.
Clinton:
Well you too by next year.
Putin: Yes my
secretary – with the support from my cook and my dog – will carry on with the
business of governing Russia,
of course, without any interference by myself.
Clinton:
And my wife will be president in America.
Putin: Right; she
did that already while you were president.
Profil: I’m not
sure but do I feel a certain degree of hostility here?
Clinton:
Wow, this guy is good.
Putin: Have you
been with the KGB too?
Profil: Currently
there is considerable bad blood between your two countries because of the
planned missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.
Condoleezza Rice …
Clinton:
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Putin: Hmm; too
bad.
Clinton:
Well, the figure is ok, but wrong party.
Profil:
Condoleezza Rice regards the Russian policy in this regard, and I am using her
word now, “ridiculous.” What is your opinion?
Putin: She really
doesn’t have such a phenomenal figure.
Clinton:
Well when she’s right she’s right.
Putin: The last
one who called me ridiculous is making brooms in Siberia
right now which will be sent free of charge to the suffering people in Chechnya.
Profil: Brooms?
Putin: Brooms!
Next year they get cuckoo clocks. The world should see that we have genuinely
warm feelings for Chechnya
and all the accusations which are leveled against us are nothing but Western
horror propaganda.
Clinton:
Well, I don’t know . . . I’ve always had more fun with Boris Jelzin than with
this guy, at least as long as the vodka lasted.
Putin: With all
the natural gas which you are not going to get from us any more, you could have
added another degree to the world’s temperature. So, now the Chinese will get
it.
Profil: Are you
really heading for another Cold War? Angela Merkel says …
Clinton:
I did not have sex . . .
Putin: Me
neither.
Clinton:
Gerhard Schroeder was probably more your type or?
Putin: Iran
will certainly be very happy with the excellent Russian atomic technology.
Clinton:
I thought that went down the drain with that submarine.
Putin: You are
really no different from Bush. You could have saved yourself the elections.
Clinton:
That’s actually a very common thought in your country. When you had the chess
world Champion Kasparov, arrested at a demonstration was that the well known
“Russian defense?”
Putin: Do you
want me to show you what a Russian defense looks like? I have a black belt.
Profil:
Gentlemen, we don’t want to …
Putin: Oh yes!
Clinton: By all
means.
Putin: I won’t
have this oral fixated hashish smoker, who has the same job as that awful
Gorbachow; explain to me how I should run my job.
Clinton:
Might actually be good for you since you’re so uptight.
Putin: What?
Clinton:
In case of doubt try both.
Profil: Let’s
return to the actual problem of the missile defense shield. If you were still
president Mr. Clinton – would you go ahead with it?
Clinton:
Well, you know that George Bush is no special friend of mine, but in this
situation where I see how it annoys Mr. Putin, certainly!
Putin: So you
would likewise have marched into Iraq.
You Americans are obviously all alike. Nothing but John
Wayne’s.
Clinton:
And you Russians? Nothing but Boris Karloff’s
Profil: But he
wasn’t Russian at all.
Clinton:
Aha, so you take his side too.
Putin: Oh I think
he just wants to be able heat his house next winter.
Profil:
Gentlemen; I thank you for this interview. But I have to admit that I have
never had one like this before.
Putin: That’s
what the KGB said too.
Jokes aside,
the matter is serious and our president is probably going to get an earful this
week from the Europeans at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm. Whether or not he is
capable of absorbing the truth of what he will be told is another matter. But
let us get back to personal experiences in Vienna.
As documented in these pages I visited there for the last time three years
earlier and the main change that has taken place in the meantime was the
appearance of the people. There were a great many more Muslim head scarves as
well as black faces. People from the Balkans and Turkey
as well as sub-Saharan Africa are finding refuge in Austria’s
prosperity. This creates, however, serious social problems, not only for
welfare agencies but also the school system. There are already some grammar
schools in certain Viennese districts where 96 per cent of all children do not
have German as their native language. As a teacher, who himself
came from Turkey,
explained to the Kurier reporter: the
problem is the parents. The children have to learn German in school and are
willing to do so but the parents do not and at home only the native language is
spoken. The problem is compounded by religion because as Mr. Pero (the teacher)
delicately put it, “Islam does not particularly encourage integration and many
children spend their afternoons in nearby clubs or mosques.” His solution is a
school for parents where they are taught the language and how one acts in a
democracy such as Austria.
This problem pertains, of course, not only to Austria but the EU at large and
while Congress is debating here what to do about illegal immigration including
building a wall for sections of the Mexican border, the Mexicans have at least
the same religion, which is not the case for the massive Muslim entry into
Europe.
The weekend
was Pentecost which is taken very seriously, albeit not in the religious sense.
It’s a long weekend which included the Monday and actually coincided with our
Memorial Day, but in contrast to here everything shuts down except for a few
emergency pharmacies, restaurants and entertainment venues. Most everybody who
could, left town and the papers reported the usual spate of accidents but remarkably
enough not on the Autobahnen where
when you travel only at the speed of 160 km (about 100 mph), you are being
passed by cars cruising at 200 km (about 134 mph), but on the way to them. I
used the Sunday to go to one of my favorite swimming areas at the Danube,
the Klosterneuburger Strandbad, and
didn’t recognize it any more. It was completely renovated with separate
swimming pools for adults and kiddies added as well as a restaurant. But one
could also still head for a branch of the Danube and
after swimming across one could get to the Danube
proper. On Monday I had intended to go via hydrofoil to Bratislava
but it was sold out so I made do with a trip down the Danube
to Hainburg, the Austrian border town, and an excursion to the newly renovated
hunting lodge of Prince Eugene.
Every
Austrian schoolboy learns the song of “PrinzEugeniusderedle
Ritter” which celebrated his victories over the Turks in the 18th
century and brought city and fortress of Belgrade
back into the hands of the emperor. He became immensely rich and since his
passion was the hunt he needed a hunting lodge which grew into a palace called Hof. After his death it was bought by
Empress Maria Theresia and remained in the possession of the imperial family until
the end of the monarchy, when it became property of the Republic. But since
there was no money for the upkeep it was allowed to decay until 2002 when the
necessary funds for complete renovation became available. The buildings of the
palace complex, their support facilities and furnishings have been completely
restored to their original glamour and one can now get a glimpse of how
aristocracy lived more than 250 years ago. The park and gardens have also been
restored in part but this aspect is still a work in progress. Here again is the
fundamental difference between Europe and America.
Europeans are proud of their heritage, take care of it with whatever means at
their disposal and try to pass it on to future generations. Although we have
some historical sites in this country which are being preserved, the spirit
that, “new is better,” which dominates here, contrasts with the reverence for
the past one finds in Europe.
This difference is in part due to,
what one may call the insularity of America.
Our educational system concentrates its efforts on this country to the
exclusion of the rest of the world. Under these circumstances it should not be
surprising that when the Baghdad
museum, which harbored artifacts from the beginning of human civilization, was
plundered the only response from our Donald Rumsfeld was, “Stuff happens” and
“Freedom is messy.” As a technocrat he may not even have known that there was
such a museum and the excuse that we didn’t have enough troops is not valid. He
had tanks to guard the oil ministry and one of them would have been sufficient
to protect the museum. Actions like these are interpreted by the world what America
really stands for. They are not due to ill will but simply reflect profound
ignorance.
On the way home from Munich
to Atlanta I read the Stern which is the German equivalent of
the long defunct Lifeor Look.
The title page showed on top a picture of the Baltic Seaside resort of
Heiligendamm behind a barbed wire fence and below the sumptuous suites of the
hotel, where the G8 meetings are being held this week. The inscription was: DasistderGipfel. Hinter demZaun von Heiligendamm.
This is another example for the inadequacy of translations. By someone who is
not steeped in the German culture the sentences would probably be translated
as, “This is the summit. Behind the fence of Heiligendamm.”
It would be literally correct but completely miss the point because the word Gipfel in this
context also means, “this is the height of folly, or extravagance.” The article
points out that these meetings are extraordinarily expensive, serve mainly
propaganda purposes, require inordinate security measures and for the “leaders
of the free world” to meet behind barbed wire sends exactly the opposite signal
to the world than what is supposed to be conveyed. The Heiligendamm meeting is
not likely to produce anything but platitudes because the differences between
Bush and the rest of the group in regard to missile defense shield and global
climate change are just too profound to be effectively bridged at this time.
To summarize: what I found in the
countries I visited was a deep distrust of current American policies. While the
people are grateful for what America has done for them and their parents in the
past they have moved on from war and disasters and now want to use their
resources on the improvement of the quality of life rather than becoming a
staging ground for new military adventures. Let America
solve its problems at home and let us solve ours here, was the constant refrain
from high and low. Furthermore, “Yes, we want and need to work with America
but it has to be on the principle of equality where our voices carry the same
weight as yours.”This would be good
advice if it were heeded in Washington
and so would be the statement by one of my Egyptian taxi drivers in Vienna
which applies to all of us. When I asked him how he was doing economically he
said “fine” and then added, “One shouldn’t chase after money, because it gets
frightened and runs away.”
July 1, 2007
SAVING THE BUSH LEGACY
It is no secret that
America’s
foreign policy has been an unmitigated failure during the Bush administration.
The tragedy of the current situation is that the president still seems to be oblivious
to this fact and even seems to believe that like President Truman his actions
will be vindicated by history. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be the case
if he stays on his present course. Truman knew the limits of military might and
this is why he dismissed General McArthur when the latter proposed to “nuke” China.
When I came
to this country in the summer of 1950 I encountered the anomalous situation
where the Austrian visitor had to defend the American president against his own
countrymen. For us Europeans he was a hero. He had kept Greece
from falling into the hands of the communists, had instituted the Berlin
airlift and had enacted the Marshall
plan which started the European economic recovery. Americans saw him
differently; for them he was simply a haberdasher who would never have become
president had Roosevelt, not picked him for the vice
presidency and died soon thereafter. When Truman fired McArthur he was
viciously attacked in the press and one cartoon which read, “Who does Harry think
he is? The President?” summed it up.
The differences between Harry
Truman and George Bush are that Truman had to work himself up from humble
beginnings, was always a man of the people, and having been in war himself had
a healthy dislike for it. George Bush is the opposite. For him the words of the
former governor of Texas, Ann
Richardson, about his father are even more correct, “poor George, he was born
with a silver foot in his mouth.” George jr. was not interested in military
service; his National Guard attendance was spotty; he failed in all civilian
enterprises; was always bailed out by his father’s connections; frittered away
the first 40 years of his life and then after a religious conversion stopped
abusing alcohol and decided to become a politician. With his father’s
connections and the unscrupulous shenanigans of Karl Rove he managed to first
become governor of Texas and then
president. Thus, not only are the careers of Truman and Bush polar opposites
but also their insights into the minds of men. While Truman was able to grow
into the office fate had thrust him into there is as yet no evidence that
President Bush has been able to do so. This is why he entirely relied on the
savvy Dick Cheney who apparently appointed himself vice president and thereby
de facto president.
There is some talk in the media of
impeaching the president but this is not realistic. One would first have to get
rid of Cheney which takes time and even if this maneuver succeeded the
Democrats simply don’t have enough votes in the Senate to remove the president
from office. At this time it is, therefore, very likely that we are stuck with
George W. Bush for another 18 months which is not a happy prospect for these
turbulent times we live in. It seems that he now has three options: 1) he can
let the clock run out and hand the disaster over to his successor; 2) initiate
military action in Iran which will lead to further tragedies; or 3) set the
country on a new course. Judging from his character, as revealed during the
years of his presidency, he is likely to choose option number 1 or 2. Either
one will only make matters worse. In regard to the first one it needs to be
recognized that world events don’t wait for American elections. There is an
avalanche in progress and steps need to be taken to limit its impact. The
second option can only bring more harm to the people of the Middle
East and does not have the slightest chance to bring stability,
let alone peace, to the area.
The only hope for some improvement
in the present situation would be a course change. If the president were a
sailor, which John Kennedy was and therefore knew danger when saw it during the
Cuban missile crisis, he would realize that he is heading for a rocky lee shore
and would immediately go on the opposite tack. This is what reason demands. To
live by reason, which we have a right to expect from our president, he would
have to discard bias and prejudice and talk not only to “a higher father” but
listen to knowledgeable people on planet earth. The media told us that the
president regards himself as “a born again” Christian. If this were to be the
case we have not seen any evidence for it in his actual conduct. The hallmark
of Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount which enjoins us not only to love
our neighbors but also those who hate us. Loving one’s enemy, as I have pointed
out in a previous essay (Love your enemy. January 1, 2005) goes beyond human ability but the Greek
word “agapate” which has been
translated as “to love” has a wider meaning and encompasses esteem. This is a
fundamental difference. While love is an emotion which cannot be commanded,
esteem is an intellectual process one can engage in. With other words by not
immediately returning hate for hate on an emotional reflex type basis, we can
sit back and try to find out why our adversary hates us. To use Jesus’ words it
is about: removing the beam in our own eye before removing the speck from our
brother’s eye.
For the true Christian hate should
have no place in private or public life. The word “enemy” should likewise be
banished when one refers to leaders of other countries. It is true that some
people are our adversaries and opponents who want to harm us but that does not
mean that we have to respond in a similar manner. As rational human beings we ought
to base our conduct on an accurate assessment of the needs and goals of our
adversaries who should be seen as they see themselves rather than what the
media and other parties portray them as. This has very practical consequences
because it does away with propaganda and provides first hand information.
Let me demonstrate this by
reference to our judicial system. If you were to be accused of an unlawful act
would you trust a defense attorney whose only information comes from the media
or witnesses? Wouldn’t you rather insist on talking to him in person and
explain your case? I believe the answer is obvious, yet in the most important
aspect of human life, the question of war and peace which affects hundreds of
thousands if not millions, decisions are taken so to
say by remote control. The adversary is declared as evil, an enemy of humanity,
and has to be done away with. The good and evil dichotomy, which is the
hallmark of the Bush administration, has led us into the terrible dilemma we
are currently facing especially in the Middle East. Let
us not forget that “ye shall be as gods; knowing good and evil [King James
version, Gen 3:5] ,” was a ploy by Satan, the original
adversary, which appealed to our ancestors pride. When this is recognized in
its full implications the wisdom of the Buddha becomes even clearer. He was not
concerned with good and evil but insisted that all human problems result from
ignorance. This distinction is vital. We cannot change the character of another
human being but we can educate ourselves about how the other person thinks and
freed from prejudice we can then deal rationally with a given problem we are
confronted with.
This brings us to the only way how
President Bush might yet save his legacy and spare the world further disasters.
On July 1 and 2 he is supposed to meet with President Putin at Kennebunkport
in Maine which is an excellent
idea. Putin will undoubtedly explain to him why the intended missile defense
shield in Eastern Europe is a serious mistake. It cannot
fulfill the officially stated purpose of defending Europe
from Iranian missiles because a) Why would Iran
send missiles into Europe? Since there is no purpose it
will not do so; and b) the current system doesn’t even work properly. If we
look behind the scenes, as the Russians have surely done, we will come to the
conclusion that the perceived danger is not to Europe
but to Israel,
and that there is an additional military-political motive to tie Poland
and the Czech Republic
even closer to the U.S.
than they already are. From Russia’s
point of view this missile defense shield is just another example of American
imperialism on their doorstep which they cannot accept without taking some
countermeasures. The Russia
of 2007 is no longer that of the early 1990s and the sooner our media and
politicians accept this fact the better off we will be. Putin will not arrive hat in hand at Kennebunkport;
he will want to be treated as an equal and deserves to be so.
The Kennebunkport
meeting will be crucial. If President Bush desists from the missile defense
shield the world can breathe a sigh of relief. He would not have to announce it
publicly, just put it on the back burner and hand the decision eventually to
Congress where it would find a well deserved demise. If, and this is a big if,
our president were able not only to listen to President Putin but show that he
can understand another country’s legitimate concerns, a major step in bringing
sanity to our foreign policy would have been taken.
The fact that they are meeting at
all at Kennebunkport rather than in
Crawford’s heat tells us something else. George W may have started to listen to
his earthly father because the latter had during his presidency frequently
invited world leaders to his home where they would informally discuss major
outstanding issues. President Putin’s visit could, therefore, become an
important precedent for our current president. Instead of spending the summer
in Crawford he should use it to get a first hand personal education from world
leaders in the Kennebunkport family
compound. But in order for these meetings to be fruitful they should include
people he intensely dislikes. President Bush should set bias aside and muster
the personal courage to invite thereafter Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of
Iran to Maine.
I realize that this sound preposterous but George W needs first hand unfiltered
information in regard to Ahmadinejad’s opinions and how he proposes to defuse
the current dangerous situation. He had written a personal letter to our
president last year, which was received with ridicule and has remained
unanswered. The situation has gotten worse in the meantime. Iran
is a key player in the region and its Prime Minister does not deserve ridicule
but serious attention. If we are too haughty to do so we are likely to pay a
heavy price in the future. By swallowing his pride and talking directly to the
Iranian Prime Minister as an equal, rather than a client, our president would
for the first time show statesman-like qualities.
The next visitor should be the
President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. He is an educated person, trained as a
physician, and has no interest in getting his country into a war. All he seems
to want is keeping his job, stability in the region, and the status quo of June 5, 1967. This means Israel’s
return to Syria
of the Golan Heights and parts of the eastern shoreline
of Lake Tiberias. Neither he nor his father ever wanted
anything else. This is not an outlandish demand but anchored in Security
Council Resolution 242, which required of Israel
to withdraw from territories it had conquered in the Six-Day War.
Although we don’t like the
governing style of any of the three mentioned individuals they are responsible
to their people rather than our government or citizenry. None of the mentioned
countries are Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union where
popular dissent was out of the question. Putin has a genuinely high approval
rating in his country and the Iranians as well as Syrians are not sufficiently
cowed by their leadership that they could not get rid of it. In Iran they were
able to depose the Shah against our will and are capable of removing the
mullahs without our help if they so wanted to The intense desire for regime
change in various countries which permeates the Bush administration needs to be
abandoned because as our efforts in Iraq and Palestine show it has the
likelihood to achieve the opposite of what was intended.
From all of the three mentioned
individuals our president is also likely to get an earful about Israel
and its unequal treatment of Arabs versus Jews in Israel
proper and its repressive policies towards the natives in the West
Bank and Gaza. It is
essential that President Bush listens and takes their suggestions to heart
because he is likely to learn aspects of the Palestinian problem which he is
unaware of. Americans who read only popular US publications and watch only
American TV programs have a very one-sided picture of what really goes on in
that part of the world. To appreciate the complexity of the problem one needs
to go to the Internet and pull up www.ynetnews.com
, the Israeli equivalent of CNN, as well as the English edition of al-Jazeera.
Contrary to expectations, the latter does not spew hate and the former provides
authentic views from Israelis which differ considerably at times from what the
American Jewish leadership presents us with. As mentioned in the June 8
installment, I was in Europe last month and even European CNN brings a much
more global picture than what we are treated to here. President Bush should,
therefore, personally talk to not only Prime Minister Olmert,
and Prime Ministers in waiting Barack and Netanyahu but people like retired
Brigadier General Shaul Arieli. He had commanded the Israeli army in Gaza
prior to its withdrawal in 2006 and has a realistic view of the situation.
The current policy of attempting to
isolate and destroy Hamas in Gaza
while providing money and token prisoner releases (250 out of 10,000) to
Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah section in the West Bank is
bound to be another serious mistake. Hamas has the support of a major segment
of the population in Gaza and Fatah
has been routed. Even in regard to Fatah versus Hamas the good and evil
dichotomy is inappropriate. As a recent report from the German news magazine
Spiegel online on June 21, 2007
noted, Fatah had its own torture chambers in Gaza
which were opened to public inspection after the Hamas victory. We don’t get
this information here and we also don’t see the pictures of Gaza’s
people on the beach finally enjoying a measure of temporary peace and quiet in
the same issue (Gaza-Streifen:
So schoen istHamastan). The emphasis is on temporary because Israeli
planes and tanks are again creating havoc.
All available reports show that
Fatah is corrupt and this is part of the reason why it lost the election in
2006. Furthermore, Abbas has been unable to obtain meaningful concessions from
the Israelis during his entire tenure and this is why the people voted for
change. Israel,
the US and the
EU then punished the Palestinians with severe economic sanctions because free
and fair elections are apparently allowed only for the purpose of keeping “our
people” in power. Since Hamas is regarded by the locals as more honest they
wanted to see what it could accomplish to ameliorate the intolerable burdens Israel
places on their daily lives. If the situation would have gotten worse under a
coalition government they could have voted them out again. This is how
democracies are supposed to work. The fact that the Bush administration did not
allow this democratic process to succeed because Hamas has been labeled a
terrorist organization made it clear to the Muslim world that all our talk
about promoting freedom and democracy is merely rhetoric.
Our policy of conflating genuine
national liberation movements such as Hamas in Palestine
and Hezballah in Lebanon
with organizations such as Al-Qaeda is at the root of our failed policies and
unless this differentiation is made no peace is possible. The Spiegel Onlinepublished on June 22nd an
interview with Mahmoud Zahar, a founder of Hamas and one of its most militant
hardliners. It is in English and deserves to be read. To the question of
whether or not Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in Gaza?
He replied,
“Of course.
We want to do that, but with full support of the people. At the moment we can’t
establish an Islamic state because we Palestinians have no state. As long as we
don’t have a state, we will try to form an Islamic society.”
To the question what this would
look like Zahar replied,
“There would be no difference from
how it looks today, because our customs and traditions in Gaza
are already Islamic. Marriage, divorce, daily business – everything is Islamic.
As soon as we have a state, then everyone will have their freedom. Christians
will remain Christians, parties could be secular or
even Communist.”
In regard to the future
relationship with Israel
he said,
“We are ready to speak with everyone
about everything. Of course we have to speak with the Israelis, de facto, for example over trade. We
also have to speak with them about cross-border issues, like the movement of
severely ill patients and protection from bird flu and how we can avoid
environmental catastrophes. We won’t discuss politics, because the Israelis
have no political agenda with us. The political agenda of Condoleezza Rice and
Ehud Olmert with President Mahmoud Abbas consists of trading kisses every two
weeks – but with empty hands. We will only talk about essential things.”
As to the perceived danger “that
the Gaza strip may become a
playground for international terrorism,”
“Our people can’t distinguish
between resistance and terrorism. We’re fighting for the liberation of our land
from an occupation. When people in Europe had to fight
the Nazis, they were honored, later, as freedom fighters. No one would have
called Charles de Gaulle a terrorist.”
This goes to the heart of the
question and Zahar might have included as ex-terrorists the former Israeli
Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. The widening tragedy of the
Palestinian people highlights again the fact that US
policy is not neutral in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but heavily biased
toward the Israeli side. This is known in the Arab world and has literally
fatal consequences. The Palestinian unity government which was first
established after the 2006 elections was deliberately sabotaged by our Deputy
National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, Elliot Abrams. He
operates out of the vice president’s office, and is not only a confirmed
neoconservative who was co-responsible for the Iraq
invasion, but also a convinced “Likudnik” who is unalterably opposed to any
meaningful concessions Israel
might make in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. Abrams had served in
the Reagan administration, was convicted and sentenced as part of the
Iran-Contra scandal, but pardoned by the incoming President George Herbert
Walker Bush.
When one types the key words:
“Abrams Gaza Dahlan” into Google a wealth of information becomes available
which has not yet been properly reported by our media. We are aware that it is
current US
policy in Iraq
to arm Sunnis against suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists, over the objections of the
Iraqi government. But we have so far not been told that the model was the
arming of Fatah against Hamas after the 2006 elections which is carried out
under the aegis of Elliot Abrams. The goal is to foster a civil war among
Palestinians and thereby demonstrate that they are incapable of governing
themselves which in turn is supposed to benefit Israel
because final status negotiations cannot take place under these circumstances.
Former President Jimmy Carter was aware of this state of affairs and this is
why he labeled our Middle East policy “criminal” in a
recent speech. He was correct because deliberately inciting war is indeed
criminal conduct. Mr. Abrams ought to be taken to task for it by Congress
because he also sabotages, according to these reports, Dr. Rice’s efforts to
reach a peaceful settlement.
For the Abrams’ policy to succeed
he needs Palestinians who are sympathetic to America
and Israel
rather than acceptable to their countrymen. The newly appointed Prime Minister
of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, who is now responsible essentially
only for the West Bank, receives high praise from the West but his party got 2
per cent of the vote in 2006. Praise is also bestowed on the former Fatah
Security Chief of Gaza, Mohammed
Dahlan. He was one of the Palestinians main negotiators at Camp
David in 2000 and is being groomed by Abrams and associates to
emerge as the Palestinian strongman once Abbas decides to wash his hands of
this unmanageable affair or is disposed of in some other manner.
Although Dahlan is highly favored
by the US and Israel,
he has little credibility among Palestinians. While in Gaza
he created a mini-empire for himself which was referred to by the locals as
“Dahlanistan.” He occupied the single most expensive villa, oversaw an
Abu-Ghraib type prison where people were tortured and disappeared, albeit
without the specifically American sexual outrages, and was the benefactor of
Abrams’ money as well as arms largesse. This was put to good use by instigating
the civil war which erupted earlier this year in Gaza
and has led to the Hamas victory.
The ostensible reason why Israel
and the West rejected the duly elected Palestinian government in 2006 was the
refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel’s
right to exist. Furthermore, as far as Israel
is concerned, Hamas must forswear armed struggle and promise to abide by
existing Palestinian and Israeli agreements. This sounds reasonable from the
Israeli side but Hamas argues that only states can recognize each other and
since there is no Palestinian state the question is moot. In addition,
recognition is based on internationally recognized borders but these do not
exist for the State of Israel at this time. As shown above Hamas cannot be
expected to give up armed resistance against Israeli occupation because all
other measures have failed and Israel
has not negotiated in good faith. This applies also to the third condition.
Although one of the statutes of the Oslo
accord was that Israeli settlements be frozen in the occupied territories they
have doubled since that time. Furthermore, as reported in “Barack in Salt
Lake City” (March
1, 2007), Barack had not fulfilled his promises prior to urging on
Bill Clinton and a reluctant Yassir Arafat the Camp
David meeting. Unless and until Israel
provides tangible benefits for the Palestinian people, Hamas will not only
remain a force to be reckoned with but continue to gain support from the
disenchanted population.
The idea that Hamas, and with it
the people in Gaza, can either be
starved to death or militarily defeated by Israel
has no merit as one glance at demographics shows. Gaza
has currently 1.4 million people of whom nearly a
quarter of a million males are in the military age bracket (www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook).
Many, if not most of them, are unemployed and see no hope for a better future
unless they engage the Israelis and their Western stooges in violent struggle.
Regardless how many “gunmen and terrorists” the Israelis kill in Gaza
and the West Bank, all they will achieve is more fierce
determination. The Palestinian youngsters live not only by the Koran but they
also read Che Guevara’s “Guerilla Warfare,”
Vo Nguyan Giap’s “How we won the war [Vietnam],”
and Mao Tse tung’s “On Guerilla Warfare.”
These are the instruction manuals they live by and for every dead youngster, 10
more will stand up. Although the West can deny Hamas money, some will arrive
from Arab countries as well as Iran.
Furthermore, in contrast to Fatah, whose members are known to feather their
nests, Hamas fighters are frugal.
Israel’s
neighbors, Jordan
and Egypt, as
well as the Saudis have come to see this impasse and are pleading for
international acceptance of another unity government which includes all
Palestinian factions but this has so far fallen on deaf ears. The need to
negotiate with all Palestinians rather than a segment is also recognized by
some Israelis and the previously mentioned Brigadier General Shaul Arieli wrote
an article, “Fatah isn’t enough. Israel
needs to finalize agreement acceptable to vast majority of Palestinians
[ynetnews.com. June 22, 2007].”
After having neglected the
Palestinian problem for more than six years and merely watched it going from
bad to worse President Bush has finally begun to show some interest but he is
still subservient to the homegrown Jewish leadership and Christian Zionists,
who are adamantly opposed to genuine concessions by Israel. They live in the
delusion that somehow by maintaining current policies the status quo in the
occupied territories can at least be maintained and eventually the Palestinians
will submit to their dictates. They do not realize that a fair number of
Israelis have already begun to move into what may be called the “post-Zionist”
phase. The former speaker of the Knesset, Avram Burg, is a typical example. He
sees the injustices that are being perpetrated against Palestinians, the
changing demographic picture in the former British Mandate territory, the
disenchantment of his fellow citizens with what has happened to their country
and he voices his concerns. Israelis who can afford it have already an
additional non-Israeli passport; many of Israel’s young people don’t see a
future in their country and intend to emigrate. I have repeatedly pointed out
in these pages that Israelis have to make a decision: do they want a secular
democracy or a Jewish state? If it is the former they might as well live in a
secular state of Palestine which
guarantees equal rights to all citizens regardless of race, creed or gender. If
they want a purely Jewish state surrounded by Arabs they have to agree to give
up dominating the Arab population within their sphere of influence and withdraw
to internationally recognized borders, sanctioned by the UN. This is the only
choice and neither Americans nor Palestinians can make it for them. The longer
Israeli politicians persist in ignoring this stark choice, the worse the
situation will get with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust at the end.
When one keeps the above described
situation in mind it is apparent that even the appointment of Tony Blair as
mediator and facilitator is not likely to bring lasting results. There is no
doubt that he will be sincere in his efforts and that he has excellent
negotiating skills. What is missing is the trust from major segments of the
Palestinian public including, of course, Hamas. Whether or not he will earn
this trust through open discussions with the Hamas leadership the next few
weeks will make clear. If he were able to do so and overcome his image of
simply being a Bush surrogate there would be hope for progress. If he could
also manage to persuade the Israelis to provide significant improvements for
the lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank as well
as Gaza, the future would begin to
look somewhat brighter. Obviously every one wishes him success and for
achieving this I would suggest that he should live in three different cities: Jerusalem,
Ramallah and Gaza. Only by working
in the midst of the locals will he be able to get a full appraisal of the
situation which would then allow him to make a comprehensive unbiased report to
the Quartet.
Thus, if President Bush wants to
save his legacy he would have to take at least two steps. The single most
important is that he makes a decision in his own mind who he wants to conduct
our Middle East policy. Will it continue to be Elliot
Abrams and the vice president or Condoleezza Rice and the State Department?
This is a decision the president must make immediately because two
fundamentally different visions cannot be executed simultaneously. The success
or failure of Tony Blair’s mission will also depend on that. In as much as the
vice president’s advice has been consistently bad it needs to be shunned in the
future. The vice president should be relegated to his constitutional role of
presiding over the Senate as well as ceremonial functions and removed from
shaping the country’s policies in his image. The second step would require for
the president to obtain first hand information about the various trouble spots
in the world but especially the Middle East and to stop
the good and evil rhetoric. Scaring the American people with terrorists in
every corner will no longer suffice. He will have to come to realize fully that
insurrections against occupying forces regardless whether they are in Iraq,
Afghanistan or Palestine
cannot be won militarily. The lessons of China,
Cuba and Vietnam
should be that in guerilla warfare, where the local population favors their own
insurgents over foreigners or America’s
proxies, even superior military forces can be defeated. The locals have time on
their side and America
will never have enough boots on the ground to control its contested
dominions.
We will know by the end of the
summer whether or not our president is capable of learning and accepting
obvious facts. If he keeps frittering it away, as he did in the past, his
legacy is doomed. On the other hand if he were to show himself capable of
insight and formulates a policy that takes the concerns of our adversaries into
account he might yet be able to salvage some of his reputation and reestablish
a positive image in the world for our country.
August 1, 2007
OUR NEED FOR MAAT
Whenever I am in Vienna
one of my first visits is to St. Stephen’s Cathedral and this year was no
exception. When I asked the cab driver who, by the way hailed from Iran,
to take me there he seemed to be surprised. Why would a Viennese want to go
there on a weekday morning when the church is actually hardly a place of
worship any more but a museum overrun by tourists with cameras? So I explained
to him that before I set out into the unknown in 1950 I had gone to St. Stephen’s
and asked the Lord to stand by me in this endeavor. He did, now it’s payback
time and show gratitude. As a good Muslim he understood and appreciated the
sentiment.
Thereafter I went to the Dombuchhandlung which is behind the
Cathedral on St. Stephen’s square. It used to sell only books that carried the Vatican’s
nihil obstat seal of approval but in
the spirit of ecumenism the strict rule has been relaxed and one now finds in
addition other books dealing with matters of the spirit. This is where I saw in
the window Ma’at Konfuzius Goethe. Drei
Lehren für das richtige Leben by Jan Assmann, Ekkehart Krippendorf and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Although
Maat, as well as Confucius and Goethe have been long standing friends of mine,
with whom I consult on occasion, I was surprised to see their juxtaposition and
inasmuch as I also saw on the shelf Assmann’s more detailed exposition Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit
und Unsterblichkeit im alten Aegypten (Maat, Justice and Immortality in
ancient Egypt) I bought that one too, as well as some others.
Assmann is a highly respected
German Egyptologist, Krippendorff a Sinologist and Schmidt-Glintzer a
Philologist; so what could motivate these three people to jointly prepare a
small book of 166 pages which spans 5000 years of human history? The answer is
that they looked for models which created and maintained a culture that could
last thousands of years. Ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom to its final
collapse, as a result Caesar’s conquest, had lasted more than 3000 years, the
China of Confucius had likewise a long history and is actually experiencing a
renewal in our day. Thus, the motivating underlying idea for both of these
states must have had an intrinsic beneficial quality that deserves to be
brought to light. But one still wonders what role Goethe played in this
context. In the US,
if he is remembered at all, one knows him only as a poet. Yet, he was also for
some time the Chief Minister of State for the small duchy of Saxe-Weimar-
Coburg, and as such intimately involved with affairs of State, and in addition
he was keenly interested in all phases of nature. He wrote about optics,
botany, anatomy, anticipated Darwin’s
theory of evolution and Nietzsche’s Ewige
Wiederkehr. Goethe’s life (1749-1832) spanned the Seven Years War (called
here the French and Indian wars), the American war of Independence,
the French revolution, the Napoleonic era and the first stirrings of German
nationalism. This period marked the beginning of the end of the feudal era and
the transition to modernity as characterized by industrialization, the machine
age, and the concomitant change from an autocratic monarchical system of
government to a democratic one as exemplified by the founders of our republic.
As such Goethe is the link between the past, present and future and this is
why, as a genuine polymath, he belonged in the mentioned book.
The authors explained that the
purpose of writing this small treatise, published in 2006, was to present some
ideas in regard to questions which are not addressed today and for which conventional
political thoughts have no answer. The book was written for those who do not
regard the current world political developments as progress but as an Irrweg (mistaken direction, wrong
track). It was the authors’ intent to at least make conceivable another form of
“modernity” which does not consist of the mere prolongation of an industrial-capitalistic,
market and profit oriented type society which has lost its “soul” long ago. By
“soul” they meant a political ethic which would deserve the name “ethic.” This
ethic can only be gained or regained by careful study of previous successful
societies with ancient Egypt
having been the first.
To discuss Maat, Confucius and
Goethe is impossible in a few pages and I shall therefore limit myself to Maat
as the motivating force of a civilization that had prevailed for thousands of
years. But before doing so, one needs to know current American thought, which
drives our policies into the mentioned Irrweg.
This is perhaps best expressed in Francis Fukuyama’s
The End of History and the Last Man. Even the
title of this book, which was published at the end of the Cold War (1992), is
probably not readily understandable by the majority of the American public
because the American educational system no longer teaches world history and the
rudiments of philosophy. We are training mainly technocrats and businesspeople.
Fukuyama’s End of History deals with the thoughts of Hegel, and the Last Man came from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.
Hegel is now known mainly as the intellectual father of Marxism while Nietzsche
is equated with the superman and Nazism.
In essence, Fukuyama
endorsed the idea of history moving – arrow like – forward with liberal
democracy as its goal. Inasmuch as this has been achieved in many countries of
the world it will eventually encompass all. Although some dangers to it may
well arise from the restless human spirit it is in his view, nevertheless, the
best form of government. In spite of detours such as communism, Nazism and the
like he regarded as a “fact that history is being driven in a coherent
direction by rational desire and rational recognition.”He wrote that, “We can think of human history
as a dialogue or competition between different regimes or forms of social
organization. . . . If there do not
appear to be viable alternatives to liberal democracy, and if people living in
liberal democracies express no radical discontent with their lives, we can say
that the dialogue has reached a final and definitive conclusion.” Fukuyama
thereby rejected the cyclical nature of human events. Although he mentioned
Plato in another context he did not deal with the Socratic idea that tyranny is
always followed by oligarchy, which in turn leads to democracy. But democracy
cannot be a stable form of government for any length of time because individual
freedom will always lead to excesses. Eventually chaos results from which the
cry for a strong leader will inevitably arise and the cycle starts anew.
We thus have two fundamentally
different views of history and our current administration is hell bent on
pushing the messianic age of liberal democracy with sanctions, bombs and tanks
on countries which hold different views. The inherent fatal flaw namely
individual profit, which fosters greed and does not consider the rights of
others, is ignored. CEOs of major companies are paid obscene salaries for
concentrating on the supposed value of their stocks thereby reducing the people
who do the actual physical work to chattel that can be disposed of for the sake
of shareholders. The dehumanization of our “liberal democracy” is in full swing
and this is the Irrweg Assmann and
his colleagues want us to reconsider before it is too late.
As mentioned above I had become
acquainted with Maat decades earlier through Breasted’s The Dawn of Conscience which can be highly recommended to the
English speaking public. It explains the development of ethical thought in
ancient Egypt
and how it had found its way into the Old Testament. As explained in The Moses Legacy. Roots of Jewish Suffering
we now see Egypt
and its contribution to human civilization only through the lens of Jewish
writers with its concomitant inevitable distortions. This is why we have to go
back to the original texts which in turn show us why Maat is needed for a stable
society which serves both the individual and the state.
The concept of Maat arose during
the Old Kingdom, which encompasses dynasties III- VI (ca.
2686 - 2181 B.C.), but entered classical Egyptian literature mainly during the
Middle Kingdom (ca. 2133- 1786 B.C.). It should be mentioned that the dates are
by necessity approximations and the ones given here come from The Cambridge Ancient History. The
catastrophe which had befallen Egypt
in the Intermediate period was regarded by the Egyptians as the typical example
of what was bound to happen when Maat was not actively maintained by joint
action of the people, the king and the gods. Just as youth does not know what
youth is until one has lost it, Maat was recognized as such mainly after the
chaos of the first Intermediary period and subsequently deified as a goddess
after the Hyksos had been expelled at the beginning of the XVIIIth
Dynasty (1567 B.C.). She was then portrayed during the judgment of the deceased
in her capacity as justice where her feather had to balance the scales of the
person’s heart, i.e. his ethical behavior, during life. The type of conditions that
prevailed in the first Intermediate period are
depicted in: The prophecies of Neferti; The Complaints of Kakheperre-sonb; The Admonitions
of Ipuwer; and The dispute of a Man and his Ba. (Miriam Lichtheim. Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol.
I) All describe profound social upheavals and natural disasters.
Inasmuch as we enter with this
literature into a realm of thought which profoundly differs from our current
way of thinking I have refrained from defining Maat up to now and shall
continue to use the Egyptian term rather than one of its various meanings. By
coincidence Maat made a cameo appearance in a National Geographic TV
presentation, “Engineering Egypt,” last week. The program tried to show how and
why Khufu had his pyramid built and Ramesses II, Abu Simbel.
Maat was mentioned as “order” according to which the structures were erected,
to ensure the king’s immortality and ascent to the stars. This is correct but
also potentially misleading because it omits the wider social context. Abstract
words denote concepts which encompass a wide variety of meanings. What happens
when only one of them is selected is perhaps best exemplified by the Greek word
logos which can have, according to Langenscheidt’s Pocket Classical Greek Dictionary,
53 different meanings. Among them are: speech, conversation, deliberation,
thought, reason, order, word, etc. When St. Jerome
translated the gospel of John into Latin he used “verbum” for logos. This made
the first sentence of the gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God and the Word was God” rather difficult to apprehend intellectually. St.
John wanted to identify Jesus’ spirit with God, as the
eternal Christ, but this can get lost when logos
is rendered merely as “word.” Maat likewise has many meanings the principals of
which are: truth, justice, righteousness and order. To isolate just one of
these terms as a translation of the word Maat violates the entire concept
because they are mutually interdependent. To explain the role Maat played in
Egyptian society I shall now summarize the essence of Assmann’s views with
apologies to the author because they are by necessity abbreviated and for
interested German speaking persons the mentioned books can be highly
recommended.
The first six dynasties, which had
lasted approximately a thousand years, with the pyramid age at their center, were
regarded in the chaotic Intermediary period as a golden age and when society
had reconstituted itself in the Middle Kingdom the question what had gone wrong
and why was given literary form and became part of the famed Egyptian wisdom
teachings. The disasters of the Intermediary period taught the Egyptians that
the natural state of man and the world is what may be called: all against all; a
conclusion which Hobbes had arrived at about 3000 years later. Hobbes wrote “Unless
there is a common power to keep them all [mankind] in awe . . . [there is]
continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
This was the state Egyptians experienced
in the Interregnum between the Old and the Middle Kingdom and they called it Isfet.
It consists of: deceit, lies, brutality, greed, crime and war. One might
summarize it as absolute egotism which rides roughshod over the wishes and
concerns of others, or “my will be
done.” Maat is the exact opposite: cohesion and harmony. This is to be achieved
first within the family then the tribe and subsequently the state. Each
individual knows his role and voluntarily cooperates in a harmonious society
simply because it is the right thing to do. But because Isfet is the natural
condition, Maat has to be acquired through patient education of one’s children.
Isfet is not overcome by brute force but by acts of Maat where each particular
act destroys one particular aspect of Isfet.
Assmann used the term “vertical
solidarity,” which includes responsibility, and contrasted it with “horizontal
solidarity.” The latter was the goal of the French revolution, with its
offshoot of liberal democracies, under the banner of: Liberty,
Equality, and Brotherhood. Since human beings are by nature not equal and
liberty uncoupled from responsibility leads to egotism, brotherhood never had a
chance of coming into being. Vertical solidarity, on the other hand, is
nature’s aristocratic principle at its best. The inherent inequality of high
and low, strong and weak is recognized but counteracted by the demand for the strong
to protect the weak from the power of the strong. In Egyptian society the power
was concentrated in the crown and the king’s officials. They had to rule on the
principle of Maat: truth will lead to justice and when justice is done order is
established. When the king, as son of God, lived in Maat he reflected as well
as established not only terrestrial but also cosmic order. But Maat is not
self-perpetuating; it requires effort.
In contrast to biblical tradition,
where God created the world and then took time off to rest, the Egyptians were
aware that the forces of creation and destruction are eternally ongoing and
since Maat is a product of effort against the natural destructive tendencies,
Maat has to be recreated on a daily basis. The analogy was the sun, Ra, who rose
in the morning, thereby allowed Maat to occur on earth and sank into the
underworld at night to bring Maat to its denizens. Furthermore, for the
Egyptians the dichotomy in the life of man was not between good and evil but
between natural chaos and Maat which needed to be practiced in everyday life. The
key to understanding Maat lies in what one may call “connectedness.” To be
human required another human being or as the proverb had it; “a human comes
into existence when he is surrounded by others. He is greeted with reverence
for the sake of his children.” and “one lives when one
is guided by another.”
Living in Maat required what
Assmann called: 1) Communicative solidarity: listening, speaking and silence.
2) Active solidarity: when injustices were committed the wrong had to be
corrected. 3) Abstention from greed. The sequence in point 1 is important
because listening comes first. Its meaning is the biblical word “hearkening,”
paying attention and taking to heart what the other person has to say. Turning
“a deaf ear” to a complaint is a sin against Maat and leads to a bad end. The
Instructions of Ptahhotep contain this admonition,
“One
beloved by God hearkens
One
who does not is hated by God.
The
fool who does not listen
Nothing
will be done for him.
He
regards knowledge as ignorance
Something helpful as hindrance.”
Furthermore, the person who
listened had to give the speaker a chance to fully unburden himself because for
a person who is distressed pouring out his heart may be even more important
than achieving success in his desire.
When speech was called for it had
to be modest, rather than brash or querulous, and it had to be truthful. Whoever
was unable to use well meaning speech was incapable of fitting himself into the
community and thereby belonged to the “living dead.” Speech had to come before
action because when, “words cease force takes over.” Here is another saying
from Ptahhotep,
“Be
a master of speech.
The
sword arm of a king is his tongue.
Speech
is mightier than battle.”
Equally important as speech,
however, was the knowledge when to remain silent. This is still expressed in
our proverb, “speaking is silver, silence is gold.” Furthermore, tattling and
spreading rumors did not belong to Maat.
For Assmann’s second point namely active
solidarity the key sentence is, “the deed returns to the doer.” This
corresponds to the Indian concept of Karma where each action has a consequence
which is either good or bad depending on its origin. Or in current parlance:
what goes around comes around. With other words: you will reap what you sow. For
the Egyptian life and death were a continuum and if an injustice had not been
remedied during the lifetime of the individual it would be at time of death. Individual
life could persist as long as the tomb was properly cared for. This is why the
person, and not just the king, had to establish a proper tomb for himself
during his lifetime which had to be subsequently maintained by his son. In this
way solidarity extended beyond the limited lifespan of the individual, broke
the shackles of time, and thereby removed the fear of death.
To discuss the religious aspects of
Maat further at this time would lead too far afield and I shall therefore limit
myself to the practical aspects of how justice was to be dispensed by the
magistrate. In civil disputes the goal was not to punish one of the litigants
but to achieve mutual agreement i.e. arbitration. In this way harmony was
restored and another major sin against Maat, greed, was avoided.For criminal cases the death sentence was
rare, more commonly it involved physical punishment especially beatings and in
case of severe offenses mutilation such as cutting off one’s tongue or nose
which provided a visible permanent deterrent. In contrast to our blindfolded
“Lady Justice,” who graces our law courts and still holds Maat’s scales, Maat’s
eyes were open in order to detect injustices carried out against the weak and
powerless anywhere.
Inasmuch as Maat was the ruling
principle a written law code was not necessarily required and if a magistrate did
not act in accordance with Maat complaints would be lodged against him which might
even reach the king. This is exemplified in the tale of “The Eloquent Peasant”
which will be discussed later. For now let us read what Ptahhotep had to say
about greed,
“If
you want a perfect conduct
To
be free from every evil,
Guard
against the vice of greed:
A
grievous sickness without cure,
There
is no treatment for it.
It
embroils fathers, mothers,
And
the brothers of the mother,
It
parts a wife from husband,
It
is a compound of all evils
A bundle of all hateful things.”
These were just three samples of
the 37 Maxims in regard to Maat of the Vizier Ptahhotep who lived during the Old
Kingdom and whose teachings were revered. A good example of how
Isfet can be overcome by Maat is the mentioned tale of the Eloquent Peasant which
originated during the Middle Kingdom. It also makes the point of another one of
Ptahhoteps’ instructions, “Worthy speech is more hidden than greenstone, being found
even among slave-women at the mill-stone.” With other words, even the lowliest
of the low may know Maat and are entitled to it.
The narrative is of a peasant from
Wadi Natrun whose family faced starvation and he, therefore, loaded all his
property on his donkeys to exchange it in the city of the king for food. On the
way a greedy rich man saw the laden donkeys and decided to rob the peasant of
his belongings. The path which the peasant had to follow beyond that man’s
house was narrow. On one side there was a canal and on the other a barley
field. In order to maintain a sense of legality the greedy man ordered one of
his servants to spread linen clothes over the path and he told the peasant not
to step on them. This forced the peasant’s donkeys into the barley field. One
of the donkeys then did what comes natural and took a mouthful of barley. The
greedy one then claimed that his property had been violated and took the
peasant’s goods. The latter complained about the injustice and said that if
there was no restitution he would go to the magistrate, Rensi, who was known to
be a just administrator, and put the case before him. This incensed the greedy
one and he gave the peasant a sound threshing. When the peasant’s appeal for
justice proved fruitless he went to Rensi’s estate and complained to his
servants. They made light of it but were impressed by the peasant’s eloquence
of speech who kept remonstrating that what was happening to him did not accord
with Maat. Rensi then personally listened to the peasant’s appeal for justice but
did not commit himself to a course of action. Instead he went to the king and
brought this unusual situation of an apparently wise peasant to his attention.
In order to elicit further sayings from the peasant the king advised Rensi that
he should turn a deaf ear to the peasant’s complaints, while at the same time
providing in secret some food for him as well as his family. This set the stage
for the peasant’s nine complaints against Rensi, whom he regarded as forsaking
Maat and fostering Isfet.
Key excerpts are: first he praised
Rensi’s power and then reminded him of his duties “For you are father to the
orphan, husband to the widow, brother to the rejected woman, apron to the
motherless.” When this fell on deaf ears he continued to point out that the
scales of justice need first of all to be to be straight and then balanced.
Rensi’s conduct, therefore, was reprehensible, “a man who saw has turned blind,
a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.” Since there was no response from Rensi
exhortations of this type continued and became increasingly harsher, “You are
learned, skilled, but not in order to plunder! You should be the model for all
men, but your affairs are crooked! The standard for all men cheats.” In the
face of silence he continued to plead, “Speak justice, do justice, for it is mighty;
it is great, it endures, its worth is tried, it leads to reveredness. . . . Crime does not attain its goal” When this
also failed to make an impression he gave up and said, “Here I have been
pleading with you, and you have not listened to it, I shall go and plead about
you to Anubis!” Having been unable to achieve justice from the living he will
now kill himself and take his case to the gods. At this point Rensi no longer continued
the charade and restored not only the peasant’s property to him but saw to it
that he and his family was taken care of.
When we now compare this state of
affairs with what is currently happening in our country we will have to admit
that Isfet has been allowed to drive out Maat. Keeping Ptahhotep in mind it is
obvious that our president has behaved like a fool because he failed to listen
to wiser council before invading Iraq.
He was warned by some members of the administration, as well as probably by his
father, in addition to the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Turks
not to engage in military action against Iraq.
He was deaf to advice and now in the words of Ptahhotep, “nothing will be done
for him.” He is discredited and will not be able to achieve anything constructive
at home or abroad. Mr. Bush also violated the instruction that “a king’s sword
arm is his speech.” He did not allow the UN inspectors to finish their task but
rushed into war. He won one battle but is now stuck in a situation he can no longer
control. Nevertheless, he still eschews listening and talking to his enemies.
In spite of the fact that it should
have become painfully clear that this “War on Terror” cannot be won militarily
our administration is now intending to sell $60 billion of military equipment to
Israel and some
Sunni Arab countries. We are exporting death and destruction as a means to keep
our economy going and that is also Isfet. Since this weapons deal is directed
against Iran
the Iranian government may well respond with an acceleration of its nuclear
program, as a deterrent against invasion. As the old Egyptians said, “The deed
returns to the doer,” and some of our troops may well find themselves
eventually on the wrong end of this fire power. A situation similar to our support
for the jihadists who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
during the 1980s might be in the offing within a few years but in a much wider
context. Thus, we have in the words of the eloquent peasant a president who
“has turned blind, a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.”
Obviously our vice president is not
only no better but even worse. Furthermore, the highest law enforcement officer
of the land, Attorney General Gonzales, has either such a serious memory
problem that it should disqualify him from holding office or has committed
perjury in the recent Senate hearings. As such, Maat cannot be found in the
Department of Justice either. The peoples’ representatives in the Senate and
House are bitterly divided, cannot get any meaningful work done and, therefore,
have the lowest approval rating ever since polling began.
The country at large also reflects the
lack of a common ideal. The economy is based on greed and a person’s value is
measured in dollars. Assmann’s horizontal solidarity, which is supposed to
exist in Fukuyama’s vision of the
liberal democracy, expresses itself merely as a lack of respect where everybody
is addressed only by his/her first name. Fear is a dominant factor which even
goes to the extent of some parents being afraid of their children lest by
disciplining they hurt their feelings. In sum and substance Isfet in form of
lies, deceit, and quest for personal advantage, rather than Maat, is the
reality at present.
How do we rectify this situation?
If it can be done at all it will take decades because like everything else that
lasts Maat will have to be grown organically from its roots. There is an innate
sense of goodness and compassion within the human being which manifests itself
as an outpouring of helpfulness after catastrophes. We saw it in the days
immediately after 9/11, Katrina, and the Southeast Asia
tsunami. This feeling is spontaneous but unfortunately brief and within less
than a week personal priorities take over again. Nevertheless, this sense of
responsibility towards unfortunates can and should be cultivated. Once it is
established in the individual, it will be automatically transmitted to the
family, from there to co-workers and eventually society at large. This is the
only way to replace Isfet with Maat because it comes from the heart rather than
as an imposed doctrine which one has to obey. This will take decades but the
time to start the process is now!
In this essay I have limited myself
to the concept of Maat in the social sphere rather than its additional religious
connotation which became prominent during the Egypt’s
New Kingdom. This aspect and its importance for our time
will be taken up in the next installment.
September 1, 2007
COUNTER-RELIGION
In the previous installment I discussed the idea of Maat as the principle which
provided the glue for a successful society in ancient Egypt.
As mentioned the key word for the understanding of the term Maat is
connectedness. To live in Maat meant to be and act in harmony with the natural
order as it exists on earth as well as in the cosmos. In contrast to current
democratic societies which emphasize equality among all its members the
Egyptians recognized the aristocratic principle of nature where there are the
strong and the weak, with the former dominating the latter. Because of this
inherent inequality it was the duty of the powerful to protect the weak in
order to attain a durable and just society. Maat in her aspect of justice was
not blind but all seeing as represented by the sun god, Ra, whose eye she was.
Thus, the king was responsible for seeing that his ministers settle disputes on
basis of Maat where the goal was not to punish one of the litigants but,
whenever possible, arbitrate the dispute so that both sides were satisfied and
harmony was restored. But since nature is also chaotic and the human being
harbors destructive tendencies, Isfet, the rule of Maat had to be reestablished
on a daily basis.
Living in accordance with Maat required from everyone, high or low, what
Assmann in his book Ma’at Gerechtigkeit und
Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (Justice and
Immortality in ancient Egypt)
had called communicative and active solidarity. Communicative solidarity
required of the person to listen to another’s complaint or viewpoint, to speak
calmly in a polite manner and to keep silent when silence was called for.
Active solidarity demanded that injustices had to be corrected. To turn a “deaf
ear” or a “blind eye” to a person in need was a sin against Maat. But the
overarching sin was greed, as the root of all evil. These principles were
regarded as self-evident and transmitted as such within the family unit which
was held in high esteem. Thus, Maat can be viewed as a positive feedback
system. The people here on earth, foremost the king as their representative,
live in accordance with Maat which is also offered in form of liturgy to the
gods who in turn see to it that cosmic order is maintained which reflects
itself in well-being on earth. Or as the Egyptians put it, “the deed returns to
the doer.”
Life for the Egyptian meant that
one’s name be remembered. This is why the householder had to provide a proper
tomb for himself. It would be the resting place for his Ka (one aspect of the
soul) and it was up to his son to provide for its upkeep. In this manner
solidarity was extended beyond a given generation into the future. The other
aspect of the soul, the Ba, established connectivity with the cosmic realm. It
was depicted in form of a bird, because it flies to heaven at time of death,
where it was weighed against the feather of Maat. If the scales balanced the
person was pronounced eligible to enter the heavenly realm otherwise the Ba was
devoured by the water monster Apopis, against which
even the gods had to guard themselves. To successfully pass the ordeal the dead
man’s Ba had to address each god of Egypt’s
42 provinces with the assurance that he had not committed a particular sin and
since each sin recitation started out with “I have not” it has been called “the
negative confession.” This litany was also placed in the deceased’s coffin and
it was hoped that it would thereby provide protection against the forces of the
underworld..
With these concept we have entered
the religious realm, which was however not separate from the state because
initially God, the cosmos and our world were regarded as having been one. The
pre-existent God, Atum (the all, the not yet
existent) did not create the world through biblical executive fiat, but the
universe, so to say, unfolded in analogy to a seed. In this view God was not
external but immanent in all aspects of the terrestrial and cosmic world. From Atum came Shuh, the wind and
life. But inasmuch as life without direction is meaningless he had a twin
sister, Tefnut, which equaled Maat.
“Then
said Atum:,Tefnut is my living daughter,
She
is joined with her brother Shu.
Life
is his name,
Maat
is her name.
I
live conjoined with the pair of my children,
Together
with my twins,
By
being in the Middle of Them,
The one on my back, the other on my front.
Life
sleeps with my daughter Maat,
One in me.One all around me.
I
have raised myself between them,
While their arms enfolded me.”
These speculations about the origin
of the universe, which remind one also of the Chinese Tao, which is nameless
and from which the “ten thousand things” appeared were, however limited to the
priests. The common people had a natural religion, like everywhere else, which
personified the forces of nature and represented them in a variety of images.
This polytheism, inasmuch as it was grounded in observable phenomena of
nature which were common to mankind, had the advantage that the names of the
various gods such as the sun, the moon, the storm etc. could be readily
translated into other languages and as such these gods were universal.
International treaties could be confirmed by oaths on a respective god because
he pertained to both countries. Religious wars were unthinkable under those
circumstances.
Although there were power struggles
within the priesthoods of various cities such as Memphis,
Heliopolis
and Thebes as to the supremacy of Ptah, Ra or Amun, these were solved when the ruling dynasty
of the particular city became dominant over the country at large by simply
appending the name of the other god to that of their own. The Heliopolitan Ra as the visible image of the sun was merged
with Amun (the hidden) of Thebes
and as Amun-Ra he became the chief god of the New Kingdom
after the Hyksos (invaders from Syrio-Palestine) had been expelled around 1546
B.C. The Hyksos invasion and partial occupation of the country had been
successful because a considerable number of Asiatics
had previously been allowed to settle in the Eastern Delta und the central
royal power had been weakened. Even after the Hyksos’ expulsion royal power was
shared with that of the priesthood of Thebes
who even arrogated to itself at times the privilege to designate a successor to
a deceased pharaoh. As royal power increased, through successful military
campaigns in Asia and Nubia, priestly
interference in affairs of state was resented and under Amenhopis
III a backlash began to develop. It reached fruition under his son and
successor Amenhopis IV who became known as the
“heretical king.”
Amenhopis
IV was loath to share power with the priesthood and instituted what has been
called the Amarna revolution. He took the drastic
step of abolishing all gods and their images in favor of a single god,
represented by the sun-disc, Aten. This became the only legitimate symbol and
consisted of the sun with its rays ending in hands. These were extended to all
but only for the pharaoh and his wife Nefertiti did
the hands also hold the symbol of life the Ankh before their noses. Since all
gods including Amun, also spelled Amen, were now decreed as fictional Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and removed his
capital from Thebes to “the horizon of Aten”, Akhetaten,
today’s Tell el Amarna.
With Akhenaten we enter the onset
of exclusive monotheism, and to use Assmann’s term
“counter-religion.” Its importance must not be underestimated because it
impacts directly on the politics and policies of the United
States in the current century. I have
discussed some of these aspects in The Moses Legacy (available on this
site) but inasmuch as events are going from bad to worse it is useful to
discuss Assmann’s book, Moses the Egyptian. The
Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, in some detail. Assmann
defines counter-religion as a rejection and repudiation of everything that went
before and what is outside as “paganism,” and in the case of Mosaic religion
“idolatry.”
Akhenaten completely overthrew the
old order as it has been described above. No longer was Maat the common
property of all in the sense that one could expect justice from men and gods
but it was redefined exclusively as “Truth.” This truth was revealed,
however, only to pharaoh as the son of Aten. In the Great Hymn to Aten, Akhenaten
declared, “There is no other who knows you, only your son Nefer-kheperu
- Ra Sole – one of Ra, whom you have taught your ways and your might.” Although
everyone saw the disc, Aten, and lived by its rays only the king knew,
understood and executed the will of God. Aten, as supreme and only god, was
made co-regent and had his own royal cartouche, which was another complete
break with the past. As such Aten became king of Egypt
and Akhenaten, his son, was the executor of God’s perceived will. This was then
regarded as “living in Maat (truth).” The previous religious thoughts were now
anathema, a pack of lies, and had to be extinguished. Religious persecutions
ensued. The monuments were defaced, the names of the gods had to disappear and
wherever the word gods showed up it had to be changed to the singular. As a
result the mentioned positive feedback system was destroyed and replaced by
arbitrary rule against which there was no recourse. One could petition pharaoh
but there was no guarantee that the wish would even be listened to, let alone
granted.
The impact on the country was
devastating. Time honored customs were all of a sudden outlawed. The previous
provincial ruling classes, who were familiar with the concerns of the people,
were replaced by newcomers loyal only to the crown and even festivals and
burial customs were affected. Festive processions which allowed the people to
adore the god in his bark could no longer be performed and the gates to heaven
via Osiris were also closed. When the sun disappeared from the horizon there
was indeed night, rather than Ra continuing his voyage through the world of the
departed. With nocturnal darkness came now all the evils that required secrecy
and although the pharaoh’s Ba could continue to exist after his death we have no
information what was expected to happen for the rest of the people. Amidst all
this upheaval massive building projects were undertaken, to create new
monuments and stamp a city literally out of the desert. The manpower came from
the military as well as civilian forced labor. It is no wonder that under these
circumstances Akhenaten neglected foreign affairs and his vassals in Palestine
vainly appealed for help against marauding tribes. The empire which previous
pharaohs had created fell into disarray and contrary to the Aten hymn which
depicts the lives of people as happy during the day when they see him, they
were actually miserable.
It should not be surprising that
this monotheistic fury did not outlive its creator. Within a year or so his
successor young Tutankhhaten was returned by his regent back to Thebes and
given the name of all us know: Tutankhamen. Order was restored and the reverse
process set in. Akhetaten was given back to the
desert and all references to the previous regime were expunged. Akhenaten’s
name and deeds were removed from all official records. What has been related
above was unknown to historians until the end of the nineteenth century when
the royal correspondence was accidentally discovered at Amarna
and the other circumstances came to light through painstaking archeological
work.
Nevertheless some memory traces of
these traumatic years had remained and were given literary form by an Egyptian
priest, Manetho, in the middle of the third century B.C. This was also the time
when the first Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, appeared in Alexandria.
As mentioned in The Moses Legacy, Ptolemy II was an enlightened ruler
who was interested in the histories of the people he was in charge of and he
probably commissioned these works. This detail is important because it
presented in part what were regarded as the same events from the Egyptian and
the Jewish point of view especially in regard to the Exodus. Manetho’s version is lost apart from excerpts which were
vigorously refuted by Josephus in his polemical work Contra Apionem.
Inasmuch as this material has been covered in The Moses Legacy I shall
mention only that the Manetho account as well as the biblical narratives are
not history but belong to “collective memory,” as discussed in “Understanding
the Holocaust Part II Dogma and Skepticism.” The problem arises when
collective memory of events which took place thousands of years ago are taken
as facts and political decisions are justified by them.
As mentioned above Akhenaten’s counter-religion
was the first radical monotheism the ancient world had seen and it has always
been tempting to regard this epoch as the model for the Moses’ Exodus story.
Several books including on by Freud, Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (published in English as Moses
and Monotheism) have been written which discuss the topic. We find in both
instances a rejection of previous religious norms, the abolition of gods and
their traditional worship and the establishment of a single God whose
will is initially made known to only one other human being; Akhenaten in the
case of Egypt, Moses in regard to the Hebrews. The Bible tells us that when
Moses was reluctant to accept the task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt
and made excuses that he doesn’t have sufficient language skills to convince
Pharaoh, the Lord told him that Aaron’s would suffice. “And he shall be thy
spokesman and . . . thou shalt be to him in God’s stead {Ex. IV 16].”
Furthermore, “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: Thus saith the Lord: Israel
is My son, My first-born [Ex. IV: 22].” In this
way Moses assumed Akhenaten’s role for the Israelites and by speaking in the
name of God his will was not to be challenged. The main difference was that
sonship was conferred to all of Israel
instead of Moses in person.
There was another difference in how
the rejected religion was treated. In Akhenaten’s case it was relegated to
oblivion while in Mosaic tradition Egypt
became the ultimate symbol for evil. Its persecution of the Israelites and idol
worship together with the covenant became the hallmark of the Mosaic
counter-religion. In the Old Testament and the Talmud we are confronted with a
veritable Egyptophobia which is unparalleled in other great religions of the
world. This phobia, unwarranted by historic facts, is the raison d’être
of the Mosaic religion. Even when Egypt
is not specifically mentioned the word “idolaters” takes its place as the
symbol for the hostile “other” who has to be overcome by force or shunned. As a
counter-religion of exclusion it set itself in direct opposition to the rest of
the civilized world and had to live with the consequences ever since.
This would not matter much if the
Exodus story had not been turned into a symbol for liberation of a people from slavery
into freedom. In disregard of the biblical reports where the Israelites left Egypt
reluctantly, remonstrated against Moses’ theocratic rule throughout their
sojourn in the wilderness, and finally did not succeed in occupying the entire
“promised land,” the events have consistently been portrayed as a grateful
people who have been liberated from untold suffering. The covenant with the
Lord was supposedly freely entered into although the Bible reports fear and
trembling in the face of a volcanic eruption rather than joyful clapping of
hands. The only festive occasion was during Moses’ absence on the mountain when
they danced around the golden calf (symbol of the Egyptian Apis)
and for which they had to pay dearly.
The Protestant reformation with its
emphasis on the Old Testament provided the cultural soil for the transposition
of the Exodus with its highlight of the gratefully liberated slaves’ myth into
modernity. This is documented in Walzer’s book Exodus and Revolution. He
shows its influence on Oliver Cromwell’s battle against the monarchy, the
Puritans in America,
Karl Max’s post-1948 revolution thoughts and most recently the Civil Rights
movement in the United States,
as well as post-Vatican II liberation theologies in Latin America.
Thus, it is obvious that even in our so-called secular society religious myth
provides the fodder for political expediency.
In this connection it is also of
interest to explore the latest myth namely the constantly repeated phrase of
“Judeo-Christian tradition,” which America
is now forced to defend against radical Islam. In previous installments I have
pointed out why I regard this term as inappropriate but was unaware of its
origin until I came across an article by Mark Silk in the American Quarterly
of spring 1984 entitled Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America.
(http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678(198421)36%3A1%3C65%3ANOTJTI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O).
To my surprise I found out that we have to thank the Nazis for it. Silk
explained that during the 1930s,
“Fascist fellow-travelers and
anti-Semites had appropriated ‘Christian’ as an identifying mark; besides
Father Coughlin’s Christian Front there were such organizations as the
Christian American Crusade, Christian Aryan Syndicate, Christian Mobilizers,
and Christian Party, and publications like the Christian Defender and Christian
Free Press. ‘Judeo-Christian’ thus became a catchword for the other side.”
WWII was fought here ostensibly for
the defense of the “Judeo-Christian tradition” or “heritage” and when that war
was followed by the Cold War the term was immediately transferred to that
conflict. From there it has entered the mainstream media because the word
tradition or heritage requires an adjective. This is how we find ourselves
saddled today with a totally inappropriate term in our new “existential”
struggle with the Islamic foe. Since “Judeo” equals in the minds of Muslims in
general and Arabs in particular the State of Israel and since the “Christian”
tradition evokes memories of the Crusader era our benighted media and
politicians keep pouring fuel on the fire.
The original proponents of the term
were for the most part Protestant theologians with a few Jewish sympathizers.
Other Jews such as Arthur Cohen dissented vigorously. He published a book in
1970 The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, in which he pointed out
that the concept was flawed because the gulf between the two faiths was too
wide to be papered over by a glib term. He wrote “The only authentic
Judeo-Christian tradition is that God bears both communities down to the end
unreconciled.” Yet Cohen was not a pessimist because he could conceive of
a state in which the two religions co-existed more or less amiably on basis of
universal humanism.
While Protestant theologians were
originally the main champions of the term Catholics were considerably more
wary, at least until Vatican II, which hoped for an improvement in the strained
relationship. This difference in the two Christian denominations has historical
roots and Protestantism can also be seen as a partial counter-religion to
Catholicism. The Egypt-Israel controversy was played out again in the 16th
and 17th century. In the Protestant view the purity of Hebrew
prophetic thought had to be re-established against the corrupt idolatry of the
papacy. Although there is no biblical evidence that the prophets had a
democratic rather than theocratic society in mind they were nevertheless turned
into democrats because they taught social justice. That the Bible used in part
the same phraseology in this regard as the hated Egyptians was not known in
those days. The additional fact that the Prophets were fervent nationalists
with little regard for the concerns of other countries did not matter either.
Nevertheless the Protestant
reformers did have a point when they compared the Catholic Church with Egypt.
When the Christian Church definitively split from Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem
in 70 AD it did not assert itself as a counter-religion either to Judaism or
Roman pantheism. Christian thinkers integrated Judaic and Hellenistic thought,
to the extent possible, and only drew the line at Emperor Worship. This brought
them into conflict with the State and led in some instances to martyrdom. The
success of the Church was precisely due to the amalgamation and integration of
existing thoughts, i.e. the Hellenistic model rather than their rejection i.e.
the Hebrew model.
In the catholic (which translates
into universal) Church the former gods became saints whose intercession was
requested; the divine judgment after death was retained; holidays remained at
their customary dates but now celebrated Christian events. It is also probably
no coincidence that Mary’s name change from Deipara
(having given birth to God) to Theotokos
(mother of God) was effected by Cyrill of Alexandria
at the Council of Ephesus in 431. This title had previously been held by the
Egyptian Isis. The Madonna with Jesus on her lap had its prototype in Isis
with baby Horus. The eye of Ra can be found in most Catholic churches,
especially those of the baroque era, and incidentally, due to the influence of
Freemasonry, it also graces the back of the great Seal of the United
States and is depicted on our one dollar
bill. In addition Catholic thought in general is much closer to
Egyptian-Hellenistic ideas than Old Testament Jewish ones. This should not be
surprising because Alexandria,
which had become the center of Hellenistic culture, was also the cradle for
much of Christian thought. Egypt
provided a fertile soil for the first Christian communities. Monastic life
began there and so did Gnosticism. It may also not be too far fetched to
assume, although I have currently no firm evidence for it, that the change from
the original Christian symbol, the fish, to the cross as the symbol for eternal
life may also have been an Egyptian contribution since it bears a close
resemblance to its ancient symbol for life, the Ankh .
When one keeps these circumstances
in mind the Puritan revulsion against “Papism” and
its “idolatry” which is based on OT exclusionism becomes more readily
understandable. The question, however, is: which of the two models: the Egypto-Hellenistic integrative or the Mosaic exclusionary
is more appropriate for our day and age? In the nuclear age the answer
would seem to be obvious but reconciliation of differences is at present not in
the cards because influential Jewish organizations have succeeded in persuading
the media and Congress that the fate of Israel is, via the “Judeo-Christian
tradition,” inextricably linked to that of the U.S. Voices which call for an
independent U.S. foreign policy that supports the right of Israel to exist
within its pre 1967 borders but also demands withdrawal to those are not given
consideration. When the undue influence of Jewish organizations on American
policies is pointed out authors are called-anti-Semites and their jobs are in
jeopardy. When politicians do so, they cannot win an election or re-election.
On August 27 Professors John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published a book The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy where they deal with this problem but although it had not
yet appeared on the market Abraham Foxman, National Director of the
Anti-defamation League, immediately prepared a reply: The Deadliest Lie: The
Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, which will be published later
this month. In view of the importance of this debate for the future of our
country and the world I shall discuss both books in the next installment.
October 1, 2007
THE ISRAEL LOBBY
ACUTE DANGER RATHER THAN MYTH
In the May 1, 2006 installment (What are they
smoking?) I mentioned that in March of that year Professors John J. Mearsheimer
of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard had jointly written a position paper, “The Israel
Lobby,” which was not published in the U.S. but instead had appeared in the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html).
Although I did not know it they had simultaneously published a more detailed 82
page report in the Faculty Research Working Paper Series of the John F. Kennedy
School of Government Web site, http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011,
The article and the paper led to a vigorous refutation on April 4, 2006 by Professor Alan Dershowitz of the HarvardLawSchool.
The 44 page rebuttal was published on the same website under the title,
“Debunking the Newest - and oldest – Jewish Conspiracy; A Reply to the
Mearsheimer-Walt ‘“Working Paper.’”When
I wrote the May 1 essay I had not been aware of the reason why these
distinguished academics had to go to London
to present their opinions rather than using one of our magazines. But it is
this fact which immediately refutes the thesis of Dershowitz and other
detractors that there is no undue influence on American public opinion by some
Jewish pressure groups.
In spite of severe criticisms, which
accused the authors of anti-Semitism, anti-Israel bias, sloppy scholarship and
similar epithets, the professors, to their credit, were neither deterred nor
intimidated but, as mentioned in last month’s installment, they persevered and
published in late August of this year a book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. In this 484 page work they tried to meet the
criticisms that had been leveled against their previous publications by
providing a detailed bibliography which takes up 106 pages of the book. For
those of us who are familiar with the topic the authors have addressed
themselves to, there were few surprises. What makes the book necessary and
important is that two distinguished academics have made a valiant effort to
break the code of silence which is enforced by our media when criticism is
leveled against the policies of the State of Israel and that they present the
data in a factual well documented manner for all to see who are willing to do
so.
The book
also cleared up my question why the original article had to be published in England
rather than here. The authors wrote in the Preface,
“In the fall of
2002, Atlantic Monthly invited us to
write a feature article on the Israel
lobby and its effects on U.S.
foreign policy. We accepted the commission with some reservations, because we
knew this was a controversial subject and that any article that scrutinized the
lobby, U.S.
support for Israel,
or Israeli policy itself was likely to provoke a harsh reaction. Nonetheless,
we felt this was an issue that could no longer be ignored especially in light
of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the looming war with Iraq.
If U.S. support for Israel was a significant source of anti-Americanism in the
Middle East and a source of tension with key strategic allies, and if
pro-Israel groups and individuals were a major influence on U.S. foreign policy
in this vital region, then it was important to raise the issue openly and
encourage public discussion of the lobby’s actions and impact.”
The authors went on to say that
they worked over the next years in close conjunction with the editors of the
magazine, meeting various objections and
“. . .sent them a manuscript conforming to our prior agreements and
incorporating virtually all of their suggestions in January 2005. A few weeks
later, to our surprise, the editor informed us that the Atlantic had decided not to
run the piece and that he was not interested in our attempt to revise it.”
This fact tells the story: two
experts in the field are requested to write a paper on a highly controversial
but vital topic, a chore which they accepted somewhat reluctantly, they were
then led on for a period of more than two years to make corrections and
changes, and when all was said and done the article was rejected. Mearsheimer
and Walt subsequently considered writing a book but finding no publisher they
essentially dropped this unrewarding subject. In October of 2005 they were,
however, contacted again by a distinguished colleague who had read the rejected
Atlantic article and suggested its
publication in the London Review of Books.
After some revisions and updating it was finally published on March 23 as The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
The main points of the book are:
Congressional financial support for Israel far outstrips that of other much
more needy countries; instead of being an asset to the U.S. at this time Israel
has become a liability; the moral cause for supporting Israel’s policies is on
shaky grounds; the lobby strongly influences American foreign policy in the
Middle East and dominates the public discourse. In the extensive documentation
of these statements the authors keep repeating that the Israel
lobby is not a secret conspiracy or cabal and that as American citizens Jews
have every right to lobby Congress for their causes, but the methods used
exceed the norms for other pressure groups. Mearsheimer and Walt also emphasize
that Jews have a right to exist in a state of their own within internationally
recognized borders but so do the Palestinians. Furthermore, since the present
policies of the state of Israel,
especially in regard to the occupied territories, do not conform to
international law they should no longer be condoned by America
and the identification of Israel’s
policies with our foreign policy is not only wrong but dangerous for the future
of our country.
In their Conclusion as to “What is
to be done?”they
emphasize that the U.S.
must again reassert an independent foreign policy because the interests of our
country differ from those of Israel.
In order for this to occur the power of the lobby needs to be reduced. The
authors are under no illusions that this will be an easy task but they hope
that through public disclosure and discussion of the impasse current policies
have created enough Americans will speak up so that constructive steps toward a
more realistic foreign policy can be taken. The task is urgent because the
lobby, which is defined as various pro-Zionist organizations and individuals in
the Jewish and Christian community, is now just as eagerly promoting a war with
Iran as it did
against Iraq
prior to the invasion of that country.
The reaction to the book was
predictable. Without having waited for the appearance of the book Abe Foxman,
National Director of the Anti-defamation League, attempted to preempt its
impact and published a reply The
Deadliest Lies. The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, to which I
shall return later. For now it is of interest to look at the American reaction
to the Mearsheimer and Walt book. The most impressive aspect is that for all
practical purposes it has not reached mainstream America.
When I asked family, friends and colleagues, “what do the names Mearsheimer and
Walt mean to you?” I got blank stares. What is not presented on TV does not
sink into American awareness and I have yet to see programs which are
exclusively devoted to this issue. Books are hardly read; from newspapers
mainly the headlines are noted and since these present for the most part the
Israeli side, the Palestinian view remains underreported. There is, of course,
a great deal of debate on the Internet but it takes time and effort to sift
fact from fancy. Ordinary Americans who are engaged in professional life and are
overwhelmed by cares for their families simply don’t have the time to devote
themselves to this task.
When one does so it is instructive
to note that battle lines have been drawn. There is little discussion from the
pro-Israel side but mainly polemic, similar to the reaction to President
Carter’s book (January 1, 2007.
The Year of the Middle
East). To gauge the reaction of
the public at large it is interesting to check reader’s reviews on amazon.com.
By the middle of last week there were 46 reviews and the average score was four
stars out of a maximum of five. Some of the titles for positive reviews are:
“An objective appraisal of the situation in the United States today;” “The
destructive role of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy;” “Documents the very
sad state of U.S. Middle East policy;” “American Jewish Power under the
spotlight;”“Let the sun shine in;”
“Extremely important book for all Americans.”
Some of the headlines from readers
who had negative views were: “Biased;” “Lack of facts to back it up;” “Now for
real facts;” “Beating up on a boogey man;” “A low-quality research one of the
lowest I have read;” “Dangerous book; authors demonize Israel
as the root cause of all evil.” But more important than these headlines are the
views of readers in regard to the helpfulness of a given review. It was
striking to note that reviews which gave the book a 4 or 5 star rating were
regarded by at least two thirds of the readers as having been helpful; while
those reviewers who had given one or two stars to the book were regarded as
helpful by less than a third of the readers of their review. This suggests that
Americans are tired of being fed a one-sided diet and are eager to read a
non-polemical presentation of other points of view
The essentials of the criticisms of
Mearsheimer and Walt’s book are, as mentioned above, contained in Foxman’s
book. The fact that it addressed itself to their working paper rather than the
book does not matter because the substance of the criticism has remained the
same and is also echoed by the writers of negative reviews for amazon. The main
difference between Foxman’s and the Mearsheimer and Walt book is that the
former is written in a polemical manner and the references to bolster his views
are sparse; of 235 text pages only six are devoted to the bibliography. The
main points of Foxman’s book can be summarized as follows: Mearsheimer and
Walt’s writings are dangerous because they focus on Israel’s “sins,” rather
than showing that Israel is only acting in self-defense; they “deliberately
distort basic realities;” they present an anti-Semitic stereotype which will be
taken up by extremist groups in defense of their views; Jewish power in the
United States is a myth and feeds into conspiracy theories; Israel is a small
country in mortal danger from her enemies which deserves all the help it is
receiving from the U.S.; Americans like Israel and U.S. support simply reflects
their views. Mearsheimer and Walt are not the only ones taken to task by Foxman
but a chapter is also devoted to President Carter’s book under the title, “A
president loses his way.” We are told that Carter “distorts the facts of
history” in relation to the failed Camp David II meetings. But Foxman’s facts
rely exclusively on Dennis Ross’ and President Clinton’s words. He fails to
take into account Clayton Swisher’s book The
Truth about Camp David. The Untold Story of the Collapse of the Midldle East peace Process (March 1, 2007. Barack in Salt
Lake City) and that of Charles Enderlin, “Shattered Dreams; The
Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. These books
should have been known to Foxman and taken into account.
Some key sentences which reveal
Foxman’s thinking are “there is also a large infrastructure of Arabist
thinktanks, university chairs and journalists with an interest in or ties to
the many Arab nations, all of whom exercise their influence on behalf of
‘balance’ in U.S, Middle East policy;” “the idea that colleges and universities
in the United States are dominated by pro-Israeli voices is absurdly laughable.”
“As a strong military power and a U.S.
ally, Israel
has proven to be the single greatest source of stability in the region.”Or, “Far from being a strategic liability, Israel
is a major source of American strength and influence.” Are statements like
these really credible? Is not the opposite closer to the truth?
Another key sentence is, “They
[Jews] haven’t changed their nature in the past 6000 years, and they won’t do
it just because a community leader expresses an opinion.” This appeared in the
context of Jews being highly individualistic people, as shown even in the
Torah, and that “. . .Jewish American organizations support and
encourage such diversity of opinion [italics in original].” While the 6000
years seems to reveal a penchant for the number six, which we commonly find
when a great many is meant, and is clearly an exaggeration, it is true that a diversity
of opinion exists among Jews even in regard to Israel.
But as Foxman states these are arguments within the family and can as such be
aired in Israel
but the Diaspora has to close ranks. There is indeed a great difference between
how our media report political events and those in Israel.
Israeli papers and Internet sites present a much more varied picture than
Americans are being treated to; a point which is also made by Mearsheimer and
Walt. It is also true that the way some Jewish writers have dealt with their
adversaries for the past nearly 2000 years has remained constant. As I pointed
out in The Moses Legacy, in the paragraphs
dealing with Josephus’ Contra Apionem
polemic (ca. 80 A.D.), the methods to defame an adversary have remained
constant. They consist of slandering his competence, proving one’s opinion by
taking statements out of context and using half-truths.
A modern equivalent of Contra Apionem is not only the treatment
Mearsheimer and Walt received but also President Carter for the title of his
book Palestine. Peace not Apartheid. The word
apartheid was pounced on and applied to Israel
although Carter meant to describe the conditions in the occupied territories
for which it is entirely appropriate and the word has been used also by
Israelis. In view of the mentioned problems with Foxman’s book, I was surprised
to see that George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration,
would not only endorse the book but write its Foreword. How a man of his
stature can write the following is difficult to understand.
“It has taken not
a little courage to write The Deadliest
Lies. Perhaps what impresses me most of all is the fair-minded and
carefully judicious tone of Abe Foxman’s voice as it is heard in these pages.
This is not an angry riposte, but the responsible and admirable effort by a
good man to return the discourse to a civil, sane, and constructive level.”
These words would seem to apply
considerably more to the Mearsheimer and Walt book than to Foxman’s. Although
Mr. Shultz is advanced in age I do not believe that he is senile and instead I
assume that he simply lent his name to the Foreword which may actually have
been written by someone else. When one looks at the endorsements of Foxman’s
book on the back of the dust jacket one finds two well known Jewish authors,
Dennis Ross and Elie Wiesel, as well as Charles Hill, Distinguished Fellow in
International Security Studies at Yale University, and Robert Satloff,
Executive Director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, of whom I
knew nothing. Although Mearsheimer and Walt had gone out of their way to
emphasize repeatedly that they do not regard the activities of the lobby as a
conspiracy Charles Hill nevertheless wrote,
“Conspiracy theories are a measure
of a society’s mental health; when on the rise, trouble lies ahead. In The
Deadliest Lies, Abraham Foxman diagnoses the ‘Israel Lobby’ conspiracy theory
and reveals how sick it is. In doing so, he does a service to all Americans.”
Robert Satloff wrote,
“Abe Foxman, one
of the most passionate men in public life, has written a sober, methodical, and
laudably dispassionate indictment of well-known politicians, pundits, and
professors who dress up centuries-old canards about Jews in more acceptable
twenty first century garb. The impact of his work will have on the credibility
of the pseudo-scholarship he debunks is devastating.”
The Washington Institute for Near
East Policy (WINEP) is known to be a pro-Israel think tank and extensively
discussed in the Mearsheimer and Walt book as part of the lobby. It is,
therefore no surprise that its executive director lauds the Foxman book. One
may ask, however, are statements in Foxman’s book such as, “a sloppy diatribe;”
“[they] deliberately distort basic realities;” “depth of irrationality;”
“disjointed argument;” “one of the most unprofessional works of scholarship;” a
series of fantasies;” which are directed at Walt and Mearsheimer evidence of a
“sober, methodical and laudable detachment”?
When one looks up Charles Hill on
the Internet one can find that he was a co-author of the “Project for the New
American Century,” the neoconservative blueprint for pre-emptive wars in the
Middle East which was discussed in the December 1, 2005 issue (Albert
Wohlstetter’s Disciples). More importantly, for the current context, he was the former executive aide to President Ronald
Reagan’s Secretary of State George P. Shultz.Since both Shultz andHill are also listed as members of theHoover Institutionit seems plausible that Mr. Hill might have had a hand in the
composition of the Foreword to Foxman’s book. An excerpted version of the
Foreword also appeared with George Shultz’s name under the title, “The ‘Israel
Lobby Myth” in the September 17, 2007 Commentary section of U.S. News & World
Report. The Editor-in Chief of that weekly
publication is Mortimer Zuckerman, a vigorous defender of Israeli policies.
When one also reads in Human Events
that Charles Hill is currently “acting as Giuliani’s Chief Foreign Policy
Advisor” one has reason to be concerned about the direction U.S. foreign policy
would take if the former mayor of New York were to win the 2008 presidential
election.
While
Foxman’s book did contain all the statements I have referred to above there are
also conciliatory gestures. For instance in the final chapter, The Way Forward,
Foxman writes,
“Our enemy, always, is simplistic thinking, rigid ideology,
and the biased refusal to face facts honestly and forthrightly. When these are
the dominating features of discourse on any
[italics in original] side in the long struggle for peace, hatred and violence
are the beneficiaries.”
This is
correct but Foxman did not seem to realize that the entire tenor of his book is
in contrast to what he has advocated here. I believe that all of us can also
subscribe to
“Let’s agree to adhere to a single standard of expectations
for moral behavior by all parties, rather than applying to our opponents a far
stricter set of principles than we ourselves would agree to follow. Let’s
stipulate that deaths to civilians on all
[italics in the original] sides of any dispute are tragic and deplorable; that all [italics in the original] people should
be entitled to basic rights of freedom and decent living conditions and that all [italics in the original] nations
deserve a chance to live in peace and security, without fearing violence from
their neighbors.”
If
Mr. Foxman and those who agree with his condemnation of Mearsheimer and Walt’s
as well as President Carter’s book would really live by these words, the world
would indeed be a better place.
Let
us ask now what average Americans think about Foxman’s book on amazon.com.
There were 13 customer reviews with an average score of two stars. There were
only four reviewers who gave the book a four or five star rating with headlines
such as, “Provides clarity;” “An important rebuttal to Mearsheimer and Walt’s
ignorance;”“Foxman fights for his cause;”
“Exposing the deligitimization of Israel efforts of Walt-Mearsheimer- Carter.”
Less than half of readers thought that the reviews had been helpful. All the
negative responses gave the book one star with several readers commenting that
it actually deserved zero stars but there was no provision for doing so.Some typical headlines are, “Foxman at his
worst- Again;” “Deflecting Truth is a Full Time Job for Some;”
“Thou Protesteth too Much.” “A faulti [sic] logic- should get zero stars.” In these
instances more than half of readers found the reviews helpful.
It should
be pointed out in addition that the Dershowitz-Foxman type of thinking is also
imposed on Jews in our country. Rabbi Lerner, Editor-in Chief of Tikkun,
published in the May-June issue of that magazine an extensive description of
his experiences with the lobby. (http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0709/frontpage/israellobby).
He grew up in a family where both parents were not only vigorous supporters of
Zionism but also played active roles on the national scene in behalf of the
cause. Young Michael was also firmly convinced of the righteousness of the
Zionist endeavor until he learned the Palestinian side of the story from the
Israeli historian Benny Morris. Inasmuch as the events surrounding the
foundation of the state and the subsequent conduct of Israeli politicians did
not conform with what he saw as the true mission of Judaism, being a light to
the world and bringing relief to the oppressed, he could no longer condone what
the state was doing. Attempts to get his views across in the Jewish community
were quashed and he, as well as like-minded other Jews, was shunted to the
sidelines. As a result he founded in 1986 Tikkun,
which stands for healing, but as he wrote in the mentioned article,
“Some of the most
famous younger Jewish authors who today represent the mainstream of American
Jewish fiction or literary writing admitted to me off the record that they felt
reluctant to write for Tikkun because of the vulnerability they felt being
associated with a magazine that was wiling to publicly voice criticism of Israel.”
This is the
crux of the problem. The lobby demands exclusive adherence to its views and
stifles other well meaning voices by intimidation. As far as Congress is
concerned the lobby’s major arm AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs
Committee) not only operates through spreading fear but also generously
supports senators and representatives who toe the line, while bedeviling as
“anti-Israel” those who do not. Once this label has been attached election or
re-election is basically out of the question.
Inasmuch as AIPAC currently has become a major danger not
only to America
but also Israel
and the world because it foments military action against Iran,
I shall discuss its history and modus operandi in more detail in the next
installment.
For now I
would simply like to add one more observation that immediately sprang to mind
when I saw the front of the dust jacket of Foxman’s book. It is ironic that
neither Mr. Foxman nor the jacket designer realized that the top half could
actually be used by anti-Semites to prove their point. To see this irony one
needs to know something about the meaning of symbols. When I visited India
some years ago I noted that the swastika and what is called the Star of David
co-existed in harmony. The swastika, as an ancient symbol of the sun and power,
was present in Hindu temples while the hexagram could be found as decoration on
some buildings. On the return trip home I stopped to see my family in Vienna
and also bought several books one of which was Das Grosse Yantra-Buch by Madhu Khanna
All of us are familiar with mantras
which originally were sacred syllables or words to be repeated, but have now
become political slogans. Yantra and Tantra on the other hand were new words
for me. I learned that Yantra stands for a religious symbol while Tantra refers
to religious practices and ideas. In the Yantra book one is immediately
confronted with a large number of “stars of David” and as the book explains the
upward pointing triangle represents the male and the downward pointing triangle
the female principle. In addition the hexagram has usually a dot, a circle or
on occasion an image of a deity in the center, which is called the bindu.
Furthermore the hexagram is commonly imbedded within a larger geometric context
which likewise has symbolic significance. The important aspect is that the
bindu denotes the origin of all being and the point to which everything returns.
It is the essence that holds everything else together and when the hexagram is
embedded within another design it denotes connectedness to the natural world.
It could thus also stand for Maat, which was discussed in the two previous
installments. An example of this Yantra is shown here
Whoever adopted the hexagram as the
symbol for Judaism calling it either the “Star of David” or “Shield of David”
had unknowingly removed its profound symbolic context by omitting the bindu. In
so doing the symbol has actually come to denote an absence of “rootedness”
within the larger human community and the universe. But to be able to see these
connections an open mind to the thinking of others and an interest in learning
is required.When we now look at the top
of Foxman’s dust jacket, as shown below, it becomes apparent that the bindu has
been replaced with the word “Lies.”
Neo-Nazis and others of their ilk
could thus readily use it for propaganda purposes and say, “whatever the Jews
write is a bunch of lies because that’s what holds them together.” Fortunately
for Foxman and company, most Americans will probably not see the connection of
the word “Lies” with the bindu because it requires having studied comparative religion
which is not a favorite topic in our day and age. Nevertheless, unless we do so
and open our minds to how others see us and the world we will be condemned to
live in a land of fantasy as exemplified by the Bush administration.
The Israel
lobby is not a myth but represents a genuine and acute danger because it
falsely identifies America’s
foreign policy interests with those of Israel.
Iran is not a
threat to the U.S.
but a potential threat to Israel.
Even if the Iranians were to develop nuclear capabilities in the future
(experts estimate it would take several years) this does not necessarily mean
that they would use them for offensive purposes. The alarmist propaganda our
country is currently subjected to needs to be resisted. Americans need to be informed
that individuals and groups who oppose the workings of the lobby are not
anti-Israel but only want to save the Israelis and ourselves from misguided
policies which may soon bring about another catastrophe of major proportions.
To avoid this outcome the methods used by the lobby, namely: slander,
intimidation and bribery, must be exposed by our media so that Congress can at
last act responsibly.
December 1, 2007
ANNAPOLIS DÉJÀ VU
On July 16
of this year president Bush gave a speech in which he announced that “a moment
of clarity for all Palestinians” had come. They have the choice between “murderers
in black masks, and summary executions,” which referred to Hamas, or “a vision
of a peaceful state, called Palestine
as a homeland for the Palestinian people.” The latter was to be achieved by the
Abbas government which is “working to strengthen the Palestinian security
services, so that they can confront terrorists and protect the innocent. . . taking steps to improve the economy . .
. ensuring that Palestinian society operates under the rule of law. By following
this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future – and
establish a state of their own.” “As I said in the Rose Garden five years ago,
a Palestinian state will never be created by terror.” He conveniently failed to
mention that Israel
as well as many other post WWII emerging nations had used terror against their
colonial overlords to gain statehood.
In order to
help the Palestinians to choose the desired path the U.S.
would provide “the Palestinians with more than $190 million in American
assistance – including funds for humanitarian relief in Gaza.
. . . [and] a direct contribution of $80 million to
help Palestinians reform their security services.” Another $228 million would
be solicited to help Palestinian businesses. With this help the Palestinian
government “must arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure and
confiscate illegal weapons as the road map requires. They must work to stop
attacks on Israel,
and to free the Israeli soldier held hostage by extremists. And they must
enforce the law without corruption, so they can earn the trust of their people
and of the world. Taking these steps will enable the Palestinians have a state
of their own. And there’s only way [sic] to end the
conflict, and nothing else is acceptable.” Again he failed to mention that the
Israelis will get $30 billion over a 25 year period to keep them secure.
Having laid out the Palestinians’ obligations in extenso the president then addressed
what the Israelis need to do, “continue to release Palestinian tax revenues . .
. unauthorized outposts should be removed and settlement expansion ended. . . .
Israelis should find other practical ways to reduce their footprint without
reducing their security – so that they can help President Abbas improve
economic and humanitarian conditions. They should be confident that the United
States will never abandon its commitment to
the security of Israel
as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people.”
In order to
achieve these goals the US
would host an international meeting, chaired by Secretary of State Rice in the
fall which “will review the progress that has been made towards building
Palestinian institutions. They will look for innovative and effective ways to
support further reform. And they will provide diplomatic support for the
parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move
forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state.”
To fulfill this presidential vision Condi Rice
then engaged over the intervening months in vigorous shuttle diplomacy to
cajole the Israelis, Palestinians and other Arab leaders to come to the
Annapolis conference and show their solidarity with the goals president Bush
had outlined. It was rough sledding because no one believed that she had the
power to bring about significant changes in the region. The Palestinians
insisted that the meeting makes sense only if there were a prior Declaration of
Principles that were to be adhered to and a timetable for their achievement.
The Israelis didn’t want to put specifics on paper. They would be happy to talk
on anything the Palestinians wanted to talk but a commitment to definitive
actions was not in their game plan. The other Arab states knew this and as the
Saudis said they were not interested to attend a photo-op.
But one
must give our Secretary of State credit for trying and against all odds
invitations went out to 44 countries to attend a one day meeting on Tuesday
November 27, in order to once again jump start the peace process. Apparently
the thought had been, “the more the merrier” because it is difficult to see
what, for instance, Senegal,
Slovenia or the
Sudan could
contribute to a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord, while on the other hand the
Swiss had failed to make the list. At any rate the goal was modest and became
increasingly more so during the run-up to last Tuesday. It was perhaps best
summed up by Dennis Ross, the US
former Middle East mediator, “You can’t just have
everybody convene in what was going to be a conference. And I’m – then I guess
it became a meeting. Pretty soon it’ll be a get-together and before we’re done
it’s going to be a hoedown.” This was clearly the voice of experience because
Ross had spent his life trying to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. It
is documented in his book The Missing
Peace, which I have discussed here previously in “Barack in Salt
Lake City” (March
1, 2007).
In order
not to offend our president, a great many of the invitees did show up and on
Monday there were private talks between Bush and Olmert as well as Bush and
Abbas The plan was for Bush to then give a speech at a welcoming dinner on
Monday evening where he would lay out his ideas of what was to be accomplished
on Tuesday. It had been intended that he would also read at that time a joint
declaration of the Israelis and Palestinians which would outline their goals
and ways to achieve them. Unfortunately the key players did not act the way
Condi had hoped. Olmert and Abbas were unable to agree on what the document
should contain. Abbas wanted the previously mentioned Declaration of Principles
and a fixed time table while Olmert preferred generalities. One must feel pity
for Ms. Rice who had gone to all this trouble and even an hour before Bush’s
speech there was still no joint statement. We don’t know what she promised
Abbas during that interval but eight minutes before the scheduled speech they
handed Bush their consensus, which reflected essentially the Israeli view.
There hadn’t been time to print this “Statement,” which had been downgraded
from “Declaration,” in large print for our president’s presbyopic eyes and he
had to use his half-glasses to read the content. This didn’t help his TV image
when he glowered above them to the audience.
As one
might expect, the statement simply said that the Israelis and Palestinians
would “engage in vigorous and continuous negotiations, and shall make every
effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.” A steering committee
was to be appointed which would meet regularly, with the first one to be held
on December 12, 2007.
Abbas and Olmert are to meet every other week to follow up on these
negotiations. The document also committed to
“. . . immediately
implement their [Israelis and Palestinians] respective obligations under the
performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel
Palestinian conflict . . .” and that the “United States will monitor and judge
the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless
otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will
be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United
States.”
I have set
this paragraph apart because it accepts for the first time Israel’s
obligations under the 2002 road map to which we will return later.
Thereafter
Abbas and Olmert gave their speeches in their native languages, probably to
stress to their people that each one will stand his ground. A technical glitch
prevented the audience from understanding what Abbas was saying for the first
several minutes because the translation device didn’t work. But no harm was
done because we have the transcript and neither he nor Olmert made any points
that were new. On Wednesday there was another set of private meetings between
Bush and Olmert as well as Bush and Abbas then everybody went home glad that it
was over and that at least nothing bad happened. While bilateral talks are to
continue between the Israelis and Palestinians in the manner outlined above the
international community will get to listen to progress some time in January at
another meeting in Moscow.
Before
discussing what was really accomplished in Annapolis
and the goal of peace by the end of 2008, it is useful to look at two key
landmarks from the past; the Madrid Conference of October 1991 and the road map
of 2002. In the summer of 1991 president Bush’s father basked in the glory of
the successful first Gulf War and intended to turn the coalition that had
driven Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait
into one that would now push for peace between Israel
and the Palestinians as well as the region at large. To get this process moving
then Secretary of State James Baker, jointly with Dennis Ross, shuttled during
that summer between the US,
Israel and
various Arab countries to coax them into an international conference. For the
first time all the Arab leaders would sit down with the Israelis under the
aegis of the US
and the USSR to
find a way how to bring peace to the region.
This was
apparently the model Condi Rice used now and this is why it is important to
look at that conference. The invitation to the Madrid
conference stated that,
“Direct bilateral
negotiations will begin four days after the opening of the conference. . . .
The conference will have no power to impose solutions on the parties or veto
agreements reached by them. It will have no authority to make decisions for the
parties and no ability to vote on issues of results. . . .
With respect to
negotiations between Israel
and the Palestinians, who are part of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian
delegation, negotiations will be conducted in phases, beginning with talks on
interim self-government arrangements. These talks will be conducted with the
objective of reaching agreement within one year. Once agreed, the interim
self-government arrangements will last for a period of five years, beginning
the third year of the period of the interim self-government arrangements,
negotiations will take place on permanent status. These permanent status
negotiations, and the negotiations between Israel
and the Arab states, will take place on the basis of [UN Security Council]
Resolutions 242 and 238.”
With other words, by late 1997 the
Palestinians could celebrate Independence Day. But Shamir, who was Prime
Minister of Israel at that time, and whose “Wanted Poster” for terrorism that
had been issued by the British during the Mandate period was carried along by
protesters outside the meeting, had other priorities. For those we have to
consult the above mentioned book by Ross. Due to Gorbachev’s glasnost policy the Soviet
Union had allowed massive Jewish emigration to Israel
and Shamir was busy building settlements. Initially he had asked the US
for $400 million loan guarantees, but after the Gulf War, when he had yielded
to president GHW Bush’s urgent requests not to retaliate against the Iraqi
Scuds, he felt that Bush should reward him for good behavior and upped the
amount to $10 billion. This request came at a particularly bad time for Bush
because you can’t give money for settlements while at the same time launching a
peace initiative with the Arabs. If the settlements had been built in Israel
proper (within the 1949 armistice line) there might not have been a problem but
as Ross explained, Shamir “could not accept that there was a difference between
Israel within
the ‘green line’ and Israel
beyond it in the territories.” Bush, therefore, defied AIPAC and its supporters
on Capitol Hill and asked for a 120 day postponement of these loan guarantees.
He succeeded, but the resulting uproar from Jewish voters, as described by J.J.
Goldberg in Jewish Power, was probably
an additional factor which cost him the 1992 re-election.
The son, George W Bush, learned
this lesson and has been extra careful not to offend Jewish sensibilities as
expressed by the leadership of Israel
and the major Jewish organizations in our country. Although Annapolis
was clearly modeled on Madrid
there was a major difference. The Palestinians, or at least some of them, were
now official partners in the peace process. Shamir had refused to sit down with
representatives of the PLO, which had been exiled to Tunis,
and had insisted that only West Bank residents were to
be allowed at the table as part of the Jordanian delegation. In those days
Arafat’s PLO and its Fatah organization were the terrorists one does not
negotiate with, while they are currently praised as the moderates who deserve
to be armed against Hamas. During the rest of the decade came the Oslo
accord. Arafat was no longer regarded as a terrorist but worthy of a Nobel
Peace Prize jointly with Yitzhak Rabin. But Oslo
came to naught after Rabin was murdered by an Israeli ultra-orthodox youth.
Camp David II, in the last year of the Clinton
administration, likewise failed, Arafat was returned to terrorist status by Israel
and the US and
on April 30, 2003 the oft
mentioned road map was formally spelled out and put on the table.
Those were the days of George W
Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq
and on the urgings of Tony Blair the Palestinian problem became topical again.
At the end of the road lay “a viable Palestinian state living side by side in
peace and security with Israel
and its other neighbors.” A quartet, consisting of the US,
UN, EU and Russia,
was to be the midwife to this overdue birth. The road map envisioned three
phases.
Phase I: Ending
terror and violence, normalizing Palestinian life, and building Palestinian
institutions (present to May 2003).
Phase II:
Transition (June - December 2003).
Phase III
Permanent status agreement and end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
(2004-2005).
In phase I the Palestinians were to
prepare for statehood by drafting a Palestinian Constitution and hold “free and
fair and open elections.” Israel
was to take “all necessary steps to help normalize Palestinian life . . .
withdraws from Palestinian areas occupied from September 28, 2000 . . .freezes all settlement activity . . . immediately dismantles settlement
outposts erected since March 2001.
Phase II which was to start
immediately after the Palestinian elections and was to end with the “possible
creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders in
2003.”The Quartet would also convene an
international conference to help in this effort.
During Phase III there would be a
second international conference which would deal with final borders, Jerusalem,
refugees and settlements. Furthermore, a comprehensive Arab - Israel
peace agreement would also occur.
As such Palestinian Independence
Day was then envisioned for 2005 and after Annapolis
it’s currently 2008. We must now ask ourselves what keeps going wrong that
pushes Palestinian independence further and further into the future while
making life for ordinary Palestinians increasingly miserable. The simplest
answer is that in the past Israeli politicians had no interest in creating a
viable Palestinian state and kept dragging their heels.
The road map had, of course, a
fatal flaw by insisting right from the start on cessation of terrorism by
Palestinians. By equating a national struggle for liberation with terrorism a
demand was placed on the various Palestinian factions they could not meet. As
has been pointed out previously, here and by others, terrorism ceases when a
state has been achieved but hardly ever before. The Palestinians did come up
with a constitution which in form of its Third Draft, dated March 25, 2003, can be found on the
Internet. They have also had free and fair elections in January of 2006 where
to most everybody’s surprise Fatah lost and Hamas won. A national unity
government was formed but our president’s quest for Middle East
democracies stopped right then and there because we had labeled Hamas a
terrorist organization with whose leadership one does not talk. Thereafter Israel
and the US, via
Elliott Abrams in the vice president’s office, engineered a mini-civil war
between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza
(Saving the Bush Legacy, July 1, 2007;
The Most Dangerous Nation, November 1,
2007). Although Fatah was supposed to win, they lost and the
Palestinian people in Gaza now live
under a Hamas government.
Our president and other countries
who are so concerned about human rights violations in the rest of the world
have no problem with accepting the fact that the Gazans are incarcerated by
walls and fences in their little strip of land. There is only one border
crossing for pedestrians and another for the transport of goods which operate
under rules that are known only to the Israeli soldiers who are guarding it.
The Gaza economy has been strangled
and the poverty rate has been estimated at 70%. What Hamas does have is weapons
and to make their presence known they shoot off rather ineffectual Qassam
rockets on a daily basis across the wall into neighboring southern Israel,
which in turn leads to predictable Israeli reprisals. In the West Bank we are
arming Fatah so that they can battle Hamas there and while this is going on the
Israelis can say, “look, these are just a bunch of wild people how can we
possibly make peace with these folks?”In spite of all the nice words we heard this week from Annapolis
this seems to be the real objective. Keep the Palestinians fighting each other
then we have an excuse not to proceed with the road map.
Whether or not this assessment is
correct will become obvious in the next few months. If Prime Minister Olmert
goes ahead immediately with his part of the road map obligations, as outlined
above, peace may have a chance. If he does not he will strengthen the hand of
Hamas because they can say that, regardless of what the Israelis promise, Abbas
and Fatah are unable to improve the lives of the people and continued armed
struggle is the only answer.
There are additional aspects of
Palestinian life under Israeli occupation Americans simply are not told because
we have a very effective media censorship in this respect. For instance the
fact that the Under-Secretary General who was also the UN’s Middle East
negotiator had resigned on June 12, 2007 in protest over the inability of the
UN to stop the human rights abuses, which are occurring on a daily basis in the
occupied territories. In his private “End of Mission Report” to the Secretary General,
Alvaro de Soto
minced no words about the inability of the Quartet to achieve anything useful
and urged that the UN ought to remove itself from this group. As mentioned in
last month’s installment the report was leaked to The Guardian and is available on the Internet. It should be read by
everyone who really wants to know the facts as they exist in the occupied
territories. De Soto made it clear
that the Quartet is “simply a side show” and used by the US
for its own purposes. The UN, as an organization which represents all the
people of the world, should not be put into a position of supporting one
political group i.e. Fatah against another i.e. Hamas. He stated furthermore,
that Israel has
adopted an “essentially rejectionist stance” towards the Palestinians.
De Soto
is not alone in his views that the UN should leave the Quartet because on October 15, 2007 the BBC reported
that the UN Human Rights envoy for the Palestinian territories, John Dugard,
“will urge the world body to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators
unless it addresses Palestinian human rights. Mr. Dugard said that the
situation has been going from bad to worse and that he was ‘very struck by the
sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people.’” He attributed it to “the
crushing effect of human rights violations” and especially the restrictions on
the freedom of movement by Palestinians within the territories. He regarded the
situation as sufficiently bad that a third intifada may well be in the offing.
He also stated that any occupation is bound to lead to military resistance and
as history has shown, today’s terrorists become leaders of their countries once
independence has been achieved.
Mr. de Soto and Mr. Dugard actually
have a very good point that the UN should not be part of this continuing
charade which calls itself peace process. When Israelis and Americans speak of
“painful concessions” Israel
will have to make to the Palestinians and vice versa they blind themselves to
the fundamental fact spelled out in the UN Charter that “acquisition of
territory by force” is inadmissible. The occupation of the territories is
illegal under international law and so is the wall Israel
is building to enforce a separation from the Palestinians.Earlier this week I received from the
organization for a Just Peace in the Holy Land an Open Letter written by Al Haq
for the West Bank and Al Dameer for Gaza which had been sent by these
organizations to Annapolis. Al Haq is the West Bank
affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva, while Al-Dameer is
the Association for Human Rights in Gaza.
The letter stated in clear language
that the overarching principle of all negotiations must be in accord with
international law as expressed in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.
According to article 47 of the Geneva Convention Palestinians are to be
regarded as “protected persons,” whose civil rights must be respected by the
occupying power. Furthermore, any treaty which is not based on international
law is null and void as stated in article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the
Laws of Treaties. Since I am a physician rather than a lawyer I was not certain
whether or not these views were correct, but a visit to the Internet confirmed
their veracity.
Since 1983 there have been 27 resolutions
introduced into the Security Council which condemned Israel’s
actions against Palestinians or Lebanese. Each one was vetoed by the US.
Let me just cite the problem of the wall which had been presented to the
American public by Mr. Zuckerman, Editor-in chief of US News and World Report, under the headline, “Good fences make
good neighbors” (Herzl’s Dream, August 1, 2004). When Israel
started building this wall on Palestinian land, outside the green zone, the
Palestinians lodged a complaint with the UN. It was referred to its judicial
organ the International Court of Justice which ruled 14:1 that
“The construction
of the wall being built by Israel,
the occupying power, in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and
around East Jerusalem . . . are contrary to
international law.
Israel is under an
obligation to terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an
obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built
in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem,
to dismantle forthwith the structures therein, and to repeal or render
ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto, in
accordance with paragraph 151 of this Opinion.”
The Opinion continues for several
pages but this was the essence. A resolution was then introduced in the
Security Council which stated in its key aspects,
“Reaffirming the
principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,
Reaffirming its
vision of a region where two States, Israel
and Palestine, live side by side
within secure and recognized borders . . .
Reiterating its
call upon Israel,
the occupying power, to fully and effectively respect the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949 . . .
Reiterating the opposition
to settlement activities in the OccupiedTerritories and to any activities
involving the confiscation of land, disruption of the livelihood of protected
persons and the de facto annexation of land,
1. Decides that
the construction by Israel,
the occupying Power, of a wall in the OccupiedTerritories departing from the
armistice line of 1949 is illegal under relevant provisions of international
law and must be ceased and reversed,
2. Requests the
Secretary-General to report on compliance with this resolution periodically,
with the first report to be submitted within one month.
The resolution was adopted by 10
members on October 14, 2003;
there were four abstentions, the US
vetoed it and wall building continues to this very day. When
one keeps these facts in mind it is clear that a peace treaty by the end of
2008 can hardly be expected. As an Israeli friend quipped to Tom
Friedman, “Annapolis turned the
ignition key on a car with four flat tires.”
It is difficult to conceive that in
an election year the US
will shed its partisan role towards Israel.
President Bush is unlikely to accept international law, including the Geneva
Conventions which our ex-Attorney General has so famously referred to as
“quaint.” Yet without adhering to this basic principle there can be no peace in
the Middle East or elsewhere. By having appointed ourselves in Annapolis
as the guardian of this peace process the president may have made temporarily
political hay at home but he lacks credibility abroad. Furthermore, although he
has pledged his personal unstinting effort one may doubt that he will follow
through because he is a “delegator” and self-described “decider” rather than a
hands on individual working in the trenches. In addition none of the viable
candidates for the 2009 presidency will touch this “hot potato” during the
campaign because it spells instant suicide. Those are the realities in our
country and one can only pity the Palestinian people because there is at this
time no one who can really effectively help them apart from nongovernmental
agencies on a purely humanitarian level.
If the Israeli government really
wanted peace it should respect international law and follow the advice
Yeshayahu Leibowitz gave to his countrymen in 1968 and which was extensively
quoted in Whither Zionism. His essays
collected, edited and translated by Eliezer Goldman under the title Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State
should be read and taken to heart by everyone who wishes the Jewish as well as
the Palestinian people well. The sum and substance of Leibowitz’s counsel was:
get out of the occupied territories now because unless you do so it will
corrupt your souls. Practically forty years later all that he had foreseen has
occurred and Israeli politicians have still not found a way to convince their
countrymen of the errors of their ways.
This is why some thoughtful
Israelis no longer believe in the Zionist dream and even a two-state solution.
They are already preparing for the future when Arabs will outnumber Jews and
there will again be only one Palestine
where those Jews who will want to remain will live in a mainly Arab, and
hopefully democratic, country where human rights are respected regardless of
ethnicity or religion. Those Israelis who will not accept this law of
demographics have for the most part already their second passport and will
again move on to some other country which they will regard as more hospitable.
When Arabs and Iranians are talking about Israel
disappearing from the map within the next fifty years they don’t necessarily
mean a military solution but they bank on the staying power of Muslims and the
well known search for greener pastures by Jews. When I wrote Whither Zionism? in 2001 I still believed in the two-state solution, as it
has now been finally espoused. But the “facts on the ground,” as Prime Minister
Sharon has called them, have probably made it increasingly more unlikely. In
the headline of the article on November 29, from which the previous statement
was quoted, Tom Friedman posed the question, “Middle East
peace initiative: Is it an oasis or a mirage?” We will know the answer within
the next few months. But since this is the Christmas season we might as well
hope for the best in the near rather than distant future.
January 1, 2008
2008 OUTLOOK
At the end
of one and the beginning of another year it is customary to look back at the
past, gauge the future, and make resolutions to avoid the mistakes that have
previously been made. This upcoming year is likely to be a pivotal one.
Decisions will be made that will affect our children and grandchildren for
years, if not decades, to come. Will our people and its leadership have the
wisdom to make the correct ones, is the key question.
First let
us look at 2007. One year ago I headlined this monthly installment as, “The
Year of the Middle East.” This was correct because apart
from presidential contender politics the Middle East did
dominate the news. In Iraq
the “surge,” about which I had expressed considerable doubt in February, has
indeed brought some improvement in the level of violence of that unfortunate
country. But whether this is a temporary lull or a permanent change for the
better has yet to be demonstrated. The reason why I am hedging my bets in this
regard is twofold. On the one hand we are arming Sunnis to fight against Al
Qaeda militants in Iraq
while at the same time not pursuing a strategy that will bring peace to a
unified country. The Shia majority will under these circumstances continue to
mistrust us and see our arming of Sunnis merely as a prelude for the probably
inevitable full blown civil war once our troop strength is reduced.
Our
administration has been told over and over again that there is no military
solution to Iraq’s
problems yet all pleadings, including those of the
November 2006 Baker-Hamilton Commission report, fell on deaf ears. We still
support a government which has no standing among its people and the only route
to achieve a modicum of peace in the area has not been taken. For this to come
to pass we would have to put prejudices aside and start direct and honest
negotiations, without preconditions, with all of Iraq’s
neighbors. Not only Turkey
but Syria and
especially Iran
are essential.
President
Bush is supposed to visit the region some time later this month but with his
penchant for avoiding direct contact with common people and preaching to others
instead of listening to their concerns we can unfortunately expect only a
propaganda exercise rather than a genuine breakthrough. For that to occur he
would have to include Tehran and Damascus
on his schedule. If he did so, in a spirit of friendship and learning, he would
find, to his surprise, a warm welcome not only from the people at large but
even the leadership of those countries. People in the Middle East
and around the world don’t hate us, but they vigorously resent our mistaken
policies, which need to be rectified.
While in the Middle East
the president is supposed to also visit Israel
and the West Bank but he will studiously avoid Gaza
which we, jointly with Israel,
are strangling economically. It is predictable that in the West Bank
he will be chauffeured on Israel’s
new highways, built on expropriated Palestinian land, and the use of which is
exclusively reserved for Israelis. Palestinians have to make do with run down
country roads which snake from one checkpoint to another. Spending one day with
ordinary Palestinians, rather than merely with leaders of Fatah, might open
even the most closed minds to the Palestinians real problems.
In years past kings and potentates
gave audiences where ordinary people could come and present their petitions but
our “democratic” society has done away with this time honored custom. Yet, it
had a dual purpose the king, sultan or whatever the title, heard the concerns
of his subjects and the people, in turn, realized that their king was
interested not only in his own, but also their well-being. But, as mentioned before
democratically elected leaders no longer concern themselves with people at
large and deal only with their so-called representatives. Yet, the king of the
Saudis and some other Arab Emirs still give audiences for the populace.
The much touted Annapolis
peace conference, of which the president’s visit is supposed to be a follow up,
is already showing itself as another maneuver to avoid coming to grips with the
real problem. This consists of the unalterable fact that we are supporting a
political regime in Israel
which blatantly defies international law, while blaming the Palestinians when
they react against their occupation with violence. Yes, suicide bombing is
reprehensible but exhortations and wall building cannot stop them for any
length of time. Only good will combined with patient, concerned listening to
the needs of an oppressed people will do so. Remove first the necessity for
fighting then decent people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide
will start cooperating and no longer yield to incendiary rhetoric from either
side.
It is already clear that the Annapolis
meeting was not primarily for the benefit of the Palestinians. It had
apparently two aims. One was to bolster Israel’s
status in the Arab world by showing Arabs the reasonableness of Olmert’s words.
Having major Arab leaders sit down in the same room, albeit not at the same
table, with Israelis provided much needed legitimacy for the Zionist cause. The
other unstated goal was to create a Sunni Arab League against Shiite Iran.
But Arabs are no fools they have a
long and rich history which has given them ample reason to mistrust the West of
which Israel is
a prime representative in their very midst. They see that Israeli politicians
are unable, unwilling or both to come to a genuine peace agreement with the
Palestinians because it would mean a return to the June 5 1967 borders. This is what International law, which
has forbidden acquisition of land by war, demands. This fundamental principle
is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and as long as it is not
adhered to there can be no peace. The obstacles which Israel
has created in form of settlements on occupied land and the annexation of all
of Jerusalem are tremendous. But
they were created by Israel,
with our help, and it is up to us and the Israelis to remove them now. Yet, at
a time when there are supposed to be final status peace negotiations in
progress, West Bank settlements are further expanded.
This blatant show of disregard for the needs of the negotiating partner can
only lead to further violence and a strengthening of the Islamic parties. The
fact that our administration tolerates this state of affairs makes us again
co-responsible when another Intifada will erupt.
Our totally inept foreign policy
and meddling in Pakistan
has now further aggravated the problems of that country too. The pursuit of the
Holy Grail called “democracy” in states which simply are not ready for it has
just caused another tragedy. Benazir Bhutto did not necessarily volunteer for
the suicide mission we had sent her on. What I am going to say now is my
private opinion and not necessarily the whole truth because documents to
support it are still lacking. But it appears that Musharaff who had been trying
to hold the country together by authoritarian means had found disfavor in
certain Washington circles and
Bhutto was drafted as the savior of democracy. Although she had misgivings,
having been fully aware of her father’s fate, she accepted the challenge,
possibly out of a sense of duty. Her assassination last week dooms any hope for
genuine democracy to emerge in Pakistan
during the upcoming year and more chaos is bound to be in store.
It is truly remarkable that our
politicians are completely incapable of learning from history. In Iran
we had put the Shah on his throne in 1953, after toppling a duly elected
democratic government, but by the late 1970s his excesses led to popular
unrest. He had, therefore, become a liability for the Carter administration
which had made human rights concerns its hallmark. The Shah was then urged to
make democratic reforms. Since they were too late the safety valve turned into
an explosion of the overheated kettle, sweeping Ayatollah Khomeini into power.
President Carter was and is an honorable man but he had no idea about the
degree of hate the Shah had created against himself in his own country. When
Carter, out of a sense of common human decency, then allowed the Shah to come
to the US for
medical treatment all hell broke loose in Tehran.
The U.S.
embassy was stormed, its personnel taken hostage, and the ensuing deep freeze
in relations has lasted to this day. The Iranians have since made several
attempts to ease the tensions but were rewarded with membership in the “axis of
evil,” which further poisoned the waters.
Musharaff is no fool either; he
knows what happened to the Shah when he tried to loosen his grip, on America’s
urging, and he may not readily relinquish power in the face of impending chaos.
Why American politicians believe that a democratically elected government will
be better able to deal with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the northwest border region
of the country than an autocratic government is difficult to fathom. If
Musharaff or some other general were to find themselves
unable to control the country during the next year the danger of Muslim
radicalism coming to power is a very real one.
Last year my friend and colleague
Professor Petsche of Vienna sent me
a book which is highly relevant in this context. It was written by Gerhard
Schweizer, published last year and is called, “Der Unbekannte Islam. Sufismus-diereligioeseHerausforderung.[The unknown Islam.Sufism- the religious
Challenge].” The author points out that Sufism tends to transcend narrow
religious bias not only within Islam but even towards Christians, Jews and
Hindus. The Sufi seeks for mystical union with God which automatically breaks
down sectarian barriers.Schweizer
recounted with amazement what he had experienced at a visit to one of the main
Sufi pilgrimage centers, Ajmir, in India.
The city of Ajmir is regarded as India’s
“Mecca” because Muinuddin Chisti
had died there in 1236. Chisti had been a major force in the Islamisation of
parts of India
but instead of the sword he had used good works and persuasion. Apart from his
veneration in the city there are numerous shrines to other Sufi saints, who had
in the past been drawn to this holy area, in the neighboring mountains. During
the ascent to the mausoleum of Meeran Hussein on one of the mountaintops, in
the midst of a throng of pilgrims who had come from all over India
and beyond, Schweizer entered into a conversation with two of them. They told
him that they had been on the road for four days having come from the state of
Madhya Pradesh, more than a thousand kilometers distant, that they were friends
and had already made several pilgrimages together. One was a teacher the other
a hotel manager.Let me now translate
some key passages,
“When the mausoleum came into sight the
teacher surprised me with the request if I would mind to be blessed jointly
with them by one of the holy men?-
Jointly? But I’m not a Muslim.
The teacher
laughed. He wasn’t Muslim either, he was a Hindu; his friend was Muslim. But, I
remonstrated, Hinduism and Islam are completely different religions there is no
spiritual connection between them – All religions are manifestations of the
All-One, the Hindu replied. God is One, for Hindus as
for non-Hindus. To some believers He appears as Shiva, to others as Vishnu,
still others as Allah or Jesus Christ. The divine is in all religions.”
In the Mosque after having bought a
bowl of flower petals which one of the members of the clergy distributed over
the grave of the saint, they received after another small fee an amulet to ward
off evil. The holy man also asked for their first names which he used in the
subsequent blessing. “He then spread a green cloth over our heads and asked us
to silently pray under this common canopy – a Muslim, a Hindu and a Westerner
of Christian descent peacefully united.” Thus, peace between the most diverse
religions is achievable; all it needs is an open mind and good will. Schweizer
then uses this and other experiences with Sufis as a measure of hope that Pakistan
might not fall victim to Muslim extremism because several Sufi religious
centers are located in that country. All we can do is hope that he is correct.
While Pakistan
is going to be of serious concern in this year there are other areas around the
world which will pose a challenge to our “global leadership.” Newsweek devoted its first of the year
edition to China
and proclaimed 2008 as the year when that country will celebrate its final
arrival among the big players on the international scene. The Beijing Olympics
are coming up and the country will put its best foot forward. Somehow I am
reminded of 1936 and the Berlin Olympics at which time Hitler had put on a show
for the world to convince it that Nazism was not what they had thought and
heard but that there were genuine achievements in which one could rightfully
take pride. He accomplished his objective and two years later he could drop
pretenses and embark on the conquest of central and eastern
Europe which had been the goal all along. The question now is: what will China
do after its successful debut and how will the U.S.
react? This is one of the overarching problems of our time.
The current issue of Foreign Affairs has several articles on
this question and the voice of reason would demand that we do not meet China’s
emergence with hostility and increased military buildup but as an opportunity
to create a more stable balance in the world. This possibility exists but everything
would depend on the outcome of this year’s presidential elections.
Unfortunately, the choices we are currently presented with do not necessarily
bode well for the future. I shall take up this topic in the March installment
because the field of contenders will have narrowed considerably after “super
Tuesday” on February 5. For now here are some statistics to ponder especially
when one reads them from the Chinese rather than American point of view. The
article by Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small, entitled. “China’s
New Dictatorship Diplomacy. Is Beijing
Parting With Pariahs?” presents a table which projects
“Defense Expenditures, 2003-30.”Estimated in billions of dollars the numbers for 2003 are 60 for China
and 417 for the U.S.;
for 2010 88 vs. 482. By 2030 the numbers are 238 vs. 808.This is, of course, pure fantasy, because by
then we’ll either have had a major war, the outcome of which cannot be guessed,
or we won’t need the weaponry any more because the world will have come to its
senses.
When the Chinese and Time magazine’s Man of the Year,
Vladimir Putin, see these numbers they will ask themselves the obvious
question: who is supposed to be on the receiving end of this arsenal? The
answer is, of course, clear. We are not going to need it for fighting Islamic
terrorists, or “rogue states” such as North
Korea. The buildup of this vast amount of
armaments will force Russia and China into an arms race with us to the
detriment of all three countries because the money is wasted. In addition it
ought to be apparent that a conventional war against either Russia
or China cannot
be won and a nuclear one will leave all of us destitute. Since this is, or at
least should be, obvious to anyone one wonders why we let our politicians get
away with their fear mongering instead of working on creative solutions.
If we persist on our present course
a conflict with China
over Taiwan
will become inevitable. It probably won’t happen this year but thereafter all
bets are off. Will we persist in defending the independence of Taiwan
and will we go to war over the issue will become an important question. In the
mid 1950s Eisenhower could credibly threaten war over the islands of Quemoy
and Matsu but those days are gone. Conventional weapons
will no longer intimidate because Chinese missiles can blow our aircraft
carriers out of the water and what good are nuclear weapons when we destroy
ourselves in the process. Are we also suicide bombers?
In regard to Russia
the question is whether or not our administration will be sensible enough to
shelve the so-called missile defense shield against Iranian nukes in Poland
and the CzechRepublic?
Will we continue to antagonize Russia
by putting our missiles in her front yard? Let us remember the Cuban missile
crisis, of which our president’s press secretary had never heard of.What prompted it? Khrushchev
putting missiles into Cuba? Yes, but why did he do so? Answer: because we had put our
missiles into Turkey.
The crisis was resolved not just, as it was proudly declared here, when
“Khrushchev blinked,” but when we promised him a tit for tat. His missiles
would disappear from Cuba
with an additional guarantee that we will never again attempt to invade the
island to remove Castro’s regime and that we will also remove our missiles from
Turkey.
Obviously, the Kennedy administration didn’t tell us about those little details
at the time because the glow of victory might have been somewhat tarnished.
While the misbegotten idea of the
missile defense shield will be one area of potential friction with Russia,
there is also the unresolved Kosovo question. The Kosovars want independence
from Serbia.
The U.S., EU
and NATO concur but Serbia
is against it and banks on Russia
to support its point of view. It is truly ironic that 100 years later Serbia
is again placed in a role which can seriously destabilize Europe
if not the world. It is, therefore, interesting to look back at what had transpired
in a Moravian castle in the middle of September 1908. Since this important
prelude to catastrophe is hardly known in this country I have briefly mentioned
it in War&Mayhem. Here is a
somewhat fuller but still abbreviated account.
The Ottoman Empire
was regarded in those days as “the sick man of Europe”
and the various European powers were already busy “Balkanizing” its European
possessions. The process had started in earnest with the Berlin Congress of
1878 which superceded the treaty of San Stefano of the same year that had ended
a Turko-Russian war. Among its various provisions were that Serbia
and Montenegro
were increased in size, Bulgaria
emerged as a practically independent state but still under official suzerainty
of the Sultan, and Austria-Hungary
was given the right to occupy and administrate Bosnia-Herzegovina, although
these lands too remained officially under the Sultan’s turban. In effect the Balkan
Peninsula was divided between an Austro-Hungarian and Russian zone
of interest while lip service was paid to Turkish authority. But Turks are
resilient and various factions arose in the country and among émigrés which did
not want to sit idly by while their country was being dismembered. In June of
1908 segments of the Turkish Army stationed in Macedonia
began to march under its officers, the proverbial “Young Turks,” on Constantinople
and upon arrival they forced the Sultan to revive the Constitution of 1876
allowing free elections and other reforms.
This created an immediate problem
for the European powers because a strong resurgent Turkey
was clearly not in their interest. They wanted the Turks out of Europe
altogether and divide the spoils. The problem was especially acute for the
Habsburg Empire and its Balkan possessions where the process of pacifying
Bosnia-Herzegovina had taken longer and proven more expensive than had been
anticipated. Furthermore, the Serbs living there were unhappy because they
wanted union with Serbia
and detested the Habsburgs. But since Bosnia-Herzegovina also had a
considerable Muslim population, government circles in Vienna
became concerned that Bosnian Muslims might want to follow the example set by
their Turkish brothers and demand to participate in Turkey’s
elections. This would have ended Austrian occupation and had to be forestalled.
Frantic meetings between heads of
the European states ensued during the summer and the one of most immediate
concern took place between the Austrian Foreign Secretary Alois Lexa von
Aehrenthal and Russia’s
Alexander Izvolsky. At this fateful get-together on September 15 the two men
hatched a plan which lit the fuse that led directly on June 28 of 1914 to the
murder of Austria’s
Archduke by a Bosnian student and WWI.
In 1908 Russia
still smarted from the defeat by the Japanese and felt that if it had been able
to move the Black Sea fleet through the Dardanelles
the debacle could have been prevented. Aehrenthal, therefore, promised to
support Russian claims if not to Constantinople itself
but at least to free passage of its warships through the Dardanelles.
In return for that favor Russia
was not to object to Austria’s
outright annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They agreed, furthermore, to give Bulgaria
its full independence and to pacify the Serbs by enlarging their country to
some extent.
Obviously these talks were held in
secret and their success depended on the agreement of the other powers and
especially of the Serbs. The official announcement was to be made
simultaneously in Vienna and St.
Petersburg but Aehrenthal jumped the gun by having
Franz Joseph declare the annexation on October 6. This had disastrous
consequences. The Russians immediately denied having had anything to do with
the plan, the Serbs were furious and all the rest of Europe,
except Germany
which had been previously notified, was aghast at this violation of the Berlin
protocol. The British were especially annoyed at having been left out of
consideration and their hostility to the Danube Monarchy can be traced to those
days. The Serbs mobilized their army and war appeared imminent. Russia’s
denial of complicity could not be upheld when Vienna
threatened to publish the Buchlau protocols (castle where the talks had been
held). War was narrowly averted but Russia
vowed “never again” would it back down from its patronage of Serbia;
a promise which was fulfilled in 1914 and extends to this very day. If Kosovo
were to declare its independence this year Russia
would be on the side of Serbia
and if a resolution in regard to that effect were to be introduced in the
Security Council Russia would likely veto it. Thus, we are still reaping the
fruits of the seeds sown more than a hundred years ago.
When one reads the Vienna
newspapers of that era, which are made available on the Internet by the
Austrian National Library under http://anno.onb.ac.at/
one is impressed how little has changed even in regard to language. Below are
excerpts of Franz Joseph’s Annexation Proclamation of October 6, 1908
“When a generation
ago our troops crossed the borders of your lands, you were assured that they
came not as foes, but as friends, with the firm determination to remedy the
evils from which your fatherland had suffered so grievously for many years.
This promise given at a serious moment has been honestly kept. It has been the
constant endeavor of our government to guide the country by patient and
systematic activity to a happier future.
To our great joy
we can say that the seed then scattered in the furrows of a troubled soil has
richly thrived. You yourselves must feel it a boon that order and security have
replaced violence and oppression, that trade and traffic are constantly
extending, that the elevating influence of education has been brought to bear
in your country, and that under the shield of an orderly administration every
man may enjoy the fruits of his labors. . . .
The established new
order will be a guarantee that civilization and prosperity will find a sure
footing in your home.”
Does this sound familiar? The seeds
have indeed sprouted but not in the way it had been hoped for. In 1908 it was Austria
bent on civilizing the Balkans, now it is America
intent on bringing the backward Muslims into a happier future. The proclaimed
“new order” led to WWI and our new order in the Middle East
is creating untold misery for the people living there with no end in sight. The
methods, especially the secrecy, have also stayed the same. We are also
learning that when it comes to empire building or defending there is no
difference between monarchies or democracies.
It is a crying shame that our
Congress has allowed the Bush administration to keep not only all presidential
documents but even those from the vice-president’s office secret. On December
24, 2007 Charles N Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of
Information (FOI) Coalition of the University of Missouri, published an opinion
article in The Christian Science Monitor
entitled, “Let the presidential record show . . .” In it he pointed out how the
Bush administration had “gutted the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and gave
presidents the right to prevent release of their presidential papers –
forever.” If the current system is allowed to persist honest historical
research will no longer be possible and we will live indeed in Orwell’s 1984.
Our children will be taught propaganda because historical documents will be
unavailable. We expected this state of affairs in Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union but not in the country of the “free and the brave.” Protests
should be shouted from the rooftops throughout this republic of ours and not be
relegated to the pages of a small private newspaper with a limited
circulation.
We are currently governed by fear
mongering and greed. Since the real ambitions of our ruling circles cannot
stand the light of day secrecy is necessary and the objectives are camouflaged
under noble phraseology. This does not bode well for the future and we can only
hope and pray that our deluded administration will not provide us during its
last year in power with another ill-conceived foreign policy adventure, which
will compound all the other mistakes. What we need is an aroused public where
people reassert the rights that have been taken from them during the past seven
years. But looking at the educational level and the interests of the majority
of our fellow citizens this is not likely to be the case as will be documented
in next month’s installment.
February 1, 2008
IS AMERICA FIXABLE?
Although the
country at large is not going to vote until November the election campaign is
in full swing and for practical purposes preempts all other topics on Cable TV.
Pundits present their wise opinions based on the latest poll numbers, although
they have been proven fabulously wrong in caucuses and primaries, and speculate
who is ahead in the race and for what reason. There is a long time between now
and November 4 but they love to declare, if not a winner, at least a
frontrunner. The futility of this enterprise does not seem to daunt them
because there are 24 hours of continuous “news time” to fill. Debates are being
held by the candidates of both parties and every little potential faux pas is
carefully dissected and then slanted to fit the pundits’ preconceptions.
Ever since
Barack Obama declared himself the candidate of “change” all the others,
regardless of party affiliation, have jumped on this phrase in spite of the
fact that most of them represent the establishment. The change is to consist of
the person who will sit in the Oval Office but otherwise things are likely to
remain remarkable the same. I shall discuss the candidates and their views in
detail in next month’s installment because Super Tuesday of next week, when
primaries are held in about half of the country, is likely to narrow the field
even more. For now it suffices to mention
ex-Governor Mitt Romney’s mantra that “Washington
is broken,” needs to be fixed, and that he is the man to do it. He is correct.
Washington is broken but the problems American society faces are not limited to
Washington they are deeply rooted in our current culture.
I was
reminded of the saying that all countries have the government they deserve, by
an article in a Vienna newspaper,
which my friend Dr. Walter Petrowitz (Pedro in War&Mayhem) had sent me, to whom I am also indebted for some of
the other information which will appear later. The article dealt with the new
Ambassador our president had sent to Austria
and whose prior diplomatic experience in the service of our Country had been in
Tobago! Austrians, who still see themselves as heirs of
the Habsburg Empire were understandably miffed, but since our president’s
understanding of history and the feelings of people living in other countries
is rather limited the choice didn’t surprise me all that much.
America’s
tragedy is that with all the intellectual limitations George W. Bush brought to
his exalted office he is unfortunately fairly typical of the baby boom
generation which now runs this country. Their parents were reasonably well off,
so the offspring indulged their whims. Pursuit of happiness rather than
excellence was the goal. One went to school because one had to but school was
to be “fun” and demands limited. Athletic achievements were valued higher than
scholastic ones and one went to college either to party or to escape the draft
during the Vietnam War. While in college one also had plenty of opportunity to
demonstrate against all the social ills of the time and proclaim the dawn of a
bright new era which they would inaugurate. Those were the 60s and early 70s
which shaped the minds of many who are currently in leadership positions. The
hallmark was the Woodstock festival
which they loved so much that they even want to put up a museum for it, with
our tax money, of course.
There is
perhaps no better phrase which demonstrates the level upon which most of our
people operate, than the one which was supposed to help us make up our minds
during the 2004 elections. It ran, “Who would you rather have a beer with,
George Bush or John Kerry?” In spite of George Bush’s demonstrated incompetence
they did reelect him because Kerry obviously was too effete and probably
preferred French wine. We can’t blame the government in Washington
for having provided George W with another four years in office, that burden of
guilt clearly rests on the voters of this country.
It has been
said that for a republic to function properly it requires an educated citizenry
and this is where the problem starts but does not end. That the American
educational system has notoriously lagged behind that of other “first world”
nations is no secret and during the campaign for the November 2000 elections
George Bush proclaimed that, if elected, he would be the “Education President.”
True to his word he initiated an educational reform package immediately upon
taking office. On January 23, 2001
it was sent to the Congress under the inspiring title of, “No Child Left
Behind.” Congress deliberated for a year and the final bill was signed on January 8, 2002. The title of the
legislation already tells us what this was all about. All children regardless
of mental ability have to be educated in public classrooms and it is the
teacher’s responsibility to see to it that even the less mentally acute pupils
will be able to pass the required tests or else she/he will lose their job and the
school may lose its accreditation with consequent loss of funding. What this
obviously leads to will be discussed later.
Professional
educators have long known about the problems of American education especially
at the high school level and in 2005 Edward E Gordon published a book, The 2010 Meltdown. Solving
the Impending Job Crisis. The year 2010 was chosen because that is
when the first baby boomers reach the age of 65 and will be starting to retire
en masse with serious consequences for our country. The book should be read by
every parent as well as grandparent because it presents us with undeniable
facts and figures which will impact on our children and grandchildren. Although
our politicians are concerned about how this avalanche of retirees will
bankrupt the Social Security system less attention has been paid to how it will
affect America’s
competitiveness in the Global Economy. This is why Edward Gordon wrote the
book.
Gordon
wrote that the American work force consists at this time of three groups:
“about 25 per cent ‘smart people’, who are well educated and also have special
career skills; another 25 percent are the ‘walking dead,’ victims of mergers or
technical change and need to acquire new skills in order to change jobs … and
up to 50 percent are the ‘techno-peasants,’ poorly educated adults with few if
any special career skills.” The problem our country will be facing from 2010 on
is that the “smart people” will be retiring in increasingly larger numbers and
the resultant gap cannot be filled by younger people because they lack the
education which is necessary to become successful in our computer-driven,
greed-ridden society.
Some of the
statistical facts in regard to the educational level of our youngsters are:
“The United
States ranks 49th out of 158
nations in literacy. Sixty percent of adults never read books; only six percent
read one book per year.
47 percent of job applicants lacked the reading, writing and
math skills for the jobs they sought.
73 percent of U.S.
employers cited ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ difficult conditions hiring qualified
workers. Forty percent said that applicants have ‘poor or no employment skills.’
50 percent of U.S.
manufacturers found that their current workers had serious reading, writing,
and math skills problems.
53 percent pf adults in Los Angeles
have literacy skills so low that their ability to work and be productive is
threatened.
90 million Americans (nearly half of all adults) face higher
health risks because their low literacy leads to trouble understanding medical
terms and following directions.”
These are
just some morsels and I have omitted the references which are given in the
original. Some other items were:
In an international study 15 year old American students
ranked 24th out of 29 nations in mathematics.
If Americans read a book at all, 47 percent read only
fiction.
69 percent of high school students actually graduate the others
drop out. As one might expect there are ethnic differences in the graduation
figures; 79 percent of Asian-Americans, 76 percent for Anglo-Americans (I guess
Gordon wanted to avoid the term Caucasian), 57 percent for native Americans
(formerly called Indians), 55 percent for African Americans (obviously excludes
whites whose parents have left various African nations when decolonization
began), and 53 percent for Hispanics.
Only about 25 percent of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders
can write a thoughtful essay free of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors.
Martin Rochester, a political science professor at the University
of Missouri-St Louis who reads
“every paper line by line,” said, “It’s one of the most painful ordeals you can
go through. Students today cannot write a complete sentence.”
They are equally benighted when it comes to knowledge about
the world they inhabit. In an international poll conducted by National Geographic in 2003 of 3,000
18-24 year olds only 13 percent of Americans could locate Iraq
or Iran, 17
percent could find Afghanistan
but 24 percent managed to find Saudi Arabia.
I guess because it’s a bigger splotch on a map.
Although children know more about
computers and the Internet than their parents, this does not translate into useful
knowledge. “Fourth-graders who were taught math without computers did better
than fourth-graders taught with them.”
Here is a
quote of what is happening in our schools:
“Take, for
instance, using the Computer Algebra system calculator (CAS) to spit out the
answers to even the most difficult equations. ‘This is just another excuse to
let people forward without a conceptual understanding,’ says Wayne Bishop, a
math professor at CaliforniaStateUniversity. ‘The kids become
absolutely helpless, and yet they are given credit for algebra.’ Many teachers
lack the training to clearly explain the underlying mathematical principles and
logic that would help students understand the basis of these calculations
(National Science Foundation).
Instead, billions of dollars have
placed computers in the classroom rather than improve teacher training . .
.The bottom line for
computer-education, says Dr. Angrist of Hebrew University, is ‘[T]he costs are
clear-cut and the benefits are murky.’”
So, what is
wrong with the American educational system that it leads to such dismal
results? One obvious answer is the lack of good teachers. But this in turn points
to another profound problem of our society. This consists of: lack of respect
for superiors and elders, lack of interest in intellectual achievements and
resultant lack of adequate pay for teachers. Furthermore, the quest for instant
financial rewards is also the major goal of why students want to go to college.
In a 2004 a UCLA study of over 267,000 students, 73.8 percent listed ‘being
very well-off financially’ as very important or essential. In 1967 the
situation was different; 86 percent said ‘It was important to find a meaningful
life philosophy. As Gordon said, “this is today’s American culture. The ‘greed
is good message’ has really penetrated all the way down to the next generation.
Another
study showed that while 71 percent of students expect to go to a four-year
college only 32 percent are actually academically qualified. Once in college 59
percent of freshman required remedial math or English tutoring and because of
poor prior education the graduation rate after four years of college is only 27
percent. But as Gordon remarks this is actually good news for parents because
some high tech jobs require only 2 years of college and a four year education
costs more than $100,000.
But let us
return to the problem of the teachers. Not only are they underpaid and
frequently lack the information on the subjects they are supposed to teach they
are also commonly confronted with an unruly mob of adolescents for whom the
word discipline does not exist. The teacher is often unable to enforce
discipline because the parents may disagree and sue. Even the most idealistic
teacher may under those circumstances throw in the towel and head for industry
where remuneration is better and the stress less. This burn-out adds to the
already existing teacher shortage across the country and math teachers,
especially, are very hard to find and keep.
The
idealistic teacher who remains on the job, in spite of the mentioned obstacles,
is now confronted with our president who once so famously asked, “Is our
children learning?” The mentioned No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation
forces teachers, out of self-preservation, to teach mainly the answers which
are asked on the test and in addition devote themselves to the dullards who
need extra coaching thereby boring the bright ones to tears. Why should anybody
want to go to school under these circumstances? How this teaching for the test
actually works, even for professionals, will be presented later.
What I have
shown so far are mainly numbers and one may cite the famous adage, “figures
don’t lie but liars figure.” That these numbers do reflect reality is apparent when
one compares how high school students are taught here with what happens in Europe
and specifically Vienna. While the
subjects American children get exposed to are similar, the time spent on them varies
considerably. For some it is measured in years while in others one semester or one
year may suffice. As such they receive a smattering of information on a variety
of subjects but not in depth knowledge from which a coherent picture can
emerge. Furthermore, exams are mainly in multiple choice formats rather than in
oral or written form.
Even in
some private high schools there is at times a teacher shortage. The students may
in part be left to their own devices via computer and see a teacher only once a
week; likewise on a computer screen. For this privilege the parents pay $7300
and more per year per child. Public schools vary immensely across the country
and in neighborhoods within a given city. The last year of high school,
especially, tends to be wasted. One example might suffice. The course work for
the first semester, which ended in December, encompassed: Math, English, Art,
and Drivers’ Education. The latter consisted of being taught traffic signs and
rules of the road without setting foot in a car. The current second semester courses
are the same for the first three subjects but instead of Driver’s Ed there is
“Free enterprise,” which deals with economics and then comes cooking!
Compare this now with the
curriculum which is currently provided by the high school I attended in Vienna
and which is available on the Internet under http://www.rg18.ac.at/.
As mentioned in War&Mayhem the
European school system differs from the American because high school starts at
age 10 and goes to age 18. What is here called middle school is Unterstufe and high school is Oberstufe. The difference is that the
major subjects are taught all 8 years but with increasing depth and only some
others are added in the years of the Oberstufe.
There have been some changes since I left school and the student now has a
choice in the Oberstufe to take extra
credits in either the natural sciences or technology. Let us just look at the
final year curriculum: Religion, German, English, Latin or French, Mathematics,
History and social studies, Geography and economics, Chemistry, Biology, Music,
Psychology and Philosophy, Gymnastics and 2 elective courses of the student’s
choice among any of the above with increased in-depth knowledge as well as
other languages of choice. Those students who prefer natural sciences get more
exposure in those fields including laboratory experience, while the technically
inclined ones get more Informatics and Geometry. For the natural sciences
students spend 33 hours/week in school and the technologically inclined 34.
In America
once you have the required grade points you can go to college while in Europe
you have to pass a stiff written and oral exam which subsequently allows the
student to go to University. With other words college is absorbed into middle
and high school.This is the time when
the brain is being taught to learn the essentials for a successful professional
life and an attempt is made to produce a well-rounded individual person.
Furthermore, the student is still under the guidance of parental authority and
is less distracted by peer pressure. Since I was not sure to what extent the
final exam, Matura, had changed since 1943 I asked my Viennese friends to send
me some current examples. It was clear that there had not been any dumbing
down, as has happened here and the exam was as difficult as it had been
previously.
The written exam consists of essays
in English, French and German as well as Mathematics. One typical example for
the latter is:
At a river’s edge is a tower with
the height h=35meter. At the opposite bank there is a mountain ridge which inclines
at an angle of 76 degrees. Measured from ground and the top of the tower the
angle to the peak of the ridge is 46.1 and 42.8 degrees respectively. a) What
is the elevation of the ridge peak compared to the river bank? b) What is the
angle under which a rock climber appears from the bottom of the tower when the
climber is exactly half way to the summit of the ridge? Calculators or
computers are, of course, not allowed and it is, of course, impossible to guess
at the correct answer.
I have omitted other examples of
greater complexity because I wasn’t sure that my translation would be correct.
Some examples of part of the oral
exam, which in this instance was given in English and the candidate also had to
respond in that language, are:
For “Spiral Dynamics”
the student had to: “Explain briefly the different forms of spiral dynamics,
give concrete examples of applications in modern society, explain the
Humpty-Dumpty- Effect.” There was also an exam portion on “Constructivism.”
The quote by von
Glasserfeld, “Knowledge, no matter how it be defined, is in the heads of
persons, and the thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he
or she knows on the basis of his or her own experience.” Based on this sentence
the candidate had to describe the meaning of the word, and give definitions for
Educational constructivism, Personal constructivism, Philosophical
constructivism.
Another sentence
to be discussed was, “One of the misconceptions of constructivism is the notion
that because individuals make meaning based on their prior experiences,
anything and everything counts equally as knowledge. Von Glasserfeld
effectively points the inadequacy of this perspective: truth in constructivism
. . . is replaced by viability.” The candidate had to explain what the author
had meant by viability.
What does this type of education
cost the parents? Not one red penny because education is free for anyone who
can pass entrance and yearly exams. University study was likewise free until last
year. Now the parents have to pay 500 Euros per semester which means that a
university education, which traditionally lasts 10 semesters, comes to 5000
Euros; a sum most parents can readily afford and if not grants are available.
As
mentioned these were oral exams and not multiple choice tests where an answer might
be guessed at. In addition multiple choice type testing via computer encourages
cheating because no one can read massive amounts of text from a computer screen
and be expected to retain the information. Reading
from a screen usually amounts to scanning, because the human brain was not
designed for it. In this way wrong impressions can arise. Many of us will have
encountered the problem that exists in regard to e-mails, even in professional
circles. One may raise several questions but only one or two may be answered
and the answer given may not be relevant. This results from scanning the screen
and it is impossible for most of us to keep the attention span focused on every
word in every sentence. This is why I have to print out important information
which requires action.
In America’
computerized society rules and regulations are passed without thought of what
they lead to but they have to be blindly followed. An article of October 7, 2007 by Dr. Douglas
Jackson, orthopedist, highlights the situation for today’s physicians. It is
entitled, “Autonomy and Income: the decline continues for orthopedic surgeons.”
In it he discusses his problems with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and
for renewing his license. The IRB is a relatively new Washington
brain child which requires every physician who is engaged in research to pass
an exam on medical ethics. The exam consists of several “modules” (modern word
for chapters) on various technical and historical aspects. Each of these consists
of several pages which appear on the computer screen. Subsequently five
multiple choice questions test the physician’s information for that
module.Since it is difficult, if not
impossible, to retain all the details from these chapters one either has to
print out this book or take the more efficient way of looking for the key
word(s) in the question, go to “Edit “ “Find” and then check off the
appropriate answer which is buried somewhere in all these pages.As part of his license renewal Dr. Jackson
was mandated to take an examination on pain management and care of patients who
are terminally ill and/or have Alzheimer’s disease. These are not the patients
he sees, yet he has to devote 12-hours to this exam, time which he doesn’t have
and is simply wasted.
Let us now return to the question
of the purpose of higher education. Gordon discussed the topic in some detail
but it immediately reminded me of an article by Nietzsche written in 1873 under
the title: Űber die ZukunftUnsererBildungsanstalten(On
the future of our institutions of higher education). Nietzsche foresaw the cultural change that was
bound to happen as a result of the drive towards higher education for everyone.
It will be directed towards utility, he wrote, its purpose will become a “better
life” which means more money with a resultant loss of depth of knowledge. Some
gifted people will become specialists who will know everything about a screw
and its uses and while developing phenomenal virtuosity in this area they will
be ignorant of everything else. This is precisely what was expressed also by
Gordon in his 2010 Meltdown. America’s
problems are cultural and do not lend themselves to the quick fix our
politicians are promising.
He offered a number of suggestions
as to how the situation could be remedied but since they are all long range and
would require a rethinking of the foundations of the capitalist society this is
not likely to take place in my lifetime. What stands in the way is,
paradoxically, the Declaration of Independence which stated that “all men are
created equal . . .” Jefferson wrote this stirring
document to foment a revolution but he knew, of course, that these words were
not true. All human beings differ in physical structure and mental abilities.
To ignore this fundamental biologic fact and use the current approach of “one
size fits all” can only lead to the leveling of society to the lowest common
denominator. This can be seen not only in education but also in every day life
where respect for others is notably lacking. We are all equal so let’s all
dress as sloppily as possible and refer to each other only by first names.
Adding a respectful Mr., Mrs., or Ms. as feminists prefer, let alone an
academic degree, violates this fundamental precept and must be shunned.
It will be argued now that we are
all equal before the law but that is not true either. White collar crime
usually does not only elude punishment but is rewarded. A CEO of a banking
institution who is negligent and runs up billions in public debt (e.g. Citicorp,
Merrill Lynch) does lose his job but with a parting gift of millions of
dollars. The same happens in the airline and other industries where corporate
mergers are being carried out on the back of the employees’ salaries and
pension funds while the CEO bails out on his millions of dollars “golden
parachute.”
Someone who is aware of these facts
will have little faith to believe in any of the promises by the current crop of
politicians vying for victory in November, although some candidates are clearly
worse than others. But who will be doing the voting, let alone vote counting?
We the people! Who are the WE? The answer came after the president’s State of
the Union speech on Monday night. The speech itself was a laundry list of what
Bush should have done during the past 7 years and he now wants Congress to do,
while promising to veto any bill he doesn’t like. He read the speech well,
punctuated it with frequent customary smirks, but failed to impress even some
of the TV pundits. The eye-opener came in form of a “focus group” where a TV
journalist charted the responses of about thirty citizens on a graph to key
aspects of the president’s speech. They were supposedly equally divided in
regard to political affiliation. When Mr. Bush said that the budget would be balanced
by 2012 (he’s of course already in Texas
for three years by then) the positive response reached phenomenal heights. When
he declared that Congress must make the current tax cuts permanent the
Republicans moved the curve up and the democrats down. These aspects one can
understand but the clincher came at the end. The moderator asked the audience:
How many of you had a positive impression of the president before his speech?
About half a dozen hands went up. When he asked the next question: How many have
a positive impression of him now? Nearly all the hands rose.
When the country is confronted with
an electorate that is so gullible it is not likely that the needed fundamental
reforms will take place which gets us back to culture and education. Ideally
the purpose of higher education should not be merely utilitarian in terms of
providing the student with the means to command the highest possible salary but
to create a human being who is at home in all cultures of the world, respects
them out of knowledge rather than on a “Thou shalt” basis, and is conversant
with the ideas which shape our world. But this can only be achieved by hard
work and not by the current belief, that the tender psyches of children must be
coddled and praise be heaped even when it is not deserved in order to foster
“self-esteem” You too can be a Michelangelo; all you have to do is paint by
numbers, seems to be the attitude. Ask
yourself: How can America
be expected to “lead the world” during this century when these conditions prevail?
Yet, we do have good people in our
country who genuinely mean well and still value hard work. An example can be
found in the most unlikely places. The Prophet, Seer, Revelator and President of
the Mormon Church died at the ripe old age of 97 last Sunday. He was genuinely
admired for his wit, erudition, competence and humanity by everyone who ever
met him and the SaltLake Tribune paid its appropriate respect. But one sentence, which
appeared below his portrait, struck me, “We say to people: you bring all the
good that you have, and let us see if we can add to it.” The same sentiment is
expressed as the banner of The Christian
Science Monitor, “To harm no man, but to bless all mankind.” In this
context the motto of the Mayo Clinic also came to mind, “Here is an
opportunity, what you make of it is up to you.”
America
is fixable but the medicine is so unpalatable that it will take more than the
good intentions of a few to make it come to pass.
March 1, 2008
VOTING IN AMERICA
February
has, as expected, considerably narrowed the would-be Presidential field.
Barring unforeseen circumstances it is now down to three contenders. While on
the Republican side the McCain nomination seems virtually assured, a fierce
battle is raging among the Democrats. But before examining how we got to this
point readers from other countries around the world will need to become
acquainted with the archaic way how this bastion of democracy elects its
presidents.
In most
other democracies or republics the process is quite simple. Different parties
select one person and these individuals exert themselves over a period of a few
months in a strenuous effort to convince the voters of that country that they
are the best qualified person for the job. On the specified day the citizens
trot to the polls, cast their votes and if there is no clear majority a run-off
election is held between the leading candidates.
A system as
simple as this, which gives the people at large the say so, was clearly
inappropriate for the 13 colonies at the time they formed their Union.
At first it was obvious that only white adult males would be allowed to vote.
But even they could not be trusted to make the right decision; they had to have
a certain amount of property which in those days consisted also of slaves. The
rousing Declaration of Independence which had declared the self-evident truth
that all men were created equal obviously had to give way to practicalities.
But one propertied man-one vote for Congress or the Presidency was also
impractical and the system of delegates was adopted, which had been so
successful in the founding of the Republic.
This was a
necessity in the 1770s. The distances were vast; communications slow and
entrusting one’s vote to a person one knew was the most efficient way of
meeting these problems. But what was
useful at the end of the 18th century became a serious problem at the end of
the 20th when a candidate who had a majority of the popular vote, Al
Gore, was defeated by one vote of the Supreme Court on a legal challenge launched by George W Bush.
There have,
of course, been some changes in the election process since the 1780s. First all
white males regardless of amount of property could vote for their delegate to
the state and national conventions, although one had to pay a fee for this
privilege. This “poll tax” was subsequently eliminated and women gained the
right to vote in 1920. Negroes, as they were called at the time, although
emancipated by Lincoln, had to wait
a hundred years until the Voting Act of 1965 and the final hurdle, a literacy
test, was abolished in 2006. Now every American citizen regardless of sex,
race, religion or IQ can vote unless one happens to sit in prison or is a
convicted felon. Nevertheless, we are still voting for delegates to conventions
and that is the crux of the problem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote in
a given state for a given person; the outcome is decided by how many delegates
are pledged to a given candidate in a given state. This is why the delegate
count becomes the critical variable and an election can hang on a single state
such as Florida in 2000 and Ohio
in 2004.
The choice
of the delegate who will cast his/her vote for us begins at the grass-roots
level in voting districts around the country. This would seem to be
straightforward but over time politicians at the state and federal level have
engaged in “gerrymandering.” This consists of drawing the borders of voter
districts in such a manner that a given party will reap the greatest benefits.
In this way politics entered the process already at the grass-roots level.
The next step is the selection of
delegates, the date of which is set by the political party bosses. Each state
has a set number of delegates which varies between the parties. Voting for
candidates takes place at primaries or caucuses, but the way delegates are
awarded also varies between states. In some there is proportional
representation per district while in others, such as California
it’s “winner take all.” This leads to the anomalous situation in the Republican
Party that if the race in that state were to be exceedingly close the candidate
who has the higher number would still get all the delegates of that state. The
Democrats are more democratic and award their delegates on a representative
basis so that each district gets the delegate for the candidate who had locally
received the highest number of votes. This would strike one as fair but since
when do politicians trust the people? To ensure that voters for the Democratic Party
choose the nominee, who in the wisdom of the party officials is best qualified
to defeat the Republican opponent in November, they have created the class of
“super-delegates.” These are persons prominent in the Democratic Party who will
cast their vote at the Nomination Convention for their candidate of choice,
regardless of how many votes that candidate has actually garnered in the
primary/caucus process. Obviously “the will of the people” can again be relegated
to the back seat.
I have
mentioned above that states elect their delegates either at primaries or
caucuses. Although Martha and I are reasonably well versed in political affairs
we still had no idea what the difference between these two systems was. We are
not affiliated with a political party and simply voted every four years for the
presidential candidate who seemed most qualified for the job at a given time. I
have even bypassed the midterm elections unless there was a crisis such as in
1994 when the Clinton White House had to be curbed by a Republican Congress, or
in 2006 when President Bush had to be prevented from creating further havoc in
the world. Inasmuch as the primary/caucus process tended to be limited to
registered party members it was of no concern to us and millions of other
voters.
But this year is different and
crucial. The next president of the U.S.
will either attempt to restore sanity to our foreign policy or pave the way to
WWIII. The choice in November is indeed as stark as this and this is the reason
why I had to vote in a primary for the first time in my life. How this actually
worked and why it may well become a “preview of coming attractions” will be
presented later.For now we have to
direct our attention to the difference between primaries and caucuses and the
dates at which they are held in the various states.
Traditionally
New Hampshire was always the
first state to cast its votes for presidential candidates. The most devoted
party members showed up on a Tuesday in the middle of February braving snow and
ice to cast their votes for a candidate of their choice. The good citizens of Iowa
had, however, caucused for a hundred years but nobody paid any attention to the
results. Only after the debacle at the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968
did the party bosses realize that it was time to listen to the voices of the
people. In 1972 Jimmy Carter won the Iowa
caucus, which was held before the New Hampshire
primary. When he subsequently won New Hampshire and eventually the presidency
Iowa’s prestige skyrocketed and its caucuses have been wooed ever since by presidential
candidates who regard it as a “must win” state.
In contrast to primaries a caucus is
more personal and could irreverently be called a “coffee Klatsch.” The registered voters
of the various districts would get together at a given location and segregate
themselves into groups which favor a given candidate. Those who are still
undecided form another group. Speeches are then held by the supporters of each
of the candidates to entice the undecided ones to flock to their banner. Once
this has been achieved the votes are counted and the party then decides how
many delegates this actually amounts to. But this is not the end because
candidates can either be “pledged” or “unpledged.”With other words, the pledged candidates have
to vote for the candidate who was just chosen by the people, while the
unpledged ones are free to change their mind at any time even as late as at the
Convention. The rules under which the number of delegates, as well as pledged
vs. unpledged, are selected are unknown to me and probably to most of the
American public but “We the People” have no say so in the process.
In states
which hold primaries instead of caucuses the voting is simpler. One just goes
to the polling station, casts one’s vote just as at regular midterm or
presidential elections and one has fulfilled one’s civic duty. On the other
hand the process dealing with number of delegates to be awarded and pledged vs.
unpledged is the same as in caucus states. Inasmuch as the vast majority of
citizens used to be ineligible to vote in primaries or caucuses most of us were
presented in November with a fait accompli and had a choice of two candidates
unless there was a third party candidate who had no chance of winning but was
on what amounted mainly to an ego trip.
This year,
however, the Democrats proved smarter than the Republicans and opened the
primary/caucus voting in some states to all registered voters regardless of
party affiliation. Independents and even Republicans could vote for a
Democratic candidate. The Republicans declined to follow suit and their voting
remained limited to party members. The Democrats’ decision to hold open
primaries/caucuses proved to be a God send for Barack Obama because it allowed
people at large and not just party members, to vote for him.
But before
we get to the personalities of the leading candidates for the November 4
election, the dates at which primaries/caucuses are held, as well as a
potentially serious problem for the national Democratic leadership have to be
discussed further. The dates at which votes are cast in the primary process are
important because they can lead to a bandwagon-stampede effect. After the first
two states have cast their votes the media, especially 24 hour cable TV news
channels, jump into the fray. They declare a “front runner” and cheer on their
candidate while throwing whatever dirt that can be uncovered on the other.
Public opinion is thereby molded and states which hold their primaries/caucuses
later in the year are decidedly disadvantaged by all the propaganda that has
been created in the wake of earlier victories. The potential gullibility of
voters who neither have the time nor inclination to delve not only into the
issues but also the character of the candidates is exploited. The herd instinct
then takes over and people vote for the person whose best image has been
created by the media.
The
importance of early votes by the various states has led this year to the
anomalous situation that votes were cast in Iowa
and New Hampshire in January
already instead of February. In addition 22 states voted on the first Tuesday
of February and since Americans like superlatives they called it
“super-Tuesday.” This meant that candidates had to begin their campaigns in the
spring or summer of last year in order to emerge victorious on February 5.
This, obviously, consumed an enormous amount of time and money. Since leading
candidates were mainly senators, congressmen or governors of various states the
duties they had been elected to perform had to take a backseat and money went
down the drain. It has been estimated that in order for a candidate to make a
credible attempt at the nomination at least one million dollars were needed for
the start up and vigorous fund raising has to continue thereafter. The total
cost of the November elections will be staggering.
The problem
for the national Democratic Party is in regard to Michigan
and Florida. Michigan Democrats
decided that they would beat the clock and hold their primary on January 15. The
national Party said no, Michiganders voted anyway but their 156 delegates are
now in limbo because they are not eligible to cast a vote at the Convention.
The Floridians likewise moved their primary into January, the Party nixed it
and Florida’s 185 delegates are
also still not part of the national equation. What to do with the votes cast in
Michigan and Florida
remains a problem which has as yet not been addressed.
The crowding of the primary/caucus process
into the winter and spring of this year has not only led to wasted time and
money but had also apparently unintended consequences for major candidates
including Hillary Clinton. She had expected to sail through Iowa,
New Hampshire and by
super-Tuesday it was supposed to have been all over with the nomination
secured. But the road proved more difficult than imagined; she ran out of money
and had to “loan” her campaign $5 million from her own bank account.
But before dealing with Hillary’s
problems we need to look at what happened on the Republican side because it
demonstrated, among other aspects, that religious bias is alive and well in our
country. The outcome of a race between a Mormon and a Southern Baptist preacher
was a foregone conclusion. Four million Mormons are simply no match against
forty million or so Southern Baptists. It was surprising, however, that a
nation-wide poll revealed that 43 per cent of all respondents said that they
would not even consider voting for a Mormon in a presidential election.
But Romney’s religion was only one,
albeit important, factor for his lack of success. He might have made a very
good president had he been appointed to the office instead of having to run for
it. His main failing was that he was a poor campaigner. When he announced his
candidacy lastyear I was ready to vote
for him because he had, after all, rescued the Salt Lake Olympics (March 1,
2002. The Mormon Olympics) and I had repeatedly voted for his father George as
governor of Michigan. Yet,
instead of displaying the principles, which he undoubtedly has in his private
life, he tried to be all things to all people and this didn’t work. It was
perceived as a lack of convictions and the media pundits had ample opportunity
to make hay. Even this would not have deterred me, but when he started to
praise George Bush by stating that we “love a president who has kept us safe
these last six years” and added as one of the president’s achievements the “No
Child Left Behind Act,” which was discussed in last
month’s installment, I drew the line. We can’t afford another 4-8 years of a
Bush surrogate.
The other two major Republican hopefuls,
Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson fizzled likewise. Giuliani had only one theme
song which he repeated in mantra like fashion: “9/11” and how he had proven his
worth on that day. Residents of New York City who appeared as witnesses at the
9/11 hearings were considerably less impressed and he was also faulted for not having
provided the fire department with modern communication equipment which could have
saved the lives of numerous fire fighters that were lost when the Twin Towers
collapsed. He also promised that he would keep the country strong, continue
with the “forward leaning” offensive military strategy, and his senior foreign
policy advisor was Norman Podhoretz, former Editor in-Chief of Commentary and
inveterate neoconservative hawk. Giuliani’s personal life, which was devoid of
the principles the evangelical base of the party demands, as well as poor
campaign planning were additional factors contributing to his political demise.
Fred Thompson was well known from
his TV appearances on the popular Law and Order show but he never seemed to be
really interested in campaigning for the nomination. He would have accepted it
had it been handed on a platter but the hard work, which is inevitably
associated with this endurance contest candidates are subjected to nowadays,
was not to his liking.
Mike Huckabee the, former Baptist
minister and subsequent governor of Arkansas,
on the other hand clearly not only wants to be president but also enjoys
himself on the trail. He comes across as a likeable, competent person with a
sense of humor but since his policies don’t promise a marked departure from the
past and his support is rooted mainly in the Bible belt his chances for the
nomination, let alone the presidency, are slim indeed.
Apart from Mc Cain and Huckabee
there is still another candidate in the running; Dr. Ron Paul whose existence
the media tend to ignore. He is a 72 year old Congressman from Texas
and obstetrician by profession who has delivered over 4000 babies as his
website informs us. But he really doesn’t seem to fit into the Republican Party
as it is constituted today. At heart he is a Libertarian and as such at odds
with the “conservative” values of the party’s base. America
differs from Europe in a variety of unexpected ways which
include the meaning of the term “liberal.” “Far left liberal” is currently one
of the worst insults that can be hurled by Republicans against any person they
detest. They don’t seem to realize that the term “liberal” referred in Europe
to the laissez faire policies of unbridled capitalism, rather than the
socialistic type intrusion of government into the lives of people.
To avoid this confusion the
Libertarian Party established itself in 1971. Its policies consist mainly of:
laissez faire capitalism, strong civil liberties without government interference
into the private lives of the people, minimal regulation of cross-border
migration and non-intervention into the foreign affairs of other countries.
Since third parties do poorly at elections in the U.S. Dr. Paul joined the
Republicans. But his civil liberties stance (which might be interpreted as to
allow abortions and/or, homosexual marriages) clashes, of course, with the Religious
Right without the support of which a Republican cannot win at this time. As far
his policies are concerned they can be summed up as: “America
for Americans.” He does not want interference by the UN, the International
Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization. The U.S.
should withdraw from NAFTA as well as CAFTA. Furthermore, all foreign aid,
including that to Israel,
should be abolished. Although he is a decent person who means well the percentage
of votes that have been cast for him is in the single digits and his chances
for the nomination are nil.
The feud between Romney and
Huckabee proved to be Senator McCain’s good fortune. In the summer of last year
his campaign was written off as having failed. He changed campaign managers,
but his big break came in Iowa
where the unexpected happened. Romney had made a massive financial effort as
well as traveling up and down the state to show that he could be a credible
candidate but came in second to Huckabee who had spent considerably less money.
The Huckabee victory set off a media frenzy which propelled him into the
national spotlight and set the stage for the fight with Romney from which
McCain emerged as the smiling third. For a Republican to win the nomination 1,191
delegates are needed. Mc Cain has, as of this week, 1,032 vs. Huckabee’s
247.For the sake of party unity
Huckabee is urged to quit because it is mathematically impossible for him to
win. But he refuses to do so at this time because he obviously enjoys his place
in the sun, doesn’t have another job and, in contrast to Romney, isn’t spending
his own money anyway.
Thus, barring some emerging scandal
or health problem, McCain is assured of the nomination at the Convention in the
first week of September. But health will become an issue in the subsequent
presidential campaign. At the time of his acceptance speech he will have turned
72 and his body had to endure a great deal of stress in younger years. When he
was shot down over Hanoi he
suffered serious injuries, which were inadequately treated. He had subsequently
undergone torture and various other deprivations at the “Hanoi Hilton,” as it
was referred to by the POWs. This fortitude earned him public love and respect
but has left his body in less than optimal condition. The problem with aging is
that the body cannot shrug off previous insults and they come to the fore again
during the inevitable aging process. In addition he has had two bouts of
melanoma; a virulent skin cancer. In 1993 a melanoma was removed from his face as
well as arm. There was a recurrence in August of 2000 in the left temple; lymph
nodes and portions of the parotid gland were removed which showed no signs of
spread. The surgery resulted in scarring of his left face which is why we are
mainly shown the right side of his profile on TV. Although scarring is only a
cosmetic blemish, melanomas have not only a tendency to recur but they also
tend to metastasize. Senator McCain has enjoyed a seven and a half year
remission by now but cancer is unpredictable.
One wishes Senator McCain well but
should he really be president? Not only will health inevitably become a problem
if he were to be elected, his policies which are essentially a continuation of
the neoconservative posture of: shoot first, ask questions later, are not likely to bring peace to our world. When one couples
this with his well known temper outbursts the outlook for a successful White
House tenure is not bright.
The contest between the remaining
two Democratic candidates is too important to be relegated to a few paragraphs
and will, therefore, be taken up in the next installment. This will also have
the benefit of knowing the results of next week’s mini super-Tuesday which is
likely to clarify the outlook for the rest of the Democratic campaign.
For now I shall merely describe the
primary process as experienced in Utah
on February 5. After breakfast I drove down the road to the local fire station
where the voting took place and was surprised that the parking lot was already
full and people stood in line to be checked against the voters’ lists. After
this was done and I was assured that I could indeed vote for a Democrat I was
led to a separate room which contained about half a dozen voting machines that
proudly carried the Diebold name. Some readers may remember that I have expressed
concerns about this system in the past (December
1, 2004 Why Bush Won. November 1, 2006 Diebold to
the Rescue?)and these were now validated by
personal experience. I was assigned to one of these computers and on the screen
appeared an alphabetic list of the Democratic candidates. I touched the screen
at the appropriate place and it led to another one which asked me to confirm
that this was the name I had chosen for our next president. I did so but the surprise
came thereafter. Instead of a Thank you or the printing of a receipt, as would happen
in any store, the machine simply reverted to the original screen with the list
of names. Well, I touched the name again ended up again with the second screen
and was caught in a seemingly endless loop. I then called the supervisor, he
tried it with the same result but the machine started cluttering as if it were
printing the vote and the screen stated that I had voted three times. The
supervisor informed me that this didn’t matter because it’ll be counted
manually later as a single vote and he took the machine out of service. I never
saw a print out.
Well, I can trust our Utahns but
what happens in large inner city voting districts under those circumstances?
It’ll be November with miserable weather in many parts of the country and lines
may be immense before one even gets into the building. There won’t be enough
machines, some will break down, people will take a long time to get acquainted
with the process, they will become confused and the machines may do whatever
they want. As an additional bonus the secrecy of the ballot is, of course,
voided because supervisors who will be needed to help will know perfectly well for
whom you have voted. Is this really the best America
can do for the most primitive right of its citizens?
On the Republican side the outcome of
the primary was, of course, no surprise; Romney got 90 per cent of the votes.
But that for the Democratic nominee was interesting. There are only 2 areas in
the state which have some Democrats: SaltLakeCounty
and SummitCounty
(which includes ParkCity).
These are largely urban with predominantly, white middle and upper middle class
voters, yet Obama received 57 per cent of the vote and 14 delegates while Clinton
had to make do with 39 percent and 9 delegates. John Edwards got no delegates
at all. The result confirmed that Obama’s support is not limited to a specific
segment of the population but is widely distributed among races and social
classes. How this will play out in the long run will, as mentioned, become clearer
next week but one thing is certain. The Clinton
campaign will pull out all stops and we can expect rather vicious attacks on Senator
Obama. How he will handle these will be another measure of his character.
April 1, 2008
HILLARY VERSUS OBAMA
The events of the past month
confirmed the expectations that were mentioned in the previous essay. Senator
McCain has indeed clinched the Republican nomination and will be on the ballot
in November. This is not necessarily good news for the country and the world
because a “forward leaning” military posture is likely to be the centerpiece of
his administration since he seems to have little use for the intricacies of
diplomatic foreign policy. He has already shown in the past week that his grasp
of details is tenuous. He kept insisting that Iran
has ties to Al Qaeda for which there is no evidence, and it appears that the
only difference between Bush and McCain is that a “q”
will be exchanged for an “n” in the four letter word.
What Bush said about Iraq
prior to the invasion will be warmed up for Iran
as soon as McCain takes office. If the McCain campaign were to find itself in
trouble during the summer or early fall his new found friend George W might
even instigate a serious incident in the Gulf so that the party with the
impeccable credentials on “keeping our country secure” will win in November.
That the real problems in our country at this time are domestic and that they
cannot be solved unless the Iraq
and Afghanistan
wars, which are bleeding us dry financially, are stopped appears to be beyond
the mental capacity of the Bush administration and its supporters.
While the Republican nomination is
no longer an issue all eyes and ears are now turned on the Democrats and as
mentioned in the March 1 issue Barack Obama has indeed become the target of
rather vicious attacks. Let us, therefore, look at the backgrounds and the
political positions of the two Democrats who are now so vigorously battling for
the nomination.
I shall continue to refer to
Senator Clinton as Hillary not only because every one else does so but she
keeps changing surnames. Hillary Rodham was raised in a Chicago
upper middle-class suburb, received local attention for a fiery Valedictorian
speech at graduation from WellesleyCollege
and then went to YaleLawSchool where she not only got her
law doctorate in 1973 but had also met Bill Clinton in 1971. He wooed Miss
Rodham vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for several years until she finally
relented and moved with him to Arkansas
in 1974. They bought a house, taught law and married in 1975. To the
consternation of both of their mothers, Hillary insisted on retaining her
maiden name in order to become known as her own person. This did not sit all
that well with the good citizens of Arkansas
who cherished the old traditional family values and when Bill ran for
re-election to the governorship (which he had held from 1979-1981) in 1982,
Hillary relented for the sake of Bill’s political future and became Hillary
Clinton or Mrs. Bill Clinton. Over the years as America’s
First Lady she became officially Hillary Rodham Clinton. As evil, or prescient,
tongues currently have it if she were to be elected we would have President
Rodham.
There is no need to detail her
illustrious career which is extensively documented on Wikipedia suffice it to
say that she has always been interested in social causes and especially the
welfare of children. Laudable as they are there have been many bumps on the
road which have made her into the controversial person as she is regarded
today. She engenders fierce partisanship and one is reminded of Schiller’s
depiction of Wallenstein, the emperor’s general during the 30 Years War: Von derParteienGunst und Hass verwirrt, schwanktseinCharakterbild in der Geschichte (To and fro sways the historians’ image
of his character; confounded by the parties hate and admiration). For her
admirers Hillary is the modern Joan of Arc who will rescue America
from the quicksand the country has entered. For others she is Lady Macbeth who
will walk over corpses to achieve her aim - the Presidency, which has been a
long term goal. Ardent feminists of the 1960s see her as the embodiment of the
female dream, while other men and women of her generation have no objection to
a woman president but balk at that particular woman.
When one looks at the political
issues she champions and wants to be enacted: affordable health care, better
schooling for our children as well as a less militaristic foreign policy there
is not much difference between her and Barack Obama. This is why the majority
of Democrats say that they could support either candidate in the general
elections. The difference, for those of us who are not wedded to a political
party, is the most important aspect for the highest office in the land:
trustworthiness!
In defining her candidacy Hillary
has insisted that she has much better qualifications for the presidency than her
opponent and keeps telling us of having “35 years of experience.” This would
take us back to 1973 when she graduated from law school. It is true that she
was already at that time interested in Children’s causes. In the following year
she worked as a staff member for the House Committee on the Judiciary during
the Watergate scandal where she researched historical precedents for
impeachment of the president. Helping to bring about Nixon’s resignation was
the first feather in her Washington
hat and this is what she might mean when she talks about her 35 years. But
subsequent success in Arkansas
and the White House was not exactly stellar. Although she was a highly regarded
lawyer and was listed twice as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers
in America
(1988, 1991), there were also some shady deals which emerged during the Clinton
presidency.
There is no doubt that without
Hillary Bill Clinton would not have become president. Bill had a serious
problem with philandering which was brought into the open by Gennifer Flowers
during the Clinton 1992
presidential campaign. During the famous 60 minute interview with Mike Wallace,
Hillary “stood by her man” and thus, kept his candidacy viable. She also
remained steadfast during the Paula Jones and subsequently the Lewinsky affair
but Bill had to pay a price. As he put it during the campaign that if elected America
would “get two for one.”Hillary would
become unofficial co-president. In the White House she had a special office
with a large staff and was placed in charge of the Health Care Reform effort,
which failed because it was held behind closed doors and Congress was never allowed
to participate.
Her tenure as First Lady was also
plagued by scandals of her own doing. First came the firing of the White House travel
office staff which was deemed inappropriate and resulted in law suits. Then there
was the failed real investment Whitewater afffair
which led to criminal prosecutions. During her Arkansas
days Hillary was a partner at the Rose Law Firm. Since she said that her legal
work in regard to Whitewater was minimal her billing records were subpoenaed. They
“could not be found” until they miraculously turned up two years later suddenly
in plain sight in the private book room of the White House. Hillary was
subpoenaed to testify under oath before Congress; the first time that this had
ever happened to a First Lady in the history of the U.S.
The circumstances around Vince
Foster’s suicide also gave rise wonderment. He had been a friend, confidante
and legal advisor of Hillary for a long time and was about to be subpoenaed in
regard to the travel office affair when he was found with a gunshot wound in
his head at Fort Marcy Park in neighboring Virginia. The circumstances of his
death have been disputed and before the police and FBI had an opportunity to
inspect his office Hillary’s Chief of Staff, Maggie Williams (who is now in
charge of Hillary’s presidential campaign) as well as the Clinton’s lawyer,
Bernard Nussbaum, were seen to remove stacks of papers from it. These were
supposed to have contained information relating to the Whitewater deal which was
also brewing at the time. For anyone interested in the timeline of the Clinton’s
Whitewater problems the URL is
Possibly in
order to deflect attention from her political problems and to re-focus media
interest on her devotion to children’s causes Hillary decided in 1995 to become
an author. One year later Simon&Schuster published the result: It Takes a Village; and other lessons
children teach us by Hillary Rodham Clinton. But as an article in the New York Times on April 22 1995, written by Mary B. W. Tabor,
informs us this effort was likewise not without its problems. Tabor wrote that
Hillary will be taking no money except expenses and royalties will be donated
to charity. So far so good but,
“The book will actually be written
by Barbara Feinman, a journalism professor at GeorgetownUniversity in Washington.
Ms. Feinman will conduct a series of interviews with Mrs. Clinton who will help
edit the resulting text.”
Everybody knows, of course, that there is hardly a
politician or politician’s wife who writes their own speeches let alone books
and that ghost writers are employed for that purpose. Professor Feinman labored
for seven months and was paid $120.000 for her work. This would have been ok had
Hillary acknowledged Professor Feinman’s help in some form or another in the
book which would have been customary. Not only did she not do so for Feinman’s
contribution but instead she decided to write,
“It takes a
village to bring a book into the world, as anyone who has written one knows.
Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing
it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave someone out.
Instead I would like to thank those who encouraged and advised, read and
reacted; those who typed and retyped, edited, copyedited, proofread, designed,
set type, and printed; and those who kept the engines of daily life humming the
whole time.”
The dustcover of the 10th
anniversary edition names the jacket designer, the photographer and the
illustrator but Professor Feinman would have searched in vain to find her name
anywhere in or on the book. She swallowed her tongue even when, according to
Wikipedia, Hillary stated during her book tour “I actually wrote the book … I
had to write my own book because I want to stand by every word.” The article
also reports that, “Clinton stated
that Feinman assisted in interviews and did some editorial drafting of
‘connecting paragraphs’, while Clinton herself wrote the final manuscript in
longhand.”
Some people who value truth have a
problem with that because it blurs the line between exaggeration and outright
lie. It would not have mattered had this been the only instance but it is part
of a pattern and as one British observer wryly remarked during her tenure as
First Lady, “She is economical with the truth.” This has also been the pattern
during her presidential campaign. She claimed to have been instrumental in the
Ireland Peace Accord which Lord Trimble Lisnagarvey, who had received a Nobel Prize
for his efforts in the process, called “a wee bit silly.” On March 5 in an
interview on CNN she stated, “I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees
into safety from Kosovo.” The problem with that statement is that the border
had been opened on the previous day; Hillary’s entire visit lasted only 12
hours and was mainly a good will tour. Most
recently she told us that she braved sniper fire on her visit to Bosnia
but CBS kept rolling the tape how she and daughter Chelsea were actually
greeted on the tarmac by a little girl presenting flowers. As such she exhibits
a penchant for bending the truth which is troublesome.
The run for
the White House was expected to be a shoe-in but something unexpected happened
in Iowa: Obama won the primary
and although he lost in New Hampshire
he kept winning thereafter more states, more popular votes and more convention
delegates than Hillary did. By March 1 her campaign was in considerable trouble
and voices arose that she ought to quit, but the Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island
victories revived her hopes, although Obama made up for the delegate losses in
Mississippi and Wyoming. In addition the Texas
win actually turned into a tie when all of the caucus votes had been counted and
some late vote counts in California
added a few more delegates to Obama which allowed him to retain his lead. At
present Hillary can no longer win the nomination on basis of elected delegates.
This is where the Florida and Michigan
problem, which was mentioned last month, comes in.
The national Democratic Party had
declared that if Michigan and Florida
insist on holding their primary in January the elected delegates will not have
an official vote at the Convention in August. Obama and many of the other
democratic candidates removed their names from the Michigan
ballot but Hillary did not. She received 55% of the vote which would have
entitled her to 73 delegates but, since the vote had been held in defiance of
party rules, they don’t officially exist. A similar situation pertains to Florida;
although Obama’s name was on the ballot in that state. Hillary won 49% of the
votes vs. Obama’s 33% which would have given her 105 delegates while Obama
would have received 67. The delegate count is the major issue and Hillary has
currently 1498 delegates to Obama’s 1629. If her 73 Michigan
delegates were to be counted and the 105 from Florida
she would have 1676 delegates while Obama would have 1696 because he only got
67 in Florida and as mentioned
his name was not on the ballot in Michigan.
The Clinton campaign has,
therefore, made every effort to claim these potential delegates but has so far
been unsuccessful. The Obama people are saying: rules are rules, you agreed to
them earlier and it’s impermissible to change them now; if these two states
wanted to hold new primaries/caucuses now there would be no objections but these
elections would have to meet legal requirements for fairness. At the present
time the issue what to do with the Michigan
and Florida delegation in August
is still undecided.
One may now ask how Hillary got
into this fix she is currently in. One of the reasons is that she was
overconfident and thought that she would easily sweep the primaries; so there
was no need to worry about Michigan
and Florida. But the major event
was the totally unexpected Barack Obama phenomenon. That, “a skinny kid with a
funny name,” as he referred to himself, who is half white and half black, would
be taken seriously by voters had been inconceivable. In addition the man was in
his first senate term and had previously served only in the Illinois
legislature for eight years, so what was there to worry about?But he surprised all of us.
Who is he? Here are the bare bone
biographical facts. He was born in 1961 in Honolulu
of a white mother and Kenyan father while they were students at the University
of Hawaii. The father left two years
later to go to Harvard for further studies and the parents divorced at some
time thereafter. The mother then married an Indonesian student and when the boy
was six years old they moved to Jakarta
for the next 4 years. After returning to the States Obama continued to live
with the maternal grandparents in Honolulu
until graduation from High School. Thereafter he went to OccidentalCollege in Los
Angeles and ColumbiaUniversity. Having finished college
he became a community organizer in the decaying South Side of Chicago but then
applied to HarvardLawSchool. He became the first black
president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. After returning to Chicago he worked at the
law firm of Miner, Barnhill &
Galland as an associate attorney, lectured on constitutional law at the
University of Chicago, and published his first book Dreams from my Father. A story of Race and
Inheritance. He was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and
relinquished his seat in 2004 after election to the U.S. Senate. He had come to
national attention because of his Keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic
Convention where he pleaded for greater unity among the citizens of our
country. In February 2007 he announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential
election. While working as a summer associate at the Chicago
law firm Sidley&Austin in 1988 he met his future wife Michelle Robinson; they
married in 1992 and have two daughters.
This tells us that he is an
intelligent and eloquent person with a great deal of ambition but gives us
little insight into his character. The details set forth now come from Dreams from my Father which should be
read by everyone who wants to understand the man. The book is important
because, in contrast to Hillary’s, it is obviously written by himself. It is not a political book because it was written
before he had entered the political arena and it shows us the struggles of a
human soul in search of an identity.
Barack Hussein Obama got his name
from his Kenyan father with precisely the same name. The middle name Hussein,
which is now a point some of his detractors delight in, was his paternal
grandfather’s first name. When Obama’s parents met at the University
of Hawaii in a Russian studies
class the mother was only 18 years old. She had a strong social conscience for
the downtrodden and introduced him to her parents who liked Barack senior. But
a black son-in-law was not exactly what they had envisioned for their future. The
circumstances of the mother’s marriage to Barack sr. were in Obama’s words, “a
bit murky,” which has most recently provided grist for the mills of some of his
opponents. As Obama wrote:
“There’s no record
of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride, No families were
in attendance; it’s not even clear that people back in Kansas
were fully informed. Just a small civil ceremony, a justice
of the peace. The whole thing seemed so fragile, in retrospect, so
haphazard. And perhaps my grandparents intended it to be, a trial that would
pass, just a matter of time, so long as they maintained a stiff upper lip and
didn’t do anything drastic.”
Let us remember this was 1961, a
time where laws against intermarriage were still on the books in half of the U.S.
and had his parent met in one of the southern states Obama sr. might well have
been lynched and his mother cast out. In this country the term was
miscegenation, while in Nazi Germany the father would have been executed and
the mother sent to a concentration camp because of Rassenschande. But they were in Hawaii
where there were hardly any blacks, racial mixing was commonplace and a brown
boy was no exception. His four years from age 6-10 are, however, also of
interest; not only for character formation but also for the light they shed on
an aspect of American foreign policy most of us are not familiar with. Obama’s
stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, had to interrupt his studies in Hawaii
as a result of the Indonesian revolution which removed Sukarno from power and
installed Suharto in his place. This was at a time when Diem had already been
murdered in Vietnam
and U.S. troops
were pouring into that country. Washington
had become concerned that Indonesia
might fall into communist hands and there is good evidence that the upheavals
from 1965-1967 were not entirely due to internal disputes within the country
but had considerable help from the CIA.
These events had a direct impact on
Obama’s life. We don’t know exactly when he and his mother arrived in Jakarta
but it must have been either in late 1967 or early 1968. At that time the major
anti-communist purges were over, Suharto enjoyed good relations with the U.S.
and American contractors were pouring into the country. I have discussed the
Indonesian situation of those years in “Obstacles to Peace” (May 1, 2007), in
relation to John Perkins’ book Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins’ story begins in 1971, the year Obama and
his mother left the country. It provides an insight into the feeling of the
locals and corroborates what one finds in Obama’s book. The May 1, 2007 article is worth
re-reading in the present context.
Obama’s stepfather had not
voluntarily terminated his studies in Hawaii
abruptly, but as part of the ongoing “purge” the visas of students in foreign
countries were revoked and he was forced to return. When Obama and his mother
arrived in Jakarta she found her
husband a changed man. He was still polite and helpful but had become taciturn
and was no longer the hopeful, joyful person she had married. He evaded her
questions and she only found out the reason after talking to some of his relatives.
They told her that upon Lolo’s return he had been arrested and then sent by the
military, which ruled the country in those days, to the jungles of New
Guinea for a year. This happened to all
foreign students. Those who had studied in communist block nations were even
worse off, they had to serve longer terms and some of them were never seen
again.
To supplement her husband’s meager
income Obama’s mother took a job teaching English to Indonesian businessmen at
the American embassy and her experience, as related in Obama’s book, confirms,
as mentioned above, what Perkins wrote. Indonesia
was regarded as an American dominion to be developed on the American model with
a hand picked government and its massive corruption was overlooked.
Between the age of 6 and 10
children have already reached some understanding of what is going on in the
larger world around them and although Obama only mentions personal stories in
his book he must have seen and heard what transpired around him. In February of
1934 I was eight and a half years old but I still remember vividly the day when
I came home from school and found the trolleys standing empty on their tracks.
When I asked the parents what had happened I was told that the Reds (Sozis,
socialists) had called for a general strike because they wanted to take over
the government. At night while my brother and I lay in our beds we heard cannon
fire from the neighboring 19th district. They were shelling the
large communal housing project (Karl Marx
Hof, renamed by the Dollfusz government to HeiligenstädterHof) which
was one of the centers of socialist resistance. As mentioned in War&Mayhem (p.86) we inspected the
result on the following weekend with our grandmother. Episodes of this type are
unforgettable even when the child does not fully understand the political
context at the time.
Thus, when Obama’s stepfather
exhorted the little boy to be strong he knew what he was talking about.
Furthermore, Obama learned two more aspects of life in those days. His
consternation about seeing in a copy of Life magazine at the embassy a picture
of a black man having tried to bleach his skin so that he could pass in white
society produced a profound shock which only those of us can understand who
have been discriminated against because of ancestry. The other aspect was
Power. Although the child was not confronted with it, the mother was and I
shall now let Obama speak for himself,
“Power. The word fixed in my
mother’s mind like a curse. In America,
it had remained generally hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of
things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person
whose trust you had earned. But here [Indonesia]
power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always
fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just
when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that
his life wasn’t his own.That’s how
things were; you couldn’t change it you must just live by the rules, so simple
once you learned them. And so Lolo had made his peace with power, learned the
wisdom of forgetting, just as his brother-in-law had done, making millions as a
high official in the national oil company, just as another brother had tried to
do, only he had miscalculated and was now reduced to stealing pieces of
silverware whenever he came to visit, selling them later for loose cigarettes.”
Those of us who have lived under
dictatorial regimes be they of the Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, or whatever
variety, surely can relate to what Obama said here and, sadly enough, power is
again at work to derail his bid for the presidency. In asmuch
as his opponents have so far been unable to find major personal failings they
have resorted to character assassination via guilt by association. His
membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ under the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright is condemned on a daily basis by some TV pundits in spite of the fact
that Obama has disavowed the more radical rhetoric of the pastor. Although the
entire Obama campaign was founded on reconciliation of the various factions
that divide the country he is not allowed to pursue this road. Race and gender
dominate the public discourse. Obama’s masterful speech at Philadelphia’s
Independence Hall on March 18, where he tried to take the racial issue to a higher
plane, was not good enough for his detractors. Instead of healing the rifts in
the country, they are widened by what can only be called vicious propaganda.
Others, who do not “play the race
card,” point instead to his “lack of specificity” in regard to the programs he
intends to enact if he were to win the presidency; while still others,
especially in the Clinton campaign,
point to his relative lack of government experience. This supposedly renders
him unsuited for the role of Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The first
point is clarified in Obama’s second book, TheAudacity of Hope;Thoughts on reclaiming the American dream,
published in 2006 which discusses his political views in detail. The sad fact
of life is that those who criticize him on this point have failed to read the
book. Those who charge him with lack of experience would profit from reading Dreams from my Father because it reveals
how he became the person he is. His is the experience of life under a variety
of difficult circumstances which will allow him to use judgment when to employ
the military, under what circumstances, rather than to use it as an instrument
of naked power.
Our country stands at a crossroad.
The next few months will show whether or not we can rise above the divisive
elements in our land or succumb to them. The current election cycle will be a
referendum not only on race, gender, national security and domestic issues but
also on the intelligence of American voters. Will they be swayed by endlessly
repeated sound bites or will they look at the character of the candidates as
revealed by what they have written and done? But since race and Obama’s church
have become such a major issue it will be discussed in the next installment in
more detail.
May 1, 2008
RACE IN AMERICA
Whenever
the subject of race comes up in today’s political climate the mind tends to
jump to “black and white,” with its literal as well as figurative implications.
In the literal sense the debate has been reignited by Barack Obama’s bid for the
presidency but in the figurative context the old stereotype between good and
bad still lurks in the background. In the old black and white Western movies
the good guys wore white hats while black hats were bestowed on the bad ones.
This stereotype is deeply woven into the fabric of America’s
culture and will be very difficult to overcome in the near future. Although the
new voting generation no longer adheres to it, as the youth vote for Obama
shows, younger people do not as yet have the power of the media at their
disposal. But it will be the media that will, to a large extent, decide the
outcome of the election.
The methods which are used to
literally denigrate Obama’s candidacy have become apparent and will be
discussed on another occasion but to understand America’s
racial problem we have to go back to the very first European settlers of this
country. Their belief systems and attitudes towards the indigenous population
colloquially referred to as Redskins set the stage for all the subsequent
events.
Although the political character of
the country tends to be defined by the Puritans who arrived in the Mayflower in
1620 they were not the first because Jamestown,
in today’s Virginia, had been
founded 13 years earlier. But the motives, which sent these British and Dutch
colonists to the New World, differed between North and
South. The Virginians had come for fame and fortune while the Puritans intended
to establish a Calvinist Kingdom of God in their realm. Thus, the split between
North and South which eventually culminated in the civil War was unavoidable.
The North won this battle and with it came religious intolerance. Since for the
Puritans even the Anglican Church was much too liberal they could not possibly
tolerate Catholics. Although this religious conflict never assumed the
magnitude it had in Europe it did profoundly affect
subsequent immigrants up to this day as will be shown later and it aggravated
the battle between Protestant England and Catholic France for the domination of
this continent. In spite of our so-called “secular” country, religion is still
a powerful force and is again harnessed for political purpose during this
election cycle.
When the first colonists arrived
their survival depended entirely on the good will of the locals who were
misnamed Indians, due to Columbus’
original mistake. The English language does not allow a differentiation between
the inhabitants of the Asian subcontinent who derive their name from the IndusRiver and the people who inhabited
the Americas
but the German language is more precise in this respect. The local population
is called Indianer while the people
who inhabit India
are Inder. The semantic difference
might be small but precision in thought and language is always beneficial.
Neither Redskins nor Indians is acceptable any more in polite conversation so
they are now referred to as “native Americans,” although the vast white
population who arrived since the 1600s and stayed here can rightfully now be
regarded also as “native.” I shall avoid political correctness and since we are
speaking English in this country I will continue to refer, for historical
reasons, to the pre-colonial inhabitants of this country as Indians.
The Indians helped the Puritans to
build Plymouth and the first Thanksgiving,
albeit fictionalized subsequently, has become the symbol of good will between
the races. But good will evaporated rather early when the settlers arrived in
larger numbers and brought not only their weapons with them but also ideas of
how this world should be run. Foremost among them, apart from religion, was the
notion that an individual could buy and own a piece of land which could be held
in perpetuity. For the Indians this was unheard of, if the land belonged to
anyone it was to The Great Spirit or the tribe. But buying and selling land was
not in their vocabulary. As the colonial settlements expanded they inevitably
encroached upon more and more of the various tribes’ hunting grounds and
clashes became inevitable. In the South it took only a few months before peace
was established for some time with the marriage between John Rolfe and
Pocahontas. But this miscegenation would have been unthinkable for the Puritans
in the North and within less than 20 years they had their first full-blown war
on their hands.
The so-called Pequot war from
1637-1638 deserves to be recalled in some detail because all the other “Indian”
wars were fought for the same reasons and followed the same pattern. The main
problem was control of the fur trade. The Pequot preferred the Dutch while the
Mohegan traded with the British. Trade involves an exchange of goods and the
local currency was wampum – a string of artistically arranged white shell beads
which symbolized internal energies of peace, harmony and contentment. Up to 1633
the Pequot had a monopoly on its manufacture but the Massachusetts’s
Bay Colony had also started to produce it which was a further cause of
aggravation. Initially isolated killings involving colonists as well as Indians
led to revenge and eventually “massive retaliation” by what has been called the
Misistuk massacre (today’s Mystic in Connecticut).
The leader of the colonial militia, John Mason, reinforced by Mohegan,
Narragansett and Niantic warriors made a surprise attack on the village of
Mystic but since the Pequot warriors were engaged on another raid at the time
mainly women and children were left. The village was burned to the ground and
orders were given that if any Pequot attempted to escape the flames they should
be killed too (May 26, 1637).
The Narragansett and Mohegan warriors who valued hand to hand battle where they
could distinguish themselves by individual valor were supposedly horrified by
the way the English fought their war and went home. John Mason on the other
hand is said to have proclaimed that this “was the act of a God who ‘laughed
his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to scorn making [the Pequot] as a
fiery Oven . . . thus did the Lord judge among the
Heathen, filling [Mystic] with dead Bodies’” (Wikipedia; the Pequot war).
This was the pattern: use the
locals as long as they are useful and when they develop ideas of their own get
rid of them with all means at your disposal. The other aspect is that
colonization of North and South America would not have
been possible had the colonists, or conquistadores, not exploited the internal
tensions between the various local tribes. There were several additional
conflicts with associated massacres over the next 100 years but the first full
blown world-war erupted in 1754 with what is known by the French as: L’affaire Jumonville. It lit the fuse for what is
called here the French and Indian War while it spread to Europe
as the Seven Year’s War. While the details are disputed the outcome of the
Jumonville affair was aptly summarized by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) as “a
volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America
that set the world on fire.” That “young
Virginian” was 22 year old Major George Washington of the Virginia
militia.
The French as well as the English
had steadily expanded their trading posts and forts and both claimed the
territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi
from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico,
loosely known as the Ohio Country. Initially a French expedition under Céloron
established French sovereignty by burying plates to register their claim to
possession and whenever English traders arrived they were told that they had
trespassed on French property (1747). But the local tribes were not pleased
with the French because they already traded with the British and when the
French subsequently built Fort Le Boeuf
(today’s WaterfordPA)
the local Mingo Chief protested and so did the Iroquois. The governor of
Virginia Robert Dinwiddie was also confronted with a dilemma. Fur trading with
the Indians was big business and if the French now asserted authority a lot of
people would lose a lot of money and that was unacceptable.
The governor, therefore, sent Major
Washington with a message to the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf in October of 1973 to demand immediate French withdrawal.
On his way he met the Indian Chief Tanaghrisson who had his own reasons to want
the French out and they proceeded together for the meeting with the commander
of the French forces. When Washington and his little group arrived with a Dutch
interpreter they were treated to dinner by the French but the demand for a
withdrawal of French troops was politely but firmly refused.
Washington
had to return empty handed but a military conflict was now unavoidable. It came
in May of 1754 with what has been called the Battle of Jumonville Glen. The
details depend on whom you listen to but the facts are that Washington who had
in the meantime been promoted to Lt. Colonel had with a small group of militia
and native auxiliaries stumbled upon a small group of French military under the
command of Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville. The French had 31and
the British 40 men. During the skirmish 10 French soldier were killed and the
others taken prisoner. Jumonville was initially taken prisoner but then killed
by Tanaghrisson. Thereafter Washington
retired to hastily erected FortNecessity
and awaited the French counterattack. The fort was poorly planned and the
expected attack from FortDuquesne
(today’s Pittsburgh), led by
Jumonville’s brother, resulted in a French victory. Washington
was taken prisoner and made to sign a document in which he admitted
responsibility for the murder of Jumonville. This document was then used for
propaganda purposes in Europe to show the brutality of
the Americans. Washington did not
know French and when he signed that fateful document he supposedly did not
realize that he had accepted responsibility for the murder of Jumonville rather
than for him having been killed.
In the ensuing war the French used
their Indian auxiliaries while the British relied on the Iroquois
Confederation. When the war was over in 1763 England
and Prussia
(which had been supported by the British) emerged victorious. France
had lost: Canada,
all it possessions east of the Mississippi,
its last remaining foothold in India
as well as several islands in the West Indies. The
country was financially exhausted and thoroughly humiliated. The British
Empire had emerged but so had Prussia,
as a continental power, to the chagrin of later British and French generations.
When one is aware of how America’s
Indians had helped the British and the colonists in French and Indian War, one
may be somewhat surprised at what Benjamin Franklin wrote 13 years later in the
Declaration Independence. As the last one in the long list of King George’s
many sins which necessitated breaking the ties with the motherland one finds,
“He has excited domestic
insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”
George Washington’s signature does
not show up on this document and he might have argued for the omission of that
paragraph because he would badly need the savages in the upcoming war. The
American Revolutionary War was also a civil war among the Indian tribes and it
split the Iroquois Federation. Only students of history are aware that two wars
were fought simultaneously at that time: in the East against the British and in
the West against the Indian tribes. When Great
Britain lost it was a disaster for the
Indians because the treaty which had limited Western expansion of settlements
was void and the Americans could now sweep unopposed to the West. The
culmination came after the Civil War when young men who had served on either
side of the war found themselves out of jobs and joined the army. The Indians
had to fight their last rearguard battles before being finally restricted to a
few reservations. The mental attitude of the army towards the tribes was
perhaps best expressed by General Philip Sheridan in 1869. One of his duties was
to ensure that the Indians remained on their allotted reservations and would
not harass the ever increasing number of settlers. At a conference with 50
Indian chiefs, in what is now Oklahoma,
the Comanche chief introduced himself as, “MeToch-a-way, me good Indian.”Sheridan
supposedly smirked saying, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” The
phrase subsequently morphed into, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and
has persisted in this form for the enemy du jour.
Having solved the Indian problem in
this manner and populated the West Coast the next goal for “Go West young man,”
was Hawaii. This is the island
where another clash of civilizations in the true sense of the word had taken
place in 1779. When Captain Cook arrived in January of that year he was at
first welcomed, having been mistaken for a divine messenger. But when he
insisted on the European notion pf private property rights, which was unknown
by the natives, trouble started brewing. Since the locals shared everything,
they thought the Europeans would do likewise and took from the English whatever
they desired. Real trouble erupted when Cook, after having left, was forced to
return within ten days because of a split foremast which required replacement.
By then it was obvious that he had worn out his welcome. When one of the locals
disappeared with Cook’s cutter the friendship had come to an end. A scuffle
ensued shots were fired and one version has it that the first one came from James
Bligh of Bounty fame who was Cook’s cartographer. The Hawaiians were however
undeterred and killed Cook. Revenge was not long in coming in form of
missionaries who brought not only the Bible but also infectious diseases
previously unknown in these islands which decimated the population.
The commercial value of the islands
for sugarcane and pineapple production was soon discovered but the islanders
were not used to back breaking work and a labor force had to be imported. American
agents began to scour China
and later on Japan
for cheap workers, which in turn became the source of America’s
next race problem. In this connection it is also interesting to look back at
the November 2001 installment (Hawaii)
of this website not only in relation to Hawaii
but also to our continuing “War on Terrorism.”
The Japanese had had bad
experiences with Christian missionaries when the Portuguese first arrived so
they had restricted all trade with Western countries to a single small island
in the bay of Nagasaki
for Chinese and some Portuguese traders. But this was not to the liking of America’s
businessmen who clamored for an open door policy in China
and Japan.
Commodore Mathew Calbraith Perry was dispatched with a small fleet and a friendly
letter by President Millard Fillmore in 1853 to assure the Japanese emperor
“that I entertain the kindest feelings toward your majesty’s person and
government, and that I have no other object in sending him to Japan but to
propose to your imperial majesty that the United States and Japan should live
in friendship and have commercial intercourse with each other.” The message
also pointed out that America
and Japan are
practically neighbors because it took only eighteen days from California
or Oregon to reach the emperor’s
domain and in case he might have second thoughts the message was reinforced by
Perry’s guns trained on his capital.
The Japanese reluctantly acceded to
the demands and along with goods flowed people into Hawaii.
But since the working conditions on the plantations were miserable to the
highest degree a great many subsequently removed themselves to the mainland. The
Chinese had arrived earlier in Hawaii
as well as on the continent and when the1850s gold rush was on they diligently mined
for that precious metal. As long as it was abundant nobody cared, but when the
mines began to be depleted it became: gold for Americans and not for Chinese. The
Chinese were segregated into their own communities, condemned to menial labor
which included laying the tracks for the Central Pacific railroad, while those
for the Union Pacific railroad were laid mainly by the equally despised Irish.
Only the Utah stretch which
joined the two lines at Promontory Point (1869) was accomplished with Mormons
doing the work because Brigham Young was not interested in letting “Gentiles”
(i.e. anybody not of the Mormon faith) come into his bailiwick and potentially
take up residence.
The influx of Chinese into California
had created a problem and legal measures were taken. In 1862 a monthly $2.50
police tax had to be paid by every Chinese person and in 1878 Chinese were
ruled ineligible for American citizenship. Immigration was severely restricted and
the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers,
regardless whether they were skilled or unskilled, for ten years. California
also banned intermarriage between Chinese and whites. One of the consequences
was that Chinese men could no longer visit with family at home nor could they
bring their spouses. For some time Chinese school children were separated from
whites but this segregation attempt did not survive legal challenges. The
“self-evident truth that all men are created equal” obviously was not applicable
to red or black skinned people as well as to those of the “yellow race.”
With the “opening of Japan”
immigrants from those islands had also started to arrive in larger numbers
threatening the status quo. By 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt was
sufficiently concerned about this dilution of the racial stock of the country
that he had to send a lengthy note to Senator Philander Chase Knox who was
Chairman of the Committee on Coast Defenses and about to join the Cabinet of
the incoming Taft administration. The letter is definitely worth reading in its
entirety and can be found on http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/trjapan.htm.
Here is an excerpt of Roosevelt’s assessment of the situation.
“She {Japan]
is a formidable military power. Her people have peculiar fighting capacity. They
are very proud, very warlike, very sensitive, and are influenced by two
contrary feelings; namely. a great self-confidence, both ferocious and conceited,
due to their victory over the mighty empire of Russia; and a great touchiness
because they would like to be considered as on a full equality with, as one of
the brotherhood of, Occidental nations, and have been bitterly humiliated to
find that even their allies, the English, and their friends, the Americans, won’t
admit them to association and citizenship, as they admit the least advanced and
most decadent European peoples. Moreover, Japan’s
population is increasing rapidly and demands an outlet; and the Japanese
laborers, small farmers, and petty traders would, if permitted, flock by the
hundred thousand into the United States,
Canada and Australia.”
The proposed remedy was that the U.S.
would have to close its borders, build up its navy to prevent any military
moves by Japan but
the administration should do its utmost not to give unnecessary offense. After
having discussed what was supposed to be done in Hawaii
he wrote the following prophetic paragraph,
“As regards the
mainland our policy should have three sides and should be shaped, not to meet
the exigencies of this year or next but to meet what may occur for the next few
decades. Japan
is poor and is therefore reluctant to go to war. Moreover, Japan
is vitally interested in China
and on the Asiatic mainland and her wiser statesmen, will if possible, prevent her getting entangled in a war with us . . . .
There is no more
important continuing feature of our foreign policy than this in reference to
our dealing with Japan;
the whole question of our dealings with the Orient is certain to grow in
importance. I do not believe that there will be war, but there is always the
chance that war will come; and if it did come, the calamity would be very
great. And while I believe we would win, there is at least a chance of
disaster. We should therefore do everything in our power to guard against the
possibility of war by preventing the occurrence of conditions which would
invite war and by keeping our navy so strong that war may not come or that we
may be successful if it does come.”
Teddy Roosevelt’s advice was only
partially heeded. The navy was indeed increased but at an international
conference in the winter of 1921-22, held in WashingtonD.C., the Japanese were allowed only three “big
warships” for every five for Britain
and the United States.
When the negotiators returned home there was universal indignation and Japan’s
Chief of the Naval Board, Commander Kato Kanji, was so upset that he regarded a
war between the United States
and Japan as
having begun. America’s
subsequent policies especially under Franklin Roosevelt openly favored China
over Japan and
made demands the Japanese could not possibly meet without loss of honor. He cut
off their steel as well as oil supplies and deliberately left the Pacific fleet
exposed in Pearltheir steel as well as oil supplies
and deliberately left the Pacific fleet exposed in Pearl Harbor
rather than returning it to its home port
of San Diego. He baited the
Japanese to attack, which they did, and they were condemned for treachery
thereafter.
While discrimination against the
Chinese and Japanese was racially motivated, that against the massive influx of
Irish was ethnically based. The Irish were poor and in the 1850s no national
group was considered lower than an Irishman. Being Catholic was an additional
strike against them. The Chicago Post wrote, “The Irish fill our prisons, our
poor houses . . . Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you
tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them
home would end crime in this country.” But the Irish persevered and a hundred
years later an Irish Catholic became president of the country.
The next big immigration wave in
the 1890s, which was equally resented, consisted of Jews from Polish Russia who
had fled pogroms. Discrimination in regard to housing, admission to social
clubs, and institutions of higher learning was likewise the rule which ended
only after WWI. But even in 1958 when we moved to Grosse Pointe in Michigan
that suburb of Detroit was still
off limits for my Jewish co-workers.
What the Asians, Irish and the Jews
were in the past century are now the Mexicans who are engaged in a peaceful reconquista of the states they had lost
during President Polk’s war. Driven by economic necessity and looking for a
better life they are being denied entry because the country needs to retain its
white identity. In imitation of the Israelis we are building a wall on our
southern border to stem the tide and illegal immigration is one of the issues
in the current presidential campaign. The fact that Mexicans are also mainly
Catholic is another unspoken hurdle.
All of the mentioned racial and
ethnic groups have eventually found acceptance once they were integrated into
mainstream America,
but this goal has not yet been fully achieved by the black skinned population
of our country. In contrast to everybody else who had come voluntarily the
Negroes were brought here in chains, sold to the highest bidder and then put to
work for the rest of their lives under, at times, atrocious conditions. Contemporary
descriptions of the conditions on the slave transports such as the 1788 report
by Alexander Falconbridge, The Slave
ship’s Surgeon, and Life Inside a
Slaver by James Arnold written in 1787 (Life Under Sail by Frank Snyder
1964; the Macmillan Company) are most valuable. These reports are truthful, not
tainted by current propaganda from either side, and they explain the wounds
which have failed to heal in some members of the black community.
These wounds run deep and it is
difficult for the white population to comprehend the burdens which have been
placed on the backs of the “Negroes.” Because the issue of black versus white
is so highly emotionally charged and has been pushed to the fore in recent
weeks it will be discussed further next month.
June 1, 2008
BLACK AND WHITE
The
previous installment documented America’s
troubled racial history in regard to the Native American “Indians”, the
Japanese, the Chinese, as well as with ethnic groups such as the Irish and
Jews. But all of these difficulties are in the past and literally pale against
the problems caused by the importation of black Africans to our shores. They
are the only group of people who neither were here in the first place nor came
voluntarily. The males were brought in chains, while the women were allowed to
move around to a certain degree on board the slave ships and some served the
sexual needs of the ships’ captains. Once sold on the slave markets, males and
females became property, with no human rights; some women were raped while
others sought to make their lot easier by ingratiating themselves with the
master. This led to the creation of the “American Negro” with varying shades of
skin color.
White
America prospered from the human trade with Africa via
what was called “the rum triangle.” The North, especially Rhode
Island, built the ships and supplied the crews that
sailed to Africa’s West Coast where they picked up the
human cargo. It was delivered to the West Indies and the
ships were then loaded with sugar and molasses to return to New
England. Back home the cargo was refined to rum which in turn was then
sold to the African traders. The triangle had originally started in European
ports and went from there to Africa, then the West
Indies and back to Europe. But as America
began to flourish the European leg of the journey declined and the American
increased. From the West Indies the slaves were sent
mainly to the cotton and tobacco plantations in the South while some ended up
in the North for a variety of manual labor jobs. It is no secret that America’s
prosperity did not result only from Yankee ingenuity but from the hard labor of
Africans which has never been officially acknowledged.
White
America intermittently made gestures of good will. Slaves were freed first in
the North and with the help of churches the Underground Railroad was
established to bring slaves up from the South. Eventually Lincoln
issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But although the Civil War officially
ended slavery, the ex-slaves were still not accorded full human rights until
the Johnson administration in the 1960s. Although while we are all equal now on
paper true equality, which consists of mutual respect, is still in the distant
future for a great many of us. Racism is officially banned and hate crimes
prosecuted but laws are unevenly enforced and prejudice persists on both sides.
Why should
this be so?It is truly a case of black
and white. For a white person in white society, be it Europe
or America, the
color black has an ominous ring to it. Death is depicted in a black robe, the Black
Death i.e. the plague ravaged Europe, the devil is
black, black mass is satanic, a scoundrel is a black-guard, we are being
blackmailed, we are being blackballed, and last not least there is the black
sheep of the family. These concepts are ingrained in our culture and actually
go beyond it all the way to the Himalayas. In Tibet,
Yama, the Lord of Death is likewise black. Among Hindus the three gunas, namely the forces governing
nature are also depicted in colors. White is given to Sattvas which denote: purity, steadiness, goodness, wisdom. Red is
the color of Rajas: activity, energy,
and power; while black is assigned to the Tamas
which represent: inertia, dullness, restraint of activity and sloth.
These are
the obstacles the American Negro was and still is confronted with. Apart from
these cultural prejudices, which are no longer on the conscious level, there is
the additional problem that blacks and whites are if not outright afraid of
each other, at least not quite comfortable when in the minority. I have
discussed this aspect previously in the October
1, 2005 installment (The Dark Side) and need not repeat it now. Let
me instead relate how our ex-slaves have coped with the problem because this
aspect eludes white America
to a large extent. This is exemplified on a daily basis by some of our cable TV
pundits who act out racism while verbally protesting against it.
The race
issue came to a head with the Obama campaign for the presidency and showed the
raw wounds as they still exist. It started with Barack Obama’s search for
identity. As a genuine African American he was confronted with the problem of
belonging. He clearly is not white and therefore suffered all the indignities
that are showered on “people of color;” but for our blacks he wasn’t black
enough. He lacked the slavery background and, therefore, the associated
accumulated anger. To his credit he decided enough is enough, there needed to
be an end to this division and he would set out to breach this gulf for which
his genes would make him eminently suitable. Inasmuch as he had grown up with
white grandparents he was comfortable in white society and during his college
years he was mainly in a black environment. He thought he knew both sides of
the divide. Full of good will and imbued with his mother’s social conscience,
he set out to work with the poorest of the poor as a community organizer in Chicago’s
South Side. It may not be irrelevant that his boss who gave him the job was a
Jew because the relationship between the Afro-American community and the Jewish
power structure is somewhat tenuous.
To bring
better living conditions to the poor was not quite as easy as young Barack had
thought and he was told that if he really wanted to get something done he
needed the help of the black churches and that the most influential person to
see in the area was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of
Christ. The Reverend, who has now become a symbol for everything that is wrong
with America was the son of a Baptist minister who had grown up in
Philadelphia, then joined the marines and according to Dreams From My Father (Obama’s first book) was “dabbling with
liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties.” But he subsequently went
to HowardUniversity
and “then the University of Chicago,
where he spent six years studying for a Ph.D. in the history of religion. He
learned Hebrew and Greek, read the literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the
black liberation theologians.” Wright had taken over as pastor of the church in
1972. By creating a variety of social programs he united black middle and upper
class with the poor members of his church, which also included some white
people who still lived in the area. His efforts had been successful and the
previously decaying membership had shown healthy growth.
The biggest challenge for the
church, as the Reverend explained to Barack, was to attract intelligent young people.
“’ They worry about looking soft. They worry about what their buddies are gonna
say about ‘em. They tell themselves church is a woman’s thing - that it’s a sign of weakness for a man to admit that he’s
got spiritual needs.’” Since Obama was one of the people so described he became
rather uncomfortable and diverted the conversation to what he wanted to accomplish
through his community work. Whereupon the Reverend uttered these prophetic
words; “I’ll try to help you if I can. But you should know that having us
involved in your efforts isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap.”
Obama had
not been raised in a church-attending environment. His mother who was
interested in all religions had tried to pick the best from each one and had
stressed the spirit over dogma. He had, therefore, never felt the need to
belong to any specific denomination. But “if you want to work with churches you
better belong to one” he was told; so he attended a Sunday morning service.
That was the day when Reverend Wright gave a sermon on “The Audacity of Hope.” Using
biblical analogies he talked about the hardships the congregation faced in
their daily lives, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and
State House as well as the personal problems of even well to do people
regardless of race. But in spite of all that there was still the hope to make
this a better world with and through Jesus, whom the congregation thanked with
dancing and shouting. It was a deeply moving emotional experience for Barack
who on that day became a Christian and a member of Trinity. He had now experienced
belonging and was grateful for the next 20 years. The Audacity of Hope became
the title of Obama’s second book and the hallmark of his run for office, first
in Illinois, then Washington
and now the presidency.
But
something happened in March of this year Obama had not foreseen and the
Reverend had warned him about. To understand the dilemma Obama found and still
finds himself in we now have to go back to his success in Mississippi on March
11 of this year; a day which became a watershed day for his campaign. After
Super Tuesday, which was supposed to have clinched Hillary’s bid for the nomination;
Obama was on “a roll.” He had won votes from whites and blacks and the goal of
bridging the gap between the races seemed in sight. But when the exit polls of that Tuesday primary
showed that Afro-Americans had voted as a block with over 90% for Obama
hurricane warning flags went up in certain quarters. The next primary, in Pennsylvania,
was six weeks away and if he were to win in that state the race would have, for
all practical purposes, been finished for Hillary. I don’t know who did what
but that a well oiled propaganda machine went into high gear of that there is
no doubt. By the evening of March 12, while all the other networks registered
surprise at Obama’s unexpected vote margins, the Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity
of the Hannity and Colmes program had gotten the word: Stop Obama! I don’t know
who issued the order, or if it was an order, but what happened thereafter was
such a classic piece of Goebbels propaganda that the subsequent events could
hardly have been due to happenstance.
For my
European friends I now need to explain that the Hannity and Colmes program
which discusses current political affairs on a nightly basis,
has the largest number of all news channel viewers at that particular time
slot. The “fair and balanced” reporting, which is the Fox channel’s logo,
requires that the Catholic conservative Republican Sean Hannity be paired with
the Jewish liberal Democrat Alan Colmes. While the latter is polite to the
guests on the program, Hannity never learned in catechism class that humility
is one of the Christian virtues and mea culpas are also foreign to him. He is
the ideal attack dog and when he has a bone in his mouth he will not let go.
The Reverend Wright, his successor the Reverend Moss and other acquaintances of
Obama are now endlessly evoked in the attempt to paint Obama as a black
supremacist and to make matter worse an “elitist,” whom low and middle class
white Americans will never vote for in November.
The
Reverend Wright had actually been interviewed on that show on March 2, 2007 after Obama had declared
his intention to run for the presidency and the transcript is available on the
Internet. This interview is important for what followed in March of this year
and explained what the Reverend and his church is all about. When Hannity
accused the pastor of racism the pastor asked him whether or not he had ever
read the books which discussed black liberation theology. Hannity obviously had
not; so he dodged the issue and kept hammering on the racism charge. When Colmes
took his turn he told Wright that his church is regarded as “separatist” and
Obama is, therefore, “accused by default of being a black separatist. Can you
straighten us out please?” I shall condense now the pastor’s reply: “The
African-centered point of view does not assume superiority, nor does it assume
separatism. It assumes Africans speaking for themselves as subjects in history
not objects in history.”The principles
are self-determination but “not saying we are superior to anybody.” “When you
are saying an African-centered way of thinking, African-centered philosophy,
African-centered theology, you’re talking about one center [in contrast to the
dominant European-centered culture]. We’re talking about something that’s
different. And different doesn’t mean deficient . . .nor does it mean superior or inferior.” When Colmes
suggested that other black churches are pretty much saying the same thing and that
his church is singled out merely because of Obama’s run for the presidency the
Reverend heartily agreed.
Hannity then broke in and suggested
that we should “talk about the American community, instead of black, the
American family, instead of black . . . “ Wright
interrupted him and said: “Let me suggest that you do some reading before you
come and talk to me about my field. I’m not trying to talk to you about – no,
no no.” Hannity continued “that would bring us
together.” The rest of the interview was foreshortened with a snippet quote and
ended with Hannity saying “I’ve got to run. Thank you for being with us.”
Whereupon the Reverend replied: “Why don’t you quote everything? Thank you for
having me, sir.”
It needs to be known now that the
Reverend is no “shrinking violet.” He is imbued with the spirit of the biblical
prophets and has taken it upon himself to live up to his illustrious namesake. Official
misconduct in high places is not to be condoned but condemned in no uncertain
terms. Just as the Jeremiah of old had not minced words when confronting the
ruling circles and false prophets of his day, so does the current one who is
cut from the same cloth. In addition one needs to know that Sunday services in
this country’s African community are considerably livelier and emotional with
jumping and shouting than we are used to in normative Christianity. They
resemble “holy rollers” of revival meetings as they are held in the South
rather than what happens in the staid North. One is tempted to compare it with
Nietzsche’s difference between Apollonian and Dionysian conduct, where the
latter evokes either fear or ridicule from onlookers. Furthermore, at the
pastor’s retirement earlier this year his church had prepared DVDs of his
previous sermons which could be purchased on the Internet. These provided
unintended grist for the propaganda mill. From hundreds of thousands of words
the juiciest morsels were then skillfully extracted and 30 second sound bites
are now being drummed over and over again into the viewer’s mind, not only on
the major news channels but also on You Tube.
After having read the March 2007
transcript I heeded the Reverend’s advice. Although I had been working with
people of African descent for the major portion of my professional life we knew
and respected each other only as individuals. But I, like many others, had
never bothered to find out the reasons why after so many years after the
abolition of slavery there was still so much anger in the black community.
From the Internet I learned that
the drive for separation from the white community had started not only with
Marcus Garvey’s “back to Africa” campaign, which I have discussed partly in
War&Mayhem, but also in the city of Detroit where I had spent a major
portion of my professional life. A stranger of mixed racial ancestry had
appeared there out of nowhere some time prior to 1930 whose name is just as
much a mystery as his background is. He is referred to as W.D. Fard, on other
occasions as Wallace Fard Muhammad, or F. Mohammed Ali among other similar
variations. His main concern was the well-being of Detroit’s
Negro population and in 1930 he founded the “Nation of Islam (NOI)” for his
constituency. The religion he taught was rather unusual and since the NOI is
still with us and directly relates to the Obama campaign I shall summarize it
here as obtained from Wikipedia.
The overriding message was that
Armageddon was around the corner and it was the duty of the black people to
discover their origin and purpose. The American Negroes were the only people on
earth who had been deprived of their history, their names and their
religion.Christianity was imposed upon
them, just as their names, including that of Negro, by the white slave-masters
and oppressors. The original people on earth had been created by Allah from the
dark substance of space, they were by nature good and their religion was Islam.
But an evil scientist by name of Yacub started advanced gene manipulation on
the island of Patmos by grafting “black sperm” to “white sperm”(other sources
say brown sperm) and over a period of hundreds of years he and his descendants
succeeded in creating a bleached subgroup, the white race. These “white devils”
would rule the earth for 6000 years but their demise had begun in 1914 and they
will be completely annihilated in the near future by means of the Mother Wheel
which circles in space and was first described in Ezekiel’s vision (Ez. 1). To
prepare the Afro-Americans for this event they had to separate themselves from
the white devils; they had to become independent in regard to economics, religion, and nationhood. They
had to lead moral lives and there
was to be no drinking, gambling, or physical abuse of black women. To protect
one's family from attacks by violent white America the young males, the
“Fruit of Islam,” were trained in the martial arts but only for defensive
rather than offensive purposes.
Mr. Fard had obviously used Old and
New Testament sources in fashioning his theory. Patmos
and Armageddon come from the Revelation of St. John the Divine who wrote his
terrifying visions while exiled to that island during the persecutions under
Domitian and Yakub reminds one, of course, of the biblical Jacob. It is small
wonder that Jews, especially, would take exception to this characterization of
their ancestor. What is less well known is that apart from the biblical Jacob
there was a historic Yakeb-Baal (also referred to as Yak-Baal) who was a ruler
of the Hyksos Dynasty in Egypt.
His Semitic name was transcribed to Yakubher and he is listed as Meruserre in
the Egyptian records. I have previously referred to this person in The Moses Legacy because he may have
been the source for the biblical story.
In 1931 Mr. Fard, who was regarded
as the Representative of God if not God Himself in human form, was expelled
from Detroit but he had already
found his successor and Supreme Minister in Elijah Poole, whose family had
moved up North from Georgia,
and as part of his conversion to Islam had received the name Elijah Muhammad. The
minister who reportedly had witnessed three lynchings in Georgia expounded on
Fard’s teachings and the NOI charter demanded, "Full and complete freedom, equal justice under the law
applied equally to all, regardless of race or class or color and equal membership
in society with the best in civilized society." The alternative,
"justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of
our own.” Elijah Muhammad left Detroit at some point and moved to Chicago’s
South Side which became his major base.
While imprisoned in Massachussets for armed robbery Malcolm Little learned
about the Nation of Islam from one of his brothers who lived in Detroit and
started a correspondence with the Chicago prophet. This proved exceedingly
important for Mr. Little because it led him to leave his life of crime in the
ghettoes of Harlem and Boston and become a follower of Mr. Muhammad under the
name of Malcolm X. The X was adopted to sginify his break with white slavery
and he started a highly effective recruiting drive for the NOI in the prophet’s
name. Malcolm X was a very unusual person and his autobiography, as dictated to
Alex Haley, should be read by everyone to understand America’s racial problem.
Malcolm was truly devoted to the prophet but when he learned of his idol’s
human frailty, having sired illegitiamte children from some of his secretaries,
he experienced a massive disenchantment. Nevertheless, he contiuned to toe the
line but in November of 1963 came the break. In answering a reporter’s question
what he had thought about President Kennedy’s assassination he made a remark
which is now held against Reverend Wright when the latter talked about 9/11,
“the chickens have come to roost.” What Malcolm meant was that you cannot
condone murder in form of Medgar Evers (Mississippi Civil Rights leader),
Patrice Lumumba and Vietnam’s Ngo Nieh Diem and not expect retaliation. Malcolm
told Haley that Americans were saying anyway “that America’s climate of hate
had ben responsible for the President’s death. But when Malcolm X said the same
thing, it was ominous.”The remark was
used by Mr. Muhammad as an excuse to silence him “’for ninety days -so that the Muslims everywhere can be disassociated
from the blunder.’” The real reason was, probably, that Malcolm had become too
powerful and his image had begun to overshadow that of the prophet. Malcolm was
desperate; having lost his ideals, he decided to study the real Islam and asked
his half-sister in Boston for plane fare to go on the Hajj to Mecca. She
obliged and his report makes fascinating reading. When confronted with the true
Islam it was a reformative event. He saw that the “white devil” theory was
wrong and he experienced the brotherhood of all races and all skin colors. When
he tried to explain the situation of the American Negro to local potentates he
was told that the term should be abandoned because his people were African
Americans rather than negroes. Malcolm not only followed the advice but also broke
formally with the NOI upon his return to America. When he then tried to set up
his own organization on Islamic principles he failed and was murdered by unknown
assassins in February of 1965.
The NOI was blamed but nothing was ever proven. During Malcolm’s “fishing”
expeditions in search of black souls who could be converted to Islam he had
also come across a young gifted violonist, Louis Walcott, who became brother
Louis X. The prophet forbade him to play his violin and at some point Louis X
became the Louis Farrakhan most of us know and who is likewise a flashpoint in
this year’s presidential election campaign. After the prophet’s death in 1975 Minister
Farrakhan took over the leadership of NOI and he holds this post to this day.
The Nation of Islam had made considerable inroads in Chicago’s black community
and this is where the lives of the Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan
intersect. Wright had remianed Christian and the Trinity church he had taken
over had as its motto: “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” A
Sean Hannity, who has not read what is summarized here would never understand
what is meant by this statement. The Unashamedly Black comes from NOI and the
Unapologetically Christian is the answer to Islam.
Louis
Farrkhan is currently one of the most hated persons by the American mainstream
media although they have probably never read his short book, A Torchlight for America. He pleaded for
true equality of all races (no more white devils), and if this is not
achievable in America then there should be separation. Afro-Americans should receive a piece of land somewhere in Africa
where those who wanted to develop their own nation could do so. Those who wanted
to stay here could likewise do so but they would have dual citizenship. The
model was the Jewish people who have a state but may not want to live there. He
ignored that Lincoln had already proposed that idea and that some American ex-slaves
had established Liberia which was, however, not an unadulterated success as it
is recent history shows. But Farrakhan was not entirely consistent in his view
about the Jewish state. He felt, and still feels, that Zionism was wrong
because it was a colonial enterprise forced upon the local population by
treachery and deceit. This has earned him the epithet of anti-Semite although
he has not only good relations with individual Jews but also withNetureiKarta. This is a group of orthodox Jews who opposed
the establishment of the State of Israel in the beginning and continue to so.
They believe that the redemption of Israel cannot be achieved by
man, this is blasphemy, but will occur only when the Messiah arrives. This, by
the way, is also the position of the Iranian mullahs and when they talk that Israel will have to disappear
from the map they mean the state rather then blowing the population to bits as
current propaganda has it. Instead of the State of Israel, there should be a
State of Palestine where the members of all the three major religions enjoy
equal rights as citizens.
The name Farrakhan has become identified
with that of Hitler in today’s America In official circles he is regarded as personified
hate and evil although one finds nothing of this kind when one takes the time
to read what he said and wrote. Under those circumstances a different picture
emerges and one can understand why the Reverend Wright’s church gave him a
lifetime achievement award for the positive changes he has brought about in
regard to the betterment of the people and crime reduction in the ghettoes of
urban America.After the Elijah
Muhammad’s death, Farrakhan took up his beloved violin again and in 1993 made his concert debut with a performance
of the Mendelsohn Violin Concerto in E Minor. “Farrakhan said that in part, his
performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was an effort to heal a rift
between himself and the Jewish community.” Even The New York Times was impressedand reported
that "Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player, full of the
energy that makes the violin gleam” He subsequently gave other concerts playing
Beethoven and other classical composers.
This
brings us back to the present. Reverend Wright is now regarded as Farrakhan’s
twin brother: a thoroughly un-American racist, hate-monger; which is not true.
The Reverenddid say in a sermon on the
Sunday after 9/11 that “America’s chickens have come to roost” but a similar
sentiment had been expressed by Jerry Falwell and retribution had been
predicted in the 2000 book Blowback
by Chalmers Johnson. He pointed out that America cannot pursue an imperial
policy by supporting state terrorism in a variety of countries, including
Israel, and engage in secret CIA activities around the world without eventually
being taken to task.
Reverend
Wright is also accused of believing that the AIDS virus did not evolve
naturally but was created in our labs here for population control. This sounds
so fantastic that I didn’t believe it. But
the good Reverend challenged us to read the book Emerging Viruses. AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional?
by Leonard Horowitz which I did. The book, which is extensively referenced, is
too important to be dealt with in a few sentences and will therefore be
discussed in the next installment. For now let us just ask a simple question:
what do Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright really want? The equally simple
answer is: respect! They want to be talked with as equals, rather than talked
to as inferiors.
Obama’s
candidacy, which was intended to heal the wounds of racial division in our
country, has instead re-opened them. The unity between Republicans and
Democrats to which he aspired and which could lead to a more constructive
internal and foreign policy is nowhere nearer. On the contrary the Democrats
are at this time engaged in hara-kiri where Feminism is played against Racism. Under
the current rules of the game it is impossible for Hillary to win the necessary
number of delegates for the nomination (see March 1, 2008 Voting in America).
How they will be bent to seat Michigan and Florida delegates is being decided right
now and by next Tuesday the last Primaries will have been held. Regardless of
their outcome, Senator Clinton cannot get the needed pledged delegates to win
the nomination, she is too far behind. She is now confronted with a question of
character. Will she accept defeat gracefully and return to the Senate or will
she continue to fight for the nomination up to and including the Convention,
thereby mortally wounding the Demorats in the fall election. This is what is at
stake now and by the time of the next installment we will know who Hillary
Clinton really is.
July 1, 2008
BARACK OBAMA’S PROBLEMS
The
first week of last month ended the primarycampaign and morphed
seamlessly into the race for the presidency. Obama had reached the required delegate
count and Hillary, although still defiant on that Tuesday night, had to
“suspend” her campaign by the following Saturday. Her concession speech was
gracious and she pledged to campaign with Obama to put the Democrats in the
White House on January 21 of next year. The reason why she quit for the time
being is simple; she had run out of money. The campaign was in debt for over
$20 million in spite of her having loaned it $11 million and the super
delegates were switching to Obama. The strategy changed, therefore, to Plan B;
the vice presidency. This “dream ticket” which would unite the party was
immediately floated by the media and there was a veritable stampede to push
Obama to make that announcement right then and there. To his credit he resisted
these efforts because it is difficult to see how this ménage á trois would work
in the White House. Hillary obviously comes with Bill in tow and he is not the
type to sit by quietly and let others play first violin. Nevertheless, the idea
is not dead and is bound to resurface before or during the convention unless
Obama comes up with a vice presidential candidate who is clearly above reproach
and brings strength to the ticket in the areas were Obama is weak. These are,
as the primaries have shown, white elderly women who relish the gains of
feminism and white blue collar workers whose livelihood is at stake in an
economy that continues to deteriorate.
Although
the adjective white in the sentence above is a taboo subject because we live
supposedly in a color-blind society it corresponds to the facts. As mentioned
in last month’s installment white fear of black people and vice versa is a fact
of life and has to be taken into account. We live, however, in a rather strange
society. It supposedly values the truth but cannot stand to hear it. I was
reminded of Schiller’s Don Carlos where the young Marquis Posa on his knees
implores Philip II: Majestaet, gebtGedankenfreiheit
(majesty, allow freedom of thought). Well, freedom of thought has always
existed; freedom of speech was and is the problem even in our “liberal, secular
democracy.” It is this freedom of speech which, when used to speak truth to
power, that put the first speed bump on Obama’s drive to the presidency in form
of his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have already discussed him
to some extent last month but the issue is too important to mention only in
passing. The reason is not only the substantive content, but also what it tells
us about the methods used by the American media to make and break candidates
for political office, as well as Obama’s character.
The media’s
method is simple. It consists of diligently searching not only for a given
candidate’s past utterances, but also those of his acquaintances, picking one
or two of the most inflammatory statements and playing them endlessly on cable
TV. This eventually seeps into the regular broadcast networks and magazines. A
label is then attached to the person that defines him/her for ever more.
Austrians will remember how this game was played with the former UN Secretary
General and subsequent President of the Republic, Kurt Waldheim. On flimsy
grounds he was declared a war criminal and anti-Semitic Nazi.This landed him on the watch list and he
could no longer visit the U.S.
He was made “radioactive” and nobody dared to speak up for him any more.
Waldheim is dead now and Austria
has weathered the storm, but the same tactic is being used at this time with
equal success in regard to Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan and most recently
the catholic Reverend Father Michael Pfleger. All of them are currently
radioactive and any kind word or attempt to understand their views puts one
automatically beyond the pale of polite society. But understand we must if we
value the truth and are not satisfied with stereotypes.
Reverend
Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ was turned into a millstone
around Obama’s neck and he felt the need to sever his contacts with the church
completely after Father Pfleger gave a sermon there earlier last month in which
he played a little skit on the pulpit ridiculing Hillary. It is now necessary
to look at context and what this particular church and Father Pfleger’s St.
Sabina are all about.
I have
already mentioned last month how Obama came to know the Reverend Wright and
then join Trinity more than 20 years ago, but “black liberation theology” which
is the underpinning of the Reverend’s work was not in my vocabulary. Since I
was completely ignorant in this matter, I did what the Reverend had asked Sean
Hannity to do, in the interview which was discussed last month, and bought the
most relevant books by Cone and Hopkins.
We must now
go back to the middle sixties, the Civil Rights movement and the mindset of the
African-American community of those years, which was only partly covered in
last month’s installment. While Martin Luther King preached the gospel of
non-violence and the gradual easing of the burdens of the black people there
was also the younger more militant “black power” group. They were not waiting for
a dream to come to fruition; they wanted action now and inner cities began to
go up in flames. King’s Christianity was challenged by the “black Muslims”
under Malcolm X who subscribed at that time to the “white devils” theory from
whom separation must be obtained by any and all means. For Malcolm “all options
were on the table,” a phrase which did not exist at the time but is currently
used to bully Iran.
After Malcolm had been expelled from the black Muslims, had gone to Mecca
and given up on the white devils idea, he had become more ecumenical in his
political outlook. Nevertheless, he insisted on the right to self-defense. His
speeches were regarded as inflammatory, he was assassinated and so was King a
few years later when he spoke out against the Vietnam War.
James H Cone (born in 1938) was a
seminary student during those times and had received his Ph.D. in 1965 from NorthwesternUniversity in Chicago.
He realized that the black power struggle of the Malcolm X variety needed some
spiritual underpinning, but since black Americans were Christians they were not
likely to change their faith in large numbers to that of Islam. But by the same
token they could also not identify with the white Christian Church which
preached love, tolerance and forgiveness while at the same time its members
treated African-Americans as an underclass and engaged not only in blatant
discrimination but intermittent killings and burning of churches in the South.
This clearly made him angry and he looked for an alternative. The inspiration
came from the Exodus story in the Bible and the sayings of Jesus. Cone was
struck with the observation that the major function of the God of the Hebrews
was to lead the slaves from Egypt into freedom and that His overriding concern
was social justice for the poor and under-privileged as proclaimed by the
Hebrew prophets. The same theme was then taken up by Jesus who likewise worked
for the poor and outcasts of his day.
Thus, Cone reasoned, there was no
need to change one’s Christian faith, all one had to do was realize that God is
black because blacks are also created in His image. The picture of the blond
blue-eyed Jesus is not the authentic one; he is likewise black because
blackness was for Cone the color of poverty and misery. Jesus’ birth in a stable
with animals, having to be put in a feeding trough instead of a crib, his
subsequent fight against the Jewish power structure, which ended with his
crucifixion, likewise mirrored the black experience. His resurrection is not
only a promise of freedom to come after death, but his living spirit animates
the black community in the here and now to throw off the shackles of oppression
and leads them to their rightful place in the sun.
Cone wrote his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, in 1969
while teaching at AdrianCollege
near Detroit in Michigan.
He followed it up with a systematic exploration of the topic in 1970 under the
title A Black Theology of Liberation
which was a major success and became the seminal work for the next generation
of black theologians. A second edition was printed in 1986, which reflected
somewhat less anger and included a second part which consisted of chapters
written by others who had followed in his footsteps. The Twentieth Anniversary
Edition of this book, on which the above presented synopsis was based, was by
October 2007 in its eighteenth printing.
In the Preface to the 1986 edition
he wrote,
The task of
explicating the gospel of God’s liberating presence with oppressed blacks was
too urgent to be sidetracked into an academic debate with white scholars about
the nature of theology. It was clear to me that what was needed was a fresh start [italics in the original] in
theology, a new way of doing it that would arise out of the black struggle for
justice and in no way would be dependent upon be [sic] approval of white
academics in religion. Again I thought of Malcolm: ‘don’t let anybody who is
oppressing us ever lay the ground rules. Don’t go by their games,
don’t play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game,
and we’ve got some new rules. . . .’”
I have quoted this paragraph
because the advice of not letting your adversary define who you are is highly
relevant for the Obama campaign. Some years later Cone became the faculty
advisor for Dwight Hopkins who received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the Union
Theological Seminary in New York City.
Hopkins’ book, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation, published in 1999, was in
its seventh printing in 2006 and represents a more recent summation. The book
also describes how Liberation Theology had spread around the world and the
initial difficulties in other regions especially Latin America
where the parishioners felt that the emphasis should not be on race but in
Marxist terms on class distinctions. These differences reflected local
concerns. For the Americans race was more important because it conformed to
their daily experiences. Malcolm had once said: “What is the name of a black
Ph.D. walking at night in a white neighborhood? Nigger!”Or as Reverend Wright, who also has a Ph.D.
had put it to Obama on their first meeting: “We don’t buy into these [class]
divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack, Cops don’t check my bank account
when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.”
In contrast to what the media tell
us, black liberation theology, as practiced by Trinity and other black
churches, is not preaching hate and division but encourages its members through
a variety of social outreach programs to become fully self-reliant individuals.
When one reads these books and the actual transcripts of some of the
controversial sermons and press conference statements by Pastor Wright, one
does not find anything particularly objectionable. He speaks truth to power and
when he does so with prophetic fervor in his soul, accompanied by bodily
gyrations, he is not speaking to us but to his congregation that is not only
used to, but expects passion. The black church differs also from conventional
white churches, especially in poor neighborhoods, in the sense that the gospel
of Christ is taken literally and as an obligation. It is not to be quietly
listened to but is regarded as a social action program. Church does not end
when everybody goes home on Sunday but service to the needy, the sick and
imprisoned starts on Monday and goes on throughout the week. The key passage of
scripture is Matthew 25:35-36:
“For whenI was hungry you gave me food; when thirsty
you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me to your home, when naked
you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited
me.”
This is the kingdom
of God in action and surely nothing
to be ashamed of. Since the Protestant Wright, the Muslim Farrakhan and the
white Catholic priest Michael Pfleger serve the same largely under-privileged
community they find common ground in this passage and also come to each other’s
aid when attacked by outsiders. But this is clearly not in keeping with the
current Zeitgeist and political
correctness. They are labeled as left liberal extremist racists and as such
dangerous. But let’s face it if we leave “racist” out, because it didn’t exist
at that time, Jesus would also fit that categorization. This is also the reason
why Hopkins said that, "To
caricature and attack Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is to attack the Black church in America," and "Attempts to muzzle him
and Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago exemplify a bad omen for every African
American preacher and every African American church in the country. And with
the Black church censored, other Christian churches will be the next in line.”
With this background we can now look how Obama has handled the Wright and
subsequent controversies because they give us an insight into who he is apart
from what he says. The Reverend’s “rant” snippets, played ad nauseam on TV, had
hit him clearly unawares and when first confronted with them he distanced
himself from the comments and said that he had not heard them before. This was
not quite believable and the media kept hammering on it. Up to that point Obama
had not found the Reverend’s sermons objectionable because, they are common
fare in the black church. When he was confronted with the soundbytes in the
debate and asked how he felt about them he said that he rejected them and when pressed
with, “but do you denounce” them he gave in and said “ok; I reject and denounce
them.”
This was his first mistake because he had disregarded Malcolm’s advice,
“don’t let your adversary define you or your friends!” “This is a new game; you
make the rules and you explain why you do so.” Obama is running on a platform
of “change” and he could have defined the new rules. He could have told the
questioner during the debate, “Look, the black church differs from the white
church because it comes from a completely different background and serves
different constituencies. Pastor Wright’s first name is Jeremiah and just as
the prophet Jeremiah two and a half thousand years ago he is holding government
accountable for what it is doing. This is not un-American or un-patriotic but
on the contrary he upholds the principles this country should stand for. I’ll
put a full explanation on my website why the pastor talks the way he does, and
now let’s have another question on matters that directly affect the welfare of the
American people.”
This is the core of Obama’s problem; he was caught unprepared and could not
come to the defense of his church. At that moment he needed to please a white
audience that sees him as a black man and at the same time he could not afford
to offend the black community more than necessary. He wants to win the
presidency after all and this cannot be accomplished without the white as well
as the black vote. But it was obvious that his adversaries now had an “in” and
they kept at it relentlessly. Every time you turned on a news channel there was
Reverend Wright gyrating and expostulating the same “hate” remarks.
In response Obama felt obliged to give on March 18 the speech on race in
Philadelphia. Is was a rhetorical masterpiece in which he tried to make a
distinction between the political views of the pastor, which he didn’t agree
with, and the man.
“As imperfect as he may
be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding,
and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard
him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom
he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. . . . I can no more
disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than
I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who
sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves
anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men
who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered
racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
But the media would not let the
matter rest and kept harping on the Reverend until the latter decided no more
turning the other cheek and went on the offensive with three speeches. On April
25 came an interview on the PBS program Bill
Moyer’s Journal, where he explained the situation in rational terms. We
watched it and were impressed because the man came across as a reasonable human
being without engaging in antics. In regard to the question about how Obama’s
reaction to the attacks on Wright had affected him he said: “It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor.
We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a
politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different
worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded
as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor.”
That was it, simple and
straightforward but not good enough for the press because they added “he’s just
a politician.” The following Sunday Wright gave a speech before the NAACP
(National Association for Colored People) in Detroit, which we likewise watched
and since he was talking largely to black folks he did engage in some levity
but his main theme was that although blacks are “different” from whites that
does not make them “deficient.” In his talk before the National Press club on
Monday the Reverend went over the same ground and when asked in the discussion
period how he had felt about Obama’s response to have been characterized as a
politician, he said:
“What I mean is what several of my
white friends and several of my white Jewish friends have written me and said
to me. They’ve said, ‘You’re a Christian. You understand
forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said,
he would never be elected.’ Politicians say what they say and what they do
based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls . . . . Preachers
say what they say because they’re pastors. They have a different person
to whom they’re accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I’m
still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January
21st. That’s what I mean. I do what pastors do.”
But he also had this
choice morsel for Obama: “And I said to Barack Obama, last year, ‘If you get
elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing
a government whose policies grind under people. All right?
It’s about policy, not the American people.’”
This was the straw that broke the
camel’s back and Obama now found himself in the role of Henry II who needed to
get rid of “this meddlesome priest.”A
few days later he called Wright's remarks
"divisive and destructive" and warned that they "end up giving
comfort to those who prey on hate. . . . I gave [Wright] the benefit of the
doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church,
but when Wright stands behind such ridiculous propositions then there are no
excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans. And they should be
denounced,"
Yet, as his critics immediately
pointed out the Reverend hadn’t said anything new in these conferences, these
views had been known to Obama all along and that Obama now acted from political
expediency. He had thereby proved the Reverend’s point that his response was
that of a politician. Although this storm has abated somewhat, it will
re-emerge in the fall because it does go to the questions of character and
judgment. It is already said that one cannot go to a church for more than 20
years, renounce it when it becomes politically inconvenient, and still claim
authenticity.
In the relative campaign news lull
prior to the Pennsylvania primary
Mayhill Fowler, a self-styled reporter for the Huffington Post website, who
follows Obama on the campaign trail came to the rescue. She had attended a
private fundraiser for Obama in San Francisco
and taped his presentation which included a comment about Pennsylvania
voters, “they get bitter, they cling
to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant
sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” This
was the soundbyte some pundits had been waiting for because they could now
paint Obama in addition to his troubles with Wright, as an “elitist” who is out
of touch with the working class which he is supposed to represent. This
statement was now repeated in a mantra like manner but no context was ever
given. When I went to the Huffington Post website, where not only the
transcript but also part of the voice recording was available, it was obvious
that the sound was so garbled that it was difficult to make out the complete
sentence. Nevertheless, even when one accepts the transcript, it was clear that
the statement had been made in the context of a question by volunteers from the
audience who were about to visit Pennsylviana to drum up support for Obama. He
had given a long answer which included,
“But -- so the questions you're most likely to get
about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete
thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what
we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for
the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and
we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series
of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get
people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in
their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and
like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25
years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton
administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration
has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or
religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant
sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I
think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are
gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know
working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go
into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be
skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're
doing.”
There was nothing offensive in these
words and they could readily be defended. But that is not what Obama did in the
debate when questioned about the soundbyte. He said that he misspoke and
apologized. He had again accepted the adversary’s position rather than sticking
to his guns. The next flap came over the American flag lapel pin. Ever since
9/11 our super patriots from George W on down wear a little U.S. flag in their
lapel to demonstrate American pride, I guess. It was de rigeur for Republicans and some TV pundits, but the Democrats
largely did not participate in this ritual. When Obama was asked by George
Stephanopoulos in a debate why he was not wearing one, Obama gave a convoluted
answer instead of simply looking down at him and saying: “Oh George, where is
yours?” And pointing to the other moderator, who likewise did not wear one,
“did you forget yours too?” These are trifles but they reminded me of Vienna
after March 12, 1938 when everybody was showing up with a little swastika in
his lapel and when one of my older school mates noticed that he hadn’t put it
on had said: “Oh I forgot my Gesinnung” (loyalty declaration).
As I said these are trifles but again Obama caved in and he now wears a pin
when even Sean Hannity has largely given up on his. The latest reversal of
positions came late last month when Obama declared that he would not accept
federal funding for the fall campaign but use money raised directly from the
public. Previously he had said that if he were to be nominated he would accpt
the $85 million as stipulated by law and he would also negotiate with McCain on
how to curtail spending. This is no longer the case. There are good reasons for
not limiting one’s fundraising ability because the law is actually full of
loopholes and Obama cannot afford to be outspent in the fall campaign. But it
shows again that he had not thought the matter through when he made the promise
in the first place. It is clear that he is a man in a hurry who had called
himself “restless” in his second book, and who can speak rashly to please his audience.
When he told the AIPAC
meeting not only that he is one hundred percent for Israel but also that
Jerusalem has to remain forever undivided, i.e. under complete Israeli control,
the Arabs were aghast because he had just sold out the Palestinians who will
never agree to it.
These and other aspects which are not yet public knowledge will come to
haunt him in the fall. Let’s face it, his meteoric rise from a two term
Illinois state senator to a U.S. senator who announces in the beginning of the
third year of his firstterm that he is
now running for the presidency, is rather unusual to say the least. Questions
will be asked to whom he owes this phenomenal succes and the book by Webster
GriffinTarpley, Obama. the Postmodern
Coup, will provide grist for the rumor mill. My personal opinion is that
Obama was actually running in 2007 for the vice presidency and he was probably
as surprised as everybody else by his success. But he has now become the
standard bearer and will have to show his mettle. Will he really be able to
effect change in Washington if he were elected? One may wonder, although it is
unlikely that he would get us into another war, which would be the main
advantage of his election.
But it is too early to speculate on what might happen because at present he
is only the presumptive rather than actual nominee and from Denver in August
it’s a long time till November. Although the economy, the costs of the war and
the general popular disgust favor the Democrats in November we don’t know what
the Bush administration and/or Israel are going to do in the meantime in regard
to Iran. The war drums are being beaten again and both Hillary as well as Obama
have missed a critical opportunity in the second half of last month. After the
tête a tête at Senator Feinstein’s home where the two of them hammered out her
surrender terms they should have announced not only that Hillary would now work
with and for him but also that for the rest of this session of Congress they
would not continue to campaign. Instead they would work in the Senate to
produce a bipartisan resolution that will require congressional approval prior
to any military action against Iran during the rest of President Bush’s term.
Furthermore, they would introduce legislation to ask the UN for a one year
extension of its Iraq mandate so that no “status of forces agreement” will be
signed until the new administration has had an opportunity to reassess the
situation in 2009. In addition a resolution could have been passed that tells
the Israeli government that if it were to engage in air strikes against Iran
during the upcoming months this would be condemned and financial aid would be
stopped. Such declarations would have been acts of statesmenship rather than
campaign promises of which we have heard enough already.
The country is in serious difficulties and by January 21 of next year it
may be too late to fix them. The media are full of excuses why oil and gas
prices are so high. They need look no further than the instability of the
Middle East and the threat of a war with Iran which nobody but a few deluded
souls really wants. If one were a speculator in the oil price futures and money
were all one was interested in, wouldn’t one bet that the price will inexorably
go up as long as the oil fields are threatened by war? Those are some of the problems
we face right now and the question is whether or not either one of the
candidates is capable of meeting them.
August 1, 2008
THE NATIONAL SECURITY SCAM
The use of
the slang term scam, which stands for “swindle” or “fraud,” in relation
to national security may strike some readers not only as irreverent but as
downright unpatriotic. But, unfortunately, we live in the age of scam, and
confidence games where hucksters pray on their gullible fellow citizens to
extract money under false premises are daily occurrences. As will be shown here
the area of national security is no exception but it is rare indeed that its perpetrators
become known, let alone brought to justice. The topic is urgent because
national security is the hallmark of the McCain campaign, especially in regard
to Iran. In the
name of national security pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s
nuclear facilities are advocated which might take place prior to the November
elections, if it began to look that Obama is likely to win.
For a
democracy to properly function it needs an educated citizenry, which in turn
depends on independent journalists who provide the nation with unbiased
information. In addition it requires a government which gives, on request, critical
information to Congress for the needed oversight of the executive branch of
government. This is not the case at this time and as will be shown has not been
for a long time, although the present scandals are far worse than what Nixon
ever did. When congressional subpoenas are routinely ignored by the White
House, invoking either “executive privilege” or “national security,” the intent
of the Constitution is subverted. The most egregious recent example is, perhaps
that of Karl Rove who attended a conference in Yalta
on the day he was supposed to give testimony before Congress. He finds time
several days a week to present his views on Fox News but testifying under oath
is not to his liking. “We the People” are being scammed because we pay in blood
and treasure for the conduct of a few, who make policies in secret and invent
pretexts to justify them. When criminal conduct is accidentally exposed, blame
is assigned to lower level underlings, For instance in the Abu Ghraib scandal a
few soldiers went to prison and the commandant was relieved of her job. But the
people who gave the orders and provided the legal “justification” in the White
House and the Pentagon were never disciplined. In order to ensure that secrecy is
maintained for all the wrongdoings of the Bush administration presidential
papers have been sealed by the present White House occupant all the way back to
the first Reagan administration of 1980. The reason seems obvious; some
unpleasant facts about his dad’s vice presidential tenure might come to light
especially in regard to the Iran-Contra affair. This is not “old history”
because some of the key players are again in position of power today.
Since even
professional historians are deprived of crucial information and our mainstream
media have abrogated their duty to provide us with it, we have to depend on
independent journalists whose sources they frequently cannot reveal because the
latter’s jobs are on the line. With this caveat we can now proceed to discuss
some of the material which has recently been published in books and on the
Internet.
The
defining event of the first decade of this century was, of course, the 9/11
tragedy which has never been properly explained to the public. As mentioned in
“The 9/11 Cover-up” (October1,2006) the Bush
administration has not only not been forthcoming about the events of that day
but has diligently tried to fix blame first on Osama bin Laden and thereafter,
in addition, on Saddam Hussein. It is,
however, obvious that Osama’s role cannot explain all the events of that day
and that Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with them. Yet, it is known to the
administration, and some members of Congress, that something else happened on 9/11.
This is withheld from the American people in spite of the fact that we have
gone to war on a false pretext and are ruining our economy as part of it.
Webster G Tarpley whom I have mentioned in the last installment in
regard to Barack Obama’s candidacy, published in 2006 a book 9/11 Synthetic
Terror. Made in USA in which he discusses the impossibilities of the
official 9/11 scenarios. He provides two other theories which are summarized by
the acronyms LIHOP and MIHOP. These stand for “let it happen on purpose” and
“make it happen on purpose.” Tarpley clearly has an agenda and the book has to
be read with some grains of salt. Nevertheless, there are verifiable aspects,
which are no longer mentioned because they contradict the official version.
The information which is presented
below comes not only from Tarpley but also from James Bamford’s A Pretext
for War. 9/11. Iraq and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies; and Paul Thompson’s, The Terror
Timeline.Year by Year, day by day, Minute by
Minute; as well as
other sources which are referenced later.The Bamford and
Thompson books do not engage in speculations but merely recount the events
prior to, during, and after that fateful day. The following bare-bone time
sequence of President Bush’s conduct on that day is abstracted from Thompson’s
book.
“On the morning of September 11 George Bush
was at the ColonyBeach
and Tennis Resort at Longboat Florida,
near Sarasota, where he had spent
the night in order to attend a photo-op next morning which was to highlight his
focus on the education of America’s
children. He got up, as usual, at 6 a.m.
for his morning jog but a “van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent
arrives . . . stating they have a ‘poolside’ interview with the president. They
do not have an appointment and are turned away. Some question whether this was
an assassination attempt modeled on the one used on the Afghani leader Ahmed
Massoud two days earlier.”
6:31 Bush went
jogging.
Between 8 and 8:20
he received his daily intelligence briefing but apparently it contained
“nothing serious enough which would have necessitated a call to National
Security Advisor Rice.”
8:35 Bush leaves
for the EmmaE.BookerElementary School
in Sarasota.
8:40 AA flight 11
crashes into the WTCNorthTower.
Between 8:46 and 8:56 members of Bush motorcade hear about crash
including Press Secretary Ari Fleischer but supposedly don’t inform Bush.
Congressman Dan Miller who is waiting to meet Bush at the school, as well as
the reporters at the scene also knew about the event.
8:46 Emergency
CONPLAN (Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan) is
activated but not by Bush.
8:55 Captain
Deborah Loewer director of the White House Situation room runs to Bush’s limousine
after arrival at the school and tells him about the crash. Bush maintains he
didn’t know about it until later.
8:55-9:00 Bush is
told about the crash by Karl Rove and believes it to be an accident.
Bush claims later to have seen the plane crash into the
building on TV at 9:01. This is
impossible because the film by the French journalists was not broadcast until
the evening.
9:03 Enters class
room while UA 175 crashes into SouthTower.
9:06 Bush is told
about it from Andy Carr (White House Chief of Staff) while listening to the
children read the My Pet Goat story.
9:06-9:16 Remains
in classroom with children.
9:16 Leaves
classroom and starts working with staff on a brief speech till 9:29. Talks with Condoleezza Rice and Governor
Pataki on the phone but makes no decisions.
9:29 Makes brief speech at the school about an “apparent terrorist
attack.”
9:34Leaves the school for Sarasota
airport amid potential threat to Air Force 1 while it was still on the ground.
9:37 AA 77 crashes
into Pentagon
9:43 Bush hears
about attack as he arrives at the airport.
9:56 Air Force One
takes off without fighter escort and without a destination.
9:56-10:40 Bush
and Cheney argue about what to do and where to go. Bush wants to return to Washington,
Cheney say it’s not safe to do so. Air Force One
simply circles during that time at 44,000 feet.
9:59SouthTower collapses.
10:06 UA flight 93
crashes in Pennsylvania.
10:10US
military is placed on world-wide maximal alert.
After 10:06 Bush
is informed about UA 93 and wonders if it has been shot down.
10:26NorthTower collapses.
10:32 Cheney tells Bush of threat against Air Force One and
that it will take 40-90 minutes to get escort fighter protection. This item is
doubted by some.
10:55 Air Force One takes evasive action because of a perceived threat
from another oncoming plane.
10:55-11:41 Escort
fighters reach Air Force One some time during this interval.
11:45 Bush lands under tight security at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
12 noon He remains
there for somewhat over an hour records a brief message to the country which is
broadcast at 12:36. The rest of the
time argues with Cheney about where to go next.
13:04 Bush
announces the state of world-wide high military alert.
13:30 Leaves
Barksdale for Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska.
14:50 Arrives at Offutt.
15:00 Video teleconference with White House top officials from
underground bunker at Offut. Bush declares he will return to Washington
as soon as refueling is completed.
15:55 White House
advisor Karen Hughes tells reporters that Bush is “at an undisclosed location
taking part in a video conference.
16:33 Bush leaves
for Washington.
18:54 Arrives at
White House.
20:30 Speaks
again to the nation and states that, “We will make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
21:00 Meets with
advisors who have already decided that bin-Laden was behind the attacks and
tells Tenet to inform the “Taliban we’ve finished with them.”
This
unusual conduct of the Commander in Chief when the country appeared to be under
attack has obviously raised a number of questions. Among them were: why did the
Secret Service not get him immediately out of Sarasota
but allowed him to go through with the photo-op? Why were members of his
motorcade informed about the attacks, rather than Bush himself who had all the
needed communication equipment in his limousine? Why did Bush not leave the
school immediately after he had been told of the second plane crashing in to
the SouthTower?
Why did he go to Barksdale and Offut instead of Washington?
Why did it take so long to get fighter escort for Air Force One? Why did he
allow Cheney to make the major decisions on that day?
For the
answers to some of these questions we have to take recourse to the mentioned
books by Bamford, and Tarpley. Since Tarpley relies to some extent on Bamford I
shall deal with that book first and concentrate only on the Barksdale, Offutt
leg of the return trip to Washington.
The decision to divert the plane to Barksdale was made on the assumption that Washington
was still unsafe, but more of that later. For now a comment from page 83 is of
relevance. “At the White House, presidential advisor Karen Hughes attempted to
place a call to Bush. ‘The military operator came back to me and in – in a
voice that, to me sounded very shaken, said ‘Ma’am,
I’m sorry. We can’t reach Air Force One.’”This piece of information needs to be combined with another one on
subsequent pages where the president’s pilot was concerned that even Air Force
One communications could be overheard. Bush also experienced trouble with the
elaborate communication equipment on his plane because transmission “broke off
in midsentence” while he was speaking to Cheney. This
was later explained as having been due to encryption problems which take time
when a plane is flying at 44,000 feet at 500-600 miles per hour. Further
conversations were supposedly conducted on open cell phones.
These were
the circumstances which led to the decision to fly to Barksdale. We must now
know that this not some ordinary air force base but “was home to the U.S.
Strategic Command’s alternate underground command post, a bunker from which
Bush could run a war if necessary.”
“It was also a
place where the President could rendezvous with ‘Night Watch,’ the ‘doomsday
plane.’ Once a specially outfitted Boeing 707 known as the
National Emergency Airborne Command Post, by 2001 it had become a heavily
modified military version of the Boeing 747-200 similar to Air Force One.
Renamed the National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), the aircraft was
designed to be used by the President to direct a war in case of nuclear attack.”
Once they
landed in Barksdale “signs on the base were displaying DEFCON DELTA in large
black type, the highest state of alert.” Why Bush did not stay at Barksdale but
instead moved on to Offutt is not explained by Bamford. But in this connection
it is of interest to remember a news item of earlier this year. A B52 with
fully armed nuclear missiles had flown across the country from North
Dakota to Barksdale. This created quite a stir at the
time but was soon explained as a simple mistake by the ground crew in North
Dakota which had failed to recognize that the
missiles carried warheads. We were, however, not told that Barksdale is also
the staging area for attacks on Middle Eastern countries. Instead of a simple
mistake by ground personnel the plan, by a rogue faction within the government,
may have been to attack Iran’s
nuclear program. That such a “rogue faction” may actually exist will be
explored later.
Bamford
continues telling us about Bush’s arrival at Offutt near Omaha,
Nebraska, which is, likewise, no ordinary
air force base but “the home of the United States Strategic Command – STRATCOM
– the successor of the Cold War Strategic Air Command, SAC. Its deep bunker is
the principal location from which the United
States would direct World War III.” Bamford
wrote,
“It was like a
scene from Dr. Strangelove, or Seven Days in May. Never before had all the
pieces been in place for the instant launch of World War III. The military
alert level was at its highest level in thirty years. The Vice President was in
the White House bunker, senior administration officials were at site R [Pennsylvania
underground bunker in accordance with the continuity of government plan],
congressional officials had been flown to Mount Weather [additional underground
facility in Virginia], the Secretary of Defense and Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff were in the Pentagon War room, and the president of the United
States was in the nuclear command bunker at STRATCOM.
Only a few feet away from Bush was
the fire-engine-red double-locked ‘clanker box’ containing the authentication
codes to send America’s
nuclear arsenal skywards.
That nuclear war did not take place
on that day is partly due to Richard Clarke, the national counter terrorism “tsar,”
who informed Richard Armitage at the State Department that the military had
gone to DEFCON DELTA status. Armitage immediately called his counterpart in Moscow
that the preparations were not intended to harm Russia.
As it turned out the call was vital because the Russians were about to start an
exercise of all their nuclear forces and Armitage was successful in persuading
them to postpone it. Putin talked to Bush later that day but apart from having offered
his condolences we are not told what else they talked about.
In addition
to DEFCON DELTA the COG (continuity of government) plan was put into operation.
Bamford does not tell us why all these elaborate precautions had been taken and
for those details we have to consult Tarpley who presents numerous excerpts
from the foreign press and government officials why the official 9/11
explanation cannot be accepted at face value. One of the key elements was the
message to the Secret Service “Angel is next.” Since “Angel” was the code word for Air Force
One it was obvious that the terrorists also had access to the highest security
codes of the government and this was the reason for the diversion of the flight
first to Barksdale and then to Offutt. Tarpley excerpted a column written by
William Safire for the New York Times, and published on September 13
under the headline, “Inside the Bunker. The source for the story was
presidential advisor Karl Rove. Key aspects are:
“
. . . when Bush stubbornly insisted that he was going back to Washington
‘ the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was
evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. .
.. ‘That knowledge . . . indicates that
the terrorists may have a mole in the White House – that, or informants in the
Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.’”
There is
additional information. “At the September 12 White House briefing, Ari Fleischer
told reporters, ‘We have specific and credible information that the White House
and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks.” In an interview
with the recently deceased Tony Snow, Condoleezza Rice was asked,
“Snow: Sept. 11
there was a report that there was a coded message that said, ‘We’re going to
strike Air Force One’ that was using specific coded language and made the
threat credible. Is that true?’”
Rice: That is true.
Snow: So we have a mole somewhere?
Rice: It’s not clear how this coded
name was gotten. We’re a very open society and I don’t think it’s any surprise
to anyone that leaks happen. So, I don’t know -it’s possible the code name leaked a
long time ago and was just used.
Snow: How on earth would that
happen?
Rice: I don’t know. I don’t know.
We’re obviously looking very hard at the situation. But I will tell you that it
was plenty of evidence from our point of view to have special measures taken at
that moment to make sure that the president was safe.”
By
September 16 the story began to change. On Meet
the Press Dick Cheney told Tim Russert: “The president was on Air Force
One. We received a threat to Air Force One – came through the Secret Service .
. . Russert: A credible threat to Air Force One. You’re convinced of that.”
Cheney: “I’m convinced of that. Now you know it may have been phoned in by a
crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way of way knowing
that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring
it to me.” The “specific coded language” has now been dropped and this paved
the way for the subsequent dismissal of the entire story because it would
obviously conflict with the “Al Qaeda only” official version. The 9/11
Commission Report simply states that the message was a “misunderstood
communication in the hectic White House Situation Room that morning.” In the
accompanying footnote we are told first that “the Secret Service Intelligence
Division had tracked it down to a misunderstanding of the watch officer.” This
became the official version. The next sentence has, however, been relegated to
oblivion. It states, “The director of the White House Situation Room that day
disputes this account.” One would surely expect the government to have been
more forthcoming in such a vital matter.
But there
is more as Tarpley reports. Debka an Israeli Internet journal with sources
close to Mossad showed the extent of penetration of the US
government by foreign agents. Excerpts from the Debka story are as follows:
“…the terrorists
had obtained the White House code and a whole set of top-secret signals. … In
fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane’s
incoming and outgoing transmissions.” Furthermore, Tarpley wrote, “According to
Debka’s information, the U.S. Intelligence community also believed ‘that terrorists
are in possession of all or part of the codes used by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the National Security Administration, the National
Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Marine Corps
Intelligences and the Intelligence offices of the State Department and
Department of Energy.’” Since this, obviously, could not be done by Osama
alone, the article goes on to state, ‘U.S.
experts do not believe bin Laden was capable of infiltrating double agents into
the heart of the US
administration on a large scale. They are looking, instead, at a country with a
very well oiled- intelligence apparatus-Iraq.’”
When one
considers the Israeli source, Iraq
being fingered as the culprit fits with the events which followed 9/11. Nevertheless,
it makes no sense whatsoever and under these circumstances one is inclined to
write off the entire article as fantasy. Unfortunately this cannot be done
because our intelligence agencies know how this feat could have been
accomplished. They are not allowed to present it in public because the
information is highly classified. Nevertheless, it is known that security
breaches have occurred in various government agencies and were first discovered
in1997. The following information comes from a Four Part Fox News Series, which
disappeared from the Fox website but is recoverable from http://www.rense.com/general31/fnews.htm.
The Introduction to the Fourth part
of the series stated,
“Los
Angeles 1997, a major local, state and federal drug
investigation sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New
York, Miami,
Las Vegas, Canada,
Israel and Egypt
soured. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking and sophisticated
white-collar credit card and computer fraud.
The problem:
according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad
guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance.
Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them
to avoid arrest. . . . The organization discovered communications between
organized crime, intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret
Service. Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA .
. . . The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to
identify personal and biographical information.
How could this be
done? [The investigators] looked at Amdocs [Israeli company which] generates
billing data for virtually every call in America,
and they do credit checks.. . . When
investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew
concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main
contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government,
and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its
research and developments costs by Israel’s
Ministry of Industry and Trade. Asked this week about another sprawling
investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush
administration treated the questions like a hot potato.”
In the subsequent interview of Carl
Cameron by Tony Snow, Cameron revealed that “Beyond 60 apprehendedor detained [Israelis], and many deported
since Sept. 11, another group of 140 individuals have been arrestedand detained in this year in what government
documents describe as ‘an organized intelligence gathering operation,’ designed
to ‘penetrate government facilities. . . . most of
them [had] intelligence experience and either worked for Amdocs or other
companies in Israel
that specialize in wiretapping.’”
It is also stated in part 3 of the
series that “investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News
that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered
career suicide.”
Further
information on the extent and potential danger to our nation from the rather
extensive Israeli intelligence operations in this country can be found in Thompson’s
Terror Timeline, Tarpley’s book and
Richard Curtiss’ article at http://www.wrmea.com/archives/June_2000/0006006.html.
These data also shed light on
President Clinton’s warning to Monica Lewinsky on March 29, 1997 (during the
hunt for wiretaps) that, “he suspected that a foreign embassy (he
did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover
stories[Starr Report]”
The real problem in this regard is not that spying
exists but that it cannot be prosecuted because of the special status Israel enjoys in decision making
circles. It has been known ever sine the
Pollard spy trial that he did not randomly procure documents but his handler
had precise orders as to what Pollard needed to steal. These came from a person
who is referred to as “Mr. X” by Victor Ostrovsky (By Way of Deception also discussed in The Niger Forgery, August 1,
2003)or “Mega” by Gordon Tomas in Gideon’s Spies (partially discussed in
the same article), as well as by Tarpley. His identity has never been
discovered and he may still operate in the highest government circles.
There is
no evidence that Israel was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11
attacks but there is evidence that the Israeli government had known of the
impending attacks and had not fully shared all their information. It was LIHOP because
it would obviously stoke American furor against Arabs.
In the
absence of official data the following 9/11theory seems likely. The Neocon
faction within our government needed a new “Pearl Harbor”
in order to realize the goal of the “Project for the New American Century” (The
Neocons’ Leviathan; April 1, 2003),
which called for a forceful military oriented pro-active foreign policy. Since
Bush could initially not be trusted to pursue this strategy he was sidelined,
and only after Cheney had agreed that the 9/11 attack would be used as a
pretext for war against Iraq and other enemies of Israel did Bush endorse the Neocon agenda. He has been faithful to
it ever since, and it will be continued by Senator McCain if he were to win the
election.
As will
be explained further later this month there were two major factions in our
government: Oil men under Cheney who wanted to invade Afghanistan for the sake
of a pipeline from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean, bypassing Iran; and
chauvinistic Zionists (some of whom hold dual citizenship with Israel) who
wanted to eliminate any potential threat to Israel by toppling unfriendly
regimes in the Middle East. Neither the National Security Advisor, Rice, nor
the Foreign Secretary, Powell, proved themselves strong enough to stand up
against these forces and the result is known.
We are
not in immediate danger from any foreign country, including Iran; the present national security danger resides within our
borders and in the excessive secrecy. It impedes criminal investigations,
thereby allowing official misconduct to persist with the resulting damage to
the country. This will be documented further next week.
August 8, 2008
ABUSE OF SECRECY
In the previous installment I
demonstrated that the Bush administration is using the cover of “national
security” in order to avoid revealing what really happened on 9/11 and the reasons
for the policies that were adopted thereafter. One might want to believe that
this is an aberration in the American political system but, unfortunately, this
is not the case as will be documented here.
In 1995 President Clinton did the
country a favor when he ordered the declassification of hitherto secret
documents that pertained to government actions conducted prior to 1970. This
opened a treasure trove of information for historians which has been brought to
the attention of the public in several books. When one combines this with
“leaked” data that are available in books and on the Internet a rather
unsettling picture emerges. For the pre-1970 data, which are presented here, I
have relied mainly on Bay of Pigs
Declassified edited by Peter Kornbluh, and Body of Secrets. Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National
Security Agency by James Bamford.
The late Senator Patrick Moynihan’s Secrecy
will be dealt with in more detail in the next installment. In this issue I
shall cover only the Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson administration.
When one reads these books one is
immediately cured of the false assumption that there is one government in Washington
which “calls the shots” and that the various agencies simply carry out the
president’s wishes and/or orders. Instead one finds a multiplicity of agencies
all of which fight their own turf wars for funding and where communications
between them and the White House can be tenuous. The most egregious example,
where even the president was not informed about some results of our spying on
the Soviet Union, is in regard to the Venona Project.
During WWII we had succeeded in
breaking the code of the Soviet Union’s secret
transmissions and were regularly reading their mail. This practice persisted
and was expanded after the War by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the
CIA. These organizations were fully informed about Soviet spying, which
included atomic secrets, but as Moynihan wrote nobody informed Truman about it.
All the president knew about Communist infiltration was what he heard and saw
on Television during the McCarthy ruckus. The decision to keep Truman “out of
the loop” was initially made by General Omar Bradley. Thereafter it acquired a
life of its own, when apparently nobody thought that the president really needed
to know the facts. While the McCarthy hearings were a charade, the senator was
not far from the truth and had Truman known the true extent of Soviet spying,
history might have taken a different course.
On the other hand President
Eisenhower was a “hands on person.” Every single covert action, which also
involved previously unknown RB-47 bomber reconnaissance flights over Soviet
territory, as well as the better known U-2 flights, had to be discussed with
him and required his imprimatur. Project
Homerun in 1956 involved 156 missions over a 3500-mile stretch of the
Soviet Arctic region from the Bering Strait to Murmansk.
Since the route across the North Pole was the best one for the Soviets to
attack us and vice versa it was deemed important to know the Russian’s state of
preparedness. Since the Soviets did not know whether these bombers, flying in
formation, were simply spying or had worse intentions it is a wonder that
nothing untoward happened.
Nevertheless, the Russians knew, at
least in part, what we were doing and on May
1, 1960 they were prepared. At twenty minutes past six in the
morning a U-2 took off from Peshawar
(obviously our presence in Pakistan
long predated the support for the mujahadeen from there during the Afghan war
against the Soviet Union in the 70s) with Gary Powers at
the helm. This was not the first of Powers’ missions over the Soviet
Union but the last of twenty four. The Soviets had been aware of
these flights, but in view of the U-2’s altitude, at 13 miles above ground,
they were unable to do anything about them apart from issuing repeated
protests. But May 1 was different; it was May Day, the Holy of Holies in the
Communist world, and Khrushchev could not let this affront go unpunished. The
order to, “shoot down the plane by whatever means,” was issued. Powers knew
that he was being tracked from the ground but felt relatively safe until a
missile hit his plane. U2 pilots were not supposed to eject from the falling
wreck but Powers managed to free himself and landed deep inside the Soviet
Union.
When Washington
heard about the downing of the plane there was consternation and the question
arose whether the previously prepared cover story for such an event,“U-2 aircraft was on weather mission originating Adana,
Turkey, pilot reported he
had oxygen difficulties. . . “, was to be issued or a different one. Eisenhower
decided, on May 5, that since all the Russians had was “a dead pilot and a
bunch of scrap metal” to go with the pre-approved version. But the wily Nikita
had not told his comrades and the world everything he knew. He had kept an ace
up his sleeve in order to catch the Americans in a lie. On May 7 he informed
the Politburo that he had deliberately withheld the information that “we have
the remains of the plane – and we also
have the pilot who is quite alive and kicking [italics in Bamford’s book].”
For Eisenhower this was a disaster
of the first magnitude and his role of having authorized the mission was not
allowed to become public. The order went out that “[The] president wants no
specific tie to him of this particular event.” But it was not as simple as
that, because Congress had started to hold hearings on the affair and testimony
had to be given under oath by senior administration officials. The Cabinet was
instructed to hide the president’s involvement even under oath. This amounted
to suborning perjury, a criminal offense. The Secretary of State, Christian
Herter, did perjure himself when he answered the direct question: whether there
was “’ever a time’ that the president approved each U-2 flight,’” with “‘It has
never come up to the president.’” This scenario obviously resembles the
Iran-Contra arms deal of which President Reagan had supposedly been unaware.
The Paris Summit Conference which
had long been planned did take place on May 16 in spite of the scandal. All
Khrushchev wanted from Eisenhower at that time was an apology and a statement
that such overflights would no longer occur in the future. Ike refused, the
Conference broke down and instead of producing a better climate the Cold War
continued in full swing. When one looks at the situation from the Soviets’
point of view one must admit that they had a legitimate grievance. What would
we have done had they repeatedly violated our airspace? Chances are that we
might have bombed them and started WWIII if they ignored our protests.
Fidel Castro’s successful
revolution in January 1, 1959,
which removed Fulgencio Batista from power, was another serious blow to our
government’s attempt to keep unbridled capitalism in power throughout the
hemisphere. It was no secret that Batista was being paid off by American
Mafiosos who not only controlled the gambling casinos but also banking and
other immensely lucrative businesses. Within a relatively short period of time
Castro closed the casinos in Havana
and thereafter started to nationalize various American held companies. The mob
bosses among whom were: Meyer Lansky, Santos
Trafficante and Sam Giancana, swore revenge.The latter two names are important in the subsequent events.
Eisenhower was determined to
prevent the Soviets from capitalizing on Cuba’s
revolution and immediate “regime change” became the order of the day. The CIA
was empowered to not only start an anti-Castro radio propaganda campaign but
also to land a guerilla force which would overthrow the government. The details
are now available in the previously mentioned Bay of PigsDeclassified
documents.
Disaffected Cubans were trained in Guatemala
rather than on American soil in order to maintain “strict deniability” on which
Eisenhower insisted. Guatemala
was chosen because the Arbenz government had, in 1954, been overthrown in a
coup d’êtat organized by the CIA’s Richard Bissell. It had been remarkably easy
to install a client regime which no longer threatened the interests of the
United Fruit Company and Bissell was, therefore, rewarded with the task to
organize the Cuban counter-revolution. The two persons who worked directly
under Bissell and were responsible for the planning and execution of the effort
to topple the Castro regime were Jacob Esterline, who had also served under
Bissell during the Guatemala
operation, and Col. Jack Hawkins who had been deputized from the Marine Corps
to oversee the military planning.
The initial intent was to gradually
infiltrate small groups of Cubans into the Trinidad area
of the island which was close to the EscambrayMountains from which larger
operations could then be launched. Once some part of the island had come into
their hands an American sponsored government would be installed which would
appeal for help from the US.
Eisenhower approved the essentials of the program in October of 1959 but, as
mentioned, insisted on strict deniability. This became the fatal flaw of the
operation. During 1960 the original plan was modified, in spite of Hawkins’ and
Esterline’s protests, and an invasion at the Bay of Pigs
was chosen instead, because of a nearby airstrip from which further operations
could be launched. Nevertheless, it was a bad idea because if the operation
failed there were no retreat options apart from the open sea.
But the plan was also predicated on
the prior assassination of Castro. In an interview in October of 1996 Esterline
said, “All of a sudden I started getting requests to authorize big payments,
$60,000, $100,000 and I refused them.” Word came down from CIA headquarters
that he had to sign the checks with no questions asked because he lacked the
necessary security clearance. When Esterline remonstrated that somebody else
who had clearance ought to sign these checks he was told “Oh no, we can’t do
that.” A few days later he was briefed and here is his reaction to what he was
told,
“I couldn’t
believe they were telling me! This plan that they had laid
out with Sam Giancana, their gambling interests – Trafficante was another name
that comes back to my mind. They [the Mafia] were being threatened, their
interests were being threatened in Cuba,
and therefore they decided they were going to do something about Castro. So all
of a sudden the agency gets sucked into being a part of it, which I never could
understand how this made any sense, how this added up, but in point of fact,
had this relationship with Giancana and he needed half a million dollars to
perform his part of this.”
When Esterline then asked what he was supposed to tell
Bissell, his immediate boss, he was told that he should say nothing because
Bissell was “not cleared.” “It wasn’t till years later [Esterline said] that I
found out that Bissell was the guy behind it. . . . I was saddled with this, I
never told Jack [Hawkins].”
The project continued in fits and
starts; the Guatemala
training camps became known but denial persisted. The fact that the Republicans
had lost the November elections made no difference. For Eisenhower it was full
speed ahead and on January 3, 1961
he told his advisors that “he would move against Castro before January 20 if he
were provided a really good excuse by the Cubans. Failing that, he says,
perhaps the United States
‘could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable.’”
The relevance of these revelations
to today’s events is obvious. Eisenhower wanted a MIHOP (make it happen on
purpose) to invade Cuba
in the same manner as our current administration wants to engineer “regime
change” in Tehran. But there wasn’t
time enough in 1961. Kennedy was fully briefed and he signed on for the Bay
of Pigs plan although the State Department and members of his
cabinet had serious misgivings about the feasibility of the project. So did
Esterline and Hawkins. On Sunday April 8 they went to Bissell’s home to tell
him that the operation as planned had practically no chance of succeeding and
that they were resigning from the project. Bissell told them that there would
be sufficient air support and that the operation would continue regardless
whether or not they stayed on. But from the information available one must
conclude that Bissell was less than honest in his dealings with his underlings
as well as his superiors. He assured Esterline and Hawkins that there would be
air-support while knowing fully well that Kennedy was against it because it
would interfere with deniability. At the same time he promised Kennedy success
even if air support was withheld.
The invasion proceeded during the
night of April 17 and resulted in dismal failure. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
had tried his level best to maintain the fiction at the UN on April 16 that the
US had nothing
to do with any potential invasion but that only made matters worse and Kennedy
stood exposed as an incompetent liar and bungler. World opinion which had
regarded him as a charismatic departure from past Cold War tactics immediately
plunged and Barack Obama, who is now largely seen as his successor, might learn
something from that if he were to be elected in November.
There was a dark side to Camelot
which has only gradually come into the open. Although Kennedy immediately
accepted responsibility for the disaster he had not learned the lesson that
invading a country whose leadership one dislikes, but which has a degree of
support by its people, is not a good idea. He blamed the CIA for having misled
him and dismissed its Director, Allen Dulles, as well as, after a suitable
interval, Bissell but not before rewarding the latter with the National
Security Medal. The practice of rewarding failure has been continued by our
current president who awarded Tenet as well as Rumsfeld the Congressional Medal
of Honor for having paved the way to the Iraq
invasion. That there was a Nuremberg
trial which made planning the invasion of other countries a criminal offense
has not yet reached the minds of our leadership.
The rank and file of the CIA as
well as the exile Cuban community were obviously disgruntled because they
blamed Kennedy for having folded at a time of crisis by not providing the
air-support they had been promised. They didn’t know, however, that Bissell had
lied to Kennedy by assuring him of success even without planes and he had also
lied to Hawkins-Esterline that they would be forthcoming. But the CIA and the
Cubans were not alone in their grievances against Kennedy, so was the Mob and
several names are worth recalling: the Chicago
branch under Sam Giancana and John Roselli, and the
Cuban Cosa Nostra under Tampa’s
Santos Trafficante. They will figure later in the event surrounding November 22, 1963.
Invasion of Cuba
and Castro’s removal remained the top priority of the Kennedy administration
but its execution was now shifted from the CIA to the Department of Defense and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff under General Lyman L. Lemnitzer. Various invasion
and assassination plans were hatched under the code name Operation Mongoose which achieved its official seal of approval by
the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, on November 30, 1961. As Kornbluh informs us Bobby Kennedy told
CIA and Pentagon officials in January of 1962, that a “solution” [should we add
“final”?] of the Cuba
problem “was now ‘the top priority in the United States Government – all else
is secondary – no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.’ The
president, he said, had indicated that ‘the final chapter on Cuba
has not been written.’” That was indeed prescient but not in the manner
intended. Castro’s regime has shown remarkable resilience and is still with us
nearly fifty years later.
While Mongoose has to some extent become known in the meantime, Operation Northwoods has remained in the
shadows. On March 13, 1962
the Joint Chiefs sent a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that listed a variety of clandestine operations
which could be carried out to provide a pretext for the invasion of Castro’s
island. Bamford reports on it in detail and the original declassified file is
available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf.This is a rather amazing document because it
advocates a terror scenario, which would sufficiently frighten the American
public to demand a war against Cuba.
Among the various options were:
“dressing ‘friendly’ Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them
‘start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be
saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started,
aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base, with damage to installations.’”
The WWII generation will readily remember that the model for the plan was the
fake attack on the German radio broadcasting station Gleiwitz, near the Polish
border, which was Hitler’s pretext for the invasion of Poland.
But this was only one of
Lemnitzer’s fantasies among other options were: blowing up a ship in Guantanamo
bay and blaming the Cubans [analogous to “Remember the Maine” which was used as
the pretext for the Spanish American War in 1898]; develop a Communist Cuban terror
campaign in Miami, other US cities and even Washington; “sink a boatload of
Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated);” “hijacking attempts against
civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures
condoned by the Government of Cuba.”
To his credit McNamara was appalled
and did not authorize the enactment of any of these suggestions. Nevertheless
the drumbeat for war against Castro was kept up, which led Khrushchev to put
missiles into Cuba
and the October crisis of that year. We have been told that Khrushchev had been
reckless in so doing but, as he is reported having said, the idea came to him
when he was vacationing on the Black Sea and looked across to Turkey where our
missiles were stationed. Two can play this game he thought and ships with
missiles began to be dispatched. We are also told that Khrushchev “blinked”
when threatened with atomic war, but in fact it was a tit for tat because we
removed ours from Turkey
and in addition Khrushchev had left a secret listening post behind which could
intercept our diplomatic messages. Our current intention of putting a
“defensive missile shield” into the Czech Republic and Poland shows that for
some of our planners the Cold War has really never ended and Russia ought to
share the fate the Romans had dished out to Carthage.
But even after October 1962, when
the US had formally committed itself to abstain from invading Cuba, Lemnitzer
and his cohorts continued to scheme behind the administration’s back, which was
regarded as showing insufficient zeal to deal with the Communist threat. It
also needs to be remembered that in parallel with the Cuban efforts the attempt
to save South Vietnam
from Communism was vigorously pursued. By the fall of 1963 the Ngo Dinh Diem
regime, which the CIA had helped install in 1954, had proven corrupt, hated by
the people and was, furthermore, suspected of trying to make a deal with the
North. A coup by a military junta was, therefore, approved by our government
and took place on November 1-2, 1963.
Although the murder of Diem and his brother, which occurred as part of the
coup, was not necessarily in the American plan, Ambassador Lodge wrote to
Kennedy after the coup, “The prospects now are for a shorter war.” So much for prescience.
The mystique of Camelot, which has
grown up since JFK’s murder did not exist in November of 1963 and his
re-election chances in 1964 were regarded as doubtful. The “military-industrial
complex” was upset because after the Bay of Pigs
disaster Kennedy had arrived at a modus vivendi
with Khrushchev and had even sent some surplus grain to the Soviet
Union during the summer when they asked for it because of a bad
harvest. There were rumors that he would pull out of Vietnam
altogether after the 1964 elections and he was clearly seen as having become
“soft” on Communism. The Mafia was upset with the president’s administration
not only because of the botched Cuban operation but, Sam Giancana, especially,
felt that after having delivered Chicago’s
and West Virginia’s votes to
Kennedy in a close election he ought to be left in peace. Instead he was
hounded by Bobby Kennedy’s quest to destroy organized crime. The CIA, with
known ties to the Mob, likewise wanted no part of Kennedy. Yet we are supposed
to believe that an incompetent Oswald was the deranged “lone gunman” who had no
other help. Although this was the Warren Commission’s conclusion it was just as
unbelievable as that of the 9/11 Commission’s theory of bin-Laden having been
the only culprit (The National Security Scam, August 1, 2008).
In 1975 Senator Frank Church of
Idaho started hearings on CIA activities, which included investigations into
the events surrounding President Kennedy’s murder. These documents are
generally referred to as the Church Committee reports. In regard to Kennedy,
the senators did not accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission but stated
that there had indeed been a conspiracy to kill the president and that a shot
was fired from the “grassy knoll.” Nevertheless, the Church Committee shied
away from fingering suspects. In the meantime a mobster, James Files, who
worked for Sam Giancana and John Roselli, who is
currently incarcerated for an unrelated crime at Joliet
prison in Illinois, has admitted
to having fired the fatal “grassy knoll” shot. Further information is available
in the book JFK and Sam, co-written
by one of my colleagues John Hughes MD, with Thomas Jobe
MD and Giancana’s daughter Antoinette. Dr. Hughes explains in detail why the
“magic bullet” theory, is medically impossible and so is the idea that the
fatal wound, which shattered the president’s skull, had come from the BookDepositoryBuilding.
The book also describes the murder of Sam Giancana just prior to his being
taken to Washington to give sworn
testimony before the Church Committee in 1975. The URLhttp://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/index.htm
provides additional information, although not all of it is reliable.
With the declassification of
government documents Congress took up the Kennedy assassination again in 1992
but still ordered some relevant documents to remain sealed to at least 2017,http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part03.htm.It is truly extraordinary that the cover-up
of the circumstances surrounding JFK’s murder is still allowed to persist and
that those who question the untenable government conclusions are derided as
“conspiracy theorists.”
During Lyndon Johnson’s
administration the Vietnam War took precedence over Cuba.
The pretext for expanding the American military commitment, the Gulf
of Tonkin incident, has already
been covered in, “When Presidents Lie” (January
1, 2006) but another event also took place under LBJ’s leadership
which likewise has not been allowed to become widespread public knowledge.
The National Security Agency, which
specializes in code breaking and listening to other peoples’ conversations,
also has some “spy ships” which are routinely dispatched to the coasts of
various countries. They are ordered to get as close as possible to shore but to
remain in international waters. This was the mission of the USS Maddox in the Gulf
of Tonkin and among others that of
the USS Pueblo (captured by the North
Koreans in January of 1968) and the USS
Liberty. The latter had been stationed off Africa’s
west coast but when tensions in the Middle East were
heating up in May of 1956 she was ordered to proceed into the Mediterranean.
On June 5 of 1956 the Six Day War erupted and NSA immediately dispatched a spy
plane to listen to what was going on while the Liberty was
steaming for the Sinai shore. By June 8 she had arrived off the coast of El-Arish
where unbeknownst to everybody, except the participants and a few Arab
witnesses, a major war crime was talking place. The Israeli army (IDF) had
captured a large number of Egyptians and was busy executing the prisoners. The
Israeli military historian, Aryeh Yitzhaki, said that up to a 1000 Egyptian
POWs had been killed including 400 in the El-Arish area.
The Liberty sat
within earshot and Bamford speculated that the Israelis became concerned that
word of the massacre might leak. Another theory is that the Israelis were
concerned that we might learn about their impending invasion of Syria
to capture the Golan Heights. Regardless of reasons,
what followed on the afternoon of June 8 is not speculation but fact. The Liberty was
first strafed and bombed by Israeli planes, which included the use of napalm,
and subsequently torpedoed by Israeli torpedo boats. Four torpedoes were
launched in the attempt to sink her but only one hit the mark.
Nevertheless, it crippled the ship
and when the crew tried to abandon the Liberty, the
life rafts were deliberately riddled with machine gun bullets by the Israelis.
As Lieutenant Lloyd Painter who was in charge of the evacuation said, “No
survivors were planned for this day!”“Jumping overboard to escape the sinking ship was also not an option.
‘If you don’t [want to] go down with the ship’ said Seaman Don Pageler, ‘you’re
going to jump overboard. If you jump overboard, the way these people were
attacking us, we knew they would shoot us in the water. We did firmly believe
that there was no way they intended to capture anybody.’”
The Israelis later said that it was
a case of mistaken identity but that was a lie.The Liberty’s
ID letters GTR-5 (NSA’s code name: General Technical Research, for the spy
ships), as well her name USS Liberty, painted in huge black letters, were
clearly visible and so was Old Glory fluttering high in the breeze. The
deliberate attack on the ship and the intention not to leave survivors to tell
the tale was clearly a war crime and should have been treated as such. But as
the French used to say c’est la guerre
or the Russians nitshevovoina (never
mind it’s war) and all soldiers know that bad things
happen in war. The real scandal was the government’s behavior in Washington.
When President Johnson was informed he “’came on with a comment he didn’t care
if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies.’ Admiral Geis told
Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, the head of the NSA group on the Liberty, about the comment but asked him to
keep it secret until after Geis died. It was a promise that Lewis kept.”
Although wounded, Captain McGonagle
managed to bring the crippled ship to Malta
on June 14 where, “A total news blackout was imposed. Crewmembers were
threatened with courts-martial and jail time if they ever breathed a word of
the episode to anyone-including family members and fellow crewmembers. ‘If you
ever repeat this to anyone else ever again you will be put in prison and
forgotten about’ Larry Weaver [Liberty crewmember] said he was warned.”
Although this was the biggest
disaster the navy had experienced since WWII with 34 servicemen killed and 171
more wounded “Congress held no public hearing. With an election campaign coming
up, no on in the week-kneed House and Senate wanted to offend powerful
pro-Israel groups and lose their fat campaign contributions.”
Commander McGonagle eventually did
receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic efforts to save the
ship and as many of his crew as was possible, but the ceremony was not held, as
usual, in the White House with the president bestowing it. Instead there was “a
low profile, hastily arranged gathering at the Washington Navy Yard” with the
Secretary of the Navy performing the honors. In addition Washington
had felt it necessary to previously ask the Israelis if they had any
objections. The full story and its aftermath, including the haggling over
Israeli reparations can be found in Bamford’s Body of Secrets from which the quotes were taken as well as Paul
Findley’s They Dare to Speak Out. People
and Institutions confront Israel’s lobby. Findley’s book has further
details on the various Israeli excuses and the deliberate suppression of
genuine information by our government. The Israeli Historian Benny Morris
devoted one brief paragraph to the affair in his book Righteous Victims. “On June 8, off Al-Arish, Israeli torpedo boats
and aircraft attacked and mauled the American spy ship Liberty, which
they apparently mistook for an Egyptian vessel. Thirty-four American servicemen
died and seventy-five [sic] were injured.” There is no mention of the massacre
involving Egyptian POWs.
When one reads information of this
type one wonders who is our government really protecting and for what purpose?
This question will be taken up in the next installment on August 15.
August 15, 2008
ABUSE OF SECRECY - PART II
In the
August 1 issue I discussed how “national security” is being used as the excuse
to cover up the full truth in regard to the 9/11 catastrophe and in the August
8 issue it was shown that this is a long standing pattern, which goes back to
at least WWII. Yet it was WWI and the Wilson
administration which first initiated the spy apparatus that reached full bloom in
1947with the creation of the NSA (National Security Agency) and the CIA.
While the NSA is mainly concerned
with SIGINT which consists of listening to conversations and decoding their
content; the CIA has, in addition to its spying activities, a covert action
program that is busy with toppling foreign governments which are disliked by the US at any given moment.
This includes attempted or completed assassinations of foreign leaders. Its
activities and budget are closely held secrets for which we have to pay with
our taxes but are not allowed to know anything about.
In 1987 PBS presented a documentary
on “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis,” which highlighted some
of these nefarious activities. The full version of the program can be viewed on
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3505348655137118430.
A partial transcript is available on http://www.wanttoknow.info/050423secretgovernment.
The appendix lists 72 different operations in 18 countries as diverse as: Greece,
Portugal, Australia,
Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam, Iran,
the Seychelles,
and Caribbean as well as Latin American nations.
Thirty-eight of these were regarded as “successful.” But these successes
included the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran (1953), from which
we now suffer the consequences, and the murder of President Diem in Vietnam
which led to our full fledged involvement in that country’s civil war. Chou en
Lai of China was also on the list to be murdered, but that effort failed.
Occasionally, as in the case of
Cuba, an unholy alliance is forged with civilian crime syndicates but since, as
mentioned, all of this is carried out under “top secret” labels the American
public is kept in the dark about what is really done with our tax money and
when a disaster such as 9/11 happens the question arises: Why do they hate us
so much? To which our president answers: They hate us because of our freedom! The
true answer would have been: Because we impose our will on smaller nations
regardless of their whishes.
While the
NSA and CIA are supposed to limit their activities to foreign countries, the
FBI provides domestic surveillance. Sometimes the lines blur, especially in the
age of terrorism where foreign nationals slip into the US,
as was the case leading up to 9/11, and then fall between the cracks because
the agencies don’t talk to each other. There are, as mentioned in last week’s
installment turf wars. Secrets are traded or bartered for favors between the
agencies rather than transmitted as a matter of course. The evidence for this
statement can be found in the late Senator Moynihan’s book Secrecy which was mentioned last week. The post 9/11 “Director of
National Intelligence” position was supposed to remedy this situation but all it
did was to create another huge bureaucracy. The left hand still doesn’t know
what the right hand does because loyalty extends only to the immediate
supervisor and sometimes not even that far.
Moynihan
wrote, “Secrecy is a form of regulation” and pointed out that although there
are many forms of regulations there are two categories which apply in this
instance. One is where “the government prescribes what the citizen may do”, and
the other where “the government prescribes what the citizen may know.” He also
stated that “Secrecy is for losers.” This statement is perhaps best exemplified
by the events that led to President Nixon’s resignation.
The Watergate break-in and attempted cover-up
was, however, only the end of a long series of other illegal activities and the
remarkable fact is that Nixon may not have even known about most of them. Since
this affair is a classic example of how secrecy can backfire and new
information has only recently become available let me summarize the essential
elements and its context: the Vietnam War, which Nixon was trying to end with a
“victory.” The parallels to the Bush-Cheney-McCain position towards Iraq
are obvious.
On the
morning of June 13, 1971
the New York Times started the
publication of a series of articles which became known as “The Pentagon Papers.”
This was a study on the origins of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned
by then Defense Secretary McNamara and showed a) how the ever progressive US
involvement in Vietnam
came about and b) that Pentagon officials had voiced increasing doubts that the
war could be won militarily. The documents carried the top secret label and Daniel
Ellsberg was one of the principals who had helped putting together the report.
Ellsberg, a friend of Henry Kissinger, had originally been a supporter of the
war but had become disillusioned and then tried to bring the documents to
public attention. After initial doubts about the legality of publishing
classified material the New York Times
chief- editor gave permission and the avalanche which brought Nixon down got
started. A detailed account based on handwritten notes by Nixon’s chief of staff
H.R. Halderman about Nixon’s phone conversations on the topic, was presented by
law professor David Rudenstine in The Day the Presses
stopped: A history of the Pentagon Papers Case, (published in 1996).
Since the
publication of this book the actual audio-tapes have been released from the
Nixon library in 2001 and these shed, in part, a different light on the affair.
The tapes and their transcripts are now available on the Internet under http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB48/nixon.html.
These tapes are of great interest because they provide an inside view of how
political decisions are made.
President Nixon was in the White
House on that Sunday and had not yet read the New York Times when he received a call from Alexander Haig at 12:18 pm (Henry Kissinger’s National Security
assistant at that time). After some chit-chat about daily casualty rates in Vietnam,
Nixon asked, “Nothing else of interest in the world today?” to which Haig
replied, “goddam New York Times expose . . . .” He regarded it as a
“devastating security breach” and “greatest magnitude of anything I’ve known.”
But when Nixon was told that the documents only dealt with the Kennedy and
Johnson administration he became quite gleeful because the information could be
turned against the Democrats. It wasn’t Nixon’s war after all that he was trying
to end.
The same
mood prevailed in the next call which came from Secretary of State William
Rogers at 1:28 p.m. The wedding of
Nixon’s daughter Tricia that had occurred on the previous day was actually more
on Nixon’s mind and when the conversation turned to the Pentagon papers he
still enjoyed the idea that this would hurt the Democrats rather than the Republican
administration. But by the time Kissinger called from California
at 3:09 p.m. the conversation was not
so light hearted any more. First some personal information was exchanged, and
then came the lower Vietnam
daily casualty figures where Kissinger upped the previous count of 20 to 23,
but Nixon thought that this wasn’t worth quibbling over. The numbers were down
and that’s what mattered. The conversation then shifted to the impending
Kissinger Le Duc Tho secret conversations which were about to start in Paris,
on achieving an end to the war. It was in this context that Nixon brought up
the Pentagon security breach. Although the tape has a great many ums, uh-huhs
and is partially inaudible it is quite obvious that Nixon and Kissinger
mutually reinforced each other toward a more vigorous approach to this leak.
Initially Kissinger was also of the
opinion that this was bad for the Democrats rather than Republicans but then
the conversation shifted to the people who leaked the report which Nixon
regarded as, “just unconscionable – this is treasonable action on the part of
the bastards that put it out.” Whereupon
Kissinger chimed in with, “Exactly Mr. President.” Having noticed Nixon’s
beginning anger he then stoked it with, “It’s treasonable, there’s no question-it’s
actionable. I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security
laws.” In regard as to what do next it was decided that Nixon would talk to the
Attorney General, John Mitchell, to find out what he knew about the situation.
Later on Kissinger again reinforced the idea that the Democrats were the ones
that would be damaged but he also mentioned that, “It hurt us with Hanoi,
because it just shows how far our demoralization has gone.” To which Nixon
replied, “Good God.” Kissinger then reassured him, that he would simply inform
the North Vietnamese that this was a new administration and Nixon intended to
stand firm, to which Nixon agreed. The conversation then shifted to the past
and Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, who had said that, “he had
to operate alone because he couldn’t trust his own bureaucracy.” Nixon and
Kissinger then started laughing because their foreign policy initiatives in
regard to Vietnam,
and China were likewise
kept hidden from the State Department. Eventually the conversation came back to
the New York Times and concerns that
current White House operations might also be leaked. Kissinger put him at ease with
“But Mr. President, all the big things you’ve done in the White House and those
files will leave with you.” This was, however, clearly wishful thinking.
From Monday June 14 four
transcripts are available. The first one was an Oval Office meeting with
Haldeman at 3:09 p.m. in which Nixon
declined to take immediate legal action. The immortal part of that conversation
is, however, Halderman’s comment,
“But out of the
gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the
government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their
judgment; and the – implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an
accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people
do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President
can be wrong.”
If this morsel of truth was meant as a warning it fell on
deaf ears as subsequent events proved.
In a
subsequent phone conversation between Nixon and Mitchell it becomes apparent
that the latter wanted to go after the Times
while Nixon was more concerned about “the goddam pricks that gave it to ‘em.”
Nevertheless, he acceded to Mitchell’s wish to call the Times and tell them to abstain from further publications. The phone
call was to be followed
up with a warning telegram. On the next day the Justice Department presented
their case to Judge Gurfein who issued a temporary restraining order to the Times, prohibiting further publications.
But he reversed this ruling on Friday the 18th when he had more
facts. The judge noted that,
“A
cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous
press, must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater
values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know. These are
troubled times. There is no greater safety valve for discontent and cynicism
about the affairs of government than freedom of expression in any form. . . .
No cogent reasons were advanced as to why these documents except in the general
framework of embarrassment . . . would
vitally affect the security of the nation.”
One could only wish that this were the case today when not
only the press, but all public media have abrogated their duty to keep us fully
informed about government malfeasance and we are reduced to relying on private
Internet information.
Since Nixon
and Kissinger were clearly upset over this turn of events they commissioned an
in-house security apparatus which was to prevent White House leaks. These were
dubbed “the plumbers” and they were recruited from ex-FBI and ex-CIA
operatives. Soon they were off on some tangents which had nothing to do with
official White House secrecy and it ended with the Watergate Hotel break-in. To
what extent Nixon was informed on any of their activities, apart from a general
order to prevent leaks, is still unknown. But judging from the extant phone
conversations he was actually only minimally involved. He comes across as a
person who had mainly reacted to suggestions made by staff rather than, like
Eisenhower, having been in involved in the details of the operations. To use a
term the current president has arrogated to himself, he was “a decider.” What
underlings did with the decision did not particularly interest him. To avoid
impeachment Nixon resigned in August 1974 and the Church Committee hearings,
which were mentioned last week, began in 1976.
One might have thought that this
would put a damper on illegal government activities but far from it as the “Iran-Contra,”
scandal showed a few years later. This affair is important because several of
the key players hold either government posts today or are in a position to influence
government decisions. A complete timeline of the events of those days can be
found on http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE3DB173EF93AA25752C1A961948260.
The brief
official version of the scandal is as follows. The Sandinista government in Nicaragua
was regarded as a Moscow-Havana satellite which would foment unrest in all of Latin
America and had to be removed. Since an overt act of war was not
deemed feasible arms and auxiliaries had to be provided in a clandestine
manner. In 1982 Congress decided that the American people should not pay for
this endeavor and the first Boland amendment which forbade financing of the
effort by the CIA was passed. Since it was regarded as too vague another more
specific one was issued in 1984. CIA director William Casey as well as
President Reagan felt that the cutting of funds was not only a serious mistake
in regard to the pursuit of the Cold War but also a challenge. Ways had to be
devised how to bypass Congress to keep the Sandinistas afloat, although the
military and CIA, including then deputy director Bill Gates (our current
Secretary of Defense),had advised that the Contras would never be able to achieve their
goal without overt military action by the US.
To
understand the events surrounding this scandal from which Reagan escaped
unscathed because he could credibly testify to loss of memory, one needs to
know again the complex context and the players. In 1979 the Shah had been
overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini had assumed full power. When President
Carter had allowed the terminally ill Shah to come to the US
for medical treatment the American embassy in Tehran
was taken over by “students” and the personnel taken hostage. During the next
year Carter tried the unsuccessful rescue operation and since the hostage
crisis impeded his re-election chances he tried negotiations with the mullahs. These
may have included promises to deliver some arms, which was in contravention of
the embargo that had been issued after the embassy take-over. There are at
present no firm data on what really happened in order to avoid an October
surprise in 1980, namely release of hostages by the Iranians, which would have
significantly bolstered Carter’s chances for success in the November
election.Webster Tarpley, who was
mentioned previously in relation to 9/11, published in 1992 a book George Bush. The
Unauthorized Biography, in which he expressed
his belief that the Republicans simply outbid Carter by offering the mullahs a
better deal. This would explain why the hostages were
released on January 20, 1981
within minutes after Reagan had been sworn in.
We now have
to realize that on September 22, 1980
the Iran-Iraq war had started and Iran
was in dire need of arms. The Israelis who had long been suppliers of this
commodity during the Shah’s regime had no compunctions about continuing
business as usual with the new administration in Tehran,
in spite of the US
arms embargo. If anybody were to win in this war it would have been preferable
from their point of view that it was Iran
because the real threat was Saddam Hussein. If Iraq
had won, Saddam might have sent his tanks through Syria
to Israel and
that would have created a serious problem. On the other hand the US, under the
leadership of Reagan and Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense in those days,
preferred the secular Iraqis over the fanatic mullahs and sold them not only
regular military equipment but also the poison gas that was used to deal with
the rebellious Kurds on the Iran Iraq border who had sided with Iran. While it
did not raise eyebrows here at the time this was, of course used in the current
decade to show Saddam’s brutality by “gassing even his own people.” The
Israelis didn’t mind our supplying the Iraqis because the longer the war lasted
the better for them.
But the US
had an additional problem in the Middle East. Lebanon
was engaged in a civil war and as part of it various factions had taken
Westerners as hostages. The CIA station chief of Beirut
was kidnapped on March 16, 1984
and so were a host of other civilians from various nations between 1985 and
1987. The predicament for President Reagan was how to get the hostages back
without violating the principle that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
At this point the narrative becomes
murky because we don’t know for certain who initiated what and when because
accounts differ. We do know that Michael Ledeen, of whom more will be said later,
went to Israel on
May 3, 1985 and met with
Prime Minister Shimon Peres to discuss the arms for hostages deal. To protect
the Israeli government from inquiries Peres deputized his “terrorism” advisor
Amiram Nir (former Mossad operative) as liaison to Col. Oliver North who was
essentially the project manager under Admiral Poindexter within the National
Security Council. The Iranian go-between was Manucher Ghorbanifar, who had
promised that the weapons would be delivered to “moderate Iranians” who would
not only be able to secure the release of five American hostages but also
effect a regime change in Tehran.
Ghorbanifar was and still is Ledeen’s favorite Iranian but the CIA, for whom Ghorbanifar
had previously worked, had come to thoroughly distrust him. Casey warned Col. North
that Ghorbanifar “was almost certainly an Israeli agent” and that he was
referred to as “the fabricator.” Apparently he served the same role as Ahmed
Chalabi did for initiating the Iraq
war with equally unsatisfactory results.
Thus, when
it comes to dealing with Israel
our government would be well advised to heed Laoocon’s advice to the Trojans
when they saw the horse the Greeks had left them, “TimeoDanaosseddonaspresentes [I fear the
Greeks even when they bring gifts]. Not only was his well-founded counsel
ignored but Laoocoon and his sons came to a bad end
which is immortalized in the famous statue that can be viewed in the Vatican
museum. I am saying this, knowing fully well that statements of this type might
be regarded by some as anti-Semitic but the information is based on Victor
Ostrovsky’s book By Way of Deception. The making of a MOSSAD officer. I have previously mentioned
some aspects relevant to the current topic in The Niger Forgery (August 2003)
and Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples (December
1, 2005). Suffice it to say that the Israelis had not fully
cooperated in the lead-up to the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut
and in the Iran-Contra affair. In Beirut
they sent only a vaguely worded warning, although they had considerably more
information, a fact which reminds one of 9/11 where a similar scenario played
out. During Iran-Contra the release of five American hostages had been promised
but only two were freed in a time frame consistent with the weapons delivery.
Others were either killed or had to wait till the 1990s. Details are in
Ostrovsky’s book as well as that by Gordon Thomas: Gideon’s Spies.
The whole affair became public
knowledge when a Lebanese newspaper reported that a CIA plane with supplies to
the Contras had been shot down over Nicaragua
on October 5, 1986. A crew
member, Eugene Hasenfus, who had worn a parachute, supposedly in violation of
orders, survived and was taken prisoner by the Sandinistas. The no parachute
order reminds one of the U-2 flights where the pilots were not supposed to
survive a crash - the planes had no ejection seats. Congress became incensed,
hearings started and an Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, was appointed. The
major responsibility clearly lay with President Reagan and Casey. But Reagan
was already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time, the onset of which
may have been hastened by the blood loss and prolonged anesthesia due to the
surgery after his near fatal gun-shot wound in 1981. Casey had died of a brain
tumor and prior to death was aphasic so that coherent testimony could not be
given. For still unexplained reasons Vice President Bush escaped scrutiny,
although he had participated in the illegal activities (Ostrovsky p. 328).
Amiram Nir had been slated to
testify on behalf of Col. North at his trial but became unavailable when the
Israelis reported that he had died in a plane crash in Mexico.
Since this was a very convenient death, Ostrovsky suspected that Nir may simply
have undergone some reconstructive facial surgery and has continued to live
under a different name somewhere.
Fourteen persons were charged with
criminal offenses, eleven were convicted but two of the convictions were
overturned on appeal and one case was dismissed. Among the convicted
individuals were: Elliott Abrams, Oliver North, John Poindexter and Caspar Weinberger.
Abrams and Weinberger were pardoned by President GHW Bush and Abrams found a
new lease on political life in the current Bush administration. He is deputy
assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor “for global democracy
strategy.” Some of his activities were discussed in Annapolis Déjà Vu (December 1, 2007). Suffice it to say
that he is not only unrepentant but pursues the Neocon Zionist policy with
great vigor and tries his level best to torpedo State Department efforts which
may lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
Although not indicted by Counsel
Walsh, there were a number of other individuals involved in the Iran-contra
scandal who also are again prominent today. David Addington is currently Vice President
Cheney’s chief of staff; John Bolton served as ambassador to the UN but was not
confirmed by the Senate. Vice President Cheney was a member of the joint
congressional Iran-Contra inquiry in 1986 and held the view that the affair was
the fault of Congress which had imposed its will on presidential power. Robert
Gates is currently Secretary of Defense. Manucher Ghorbanifar again became an
important source for the Pentagon on Iranian affairs in 2006 in spite of
objections by the CIA. John Negroponte became ambassador to Iraq
after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and serves currently in he State
Department.
In addition there is Michael Ledeen
the eminence grise. As mentioned he
had gone to Israel
as consultant to the National Security Council to facilitate the arms for
hostages deal. He was also the person who vouched for the bona fides of
Ghorbanifar as the prime intermediary with the Iranians and seems to be
incapable of learning from past mistakes. Although Ghorbanifar was thoroughly
discredited by the “arms for hostages” debacle, Ledeen continues his attempts to
bring him to prominence. In addition Vincent Cannistraro,
a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, suggested in a 2005 radio interview that
Ledeen was likely to have been behind the forged Niger
document, but this was denied by Ledeen. Since he has powerful friends a formal
investigation is not likely to come to pass in the near future. Nevertheless,
it is important to know that he is one of the most ardent supporters of air
strikes against Iran
as well as other measures to overthrow its current government. In his book The War Against the
Terror Masters he insisted that the purpose of intelligence gathering is to
support a policy which has already been decided on and this idea was obviously
enacted in the run-up to the Iraq
war with the known consequences. Ledeen believes that the end justifies the
means and he does not realize that this was the road that led to Auschwitz.
Thus, the mentality that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal lives on in the
highest decision making circles and we can expect a recurrence of these
illegalities at any time.
What can we learn from all of this
information? The most important aspect is that our government does not function
as a unit. There exist various factions which vie for power and may subvert or even
usurp official government functions at certain moments. There is no agreement
as to the constitutional limits of the President’s executive power in relation
to the Judiciary and Congress. We are not, as frequently stated “a country of
Laws,” but a “country of lawyers” and each branch of government uses its
lawyers to interpret the Constitution to their liking. We see this played out
currently where the president and vice president assert ever more privileges. In
addition the president can bypass Congress by signing “Findings” which are
executive orders that can be kept secret. Furthermore, the Judiciary is not
neutral but has become a tool of the executive branch, because only those
justices are appointed by a given administration whose principles are likely to
be in accord with those of the ruling party.
We also see that the notions of
“good and evil” or “even “right and wrong” do not apply to our government.
President Nixon was convinced that everything he did was for the good of the
country. When he said that “If the president does it, it’s legal,” he believed
that he was correct and this why he could tell the country with conviction, “I
am not a crook.” The same applies to the current administration. But from a
common sense point of view one must object because this stance behooves an
absolute monarch rather than a Republic which was designed to protect us from
such abuses of power.
The same applies also to other
individuals who are either in government or act as advisors. They have a
viewpoint to which they firmly adhere and will pursue with any and all means
because they believe that this is the right way to serve the country. This pertains
also to those of our citizens who have come to believe that the interests of
the United States
are identical with those of the State of Israel. Under those circumstances they
do not regard themselves as disloyal when they push for policies that favor
Israeli positions and when they hand secret information to that country. They
are not spying because when interests are presumed to be identical the concept
simply no longer applies. The Israelis on the other hand have no such
compunctions and pursue their interests, and only those, regardless what
country they deal with, which is only natural.
Furthermore, the Constitution is indeed
in peril and the Bush-Cheney administration should have been impeached as,
among others, Representative John Conyers of Michigan
has suggested. His book: The Constitution
in Crisis. The High Crimes of the Bush Administrationand a Blueprint for Impeachment provides the details in regard to:
deception, manipulation, torture, retribution, illegal surveillance and
cover-ups. Impeachment could not be pursued because not enough Republicans had
the strength of character to vote for it. We are now facing the prospect that
no one of substance will be held responsible for the disasters this
administration has caused and if Senator McCain were to win in November the
policy of strengthening the Presidency vis á vis
Congress would persist. So would covert operations and they are likely to even
increase.
Under these circumstances we may be
only on “Finding” away from the suspension of the Constitution altogether. The
so-called PATRIOT Act which permits spying on US citizens, for no reason, is
the herald of things to come. Its official name is: Uniting and Strengthening America
by Providing Appropriate Tools required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act. A similar but considerably more precise euphemism was used by Hitler after
the Reichstagsbrand on February 27, 1933, five days before
parliamentary elections. It was called Verordnung
zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (decree to protect the people and the state),
which gave him dictatorial powers. A scenario how this could come about in the US
is sketched out by Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota,
in his recent book: Don’t Start the
Revolution Without Me. Although written tongue in
cheek he is dead serious and can prove his points. Suspension of the
Constitution not only can happen here but will happen unless the citizens of
our country begin to pay more attention to what our government does in our name
and demand accountability.
What should be done? What Senator
Moynihan had called the “culture of secrecy” should be replaced by one which
stresses “openness.” The overall rule in regard to
secrecy ought to be that of the prudent physician in regard to medications: use
the minimum effective dose, only at time of need and stop it when it no longer
serves this purpose. Covert operations which are not supposed to see the light
of day should no longer be undertaken. The guiding principle should be: don’t
do anything that you don’t want the media to broadcast. When perpetrators are
caught they should tell the truth, the whole truth, as it was available to them
at the time and refrain from making excuses and lying.
There should not be two sets of
morality; one for private citizens and the other for government officials. A
crime is a crime regardless of motive and the perpetrators need to be held
accountable.
Israel should be treated as a
foreign country. Although some of its interests coincide with ours others do
not and the automatic excuse for wrong-doing by emphasizing our friendship
should no longer be condoned. Dual citizenship, regardless of what other
country is involved, should not be allowed.
The invoking of “national security”
for domestic political gain, as is so obvious in the current presidential
campaign, needs to be denounced. “Crying wolf” all the time leads to
inappropriate responses and is harmful to the country.
I realize that these suggestions
have no chance for implementation in the existing political climate.
Nevertheless, for the sake of our children and grandchildren they need to be
presented because unless the past and current abuses are addressed they will
not only persist but grow exponentially.
In view of the upcoming Democratic
and Republican Conventions the next installment will appear on September 7.
September 7, 2008
IMAGES
A Chinese
proverb says that one picture is worth a thousand words and this ancient wisdom
was again proven correct during the past few weeks. First there was the
spectacle of the Beijing Olympics which, fortunately, went off without a major
hitch. Every Utahn’s heart beat higher when one saw our Andrei Kirilenko as
flag bearer for his native Russia
thereby overcoming the politics that cloud the relationships between the two
countries. Unfortunately, he didn’t do all that well in the games and we were
deprived of seeing him play against his usual basketball teammates of the Utah
Jazz. On the other hand our other players including the star with the engaging
name of Carlos Boozer did exceptionally well and brought home a Gold Medal.
Apart from
the athletic achievements the highlight was clearly the opening ceremony with
its cast of thousands and possibly tens of thousands. It was superbly
choreographed and the message to the rest of the world was loud and clear: We
are an ancient culture, we have the people, we have the technology, we are
resilient so please don’t fuss with us and don’t lecture us! All of this was
conveyed in a subtle rather than communist hammer and sickle way. The most
touching scene demonstrating courage and resilience was perhaps little nine
year old Lin Hao who had survived the collapse of his school in Sichuan
province’s devastating earthquake and then went back to help injured
classmates. He walked hand in hand with the giant basket ball star Yao Ming smiling
happily and waving his little flag. This was humankind at its best.
By the time
the closing ceremony rolled around NBC, which was our only available news
outlet and which had essentially concentrated on US athletes, to the exclusion
of most of the rest of the world, had apparently enough of pageantry and kept
interrupting it with commercials and pictures of our athletic triumphs. At any
rate, the opening ceremony clearly received an A+ and could not be topped. The Brits
will have a problem in 2012, if it were to come to pass, because this type of
performance can hardly be matched.
My concerns
about the future were based on another picture: Russian tanks rolling into the
former Soviet Union’s Georgia
and the attendant propaganda in the US.
That “our man in Tbilisi” Mikheil Saakashvili had overplayed his hand by
sending his US trained fledgling army into South Ossetia, and in the process killing
an unknown number of Russians, was downplayed here. So was the timing of the
event and one cannot fault Putin for suggesting that our election campaign may
have played a role because it immediately strengthened the hand of one of the
pretenders to the presidential throne. John McCain immediately fired a
rhetorical salvo over Putin-Mevdevev’s bow with all sorts of dire warnings. Obama
was initially more realistic but soon felt obliged to chime in, to keep his
candidacy viable.
Let us now
take a quick look back at the previous century. The scenario which is unfolding
does not reflect 1938, as our Likudniks are trying to convince us, with
Ahmadinejad in the role of Adolf the not so great, but instead the decade
before WWI where 1908 was the prelude. I have discussed the disastrous
September 1908 meeting between the Austrian Foreign Secretary Baron Aerenthal
and his Russian counterpart Alexander Izvolsky in the January 1, 2008 issue
(2008 Outlook), but the essentials bear repeating.
The “young
Turks” had taken over power in Constantinople and
demanded representative government. Austria
held a mandate over Bosnia-Herzegovina and Vienna
was intensely concerned that this desire for political representation might
spread to that area because it was officially still part of the Ottoman
Empire. This had to be prevented and the best way seemed to be a
deal with Russia.
Austria would annex
these provinces outright and the Russians in turn were promised free access
through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean,
a long desired goal. Let us remember, furthermore, that all of this happened
only three years after Russia’s
dramatic loss to Japan
and she blamed the defeat in part on not having been able to send her Black
Sea fleet through the Turkish held sea-lanes.
There were two problems with this
plan. One was that it required absolute secrecy and the announcement was to be made
simultaneously in Vienna and St.
Petersburg. The other was, of course, that Aerenthal
had no way of making good on his rash promise. He then compounded his mistake whith what he thought would be a favor to his Emperor Franz
Josef by announcing the annexation prematurely at the time of Franz Josef’s
sixtieth anniversary of his ascension to the throne on October 6, 1908. Needless
to say Izvolsky was furious because he was portrayed as having acceded to
abandoning Russia’s
traditional friends the Serbs, who wanted a greater rather than lesser role in
World affairs. He was forced to resign and swore revenge. The Western powers
were also miffed because Austria
had by its unilateral action violated the Berlin
agreement of 1878 which was intended to establish a certain degree of peace in
the Balkans. This left Austria
isolated as far the West was concerned, with Germany
as its only partner. But since the Russian government had barely survived
revolution in 1905 the country could not go to war at the time. Instead Russia
pursued an intense arms build-up so as not to be caught unprepared the next
time. This in turn alarmed the Germans and it was felt that by 1915 Russia’s
massive army would be unbeatable on the continent. Ergo, what do politicians do
regardless of the country they are in charge of? They plan a preventive war. The
“Russian Steam Roller” served the same propaganda purpose then as a nuclear
armed Iran does
now. The British were not directly involved
but they were worried about Cousin Willie’s naval ambitions and for having had
the temerity to build a railroad to Iraq’s
Baghdad which they regarded as
their front yard. Obviously the French hated the Germans because they wanted
Alsace-Lorraine back which they had lost in 1871. Thus the powder keg was in place
and only the fuse needed to be lit.
The First World War was not, as it
has been portrayed here, a fight of good versus evil but due to fear,
commercial greed and stupidity. Unfortunately we can see the same factors
operative today. Russia
was seriously weakened in the 90s and is now in the process of re-establishing
its role as a world power, which we are unwilling to grant. We again provoked
her by recognizing Kosovo (which has for a long time been part of Serbia)
as an independent country and we obviously don’t mind that Kosovo is run by the
PKA whose members have previously been denounced by us as “narco-terrorsts.” In
addition we are doing our level best to annoy the Russians further by trying to
extend NATO into the provinces of the former Soviet Union
under the guise of bringing them the blessings of democracy. The real purpose
is, of course, access to Central Asia’s oil, gas and
mineral resources as well as a pipeline from the Caspian to a Turkish
Mediterranean port thereby bypassing Russia.
Since NATO on its doorstep is not only regarded as a security threat, but there
is also a considerable loss of revenue involved if the “near abroad” were to be
solidly integrated into the West, we can expect serious troubles arising from
the area. How far they will escalate will depend, to a considerable extent, upon
the choice Americans will make in November.
Before going to the next spectacles,
the Democratic and Republican Conventions, there was one more image which
attracted my attention. When Georgia’s
President Saakishvili delivered his thunderous declaration of Russian villainy
one could see to his right the Georgian flag, which was appropriate but on the
left stood that of the EU. Anybody is, of course, entitled to fly any flag one
likes as a private citizen, but it was inappropriate for Georgia’s
president to use it at an official function. Georgia
is not a member of the EU and its member states might now think twice before
they make it happen.
Immediately prior to the Democratic
convention the weekly issue of Time magazine was devoted to the
Democrats and its presumed standard bearer. The major article was on “The five
faces of Barack Obama” and concluded in essence that we don’t know enough about
him. We should not be swept away by “Obamania” but
look very carefully at the seamy side of his life and rise to fame through the
rough and tumble Chicago politics.
The article was a brief summation of the book Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi Ph.D. which is an exquisitely drafted
hatchet job and will be discussed in the October 1 issue in relation to the
personality depictions of all the candidates. For now there are only two
aspects that are relevant. The first one is the point Corsi made stating that the
words “Obama Nation” should be read very fast which would result in
“abomination.” The second is Obama’s face as it appeared on the cover of Time. We were confronted with a gaunt
brown face glaring at us from a black background and the facial expression could
only be called sinister. When I first saw the picture I immediately had the
impression that they wanted to show us Lucifer emerging from hell and didn’t
need to put horns on him. The message was clear: whatever happens in Denver
at the Convention this black guy is a menace and must not be elected in
November.
I had just finished reading Corsi’s
book, which painted Obama as a ruthless, social climber who puts expediency
above conscience, the evening prior to his expected announcement of his running
mate and told Martha that if Corsi is right Hillary will be nominated as VP,
because that would be the most expedient course to win in November. Next
morning Martha, who is an early riser and no fan of Hillary, greeted me with a
sad face. I immediately said, “It’s Hillary!” Then she laughed at having fooled
me and said, “No it’s Biden.” Mind you she has always been a staunch Republican
but a third Bush term in form of McCain is too much even for her. By forsaking
immediate gain and thereby potentially risking the election, Obama had shown
statesmanship over winning at all costs. He knew, and so did most rational
thinking individuals, that the election is only the first step; the hard part
comes in the Oval Office. As Bill Clinton told us in 1992 we would “get two for
one” if we elected him, we would again get two for one if we now elected
Hillary for the vice-presidency. To have a president and two co-presidents
could not possibly have worked. By picking Senator Biden, Obama showed that he
is fully aware of his own meager foreign affairs credentials and is willing to
listen to the best possible advice. Furthermore, it is clear that the country
would be in good hands if Biden had to assume the presidency in case of
unforeseen circumstances. The thousand(s) who came to hear the announcement
from the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield
and lined the streets as far as the eye could see were obviously of the same
opinion.
The forces which are bent on
Obama’s destruction banked on the Clintons
to throw the Convention into turmoil but, to their credit, they refused to do
so. Hillary as well as Bill gave good speeches praising Obama’s readiness to
lead the country to a better future and the picture on the TV screen, after
Hillary moved that Obama be elected by acclamation without further roll call of
the states, was unforgettable. There was an apparently genuinely smiling
Hillary holding the microphone while all around her broke out in cheers with
tears rolling down some black and brown faces.
This scene was repeated on the next
day in Denver’s football stadium
which was packed with more than 84,000 people from all walks of life who had
come to hear Obama accept the nomination. It was truly a historic event in America’s
history because it showed that racial barriers, especially against those of our
citizens who are to a varying degree of African descent, have indeed been
overcome by one of our major parties. Regardless what happens in November, the
country has taken a giant step forward to finally fully enfranchise
African-Americans who up until 1865 were “property” and legally regarded as
three-fifths of a person. Even when they were emancipated by Lincoln
they were left destitute and racial equality was still “a dream” for Martin
Luther King on August 28, 1963.
He paid with his life for that dream and it is not far fetched to think that
this fate may also befall Obama. But even if this tragedy were come to pass
only a major catastrophe, which would transform America
into a Hitler-Stalin type dictatorship, can undo what happened on August 28, 2008 in Denver.
Blacks and Whites spontaneously embraced each other and for one brief moment
there was a unity of joy rather than one of shared grief which had resulted
from disaster on 9/11.
The Democrats created powerful
pictures and this presented McCain with a major challenge. In order to counteract
the boost which the Democrats were expected to get from the Convention, he had
withheld the name of his vice presidential pick until after the Democrats had
their day in the sun. He kept the media guessing for weeks and my personal opinion
is that he himself had not made up his mind until the week of the Democratic
Convention. He then allowed the
Democrats one night of grace to enjoy their celebrations and on the morning of
the 29th he announced that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska
was his choice for vice president. This was a brilliant tactical move because
it left all of us stunned. Nobody outside of Alaska
had ever heard of her before and if McCain wanted to momentarily steal the
Democrats’ thunder he had fully succeeded because the media were now scrambling
to find out who this woman is.
The moment Martha and I got over
our surprise of the totally unexpected I headed for the Internet and lo and
behold there was already on Wikipedia a full exposé. She was born 44 years ago
in Sandpoint Idaho (a beautiful
little lakeside community) and during her infancy the parents moved to Alaska
where she has resided ever since. She is married and has five children. She was
a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, also earned the title of Miss
Congeniality, has a BS degree in journalism from the University of Idaho,
served as mayor of Wasilla (population estimated 7,000 - 8,500) and became
governor of the state in 2006. Governor Palin is an outdoors woman and started
hunting with her father in childhood; she worked briefly as sports newscaster
on local TV and for some time with her husband as commercial fishermen. She is
held in high regard as incorruptible by her constituents and is ardently
against abortions. It may have been this point which convinced McCain to pick her because she demonstrated the courage of
her convictions by not aborting her youngest child whom she knew to have
Down syndrome (previously called Mongolism). These are all admirable traits but
does this résumé qualify her to be president of the country if the 72 year old
McCain were to be incapacitated?
Although McCain and Palin gave brief
rousing speeches, interrupted by frequent applause and cheers, the cameras
stayed focused mainly on the platform and the speakers rather than occasionally
panning to the crowd, as they did in Springfield
when Obama had introduced Senator Biden as his running mate. There had been
rumors prior to the 29th that the enthusiasm of the Republicans did
not match that of the Democrats and people had to be bussed in from various
states to swell the crowd. Be that as it may. The substance of the speeches was
that the Alaskan governor is fiscally responsible, has high ethical standards, battles
special interests (oil industry) and corruption, even in regard to her own
party. In McCain’s words “She's exactly who I need. She's exactly who this
country needs to help me fight the same old Washington
politics of me first and country second.” On the stage was also the Palin
family including 17 year old daughter Bristol
who had been designated to hold 5 months old baby Trig. A picture perfect
quintessential made for TV wholesome American family.
But there was something wrong with
this family idyll which made the news only on the following day. Bristol
was not just a good sibling but the baby she was holding served an additional
purpose. It shielded the view of Bristol’s
expanding lower abdomen which harbors a baby of its own. This pregnancy had not
been planned but in view of Palin’s national prominence it was announced that
the wedding bells will ring at an as yet undisclosed time. Although this is
strictly a family matter it is not entirely irrelevant in a political campaign
which stresses fundamental Christian morality and family values. In addition we
learned that the governor is currently under investigation in Alaska
for potential abuse of power in a case that can be regarded as inverse nepotism.
An independent prosecutor has been appointed to investigate the matter and the
verdict is supposed to be announced on October 10.A more detailed report on these as well as
other problems Governor Palin faces will be presented in the next installment.
The media and the Democrats will have a field day in the coming weeks and
months.
Sarah Palin’s family problems and
potential improprieties in her official conduct are, however, not the main
issues at this time. The important aspect is Senator McCain’s judgment and
decision making process. He had met Mrs. Palin only once in February of this
year at a governors conference in Washington
and had subsequently spoken to her only once on the phone during the week of
the Democratic Convention to invite her for a visit to his Arizona
ranch. According to newspaper reports his first face to face substantive meeting
with her was on Thursday August 28 when he offered Mrs. Palin the job and the
announcement came the following day. The entire process had been shrouded with
deep secrecy and it is doubtful that a careful investigation of the governor’s
background had preceded the nomination.
One wonders if McCain would really
have taken Palin as his vice-presidential candidate had he had even the limited
information which is available at this time. As such the selection appears to
have been made hastily and on purely political grounds. Apparently Senator
McCain thought he might appease his evangelical base by selecting a woman who
has strong anti-abortion credentials and this might also swing disaffected
democrats, who had voted for Hillary, to his side. The choice of a completely
unknown governor from a sparsely inhabited state was a gamble and demonstrated
his “maverick” nature. But in so doing he forfeited two of his strongest
campaign points. He had promised us that his vice-president would be the most
qualified person who could step up to the presidency at a moment’s notice and
that he would always put the needs of the country above those of political
expediency. Alaskans, who know most about Sarah Palin reacted to “the most
qualified person” statement with “oh, really?” and this was echoed across the
country, apart from Republicans who dutifully toed the party line. If Senator
McCain had been true to his promise and had wanted to put a woman on the ticket
to lure disenchanted followers of Hillary he could have picked one of several
well known governors and/or senators whose credentials are above board.
But McCain’s problem was that he
wanted not only a woman but also to please the evangelical anti-abortion base
and in this situation there were slim pickings. Governor Palin’s, impeccable
anti-abortion stance, even in case of rape or incest, was probably the decisive
factor. This leads us to the remarkable conclusion that the fate of the world
may be decided in November on the issue of abortion. Since there will be, in
all probability, vacancies on the Supreme Court, the Republican base fears that
unless McCain is elected judges will be nominated who may favor overturning the
1973 landmark Roe vs. Wade decision which legalized abortion in this country. The
right to an abortion is a significant and highly emotionally charged subject
but we must ask ourselves: Is this really the most important problem the
country faces now and in the next four years?
The Republican Convention
festivities were initially muted because of hurricane Gustav which required
evacuation of New Orleans and the
cable news channels were transfixed, to the exclusion of everything else, with
moment to moment updates. There was actually not much to report apart from the
fact that in contrast to hurricane Katrina local, state and federal agencies now
worked in concert to see that the evacuation proceeded in an orderly manner. This
was achieved successfully and the hurricane which had, already been downgraded
prior to landfall skirted the city. We saw impressive pictures of waiting buses
ready to evacuate people, long lines of cars leaving New
Orleans and an empty Bourbon
Street. We also saw water sloshing over the levies
and were told that they had been reinforced since Katrina but the work was only
25% finished. The reason was, “inadequate funding.” This raises a serious
question. We have the money for building a wall, on the Israeli example, to
keep Mexicans out of our country but we don’t have it to protect one of our
major cities. Since hurricanes are going to keep visiting the area on a regular
basis, are the people of New Orleans
supposed to pack up ever so often and leave their homes and businesses? There
seems to be something drastically wrong with our priorities.
But the hurricane proved to be a
blessing for the party faithful. The Monday festivities had to be scrubbed and
only the absolute minimum of business was conducted. By Tuesday, when it was
apparent that damage had been limited, partying was again in full swing with
one exception. President Bush as nominal leader of the party was expected to
give a speech but his duties, to oversee that the storm stricken people get all
the help they need kept him in Washington
and his appearance was limited to an eight minute Video-link address. The
vice-president was also unavailable because of pressing business in ex-Soviet Georgia
where he presented its President Saakishvili with a $1 billion check. Again one
wonders what priorities this administration has in regard to financial
largesse.
The Republicans were delighted not
to see either the president or vice-president in person because the theme of
the Convention was, “Change.” Since they had been the party in charge of the
White House for the past nearly eight years this use of Obama’s key mantra
might seem strange.But they did not
want Obama’s change with: higher taxes, more government spending, all-intrusive
liberal extremism, and an absence of an energy policy; instead it will consist
of: making the Bush tax-cuts permanent, cutting government spending and “drill,
drill, drill” for more domestic oil and gas plus investing in alternative means
of energy and strong national security. If this did not sound like a great deal
of change from the Bush years it went unnoticed.
When Governor Palin gave her
acceptance speech she roused the audience by describing herself as a
“hockey-mom” and explained that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit
bull was “lipstick.” One may ask now if the country’s needs are best served by
a pit bull at this time but this was not on the minds of the delegates. She
portrayed herself as just an ordinary person who had always fiercely striven to
uphold the common good, had lowered taxes, had held government accountable even
when it involved members of her own party, had been fiscally responsible and
that her work as mayor of Wasilla and now governor of Alaska had provided her
with more executive experience than Obama ever had. The entire presentation was
geared to portray her just as much of a “maverick” as her hoped for boss and
the audience was ecstatic. We were told that “a star was born.”
On Thursday Governor Huckabee, the
unsuccessful presidential aspirant, told us that Palin had received more votes
from her constituents during her political life than Senator Biden ever had,
which delighted the audience, notwithstanding that the math doesn’t add up. Not
to be outdone, our Utah governor,
Jon Huntsman, declared in his Palin nominating speech hat she did have foreign
policy credentials, which had been previously doubted, because her state
borders on Russia
and Canada.
“Oh, really?” comes to mind again.
While “Sarah Barracuda,” her
nickname from high school basketball games, gave no hint of “reaching across
the aisle” to achieve mutually agreeable solutions, Senator McCain in his
acceptance speech struck a somewhat conciliatory note. After sharing with the
audience his, by now well known, experiences as POW in Vietnam
he emphasized his love of country, unstinting devotion to duty, always placing
the country and honor above all considerations. After a relatively mild swipe
at Obama’s inexperience and lack of a coherent political program he promised to
work in a bipartisan manner for peace, security and prosperity. Although I gave
the speech only a C, the audience was ecstatic. After every second sentence or
so they rose, clapped wildly, held up heir banners and shouts of “USA,
USA, USA,”
filled the air, which brought memories of the fervent SiegHeils of bygone days to mind.
In all of these images there was one event that
failed to make the news and is known only to a handful of people who care about
the imprisoned 1.5 million Gazans whose borders have been sealed ever since
Hamas took over last year. I have discussed this situation previously in “Saving
the Bush Legacy” (July 1, 2007).
But earlier this year a heterogeneous group of intrepid people decided to see
whether or not the Gaza blockade
could be broken. They bought two rickety fishing vessels in Crete
which were made, to some extent, sea-worthy and sailed under the Greek flag to Cyprus
where they picked up a few more passengers with destination: Gaza.
These hardy sailors, on their SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty, were from all walks
of life, various nations including Israel, and featured even an 81 year old
Catholic nun as well as Tony Blair’s sister in-law. It was a demonstration of people to people
power and had nothing to do with any government. Although Israel
issued a warning that the boats may be shot at upon entering Gaza
waters, the government reconsidered because the little two boat flotilla had attracted
international attention and there were a number of reporters on board. They
entered Gaza harbor to a cheering
crowd of thousands but as mentioned Americans were not allowed to see these
pictures on their TV screens.
One of the participants, Israeli
citizen Jeff Halper, placed his experiences on the Internet and I only became
aware of the story as a member of Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy
Land.Halper wrote that
they had been joyously welcomed by about 40,000 Gazans and when he tried to
enter Israel via the Erez checkpoint, waving his Israeli passport, he was
promptly arrested and sent to prison in nearby Ashkelon. His crime was that he
had violated a military order which prohibited Israelis from being in Gaza.
I shall now let him speak for himself,
“All night I was
physically threatened by right-wing Israelis - - and I was sure I wouldn’t make
it till the morning. Ironically, there were three Palestinians in my cell who
kind of protected me, so the danger was from Israelis, not Palestinians in Gaza
as well as in Israel.
(One Palestinian from Hebron was in
jail for being illegally in Israel;
I was in jail for being illegally in Palestine.)
As it stands, I’m out on bail. The state will probably press charges in the
next few weeks, and I could be jailed for two or so months.”
Halper’s entire story is available
on http://www.ICAHD.org and news about Gaza
on http://www.FreeGaza.org. Our treatment
of the Palestinians, leaving them to the not so tender mercies of Israel,
is shameful but is not likely to change especially if McCain were to win in
November. In order to extend Sarah Palin’s foreign policy grasp she has been
assigned a tutor in form of McCain’s good friend Joe Lieberman who immediately
presented her to AIPAC for instruction. One wonders under these circumstances
what “putting country first” means under these circumstances. What country are
we talking about?
In November Americans will be faced
with a choice which goes beyond Democrat versus Republican. We will have to
choose between very different personalities for president as well as
vice-president. This will be the topic of the October 1 installment.
October 1, 2008
SIFTING FACTS FROM PROPAGANDA
The
seemingly interminable election process for our next presidential team is
mercifully nearing its end by the beginning of next month. The presidential
contenders have been going at each other for at least one and a half years with
allegations, rumors and innuendos frequently trumping the facts. Money has been
raised in prodigious amounts and the election circus – the only reasonable term
to describe these events – has taken time and attention away from the nation’s
real business. The current financial Wall Street debacle could have been
foreseen and acted upon but the media’s and, therefore, the public’s attention
was diverted to the candidates’ numerous debates and views on a variety of
subjects. The game was “gotcha” where the moderators, or the candidates
themselves, tried to catch the unwary in a gaffe. Quick thinking and coming up
with a succinct sound bite was desired rather than reasoned debate of the pros
and cons of a given proposition.
The
Republicans were ready to declare their winner in March, while Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama had to slug it out to the nearly bitter end on June 7. But
since Hillary’s loss was deeply resented by her 18 million supporters there was
danger that they would create a furor at the Democratic Convention and demand a
recount of the votes. It was alleged that Hillary had been treated unfairly
because the Michigan and Florida
votes had not been properly counted, notwithstanding that these states had
defied party rules and had held their primaries at unauthorized dates. It is
true that voters should not be punished for the stupidity of their state
leadership; but since when are leaders held accountable rather than the public?
The country was held in suspense and the Republicans could enjoy the Democrats
tearing themselves apart. This would then provide grist for the propaganda
machine in the final battle leading up to November 4.
Once it had been clear that Obama
was a serious contender for the presidency a number of books appeared which
presented him in the most unfavorable light. I have mentioned them briefly on a
previous occasion but since Obama is now the Democratic standard bearer and
they are being taken seriously I have to address them in some more detail. I
shall limit myself only to those I have personally read namely: Webster Griffin
Tarpley’s Obama the Postmodern Coup. Making of a Manchurian Candidate and
that by Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D.The Obama Nation.Leftist Politics and the
Cult of Personality.
Tarpley’s book was written in March
of this year and precipitated by Obama’s stunning successes in the Iowa
caucus. Tarpley stated, “The need for this book became evident to me between
Sunday January 6 and Monday January 7, 2008 , that is to say, during the
interval between this year’s January 3 Iowa caucus and the January 8 New
Hampshire primaries.” Tarpley’s goal was to prevent an Obama presidency because
it would lead, in his opinion, to a fascist state. The picture on the book’s
cover shows on the left side a serious, somewhat grim looking Duce greeting
throngs of supporters with upraised right hand; while we see on the right a
smiling Obama addressing an unseen crowd with raised left hand.
Tarpley’s thesis is that Obama’s
rise to fame was no accident. He had been selected by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
whose student he was at ColumbiaUniversity
in the early 1980s, and backed by the Trilateral Commission, a shadow
government that supposedly runs the world. The purpose was to engineer a “CIA
people Power Coup.” The original Fascist Movement by Mussolini, as well as
Hitler’s National Socialist Movement (die
Bewegung, of not so fond memories) stemmed from grass roots populist
demagogy playing on the fear of communism and the inability of democratically
elected governments to provide adequate living standards for the citizens of
their countries. While these coups i.e. Mussolini’s March on Rome
and Hitler’s rise had the backing from high finance and heavy industry, the
postmodern coups have, in addition, the help of the CIA. As examples Tarpley
lists the 2004 Orange revolution in Kiev;
the so-called “bulldozer revolution” in Belgrade;
Serbia in 2000
and the Roses revolution in Tiflis, Georgia.”The 2006 Cedars Revolution in Lebanon
failed only because of Hezbollah’s mass mobilization. The driving force of
these revolutions, which are far from spontaneous, is what Tarpley calls a
“rent a mob.” The money comes from “The National Endowment for Democracy [a supposedly
private agency established in 1993], the various Soros foundations, Gene
Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute, and other entities that we may refer to for
the sake of brevity and clarity as the privatized or quasi-governmental left
wing of the US intelligence community or left CIA in the post 1982-era of
President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333 [provides for the conduct of US intelligence activities and gives special
authorities to the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA].”I shall return to these quasi NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) on a later occasion in another issue.
The purpose of these coups,
according to Tarpley, is to draw the ex-Soviet Union Border
States into the Western orbit and thereby further
destabilize Russia.
Brzezinski, as a native of Poland,
instinctively hates Russia,
regardless of its prevailing government, and will do everything to bring about
its final demise. The common feature of all these coups is that they are “built
around a ‘telegenic demagogue.’” When Tarpley saw an Obama rally on MSNBC (January
7), his reaction was: “My God!” I exclaimed. “It’s a color revolution in the US!”
Tarpley then goes on to show that Obama will not only bomb Pakistan
but also Russia;
that he is supported by “rich Elitists” and eventually the country will be
transformed into a “TotalitarianFascistCorporateState.”
For the near future Tarpley proved
himself a poor prophet. He not only assumed a Hillary victory and a
McCain-Lieberman ticket but also envisioned for the Denver convention, “a
rent-a-mob/dupe-a- mob of swarming adolescents descending on the city to stage
a made for television spectacle of ochlocracy [government by mob, intimidation
of constitutional authorities] and mob rule in order to impose an Obama
candidacy.” Although some of his long range views, which will be discussed on
another occasion in relation to the current tectonic shift on Wall Street
cannot be as readily dismissed. It is inappropriate, however, to lay these at
Obama’s feet.
What are the facts in regard to
Tarpley’s opinions? Brzezinski is indeed Obama’s main foreign policy advisor
and members of the Brzezinski family work for his campaign. It is also true
that Obama has recommended that if we knew where the Al Qaeda leadership was located
in Pakistan and
the Pakistanis were unwilling or unable to do something about it that we should
“take them out.” This is, however, a far cry from indiscriminately showering
missiles on suspected targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan
as is now being done by the Bush administration, let alone bombing Pakistan’s
interior. Furthermore, although Mr. B does not harbor a great deal of
friendship for Russia
and feels that the country is backsliding into autocracy there is no hint that this
should be avoided by starting a war with that country. He does favor what he calls
an Atlantic community that encompasses the US,
Canada and Europe
as a counterweight to Russia
and China. But
as he argued in his most recent book, Second Chance. Three
Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, America’s global
leadership needs to be exerted through the force of its ideals by diplomacy rather
than military power. The idea that “Obamania” was a CIA sponsored “rent-a-mob”
phenomenon can also be laid to rest since at the end of August it was surpassed
by an equally impressive “Palimania.”
While Tarpley predicts disaster in
form of a leftist fascist autocracy the Corsi book tries to add fuel to the
fire with sly innuendos and willful distortions of facts. Just as with Tarpley,
the book was written to destroy a potential Obama presidency and the author
prides himself of having derailed the Kerry campaign with his 2004 co-authored
book, Unfit for Command. Swift Boat
Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Corsi was now trying to duplicate
this feat in 2008 and the book has enjoyed a great deal of attention. In
essence it is an attempt of lynching by association. One typical example is: In
Indonesia Barack went for two years to public elementary school where, among regular
subjects, the Koran was also taught. Since Indonesia
is a Muslim country this ought not to be particularly surprising. But as a
further indication that little Barry had Muslim leanings, Corsi points out that
the stepfather had occasionally taken the boy to a mosque and that the youngster
had worn a sarong. The fact that this was the local garb, just as much as
Lederhosen were in Austria,
remains unmentioned. On the other hand that Barack’s
religion had supposedly been listed as Muslim is brought to attention. Well,
the Kenyan father was indeed a lapsed Muslim and so was the stepfather, Lolo
Soreto, while the mother was religiously unaffiliated. Since religion had to be
put on a certificate when enrolled in public school, a practice common around
most of the world, that was the appropriate answer. To jump from an eight to
ten year old to the religious beliefs of a grown man is, however, a rather
large one indeed.
Other examples are in a similar
vein. Such as a friendship in adolescence with an African-American ex-communist;
acquaintance with an ex-Weatherman bomb thrower who is now a respected
professor at the University of Illinois; supposed profiteering from a Chicago
housing developer; harboring Afro-centric rather than Amero-centric views as
demonstrated by attending the Reverend Wright’s church; encouraging a cult of
personality; holding domestic opinions that are to the extreme left of the
spectrum. If this toxic brew were not enough let us not forget that he would immerse
himself into Kenya’s
problems ahead of ours and pursue an anti-Israel foreign policy.
While Obama has indeed had contacts
with the people Corsi mentions there is no evidence that they, therefore, were
the determining elements in his world view. By reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital a person does not automatically
become either a Nazi or Communist. Contact with a wide range of opinions is to
be welcomed rather than condemned because it broadens one’s outlook and
prevents dogmatism. One is likewise not anti-Israel, which tends to be equated
nowadays with anti-Semitism, when one strives for a just and durable peace in
the Holy Land. But this can only be accomplished when
Israeli politicians and our local super-Likudniks see the necessity to take the
genuine aspirations of the Palestinians into account. That peace in the larger Middle
East can only be achieved with peace in that troubled country is
obvious for everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear but unfortunately not
for Dr. Corsi and his fellow travelers.
If one wants to know what an Obama
presidency might really look like one should read what he himself has outlined.
The Audacity of Hope was published in
2006 and describes in considerable detail his views of how political bickering
and rampant unbridled capitalism, which was running the country into the ground,
could be channeled into constructive actions through government as well as private
initiatives. What he asks for is good will and thoughtfulness rather than
inflammatory rhetoric.
The
Audacity of Hope was obviously written with the impending presidential
campaign in mind. It shows an individual who is intelligent and well educated
but also restless and ambitious. Another person might have served at least one
full term in the Senate before reaching for the highest office in the land and
he must have known that he would be running head on into the Clinton
political machine. Under these circumstances he also must have known that he
could not be a “uniter” of the Democratic Party but he would instead cause deep
rifts. I don’t know why he did what he did but the official reason, given by
his friends, is that: 2008 is a unique opportunity for the Democrats and if he were
to let it slip by another one would not return until at least 2016 at which
time Hillary’s two terms would be up and the country would be ready for the
Republicans again. This may well have been the case but there could have been
an additional calculation.
I always like to put myself into
other people’s shoes and can imagine the following conversation having taken
place between Barack and his wife Michelle one weekend over breakfast some time
in 2006:
Barack (in a rather hesitant
manner): You know that people have been talking to me about running for
president. I think that I might want to do it.
Michelle (furious): Are you nuts? You can’t possibly win against Hillary! Don’t
we have enough trouble as is?
Barack (in a patient voice): I know
that, but listen for a moment. If I make a good enough showing they have to
give me the vice presidency. That’s nothing to sneeze at either and maybe 2016
will be our turn.
Michelle (somewhat conciliatory): I
don’t know; you’re asking for a lot of grief for all of us. They might even
kill you like they did Malcolm and Dr. King.
Barack (more insistent): I know
that too, but will you help me if I do take the plunge?
Michelle (still doubtful):Well, I’d have to think about that for quite
some time.
I don’t know if this was the way how things really happened in
the Obama family but I’m extrapolating from how important decisions are made in
our house and the obvious fact that Barack and his wife are truly a team which respects
the wishes of each other. Extrapolating further I believe that the Obamas were
as surprised by the ensuing Obamania as the rest of the country and when it
became clear that he had a good chance of being nominated they whole-heartedly
threw themselves into the enterprise.
This type
of thinking does not necessarily hold for his counterpart, John McCain. It
appears unlikely that he would have asked Cindy whether or not he should have
entered the race in 1999 and again in 2007. His life’s trajectory and
personality is totally different from the middle class America
the Obama-Robinson family belonged to and yet the Clinton
and subsequently McCain campaigns have managed to paint the Obamas as
“elitists” while the multi-millionaire Clintons and McCains are supposed to be
humble folks like us. It is true that most of the McCain money belongs to Cindy
but John is able to enjoy all the perks that result from it.
In order to
get a clearer view of who Senator McCain is and what he really stands for I
resorted to four books, checked facts on the Internet and watched his conduct
during the campaign. In contrast to Obama who personally wrote his books, all
of McCain’s are co-authored. Since the first book is usually the most important
to get a feel for an individual I read only Faith
of My Fathers which appeared during his first presidential run in 1999. It
is co-authored by Mark Salter, a long standing friend, alter-ego and his speech
writer. I couldn’t help noticing that the title sounded eerily familiar to
Obama’s Dreams from My Father (discussed
in Hillary versus Obama; April 1, 2008),
which had been published 4 years earlier. There are other parallels. Both books
stay on a personal note and eschew political aspects. Unlikely as it may seem
McCain and Obama also had actually to deal with similar personal problems. Both
had largely absent fathers who intermittently indulged in alcohol abuse. Yet in
both instances the image of a high achiever father was something the boys had been
instructed to live up to and had subsequently thoroughly internalized.
McCain’s
grandfather was an admiral who stood with MacArthur on the deck of the Missouri
during Japan’s
surrender ceremony and his father was Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific
Command while John was languishing in a Hanoi
prison. A navy career was genetically ordained for John and he rebelled against
it with vigor. In Annapolis he
repeatedly provoked his superiors, was at times on the verge of being expelled
and graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. As he describes himself he
was: “chronically late for class”; had “reservations about my destiny;” had a
“long history of transgressions and improprieties;” “Whatever the cause I
instantly lost my temper and what little self-respect I possessed in those
days;” “I did not enjoy the reputation of a serious pilot or an up-and-coming
junior officer;” “I crashed a plane in Corpus Christy Bay one Saturday
morning;” “contemplated joining the French Foreign Legion.”
These
quotes were taken from the first 173 pages of the book and to which one more
incident needs to be added to round out the picture of the young McCain prior
to his deployment to Vietnam.
“My reputation was certainly not enhanced when I knocked down some power lines
while flying too low over southern Spain.
My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and
created a small international incident.” We, therefore, see a person of
remarkable candor who relished adventure wherever he might find it, had no use
for authority, made sure that others knew it, lost his temper to his own
detriment and engaged in unacceptable risks.
The rest of
the book deals with his near fatal accident during a fire on the carrier
Forestall, which had not been his fault, his subsequent volunteering for
another carrier assignment, the ill-fated bombing run over Hanoi, five years
imprisonment and final release. It is stated that the years as POW were the
transformative experience of his life which is undoubtedly the case and the
fact that he refused to be repatriated prior to his buddies, because of his
prominent status, is definitely to his credit. It showed strength of character
in face of certain massive physical and mental abuse. Toward the end of the
book he wrote,
“Surviving
my imprisonment strengthened my self-confidence and my refusal of early release
taught me to trust my own judgment. I am grateful to Vietnam
for those discoveries, as they have made a great difference in my life. I
gained a seriousness of purpose that observers of my early life had found
difficult to detect. I had made more than my shares of mistakes in my life. In
the years ahead I would make many more. But
I would no longer err out of self-doubt or to alter a fate I felt had been
imposed on me [italics added]. I know my life is blessed, and always has
been.”
I have added italics to one sentence of the foregoing
paragraph because this is precisely the governing style of George W Bush who
“answer[s] to a higher father” and brought us to the current brink of disaster.
Senator McCain has abandoned some of the foibles of his youth but still
relishes the role of a “maverick,” by doing the unexpected. The term maverick,
which is derived from a lawyer by name of Samuel Maverick who did not brand his
cattle in the 1800s, is actually only partly correct. A better description for
the Senator’s conduct is impulsive and erratic.
For information on McCain’s Senate years
and how he changed from the 2000 to the 2008 campaign a number of books are
available but I have read only three which provide all the information one
needs. The first one, published in 2002, is by Elizabeth Drew. Although she is
“a much honored previous author” the book is quite limited in scope and the 171
pages deal exclusively with the efforts to get the Senator’s claim to fame, the
McCain-Feingold Election Reform bill, passed. It is not clear what the purpose
of this book was except possibly for the reader to admire McCain’s tenacity and
ability to “reach across the aisle.”The
bill was supposed to limit campaign spending, but it was riddled with such
extensive loopholes that it was useless. The current election cycle has raised,
as of the end of August, $454 millions for Obama and $230 millions for McCain.
These are obscene sums of money which surely could have been better spent but
are necessary for success in today’s climate. The McCain-Feingold bill was,
therefore a dismal failure.
The other two books: McCain. The Myth of a Maverick by Matt
Welch which appeared in 2007 and The Real
McCain. Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t by
Cliff Schecter, published in 2008, are more substantive. In both instances an
attempt is made to look behind the façade of the populist, good natured,
self-deprecating joke-telling elder statesman. The emerging picture is far less
appealing and reveals an individual whose words and actions rarely mesh. They
demonstrate, furthermore, that Mc Cain is infinitely more comfortable in the
upper class circles of Washington
than with the Arizona common
folks he is supposed to represent. Inasmuch as his navy career was cut short by
the injuries suffered as a result of having been shot down over Hanoi
he sought to fulfill the obligation imposed upon him by the Faith of his Fathers
through the life of a politician.
The marriage McCain had entered
into prior to service in Vietnam
did not appeal to him upon return and when he met by chance Cindy Lou Hensley,
a very attractive unattached young lady who also had the millions to match her
looks, it was love at first sight. After an uncontested divorce Cindy and John
were married in 1980. Immediately upon his father’s death in 1981 he resigned
from the navy and moved to Phoenix
where he began to work as vice-president for public relations of the father-in
law’s beer distributorship. In 1982 an opening for the House of Representatives
occurred in Arizona’s First
Congressional District and Cindy immediately bought a house there to establish
residence. John engaged in a vigorous campaign for the seat but was confronted
with the label of carpetbagger because he clearly had no ties to the community.
Eventually he got angry about it and dressed down the impudent accuser with
“Listen pal!” followed by some choice words dealing with his naval service
which had prevented him from living in such a nice place as Arizona’s First
District. He ended with, “As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the
place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”
Well, he stretched the truth then because the family had lived mainly in the
area around WashingtonDC
and when he still repeats the statement now on occasion, it loses all
credibility. I am mentioning this only because it shows that John McCain has
the gift for catchy sound-bites notwithstanding their truth.
In contrast to the Obamas, the
marriage seems to be one of convenience rather than a partnership. Cindy had to
live mainly alone in Arizona
while John remained in Washington
and when she came back one day from a trip to Bangladesh
with a child she had adopted from an orphanage there, she simply confronted him
with the fact without prior consultation. But more importantly, McCain’s tenure
in the House, and after Barry Goldwater’s retirement in the Senate, was marred
by disputes and a reprimand by the Ethics Committee for having used “poor
judgment” when he used his office to help one of his major friends and campaign
contributors who had been involved in the Savings and Loan debacle of the
1980s.
Since he values his sense of honor
above everything else he subsequently led the mentioned campaign finance reform
drive. This did not prevent him, however, from establishing political action
committees (PACs) through which the law could be bypassed and from which his
campaigns could be bankrolled.His
reputation for honesty and transparency was built by providing reporters
unlimited access early on, especially on the “Straight Talk Express” during the
2000 campaign, at which time the press succumbed to his charm. This changed in
2007/8 when he became considerably more taciturn with the press, especially
after initial campaign setbacks, and had, in part, become outright rude to
interviewers. One must remember now that, although he seems to be in reasonably
good health, apart from his bouts with facial melanoma, he is eight years older
but not necessarily wiser.
Matt Welch quoted the views of an
erstwhile friend of McCain, the former publisher of the ArizonaRepublic Pat Murphy, on the senator’s
character. Here is a brief excerpt: “He cannot endure criticism; threatens;
controls by fear; he’s consumed with self-importance; shifts blame; is a man
obsessed with political ambitions but plagued by self-destructive petty
impulses.”
But we don’t need books to wonder
about the Senator’s character because we received direct insights during the
past six weeks. On August 16 Pastor Rick Warren, of the evangelical Saddleback mega
church in Lake ForestCalifornia,
held an Open Forum. For the first hour Obama was given a set of questions and
during the second hour the same question were presented to McCain who had not been
present during the previous hour and was, therefore, unaware of what he would
be asked. This provided us with a unique opportunity to assess the personality
structure and thought processes of these two persons. I shall cite only a few
key aspects from three questions but the entire session is available on http://trevinwax.com/2008/08/17/obama-mccain-with-rick-warren-at-saddleback-forum-video
/
Q: Who are the three wisest people
you know in your life and who are you going to rely on heavily in your
administration?
Obama: “Michelle, my wife, who is
not only wise but she’s honest. And one of the things you need – I think any
leader needs is somebody who can get up in your face and say, boy, you really screwed
that one up. You really blew that . . . another person is my grandmother . . .
very common sense no fuss no frill kind of a person.” In regard to his
administration he listed: Senators Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar, Ted Kennedy and
others.
McCain:“First one I think would be General David
Petraeus, one of great military leaders in American History who took us from
defeat to victory in Iraq . . .John
Lewis [African-American civil rights leader and member of Congress from Georgia]
. . .had his skull fractured continues
to serve. . . . Meg Whitman the CEO of e-Bay 12 years ago there were five
employees and today there are one and a half million people that make a living
off e-mail in America,
in the world.” Actually, she joined the company of 30 employees in March 1998
and stepped down in March 2008 to join the McCain campaign as national
co-chair.
Q: Does evil exist and if it does
do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?
Obama: “Evil does exist. I mean we
see evil in Darfur. We see evil daily on the streets of
our cities . . . . It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that
I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be
able to erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. But we can be soldiers
in that process and we can confront it when we see it.”
McCain:“Defeat it! One, if I’m president of the
United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will
get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to
do that and get that done. Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are
facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century, radical
Islamist extremists.Not long ago in
Baghdad Al-Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put
suicide vests on them, sent them into the marketplace and by remote control
detonated those suicide vests.. . and we are going to
defeat this evil and the central battlegroundaccording to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battles – is
Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq and we are winning and we are succeeding and our troops
will come home with honor and victory and not in defeat and that’s what’s
happening.”
Q:Why do you want to be president?
Obama: “I feel like the American
dream is slipping away. I think we are at a critical juncture economically, I
think we are at a critical juncture internationally. We’ve got to make some big
decisions not just for us but for the next generation and we keep putting it
off and unfortunately our politics is broken and Washington is so broken that
we can’t seem to bring together people of good will to solve these common
problems. I think I have the ability to build bridges across partisan lines,
racial, regional lines to get people to work on some common sense solutions to
critical issues and I hope that I have the opportunity.”
McCain:I want to inspire a generation Americans to
serve a cause greater than their self-interest. I believe that America’s
best days are ahead of us, But I also believe that we face enormous challenges
both national security and domestic as we have found out in the last few days
in the case of Georgia.
. . . Throughout my life. . . I put my
country first. . . .And I believe as I said it’s time for us to put our country
first . . . I want every American to know that. . . I know that my job is to tell them [African-Americans in Alabama
who won’t vote for him] that I’ll be president of every American and I’ll
always put my country first.
It seems to me that the differences
are quite obvious. McCain has a military mind that is obsessed with the lost
Vietnam War and he will do everything in his power to rectify this defeat, be
it in Iraq, Afghanistan
or wherever else in the world. He will erase evil, which he sees only in others,
from the face of the earth. The how is left unanswered. Furthermore, if he
really knew where Osama is it would be his duty to tell the Bush administration
rather than keep the secret to himself.
Obama is clearly more nuanced and
humble. He will consult with family on personal matters and important leaders
of the Senate, regardless of party affiliation, when it comes to national
affairs. He sees evil in the everyday lives of individuals and intends to help
wherever help is possible. While Obama wants to use his presidency to build
bridges between different factions on the national and international level,
McCain is the representative of what is called American exceptionalism. America
can do no wrong; it’s Ronald Reagan’s: “Morning in America.”
That the world has profoundly changed in the intervening 28 years has not come
to his attention. For him the only difference seems to be the name of the enemy
by substituting Islamic extremism for Communism.
Mc Cain also demonstrated his
impulsivity during the recent Georgia
crisis. He immediately demanded Russia’s
expulsion from the G8 and proclaimed that, “We are all Georgians.”Georgia’s
President, Mikheil Sakaashvili, is a personal friend and this may well have contributed
to this outburst. In addition McCain’s chief foreign policy affairs advisor,
Ronald Scheunemann a dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative, was a lobbyist for the Republic
of Georgia. He had to give up this
lucrative job on May 15, when the
McCain campaign imposed an anti-lobbyist policy. But his firm, Orion
Strategies, is still fulfilling its $200,000 contract which it had received
from Saakishvilli on April 17 of this year.
McCain’s erratic behavior was also
demonstrated again last week when he suddenly declared on Tuesday that he would
suspend his campaign in order to fly to Washington
and bring the financial bailout negotiations to a successful conclusion. The
dire state of the country required the suspension of political activities and
the debate with Obama which had been scheduled for Friday night should be
postponed. Obama on the other hand said that precisely because the country is
in trouble its citizens deserve to know where the nominees stand on the issues
and that the debate should proceed on schedule. Although nothing was
accomplished on Wednesday and Thursday in spite of McCain’s roaming the White
House and Halls of Congress he did show up at the debate and politicking
continued on its merry way.
McCain’s major campaign slogan is
“country above politics” but he violated this precept by naming the unknown
governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin,
as his running mate. It is not clear whether or not she had told him that she
is currently under investigation in Juneau.
On July 28 the Legislative Council, a bipartisan group of 12 state lawmakers, voted
unanimously to launch an abuse-of-power investigation into Palin's firing of
Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan and appointed an Independent Counsel,
Steven Branchflower. Governor Palin stated in July that she would fully
cooperate because she had “nothing to hide,” but that was before August 29. The
report of the Independent Counsel was supposed to have been delivered by the
end of October but with her nomination for the vice presidency this was deemed
to be too close to the November election and the date was advanced to October
10. Nevertheless, the McCain campaign wasn’t taking any chances. Via the Alaska
Republican party they declared the inquest as invalid and supported instead an
investigation by the State Personnel Committee. The Independent Counsel, had
subpoenaed witnesses, including Palin’s husband, but they did not show up.
Inasmuch as the Legislature does not meet until January the question whether or
not the witnesses will be cited for criminal contempt remains open.
It is clear, however, that a
McCain-Palin administration will be business as usual, in the Bush-Rove-Cheney
style, because the Personnel Board investigation meets in secrecy and its
report can be delayed for two years. The Palin affair, which can best be
followed in the Anchorage Daily News,
http://www.adn.com, clearly showed that
McCain had acted on impulse for immediate political gain and thereby put the
country at risk. In view of the importance of next month’s election the
candidates will be discussed further after the last presidential debate.
October 18, 2008
A MATTER OF TRUST
The debates
are finally over and November 4 is getting close. As expected, acrimony and
insults have soared and the McCain campaign is following the script as outlined
by Jerome Corsi and discussed in the October 1 issue. Obama has been accused by
Sarah Palin of “palling around with terrorists,” and supposedly a shout “kill
him,” arose from the audience. The “pit bull with lipstick” continued in this
vein for several days until McCain had to step in and come to the defense of
Obama’s character. It may well have been too late, however, because the
atmosphere is currently thoroughly poisoned and a few soothing words by Mc Cain
in presence of continued attack ads may not be sufficient to quench the hatred
which has been aroused.
The media,
with FOX News in the lead, have also done their job to stoke anger which, in
part at least, can be laid at the feet of the financial collapse that had
significantly worsened during the past weeks. The polls currently show Obama in
the lead but they cannot be trusted. A significant percentage of Americans
actually says that they would not vote for Obama because of his race but a
considerably larger number may not admit to it, yet may act in this manner.
George Packer’s article, “The Hardest Vote (The
New Yorker; October 13, 2008)
reveals how people really feel in underprivileged rural America.
Towards the
end of August the McCain campaign was in trouble and his appointment of Sarah
Palin as running mate was dictated by falling numbers in the polls. It was a
brilliant tactical move at the time because it did energize his “base” but many
of us know that it would be a disaster for the country if a McCain-Palin
administration were to take over in January. There are several reasons for
holding this opinion but the most important one is the character of the
candidates. Although the issues of: the economy, health-care, abortion, and the
Iraq/Afghanistan wars take the headlines the real question is which candidate will
be better able to deal with them. This is the choice we face and this why the
personalities of the candidates are of such importance. Pre-election promises
by either party are meaningless in the current economic crisis because what can
be achieved by the next administration will entirely depend on the harsh
realities the country faces on January 20.
Although
the Obama-Biden ticket has its faults, as mentioned in previous installments,
these pale in comparison with those of its counterpart. While Obama has been
pandering to pressure groups, especially in regard to foreign affairs, this can
be understood as tactical moves without which he would not be electable. Campaign
rhetoric will be followed by a more realistic appraisal of the international
situation because that is what his character is all about. He is a consensus
seeker rather than the Bush-Cheney “my way or no way” attitude. This can not be
vouchsafed for the McCain-Palin ticket which prefers a decidedly
confrontational approach along the lines of the current administration.
I have
discussed Senator McCain’s character in previous installments, suffice it to
say that as the son and grandson of admirals he has military values stamped into
his DNA. He will, therefore, prefer radical solutions over the tedious process
of diplomacy which does not provide immediate gain. For this reason there is
grave danger that he may initiate a war with Iran.
The consequences would be disastrous in the political and economic arena. The
issue of war and peace has been pushed to the side lines because of the current
economic crisis but is bound to emerge again at any moment. In a foreign policy
crisis a President McCain is likely to opt for war while a President Obama will
try to defuse it. Those issues ought to be the prime consideration because all
the others can only be pursued when the nation is at peace with other countries
rather than during perpetual war.
We should
now ask ourselves why a 72 year old man would want to become the oldest
president we have ever elected. He has a life-time sinecure in the Senate, a
rich wife who can provide him with all the material comforts anyone could
aspire to and the presidency is the most difficult job in the world, especially
in the present circumstances. The official reason we are given is that he has
always devoted his life to a cause greater than himself and that he has always
put the needs of the country above his own wishes. Although he might believe
this himself, having repeated the phrases often enough, they do not ring true. As
Matt Welch has pointed out in McCain The Myth of a Maverick, he used them in 1998 during a
eulogy at the funeral of Senator Barry Goldwater, whose seat he had taken over
after the latter’s retirement.
As a
professional student of human behavior I believe that the actual motive which
propels the senator toward the presidency is a battle with the ghosts of his
father and grandfather. In his own mind he probably feels that he has never
fully lived up to their expectations and dying as a “mere senator” might not
fit the heroic image of war waging admirals. A successful naval career had been
thwarted by his Vietnam
injuries so politics, first in Congress, then the Senate with the ultimate
prize of the Presidency, was supposed to have been the answer. In 2000 this
goal seemed to be in reach but he was way-laid by vicious slanders of the Karl
Rove-Bush campaign and as such 2008 is his last chance.
But here
comes the problem. At age 72 he is no longer the person he was at 66 and when one
pursues the same goal under changed circumstances this is not necessarily appropriate.
It is true that people tend to live longer and can lead productive lives in
their senior years but it is equally true that work should be carried out on a
volunteer basis and not involve executive functions; let alone those which
involve the well-being of the entire world. A private company may place senior
citizens on their Board of Directors but I wonder if they would appoint him as
CEO as well as CFO (Chief Financial Officer). Yet, we are supposed make McCain
the CEO and CFO of the United States
as well as the Commander-in chief of the Armed Forces. To aspire to this post
at this age does make one wonder about his judgment regardless of the lofty
motives proclaimed in his rhetoric.
We now must
be aware that it is not only the body which undergoes decay but so does the
brain and thereby the mind. The Wechsler Intelligence Quotient which is still
widely used recognizes this fact and provides an age correction factor. But
Americans, who are optimistic by nature, do not like limitations and point as
role models to people in their 80s and 90s who are still employed in
professional life. What these articles and pictures don’t tell us, however, is how
well these people actually function in crisis situations.
The general population tends to ignore
that ageing, just as youth, does not proceed in a linear fashion but is
characterized by spurts which then level off for a time before the next one
sets in. Most importantly these spurts, in the case of ageing, do not affect
the entire brain at the same time but have predilections. The highest functions
of: foresight, judgment, attention to detail, mature last and disappear first.
The time and rate depend upon the individual and life circumstances but the
fact that this is an inevitable accompaniment of the ageing process has to be
taken into account.
These are not assumptions or
opinions because a person’s mental abilities can be readily examined with
neuropsychological tests, which go beyond the assessment of a person’s IQ. If
we lived in a rational society, which is clearly not the case, neuropsychological
testing would be obligatory for anyone who aspires to high office that can
affect the lives of millions of others. These tests are objective and the
results could be submitted to three different neuropsychologists who would be
unaware of the person from whom they were obtained and the verdict should be
made public. Unfortunately, a proposal of this type will not be enacted any
time soon and the country may have to endure many a failed presidency before
reason will triumph over emotion.
For now it is already obvious that
Senator McCain would not pass neuropsychological testing with flying colors and
one can also point to the Reagan presidency in this connection. Although
President Reagan has achieved iconic status in the eyes of Republicans, the
country has never been told the full truth of how he really functioned,
especially during his second term. His Alzheimer disease did not start when he
announced it in 1994 but had only become more and more symptomatic over the
years until it could no longer be hid. This is not merely my opinion but is
documented by Robert Graves, our current Secretary of Defense. In his book From the Shadows he wrote,
“I believe Regan
began to fade bit by bit beginning in late 1985 - early 1986. In the first five
years or so, I would watch Reagan in the Situation Room, see him listen to
complex options or problems and then tell a story that would transform those
complicated ideas into something the ordinary citizen could understand. His
stories were Lincolnesque and often would capture the point of the discussion
with precision. It was an amazing thing to observe. However, as the second term
wore on, we would hear a story told over and over, often told with no point at
all. I thought he was still on top of issues, at least the major ones, but a
quality I believed to be fairly magical was waning day by day. Both when he
offered me the job ofDCI [Director
Central Intelligence] in 1987 and when I later told him I was withdrawing, I
had the sense he could not have recalled my name five minutes later.”
When I read these lines I felt a sense of reassurance in my
clinical judgment which was based strictly on what I had seen on Television. At
the end of the last debate in October of 1984 Reagan was supposed to sum up in
a precise manner why he wanted to be re-elected. But he trailed off into
irrelevancies describing the beauty of the sunset over the Pacific
Ocean. When I heard this I said to Martha, “Oh my God he’s lost
it,” referring not to the election but his mental functions. Reagan’s near
fatal bullet wound from the assassination attempt in March of 1981, leading to
considerable blood loss and prolonged anesthesia, may well have contributed to
an earlier onset of the disease. But we now must also remember that McCain has undergone
more physical and emotional stress during his imprisonment in Hanoi
than anyone can readily imagine. He has recovered, but it must have left a
mark. We need to remember, furthermore, that the presidency is an extremely
stressful job for anyone and even Clinton as well as Bush turned prematurely
grey. Mental ageing is insidious and by the time it becomes apparent to others
it is already reasonably advanced and will inevitably progress. These are unpalatable
facts but wishing them away will only make the situation worse.
That Senator McCain’s mental powers
are no longer at their prime became obvious when he selected Governor Palin as
his running mate. The choice surprised even members of his staff who had not
been given the time to properly vet the candidate and this was a strategic
blunder of the first magnitude. If McCain thought that he would attract
disillusioned Hillary supporters by choosing a woman who is fiercely
anti-abortion and in this, as well as other views, the antithesis of Hillary, it
reinforces the belief that he was not thinking straight. Naming the vice
president is the first crucial test of a candidate for the presidency and
McCain flunked it. He must, or at least should have, considered that in view of
his age he may become incapacitated even during the first term in office and to
hand the country over to Sarah Palin can only be regarded as extreme
recklessness.
But it is not only mental health
that counts. Although the senator’s malignant melanoma is currently in
remission it may flare up at any time and we have not been shown recent medical
records. In the spring of 2008 a file of about 1200 pages was provided for
inspection to the media, which had been collected as part of a research project
on the health of Vietnam POW survivors. Dr. Sanja Gupta, the medical consultant for
CNN, wrote that they were given one hour to look at these data, but the pages
were not numbered so no one knew what might have been missing. Prior to November
4 we should be told what the senator’s current state of health really is; what
medications he is taking and in what doses. The right to privacy does not apply
when one wants to be president of the country.
On August 29 of this year all of us
asked in surprise, “Who is Sarah Palin?” and I presented a skeleton outline in
the September 7 issue. Since then a great many facts have come to light which ought
to disqualify her for the office of vice president let alone president. For
clarifying my own opinion I have relied mainly on residents from Alaska
who know their governor best. The most reliable information comes from the
Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com). In
addition there are several Alaska
blogs (e.g. www.andrewhalcro.com)
and Anne Kilkenny’s warning letter. Although they represent a definite
viewpoint they have also valuable information from people who have known Sarah
Palin for a long time. In addition I read Kaylene Johnson’s book, Sarah. How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political
Establishment Upside Down, which has been endorsed by the McCain campaign.
Under these circumstances a
different picture from that of the “role model” which is touted by Senator
McCain emerges. Sarah Heath’s educational career was quite checkered. She
attended four different colleges and one university, over a period of five
years, before she graduated from the University
of Idaho in the spring of 1987 with
a BS degree in journalism and communication. Intellectual pursuits were apparently
not a priority and there is no evidence that she participated in the student
newspaper. Her major interests were in sports.
After returning to Alaska
she obtained a job at a local TV station as sportscaster for a brief time in
1988, but then “eloped” to marry her long standing boy friend Todd. This event
was also somewhat unusual for the “family values” and devout Christian
principles she professes. Husband Todd explained that they had a bad fishing
season and wanted to spare the family the expense of “a white wedding,” which is
not entirely believable. Wedding expenses are the responsibility of the bride’s
father rather than of the groom’s and Papa Heath was a high school teacher rather
than fisherman. Kaylene Johnson explained the situation as follows,
“On August 29, 1988 Sarah and Todd were
supposed to meet Heather [Sarah’s older sister] and her friends at the [State]
fair, but they never showed. They had decided to elope.
The magistrate at
the Palmer courthouse informed the young couple that they would need witnesses
for the marriage ceremony, so they walked across the street to the Pioneer
Home, a state-run nursing home for seniors. Two volunteers, one of them in a
wheelchair and the other supported by a walker, looked on as Sarah Heath
officially became Sarah Palin.”
To elope is one thing but to be unaware that witnesses are
needed for a marriage ceremony shows a considerable lack of general
information. One also wonders why her parents, with whom she was supposedly
close, were apparently not informed. For some time the young couple lived with
Heather but by April of 1989 their first child, Track, had arrived and they
moved into an apartment with Todd taking a job for British Petroleum (BP) on Alaska’s
North Slope in addition to his summer fishing business. It has been suggested
that Track might not have been born premature but on schedule and this might
have been the real reason for the hasty marriage. As we know a similar scenario
is playing out with daughter Bristol
at this time.
As far as religion is concerned,
Sarah had been baptized in the Catholic faith as a baby but her mother, Sally, had
needed “a more compassionate God” and the family joined the Wasilla Assembly of
God. As a result Sarah “began to feel connected in a soulful way, to a deep
river within her, one that was fed by a power completely outside and beyond her,”
according to Kaylene Johnson. We are told, furthermore, that at age 12 while
“attending Bible camp, she asked to be baptized. She wanted to make a public
statement of faith, one that showed she had committed her life to Christ.” This
was accomplished by the pastor immersing her in the chilly waters of BeaverLake, and Sarah’s mother and
siblings followed suit.
I am mentioning these tidbits
because we are talking about the character of a person who might become
president of the United States.
Her father, a strict disciplinarian and rugged out-doors individual with
hobbies of hunting and fishing, was, nevertheless, unable to curb Sarah’s
“unbending, unapologetic, streak of stubbornness.” “The rest of the kids, I
could force them to do something, but with Sarah, there was no way. From a
young age she had a mind of her own. Once she made up her mind, she didn’t
change it;” Chuck Heath supposedly said about his daughter. This may have been
so but Ms. Johnson also says that Sarah was an avid reader who analyzed every
word in the newspapers and preferred non-fiction over Nancy Drew books. In view
of her uneven college career and the knowledge she displayed in her interviews
with Katie Couric she seems to have dropped this habit in adolescence.
With husband Todd away at his work
for the oil company, Sarah raised the children and eventually became the hockey
mom. But she also attended aerobics classes at a local gym in which the mayor
of Wasilla, John Stein, and its police chief, Irl Stambaugh, participated. This
planted the seed in Sarah’s mind that she might want to run for city council.
The city of Wasilla was
incorporated in 1974 and consisted of 400 hundred inhabitants at the time. By
1992, when Sarah launched her political career it had grown to about 5,600 and
the little city served mainly as a bedroom community for nearby Anchorage.
Her aerobics partners supported her
application and she served from 1992-1996 on the city council. But her sponsors
soon became disenchanted with her. She did not go along with the wishes of her
elders and by 1994 she agitated for term limits on the mayor’s tenure. With the
battle cry of “three terms are enough” and “the need for new leadership” she
ran for the mayor’s position. The town was still growing to some extent, and
the Alaska Republican Party had been looking for “fresh faces.” Sarah, who
could be quite charming, fit the bill and for the first time national issues,
such as abortion and gun control, were introduced into
the race, rather than the usual local concerns about infrastructure.
She won the contest in 1996 and
immediately dismissed most, if not all of the incumbents including the police
chief. They were replaced with less experienced Palin friends and loyalists,
including a deputy administrator who did most of the actual work. This did not
sit right with some of the locals and a recall petition was being discussed. In
addition, the police chief sued Palin for wrongful termination. Legal
proceedings lasted seven years, costing the city a pretty penny, and at the end
it was decided that she had been within her legal right because city
functionaries serve at the mayor’s pleasure.
Her “fiscally conservative” stance is
a fiction. She took over a city free of debt in 1996 but by 2002, when her two
terms were up, Wasillians found themselves saddled with a debt of $22 million,
which has not yet been fully paid off. It was mainly due to a sports complex
which was built on land the city didn’t own and this also led to litigation.
Foresight and checking facts before signing contracts are apparently also not
part of Sarah Palin’s make-up, because she repeated the pattern as governor.
In the last year of her second term
as mayor she ran for Lt. Governor of the state but was defeated. Nevertheless,
the Governor, Frank Murkowski, rewarded her with a choice appointment as Ethics
Supervisor of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. It was a plum job
with an annual salary of $122,400 but required residence in Juneau,
a fact that was not to Palin’s liking. Inasmuch as the ethics violations she
discovered were not addressed to her satisfaction she resigned a year later in
2004. But her stand against her own Republican party colleagues brought her to state-wide
attention and is the reason for her much touted image of a maverick who stands
up for what is right regardless of consequences.
This proved highly beneficial in
her run for governor in 2006 because her lack of genuine executive experience
could be masked by crusading for ethics in government, which had become a hot
topic. It needs to be pointed out that there was indeed an “old-boys network” in
Alaska, where one hand washed the
other, and investigations are currently under way on the state and federal
level.
Once in office she repeated what
she had done in Wasilla and fired incumbents. In at least one instance that of
the Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, personal reasons were involved.
This led to the “Troopergate” investigation in July of this year which was
mentioned in the October 1, issue. Although the McCain campaign tried to thwart
the release of the report prior to the national election and went all the way
to Alaska’s Supreme Court, the
effort failed. The report, made public last week, stated that the governor had abused
her power (a violation of an Alaska Executive Ethics Act statute) but found,
similar to the Wasilla situation, that no laws were broken.
This affair showed that Palin is
not truthful because she still claims to have been vindicated. Telling a
half-truth is not an isolated incident in her career, but a pattern. In her
acceptance speech of the vice presidential nomination, which she read with
great aplomb, but had been written by Bush speech writer Mathew Scully, she
said at least two things which stretched the truth. One had to do with Senator
McCain’s recently discovered dislike of congressional earmarks. Governor Palin
did not have such scruples and had lobbied the federal legislators for earmarks
even as mayor, which had been unheard of before. This is where the famous
“Bridge to Nowhere” comes in.
The airport for the city of Ketchikan
is located on GravinaIsland
and the good people of Ketchikan
thought that it might be appropriate to have a bridge connecting it to the
mainland, rather than have the ferry service, especially when one considers Alaska’s
long and hard winters. But the island has only about 50 residents and it was
this fact which the media harped on. Initially Congress was willing to pay for
the bridge but with McCain’s crusade against earmarks the project was
cancelled. Palin had been for the bridge when the money was coming in, but when
it dried up she said in the mentioned speech, that she had told Washington
“Thanks, but no thanks” and that she had given the allocated money back. This
was untrue because she had kept the money and used it for other purposes. The
sale of the governor’s jet on e-Bay, which she announced at the same time, also
didn’t stand up to scrutiny. She did put it up on e-Bay but nobody bought it
and it was finally sold elsewhere at a loss.
Her Wasilla fiscal profligacy has
already been mentioned but there is still one aspect from her mayoral days
which shows her budget priorities. Among other items, she cut the budget for:
the library book purchasing fund, animal control fund, summer recreation
programs, early intervention services, police department public relations fund,
and children’s shelter. She added funds for: defending against wrongful
termination lawsuit, the mentioned land grab for the sports complex,
redecorating the City Hall, the lease of an SUV and improvements for the
Wasilla airport. The latter item is especially glaring because the AnchorageInternationalAirport
is only an hour’s drive distant and connects to all the major cities of Alaska
as well as the mainland. The Wasilla airport had a total of 479 passenger boardings during the past 8 years, with 384 in 2006 when
Sarah was campaigning for governor.
Mrs. Palin also stretched the truth
considerably when she repeatedly stated that “We’re building a nearly 40
billion natural gas pipeline;” a claim McCain echoed in Wednesday’s debate. It
is true that she has signed a contract to build it, but the oil companies which
are supposed to provide the gas have not yet signed off on it. In addition the
pipeline goes through Canadian First Nations’ land. There have as yet not been
any negotiations with the Indians, and these can take years, before a
settlement is reached. When the actual construction will start and what the
final cost will be is anybody’s guess. The only certainty is that it will be
vastly more expensive than is currently projected.
Although the Palins would qualify
for Obama’s promised income tax cut they have done very well and have accumulated
assets estimated at $1.2 millions. These include their home on LakeLucille with the floatplane moored
on the dock, as well as several land parcels. Todd Palin is not sure whether
snowmobiling is his hobby or a business because he has taken expenses off from their
income tax. The couple has also claimed tax deductions for their travel with
the children, and Sarah received a per diem while working at home rather than
at the official residence in Juneau.
In view of her national exposure the tax returns are currently examined by attorneys
and the Palins will probably have to pay back taxes with interest. But as
mentioned above they can afford it.
Finally Alaskans have another
problem with Todd. He acts as “shadow governor,” and has been the main agent in
the firing of the Police Commissioner, which led to the mentioned “Troopergate”
investigation. But this is just the beginning. This particular saga continues
in Alaska at this time and an additional
investigation may be starting which deals with the firing of another state
employee who had run afoul of Todd. Relevant e-mails have been demanded to be made
public but the governor claimed “executive privilege” which would allow her to
withhold the information. But since Todd was routinely copied in on these
messages, and he is a private citizen rather than a government employee, this
excuse will not work. The story is currently unfolding but the promised
“transparency in government” has obviously gone out of the window. All of this
has led to a decrease of her popularity even in Alaska.
The picture of Sarah Palin which
has emerged is far from reassuring. Her Christian values seem to be mainly
limited to concerns for the unborn but the principles of Charis (A favor done without expectation of return. Unmerited,
unearned favor and the joy which results therefrom), Aletheia (truth as opposed to falsehood) and Agape (brotherly rather than sexual love), as expressed in the Gospel
of John, seem to be Greek to her even in English translation. Mercy and
forgiveness also seem to be in short supply. She comes across as a driven,
restless, opinionated, stubborn, power hungry woman of savvy intelligence but
little learning who can also be vindictive and who hides her ignorance on
matters of national importance by folksy charming mannerisms. In addition, just
as our current president, she believes that she has a direct line to the Lord. When
one combines these traits with what we know about Senator McCain we have every
right to be seriously concerned about a possible McCain-Palin administration.
Although Obama is currently ahead in the polls
these number can, as has been mentioned, not be trusted. The race factor does
play a role and irregularities in voter registrations, which largely benefit
the Democrats, have come to light in a number of states. When one adds to this the
allegation that the Obama campaign has received illegal financial contributions
from abroad, we can be assured that the next two and a half weeks on the
campaign trail will be lively indeed. To make matters worse, a late October
surprise in form of some external event, which might benefit the national
security credentials of McCain, can also not be ruled out. To top it off there will
be massive problems with electronic voting machines on November 4. If an
Obama-Biden victory were to be close, voter fraud will be alleged and the election
result may again be tied up in the courts as in 2000.
The question now is: to whom will
Americans entrust their and their children’s future? There are only two choices
and the election outcome will tell us a great deal about the American people. This
will be discussed in the November 8 issue.
November 8, 2008
AUDACITY OF HOPE
In the past six weeks we have
witnessed not only one but two tectonic shifts of world plates. In September
came the stock market collapse with the attendant ripple effect of a world-wide
recession and in this week the stunning victory of Barack Obama over John McCain.
To call the Obama victory historic is actually an understatement of his
achievement. Let us remember: when he wanted to attend the Democratic Convention
in Los Angeles eight years ago he couldn’t get a floor pass because he was not a
delegate; four years ago he gave the keynote speech at the Convention and this
year he was not only nominated for the Presidency but as of Tuesday he is
President-elect of the United States.
While this trajectory is by itself highly
unusual, the fact that the election of a mulatto to America’s highest office
was hoped for not only by Americans of African descent but by a wide swath of
the American people of all ethnic, religious and other factions which make up our
country, is unheard of. What Obama has done was to permanently bury racial
stereotypes. Hitler’s malignant ideology of Aryan intellectual superiority was once
more proven wrong; not by wishful thinking or propaganda but by example. Obama
actually demonstrated the biologic principle of “hybrid vigor,” which I learned
in High School during the Nazi era. The point was made, however, at the time that
this did not apply to human beings. Nevertheless, as a Mischling in Nazi eyes,
I drew comfort from it and felt that when fate had decided to create one human
being from two different racial backgrounds one needed not to have to love the
one and despise the other but one could take up the challenge and build a
bridge between the two. For those who know the Hitler years only from hear-say
let me state unequivocally that having a Jewish grandfather in Nazi Germany was
just as unfortunate as having a Negro grandfather during the 1930s in America’s
South. One’s physical appearance might allow one to “pass” but the knowledge
and shame were deeply felt. Because of this personal history I have always felt
a certain mental kinship with those who were despised for no fault of their own
but merely on basis of social prejudice.
This attitude towards accepting and
utilizing both aspects of one’s genetic background does not necessarily come
easy but requires study and good will. Malcolm X, one of whose grandfathers had
been white, wrote in his autobiography, “I learned to hate every drop of that white
rapist’s blood that is in me.” It was understandable and drove him to join
Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims who advocated the “white devil” theory (Black
and White; June 1, 2008). But
even Malcolm changed his view during his jihad to Mecca
where he was confronted with genuine Muslim theology and saw that the Muslim
faith encompassed people of all races.
Obama was more fortunate by having
been a child during the violent phase of the civil rights struggle and he had
reaped some of the benefits of its outcome in form of the affirmative action
program which paved the way towards higher education for African- American
students. While the program allowed entry it did not ensure success and this
achievement was entirely due to his character and hard work. Many books will be
written about how Barack Obama became President-elect, and hopefully on January
20 President. The demographics of the electorate as well as the other factors
which contributed to his success will be analyzed in infinite detail and
contradictory opinions will be published, initially by journalists and
subsequently historians. It is too early to gauge the impact an Obama
presidency is likely to have on this country and the world but certain outlines
of the major contributing factors to the November 4 outcome are apparent.
Immediately after Obama had reached
the magic number of 270 electoral votes and Brit Hume on Fox News had recovered
slightly from the shock, he stated that we still don’t know who Barack Obama
really is. Well, no one fully “knows” another person, we don’t even completely understand
ourselves, but an attempt can be made. Those who say that they don’t know Obama
have not taken the trouble to read his books because they do reveal major
aspects of his personality and what he would like to accomplish. Furthermore,
they were not ghostwritten by Bill Ayres, as was proclaimed by a former Utah
Congressman a few days before the election. His books and most important speeches
are authentic because he has shown himself to be very eloquent, as for instance
in the Democratic Keynote address in 2004, and in his
speech on race on March 18, 2008
in Philadelphia.
We now have to look at the election
results from two points of view. First, what did Obama do right and second, what
was McCain’s fatal flaw. Obama clearly has a superior intellect and an affable
personality. This allowed him to attract, Gentile as well as Jewish, Chicago
community leaders who provided the base for his campaign. He then proceeded to
develop a superb organization; he remained cool and deliberate under fire and
had the ability to collect previously unimaginable sums of money for the
campaign. But there remains an additional major unsung hero, whose contribution
is not likely to be acknowledged. This is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright whom I
have already discussed in the mentioned June 1, as well as the July1 article
(Barack Obama’s Problems). But the relevant points bear repeating because
without having experienced the emotional impact of the BlackChurch, Obama’s turn from a
basically intellectual Deist outlook to one of genuine Christianity might not
have taken place. I emphasize genuine Christianity because this trait is
unfortunately rare in some evangelical circles who call themselves “born again
Christians.”I shall return to this
point later in the discussion of the reasons for Senator McCain’s defeat.
During Obama’s days as community
organizer on Chicago’s South Side
he was told that if he wanted church support for his efforts he really ought to
belong to one. The marked emotionalism of black lower and middle class churches
may well have clashed with his white middle class upbringing but it was
different in Pastor Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. This was a
microcosm of American society where blacks of all social classes met with some
white folks and where emotions were shared by both races. Obama had found a
home for his soul. He disregarded some of the more egregious outbursts by the
pastor and wrote them off in the same way as “rhetorical flourishes” as those of
his running mate, Joe Biden, during the later stages of the campaign.
The snippets of the pastor’s
performance which we were treated to endlessly on TV were obviously a
caricature of the man. What has been labeled as anti-Americanism was a
condemnation of American policies. This was justifiable unless one holds the
“right or wrong my country” view which has brought us the unnecessary wars we
are currently saddled with. Likewise his “hate speech” is also in the eye of
the beholder. When he held American policies co-responsible for the events of
9-11 he had plenty of company from academia as well as of the Republican icon
the Reverend Jerry Falwell. Furthermore, by the same token our “Christian”
denouncers do not take the pastor’s role models, the biblical prophets, into
account. They did not mince words either when they condemned the Jewish power
structure of their day and neither did Jesus in regard to scribes and
Pharisees. But speaking truth to power was dangerous then and still is. Obama
had to divorce himself from TrinityChurch
because otherwise the media would have destroyed his candidacy.
Obama described what attracted him to
Trinity in Dreams from My Father, “it
was this capacious talent of his [Wright’s] – this ability to hold together, if
not reconcile, the conflicting strains of black experience – upon which
Trinity’s success had ultimately been built.”It is probably not too far fetched to think that this became the goal
for Obama’s political life without limiting it to the “black experience.”
Furthermore, the motto of the church, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically
Christian,” which was the answer to Chicago’s
Black Muslim community, would also have appealed to a spirit searching for an
identity that was difficult to come by in racially and religiously divided America.
As Obama tells it, the first
service he attended at Trinity in the 1980s featured the pastor’s “Audacity of
Hope” sermon. It not only brought tears to his eyes but led him to be baptized
into the Christian faith. It may not have happened exactly the way he described
it in his book but here is an excerpt of the sermon how Obama remembered it. After
having reminded the congregation of the biblical Hannah, from the book of
Samuel, who had been barren but never lost her faith in the Lord, the Reverend
talked about a picture another pastor friend of his had seen in a museum and
which was called Hope. Obama wrote,
“The painting
depicts a harpist, ‘Reverend Wright explained,’ a woman who at first glance
appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and
see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp
reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn to the scene below,
down in the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the
drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.
It is this world,
a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of
Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need,
apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere . . . That’s the
world! On which hope sits!”
Obama had seen and felt this type of world in Indonesia
as well as America.
Then the Reverend pointed to the picture again, “Hope! Like Hannah that harpist
is looking upwards, a few faint notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She
dares to hope.. . .She has the audacity . . .to make music . . . and praise God . . . on
the one string . . . she has left!” This was America’s
black experience articulated and the Audacity of Hope became not only the title
of Obama’s second book, which laid out his political program, but also the
obligation for his future life’s work. A run for the highest office in the
land, while still being only a first term senator, must be regarded as either
foolhardy or truly an audacity of hope.
He needed
every ounce of it not only during the primaries against the overwhelming
favorite, Hillary Clinton, but especially in the run against a war hero whose
level of experience he could not match. The campaign got increasingly ugly and
especially in the final weeks, when it became apparent that Sarah Palin’s sheen
had worn off, the wildest accusations were hurled against him. He was denounced
as a “baby killer” for his stance on abortions, anti-American because of past
associations with Pastor Wright and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, and ultimately as
a socialist who “will take your money and give it to others.”
Credit for this particular
development goes to Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, who
became the poster child of the McCain campaign and a darling of the Republican
media. After a campaign rally in early October, Obama had taken a stroll
shaking hands in Wurzelbacher’s neighborhood. The latter introduced himself as
a plumber who was thinking about starting his own business but wondered how he
would fare under Obama’s tax plan which would raise taxes on individuals and
businesses. Obama explained that if Wurzelbacher made less than $250,000 he
would get a tax break but if he made more, his taxes would be raised somewhat
because, “I think when you spread the wealth it’s good for everybody.” The
words “spread the wealth” ignited a wildfire on the Internet; they were then used
by McCain in the last debate, and subsequently became the mantra to frighten
the unwary American public away from this “socialist.” In a telephone TV
interview a news-lady confronted Joe Biden with Karl Marx’s, “from each
according to his means to each according to his needs” and asked why this did
not equate with Obama’s “spreading the wealth.” All Biden could answer was,
“you must be kidding;” but “no” she insisted, this was a serious question.
Biden tried to explain Obama’s tax plan but the damage was done and the
interviewer became another darling of Republicans.
As usual the facts got lost in
favor of polemic. Mr. Wurzelbacher does not have a plumber’s license, is in
debt, in no position to start a business of his own and would actually get a
tax break under Obama’s plan. Furthermore, the fact that we already have a
progressive tax system which exacts higher taxes from the well to-do, than from
those in lower income brackets, and that the Obama tax plan would only bring
the top bracket to the level of what it was under Clinton (39.6%) was not
mentioned. Neither was the fact that under the Republican’s patron saint, Ronald
Reagan, it was 50% and that the most progressive income redistribution occurred
during the Eisenhower as well as Kennedy years when the top tax bracket was at
91%. Anyone with good will and accesses to the Internet can readily check these
figures at http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-20080107.pdf
Although the polls favored Obama many
of us were still very concerned about the election outcome because we did not
know to what extent it be would influenced by the race factor. As mentioned in
previous installments, people may tell the pollster that they would vote for
Obama to show that they are not prejudiced but elect someone else when the
chips are down. This has been called the Bradley effect. The African-American Tom
Bradley who ran for governor of California
in 1982 had been leading in the polls by a comfortable margin but lost the
election.
On Monday the 3rd of
this month, all the polls predicted an Obama victory with an average of 6
points but there was considerable scatter and his margin had narrowed in the
last few days. The Huffington Post then alerted me to another website which is
not widely known at this time but is likely to figure prominently in the
future. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
predicted on Monday evening Obama’s victory chances as 98.9%. The projection
for electoral votes was: 348.6 vs. 189.4 in favor of Obama and for the popular
vote 52.3% vs. 46.2%. The final results are not yet available but as of
Thursday they were: 364 electoral votes for Obama and 173 for McCain; the
popular vote was 53% vs. 46%.
The person behind this feat of
prognostication is Nate Silver a 30 year old Chicago
resident who made his fame and fortune by predicting the success of baseball
teams and players. His website explains the method for projecting political
campaign results.
“Firstly, we assign each poll a weighting based on that
pollster's historical track record, the poll's sample size, and the recentness
of the poll. More reliable polls are weighted more heavily in our averages.
Secondly, we include a regression estimate based on the
demographics in each state among our 'polls', which helps to account for
outlier polls and to keep the polling in its proper context.
Thirdly, we use an inferential process to compute a rolling
trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled
recently and make them ‘current’.
Fourthly, we simulate the election 10,000 times for each
site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral
outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952. The
simulation further accounts for the fact that similar states are likely to move
together, e.g. future polling movement in states like Michigan and Ohio, or
North and South Carolina, is likely to be in the same direction.”
He updates this process on a daily
basis and thus comes up with the most reliable results. It is obvious that Mr.
Silver is going to be in high demand around the world from now on and he will
be able to name his price.
There are several reasons why
McCain lost. Republicans blame the economic disaster which befell us during
September but this is an excuse. The major reason was that in contrast to
Obama’s campaign, which was highly organized and unflappable, that of McCain was
characterized by lacking an overriding theme until Joe the Plumber came to the
rescue. The major problem resided in Senator McCain’s character. As mentioned
in the previous installment, he is impulsive and shoots from the hip. This made
him dash from one campaign theme to another, suspend his campaign to rush to
Washington to fix a financial crisis which was not in his power to fix, and
most of all, in the choice of the inexperienced Sarah Palin as his running
mate. This alienated even prominent Republicans who came out publicly in favor
of Obama. Palin was the albatross around McCain’s neck and he can blame his
campaign staff for it.
I have discussed Governor Palin in
the previous installment but some aspects are worth repeating because they deal
with the future of the Republican Party. McCain was reported to have wanted
either Senator Lieberman, Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota
or former Governor Ridge from Pennsylvania
as his running mate. But the Republican base, as crafted under Bush advisor
Karl Rove, demanded an evangelical anti-abortion candidate. Neither, Senator Lieberman,
a progressive Jew, nor the pro-choice Catholic Ridge, fit this bill. Governor
Pawlenty was also pro-choice and as such ineligible. Since the campaign wanted
to attract disaffected Hillary voters the choice of a suitable woman candidate became
limited to Sarah Palin who had endeared herself to conservative Republicans in
2007. While they were on an Alaska
cruise they visited Juneau, were
feted by the governor and were overcome by her charm. Instead of sticking to
his own choices McCain allowed himself to be persuaded to pick Palin,
especially since time was getting short. The initial enthusiasm which greeted
the newcomer from Alaska soon
wore off and towards the end of October even McCain campaign insiders were
complaining about her.
It is true that in view of President Bush’s unpopularity and
the dissatisfaction with Republicans in general, Senator McCain had a very
difficult job on his hands and he may have lost the election even without
Palin’s help. Nevertheless, his public image might have been less tarnished
than what he has allowed it to become during the last weeks of October.
The Republican Party is now
confronted with an identity crisis. The Bush administration, which relied on
neoconservatives and evangelical “born-again” Christians, has lost the support
of independents and even some Republicans. If the party decides to tie its
future to Sarah Palin, as is currently hinted, it is bound to go down in defeat
again because the assumptions underlying her candidacy are fundamentally
flawed. A Christianity that is limited to church going, not allowing abortions
under any circumstances, and showing intolerance of people it doesn’t like for
whatever reason, does not meet Jesus’ standards. The Palin supporters should
take John 13:35 to heart and not just mouth but practice it: “By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” But to
those who quote this rule in order to justify sexual desires it needs to be
pointed out that the word used for love is Agape,
brotherly love, rather than Eros.
Senator McCain has redeemed himself
in his concession speech where he came across as a gracious person who promised
to help the Obama administration in any way he could. When I watched him giving
the speech I got the sense that in his heart of hearts he was quietly relieved
at the result for not having to assume the burden of office in a country so
deeply troubled and divided by the campaign. A McCain-Palin administration
could not possibly have found acceptance by Democrats. We would have seen angry
confrontations between the legislators of the two parties which would have
stalled all efforts towards reasonable solutions of our massive internal and
foreign problems.
While McCain looked composed,
resigned, and possibly relieved, during his speech, Obama was far from gleeful.
The audience in Chicago’s Grant
Park, the scene of the 1968 Convention riot, was literally jumping with joy and
tears were running down even of Jesse Jackson’s face, who had not been one of
Obama’s friends. But the President-elect’s demeanor was utterly serious, with
hardly a smile. I got the feeling that he may have actually felt stunned by the
magnitude of the event that had just transpired and he had suddenly become
aware of the weight of the world that had descended on his shoulders. The
speech itself was grateful and sober. He acknowledged the difficulties the
country will be facing in the next years; that everybody will need to put their
shoulder to the wheel and will have to sacrifice something in order for us to
emerge from the current difficulties. In regard to foreign affairs, and in the concluding
sentence, he said,
“And to all those watching tonight
from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled
around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular,
but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We
will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to
all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight
we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the
might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of
our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. . . .
This is our time, to put our people back to work and open
doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause
of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth,
that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are
met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will
respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we
can.”
People
in most countries around the world rejoiced, but Mevdevev-Putin felt obliged to
send a warning shot across the bow of an Obama administration in spite of the
fact that he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. They should be grateful for the
election outcome because a McCain administration with revived neoconservatives,
an impulsive president, and an incompetent vice-president would have been a
nightmare.
This
leaves us with the question: how will President Obama govern? Using past
performance as a guide he is likely to model himself after Lincoln whose image
he evoked when he announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007 in front
of the Old State Capitol Building in Springfield Illinois. This was the place
where Lincoln had delivered his
famous “House Divided” speech 149 years earlier. If Obama follows the pattern,
his cabinet will include the most experienced people regardless of party
affiliation and he will make every effort to “reach across the aisle” in order
to achieve bipartisan support for his major pieces of legislation. We have to
hope and pray that he will be successful in this effort and that he will not
have to share the fate of his illustrious predecessor. Regardless of current
good-feeling among the majority there are also some misguided haters and there
are too many guns in irresponsible hands. Lincoln
was cut down in the hour of his triumph. Had John Wilkes Booth not murdered him,
the South would have been spared its humiliation, there would not have been a
need for the Ku Klux Klan, and instead reconciliation between the races might
have begun. If some individual lunatic or organization were to follow the
example set by Booth the country and the world would be in dire trouble. For
this not to happen we truly need the Audacity of Hope that our country has
permanently changed for the better on November 4.
December 1, 2008
BUSH AND OBAMA A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
As the Bush
presidency is winding down and Obama’s is about to start we already see that
there is a stark difference between these two individuals in the way they
approach their job. Let us look first at our current president and then try to
discern the forces that shaped the next one.
Although President Bush’s history
is abundantly known by now, it is worth while to point out that he seems to
have been drafted into the presidency rather than really having desired it for
specific reasons. He had sort of drifted into his political life, first as
governor of Texas and then into
the White House, without a clear plan of what he wanted to accomplish. Having
been born into a family of political high achievers it was his birthright and
he conducted himself accordingly. Strenuous effort never seems to have been his
forte. Even during military service he didn’t exert himself in the Air National
Guard and was, for practical purposes, AWOL for a significant period of time.
His subsequent studies at Yale earned him an MBA degree, but they apparently
did not provide him significant information about how business really runs
because he was unsuccessful in all his ventures and had to be bailed out by
friends and family.
Although alcohol abuse was in part
responsible, there was a deeper characterologic problem which became apparent
during his years in office when this was no longer the case. He simply was not
interested in the onerous daily work grind all of us have to endure but
preferred the perks of office rather than its duties. As such his time in the
Oval Office, especially during the first six years, was rather limited and he
preferred the fresh air of Crawford or Camp David. This
had the disastrous consequences for the country which we are currently
confronted with.
His guru, Karl Rove, persuaded the
public that Bush is a strong leader and commander-in chief who kept the country
safe from attack after 9/11. This led to victory at the polls in 2004 but was
far from the truth. The attacks of 9/11, which are still the major reason for
our current dilemma, may well have been avoidable had we had a president who
had regarded his job as a sacred trust rather than as a means to better enjoy
life. The August 6, 2001
national security brief which told him that Osama bin-Laden intended to attack
the continental US did not in the least interfere with the vacation in
Crawford. There is no evidence that our president contacted the heads of the
CIA and FBI to find out what they really knew about the situation and had asked
them to be kept up-to date on suspicious activities inside the country. Instead
he devoted himself to the life of a rancher and brush-cutter. This amounted to
criminal negligence.
The response to the 9/11 disaster
was also totally inappropriate. Instead of launching a comprehensive
investigation into the causes of the tragedy and establishing a strategy to
destroy al Qaeda, he allowed himself to be persuaded to use the occasion to
enact the utopian neoconservative agenda. First Afghanistan,
then Iraq and
thereafter the rest of the Middle East would be
democratized by means of our superb military forces; cheap oil would flow in
unlimited quantities, and “The Only Superpower” would rule the world for the
rest of the century. Bush would be hailed as the Augustus of the new Rome
and his place in history would be firmly established. This was the fantasy he
was presented with by his “advisors” and to which he whole-heartedly
subscribed.
That this was utter lunacy, as has
become apparent since, is not just hindsight but was predictable by anyone with
a sense of history and an understanding of human behavior. My articles written
on this site in October 2001 (September 11th), December 1, 2001 (War on Terrorism) December 1, 2002 (Wanted: Good
Judgment) and January 1, 2003
(Deconstructing America) are evidence that it was only sloth and mental
blindness by President Bush which led us into our current difficulties. The
country at large did not see it and the people succumbed to propaganda until
hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans, became a wake-up call. The president was again on
vacation, the federal response was totally inadequate and when Bush did visit
the scene several days later he congratulated the head of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) with the famous words, “Good job Brownie!” The country
became finally aroused and the 2006 elections brought a narrow Democratic
majority to the Congress. Nevertheless, the margin was too slim for Congress to
be able to work effectively and the presidential pen could veto any proposed
legislation. But towards the middle of 2007 Mr. Bush did begin to take his
office somewhat more seriously because the end of the line and the verdict of
history began to loom.
He finally agreed to a belated
effort towards a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and promised a
solution before leaving office. That this promise could not be kept was
likewise obvious to anyone who has followed the situation in that part of the
world (December 1, 2007
Annapolis Déjà vu) but it was at least a recognition of an unacceptable
situation. The timing was, however, such that even a more energetic follow-up
effort by our president would not have had much impact because neither Ehud
Olmert nor Mahmoud Abbas had enough of their respective people on their side to
make the necessary compromises.
During this year our president
seems to have spent somewhat more time at his desk but he again proved himself
clueless when the financial crisis hit in September. Senator McCain attempted
to rally him into action by having the meeting in the White House on the 25th
but that degenerated into pandemonium with Bush unable to assert control. In
sum and substance George W Bush is from all appearances a likeable person but
he should never have been elected to the presidency of this country for which
he was characterologically unfit. He did not necessarily lack the intelligence
but his fundamental weakness was a lack of interest in the requirements of his
job. He made no effort to read important first-hand material but relied on
predigested opinions which were presented orally and then made his decisions on
a “gut level,” which at certain times was regarded as the voice of the Lord,
and he subsequently obstinately adhered to them even in the face of obvious
failure.
Barack Obama is cut from completely
different cloth as his campaign and the current effort toward creating his
administration show. While Bush is intellectually lazy Obama reads voraciously,
carefully investigates all sides of a given problem and learns from experience.
This may be the most important difference between these two individuals.
President Bush has left his successor an unmitigated mess that could not have
been foreseen eight years ago. From a budget surplus and a world at relative
peace Obama is now confronted with two wars, which are difficult to end, an
unheard of budget deficit, and an economy in serious recession bordering on
depression. The financial crisis and associated economic stagnation is far from
over. As yet we do not know how far unemployment will really rise and the
specter of the great depression of the 1930s haunts decision makers.
This brings us to the question:
What makes Barack Obama tick? He is hailed as the Messiah by some, condemned as
the Anti-Christ by others, while the most commonly applied label by his
detractors who are of the secular variety is: left liberal extremist. I don’t
believe that any of these labels apply and they reveal only the mindset of the
admirers and accusers rather than telling us something about Barry Obama, Barry
Oseto and now Barack Obama. Our names and what we do with them identify us. At
birth his father gave the newborn his own name which would be appropriate if he
had been born in Africa but it immediately presented a
problem to his mother and her parents. Obama is bad enough in America
but whoever heard of a little kid called Barack. So Barry was the appropriate
solution and he grew up with that name. When the mother married the Indonesian
Lolo Oseto, he adopted the boy who was then enrolled in school as Barry Oseto.
But that marriage didn’t last either and when Barry was returned to his
grandparents he became Obama again.
I don’t know at what point Barry
decided to become Barack again and assume the full responsibility that goes
with it, but that it was a conscious decision with an eye to the future of that
I have no doubt. The desire to become president had grown at some point from
being a fantasy, to a wish and then a goal and in this transition there was no
room for a cuddly Barry. James Earl Carter Jr. had become the 39th president of
the republic and had insisted to be known by the folksy Jimmy, but this was a
bad precedent because the office of the presidency should not be brought down to
that level. The office demands respect and neither a Jimmy nor a Barry,
especially when one’s last name is Obama, would do. With his birth name of Barack
Obama he could craft an identity that is truthful and recognizes the African
component of his being.
After graduating from Columbia
the question arose how this identity would fit into the American mainstream.
Information on how he arrived at the decision to become a community organizer
is sketchy at this time. In Dreams from
my Father he merely said on page 133, “In 1983, I decided to become a
community organizer.” This statement immediately brought to mind one written in
1925, “Ich aber beschlossPolitikerzu werden
(But I decided to become a politician. Mein Kampf p.225). In Hitler’s case the decision resulted
from not having learned a profession, therefore, no job prospects and the
bitter resentment over the lost war with the subsequent economic disaster. For
many Germans, including Hitler, the fault lay with the Marxists who had
sabotaged the war effort and thereby had stabbed the undefeated army in the
back. He would raise Germany
by sheer dint of will, from her defeat to glory which could only be done by
ruthlessly eliminating Jewish-Bolshevism. Ausrotten (extirpate at the
roots) was required and this could only be accomplished by a strong leader with
autocratic powers. He would become that leader.
How does Obama fit into this
scenario and what was his professed intention? I now shall let him talk for
himself. After he stated his decision he wrote,
“There wasn’t much
detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way. When
classmates in college asked me just what a community organizer did, I couldn’t
answer them directly. Instead I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in
the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty
deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the
country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say.
Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
That’s what I’ll
do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots.For change.”
Corsi’s book The Obama Nation, which I have referred to in previous articles,
shows that Mr. Obama had allowed himself some poetic license because there was
a history to “community organizing” and its Godfather was Saul Alinsky. This is
a fascinating story, albeit not widely known, except for internet aficionados
who love to peek behind the scenes. When TV pundits profess surprise and
amazement that Obama would offer the job of Secretary of State to his rival
Hillary Clinton they don’t know what Obama really is and that the two of them
have a common denominator who happens to be the above mentioned Saul Alinsky. Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in
political science was entitled "‘There Is Only the Fight...’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."
She had met Alinsky at a school outing to a Methodist church
where Alinsky was giving a talk and became intrigued with his work. He offered
her a job after graduation in his organization but she decided instead to go
first to Yale. “’His offer of a place
in the new institute was tempting,’ she wrote in the end notes to the thesis,
“’but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I
need three years of legal rigor.’” http://www.gopublius.com/HCT/HillaryClintonThesis.html
provides the major outline of the thesis that had become somewhat embarrassing
to the Clintons’ at their run for the White House in 1992 and was kept sealed
at Wellesley. At Yale she met the handsome, charming Bill Clinton and community
organizing was shelved.
In 1969 when Hillary rejected
Alinsky’s offer Barry Oseto was still in elementary school in Jakarta
and he never met Alinsky because the latter died in 1972. It is, however,
extremely likely that Obama had read at least one of Alinsky’s books by 1983
because the language used in his decision paragraph which is quoted above comes
straight out of Alinsky. Saul Alinsky is no longer a household name but he was
widely loved, feared and hated from the 1930s to his death. Apart from his
books Reveille for Radicals (1946)
and Rules for Radicals (1971) I found
the 1972 Playboy interview, which can be found on http://www.progress.org/archive/alinsky.htm,
most informative. To understand the man and, therefore, the concept of
community organizing it is essential to read this interview because the books
are in part redundant. Although the narrative was probably at least in part
self-serving, it imparts a picture of a soul on fire with the ideal of bringing
truth, justice and brotherhood to the people regardless of the means, provided
they did not result in useless bloodshed.
Saul Alinsky, born 1909, was the
son of pious Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia’s
Lithuania late
in the 1890s. The father, who regularly beat little Saul for various
misdemeanors, tried to eke out a meager living as a tailor in the “slum of
slums” of Chicago and taught him
the first valuable lesson for life. After his beatings he always said, "You ever do that again and you know what's going to
happen to you." Usually the boy just skulked away in tears but one
day he got his courage up and said, "No, what's
going to happen?" The father’s jaw
dropped in surprise and he was nonplussed. The boy realized at that
moment that, “Power is not what the enemy has but what you think he has.” It
may not have happened in quite that way but whenever the insight came, it
proved to be the cornerstone for his future life of rebellion against authority.
Life in the poverty of the slum was
tough but Saul became resilient. The parents divorced when he was 18, the
father moved away and never again provided even the rudiments of support for
the family. But Alinsky used his street-smarts to get by. After having finished
college he received a social science fellowship in criminology which he used to
write a dissertation on Al Capone’s mob. He spent about two years living with
the mob and learning its ways but he never finished the dissertation. Instead
he got a job at the Illinois State Division of
Criminology, where he worked with juvenile delinquents and thereafter as a
criminologist at the State Prison in Joliet.
These
were the experiences which provided the foundation for his future work with the
underprivileged. He came to disdain academia because the professors, who hailed
from a different social stratum, didn’t really know what they were talking
about and he compared the efforts of sociologists with, “giving an enema to someone
with diarrhea.” After criminology had become unattractive, he gravitated to the
labor movement and began to work with the leader of the C.I.O. (Congress of
Industrial Organizations), John L Lewis, who provided him with further insights
into how to organize the downtrodden. But he soon found that the goals of labor
were too limited by focusing only on better working conditions and he saw that these
were only one part of improving a rotten system. For genuine help, housing had
to be improved also and most of all the spirit of the disheartened people had
to be lifted. They had to be shown that they could do something by themselves
for themselves. From these ideas the concept of the “community organizer” was
born.
To see
the world as it is rather than as it should be, became the start towards making
a better one. Alinsky realized that people lived in isolation with everyone
nurturing their private grievances. The unions worked for better wages, the
churches provided resignation to fate with hope for the afterlife, while the
political parties were corrupt and fought each other to a standstill. It was
this fragmentation which bothered Alinsky and he worked to overcome it by
creating a “grassroots democracy.” His first major effort when he struck out on
his own was to organize the people living in Chicago’s Back of the Yards area slums
whose condition had not improved from those described in 1906 by Upton Sinclair
in his novel The Jungle, which deals
with America’s meat-packing industry. Alinsky being Jewish and the slum
dwellers Catholic obviously created a problem because for any effort to succeed
it had to have the blessing of the local churches. By deftly working on the
individual interests of the various parishes and initially playing one against
the other he succeeded to win them all and life began to improve for the people.
The same
model was then applied to working against segregation of the Negro people who
were even excluded from joining the unions in those days. He achieved major
successes but also became persona non grata for authorities and when he arrived
in Kansas City for instance he was promptly jailed. This did not bother
him because it enhanced his stature among the people he was working for and
gave him the time to organize his thoughts. He started writing his first book Reveille for Radicals while imprisoned.
As he mentioned in the Playboy interview he refused release at one point
because he was in the middle of a chapter and wanted to have the time to finish
it.
His
political outlook was thoroughly antifascist and he helped raise funds for the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. His type of work
obviously brought him together with communists and other Reds but he never
joined a political party because he hated dogma of any kind. If one wanted to put
the difference between Alinsky’s concept of community organization and
socialist- communistic or fascist party principles in a nutshell, one might say
that the latter create a power structure from the top down, which orders people
what they are supposed to do. The community organizer, on the other hand, first
listens to people’s concerns in a given neighborhood and then brings them
together regardless of who they are as to race, creed, political affiliation or
type of work, in order to form a common front to address a specific issue. Once
that particular issue has been satisfactorily resolved, communities move on to
other problems. While the mentioned political systems are authoritarian top
down, Alinsky’s model is democratic from the bottom up.
He saw
three groups of people: the Have-Nots, the Have-a-Little-and-Want-Mores,
and the Haves. The morality of these groups was one of rationalization. The
Haves want to keep what they regard as theirs and will obstruct change by all
the power at their disposal. The Have-Nots are
powerless but do have the numbers on their side. Using these numbers with
unorthodox tactics but remaining, barely, within the limits of the law, but at
times outside the rules of what is called common decency will get them into the
Have-a-Little-and-Want-More group until they can eventually join the Haves. The key aspect was tactics because to confront the
power structure head-on with guns, as was attempted in the late 1960s, is
suicidal. Other means would have to be devised for which only general rules could
be given because success depended on the situation that was encountered. The
most important aspect was the intelligence and flexibility of the organizer to
find another approach when the first one didn’t work. For Alinsky there was no
overarching plan, he went with the flow and let events dictate his next moves.
This exasperated conventional thinkers because they couldn’t pigeonhole him.
Alinsky
had no use for the way the youngsters in the 60’s wanted to make their
revolution. The middle-class youths who rebelled against their elders with
non-conformist conduct were, in his eyes, misguided. He, therefore, intended to
show them the proper way to channel their energies towards a successful outcome
of their desires. By the time the country’s cities were burning in the late
1960s he had decided to devote the next decade of his life to “organize the
middle-class.” He saw this large majority of the population, who lived in
Thoreau’s words, “lives of quiet desperation,” stuck in materialism without
spiritual sustenance, as the key to America’s restoration. The country was mired in Vietnam’s unwinnable war but Nixon’s “silent majority” was not
Republican and conservative as was implied at the time. It was silent only out
of frustration and an inability to effectively change the system. Alinsky
intended to show them how, but the project could never get off the ground
because he died in 1972.
One may
now feel that he was a crackpot who had failed to bring genuine change to the
country but that is not how he was seen at the time. The governor of Illinois and two-time presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, said
that Alinsky's aims "most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood,
tolerance, charity and the dignity of the individual." Perhaps his
greatest success was having obtained a grant from liberal millionaire Marshall
Field III, who provided funds to establish the “Industrial Areas Foundation.” This
Foundation became Alinsky's primary base of operation and a training facility
for young people in the art of community organization. The Foundation survived
Alinsky’s death and in due course of time led to November 4, 2008 when America
elected as its future president a person who had come through Alinsky’s school.
As mentioned earlier Obama had
decided to become a community organizer but didn’t know how to go about it. He
answered newspaper ads and Jerry Kellman (called Marty Kaufman in Obama’s Dreams from my Fathers) came
from Chicago to New
York to interview Obama for the job. Kellman had been
trained by Alinsky with Foundation money and he now wanted to organize Chicago’s
South Side black slum area. Although Jewish, like Alinsky, he didn’t have the latter’s
charisma and realized that in order to be successful in the black environment
he needed an intelligent, vigorous, young black male who sincerely wanted to do
good and was willing to work for the pittance the Foundation could provide.
Obama clearly was his man but he doubted that he would take the job.
Nevertheless, to Kellman’s surprise he accepted and as they say, “the rest is
history.”
We can now see why many people have
such a difficult time categorizing Obama into one of the conventional slots and
the best way to understand his actions up to now is when we view him as a
community organizer. He internalized Alinsky’s principles that: 1) Power is not
what the establishment has but what you think it has; and 2) do not meet your
opponent head on but outflank and eventually co-opt him. The first principle
gave him the courage to enter the presidential race as a first term senator,
which one might have regarded as arrogance, foolishness or hubris. But he had
learned how to deal with the power structure, which was in the first phase of the
campaign the formidable Clinton
machine. He knew that his chances in Primaries were less than Hillary’s because
they were relatively easy to control by the Democratic Party. This why his
initial efforts were aimed at those states where direct people to people
contact existed as in Caucus voting. His stunning success in Iowa
proved the point and so did his immediate subsequent loss in New
Hampshire. When he was about to win the nomination
the pundits and commentators as well as some Democratic Party members wanted
“red meat” in his speeches to annihilate the enemy, but that is not how a
community organizer proceeds. He knows that after victory he has to work with his
opponents and this can only be done if he has earned their respect rather than
by poisoning the water.
Obama has
now entered another phase which consists of organizing his cabinet and it is
apparent that he places experience and a wide variety of views above party
ideology. He thereby conducts himself in agreement with Alinsky’s
qualifications for a successful organizer. They are: “Curiosity,” which leads
to a continuous search for meaning; “Irreverence,” which shuns dogma and rebels
against any repression of free speech; “Imagination,” which seeks new solutions
to old problems; “A sense of humor,” which allows him to laugh even about his
own foibles; “A bit of a blurred vision of a better world,” which means that
although he works only on a small piece of the great mosaic that makes up our
world, he sees a vague outline of it and that keeps him going; “An organized
personality,” which keeps him rational in a sea of irrationality; “A well
integrated political schizoid,” by which is meant that although for political
purposes an issue has to be framed in polarizing 100% black and whiteterms, the organizer also knows that when it
comes to negotiations the difference frequently amounts to only 10% and these
can be successfully bridged. The last item is: “Ego.” It must not be confused
with egotism but consists of “unreserved confidence in one’s ability to do what
must be done.” The organizer has found his identity. He, therefore, does not
need to take refuge in ideologies and can bring the different viewpoints of
opposing groups of people to bear on a given problem.
When we
now compare how President Bush and President-elect Obama fare on these
principles, it is obvious that Obama passes while Bush would fail most of them.
But this also gives us a perspective of the future. The president-elect is
currently organizing his administration. In his first term he will devote
himself with the same energy to organizing the country and if he were to be
granted the opportunity to finish it and be re-elected for a second one he
would then try to organize the world on pragmatic principles. All we can do now
is to wish him good luck and hope that he will be able to bring at least some
of the needed reforms to fruition.
January 1, 2009
BARACK OBAMA’S CHALLENGE
When one considers the massive
problems the Bush administration is leaving in its wake the word “challenges”
might be regarded as more appropriate for the title. But there is an overriding
one which dwarfs all the others and will be discussed later. For now let us
look at the world Obama inherits.
The
catastrophic failures of the Bush-Cheney co-presidency are, with the exception
of his staunchest supporters, apparent to all. That Laura Bush would defend her
husband’s legacy is honorable and can be expected but why Condoleezza Rice
should believe that history will vindicate what is clearly the worst
performance in office of any president in recent history is less clear. As a
matter of fact I cannot think of a single president in American history who was
confronted with greater problems upon taking office.
It is
customary today to compare the country’s difficulties with those FDR found
thrust upon him in March of 1931, but this is only partially true. When Roosevelt
took over, the economy was in shambles but America
had a manufacturing industry, no appreciable foreign debt, and there was no
external threat. The rest of the world was at relative peace. The British
Empire, albeit tottering, was still intact and although Hitler had
taken over Germany
in January of that year, he needed 7 years to consolidate his power. Under
these circumstances Roosevelt could work out his
problems in peace, but let us also remember, that the great depression was ended
only when the country engaged in a massive arms buildup, in anticipation of
WWII, and that the stock market did not return to its pre-October 1929 level
until 1940.
Even
Abraham Lincoln, although confronted with the likelihood of a Civil War, had a
strong manufacturing base in the North and no foreign enemies. We have to go
all the way back to George Washington and Valley Forge
for an analogy when the emerging country had no internal financial resources,
its militia was confronted with a superior professional army, and only about a
third of its citizens supported the cause. Another third, the Loyalists, rooted
for the British and the rest hedged their bets to go with the eventual winner,
rather than risking life, limb and property. If France
had not come to the rescue the American experiment would have been stillborn in
those days.
So let us
look objectively at where America
stands at the beginning of this New Year, which will be far from happy for most
of us. On the domestic scene the most important aspect is that apart from the
manufacture of weapons and planes we hardly have any heavy industry which is
competitive on the world market. We have outsourced manufacturing for cheap
labor, which in turn produced cheaper consumer goods for which we pay with money
that again goes abroad. Our “service economy” does not produce goods but lives
on borrowing. This has led to a staggering internal and foreign debt and now we
have to rely on the sanity and good will of former enemies and future rivals,
such as Japan
and China that
they will continue to accept dollars and to keep lending, rather than to start
collecting on their debt. From creditor status we have been reduced to begging.
We cannot
blame others for this state of affairs because it strictly bears the stamp
“made in U.S.A.”
under the title of globalism. During the Reagan administration we were told
that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” But tides don’t keep rising, they crest
and what happens when the ebb comes nobody seems to have been interested in.
The father of our current president did have an inkling that the rising tide
theory wouldn’t work in the long run. While still a contender for the
presidency against Reagan he called it “voodoo economics” but when offered the
vice presidency he gladly accepted it, forgot about his qualms, and deficit
spending went through the roof.
While it can be argued that this
was for a good purpose because the arms race ruined the Soviet economy and led
to the collapse of that system, we must also recognize that it laid the
foundation for our current problems. It initiated decades of greed and
concomitant market speculations, the fruits of which we are now confronted with
on the domestic and international scene. During the 1980s defeating communism,
by any and all means was the overriding international goal. These included
arming and supporting Islamic fundamentalists, the Mujihadeen, in Afghanistan.
They were hailed as freedom fighters then but have now to be defeated as “the
Taliban” although they still have the same goal, which is to get foreigners and
their ideas out of their country. For them it doesn’t make any differences if
the foreigner is the godless Soviet Union or the
“Judeo-Christian” Capitalist. They owe allegiance to neither because both of
them bring a modernity which profoundly conflicts with ancient customs. The
idea of raising and supporting enemies of your enemies sounds simple but does
not take the long term consequences into account.
Before more fully confronting America’s
foreign political problems we have to discuss an internal problem that is most
lasting and most difficult to remedy. This is not necessarily the inadequate
health-care system which will require a great deal of money and effort but the
terrible state of our educational system. I have dealt with the problem in the
February 2008 issue (Is America Fixable?) and it has been regarded as one of
overriding importance by the incoming administration. But from what one reads
one gets the feeling that the sorry state of our school system can be fixed by
gaining concessions from teacher unions and allocating more money.
Unfortunately the problem goes much deeper. It is rooted in a philosophy which
sees the child from its beginning in the cradle not as a trust parents have
been endowed with and an obligation to develop its intellectual and spiritual
capabilities by discipline but as an individual whose whims are to be indulged.
The notion that children, when left
to their own devices, will by nature be inclined to study and improve their
minds is fundamentally wrong. By nature children are pleasure driven and in
regard to academics lazy. Their attention span is short and what is not of
immediate gratification is abhorred. This is not fantasy but life experience
and parents who do not realize this are likely to raise children who may become
decent persons but will be unable to compete in the school of life. Barack
Obama knows this and he remembers fully well that had his mother not made him
read early in the morning, before she had to go to work, he would never even
have dreamt of high achievement let alone worked towards it.He hated it at the time but is grateful now
and the same applies to others, including myself, who were subjected to “tough
love.”
Thus, for educational reforms to
succeed parental attitudes would need to change and the school curriculum,
especially that of Middle and High School would have to be revamped. Our
teenagers are not being challenged intellectually and apart from sports
activities they tend to be bored, which in turn leads to the inordinate number
of High School dropouts. But even many of our children who do finish High
School are inadequately prepared for College and are likely to pursue courses
which are the least demanding. The broad foundation which their European and Asian
contemporaries still receive is missing. These young defenders of “Western
Civilization” will have, after enormous financial sacrifice by their parents, a
bachelor’s or master’s degree but will have no idea what Western civilization
really is, apart from its incentive to make money. The “usefulness” of an MBA
degree is perhaps best exemplified in our current president, the number of
people who are being turned out of jobs at present, and the still greater
number in the future. As mentioned Obama knows this but what he can do about it
is another matter because this problem cannot be solved by money. It requires
engaged parents and a public which demands appropriate changes.
Obama is inheriting a country in
crisis and whatever he wants to accomplish domestically will require a sane
foreign policy. As long as the wars continue so will the financial drain, which
in turn will hamper needed domestic spending. Unfortunately, world events are
not his to control, they are sprung on him as the example of Israel’s
conduct at the time of this writing shows. The Iraq
war may be winding down but at the same time Afghanistan
is heating up. Obama intends to send more troops and it is projected that by
the end of the year the total number, including those from allied countries,
will be about 70,000. In this connection it is useful to remember that in
1983-1984 the Soviets had 85,000 in the country and an additional 30,000 were
stationed across the AmuRiver
on their side of the border. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates should read
or re-read the book by Yousaf and Adkin,
The battle for Afghanistan. The Soviets versus the Mujahideen during the 1980s.
It was first published in 1992 and re-issued in paperback in 2007.
Brigadier General Mohammad Yousaf
was the Afghan Bureau’s Head of Pakistan’s
Inter-Service-Intelligence (ISI) and as such in charge of all the Mujahideen
operations in Afghanistan.
He was also the link to the CIA which provided funds, weapons and satellite
pictures of the deployment of Soviet forces. This put him in a delicate
position because a too overt role of Pakistan
in the war would have led to Soviet reprisals which the country clearly could
not afford. In the book he details the deployment of Soviet forces down to the
regiment level and it is fascinating to see that our current troop positions
mimic those of the Soviets, with forces concentrated mainly in the Kabul
area, the Bagram Air-Base and along the North-South
Salang Highway. As far as the rest of the country
is concerned there were only two divisions on the western border and a token
presence in the Kandahar area. To
drive home the point that this force level was totally inadequate for pacifying
the country, Yousaf mentions that the Soviets employed 250,000 troops in 20
divisions to occupy Czechoslovakia
in 1968.
Just as with our troops, the
Soviets remained mainly at their bases. There were intermittent forays to root
out some Mujahideen stronghold, they killed some of the rebels, returned to
their bases and other Mujahideen fighters re-occupied the land. This scenario
is, of course, familiar to every Viet Nam
veteran. The main goal of the Soviet strategy was to hold Kabul
and this is now also our aim. In essence the war was a stalemate until the CIA
delivered stinger missiles to Yousaf which ended Soviet air superiority because
their helicopters could then be shot down. The war was estimated to have cost
$12 million per day and by 1987 Gorbachev decided that his country could no
longer afford this bleeding and started withdrawing troops. The last Soviet
soldiers left in February of 1989 and American support for Afghanistan
also disappeared.
Thereafter chaos reigned until the
Taliban took over and established their type of Law and Order. In the late
1990s American interest was rekindled because a pipeline was planned to run
from the newly liberated states in the Caucasus through Afghanistan
and Pakistan to
India. The
construction required, however, an agreement by the Taliban and when they gave
their final “no” in the summer of 2001 they had sealed their fate as far as the
Bush-Cheney administration was concerned. The refusal to hand over bin-Laden
after the 9/11 attacks was a convenient excuse since removal of the Taliban
regime had been planned anyway. In 2002 “our man” in Kabul,
Hamid Karzai, approved of the plan but construction still cannot proceed
because with Taliban fighters roaming the countryside the required security is
lacking.
This excursion into recent history
leaves us with the question why do our planners believe that we can do better
than the Soviets in the 1980s and the Brits in the late 1830s and again in the
late 1870s? We cannot occupy the entire country; the Kabul
government is corrupt and has no credibility; the pipeline will not become
operational in the foreseeable future and since energy independence is now the
goal it may never come to pass. As of yore the Afghans are again supported by
some of their Pakistani brethren and this leaves us with few options. Air-power
does not win wars and a ground invasion of Pakistan
would likely trigger WWIII. Those are the realities Obama faces and he will
have to come to grips with them. The American imperial dream of being able to
dictate to other countries what they are supposed to do, and with whom to
trade, is over. The sooner our country realizes this, the better off we and the
world will be.
Thus, on the international scene
Obama’s major and immediate problem will not be Bush’s “axis of evil,” China
or Russia, but
the larger Middle East. In order to achieve reasonable
solutions to these festering problems a fundamental shift in thinking will be
required. Obama would need to abandon the Bush-Cheney-Likud formula that lumps
all national liberation movements under the convenient label of terrorists,
because of the methods they employ. Yet the goals of the various groups differ.
The Taliban don’t want to invade or even bomb us, they want us out of their
country. The same goes for Hezbollah whose goal is Lebanon;
Hamas as well as Fatah want a Palestinian state and all of them will fight us
as long as we stand in their way with our unconditional support of Israeli
policies. Moderates in these parts of the world will not gain immediate
ascendance, as we hope, unless and until their national goals have been
achieved.
I find it amazing that Israeli governments
don’t realize this because their state was built on the principle of terrorism
which forced the British out and they are now upset when the same methods are
applied against them by some members of the indigenous population. It is also
hard to understand why Israeli politicians have not learned as yet that they
cannot win wars by air power alone and that their tanks can readily be blown to
bits by youngsters with a bazooka. Ehud Barack’s boast of this week that he will
crush Hamas with his current offensive in Gaza
is just that. You cannot destroy an ideology by military means unless you are
willing to physically occupy a country and accept the daily casualties from
snipers and suicide bombers. These are the lessons history taught us in my
lifetime and it is truly amazing that Israeli as well as some of our
politicians are incapable of learning them.
The Middle East
conflict has, apart from oil, as its nucleus: the human rights of Palestinians.
These have never been taken seriously by previous administrations because of
domestic political considerations. The shift from America’s
position as an “honest broker” to one of unconditional support of the Israeli
side has been gradual and the last genuine attempt to achieve a solution which
respects the rights of both parties was in the fall of 1991. This was the time
when President Bush’s father correctly saw that in order for his vision of a
New World Order to succeed there had to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace
accord.
Let us remember the events of that
momentous year. The Soviet Union had collapsed, Saddam
Hussein had been successfully evicted from Kuwait
and there was no counterweight to American power. Bush reasoned that the Arabs,
who had lost their main sponsor, would make peace with Israel
provided the Israeli government would give up claims to the land conquered in
the 1967 war and live within internationally recognized pre June 1967 borders.
It sounded all so reasonable but the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir,
rejected any idea of a land swap outright and had to be dragged to the Madrid
Conference in November which was intended to open a dialogue between the
warring parties. This former freedom fighter, aka terrorist in British eyes,
not only sabotaged any possible hopes for peace but in addition wanted a $10
billion loan guarantee, over a five year period, to settle the ever increasing
flood of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. For Bush it was first things
first: let’s get a peace agreement and the money would come later. It was not
about the principle of extending the guarantee but the time was wrong
especially since Bush didn’t know where those people would be settled: in Israel
proper or the conquered territories? If the latter were to be the case any hope
for peace would obviously be lost.
What followed has been recounted by
J.J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power
and has been chronicled here in the May
1, 2003 installment (Power Politics or Statesmanship?). Bush ran
into a furious protest storm from the organized Jewish community. Although he
gave in, the damage was done and he lost his re-election bid. Jewish
dissatisfaction was not the only factor in his loss but it was an important
one. All subsequent efforts by succeeding presidents to resolve the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict were half-hearted ones and in the main consisted
of attempts to dictate terms to the Palestinians. Camp David II in the fall of
2000 was ill-conceived because it fell into the last quarter of President
Clinton’s presidency and no one knew if the next administration would enforce
whatever agreement might have been reached. Furthermore, Israel’s
Prime Minister, Ehud Barack, had little support at home and faced an election
within a few months. But the most important aspect was that Arafat did not want
to come to this conference because Barack had not honored previous agreements.
It, therefore, was unlikely that a final-status agreement could be reached on
such thorny issues as Jerusalem,
Palestinians right of return and permanent borders when the essential element –
trust – was missing.For Barack it was a
political ploy to be used in the upcoming Israeli elections and for Arafat it
was a no win situation. His constituency had gotten restive because the Oslo
Peace process had not led to tangible benefits and settlement constructions, in
violation of international law, had continued unabated. Bill Clinton who was
recovering from the Lewinsky impeachment scandal hoped to establish his legacy
by achieving a final peace agreement. He didn’t seem to have realized that this
was out of the question because it would have required a forceful stance not
only towards Arafat but especially with Barack. This he could not do because
Hillary was running for the Senate in New York
and any “leaning on the Jews” would immediately have doomed her election
chances. Arafat, before agreeing to come, had extracted a promise from Clinton
that if the conference were to fail he would not be made to bear exclusive
blame. But this promise was sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Sharon
then helped to provide the spark for Intifada II, and the end of the Oslo
accord, with his provocative walk on the TempleMount. Details of this peace-making
failure were presented here in the March 2007 installment (Barack in Salt
Lake City).
The current President Bush
completed the tilt towards Israel and away from Palestinian concerns by not
only giving Sharon a free hand in the re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
but for good measure he also praised him as a man of peace. This was especially
egregious because efforts were under way to have Sharon indicted as a war
criminal for his complicity in the 1982 Lebanese Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Although Bush later endorsed the “two-state solution” he did nothing towards
its implementation and last year’s Annapolis
conference was, to put it bluntly, eye-wash (Annapolis.
Déjà Vu. December 1, 2007).
The end of January and beginning of February 2001 would have been the time for
a breakthrough in the Middle East stalemate if Bush had
acted decisively and this is why I wrote Whither Zionism?and sent it to him, all the members of his Cabinet as well
as key members of the Senate and House. No action was taken which amounted to
an agreement with Israeli policies and all of the resultant disasters. Eight
years later all of us are clearly worse off then ever before but no one can say
that there has not been ample warning from numerous well meaning sources.
Yet, there seems to have arisen a
faint stirring of recognition that the Arab-Israeli problem is indeed the
cornerstone of our relations with the Muslim world and can no longer be
ignored. President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
published in 2007 a book, Second Chance.
Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower in which he grades
the actions of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.Bush 41 received a “Solid: B” for his
tactical skill of how he had handled world affairs but he was chided for having
“missed strategic opportunities.” The latter referred to the president’s inability
of achieving a breakthrough in the Middle East problem but it seems that
Brzezinski may not have given sufficient weight to Goldberg’s book, which
explains the reasons for the failure. At any rate President Bush might have
thought that he would be able to solve the problem in his second term but that
was not to be. President Clinton received an “Uneven: C” because there was a
“Major gap between potential and performance.” One might add that this resulted
from a characterologic flaw which allowed his libido to interfere with official
business. Our current President got a “Failed: F” with the comment: “A
simplistic dogmatic worldview prompts self-destructive unilateralism.”
Brzezinski’s opinions should not be
taken lightly because he was one of Barack Obama’s teachers at Columbia
and now one of his foreign policy campaign advisors. In short, Brzezinski
states that the days of empire, where a given nation can force its will on
others, are over. There has been a global awakening and emerging countries want
to be treated with dignity. In practical terms this means that diplomacy
without preconditions has to take center stage. For America
to prosper, close cooperation with Europe is essential. Russia
and China
should not be provoked unnecessarily but engaged in peace-making efforts and Iran’s
nuclear ambitions are also best addressed by direct unconditional negotiations
conducted with good will and supported by the rest of the world. These efforts
would gain credence if at the same time Muslim states saw that America
is serious in its attempts to solve the long festering Palestinian problem and
returns to the “honest broker” stance.
The idea that nothing can be
accomplished with Iran
unless definitive steps are taken towards a viable Palestinian state has also
gained some traction in the January/February 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs. Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk pointed out in
their article: “Beyond Iraq.
A New Strategy for the Middle East,” that reduction of
force levels in Iraq
should lead to a “grand bargain with Iran,
forging peace between Jerusalem and
Damascus, and promoting a
final-status Israeli-Palestinian agreement.” Indyk, who is Jewish, used to be
ambassador to Israel
and was also a prominent member of the U.S.
delegation during the Camp David II sessions. He is a fair minded person and so
is Dr. Haass who is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A second article in the same issue by Walter
Russell Mead, who is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
entitled “Change They Can Believe In. To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians
Their Due,” makes a similar point. Mead wrote, “Much like Copernicus, who put
the sun at the center of the universe, the Obama administration must put Palestine
politics and Palestine public
opinion at the center of its efforts to bring peace to the Middle
East. But this need not mean turning away from Israel:
such a refocusing would in fact offer Israel
substantial long-term benefits.” Articles of this nature are encouraging but
raise two questions. One: is the current Israeli offensive in Gaza
designed to undermine this impending effort? Two: is the incoming Obama
administration serious about solving the Palestine
problem or will it again be a matter of lip service?
This brings me to the ultimate challenge
Barack Obama faces. It is one of character and he has alluded to it in his Audacity of Hope. He wrote that after
public appearances “sometimes someone will grab my hand and tell me that they
have great hopes for me, but that they are worried that Washington
is going to change me and that I will end up just like all the rest of the
people in power. Please stay who you are, they will
say to me. Please don’t disappoint us.” Yes indeed! Now it is not only his
constituents whose hopes ride on him but those of most of the world. Senator
Biden told us that Obama will be tested by a foreign policy peril within the
first few months after taking office. Obama’s namesake didn’t want to wait that
long. As Defense Minister, who hopes to become Prime Minister again in
February, Barack launched the Gaza
attack which is under way at this time and thereby may force the
President-elect to take a stand. Although President Bush is still nominally in
charge of the country for the next nineteen days a glimpse into the heart of
Obama, the politician, may become available in the next few days. Will he do
the politically correct thing and join the chorus which puts exclusive blame
for the ongoing human tragedy on Hamas, or will he be more nuanced in his
response?
At present we don’t know what his
feelings towards the Palestinians are but we are likely to know by the time of
the next installment on February 1. Not only is he going to reveal himself by
what he says in his Inaugural Address on January 20, but more importantly by
what he does up to then. In spite of his generally excellent choices for his
cabinet and advisors a warning flag has gone up. Obama’s entire meteoric rise
was due to charisma and a projection of honesty. My concern, therefore, is
twofold. He promised us an administration where cooperation rather than
confrontation will be the hallmark, yet he appointed as his Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel who is known and feared for his abrasive behavior. Thus, the gate
keeper to the Oval Office is not only a very competent person but one who comes
with some baggage which will be presented below. Furthermore, Obama told AIPAC
that in his eyes an undivided Jerusalem
is the eternal capital of Israel.
For Jews the latter can only mean that he has already sold out the Palestinians
and they may hold him to it. Therefore the question arises: will Obama be able
to live up to his promises and the expectations the world has for him? People
will forgive him some inevitable mistakes and rash statements made during a
campaign but if he were to cover up some potential malfeasance within his
trusted band of advisors his fall from grace would be even more rapid than his
rise.
The Emanuel appointment was greeted
with dismay in the Arab world. Not only is he a devout Jew but he takes the Zionist
cause seriously and had served as a civilian volunteer for the Israeli army
during the first Gulf War. His father was born in Jerusalem,
served in the Irgun, which was branded by the British as a terrorist
organization during the fight for Israeli independence, and he still has little
use for Palestinians. Although Emanuel was in charge of the arrangements during
the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, his current
sentiments in regard to Palestinian rights are unknown.
His biography attests to phenomenal
fund raising abilities and in between political appointments he was also able
to amass a considerable personal fortune. After he resigned as a Clinton
advisor in 1998 he joined an investment firm and during two and a half years
acquired $16.2 million. In 2000 he was named by Bill Clinton to the Board of
Directors of the now infamous Freddie Mac where he received an initial salary
of $31,060 which was upped to
$231,655 in 2001. During his tenure the organisation was plagued by scandals
involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Emanuel
resigned in 2001 to run for Congress. After a rather nasty primary fight he won
the seat for the 5th Illinois District, vacated by Rod Blagojevitch whom he
helped in his run for governor of Illinois. In contrast to Obama who had kept
aloof from the governor, and potential shady deals, Emanuel seems not to have
had such scruples and had probably engaged in some typical Chicago type
politics which brought him bad press by The
Chicago Tribune’s columnist John Kass.
While serving in Congress he became Chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (CDCCC). He was able toraise a phenomenal amount of money and has
been credited with the Democrat’s success in the 2006 elections. For his own
latest re-election it was reported that he "was the top House recipient in
the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms
and the larger securities/investment industry.” To what extent he was involved
in the massive campaign contributions Obama received is as yet unknown.
Apart from any possible involvement in the current Blagojevitch scandal
(trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder), a question has also
been raised in regard to Emanuel’s past veracity. Just prior to the 2006
elections a sex scandal involving a Florida Republican Congressman surfaced.
Since some of the allegations had been known for more than a year the
Republicans questioned the timing of the publicity and branded it as one of the
Democrats “dirty tricks.” In an ABC interview after the election George
Stephanopoulos specifically asked Emanuel as CDCCC whether or not he had been
aware of the allegations in 2005 which Emanuel denied. Yet it became known
thereafter that the DCCC had indeed had some prior knowledge of the
affair.
These are some of the questions, which are currently raised only on the
Internet but will undoubtedly be disussed by the major media as soon as Obama
falters a bit. President Eisenhower had promised during his election campaign
an administration that would be “clean as a hound’s tooth” and when questions
arose about the gift of a Vicuna coat his friend and Chief of Staff, Sherman
Adams, had received, he discharged him. What will Obama do when questions will
be raised over Emanuel’s conduct? The latter surely has made sufficient enemies
so it seems to be only a matter of time before Obama is confronted with some
nastiness on that score. Will the promised transparency triumph or will it be
politics as usual? Thus, his biggest challenge will be in regard to honesty
when the chips are down, as they inevitably will be. There is no doubt that he
means well but whether or not he has the strength of character to stand up for
what is right, even at the expense of political capital and potential damage to
re-election, only time will tell.
February 1, 2009
EIGHT YEARS LATER – NO EXIT
This issue
is an anniversary of sorts, because the first “Hot Topic” appeared in February
2001. The initial intent was to raise awareness of my non-medical books, and possibly
sell a few copies, but this goal was not achieved to any appreciable extent.
Instead something else and possibly more valuable happened which I could not
have foreseen in that halcyon month of the incoming Bush administration. The articles
describe the mistakes the Bush administration has made from 2001 on while they
were implemented, and discuss the expected results that would accrue therefrom.
As such they represent history as it happened, rather than as viewed
retrospectively.
Appalled by the sleaze, lying and
even perjury of President Clinton I welcomed a president who would bring
dignity to the office and I regarded his “seasoned team” of Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as I called it in Whither Zionism?a harbinger of a better foreign
policy, which would not be dominated by bombs, rockets and other military
ventures. This state of happy delusion persisted until October of that year
when the truth of the goals of the Bush regime started to take shape. The
essays, therefore, show how a citizen, imbued with good will towards his chosen
country, had to change his views when it became apparent that the new
administration was even worse than the old one.
As of January 20 we have again a
new administration, which in contrast to that of Bush in 2001 did not result
from one vote of the Supreme Court but was indeed an expression of popular
will. Barack Obama assumed the office with an unprecedented outpouring of good
will and equally unprecedented high expectations. He is supposed to end not
only the country’s economic woes but also the rush to war which the Bush-Cheney
administration under relentless prodding of the neoconservatives had been
engaged in.
The question now is: can he deliver
what he has promised?Obviously it is
very early to try to assess his chances, but his first few days in office do
give us a hint as to how he will proceed. There is little doubt that, in
contrast to his predecessor, he will continue to be a “hands on” person. He
will take his duties seriously and remain for the most part at his desk in the
Oval Office rather than vacationing on a ranch, which he doesn’t have anyway.
There is also no doubt in my mind that he means well and will try to do what he
regards as best for the country. Had I not written these essays for the past
eight years, which forced me to look behind the headlines, it is likely that I
might also have succumbed to what has been called Obamania by his detractors.
Whatever doubts I have in regard to his future success are only in part related
to what I have called in the January installment “Barack Obama’s Challenge” but
are mainly due to the powerful forces which are arraigned against him and the
old axiom that the past predicts the future.
In regard to the economy one can
only say that “all bets are off” because not even Nobel Prize winners agree on
what could and should be done. Economics is not a science. It relies on models
and the human emotions of fear and greed. Models depend on assumptions, which
may be wrong, and while we know that emotions are active we don’t know the
circumstances under which they will become most dominant, leading to panic and
a subsequent governmental crackdown on its rebellious citizens. In difficult
times the cry for “strong leadership” has always arisen and, when coupled with
a perceived or manufactured external threat, the step from democracy to an
authoritarian regime is indeed a small one.
In foreign affairs it seems that the old French saying, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, is
still correct. This was driven home
by the fact that a drone was dispatched to Pakistan,
which killed not only some militants but also innocent civilians. That this
attack prior to Ambassador Holbrook’s mission was a duplicate of Bush’s rocket
attack on Iraq
before General Powell’s Middle East trip in 2001 shows
that we are still dealing with la même
chose. Obama is determined to beef up US
troop strength in Afghanistan
and thereby enmesh us further in the unwinnable war. He does realize that the
Afghan problem cannot be solved without Pakistan’s
active help, but since that country is likewise about to sink into chaos
Ambassador Holbrook has a monumental job ahead of him. When one realizes,
furthermore, that Afghanistan’s
western neighbor, Iran,
also has a vital interest in a stable regime which does not derive its income
from growing poppies on its border it is obvious that our policy toward that
country would also need to change. The February
12, 2009 issue of The New
York Review of Books contains a valuable article on, “How to Deal with Iran”
by Bill Luers, Tom Pickering and Jim Walsh which should be taken to heart by
the new administration. But the Iranian situation will be very difficult to
address because it involves our relationship to the State of Israel and
especially its domestic lobby AIPAC.
While the above cited French saying emphasizes the
“sameness” accompanying change there exists another one from the even more
distant past: idem sed aliter, the
same but different, which allows for hope. It seems that President Obama might
follow that path in small incremental steps. In regard to the Middle
East he has so far taken two steps which differentiate him from
his predecessors. The envoy he had appointed was not the expected Dennis Ross
of the Clinton era, who is Jewish
and has lost credibility in Arab states, but former Senator George Mitchell
whose mother hailed from Lebanon
and who thereby has ties to the Arab world. In addition the first formal
interview Obama granted any news organization was with Al Arabiya. This
sent a powerful signal to the Arab and Muslim world that their concerns will be
listened to. It is also noteworthy that he had chosen Al Arabiya. This network presents a more moderate
position than Al Jazeera which,
although more widely viewed, tends to be more strident in its Arabic programs.
These signals have not gone unnoticed in Israel and Uri
Avnery, who is currently regarded as that country’s conscience, published on
January 28 of this year an article (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12074)in which he declared that the Zionist regime
is ”on the wrong side of history.” He endorsed Obama’s vision for solving
problems diplomatically rather than by military means and so did the noted
historian Avi Shlaim, who wrote an article for The Guardian on January 7 on, “How Israel brought Gaza
to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine).
He outlined the course of events that had led to this
tragedy and also stated, “The
Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane
offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash.”
These articles deserve to be read on the mentioend sites because as yet
information of this type does not appear in our mainstream media.
There are,
however, some faint stirrings even here because last Sunday CBS’ 60 Minutes
aired a segment which showed the suffering Israel has inflicted on innocent
civilians in the recent Gaza war. Other articles critical of Israel’s behavior
in the Gaza war appear occasionally in The
Christian Science Monitor, and “Eyeless in Gaza” by Roger Cohen in the
mentioned New York Review of Books
attracted my attention to Avi Shlaim’s article. There even some “voices in the
wilderness” of Congress. Former presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich
(Democrat) and Ron Paul (Republican) are trying to break AIPACs stranglehold on
that instituion. To what extent they will be successful is unknown but they
deserve our full support.
As mentioned,
Senator Mitchell is currently on his “listening tour” in the Middle East.
Although he has apparently not been allowed to put Gaza on his itinerary, because
that would be tantamount to “talking with terrorists” in Israeli-Bush
terminology, he will bring back the view that without taking the concerns of
Hamas into consideration peace in that area will not be achievable.
While preparing
this essay I looked at some of my previus writings and was startled to find
that in the June 2001 issue (Metaphysical Guilt) I had written,
“The
Middle East continues to drift into chaos and the Mitchell Commission
recommendations - although well meant - have predictably been rejected by both
sides. Youngsters who aspire to heaven via martyrdom cannot be restrained by
anybody and to make their disappearance the precondition for negotiations is a
lame excuse. So is the necessity for continuing to expand the settlements.”
For Senator Mitchell his current fact finding
trip must, therefore, be a déjà vu because the situation is basically not only
the same but considerably worse. So let us go back to November 7, 2000 when
President Clinton established what was called the Sharm el-Sheikh
Fact-Finding Committee. It was chaired by Senator Mitchell and the other
committee members were: Former Senator Warren B Rudman; Saleyman Demirel former
president of the Republic of Turkey;
Norway’s
foreign minister Thorbjoern Jagland; and Javier Solana as representative of the
EU. The report, which was issued on May
6, 2001, contained, among others, these major recommendations:
The GOI [Government of Israel] and the PA
[Palestinian Authority] must act swiftly and decisively to halt the violence.
Their immediate objectives then should be to rebuild confidence and resume
negotiations.
The PA should make clear through concrete action to
Palestinians and Israelis alike that terrorism is reprehensible and
unacceptable, and that the PA will make a 100 percent effort to prevent
terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators. This effort should include
immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists operating within the
PA's jurisdiction.
The GOI should
freeze all settlement activity, including the "natural growth" of
existing settlements. The kind of security cooperation desired by the GOI
cannot for long co-exist with settlement activity.
The GOI should
give careful consideration to whether settlements which are focal points for
substantial friction are valuable bargaining chips for future negotiations or
provocations likely to preclude the onset of productive talks.
The IDF [Israel
Defense Forces] should consider withdrawing to positions held before September 28, 2000 which will reduce
the number of friction points and the potential for violent confrontations.
The GOI should
ensure that the IDF adopt and enforce policies and procedures encouraging
non-lethal responses to unarmed demonstrators, with a view to minimizing
casualties and friction between the two communities.
The GOI should
lift closures, transfer to the PA all tax revenues owed, and permit
Palestinians who had been employed in Israel
to return to their jobs; and should ensure that security forces and settlers
refrain from the destruction of homes and roads, as well as trees and other
agricultural property in Palestinian areas.
These were reasonable
recommendations but, as mentioned rejected by both sides. The essential
elements needed for a peaceful settlement – good will and trust – were missing.
Prime Minister Sharon declared that there could not be negotiations with the PA
because Yasser Arafat is a terrorist. Arafat on the other hand did not have the
power to reign in militant members of his people, because their memories of
insults were re-enforced on a daily basis. Thus the policy of Israel’s
massive retaliation continued. When Mahmoud Abbas became president of the PA
negotiations were re-started but the Israelis not only kept dragging their feet
they also continued to build and expand settlements on Palestinian soil in the
West Bank as well as in Gaza. Eventually the Gaza
situation became untenable for its 8000 Jewish settlers who required the IDF
for security and Sharon decided on
a unilateral withdrawal from that strip of land.
This step was hailed in our media
as a great peace gesture and a downpayment for future withdrawals from West
Bank settlements, but the reality was quite different. The purpose
according to Prime Minster Sharon’s friend, lawyer and confidante, Dov
Weisglass, was to place the entire peace process into “formaldehyde,” where it
would sit for decades to come. Information of this type is not conveyed to the
American public by our media but readily available from Haaretz.com where the
transcript of the August 10, 2004interview can be found (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=485929).
It is highly informative and also
shows the degree of political intimacy Mr. Weisglass had achieved with Condi
Rice. Here are key excerpts of what Weisglass said at that time,
"The
concern was the fact that President Bush's formula [the road map] was stuck and
this would lead to its ruin. That the international community would say: You
wanted the president's formula and you got it; you wanted to try Abu Mazen and
you tried. It didn't work. And when a formula doesn't work in reality, you
don't change reality, you change the formula. Therefore, Arik's
[Sharon] realistic viewpoint said that it was possible that the principle that
was our historic policy achievement would be annulled - the principle that
eradication of terrorism precedes a political process. And with the annulment
of that principle, Israel would find itself negotiating with terrorism. And because once such
negotiations start it's very difficult to stop them, the result would be a
Palestinian state with terrorism. And all this within quite a
short time. Not decades or even years, but a few months."
"The
disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the
bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula so that
it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually
formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that
there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
“The
American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible
for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as
far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that
there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do
the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision
is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the
seething and simmering international community and say to them, `What do you
want.' It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to
deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote. It places the Palestinians
under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner that they hate to be
in. It thrusts them into a situation in which they have to prove their
seriousness. There are no more excuses. There are no more Israeli soldiers
spoiling their day. And for the first time they have a slice of land with total
continuity on which they can race from one end to the other in their Ferrari.
And the whole world is watching them - them, not us. The whole world is asking
what they intend to do with this slice of land."
I
have quoted so extensively because it shows the mindset of the Israeli
political establishment, which has not changed, regardless of the political
party which happens to be in power. It will not change after Israel’s
February 2009 elections and this is what the Obama administration will have to
confront if it wants to make headway in its peace efforts. The interview shows
how the situation was presented to the Israeli public at that time so that the
Knesset would sign off on the removal of the settlers from Gaza and their
protectors, the IDF. The withdrawal did take place in August of 2005 over
violent protests of the settler party.
But at that time
Sharon saw no strategic value in Gaza and retrenchment to the West Bank allowed
him to continue settling Judea and Samaria, as it is called in Israeli
parlance, to his heart’s content. To make sure that the Gazans don’t get big
ideas the “security fence” was reinforced, entry to Israel and Egypt was
restricted, sea and air space controlled, which effectively prevented economic
development. The situation worsened even more under Bush’s plan to
“democratize” the Middle East. The Palestinians made the mistake that they voted in greater
numbers for Hamas than “our guys,” Fatah, because even the people on the West Bank had been submitted to
increasing hardships while Abbas held fruitless talks with the Israelis. On the
basis of the “Sharon-Bush doctrine” that you don’t talk to terrorists the
legally elected Palestinian government was boycotted and a civil war between
Fatah and Hamas instigated (July 1, 2007, Saving
the Bush Legacy; December 1, 2007, Annapolis Déjà
Vu). When Hamas won militarily in Gaza, the fate of its inhabitants was literally sealed in the full sense
of the word. There was to be no commerce with the outside world and I have
reported here last year on the little Gaza flotilla which
intended to show some solidarity of the outside world with the suffering of the
locals (Images, September
7, 2008). What do prisoners do, especially
when they are young and angry? They build tunnels to break out, ship in some
arms with which to annoy their tormentors and thereby attract attention. The
current Gaza war was the result.
But again there is
more to Gaza than we have been told because Israel now
has a commercial interest there. In contrast to the West Bank it is not the land they
want but its offshore natural gas field. Michel Chossudovsky, who is by
profession a Professor of Economics and also heads the Canadian Global Research
organization, published an article on the topic on January 8 of this year (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680).
The article states,
in essence, that extensive gas reserves had been discovered off the Gaza coast
and a 25 year agreement was signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian
Authority to grant British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based
Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh
and Koury families, oil and gas exploration rights. Although the gas field
legally belongs to the Palestinians this right was challenged after Sharon came to power
in 2001. He declared unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from
Palestine,” and in 2003 vetoed an initial deal for British Gas to supply Israel
with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. The Hamas victory at the polls and
subsequently militarily in Gaza obviously made the situation worse. Chossudovsky quoted an article
published by Haaretz on December 27, 2008 which stated
that the invasion of Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” had been planned for more than six months
earlier, “even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” The object
of that operation was to remove Hamas from power in Gaza so that the more
pliable Fatah would then make the required concessions.
It will be
interesting to see whether or not this information reaches American mainstream
media and what the Obama administration will do about it. Theoretically, Gaza could rebuild
itself with revenue from its gas field provided Israel was
to assent to it. Right now there is no such indication and the “security”
blockade persists. It does not even allow the import of cement, which is needed
for rebuilding destroyed homes and infrastructure facilities, because it could
be used for tunnel building. Tunnels would obviously be unnecessary if orderly
border traffic were allowed but this is not in Israel’s interest because it
does not want a prosperous Palestinian state to be established, even in
rudimentary form.
But there is
further rather remarkable information available when one types the keywords
“Israel Pipeline” into Google. Realists in our country couldn’t help but see
the connection beween Saddam’s oil, rather than his supposed WMDs, as the
rationale for the American invasion, but we thought that the US would be
the main beneficiary. As it turns out there was a parallel process with the
Israeli’s in place. “Our man Chalabi” was supposed to take over the government
in Baghdad; immediately make peace with Israel and
re-establish the Mosul-Haifa pipeline which would bring Iraq’s oil
directly to the Mediterranean. It had been built by the British and was in use prior to 1948 but
with the proclamation of Israel’s statehood it was shut down by Iraq and
has since fallen into a serious state of disrepair. The Israeli desire for the
project was reported first by Asia Times
on April 4, 2003 under the title, “In the pipeline: More regime
change.” byHoomanPeimani(http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=SUNA,SUNA:2006-23,SUNA:en&q=In+the+pipeline%3a+More+regime+change+By+Hooman+Peimani+).
The content of the
article was subsequently confirmed by several other reports. It is noteworthy
that the last shots, which signaled “Mission Accomplished,” were fired in Baghdad on April 12,
a week after the Asia Times report. This information is still withheld from the
American public and we should insist that the Cheney energy discussions in the
early spring of 2001 be made public because they explain not only the Iraq but
also the Afghanistan war.
The quest for a
pipeline from the Caspian basin via Afghanistan
to Pakistan, thereby bypassing Iran as
well as the potentially problematic Strait of
Hormuz was, as has been mentioned in
previous installments, a paramount reason for toppling the Taliban regime. The
pipeline has remained a pipedream because the necessary security is
non-existent. Nevertheless the dream is still vigorously pursued with the
Afghan war as its consequence. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html, provides the details under the title “Unocal and the
Afghanistan Pipeline.
When Obama stated
during one of the debates that if there was reliable intelligence which
pinpointed the location of the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan he
would “take them out,” I thought that he meant it in that restricted sense. It
has now become obvious that he didn’t mean just that but he does want to widen
the Afghan war against the Taliban into neighboring Pakistan.
This is counterproductive. With every rocket fired by a drone we create more
mujahadeen and destabilize Pakistan
even further. In October 2001 (September 11) I warned against invasion of a
Muslim country because that is precisely what bin-Laden had tried to achieve
with the 9/11 attack. Afghanistan has always been regarded as “the graveyard of empires,” and we are
now disregarding the failure of the British in the 19th and that of
the Soviets in the 20th century. In November of 2001 I wrote,
Deny
it as we might the current war against “terrorism” is indeed a religious war of
ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops
in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be
defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul,
fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla
warfare accompanied by terror tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me
to say so but Osama bin-Laden has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A
$200.000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped by selling assets on the
stock market before its crash) has produced and continues to produce, billions
of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media
and if we are to believe our politicians we engaged in an Afghan war with a
projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Laden now he will be a
martyr (which is want he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will
spur other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in
the Islamic world.
The American public
was hoodwinked in 2001 and President Obama has apparently decided to continue
the deception. The war is not about human rights or America’s
defense but our access to and domination of Central Asian energy riches.
Secretary Gates testified in Congress last week that we will be in
Afghanistan-Pakistan at least till 2014. The fact that our country is broke and
cannot afford these wars does not enter into the equation. The situation
actually reminded me of a purported discussion between Hitler and his finance
minister Hjalmar Schacht. When Schacht confronted Hitler with the fact that the
German economy was unable to sustain the costs of building Autobahnen, homes
and cruise ships for workers in addition to re-armament, Hitler replied: we’ll
have a war and when we win the war we’ll have plenty of money; if we lose we
are all dead anyway. Faultless logic except not everybody dies and the
survivors have to live with the devastation this logic causes. Sad to say we
are now on the same road except that the big war which looms as a result of
these misguided policies will leave America
even poorer than she is now.
President Obama
will need to change course not only in the Middle
East and Iran but
also in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater of war. He is an intelligent person and
should read Ahmed Rashid’s recent book, “Descent into Chaos: The United States
and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Central Asia” (reviewed by William Dalrymple in the mentioned New York Review of Books). The lessons
contained therein ought to be taken to heart.
In sum and
substance the Obama presidency seems to be shaping up as more idem than aliter. The Middle East is again on the verge of explosion and according to Haaretz a
renewed attack on Lebanon in addition to Gaza is being considered (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11800).
The previously mentioned Michel Chossudovsky has also published a paper on
January 11, on that site, which states that two ships loaded with an
extraordinary amount of “ammunition” (not further specified) are currently on
their way from Greece to Israel. These are our weapons and may include more “bunker busters” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11743).
We elected Obama on
his promise of “Change!” Now is the time to redeem it. Real change would be if he
were to issue a public statement which informs the Israeli leadership that we
will not condone any further “defensive” massive retaliation against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iran. If
they chose to ignore this warning we will no longer replenish their arsenal and
will support a Security Council’s vote of censure. This would get the attention
of the ruling circles in Israel as well as their US
supporters and under those circumstances genuine peace negotiations could take
place not only with Palestinians, but on a regional basis. Short of a
declaration of this type there will be no peace there or in Central Asia. I realize that
Obama’s first priority has to be the global economic crisis, but the danger is
that Israel will engage in some other major military action within the next few
weeks or months. The purpose would be to force Obama’s hand and re-emphasize
his unchanging solidarity with Israel, regardless
of its deleterious effect on us and the world. But in so doing he would lose
credibility around the world and all peace efforts would be doomed.
Because of these uncertainties
I have added to the headline, as a warning, “No Exit.” It refers not only to
the interminable wars we will continue to be engaged in but obviously also to
Sartre’s one act play of 1944 with the original title Huis-clos (closed door). It
depicts three people, one man and two women, locked into a room where there is
nothing else to do but to listen for eternity to each others woes. It contained
the memorable sentence, “l’enfer c’est les autres.” It has been translated as
“hell is other people” but literally it says, “hell is
the others.” This is also the philosophy which dominates our thinking and that
of Israelis. It is always “the others” who have to change their behavior before
we change ours and that is how we are paving the way to hell. Israel’s stated
policy: not to engage in peace talks before terrorism has stopped, is a very
convenient way of avoiding meaningful negotiations in the belief that the
status quo can maintained indefinitely because time is on their side. This is a
fallacy and as some perceptive Israelis have pointed out it may already be too
late for a genuine TwoState solution to emerge. The recent Gaza massacre has
increased Palestinian hatred and it is difficult to see how Senator Mitchell
can accomplish anything under these circumstances.
There is an
additional sentence in Sartre’s play which bears pondering. The more aggressive
of the two women says at one point, when roughly translated, “I’m really quite
wicked, that is to say, I need the suffering of others in order to exist.”
Unfortunately she is not alone, there are a great many of us who either
consciously, or more commonly unconsciously, love to inflict suffering upon
others, which is one additional reason why mankind cannot find peace. The play
ends with: “oh well; let’s just go on;” which also seems to encapsulate our
current state of affairs. Therefore, the question for President Obama is: can
he open the doors which the Bush policies have closed or are we really stuck
for good?
March 1, 2009
WHITHER ZIONISM? REVISITED
By Ash
Wednesday, February 28 of 2001, I had finished Whither Zionism?and the book went to the
publisher thereafter. It was born of the naïve hope that if the history of
Zionism could be presented to the leaders of our country in a concise “Reader’s
Digest” format they might recognize the dangers chauvinistic Zionism poses not
only to the Middle East but also our country. The book
was the work of a citizen who thought that living in a democracy, as opposed to
the previous authoritarian governments the author had lived under, the leaders
of the country might be accessible to well meant advice. This was not to be and
I learned that individuals are just as powerless here as they are in the
countries we are fighting wars against for their ostensible lack of freedom. We
have the freedom to express our opinions on certain matters but the powers
which rule our country have the freedom to ignore it.
The failure
of reaching responsible people was not due to lack of trying. I did indeed not
only put my money where my mouth was but could not even get an audience with
either one of our senators. My congressman, who at that time was in his first
term, graciously did consent to see me, listened impassively, never asked a
question, thanked me for coming and subsequently probably left the book, which
I had placed into his hands, with his secretaries, without ever reading it.
Due to the fundamental ignorance of
our policy makers about the true causes of the Israeli-Palestinian war the
situation has been allowed to deteriorate further by aiding and abetting only Israel’s
side while paying lip service to the necessity of creating a separate
Palestinian state. The Bush administration, by deliberately pursuing a
neoconservative, and one might also call it neo-colonial, approach, had tried
to solve philosophical problems militarily which has led us and the Middle East
into the terrible difficulties we are currently facing in the domestic as well
as international arena. The completely inappropriate response to the 9/11
tragedy which was used to impose our will on others by force of arms, has
ruined our standing in the world, bankrupted us and did not increase Israel’s
security, which was one of the goals of this policy.
We now have again a new
administration upon which America
and to a large extent the rest of the world, pins its hopes. This is the reason
why it is appropriate to review the failures of the past because unless this is
done they will be repeated. The Obama presidency might be our last chance
before the Middle East sinks into final chaos and we
will not remain unscathed.
Had I known in the beginning of
2001 what has been published since on the failed “peace process” I might have
abstained from the effort, although everything that was written in 2001 has
remained true. The reason for my being considerably less optimistic today lies
not only in the subsequent developments on the ground in Israel, but in four
major books, which explain the failure of the US effort to achieve a peace
agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. They are in sequence of
appearance: Shattered Dreams - The
failure of the Peace process in the Middle East 1995-2002 by Charles
Enderlin; The Missing Peace - The Inside
Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace by Dennis Ross; The Truth about Camp David; The Untold Story
about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process by Clayton E. Swisher; and
The Much Too Promised Land; America’s Elusive
Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by David Aaron Miller. Enderlin was the Jerusalem
based Bureau Chief for the France
2 network since 1990 and had direct access to the events as they unfolded.
Swisher is a former marine reservist and federal criminal investigator and
since 2005 Director of Programs for the Middle
East Institute, a Washington based think tank which also publishes the Middle East Journal on a monthly basis.
Dennis Ross as well as Aaron David Miller worked for our State Department and
were as such actively involved in the negotiations, including Camp David II. Apart
from Miller’s book, which was published in late 2008, I have discussed these
books previously to some extent but they can now be taken in total context and
seen in the light Miller has shed on the scene.
The reasons for the failure of the
peace process can obviously not be laid at the feet of one person from one
country. Israelis, Palestinians and Americans had their share but some more so
than others, as will be shown later. On the last pages of his book Enderlin
recounts that a final attempt to organize a summit between Ehud Barak and Yasir
Arafat took place in the office of France
2 just prior to Sharon’s election
victory. Enderlin quoted a conversation between Israel’s
Gilead Sher (Chairman for the Palestinian track negotiating team) and his
Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat. The last sentences in regard to the
impending Sharon election, before
Enderlin was ordered to leave were as follows:
Sher: You wrecked it [Israel’s
peace camp] with these four months of violence.
Erekat: I told you that, if Sharon
went up to the Haram [Temple Mount visit which many regard as the spark that
ignited Intifada II], one man would be smiling after that visit and the rest of
us would be weeping.
Sher: It’s been four months now.
You could have stopped (all that). You didn’t want to.
Erekat: All Barak is now is a
chapter in a Greek tragedy.
Yes indeed; and all the actors of
that tragedy are again in leading roles. Swisher reported that Arafat had tried
to intervene with President Clinton to pressure Barak to veto Sharon’s
request for the TempleMount
visit because it was a propaganda election ploy and would inevitably inflame
Palestinian anger even further. Swisher’s report differs slightly from that of Dennis
Ross but the essence is the same. Swisher stated that Arafat had wanted to
speak with Clinton personally on
the phone but he was directed instead to Ross who felt that American
interference was not possible. In his book Ross stated that on the day prior to
Sharon’s walk-about on the TempleMount, Erekat had asked him in
person if he (Ross) could intervene to prevent this occurrence. Ross replied
that he could not because “We won’t dissuade him, but we might incite
him.”Nevertheless, Ross promised that
he would try to persuade Shlomo ben-Amin (Israel’s
Foreign Minister and Minister of Internal Security) to limit or block the
visit. Ross then stated that he did talk to ben-Amin but the latter only agreed
that Sharon should not be allowed
to enter the mosques.
September 28, 2000 was a fateful day and it was preventable.
At this time we don’t know if President Clinton was ever informed of the
impending Sharon Temple Mount visit but after reading Miller’s book I believe
that he was not and he had to see, like the rest of us, the results on CNN.
Ross, in all probability, had acted on his personal authority and, therefore,
needs to share a burden of guilt for the subsequent events. If President
Clinton had been told and he had called Barak not to issue permission for this
visit or else American aid to Israel
would be put on hold, it is highly likely that this fateful visit and its
disastrous consequences might have been avoided.
At the end of his book Enderlin
recounts a subsequent conversation with Ross about the failure of the peace
process and quoted Ross as saying,
“I
think our biggest mistake was letting a huge gap develop between the reality on
the ground and the reality around the negotiating table. The Palestinians have
to stop inciting violence. They have to bring up [their children] differently. The
Israelis have to stop. . . constructing
settlements. I don’t care if they stop within existing locations, but no
extensions.”
The square brackets and ellipsis
are in the original text. The quote shows Ross’ mindset: the Palestinians are
wrong for objecting violently to having been deprived of their homes and they
have to educate their children to accept Israeli demands. All that is required
of Israelis is that they not take any further land from Palestinians and “change
their attitudes at the checkpoints.” If this is the basis for our negotiating
efforts they will remain doomed. Ross’ final words as quoted by Enderlin were,
“We never did anything to prepare public opinion [for peace]. Holding
negotiations what may, got us nowhere. If I could do
it all over again, I’d do it differently.” Enderlin commented, “This mea culpa
was late in coming,” and he concluded his book with the words that this was “a
failure of politics, of diplomacy, and of a vision of the world.”
Has Dennis Ross really learned the
lesson of the true reasons for his failure? Will he act differently now? These
are the questions we will address later in this essay because he has again been
put in a leadership position. In his own book Ross placed the blame for the
failed peace process, including Camp David II, mainly on Arafat’s
intransigence. He branded him as a liar with whom negotiations were impossible.
But he also wrote,
“As much as I
would like to see America
act to promote Israeli-Syrian peace, we should never forget that the core of
the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians. There is no escaping the need to address it.
Ultimately, one
reality that cannot be ignored is that Israelis and Palestinians are destined
to be neighbors. History and geography leave them no choice. Neither can forge
an outcome in which the other does not exist. The Israelis with all their
military power cannot extinguish Palestinian aspirations. The Palestinians with
all their anger and use of terror will not succeed in forcing the Israelis to
submit through violence. . . . .
It may take a
‘divorce’ before there can be reconciliation. For the sake of all who have
suffered, for all our sakes, it is essential to shrink the time it takes to
move from theory to reality. Unfortunately in the case of the Middle
East, time does not stand still, and too often it is measured in
blood.”
In an Afterword to the paperback
edition from which these quotes were taken Ross expressed the hope that the
year 2005 “could be the year that confidence in peacemaking is restored and the
timetable to peace is established. Unfortunately, if we miss the moment, miss
this opportunity, Abu Mazen and the reformers will lose out to Hamas and it
will be a long time before we once again have the chance to find the missing
peace.”
As we all know not only was the
opportunity missed, but American policy during the rest of the Bush
administration was a disaster. We first insisted on Palestinian elections, and when
Hamas won we denied the Palestinians the opportunity to form a unity government.
We acceded to Israel’s
“unilateral withdrawal” from Gaza, which
turned that strip of land into a prison. When it was subsequently bombed to
rubble we agreed with “Israel’s
right to defend itself” and did not insist on an immediate halt. Now we, the
taxpayers, are asked to dish out $900 million for the clean-up.
Miller’s book is in considerably
greater agreement with Swisher’s than with that of Ross about the reasons for America’s
failure at peacemaking. Miller and Ross served for more than twenty years
together on Middle East problems and the most important
aspect is that Ross regards himself as a Jewish-American while Miller is “an
American who happens to be Jewish.” This self-identity is crucial because it
flavors one’s conduct. Miller openly admitted the potential for bias and
confronted it, while this was lacking in Ross. Miller wrote, “Concern for Israel’s
well-being had become part of me, like some sort of ethnic DNA. Maybe the best
we can do is to recognize those biases, make allowances for them, and set them
aside in an effort to understand other’s perspectives and do what we believe is
right. In my case, this meant trying to further the best interests of the United
States in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli
peace.”
This is obviously what we expect
from our negotiators but do not necessarily get. Miller’s honesty is an
exception. He pointed out that in all of the more than 800 pages of Ross’
exculpatory book there was no mention of AIPAC and the influence of the
domestic Jewish lobby on our foreign policy conduct. When he asked Ross about
it, the answer was, “that in his [Ross’] view the United
States didn’t do things simply because of
AIPAC or the Jewish community.” Although Miller agreed in part he subsequently
spent several pages of his book to demonstrate the considerable influence Jewish
pressure groups exert on the administration.
But it is not only Jewish groups
which exert pressure, so does a segment of Evangelical Christians under the
leadership of the recently deceased Reverend Jerry Falwell and a very active
Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, who is the leader of “Christians United for Israel.” Miller
who was invited in 2006 to attend a “Night to Honor Israel”
described this “two-hour largely musical tribute,” which offered “a veritable
hit parade of Israeli and Jewish songs.” The atmosphere was highly emotional
and tears were flowing. There were also congratulatory messages from Shimon
Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, but if any came from Sharon or Olmert they were
not mentioned because Hagee was opposed to the Gaza
withdrawal.
Miller went on to recount a
conversation he had in 2006 with Zev Chafets who had directed Israel’s
Government Press Office under Prime Minister Begin and who had also written a
book, A Match made in Heaven which
describes the ties between evangelical Christians and Israel.
Instead of excerpting I shall now give the entire conversation because of its
obvious relevance, Chafets said,
“’From an Israeli
perspective the Elders of Zion couldn’t have cooked it up any better.’ He told
me he had asked Reverend Falwell what would happen if Israel
went after the Iranian reactor. ‘We’d stand up and cheer,’ Falwell replied.
‘That’s seventy million people.’ ‘And the truth is,’ Chafets concluded, about
Republican aspirants to the presidency, ‘you really can’t get the nomination
without the blessing of the evangelical wing of the party. That means a lot.’
Only half-jokingly he concluded that the pro-Israel community has quite a lock:
‘If a Democrat’s in, AIPAC owns the White House, and if it’s a Republican
Falwell owns the White House.’
Chafets sensationalizes his point.
But it does reflect an underlying political reality; it’s hard to compete and
be successful in American politics without being good on Israel.”
These are the realties of American
life and they have not yielded to Obama’s election mantra of “change.” Miller
then discussed the failure of Camp David II and in agreement with Swisher pointed
out how disorganized the entire process was. Ehud Barak was running the show
and President Clinton, as well as Madeleine Albright, relied on Ross to work
out formulas that would be agreeable to the Israelis. There was no genuine
American proposal ever on the table because Ross had finessed it before it was
ever presented to the Palestinians. Miller said,
“Had we gotten
Barak’s comments, taken what we thought appropriate, argued about what was not,
and pushed back when the Israelis went too far, we might have preserved our
integrity as a mediator. But we caved to Israeli objections. We had a
substantive approach, Dennis recalls, but ‘Barak says no, so we back off,’ The
president to use one of his favorite words , was simply not prepared to ‘jam’
the Israelis. This wouldn’t have been jamming at all – it would simply have
been smart negotiating.”
Miller’s final recommendations were
that we have to keep negotiating towards a genuine two state solution but our
stance has to be that of honest broker between the two sides and dish out“tough love” whenever needed regardless
whether it is towards Palestinians or Israelis. The Dennis Ross approach, who
acted more as “Israel’s
lawyer,” rather than an American arbitration judge, cannot lead to a lasting
settlement of the conflict.
If anyone were to think that all of
this is “ancient history” because we have a new administration, a president who
has to some extent Muslim blood in his veins and who will now act in a truly
impartial manner, should consider a few more facts which have emerged during the
past month. It is obvious that President Obama walks a tightrope. His first
priority is to get the domestic economy moving again and in order to achieve
this goal he must not alienate the Jewish community. As such a tough love
approach to Israel
will be difficult to implement especially since his Chief of White House Staff,
Rahm Emmanuel, may have other ideas. We don’t know as yet how Emmanuel feels
about Palestinians but the views of his father are, and they are not
encouraging.
That the president is not willing
or able, to deal forthrightly with the problem Israel
presents for our country was demonstrated in his first White House Press
Conference on February 10. Helen Thomas, who at age 88 is the doyenne of the
White House Press Corps and as such is, usually, accorded a seat in the first
row. But she is also regarded as a potential “troublemaker” because she at
times asks hard rhetorical questions. These have banished her in the past to
back rows by some previous presidents, but here she was again in the front row,
and President Obama was obligated to call on her. He postponed doing so until
nearly the end of the conferences but then started out with, “All right, Helen.
This is my inaugural moment here.” This was greeted by laughter from the
audience. He continued, “I’m really excited.” Unflappable Helen rose and asked,
“Mr. President, do
you think that Pakistanis are maintaining the safe haven in Afghanistan
for these so-called terrorists, and also do you know of any place in the Middle
East that has nuclear weapons?”
This was
obviously a loaded question, to which the president responded with a three
minute answer which dealt with well known generalities. Ms. Thomas tried to
interrupt a couple of times to get him back to the point everybody was waiting
for: Israel’s nuclear
arsenal. But he merely plowed on and dealt with that part of the question only
with,
“I don’t want to
speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region
as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger. And one of my
goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally . . .”
He then went on to explain that he would work with Russia
to achieve a reduction in these weapons. This was a missed opportunity to come
clean on a subject everybody knows the answer to, but nobody wants to talk
about. He could have cleared the air by saying something like,
“With respect to
nuclear weapons in the Middle East I am glad that you
asked this question because everybody knows that you are referring to Israel.
The time has come to discuss it openly and put it into its historical context.
After the Suez war in 1956 when Israel
was forced by President Eisenhower to return the captured Sinai
Peninsula to Egypt
the then Prime Minister Ben-Gurion vowed that never again would Israel
be placed into a position where she has to rely on outside help for her
security. With the help of France
the Israelis built a nuclear reactor and have over the decades acquired a
sizeable nuclear arsenal that acts as a deterrent against her several enemies.
Since Israel
has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation agreement she has not broken any
international laws in this respect.Israel is also determined that no other power in the Middle East should
be allowed nuclear weapons because this would create a stand-off.
This brings me to Iran’s
nuclear ambitions. The Iranians, for reasons of their own, also feel threatened
and have been engaging in nuclear research ever since the days of the Shah in the
1970’s. Although they say that they are working only towards peaceful use of
nuclear energy we can’t be certain and the IAEA is closely monitoring the
situation. This is what makes the Middle East so
dangerous and my administration will spare no effort to defuse the situation.
Let there be no doubt: we will not allow Israel
to vanish in a cloud of radio-active dust, but let there also be no doubt that
the same applies to Iran.
I have, therefore, empowered Hillary to bring about a peaceful diplomatic
resolution to this problem. I will closely monitor the progress and will keep
the American people fully informed. I hope that this answers your question.”
A reply of this type would have
made headlines around the world and put everyone on notice: America
is here to help but will not allow herself to be blackmailed
by friend or foe. It didn’t happen, but something else did which makes the
president’s refusal to answer the question in a forthright manner even more
ominous. On the 23rd of last month Reuters reported, “U.S.
foreign policy team veteran, Dennis Ross, has been appointed special advisor to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Gulf region, including Iran,
and southwest Asia, the State Department announced on
Monday.” When the Press subsequently asked a State Department spokesman what
role Ross would play the reporters could not elicit a straight-forward answer.
Ross would not be formally an “envoy” but he is “going to be providing the
Secretary with strategic advice.”
This appointment is a potential
disasterand another report
headlined the impending news with, “Reuter’s report how Ross
could torpedo Iran!!!”
Why should this be so? After having left government service with the incoming
Bush administration Dennis Ross became “Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow
of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, a think tank which is regarded as having a decided pro-Israel tilt.
He also became the first Chairman of the Board of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute which is based in Jerusalem,
founded and funded by the Jewish Agency. The latter is a quasi governmental
agency, receives its money from the State of Israel and is concerned with the
well-being of Jews around the globe. While these aspects show that Ross is
heavily involved in Jewish affairs his views on Iran
were published in a 2008 report “Meeting
the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development.” (http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/8448)
The report indicated that despite Iran’s
assurances its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is,
therefore, “a threat to U.S.
and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation
regime.” “Cold War deterrence” is not feasible because of the “Islamic Republic’s
extremist ideology,” even a peaceful uranium enrichment program would place the
entire Middle East region “under a cloud of ambiguity.”
Even more important are the recommendations that were issued. Some of them are
reprinted below,
“The report advises that the new U.S. president bolster
the country’s military presence in the Middle East, which would include ‘pre-positioning
additional U.S. and allied forces, deploying additional aircraft carrier battle
groups and minesweepers, emplacing other war material in the region, including
additional missile defense batteries, upgrading both regional facilities and
allied militaries, and expanding strategic partnerships with countries such as
Azerbaijan and Georgia in order to maintain operational pressure from all
directions.’ In addition, the new administration
should suspend bilateral cooperation with Russia
on nuclear issues to pressure it to stop providing assistance to Iran’s
nuclear, missile, and weapons programs. And, if the new administration agrees
to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that the country first cease
enrichment activities, it should set a pre-determined compliance deadline and
be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if the deadlines are not
met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes that would ‘have to target not
only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military
infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.’”
Jim Lobe,
an Inter Press Service reporter, correctly called this document “a roadmap to
war.” But it does reflect the views of Dennis Ross and this is the advice
Hillary Clinton is now getting. One really wonders what has happened to sanity
in Washington regardless of administration. We don’t know as yet how
much of this proposal will be enacted by President Obama but we do know that
last Thursday’s budget proposal called for an
additional $75.5 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year,
and $130 billion for the wars next year.
This
brings us back to this essay’s title. Originally, I had placed a question mark
in the title of the book because there was still hope in 2001 that reason might
prevail. This hope is getting dimmer by the day and we can now make it two
question marks. The Palestinians are split right down the middle, and so are
the Israelis. Benjamin Netanyahu has been charged with forming a coalition
government and he has vowed to continue with settlement building. The Israeli
paper Haaretz reported that in 2008 approximately
290,000 Jews lived in the 120 official settlements and dozens of outposts
established throughout the West Bank. That these settlements are illegal under the Geneva Convention does
not faze either the Israeli or our government. We tell the Israelis that they really
shouldn’t do that but they know that we have no intention of enforcing our view
because they are protected by the previously mentioned,” Match Made in Heaven.”
But responsible
Israelis as well as Americans, who happen to be Jewish as Aaron Miller put it,
want reason to prevail against all odds. Dr. Carlo Strenger an Israeli
philosopher and psychoanalyst wrote on February 26 in Haaretz, that although we don’t know what George Mitchell had told
President Obama he should have told him that,
“[Israel] is
indeed a country that thrives in certain respects, but politically it has
reached complete paralysis. Never in my long experience have I seen a developed
economy and seemingly functioning democracy in a state of such anxiety and
hopelessness. . . . In this respect Israel is a
mirror image of the Palestinian situation. ... Bilateral talks would at this time be doomed
to failure. . . . We [the U.S.]
should pressure Israel into engaging with the Arab peace initiative. We could do so if we
provide Israel with the guarantee that we will use our might to prevent any attack
from Iran, even if it goes nuclear, but that in return for this guarantee Israel will
have to start dismantling the settlements in the West Bank. . . .And please convince Bill Clinton to stand by
my side in this process, because Mr. Clinton used to be loved and trusted in Israel, and
he might help me generate trust in the possibility of peace that has
evaporated.”
This is an authentic voice from Israel and
our president would be well advised to add to his evening reading www.Haaretz.com in order to get the true
Israeli perspective rather than what is filtered through domestic channels.
All of us, here and
in Israel, will have to confront an unpalatable truth: secular Zionism was
founded on a mistaken assumption! As has been mentioned previously in these
pages (Israel the Fifty First State, November 1, 2002; For the Goyim they Sing,
September 1, 2003), Herzl thought that if the Jews were to have their own
country, they would move there en masse, the existence of the state would be
guaranteed by one of the great powers and anti-Semitism would disappear,
because there would be no Jews to hate any more. On the other hand he also
wrote that “The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in considerable
numbers.”While the first assumption was
wrong the second one was correct and one wonders why an intelligent person, as
Herzl undoubtedly was, did not draw the obvious consequence; especially after
Sultan Abdul Hamid II had told him that the Muslims would never give up their
land willingly. The secular Zionist dream was pursued in disregard of the
obvious consequences and anti-Jewish sentiments were exported into the Muslim
world where they had previously not existed to any appreciable degree. In 1492
Muslims had shown themselves more tolerant than Christians.
The Jews have lost
their country twice before. The reasons were: internal strife combined with
pride and disregard of external realities. So far Jewish leadership circles,
which are responsible for policy decisions, have not realized that “Chosenness”
means to have been chosen to serve the Lord, rather than to dominate others.
This is the reason why Israel’s adversaries would prefer to put into the title of my book and this
essay an exclamation mark rather than a question mark. There is still a slender
hope that insight into how the world really works will prevail but the clock is
ticking. This may be the last warning for all of us and if we fail to heed it
we may not have to worry about global warming because a nuclear winter might
take its place.
April 1, 2009
UNCHARTED WATERS
The good
ship USSS America found itself in the Sargasso Sea
during the past month. Sails were flopping in the practically non-existent
breeze and the crew i.e. Congress and the media were grumbling and complaining.
It’s not an outright mutiny as yet but Republicans have closed ranks with a
solid “njet” to any further “economic
stimulus packages” and even the Democrats have second thoughts on what to do
with the budget proposal which is before them. President Obama valiantly tries
to rally the country behind his plans on how to get the Ship of State moving
again, but the critical voices have been getting increasingly strident.
The problem
is that this generation has never been in a situation like this. Although the
economic crisis is still called a “recession” it obviously does not much look
like any of the previous recessions we have gone through since I came to this
country in 1950. As popular wisdom has it the definition of a recession is when
someone else loses his job but when you lose yours it’s a depression. The
millions of unemployed and underemployed are likely to agree that recession is
no longer the appropriate word to describe the current economic disaster. All
of us are affected in some way or another and when even Warren Buffett loses
massive amounts of money one has to conclude that there is a fundamental
problem in the way America
conducts its business.
Captain
Obama has a serious problem on his hands. He tries to do the right thing but
nobody knows what the right thing is. Nobel Prize advisers have drastically
different opinions on what should be done and since Obama is by profession a
constitutional lawyer rather than economist he has to rely on the advice he is
getting. But economic forecasting is not a science; it relies on computer
models which in turn are based on assumptions which are just as likely to be
wrong as having a chance to be correct. Even the past history of the depression
of the 1930s and the attempted remedies, which are based on that experience,
are no longer a guide for the future because the world has never been so
interconnected.
Our treasury has never before been
in debt to the tune of $3 trillion, with $739 billion owed to mainland China
and another $634 billion to Japan.
These numbers refer to Treasury bill holdings as of January 2009 and come from
the US
government. In February of 2008 that debt was 2.4 Trillion dollars. In
September of last year China
owned 20.5 % of these assets and for the first time surpassed Japan
as chief lender. In the subsequent four months the figure rose to 23.6%. Under
these circumstances one need not wonder why the Chinese are concerned about
their exposure to the dollar; the value of which they have no control over.
Their worries are legitimate because one of the true and tried methods of the
past about solving financial problems has always been to print more money which
in turn leads to inflation and depreciation of the value of the currency. The
Chinese are thereby in danger of losing a bundle and are understandably not
very happy about that prospect.
While annual budgets used to be
reckoned in billions we passed that point just last year and the current
proposal for fiscal 2010 amounts to $3.6 trillion. This is what Congress is
currently chewing on and to sweeten the deal the administration stated that
this is the first honest budget because it contains the costs of the Iraq
and Afghanistan
wars, which previously had been dealt with separately. If passed and signed
into law the Federal Budget Office projects a deficit of $9.3 trillion over the
next ten years, which sends shudders down everybody’s spines.
But when we look at past history
these projections are utterly meaningless and can only serve political
purposes. On December 28, 2000
President Clinton’s White House released a report which stated that, “The United
States can be debt free this decade. . . .The national debt is projected to be paid down by $237 billion this year
. . . . The United States
is on track to reduce the debt by $600 billion over four years.” When one
considers that the country had a surplus of $236 billion in 2000 and a
projected surplus of $256 billion for FY 2001 this forecast did not seem
unrealistic at that time. The actual surplus was around $150 billion because of
the totally inappropriate response to the 9/11 tragedy by the Bush-Cheney
administration. Two wars were started and from a surplus, the country went into
a massive deficit.
On June 3, 2004 Centrists.org projected that the annual
federal deficit “is poised to hover around $400 billion through 2007,” For 2010
the deficit was projected at $600 billion and for 2015 $800 billion. Well,
those numbers which frightened everybody would now be regarded as good news.
The 2010 projection was reached in 2008 and in September of last year the
fiscal deficit for 2009 was expected to be as high as “perhaps $1.2 trillion.” This
estimate was revised on October 13 by a Morgan Stanley economist who wrote that
“the US federal
deficit for 2009 could go as high as $2 trillion.” These are obviously
astronomical numbers which hardly anyone can comprehend but they show how projections
are made on flimsy data and that even two year, let alone ten year, forecasts
are totally meaningless.
All our projections, regardless
whether they are related to economics or weather, which includes global
warming, rely on models. These are in turn based on assumptions resulting from
past experience. As such they cannot accommodate the unforeseen. We live in a
volatile world which changes from moment to moment. If anyone had told my
grandfather one June 27 1914 in Vienna that six weeks later there would be a
world war and four years later the Austrian, German, Russian and Ottoman
Empires would be past history, he would have laughed and said in so many words,
“you are nuts.”Yet it was true and
those of us who have lived through the last three quarters of the 20th
century have a healthy skepticism in regard to forecasts.
This skepticism, which I prefer to
call realism, is also useful in evaluating other data and I shall now digress
into the personal sphere. Apart from science and ancient as well as current
history one of my hobbies was sailing. As such I read a fair amount of sailing
lore including reports on Christopher Columbus’ four voyages to, what he
regarded as, the Indies. We look with disdain today on
the Spaniards unquenchable thirst for gold but we don’t realize that gold and
spices were in the 15th century, what oil and gas are today. These were
the commodities wars have been fought over in the past and are still fought
over at this time.
One additional reason for the 15th
century voyages of discovery was the fall of Constantinople
to Turkish forces in 1453. This created panic throughout Christian Europe
because the ancient sea routes from the Mediterranean to
the Middle East and via the Bosporus
and the Black Sea to the Silk Road
were no longer available. All of a sudden gold and spices which had arrived in
this manner were in short supply and alternative routes had to be found. Genoa
was especially hard hit by the Constantinople disaster
since some of its islands in the eastern Mediterranean
were now also taken over by Muslim forces. In contrast to Venice,
the Genoese only had a commercial fleet rather than a military navy and as such
were in no position to defend their property.
This was the climate Columbus
was born into and which shaped his life. He took to sailing early on but since
he was restless and ambitious the Mediterranean, which
was the exclusive Genoese trading area, was not big enough for his dreams
especially since Prince Henry, “the Navigator,” of Portugal
had already begun to explore the African coast. The Azores
as well the Cape Verde
islands became Portuguese property and for a young restless, ambitious sailor, Portugal
was the country to go to. Columbus
did so and went along on journeys which got him as far north as Iceland
and as far south as Guinea.
Rumors of islands in the Atlantic, “the Antilles,”
had been around for centuries but they could not be verified and there had been
no reason to mount an expedition. The need for gold and spices now provided the
incentive.
Contrary to popular myth the
scientific community of our forefathers had known long before the days of
Ptolemy (90-168 AD) that the earth was round and that you could reach the east
by going west was no secret. The only question was how long such a journey
would take and thereby its commercial feasibility. Ptolemy’s contribution to
cartography was that he had given a rather accurate estimate of the earth’s
circumference. Although Columbus
believed in the roundness of the globe he rejected Ptolemy’s math and started
to create his own estimates of the distance to the Indies.
These he tried to sell to King John II of Portugal
but without success. A trip across the Atlantic was not
regarded as feasible in view of Ptolemy’s widely accepted numbers. It was,
furthermore, no longer needed for the Portuguese because they were already
committed to the much better known route along the African shore line and
eventually around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian
Ocean.
With his hopes dashed in Portugal
Columbus turned to Spain
where the situation was different. Since Portugal
was now in charge of the eastern route a western one had become of interest.
But Columbus had three strikes
against him. One was that as a “foreigner” he evoked some distrust, the second
was that Spain
was still at war with the Moors which had drained the treasury, but most
importantly his figures just didn’t sound right. Nevertheless, Isabella and
Ferdinand humored him and appointed a commission to check on the feasibility of
the proposal. The commission took its time from 1486 till 1491 until the members
rendered their verdict. Although it was clearly negative because Columbus’
numbers didn’t match expected facts, it left a small loophole for Queen
Isabella, who was Columbus main
patron, not to close the door completely. The war was winding down and when the
final Moorish stronghold, Granada,
capitulated on January 2 of 1492, a victorious united Spain
sent thanks to the Almighty and Isabella’s wish to convert souls from
undiscovered lands to the true faith acquired new force.
After further persuasion of the
Court by Columbus his exorbitant
wishes, which included the hereditary title Admiral of the OceanSea, viceroy and governor general
of the lands to be discovered, and a tenth of all the profits from the
discoveries, were granted. Isabella did not have to hock her jewelry to finance
the voyage. Outfitting of the three caravels at Palos was relatively cheap and
the crown found a way to saddle the citizens of Palos with the cost.
Getting seasoned crew, which was
willing to take a leap into the unknown, was another matter. Amnesty was
granted to men who were imprisoned for various crimes but they didn’t
necessarily make good sailors. Columbus’
luck held when the highly respected Martín Alonso Pinzón opted to join the
voyage with his Pinta. Columbus
needed Pinzón not only for his sailing expertise but also for crew procurement
and in the end only three convicts were among the ninety people who set out on
this voyage for the riches of Cipango (Japan),
Cathay (China)
and India.
Apart from the Pinta, there was an
even smaller caravel the Nina and the
Admiral’s somewhat larger flagship the Santa Maria which
was not regarded, strictly speaking, as a caravel but a “nao,” a ship.
These three vessels took off from
Palos on August 3 heading for the Canary Islands, which
were Spanish property, to take on final provisions and water. After they
achieved that goal and repaired the Pinta’s
damaged rudder they left on September 6 from Gomera on their voyage into
history. They were frequently becalmed, found themselves in the Sargasso
Sea, which was a totally new experience, and after threatened
mutiny eventually made landfall on one of the islands in the Bahamas
on October 12. Since Columbus’ log
is missing various theories have arisen in regard to which island he had landed
on, but Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas published a book in 1550 on Columbus’
journeys which used excerpts of the log and these have subsequently been
republished. For the information provided here I have relied on Christopher Columbus. The
Four Voyages by J.M. Cohen, and Christopher
Columbus by Gianni Granzotto.
The reason why I have spent
considerable space on Columbus in
this essay is because precisely 500 years later our lives intersected on parts
of the same stretch of ocean. This allows me to not only appreciate why he had
all the troubles on his first voyage but also encouraged me in the belief that Guanahani,
where landfall was first made, was indeed probably today’s San Salvador rather
than any of the other places which subsequently have been suggested. The
following description of our adventure was excerpted from notes I had made at
the time and is as such not subject to potential memory lapses in regard to
events that had transpired 17 years ago.
I had retired from executive duties
and seeing patients in 1990 in order to have time for my hobbies, among which
was sailing, while health was still good. Although I had been sailing and
racing one design boats for the previous 35 years this was mainly on inland
lakes. Martha and I had started out sailing with the University
of Michigan Sailing Club on 10 foot
dinghies and Jet 14’s. The professional move to Detroit,
motivated by better professional opportunities, was sweetened by the fact that Lake
St. Clair is a significant body of water with a number of active
sailing clubs and connects directly to the Great Lakes.
The choice of Grosse Pointe for raising the family was dictated by a 25 minute
commute to work and walking distance to the boat. Buying a boat was an
immediate necessity and we started out with a 16 foot Rebel which was later
traded in for a 22 foot Ensign and eventually a Cal 25. When we were not racing
I was mostly single-handing the various boats because a modest degree of
affluence had allowed Martha to follow her dreams which centered on horses,
Single-handing has the tremendous
advantage that you are not dependent on crew availability and in addition you get
to know yourself much better because there is no one to blame when you screw
up. Sailing and especially one design racing, teaches you that there are
numerous ways to do things wrong but only one to do it best. With the Ensign
and the Cal 25 I went down to Lake Erie, which provided
some Great Lakes sailing experience and the lake has a
reputation for being “a nasty cat that swallows a lot of boats.” I also
participated in several Port Huron
to Mackinac races on 30 footers owned by friends and the longest voyage up to
that time had been a Chicago-Mackinac race which covers 256 nautical miles, as
the crow flies.
I mention these aspects only to
point ut that I truly loved sailing, was reasonably competent on small boats
propelled mainly by the wind and used the outboard only when getting in or out
of the marina under adverse circumstances. The wind was my friend, noisy motors
were to be shunned and happiness was a bow wave after having been becalmed for
some time. These aspects were to become important as will later become
apparent. Relatively early retirement at age 65 was, therefore, also due to my
wish to expand sailing life to Blue Water and after a brief excursion with our
son Eric and his wife on a 40 footer, where we journeyed from Fajardo in Puerto
Rico to St. Thomas and back, it was apparent that I had a lot to learn about
bigger boats. I, therefore, took the Moorings bareboat charter course and got a
captain’s license. Thus, I became ready for adventure, which consisted first of
exploring mainly the British Virgin Islands on the boat of the course
instructor who had become a good friend. Early in the spring of 1992 I had the
opportunity to sail the Abacos (northern island chain of the Bahamas) on a
friend’s catamaran and since I liked the area so much I chartered six weeks
later a 30 footer, Pipedream, from Sunsail at Marsh Harbor and went with Eric to
the northern islands rather than the southern ones I had visited previously.
To my surprise I received a call another
six weeks later from Sunsail, if I would be interested in helping deliver one
of their boats from their base in Tortola (British Virgin Islands) to Marsh
Harbor in the Abacos. We would have use of the boat for 14 days and all I would
have to pay was $1200 and the airfare. The roughly 1000 mile passage would be
broken up at San Salvador from
whence we were to proceed to the Abacos. Obviously I jumped at the idea of
passage making and looked forward to it. Next thing I knew was a call from
Chicago where one of the other crew members introduced himself and said that
since I was a doctor he thought it might be good if I knew that he was in his
middle fifties, had a coronary bypass a year or so ago, but was now in good
health. In addition while originally only three crew members had been planned, a
fourth one would also come along. That I was now regarded as the ship’s doctor
was not particularly good news because my last experience with emergency
medicine dated to 1950-51 and neurology is not much of a help with disasters on
the sea.
I, therefore, got the books out and
also called Sunsail to inquire what type of medical supplies were on the boat.
This was crucial because on the trip with Eric I had noted that the first aid
kit had been totally inadequate. It didn’t matter at the time because we were
always in sight of land but an ocean passage is a different matter. Although
the Sunsail lady had assured me that supplies were adequate I wasn’t quite
convinced and faxed her official recommendations from Cruising World, but never received an acknowledgement. As a
precaution I got some Valium, Demerol and other emergency drugs from the
hospital pharmacy (I was still interpreting EEGs at Primary Children’s Hospital
twice a week) and then flew to Tortola. The boat was a
39 foot Oceanis, by the name of Moca, looked in good shape but as expected the
first aid kit was no better than on the Seawolf Eric and I had sailed on
earlier. The next surprise was that the captain was a Brit in his middle
thirties who made up for soon to be apparent lack of experience with
considerable arrogance. The other crew members were the mentioned Jack who had
brought along his friend, Joyce, who was likewise in her fifties and another
relative youngster in his thirties who hailed from Toronto.
He didn’t own a boat because “LakeOntario
is too polluted.” What this had to do with sailing eluded me, but he was
working on his British Ocean Certificate which required 5000 miles of sailing,
of which he had by that time 1600. While Jack and companion had had limited
sailing experience Louis was competent and had brought all sorts of nautical
equipment, including a sextant. He had hoped that Tim, the captain, would be
able to teach him how to use it, but that didn’t pan out. The first GPS models
had just become available and Tim had a Magellan, Louis a Trimble. Since both
of these instruments agreed on latitude and longitude we were in good shape in
this respect. The next surprise came when Tim declared that instead of going
straight to San Salvador and then
to the Abacos we would be sailing to Great Inagua, which is the southernmost
island of the Bahamas,
and from there go island hopping to San Salvador.
Initially I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for a 7 day passage
out of sight of land but it turned out to be a good idea in regard to Columbus.
The reason Tim gave was that we could duck into a harbor in case of bad weather.
But that was an excuse because the chart on the boat was on the scale of 1:
1,500,00 which is good for plotting a course on open water to your destination but
useless for everything else. The Cruising Guide was limited to the Bahamas
and the graphs explicitly warned that they should not be used for navigation.
It was obvious that he did not trust his nautical skills and he apparently had
never captained a boat with a paying crew.
The passage to Great Inagua was
literally a breeze, took about two and a half days with winds ranging between
17 and 25 knots and boat speed around 6-7 knots. Huge rollers from the
southeast also helped to push the boat along on our northwesterly course. These
led to a mishap. Louis’ shortwave radio got doused and we were not able to get
weather information. Since the boat was intended to be sailed only in the Virgin
Islands and the Abacos there were no other communication devices
apart from hand held VHF communicators which had a relatively short range.
There is no record that Columbus
had visited Great Inagua but once we got to Long Island,
which he had called Fernandina, we retraced his voyage up to San
Salvador in the opposite direction. I had brought as
reading material for the trip the mentioned Columbus
book by Cohen and when we anchored in Little Harbor it seemed to correspond
perfectly to what Columbus had
described in his log. The entrance to the harbor matched and so did the
spaciousness of the lagoon. The next day we proceeded to Rum Cay aka Santa
Maria de la Concepción and thereafter to San Salvador.
Our sailing experience agreed with Columbus’
log excerpts and I felt a certain thrill that history was being replayed.
We stayed a day at San
Salvador and bad omens began to appear. The VHF worked
only for less than a mile over water and Tim had run the boat aground on a sand
bar in the San Salvador harbor.
Instead of waiting for the tide to lift it he kept gunning the engine to get us
off which eventually did happen, but I wondered in retrospect what that did to
the engine. In addition I should mention that he had also had the habit of running
the engine full blast at night on the passage to Great Inagua although the
sails were up and we had all the wind we could handle.
We left San Salvador in the late
afternoon and thought that we’d be at the Abacos, which were only about 200
miles to the north, within a couple of days. But soon after midnight there was an awful crashing noise from the
engine. Tim, who had been on the helm, again had the engine running at full
speed, in addition to the sails, although there was plenty of wind. When the
engine was shut off, inspection revealed that the propeller shaft had separated
from its stuffing box. For me this was a “so what;” I had always disdained
engines anyway, we had plenty of wind and once we got to the Abacos they could
tow us in. Ignorance may be bliss but it’s surely of no help when you have to
get out of trouble. While I was in my element because being becalmed without an
engine was no news, our captain was out of his inasmuch as engines were his
delight. He should have been what we sailors derisively called a “stink
boater.”He insisted that the air would
come up at any moment but I wasn’t so sure.
The rollers were gone, the water
was placid as a sheet of glass with not a cat’s paw in sight and it was as if
we had arrived at a totally different ocean. Jim did have the sailor’s friend,
Hiscock’s Cruising under Sail, on
board and there was the explanation: we had entered what is called the horse
latitudes. I won’t go into the meteorological reasons but there is a relatively
narrow zone between the prevailing northeasterlies in the lower latitudes and
the southwesterlies in the higher ones. It is centered at 30 degrees north and extends
to about five degrees in either direction. The use of the northeasterlies were
the real way to go from the Canaries to the “Indies” while the southwesterlies
would take Columbus and all subsequent generations of sailors back to Spain. But
Columbus didn’t know that on his
first voyage. The canaries, where he came from are on latitude 24 degrees and
so is San Salvador. He thought that
he had steered straight west but got too far north and that was why he ended up
mostly becalmed in the Sargasso Sea. At one point he
deliberately tried to find some wind by going further north but this would only
aggravate the problem and if he had persisted in going north he would have been
driven back towards Spain
without having accomplished anything.
On October 6 Pinzón, the more
experienced mariner, and as such more familiar with the flight patterns of sea
birds, advised him to go west-southwest instead of west-northwest but Columbus
didn’t heed this suggestion until later that night. Even on October 8 the log
excerpt still stated that “They found the sea as smooth as the river at Seville.”But by October 11 the air had freshened and
“They ran into rougher seas than any they had met with on the voyage . . . and
up to two hours before midnight they had gone ninety miles.”Two hours after midnight,
i.e. October 12, land was sighted and they had arrived at Guanahani. By going
south he had entered the trade winds zone and by learning this fact Columbus
was able to cross the Atlantic in three weeks on his
second voyage, rather than the five he had needed for the first one.
On July 29, 1992 we were in a
somewhat similar position in which Columbus had found himself 500 years earlier;
becalmed without engine, a less than competent skipper who had never seen
conditions like these, a grumbling crew with hardly any supplies of potable
fluids, and canned food was also running out. Tim tried to raise someone on the
VHF but there was only silence; we had the ocean to ourselves.
The major difference was, of
course, that we had a GPS and knew where we were but still had no way to get
where we wanted to go. In addition it was hurricane season. We had no weather
information and even if we did it might not have done us much good. We crawled
along at a rate of 0.5-2.5 nautical miles per hour and after three days reached
Cherokee Sound, the southernmost point of Great Abaco. Although we were in
sight of the radio tower there was no response to our VHF call for help until
we were less than a mile distant. A boat came out towed us through the reefs
into the harbor and all was well that ended well, although we had missed our
planes and had to reschedule departure for the States.
At that point we didn’t as yet know
how lucky we had been because about three weeks later came Hurricane Andrew
which completely devastated the Bahamas
with winds of 160 miles per hour, and subsequently portions of Florida.
It was the third most intense category 5
storm of the twentieth century and has so far only been surpassed by Katrina in
2005.
We may now ask what all of this has
to do with the current economic crisis. Well there were lessons to be learned.
Among them were: all of life ought to be regarded as a learning experience how
to cope with the unforeseen. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, while
using whatever resources you have at a given moment optimally. The wind will
always come back up, it may not take you into the direction you want to go and
if it’s a hurricane you’re in the hands of God; the ultimate teacher.
For Americans the 21st
century will be a new learning experience. The idea of “exceptionalism” and its
corollary “it can’t happen here” was shattered on 9/11. “Greed is good” had its
comeuppance during the past few months. We are still told by some politicians
that we are “the biggest and the best,” but it is no longer true. Genuine
recovery will take place when we, the citizens, look at ourselves, and the
society we have created over the past decades, truthfully and realistically in
accord with the world’s changed circumstances.
We know where we are and we know
where we want to go but have at present no means to get there. In the past when
rulers found themselves in financial troubles they went to war in order to
acquire booty. This will not work any more. The current wars make us poorer
rather than richer and the sooner they can be ended the better. Printing more
money will also no longer work because, as mentioned earlier, under those
circumstances the world will abandon the dollar and create another currency for
its financial reserves. It’s “sink or swim” for all of us. The current
prescriptions for economic recovery are for more borrowing on the one hand and
cutting taxes on the other. Either extreme is likely to be unworkable and
President Obama tries to steer a middle course which he may or may not be able
to hold.
The real problem, which is not yet
addressed by our media, is that we can no longer afford our empire. Our foreign
military bases no longer serve the purpose they were created for and neither
does our massive arsenal. In the past our country has oscillated between hubris
and paranoia, which can only make matters worse. If the public mindset were to
shift from confrontation to cooperation with the rest of the world, defense
expenditures could be reduced in a gradual manner and the money saved thereby could
be utilized for peaceful purposes. Before we begin changing the world, as we
will try to do later this week at the G20 summit, we ought to realize that
change begins at home in the hearts and minds of our citizens. Americans are
resilient and even our politicians will eventually be able to handle the truth
when it is presented in a factual way. This will be the task of the media which
are now faced with an enormous responsibility. Whether or not they will be up
to it no one knows, but for the individual who is of sound mind and body and who
takes the above mentioned lessons to heart the current crisis need not be a
stumbling block but can be a stepping stone to a more insightful future
conduct.
May 1, 2009
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
Just as last month; the USS
America is still floundering with sails luffing and a tide of red ink
threatening to send it upon the rocks of a lee shore. The 2010 budget of $3.6
trillion, that I had previously mentioned, was initially revised to $3.9
trillion, and has currently been negotiated down to $3.5 trillion. These are figures
which nobody can comprehend. According to current scientific wisdom the entire
universe, after the “big bang”, is supposed to be 13.5-14 billion years old
which might serve as a comparison. Republicans are up in arms against the “tax
and spend Democrats” who will turn our capitalist country into one of Europe’s
socialist democracies or worse and even some “blue dog” Democrats are worried.
While comparisons
with the great depression of the 1930s, which some of us have personally
experienced, are en vogue it needed an article by Jill Lepore on Edgar Allen
Poe to bring to our attention that a similar disaster had occurred in 1837. It
appeared in the April 27 issue of The New
Yorker under the title “The Humbug. Edgar Allan Poe and
the economy of horror.”But
before dealing with this event a few words about Poe, who literally had a
miserable life, are appropriate. Born in 1809, his mother was soon thereafter abandoned
by her husband and died in 1911 of consumption, the term used for tuberculosis
at the time. The orphans, he had a brother and sister, were separated and Poe
ended up with the family of a wealthy Richmond
merchant named John Allen. The stepparents apparently never liked the boy very
much and did not adopt him. Nevertheless, Edgar at some point took the
stepfather’s name and became known as Edgar Allen Poe. He never had what one
might call a reasonably “normal” life. Whatever little money he was able to
earn usually went on alcohol consumption but he did manage to write memorable
poetry and short stories. Lenore’s “nevermore” raven is a classic and so is
“The Murders on the Rue Morgue.” Inspector Dupin has
become the model for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes who in turn spawned
numerous successors who fill the shelves of bookstores around he world. When
the rich stepfather parted from this world he didn’t leave a penny to Edgar who
eventually succumbed to alcoholism and died in abject poverty. For more on
Poe’s miseries, which explain why he wrote the way he did, the interested
reader can consult Ms. Lepore’s article.
The relevance at the moment is her depiction of the 1837 “Panic”
and its aftermath. Since the causes were entirely similar to what has happened
in September of 2008 I shall paraphrase her article and subsequently quote
relevant sections here. The problem arose initially over the use of paper money
which was not covered by gold reserves. There were two financial crises in
Poe’s lifetime, “the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837, the pit and the
pendulum of the antebellum economy.” The economic depression which followed the
1837 bank collapse lasted seven years and the 1840s were known in Europe,
as “The Hungry Forties.” After his 1829 inauguration President Andrew Jackson
engaged in a battle with Nichols Biddle who was in charge of the Bank of the United
States. Biddle insisted on federal
regulation of the paper currency while some of Jackson’s
supporters were against all paper money. In the absence of regulations
speculators took over and between 1830 and 1837 three hundred and forty seven state-chartered
banks were opened across the US.
They printed their own money and by 1836 $140 million were in circulation.
These were backed by nothing or as Hitler said, when he found himself in a
similar situation 100 years later by “the work of the German people.” Let me
now quote extensively from Lepore as to what happened in 1837 because of the
similarity to last year’s events.
“At the end of Jackson’s
two terms American banks held six times as much paper money as gold. . . . With
all that paper money, speculators had gone wild; in the West, there had been a
land grab and in the East a housing bubble – in New York,
real-estate values had risen a hundred and fifty percent. When the crash came,
in the last weeks of Jackson’s
presidency, bankruptcies swept the nation. In New York,
riots erupted as the swelling ranks of the city’s poor broke into food shops.
‘Down with the panic makers,’ one newspaper warned, promising, ‘”A bright sun
will soon dispel the remaining darkness.’ But the skies didn’t brighten. In
April one New Yorker wrote in his diary, ‘Wall Street. The blackness of
darkness still hangeth over it. Failure on failure.’
By the fall of 1837, nine of ten Eastern factories had closed. Five hundred
desperate New Yorkers turned up to answer an ad for twenty day laborers, to be
paid at the truly measly wage of four dollars a month.”
When one reads about the “bright
sun” coming up, President Obama’s “glimmer of hope,” which he saw a couple of
weeks ago sounds rather similar. The seven fat years and the seven lean years
have been known from the Bible and the depression of the 1930’s didn’t end
until the war came. We better prepare for the long haul and some Americans are
doing just that now. They are arming themselves to the teeth to meet their
neighbors with the barrel of a gun in order to protect their property if and
when riots were to break out.
But let us temporarily remain with the 1840’s.
In Britain
there were crop failures and the potato blight, which drove millions of Irish
to America.
Continental Europe also suffered from the consequences of the economic
depression. The beginning industrialization and speculations had led to serious
social dislocations. Poor harvests contributed to higher food prices and the
general unhappiness finally expressed itself in the 1848 revolutions. Europe
was “haunted by the specter of communism” as Marx and Engels had put it in
their Communist Manifesto, which was written for the occasion. It took a World War
and the fall of the Russian Empire for that dream to come true. Subsequently it
needed another World War, as well as numerous proxy wars to demonstrate to the
Russians that the communist model was an unworkable fantasy until they ditched
it under Gorbachev.
Yet, there are two important
lessons. One is that ideas take decades to come to fruition after they are
first hatched and when they do, they won’t work in the way they were intended
but have to be modified to meet human realities. The European socialists soon
realized this and separated themselves from the communists who never forgave
them this act of treason. On the other hand the socialists did manage to initially
create stable political parties and subsequently stable democratic coalition
governments.
But the propertied middle class,
the bourgeoisie as it was derisively referred to, never made much of a
distinction between socialists and communists. Both carried the red flag as
their symbol, both celebrated May Day as the worker’s day of freedom, and Karl
Marx, with his revolutionary, rather than evolutionary theories, was the patron
saint of both parties. Educated people had read the Communist Manifesto where
the “proletarian,” as the hero of the future was treated to exhortations such
as, “You must, therefore, confess that by ‘individual’ you mean no other person
than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property. This person must,
indeed, be swept out of the way and made impossible.” Well, nobody wants to
lose whatever little property one has.
Marx could only write such nonsense because as
the offspring of a long line of rabbis, who lived on the charity of the
congregation, he expected to be treated in the same manner. Instead of bringing
God to the people, he saw himself as the secular prophet of the earthly
paradise and as such deserved that his needs were met by others. For his
livelihood in London he depended
mostly on the good will of his friend Friedrich Engels. The latter lived on his
father’s money who was a prominent German industrialist. When dad was no longer
willing to pay for his son’s revolutionary ideas Friedrich had to start working
for him. He thereby joined the bourgeoisie, while still sending money to Karl. It is clear that without Engels, Das Kapital,
Marx’s main contribution to society, would never have been written. What the
communists did not understand was that it takes leisure for a person to work
creatively. But somebody has to pay for that leisure and “proletarian” bureaucrats
are not trained to see this necessity. Karl Marx is the best example for the
communist paradox.
Religious people and foremost the
Catholic Church were concerned about the change in social mores which would
flow from the principle of Marx’s atheism which the socialists, as the party of
humanity, progress and reason, endorsed.As part of Marx’s program the education of children was to no longer
remain in the hands of the Church, but was to be transferred to the State. The
property of the Church was to be taken over by the State. Marriage was a relic
of the past, because wives are exploited by their husbands who see them as a “mere
instrument of production.” The divided Protestant Churches, did not offer
appreciable resistance but the Catholic one under Pius IX, of whom more will be
said later, put up a stiff although loosing fight.
While America
had its Civil War in 1861, ostensibly over slavery, Austria
and Prussia
followed suit in 1866. The purported reason was minor; the real cause was the
question of who was to become in charge of a potentially unified country:
Catholic Austria or Protestant Prussia? As in America
it was North against South and in both instances the North won.
This ascendance of Protestant
Prussia and its German allies under Bismarck
was a grave threat to Catholicism and Pius IX tried to rescue the Church which
found itself beleaguered on the political as well as societal level. The
reunification of Italy,
which he had opposed, cost him the Papal States. In 1871
the French, who had supported him up to then, had to put “first things first”
when Bismarck invaded their country.
This meant that the Pope’s, terrestrial kingdom had permanently shrunk to that
of Vatican City as the smallest
independent state.
Pius IX (1792-1878), or Pio Nono as
he was referred to at the time, had been elected in 1846 and as such was
intimately involved in the social upheavals of the times. He was a fighter and
did not take these losses with Christian humility. In view of the rapid strides
liberal ideas had made in Europe the pope issued a series of Encyclicals, the
most important of which was Qunta Cura
(1864) which listed in an appended syllabus 80 errors European thinkers were
committing in relation to religion and its purpose in society. Among them were:
the false belief in absolute reason; socialism; communism; secret societies;
the Church and her rights; the relationship to civil society; the difference
beween natural and Christian ethics; Christian marriage; sovereignty of the
pontiff and modern liberalism. Inasmuch as these “errors” of European society
are now being enacted in America
I am providing the URL where the complete syllabus can be found http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm.
Thus, Pio Nono could also be called Pio No No!
In 1868 he convoked the First
Vatican Council from which arose the papal infallibility dogma in 1870. The
dogma regarding the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception had already been proclaimed
in 1846. The ideas behind the dogmas were not new only their dogmatic
expression was. But the infallibility doctrine was too hard to stomach even for
some Catholics which led to a split in the Church. Those members who refused to
accept it became “Old Catholics” and its influence on my own life has been
mentioned in War&Mayhem.
The pope also had an interesting
medical history of epilepsy which has been ascribed to a near drowning accident
in adolescence. This has led to speculations that he was of unsound mind which
directly affected Church history and his penchant for issuing encyclicals as
well as the two dogmas. The Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sirven has recently published an
article on the pope’s epilepsy in which he correctly rejects this view,
although the likelihood exists that some of his documented erratic behavior in
later years, as well as a facial rash, may have been a result of bromide
intoxication. Bromide salts were the main treatment method ever since the
accidental discovery of their anticonvulsant properties by Sir Charles Locock
in 1857. This might have been another example where the cure may have been
worse than the disease
Although Pio Nono’s efforts were a failure in
the short run, he did manage to keep the remainder of his flock in line and stem
the advance of socialism in most Catholic European countries. For this and the
fact that he was longest reigning pope in history he was raised to the status
of Blessedness in 2000 and is now being considered to be elevated to Sainthood.
These historical facts are not
“ancient history” but are directly influencing American culture. The current
debate over the meaning and definition of marriage is a direct outcome of the
battles that were fought in Europe more than a hundred
and fifty years ago. A few weeks ago Newsweek
had a lead article on “Post Christian America” which immediately reminded me of
a book published in 1872 by David Friedrich Strauss entitled, “Der alte und der neue Glaube.” The first
chapter had the headline, “Are we still Christians?” The book, although well
received in some liberal German circles, led to a violent polemic against it by
a young philologist Friedrich Nietzsche, who had previously admired and
recommended Strauss’ first book, “Das
Leben Jesu.” In that one Strauss had declared that the long held beliefs
about the “historical” Jesus were nothing but fables and myths. Jesus had been
a well meaning, exceptionally gifted human being but to ascribe divinity to him
was a serious mistake. Needless to say this opinion created a furor not only in
religious but also literary circles which is even more understandable when one
considers the publication date of 1835.
Nietzsche’s problem with the 1872
book was not atheism, which he vigorously endorsed in his own later writings,
but the “neue Glaube” – the new
belief system. For him Strauss had become a “Bildungsphilister;” a highly educated person well versed in the
classics, but a Philistine in the sense that he accepted and endorsed the
political status quo. In concrete terms this meant support of the new Germany’s
militarism and the belief that Science – with a capital S – was now to be the
new god that would solve all the world’s ills.
The massive optimism which resulted
from scientific discoveries during the 19th century which
revolutionized travel, communications, as well the natural sciences and
pervaded all of Europe at the time was regarded by
Nietzsche as unfounded because he looked below the surface and saw the cracks
in human nature. In addition he had no use for the militaristic type thinking
which had swept Germany
after the defeat of the French and the re-establishment of the German Empire. He
realized that the fundamental problem the world faced was how to live without
God, a problem that has not yet been solved and for which lives are lost in
current wars. In blunt, sarcastic, polemical, albeit beautifully phrased
language, he castigated his contemporaries with ever increasing virulence. I
shall deal with Nietzsche and his influence on our time on another occasion
because he did have a neurologic disease which had clearly influenced his later
literary output and this is not taken into account by a number of his
biographers.
For now we have to return to the
America of the 21st century where Europe’s history of the 19th
century is to some extent being re-enacted without most of the our countrymen
knowing that this is the case. One sentence from Nietzsche’s polemic against
Strauss struck me in particular, “A great victory is a great danger. Human
nature can tolerate it less than a defeat; actually it seems to be easier to
gain such a victory, than to follow it up in a manner that it will not result
in an even greater defeat.” Nietzsche wrote these sentences in the full
knowledge that the French would never forgive Germany
the harsh financial reparations they had to pay after their defeat, as well as
the humiliation they had to endure when the German Empire was proclaimed in
their very own cherished Versailles,
rather than on German soil. We know of the revenge Versailles
dictate of 1919. We also know what happened after Hitler’s victories and Israel’s
Blitzkrieg in 1967. The fruits of the latter are the cause of current and
future tragedies. America
escaped this fate in 1918 and 1945 but succumbed to it in 2001
But Americans are no longer trained
to see world history in the total context and will remain ignorant of the
causes of world affairs as long as our educational system continues to head for
the lowest common denominator. When Nietzsche complained about the Bildungsphilister of his time, he would
certainly have shuddered had he seen America’s
current high school curricula and the grade inflations. This resulted largely
from a philosophical view, contributed to by psychoanalysts and an assortment
of child psychologists, that children have a tender psyche and must be raised
in their self-esteem. Since life is only going to get progressively better they
don’t need to be trained for the rigors the real world will actually confront
them with.
I have discussed the catastrophic
state of America’s
high school situation in a previous essay (February 1, 2008, IsAmerica
Fixable?) and as a result of the current economic crisis the education of our
children is becoming a serious concern within the political establishment. This
brings up the question: what are we educating or youngsters for? The answer
seems to be: docile technocrats who are happy to spend their lives in the
cubicles they are assigned to by their different employers, facing a computer
screen and typing on keyboards. After work they are to go home to their
anthills of high rise apartments and watch sports or soap operas on TV. Last
week The Salt Lake Tribune reported
on a new school program where four year old tykes are taught to learn the
letter A of the alphabet by watching a video of an apple falling on a farmer’s
head, which elicited giggles. I don’t think Sir Isaac was mentioned in that
context. The debate was not about the educational merit, of getting
pre-schoolers hooked to watching computer screens, but about the money that was
to be spent on it. One can expect that these children will learn “computering”
and “texting,” where grammar, spelling and rudimentary courtesy have become a
relic of the past and by the age of 8 or 10 they will be busy visiting a
variety of porno sites. But pre-schoolers are not made to sit in front of a
video screen; they are supposed to be running around outside playing and learning
from nature as it really exists rather than images consisting of cartoon
characters.
The current generation of America’s
high school and college youngsters has no idea what “Western civilization”
really means. The history of religion and philosophy is unknown to the vast
majority of them and their mental outlook on the world starts with the day when
relatively permanent memories are beginning to get stored in their brains. This
is the tragedy of America’s
educational system which is not addressed and the only change which is
envisioned is more emphasis on math and science. It would need a Nietzsche type
polemic to shake up our education planners and bring about a change in
direction. The humanities ought to receive the same attention as the natural
sciences. This should already be done in high school rather than the students
having to wait for college, which is becoming increasingly expensive.
Furthermore, colleges can not build on a non-existent foundation that ought to
have been laid years earlier. They cannot be expected to teach in two or four
years what had been neglected between the ages of 10-18. We don’t want
Nietzsche’s type of Űbermensch
but we do need well informed – which includes knowledge of the past history of
ideas that have shaped the world we live in – well rounded, well meaning
citizens who are trained in critical rather than cynical thinking.
The distinction is important. The
well meaning critic says: I don’t believe it; but if you can show me that what
you say or do leads to correct results, then I’ll either believe you or investigate
to see whether or not you have your facts correct. The cynic on the other hand
says, “Hogwash,” and is done with it while continuing to live in his own
fantasy world. The ancient Cynics’ initial goal was noble, namely to live a
life of virtue in accordance with nature rather than worldly pursuits and the
best known example is, of course, Diogenes who supposedly lived in a vat. The
original meaning of the name is obscure but since Cynics lived in the street
and hurled insults at passing strangers the name was used derisively as kunikos, dog-like. Inasmuch as they also
frequently disturbed public order they were intermittently expelled from major
cities. The best way to deal with them was recounted by Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars. When the Emperor Vespasian
was accosted and harangued on the road by the banished Cynic philosopher Demetrius,
he merely said, “Good dog.”
Currently Americans are bewildered.
Some of them are still trying to hang on to the belief that, “we are the
biggest and the best,” or Reagan’s, “It’s morning in America,”
or the neocons’ “lone superpower,” which must use its military might to remain
the top player. All of these slogans no longer apply. We are at present a
nation at loose ends. Organized religion no longer suffices for a great many of
our citizens, just as in the Europe of the late 1800s,
and dreams of military glory with the goal of world domination are also
beginning to fade. What is left is the belief in science and technology.
That Science when written with a
capital S is likewise a false god was proven by Nazi Germany but this lesson
has not yet sunk in. In the US Nazism has been reduced to the Holocaust –
likewise written with a capital H to denote its political sacredness – which is
a serious mistake. I have discussed the thoroughly “rational” decision making
process of the Hitler regime in War&Mayhem
but since those thoughts go against our Zeitgeist,
they are not to be printed by a major publishing house. As such unpopular, but
essentially correct views are relegated to obscurity. But inasmuch as they are
correct in their essence they will likely receive a hearing in the future;
unfortunately after a great deal more bloodshed and property destruction.
Everything in our personal and
socio-political lives depends on Weltanschauung – namely how we see ourselves
and the world around us. If we believe in a higher power, above and beyond the
State, to which we are responsible different conduct can result than when we
live under the assumption of, “what feels good is good.” This is not to say
that a belief in God as exemplified by President Bush 43, or “Providence”
as exemplified by Hitler, necessarily leads to good policies. Politicians can
not only be mistaken, by listening to wrong advice as was the case with
President Bush, they can also be dogmatic fanatics as was the case with Hitler.
But we always have to remember that politicians are only the expression of
their times and will act in accordance of that Zeitgeist. It would be the function of an educated public and the
media to bring about a culture that is worthy of its name.
We do not have one at this time although
it is to President Obama’s credit that he recognizes the problems and tries to
do something about them. But the difficulties are so profound and have arisen
over a period of decades that the quick fix, which is expected by the generally
short attention span of our citizenry, is impossible. This week the media are
preoccupied, apart from swine flu and other nuisances, with grading Obama’s
first 100 days in office. All in all he tends to get an A- or B+ for how he has
conducted himself so far but the warning signs for the next 100 days are also
pointed out. The concerns are that Obama’s attempt to attack all domestic
problems on a broad front is likely to misfire and if people do not begin to
see an improvement in their lives his currently high approval rating will
dwindle. The reforms Obama is trying to achieve in the tax structure, health
care system and education are also attacked as an attempt to replace the
capitalist system with a socialist type one. This debate relies on an obsolete
conservative-liberal type dichotomy when in fact a middle ground between the
two extremes must be found.
The rest of the world is also
currently looking at Obama for leadership not only in regard to the economic
crisis but critical foreign affairs. In the Middle East
the situation is worse than it was in 2001 when President Bush took office.
Events are threatening to spin out of control and the recent election of
Benjamin Netanyahu, or “Bibi” as he is colloquially referred to, as Prime
Minister of Israel is not good news. He is opposed to a Palestinian state and
simply wants to grant “autonomy” to the Palestinians in certain areas, which
would leave Israel
free to build further settlements on expropriated Palestinian land. The model,
although no one will admit it, clearly is Hitler’s “Reichsprotektorat Boehmen und Maehren,” which he established in
March of 1939 from rump Czechoslovakia.
I have discussed this aspect previously (April 1, 2002. PalestinianState or
Israeli Protectorate?)and the situation has
clearly gotten worse since then through Sharon’s
misguided policies and the Bush administration’s tacit approval.
The immediate and most dangerous
question before us is not even the economy but what will the American educated Netanyahu
do, in regard to the Iranian nuclear program? Walter Rodgers published in the
weekly April 26 edition of The Christian
Science Monitor an article where he listed the dangers an Israeli air
strike on one of Iran’s
nuclear facilities would pose for the world. They include: closing the Strait
of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil is shipped; Hezbollah
which has enough rockets to do considerable damage to Haifa and Tel Aviv would
be unleashed by Iran; a tsunami of anti-Semitism would be triggered around the
world and not remain limited to Muslim countries; the US would be regarded as
co-responsible and Islamist youngsters would respond en masse to the call for
jihad especially in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans.
Mr. Rodgers went on to say that
Netanyahu is no fool and knows what is at stake but “What’s worrying is that
Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as Prime Minister
from 1996-1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of ‘Bibi’
in October 1997 under the headline ’Israel’s
Serial Bungler.’ It described his governance of the Jewish state as a
‘calamity’ for the peace process.” Rodgers then wrote, “Obama needs to do
Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: ‘No first strike.’ Keep the F-15s and
F-16s at home.” A remarkably similar article was sent to me earlier this week
by a friend from Austria
which had been published in Die Presse.
It was written by Dr. Albert Rohan, former general secretary in Austria’s
equivalent of our State Department. Furthermore, this week’s Time magazine features an article by Joe
Klein on Obama’s first 100 days in office which quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy
Carter’s National Security Advisor) as saying, “The one thing Obama hasn’t done
in the first 100 days is the big Middle East speech where he says, ‘this is the
settlement. This is what we’re for.’ If he doesn’t do that soon Netanyahu is
going to set the agenda not us – and that will be a disaster. If we don’t act
now, any chance of a two-state solution will be gone. If he does act now, every
government in the world will stand with him.
Rodgers, Rohan and Brzezinski are
absolutely correct but unfortunately there are political realities which Obama
has to consider. What is the balance between his domestic programs and the
foreign threat? If he speaks out forcefully, as would be needed so that there
remains no shadow of a doubt where America
stands, he is bound to alienate the Israel
lobby which can doom his domestic agenda. Furthermore, he is only one person.
His powers are limited and when it comes to Jewish concerns his efforts can even
be quietly sabotaged by members of his own administration. Yet speak he must
even if it is limited to Secretary Clinton delivering a personal unmistakable
letter to the Israelis.
This is President Obama’s challenge:
steering the ship of State between partisan hatreds and fears, in the midst of
a massive economic crisis, to a better future. Fortunately, he means well, is
young, energetic, well educated and competent. Furthermore, and let us not
underestimate this point, he has a loving and equally competent wife who can
protect him from excess male vanity. As such he deserves all the help we can
provide him with in his monumental task.
June 1, 2009
POLITICS OF FEAR
President Obama surely has a
tough row to hoe. After eight years of mistaken policies and unbridled laissez
faire capitalism he is now expected not only to set the country on the right course
for the future but the results must also be immediate and to everybody’s
liking. Americans are an impatient people who, in contrast to Europeans
and especially Asians, have not yet learned the virtue of patience. They are of
the “instant” generation which started with instant coffee and fast food chains
and culminated in instant Zen via drugs. You can have it all was the lure. Now
that this house of cards has collapsed, instead of sober reflection of where we
have gone wrong, the expectation is fostered that by the end of the year this
“recession” will be over and we can go back to our merry old ways of spending
ourselves out of debt.
This is the
hope and message of the true believers but since this would mean that the
Democrats would retain their majority in the House and Senate in next year’s
midterm elections these expectations must be dashed and the best way to do so
is to spread fear. It is true that there are great dangers on the horizon,
Obama is aware of them, but the way to meet them ought to differ from the
policies of the Cheney-Bush administration. This fundamental insight is still
lacking in a substantial portion of our politicians and the electorate. Instead
of pulling together, as Obama hoped he might be able to achieve, we are being pulled
apart through partisan politics, to the detriment of the country at large.
Those of us
who voted for Obama were a mixed lot. Surely there were some flaming liberals
who thought he’d usher in a socialist paradise, but most of us had no such
illusions. We merely wanted a competent, well educated Chief-executive who is
capable of building bridges across divides on the domestic as well as
international scene. The times had called for a pragmatist who faces facts
rather than an ideologue who has a direct line to the Almighty, as was the case
with President Bush and potential Vice-president Palin.
Let us remember the choice we had
last year.It was quite limited because
our two party system has no room for Independents. The
religious right, which controlled the Republican Party at the time, could not
stomach a competent Mormon and defeated him in the primaries in favor of an
ex-Baptist preacher. Political experience played no role because both had been
governors of their respective states.It
was strictly religious fervor at play and, as I mentioned in these pages last
year, when the choice is between a Mormon and a Baptist the outcome is a
foregone conclusion. But since the country at large doesn’t consist only of
Baptists, Senator McCain profited from this internecine battle. He was supposed
to have been the unifier who, in addition, would keep the country safe. But the
elderly, intemperate, military man whose immediate
answer to some international nastiness would probably have been a new war, was
an unlikely candidate for that role. “Keeping the country safe” was a
successful mantra in 2004 and in spite of its failure in 2008 is again
vigorously chanted as will be commented on later.
On the other side there was the
young and vigorous Obama, who had deftly defeated his most formidable opponents
- by dint of glamour, charisma, smarts and money. Genuine change in the way Washington
works seemed no longer “the impossible dream,” but within reach. Since our
future and that of the world depends on how Obama will deal with the increasing
pressure, domestic and international events are about to bring to bear on him,
it is useful to once more assess what we know about his character.
The outstanding aspects seem to be
ambitious and deliberative. His life experiences taught him compassion with the
underprivileged and the desire to rectify obvious injustices. This is why he
first became a community organizer. He soon saw that the effect he had was limited because all the good will was for naught unless
he could drum up the money from the powers who controlled the city. The next
step was, therefore, Law school and state government. But again, a state
senator likewise has only limited influence especially if he belongs to the
minority party. Real power was seen not in Springfield
but the Senate in Washington.
That the ultimate goal was the presidency, with the power it conferred to the
officeholder, is, of course, obvious.
There is no doubt in my mind, that
he intended and still intends to use the Presidency for the good of the country
and the world but he is now confronted with powerful realities. The most
important fundamental aspect which Americans have yet to confront is twofold.
One is that results are independent of one’s intentions and the other that
power, even presidential power, has its limits provided one wants to stay
within the constraints imposed by the Constitution. President Obama now finds
himself saddled with wars, which were not of his making but which cannot
readily be terminated. He is too young to remember the Lyndon Johnson years who
found himself in a somewhat similar situation. He didn’t want the Viet
Nam war but there was no easy way to get
out. I remember Johnson’s dilemma and his wistful statement, “They talk about
the awful power of the president. All the power I have is nuclear and that I
can’t use.”
But Johnson said something else in
his Texan drawl, which I also remember and which I believe he sincerely meant,
“I want to be the President that is loved by all the people.” When I heard this
I thought, “Oh my God, the fellow hasn’t read Machiavelli.” The chapter in The Prince, “Is it better to be loved
than feared?” had immediately sprung to mind. As it turned out Machiavelli was
right and the Johnson presidency ended in failure. The attempt to end the war
was left to Nixon who failed for other reasons, which were likewise
foreshadowed by Machiavelli.
Our “enlightened” era has given
Machiavelli a bad press but he deserves to be studied because he knew human
nature as it really is and this will always remain the crucial variable in
every political equation. The mentioned chapter explains that being loved by
one’s subjects is theoretically preferable over being feared but it is usually
not achievable. A choice has to be made in most cases and under those
circumstances “it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
“Because this is
to be asserted in general of men; that they are ungrateful, fickle, false,
cowardly, covetous and as long as you succeed they are
yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children .
. . when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.
And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other
precautions is ruined;because
friendships that are obtainedby
payments and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but
they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have
less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love
is preserved by the link of obligation, which owing to the baseness of men, is
broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a
dread of punishment which never fails.”
One may decry this pessimistic view
of humankind but Machiavelli knew what he was talking about. He had a
distinguished diplomatic career for his city of Florence
which brought him into contact with all the powers of his day. But when the
Florentine government changed he was not only exiled but thrown in jail. After
his release he never regained his formal stature and had to eke out a living
for himself and his family by working a small farm. Those were the
circumstances under which “The Prince” was written and published in 1513. His
efforts to bring this book to the attention of the Medicis were unsuccessful
but he did achieve renown for writing comedies and dramas. His political advice
was then sought and given, although he favored a Republican form of government
over an autocratic one. When the Republic was re-instituted he tried again to
obtain the office of Florentine Secretary, which he had held prior to the Medicis, but was rejected. Although this was merely proof
of what he had written about human nature he was devastated and died a few days
later on June 20, 1527 at
the age of 58 years.
The information presented above
comes from The Great Books of the Western
World and it is only fitting that Nicolo Machiavelli shared this particular
volume with Thomas Hobbes who held an equally unfavorable view about human
nature. I have discussed Hobbes’ contribution to the history of mankind
previously (April 1, 2003. The Neocons’ Leviathan) in relation to Robert
Kagan’s 2002 article “Power and
Weakness”, which had considerably upset the Europeans. A sentence such as, “It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and
Americans share a common view of the world, or even
that they occupy the same world;” may read as rather strange today but was the
leading philosophy which brought us to the current impasse. This April 2003
issue is well worth reading from today’s point of view because it is not 20/20
hindsight but pointed to the inevitable consequences of this type of thinking.
But let us stay with Machiavelli for another
moment because he is a reliable teacher. While he gave fear precedence over love
he also pointed out that it must not be used indiscriminately lest it engenders
hatred, which is to be avoided. The ruler “ought to be slow to believe and to
act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with
prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious
and too much distrust render him intolerable.”Since every human being also contains within himself an animal nature
the ruler should make appropriate use of it. The two animals which are relevant
in this respect are: the fox and the lion. The lion is powerful but may fall
victim to snares, while the fox although relatively powerless is usually
sufficiently astute to avoid them. Thus in combination with a character
structure as outlined above these two qualities will ensure effective rule.
President Nixon had the qualities of the fox and the lion which earned him the
“tricky Dick” appellation but his relative lack of the necessary human
qualities in regard to politics was his downfall.
Machiavelli’s chapter XIX deals precisely
with this issue, “That one should avoid being despised and hated.” The prince
becomes hated not so much when he kills people but when he violates other
people’s property. In this connection the current outcry against Obama’s feared
tax policies immediately come to mind. The phrase that he will “redistribute
wealth” was one of the campaign slogans against him and will persist throughout
his presidency. Since taxing the people is unavoidable in today’s day and age
Obama will need to be circumspect about it, lest he comes to be regarded as
“rapacious.” To quote Machiavelli,
“When neither their
property nor honor are touched, the majority of men
live content, and he [the Prince] has only to contend with the ambition of a
few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.
It makes him contemptible
to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute from
all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should
endeavor to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity and fortitude; and
in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are
irrevocable and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either
to deceive him or to get around him.”
When we look at our past Presidents from this
point of view there are not many who measure up, but Lincoln would fit the bill and he
is Obama’s role model. Unfortunately Lincoln had to pay with his life
for it at the crucial time when he was needed to lead a national reconciliation
effort. Our country is again at a crossroads where fear and hatred are being
stoked.
The current efforts to derail Obama’s
policies involve among others not only the mentioned tax problem but also the
revived “national security” mantra. For reasons of his own
Obama has muted the idea of having a commission appointed to investigate the
various malfeasances of the Cheney-Bush administration and decided to look
forward rather than backwards. By the way, the sequence Cheney-Bush is not a
mistype but denotes the true power structure of at least the first 6 years of
that administration. Obama’s decision not to open the books on the past eight
years for public inspection is I believe a mistake. Unless a country comes to
grips with its past history it will continue to pursue false goals when they
are no longer applicable by changed circumstances. The true causes of WWI and
WWII should serve as a warning how to avoid WWIII which seems inevitable unless
a genuine change of heart were to occur within the American public, the media
and Congress. But this can only happen when the recent past is dispassionately
examined.
The urgency of this fact was underlined by
the attempts of former Vice-president Cheney to
whitewash the dismal record of the past eight years and the positive reaction
his comments have received from a still influential segment of the public. It
was known that Mr. Cheney was to give a speech on “National Security” on May 21
before the American Enterprise Institute and inasmuch as his views, which have
not changed for decades, were also known, the Obama administration decided to
pre-empt the impact of Cheney’s speech by one given by the President a few
hours earlier on the same day. The timing was dictated by Obama’s attempt to
close the Guantanamo detention facility and
the venues of the speeches were symbolic. Obama delivered his in the National
Archives where the Constitution is prominently displayed, while Cheney chose
the American Enterprise Institute whose members were largely responsible for the
failed assumptions which led to the inappropriate response to the 9/11 tragedy.
Obama laid out his plan on how to deal with
the rest of the detainees who are still held in Guantanamo in a step by step manner
which corresponds to US law as well as international
norms. It requires adjudication on an individual case by case basis. He foresaw
that some individuals whose detention was no longer required could be returned
to their countries of origin or others that are willing to take them, including
our own. Prisoners who are found guilty of crimes and represent a danger to
society would be sentenced to life-long detention in maximum-security
facilities within the U.S. This process makes sense
to rational human beings but we are not dealing with this species. We are
living in a society which is fear-driven and where fear continues to be stoked.
The irrationality of the public is perhaps
best illustrated by the fact that we are willing to send Guantanamo inmates to other countries
but completely unwilling to accept them within our own borders. Detractors of
Obama’s plan now point out that other countries don’t want to take these
prisoners, so why should we? The simple answer, which they don’t want to
consider, is that we have put these people in a concentration camp off our soil
precisely because we did not want to adhere to international legal norms. We
created the problem ourselves and it is only reasonable for others to expect
that we would solve it within our own jurisdiction rather than foisting it onto
the good-will of the rest of the world. If we don’t show it why should they?
For Obama the problem is acute because he has committed himself to closing Guantanamo by the end of this year
but Congress has denied him the money he asked for to create viable
alternatives.
This is the point where Mr. Cheney weighed
in. He roundly condemned Obama’s efforts, praised those of his administration
and insisted that unless the path of the past eight years in regard to the “War
on Terrorism,” including “enhanced interrogations” is continued America will
experience an even more disastrous 9/11 type attack. The problem for our
country which arises from this dogma is that a substantial segment of our
people believes it and this bodes ill for the future. It is quite possible that
a terrorist attack may occur on our soil again, as it has happened in other
countries around the world since 9/11, but everything will depend on how we as
a country respond to it. It is a truism that it is not the crime which people
can’t forgive, it’s the cover-up. The same applies to man-made disasters such
as 9/11. Had it been regarded as a crime, rather than an incitement to war,
numerous lives and an immense amount of property would have been saved.
When a tragedy is viewed as an opportunity to
put preconceived plans into operation we compound it and the Obama
administration is in danger of falling into the same trap. While Cheney and
company used 9/11 to pursue imperialist hubris, Rahm Emmanuel declared after last
year’s financial collapse that “an opportunity should never be allowed to go to
waste.” What he meant was that the domestic agenda of the left could now be
enacted with relatively little opposition. But the difference between 2001 and
2009 resides in the Chief-executive. While President Bush deferred to the
Cheney-Rumsfeld-Neoconservative ideology, President Obama seems to be of a more
pragmatic type. But whether or not he will be able to stand up to the
increasing pressures only time will tell.
Since the former Vice-President is becoming
the voice of the disenfranchised right wing of the Republican Party he must be
taken seriously and his views, as expressed in the mentioned speech, examined.
For anyone who reads the transcript and has a perceptive mind it is obvious
that Mr. Cheney still harbors dangerous delusions about his term of office and America’s place in the world. The
key aspect is the opinion that his administration’s policies have kept the
country safe from another attack on the homeland since 9/11. Although this
mantra, as mentioned above, is good for propaganda purposes it has little to do
with the reasons why there was a 9/11 attack in the first place. This
deliberate blindness is dangerous. The Cheney group, ex-President Bush is currently
out of the picture, keeps fostering the illusion that they took office on the
evening of September 11, 2001 rather than in the
afternoon of January 20. These crucial eight months when the administration
patently failed to keep America safe are deliberately
swept under the rug.
Cheney’s speech is classic for unintended
truth, ambiguities and outright falsehoods. Here is a key excerpt:
“The point is not to look
backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our president’s
understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices
he makes concerning the defense of the country, those choices should not be
based on slogans and campaign rhetoric [closing Guantanamo], but on a truthful
telling of history.”
The first sentence is self-serving and in
direct contradiction to the ending of the second one. A truthful telling of
history is indeed vital and is what most Americans want. But this is predicated
on “looking backward” and the opening of archives which are jealously guarded
for reasons, you guessed it, of “National Security.” We are to be made secure
by ignorance of the past! Cheney then listed the attacks against Americans
during the Clinton years and how they should
have been responded to differently. He failed to mention that when his
administration took over Richard Clark’s warnings were disregarded and that Al
Qaeda simply wasn’t a priority.
For a discussion of the rest of the speech I
shall use the device of an open letter to Mr. Cheney. Although I harbor no
illusion that he’ll either see or read it, the information may be useful to the
public at large.
Dear Mr. Vice-President,
In your speech of May 21, 2009 you made several points
which deserve to be commented upon. Please be assured hat I harbor no ill-will
against you in person but since your views and the attempts to influence
current policies are potentially harmful to our republic they need to be aired.
With your professed
devotion to America’s security we would like to know whether or not you were
aware of the August 6, 2001 briefing
which stated that Osama bin-Laden planned to attack the homeland. If not: why
not? And if yes: why did you ignore it? What was your schedule during the
months of February to the beginning of September? We know about your meetings
on America’s energy needs but they
are still secret. We request, therefore, that you allow the publication of all
the relevant memos, e-mails etc. so that truthful history can be written.
Please also tell us why
your administration immediately embraced war instead of first declaring the
area of the WTC a crime scene. The latter course would have allowed a thorough
investigation of the rubble for clues to the unprecedented collapse of three
steel reinforced buildings, one of which wasn’t even hit by a plane. Mr.
Vice-President, we who ask these questions are not conspiracy theorists, we
simply want the God‘s honest truth, which you have so far failed to provide.
You also stated that “wars
cannot be won on the defensive” and this why your administration “moved
decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries and
committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” Mr.
Vice-president, more than seven years have passed and as a result of your
decisions we now have more Taliban fighters not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan, which may be on the
brink of collapse. Do you not feel any sense of responsibility for that
outcome, and why have you not brought Osama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to
justice; instead of invading Iraq?
You repeatedly mentioned
that the interrogation methods of prisoners yielded actionable intelligence and
have prevented further attacks on U.S. soil but you have not
provided us with specific examples upon which to judge the veracity of this
statement. Doubt is permissible because you also reiterated that Saddam Hussein
had “known ties to Mideast terrorists,” which is
misleading. The only tie we know of for certain is that he sent money to the
families of Palestinian suicide bombers. While this showed bad judgment in our
eyes it hardly qualifies for invading his country. Furthermore, by now you
should know perfectly well that the “intelligence” you and the rest of the
administration relied on for doing so was manufactured and/or willfully
distorted.
As far as the methods of
interrogations are concerned which are currently under investigation by
Congress you emphasized that they were “legal, essential, justified, successful
and the right thing to do.” But Mr. Vice-president they were legal only because
your lawyers were under orders to write opinions that justified your wishes.
The idea that “if the President does it, it’s legal” was President Nixon’s
defense. It was not accepted then and it will not be accept now unless you are
willing to depart from our republican form of government and espouse the
autocracy of well known dictators from the past century.
I believe that you are
correct in stating that the Obama administration may have “carefully redacted
[memos] to leave out references to what our government learned through the
methods in question. . . . Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots
that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons
the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to
know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”
These are important points
and you can rest assured that those of us who want to arrive at the full truth
of the events which transpired during your administration will keep asking for
it. But this is a two way street you also must personally be willing to release
all the information you have and if need be under oath.
In regard to your
categorical statement that “Torture was never permitted” I hope that neither
you nor a member of your family will ever be subjected to the “enhanced
interrogation methods” which you still support. If this were to be the case you
would likely conclude that the difference is purely semantic rather than
substantive.
We know that you are
currently writing a book about your role in the Bush administration but if it
is merely a reiteration of what you have told us on May 21 it will have no
historical value. On the other hand, if you were to be totally honest with
yourself and the American public and included accurate information, which is
currently not available, you would provide a service for the country.
Sincerely
Ernst Rodin
It is obvious that the wish expressed in the
last sentence is not going to come to pass because I believe Mr. Cheney is honestly
convinced that his course was the correct one; but so was Hitler. This is the
current tragedy of our country: we have people in our midst who in their own
minds firmly believe to be on the right track, but proceed with blinders which
don’t allow them to consider the adversary’s point of view. On the
international scene they are all lumped under the label of terrorists and their
eradication by bombs and other fire power is the supposed answer. As long as
people continue to believe this all the sacrifice in lives, limbs and property
the past eight years have engendered will have been in vain.
In previous paragraphs I have referred to
Machiavelli’s views about human nature, which unfortunately are quite correct
in most instances. But there is another side to the human being which was
incorporated in a contemporary of his, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). He is
regarded as the Renaissance man par excellence. While he held no illusions
about the inherent goodness of human beings, whom he did consider, similar to
Machiavelli, thoroughly depraved, his message of how to overcome this condition
was different. I shall have more to say about him in future installments, for
now I would simply like to draw attention to his 1517 publication, “Querela Pacis” which has been translated
as “The Complaint of Peace.” It is available in The Essential Erasmus, translated by John P. Dolan and ought to be
read by everyone who is concerned about world affairs.
In this article Peace, speaking in its own
name, is genuinely puzzled why people throughout the ages have always preferred
war while professing love for peace. This in spite of the fact that war is so
much more expensive, unleashes the worst qualities of human beings and once
started is difficult to terminate. For Erasmus, as a devout Christian, albeit
one who relentlessly criticized the conduct of ecclesiastic authorities, the
way out from incessant wars was to heed the message of Jesus. This will strike
the modern reader just as “quaint” as the Geneva Convention was for the
followers of the neoconservative ideology. Yet, the concept of Jesus as the
Christ provided the foundation of what we call Western civilization and needs
to be taken seriously. I shall present the reasons why this is the case later
this year in book form.
As a final note I would like to let readers
know that the next Hot Issue will not appear on July 1 but during the last week
of June because I intend to join my colleagues in the celebration of the 100
year anniversary of the International League against Epilepsy which will be
held in the city of its birth, Budapest, June 28-July 3.
July 1, 2009
FAITH AND SCIENCE
In last
month’s installment I confidently predicted that I would be joining my
colleagues in the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the International
League against Epilepsy but I should have added the Muslim’s Insha-Allah, God willing. The
insignificance of our desires in the scheme of things was drastically driven
home in one instant. From one moment to the next one can be reduced from a
self-sufficient individual who looks forward to vacations and meeting with friends
and relatives, to a helpless infant who has to scream for his mother.
While
getting dressed and putting on a sock one morning, the prosthetic hip
spontaneously dislocated. There one sits, totally immobilized because the
slightest movement produces inordinate pain. The phone which would allow one to
call for emergency services is only ten paces away but it might as well be on
the moon because it’s unreachable. Martha, who always gets up bright and early,
is in the kitchen at the other end of the house and has the TV on. So, there
one sits and yells at the top of one’s lungs hoping that she might hear. She
did, the ambulance was called, and after due time the hip was replaced into its
socket in the nearby hospital’s emergency room. By mid afternoon I was
basically intact again, from the pelvis on up. Travel was now out of the
question because it was the second spontaneous dislocation and what happens
twice can recur at any time thereafter. An operative repair to limit the risk
of further recurrences is essential and scheduled for the middle of the month.
When even a
simple task, such as putting on a sock, has all of a sudden become hazardous to
one’s health this gives one pause to think. Ordinarily whenever something
untoward happens we love to blame somebody else or even oneself. But there was
no one to blame unless you say it was the will of God. Under those
circumstances you can either vent useless fury against an unreachable Deity or
think about what the message might be that you have been sent so unexpectedly.
I did the latter and this article is part of the outcome.
A few years
ago, after having published The Moses
Legacy, I prepared a book about Jesus. It placed the gospel writers and
their mental pictures of Jesus in the socio-political-religious context of the
First century and looked at the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, from a medical
point of view. The manuscript was finished four years ago and then made its
rounds to various publishing houses which I thought might be appropriate. It
was an exercise in futility. It sat on editors’ desks and the one who appeared
most interested finally rejected it after two years in spite of repeated
changes which I made on his requests.
I can’t
blame the editors because this type of book simply does not fit into today’s
compartmentalized thinking, where a physician has no business to stick his nose
into an area that is the prerogative of theologians and historians. In
addition, since I am unknown in the circles of literati, it won’t make money
for the publisher. I, therefore, abandoned the project for the time being and
concentrated on the scientific work that needed to get done and published. But
the event in the beginning of last month was a wake-up call with the question:
what are your priorities? Since it is obvious that Atropos, who stands poised with her scissors, can cut the feeble
strand of life at any moment there is really no more important task than to
finish unfinished affairs. The Jesus manuscript was, therefore, re-examined, a
new Preface was written as well as a chapter on Pilate’s question, “What is
truth?” and an up- to-date Conclusion. Under the working title: Understanding Jesus. A Physician’s Search
for the Truth the manuscript is now making its rounds to some friends and
colleagues for critique and possibly helpful suggestions. This essay is a
somewhat expanded version of one aspect that is covered in the book.
Before
addressing the substantive issues it may be necessary for some readers who did
not have the benefit of a classical education to explain the role of Atropos in Greek mythology. The Greeks
firmly believed in Fate against which even Zeus was helpless. But Fate was a
trinity. Clotho spun the thread of
life; Lachesis measured it, while Atropos cut it. Clotho
and Lachesis have been relegated to
oblivion while Atropos lives on as the name of a drug: Atropine. But only the
names of these deities have disappeared, the essence of what they stood for is
now regarded as our DNA and its “longevity gene,” for some of us. Since we
didn’t order our DNA from the celestial menu prior to conception we are stuck
with what we got and this is our personal fate.
These
considerations bring up not only the question of: Who and What are we; but also
of “Free Will” and: “How can Science help us in solving these questions? I have
capitalized the word Science because it has become a substitute for God in the
minds of an influential segment of our society. On the one hand Science is
looked at with awe by some while it also has been degraded to an extent that “Science”
is a subject taught in elementary school. So let us be clear what we mean.
Science is an abstract noun which in America
tends to mainly cover the physical sciences; aspects of the material world
which lend themselves to measurement. The word itself is derived from the Latin
scientia and as such has no
particular meaning, except that which is currently ascribed to it. In German
speaking countries the word is Wissenschaft
which is both meaningful and considerably broader in its connotation. Literally
translated it is knowledge-creation. Ergo, anything that enhances human
knowledge is subsumed under this term, which is then divided into Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschafte. These correspond here to the natural
sciences and the humanities.For the
German word Geist there is no single
equivalent in the English language because it can, apart from ghostly
apparition, mean mind, spirit or soul depending on the context. I am mentioning
these points because German words, and thereby thoughts, may not be directly
translatable into English and when we think we are talking about the same thing
we may not be.
After
considering the semantics we now need to realize that science with or without
capital S does not exist in some vacuum. A common statement such as: “science
has demonstrated,” is nonsense. Science is a mental concept which doesn’t
demonstrate anything, only scientists do! But even if we clarify the sentence
to, “scientists have demonstrated,” it is still not particularly meaningful
because we are not told the details of what these scientists really did to
achieve the result which they regarded as valid. The popular media jump on
results, propagandize them as the latest truth only to find out a few years
later that what they had believed in wasn’t really so. The various miracle
cures we have been treated to during my lifetime are obvious examples.
The
inevitable next conclusion, which results from the non-existence of science per
se, is that in regard to scientists we are not talking about gods but human
beings who are fallible. Furthermore, the scientist acts scientifically only
for a fraction of the day, namely when s/he is actually involved in the conduct
and evaluation of a specific experiment. The rest of the time is spent on other
duties which nowadays frequently involve grant writing. Our capitalist system
has introduced during the past half century the quest for money into the halls of
academia where search for truth should have been paramount. It is amazing to me,
who fortunately could do most of his work unencumbered by financial
considerations, how the situation has changed for the current generation.
The golden era of science for the sake of science ended
around the nineteen seventies. Prior to that time one could pursue scientific
work strictly because one wanted answers to questions which were not in the
books or because one knew that the books were wrong and intended to correct
those notions. One’s standing in the scientific community was measured by work
one had personally performed, presented at scientific meetings and subsequently
published. This is no longer the case nowadays, not only does everybody have to
be mentioned under authors who had only the faintest contact with the work his
name is associated, but when speakers are introduced at meetings the number of
grants they have obtained as well as their amounts are now the hallmarks of
their achievements. This intrusion of capitalism will have a profoundly deleterious
influence on the quality of scientific work in America.
Jesus’ statement about not being able to serve God and mammon is still correct.
I shall limit myself to describe
the current situation in this country in regard medical research, where I have
first hand knowledge. The mere fact that one has to apply for a grant which has
to be approved by one’s “peers” who are appointed by one of the funding
agencies, which as far as medical research is concerned involves mainly NIH or
the pharmaceutical industry, is only the first problem. These “peers” who judge
the applications are human beings with vested interests. They are wedded to a
given conventional ideology and will, therefore, approve grants on topics they
are familiar with and which are likely to confirm their currently held views.
As a result more and more strictly routine work is produced because fundamental
new insights occur mainly by serendipity and cannot be properly followed up on
because brand new ideas cannot get funded.
In the
1970s when grants started to become de rigueur, a joke circulated. The Lord
applied for a NIH grant but was turned down. The rejection letter stated: The
committee is fully cognizant of the magnificent work the applicant has done in
the past but is not aware of any recent achievements and he has never published
in English. As money became increasingly scarce a new method was invented so as
not to hurt the applicant’s feelings. The grant may be approved but not funded!
Countless days and weeks are wasted merely in grant writing and since gifted
investigators are not particularly good at flattering the funding agencies with
pseudo sophisticated protocols, universities now employ, to some extent,
professional grant writers for that purpose.
In addition,
before a grant can even get submitted it has to pass the “Institutional Review
Board (IRB) of one’s facility to immunize it against lawsuits which might be
brought against it. The Nazi concentration camp experiments are held up as the
example of what happens if physicians are not carefully supervised in regard to
their ethical practices. That this aberration was an exception and part of an
inherently criminal government during the conduct of a war is not taken into
account.
IRBs are now mandated by law and
have to decide whether a given proposal meets ethical guidelines and to what
extent the proposed work might lead to risks for the patient/volunteer. This
means that all of us have to take periodic, multiple choice, “ethics exams” to
demonstrate that we are fully cognizant of past abuses and a certificate of
having successfully passed must be presented. The Hippocratic Oath and “above
all do no harm” no longer suffice. These tests are generic and have nothing to
do with the work that is intended to be done. They and the IRBs are eyewash but
will prevent important new discoveries from being made. Neither Pasteur or
Jenner nor possibly even Salk, would nowadays have passed inspection by an IRB.
There is, of course an obvious fallacy in all these “safeguards.” Ethical
conduct cannot be vouchsafed by multiple choice tests because it is easy to
cheat and if a given human being does not have inherent ethical standards they
will not be achieved by the measures cited above. But as mentioned, it really
has nothing to do with ethics per se. All of this results from the fear of
lawsuits, which is another major limiting factor for innovative research.
While this situation is unfortunate
for the physician who does not have to rely on his research to provide the
daily bread, it is infinitely worse for the PhD who works in basic research.
Grants are now the sine qua non and once a grant has been obtained the
application for renewal has to be prepared. What happens in practice is that
the investigator knows the essential result after a few experiments but is now
forced to repeat them in a routine manner to meet the demands of the protocol
which specified that a given number of tests will have to be carried out in a
given manner. Since grants need to be renewed the investigator cannot strike
out into the unknown with a hypothesis which might or might not pan out. For this
reason before a particular grant is written the investigator already has to
have a reasonably good idea of what will work because if the grant money
doesn’t keep coming, the family can’t be supported. With other words, our
brightest people, who are supposed to produce original thoughts, are reduced to
the level of assembly line workers who have to keep to a rigid protocol.
Assume now that by sheer good luck
the investigator has come up with a finding that has a significant impact on
the field. Assume further that it invalidates previously held cherished views.
Obviously the finding will need to be published in a first class scientific
journal but now comes the next hurdle. Editors of journals have their pet views
and whatever doesn’t fit is not allowed to exist. The situation in 2009 is
really not much different from 1610 when Galileo’s “peers” refused to look
through his telescope. They already knew the answer, because the Bible told
them so, and, therefore, whatever Galileo told them must be wrong. One may
doubt the veracity of this statement but it results from current personal
experience. The Bible has simply been replaced by secular dogma which is held
on to with the same religious fervor.
These are
the facts, especially in the medical scientific establishment, of which the
general public tends to be unaware. But there are wider questions that need to
be addressed: Can the natural sciences lead us to objective truth about the
world we live in and especially about ourselves? Are there limits to the information
scientific work can achieve and if so where are they? These questions are not
new but were raised by Emil du Bois Reymond in the 1870s. He is rightfully
regarded as the father of electrophysiology having discovered among other
aspects that the “nerve impulse” is an electric current which is now called the
action potential. As such, Du Bois Reymond had impeccable scientific
credentials but his interests were not limited and encompassed also history and
philosophy. These were the foundation upon which rested his most remembered
speeches that ended with “ignorabimus”
and “dubitemus.”
The first
lecture “Über die Grenzen der
Naturerkenntnis” - On the Limits of Natural Science, was given in Leipzig
in 1872. It is available on the Internet
and well worth reading because the scientific optimism which pervaded Europe
during the 19th century is still that of America’s
in the 21st. In the 1872
presentation Du Bois Reymond referred to a sentiment, expressed by Vogt in the
1850s that all mental activities are merely functions of the brain. “To put it
crudely, thoughts stand in the same relationship to the brain as bile to the
liver, or urine to the kidneys.” Du-Bois Reymond rejected this thesis as
unwarranted because even in regard to some of the most essential aspects of the
material body we have to admit to ignorance, “ignoramus.” While this statement would have been accepted by the
audience his final conclusion created uproar and he was severely criticized by
the powers of the era.Because of its
importance for our time I shall translate the last paragraph of his speech
here.
“In the face of
the riddles the physical world presents us with, the natural scientist has for
quite some time been accustomed to state with stoic resignation [maennlicher Entsagung] his ‘ignoramus’.
But looking back upon victorious past achievements he harbors the silent
awareness, that what he does not know at present, he may under certain
circumstances, perhaps come to know in the future. But in regard to the riddle
of: what is matter and what is energy [Materie
und Kraft] and how they are able
to think he has to admit to himself the much more difficult truth:
‘Ignorabimus.’”
For this ignorabimus, by which he meant that we are inherently incapable of
ever knowing the answer to this most fundamental question of our being, he was,
as mentioned, severely criticized and subjected to ad hominem attacks. He, therefore,
followed it up eight years later as part of a Leibniz celebration with, Die Sieben Welträthsel, The Seven
Riddles of this World. In it he met his critics, who had not bothered to
properly read his first speech, head on and explained why he said what he had
said. Since these two presentations form a unit I shall now present their
essence working backward from the second to the first.
He listed the Seven Riddles as: the
essence (Wesen) of matter and energy;
the origin of motion; the origin of life; the apparently intelligent plan in
nature; the origin of sensation; the origin of rational thought and speech; and
freedom of will. Three of these puzzles he thought were potentially eventually
amenable to solution by the scientific method. For three others the answer was
no and for one: “freedom of will” he hedged his bets because it depends on the
three unsolvable ones: the essence of matter and energy, first motion and first
sensation. Since the speech was given in honor of Leibniz who had thought that he
solved all of these problems to his own satisfaction, Du Bois Reymond ended his
presentation with the comment that if Leibniz could stand today on his own
shoulders he would probably agree with what had been presented and conclude
with him in “dubitemus,” we are not
quite sure.
This is not the place to engage in
a polemic to what extent the ignorabimus
was justified but it is clear that we still have to say ignoramus for all the seven puzzles. For whether or not some of them are solvable by the scientific
method, the dubitemus is also correct
as will be shown. In former years, e.g. the era of Descartes and Leibniz, God
was a reality and so was the dualism of body and mind/soul. One was a material
entity upon which the immaterial one somehow exerted its influence. Under those
circumstances free will for instance was understandable as a gift of the spirit
while it must be denied, if one is intellectually honest, when only purely
physical forces operate in a mechanistically determined universe. While chance
events can occur, purpose which exerts its will towards an end can not. Because
the question cannot be solved by scientific means it is shunted to the realm of
philosophy but that is, to put it bluntly “a cop out,” for believers in science
as the ultima ratio. As scientists we
are also human beings and this fragmentation in regard to fundamental problems
of human nature is not in the best interest of the species. Socrates reportedly
said: the unexamined life is not worth living. It is, therefore, up to us to
fulfill our human potential by truthfully examining all aspects of life and
when we reach the limits of understanding accept them and fearlessly present
them as Du Bois Reymond did.
The fundamental problem of
awareness or consciousness was formulated by Du Bois Reymond as: a statement
that awareness can be explained on basis of mechanics needs to be denied, but a
statement that awareness depends upon mechanics is undoubtedly correct. With
other words our brains, acting on mechanical electrochemical principles, are
required for awareness and the content will be shaped by its state in health
and disease but that does not mean that mechanical principles, therefore,
explain the origin of awareness. He quoted Leibniz for further explanation:
“One is forced to
admit that awareness (Wahrnehmung)
and everything that depends upon it cannot be explained on a mechanical basis;
that is through objects and movement. Let one imagine a machine which is so
constructed that it produces thought, feeling and awareness. Let us now magnify
it to an extent that one can enter into it like a mill. Under these
circumstances one would find in its interior nothing else but parts, which push
at each other but never anything from which one could explain awareness.”
While thinking about this problem other
examples came to mind. We can scientifically examine Michelangelo’s Pietà in
St. Peter’s Cathedral to the nth degree but this will never allow us to say
anything about what the artist wanted to tell us. Or, imagine that a UFO from
outer space abducts a car from a street and brings it back to its planet where
such contraptions have never existed. The scientists and engineers of that
planet would then take it apart piece by piece, examine the parts in detail put
them together in various combinations but they still would not have the
faintest idea what the purpose of that contraption was in the first place.
Nevertheless, this is our scientific method and Goethe was already aware of its
limitation. In Faust there is a scene
where Mephisto impersonates the old scholar and explains the various branches
of university study to a student who had come for advice. A pertinent quote is:
„Wer will was Lebendiges
erkennen und beschreiben,
Sucht
erst den Geist heraus zu treiben,
Dann hat er Teile in der Hand,
Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band.
Encheiresin natuare nennt’s die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.“
One might paraphrase this stanza as
follows. Whoever wants to understand and describe a living entity attempts
first of all to drive out its spirit. He then has the parts in his hand but
alas what’s missing is the band which held it together in the first place. This
lack is being excused by referring to nature’s handiwork (my approximate rendering
of encheiresin naturae) thereby
mocking ones efforts by not realizing what one has actually done.
This is the inherent limitation of the
scientific method as currently used: we can only describe and analyze, which is
essentially the same process. By describing a tree I separate it mentally into
roots, trunk, branches and leaves. If I am an arborist I can go further,
measure the various component parts, and conjecture how they might fit together
to make the tree we behold. The latter process is called forming a
theory/hypothesis. This theory is, however always incomplete and will be
improved upon or invalidated by others in the future. As such science is an
ongoing process and any conclusion that is currently accepted as true is
entirely dependent on three aspects. These are: a) the instrumentation that was
used for measurement; b) the conditions under which the measurement proceeded
and c) the interpretation that was applied to the observed result. Since c)
always involves deductions by the human mind, which can only put new
information into some type of known framework, the presumed objectivity of
scientific endeavors is unachievable, even under the best of circumstances. All
we can hope to obtain is common consensus based on common experience but we are
not justified to regard this as final reality.
This is not to deny or to diminish
in any way the impressive scientific progress that has been achieved over time
but it is necessary to recognize the limitations imposed by the scientific
method because in so doing we become considerably more humble, especially in
regard towards aspects of life which elude rational thought.
Up to know I have limited myself to
the world as we experience it on a daily basis and upon which we have built our
laws. In the popular mind they can be summarized as either-or. There are
mountains and there are oceans, but if you were to declare one to be the other
you would be regarded as either a liar or suffering from mental illness. Likewise
in criminal law one is either guilty or innocent. There is no room for yes-but
or may be. In the current context, one is largely regarded either as a
scientist or as a religious person and the one is not supposed to trespass on
the domain of the other. I was told so when the Jesus book was rejected by
publishers. Our civilization assigns us slots to which we are supposed to
conform and not move out from. But this attitude leads not only to false assumptions;
it does not even reflect all aspects of our material world.
In our quest “to get at the bottom
of things” we have split objects into ever smaller parts and did not stop at
the level of the atom. It also was smashed to bits and the result of our
handiwork – the bomb – now threatens to destroy us. But by splitting the atom
we have entered the subatomic world of particle physics which behaves not at
all the way we expected. Rather than as “either-or” this world seems to run on
“as well as.” A subatomic particle may behave as a particle or as a wave and
“what it really is” depends on the instrumentation used for observation.
Particle physics has introduced the “uncertainty principle” and even worse the
idea that two different states may co-exist at the same time. What is “real” is
determined only when an observer enters into the picture.
Erwin Schrödinger, a well known Austrian atomic
physicist and 1933 Nobel Prize winner, performed a mental experiment which has
become known as “Schrödinger’s cat” where the cat can be both dead and alive at
the same time. These apparent absurdities are the problems atomic physicists
struggle to make sense of and you may enjoy reading about it from the cat’s
point of view by typing “Viennese Meow” into Google. Being “dead and alive” at
the same time is obviously a fantasy and there are other explanations, but that
particles once they have met are then wedded to each other and behave in
relation to each other, regardless of the distance that separate them, is an
observable phenomenon that has been called Verschränkung
by Schrödinger and entanglement in English.
Bernard d’Espagnat, a highly
respected atomic physicist and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University
of Paris-Orsay, has recently published a book on Physics and Philosophy in which he discusses the puzzles which flew
out of Pandora’s Box when we smashed the atom. In the Introduction he wrote,
“Great philosophical riddles lie at the core of present-day physics and most
people, by now, are aware of their existence even if but a few have a precise
idea of their nature.” The book is not easy to read and must be carefully
studied but what comes through loud and clear, even for the lay person which
includes everyone who is not working in that particular field of science, is that
even the material world is infinitely more complex than we have been willing to
admit. Pride in human achievements has no room in quantum physics because even
the experts admit that we don’t know what we are talking about when it comes to
“reality.” While the experts are busy trying to detect even smaller particles
at CERN by smashing them in a super collider, relatively few people have
started to consider the implications of what we are doing and what we are
trying to accomplish for what purpose.
One of these implications ought to
be obvious. Faith and Science are not mutually exclusive. Even the scientist relies on faith that the
work s/he is doing is going to be of some use. Just as Science does not exist
in the abstract neither does Faith. It is always attached to something and the
person who cannot muster faith in God will simply place it on some terrestrial
object or idea. No one can live without faith in something and even Nietzsche
would have killed himself, as he intimated in his letters, had he not held to the
firm belief in posthumous fame. Faith is innate, we are born with it and how we
use it is part of our free will.
In view of the importance of the
subject the discussion will be continued in the next installment on August 1; Insha-Allah.
August 1, 2009
KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH
Inasmuch as the hip operation,
which was mentioned in last month’s installment, went off without complications
I can keep to the usual schedule and continue the discussion on aspects of life
which, under ordinary circumstances, we tend not to consider. Yet they are
fundamental to the question what we are as human beings and how we differ from
the rest of the animal kingdom.
The major
difference is clearly that we think of ourselves as “rational” beings whose
actions are regarded as voluntary and who exercise judgment as to likely
outcomes. Animals on the other hand go
through their lives “instinctively.”They know what’s good for them without weighing possibilities and
whatever ruminating is done is limited to the digestive tract rather than the brain.
Their vocalizations are mainly related to their needs of attracting a mate or
warnings of danger while we have developed not only speech to communicate but also
for abstract thoughts to ponder. In addition, we have set out with unbridled
pride and optimism to fulfill the biblical injunction to “subdue” the earth
“and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over every living thing that moveth upon the earth
[Gen 1:28].”The world has become “our oyster” and we have
only lately begun to realize that this ruthless exploitation of its resources
is beginning to threaten our very survival.
Our
scientific and technologic advances bear no small responsibility for this state
of affairs including the idea that we have evolved to our present state through
the “law” of the “survival of the fittest.” According to Hobbes, and
subsequently to some extent Darwin,
the world is a jungle where the strong eat the weak and those who fail in that
competition get eliminated. As such they can be regarded as fore-runners of
Nietzsche who extended this notion to human beings and divided societies into
those with master versus slave morality. These ideas were put in practice
during the Nazi era and although the world was outraged it didn’t seem to
realize that this outcome was unavoidable when one believes that man has the
right to “subdue” his environment, which by extension, includes weaker nations
(colonialism) and ethnic groups, for the benefit of the strong.
The
fundamental error, which started with biblical thought, is the non-recognition that
nature is not only cruel, in the sense that big fish do eat little fish, but
that there is also a tremendous amount of cooperation and interdependence. This
applies not only within species but across species. What is bad for one is good
for another as the simple example of respiration shows. Without trees we
couldn’t live because they produce the oxygen we need and we give them our
carbon dioxide in return. This is so rudimentary that it would hardly be worth
talking about if the survival of the fittest idea and “subduing” were not so
deeply ingrained in our behavior that we don’t think about it. This is,
however, a direct result of city living where we no longer have an opportunity
to watch how nature really unfolds and cooperates.
Martha and
I are very fortunate that our little property is not fenced in and the backyard
is regularly visited by a variety of wildlife which taught me a number of
lessons. Among our visitors there is respect for each other and each one knows
its place. While the magpies feed first on Martha’s generosity, the blue jays
sit and wait and when they are done the chickadees arrive. There is no fighting
and even without Martha’s help there’s plenty for all because nature is
extremely generous. While this clearly demonstrated the “pecking order” another
example of tolerance could be observed between deer and magpies. At times one
can see that a magpie descends on the back of a doe and begins picking whatever
edibles it finds from its fur. The doe has absolutely no problem with that and only
when the magpie gets pesky she flicks her tail and the bird takes off. There is
peace among God’s creatures in our backyard and it is only people who create
havoc with wrong ideas.
So, how do
we know what we think we know? As the title of this essay suggests we
distinguish between what we regard as opposites; we discriminate; we parcel out;
we multiply by dividing and we break into parts. This is the Western way of thinking
–mechanistically. The world is a machine which has parts and from the parts we
think we can learn how it functions. As mentioned in last month’s installment
this is fantasy because the organic world differs fundamentally from the
inorganic. Instead of creating a human being by taking its various organs e.g.
bones, blood, muscle, brain etc. and putting it together, as we would for
instance a car, nature always proceeds from an entity which gradually unfolds
according to its potential. In the vegetable kingdom the seed makes roots,
which gain strength from the moist earth and then raise a stem above it which,
with the help of the sun, eventually turns into a trunk with branches and
leaves as well as new seeds. But take that seed apart, put it under the most
elaborate microscope and you’ll never find the tree in it.
The same
applies, of course, to the development of human beings. The sperm and its DNA
is just that, an entity. It meets an egg with its DNA, which is another entity.
The two mate, become a “fertilized egg,” a different
entity with different potential than the single cells which were responsible
for it. From it develops the embryo, the baby, the child and eventually the
adult. But during any of these stages we are not dealing with parts which are
added, instead there is a constant unfolding of latent potentialities which can
be fostered, harmed or destroyed by the environment in which the developing
organism finds itself. This is truly so “elementary my dear Watson,” that one
wonders why this type of thinking is not in the mainstream of our society and
especially its leadership of whatever party. Although lip service is paid to
“consensus building,” the attempt by one faction to dominate the other
persists.
Furthermore, the concept of unfolding
makes, for instance, the abortion argument as to “when does life begin?”
totally meaningless. But, of course, so has much of our language become. We
don’t talk about people who are for abortions on demand in these terms, they
are simply “pro choice,” while abortion foes are “pro life.” Obviously,
everybody is for having a choice and everybody is fond of life but since
abortion means destruction of a potential human being this unpleasantness has
to be camouflaged by meaningless euphemisms and this is how we lie to each
other and to ourselves. For the Catholic Church life begins at conception while
for the secular segment of society various arbitrary time points are set. They
are of course arbitrary and serve only to assuage our moral conscience because
once you see a human form in the uterus it becomes increasingly more difficult
to rationalize its killing. In fact “life” has neither a beginning nor an end.
There are only transformations with inherent different potentialities at each
stage. The sperm and the egg had separate lives and only their potential to
development was changed by conception. Nevertheless they always were a human
sperm and a human egg, rather than those of a pig or a bear, for instance.
Therefore, even the question: when does human life begin? is
meaningless.
If we then were to redefine the
abortion issue as to “when does intelligent life begin?” we are in even deeper
water because: what defines intelligence? Reason would answer: thinking for
oneself and independent living. But we don’t want to go that way because we
could then eliminate the old folks and the “useless ones” who can’t take care
of themselves. This is precisely what was abhorred as amoral, utilitarian Nazi
practices and now engenders the thoroughly hypocritical debate about “the right
to die.” The US Constitution has been stretched in the famous Roe vs. Wade
ruling, which made abortion legal in this country, by finding a guaranteed
“Right to Privacy.” But assisted suicide, which is obviously also a private
decision and should, therefore, enjoy the same guaranteed right, is shunned and
for the most part outlawed. Yet, objectively in either case a physician is
involved who terminates the existence of a human being, albeit at different
stages of development. Is this rational? No; it’s simply a leftover struggle
with religious faith which we don’t know how to properly handle.
I have been mentioning these
examples only to demonstrate how intertwined what we regard as knowledge and as
faith really are. Let us now examine them separately and ask again: How do we
“know” what we think we know? In general, we accept something as knowledge
because it fits with expectations and follows the cause and effect rule. In
addition there is obvious habituation because I know that right now I am typing
these letters on a keyboard rather than, for instance, playing tennis. This is
what one might call instinctive knowledge which is accepted without question by
our mind. But there are exceptions where we can have the same certainty of
knowledge but the thought that accompanies this conviction is mistaken.
In the August 26, 2004 essay “Perceptions of Reality” I
had already mentioned a life altering experience which brought me face to face
with the questions whether knowledge always reflects reality and what is
reality? In view of the media frenzy on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) during
the late 1970s I had published my views in the medical literature in 1980 and
am discussing them more fully in the Chapter: “What is Truth?” in the book on
Jesus. It is of relevance there because Pilate’s question to Jesus, as reported
in the Gospel of John, deserves a thoughtful answer.
Briefly; in 1953 I had to undergo
surgery for a lesion in the right upper lobe of the lung which had been
regarded by the radiologist as “probably metastatic” Prior to being lifted onto
the operating table I quietly prayed that if the lesion were to be indeed a
metastasis I’d be allowed to die on the table. A few more months of misery and
burden for my young wife were not a fate to relish. This unique set of
circumstances and mindset is important for what followed. At some point during
objective unconsciousness from anesthesia I experienced a sensation of
tremendous bliss and the knowledge, “It was a metastasis, I am dead, I am free.” It was the most profound experience of my entire
life and the mentioned thought was not “belief” but absolute certainty;
conviction. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I opened my eyes saw Martha
leaning over the bedrail and all I could say was: “let me die, let me die.” This
request was totally incomprehensible to her because she was happy to have her
husband back even in such bad shape as he objectively was at that moment.
This experience taught me a
fundamental lesson which has not yet been incorporated into mainstream
thinking. There is a massive difference between subjective and objective
knowledge and that we have no right to infer from what we see in another person
at a given moment what that person experiences at the same time. What is the
essence of human life? Consciousness of self! This consciousness is obviously
preserved during sleep in dreams and can be present in a person who is
“unconscious” for medical reasons. In medical practice we have what is called
the Glasgow scale which provides for
the distinction of different levels of unconsciousness and coma. The scale has
prognostic value but we don’t appreciate that “level of consciousness” applies
only to reactivity to the outside world. That the person can be fully conscious
to his inner world, as in the above mentioned example, is not taken into
consideration because we have no means to objectify subjective thought
processes.
There are other important lessons in
this example for our understanding of what we regard as knowledge. One is that
emotions and accompanying thought content need not have the same validity. All
of us know that dreams are real while we dream but are revealed as dreams only
after we wake up. In the dream we can perform feats which we are unable to do
in waking life and simply accept this as a fact at the time, while we know upon
awakening that these were fantasies. This same sense of “reality” will pervade
us in the process of dying and regardless of what the content of our thoughts will
tells us, including that we are now dead, we are not dead to ourselves, even if
we clearly appear so to others. Subjective consciousness, which is even more
important to us than objective consciousness, i.e. measurable by others, can be
retained for some time after the last expiration. We don’t know for how long
but that is irrelevant because time has no meaning in these spheres. The sense
of time which results from perceived changes is simply absent. Since there is
no “waking up,” as in the dream, and we are unable to experience subjective
unconsciousness, as exemplified by dreamless sleep, we are actually immortal to
ourselves, albeit not to others. Therefore, regardless of what the content of
subjective consciousness is: be it one’s vision of heaven, hell, limbo or
whatever, accompanied by the conviction of having died, that conclusion is
illusory because whenever there is consciousness there is life. True death,
namely complete absence of awareness cannot be experienced; it is a
contradiction in terms. When one knows this, and incorporates this knowledge
into one’s life, death has truly lost its sting. Therefore, one can start
working on ones daily conduct to keep it as much as possible free from fear, hate
and greed, because these emotions may well come to the fore as our last
conscious thoughts. But since we are mortal for and to others we can help our
“loved ones” not to excessively grieve for us and we can also make arrangements
that our physical absence will cause only a minimum of hardship on them.
All of these aspects flow from
rational thought processes and do not require faith or belief in whatever kind
of afterlife which may or may not exist. The important lesson is to keep the
difference between subjective and objective knowledge in mind. Nevertheless, this
difference bears further examination. In the previously mentioned article on
NDEs I made a distinction between: subjective reality, shared subjective
reality and objective reality. With other words: subjective reality is that
knowledge only a given individual is privy to. Shared subjective reality is our
common experience of this world which is based on the normal structure and
functions of our brain, which allow us to agree that a mountain is not an ocean
and a tree is not a rabbit. It can also be called “experiential reality.”A person who would insist on the opposite
would be either be regarded as a deliberate liar or mentally ill. Objective
reality is measurable by an independent observer and its pursuit is the goal of
science.
This was as far as my thinking in
the late 1970s had led me to: There is knowledge which may or may not be
spurious, depending on the occasion, and there is faith which the scientist
stays away from because it can’t be objectified and is thereby relegated to the
realm of metaphysic and religion. The unspoken assumption was that the one is
valid, while the other is speculation and never “the twain shall meet.” The
intervening thirty years have made it clear, however, that this simple dichotomy
was an oversimplification because “objective science” also requires a subject –
the observer. Whatever phenomena are recorded, even with the most sophisticated
instruments, have to be “interpreted” by that observer. Even if the same result
is obtained by different observers, who have used the same instrumentation,
their interpretation will still be subjective because they are processed by
human brains, which allow only certain conclusions which are based on past
information. We are, therefore, still in the realm of “shared subjective
reality” and as some physicists nowadays admit, true “objective reality” is
unavailable to the human being.
This is where faith comes in. But
before discussing this aspect further let me make one more distinction which
will be helpful. There is not only subjective and shared subjective reality but
the content of that reality can either deal with the material properties of
this world – those which our sense organs allow us to perceive or, esoteric –what
is apprehended directly by the mind, as for instance my “death” experience. With
this as background we can now examine what is Faith? Its fundamental nature is
unknown but its content can be either directed toward the material world or an
existence which is not accessible to most of us but has been experienced by
mystics, some of whom have gone on to found religions. Since the latter aspect
is even more difficult to deal with it will be discussed in a separate article
dealing with religion and the religious experience. This essay will limit
itself to the secular aspects of faith because they cut across individual
differences and can readily be verified.
In last month’s installment I made
the apodictic statement that “Faith is innate, we are borne with it and how we
use it is part of our free will.” Let me now illustrate from a personal example
why I believe this statement to be true. I have used it, as well as another
example, in the previously mentioned chapter on Truth of the Jesus book. In the beginning of December 1957 I took the
Specialty Board Examination in Psychiatry and Neurology. In as much as it was
held at New
York’s
Columbia-PresbyterianHospital I thought we might use the occasion to stay for
a few days with Martha’s mother and give her the opportunity to enjoy her
grandchildren. Our daughter, Krista, was five years at the time while Peter was
one month shy of his third birthday. After the exam Martha and I took the
children on a tour of midtown Manhattan which included a visit to Macy’s Santa
Claus. The line was short and when it was our turn little Peter ran up to that
man hugged him and cried out “My Santa Claus!” It was an unforgettable
demonstration of innate childhood faith and innocence of which his older more
world-wise sister deprived him some time later on.
While faith has been given numerous definitions of a religious as well as
secular variety I like to look at it ontogenetically and regard it as the “the
firm unquestioned expectation that what is hoped for will come to pass.” In the
young child doubt does not exist, it matures gradually under the influence of
the environment. If the latter is benign, faith, or trust in the natural
goodness and truthfulness of human beings, will be fostered. On the other hand
if the environment is adverse, either through maltreatment by family members or
others, faith will first fall victim to doubt and in adult life will turn into skepticism
or cynicism. These terms are not synonymous, in spite of what the Microsoft
Word Thesaurus states. The skeptic listens to a viewpoint he does not readily
agree to but is willing to examine it for its potential value, while the cynic
rejects it out of hand as nonsense. While the skeptic behaves rationally, the
cynic shows not only his bias and ignorance but also his unwillingness to
learn. While skepticism is to be welcomed there should be no room for cynicism.
Since, as has been mentioned, faith is innate it can never be lost. Those
individuals who have “lost faith” in regard to religious matters have simply
redirected it to secular aspects and then we see the adoration which is
showered on human beings and political ideologies. There were “true believers”
among Nazis as well as Communists whose faith was just as strong in Hitler,
Lenin, or Stalin for instance, as other people place in religious figures.
What does “faith” mean? Basically it is simply placing our trust in
another human being, society, or an ideal which will lead to a hoped for
outcome. Without trust society cannot function. But because human beings are
fallible our trust is, at times, misplaced and this is why some of us who
recognize this fact place our trust, faith, in a “higher power.”There is, however a hitch. This “higher
power” has to go through our individual, biased, brains to reach us and actions
based on the perceived advice may still be wrong. A perfect example of this
fact is our immediate ex-President. When asked, whether or not he had discussed
the planned Iraq invasion with his father, he replied that he was listening to a higher
father. I don’t doubt that George W Bush meant well, even with this statement, but
in fact he had listened to the wrong people. If he really had consulted with
the Holy Spirit he would have been confronted with questions such as: How many
people are you going to kill when you do this? How many people will be forever
maimed? How much property will be destroyed? Mesopotamia, Iraq, is one of the cradles of our civilization,
what treasures are going to be forever lost? Are you considering only what
benefit or losses Americans will suffer or also those of the Iraqi people whom
you supposedly want to free from tyranny? If ex-President Bush had really
pondered these questions with a spiritual advisor, including his father, who
surely had the best interest of his son at heart, the ill-advised invasion
would never have been taken place. Instead we could have concentrated our
efforts to build up Afghanistan’s society which was waiting for our help at
that time and we would not be fighting a war there now eight years later, with
an outcome that is still uncertain.
Human knowledge is and always will
be partial and fallible; therefore faith, based on this knowledge, is not
necessarily trustworthy either. This is a fact of life we have to recognize and
live with. But mere recognition and slothful resignation is not the answer
either. Neither is sloppy language which leads to sloppy thinking. Again the Iraq
war is a perfect example. Our politicians who wanted the war relied on
“intelligence,” which they now claim was in part faulty. But it wasn’t
“intelligence” in the first place. It was “information,” a set of data; some of
it was correct others faulty, which were presented by the misnamed CIA and
other sources, to the leadership. It was their task to intelligently assess the
information and to sift fact from fancy. Intelligence is not just data
gathering; it is required for correct interpretation of the material. But here we
are again at the intersection of faith and knowledge. Since we never have full
information especially in regard to the outcome of a given decision we take a
“leap of faith” and then hope for the best. This is how world politics
proceeds.
On the other hand our secular faith in the continued onward and upward
material progress had left some of us unfulfilled and has come under even
greater question by America’s inappropriate response to the 9-11-2001 tragedy and its aftermath which we are
currently chewing on. That this feeling of disenchantment with material life is
actually quite prevalent in most of the “Western World” was driven home to me
by a recent article in the Viennese Die Presse,
written by Peter Henisch, and sent to me by my friend Professor Petsche.
The title of the article, which does not lend itself to direct
translation, was: Was fehltunsDoktor? When a
patient sees a physician with some vague complaint he may ask: what’s wrong
with me doctor? While this is an approximate translation it does not reflect
the key word “fehlt”
which means “missing” or “absent.” In other words: what is absent in our lives
which makes us feel as miserable as some of us do? Henisch wrote: “Interest in
religion: No thanks. Interest in religious topics: Yes please.” He continued
with, that the hunger for spiritual sustenance was intended to be stilled by
two recent books about who Jesus really was. These had quite divergent contents,
which he discussed subsequently. I shall now translate some key excerpts from
his introduction. This will not be entirely literal but reflect what Henisch
would have said had he written for Americans.
“Religion is pretty much out; interest in
religious topics is totally in. When one reads the newspapers of the past weeks
one can find evidence for both of these statements. This is a correct diagnosis
at least for the so-called Western World.Diagnosis sounds a little like a visit to the physician, but perhaps
this analogy is useful as a working hypothesis. Was fehtunsDoktor? The physician sits behind his computer and
doesn’t give us an answer. He puts in data; as is usual nowadays. We are devoid
of meaning, of consolation. We are missing a perspective . . . .
There is something in the air, a need one
feels unless one is totally insensitive. It is the need to concern oneself with questions, which although eternal, we have
never adequately answered. This pertains to religion as well as literature
which unites the two domains. We can probably never
answer these questions to complete satisfaction but it is important to keep
posing them. Where we are from, where are we going and what’s the point of it
all? Is our life, our history only a bad joke, a half-way successful satire, an
irony bordering on cynicism, or is there a deeper meaning? Man does not live by
Big Macs alone. Religion has ceased to be the opium of the people for quite
some time; it has been replaced by consumption.”
The books Henisch discussed don’t answer these questions but this is
precisely why I wrote the Jesus book which, hopefully, will be on the market in
the fall. It is noteworthy that I have expressed Henisch’s question as,
“. . . the privilege of the human being is a degree
of free will and upon that depends our Weltanschauung (how we view the world).
As materialists we may chose to believe Macbeth’s conclusion that life is “a
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” or we can
see ourselves as having been granted an opportunity to grow in mental and
spiritual stature. The choice is an individual one but this is how we shape our
karma (consequence of all our thoughts and actions) for the rest of our life.”
As mentioned earlier an exposition
of the esoteric aspects of our lives will be taken up in a subsequent issue
which will also provide an answer to Peter Henisch’s question. For now I would
like to conclude with one more observation. The Greek New Testament term for
“faith” is “pistis.” This led me to,
what is called in neurology, a “clang association,” “piston.” Although the two
words are not etymologically related I believe that they bear a close
relationship because faith is the piston that drives the will and thereby
directs subsequent behavior in a given direction. Its content can and does
change over one’s lifetime but its existence should not be denied. Even
suicide, which at times is regarded as due to a loss of faith, can still be
motivated by the faith that an apparently unendurable situation can thereby be
terminated. This leads one to conclude that faith should be directed to a
better way of dealing with the vicissitudes of life – one which is not destructive
and mechanistic but constructive and organic.
September 1, 2009
OBAMA’S REALITY CHECK
August is usually
a quiet month in American politics. Congress and the president go on vacation
and the media entertain us with trivia. But this year was different. With the
recession having shown some slight signs of easing, at least for Wall Street
which seems to have started to enter its boom cycle again, the proposed health
care legislation moved to front and center of the public debate. While the
substantive issues are clearly important, it has been politicized to such an
extent that any agreement between Democrats and Republicans has become unlikely
when Congress convenes again in September. The atmosphere has been poisoned to
such an extent by the media and town hall meetings that the issue has become a
referendum on President Obama. His detractors now see health care as the tool
to discredit his administration and pave the way to a Democratic defeat in next
year’s Congressional elections.
Let us now look at how Obama
allowed himself to be maneuvered into this impasse. One clue resides in his
character and the other in America’s
political system. For his character and what he really intended to do we have
his own words in “The Audacity of Hope.”
In the Prologue to the book while talking about how age tends to reveal
physical and mental flaws, he wrote, “In me, one of those flaws had proven to
be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well
things were going, those blessings that were right in front of me.” This
restlessness propelled him, within the short span of four years, from an
unknown junior senator to the presidency. When we use instead of the word “restless,”
“impatient,” it becomes clear that this very American character flaw may result
in political failure.
As mentioned repeatedly in theses
pages when Obama took the oath of office the country faced unprecedented
staggering problems: Two wars that cannot readily be terminated but drain the
already depleted treasury; the potential threat of further terrorist attacks; a
massive fiscal deficit; the economy teetering on the verge of collapse;
unsustainable health care and Social Security costs; an inadequate educational
system; and a world that had become increasingly suspicious of America’s
motives. All of these problems were to be solved by the mantra of “change” and
the hope that through sheer strength of personality the diverse factions which make up our country would somehow see the need to
cooperate under an enlightened leadership which steers a rational course. “A
more perfect Union” was the goal that has become ever more
elusive with each passing month.
The gauntlet was thrown down
immediately after the inauguration by Rush Limbaugh, the widely listened to
radio and TV commentator, who declared unabashedly, “I want Obama to fail.”
When he was taken to task for this stance, he modified the statement to “I want
his policies to fail,” which is obviously a distinction without a difference.
When the Obama administration then tried to tackle most of the problems listed
above essentially simultaneously, with the only available remedy namely massive
deficit spending and some government oversight of the banking and auto industry,
it provided the fuel for the fire which broke out in regard to the health care
legislation. The final straw was when the Congressional Budget Office, which is
non-partisan, projected that the plan which was under consideration would cost
approximately $1.6 trillion over the next ten years. This expense would be
added to the $9 trillion of the current ten year federal deficit projection.
These are clearly figures which
stagger the imagination but, as mentioned in a previous issue (Uncharted
Waters. April 1, 2009), are quite
meaningless. Economists could not predict the 9/11 tragedy and that the 2000 surplus
would morph within one year into ever increasing deficits. But figures of this
type do have a purpose. They can be used to scare the public. Nevertheless
apart from the projected cost, the bill that was supposed to have been voted on
had indeed significant other problems. When one considers what the bill was
actually supposed to accomplish it is clear that the administration had left
itself wide open to justified, as well as purely polemical, attacks.
Before examining the major bones of
contention of that bill let us first look objectively of what is wrong with the
way the current health insurance system works. First of all we have again a
misnomer. We don’t insure health, nobody can do that, we want the cost of
illness to be covered by insurance. This is just another typical example of the
euphemisms which pervade our society and prevent straight thinking. Medical
care costs have risen astronomically over the past years. This was mainly due
to more sophisticated technology, rising medical and malpractice insurance rates
as well as medication costs. Insurance carriers have raised their premiums to
an extent that catastrophic illness can now bankrupt families. In addition the
last quarter of the previous century saw the rise of “Health Maintenance
Organizations (HMOs),” another euphemism for limited insurance against illness.
The reason why I am saying “limited” is because the particular organization one
joins allows one to receive care only by participating physicians and
hospitals, rather than the institution one might really want to have take care
of oneself in case of a complicated serious problem. Not only do these HMOs
limit the choice of physicians but also the diagnostic procedures a given
member may receive as well as the type of medications. Their “bureaucrats” already
act as gate keepers to keep the HMO profitable rather than the patient as
healthy as possible. This aspect is completely overlooked by the opponents of the
reform bill who claim vociferously that the Obama plan will, through
“socialized medicine,” deprive us of our free choice of physicians. For many,
if not most of us, this option no longer exists anyway.
In addition to these private
insurance carriers there is for veterans the government Veterans Administration
(VA) system; for disabled children and some indigents Medicaid, and for
everyone above the age of 65 Medicare. With other words we already have three government supplied medical insurance programs, all of which
have problems of their own. Leaving the VA aside, Medicaid is the most problematic.
Costs are split between the federal government and the various states; it
ensures indigents against certain illnesses but not all and pays physicians and
hospitals such a pittance that a considerable number refuse to participate
because every patient they see is a financial loss. Medicare is, as has been
mentioned, automatic and cannot be refused even if one has private insurance.
For the elderly population, which is the one most in need of medical services,
we now have the anomalous situation that two bureaucracies do the billing if
you have private insurance through your former employer’s pension plan.
Medicare as the primary provider pays for some services then the bill goes to
the secondary insurance which may or may not pick up the rest of the charges.
As a result of my hip problem I now get most every other day form letters from
Medicare which assure me that “This is not a Bill” but an “Explanation of
Benefits” and I have no idea what to do with them. They are frequently vague,
contain a lot of “$0s paid” but do provide the phone number to call if one has
questions. To anyone who tries to do so one has to wish good luck with
maneuvering through “menus” before one gets a human being who may or may not be
helpful.
Martha and I are among the fortunate
few who have excellent secondary insurance as part of my retirement package
from the State of Michigan. It is
administered through Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan and out of pocket
expenses have so far been minimal. In addition the insurance is “portable” and
we can truly go to the physician and hospital of our choice anywhere in the
country. This is what should be and is an example what “government” (in our
case State Government, but also the Federal Government for its employees) can
supply.
Yet this option is not available to
the majority of our fellow citizens because everything depends on the plan the
employer chooses and this is where cost cutting measures come to the fore. Why
chose the best and most expensive plan when you can get by with the minimum
HMO? This is another area where unbridled capitalism directly impacts on our
lives and we can do absolutely nothing about it. If one happens to be
self-employed one can buy private insurance but there are restrictions. A
pre-existing condition such as diabetes or epilepsy might either lead to
refusal or to premiums which are clearly unaffordable. In addition, as
mentioned above, premiums have steadily gone up over the years and middle class
incomes cannot keep up with them. As such approximately 46 million (the number
is hotly disputed) forego insurance and simply show up in emergency rooms when
the need arises. Under these circumstances the hospitals have to absorb the
costs for services which might have been handled for considerably less by a private
physician.
In view of this situation health
care reform has been discussed at least since the first years of the Clinton
administration. Hillary was tasked to achieve it but her efforts came to
naught. It was noted at the time that the plan was hatched in secret and
Congress was expected to sign on the dotted line. The insurance companies
rebelled; the media roundly denounced it; TV ads saturated the public with
fears of “government take over” and “socialized medicine.” All of this led not
only to a defeat for improved medical insurance but also the Republican
Congressional victory in the midterm elections of 1994.
This was the example Obama was
confronted with and why he decided to do the opposite. He would provide
Congress with broad guidelines and let the House and Senate fill in the
details. The intent was that the plan would be affordable, available to all and
portable (not dependent on employment and free choice of physician anywhere in
the country). The costs were to be largely covered by eliminating waste and
streamlining bureaucracy. This was regarded as relatively easy to accomplish. With
a Democrat majority in the House and Senate passage was expected before the
summer recess. But when the House Bill emerged it covered more than 1000 pages
and was so complex that hardly anyone who is not a lawyer could understand it.
Since the administration knew that any delay in passage would be fatal they
tried to ram it though the House but when the price tag appeared even some
Democrats got cold feet. Congress adjourned and the media had a field day all
throughout August.
Apart from the cost two aspects
became the rallying cry for the disenchanted Republicans. One was the so-called
“public option,” an insurance system run by the government for those individuals
who could not afford the private premiums and the other which was termed the
“Death Panels.” The “public option” was derided as “socialized medicine” and
government take over of the health care system. Private insurers, it was
claimed, would no longer be able to compete on a level playing field and as
such it was inimical to a free capitalist society. This was a repeat of what
had been called Hillarycare in the Clinton
administration and has now been changed to Obamacare. The “death panels” were,
however, a new wrinkle and termed as such by the ex-Governor of Alaska,
Sarah Palin, who is apparently already running for the presidential elections
in 2012. They have an interesting history and the topic requires an open and
intelligent discussion.
The mentioned House Bill had a
provision which allowed Medicare payments for a consultation with a physician
about “end-of-life care.” If an elderly person had previously wanted to do this,
it would have been an out of pocket expense. It is well-known that the major
medical expenses occur within the last six months of life during terminal
illnesses. From society’s point of view significant savings could be achieved
if terminally ill patients, who may or may not be mentally competent, were to
receive compassionate care but not extraordinary measures of life support such
as artificial ventilation and feeding. The proposed bill intended to make the
elderly aware of what options are available to them by making what is called a
“living will;” giving a trusted family member “durable power of attorney;” and
acquainting them with local hospice rather than hospital care. The
consultation, as envisioned in the Bill, would be voluntary and initiated by
the patient. After five years, or drastically changed life circumstances, another
one would also be paid for by Medicare.
From a purely rational point of
view this provision is good for the patient as well as society. All or at least
most of us have a “Last Will and Testament,” which informs our heirs what to do
with our property, and some of us have even bought burial lots and made
arrangements for the funeral. Yet, when it comes to the choice how we want to
be treated when accident or illness deprive us of our decision making capacity this
aspect of our lives seems to be out of bounds; even for discussion. Every
intelligent person ought to ask him/herself to what extent resuscitative
measures should be undertaken after cardiac or respiratory arrest. Does one
really want to linger unconscious in a hospital bed on a ventilator with tubes
in every natural and artificial orifice and when what was previously called
“the friend of the aged,” pneumonia, arrives it be combated with antibiotics?
But this is what happens in America
on a daily basis.
Let me relate a relevant personal
anecdote. In the 1980s when I was in charge of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory
of Harper Hospital in Detroit one
of my duties was to certify that in a given comatose patient “brain death” had
occurred because its electrical activity had ceased. Once I did so physicians
and nursing personnel could tell the family that the patient had died.
Permission was then given to “pull the plug.” The respirator was disconnected and
the patient was officially declared dead. There was usually no problem, but in
one instance the son adamantly refused for several days to give the requested
permission. The reason was that he still wanted to get the father’s end of the
month Social Security check! I don’t know if he really needed it or whether it
was pure greed but the fact remains that this is what can happen if a person
has not previously made the appropriate legal arrangements about end-of-life
care. The Terry Schiavo case, which has been discussed previously,(Pain and Suffering. April
1, 2005) ) is, of course, another example.
Without such a declaration one
becomes part of what I call “the system.” It operates on laws of its own and
these are geared nowadays mainly to do everything possible to avoid a law suit.
“Standards of Practice”, which may or may not be reasonable have evolved for
every conceivable contingency and unless these are adhered to, the malpractice
lawyers would have a field day. The recent hip surgery is a case in point. I
have a living will, Martha has durable power of attorney for me and I not only
supplied the hospital with copies of the forms but also told the anesthetist
and the surgical personnel before lying down on the operating table that in
case of cardiac or respiratory arrest no resuscitative measures were to be
taken. In addition there had earlier been an animated discussion with the
surgeon over the pre- and postoperative “standard of care protocol.”
Surgical procedures can be followed
by blood clots in the legs, due to immobility, and the Society of Orthopedic
Surgeons has decreed that patients have to be placed on the blood-thinner “warfarin,”
which is its generic name. The drug is relatively expensive but in addition,
and this is the main problem, unpredictable in its effect. The same dose may
not prevent clotting in one patient and can produce increased bleeding in
another. As a physician I was aware of this problem and I also knew that
aspirin is a very effective blood-thinner without leading to increased
bleeding. When I discussed this with the orthopedic surgeon he told me that he
was obliged to follow the official recommendations but I was equally adamant
that I would go with the aspirin after, rather than before, the operation. I
could not fathom why I should encourage bleeding by taking warfarin prior to an
operation which by necessity will lead to increased bleeding. As a physician I
could discuss these aspects rationally with my colleague the orthopedist, he
could put it in writing, to protect himself and everybody was happy. After
three weeks when the staples came out the nurse was surprised to see how clean
the wound was; there was none of the bruising and swelling she usually sees at
that time in other patients. I couldn’t help but feel that the aspirin rather
than warfarin regimen, which I had opted for, may well have played a role in
better healing. Yet, the warfarin discussion was an option which was available
to me, as a physician; the average patient might not have such a choice.
Treating physicians have to go by the book, but the studies which lead to the
dogma of “Standard of Care” for a given condition may not be all that reliable.
This aspect was in part covered in Faith and Science (June 1, 2009).
Everyone needs to know, therefore,
that once you enter “the system” you have given up significant portions of your
autonomy and the sooner you can leave “the system” for your home the better off
you are. In my situation I limited the stay to a total of 48 hours. This was
both cost-effective and provided peace of mind as well as rest that would be
unavailable in the hospital where nurses are obliged to check your vital signs
during the night when all you want is to sleep. These are today’s realities
which the “health care reform” is supposed to fix.
One would think that from a few
paragraphs which basically allowed payment for “end-of-life discussions” with
your physician to Sarah Palin’s “death panels” is a large jump. But not so
large if one enters the conservative mindset as expressed on November 23, 2008, barely three
weeks after Obama’s victory at the polls. On that day the Washington Times (a conservative daily newspaper) published an
Editorial with the headline “No 'final solution,' but a way forward.” The author linked Hitler’s
euthanasia program, which was enacted at the beginning ofWWII, with this country’s abortion issue, which
the author feared would become worse as a result of Obama’s election. Hitler’s
team of physicians and administrators which decided who could be euthanized, as
being a drain on society, became Sarah Palin’s “death panel.” The phrase showed
remarkable viability in spite of the fact that it has absolutely no bearing on
the plan as considered by the House. Palin, mother of a child with Down
syndrome, was, apaprently struck by a quote from Rev. Briane K. Turley in the mentiond
Editorial, which stated,
“Here in North America, since the
1970s, we have discovered a far more efficient means of weeding out those with
disabilities. ’Were God's design for us left unhindered,’ he says, ‘we could
naturally expect to welcome 40,000 or more newborn infants with Down syndrome
each year in the U.S. And yet we have reduced that number to just under 5,500.
These data strongly indicate that, in North America, we have already discovered
a new, 'final solution' for these unusual children and need only to adapt our
public policies to, as it were, 'cure' all Down syndrome cases."
On August 7 Mrs. Palin published on
her Facebook account this comment, “The America I know and love is not one in
which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of
Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective
judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy
of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
The issue
was then joined by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was not known to be a
firebrand, with a comment on August 14 that,“We should not have a government program that determines if
you're going to pull the plug on grandma.”
On August 17 Betsy McCaughey
(former Lt. Governor of the State of New York)
weighed in with an article in the New
York Post under the title Deadly Doctors, “The health bills coming out of
Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential
appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will
have and what seniors get under Medicare.”
These are outright falsehoods and
to their credit Palin as well Grassley have
subsequently retracted their statements. Nevertheless the fact that a secret
program which was initiated in a totalitarian state at the outbreak of WWII is
equated with a bill which is discussed in Congress and to be voted on by
elected representatives shows the level of hatred which exists in some circles
and which is regularly stoked by some radio and TV commentators.
Leaving aside the deliberate
political distortions there are two genuine concerns in regard to the insurance
issue. One is what type of health care reform plan should be adopted, and what
is our society’s attitude towards death? The latter can be summed up in one sentence.
Many of us are literally deathly afraid of dying. This seems to be a peculiarly
American situation because it does not hold true to the same extent for the other
cultures I am familiar with. In our country any and all efforts are frequently
made to keep someone alive even in the face of an aged patient with obvious
terminal illness. Why should this be so? Theoretically approximately 75 per
cent of our citizens are Christian for whom death should present no problem
because according to that faith Jesus had died for our sins and if we place our
faith in him we will go to our reward. Muslims accept death as the will of God,
while Hindus and Buddhists are re-incarnated anyway. Of our approximately 3.6
per cent Jews, and whatever number of atheists, some may have a serious problem
because their faith does not allow for an after-life, but they should not
dictate policies.
In this area we are clearly at the
intersection of faith and politics. While a faith in God, under whatever name,
will remove fear, its absence promotes it. Faith in God has been replaced in
some quarters by faith in Man, whom we have, however, every reason to distrust
as past history has shown. While physicians generally do the best they can,
they also know the limits of their art, and medical science is a work in
progress. All of us should realize that we live on “death row.” We have not
given life to ourselves and we don’t know when this gift will be withdrawn. We
should cherish it while we can, but we ought not to cling to it when its purpose
has been served. We are part of nature so let nature take its course. When the
apple is ripe it falls to the ground and the deer or other creatures eat it.
What we are doing with artificial life support is akin to fastening the apple
with duct tape to the branch. It will prevent the apple from falling but just
leaves it to rot on the tree where it won’t even be healthy for the birds.
Fear of death has been with the
human race for millennia and is probably one of the reasons why religions
flourished. But one does not necessarily need to subscribe to a specific one;
the Stoics of ancient Greece
and Rome provided a rational
answer. Epictetus (ca. 55-135 AD) wrote,
When death appears
an evil, we ought to have this rule in readiness, that it is fit to avoid evil
things, and that death is a necessary thing. For what shall I do, and where
shall I escape it? . . . . I cannot escape from death. Shall I not escape from
the fear of death, but shall I die lamenting and trembling? For
the origin of perturbation is this, to wish for something, and that this should
not happen.
What conclusion should rational
adults draw from the foregoing? Since death is inevitable prepare yourself and
your family mentally for it. Don’t live in denial because when you do so you give
up your most valued possession, your autonomy. Others will deal with you
according to their needs and this may not be what you or your family really
wanted. In our day and age a “living will” should be part and parcel of one’s
Last Will and Testament and it will be honored by authorities as long as we
have an elected rather than despotic government.
What should Obama do now to
extricate himself from the mess the health care reform is currently in? First
of all he should re-read pages 183-189 of his Audacity of Hope. Let me just quote the first key sentence, “We
could start by having a nonpartisan group like the National Academy of
Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) determine what a basic, high quality
health-care plan should look like and how much it should cost.” If Obama had adhered
to this idea he might have saved himself a great deal of grief. But under
pressure from his supporters and in the belief that his popularity would
overcome whatever obstacles his detractors might put in his way he had turned
the matter over to Congress, where the process was doomed to fail. His
fundamental mistake was the assumption that the American people at large
trusted him and thereby his administration. He had not realized to what extent
faith/trust in government had already been eroded by previous government
actions and that it cannot be restored overnight by well-meant speeches. This
message was conveyed loud and clear, in the various town hall meetings that had
been conducted by senators and representatives during the past month. In
addition Obama had underestimated the intense personal animosity which his
victory in November has elicited in some as well as the profound polarization
of politics. The center seems to have disappeared in public discourse and those
who try to make the voice of reason heard get literally shouted down. Some
commentators, even on CNN, can hardly hide their glee when they report on
Obama’s falling popularity poll numbers.
There were two other aspects in
Obama’s book he might profitably ponder at this time. The mentioned Prologue
quote was followed by, “Someone once said that every man is trying either to
live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes, and
I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.” Yes
indeed; Obama is trying to live up to his father’s expectations. But just as
his father’s political hopes for Kenya
were wrecked by tribal politics, the son’s political future is here being
determined by party politics. This is one lesson he needs to take to heart and
learn why his father had failed in that respect. The other is the question
Obama has raised at the end of the Prologue, “how I, or anybody in public
office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger to please, the fear of loss,
and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice within each of us
that reminds us of our deepest commitments.”
These are character issues and will determine
either success or failure of Obama’s Presidency. What he needs above all in the
current climate of lack of trust in government, is that rare virtue: patience.
He must not allow himself to be stampeded by either the right or the left into
decisions which, once they are made, are irrevocable and may not conform to the
best interests of the American people.
In regard to the current health care
proposals the Democrats have already dropped the “public option” and the “end-of-life
counseling” provision. It seems that in their eagerness to get some type of
legislation passed in the fall, further compromises will be made and a Bill
will be passed which is likely to compound, rather than solve the problem. Any
reform that does not address the excessive profit motive of insurance
companies, trial lawyers and the pharmaceutical industry is doomed to fail. I
have left out physicians and hospitals because if they charge exorbitant fees,
patients will not use them.
Instead of creating new
bureaucracies on top of existing ones the government could provide a genuine
“public option” for patients who cannot afford or obtain private insurance.
Medicaid could be abolished and instead Medicare would cover all patients, regardless
of age, who do not have access to private insurance. In the private arena some
version of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield model could be made available to everyone
and not merely to government employees and its pensioners. The immediate outcry
will be, “but we can’t afford that!” The answer to this financial problem will
require a re-thinking of our priorities and an awareness of how our government
really works instead of how it was intended to work. To explain this to the
public, honestly and in simple language, ought to be Obama’s task in the coming
weeks and months.
October 1, 2009
CRISIS OF TRUST
Among all the crises, real and
artificially created, there is perhaps none that is more serious and detrimental
to our country than the erosion of trust in our institutions. When there is no
trust fear reigns and in the June 1,
2009 installment I have commented how fear is deliberately spread
in our country to gain political points. The tone was set by ex-Vice President
Cheney who chastised President Obama for being lax on national security and
thereby inviting further terrorist attacks. This was the opening salvo which
has become a virtual barrage of fear mongering by some members of the
Republican Party but more importantly, by media personalities. The latter are
now driving policies especially in the health care debate which was discussed
last month and rages on unabatedly. A recent e-mail dubbed it, “Obama’s Health
Scare Plan.”
The issue is still being vigorously
debated in Congress, Obama gives speeches and interviews but it is already
obvious that whatever legislation is eventually going to be passed, will be
saddled with so many amendments which may aggravate rather than solve the
problem. Since the president has made health care reform one of his prime political
goals he may well sign a piece of legislation that will come to haunt us in
years to come.
Health care is, however, only one
of the many aspects of our culture where fear is stoked. This has very
practical and dangerous consequences. A recent article in The Salt Lake Tribune pointed out that while the overall economy
lingers in recession, gun sales, ranging from handguns to assault weapons, are
experiencing an unprecedented boom. Utah,
a State of about 2.7 million people, issued about 7,000 permits for concealed
firearms in all of 2001 but 56,370 from Jan. 1-Aug. 31 of 2009. Gun sales had
remained up to 10,000 for the first five years of this decade but had shown a
steady rise thereafter and officials expect to process 70,000 applications next
year. Citizens are clearly arming themselves and the question is: what for?
There may be individual valid reasons but for the most part these weapons are
clearly unnecessary and will unavoidably create more homicides. Since violence,
in addition to sex, is the daily fare of our TV programs this outcome is
totally predictable. What is one to expect when concealed weapons are now
allowed to be taken even to churches?
While fear has reached in part
irrational proportions, trust, which is the glue that must hold a complex
society together, is also steadily being eroded. The reason is that we are
being lied to by government, institutions, the media, businesses as well as
private citizens. The lie has become the biggest problem of our lives and comes
in many forms. The most egregious is, of course, the deliberate
misrepresentation of the truth as one knows it. This is, however, not
necessarily the most common or vicious one. The worst lie is the deliberate
withholding of part of the information which is essential to form a correct
opinion about a given plan or proposition. I have discussed this aspect
previously in the essay on The Great Satan (February 1, 2002), where I pointed
out that it was precisely this satanic lie which led to what has been called
the original sin and which is re-enacted on a daily basis. It is the
precipitous rush towards some expected gain based on information from which an
essential element has been deliberately withheld. In this manner the human
being’s innate trust is being abused and the fabric of society frayed.
The Bush 43 administration may have
done the greatest harm in this respect and the Obama administration has so far
not found the courage to confront the most vicious lie of this new century.
Obama has inherited two wars and in both instances the reasons given for
invading Afghanistan
as well as Iraq
were not the full truth. While it is today agreed by most that the Iraq
war was unnecessary and a mistake, conventional wisdom still has it, that the
war in Afghanistan
was one of necessity. This war has now been going on for 8 years and our new
commander, General Stanley McChrystal, declared that the war cannot be won
militarily, but total defeat can be staved off by sending more ground troops to
fight the Taliban insurgency. Some of us who have a smattering of history know
that Afghanistan
has been called the graveyard of empires; as the British found out and
subsequently the Soviets. This is the reason why I wrote, in the aftermath of
the September 11tragedy, on these pages in October of 2001, that military action
against Afghanistan would be a serious mistake because this is precisely what
bin-Laden wanted and in order to understand our enemy we need to put ourselves
mentally in his shoes.
These statements were correct then
and they are still true. The only mistake in that article was my ignorance as
to who was really in charge of our country. At that time I still had faith in
the wisdom of George W Bush’s advisors without knowing that they were in the
neoconservative camp that itched for war with Iraq
and only acceded to the Afghanistan
route to Baghdad out of expediency.
I had also been unaware of previous discussions with the Taliban by Unocal for
a proposed gas pipeline through their country and then via Pakistan
to the Indian Ocean which they had turned down in August
of that year. As such further terror attacks were not needed because we fell,
voluntarily, into bin Laden’s trap. I also wrote on November 1, 2001
“Deny it as we
might the current war against "terrorism" is indeed a religious warof ideasand,
as mentioned repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan,
Iraq or other
places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated
and a pro-Western
government installed in Kabul,
fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla
warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum.
It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Laden has so far succeeded beyond his wildest
dreams. A $200,000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped anyway by selling
assets on the stock market before its expected 9/11 crash) has produced, and
continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy,
fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we
are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even
if we kill bin-Laden now he will be a martyr (which is what he wants anyway)
who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics to continue with
his work of creating hatred for America
in the Islamic world.”
I don’t
claim the gift of prophecy but the outcome of the wrong decisions which were
made by the Bush administration immediately after 9-11-2001 was obvious to anyone who is not blinded by
passion. As mentioned above General McChrystal realizes the difficulty, if not
impossibility, to bring the Afghan war to a victorious conclusion but hopes
that with an additional contingent of 40,000 American troops and a strategy
that provides security for the Afghan people, the tide can be turned against
the Taliban. Past history, including that of the Vietnam War, tends to make
this hope illusory. Even 100,000 troops are inadequate to control and hold a
country of Afghanistan’s
size and geography. In the absence of a stable popular government, indigenous
rebels have time and terrain on their side. They know fully well that sooner or
later we will have to leave, regardless of what our government may say and they
can wait us out while harassing our troops to the best of their ability. They
win by just surviving. Since our troop strength will always be inadequate,
unless the draft was to be re-instituted, which would be political suicide, we will be forced to continue to rely on air power
to hit Taliban strongholds.
This
strategy had proven itself fruitless in Vietnam
and has the additional disadvantage that it relies on local informants as to
the targets. This not only opens the way to settle scores among rival Afghan
factions, with American help, but inevitably causes civilian casualties which
are then blamed on us. In addition that country has a warrior ethos where you
are supposed to face the enemy and lay your life on the line. But Americans are
averse to risking the lives of soldiers and airmen and we are now fighting the
air-war largely by drones. The pilot sits in relative comfort in Nevada,
flies his mission via “joystick” and then goes home for dinner. While this may
well be the war of the future it is bound to be fiercely resented by the
recipients of this type of fire power because it will be regarded as cowardice
on our part and thereby stiffen the resistance.
The problem
the Obama administration faces in regard to Afghanistan
is compounded by the apparently fraudulent election results, which deprive the Kabul
government of legitimacy. President Obama, who has no love for this war, but
doesn’t know how to end it without ruining his and his party’s political
future, has so far decided to what is commonly called “kick the can down the
road;” to wait a while before making a decision in regard to troop strength and
strategy. This is understandable but akin to hoping for a miracle.
The problem and thereby its
potential solution demands a fundamental re-assessment of America’s role in the
world of the 21st rather than 20th century. Obama
realizes this, as his speech to the UN’s General Assembly and the enlargement
of the G8 to G20 showed, but the American media and therefore the public have
as yet not caught up with these changed realities. In addition, the American
political system which is geared to winning elections, rather than towards long
term solutions of problems, does not lend itself to sober reflection on what is
possible to achieve, rather than what we would like to happen. As far as Afghanistan
is concerned this would mean an educational campaign not just in that country
but right here. We need to stop lumping Al-Qaeda with Taliban and simply regard
both groups as terrorists who are equally responsible for the 9/11 tragedy. The
Taliban are predominantly tribal nationalists, who want to run their patch of the
earth their way and have no interest in exporting their ideas beyond possibly Pakistan.
While their religious philosophy is unacceptable for us, we can’t change it by
bombs. Some accommodation will have to be made in the short term and in the
long run religious fundamentalism, of whatever stripe, is not likely to carry
the day in a technologically integrated world.
The apparent fear is that if we
leave Afghanistan
and the Taliban assume power, Al-Qaeda will again have a safe haven from which
to instigate 9/11 type attacks. But it has been pointed out repeatedly that
this group no longer needs Afghanistan
because there are enough other unstable countries around the world from which
they can operate. Al-Qaeda likewise will never be defeated by bombs or other
military actions and its activities will cease when they are no longer deemed
necessary and financial support dries up. In the meantime international
cooperative police actions can thwart terrorist plans and even if not fully
successful minimize their impact. The key aspect is again not to let irrational
fears cloud better judgment. This is, however, precisely the problem. There are
some in our country who apparently need this fear in order to enact their own
agenda which has little to do with the ostensible reason.
The 9/11 tragedy will continue to
serve as the excuse for ill-considered military as well asother actions (e.g. Patriot Act) and this is
why it will continue to haunt us until our media as well as our government,
provide us with the full truth about the events of that day. This is still
withheld from us. What I have above called “the satanic lie,” the purposeful
use of half-truths has become dogma and whoever does not subscribe to it loses
membership in polite society as well as potentially his/her job. Yet there is a
substantial segment of our society which cannot believe the official version of
what happened on 9/11, but is powerless to gets its voice heard. This adds to
the distrust of government and the promised transparency which many of us voted
for last year has not materialized.
Let me just give a few examples why
I believe that we have not been told the full truth about what happened on that
fateful day and why a re-evaluation of the official version is urgently needed.
Recently a memorial service was held in SomersetCountyPa.
for the passengers who supposedly took charge of the doomed UA 93 flight and
crashed it to the ground. But there is a problem with that story. No plane or
bodies had initially been found on the supposed crash site; there were only
widely scattered debris over a radius of several kilometers. The coroner, Wallace
Miller, has been quoted as saying that "I stopped being coroner after
about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.” This disintegration
of the plane and its passengers is, of course, highly uncommon, if not unheard
of, when airliners crash. While the FBI reported that 95 percent of the plane’s
debris had been found, the coroner told a Canadian audience that only eight per
cent were recovered, “everything else was vaporized.” The most reasonable
explanation, which was denied by the FBI, is that the plane was shot down by
one of our military jets to prevent it from crashing into the Capitol or the
White House. It seems that Dick Cheney, with or without Bush’s approval had
given the order and under the circumstances it was the right thing to do. Yet,
the American people are not to be trusted with being able to handle the truth
and the disasters of that day seemed to have demanded a heroic ending. The
truth about the crash site ought to be presented publicly to the mainstream
media by the emergency personnel, including the coroner, who were called to the
site on that morning. Once this has been established, if the scenario as
outlined above (it comes strictly from Internet sources) is validated, the true
cause of the plane’s pulverization should be ascertained. The purpose is not to
diminish the plight of the passengers and their possible attempt to take charge
of the plane but to clear the air as to what is rumor and what is fact.
The same
applies to the unprecedented collapse of the Twin Towers within half an hour of each other and the even more mysterious
one of building WTC 7, which hadnot
been hit by a plane but was partly on fire from falling debris and combustibles
within it. People who question what had really happened are relegated by the
media to the lunatic fringe as conspiracy theorists. Some are, but there are
also reputable scientists who are not and their concerns are not being properly
listened to and investigated. One such person is physics Prof. Steven Jones of BrighamYoungUniversity,
a good Mormon, who is not given to outlandish ideas. As a result of his
investigations which suggested that thermite (explosive used for controlled
demolitions) may have been present in some of the dust from the TwinTowers’ wreckage, he lost the use
of his laboratory, was initially placed on paid administrative leave by the
university and he retired thereafter. Another is Prof. David Ray Griffin who had
a good name in his field (Philosophy of Religion and Theology) because among
other aspects he had been co-editor of Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology,
which is the definitive version of that well known philosopher’s epoch making book.
The common link between these two professionals is their love of truth and
their dislike of being manipulated by falsified data.
Some of these aspects have
previously been discussed in the article, “The 9/11Coverup” (October 1, 2006) which was based on
then available literature, including Griffin’s
book, The 9/11 Commission Report. Omissions
and Distortions. Since that
time NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) issued another
“draft” report on August 21, 2008
for which it invited comments. This report stated that, “‘Our
study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise
similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary
event,’ said NIST WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder. ‘Heating of floor beams
and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced
progressive collapse that brought the building down [http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html].’”
USA
Today also reported these statements by Dr. Sunder, "The public should
really recognize the science is really behind what we have said. The obvious
stares you in the face [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm].”
It may have been obvious to Dr. Sunder and his team but there were a great many
dissenting voices and Prof. Griffin published on September 8 of this year a
book devoted to this topic entitled, The
Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final official report
about 9/11 is Unscientific and False. I have not yet had an opportunity to
read the book because amazon.com does not have it in stock and there is a
two-three week delay before it can be delivered. This indicates that
main-stream publishers were loath to associate themselves with the professor’s
views. But
Griffin gave a lecture
on the NIST report on September 10 and wrote an article on Sept.14 for Global Research
which is available on http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15201.
In the article the author accuses
NIST of having committed “scientific fraud,” by omitting evidence which did not
fit into the preconceived politically desired conclusion. The article provides
extensive references and the main gist is that fire alone could not have
brought the building down. It is stated that a steel beam had been found which
had “melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese.” This would have
required temperatures which cannot be reached by fire. In addition particles of
dust were recovered from the nearby DeutscheBankBuilding.
The Bank’s insurance company failed to pay for the clean-up claiming that the
dust had not come from the WTC collapse. The private firm RJ Lee was, therefore,
hired to determine whether or not the dust had indeed come from the WTC destruction.
Their report, also available on the Internet, showed unequivocally that the WTC
dust had its own “signature,” which differentiated it from other normal
“background dust.”WTC dust contained
toxic material and evidence of extremely high temperatures. “Various metals
(most notably iron and lead) were melted during the WTC Event, producing
spherical metallic particles.” The report also stated, “The presence of lead
oxides on the surface of mineral wool indicates the exposure of high
temperatures at which lead would have undergone vaporization, oxidation, and
condensation on the surface of mineral wool.” Griffin
stated that this would amount to temperatures of 1,749 degree C (3,180 F). Fire
temperatures vary depending upon the material which is consumed, but it appears
that napalm is at the top of the list with about 1,250 degree C.
It now needs to be mentioned that
the official explanation provided by NIST, which is to be taken as the full
truth, is actually only a theory. It was mainly based on computer simulations
and no actual debris had been examined. NIST pointed out that the steel beams
used for WTC7 were not labeled, as had those from the Twin Towers and whatever
steel beams were left in the scrap yards that had not already been shipped off
to Asia could therefore not be definitively identified. This applies, of
course, also to the dust samples. While one can understand NIST’s predicament,
relying nearly exclusively on computer simulations for a definitive explanation
of the mysterious collapse of WTC 7 leaves us with a problem. Everyone, who has
been using such data, knows that all you can get is “virtual reality” and a
“model” rather than “what really happened.” The official theory demanded that
fire was the culprit and, therefore, the theory had to be proven by simulation.
As Griffin pointed out this is not
how unbiased science is supposed to proceed.
Since the collapse of the Twin
Towers seemed to have been preceded by explosions which sent dust and debris
even to New Jersey and that of WTC7 looked to everyone, who does not have
preconceived ideas, remarkably similar to an implosion resulting from a controlled
demolition many people have had difficulty accepting the official government
explanations. A Zogby poll in 2004, after the publication of the 9/11
Commission Report, showed that 49 percent of New York City
residents and 41 percent of those in New YorkStatebelieved “individuals within the US government ‘knew in advance that attacks
were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.’"
The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent. When nearly 50 percent of
New Yorkers, people who were most affected by the tragedy, believe that the
government cannot be trusted in this respect we are no longer dealing with the
lunatic fringe.
A group that called itself 911 truth.org published on Oct. 26, 2004 on their website that “An alliance of 100
prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today
announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry
into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have
deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.” Focusing on twelve
questions, the Statement highlighted areas of incriminating evidence that were
either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission. These ranged
from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings as
well as inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asked for four
actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer,
Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly
independent citizens-based inquiry.
Needless
to say this was an exercise in futility and exposed the signers of this
petition to potential jeopardy of their careers, especially since the statement
also contained the words that, “this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate
public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the
current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen,
perhaps as a pretext for war.”
The
most recent victim of the signatories was Van Jones who had been appointed by
the Obama administration to what has been called, “green-jobs czar.” He was
forced to resign on September 6, 2009and Charles Krauthammer wrote on September 11 in the Washington Post that
the major problem with Jones’ views was not necessarily his leftist opinions
but,
“He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You
can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge
that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e.,
collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be
permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White
House. Unlike the other stuff (see above [left wing radicalism]), this is no
trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into
the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist
posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America,
movements and parties are required to police their extremes. . . . You can no
more have a truther (sic) in the White House than you can have a Holocaust
denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the
service of a fathomless malice.”
While the petition did not state
that the Bush administration had indeed been responsible, although it hinted at
it, the intention was to get an honest inquiry to clear the air once and for
all. But Mr. Krauthammer’s language is typical for how people tend to get
labeled nowadays if one wants to pursue the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, regardless where it leads to. The unwarranted linking to
Holocaust denial is also typical.
The 9/11 truth group did indeed have some members who
harbored outlandish theories and this is why the scientifically inclined
members then formed a separate organization in 2007 which calls itself Scholars
for 911Truth and Justice and focuses on scientific research in regard to the
government’s claims (http://stj911.org). The key issue in regard to the
collapse of the WTC buildings is: whether or not the fires could have destroyed
the buildings and send the mentioned clouds of toxic dust far and wide as the
government maintains. Prof. Jones did not believe this scenario and his talk
before the Utah Valley State College can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586#.
In his original publication where he reported having discovered highly explosive
thermite in a dust sample, which a private citizen from Manhattan had provided
him with, he had asked for additional samples from other private individuals
and that these should be made available to a group of independent scientists.
This was done and a report has been published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009,
Volume 2 Harrit et al..It represents a
collaborative effort of several scientists including Prof. Jones and the lead
author is from the Chemistry Department of the University of
Copenhagen, Denmark. The pdf version of the article can be downloaded for free
and the essence is that four independent dust samples contained evidence for
having been exposed to extremely high temperatures, above those of fire. In
addition to iron rich microspheres, red/gray chips were present which represented“active, unreacted thermitic material,
incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or
explosive material.” The article also pointed out that this type of
nanotechnology was available in 2001 and that the 221st National Meeting of the
American Chemical Society held during April 2001 in San
Diego featured a symposium on Defense Applications of
Nanomaterials. Dr. NielsHarrit’s
interview of April 10, 2009
on Danish TV can be seen on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o.
Since the dust samples were
available to non-government scientists one must wonder why NIST had not availed
itself of this opportunity which is the point of Griffin’s book and article.
The key questions were: 1) why did NIST deny that “molten steel” had been
observed not only in the remains of the TwinTowers but also in those of
Building 7. 2) Why did the NIST report state unequivocally that “the reason for
the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” and that it “did
not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down”?
The answer is that scientific integrity had to make way
for political expediency. As a former NIST employee stated, “everything had to
be approved by the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and
the Office of Management and Budget.” As such political pressure was exerted to
bring about a desired result and this is not how science should proceed. In
addition NIST’s spokesman had not been entirely truthful when he had declared
that the mystery of the WTC 7 collapse had been solved because no physical
evidence was examined and a follow-up letter based on the Freedom of
Information Act brought on August 12, 2009 this reply, “As we mentioned previously,
we are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse of the upper
stories of the tower. . . . . NIST did not conduct tests for explosive residue
and as noted above such tests would not necessarily have been conclusive.”
While it is true that tests might have remained
inconclusive this is no excuse for not even undertaking them and to declare
officially that no explosives had been used. These are the facts which the
general public needs to know and ought to make headlines in the papers as well
as promote discussions by TV pundits. In their absence trust into the veracity
not only of the government but also the mass media will be further, and
possibly irreparably, eroded. These questions are absolutely vital and a new
investigation into the events surrounding the collapse of the buildings is
urgently needed. An international group of scientists, who are free from
government control, as well as potential retribution, should be officially
empanelled and given the resources to produce an honest report.
The official cover-up in regard to the events of 9/11
persists and there is indeed a conspiracy. Not necessarily by people who want
answers but a conspiracy of silence by the government and media, which is
compounded by the demonization of those who object to
it. 9/11 was not only a crime but it can also be regarded as the “original sin”
of this new century. Until it is fully confessed to, it cannot be expiated. As
such it will continue to fester, and wrong decisions will again be made with
ensuing new disasters. The satanic lie of half-truths must be exposed for what
it is if trust in our institutions is ever to be restored.
November 1, 2009
THE JESUS CONUNDRUM
PART I
WHY ANOTHER BOOK
In the July
1 Issue (Faith and Science) I mentioned that a book dealing with an attempt to
understand Jesus, as he is depicted in the gospels, was finished and making its
rounds to some friends and colleagues for comments and critique. The major
suggestion was that the title, “Understanding
Jesus. A Physician’s Search for the Truth” did not fully correspond to the
contents and ought to be given further thought. This was correct because titles
and cover picture are important. Unless they catch the eye a given book will
not merit a second glance, let alone be picked from the shelf for closer
inspection, regardless of its intrinsic value. This leads at times to such
exaggerated titles as The Murder of
Tutankhamen, for which there is no evidence; or Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers which turned Mischlinge (individuals where one parent or grandparent had been
Jewish) into full blown Jews thereby misleading the public.
Since I have some personal
experience in these matters and the mentioned books are supposed to be
non-fiction I contacted the authors and they readily admitted that these titles
had not been their first choice. They had been selected by the publishers for
marketing purposes. It seems that a similar process was also at work in a most
recent tome which features on the front of the dust jacket the word God in triplicate and large font with “The Evolution Of” in the center in
smaller print. One may now ask: does God evolve? Or do our opinions about the
Deity change over the span of recorded history? It is, of course, the latter
aspect. Furthermore, of the nearly 500 pages about 400 are devoted to show how
the god of Abraham, a tribal deity, had become “the One and Only God.” While
the book clearly has merit the near exclusive preoccupation with Yahweh, or El
Shaddai as he was originally referred to, is not apparent from the title. Karen
Armstrong’s book title: A History of God.
The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which had covered
essentially the same material about 15 years earlier, was considerably more
explicit.
In view of these precedents and for
the sake of accuracy Martha and I, jointly with our daughter, put our heads
together and came up with a new title, The
Jesus Conundrum. Searching for Truth beyond Dogma.
This title reflects two realities. One is that a fair number of our educated
citizens have become estranged from the official teachings of the Christian
churches and thereby don’t really know where to place the figure of Jesus into their
mental horizon. As such, he presents us with a conundrum. The second aspect is
the emphasis on “truth” and “searching.” Please note that the definitive
article was omitted because “the Truth” is a matter of faith and in the realm
of religion. The mere fact that numerous religions exist, all of which lay
claim to the exclusive truth, is sufficient evidence that it behooves us to be
more careful. The truth as it is explored in this book deals with common
consensus, which is independent of a given culture or time period. In addition
it represents a personal perspective and does not aspire to universal agreement.
Since the book contains over 300
pages and I would like you to read it I shall give in these three essays only
the reasons why I think you could profit from doing so. In this first
installment I shall deal with why it was written. The second one will discuss
the methodology used in trying to reach an answer to Pilate’s immortal
question: What is Truth? The third essay will explain why the answer to this
question is of fundamental importance for our society. In the current
installment, as to why I wrote this book I shall also proceed in three steps.
First of all Jesus presents us with a challenge; not only for our personal
lives but also for the society we live in and which we are constantly changing.
Second: What are the hallmarks of our current society and to what extent do
they satisfy human needs. Third: What are the personal aspects that prompted me
to write this book and my qualifications for so doing.
The challenge
As mentioned above, we know of Jesus
but don’t know what to do with him and a fair number of us just want him to go
away, as was so beautifully expressed by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, more than a hundred years ago. His name is
on our lips but our secular society has difficulty finding a place for him in
our hearts and minds. This conundrum is perhaps best exemplified by a Multiple
Choice Test, as it might appear in a quiz, and which also will give you an insight
into your own personal current attitude.
The word Jesus refers to:
a)An expletive used
when one is angered or distressed.
b)A prophet of God.
c)A deluded
itinerant Galilean preacher and miracle worker.
d)A dangerous false
prophet.
e)The savior of
mankind.
The fact that one can phrase a quiz
in this manner makes it obvious that Jesus may be the most controversial person
who has ever walked on earth. For some he was, and still is, a stumbling block
which has to be rejected. For others he is the cornerstone of their belief
system. Still others use his name simply as an expletive. Among religious
figures he is quite unique because his name arouses emotion which is not the
case for Moses, the Buddha, Zarathustra, Muhammad, or others. The Christian
claim to his divinity only partially explains the phenomenon.
Let us look closer at the choices.
Choice a) is the most common in popular culture but it may surprise some that
choice b) is part of Muslim belief system where he and his mother figure prominently.
Muslims diverge from Christians only to the extent that they cannot accept
Jesus as “the only begotten Son of the Father” because as stated in the Koran,
“Allah has no son.” Full divinity of Jesus, as expressed in the Christian
Trinity, is regarded as violating strict monotheism. Choice c) is common among members
of our intelligentsia who have become estranged from official religious creeds
and have not taken the time to think more deeply about the problem. Choice d) reflects
orthodox Jewish belief system and choice e) is, of course, Christian dogma. As
such, the questions arise: where does truth reside; and is it possible to come
to a modicum of agreement?
Aspects of our
society
What are some of the reasons why
the Son of Man still has not found a home even in so-called Christian
countries? Yes; churches profess and extol him but even listening to his
teachings, let alone following them, is by and large limited to Sunday church
services which are increasingly sparsely visited. There is good reason for this
state of affairs. The image of Jesus as presented to us has become so overlaid
and encrusted with dogma that a rational understanding, of which we pride
ourselves, has become nearly impossible. We regard ourselves as a society
guided by reason, facts, and science in which the “supernatural” obviously has
no place. Yet when we look at the history of the past century and even the
beginning of this one it is obvious that these assumptions are a myth. Instead
we are led by crude emotions of greed and fear which are camouflaged under
noble names such as patriotism, national security, democracy, freedom and the
workings of capitalism. A teacher who admonishes us to deny ourselves for the
sake of others has an infinitely more difficult time to find genuine disciples
than one who promises material benefits if certain commandments are being
followed. This is in essence the difference between Moses and Jesus.
Moses had promised the Israelites a
long life and lots of progeny in a land flowing with milk and honey provided that
they fully adhered to Yahweh’s commandments. Jesus, on the other hand, promised
his disciples a kingdom of God.
Its nature was explained only in parables, which even the disciples had
difficulty understanding. Furthermore, the kingdom was to be reached by serving
others rather than lording over them, and in addition exposing oneself to
persecution for the sake of it. This is hardly conducive to gaining worldly aplomb
and the fact that the Christian churches succeeded to the extent they did was
due initially to a few dedicated souls who were willing to give up their lives
for the master and subsequently the compromises that were made for political
purposes.
When the human being’s choice is
between immediate gratification of appetites and postponing the fulfillment of
desires to an indefinite future, the outcome tends to be obvious. Even the
Israelites couldn’t adhere to the relatively simple Ten Commandments that were initially
imposed on them, as the story of the Golden Calf demonstrated. It was used by
Gounod as a ballet in his Faust,
which is an operatic masterpiece. Since we are talking about truth the words of
Mephisto’s song, as presented below, are one example.
Le veau d’or est toujours
debout:
On encense sa puissance
D’un bout du monde à l’autre
bout!
Pour fêter l’infâme idole,
Rois et peuples confondus.
Au bruit sombre des ecus
Dansent une ronde folle
Autour de son piédestal!
Et Satan conduit le bal!
Le veau d’or est vainqueur
des dieux;
Dans sa gloire dérisoir
Le monster abjecte insulte aux cieux!
Il contemple, ô rage étrange!
A ses pieds le genre humain
Se ruant, le fer en main,
Dans le sang et dans la
fange
Où brille l’ardent métal!
Et Satan conduit le bal!
The golden calf always stands high
(can also be translated as “is alive”). One worships its power from one end of
the world to the other. To celebrate the shameful idol, kings and commoners
together, to the murky clink of money dance a mad round about its pedestal, and
Satan conducts the ball!
The golden calf is the conqueror of
gods; in its grotesque glory the abject monster insults the heavens. It
contemplates – oh strange lunacy – the human race stampeding at its feet,
weapon in hand, amidst blood and filth (vice) wherever the fiery metal
glitters! And Satan conducts the ball!
This is our
reality and even our current wars are fought for material gain. The Golden Rule
is now interpreted as “he who has the gold rules” and in the form of laissez
faire capitalism it has penetrated all walks of life in our country. Adam Smith’s
idea of the “invisible hand,” where
the pursuit of individual self-interest would unintentionally produce a
collective good for society, was again exposed as a pipedream as recently as
last year. Self-interest does not provide a check for greed. The crucial
knowledge of when enough is enough is elusive and requires wisdom. While
unfettered capitalism is one bane of our society, which President Obama tries
to curb to some extent, the idea persists that more money will solve our
problems.
To understand the folly of our time we need to realize the extent of the
hole we have dug for ourselves; the immense amount of debt we have acquired,
and the idea that we can borrow ourselves out of debt by incurring further
debt. The figures we are dealing with are astronomical and the “science” of
economy, which is supposed to be the remedy likewise defies human
understanding.The November 1
issue of The Christian Science Monitor
reported that, “Federal debts currently stand at $11.9 trillion, a total that
includes reserves of Social Security and Medicare trust funds as well as debt
owed by the public in the US
and abroad.” It was also noted that, “even at today’s low interest rates
servicing the debt costs almost $500 million a day, much of it going to foreign
banks and governments.”
The 2010 federal budget amounts to about
$3.5 trillion of which about $680 billion are supposed to go to the Department
of Defense. To this one needs to add approximately $55 billion for the
Department of Homeland Security and $18 billion for the FBI. The additional
costs for the CIA and the National Security Agency are undisclosed. The real
costs for “defense spending” are, therefore, unknown although we live in a
republic rather than an authoritarian state and are supposed to approve each
expense item. Compare the available defense related figures with the $99
billion for the Department of Health and Human Services. In spite of the fact
that the Cold War is over, defense spending has steadily risen. An article in
the current issue of Foreign Affairs
has pointed out that in 1960, at the end of the Eisenhower administration but
in presence of a hostile nuclear armed Soviet Union,
defense spending amounted to $265 billion in today’s dollars. So; where are our
priorities? Gounod had it right: Satan
conduit le bal!
In addition to the unsustainable
debt we are incurring as individuals, as well as a nation, there is the problem
of fragmentation and dehumanization of our society. On the military side hardly
anyone gives any thought to the consequences of the fact, which I have
mentioned last month, that we are now conducting our air-war in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
largely by drones which are remote-controlled from sites in the US.
We are thereby telling the world: our lives are precious but yours are readily
expendable. Civilian losses are merely “collateral damage” for which we are
willing to pay some money. Human beings have become a commodity to which a
price tag can be attached. This type of thinking cannot bode well for our
attempts to convince especially the Muslim world that the example we set should
be followed.
In civilian life corporate greed,
which frequently cares nothing about the well being of the people in their
company, has become the main fact of life. Profit is the overarching goal and
companies have become commodities that are being traded as if they were
lifeless objects. Their workers can be fired at any moment because in order for
the top brass to make more money the work force needs to be “down-sized.” The
1987 film Wall Street was a typical
example and the situation has only gotten worse since then.
While people have always aspired to
the American dream of homeownership and a degree of freedom from material
worries the changes that have taken place in our society since I first set foot
on these shores in 1950 are truly astounding. At that time America
still regarded itself officially as a Christian country. At Christmas time
there were crèches on public property. Everybody knew what marriage meant and
the idea that it needed a legal definition and possibly even a constitutional
amendment would have been laughed at. Children recited the pledge of allegiance
in school and no one took offense that it contained the words “one nation under
God.” Likewise, the oath which was administered at court proceedings did not
only contain the promise to tell “the truth, the full truth and nothing but the
truth” but also the additional ending “so help me God.” If anybody had asked me
what Hanukkah was he would have gotten a blank stare and even Jews didn’t
celebrate it to any extent. The word holocaust existed only in the Bible in
spite of the fact that this crime against humanity was in the recent past and Europe
was still full of camps housing DPs (displaced persons). Israel
was a state like any other. When late, in the Suez War, it transgressed its
assigned borders the Eisenhower administration took its government to task and
the spoils of war had to be returned.
What has happened in the meantime
came about so gradually that it went practically unnoticed. Under the banner of
strict separation of church and state atheistic Jews have fought and won a
series of court battles. This was to lead not to freedom of but freedom from
religion. I have documented some of these in The Moses Legacy. The result was that the Christian majority gave
way, step by step, to Jewish demands. It is true, of course,
that these measures were not taken by Jews only for Jews but were
supposed to benefit all. Nevertheless Jewish secularism has clearly been the
winner with Christians steadily losing ground. Even the Catholic Church had to
make concessions in its liturgy to avoid the constant accusation of anti-Semitism.
It is not polite to speak of Jewish power in our country yet it pervades all
walks of life from culture to politics. “Fear of the Jews,” of which the
gospels speak, is not a fantasy but a reality. We cannot even pursue an
independent foreign policy at this time which is not approved by our homegrown
Zionists. While Eisenhower could order Ben Gurion to return the Sinai to Egypt,
Obama cannot even make Netanyahu desist from building further settlements on
Palestinian soil.
While crass materialism has come to
dominate public life, individuals are increasingly looking for some answers to
the question of meaning which elude us. This has given rise on the one hand to
a spate of books on atheism and on the other to renewed interest in esoterics. Books
and movies of the latter genre are more common and doomsday scenarios are
abundant on TV shows. The Apocalypse, or more precisely the Book of Revelation
by St. John, also has become
immensely popular and I have discussed it previously under the title The Unholy
Alliance (May 1, 2002). Now
even Nostradamus’ quatrains are regularly milked on the History Channel to show
that he has predicted the arrival of the third antichrist. Napoleon and Hitler
shared the honor of this title for the 19th and 20th
century respectively. The current doomsday date, with or without the subsequent
arrival of the kingdom of God,
is December 21, 2012. A
once in thousands of years celestial alignment is supposed
to take place and this is said to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar. If
you “google” that date you will be amazed at what you find.
While these are some of the reasons
for writing the book, it also represented closure of unfinished business. In The Moses Legacy I have discussed the
foundations of Judaism and its impact on our society but could deal with
Christianity in only a limited manner. A more detailed exposure of the
fundamental differences beween the two belief systems, which are glossed over
by the term Judeo-Christian tradition, became necessary. In addition there was
an even more personal aspect which can best be stated as an attempt to express
my gratitude to Jesus for his help throughout a long, eventful and turbulent
life. The idea was born under the most unlikely circumstances and started with
a dream. Not the Martin Luther King type of dream, but the nocturnal event
which is part of our physiology. It occurred during a sailing trip in the Caribbean
where I was island hopping on a forty footer with a friend who owned the boat
and his friend, a lady pediatrician. The weather was perfect, our little crew
of three most compatible, and life could not be better. It was one of those
rare days when you truly have no worries. God is in heaven and there is peace
on earth.
During the night I dreamt that it
was late afternoon on Christmas Eve and I discovered to my dismay that I had
not bought a single present for the various family members. It was a disaster.
“Where am I going to get gifts now at the very last minute?” was the worried
thought. But immediately came the next one, “What are we really celebrating?” “Jesus’ birthday, of course.” “But what can I give Jesus? He
has everything he could possibly want?” The answer came back, “Souls!” Yes
indeed; and if this book can help even a single soul to understand Jesus and
his message better it has fulfilled its purpose. Just as in my scientific
publications, the purpose of this book is therefore: to set the record
straight; to separate fact from fancy and attempt to arrive at a cohesive world
view.
Qualifications
One may now ask why I, a physician,
would want to tackle this topic when there are literally hundreds of thousands of
books about Jesus by eminent authorities extant, including one from the current
Pope Benedict XVI. “Legitimate” inquiry into the life and meaning of Jesus is
relegated by our society mainly to theologians, historians and professional
teachers of comparative religions. This is due to the fact of increasing
specialization. We divide our world and what is happening in it into relatively
small niches where certain “experts” have the answers and the rest of us, the
laity, are expected to submit to superior wisdom. Our professions are supposed
to define us and if we step outside this narrow circle we do so at our peril.
As will be shown below these circles of professions within professions have
become progressively smaller due to increased specialization and we now have
reached the stage where a given professional knows more and more about less and
less. This adds to the fragmentation of society where the forest is being lost
for trees, leaves and their spines.
The question arises, therefore: What
qualifications can a physician and neuroscientist claim that his views might
merit a hearing? In my case perhaps the most fundamental one is an urge to
understand the ununderstandable in human behavior. This led to the choice of my
medical specialty in the first place. It has remained a life-long vocation
rather than a profession for which one receives financial remuneration and from
which one eventually retires in advanced age. Here again is, however, an
example of how our society has fragmented. In 1950 when I first started working
at Vienna’s UniversityHospital for Neurologic and
Psychiatric Diseases, the Nervenklinik
as it was popularly dubbed, the two fields were one. It was axiomatic at the
time that the mind could not be separated from the brain and that their
reciprocal influence is responsible for health as well as disease. But when I
applied in 1951 at the Mayo Clinic for continuation of my training, I had a
rude awakening. When asked by the director of the Mayo Foundation what I wanted
to specialize in and said “Neurology and Psychiatry” I was told that this was
not possible. I had to choose one or the other.
Unbeknownst to me a shift had
occurred in America
which can be laid directly at Hitler’s feet and is another example of how
interconnected events really are. His persecution of Jews had led to
large-scale emigration and psychoanalysts, who were mainly Jewish, relocated
largely to America
where that field had already penetrated popular culture. Prior to WWII,
neurology and psychiatry had been one specialty here, like in the rest of the
world, but the influx of psychoanalysts changed the situation. The
neurologically oriented members of the profession could not swallow Freudian
doctrine, left the fold and went their separate way. By 1951 the split had
become practically complete, although there was still one Specialty Board and
neurologists had to have a minimum training of three months in psychiatry and
vice versa. Compare this with the situation I had left in Austria where the
neurologist had to have a minimum of two years of training in psychiatry and
three in neurology. For budding psychiatrists there were two years of neurology
and three of psychiatry required. This arrangement had ensured adequate
training in both fields and thereby minimized wrong diagnoses. Since three
months, as was required in the US,
are clearly inadequate, patients were commonly misdiagnosed. The psychiatrist
became known as “the shrink,” brain tumors were missed and nobody in the
general public knew what a neurologist was or did. I made up for this
deficiency with additional training. The use of psychoactive drugs and the
recent advent of computer-based imaging methods have shown again the
interdependence of mind and brain, but the artificial separation of psychiatry
and neurology persists in the training of physicians to the detriment of
patients.
This excursion into my curriculum
vitae is not irrelevant for the topic under discussion because Jesus has been
labeled by some psychiatrists as a “paranoid schizophrenic” and St.
Paul by some neurologists as an “epileptic.” Thus the
two founders of Christianity carry diagnostic labels which clearly fall into
the purview of my expertise. The book was, therefore, also an attempt to
examine the validity of these medical-psychiatric opinions. While anyone can
write a book, to get it published is an entirely different matter. The author
wants to get his/her opinions across but the publisher is only interested in
cash flow. Although books dealing with spiritual topics are, as mentioned,
currently somewhat en vogue, publishers look at the proverbial bottom line. A
person who has “name recognition” can immediately get a lucrative contract while
those of us who feel that they have something to say but whose “name
recognition” is limited to their profession have hardly any chance to get
published by mainstream firms on topics that are regarded as lying outside
their field of expertise. I mentioned the fruitless quest of the first version
of the Jesus book in the April 1, 2004
issue (Mel Gibson’s Passion) and fared no better with the current one. When I
submitted the query form to an appropriate publishing house I had to answer the
question: What is your marketing plan? Well, Jesus doesn’t have one and as all
of us know he told us that you cannot serve God and mammon, which happens to be
true. When I answered that question with: I am going to talk about the book and
discuss it on my website, but am too old to go on book tours around the country;
the negative answer to the query came within 24 hours. No marketing plan – no
contract is the reality for our era. Since I no longer have years to waste in
fruitless search for a publisher I put, as the saying goes, my money to where
my mouth is and contracted with Trafford where the book is currently in the
process of being printed.
As mentioned in the introduction to
this essay I shall discuss the methods employed upon which my opinions about
Jesus and his teachings are based in the next issue.
December 1, 2009
THE JESUS CONUNDRUM
PART II
INTRODUCTION, MATERIAL AND METHODS
The subtitle of this essay may
raise eyebrows because one does not ordinarily think in these terms when seeing
a non-scientific paper. But scientists have to follow rules when they want to
get their data published. First is the Introduction which consists of a
selective review of the literature and the reason why the investigation was
undertaken. This is followed by the Material and Methods section which provides
information on how the presented Results were achieved. Thereafter comes a section called Discussion where the author puts the
new information in relationship to what had previously been known and the
literature references which have been used. Inasmuch as I have published
numerous papers in the scientific literature in this manner it has become
second nature and I have approached the “Jesus Conundrum” in a similar manner. In
the previous installment I have already discussed to some extent why the book
on Jesus was written. These comments will be amplified here as well as the
basis on which the opinions, which will be presented next month in the Results
and Discussion essay, were arrived at. This division is important because it
justifies the subtitle of the book, “Searching for Truth beyond Dogma.” The
latter was the hallmark of the endeavor because, especially in our day and age,
truth is hard to find even in daily life.
The problem of truth, which is
fundamental for an orderly society, has in part already been covered in
previous essays on this site (What is Truth? September 2001; Perceptions of
Reality, August 2004; Faith and Science, July 2009; Knowledge and Faith, August
2009) but for the present it is necessary to point out that the Jesus book is
not about “absolute truth.” The latter is
not available to human beings and the emphasis on truth is therefore in regard
to human relationships. What we regard as truth is personal and dictated by the
individual’s life experiences. Mine were profoundly shaped by the Nazi era
where the truth as proclaimed by the government deviated fundamentally from
what the Catholic religion held and also from that which ruled family life.
These were tensions the adolescent had to come to terms with and their
reasonably successful solution reflected itself in the subsequent course of
life and eventually the book under discussion.
It tends not to be fully realized
that the so-called “Abrahamic religions,” namely Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, are not merely religions, namely private belief systems, but have a
political dimension which impacts on everybody regardless of the faith,
including agnosticism, a given person may hold. The current conflict with
Muslim countries is, also part and parcel of the political domain enshrined in
the Bible. In the Jesus book I limit myself to Judaism and Christianity and explore
their similarities and differences with their impact on 21st century
America.
In regard to Judaism there exists a
fundamental difference from Christianity, which is not fully appreciated but
has profound political implications. Moses did not merely intend to provide a
rule book for ethical living. The goal was to create an enduring nation out of the
Hebrews and the “mixed multitude” that had followed the tribes out of Egypt.
As such, the Mosaic Law, and Judaism which evolved from it, was a political
action program. Jesus, who lived in a different era, not only under Mosaic Law
but also Roman occupation, which operated on a different value system, was not
interested in nationhood but only in doing the will of God as he saw it. By
following his truth, regardless of consequences, he became a symbol for the Kingdom
of God - Life of the Spirit.
In this way he had a profound
impact on all aspects of our culture. So-called Western civilization, including
its art and philosophy, is unthinkable without Christianity and Jesus at its
center. Even historical time is still mainly reckoned as B.C., before Christ,
and A.D., Anno Domini, although these labels are now spurned in scientific
circles. In order not to offend other belief systems one has to use the terms
B.C.E., before current era, and C.E., current era, if one wants to publish a
scientific historical paper. If one uses the traditional terms the paper is
likely to be rejected by its editors. This development is recent but another
example that Christianity, and thereby Jesus, is gradually but steadily removed
from public discourse and confined to the strictly personal religious sphere.
But even in that realm traditional churches are losing ground and regular
attendance is dwindling.
A cultural shift has taken place.
It started in Europe with the so-called enlightenment of
the 18th century and has steadily gained traction ever since. The
“miracles” of science and technology all of us have witnessed are the major
reason why the “educated” members of society began to look askance at whatever
cannot be explained by reason. Inasmuch as genuine religious experiences are
not part of the sensory systems upon which we commonly operate, people who still
believe in them tend to be regarded as “out of touch with reality.” Depending
upon the vigor with which persons defend this obsolete faith they tend to be pitied,
ignored, or regarded as delusional.
The first crack in the unbridled
optimism in regard to the exclusive role of “scientific reality” in regard to
human behavior appeared in the European mind with the First World War. Here was
an unmitigated disaster which defied rational explanations and showed how
science and technology are not merely servants of mankind but can be used for
its destruction. Nevertheless, this lesson did not sink in immediately. On the
contrary, scientific materialism became the hallmark of the first half of the
twentieth century in Europe. Its political expression
was Communism and as a reaction to it Fascism in Italy
and National Socialism in Germany.
All these systems were authoritarian and shared the belief that all problems
can be solved by science and technology. But the conduct towards their citizens
who did not accept the officially proclaimed truth differed in the case of Italy.
While Mussolini’s system was
originally relatively benign in this respect, the other two were vicious. The
choice of the “enemy of the State” was based on local circumstances. In the Soviet
Union it was the Kulak and the Bourgeois; in Nazi Germany the Jew and
the Communist. I have deliberately capitalized the labels because this is how
they were used at the time. Individual differences and thereby individual
belief systems made no difference; the person was lumped into a given class and
as member of that class disposed of according to the whim of the State. The
slogan in Nazi Germany, the system I am personally most familiar with, was “Der Einzelneistnichts, das
Volk istalles.”The individual is nothing the people (State, Nation)
is everything. For the sake of the “people,” or rather the State, any and all
means were legal once they had become official policy.
There is now an interesting and
underappreciated fact of history that has become apparent in the demise of
these two belief systems in regard to the choice of the enemy. Communism could
be tolerated in the West, until the Cold War, because a slaughter of “Kulaks”
and of “Bourgeois” was regarded as an internal problem and these people had no
international allies. But for the Nazis the situation was different. Persecution
of Jews, from which Mussolini had abstained prior to falling under Hitler’s
influence, was intolerable in the eyes of the world. The Jewish Diaspora could
not accept it and had the means to enforce its views. Theoretically it should
make no difference who the person is against whom a crime is committed and the
killing of millions of people in the Soviet Union prior to WWII should have
aroused at least as much animosity in the world as the persecution of Jews by
Hitler. Prior to WWII these consisted mainly of depriving Jews of their
livelihood, making their lives miserable by chicaneries, and thereby
encouraging emigration. Outright mass murder was the result of the war.
In my previous books War & Mayhem, as well as The Moses Legacy, I have shown that
Hitler’s belief system was not merely the opposite of Christianity, which
earned him the title of Antichrist, but even more so the outgrowth of Old
Testament thinking. The “chosen people” had, in Hitler’s opinion, seriously
trespassed against the needs of the German nation and, at least within Germany,
they had to be brought to heel. He thoroughly underestimated, however, the
history of the Jewish people who, although they also valued their nationhood
(albeit in exile at that time) above all else, would not tolerate that a Jew anywhere
in the world was subjected to discrimination simply for being a Jew. For the
Jewish leadership this was a matter of survival and the world’s resources had
to be mobilized to get rid of this danger. When Hitler spoke of Weltjudentum, world Jewry, and its power, he was
correct in a sense, but he was mistaken in thinking that he had the means to
overcome it.
Inasmuch as WWII, its causes and
goals, tend to be misrepresented in the American media, a small excursion into
what for me was Zeitgeschichte
(personally experienced history) is necessary at this point. Without coming to
grips with how WWII really started we cannot hope to avoid WWIII. A search for
truth beyond dogma inevitably also involves the political sphere because what
was a propaganda slogan for a specific purpose can subsequently become dogma
for all time. As far as Hitler is concerned he had thoroughly deluded himself
by not reading “the sign of the times” (Matthew 16:1-3). He still thought as a
pre World War I European who had not realized that America
was already in ascendance and in the process of relieving the British
Empire of its burden. The idea that he could confine his war
against the Soviet Union, which was the foremost goal,
and that the Brits would be happy if he helped them with his Wehrmacht to hold
up their tottering empire, was thoroughly
anachronistic. As the Spanish-American war and WWI had shown, America’s
frontiers had moved not only to East Asia but also to Europe.
Once Britain
had entered Hitler’s war the outcome was pre-ordained because by hook and by
crook America had
to be dragged into it.
On the other hand for the average
American citizen to become a willing participant, who would sacrifice his life,
the reason for the war had to be redefined. The Nazis were now portrayed as the
sole menace to civilization and since they officially fought against “atheistic
Jewish bolshevism” in order “to save Western civilization,” a new rallying cry
had to be found. I have used quotes in the previous sentence because this is
how Hitler’s war was sold to us at that time.Americans could not be expected to enter the war in the defense of British
and Jewish interests, as well as those of industrialists who would profit from it
and Charles Lindbergh’s speech in Des Moines, Iowa on September 11, 1941, which
is available on the Internet at http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp,
provides a picture how the war was portrayed here at that time. Similar forces
are operative at present and for this reason the speech will be discussed in
more detail in another essay. Lindbergh
was promptly ostracized for speaking truth to power, smeared as an anti-Semite,
and the rush to war continued.
Since there was a considerable
popular groundswell of anti-Semitism in the America
of the 1930s, which actually lasted to some extent until at least the 1950s (Jews
could not move to Grosse Pointe when we bought our house there in 1957), no one
would have been willing to sacrifice life, limb or property for the sake of
European Jews. A high ethical reason had, therefore, to be found. Inasmuch as the
words Christian and Christianity had become tinged with anti-Semitism, as a
result of Father Coughlin’s widely listened to speeches, a compromise solution
was reached. Defense of “the Judeo- Christian heritage” now became the slogan
of the day. Since evangelical Protestants always had somewhat of a preference
for the Old Testament over the New, the term was eminently successful. It has not
only survived the war but has replaced the word Christianity in public and
especially in political life. It is impossible to win an election for major
public office unless one professes allegiance to this Judeo-Christian tradition
(heritage) rather than Christianity and Jesus. Yet, for anyone who has given
thought to these matters it is obvious that the term “Judeo-Christian” is
merely a political expedient, a popular half-truth, and thereby dangerous.
Inasmuch as we live in dangerous
times where truth is again manipulated to serve political purposes, I felt the
need to explore the reasons for it and the book resulted from these endeavors.
As a physician I concentrated on the human aspects of Jesus’ life leaving
“Christology” to theologians. But in the effort to discern how Jesus might have
felt and why he did what he did, we are limited to the narrations of the
evangelists and they don’t agree on some key aspects. Nevertheless, a wise
Rabbi once declared, “it doesn’t matter what really happened, what matters is
what people believe has happened.” This is correct and a limitation all of us
have to accept. For this reason we can work scientifically with the gospels
only in an “as if” manner. This means that we can study what is written, not
necessarily as absolute historical truth, which does not exist even in secular
literature, but as a version of events that is regarded as such.
When one works with the gospels in
a systematic manner the first thing one has to realize is that we are dealing
with translations of translations. We do not have Jesus’ original words because
no Aramaic text has ever been discovered. The gospels were written in Greek and
translated during the fourth century A.D. by St. Jerome
into Latin as the Vulgata, which means the
language of the common people. The subsequent translations into the various
languages of the world, and their revisions, are based either on the Latin or
Greek text. Since Greek was the original language the gospels appeared in, one
might be tempted in one’s quest for authenticity to disregard the translations
altogether and simply concentrate on the Greek version. Unfortunately, the
original Greek versions of the gospels no longer exist. They have been revised
several times and the earliest printed version, as opposed to handwritten,
dates to 1514. The Greek text that is currently commercially available, and
which was used for the book, represents a 1901 revision.
While this makes a scientist
shudder, the situation is even worse for the Old Testament. The Hebrew
collection of scrolls, which eventually became our Bible, emerged over a period
of centuries. They contained no vowels or punctuation and are read from right
to left. Bible scholars who want to glean “the truth” from early Hebrew
documents, to the extent they exist, as for instance in the Dead Sea
scrolls, are faced not only with a formidable but a basically unsolvable task.
A given sequence of consonants can be filled in with vowels of one’s choice,
and sentence endings may have to be artificially constructed. For the Dead Sea
Scrolls the problem is compounded by the fact that the scholars have to work,
to some extent, with scraps of material which have to be pasted together in
some type of logical sequence. This process is, of course, also open to bias.
In addition there is a difference
between the spoken and written word which is called prosody. A little Jewish
joke might illustrate this better than erudite explanations. Moshe and Shlomo had an argument during which Moshe called Shlomo a scoundrel. Shlomo was
upset and took Moshe before the judge. The judge said to Moshe, “Tell Shlomo that he is not a scoundrel.” Whereupon Moshe said, “Shlomo is not a scoundrel?” The judge reproved Moshe saying
that this was not what was meant, whereupon Moshe replied, “Your honor, you can
give me the words but I make the melody!”Yes indeed; it is the melody which counts and we try to convey it in
written language by commas, exclamation marks, question marks, periods and so
on. When these are missing, as they were up to the early centuries of our time,
all bets are off as to the intended original meaning. This is why one can
dispute interminably what a given word or sentence in a Hebrew document might
have meant originally.
All of this is compounded by the
fact that language is not static but changes over decades let alone centuries
or millennia. No one would have expected in the 1950s, for instance, that the
simple word “gay” would refer to homosexual people. It seems quite possible
that in another fifty years that this is all it will mean and that the
Christmas Carol, “Don we now our gay apparel” will be viewed as an invitation
to cross dressing. Who knows? Furthermore, words have more than one meaning in
different languages and the translator has to choose the one that fits best
into the concept he wants to convey. There is inevitable bias inherent in this
process and it is exceedingly interesting to not only compare the various
gospels, but also the different translations within the same language. If this
were not enough, each translator lives in a given time period with the culture
of its day and cultural bias is, therefore, practically unavoidable. We should
also never forget that words are not things per se but symbols which
stand for thoughts, feelings or visions. In this way they are always inadequate,
especially when it comes to the expression of spiritual topics.
In order to reach an understanding
of what Jesus might have said and done I used as basic documents the New
Greek - English Interlinear New Testament and for the Old Testament mainly
the Septuagint which is the Greek translation from Hebrew. The latter is
actually the oldest complete Bible, in the form we
know the book today. It was also the main text the gospel writers used. For
comparison purposes other Bibles were also consulted as well as the Socino
Chumash for the Pentateuch (first five books of Moses) and for some of the
prophetic writings. Using the Greek text had the advantage that a given word
could be explored for its various meanings which opened new understanding of
some difficult concepts. Since I had only learned Latin, English and French in
High School the Greek language was indeed Greek to me but the problem was
overcome with the mentioned text and the help of Zodiathes’ The Complete Word Study Dictionary,
which cannot be recommended strongly enough for serious Bible study.
Although I proceeded initially in
the usual sequence of the gospels, as laid out in the New Testament, it soon
became apparent that the material would not only become unmanageable but also
fail to reach the desired end. I, therefore, changed the sequence by presenting
the gospel of Mark first and then merely discussed the discrepancies between
Mark’s gospel and those of Matthew and Luke which form what is called the
synoptic gospels because they show internal coherence. Inasmuch as Luke
provided not only the life of Jesus but also The Acts of the Apostles,
his sequence was retained. The Acts can, however, not be understood unless one
is familiar with the major Pauline Epistles. They were, therefore, presented
after The Acts. These in turn led into St. John’s
gospel which is a theological treatise, rather than a biography of Jesus, and
subsequently the Revelation of St. John the Divine, better known as the
Apocalypse. These two chapters are the most challenging to the intellect and
can readily be misunderstood. The subsequent chapter put the gospels into their
historic context and the final one addressed Pilate’s immortal question: What
is truth? followed by Conclusions and Bibliography.
As a scientist I proceeded in the
same manner as for my medical investigations. I was familiar with the
conventional textbook wisdom but ever so often a question arose on some
specific aspect where the textbook and clinical experience did not quite agree.
I then performed the appropriate experiment and reached my own conclusions.
Only after I had obtained my results and was ready to prepare the data for
publication did I perform a thorough literature search in order to see what
others had reported. This method while limiting bias also led to major
disappointments, because ever so often I found out that my efforts had merely
duplicated the findings of others. But apart from hurt pride for not having
been the first one to make this particular observation, I could give the
previous authors credit. In addition, when one can independently confirm
somebody else’s results this provides them with even greater validity.
The literature on Jesus is,
however, so vast that nobody can read it in one’s lifetime. A choice had to be
made and in my search for purity I, therefore, concentrated mainly on authors
from past decades and centuries. There was no slight intended because as
explained in the book, the truth has to stand the test of time. This is
contrary to the current Zeitgeist where what is new is automatically regarded
as being better and this is why we are confronted with so much contradictory
information even in regard to scientific matters. The hallmark of the truth,
especially in matters of the spirit is that it keeps! What was true yesterday,
years, decades, centuries and millennia ago should still be true today!
Furthermore, what is true for one civilization needs to be true for humankind
at large because truth does not know national borders.
There is a spirit of truth which
has been known to mankind throughout history. Different cultures have given it
different names, but in Christian lands it is called the Holy Spirit or the
Holy Ghost. Personally I do not much care for the term Holy Ghost because the
word ghost pertains mainly to apparitions of the dead while Spirit animates the
living. Among the acknowledgments in the book I, therefore, also listed the
Holy Spirit upon whose guidance I had relied throughout my life and during the
writing of this book. Since the Holy Spirit is the center piece I was looking
for an appropriate symbol that could be used for the front cover of the book.
By putting our heads together as a family we came up with the idea of a dove emerging
from the sun and carrying in her beak the feather of Maat (Ancient Egyptian
symbol for truth and justice; discussed in Our Need for Maat, August 2007) to
earth. To put these thoughts into a picture I entrusted the task to Mr. Zack
Johnson who is also my webmaster. When I first saw the finished product I
experienced a little shock of dismay because I had visualized a pure golden sun
rather than the way it was depicted and reproduced below.
After I had looked at it for a
little while I became aware that, unintentionally, the picture contained not
only greater symbolism than I had expected but also corresponded better to the
truth. For the sun and the earth actual photographs from outer space were used
and it just so happened that the dove heads for the Middle East,
the birthplace of our civilization. Egypt,
the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia
and the Persian Gulf are clearly visible as terra firma
at the upper end of the globe. In regard to the appearance of the sun, which
could also be regarded as the cosmic egg from which all else emerged, I had
another surprise when for some unfathomable reason my eye was drawn one day to
Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell which had been sitting for decades on one of my
library shelves. I had never read the book from cover to cover, only scanned
certain portions and had retained only their essence. I shall deal with
Swedenborg in more detail at another time but for now I was flabbergasted to
read, as part of a random selection, how the angels see God according to
Swedenborg’s conversations with them. In the chapter on “Change of State of the
Angels in Heaven,” section 159, he wrote:
I have been shown
how the Lord, as a Sun, appears to the angels of the celestial kingdom in their
first state, how in their second, and how in their third state.The Lord as a Sun was at first seen, golden
red and glittering with a splendour that cannot be described. . . .Afterwards there appeared a great dark belt around
the Sun and by this its first glow and brilliancy which gave it such splendour
began to be dulled. It was said that such is the appearance to them in their
second state.
For the purely materialistically
oriented mind it is obviously a coincidence that Zack picked from all the
available NASA earth photographs this particular one as well as one of the sun which
is the most appropriate for the context. Furthermore, that I not only looked at
the Swedenborg book, after several decades, but chanced upon this particular
paragraph from its more than 500 pages, will likewise be regarded as
coincidental. But events like these have happened on other occasions and this
is part of the reason why I am giving the Holy Spirit His due in the
Acknowledgments of the Jesus book. The cover picture was, however, designed
only after the text had been submitted to the publisher and the above mentioned
details are not included in the book.
As mentioned, the contents of the
book are concerned with the search for truth beyond dogma and, therefore, not
limited to a specific belief system. It required an investigation of how other
cultures in previous centuries had dealt with the problem of living in relative
peace with oneself and one’s neighbors. This is the key aspect and unless we
solve this problem we cannot hope to achieve material, let alone spiritual,
well-being. Material-scientific progress alone cannot achieve this goal. Europe
has learned from the tragedies of the first half of the 20th century,
is sick of war, and is again beginning to add a more humanistic component to
continued scientific progress. Yet, the influential circles which govern America’s
fortunes are still mired in the thought patterns of optimistic, materialistic
19th and early 20th century Europe.
In the November 23 issue of Newsweek
the well known Christopher Hitchens, who is a militant atheist, wrote: “The United
States has to stand or fall by being the
preeminent nation of science, modernity, technology, and higher education.”
Hitler could have said the same thing for Germany,
Lenin and Stalin for the Soviet Union, and the Chinese
communists for their country. Not only is “preeminence” the key word, which
also implies domination rather than cooperation, so is the absence of a
spiritual component: truth and justice for all. In the Jesus book I have tried
to show how a synthesis of matter and spirit can be achieved and why this is
necessary for the further evolution, if not survival, of the human race.
I had hoped that the book would be
available for Christmas but numerous delays by the publisher made this
impossible. It is now slated to appear in print sometime in January.
January 1, 2010
THE JESUS CONUNDRUM
PART III
RESULTS and DISCUSSION
In the previous installments I
discussed why I felt compelled to write this book and how I proceeded in a
somewhat scientific manner to analyze the gospel material about Jesus and his
time. It has also been pointed out that the book, although dealing with Jesus
as a person, does not claim to have discovered the “historical” Jesus.
Furthermore, as a physician and neuroscientist I have also not ventured into
what can be called Christology because that is an area that belongs to
theologians and philosophers. But since there is near universal agreement that
a human being called Jesus of Nazareth existed in Roman occupied Palestine
and was crucified there, the physician has a right to be interested in this
person and to try to find out why he did what he is reported to have done. This
was not only of personal but also professional interest. Jesus has been labeled
by some of my psychiatric colleagues as “a paranoid schizophrenic” and St.
Paul as an “epileptic.” Since these illnesses and their differential diagnosis
clearly fall into my medical specialty it should not be surprising that I
wanted to examine the basis for these claims.
As has also
been mentioned previously the only information anyone, who wants to write about
Jesus, has available are the four gospels. Regardless of the qualifications a
given person can bring to the study of Jesus these are the only basic documents
extant at this time and it is upon those that personal opinions are rendered.
Furthermore, the gospels were originally written in Greek and the vast majority
of people around the world who profess to be Christians no longer understand that
language. We are, therefore, when we talk about Jesus’ words and actions,
dealing not only with translations into the various languages of the world but
also with an ever increasing number of versions of the New Testament (NT) even
in the English language. From these one can pick and choose the one which best
suits one’s needs and interests. This fundamental fact must be clearly
recognized and so must be the fact that the Greek language was considerably
more expressive in philosophical matters than contemporary English. We are
doing the spirit of the gospel writers a profound disservice if we don’t
attempt to look at the meaning of what they have tried to convey and simply stay
with a few basic English words such as: love, grace
and charity.
Although I
did not have the benefit of having learned Greek in High School, I tried to
make up for this deficiency by using a Greek-English transliteration of the NT
and by examining, in dictionaries, the multiple meanings of certain words. This
provided personal insights which tend to go beyond what one commonly reads in
modern literature. The emphasis is on “personal” and the book makes no claim to
have discovered universal truth to which everyone must subscribe unless eternal
damnation were to result. This is the realm of
religious dogmas and the difference between truth and dogma is not always appreciated.
The Greek word for truth in the NT is aletheia
and refers to: truth, veracity, uprightness, honesty and reality in contrast to:
an appearance or a lie. Aletheia was
differentiated from doxa which
referred to: opinion, notion; expectation; false opinion, delusion, fancy;
decree, project; judgment; reputation, report, estimation, honor; glory,
splendor. In the NT the word is used, especially in regard to God, in the last
two meanings. While dogma also carried the meaning of opinion, it was strengthened
by: decree; resolution; doctrine.
Unless one
clearly differentiates these terms and merely supplants them with the one word
“truth” no agreement will become possible. It is this failure to differentiate aletheia from doxa which leads to the current frequently expressed notion: there
is no truth; all is opinion to which cynics may add that all opinions are
equally unreliable. This type of thinking allows lies to flourish and is the
root of many of our problems. It is true that most of our ideas are doxa and some of them have been elevated
to dogma in the religious as well as political sphere, but this does not mean
that aletheia, in the sense of
honesty, does not exist. Although aletheia
is to some extent also personal and flavored by the life experiences of the
individual, it can be checked for veracity by others who are willing to do so.
In the book
I have kept the difference between these three terms in mind. There is no dogma
to which any reader is supposed to subscribe, there is a great deal of doxa, which is necessitated by the
limitation of the topic’s sources, but also aletheia
in the sense of remaining honest in the presentation of the data. This is the
aspect which may give some readers the most trouble because honesty, although
being paid lip service to, is not desired by our society. We are told by well
meaning friends “but you can’t say that, you’ll offend the other person.” This
is the point where we tend to give in, and either shade our truth or hold our
tongue altogether. “Thus makes conscience cowards of us all” said Shakespeare, and
Goethe had Faust say, when paraphrased: the few who have had the temerity to
proclaim what they really knew have always been crucified or burned at the
stake. Stating the unadulterated truth is dangerous to one’s professional life,
and occasionally even in the family circle. In addition, personal experience
has taught me that the truth is also that which hurts the most to admit!This is documented with examples in the book and
is also the reason why the book is not likely to become a bestseller. Nevertheless,
it puts the book in good company and I have quoted Seneca (4 B.C-65 A.D.) who
stated, “What I say will benefit you even if you don’t like it. Words that are
not soothing must sometimes reach you . . .”
In the
previous installment I mentioned the order in which I proceeded in my quest for
understanding Jesus and that I had started out with the gospel of Mark rather
than, as in the NT, with Matthew. It had become apparent that the four
evangelists had come from different backgrounds and wrote for different
audiences. Our current picture of Jesus is, therefore, an amalgam of different
viewpoints and as such in part contradictory. Even when one leaves the gospel
of John aside for the moment, the writers of the three synoptic gospels provide,
in part, conflicting information which can only be explained by their
underlying motive and that the documents had undergone an editorial process in
ancient times. It is also clear that neither Mark nor Matthew or Luke actually
wrote the final documents which now bear their names and the Church has made
this apparent by referring to the specific gospel as “according to” rather than
“by,” which leaves authorship open.
Since the
gospel of Mark is the most concise, largely avoids polemic and provides a
relatively coherent narration I have placed it first in the book. It was
written for a gentile audience and presents a Jesus whom I could understand and
sympathize with. Even some of the “miracles” can potentially have a rational
explanation as was shown in that chapter. Mark also presents the tragedy of human
endeavors. The first words attributed to Jesus in Mk 1:15 were, “The time has been fulfilled; the kingdom
of God has come near; repent and
believe in the good news.” The last ones, uttered on the cross were, “My God,
My God, why have you forsaken me?” A conviction, his personal aletheia, of having been chosen to save the
Jewish people, if not humanity, from its errors had given way to his new
reality that he had failed and could not fathom the will of God. It was no
longer Abba, the Father, whom he
addressed in his agony but that power of the universe, Eloi, which we can give names to, but which defies human
understanding. In this way the gospel of Mark mirrors the fate of the human
race. Imbued with good will and full of hope we try to put our stamp on the
world but when we do so in disregard of the “Prince of this World” we are bound
to come to grief. But, as explained in the book, words are not what we die
with. We are going to see pictures which are likely to represent our deepest
held beliefs and under those circumstances Jesus may well have seen himself received
by the loving arms of his Father.
Since it is
obviously impossible, and not even desirable, to
condense the entire book into a few pages here, I will provide only some
snippets which deal with the explanation of words and conclusions derived
therefrom. For instance what does “repent” really mean? The Greek word was metanoeite and conveys the concept of
“to rethink,” to consider what and how one has thought up to that point and to
change these thoughts for the sake of current reality. In the Jesus context it
would mean: don’t concern yourself any longer with thoughts of material
prosperity, regardless of the means to gain it, or of rebellions against the
political system; they are not helpful. The kingdom
of God – the reign of aletheia and freedom of spirit which
only God can provide – is coming. This would be the timeless message of the euaggellon, evangelium, good news. In
Jesus time there was the additional element of wide-spread apocalyptic thought,
which literally expected a fiery end of this world at any moment.
Metanoia is not
limited to the concept of sin but is useful to keep in mind for everyday
life.Let us reflect on our conduct and
see where and what type of improvement is needed. This applies also to the
Greek word for sin, which is hamartía.
Sin is an offense against God and since
God does not exist for atheists they can, therefore, not sin. Nevertheless,
they can still fall victim to hamartía.
This paradox is resolved when one realizes that the term refers primarily to:
miss the mark, err, or fail. The word has even found its way into neurology
where we find it as hamartoma, which
refers to a group of nerve cells which have missed its destination in the
cerebral cortex, formed a tumor in places where they don’t belong and thereby
create illness. I must admit that, although I knew of hamartomas, I did not
know the derivation of the term before I embarked on the study of Jesus and thereby
reaped an unexpected professional bonus. Thus, missing the mark is the key
aspect we should hold in front of our eyes at all times. What is the goal we
try to hit with our arrow and how good is our aim? Those are the questions each
one of us ought to reflect on and they are independent of all the variables,
such as: race, gender, national origin, and religion with which we separate
ourselves from each other.
As
mentioned above Mark’s gospel is concise. There is no genealogy, history of
supernatural birth, and there is not a single one of the “woes” which we find
in Matthew and Luke. There is also no mention of the Church which Jesus will
found on his rock – Peter. When Jesus asked his disciples: who do you say I am?
Peter blurted out: “You are the Messiah.” In Mark’s gospel (8:29) Jesus merely told them not to mention this to
anyone, while Matthew (16:16) put
the well known Church founding verses 16:17-19 into Jesus’ mouth. As explained
in the book, some of the words and parables attributed to Jesus reflected not
so much Jesus’ core belief but the needs of the growing Church which had to
differentiate itself from Judaism as well as the various splinter groups of
emerging Christianity. Mark also tells us nothing about Jesus’ biologic father
and the only Joseph who appears in the gospel is Joseph of Arimathea who
provided the tomb and assisted in the burial. The fact that Jesus is referred
to in Mark’s gospel as “the son of Mary” (6:3) is highly unusual in biblical
literature and I have discussed ancient as well as recent thoughts about Jesus’
physical, as distinct from spiritual, paternity in the book.
Finally,
Mark’s original narration of the resurrection events ended with the women who
had come to anoint the body but having found instead “a young man dressed in a
white robe” who told them that Jesus “had been raised” and that they should
tell Peter and the disciples that “they will see him in Galilee.”
Whereupon the “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement
had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid [16:5-8].”
Since whatever Mark had written thereafter, was no longer available to the
Church fathers and they could not end the book with frightened women running
away, they compromised and provided a short as well as a long ending, which is
now official. The short one was added to verse 8 while the long one consists of
verses 9-19. Both versions are, even by the Catholic Church, regarded as
inauthentic. But Jesus’ supposed prophecy in regard to his followers’ speaking
in tongues, handling poisonous snakes and drinking toxic juice has become
folklore and is enacted in some religious “Christian” communities to this day.
The gospel of Matthew was written by a Jewish
convert for his Jewish brethren. It relates many of the same events as Mark did
but elaborates on them and although insisting on virgin birth, traced Jesus’
paternity from Abraham through David to Joseph. It also contains the wise men
from the East, Herod’s massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt
and eventual return to Galilee and Nazareth,
which according to Matthew had not been Joseph’s original home. The book
explains why these elaborations were necessary from a Jewish point of view. The
difference between Mark and Matthew also becomes palpable in the way Jesus’ attitude
to the oral Law was depicted. Mark’s Jesus clearly had no use for the 613 rules
and regulations the Pharisees had imposed upon the people and he even reduced
the written Law to “love God and thy neighbor.” This presented a conflict for
the observant writer of Matthew who had Jesus say that, “. . . whoever breaks
one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven . . .(5:17-21).
These verses are an insert in the Beatitudes and conflict with Mark’s Jesus who
dined with sinners (violating the dietary rules and ritual cleanliness of
dishes) and worst of all told the Jewish authorities that the Sabbath was made
for man and not the other way round (Mk 2:27). Since Matthew also relates the
Sabbath healing and other aspects of oral Law violations by Jesus it seems
apparent that an editor had been at work on the original document which led to
these contradictions. Whether or not the famous woes to the Pharisees were
indeed proclaimed by Jesus can no longer be ascertained but they have their
counterpart in the Old Testament (OT) book of Enoch where they are addressed to
sinners in general rather than Pharisees in specific.
Luke’s
gospel largely agrees with Mark and Matthew but added the stable and shepherd
story to the nativity scene and seems also to have been edited in ancient
times. It was written for a gentile audience and it is assumed that the main
author was Luke, a physician, who had accompanied St. Paul
on some of his missionary journeys. There are some additional key differences
from Matthew. The genealogy not only traces Jesus’ biologic paternity beyond
Abraham through Adam to God but the names of the various fathers differ, except
for Joseph and David. In addition the gospel contains the parable of the Good
Samaritan which defines the concept of “neighbor;” Jesus’ healing the severed
ear of the High Priest’s servant at Gethsemane, and the momentous “Father,
forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (23:34).”It needs to be noted, however, that the latter
statement was placed in square brackets in the Greek text indicating that the
statement was a later insertion. Nevertheless, by the time the gospel was
translated into Latin and all subsequent languages, these brackets have
disappeared. Although Luke’s gospel, as it exists today, had undergone
revisions in ancient times by merging different texts it makes important points
for Christian living as the above mentioned forgiveness statement shows.
Another
deviation from Mark as well as Matthew occurs in regard to the Last Supper.
Although the scene setting is largely identical, only Luke added the words “do
this in remembrance of me.” These few words portray a thoroughly human Jesus
who knows that he is going to die a cruel death, whose disciples may or may not
be reliable in following his example of supreme self-sacrifice for the sake of
God, but at least they should keep his memory alive. Isn’t this what we mainly
want: to be remembered in a positive light? For accuracy’s sake, it should be
mentioned that although the other synoptic gospels do not contain these words
they do show up in St, Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (11:24) and if Luke indeed accompanied Paul on
some of his travels he might have heard them from him.
By the time
the gospel of John was written, the synoptic gospels were already available,
but a need was perceived for a permanent transfiguration of the human being
Jesus of Nazareth to the everlasting Christ, the “logos,” who had preexisted from eternity. The gospel only uses
Jesus as a framework to make theological points and cannot be understood from a
materialistic point of view. It is the only officially condoned “Gnostic” book
of the NT and needs to be read from a spiritual and allegoric point of view.
Unless one does so, one would have to conclude that Jesus was indeed suffering
from megalomania. To reconstruct human biographical features of Jesus is well
nigh impossible and was never the intention of the author. An understanding of
this gospel requires not only information about Greek philosophy (logos and its various meanings) but also
awareness of the power struggles within the nascent Church. These are hinted
at, especially in Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles, but are clearly
apparent in John who expressed a great deal of indignation about the Jews. Jews,
as Jews, do not figure in the synoptic gospels except for the trial and
crucifixion of Jesus. In John there are more than 50 references to them and
usually in a negative manner.
The reason
for this change can probably be traced to the fact that Jews, by and large, had
failed to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah and not only refused to join
the Church but the Jewish authorities were, for good reason, hostile to it
because they perceived the obvious threat to their established religion. The
followers of “The Way” as they were originally called, before the initially
derogatory term Christians was bestowed on them, were regarded by Jews as a
dangerous sect and John, or more correctly the various writers and editors of
the gospel who came from the Jewish community, were deeply disappointed by this
turn of affairs. This hostility is also clear in the Pauline epistles. On
several occasions he only narrowly escaped from Jewish mobs during his
missionary travels and eventually had to procure his Roman citizenship papers
in order to avoid being killed in Jerusalem.
For the story that he was beheaded in Rome
in 65 A.D., there is no evidence; neither from the NT nor from Roman sources.
As
mentioned, the gospel of John also had several authors and this accounts for
the numerous repetitions in the text. But the first chapter, which does form a somewhat
cohesive whole, gives an indication of what John had intended to prove. In view
of subsequent Church dogma it is of interest how the idea of Jesus as the only
begotten Son of the Father had arisen and why the split between the Western and
Eastern Church had occurred. The details are in the book but it may suffice to
mention here that for the first instance the relative adverb hós which denotes: who, how, in what
manner or way, as, so as, like as, which appears prior to monogenous was translated to “as of” in the King James Version (1:14). The Latin vulgate is, however, more
accurate by translating hós with quasi, “as if,” which clearly denotes
analogy rather than identity. One marvels what a difference the translation of
one simple word and the exchange of an “i” for an “o” in the English language
can make. But this is an example how dogmas come into being.
Another
example of dogma creation deals with an “i” in the Greek language. A dispute in
regard to the extent of Jesus’ divinity had arisen in the early Church. There
were two factions; one insisted the Jesus was of the same substance as God, homoousios, while the other insisted with
equal vigor that this could not be the case and that he was of similar but not
identical substance, homoiousios. The
first group, monophysites, won the day by a democratic vote and those who had
championed the similarity as opposed to identity were cast out as heretics.
Democracy and Majority Rule have their virtues but provide no guarantee that aletheia will thereby triumph.
The first
chapter of John has another interesting aspect. Verse 17 provides the essential
difference between Christianity and Judaism. Translations differ slightly but
the essence is: the Law was given through Moses but grace and truth through
Jesus Christ. Truth, aletheia, has
already been explained but “grace” is another difficult concept with several
potential meanings. The intention of the author becomes clear when we look at
the Greek word which has been translated as “grace.” The word is “charis” and stands for the joy of a recipient
for an unexpected and undeserved gift. From “charis” charity was derived but this fails to include its essence –
joy. Yet, it was joy which was the Good News, the euaggellon.
Years ago when I read some of Kazantzakis’
books for the first time, I was struck by the fact that the Cretans greeted
each other on Easter Sunday with, “Rejoice, the Lord has risen;” while sailing
aficionados who have read Patrick O’ Brian’s series about the exploits of
Captain Aubrey and his friend Dr. Maturin will remember that they greeted each
other with “give you joy.” This seemed to me at the time as quite incongruous
because in our day and age we would not talk this way. Yet, O’Brien knew his
Greek and that when people met, either in Crete or in
ancient Palestine, they said “chairete,” Joy, be with you! This is
also the word Jesus used when he greeted his disciples (e.g. Mt. 28:9). What do
some of our English language NTs say? The King James
translation uses “All Hail,” the Amplified Bible: “Hail (greeting); The New
English Bible: “he gave them his greeting;” The New Greek-English interlinear
Testament in the English text: “Greetings,” but chairete was transliterated as, “Hello.” This is a typical example
of the paucity of our language because none of these terms convey the joy which
one may feel when meeting someone who is dear to one.
Another important example is the
word “love,” which has an erotic-sexual as well as a wider connotation. In our
day and age the sexual element predominates and this is in no small part due to
the influence of Freud on our culture which will be discussed separately on
another occasion. For now it suffices to say that he seemed to regard St.
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which he praised love above all else (I
Cor. 13:1-13), also in the context of eros
(Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse,
chapter on Suggestion and Libido), rather than the words used in the Greek or
Latin version of the NT. While we have only one word for love, the Greeks had
three. These were: agape, phílos and eros. Eros dealt with sexual attraction, phílos with friendship and agape
with: affectionate regard, goodwill and benevolence. It is the selfless love of
parents towards their children and in the context of the NT the love of God for
mankind and Jesus’ love for his disciples. It is essential that these concepts
are kept separate but since this is somewhat difficult in the English language,
or for that matter the German, confusion abounds.
Since agape (the “a” is pronounced as in “ah” and “pe”
as in Peoria) is such an important
and undervalued concept, but the essence of Jesus’ message, I shall try to
explain it further. Erotic love, with or without sexual consummation, is always
directed towards one other person or object (as in fetishism). The love object
may change over time and is usually one individual although a ménage à trois
may occur. Furthermore, as Freud has pointed out, there is also a degree of
ambivalence (attraction and repulsion) involved, and love can readily change to
hate. As such, erotic love is selfish and requires a partner for wish
fulfillment. Agape on the other hand
is omni-directional, not limited to a person or persons but extends to all of
nature and may even be regarded as the glue which holds society together and
connects it to the universe. Agape
simply is; it gives and gives without expectation of any return. With other
words it is utterly selfless. In this way it is closely linked to, but not
necessarily identical with, charis
which also gives without expectation of a return. But since it has the added joy
which is experienced by the recipient as one of its essential elements it
pertains mainly to human beings. One may also visualize the difference as agape being the underlying substrate,
which expresses itself in action as charis.
This can be experienced by the human being especially when the English word
“agape” is used in the context of keeping one’s mind wide open to other ideas.
Under those circumstances one would not automatically submit to deeply rooted
prejudices but see the world in a new light.
In the conclusions of the Jesus
book I stated that, “in the struggle for our minds and
souls, Moses has won and Jesus has failed.” This sounds like a harsh indictment
but reflects reality. As mentioned above, St. John stated that Moses brought
the Law but Jesus aletheia and charis. I am deliberately using the
Greek terms because the words lose their essence in English. As a society we
put our faith in laws, which proliferate on a daily basis, and people attempt
to cirumvent them whenever possible. Selfishness, or Freud’s “libido” pervades
all aspects of life and Christian principles are proclaimed but not practiced.
Even the so-called born-again Christians, foremost among them our immediate
past President, George W Bush and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin,
lacked the essential ingredients of a Christian life with which I closed the
Jesus book: Aletheia, Agape, Charis. A person who lives by these principles would never start a
war and when a tragedy happens, such as on 9/11, would have provided a clearly defined
non-violent rational response rather than used it as pretext for invading other
countries.
The
9/11 response of our government was a typical example for Moses’ success over
Jesus because fear and the desire for revenge against the evil-doers, which are
clearly sanctioned in the OT, trumped “agapate
your enemies” (Mt.5:44). The reason is obvious, hate and revenge are natural
biologic passions while agape, even
toward those who harm you, requires spiritual effort few can muster. Those are
facts, aletheia, and unless we come
to grips with them mankind will continue to stumble from one disaster to the
next.
In
order to overcome our ingrained passions the message of Jesus is clear. On the
societal and political level the key sentence is found in Mark 8:15, “Watch
out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Herodians.” With other words,
don’t fall for religious or political propaganda, but examine carefully what
you are told. For personal conduct we need to take Matthew 7:5 to heart, “First
take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the
speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” This admonition cannot be emphasized
sufficiently and this why I shall paraphrase it: look at your soul, don’t hide
it in the attic like Oscar Wilde’s picture of Dorian Gray! Examine your
thoughts and conduct on a daily basis and then change what needs to be changed
before you make others conform to your opinions. Only when one honestly
confronts all one’s failings can spiritul progress be achieved and one knows
when one is on the right track when one can live with the final reassurance:
Fear not; aletheia will set you free!
In
contrast to the fear of the Law, which comes natural, the above mentioned
Christian precepts, which by the way were also taught by the Buddha, require a
great deal of effort and tend to be shunned. Yet, our society can no longer
afford to do so and metanoia in the
sense of reassessing who and what we are is urgently needed.
Finally
we can safely leave the question of physical resurrection and the physical
return of Jesus to this planet to the theologians. If and when he were to
return we might not even recognize him because as some of the gospels tell us
he appeared after resurrection in “another form.” In Luke we read that two disciples
on the way to Emmaus regarded him as a stranger, and in the gospel of John even
Mary Magdalene thought him to be the gardner. In the last chapter of that
gospel the disciples did not recognize him either when he showed himself to
them on the shore of the lake in Galilee. The important message that is
contained in these few verses, namely to see Jesus in the stranger, is widely
disregarded. Thus, the task for those of us who would like to consider
themselves as Christians, is clear. Resurrect the spirit of Jesus in your heart
and mind and then act accordingly. This is our freedom, which no one can take
away, and in this way he and his words will indeed be with us until the end of
the world.
February 1, 2010
THE HUMPTY DUMPTY SOCIETY
In the
three previous installments I discussed why I felt the need to write The Jesus Conundrum book (now available
on www.amazon.com as well as www.trafford.com) and why it is important
for our society to heed the essence of Jesus’ message if it wants to avoid
meltdown into complete chaos. Yet, I was also fully aware that our society
simply is not ready for metanoia,
which is the Greek word used in the New Testament for repentance. We have here
another example of how words when translated into another language which demands
that only one meaning be taken from several possible ones can lead to false
thinking and thereby either wrong action or inaction. Anyone who tells
Americans that they need to repent of past conduct will be looked askance and
might even be regarded as a religious fanatic. We are, after all, if we listen
to our leadership, the paragons of virtue whose “freedoms” need to be exported
even to countries which don’t particularly hanker after them. Anyone who casts
doubt on this stance is likely to be branded as un-American and possibly even
as lending aid to our enemies. But metanoia,
as explained in the previous issue, need not be confined to a religious
context, it can be taken in its literal meaning of: to rethink, to reconsider.
Serious
thought, although essential for future conduct, is, however, at present a rare
commodity in American life. Instead one finds mindless repetition of political
or religious slogans, which in the latter case are called dogmas. This goes to
the extent that if one knows a given person’s party or religious affiliation
one can readily predict the opinions which will be expressed. Dissension from
official dogma, regardless whether it is political or religious, can only
safely be expressed against the opponents of one’s party or faith. Freedom of
speech is only tolerated within these limits. We have thereby drifted into
Humpty Dumpty type thinking without even realizing what has happened.
The nursery
rhyme:
“Humpty Dumpty sat on
a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a
great fall
All the king’s horses
and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty
Dumpty together again”
is, of course, known to everyone whose childhood was spent
in English speaking countries. Originally in the early 1800s it served as a
riddle why this should have been impossible. The answer was that one was
talking about an egg. But it was Charles Dodgson who provided us with Humpty
Dumpty’s essential characteristics. Before explaining those it is of interest
to know a little more about the author and why he found it necessary to publish
under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson (1832-1898), the scion of a long line of Anglican clerics, was raised in a small
parsonage but subsequently went to Oxford’s Christ Church College and was
expected to follow into the father’s footsteps with a clerical carreer. His
interests and ambitions lay, however, elsewhere because he was a gifted
mathematician, writer as well as photographer. Although he remained at Oxford
as Lecturer in Mathematics for the rest of his life he was rather bored by it
and enjoyed more playing with words, puzzles and acrostics. The stories which
are now known as Alice in Wonderland and which dealt with the dreams of a
little girl had some external precipitant. The Dean of the College, Henry
Liddell, with whom Dodgson was friendly had three daughters whom Dodgson
intermittently took out on rowing excursions. It was on one of these that the
thought, which would later on become his most famous stories, occurred to him.
When he first told them to Alice, the youngest of the three, she begged him to
write it down for her. Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland became an instant literary as well as commercial success and
was followed in 1871 by: Through the
Looking Glass.
While Alice had entered
her adventurous dream wonderland through a rabbit hole, she met Humpty Dumpty
on her trip through a mirror. Let me now paraphrase the beginning and then
follow it up with an extensive quote. Alice had been to a store, which was
tended by a shape-shifting sheep, and wanted to buy an egg. The sheep insisted,
however, that two eggs were cheaper than one but under the condition that she
had to eat both of them. Alice opted for one and tried to reach for the egg but
it got larger and larger, more human, and then assumed the well known form of
Humpty Dumpty who sat crossleged on top of a narrow high wall making remarks
which did not relate to her. At that point Alice softly recited the above
mentioned rhyme except that the last line read, “Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in
his place again.” This was followed by:
“’That last line is much
too long for the poetry,’ she added almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty
Dumpty would hear her.
‘Don’t stand chattering
to yourself like that,’ Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time,
‘but tell me your name and your business.’
‘My name is
Alice, but – ‘
‘It’s a stupid name enough !’ Humpty
Dampty interrupted impatiently. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Must a name
mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.
‘Of course it must.’ Humpty Dumpty
said with a short laugh: ‘my name means the shape I am–and a good handsome
shape it is too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.‘”
Alice didn’t want to
argue so she changed the subject but the point to be made is clear. Humpty
Dumpty is a proud character who lectures everybody on everything and who is
always right as will be apparent in the next excerpt. But Dodgson played a
trick on us, which has probably eluded the majority of casual readers, when he
had Humpty Dumpty refer to Alice’s name as “stupid enough” and that, “with a
name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.” While the average reader
might assume that Alice’s changing shape from that of a normal child to a very
small or extra large one was the sufficient explanation for that statement
Dodgson had a more profound thought in mind. The name, Alice, does have meaning
and it does deserve Humpty Dumpty’s derisive dismissal when one looks at the
world only on his terms. Alice is derived from Alicia, which in turn is the
anglicized version of Aletheia–Truth.
Thus, whenDodgson repeatedly denied
that Alice Liddell was indeed the model for his stories he was correct because
the Liddell Alice was only one form of the universal truth of childhood he
tried to convey in the dream imagery. It is equally obvious now that a
character, as portrayed in Humpty Dumpty, could find no possible use for it
except possibly as the assumption of different forms.
The conversation continued
with Humpty Dumpty correcting Alice at every turn and taking each one of her
comments literally. After he had informed her that un-birthdays are infinitely
more important than birthdays, the following exchange took place:
“’… that shows that
there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday
presents–‘
‘Certainly,’said Alice.
‘And only one for
birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you
mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled
contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice
knock-down argument for you!’
‘But “glory” doesn’t
mean a “nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in
rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more
nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said
Alice, ‘whether you can make words
mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said
Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all.’”
This is indeed the question for our time to which
I shall return later. My private question, however, is: did Deacon Dodgson
allow himself a spoof on John 1.1? Well educated trickster that he was I would
not put it beyond him. Let us look at that quote as it exists in the King James
Version which was authoritative in those days. “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” As explained in The Jesus Conundrum this was, of course,
a simplistic translation from the original Greek where logos was used in that sentence and which has a much broader
meaning. The most relevant one in the current context would be: thought and reasoning
power. Nevertheless, a gifted atheist might translate logos with story, fable or rumor and no one could contradict him
because logos not only allows these
meanings but many others. When the gospels were translated into Latin for
dispersion throughout the Roman Empire the translator was, therefore,
confronted with a difficult choice from all the potential meanings and settled
on: In principio erat Verbum . . . . St.
Jerome’s version (c. 347-420), the Vulgate, which was adopted as official by
the Church, then elevated Verbum, word,
when written in capital letters, to God. This was retained in all subsequent
translations thereby creating no end of confusion, especially since spoken
language does not distinguish between upper and lower case. The situation
became even worse when Luther and his followers declared the Bible in its
entirety as the inerrant word of God.
The deliberate misuse of words has a long
history. In Faust a new student was advised, when paraphrased, “most of all
rely on the master’s word, then you shall enter through the portals to
certainty.” When the student objected that there ought to be a concept behind
the word he was told, “don’t get all flustered over that. Precisely when there
is no concept you’ll find a word. With words you can most eloquently argue,
with words you can create any system you like, in words you can readily believe
and you can’t even deprive a word of an i.” The latter was a pun in High German
language because the letter “i” is spoken as iot (pronounced yot) and and “not
even one iot” means: not even the slightest trifle. But Goethe was making an
additional point; he castigated the battle over the i which defined the nature
of Jesus among warring views, as explained in the Jesus book and the previous
installment. The word homoousis,
identical with God, versus homoiousis,
similar to God, had fractured the
Catholic (universal) Church and the split persists to this day. Goethe, just
like Dodgson, had a keen sense ofhumor
and put some of the most profound truths of daily life into the mouth of
Mephistopheles, as exemplified above.
These were just some relatively more recent
examples from the literature yet Humpty Dumpty type thinking goes all the way
back to the times of Socrates. But when one familiarizes oneself with those
days one comes to the remarkable conclusion that we know as little about the
“real” or “historical” Socrates as we do about Jesus. There are three
depictions of Socrates extant, that I am aware of, and one can pick and choose
among them the one which best fits one’s preconceptions. There are no original
publications by Socrates, just as there are none by Jesus, and all we know
about these human beings is what others said about them.
Since I have previously discussed Jesus at length
it may be useful to stay with Socrates for a moment because there are so many
parallels with Plato’s account of him that one is tempted to wonder to what
extent aspects of his Socrates might have served as a model for the Jesus of
some of the gospel writers. But as mentioned there are two other views of
Socrates; one by Xenophon and the other by Aristophanes. All were
contemporaries and had known Socrates personally. While Xenophon, similar to
Plato, exalts Socrates’ wisdom and defends him against the unjust accusations
which had led to his judicial murder, he presents us with a more practical side
of the man. His Socrates gives sage advice on matters of warfare, husbandry, and
marital affairs. The social critic and satyrist Aristophanes on the other hand
turns Socrates into a smug atheistic sophist from whom one can learn how to use
language to overcome ones adversaries in legal matters regardless of the truth
of the matter.
It is a pity that Aristophanes’ “The Clouds” are no longer shown on the
stage or on TV because this is one of the most modern plays I have come across,
although it was first performed in 423 B.C.. The Peloponnesian War had been
going on for years and Athens had suffered a serious defeat at Delium in 424
which had led to a temporary truce with Sparta. Aristophanes had no use for
that war and Cleon, who ruled the City-state at the time, was a frequent target
of his sarcastic ire. But since there seemed to be peace on the horizon Aristophanes
devoted The Clouds to the larger
issues of society namely religion versus science and legalisms versus truthful
speech. The reason of the protagonist, Strepsiades, for seeking out Socrates in “the thinkery” is to learn “wrong
logic” so that he can get out of his debts. Although the play abounds with aspects that are specific to the times
and locale its underlying message is reenacted in our days when words are again
twisted out of context to serve private gain. It could readily be translated
again in modern idiom to show our fellow citizens “what fools we mortals be.”
Let us now move from fith centry B.C. Athens to
21st century America which finds itself embroiled in two wars and which,
just like the Athenian one, were brought about by Hubris. Yet if one listens to
our politicians and pundits they were forced upon us through sheer villainy of
others. In additon, one gains the impression from TV commentators that the
United States is about to succumb to terrorists at any moment unless we pour
vast sums of money into this war on terrorism and enact even more stringent
regulations on civilian travel than already exist. It can safely be predicted
that when the next underwear, or whatever, suicide attempter arrives on the
scene futher regulations will be imposed and if things go unchecked we might
even get martial law, which some of our fellow citizens seem to look forward to.
I don’t deny for a moment that there are
misguided people who want to blow themselves up and take as many innocent civilians
with them as possible, but let there be some sanity. While reasonable
precautions need to be taken and cooperation by international security
organizations (such as Interpol and the various spy agencies) is essential, ordinary
nail clippers or a toothpaste need not automatically be regarded as contraband
and confiscated when one wants to board an airliner. Those of us who lived as
adults through the sixties and seventies will remember the evil organization
Thrush and people such as Goldfinger, Dr. No and other miscreants who
threatended the world with disaster. It seems that these TV scripts are now
serving as blueprints for political propaganda. The current arch-villain is
Osama bin Laden although there is good reason to believe that he may actually
already be dead and only his name is kept alive to provide credence for a
variety of groups which now call themselves Al Qaeda affiliates. The purpose of
all this is to frighten our citizenry and bring about a return from President Obama’s
Internationalism and hankering after diplomatic solutions of our problems to
the more robust Cheney-Bush years which, in the words of Senator McCain during
the election campaign, will defeat evil. Since this has been tried with the
same methods for millennia it hardly seems likely that going down the same road
again will lead to a different result.
The sad state our country has come to as a result
of Humpty Dumpty type thinking was again demonstrated last Wednesday during
President Obama’s State of the Union Address to Congress. This annual spectacle
of pomp and glory is apparently the closest America can come in imitation of
past European splendor. A ritual has evolved, which surely was not what George
Washington or Thomas Jefferson had in mind when theConstitution was adopted. Its pupose was
simple, namely to have the president of the country report ever so often, at a
time of his choosing, the situation the country is in and what he intends to do
about it. The fact that the time has become fixed doesn’t matter but it is the
grand entrance that strikes a devotee of simple tastes as rather quaint.
Various luminaries, such as members of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and
others are announced first. Then comes a pregnant pause and two worthy
gentlemen appear. They head down half way to the center of the hall and then
one announces “Madame Speaker,” addressed to Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker of the
House, while the other, after another due pause, declares: “The President of
the United States.” Whereupon among universal cheers and handclaps Mr. Obama
emerges from the shadows where he had been patiently waiting to shake hands
with some, embracing others, while he wends his way to the rostrum. Once
arrived under continuing applause Mrs. Pelosi eventually pounds the gavel on
the desk and announces again that the president has now arrived. This leads to
another outburst of applause and when the president then tries to talk he can’t
do so because of unending new rounds of applause.
This would all be very nice if it weren’t staged
and if the acclaim were genuine which in many instances was not the case as
soon became obvious. President Obama gave a good speech, as speeches go, and covered
all the bases mainly on the domestic front. He promised to save us money by
2011 with a “freeze on government spending for three years.” But “spending
related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will
not be affected.” Since it is those aspects, however, which gobble up most of
taxpayer money a genuine deficit reduction can hardly be expected to occur. He vowed
that he would continue to fight for the moribund “health care plan,” although
it won’t save much money but it was the right thing to do. In the realm of
foreign affairs he promised to have all “combat troops” out of Iraq “by the end
of this August” and “make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops
are coming home.” In Afghanistan it is expected that their security forces “can
begin to take the lead in July of 2011 and our troops can begin to come home.” He
also informed us that during the previous year “hundreds of al-Qaida fighters
and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed –
far more than in 2008,” and that Iran and North Korea will face even tougher
responses if they continue their pursuit of nuclear weapons. To placate Muslim
sensitivites he assured them that, “we are working with Muslim communities
around the world to promote science, education, and innovation.” This is nice
but hardly addresses their main grievance because he had left the Palestinians
to the continued not so tender mercies of the Israelis.
On the whole the speech was conciliatory and
Obama genuinely tried to convince Republicans that they should no longer
automatically block his legislative agenda and instead of thinking what is good
politics at the moment to consider the well-being of the country. On the other
hand it was obvious that he didn’t change a single vote. While Democrats stood
up clapping their hands furiously, especially in the beginning, they seemed to
have gotten tired after about half an hour, the Republicans sat on their hands
and were already thinking of when they could go home.
After the president’s exit the networks waited
for a few minutes and then came the customary response by the opposition which
was given at the State House in Richmond Virginia to a loyal crowd by their Governor
Robert McDonnell. One might expect that a response would be a reply to what the
president had just said. The transcript had been made available to the media
earlier and was, therefore, already in the public domain, but that would never
happen in a Humpty Dumpty society. In this one it is necessary for the respondent
to ignore the speech and pronounce instead the Republican agenda. Never mind
that it hardly differed from the goals of the president especially since the
details how to accomplish them were left rather vague. As such Republicans and
Democrats were talking on parallel tracks where never the twain shall meet.
America now finds herself in the difficult
position where the reality of relative loss of power, through fiscal
mismanagement and militaristic adventures, is beginning to become obvious. Yet,
instead oflaying doctrinal differences
aside and starting to embark on a genuine effort by both political parties to
work towards what is good for the country, the current overriding goal of
Republicans is winning the November midterm elections to regain enough seats in
Congress so that Obama’s “socialist” plans can be brought to naught. Although
the previous elections were already exteremely costly the midterm elections of
2010 are likely to become the most expensive ever. Raising obscene amounts of
money was aided by the recent Supreme Court decision which declared previous
laws in regard to campaign financing as unconstitutional (includingSenator McCain’s prime claim to fame, the
McCain–Feingold Bill) because it curtailed “free speech.” What giving money has
to do with free speech eludes ordinary citizens, but it should not when one
realizes that Humpty Dumpty also rules the Supreme Court of the land. This
decision means that all pretense of democracy is gone because the vote will now
go to whoever has received the most money. While Hitler had always railed
against the “plutocrats” we will in fact have even more plutocracy than ever
before.
To a realistic observer of the American scene it
has become obvious that no later than last summer a decision was made in
Republican circles that the Obama administation must not be allowed to succeed
and that the health insurance plan was to be “his Waterloo.” This goal, of
derailing every and all of Obama’s efforts had already been enunciated prior to
that time by the radio personality Rush Limbaugh as soon as the new president
was sworn in. But it took till the summer to become unspoken, yet apparently
official, policy. In previous years a simple majority could pass legislation in
Congress but this is no longer possible. Now the supermajority of 60 votes is
required in the Senate and up to January 19 the Democrats were able to muster
it by cajoling and bribing reluctant members of their party. This state of
affairs ended on that Tuesday when the good citizens of Massachussets elected a
Republican to fill Teddy Kennedy’s seat, who had died last year of a malignant brain
tumor. Athough other local issueshad
been at play, the election outcome was widely hailed as a repudiation of
Obama’s policies in general and the health insurance program in particular. The
newly minted Senator, Scott Brown, declared immediately that he would vote
against the currently existing plan which is undergoing a “reconciliation” of
the House and Senate versions before it can be submitted to the president for
signing it into law. Thus it is obvious that there will be no meaningful change
in the health insurance situation except that the insurance companies, in
anticipation of harder times ahead, have already raised their rates in some
instances and some medications which had previously been covered are no longer.
The question now arises: can an educated
citizenry put a halt to this slide into political chaos and infighting which
prevents proper government? The outlook is not good because as discussed two
years ago (Is America Fixable?, February 1, 2008) the American educational
system has been geared towards the lowest common denominator and there is no
sign that serious reform is in the offing. President Obama correctly declared
in his address to Congress that a High School diploma no longer guarantees a
good job, but he failed to put his finger on the cause. Instead he advocated
more money for community colleges. Yet, college cannot, and should not, make up
for the years that were wasted during Primary and High School education. Ill
considered legislation which requires of teachers to achieve across the board acceptable
pupil test scores, when some of them are mentally handicapped and others don’t
even know English, is absurd. Yet it is curent law because “no child must be
left behind.” While test scores may go up under these circumstances genuine
learning can hardly occur. Unless curricula are revamped, at all levels,
American youngsters will not be able to compete against the rest of the world
which does take the education of its children seriously. We are spending
infinitely more on our schools than other countries, yet are producing a worse
outcome, which is another example of Humpty Dumpty’s reign.The mental level of America’s younger
generation, who will be in leadership positions in the near future, is perhaps
best exemplified by a cartoon which came through the e-mail a few months ago
A society
where its male members, have largely given up on extracurricular political or intellectual
aspects of life and limit their interests to the Trinity of: Money, Sex and
Sports, in varying proportions, can hardly be expected to retain a responsible
leadership position in the world. The cultural level of our country is not only
portrayed but also manufactured by the mass media. They show us Humpty Dumpty
land and some years ago Woody Allen “joked” that “the brain is my second most
favorite organ.” But it wasn’t a joke; not for him and not for a great many of
our citizens. As long as this state of affairs persists, all well meaning
efforts to bring our society out of its rut will be in vain. Humpty Dumpty’s
fate is well known and so is the proverb that pride comes before the fall. We
are fortunate at this time to have a president who is genuinely well meaning,
regardless of what the opposition says, and has the intellectual and emotional
acumen to guide the country into calmer waters. But the forces which are
arraigned against him are substantial and the audacity of hope may not be
enough to carry the day; although it is our best chance.
March 1, 2010
PRISONERS OF WORDS
In last month’s installment I
mentioned that The Jesus Conundrum is
now available for purchase from the Internet (www.trafford.com;
www.amazon.com; www.barnesandnoble.com ). Readers of
this site who are personally acquainted with me, however, need not buy the book
because I shall send them an autographed copy gratis. In case they have mislaid
the e-mail address it is erodin@pol.net. Since
the address is haunted by spam I would recommend that you list the subject as
“Jesus Conundrum book” so that I do not accidentally delete your message. I shall
also welcome your comments, questions and critiques of the book as well as
aspects of the Hot Issues. They will be answered promptly unless I am out of town.
The title of this month’s
installment comes actually from the Conclusions of the Jesus book where it was
used in the context of the difficult commandment to “love” ones enemies. In
addition, it follows on last month’s discussion of “The Humpty Dumpty Society”
where I pointed out how words can be arrogated by someone without regard to the
meaning as it is commonly understood. Since this is an important problem not
only in the political-religious but even scientific sphere, I shall discuss it
here in some more detail.
Let me start with science first
because the misuse of language in that arena of “objective truth,” may not be
obvious.Yet, as mentioned on previous
occasions, objective truth does not exist and since scientists are human beings,
subjected to all their foibles, it should not be surprising that faulty
thinking can arise even in the hallowed halls of academia. The one I am most
familiar with in my professional work is in the field of epilepsy and I
published a paper on it last year in the international literature. Although
everybody knows the word “epilepsy,” it may come as a surprise that my
colleagues cannot agree on its meaning and have, therefore, practically
abolished it. There are several reasons for this state of affairs. In the
1950’s it was felt that the stigma which has characterized the illness is best
removed by renaming the disease. Instead of “epilepsy” the words “convulsive
disorders” became the scientific politically correct term. This change was not
based on science, but on the assumption that the general public cannot stomach
the truth.
Yet, “convulsive disorders” was a
poor choice of words for two reasons. One was that not all patients who suffer
from epileptic seizures “convulse.” The other reason was that epilepsy was then
no longer regarded as a disease sui
generis for which one can give a prognosis, but merely a symptom of a whole
host of other brain disorders. Under these circumstances it is, of course,
futile to look for a common underlying mechanism which might pertain to the
great variety of most epileptic seizures. In view of the fact that a
“convulsion” is not necessary for a diagnosis of epilepsy the term “convulsive
disorders” has subsequently been dropped and replaced by “The Epilepsies”
and/or “Epilepsy Syndromes.”
Although this is currently the
official terminology in scientific circles it suffers from the same defect of
mistaking the symptom–the epileptic seizure– for the underlying disease, the
cause of which is in most instances unknown. This has very practical consequences
as I have already pointed out in the 1960s in my book on The Prognosis of Patients with Epilepsy. If epilepsy is just a
symptom of a whole host of other diseases, such as a cough, it would make no
sense to look for a prognosis let alone search for a cause. This view was,
however, the proverbial voice in the wilderness; the book was first criticized
and then ignored. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the International
League Against Epilepsy, and this prompted me to
review the world-wide progress that has been made in the understanding of the
illness since 1909. The result was dismal. Although we know a great deal more
about the electromagnetic mechanisms which are the concomitants of overt
behavioral seizures, as well as their trigger, we still don’t know why these
events occur in the brains of some people and not others; what leads to their
episodic recurrence; why our anticonvulsant drugs are not more effective and
why even surgery, where the supposed offending region of the brain is removed,
frequently does not result in a complete cure. In these fundamental aspects we
are still as ignorant as our colleagues were in 1909, when they first gathered
in Budapest for their exchange of
views.
By changing terminology from the
singular of the word, epilepsy, to its plural we have imprisoned our minds,
concentrated on the differences, instead of potential commonality, and thereby
prevented progress in the understanding of fundamental aspects of the illness
to the detriment of our patients. Fortunately, at long last, there are some epilepsy
specialists who have again realized that a longitudinal approach, which looks
at a given patient over a period of decades, is needed rather than the current cross-sectional
one which labels a patient according to the prevalent seizure type at the time
of the visit to the physician. “Epileptogenesis,” the process in brain
structure and metabolism that underlies the propensity to recurrent seizures,
is now pursued in a number of basic science laboratories. The term is correct
and one can hope that genuine insights will be gained.
But what took us so long to see the
obvious? We allowed ourselves to be misled by inappropriate terminology and suffered
the consequences. This is a fact of life which pervades all areas of our
society and I have used the scientific example first because it is least
expected by the general public. This brings us to the next question: why do
words, and subsequently language, have such a powerful influence on us? Since
words are only symbols, which stand for thoughts, we need to be clear how
thoughts are generated, translated into words and what we know in regard to their
neurophysiologic concomitants. In the discussion of these questions I shall
refer to the work of my friend and colleague emeritus Professor of
Neurophysiology and former Director of the Neurophysiologic Institute of the University
of Vienna, Professor Hellmuth
Petsche, whom I have mentioned on past occasions and whose help I have
acknowledged in some of my books.
But before doing so a few words of
explanation are needed. Although Petsche and I have closely worked together
only for somewhat over six months at the start of my training in neurology and
psychiatry, because I came to the USA
thereafter, I have always respected his integrity and carefulness. This is why
we have stayed in contact ever since January of 1950 when we first met at what
was then popularly called the Wagner Jauregg Klinik; the University Hospital
for Psychiatric and Neurologic Diseases. The eponym was applied to honor its
former director, Julius Ritter von Wagner Jauregg (1857-1940), who had received
the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery that “general paresis of the insane,”
also called “dementia paralytica,” a late stage of syphilis infection, which
was highly prevalent and incurable at the time, could be successfully treated
by inoculating the patient with malaria.
Petsche’s and my scientific
interests, EEG and epilepsy, paralleled each other and I was able to prove in
the late 1980s and 1990s, with improved technology, the validity of some of his
early work of the 1960s, on what used to be called Petit Mal and has been
renamed to absence seizures. In contrast to myself,
who likes music but cannot play an instrument, he is a gifted cellist and
pianist, which led him during the later years of his scientific career to
investigate the electrical concomitants in the brain when an individual listens
to music and how these processes differ in musicians from people like myself.
His work was responsible for the “Mozart effect,” which had aroused
considerable interest in the general public during the 1990s. This in turn
brought up the problem of, “what is thinking” and the overlap of science with
philosophy. It was in this area where our interests converged again and while I
had stayed on the philosophical side, Petsche added his neurophysiological
experimental work. With his colleagues Prof. Peter Rappelsberger and Prof.
Helmut Pockberger he published a series of papers on the EEG concomitants of
thinking, language, and differences beween gifted artists versus laypeople in
the appreciation of music and the visual arts.
Before discussing Petsche’s and
co-workers scientific conclusions let me start with some general aspects of
thinking which differ markedly between people and depend on brain function and
anatomy. These are intimately related because they are influenced not just by
heredity. Early childhood experiences can also shape anatomy. Petsche and I can
be used as examples of different types of thinking and how this might have come
about, because we freely share our thoughts on this topic. His interest in
philosophy and science resulted from a loving father who nurtured these aspects
in him already at an early age, while his mother was a pianist and in his
childhood they played Haydn symphonies together four handed. Anyone who has
read War & Mayhem is aware that
this was not the case in my situation. Music was absorbed by osmosis rather
than practice and the interest in science and philosophy had a very practical grounding
in the desire to find out why people do what they do, and at times treat each
other in such a callous egotistical manner. Although we came from different
routes and arrived at similar conclusions, our mode of thinking still differs.
Mine is essentially verbal, while his is more inclined to pictures and musical
elements. In addition, since his interests were aroused as part of childhood
play he enjoys what one may call academic-theoretical philosophy as exemplified
by Parmenides, Heraclites, Plato, Plotinus, Cusanus, Leibniz, Spinoza all the
way up to Wittgenstein, Jaspers, Cassirer and Whitehead. My favorite
philosophers on the other hand were Confucius, the Stoics, especially Epictetus,
and the one whom I regard as their spiritual father: the Buddha. They appeal to
my practical nature which had to adapt to adverse circumstances and provided
rules of conduct that not only made sense to me but could be enacted. The
connection between these two different types of thinking was, however,
facilitated by our mutual admiration for Goethe who truly was a polymath and
had the gift to express the most profound truths in poetic language.
One can ascertain one’s own type of
thinking by just closing one’s eyes in a quiet room and watching how a thought
develops. This is an exceedingly healthy effort because it is the only way to
get to know oneself, which aught to be one of the goals of our lives. When I do
so in a relatively dark environment there is at first darkness with some
inchoate shapes akin to fireflies. Thereafter comes some kind of a stirring and
a snatch of a syllable or even a word, then comes the thought of a complete
word which is, however, not yet spoken and eventually an inner spoken sentence.
It is clear, therefore that on “automatic pilot” there is no will; there are
just happenings, which can be observed. These verbal thoughts can be quite
intrusive and prevent me at times from falling asleep. The cure is to force
myself to dismiss a word as soon as it arrives and instead concentrate on a
picture, sequences of pictures, which then lead to day-dreaming and sleep. This,
however, requires effort and is voluntary rather than letting nature take its
course. As Petsche wrote to me his initial shreds of thoughts (Gedankenfetzen) are picture fragments with
some musical underpinnings, rather than words.
These undertakings are not just
idle musings. On the one hand, since they are play they are fun, and we can use
all the fun we can get out of life, and on the other they can lead to an
understanding how our individual mind works and how we can improve on its
function. Let us stay with mind for a moment. If we are observant of what goes
on inside of us, one notices that our thinking, unless
directed towards immediate problem solving, is far from “logical” in the sense
where one thought dictates the next one in a sequence which leads to the
desired goal. There are always “cross associations” namely unwanted intrusions
which deflect from the intent and it needs “will power” to return to one’s
task.This is, of course most obvious
when we just let our brains have their way and under those circumstances
thinking resembles a swarm of gnats (Mueckenschwarm)
in sunlight, as Fritz Mauthner (German philosopher, 1849-1923, of whom I knew
nothing until Petsche pointed me to him) has expressed it, or an anthill as is
writtenin Buddhist literature. Actually
I prefer the anthill analogy because it carries the additional adjective of
“burning anthill” to signify the passions of the human mind which frequently
distract us from our goal.
Another reason why I like the
anthill picture is because one can observe the behavior of some members of this
species in detail. When I am in the backyard in the summer ever so often an ant
will appear from nowhere and crawl around. But it doesn’t just go steadily in a
straight line. It does so for a little while then zigs to one side, zags to the
other, goes backwards, forwards, subsequently revisits the same spot it had
been before. This goes on until either I get tired of watching or it vanishes
from sight. It then dawned on me that this is actually how my own thoughts
zig-zag around, although there is also some thread that eventually pulls them
back to what is supposed to be accomplished. This thread which brings order to
chaos is, however, heavily influenced by emotional components, which remain
unconscious and are not subject to the will. Nevertheless, they reflect
themselves in how a given person perceives the world and reacts to it. A point
to which I shall return later.
For the question why we can’t do
better in regard to the control of our minds we need first of all to look at
our brains and their individuality. I shall now provide some aspects of
Petsche’s scientific work which he has summarized in a book EEG and Thinking (H. Petsche and S.C. Etlinger. Verlag der OesterreichischenAkademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1998). The first fact we need to be aware of is that no two brains are
alike in the external appearance of their folds (gyri and sulci) and these
differ even more than facial features. The cortical folds are due to the fact
that our nerve cells (neurons), their connections (fibers), and supporting
structures (glia) require more room than can be accommodated within the fixed
size of the skull. At birth the gyri and sulci are present in a somewhat
rudimentary form while the mature appearance tends to occur during late puberty
and early adulthood. During maturation our different life experiences find
their reflection in the structure of the brain and in this manner: heredity,
structure and function become interlinked to lead to the thinking patterns and
their verbal as well as behavioral expressions of individuals
It has been estimated that the
cortex (surface layers of the brain) contains about 10 billion neurons but
obviously nobody has counted all of them and surprisingly enough even the word
“billion” is ambiguous. The American “billion” is the European “milliard” which
follows linguistically after millions and only a thousand milliards make a
billion. The ten year projected trillion dollar deficit for the proposed health-care
reform would amount to a billion in Europe. This is
another example where we are using the same word for completely different concepts
and expect to be understood.
Be that as it may; the next
important aspect in regard to brain structure and function are the connections
between all of these neurons, their fibers. These are vast and communication
between widely separated areas not only of the cortex, but also its deeper
structures (nuclei) and the cerebellum occurs within milliseconds. This is a
fact which is not fully appreciated by the general public. We are currently
seduced by pretty color pictures derived from functional magnetic resonance
images (fMRI) which promise us to find the precise location of various brain
functions and emotions. We are even told that fMRI pictures can be used to
detect lying. Our capitalist system immediately smelled money and special
machines are already on the market to sniff out lies. What these people
deliberately ignore is that fMRI measures only changes in blood flow rather
than direct neuronal activity. It is true that increased neuronal activity
leads to increased blood flow, which is measurable, but there are two problems.
One is that for blood flow to increase takes time, usually 1-5 seconds. The
other is that the blood flow changes are so small that they need to be
amplified by several repetitions of the test procedure, which is not how
ordinary thinking, including lying, proceeds. The time element is especially crucial
because as mentioned above initial neuronal connections occur within 1-2
milliseconds and their complete elaboration (secondary and tertiary responses)
usually takes no longer than up to 300 ms. While we can find what might be
called centers of gravity for some specific brain functions it is erroneous to
think that we, therefore, can find specific areas in the brain which underlie a
given thought process.
Petsche and co-workers have
established quite unequivocally by their EEG work in the 1980s (prior to the
discovery of fMRI) that these “centers of gravity,” or to use another analogy
“airline hubs,” exist for certain mental functions such as music or picture
appreciation as well as reading and memorizing. It is these “hubs” which fMRI
is able to demonstrate. But it cannot establish their degree of connectivity to
other brain areas because that occurs in the millisecond domain. The EEG, and
now also the magnetoencephalogram (MEG), can do so and with appropriate
software, as well as financial support, is likely to supplant fMRI in the
future. What Petsche and co-workers have already shown, is that when one looks
not only at the “hubs” but at the degree and extent with which they connect to
other brain areas one can not only distinguish between the previously mentioned
mental functions but also show how the brains of artists, be they musicians or
painters, behave differently from non-artists when they are confronted with the
same piece of music or painting. Even aptitude for a given talent could be
ascertained to some degree by statistically assessing increase and decrease of
connectivity (coherence in specific frequency bands) and so can differences in
the processing of language by skilled professional interpreters during
translations.
When one keeps all of these aspects
in mind it is obvious there has to be a tremendous variety in individual
thinking which is the reason why we never really will “know” another person.
Our “knowledge” is based on observed conduct over a period of time and we
assume that this will not vary appreciably in the future. If the person then were
to commit an act which appears to have been “out of character,” but was really
an expression of his inner self, we are astonished, disappointed or even hurt
because our judgment had been proven wrong. The point is that we want others to
conform to our notions as for instance an exasperated Prof. Higgins exclaimed
in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a woman
be like me!” It can’t happen; their brains are different from those of males as
has also been demonstrated electroencephalographically. The answer to the
problem is, therefore, first of all the recognition of these inherent
differences and thereafter the development of respect and tolerance. These
functions are not innate and even go to some extent against human nature which
is for the most part egotistical. They need to be learned. These statements may
be doubted, but just look at America’s
conduct around the world. We want everybody to be like us and governed as a
“liberal democracy” or at least by pliable dictators who take orders from Uncle
Sam.
What could or should be done about
this state of affairs and how can tolerance be fostered? To answer this
question we have to go back to words, their meaning and how they are put to
together in a grammatical sequence to form language. We regard language as the
highest achievement of the human race, which puts us above the world of the
animals, but we forget one crucial fact of life. For every gain there has to be
a loss. For us spoken and written language is our main means of communication,
although “body language” may give us away when we are dissembling or lying.
Animals communicate perfectly well among themselves and to some extent with us,
without language apart from rudimentary sounds. Furthermore, we have forgotten,
as mentioned above, that words are not things per se but only symbols which
stand for either a concrete object or an abstract thought. The latter situation
is even worse because we are piling one symbol on top of another. We completely
disregard that abstract nouns, such as: truth, justice, democracy, as well as
all the -isms are merely symbols sitting
on top of other symbols created by our minds and Humpty Dumpty, my favorite example,
can provide any meaning he likes to those. Yet, absurdly enough, these are the
ostensible reasons over which wars are fought, including the current one on
“terrorism.”
When mankind developed language it
opened the door to lies and they have haunted us ever since. In the December 1, 2009 installment I mentioned
the 18th century scientist Swedenborg and that I shall return to him
at some other point. The reason why I do so now is that according to him
angels, with whom he conversed on a daily basis during later years of his life,
are inherently incapable of lying. Communication between themselves as well as us
consists, according to Swedenborg, of direct thought transfer, telepathy. We
may not believe Swedenborg’s writings because seeing angels and communicating
with them is not a common experience of the human race, but if we could develop
telepathy we might even get rid of wars because they require secrecy and
dissembling words for their initiation.
Imagine for a moment what the world
would be like if all our thoughts were immediately accessible to everybody
else. At first there would be massive consternation but thereafter, if I am
right, there might be hilarious laughter and relief with an amazed, “what you
too?” I had an inkling of this sentiment right after the demise of the Nazi
regime. A Jewish parent or grandparent had stamped one, literally on official
papers, as a Mischling. This had
serious adverse consequences and was, therefore, kept very quiet as long as
possible by the person who carried that label. Since Mischlinge looked and behaved like everybody else and were not
required to wear a distinctive mark they could blend into society at large
simply by keeping their mouths shut and their thoughts to themselves. But when
the war was over and Nazi rule was gone it was absolutely amazing how large this
“silent minority” had actually been and the, “what you too?” led to a round of
laughter.
With the obvious disadvantage of
words, as consequences of and symbols for thoughts, is there a way to escape
from their constraints on our thinking or are we destined to remain their “prisoners?”
Since we don’t have telepathy, we have to use words because even if we were to
think in pictures or in music we would still have to express our feelings about
them to others, verbally. What matters, therefore, is to understand what our
words originally meant and subsequently use them wisely. For the first part
looking at the etymology of a given word has been a considerable help for me
because originally the word held meaning, even if it came from a different
language, which may have become lost over the ages. This method was very useful
in writing the Jesus book. Precision in expression is essential; otherwise we
shall reside for ever in HumptyLand
where we talk to ourselves rather than each other.
The wise use of words is our
greatest challenge but my favorite philosopher, Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha,
has shown the way. He did not set out to found a religion that has to be
believed in and he did not rely on miracles or supernatural intervention. He recognized
that the mind, as expressed in words and deeds, is the reason for the misery
human beings inflict upon each other and developed a method for controlling it
which can be used by anyone who makes the effort. The noble path towards that
goal starts with “right view.” I don’t know as yet the Sanskrit, or better yet
the original Pali word, which has been translated into English not only as
“view,” but also as “decision” and if a reader were to know it I would be
grateful for the information. The German word is “rechteErkenntnis
[correct realization]” and by another author “rechterGlaube [correct
belief, faith]. It is obvious that all of these translations have inadequacies
but they also point to the difficulty inherent in all translations. Personally
I prefer to think that the Enlightened One intended to advise the proper use of
that deep stirring which precedes thought and is the groundswell from which all
else arises: thought, speech, action, etc.. We cannot see this groundswell even
in ourselves but only infer it from introspection and when it comes to others
we have to rely on their words and conduct. Nevertheless we can infer it and I
shall give a couple of examples.
During the years while I prepared
and subsequently wrote The Moses Legacy
I subscribed to Commentary which is
the foremost conservative Jewish magazine in this country. I did so because I
wanted to obtain authentic Jewish viewpoints rather than getting second-hand
information. Two sentences from different authors, in different years, remained
in memory. The first one was, “If I am not for myself, who is?” The context was
in essence that the personal self and its needs should trump everything else.
This struck me as the opposite of right view. As stated on another occasion I
believe that: whatever you do for yourself, dies with yourself; what you do for
others, lives in others. The second sentence was a headline, “The Virtue of
Hate.” The author used it in defense of the policies of the State of Israel and
was very eloquent in support of his thesis but hate hardly seems to be the
proper vehicle to resolve serious international conflicts.
Thus, right view would consist of
an outreach to others and provide help where help is needed. Right speech
should then not only consist from abstention of gossip, lying and slander. It
should also be precise, using words in their correct meaning and conform to the
purpose of speech, namely, to effectively communicate ones thoughts to others
without, however, insisting on having the last word. Communication has to be a
two way street to be effective. Unfortunately this is rarely the case in
today’s politicized environment as last week’s attempt at President Obama’s
health-care summit has shown.
Finally, for the recognition of the
prison we have built ourselves with words it is essential to keep in the
forefront of our thoughts the differences between: dogma, opinion and truth.
All of human “knowledge” falls somewhere on this spectrum and within it we
either find our freedom or perpetuate our prison. This will be further discussed
with contemporary examples in a subsequent issue.
April 1, 2010
RIGHT VIEW
In the
previous installments I have discussed the necessity of precise thought and
language if we want to talk with each other rather than engaging in
self-congratulatory monologues. I have also pointed to my friendship with Professor
Petsche and how our correspondence has been mutually fruitful in clarifying our
thoughts. To summarize briefly: Human brains are highly individualistic. They
are shaped anatomically and functionally by heredity as well as the life
experiences of the individual. While it is agreed that the “mind” is influenced
by past experiences the fact that this reflects itself in brain structure and
function is less commonly admitted to. Yet, since this is the case it provides
the reason why some behavior patterns are so difficult to change even if they
are harmful to the individual. The other point to emphasize is that we,
therefore, should not merely ascribe ill-will to others who do not readily
agree with our views because in many instances they simply cannot follow our
line of thought by not having undergone our life experiences. This is
theoretically obvious but since it calls for tolerance of differences, rather
than condemnation, we find ourselves in the political as well as at times in
the private sphere of our lives at odds with others, who then receive a variety
of undesirable labels which in turn leads to mutual recriminations.
Since
Petsche and I are not only neuroscientists but also have philosophical
interests we have been trying to bridge this gap between science and philosophy
which bedevils the public at large. Furthermore, as neurologists, we have
chosen the study of the brain and its functions as one of our major
professional goals, with the other endeavoring to provide the best possible
care of our patients. Therefore, it was more or less inevitable that we should
drift into the fundamental questions of how human beings think and communicate
with each other. In so doing Petsche came up with two terms in the German
language which need to be kept apart when we talk about the genesis and use of thought
processes. These are Gedankenkunde
and Gedankenkunst. Gedankenkunde denotes the scientific
investigation of the physical concomitants of thinking with EEG/MEG, fMRI and
other imaging methods, as has been discussed in last month’s installment. This
will lead to a body of information which already has practical value. Examples
have been shown in a recent “60 Minutes” segment where patients, who had lost
the functions of their limbs as well as speech, communicated their thoughts via
EEG signals, which were deciphered by a computer program and displayed on a
video-monitor.
Gedankenkunst on the other hand is more
difficult to define in the English language because the word Kunst – Art has been degraded to a considerable
extent in our culture. A fair number of our celebrated “artists,” regardless of
the field they labor in: music, the theater or the visual arts, would hardly
have qualified for that title in previous decades. The Gedankenkunst Petsche is talking about, is the ability to express
one’s thoughts not only in a beautiful poetic way but also in a coherent system
of thought which can stand as a monument to its creator. Petsche, who has read
infinitely more philosophy than I have, had to conclude that most of our well
known philosophers have really not created a cohesive system that can be
regarded as valid across different cultures but have produced philosophems.
Let me
explain the various terms. A philosopher, strictly speaking, is merely a
“friend of wisdom” and this does not require even a college degree. Since a
number of professional teachers of philosophy were actually not “friends of
wisdom,” but merely spouted theories invented by others, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche excoriated them. A philosophical system could be compared to a mental
home, in an attractive neighborhood, which is well founded and furnished, where
the person is content to live. Looking at the various existing philosophies
this goal is hardly ever met. Our philosophers have instead provided us with
the mentioned philosophems which are defined as: a philosophical proposition,
doctrine, axiom, theorem or principle of reasoning. With other words our well
known philosophers have provided us with some bits and pieces of advice, which
may or may not be well founded, but for the most part they have not been able
to provide us with a mental home of the type described above. This would have
required a true architect of the mind who is not just an architect but a
Michelangelo who can see a Pietà in a block of marble. This is the
Gedankenkunst Petsche was talking about.
True
artists as incorporated in Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rubens and others in the
visual arts; Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven in music; Shakespeare and Goethe in
poetry and language, are nowhere to be seen among today’s celebrities. Instead
we have what is called in German Kuenstlerei
that is: pretension to artistry. The word “artifice” came to mind but its
definition of, “crafty but underhanded deception; a
trick played out as an ingenious, but artful, ruse; a strategic maneuver that
uses some clever means to ...,”has a
negative connotation which I do not want to imply. What some of our contemporary
“artists” are doing is merely to conform, frequently with meager talents, to the
Zeitgeist in order to achieve fame and fortune. Since we live in the “modern
deconstruction” era any artistic result which expresses universal beauty and
harmony can hardly be expected.
All of this
may sound highly theoretical but it is not. The mental world we live in
expresses itself in conduct which affects others, and for those in power the
world at large. Especially for people in leadership positions the inner and
outer world becomes one and since thought precedes action it is imperative that
we acquaint ourselves with the mental homes our leadership lives in. This can
only be done by inference, of course, but we do have their spoken and written
words as well as actual conduct on which to base a reasonable estimate.
Furthermore, as mentioned in last month’s installment, there exists an
unconscious attitude which precedes conscious thought. It flavors the thought
and thereby all subsequent actions. As a result thoughts, reasoning and
philosophy are frequently used to justify the unconscious wish and “rationalizations”
are invented. This is precisely the reason why the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama,
placed “Right View” on top of his eight fold Noble Path and why it needs
extensive discussion.
In the
March installment I have also mentioned that I did not know the original
Sanskrit terms for the various aspects of the Noble Path but our daughter came
to the rescue. The term dŗst for view is derived from to see and therefore
does reflect inner view or insight. Right stands for correct and as everything
else in Buddhism, does not reflect a moral judgment in the sense of right and
wrong. It merely denotes that there are two ways of doing something: a right
way which leads to the desired result come hell or high water and a wrong way
which will not withstand adversity. Any sailor knows that there is only one right
way to make a given knot and a hundred different wrong ones, which led to the
adage that, “He who doesn’t know how to tie a knot, ties a lot. This brings us
to some examples from the past month which illustrate concretely
what has been so far discussed only in the abstract.
The on-line
bookstore Daedalus had sent me one of their periodic catalogues and in it I
found the title: “Jesus and Yahweh” by Harold Bloom with the subtitle, “The
Names Divine.” I had not been familiar with Bloom’s
writings but in view of just having published the Jesus book I thought it might
be useful to read his views on the topic. The subtitle should have given me
pause because it is, of course, unusual in the English language to put the
adjective after the noun, but the meaning eluded me at the time. Mere curiosity
prevailed, I bought the book, read it and was puzzled as well as to some extent
annoyed. Mind you, I knew absolutely nothing about the author and merely judged
this particular product. But since he wrote, “This book culminates for me what
began half my lifetime ago, on my thirty-seventh birthday, when I woke up from
a nightmare to begin writing an essay called ‘The Covering Cherub or Poetic
Influence.’ This was published six years later, much revised, as the opening
chapter of a short book called The
Anxiety of Influence (1973);’”I also
had to obtain that one from the Marriott Library of our university. This was
necessary because I had never felt any “anxiety of influence” in my life and
didn’t know what he was talking about.
For now,
let me stay with Jesus and Yahweh, because one can summarize the essence of the
238 pages in one paragraph. The first part of the book deals with Jesus and the
second with Yahweh. He agrees with others that the quest for the historical
Jesus, or Yeshua how prefers to call him since Jesus was a Jew, is futile. The
gospel biographies are unreliable. From extra-biblical sources about Jesus, Bloom
mentioned only the brief quote by Josephus, whom he calls “a superb liar,” as
confirmation that Jesus had ever lived. The Christian Church has misread the
Hebrew Bible for its own purposes, the “Father” of Jesus bears hardly any
relationship to the Yahweh of the Hebrew documents and the idea of a Judeo-Christian
heritage is untenable because there is an “Irreconcilability of Christianity
and Judaism.”
I am glad
that I had not read Bloom’s book prior to writing my own on Jesus because I
have come independently to the same conclusions. We differ, however, not only
in the style of writing but also on the basic premise in regard to the Deity. Let
me discuss style first. It abounds in apodictic, at times sarcastic and at other
times seemingly meaningless statements which are designed to impress the reader
with erudition. As such the book is an example for what I have referred to
above as Kuenstlerei or pretensions
to art. The German language has another word which is applicable: Effekthascherei, namely trying to
impress the reader regardless of truth or the harm that may be done by
polemical statements.
Here are
some examples: “All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus’ enigmas/riddles, in
amalgam with the ironies of Socrates [p.10].”He regarded Yahweh, “by definition the most formidable of all ironists [p.12].”
“Paul and the other three Gospel authors (or traditions) have and partly
deserve their literary admirers, yet Mark stands by itself as the enigma-of
enigmas, endlessly resistant to analysis [p.31].” On the other hand Bloom had
stated earlier that “The Marcan Jesus may be as close to ‘he real Jesus’ as we
can come [p. 11].” Other stylistic examples are “…the Trinity, Christendom’s
extraordinary exploit in somehow asserting its innocence as to the exiling of
Yahweh [p.98].” “Christology is a weird science from the perspective either of
Judaism or of Islam. Immersing myself in its study has been an educational
experience for me, not at all akin to my bafflement when I try to absorb
Buddhism or Hinduism, both of which evade me [p.154].” While all of the above
can be explained as the harmless musings of an author who seeks to justify his
ideas, the statement, “If Yahweh is a man of war, Allah is a suicide bomber
[p237]” is clearly inflammatory and occurs in the final chapter headlined
“Conclusion: Reality –Testing.”
The statement that, “Only Mark’s Jesus goes through an all-night
agony because his death is near [p.8],” is factually incorrect. The
night at Gethsemane is reported in all three synoptic
gospels. Furthermore, “Mark’s persuasive misreading changes ‘one like a human
being’ into the apocalyptic term ‘Son of Man’ [p.64].This leaves the impression
that Mark engaged in a deliberate distortion of an Aramaic document and ignores
that Mark had, in all probability, used the Greek Septuagint for Daniel’s
vision where the term is indeed nionanthropon which translates into son of
man.
The main
point of the book seems to be a demonstration that the “Anxiety of Influence”
was at work in the preparation of the New Testament, which he prefers to call
the Belated Testament. Here is Bloom’s explanation of what he means,
“I have learned that
my idea, the anxiety of influence is very easily misunderstood, which is
natural, since I base the notion on the process of ‘misreading,’ by which I do
not intend dyslexia. Later works misread earlier ones; when the misreading is
strong enough to be eloquent, coherent, and persuasive to many, then it will
endure, and sometimes prevail. The New Testament frequently is a strong
misreading of the Hebrew Bible, and certainly it has persuaded multitudes
[p.46].” . . .
Influence is a
kind of influenza, a contamination once thought to pour in upon us from the
stars. Mark’s influenza was caught by him from the J writer, or Yahwist; Paul’s
and John’s cases stem from the Law and the Prophets alike. The great critic
Northrop Frye (who had contaminated me) remarked to me that whether a later
reader experienced such an effect was entirely a matter of temperament and
circumstances. With amiable disloyalty I answered that influence anxiety was
not primarily an effect in an individual, but rather the relation of one work
of literature to another. Therefore the anxiety of influence is the result, and
not the cause, of a strong misreading. With that we parted (intellectually)
forever, though in old age I appreciate the irony that my criticism is to his
as the New Testament is to the Tanakh, which is spiritually the paradoxical
reverse of our spiritual preferences [p.47].”
The last sentence of this excerpt
will be discussed later but while I can understand that later writers are inevitably
influenced by what others have previously written and may either modify, or
plagiarize the contents, I could not see why this should be regarded as one
being “contaminated” by it and wondered where the “anxiety” fit into all of
this. This is the reason why I had to consult the 1973 work which was the
seminal one and established Bloom as one of the foremost literary critics of
this country. It earned him tenure as Professor of Humanities at Yale and numerous
prizes. What struck me most in that book was its Humpty Dumpty quality in the
idiosyncratic way he uses language.
The subtitle of the book is: A Theory of Poetry. Although he does
talk about poets he also lists as examples Freud and it becomes apparent that
he really means anyone who tries to bring a new aspect to literature. The main
point is that “the poet” strives for originality but has to “wrestle” with his
precursors lest he becomes overwhelmed by their “influence.” “… Self-appropriation
involves the immense anxieties of indebtedness, for what strong maker desires
the realization that he has failed to create himself? [p5].” Later on we read,
“The anxiety of influence is so terrible because it is both a kind of
separation anxiety and the beginning of a compulsion neurosis, or fear of a
death that is a personified superego [p.58].” I could go on with numerous other
examples of this type which filled 157 pages but the Freudian influence is
obvious and I believe that the reader will already have the flavor of Professor
Bloom’s type of thinking and style of writing.
Let us, therefore, return to the
last sentence of the excerpt from page 47. Herman Northrop Frye (1912-1999) was
a Canadian author who can be regarded as having established “literary criticism”
as an academic scientific discipline with his essay on: Anatomy of Criticism, which was published in 1957. He had studied
theology and became an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. Bloom
on the other hand is conflicted about his religion.
“Yahweh, whom I
have evaded throughout my three-quarters of a century, has an awesome capacity
not to go away, though he deserves to be convicted for desertion, in regard not
just to the Jews but to all suffering humankind. In this book [Jesus and Yahweh]
the interpreter is a Jew whose spirituality responds most fervently to the
ancient tendency we term ‘Gnosticism,’ which may or may not be a religion in
the sense that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam remain the primary Western
traditions. I very much want to dismiss Yahweh as the ancient Gnostics did,
finding in him a mere demiurge who had botched the Creation so that it was
simultaneously a Fall. But I wake these days, sometime between midnight and two
A.M., because of nightmares in which Yahweh sardonically appears as
various beings, ranging from a Havana-smoking Edwardian attired Dr. Sigmund
Freud to the Book of Daniel’s silently reproachful Ancient of Days. I trudge
downstairs gloomily and silently, lest I wake my wife, and breakfast on tea and
dark bread while rereading yet once more in the Tanakh, wide swatches of
Mishnah and Talmud, and those disquieting texts the New Testament and
Augustine’s City of God [p.236].”
When one
reads these lines it is obvious from where this anxiety of influence originated
and, in spite of protestations to the contrary by Bloom, Frye was correct when
he diagnosed the “anxiety” as an effect of the literature on Bloom rather than
the other way round. Bloom prefers the term Tanakh (acronym for Torah, Prophets
and Writings) over Old Testament, which is understandable, but he does not seem
to realize, that the Tanakh is only a partial version of the first complete Jewish
Bible – the Septuagint. He stated that the “New Testament accomplishes its
appropriation by means of its drastic reordering of the Tanakh,” and then
proceeded to list the books of the Bible in the order in which they appear in
the Christian Bible and contrasts it with that of the Tanakh. When one peruses
this table one finds that the Tanakh does not contain different books from the
OT but merely omits some which are present in the Christian version.
Furthermore, these books are contained in the Septuagint, and their sequence is
identical to the Christian OT. Bloom apparently felt that the Church Fathers
had willfully changed the sequence so that the books end with Malachi instead
of with II Kings, as in the Tanakh, to provide a different emphasis. But I
believe that he was mistaken. Since Greek was the lingua franca in the first century A.D. the Septuagint was, in all
probability, the original scripture from which the gospel writers took their
information rather than a Hebrew or Aramaic text.
It is, of
course, true that the gospel writers did adapt the prophecies contained in the
Septuagint to allow for an identification of Jesus with the expected Messiah. This
was not some inadvertent misreading but purposeful, as has been pointed out in
my book on Jesus. Since these points deal with a fundamental aspect of
Christian religion they will be discussed further in appropriate detail at
another time. The important aspect for now is the relationship of Bloom to
Yahweh. It is not idiosyncratic but pervasive in a considerable “secular” segment
of the Jewish population and a source of inner conflict. This is then projected
onto the outer world. Bloom defined the differences between the three
“Abrahamic” religions as,
“A Christian believes that Jesus was the Christ,
anointed before the creation in order to atone for the sins of the world.
Muslim’s submit to Allah’s will,
shatteringly set forth in the Qur’an. My own mother trusted in the Covenant, despite
Yahweh’s blatant violation of its terms.”
Thus, for
Bloom and like-minded others the role of the Deity is to serve the needs of
individual humans or the nation, apparently regardless of their conduct. As I
have pointed out in The Moses Legacy
the Covenant at Sinai, which is the hallmark of the Jewish religion, is simply
a business contract on the model of Egypt.
Here is the relevant quote,
“Erman in his Life in ancient Egyptgives the following example: ‘Contract
concluded between A and B, that B should give x to A,
whilst A should give y to B, Behold B was therewith content.’ The contract
between Yahweh and the Israelites at Sinai stated that: ‘if you will hearken to
my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be Mine
own treasure from among all peoples… and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation [Ex 19:5, 6].’ ‘And all the people answered together,
and said: ‘all that the Lord hath spoken we will do’ [Ex. 19:8].’ We therefore
might say: ‘Behold the people were therewith content [p.72].’”
When one
subsequently reads about the actual conduct of the people, and their offspring
as depicted by the prophets, it should come as no surprise that Yahweh was not
pleased; he chastised them, and eventually may have given up on this ungrateful
lot. These are, of course, assumptions, because there is no evidence, except
from the biblical assertion, that such a Covenant has ever existed.
Nevertheless, the idea that Yahweh owes the Jews something because of his
promises has apparently penetrated some Jewish brains to the extent that even persons,
such as Bloom, who no longer believe in or trusts Yahweh, still harbor this
notion. In case one were to think that I am exaggerating, here are the last two
sentences of the book, “Yahweh present and
[italics in the original] absent has more to do with the end of trust than with
the end of faith. Will he yet make a covenant with us that he [italics added] both can and will keep?”
In the book
on Jesus I raised the question, if “living without the help of an unseen
benevolent power, which we like to call God, is possible?” The answer was yes,
but “living in mental harmony throughout all of life’s vicissitudes is not
likely.” I believe that this comment applies also to Professor Bloom and his
persistent nightmares which prevent restful sleep.
While I was in the process of
reading Bloom’s book our daughter came for a few days of skiing and she
presented me with the counterpoint in form of: The Good Heart. A Buddhist Perspective on the
Teachings of Jesus by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
It is a partial transcript of the John Main Seminar held in London,
England, in 1994, in
addition to an explanation of key aspects of Buddhism and Christianity, as well
as short biographies of the main participants. The annual Seminar is sponsored
by “The World Community for Christian Meditation” and this particular one was
devoted to the Dalai Lama’s interpretations of selected New Testament portions.
He was given eight passages, two from each of the four evangelists, for
comments on his understanding of the scripture.
When I read
this book, immediately after having finished the mentioned two by Bloom, I was
vastly impressed by the different spirit which was expressed in its pages. The main
point was the deep respect both sides had for the viewpoint of the other. They
had not come together to preach or to convert each other but merely to learn
and understand the different viewpoints. The hallmark was that differences need
not divide but can be used for the growth of understanding our world. The Dalai
Lama pointed out that even Buddhism is not monolithic, different sects
interpret the Buddha’s teaching in different ways, but this does not make one
superior to the other. The common ground can be found in the teaching of the
Reality of Suffering and how to overcome it. This requires respect and
tolerance for the views of others because any other course would lead to an
increase of suffering rather than its diminution.
The
passages the Dalai Lama was given to discuss dealt with: Love your enemy (Mt.
38-48); the Beatitudes (Mt. 5:1-10); Equanimity (Mk. 3:31-35); the Kingdom
of God (Mk. 4:26-34); the Transfiguration (Lk.
9:38-36); the Mission
(Lk. 9 1-6); Faith (Jn. 12:44-50) and the Resurrection (Jn. 20:10-18). In all instances he expressed himself clearly
and succinctly and I was pleasantly surprised about the extent his opinions
coincided with the ones I had expressed in my book on Jesus. The notion
expressed there that a “Jesus Conundrum” exists only in the secular West and
that Buddhists would welcome him as a Bodhisattva was correct because this is
how the Dalai Lama had referred to him during the Seminar. The Good Heart is a highly recommendable introduction to Buddhist
thought and some of its differences with Christianity; a topic which will be
discussed further on another occasion.
At this
time it is appropriate to focus on the problem of suffering, which is the First
Noble Truth, its meaning, and how to deal with it. The Dalai Lama offers us an
excellent example. Tenzin Gyatso was born in 1935 of poor peasant stock in
northeastern Tibet
and was recognized at age 2 as the re-incarnation of the previous Dalai Lama
who had died in 1933. He was moved to Lhasa
where he received intensive religious and spiritual training. In 1940 he was
officially enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama and after his final
examination in 1959 he was awarded the equivalent of a PhD with summa cum laude
in Buddhist philosophy. The Chinese army had already invaded Tibet
in 1950 and in 1954 the Dalai Lama went to Beijing
to meet with Mao Tse Tung to arrange for some peaceful co-existence between the
two countries. The talks failed; the Chinese occupation and repression of the
local customs became increasingly harsh, which led to a rebellion. With his
life in danger the Dalai Lama had to flee to India
where asylum was granted in Dharamsala. These aspects are important. Not only
had he experienced suffering first hand but its meaning was revealed through
his life. Hardly anybody knows anything about the 13th Dalai Lama
but the 14th is known the world over and has received the Nobel
Peace Prize. Had the Chinese not invaded his country and eventually forced him
into exile he would never have gained the stature he has today. He deeply
thought about the meaning of suffering, internalized the teaching and now
stands as a symbol for how to conduct oneself in adversity.
This is the
precise opposite of current Western society’s ideation, as also expressed in
Bloom’s book, that whenever something untoward happens, someone else is to
blame and if no one can readily be blamed, it’s Yahweh’s fault. Clearly this
cannot be Right View and unless our society changes its mental outlook from
always assigning blame to others, while we bathe in the innocence of
righteousness, this century is likely to become even bloodier than the
disastrous previous one. This is the lesson which ought to be taken to heart.
Although Buddhists do not believe
in a Creator God they do believe in the power of prayer, not for themselves as
individuals, but mainly for others. The Dalai Lama closed his Nobel Prize
acceptance speech with, “I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together
we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and
that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.”
Let us join him in this work.
May 1, 2010
OUR ATHEISTS
Prior to the publication of The Jesus Conundrum I had not been aware
of the rapidly growing literature on atheism which for the most part heaps
scorn on individuals, especially scientists, who still hold on to the outmoded
idea that God exists. When one goes to amazon.com and types the key word
“atheism” thirty books appear immediately and when one then looks at readers’
reviews of, for instance, The God
Delusion one finds more than 1500 reviews. Atheism is, therefore, a “hot
topic” in our country which deserves critical thought and discussion.
I have read
five of these books and these are, in alphabetic order, Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Dennett’s Breaking the Spell–Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon, Harris’ The End of
Faith–Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, as well as A Letter to a Christian Nation, and
Hitchens god is not Great–How Religion
Poisons Everything. All have publication dates within the current century
and have received wide critical acclaim. Four of them have obtained “New York Times Bestseller status,” while
The Letter to a Christian Nation had
to make do with “National Bestseller.” Nevertheless, it was regarded as, “A
breath of fresh fire” by The Wall Street
Journal. We are, therefore, dealing with a social phenomenon of
considerable importance, which must be addressed forthrightly. Since there is a
great deal of overlap and redundancy among these books I shall first give some
information about the authors as well as key aspects of each book and
subsequently discuss what I regard as a common fallacy in the thinking of the
authors. This will be done in the order in which I have read the books.
Christopher Hitchens is a well
known British journalist and author who in 1981 moved to the U.S.
He is frequently seen on talk shows, espoused the Bush administration’s
“interventionist foreign policy,” believes in “Islamofascism” and regards
himself as a secular humanist and anti-theist. The essence of Hitchens’ book
can be summarized as: If there was a creator god, he was not only incompetent
but also malignant. As such, god is not only useless but harmful and there is
no need to bother with him any more. Laplace’s
answer to Napoleon why God had not appeared in his epoch-making calculations on
Celestial Mechanics, "I did not need this hypothesis," is taken as the
validation that God is obsolete. Inasmuch as this quote was also used by
Dawkins it seems that the marquis may belatedly become an honorary patron saint
of the atheistic community.
Laplace
(1749-1827) was a superb mathematician, astronomer and physicist whose work has
made its re-appearance in some aspects of my profession.
Electroencephalographers have always been confronted with the problem how to
distinguish locally generated electrical brain activity from that which
originates at a distance and is merely transmitted to a given area. This is, of
course, of special importance in the surgical treatment of epilepsy. Bo Hjorth
of Stockholm, Sweden,
in 1975 adapted one of Laplace’s
celestial formulas for the needs of electroencephalography and thus brought the
heavens down to earth. The method was difficult to implement at that time
because EEG machines were of the analog type, but with the advent of digital
EEG systems and appropriate software Laplace’s
idea can now be implemented with a mouse click. I have published several papers
using the method and, therefore, have strong personal positive feelings for Laplace’s
scientific work. Furthermore, in the context of Napoleon’s question his answer
was correct. We may ask, however, whether or not the generalization which has
been made in regard to this answer is valid.Does it apply to all contingencies the human being encounters during
life, as suggested by our atheists, or to some specific problems in regard to
the physical universe?
We know too little about Laplace
as a person and a single sentence is not likely to encompass the totality of
his being. We do know, however, that he was a poor administrator. Napoleon, who
had appointed him Minister of the
Interior in November 1799, had to dismiss him less than six weeks later. In his memoirs from
St. Helena Napoleon is quoted as having written, ”Geometrician of the first
rank, Laplace was not long in showing himself a worse than average
administrator; since his first actions in office we recognized our mistake.
Laplace did not consider any question from the right angle: he sought
subtleties everywhere, only conceived problems, and finally carried the spirit
of "infinitesimals" into the administration.”
Hitchens’ sees “The Need for a New
Enlightenment” and his book is an entertaining polemic which strives to
popularize the atheist point of view by pointing to all the misdeeds of the
world’s religions, which he seems to regard as the norm rather than as
exceptions. As mentioned he is by profession a journalist, has taken up
Voltaire’s écrasez l’infâme and seems intent to devote the rest of his life to
“fight the enemy.” Since he is neither a philosopher nor a scientist deeper
thoughts about the problem at hand need not be expected from him.
While Hitchens is a journalist and one can, therefore, adopt a “take it or
leave it” attitude towards his work, this is not so readily the case for Sam
Harris who has a B.A. in philosophy and had last year received aPh.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA. Apart from
articles for the general public he has also published, as first author, a paper
on Functional Neuroimaging of
Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty (2008) as well as The Neural Correlates of Religious and
Nonreligious Belief (2009). I have made a point of “first authorship” because
the scientific community currently suffers from an inflation of authors. When I
publish a scientific paper today I have to list as “authors” all the people who
were remotely connected with the data upon which the paper was based. Simply giving
them credit in the Acknowledgments no longer suffices. When one reads,
therefore, that a given scientist has by the age of 50 several hundred papers
to his credit one needs to realize that this does not mean that he has actually
written them or even done some of the work. If one wants to do original work
and publish the results oneself one can do so for maximally two or three papers
in a given year. On the other hand since the motto in academia is “publish or
perish,” it is understandable that people want to see their name in print.
Thus, articles with ten or more authors are no longer a rarity and I am making
this point explicit because the general public has a right to know what really
goes on today in the hallowed halls of Science.
In my review of The End of Faith
on amazon.com I used as title, “Talmudic Thinking,” but made it clear that this
was not meant in a pejorative sense and mentioned that I had discussed this
type of thinking in The Moses Legacy.
It is characterized by the person knowing the answer to a given question and
then justifying it by a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, which may strike an
unbiased observer as strange and unwarranted. I provided typical examples in The Moses Legacy and since it can be
downloaded from this website I need not belabor the point.
The reason why I used this title for
the review was to make it clear to readers of the book that Harris did not
follow the rules of science in this publication and readers should not expect,
in view of his Ph.D., a scientifically reasoned treatise. The book is likewise
written in a polemical style and essentially covers the same ground as that by
Hitchens. Like the other mentioned authors he exalts “Reason” above all other
aspects of human life and in the Epilogue he stated,
“My goal in the writing of this book has been to help close the door to a
certain style of irrationality. While religious faith is the one species of
human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction, it
is still sheltered from criticism in every corner of our culture. Forsaking all
valid sources of information about this world (both spiritual and mundane) our
religions have seized upon ancient taboos and prescientific fancies as though
they held ultimate metaphysical significance.”
Yet, in spite of this aim he at
times lets emotion overpower reason, succumbs to unwarranted generalizations
and on one occasion even raised the ghost of FDR’s speechwriter when he wrote
“our enemy is nothing other than faith itself [p.131].” He has no use for
“tolerance”and wrote in the first chapter (Reason in Exile), “I hope to show
that the very ideal of religious tolerance–born of the notion that every human
being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God–is one of the
principal forces driving us toward the abyss [p.15].” Other morsels are: “faith
is an impostor [p.66];” “Without faith, most Muslim grievances against the West
would be impossible even to formulate, much less avenge [p. 138];” “Think of
it: if a computer virus shuts down a nation’s phone system for five minutes,
the loss in human productivity is measured in billions of dollars.Religious faith has crashed our lines daily,
for millennia [p.149];” “Is Islam compatible with a civil society? Is it
possible to believe what you must believe to be a good Muslim, to have military
and economic power, and to not pose an unconscionable threat to the civil
societies of others?I believe that the
answer to this question is no [p.152].”
Although Harris limits the term “faith”
to religious faith, it is still apparent that he confuses it with “religious
dogmas” of a given faith. He assumes in addition that members of a given
religious denomination accept all of the dogmas and should automatically feel
obligated to act on them. This is clearly not the case. His views on the Muslim
religion seem to be largely shaped by the phenomenon of suicide bombers and he
ignores their modern origin in the Israeli-Palestinian war. I am deliberately
using the word “war” rather than the usual term “conflict” because it is fought
on one side by soldiers with tanks, planes and infantry, while the other side
has rocks, rifles, bombs and, so far ineffectual, rockets.Before this war the conflict was originally
over land rather than religion. The Zionists were mainly atheists and religious
Jews wanted no part of them, as documented in Whither Zionism?which can be downloaded from this site. The early kibbutzim settlers had a
Marxist ethos for whom God was either non-existent or irrelevant. The religious
Jews who had lived in the land for generations had gotten along well with their
Muslim and Christian neighbors. They even regarded the foundation of the State
in 1948 as illegitimate. Only the messiah had the right to form the State and
Ben-Gurion clearly did not fit that role. The local Arabs, on the other hand,
resented that portions of what they regarded as their country was arbitrarily
given first by the British, subsequently by the United Nations to Jews, and
eventually all of it was conquered by the
Israeli army.
Religion simply was not a factor initially but has become one as a result of
the humiliation local Arabs experienced and their powerlessness against
Israel’s might. Inasmuch as it is sustained by U.S. taxpayers we have earned
their ire. When no help is obtained from human beings it should not be
surprising that people turn to God for redress of grievances. Furthermore, to
cast “religion” exclusively in the role of the villain, as done by Harris and
others, ignores the fact that religion tends to be used and exploited for very
secular gains by unscrupulous individuals. This is not to say that religious
fanatics do not exist, they do and can create havoc, but they are a small
minority. It should be our duty to deal with those individuals on an individual
basis rather than denounce all religion.
This applies also to the phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombers where a
command to jihad and the promised 70 or 72 virgins (one finds both versions)
are presented as the sole motivation for their acts. Inasmuch as this seems to
be one of the main objections to the Muslim faith it requires further comment.
Serious literature on this phenomenon is just beginning to emerge and the
Israeli Security Agency (ISA) has established profiles of successful as well as
unsuccessful suicide bombers.I have not
yet had an opportunity to study this aspect of the “Clash of Civilizations,” to
use Huntington’s term, to any appreciable extent but am aware of EfraimBenmelech’s (Assistant
Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Faculty Research Fellow,
National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Claude Berrebi’s (Research Economist, RAND Corporation, Santa
Monica, California) work. They have studied some of these data and published
their findings under the title, “Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide
bombers.” Their article http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/benmelech/files/JEP_0807.pdf
did not enter into the question of motivation but the Israeli data base
probably contains a considerable amount of information on these aspects and
further studies are urgently needed to replace assumptions with statistical
facts. That religion alone is not necessarily the main motivator is also
revealed by the numbers of suicide attacks which have been carried out by
Palestinians against Israelis. Thehigh
water mark was during the second Intifada in 2002 and attacks have steadily
decreased thereafter. Sean Yom and Basel Saleh carried out a Statistical Analysis up to 2004 (http://www.ecaar.org/Newsletter/Nov04/saleh.htm)
and demonstrated this phenomenon. Although one might want to credit the “security
wall” it should be noted that the decrease began before the construction of the
wall and general support for suicide bombing has also steadily ebbed among
Palestinians.Yom and Saleh’s data also
show that in most instances revenge was the major motive for the attacks rather
than religion.
An example that Harris’ emotions can overpower
reason is the following statement in regard to the possibility of Iran
acquiring nuclear weapons. “In such a situation, the only thingto ensure our
[emphasis added] survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own.” He
went on explaining that this would be a terrible thing to do, nevertheless, he
did posit it. There is no doubt that a nuclear armed Iran would further
destabilize the world, but it does not follow that “our survival” would be at
stake. The State of Israel’s possibly, but not that of the U.S. unless we were
to respond inappropriately. Harris’ mental conflation of the presumed needs of
Israel with those of the U.S. is common in our media, but erroneous and does
not follow the laws of reason.
While these were some examples of Harris’
thoughts which can be questioned there are obviously others to which one can
subscribe. For instance he does admit to a “spiritual” component to human life
and that there exists “a sacred dimension [p.16].” This is in contrast to
Hitchens who takes pride in limiting himself to being “a mammal;”a term he also uses for self-description. The
last chapter of Harris’ book deals with “Experiments in Consciousness” and
leaves room for spiritual experiences, which he distinguished from faith. In addition, he pointed out that, “The
idea that brains produce [emphasis in
the original]consciousness is little
more than an article of faith among scientists at present, and there are many
reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either
prove or disprove it [208].” This was regarded as apostasy by some readers and
forced Harris to discuss it in an Afterwordfor the paperback edition. The complaint was that “The End of Faith is
not a truly atheistic book. It is really a stalking-horse for Buddhism, New–Age
mysticism, or some other form of irrationality.” Harris defended his position
but it is obvious that deviation from the party line of atheists will not
readily be condoned by what one can only call “the faithful.”
I headlined my review of Harris’
Letter to a Christian Nation with“Harris’ Antichrist,” because it is a replay of Nietzsche’s arguments
against the Christian Church with equal vigor. The book, published in 2007 has
only 120 pages and is a reply to criticisms he has received from a mainly
Christian readership. I won’t deal in detail with this book because the
essential material is covered in all the others so let me just quote from the
“Note to the Reader,”
“In Letter to a Christian Nation, I have set out
to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most
committed form. Consequently, liberal and moderate Christians will not always
recognize themselves in the “Christian” I address. They should, however,
recognize one hundred and fifty million of their neighbors. I have little doubt
that liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right
to be as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin
to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives
shelter to extremists of all faiths [p.ix].”
What this says, in other words, and he is quite explicit on other
occasions, everybody who has some form of Christian belief is an enabler of
religious fanatics. Whether or not this stance is a dictate of reason or
emotion I shall leave the reader to decide. I have used the above excerpt
because the sentiment corresponds to that of, Dawkins and Dennett. It must,
therefore be taken as one fundamental aspect of the atheist creed.
But before examining their views we
have to return to Harris’ scientific publication. Only the second one needs to
be mentioned because it builds on and encompasses the first one. In “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious
Belief" he demonstrated, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI; the technique was discussed in the March and April 2010 articles on this
site), that what may be called, “a belief system” exists in the brain. But, and
this is the crucial element, it is content neutral. With other words Harris and
co-workers showed that people believe or disbelieve whatever is currently
acceptable and conforms to their thought structure, regardless whether the
content is religious or secular. Harris will now have to draw the consequences
of his own scientific work and realize that an “End of Faith” is not in the
cards. People will continue to believe with equal fervor whatever is
fashionable and acceptable at any given time in history, regardless whether or
not it is “reasonable.” What is reasonable today can be regarded as patent
nonsense tomorrow.
While
Harris is still in his early forties there is potential room for spiritual
growth (Wikipedia informs us that he “has studied with ‘several meditation masters’ in the Buddhist traditions”). This may not hold for Richard Dawkins who by the time of
publishing The God Delusion had
already reached the age of 65. He is a product of the British Empire, born in Kenya, of Anglican parents and received his Ph.D. from OxfordUniversity. He has published and lectured extensively, has been
accorded international recognition, was president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science in 2004, and retired from his post as Simonyi
Professor of the Public Understanding of Science in 2008. As such he is clearly
a person who deserves a careful hearing.
Dawkins
first book for the general public was The
Selfish Gene which was published in 1976 and all of his subsequent
publications built on that foundation. I bought the book but have not yet had a
chance to read it and will, therefore, postpone a discussion of its contents
for a later occasion. Wikipedia tells us that Dawkins has been referred to as
“Darwin’s bulldog” and judging from The
God Delusion this seems to be an appropriate term. In his opinion evolution
with natural selection can adequately account for all the phenomena human
beings encounter and it is positively harmful to believe otherwise. It is especially
heinous to indoctrinate children with unfounded religious beliefs. He denies
that his atheism is dogmatic and states that if adequate proof for the
existence of the supernatural could be brought to his attention he might change
his view.
For the present, however, he
espouses Laplace’s answer to Napoleon and uses Laplace’s probability theory to
demonstrate that the existence of any kind of God, is extremely improbable. The
book is full of valid scientific data and most of his points are well taken. It
deserves wide readership followed by unbiased thought and discussion. In my
review I have called it “An Atheist Manifesto,” because, in analogy to Marx and
Engels of 1848, Dawkins clearly laid out the reasons why he believes what he
does and what he sees as the purpose of his life. He intends to be a
“consciousness-raiser.” In pages 23-26 of the Preface he lists four aspects he
wanted to demonstrate 1) that “to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration and a
brave and splendid one.” 2) since all arguments for God’s existence “are
spectacularly weak” and other types of –theisms, deisms or agnosticism are
likewise unsustainable, the “power of natural selection” is a sufficient
explanation for our existence and well-being. 3) Religion has anthropologic
roots which are perpetuated by childhood indoctrination. A child cannot be a
Christian, Jew, Muslim etc. because the child is too young to have an opinion
on the matter. For parents to transmit their religious beliefs to their
children amounts to “child abuse.” 4) “Being
an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. On the contrary, it is something
to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly
always indicates a healthy independence of mind, and indeed, a healthy mind.”
These opinions are explained and justified in great detail over a span of 448
pages.
The
goal of an atheistic world is to be achieved by a “Brights
campaign [p.380].”But since this idea
occurs also in Dennett any discussion of it requires first a degree of familiarity
with Breaking the Spell and other
writings by Professor Dennett. He is currently 68 years old and his photo on
Wikipedia reminds one of one of the biblical patriarchs with the appropriate
luxurious beard. By profession he is a philosopher and currently the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of
Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive
Studies at TuftsUniversity. In 2004 the American Humanist
Association named him Humanist of the Year. He has published extensively and
the 35 papers and books, which are listed in the references of the book we are
discussing here, probably represent only a small fraction of his literary
output.
The “spell” to be broken is the
taboo which guards religious institutions and our current reluctance to discuss
religious dogmas with individuals who belong to a different religion. The book
is likewise very detailed and covers much the same ground as the others which
have been discussed here, although with one major difference. Dennett admits to
being a philosopher and as such he is “better at raising questions than
answering them.”
Let me now point to some aspects Dennett and I agree on which can be found
mainly in the last chapter section 5 entitled Patience and Politics. Although
he wants atheism to take root,
“We must be patient and have faith [the sentiment
Harris wanted to get rid of] in our open society, in knowledge, in continuing
pressure to make the world a better place for people to live, and we must
recognize that people need to see their lives as having meaning. The thirst for
a quest, a goal, is unquenchable, and if we don’t provide benign or at least
nonmalignant avenues, we will always face toxic religions.”
Christian Zionists who firmly believe in the “Rapture” (discussed in The
Unholy Alliance May 1, 2002) and want to hasten the coming of Armageddon by
joining Israeli zealots in their claim to the entire “Holy Land” and building
the third temple on the site ofthe
current Muslim shrines in Jerusalem are mentioned as an example for the toxic
group. The “End Times” movement is dangerous and an objective investigation of
the people who adhere to it, possibly in high places of influence, need to be
brought to public attention. Finally, “Ignorance is nothing shameful; imposing [emphasis in the original]
ignorance is shameful.”
Dennett
limits himself to explain his own point of view and gently urges readers to
reconsider theirs on basis of the evidence presented. He does want, however, to
make atheism not only acceptable but the dominant creed. This is to be achieved
by the Humpty Dumpty strategy (February 1, 2010). That is: you take a commonly
used word and give it a completely different meaning. Dawkins and Dennett point
out that this has been successfully done by the homosexual community which
immediately changed its image by calling themselves “gay.” The same can be
achieved by atheists if they no longer regard themselves as “godless” but as
“bright.” Dennett has officially endorsed the concept in an article for The New York Times on July 12, 2003
under the headline “The Bright Stuff,” which is an obvious allusion to our
space pioneers. The article is reprinted on http://www.the-brights.net
which also provides the views of that organization. The website informs us that
there are “brights,” those individuals whosubscribe to the ideas in private, and that there are “Brights” who are
registering themselves as (dues paying?) membersof the “movement.” Since the word “movement”
translates into German as “die Bewegung,”
which was used by the Nazis to describe their grab for power, I have a healthy
dislike for such “movements” which include the current “tea parties.” In
English the word is also used for one of our ”natural functions,” which actually
rid the body of what might be called “the wrong stuff.”
After having read these books I
found them nice in theory, although even the theory that Science and natural
evolution are the summum bonum is
open to doubt, but unacceptable in practice. Let me be quite concrete because
we live in the real world where other people matter. Martha and I moved to Utah
20 years ago because there are: beautiful mountains to ski on, a nice lake to
sail on, a university where I can continue to work and Martha could have her
horse to ride near-by. Religion did not enter into the picture at all, because
we belong to the religious moderates who follow a live and let live life-style.
Although Salt Lake City itself is becoming more cosmopolitan, the suburbs, and
especially the area we live, is at least eighty per cent Mormon. Nevertheless,
not all of us are. The first name of our neighbor across the street is
Mohammed, that of our neighbor to the south of us is Jim, but his neighbor’s is
Ahmed. Jim has a statue of St. Francis in his backyard which identifies him as
Catholic, while our Buddha gently smiles upon all creation. All of us get along
with each other and our private beliefs remain just that, private! Since the
Constitution has interpreted even abortion legal under “the right to privacy,”
I don’t think that I have a right to discuss my belief system with others
unless I am directly asked to do so or for instance on these pages, which
anyone is free to read or disregard.
What would happen if I were to take the mentioned books as a clarion call
to bring the gospel of atheism to all of our neighbors including the Mormons?
You know perfectly well the outcome and I don’thave to describe it. So the edifice breaks down on a very practical
level. Another aspect the authors have ignored is that atheism has been
official doctrine during the period called la
terreur of the French Revolution. Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins, I am
excepting Dennett because he is a gradualist,seem to be a reincarnation of Hébertists (followers of Jaques
Hébert)who adored the “Goddess of
Reason” and reportedly planted her statue on the High Altar of Notre Dame on
November 10, 1793. They also had done away with the Christian calendar;
introduced a new one starting with the French Revolution and had renamed all
the months of the year. It didn’t work. In the following year the Hébertists
became part of the estimated 50,000 who were guillotined during that era and a
few years later the eminently practical Napoleon made peace with the Church.
The atheistic experiment was then tried again by Lenin and his followers
starting in 1917. But that one began to crumble during WWII when Stalin saw
that his people wouldn’t fight for scientific materialism but would do so to
defend “Holy Mother Russia.” He had to enlist the help of what had remained of
theOrthodox Church and as they say “the
rest is history,” with the official recognition of the Church after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
We disregard history at our peril and I submit that militant atheism is going
to be just as great a danger for our world in this century as religious
fanaticism. This aspect as well as some other objections to the “Brights’
movement” will be discussed in the next installment.
June 1, year
RIGHT THOUGHT
In the April issue I had discussed “Right
View” as the basis for satisfactory human conduct and in the Buddhist
“Eightfold Noble Path” it is followed by “Right Thought.” The official text
lists as its aspects: the resolution not to cherish desires, not to be greedy,
not to be angry, and not to do any harmful deed. While these four “don’ts” are
useful universal guidelines, which can be followed by different people to
different extents, there are also some additional practical aspects of wrong
thinking which we encounter in our daily lives. These need to be exposed
because conduct depends on it and when it occurs in persons who are in
leadership positions immeasurable harm results.
One is the idea that if I think or feel in a given way so does,
or at least should, everybody else. I have linked thinking and feeling because
there is always, as has been mentioned in April, an emotional undercurrent to
our thinking which, although unperceived, is nevertheless real. “Wishful
thinking” is not an exception but more commonly the rule although it is usually
not acknowledged as such and hidden behind a variety of rationalizations. It can
pervade even what is regarded as objective science and expresses itself in
unwarranted generalizations.
Another faulty thought pattern is
the either-or, true-false, right-wrong, good-evil dichotomy, for which there is
no middle ground. It has, of course, its appropriate uses but when it becomes the
dominant thought form it is bound to lead to false conclusions and potential
disasters. The presidency of George W Bush is an obvious example of where it
can lead to. Although he is out of office now the thinking pattern persists in
some influential minds and its fallacy needs to be exposed. Although
unwarranted generalizations and either-or thinking are here treated separately
it will be apparent that they frequently occur together in regard to some
specific occurrences.
Let me now give some examples for
inappropriate generalizations which have created a great deal of harm. One is
from medicine and specifically psychiatry, where the uncritical acceptance of
Freud’s theories has not only set the field back by nearly one hundred years
but has also produced undesirable social consequences. While psychiatry is now
finding its way back to where the biologic origin of the major mental illnesses
is again recognized as fact, the social consequences will haunt us for years to
come. When I started my specialty training in this country the idea that aspects
of brain function should be explored as potential causes of mental illness was
regarded as anachronistic because psychoanalysis was thought to have
conclusively shown that aberrant behavior was a result of early childhood trauma,
usually sexual, which had been repressed but had led to the current symptoms of
the patient. The ubiquity of the Oedipus complex as the root of all, rather
than some, neurotic behavior was accepted as scientific fact not only by the
psychiatric profession but through movies and popular literature by the general
population. Because Freud had been
conflicted in regard to his early desires for his mother and had experienced
his father as a rival, he assumed that everybody else must have shared these
feelings. In a letter of October 1897 he wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fliess
about the progress in his self-analysis,
“Being entirely
honest with oneself is a good exercise. One single idea of general value [emphasis added] has occurred to me. I have found
love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case, and now believe
it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood. . . . If that is the case,
the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the rational objections to
the inexorable fate that the story presupposes, becomes intelligible. . . . Every member [emphasis added] of the
audience was once a budding Oedipus in phantasy, and this dream fulfillment
played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full
measure of repression which separates his infantile from his present state.”
The quote was taken from Schur’s book, Freud: Living and Dying. It is a very
valuable resource because Max Schur was Freud’s physician during his long
illness from 1928-1939 and the book includes not only personal data but also
previously unpublished letters which shed light on the genesis of Freud’s
thoughts.
Freud’s living arrangements during
infancy and early childhood were far from typical. Sigmund’s mother Amalie was not
the father’s first wife but there is no information whether she had died or
there had been a divorce. There had, however, been two boys from that marriage
who by the time of Sigmund’s birth in 1856 were already in young adulthood.
What is more important is that Jakob and Amalie Freud lived in a rented room of
a house where the lower floor contained the owner’s workshop, who was a
locksmith, while the upper floor had two rooms. One was for the owner and his
wife the other for the Freud family. Sigismund Schlomo (his birth name) spent
the first three years of his life in that house and the single room witnessed
first the birth and death of his brother Julius (1857-1858) and subsequently
Anna’s birth in 1858. The older sons lived with their families nearby. It is
obvious that young Sigismund had been exposed to “the facts of life” at an
unusually early age which may well have made an indelible impression. It is,
however, equally obvious that this type of living arrangement is uncommon,
especially in our society, and that ideas which result from these experiences
need not have general validity.
The above cited letter, without the
ellipses which have condensed the content without doing violence to the
context, is also reproduced in The
Origins of Psycho-Analysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887-1902
by Sigmund Freud, which is likewise most helpful in our understanding of
how Freud arrived at his theories. Just as in the case of Nietzsche one cannot
get a flavor of the person when one reads only his publications and critiques
of them. Letters by the individual are of critical importance because, although
to some extent also self-serving, they reveal the doubts and conflicts the
creative individual has to undergo and which do not appear in official
biographies.
Wilhelm Fliess (1858-1928) was a
well known ENT specialist in Berlin
who had, however, wider interests especially in the area of sexuality which
formed the nexus with Freud. Fliess believed that the nose was also a sexual
organ and he insisted that the bisexuality of human beings should be taken
greater cognizance of. In addition he had developed the idea of biologic
rhythms beyond the well known 28 day cycle. It made a brief reappearance in the
60s and 70s of the past century and one was able to determine, via a simple
calculator, auspicious days in one’s cycle for various endeavors. It can still
be found on the Internet where one is encouraged to try it for oneself. For the
years of 1887 to about the summer of 1900, when the last personal meeting
between them took place, Fliess had become the main sounding board for Freud’s
nascent psychoanalytic ideas.
The 1890’s were the critical period;
Freud’s neurological interests had ended with the publications on Aphasia as
well as Cerebral Palsy in 1891 and the collaboration with his friend and mentor
Josef Breuer on the Studies of Hysteria
began thereafter. The negative reaction of the Viennese psychiatric
establishment to his presentation of the data was mentioned in a letter to
Fliess (April 6, 1896) where Freud regarded his colleagues as asses (Eseln) because they did not recognize
that he had shown them “the solution of a thousands of
years old problem, a caput Nili. [the
origin of the Nile, had been a hotly debated subject
until firmly established by Stanley
in 1872].” The unkindest cut of all came from Krafft- Ebbing, the author of the
widely read Psychopathia Sexualis,
with the statement that, “it sounds like a scientific fairy tale.”
But Freud persevered and upon the
death of his father in October of 1896 he embarked on his self-analysis which
culminated in The Interpretation of
Dreams, published in 1899. In 1902 he received his professorship and how
this event came about is documented in a letter to Fliess which he wrote on
November 3 of that year. But this success also marked the end of the friendship
which had, as mentioned, begun to fray in the summer of 1900. At their last
meeting Fliess had expressed the opinion that temporary improvements in Freud’s
patients were not necessarily the result of therapy but could be related to
cyclical events which must also occur in the mind as well as the body.
Furthermore, he had commented that “the thought reader reads only his own
thoughts in those of others.” This was regarded by Freud as an unpardonable affront
and Freud began to collect his own disciple for whom he became the father
figure. Fliess was no longer needed.
Nevertheless, Fliess had been right
and the identification of one’s own thoughts with those of others is an
unfortunate common fact of life. I don’t deny that Freud had made major
contributions to the understanding and especially popularization of the
Unconscious, but he neither invented the concept nor could the theories be
validated by the treatment results of actual patients. As mentioned in War&Mayhem, Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
had already discussed unconscious motives underlying behavior and his ideas
were subsequently fleshed out by Nietzsche (1844-1900). But when I wrote the
mentioned book I had been unaware that there had existed in addition the
massive Philosophie des Unbewussten by
Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906) which had been published in two volumes in
1869. In his youth Freud had been a voracious reader of philosophical subjects
and he had also attended courses on philosophy at the university. He was, therefore,
quite familiar with the major philosophical trends of the time. Thus, the
Unconscious, which Freud took up as his life’s work was a hotly debated issue
at the time and the major limitation of Freud’s efforts was what may be called
its exclusive “sexualization.” For him libido was the one and only determinant,
although he played for some time with the thought of a death drive to balance
the concept.
This materialistic outlook on life
was also responsible for Freud’s atheism, which is another example of, “because
I do not experience what you say you do, you must be wrong.” One hundred years
ago Freud regarded religion as an “illusion” while Dawkins relegated it to the
realm of “delusion” in this century. The books by Hitchens, Harris as well as Dawkins,
which were discussed in last month’s installment, are a typical example for
modern times. They demonstrate not only the thought pattern as described above
but additionally the either-or thinking. Furthermore, there is frequently no
distinction made between religion as a personal
experience versus the exercise thereof as a member of a specific denomination
with its articles of faith. This muddled thinking makes good polemics but is
not helpful in creating understanding between people with different belief systems.
In addition it leads to intolerance of the views of others, as so clearly
expressed in the mentioned books.
The problem is compounded when one
does not distinguish between “experiential truths,” as known by all human
beings, and “revealed truth” which is the subject of religious discussions. The
latter is personal and belongs to what William James has discussed in The Variety of Religious Experiences.
Confirmed militant atheists do not want to see this distinction and harp on the
documented abuses of religion for secular purposes, as if these were the only aspects.
In addition, the idea of God is regarded as a relic of mankind’s past which
does not withstand the rigors of modern science. I have discussed the
limitations of science on other occasions and need, therefore, add only one
additional comment. Our science is based on vision and even when we listen via
SETI for messages from outer space, we watch wiggles on a computer screen. Furthermore,
scientific work demands measurement which likewise requires eyesight. The
notion that something cannot exist because it cannot be visualized and measured,
is unsustainable.
In Dennett’s book, Breaking the Spell, which I discussed
last month, I found an interesting sentence in regard to evolution of the brain
and the potential survival value of a “God center.” He quoted from Dawkins’ The God Delusion, “If neuroscientists
find a ‘god center’ in the brain, Darwinian scientists like me want to know why
the god center evolved.” Dennett continued, “… we don’t have an innate
chocolate-ice cream center in the brain, after all, or a nicotine center.”This statement immediately triggered a thought,
“Yes Professor Dennett, the search for a God “center” would indeed be just as
fruitless as that for a nicotine center, but we do have nicotine “receptors.” The
extent to which they are connected to pleasure centers in our brains determines
whether or not a given person will become addicted to nicotine or can readily
give up smoking after a few trials because it doesn’t have any positive effect,
as happens to be the case in my own situation.” This is again an example were unfounded
generalizations break down and our statements need to be nuanced in order to be
truthful. Could individuals with genuine mystical experiences have what may be
called “God receptors” in their brain, which enable them to receive meaningful
messages which are not perceived by others? Do all of us have them but in
various degrees of expressivity? There is no way of knowing, but to
categorically state that this could not be so is also unwarranted.
The anthropological explanation of
religion as expressed in the previously mentioned books neglected an additional
factor. When we look at the history of today’s major world religions we are
told about a founder who had some type of revelation. Moses was confronted by
the Lord in the burning bush, the symbolism of which seems not to be fully
appreciated. According to legend Prometheus brought fire to the human race
which he stole from Hephaestus smithy.But there may also be an additional celestial fire which illuminates and
invests but does not consume, as symbolized in the Bible story. Once an
individual has an experience of this sort it needs to be put into words. Rationalizations
occur thereafter and the individual may set out on a new path in life. For
Moses the task was to bring the Hebrews out from Egypt;
for the prophets including Jesus to bring the wayward Jews back to God, and for
Muhammad to bring the message of the One God to his polytheistic people. It is
at this stage where the original message can become garbled and human ambition
can dictate further events leading to the establishment of a given religion,
with all of its human faults.
If we define God as “an unseen
spiritual force that has a personal interest in us and can influence our lives
in a variety of ways” atheists seem to have two main objections. One is that
God is privy to all of our thoughts, which a number of people find intolerable.
This problem is, however, strictly attitudinal. Instead of being afraid of what
God will find in the hidden recesses of our minds one can also say, “Look at
this mess; now please help me to clean it up!” The other stumbling block is the
“supernatural” quality of God. In this instance we may again be prisoners of
our words and thoughts. Physicists tell us that any number of parallel
universes could exist in addition to ours. Might we, therefore, be better off
to consider what we now call supernatural as “paranatural?” Can there be a
parallel universe where its sentient beings are not dominated by the sense of
vision and therefore locked onto forms, but where energy, including psychic
energy, is the dominant principle? Might the thoughts of these beings sometimes
intrude into our world? These are questions to which there are no answers; but
why foreclose the issue?
While psychology and religion were
examples for the “because I feel a
given way, therefore everybody else does so,” the phenomenon is also observable
in politics where it has even graver consequences in the form of war. Last week
PBS aired a program on the destruction of the French fleet by the British Royal
Navy at Mers el Kebir. This is a little known episode of WWII but was at least
in part responsible for America’s
entry into the war. When Churchill became Prime Minister on June 10 1940, the day Hitler had
started the invasion of Holland, Belgium
and France, he
thought that the French and British armies could contain the German advance. But
this idea became untenable within a few days and Churchill saw himself confronted
with the specter of the German army looking at him from across at the channel.
He knew that if France
fell England
would not be able to win the war and American assistance became, therefore,
essential. This is the point where habitual thought patterns led to decisions
which had fateful outcomes. Assuming what the adversary will do on basis of
what you would do was one of the miscalculations which led to WWII in the first
place.
The war originated largely in the
minds of four people: Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. The rest of the
world’s population had become pawns in their hands to suffer the consequences
of their thoughts. I am bringing this up now because Americans still believe
that they have a voice in the foreign policy decisions which are being made for
them. The facts are, however, that not only has history been distorted by
political propaganda but what we receive today as “news” in the media is not
only slanted for political purposes but becomes the history of the future.
Contrary to current popular belief
Hitler harbored no animosity against the British and their empire because as
part of the Nordic race they would keep the rest of the world’s “inferior
races” in their place. His mind was that of a soldier who had served during WWI
in the infantry and his goal was the destruction of the Soviet Union
in order to gain Lebensraum (living
space) for the German people. He had no interest in a war with England,
let alone America,
and had made this quite clear in the 1935 naval agreement with Britain
where he voluntarily limited the size of his fleet. The Navy did not interest
him and the purpose of the Air Force was to support the troops on the ground
rather than engage in strategic bombing of the enemy’s cities. With other words
he wanted strictly a land war where superior forces and technology would
overcome the weaker enemy by surprise and with lightning speed. Because he was
thinking in terms of “land” and wanted nothing from the British he assumed that
they would understand and let him have his way. When they failed to follow his
line of thinking and instead declared war on September 3rd there was
profound disappointment in Berlin
because none of the Nazi bigwigs from Hitler on down had wanted this to happen.
The war in the West was truly forced on Hitler against his will.
Hitler’s main adversary in England
was Churchill who harbored a visceral disdain against him, which was heartily
reciprocated by Hitler, and precluded any type of agreement. But up until September 3rd 1939 he was
out of power and could only vent his feelings in the press and the House of
Commons. The essential point is that in contrast to the continent bound Hitler,
Churchill, who was born and raised on an island, loved the Navy (he had been
for some time First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI) and saw the world in
global terms. For him naval power was the way to win wars by blockading the
enemy, thereby depriving him of vital supplies, including food for the civilian
population. This would be aided by air power which would destroy the enemy’s
industrial capacity, terrorize the civilian population, and thereby induce
surrender without having to fight major land battles for which the British were
not equipped.
Since Churchill firmly believed in
strategic bombing he had urged from 1935 on for Britain
to build a bomber fleet and he used exaggerated numbers of German airplane
production to gain his goal. With other words: since he thought that this was the best way to win a war he assumed that
Hitler would think the same way. This was not the case and Germany
started to build long range bombers only after the Brits had done so. Naval
supremacy was likewise an essential aspect of Churchill’s thinking which had no
counterpart in Hitler’s. Yet, it was this idea which led Churchill to issue the
order for the Mers el Kebir attack.
With the impending fall of France,
Churchill had become increasingly concerned about what he regarded as an
imminent invasion danger, and he appealed to Roosevelt,
as another “navy man,” to send him fifty destroyers to help counteract the
threat. But Roosevelt had an election to win in November
and his campaign, just like that of Wilson
in 1916, stressed that he would keep America
out of a European war. When the destroyer request was denied Churchill was in
serious difficulty. France
had surrendered on June 22nd and Churchill’s main concern was the
fate of the French fleet. For him it was obvious that it would now come under
German command. Jointly with the Italian navy the British would be heavily
outgunned and the island could indeed be readily invaded. But this was not a fact;
it was only a reasonable assumption by a person who thought in terms of naval
power.
As mentioned above, Hitler was not
interested in navies, which was again demonstrated in the armistice agreement
of June 22nd.I have, so far,
been unable to get a copy of the original German and French texts and have had to
rely on Wikipedia’ s English version. The salient aspects of Article VIII are
reproduced below,
“The French war fleet is to collect in ports to be
designated more particularly, and under German and/or Italian control to
demobilize and lay up -— with the exception of those units released to the
French Government for protection of French interests in its colonial empire.
Clause 1 The peacetime stations of ships
should control the designation of ports. Clause 2 The
German Government solemnly declares to the French Government that it does not
intend to use the French War Fleet which is in harbors under German control for
its purposes in war, with the exception of units necessary for the purposes of
guarding the coast and sweeping mines. Clause 3 It
further solemnly and expressly declares that it does not intend to bring up any
demands respecting the French War Fleet at the conclusion of a peace. Clause 4 All warships outside France are to be
recalled to France with the exception of that portion of the French War Fleet
which shall be designated to represent French interests in the colonial
empire.”
In addition to these provisions, which clearly stated that the Germans only
wanted the French fleet to be neutralized for the duration of the war, Admiral
Darlan, Commander of the French Navy, had given his assurance to the British
that he had ordered the fleet to be scuttled in case Germany violated the agreement.
Nevertheless, Churchill issued on July 3 an ultimatum to the French commander
at Mers el Kebir,
“… His Majesty's Government have instructed me to
demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in
accordance with one of the following alternatives; (a) Sail with us and
continue the fight until victory against the Germans. (b) Sail with reduced
crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be
repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by
you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay
full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile. (c) Alternatively if you feel
bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans
unless they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to
some French port in the West Indies–Martinique– for instancewhere they can be demilitarised to our
satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe
until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated. If you refuse these fair
offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours [emphasis added].
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty's Government to
use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into
German hands.”
The French dithered, the Brits
opened fire, disabling the fleet apart from the battleship Strasbourg which managed to escape to Toulon. Twelve hundred and ninenty seven French sailors
died on that day and about 350 were wounded at the loss of one British aviator.
It was a massacre and deeply resented by the French. One may argue, of course, that
Churchill had no reason to trust the Germans or Darlan. Yet, when Germany
occupied the rest of France in November of 1942, in response to the Allied
invasion of North Africa, the fleet in Toulon was scuttled as Darlan had
promised. Militarily the affair was a disgrace for the Britsh but for Churchill
it was a political victory because he had shown to Roosevelt that regardless of
morality or cost of lives the British were determined to fight and that they
deserved American help.
With continued propaganda about Hitler’s non-existent threat to America, Roosevelt
joined Churchill immediately after his November re-election in the war effort,
although he had promised during the campaign, just as Wilson had done in 1916,
that he would keep America out of war. Although Pearl Harbor is officiallly
regarded as the cause of America’s entry into the war, the policies which led
to that disaster for the U.S. Pacific fleet had been laid down years earlier. Nevertheless,
history as told to the American people still continues to be influenced by propaganda.
Although the PBS version of the Mers el Kebir tragedy was essentially accurate
it did leave the impression that Germany had wanted the French fleet for its
war effort, which was not the case. Although Hitler had violated other
agreements when it was to his advantage, the navy was useless against his main
enemy, Stalin, and there was no reason to inflame the French from whom he only
wanted neutrality for the rest of the war.
This is not ancient history, as some might feel, because the thought
patterns which led to these catastrophes still pervade the minds of some who
are in today’s leadership positions both here and abroad. False generalizations
abound in our attitude to current international problems ranging from the
mislabeled “War on Terrorism,” through Iran’s perceived nuclear threat and
Israel’s assumed vulnerabilty, the unresolved war between North and South Korea,
to the entire rationale for American bases around the world. All of these
problems have their roots in assumptions held by a few people who enforce their
views through the media on the rest of the world. We the citizens of this “free
country” are relegated to the sidelines and, as mentioned on other occasions,
are only good for paying with money and some of us with blood for the
misjudgments by others. The only difference between us and our adversaries is
that we can voice our concerns openly. Nevertheless, as the history of how
America was dragged against its will into WWII has shown, expressions of
popular discontent have no decisive influence.
President Obama’s administration seems to be trying to bring a degree of
sanity to international relations in order to defuse the powder keg, which is
even larger and more dangerous than in 1914 and 1939. The Middle East can fully
explode at any moment. But Israel’s conduct must still not be officially questioned,
although President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have completely different
ideas about how the needs of both countries can best be met. Obama is nuanced
in his approach, while Netanyahu represents the camp of those whose false
thinking has been the point of this article. We can expect no help from
Congress because its members have the November election as their first priority.
Elections have become immensely expensive and money from pro-Israel sources is
bound to flow freely. Thus Right Thought, although enunciated 2500 years ago,
has still not reached the people who hold our fate in their hands. False ideas
have always been camouflaged behind grand slogans, such as Wilson’s “making the
world safe for democracy,” and the situation is no different today.
Unfortunately, even if President Obama tries to stem the tide against these
false arguments he may not have the power to do so. This is the sad conclusion
on this Memorial Day, which is full of patriotic slogans about the “Fallen” in
wars which could readily have been avoided.
July 1, 2010
WHITHER ZIONISM? UPDATED
Although I had already passed
the biblical age of three score and ten by several years in February of 2001,
when I wrote Whither Zionism?, I
still held the belief that good will and reason exist in our government and
that if its members were to be offered an easy to read version of the actual
history of Zionism they might reconsider their policy towards the fractious
Middle East. President Clinton’s efforts in December of 2000 towards an
Israeli-Palestinian accord had failed and Chairman Arafat had been made solely
responsible for the outcome. We were told that Arafat had not only rejected the
“unprecedented generous” territorial offers by then Prime Minister (currently
Minister of Defense) Ehud Barak, but also responded with increasing terrorism
to extract further concessions from the Israelis which they could not possibly
agree to. This was the official version of events Americans were treated to on a
daily basis at that time and it was obvious that renewed violence of massive
proportions was about to break out again in the “Holy Land.”
We were not
told that the Camp David II talks never had a chance to succeed. Clinton
was about to leave office on January 20 and any potential agreement could not
have been implemented within that time frame. Ehud Barak faced a tough
re-election campaign against Ariel Sharon and whatever promises he made would
be meaningless because the Knesset would not ratify major concessions. This
was, of course, obvious to anyone with a moderate degree of insight and Arafat
knew that the deck was stacked against him. He had not wanted to come to that
meeting. It was premature because Barak had not adhered to previous commitments
and unless those steps were taken first no “final status” agreement on the “Two
State Solution” was possible. But Arafat had no choice; when the president of
the United States
wants you to come it is impossible to refuse. Arafat did request, however, that
he would not be made the exclusive scapegoat if the talks were to fail. Clinton
promised, but he promptly broke the promise after the meeting and the version
of the events as described in the first paragraph has remained official
history. The documentation for these statements can be found in the March 1,
2007 article: Barak in Salt Lake City and March 1, 2009: Whither Zionism?
Revisited.
When the
Bush administration took office on January 20 I had hoped that our Middle East
policy might become that of an “honest broker” who takes the needs, rather than
desires, of both sides into consideration which might lead, over a couple of
years, to a resolution of this conflict, which can degenerate into a major war
at any time. While the Balkans, with their national aspirations, were the powder keg for the 20th century, the Middle
East serves that function in the 21st.This was the background which prompted me to
write the mentioned book and to send it to all members of the Bush Cabinet as
well as key members of the Senate and House. I thought that if I kept the
narration short they might read it on some of their plane travels and take the
contents to heart. As I noted in a postscript in 2004 I was sorely mistaken. As
an average citizen I had no idea what the Cheney-Bush administration (sequence
corresponds to the facts and is not a typographic error) was really all about.
The administration, including the Pentagon, was chock full of “supporters of
Israel” and any understanding with Arabs became completely out of the question
when Sharon took office and reoccupied the West Bank territories in reprisal
against the second Intifada which was dominated by suicide attacks against
Israeli civilians.
The 9/11 disaster was the final
nail in the coffin of any potential “peace process” because Sharon and Bush
succeeded in submerging the Palestinian national liberation struggle into the
“Global War on Terrorism.” The official line was that the Israelis had been the
first victims of this Muslim terror and they were now regarded as the experts
on how to deal with it. Israeli generals could walk unannounced into Pentagon
offices; Israeli “advisors” taught our troops how to conduct urban guerilla
warfare and how to extract confessions from unwilling captives. They had, after
all, decades of experience in the matter but the fact that this type of
experience had merely prolonged the conflict, rather than ending it, did not
deter anyone in Washington. The
mantra, which continues to this day, is that Israel
is a small country, surrounded by implacable enemies devoted to its demise and,
therefore, has special security needs. Furthermore, as the only democracy in
the Middle East it is our most reliable ally and its
conduct must not be questioned.
When the TwinTowers of the WTC collapsed, Osama
bin Laden was immediately named as the culprit and any possible link to
grievances against America’s
unconditional support of Israel’s
policies against the Palestinians was squashed as anti-Semitic rumor mongering.
The fact that the chief plotter of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) was the uncle
of Ramzi Yousef, who was responsible for the first WTC bombing in 1993, and had
provided him with money, was relegated to the relative obscurity of the
Internet. According to Wikipedia Yousef had sent a letter to The New York Times after the 1993 attack
which provided the motive: "We
declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This
action was done in response for the American political, economical, and
military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the
dictator countries in the region.” Since the bomb had failed to wreak
the expected havoc the group vowed to repeat the attempt with improved
means.
This aspect of past history,
especially the fact that KSM was also reported to have had ties to Pakistani
Intelligence Services (ISI), clearly did not fit with the plans of the
Cheney-Bush administration which required Osama bin Laden to be the sole
instigator. Since bin Laden and Al Qaeda were protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan
the country had to be taught a lesson.Yet, even nearly 10 years later we don’t know to what extent bin Laden
had personally been involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks
because there has never been an international inquiry into the events of that
day. The 9/11 Commission report simply accepted bin Laden’s guilt without
providing evidence which would hold up in a court of law. The Bush
administration’s response to 9/11 was most revealing. If one were certain that
bin Laden was the mastermind one would not have needed to invade the whole
country of Afghanistan
to capture about 50 or so people. That is what we have the CIA and our vaunted
special forces for who have no compunction over capturing and/or killing
undesirables wherever they may be found. The invasion of Afghanistan,
ostensibly in retaliation of 9/11, had ulterior motives as has been previously
discussed here (One Year later; October
1, 2002) .
While the fate of Afghan women, who
had to be liberated from their burqas, was a good propaganda tool, a more powerful
reason was the desire for a pipeline from the Caspian area through Afghanistan
and Pakistan to
the Arabian Sea, south of the Strait of
Hormuz. This would have bypassed Russia
as well as Iran
and thereby secured unhindered flow of oil to the Western world. Nine years
later there is still no pipeline, Burqa clad women can still be seen even in Kabul,
the only city we have some control over, the Taliban remain undefeated, Al
Qaeda has moved to Pakistan
and is training new recruits from all over the world including our own country.
And what has become of the arch-villain bin Laden who had to be brought back
dead or alive in 2001? The $25 million reward is still looking for someone to
collect it and it is difficult to believe that, if the U.S.
had really made a concerted effort, he would not have been found by now. David
Ray Griffin, in Osama Bin Laden: Dead or
Alive, advanced the thesis that the man is in all probability dead because
he was reported to have had serious kidney disease requiring dialysis already
in the summer of 2001. Politics demand, however, that he be kept alive, not
only in memory but in fact, to provide a rationale for the continued War on
Terrorism which is so vital for our some of our Republican perpetual warriors.
We are told that America’s
security would be in serious danger if the Taliban were to succeed. They would
create havoc in Afghanistan;
allow Al Qaeda again a safe haven in that country and that would be the end of
the U.S. as we
know it. Let us stay with Afghanistan
a moment longer because of last week’s events. The commanding general of the
Afghan war, McChrystal, and his staff had made a fundamental mistake earlier in
the year when they regarded a reporter as a drinking buddy with whom they could
“spill their guts.” Their unvarnished opinions about how the war was going,
which were essentially correct, appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, of all
places, and thoroughly embarrassed the general. Now it was up to President
Obama to deal with this problem, which came on top of the uncontrollable oil
spill in the Gulf for the handling of which he continues to get hammered in the
media on a daily basis.
General McChrystal had neglected
the unwritten 11th commandment which governs our society and states:
Thou shalt never speak the truth as you see it in public. This had gotten him
into hot water with the Obama administration last year but did succeed in
providing him with at least thirty of the forty thousand troops he had asked
for in order to order to bring that war to a successful conclusion. The
Petraeus counterinsurgency “surge,” on the Iraq model, which I must admit I had
not believe in at the time, was to be the key to victory and the capture of the
town of Marjah earlier in the year was to have been the prelude to rooting out
the Taliban in Kandahar during the summer. Well, the Taliban don’t play by our
rules; they do what I said in December 2001 (War on Terrorism) they would. They
temporarily melt into the civilian population and the mountains from whence
they emerge intermittently to harass and frighten not only NATO troops but more
importantly all those of their fellow citizens who show an inclination to side
with the foreigners in their country.
The fact that the Karzai government
has not succeeded in gaining the respect of the people and allows lawlessness
as well as rampant corruption to exist undermines, of course, the basic premise
of counterinsurgency. When the government is ineffective, people will accept
any kind of order even if it is tyrannical. This has been the lesson of history
and ignoring it will not help matters. Since the Marjah problem has not yet
been satisfactorily solved the Kandahar
operation was postponed to the fall while the rest of the additional 30,000
troops are on their way. Now we have to face another fact of life. I don’t
think that any levelheaded person in the administration, including Obama and
the Pentagon, believes that the Afghan war can really be won. The real problem
for the administration is how to get out without jeopardizing the 2012 presidential
election. The goal now seems to be to build and train an Afghan army. But the
Afghans have known since time immemorial how to fight people they don’t like
and hardly need any training for that. The important point is that they fight
when they want to, whom they want, and no foreigner has ever convinced them to
be subservient to a regime that they dislike; native or foreign.
Obama is regularly chastised by the
Republicans as having no military experience and is now selling out the
national security of our country simply to please foreigners. Under these
circumstances the president had to show the “leadership” which his critics said
he lacked. McChrystal was unceremoniously fired, General Petraeus was persuaded
to take that thankless job, which he accepted, probably against his better
judgment, and the whole country including FOX news applauded. Now comes the
irony of the whole situation in form of a comment Petraeus had made earlier
this year in a Pentagon briefing and which was reported by CNN in March to the
effect that “America’s
relationship with Israel
is important but not as important as American lives.” This led to headlines
such as “Israel’s
intransigence is endangering American lives.” While we are paying lip service
to the phrase that the world has become vastly interconnected the influential
Jewish leadership in our country vehemently denies any linkage between America’s
unquestioning support of any and all of Israel’s
policies with the success or failure of our War on Terrorism.
When Obama took office there was
again, briefly, the hope that America
might now at last assume the honest broker role which the previous
administrations had failed to carry out. He gave conciliatory speeches trying
to please both sides, which also called for a stop of new Jewish settlements in
Palestinian areas. It is obvious that any resolution of the conflict requires
this as the first step. Even President Bush had asked for it from Prime
Minister Sharon but when this was not forthcoming he quietly accepted “realities
on the ground.” The same fate now befell Obama when he tried earlier in the
year to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu that the settlements are a major
obstacle to peace efforts and that before anything else can be achieved at
least new settlements must no longer be allowed. But just like in previous
years the plea fell on deaf ears and was ignored. Yet, unless this condition is
met even the “proximity talks,” which Senator Mitchell has valiantly been
trying to get going for the past year, are an exercise in futility.
To understand the depth of the
quandary we have to recognize that we are dealing with an identity problem
which especially the Ashkenazi segment of the Jewish people has been grappling
with since the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th
century when they emerged from the shtetl culture into the ferment of budding
European “enlightenment” and nationalism. As mentioned in Whither Zionism?the modern impetus for
Jews to regard themselves as a nation, rather than a religious-cultural ethnic
community, did not originally come from a supposed ancient Jewish yearning for Jerusalem,
as expressed in Psalm 135. Only verses 5 and 6, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem
above my chief joy,” tend to be quoted to signify the eternal yearning of Jews
for the lost homeland. The ending of this psalm, verses 8 and 9, “O daughter of
Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be, that rewardeth
thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh
and dashes thy little ones against the stones,” are not in the repertory of
Christian, at least Catholic, worship services. It is obvious that the psalmist
got a little bit carried away by his rhetoric because only a minority of the
exiles felt that way. A larger number was quite content to remain in the
cosmopolitan climate “by the rivers of Babylon”
where they had grown roots and felt no need to move back to the intellectual
isolation and harsh physical conditions of Judea.
Paradoxically the modern impetus to
nationhood had come from the Christian community, especially that segment which
takes the Bible literally as the inerrant Word of God, and was intent on hastening
Jesus’ second coming. In their view this event is predicated upon the Jews’
returning to the ancient homeland and the rebuilding of the temple. Initially
Jews were not intrigued with this idea since it is not particular good news for
them. In case this were to happen as envisioned by these believers the Jews
would be confronted with the stark choice: convert or be killed.
Continental European nationalism
started with the Napoleonic Wars. In the name of “La Grande Nation” Napoleon,
or “Bonie” as the British sailors affectionately referred to him, smashed the
moribund multiethnic Holy Roman Empire and created a
variety of mini-States as well as duchies. But the idea took hold. If the
French could be a nation, why should this not apply to Germans, Italians,
Spaniards and Jews?Napoleon was aware
of this problem and, therefore asked the Jewish elders: are you a nation or a
religion? They answered with: we are a religious group and good Frenchmen.
Although it is clear that this was the only permissible answer they could have
given, I am inclined to believe that they were sincere. The reason for this
opinion is that throughout the 19th and even the early part of the
20th century those Jews who were socially and professionally
integrated into their respective countries had no wish to jeopardize their hard
won positions of influence in them. As Vienna’s
Chief Rabbi Moritz Guedemann told Herzl who tried to convert him to the Zionist
cause:
“In the Talmud it
is written: ‘Vengeance is great; since the word ‘vengeance’ appears between two
names of God, ‘A god of vengeance is God.’ You do not seem to be aware of this
at all. I am to go away from here and clear the way for our enemies, who
constantly abuse and curse the name of Jew and all those who bear it, in order
to grow vegetables in Palestine.
No, ten thousand horses could not drag me away from here, until I have the
satisfaction of seeing the downfall of our enemies.”
This is not some anti-Semitic invention but was reported in Fraenkel’s
book, The Jews of Austria.
The influential Jews of Herzl’s
days, regardless of what country they lived in, were nearly unanimously opposed
to the idea of a “Judenstaat” and I
have excerpted portions of Guedemann’s Nationaljudenthum
in War&Mayhem, as well as Whither Zionism? Since the latter can be
downloaded cost-free from this website I shall limit myself here only to the
first sentences and the last,
“The word
Nationaljudenthum and the movement which is associated with it suffer from an
inherent inner contradiction. Judaism on account of its historic mission, does
not have the task to support let alone worship the addiction to or hankering
after nationalism, but much rather to work towards the removal of the
individualism of all nations and the unification of all human beings in one
family. If Judaism would awaken in all its members the desire to become once
again a nation, it would commit suicide.”
As a rabbi Guedemann ended his pamphlet with a quote of
Zechariah 14:9, “And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day
there shall be one LORD, and his name is one.” While this quote was for public
consumption his private view, expressed to Herzl as noted above, was probably
more in line with verse 14:12 of Zachariah, “And this shall be the plague
wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against
Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and
their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume
away in their mouth.”
This was written in 1897 when the word
Zionism, coined by Nathan Birnbaum a few years earlier, was not yet en vogue.
Herzl was undeterred, and pointed to the anti-Semitism of Europe
as well as the dismal living conditions of the Jews in Poland
and Russia
which required redress. He felt that the Jewish race (Rasse) needed to be improved but
this could only be achieved when the Jews had a country of their own and under
those circumstances the Maccabees would rise again. Unfortunately he had not read
the real history of the Maccabees because otherwise he would have known that
his dream, even if it came to fruition, would end in a nightmare in the short
span of about a hundred years. This is the tragedy of our era. We profess to
have learned the lessons of history when in fact we live by myths which are
regarded as facts and literally defended to the death. The best example is of
course the Bible. It is mistakenly read as factual history rather than as a
collection of documents from various periods with the purpose of edifying the
populace so that it might lead to improved conduct. While the New Testament,
apart from the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), is relatively benign because it
orders Christians to accept secular authority and promises a posthumous reward,
this is not the case for the Old Testament, which has decided chauvinistic
features. But this is the document upon which Israeli recruits take their oath
of duty in front of the Western Wall of the TempleMount, in spite of the fact that a
great many of them no longer believe in the God of the Bible.
The Zionist enterprise was entirely
secular and operated originally on Marxist principles where religion was
tolerated as a necessary evil one had to make compromises with. Jews were a
nation which required Lebensraum and
religion was optional. I have deliberately used the German word because there
are some eerie parallels to German policies between 1933 and 1937 in regard to
how to deal with undesired minorities. People don’t want to be reminded that
Zionist policies and those of the Nazis coincided. Hitler wanted to be rid of
Jews and Ben Gurion was only too happy to accept them because he needed numbers
to justify the creation of the State. Unfortunately for Ben Gurion and his
successors most Jews were of the Guedemann persuasion and preferred to move to
one of the Western countries when life in Germany
had become intolerable. That Hitler would catch up with some of them in 1940
could not have been foreseen. The same reluctance to move to Israel
was observed when the Soviet Union was forced to open
its borders for Jewish emigration. Although a substantial number did arrive in Israel
many relocated, however, to one of the Western democracies, especially the U.S.
The majority of the American Jewish
power elite still seesIsrael
in the idealistic terms of its founders: a secular democracy with equal rights
for all, which provides a model for stability in the region that deserves
emulation by its neighbors rather than their enmity. Furthermore, the hostility
which actually exists is totally unfounded and purely grounded on ill-will and
anti-Semitism. These groups, which still influence America’s
policy toward Israel,
have not come to grips with the changes the country has undergone in the past
forty years as a result of the victorious 1967 war. While American policy
makers have come during the past decade to the reluctant conclusion that the
“two state solution” is the only viable one, facts on the ground have shifted
to an extent that make it quite improbable. It is obvious that the Palestinians
do not want to indefinitely live under military occupation and hanker after
their own independent state. But it is equally obvious that Israelis do not
want to grant them this privilege, unless conditions are met which are
incompatible with genuine sovereignty. They suffer from what is called the
“burned child syndrome” and regard themselves surrounded by implacable enemies.
Under these circumstances, the prevalent idea is that only brute force, which
strikes fear in the heart of the adversary, will provide security. While
Netanyahu may verbally agree to peace talks
he neither has the interest nor the ability to make the concessions which would
result in a peace accord.
We know that our own government is
currently stalled because Republicans and Democrats are at each other throats
in order to win the November midterm elections, a goal which overrides
everything else. The situation is even worse in Israel.
In the aftermath of the 1967 war the religious parties have gained influence to
an extent that they have a virtual veto over the government. They are the
genuine successors of the Maccabees who feel that the land was given to them by
God and no man has the right to give up even a portion of it. To secular
nationalism religious fervor has been added which bodes ill for the future. The
average Israeli, just as the average American, deplores the situation but is
powerless to effect any change because emotions run high and the country is
seriously politically fractured.
This is actually a replay of 2nd
century BC. All we have to do is to change the former name of Hellenists to
secularists while the “pious” or “faithful” represent the current
ultra-orthodox segment. We know that the Maccabean era ended in civil war between
two contenders for the High Priesthood, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. They then
appealed to the Romans for help, which they did and in due time even gave them
a puppet king, Herod the Great. But when the country exploded again after his
death the religious authorities asked that Rome
take over the government. The Romans complied but since some of the procurators
were rapacious and not attuned to local sentiments sporadic rebellions
persisted, which eventually led to all out war in 67 AD. The destruction of the
temple, which had been turned into a military fortress, occurred three years
later. As if this totally avoidable tragedy had not been enough, Jewish
nationalists rebelled again in 132 and after another fruitless three year
struggle the country was so devastated that nobody wanted to live there any
more. It is a myth that the Jews were exiled by the Romans and were never
allowed to return. The historical truth is that there was no incentive to
return. But this little piece of historical unpleasantness goes counter to the
heroic myth of a downtrodden always victimized people, who have now at long
last found freedom which they will defend to their dying breath. The outcome of
this type of thinking is likely to be the same as nearly 2000 years ago but
unfortunately on an infinitely larger scale.
Some of us, Jew and Gentile alike,
who see this coming, can write books and articles as warnings but the influence
is likely to be meager. America
is the only country which can prevent this looming disaster but her citizens by
and large don’t read much any more and don’t want to be bothered by topics
which they regard as peripheral to their lives. But by the time these events
reach center stage it will be too late. Since books and articles are no longer
the prime medium, the only effective way would be through the cinema and
especially Television. What would be needed to dispel the myths, which
propagandists on either side live by, would be genuine historical dramas that
show how, for instance, the Maccabean wars had come about, what really
transpired during them, why the Romans ruled the country and why the temple was
destroyed. Josephus has already written the script,
which can be corrected from Roman sources for some inaccuracies. If this were
shown in living color in all of its blood and gore, especially the final siege
of Jerusalem, some people might
come to their senses. TV is the most powerful medium but unfortunately its
content currently is so mediocre and biased that it is hardly worth watching
but if it were properly used it might yet be able to stave off disasters.
The problem of Jewish
self-identification: nation, people, race (DNA), religion, or ethnicity is
currently hotly debated in Jewish circles with considerable differences in
opinions. The ground is beginning to shift and thoughtful members of the Jewish
people are recognizing that to close ones eyes to the new realities which are
emerging is no longer advisable. Zionism as it has been practiced in the past
is coming under increasingly critical review and some Israeli citizens are
beginning to speak of the post-Zionist era. These are important developments
for the US and
they will be explored on basis of recent books and articles in the next
installment.
August 1, 2010
DER JUDENSTAAT
In last
month’s installment I mentioned that Jewish self-identification is a problem
under hot debate in Israel.
It goes to the fundamental issue: who and what is a Jew? This leads in turn to
the question what is Herzl’s Judenstaat
supposed to be?The word comes from
his programmatic pamphlet which he published in 1896 and laid out the means to
achieve statehood for Jews. Unfortunately Judenstaat,
like so many other words, is ambiguous when an attempt is made to translate it
from the original German into a different language and this has bedeviled the
state of Israel
since its recognition by the UN in 1947. Herzl’s vision was a secular
democratic state where Jews are the majority but with a constitution which
guarantees the minorities within its borders equal rights as full-fledged
citizens of the state. This is one interpretation of Judenstaat. The other is a state of Jews, by Jews, for Jews and
non-Jews are, in case they should decide to remain, second-class citizens with
limited rights and privileges. It is the latter vision which the founders of
the state subscribed to. Only the methods differed between the radical ideas of
expulsion of minorities, as proclaimed by Jabotinsky (Is Zionism Moral? May 10, 2007), and the more gradual encroachment on the civil rights of native
non-Jewish Palestinians, as adopted by the Labor party under Ben-Gurion and his
successors. The Likud party which is currently in charge of Israel’s
government is psychologically the successor of the Jabotinsky nationalistic program
to which has been added biblical fervor with the emergence of religious parties
which can make or break any government coalition.
One can now
raise a legitimate question: why should Americans care what type of government
is in charge of the state? The dominant view in our country is: Israel
is a democracy, our friend, and most trusted ally whose security is threatened
by hostile neighbors and, therefore, deserves our unstinting support regardless
of its internal policies. Anyone who raises a question in regard to any aspect
of this statement runs the risk of being labeled an anti-Semite or self-hating
Jew as the case may be. This would, of course be irrelevant if it were not the
view which governs our foreign policy and has led us into unwinnable wars
against the Arab and Muslim world. One may wonder whether I am exaggerating but
this is why this article was written. It provides some documentation, mainly from
Jewish sources, why American foreign policy cannot succeed in the Middle
East at this time, regardless whether Republicans or Democrats
control the White House.
When
President Obama reacted with annoyance to Israel’s
defiance in regard to the settlement freeze, Republican fury descended upon
him. Ex-governor Sarah Palin, who is already running for the presidency in the
2012 elections, proclaimed that Obama was “selling out our ally Israel”
and was treating Prime Minister Netanyahu “shabbily.” Instead of standing up
for its ally, Obama was kowtowing to Russia
and China. “So
while President Obama is getting pushed around by the likes of Russia
and China, our
allies are left to wonder about the value of an alliance with our country any
more. They’re asking what is it worth.”
But Palin’s newfound love for
allies was actually an echo of a more serious discussion between Roger Cohen (former
foreign editor and columnist for the New
York Times), Rashid Khalidi (professor of Arab studies at New York
University), Stuart Eizenstat (former US ambassador to the EU and
undersecretary of state) and Itamar Rabinovich (former Israeli ambassador to
the US and professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University). The
topic for the discussion, moderated by John Donvan of
ABC News, held at New YorkUniversity
and reported by Newsweek in February
of this year was: Should the U.S.
step back from its special relationship with Israel?
Roger Cohen and Rashid Khalidi argued in favor while Eizenstat and Rabinovich opposed
the idea. Here are some excerpts,
“Cohen: In life,
when we fail, we call it stupidity to burrow deeper into failure. Measured by
that standard, American policy toward Israel
has failed. We are no closer to peace. Israelis and Palestinians are farther
apart than ever. What makesAmerica’s
relationship with Israel
special is its uncritical nature, even when U.S.
interests are being hurt, and also the incredible largesse that the United
States shows toward Israel
– over the past decade, almost $60. . . . ‘Two states for two peoples’ is the
declared objective [but] the U.S. is bankrolling the very Israeli policies that
are dashing these hopes by making two states almost unimaginable. . . . America’s
perceived complicity in Israeli violence carries a heavy price. It is a potent
terrorist recruitment tool. . . . America
should be ready to speak openly and critically of Israeli mistakes when needed.
. . .
Eizenstat: For the
United States to stand back from its special relationship would betray the very
principles of morality upon which U.S.
foreign policy is based. It would mean abandoning the only democratic reliable
ally in the region. What message would this send to other allies? America
has to stand behind its allies, or it will not have many left anywhere. . . .
Khalidi: Let me
list a couple of problems that result from this special relationship. One is an
almost total deafness to public opinion in Palestine
and in the Arab world. Everybody knows there is a big fat U.S.
thumb on the scales when the U.S.
acts as mediator. . . .
Rabinovich: What
does special relationship mean? It does not mean the tail is wagging the dog. .
. . [Our] very close military and strategic alliance is defined, among other
things, by the fact that Israel
does not want American troops in Israel.
Not having to station troops in that part of the Middle East
because Israel
is there is a huge advantage to the United
States. Remember, when Al Qaeda attacked the
world TradeCenter,
the first reason they cited for attacking the U.S.
[was] that the U.S.
had troops on sacred Muslim soil.
Eizenstat: . . . Israel
would be completely alone. I can tell you, it would send a chill down the spine
of every ally we have in Europe and around the world if
the relationship were abandoned. Because they would say, we will be next.
Cohen: Nobody is
arguing that Israel
should cease being an ally. We are just saying that when President Obama says
he wants settlements to stop, and settlements continue, and Prime Minister
[Benjamin] Netanyahu declares that some settlements are Israel’s
for all eternity, there should be consequences. . . . Our policies up to now
have failed. But any adjustment in U.S.
policy toward Israel
is extremely difficult. There is a state called Florida
with a large Jewish community, a calculation not lost on America’s
leadership. President Obama, I understand has been told by some Jewish
congressmen, if you want your health bill, step back on Israel.
Eizenstat:
American policy toward Israel
is supported by a bipartisan majority because the American public recognizes
that Israel and
the United States
share common interests and common values. And those are always counterbalanced
by the oil interests, [and] major business interests.”
This document is remarkable on
several counts. First of all, the fact that this discussion was not only held
but reported in a mainstream weekly journal is important in itself because it
is part of what I have called the “shifting ground” in last month’s
installment. Even two years ago one might have found it on the Internet but not
in Newsweek.
The Eizenstat-Rabinovich defense of
the status quo remains official policy although its reasoning is faulty. If America
were to become an impartial arbiter of the conflict our allies would not be
dismayed, as we are being told, but in all likelihood they would say, “What
took you so long?” The argument in regard to Israel
not wanting U.S.
troops on its soil is also specious. The real reason is not the desire to save
us time, money and effort but having our troops in the occupied territories
would reveal the ugly side of the occupation for all to see. Photos would flood
to relatives at home, reporters would film the “facts on the ground” and
instead of one having to rely on the Internet for the facts, reality would
sweep across our TV screens into our living rooms. This is the last thing any
Israeli government would want and I am reasonably sure that Ambassador
Rabinovich is aware of this eventuality. It is true that bin Laden’s first goal
was to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia, but the real mastermind of
9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, freely admitted
after the first WTC bombing in 1993, that it was an act of revenge for U.S.
collusion with Israel in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. They
had also vowed to do a better job next time. This is not a secret but common
knowledge as has again been documented in last month’s installment. It is
unlikely that Ambassador Rabinovich was not aware of this information but since
its acknowledgement would have strengthened Mr. Cohen’s and Professor Khalidi’s
case, it must not be admitted to.
Two more aspects need to be
discussed: “morality,” as well as “common interests and common values.” The
human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories
as well as in Israel
proper and especially Jerusalem do
not correspond to what the civilized world regards as moral conduct. This is
recognized by the peace movement and numerous volunteer groups in Israel
who protest against the arbitrary behavior of the government. These are the
Jewish people who want our help and we let them down because of our electoral
politics. The “common interests” fall apart when the Israeli government engages
in what is regarded by the world community as unacceptable behavior and this
fact cannot be simply wished away by labeling everyone who voices disagreement as
anti-Semitic. Ambassador Eizenstat was correct when he said that if the U.S.
withdrew its support “Israel
would be completely alone.” But under those circumstances it would behoove
clear thinking people to wonder why this would be the case and as mentioned
above the excuse of world-wide anti-Semitism is not a convincing argument.
Self-inspection, as a segment of the Israeli public is engaged in, would be
called for but as yet finds no resonance here.
Before discussing “common values,” which
are indeed the most pervasive propaganda tool, it needs to be mentioned that
the audience was polled before as well as after the discussion in regard to
their views. In the first poll 33 percent favored a pullback in American relations
with Israel, 45
percent were opposed and 25 percent undecided. After the debate 49 percent
favored a pullback, 47 percent were opposed, with 4 percent undecided. It is
obvious that the discussion did sway some minds; a sharper polarization had
taken place and the audience was essentially split in the middle. Why should
this be the case? One of the most likely reasons is that the American Christian
community is largely dominated by various Protestant denominations which,
especially in the South, prefer the Old Testament and its vengeance exerting
Yahweh over the forgiving Jesus. Although the “Evangelicals” profess Christ
with their lips, their hearts are largely with Moses and the chosen people. A
good example is the ex-governor of Arkansas
and former as well as possible future contender for the presidency: Mike
Huckabee.
In June of this year Ariel Levy
published an article in The New Yorker
entitled, “Prodigal Son. Is the wayward Republican Mike Huckabee now his
party’s best hope?” In it Levy describes how Huckabee sees himself and the
views he expressed while leading a group of one hundred and sixty evangelicals
on a tour of Christian holy sites in Israel, which by the way, was his
fourteenth trip. Below are some of the most relevant excerpts.
‘“I worship a Jew!
I have a lot of Jewish friends, and they’re kind of like, ‘You evangelicals
love Israel
more than we do.’ ‘I’m like, Do you not get it? If
there weren’t a Jewish faith, there wouldn’t be a Christian faith.’ . . . In recent weeks Huckabee has defended the
Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza,
in which nine people were killed. He does not support a two-state solution, or
at least, as he told numerous reporters in the course of the trip ‘not on the
same piece of real estate’– which is to say he thinks that coming up with a
place for Palestinians ought to be an Arab problem. In fact, Huckabee does not
believe that Palestinian is a legitimate nationality. ‘I have to be careful
saying this, people get really upset –there’s
really no such thing as a Palestinian,’ Huckabee told a rabbi in Wellesley,
Massachusetts, at a kosher breakfast on the campaign trail in 2008. ‘That’s
been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.’
In a speech to the Knesset on our trip, Huckabee said, ‘I promise you, you do
not have a better friend on earth than Christians around the world, who know
where we have come from and know whom we must remain allies and friends with.’
The members of his tour group who were seated in the audience applauded vigorously,
several rose to their feet and shouted, ‘Amen!’
Huckabee was being
paid to lead the tour, and, like everything he does now, the trip provided
fodder for his television show. But he was also building credibility with
Zionist Christians and right-wing American Jews, which will be valuable should
he decide to run for president again. ‘There’s a lot of Jewish money on the
right that’s got to go some-place, especially if Obama continues to be
perceived as unfriendly to Israel,’ Zev Chafets, an American journalist and
Menachem Begin’s former communication’s director, told me. . . .”
The mentioned television show has a
prime time slot on FOX News (Saturdays, 6 pm) and thereby reaches a wide
audience, especially since the other cable networks have largely written off this
precious time slot and do not present national or international news. To his
credit one must admit that Huckabee is not abrasive, as is common with pundits
on that network, and he presents himself instead as a guitar playing folksy man
of the people; an image which is lapped up by his adoring audience. Yet, as the
sentences above prove his views are malignant and misinformed. For instance, he
is unaware that during the British mandate period from 1922 to 1947 the people
who lived in the country were officially called Palestinians regardless of
religion or ethnicity. Jews emigrated from Europe to “Palestine”
and they had no problem referring to themselves as Palestinian nationals. Jews
created the Palestine Post, the
Palestine Brewery, the Palestine Brigadesand their
musicians toured the world as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. It was established
in 1936 and only after Israeli statehood was it renamed to Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra. Is it really too much to ask of a contender for the Presidency of
the U.S. to
know the rudiments of the history of a country that has such a profound and
unfortunately divisive influence on the rest of the world?
The ignorance of the average
American citizen (Huckabee, as well as Palin likewise fall into this group) in
regard to history is appalling and since people no longer read to any
appreciable extent, but prefer to get theirinformation from television, American public opinion can readily be
molded by “special interests.” Everything is for sale including Congress and
the Presidency. Under these circumstances is it any wonder that Obama converted
to the Israeli point of view. Earlier last month he provided Prime Minister
Netanyahu with a red carpet treatment which was distinctly different from what
he received in March. “What rift?” was the headline of an article in The Salt
Lake Tribune on July 7 and added “President says U.S.
bond with Israel
is ‘unbreakable.’” The article also stated,
“Netanyahu emerged
with a pile of promises from Obama that the U.S.
is both committed to Israel’s
security and a believer that the prime minister wants peace with Palestinians. For
his part, Netanyahu showed the urgency that Obama wants in boosting peace efforts,
though he didn’t say in public just what he might have planned.
The last time Netanyahu visited in
March, amid a moment of deep tension over Israeli settlements in disputed
territory, reporters were not even invited to see the leaders shake hands. This
time, the media got to see them talking, smiling – even Obama escorting
Netanyahu off to his waiting limo.”
The accompanying picture showed
them walking side by side. This was a modest improvement over a picture from
the Bush years where Sharon, the “man of peace,” was walking several steps
ahead of a rather crestfallen George W. What has happened in these few months? The Christian Science Monitor of June 21
provided the answer. In “Decoding Netanyahu” Ilene R. Prusher wrote,
“But the ‘tough
love’ – a term many veteran Middle East policymakers in Washington have come to
use as a catchphrase for taking a firmer hand toward Israeli ambivalence and
foot-dragging – got perhaps too rough and backfired. Members of Congress, and
pillars of the American-Jewish community such as Elie Wiesel, began to chastise
the administration for taking too harsh an approach and alienating Israel.
. . .
Then, in mid-May,
Mr. Obama told members of Congress that he’d made some missteps entering the Middle
East minefield and, he joked, might have lost a few fingers.”
Ambassador
Rabinovich in the above mentioned discussion at New
YorkUniversity
had denied that “the tail wags the dog,” but here is the evidence to the
contrary. The tail does wag the dog and the implications for our country and
the world are enormous. Obama is hamstrung. Netanyahu can continue to build
settlements wherever he pleases and evict Palestinians from their ancient homes
in East Jerusalem. Of course, Netanyahu wants peace with
the Palestinians and is willing to talk to their leadership but on his terms as
the superior, who holds all the cards, to the inferior who has to comply. The
Palestinians responded, according to a small blurb in the Tribune, that there was, “No point in talks with Israel.”
The fine print stated the reason, “Mahmoud Abbas sounded determined not to
return to the table unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commits to an
internationally mandated settlement freeze and agrees to pick up talks where
they left off in December 2008.” But Abu Mazen, as he is referred to by his
friends, has apparently not yet realized that Obama has capitulated and last
week there was a short article in the paper headlined, “U.S.
warns Abbas on talks.” The article read in toto,
“A senior U.S.
envoy warned the Palestinian president that he must move quickly to direct
talks with Israel
if he wants President Barack Obama’s help in setting up a Palestinian state,
according to an internal Palestinian document obtained by the Associated Press
on Monday. The 36-page memo sent to senior Palestinian officials, advised Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas to resist growing U.S.
pressure, warning that rescinding conditions for face-to-face negotiations with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be ‘political suicide.’”
Thus we are witnessing a replay of
the events that had led up to the Camp David II debacle, which has been
discussed in extenso in previous installments, and is bound to lead to the same
result – failure and more bloodshed. Abbas cannot enforce his views on Hamas
and Netanyahu cannot condone a viable Palestinian state, even if he wanted to,
because his coalition government with ultra-orthodox and settlers parties would
collapse. A two-state peace agreement is at this time out of the question,
regardless how much Obama would want it to justify his premature Nobel peace
prize. The Knesset would never ratify it and the lost years of the Bush
administration’s failure in regard to the Middle East
cannot be made up any more.
In the
conclusion of the previous installment I mentioned that “The ground is beginning
to shift and thoughtful members of the Jewish people are recognizing that to
close ones eyes to the new realities which are emerging is no longer advisable.”
In Israel the
divisions between right and left have hardened. Even its democratic bulwark,
the Israeli Defense Force has become politicized by an increasingly religious
outlook and some units have refused to evict Jewish settlers from illegal
outposts. The extent of the problem was discussed by Eyal Press in The New York Review of Books under the
title, “Israel’s Holy Warriors.” The fact that an article like this and two others,
which will now be mentioned, are examples of the beginning concern Jewish
authors feel about the situation, although it has not yet reached the
leadership in our country. Press quoted “a military Torah college head,”
stating, “that in a few years, religious soldiers will make up the majority of
brigade commanders in all areas.” The
significance lies in the fact that strict Torah believers regard the entire land
of Palestine as their country. For
them, just as for Huckabee, there are no Palestinians and to evict a Jew from
any of the settlements is sacrilege. Since there are by now about 516,569
settlers in widely dispersed areas of the West Bank and East
Jerusalem a viable Palestinian state may well be impossible to
create because the army may refuse to follow orders for removing the settlers.
That is one of the “facts on the ground” which American administrations have
fostered by not only allowing the settlement movement to proceed but having
even provided the money to the tune of $60 billion over the past decade.
Naturally this sum was officially to go for defense spending. But this is
eye-wash because the money the Israelis saved themselves by these means went to
build the separation wall and settlements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement
provides a picture of the situation.
Another
article in the same journal entitled, “Eyeless in Gaza,”
by David Shulman pointed to,
“The depth of
change that Israel
has undergone since the present government came to power in the spring of 2009
. . . Under conditions of escalating national hysteria, Israeli dissent is
harshly dealt with. Ezra Nawi, one of the heroes of Israeli nonviolent
resistance to the occupation is now in jail. . . . The villages of Bil’in and
Na’alin where nonviolent protest against the route of the security fence was
pioneered and has continued without interruption for over four years are now a
closed military zone, off limits to Israeli peace activists. More important
still is the attempt to break the back of nonviolent grassroots protest in Palestine
by arresting and sometimes prosecuting, on trumped-up charges the leading
activists. . . .”
While these
articles dealt with the shifts in attitudes which have occurred in Israel
the one by Peter Beinart, in an article published on June 10 likewise in The New York Review of Books, highlights
aspects of the domestic scene. The title is, “The Failure of the American
Jewish Establishment,” and the author voices his concerns that official Jewish
leadership is out of step with especially the younger generation of Jews in our
country. Key aspects are,
“Among American
Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world,
people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many
liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people who are devoted to
human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are
increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generation, fewer and fewer
American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists
are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have
refused to foster – indeed have actively opposed a Zionism that challenges Israel’s
behavior in the West Bank and Gaza
strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish
establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s
door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have
checked their Zionism instead.
Morally, American
Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the
Conference ofMajor American Jewish Organizations
do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger
orthodox-dominated Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians
scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic
to appalled.”
The author’s warning was very
personal because the future of his own Jewish children is at stake. These are
some of the stirrings within the Jewish community in regard to the policies of
the state of Israel
but they have not yet reached the leading Jewish circles and thereby our mass
media, especially television. But unless and until this happens
no U.S.
president, regardless of best efforts and political party affiliation, can
harbor a realistic hope of influencing Israel’s
conduct and thereby bring peace to the Middle East.
Since this problem affects all of us, Gentile as well as Jew, in some form or
another, the next installment will demonstrate how we have reached this impasse
and what might be done about it.
September 1, 2010
MYTHISTORY
In the previous installments I
have pointed to some of the differences between popular U.S. perception of what
the state of Israel stands for and the actuality as experienced by the people
living in the country and the occupied territories. I also showed that the
Jewish leadership in our country, which has significant influence on our
domestic and foreign policy, is beginning to be out of step with factual
developments both here and in Israel.
The purpose of this installment is to further explain How Moses Shaped America.
I have capitalized the initials because this is actually the title of an
article which appeared in Time
magazine last year (October12). The subtitle was, “From the Revolution to the Cold
War, the Old Testament hero has been the country’s defining religious symbol.
What we can learn from Moses today.” Bruce Feiler, the author, is best known
for his book Walking the Bible in
which he described his 10,000-mile trek
retracing the journey of the Hebrews from Egypt
to the Promised Land as described in the first five books of Moses, the
Pentateuch. Feiler’s article was an adaptation of his latest book, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American
Story, which, as yet, I have not read. Thus, the subsequent comments are limited
to the Time magazine article.
Feiler’s
point was to exhort President Obama to persevere in the face of adversity, just
as Moses did when confronted with difficulties from the Egyptian authorities
and rebellions by his own people. Although he did not enter the “Promised Land”
himself, he had paved the way by constantly emphasizing the vision of a land of
“milk and honey,” which they would soon be able to enjoy. Feiler was correct
when he pointed out that ever since the first pilgrims entered these shores,
who regarded King James as their “pharaoh,” the Exodus story has been the
guiding light for Whites and Negroes alike, who used it for their respective
purposes. The title “pharaoh” was subsequently bestowed on King George, while the
spiritual “Go down Moses . . .tell Ole’
Pharaoh Let my People go,” could be regarded as the “Battle Hymn” of the Civil Rights
Movement. George Washington was regarded as America’s
Moses and so was Brigham Young by Mormons. Presidents from Lincoln
on down to Obama have consistently emphasized Moses’ greatness as leader and
lawgiver. The biblical fact that the “milk and honey” vision was accompanied
not only by threats but physical destruction of opponents tends not to be
mentioned by Moses’ admirers. Neither is the fact that although Canaan
was reached, it did not yield the expected benefits, and that Moses has
provided the Hebrews, later Israelites and now Jews, with a great deal of
trouble ever since they left the “fleshpots of Egypt.”
The Moses
phenomenon is a classic example which demonstrates that human beings do not
live by facts but myths. Moses never wrote the books, which later generations
have ascribed to him. There are no historical data about him, and that the
Exodus ever took place in the manner the Bible reports it. The only information
we have comes from the Bible and a comment by Manetho, as related by Josephus
(37- c.100 A.D.), who describes Moses as an Egyptian renegade priest. But this
piece of information was regarded by Josephus as “slander” and only the
biblical version was propagated by the faithful. I have discussed these aspects
of the Moses story in The Moses Legacy
and since it can be downloaded free of charge from this site they need not to
be discussed further at this time.
Originally these were stories which
had been orally transmitted and embellished by gifted storytellers. Their
purpose was to serve not only as entertainment and educational tools by the
nightly campfires, but also to instill awe as well as fear in the audience.
Later on these stories solidified under the leadership of priests; they were
put into written form and further modified to serve a religious and/or political
purpose. With the passage of time some of these myths, such as the stories
about the Greek gods, fell by the wayside and became relegated to “mythology,”
while others which fulfilled a more direct political purpose at a given time
were adopted and became the foundations of organized religions. Under these
circumstances the line between story and historical fact becomes blurred. When
myth is regarded as history we end up with “mythistory,” a term used by Shlomo Sand in his book on, “The Invention of the Jewish People.”
The author
is a Professor of History at TelAvivUniversity and a typical product of
the turbulent second half of the past century. He was born in 1946 in Linz,
Austria, where his Jewish
Polish parents, who had survived the atrocities of the war, lived temporarily
in a DP (displaced persons) camp. In 1948 the family moved to Jaffa.
Early on, like many others, he became enamored with communist ideology, joined its
youth organization but also proved himself to be sufficiently non-conformist to
be expelled from high school. After military service he did receive his
matriculation certificate which allowed him to go to university. In 1975 he
graduated with a BA in history from the University
of Tel Aviv but his PhD (1982) was
earned in Paris where he first
studied, and subsequently taught, French history until
1985 when he returned to Tel Aviv. These bare-bone facts came from Wikipedia.
The rest of the information, which is recounted below, was obtained from his
mentioned book which also carries on its cover page, a quote from the New York Times, “Extravagantly denounced
and praised.”It was originally published
under the title Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi? andit is
noteworthy that the Hebrew title had a question mark at the end. A faithful
translation, as it appears in the English version, would have been, “When and
How was the Jewish People invented?”
To
understand the furor the book has created it is useful to first look at the
meaning of the word “people.” In English it is derived from populus, as for instance in Senatus Populusqe Romanus (SPQR, the
Senate and the people of Rome). The
term referred to the people under Roman authority, in the sense “of forming a
political community,” but did not necessarily convey an ethnic status. In
contrast, the German corollary Volk,
when used in a political context, is largely identical with ethnicity. These
are not academic distinctions. They can have very practical and in fact lethal
consequences. When Hitler issued his decrees in the name of “dasdeutsche
Volk,” a distinction was drawn from other Voelker, such as the French, British etc. Inasmuch as Zionists
proclaimed that Jews are also a Volk,
a people or nation, they were automatically foreigners and could never be “real”
Germans. All of the disasters which befell the Jews of Germany flowed from this
interpretation of one word.
Closely
connected with the idea of Volk in
this narrow sense is that of Heimat,
a concept which has little meaning in America.
Sinceit is a concept, rather than
simply a six letter word, it cannot be properly translated but must be
described. Although the term “homeland” could be used, it is not merely the
country where one happened to have been born. The concept includes: place of
birth, the language one is raised in, and most importantly the identification
with the history of one’s place of birth. These aspects together form the
emotional attachment to, and responsibility for, that place which was the first
“home” in one’s life. Let me make this quite concrete. I was born in Austria
and at first had Austrian citizenship; when Austria
disappeared from the map through Hitler’s annexation, I became officially
German, albeit of inferior status because of my Jewish grandfather. In April
1945, after the Soviet Union had “liberated” Austria
and established a government in Vienna
I became Austrian again. When I left Austria
for the U.S.,
married Martha and subsequently obtained citizenship, I became and have
remained an American. While living in this country Martha and I have resided in
four different states of the Union: so where is my Heimat? Well, I still happen to have an
official legal document which is called Heimatschein. This
is a certificate that was issued in 1933 by the City of Vienna
which guarantees me “Heimatrecht”
in Vienna throughout my lifetime.
This
excursion into German language and thought might seem totally irrelevant to
Americans, but it is in fact the essence of our current problems in the Middle
East. One tends to forget that the early Zionists spoke, thought,
and wrote mainly in the German language rather than English, French, Polish or
Russian. The official language of the First Zionist Congress (Basel
1897) was German and Wikipedia shows the first page of the “Programm.” The first handwritten
sentence reads, “Der Zionismuserstrebt fuer das juedische
Volk die Schaffungeineroeffentlich[in insert]rechtlichgesichertenHeimstaette in Palaestina.”
This might be translated as: Zionism strives toward the creation of an
official, legally guaranteed, homeland in Palestine.
As such, Volk and Heimat were the concepts they operated
with. Zionists did not feel “at home” in the countries where they happened to
have been born and raised, because regardless where they lived they were in a
minority and as such liable to discrimination as well as outright persecution.
For assimilated secular Jews all of
this was dangerous nonsense because they did identify with the country they
were born in: Germany,
France, England,
America etc. They knew that instead of anti-Semitism magically disappearing,
when the Jews moved to Palestine from
the countries they lived in, their troubles would not be over but new ones would
follow in their wake. Although sporadic anti-Semitism was a nuisance it was not
a danger in Central and Western Europe. They, therefore,
had no intention of packing up and leaving. The well-to-do had come to identify
with the country of their birth, although this was not the case to that extent
in Poland and Russia
where the largely poor majority of Jews resided.
Hitler’s policies changed all that
because he took the Zionists at their word and applied their aspirations to all
Jews. The logic was: If you are a Volk
and your Heimat is in Palestine
please go but leave the major portions of your property here. Germany
is for Germans and if you wish to remain you will no longer have the right to
full citizenship, but only residency with limited professional opportunities.
These policies were codified in the Nuremberg
laws. In 1938 the annexation of Austria
added a sizeable Jewish minority to the Reich and brought new chicaneries. But
systematic state sponsored, rather than sporadic, murder of Jews did not occur
until WWII and especially the campaign against the Soviet Union.
Although the November 1938 Kristallnacht
could be regarded as foreshadowing the future. When one is aware of these
historic facts, of which I happen to be an eye-witness, the current Israeli
policies towards its non-Jewish citizens, and especially in the occupied
territories, evoke eerie memories. The official stance of the state is that all
of Palestine is Heimat solely for Jews, just as Germany
was only for Germans during the Hitler years. Non-Jewish citizens in Israel
proper (within pre June 1967 borders) have limited rights and the Palestinians
in the occupied territories are currently stateless, although the Palestinian
authority does issue them passports for travel abroad.
This is the situation, which is
deplored by Israelis who are guided by history and the light of reason. It has,
therefore, given rise to numerous articles as well as books. The mentioned one
by Professor Sand has struck at the root of the problem and this is why his
book is both praised and vilified. His
intention was to expose the voelkisch,
nationalistic and chauvinistic interpretation of the word “people,” and that of
a common national origin, as a myth which is taken for actual history.This is why he used the word “mythistory” to define the thinking which
has given rise to the current tragedy.
The
Introduction lays out the absurdity of Israel’s
nationality law. Every person living in Israel
has to have an official identity card which also states the individual’s “nationality.”
Those who are Jews by birth or conversion, regardless of the country they were
born in, are designated as “Jewish;” all others carry the names of the country of
their birth. But since the state of Israel does not recognize “Palestine” as a
country the Palestinians who had remained after the nakba (the events surrounding the founding of the state which led
to the massive and as yet unsolved refugee problem), are referred to as
“Arabs.” As Sands pointed out Israel
has thereby become the first country in the world which recognizes Arab
nationality and unity, which, by the way, even Nasser
had failed to accomplish. He described the situation as,
“Dominated by
Zionism’s particular concept of nationality, the state of Israel
still refuses, sixty years after its establishment, to see itself as a republic
that serves its citizens. One quarter of the citizens are not characterized as
Jews, and the laws of the state imply that it is not their state nor do they own
it. The state has also avoided integrating the local inhabitants into the
superculture it has created, and has instead deliberately excluded them. Israel
has also refused to be a consociational democracy
(like Switzerland
or Belgium) or
a multicultural democracy (like Great Britain
or the Netherlands)
– that is to say, a state that accepts its diversity while serving its
inhabitants. Instead, Israel
insists on seeing itself as a Jewish state belonging to all the Jews in the
world, even though they are no longer persecuted refugees but full citizens of
the countries in which they chose to reside. The excuse for this grave
violation of a basic principle of modern democracy, and for the preservation of
an unbridled ethnocracy that grossly discriminates against certain of its
citizens, rests on the active myth of an eternal nation that must ultimately
forgather in its ancestral land.”
The book then demonstrates that Jews
have never been one unified people, who resided more or less continuously in Palestine
until they were “exiled” after the Jewish wars in the first and second century
of our era. Instead, they were characterized by what Arthur Koestler called in
his book, The Thirteenth Tribe, “Wanderlust” (desire to roam the world)
which established large Jewish Diaspora communities within the various empires
of their day. Koestler’s book, published in 1976, with the subtitle, The Khazar Empire and its Heritage was
the first one which popularized the theory that the large Eastern European Ashkenazi
Jewish population might not have originated, as commonly assumed, from German
Jews of the Rhineland. Instead, Koestler argued, they
might have come to a large extent from a westward movement when the Khazar
Empire, which was ruled by Jews for some time, collapsed in the tenth century AD.
This is not the place to enter into
the pros and cons of this theory, which is the basis of Koestler’s book and was
also discussed by Sand as well as by Kevin Alan Brook in The Jews of Khazaria.Suffice it to say that this kingdom covered an extensive area between
the Caspian and the western shore of the Black Sea,
including the Crimea. To the North it reached up to Kiev,
and Georgia in
the South was its tributary. A map is available on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chasaren.jpg.
The relevancy for now is that at some point in time Judaism became the state
religion. The empire was ruled on a hereditary basis by a “Kagan” who held the
supreme authority although the military commander could also have that title.
Since Judaism was the state religion it should not be surprising that a Muslim
traveler in the tenth century wrote, “In Khazaria, sheep, honey and Jews exist
in large quantities [Koestler 1976].” But when Khazaria lost its independence,
in the latter half of the tenth century, the people did not vanish; instead a
gradual westward migration took place into what is now
Southern Russia, Poland,
Lithuania and Hungary.
From an etymologic point of view it
is of interest that Kagan has become a relatively common Jewish name as for
instance of the recently appointed Supreme Court Justice. In Russia the better
known Lazar Kaganovich (son of Kagan) was one of the early leaders of the Bolshevik
Revolution and co-author of the decrees which led to the famine in the Ukraine
(1932-1933) for which he has recently been accused of genocide. In Brook’s book
there is also a legend about the origin of the Khazars. They consisted of
several Turkish tribes and the most powerful of these was called: A-shi-na. It may not be too far fetched to relate this to Ashkenaz,
also spelled Ashenaz, although Brook did not make this connection. Yet, it may
not be totally unfounded. In Genesis 10:2-3 Ashkenaz was the great-grandson of
Noah via Japheth and Gomer. In Jeremiah 51:27 where the Lord vents his anger
against Babylon, the kingdoms of
“Ararat, Minni and Ashenaz” were to assist from the North while the Medes were
to join in the destruction from the South. In addition it might not be
irrelevant that Noah’s ark supposedly came to rest on “Mount Ararat,”
which is in southern Turkey.
Furthermore, in The Moses Legacy I have pointed out that
Abraham’s original name was Abram and since Indo Europeans were already present
during the second millennium B.C. in what are now Turkey, Syria and Iraq, some
of the biblical names need not be thought of as originating within Semitic
languages but could have counterparts in Sanskrit, from which most European
languages were subsequently derived. In that language the verb “bhram” means “to rove” or “to wander”
and the prefix “a” indicated the imperfect tense. Abhram would have meant “wandered.” Is this suggestion totally
uncalled for? Well, in Deuteronomy 26:5 Moses exhorted the Israelites to say at
the time when they bring the first fruits as an offering to the Lord, “A
wandering Aramean was my father . . . [The Soncino Chumash].” The King James Version
substituted the word “Syrian” for Aramean, which is more modern but less historical.
Abram’s father was Tera, and in Sanskrit Thera
means “Elder.” Abram’s grandfather as well as his brother was called Nahor and
the root nah means “to bind,” Sarah
has numerous meanings in Sanskrit of which “precious” is one. Furthermore, the Ur
from which father Tera supposedly migrated need not be the Ur
in southern Mesopotamia but could have been Urfa,
as Gordon and Rendsburg in The Bible and
the Ancient Near East have pointed out. Urfa
was close to Haran as well as the
city of Nahor, where Abram’s clan
resided and from which Jacob brought his wives: Leah and Rachel. These places
were to the east of the Euphrates in what is now
southern Turkey.
Thus, a case can be made that Jewish ancestry is more closely associated with
the northern portion of the Levant and its eastern
extension, rather than the “Land of Zion,”
which is considerably further south.
In the eyes of confirmed Zionists
this is, of course, rank heresy because the title to the land and with it the
expulsion of the locals in Palestine,
who relish their orchards and are not gripped by “Wanderlust,” loses its justification. This is why Sand’s book has
been so vigorously attacked in official circles. Since the entire moral
justification for the Zionist enterprise resides in the Bible, archeology has a
political dimension in Israel.
Jerusalem is the key flashpoint in
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and Prime Minister Netanyahu has recently
reaffirmed that “Jerusalem is the
eternal capital of the Jewish people.” This allows him to bulldoze Palestinian
homes in East Jerusalem in order to create space for
Jewish settlers. Unfortunately, there is no evidence, apart from the Bible,
that Jerusalem was the seat of a
powerful kingdom in ancient times. Sand referred to this lack of evidence and
it is further documented in the book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher
Silberman (published in 2002) The Bible
Unearthed. Archeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its
Sacred Texts.
The authors, who are professional
archeologists, reaffirmed that the stories about the patriarchs, Moses, the
Exodus, the conquest of Canaan by Joshua are legends
rather than facts, but Chapter 6 was the bombshell which galvanized Sand. Its
title, “OneState,
One Nation, One People?” immediately brought memories
of Vienna during the Ides of March
1938 to my mind. In those days the masses cried themselves hoarse with the
slogan: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer
to celebrate that Austria
had again joined Germany
as had been the case prior to 1866. “Heim
ins Reich” was the slogan, but in 1945 “Heim
aus dem Reich” was more popular because Austrians had found out that the
neighbors to the North were not their Heimat
after all.In the mentioned chapter,
which clearly influenced the title of Sand’s book, Finkelstein and Silberman
presented evidence that the most hallowed belief in the powerful united
monarchy under David and Solomon was an invention by Jerusalem’s
priesthood during the reign of Josiah in the 7th century B.C.
Contrary to poplar belief archeological
discoveries suggest that the northern Kingdom of Israel
was the more densely settled and prosperous, while the southern Kingdom
of Judah was sparsely inhabited and
economically backward. In the tenth century (supposed time of David and
Solomon) “the built-up area of Jerusalem
covered an area of no more than one hundred and fifty acres. . . . Its population of around fifteen thousand
would have made it seem hardly more than a small Middle Eastern market town. .
. . ” Instead of the Davidic kingdom having been the glorious one it was the
line of Omri in the North which achieved international importance in the ninth
century. The kingdom of Judah
only entered the larger scene in the eighth century, when it was flooded by
refugees from the north after the Assyrian conquest, and especially in the
seventh under the reign of Josiah (639-609). It was under his rule that the
“book of law,” which is commonly regarded as having been Deuteronomy, was
“discovered.” A strict monotheism with a single place of worship, the Jerusalem
temple, was instituted and enforced. In addition History was rewritten from the
point of view of the Jerusalem
priesthood which resulted in the “historical” portions of the Bible as we know
it. The tribe of Judah and its descendants became the heroes and the
Northerners had received their just desert for having hankered after false
gods. A second editing and embellishment of the Bible had taken place after the
fall of Jerusalem (587), which was
likewise blamed on the waywardness of its inhabitants towards Yahweh.
Nevertheless, the supposed promise of the messianic kingdom under a descendant
of David and centered in Jerusalem,
has remained intact to this day and provides the excuse for Israeli policies.
Since archeology has failed to
deliver the expected results attention has now shifted to genetics to bolster
the idea of the “One People.” While “race” was a bad word that had to be
avoided after Hitler, it has now resurfaced under the more scientific term,
“DNA.” A few years ago a “Cohen gene” had been found but it made no appreciable
impact. Earlier this year, however, two scientific papers appeared, which were
reported in the New York Times (June 9, 2010) under the title “Studies
Show Jews’ Genetic Similarity.” The two Jewish communities of Europe,
the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, were found to have been genetically close and the
studies “refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand . .
. that Jews have no common origin. . . . Jewish communities from Europe,
the Middle East and the Caucasus
all have substantial genetic ancestry that traces back to the Levant;
Ethiopian Jews and two Judaic communities in India
are genetically much closer to their host populations.”
When I read the article another
headline from the Times sprang to
mind, “Tests Show King Tut Died from Malaria
[February 16, 2010].” When
one reads the fine print of the actual paper in JAMA it becomes clear that the
malaria parasite had not been found only in Tut’s tissues, but it was also
present in other royal mummies from that period and the precise cause of his death
still remains a matter of speculation. The article on Jewish genes was based on
two papers. One, “Abraham’s children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters
with shared Middle Eastern ancestry,” was by Atzmon and co-workers; while Behar
and his group had published, “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people.”
For me the key sentence from Behar paper was that “Most Jewish samples form a
remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not
samples from other Levantine populations.” The major population center of the
Druze is, however, not in southern Palestine
i.e. Jerusalem and the former Kingdom
of Judah but further north in Lebanon
and Syria. When
one goes from Cyprus
to the east and a tad north one arrives in Haran
from where Abram is supposed to have set out on his journey. From there to
Khazaria is just the proverbial “hop, skip and jump.” This particular paper,
therefore, hardly lends itself to support a claim to Jerusalem
on a genetic basis.
The Atzmon study is very complex
and for me somewhat difficult to interpret but here are the key points.
Principal component analysis (a statistical technique which allows separation
into major contributing elements) showed, “that the Jewish populations
clustered with European groups.” This result was, of course, not particularly
desirable so the data were milked further; subclusters were identified and not
surprisingly “Europeans were closest to Ashkenazi Jews.” It can, therefore be
concluded that genetics are likewise a poor tool to claim the land
of Palestine as the birthplace of
the Jewish people, rather than its religion.
This brings us back to America
and its Jews who currently hold the fate of the world in their hands. Since one
may regard this as an exaggeration I shall refer for now only to the book by
Elliott Abrams, Faith or Fear, which
he published in 1997 while temporarily out of office. During the Reagan
administration he was intimately involved in the Iran-Contra Scandal, indicted
by the Senate for withholding information, but pardoned during the presidency
of Georg H W Bush who elevated him to the post of “Special Assistant to the President and Senior
Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs.” On June 25, 2001, during
the Bush-Cheney presidency he became “Special Assistant to the President and
Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at
the National Security Council.” On December 2, 2002 he became “Special
Assistant to the President and the NSC's [National Security Council] Senior
Director for Near East and North African Affairs.” In this capacity he was the
major American player in Fatah’s military attempt to gain power in Gaza after
Hamas’ unexpected success in the Palestinian elections. The coup, instigated by
the U.S., not only failed, but consolidated Hamas’ rule in Gaza with the
consequences all of us are aware of. Although temporarily out of office again
he still is a person ofconsiderable influence
whose views one should listen to.
His book carries the subtitle, “How
Jews can survive in a Christian America” and is remarkable for its candor.
Had a Gentile written about how the Jewish leadership has conducted itself
during the past century, he/she would have been summarily drummed out of court
for blatant anti-Semitism. Abrams noted that, haunted by fears of past persecutions,
they decided that religion was the major problem and secularism with a strict
separation of Church and State had to be enforced. To this end numerous
lawsuits were instigated and we know the result. The social fabric was rent
asunder, personal gratification rules and “love thy neighbor” is obsolete in
the circles which shape public policy.Yet, this and the other mechanisms the
Jewish leadership has employed to overcome this primal fear, such as the
promotion of identification with the land of Israel and devotion to the holocaust,
will, according to Abrams, not succeed in the long run.
Abrams’ noted that Christianity has changed over the past several decades.
It no longer bedevils Jews but respects them, therefore, they have nothing to
fear from Christians. The greatest current danger to Judaism in America is
intermarriage, because about fifty percent of Jews marry partners from other
belief systems. Assimilation will lead to loss of identity unless Jews return
to Judaism i.e. the Torah and its teaching. Abrams obviously failed to
recognize that those Jews who do obey the Torah – the orthodox and
ultra-orthodox segment – have to be in perpetual conflict with the rest of the
world because it demands separation and “otherness.”
The Torah myths are the basis of the Middle East wars and as long as
policymakers subscribe to them there can be no peace.Given these facts the “peace talks” which are
supposed to begin again in Washington in the middle of this month have hardly
any chance for success and, as in the past, the Palestinians will likely be
blamed in the American media for the failure. Inasmuch as the popular media
dispense myths rather than facts, as an excuse for political decisions, the
topic will be continued in next month’s installment, with further documentation
of the vital role Jewish individuals and organizations play in shaping the policies
of our country.
October 1, 2010
SEASON OF DISCONTENT
When President Obama won the
election on November 4, 2008
most of the country and people around the world breathed a sigh of relief. This
was based on a threefold hope: America would abandon its quest for unilateral
imposition of its policies on the rest of the world and thereby bring about
cooperation rather than more strife to the world at large; the impending severe
economic depression brought about by the collapse of Wall Street would be
prevented; and a more equitable system of social justice would be inaugurated
in our country. These were the hopes and the promises of the incoming
administration at the end of January 2009.
When a fair
minded person looks at today’s situation one must admit that there has been some
progress in regard to the first two hopes but utter failure in regard to the
third one, which threatens to undermine the other two accomplishments. The fact
that the Obama administration has not been able to create the private sector
job growth, which had been hoped for, has given rise to a widespread spirit of
disenchantment around the country. Added to the frustration was the “bailout of
the banks,” (which was actually initiated by the outgoing Bush administration)
and Obama’s “stimulus program” which have significantly increased the federal
deficit. To top it off there is the fight whether or not the Bush tax cuts
should be extended beyond December 31, when they are slated to expire. It is a
season of discontent, with outright anger by some, and the current new hope
resides in next month’s mid-term elections and beyond that for 2012 when the
Republicans believe that they will not only regain majority in Congress but
also the presidency.
Leaving
propaganda and assumed reasons for the country’s problems aside this is the
real goal of the anti-Obama forces to which everything else which smacks of
cooperation with the Democrats has to be subordinated. There is, of course, a
massive irony in the current situation, because the reasons which led to the current
problems, namely lack of oversight, are now advocated as the solution. As
mentioned in earlier installments some Republicans under the banner of Rush
Limbaugh had already declared in January of 2009 that Obama’s presidency was
not to be allowed to succeed. Republicans in Congress heeded the call and
systematically delayed or sabotaged major legislative proposals. One of the key
promises of the Obama campaign had been the misnamed “healthcare” reform bill,
which was intended to provide affordable health insurance to every American. It
had actually little to do with “health care” per se but everything with
insurance coverage. One might think that the idea that nobody should have to
mortgage one’s home or go bankrupt because of unaffordable insurance premiums
could be agreed to by everyone, including politicians, but it was not to be.
The health
insurance question had to become the litmus test for success or failure of the
Obama administration and the strategy to thwart a reasonable piece of
legislation was to threaten with filibuster. This revered American institution
goes back to 1851 and allows a given senator to hold the floor until he either
collapses or gives up, as so beautifully depicted by Jimmy Stewart in the
movie, “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.”
To quote from Wikipedia, “The rules
permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish
and on any topic they choose, unless ‘three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen
and sworn’ (usually 60 out of 100 senators) brings debate to a close by
invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII. This means that 41 senators, which
could represent as little as 12.3% of the U.S. population, can make a
filibuster happen.” Thus, legislation which affects the vital interests
of a given political party can no longer be enacted by a simple majority vote,
but now requires the supermajority of 60 votes.
Although the Democrats had during
2009 the needed 60 senate votes to push their insurance legislation through,
they wanted to avoid the appearance of partisanship and tried to get as many
Republican votes as possible. This attempt at bipartisanship was unsuccessful.
The Republicans stalled throughout 2009, valuable time was lost, unsustainable
compromises were made and the insurance lobby wasted no time and effort to
defang the legislation. For good measure the companies also started to
immediately raise their rates for some private plans, thereby making the
situation worse than it was in 2008. The final piece of legislation signed by
Obama on March 23, 2010 was a
monstrosity of a 2400 page document which our “lawmakers” who voted on it had
not even had time to read since it was prepared by staffers anyway.
The major goal “affordable rates
for everyone” had been scrapped while some benefits were mandated. Among these
were that insurance companies could no longer deny insurance on basis of a
“pre-existing condition” and could not arbitrarily terminate it. Furthermore
there was a clause that required for everybody to buy some insurance regardless
whether or not they wanted it. In addition, while some of the provisions are
going into effect today, October 1, others will not become active until 2014.
But since all insurance programs – apart from Medicare and Medicaid which cover
some of us to some extent – remain in private hands they are geared to maximize
profits for the companies. Rates can be raised to whatever the competition will
allow and the four year interval provides further incentive for the insurance
industry to raise rates in the meantime to potentially astronomic levels. These
are not abstract thoughts because last week I received a notice that Martha’s
and my premium will go up by 15% for 2010-2011. What happens next October is
anybody’s guess. Thus, the insurance legislation is another classic example of
“the way to hell is paved with good intentions” and it has now become fodder
for the Republicans who have vowed to repeal it once they regain control of
Congress.
In addition to effectively blocking
reasonable legislation, Republicans have also succeeded in their propaganda
campaign against Obama’s person. On September 6 the Newsweek cover featured,
“The Making of a Terrorist-Coddling Warmongering Wall Street-Loving Socialistic
Godless Muslim President,” although a small asterisk indicated that Obama did
not fit into any of these categories. The fact that these epithets are non
sequiturs because you can’t be a socialist and love Wall Street, just as you
can’t be an atheistic Muslim doesn’t matter for some of our citizenry. These
slogans exist, are dutifully chanted by some crowds and for good measure the so
called “birthers” also insist that Obama’s presidency is illegitimate because
he was really born in Kenya.
A recent article in Forbes Magazine
by Dinesh D'Souza explained
Obama and his policies. Based on Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father” (reviewed
in the April 1, 2008,
Hillary versus Obama, installment) D’Souza asserted that our president is an
anachronistic anti-colonialist who aspires to fulfill what his father never
accomplished. Here are some key excerpts:
“Obama is a
socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style
socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution. These
theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could
account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy.
The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to
his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him
into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own
history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his
life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii,
Indonesia and Pakistan,
with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa. … If America
is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough
environment. But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is
trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S.
is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This
philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for
denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the
nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes
it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The
invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job
done. America
today is governed by a ghost.”
One might say, ok so what, there
has always been nonsense written, but Dinesh D’Souza is currentlythe president of the King's College in New York City and the author of the forthcoming bookThe Roots of Obama's Rage(Regnery Publishing). We are also
told that he is from India,
a non-practicing Catholic and was an adviser to
President Reagan. It is, therefore, small wonder that these opinions are taken
on face value especially when they are repeated and endorsed by some prominent
individuals such as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In an interview
with National Review he was quoted as
having said:
"What if [Obama] is so outside our
comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can
you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate,
predictive model for his behavior…. This is a person who is fundamentally out
of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con,
as a result of which he is now president. I think he worked very hard at being
a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent,
accommodating -- none of which was true.” (http://www.whorunsgov.com/politerati/uncategorized/newt-gingrich-rips-obama-as-kenyan-anti-colonial-thinker-sunday-reading).
At this point we must remind ourselves that Newt Gingrich is not some “has
been” but is seriously considering running for the presidential nomination in
2012. Opinions of this type which express and fuel anger on the
political scene have now found an even larger forum in form of the “Tea party”
or more correctly the “tea parties.” This group of people is as yet not a
political party, in the commonly used sense of the word, but consists of
disenchanted individuals who hanker after an imagined past where America
was a tax free haven of free enterprise with no or minimal government
regulatory oversight over key aspects of industry and commerce. The core belief
is American “exceptionalism,” which can be summarized as, “We make our own
rules and need not bother with those which apply to the rest of the world.” One
of the battle flags is a coiled rattle snake poised to strike, with the
lettering “Don’t tread on me.” While another consists of the American flag
which contains instead of the 50 stars a ring of 13 stars with the Roman
numeral II in the center to signify the start of the second American
Revolution.
This hearkens back, of course to
the events of December 16, 1773in Boston,
when the colonists had gotten tired of “taxation without representation” and
dumped a shipload of tea from the Dartmouth into the harbor. This “Boston
Tea Party” was the forerunner of the War of Independence but few people know
that there was an irony in the whole situation. The so-called “Tea Act” of 1773
had allowed the East India Company,
to export tea directly to the colonies thereby abolishing the middle men
which lowered the actual price of tea in spite of the retention of the 3 pence duty. This little morsel of good
news, i.e. cheaper tea, was drowned out by the clamor against any and all taxes
unless the colonials were given seats in Parliament.
This brief excursion into history is not irrelevant for our current tea
partiers. King George has been replaced by “Washington”(the city rather than
president) and they believe that by electing candidates who will support less
government oversight, lower taxes and American supremacy in the world, they
will create prosperity and the good life.As mentioned, the current Tea Party is not a single organization but
started as Internet blogs and Facebook entries by unhappy citizens who felt
that the country was on the wrong track. Different organizations such as the
“Tea Party Express,” the “Nationwide Tea Party Coalition” and “Tea Party
Patriots,” to name just a few began to organize rallies. This populist
movement, which as yet has no Fuehrer,
gathered steam earlier this year when candidates for the November 2 elections
who were supported by tea partiers, who also include for instance Sarah Palin,
were successful in primary contests around the country. Even an arch-Republican
as our very own Bob Bennett fell victim to the even more “conservative” Mike
Lee. Since Democrats and Independents are a small minority in Utah, Mr. Lee is
bound to be elected on November 2. Patriotism, “taxed enough already” (another
reason for Tea as an acronym) and “taking our country back” are the key slogans
and some of these worthies cannot get enough of the American flag as shown
later in a picture from another Newsweek edition.
Although the tea partiers may well get their wish and the next Congress
will be more “conservative” in its composition, their hope and belief that the
newcomers are going to be able to show true independence of mind is ill
founded. One reason is that money will continue to control their votes, because
they obviously want to be re-elected before they have even warmed their seats
and the second is the rules which govern the Senate. As mentioned above 41 members
can effectively block any piece of legislation and to change this rule would
require a supermajority which is not likely to come to pass. They are also
quite deluded in their assumption of where the money is coming from which funds
the various organiziations which have “Tea” as their common denominator. While
the people reflect “grass roots” the money is provided by ex-establishment
figures in Washington and private finaciers who hate Obama for any and all of
the reasons which have been mentioned above.
There were two articles in TheNew Yorker which shed some light on how
America is really run. One was by Connie Bruck (May 10, 2010) under the title
“The Fixer,” which deals with the rise to fame and fortune of Mr. Haim Saban.
Hardly anyone of the general public has probably ever heard his name but there
is not a politician around, including the good Mormon Harry Reid, current
Senate Majority Leader, who doesn’t obey “his master’s voice.” But before
documenting this statement let me summarize the article. Saban was born in
Egypt of Jewish parents and soon came to experience anti-Semitic taunts. The
family moved to Israel where the boy took on a variety of odd jobs. He then
gravitated into show business and with his friend Yehuda Talit became a promoter.
After the Yom Kippur war they found themselves seven hundred thousand dollars
in debt and Haim promptly removed himself to Paris. They stayed friends and
Talit told the interviewer, “’There was something about him. He was not just
smart. He had an unusual character. He never had shame. What others were afraid
of he would do.’” I’ll skip over the details how he subsequently moved to New
York and made an estimated $3.3 billion. Instead, I shall concentrate on how he
uses them. As a dual citizen of Israel and the U.S. his avowed goal in life is
to strengthen the U.S. Israel relationship. He told the interviewer “’I am an
one issue guy and my issue is Israel.’” He described the method to achieve this
goal to an Israeli audience last fall as follows, “’There are three ways to be
influential in American politics: make donations to political parties,
establish think tanks, and control media outlets.’” He has done this to
perfection. He contributes generously to the Democratic Party and has
established the “Saban Center for Middle East Policy” at the renowned Brookings
Institute. Although he has not yet been able to buy the LA Times, The Washington Post
or the New York Times, this was not
for lack of trying and he is still hard at work on these projects as well as the
acquisition of a major cable network.
With all that money one might assume that he pays his fair share of taxes.
But the super-rich don’t pay taxes; it’s below their dignity. When Saban
received from Morgan Stanley $11 million in a settlement, he asked his
accountant how much tax he would owe. When told by his tax advisor, Matt Krane,
“’27 percent state and federal combined,’” Saban grew livid, “’Are you fucking
kidding me? Are you fucking crazy?’ He was shouting, ‘I’m not paying that.’”
Krane was ordered to fix that little tax problem. He did, but went to jail for
cooking the books. The article does not tell us how much if anything Saban, who
disputes this account and says he was hoodwinked by Krane, had to pay.
When you have friends in high places none of this matters and most
prominent among them are Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2002 Saban donated $5
million to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library and he has given more than five
million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. According to the article BillClinton’s assessment of Haim was, “’… a loyal
supporter, and a trusted adviser to Hillary and me. … He is a fascinating,
generous, and profoundly good man, and I’m glad to count him among my closest
friends.’” Saban told Bruck that he had begged Hillary to run for the
presidency in 2004. In 2007, even before she declared her candidacy, he had
already begun preparing a list of prospective donors. Thereafter, he put his
heart and soul into her campaign and her defeat was “’my biggest loss – and not
only mine.’”
His relationship with Obama seems to be cool to say the least and is
determined by the latter’s attitude to Israel. When Obama had won the primaries
against Hillary in June 2008 he called Saban for his help. Saban related,
“’Obama was asked the same question Hillary was asked – if Iran nukes Israel,
what would be your reaction?’ Hillary said, ‘We will obliterate them.’ … Four
words it’s simple to understand. Obama said only three words. ‘He would ‘take
appropriate action.’ I don’t know what that means. … So I had a list of
questions like that. … But Chicago wasn’t able to deliver the meeting, so I
couldn’t get on board.’”
Now back to Harry Reid ofNevada who
is fighting for his political life against Sharron Angle, who is supported by
tea partiers. Saban described how to deal with recalcitrants: “’I hosted the
Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, in my home. I was informed that he refused
to sign a letter to Obama, which was signed by most of the senators, supporting
Israel, before the speech in Cairo. … I got the message on Saturday and he was
at my house on Sunday. I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you sign?’ So he said, ‘Because
I don’t sign other people’s initiatives, as the leader, as head of the
Democratic Party.’ I said, ‘So send a letter of your own.’ And Saban added,
smiling, and with hesitation, as though he didn’t like boast, ‘He did,’” This
is how politics works in our country.
While Saban’s dislike of Obama stems from the latter’s stance towards
Israel, the Koch brothers have a different motive to ruin his presidency via
the tea partiers. The followinginformation comes from the article by Jane Mayer under the title “Covert
Operations. The billionaire brothers who are waging a
war against Obama,” which appeared in The
New Yorker on August 30, 2010. The brothers, David and Charles Koch, own a
variety of industries including oil and are “ranked by Forbes as the second-largest company in the country. … Their
combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.” “… Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for
Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group said, ‘The Kochs are on a whole
different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer
dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking,
political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since
Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of
our times.’”
The political outlook of the brothers is libertarian i.e.
unfettered free enterprise with no government oversight of any kind. As such
they are the natural enemy of the “socialist” Obama and prime sponsors of the
tea partiers. At a training session for “tea party activist” an advertisment
proclaimed “’Today the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by
lobbyists and special intersts. But you can do something about it.’ The pitch
made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed
frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David
Axelrod, Obama’s senior advisor said, ‘What they don’t say is that, in part,
this is a grassroots citizen’s movement brought to you by a bunch of oil
billionaires.’”
Let me now engage in a little futuristic fantasy. There is no love lost
between Saban and Obama but Saban still smarts from Hillary’s defeat. He is,
therefore, likely to undermine Obama to the best of his ability in order to
make him a “one-term president,” and urge Hillary to run against whoever the
Republican candidate will be. Obama has already been compared to Jimmy Carter
as a “failed president” and his policies have alienated not only many of the
Independents but also some of his base. The African-American community has not
reaped tangible benefits, neither has the homosexual lobby, Jewish donors are
in part turned off by his insistence on a fair deal for the Palestinians as
well as the Israelis, the middle class is suffering and for Wall Street he is,
of course, anathema. So where is the money for re-election going to come from?
The grassroots of popular good-will? Hardly.
Chances are that the 2012 election campaign funds of a presidential
candidate will approach, if not exceed $1 billion, by the time the votes are
tallied. If this sounds fantastic it is, but not unrealistic when one considers
the cost of the 2008 election. In that year the combined fundraising of McCain
and Obama exceeded $1 billion with Obama’s share an unprecedented $659
million. This was more than double of both John Kerry and George W. Bush in
2004, according to ABC. In the coming election cycle the situation is bound to
be worse because of the Supreme Court decision in January of this year which struck down laws that banned corporations from
using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office. This
has opened the floodgates for unlimited spending, although not on an individual
candidate but on the groups which lobby for him/her.What was the reason the wise justices gave for
their decision? Free speech! Corporations were regarded as persons who enjoy
the constitutional right of free speech and can, therefore, buy themselves
whomever they wish. Do the tea partiers realize that they are just puppets in
the hands of the real powers who pull the strings?
Below are two pictures, side by side, from Newsweek covers which highlight
today’s American scene. On the left is a what one might call a prototypical
“tea partier,” while the right one deals with the contentious issue of the
so-called “Mosque on Hallowed Ground.”
The worthy gentleman on the
left hardly needs any comment, but the picture on the right does. The articles
by Fareed Zakaria and Lisa Miller which are listed were constructive, and mentioned
several aspects which tend to be drowned out by the media circus around that
“mosque.” The building, in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from “Ground Zero,”
has been in existence since the 1850’s and Muslims from the neighborhood have
regularly used part of it for prayer. The neighborhood itself is rather
unimpressive. Nicolaus Mills, who had recently toured it, wrote an
article for the Christian Science Monitor
on August 24, 2010 under
the headline:Sex shop and strip clubs
near ground zero show double standard over Park 51. He noted that, “This kind
of commercial mix is typical of New
York. Most of us who have lived in the city for
any period of time take it for granted. But for those who have based their
opposition to the MuslimCenter on their
concern for the sensibilities of the 9/11 families, places like the New York
Dolls and the Pussycat Lounge present a moral dilemma.”
It should also be emphasized
that the Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, belongs to the Sufi sect of Islam, rather
than Sunni or Shia. The Sufis represent the spiritual mystical aspects of Islam
and are, therefore, the most tolerant in regard to other religions. I have
discussed Sufism in a previous installment in regard to Pakistan
where the major Sufi shrines are located (January 1, 2008; 2008 Outlook). Needless to say, some of
Imam Rauf’s comments have been taken out of context and Bill O’Reilley spent
evening after evening on the Imam’s radicalism and anti-Americanism.
Furthermore, the ancient current building is supposed to be replaced by a
modern one, modeled after the Jewish community and cultural center, the 92 St. Y, rather than a mosque with minarets. The
envisioned building, which can be viewed on Wikipedia under “Park 51,” “includes a 500-seat auditorium, theater,
performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court,
childcare area, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, food court, September
11 memorial, and prayer space that could accommodate 1,000–2,000 people.”
The whole situation reminded me of the Carmelite
nuns who had to be evicted from Auschwitz because Christian prayers for the
souls of the killed and that crimes like these should never be allowed to
happen again, were regarded as blasphemous. Never mind that not only Jews died
there but Russians, Poles, Gypsies, Germans and others. The current gift shop
and cafeteria are obviously better suited to attract tourists and revenue than
quiet dignified prayer.
The Newsweek cover as depicted above
reveals, however, some additional information which ought to provide food for
thought. We are told that the TwinTowers had
collapsed as a result of damage by the planes and subsequent fires. Yet, when
one looks at the picture above, one is struck by the fact that only twisted
steel structure residues remained and the rest of the buildings had literally
been pulverized. I have discussed these anomalies previously and that those of
us who have difficulty believing the official version are ostracized, relegated
to the lunatic fringe, and at least one physicist has lost his job (October 1,
2006, the 911 Cover-Up; October 1, 2009, Crisis of Trust). Yet, the full truth
about what I call “the original sin of the 21st century,” namely the
events of 9/11, must come out if our country is to live up to its ideals of
being a beacon for freedom, truth and justice. The fact that the Obama
administration has shown absolutely no interest in investigating the claims
made by responsible scientists, that the Bush administration’s assertions defy
the principles of physics, was one of my dashed hopes. I readily admit that I
am not an engineer and have to defer to the judgment of professionals but their
voices are not allowed to be heard by the media. For instance, I did not know
that the group which calls itself “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth”
held a Press Conference at the National Press Club on September 9, at which
time evidence was presented to indicate that the three WTC buildings could only
have collapsed in the manner they did as a result of preset explosives. The
group called for a grand jury investigation of NIST (National Institute for
Standards and Technology) officials and circulated a petition signed by over
1,270 architects/engineers from this country as well as 10,000 from around the
world calling for a new investigation. This was given to every government
representative in Congress.
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/congressionaloutreachteam/PRESS-RELEASE-DC.pdf.
The topic was also taken up by
President Ahmadinejad in his speech at the UN on September 23 where he
“proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for
the event of 11 September so that in the future expressing views about it is
not forbidden.” Unfortunately Ahmadinejad lacks the moral stature, especially
after the bloody suppression of the opposition after his re-election, for his
call to be heeded. It would need a person of the stature of President Nelson
Mandela for instance to attract the attention of the media to the serious
questions which have been raised about the events of that fateful day.
We are told over and over again that we live in an
open society with a government “by the people for the people,” so let us have
“transparency” and let the transcripts of the phone conversations which went on
between President Bush and Vice-President Cheney on that day be made available
to the media. Obviously, the universal excuse of “National Security” will be
hauled out to prevent their publication. But the only security which we will
ever have will be when our government opens the books and demonstrates that it
has nothing to hide from its citizens. It will be 10 years next September and
people are getting killed and maimed on a daily basis in a “War on Terrorism,”
which is based on the events of that day but have never been satisfactorily
explained. We have been told, “The truth shall set you free,” so let us at long
last give it a chance!
The November installment will not appear, as usual,
on the first of the month but on the 8th because of professional
obligations during the end of October. This postponement will also allow for a
discussion of the election results.
November 12, 2010
IMPRESSIONS FROM ASIA
As
mentioned in last month’s installment this issue was delayed for professional
reasons. Last year I received an official invitation from the organizers of the
29th International Congress of Clinical Neurophysiology to present
some of our data on infraslow electrical activity as recorded from the brains of
epilepsy patients while they were undergoing evaluation for the possibility of
surgical treatment. The Congress was to be held in Kobe,
Japan, and due to my advanced
years as well as the potentially precarious health of my spouse, I wasn’t sure
whether or not I should accept. I, therefore, told my Japanese colleagues that
I would be happy to come provided circumstances allowed it and in case I were
unable to appear in person I would supply the PowerPoint presentation to be shown
by someone else. The Congress organizers agreed and also apologized that due to
the economic problems, which still beset Japan,
they could not cover the transportation expenses but I would receive an
honorarium.
The family
was not keen on my going because they watch on a daily basis my labored
ambulation and wondered how this would work out in such a distant country. But
I really wanted to go and told the kids to regard this as a dress rehearsal,
because after all I am not going to be around for much longer and they will
then have to take care of their mother. I had been to Japan twice before but
wanted to go this time because the work which was to be presented was dear to
my heart, quite controversial at this time among my peers, and this was an
opportunity to suggest to my colleagues from around the world what they should
look for in the data which they are currently accumulating.
Since
Martha’s health was stable I ventured on the trip but curtailed it to the
minimum of one week. Inasmuch as the presentation did arouse the expected
interest I had to spend considerable time, after my return, corresponding on
scientific matters with some old and new-found friends. This lasted longer than
anticipated and the previously announced date of November 8 had to be
postponed. It didn’t matter because the November 2nd election
results are still a hot topic for TV pundits and can likewise now be discussed. For flying across the Pacific
I had used my Delta frequent flyer miles to upgrade to business class in the
hope that this would allow me to stretch out and get some sleep. From SaltLake we have a direct connection to
Seattle and from there a direct
flight to Osaka from where a
limousine takes you to Kobe.
Anybody who still assumes that business class is what used to be first class
will be in for a surprise. The hype is there, but the facts differ. In former
years first class seats were spacious, with two on each side of the isle, and
you had room to move. Those days are gone. Now there are an additional two in
the center which obviously has to be compensated for by narrower seats. It’s
not quite as bad as in coach where they now cramp four seats into the center of
the plane, but in business class it amounts to about the space that you used to
have in coach when I first started flying in the fifties.
There are
other innovations. The pamphlet in front of the seat assures you that Delta has
restructured the seats so that you now can stretch out horizontally during the
night and enjoy restful sleep. This may be true but whoever designed these foot
brackets had either midgets in mind or more likely was
limited by the profit motive which insisted on shorter space between rows.
Although I am of average height the leg support ended at mid-calf which is not
a good idea. It was further complicated by the fact that it was only slightly
padded. Under these circumstances you compress the venous return from the legs
and doing so for 10 hours, which is about the flight time across the Pacific,
could be an invitation to form blood clots which may then send off some little
bits of emboli to the lungs or the brain. The seat next to mine was open and in
former years you might have lifted the arm rest and made use of the extra
space. This is no longer possible in our electronic age. The armrest is firmly
anchored because it contains numerous gadgets which take time to figure out.
Most importantly you can push a variety of buttons to change seat positions and
hidden somewhere in front is a small video screen which allows you to watch a
variety of DVDs or listen to whatever music you desire. That was nice but,
although of normal weight, I was so squeezed into the seat that I had a hard
time reaching the remote control system which was also lodged in the side of
the armrest. The flight attendants were, however, quite helpful and solved this
problem. I have no idea what a 250 pound person would do because even if he/she
were to buy two seats it wouldn’t do any good.
The flight
across the ocean reminded me of the movie The Longest Day because literally the
sun did not set throughout the flight. We left Seattle
in the afternoon and arrived at Kansai International airport next day in the
afternoon with 15 hours time difference from SaltLake. Since I no longer can manage
the distances which one has to cover in airports I had asked for a wheel chair
and that aspect functioned flawlessly. One is whisked through immigration where
not only a photo is taken but you also leave them two of your fingerprints as a
permanent souvenir and banners in English proclaim that they take terrorism
threats very seriously. The limousine bus starts right in front of the airport
exit doors and has a frequent schedule which reduces waiting time to a minimum.
On the highway from the airport to Kobe
the meaning of the 1930’s propaganda slogan Volk
ohne Raum (people without living space), which had such disastrous
consequences, was literally driven home to me. There were indeed hardly any
open spaces on that journey. From Osaka
to Kobe one encounters essentially
a strip city and the highway, which consisted of two and sometimes three rather
narrow lanes for each direction, was not on the ground but elevated. There was
hardly room for a curb and if there were to be an accident, especially on the
two lane stretches, it would take quite some feats of engineering to remove the
dead or wounded as well as the impacted vehicles. But the Japanese have no
choice in this respect and one has to admire their ability to overcome
adversity.
Kobe,
like most other Japanese cities, was severely bombed during WWII and its
architecture is typical for post WWII functionalism, which now dominates the
world. If one would not see Japanese people on the street and Japanese signs on
the buildings one would have no idea where one was in the world. The convention
hotel, Portopia, was an ultramodern structure with ultramodern features, some
of which were clearly not appreciated by this traveler. You no longer turn
lights on but you place the card which serves as a room key into a receptacle
by the door and presto the entire room, including bathroom, light up. This is
nice but you have lost individual control. If you would like to read in bed
before going to sleep, you then have to get up and take the card out from its
habitation which in turn, for good measure, shuts off the bathroom light which
might be needed later on. Forethought provided the traveler with a tiny
flashlight by the bed which was intended to serve as a guide to that facility
in pitch darkness.
There were
two more surprises. The toilet seat was pleasantly warm and on its side were
several explanations. I didn’t read them but apparently the facility has a
variety of functions including that of a bidet. I abstained, because I didn’t
want to flood the place. More important, however, was the air conditioning. It
was set at 25 degrees Celsius which corresponds to 77 degrees Fahrenheit.
Opening a window is no longer possible because it is firmly shut in place or
else weary, depressed, travelers might be induced to jump from this
considerable height. Now one would think that it should be no problem to reset
the panel to 20 degrees, because no one wants to sleep in that heat. Yes, you
can dial down but nothing happens and after about 20 minutes or so you can see
the number 25 pop up again. Well, at that point you turn the thing off but this
is likewise not to its liking and it obsessively returns to the magic number, apparently
the only one which exists in its mechanical brain.
If one were
to call room service to fix this little problem you might have another surprise
coming. Hardly anyone on the staff spoke English and my Japanese is limited to arigato (thank you). It was impossible
to get a straight answer to simple questions which was the major frustration
encountered. But this lack was made up for by good cheer. The hotel personnel,
especially the young ladies, had obviously been selected for good looks as well
as charm and must have been born with a smile on their lips. Bowing courteously
and warm smiles were the order of the day so you really couldn’t complain that
they had no idea what you wanted when a question was asked.
As
mentioned I had been to Japan twice before. Once as a result of an invitation
for a lecture tour in the 70s, which I have briefly alluded to in Living with
Duhkha (June 1, 2005) because it provided me with the first opportunity to get
somewhat closer acquainted with the Teaching of Buddha and the second time in 1981
for the Kyoto International Congress. During the lecture tour I had been
provided with a guide who was fluent in English and at the time of the Kyoto
Congress I was with Japanese colleagues who had worked in the West and were
likewise fully conversant with the English language. This time was different, I
was alone and this drove home the difficulties one encounters when there is no
common language.
I shall
skip over the scientific aspects, which were of high quality, and just relate
the highlight of the Congress: the Gala dinner. My previous visits to Japan
had shown that my Central European stomach did not appreciate Japanese food and
I was, therefore, not particularly keen on attending. But as part of the
official invitation there was a ticket supplied in the bag which held the rest
of the Congress material, and I wanted to mingle with colleagues from other
parts of the world whom I had never met before. The dinner was held at a
different hotel to which we were transported by bus. But when I presented my ticket
the lady at the counter couldn’t find my name on her list and told me with the
habitual smile that I can’t stay. I tried to tell here that there must have
been some mistake but as mentioned above English was not her forte. Somewhat
annoyed I said mentally a well known Americanism to myself and was ready to
leave, but an Australian colleague, who apparently had heard my presentation
the day before, told the lady in no uncertain terms that I was an invited guest
and had to be admitted. The supervisor was called and after about 10 minutes or
so I was told that I was indeed eligible to partake of this feast.
On the
other hand, the waiting time was not wasted because a colleague from one of the
Persian Gulf Emirates had approached me and our conversation drifted from
science to politics. When I asked him what he regarded as the major problem in
the Middle East the immediate answer was: Israel.
He had heard Obama’s Cairo speech and
was encouraged that a new tone was being set in Washington
but could not understand, why the U.S.
continues to support Israeli policies in spite of their blatant disregard of
Obama’s wishes. He told me that they are regularly seeing the plight of the
Palestinian people on their television screens and that Jerusalem
is the flashpoint. The city is holy not only to Jews but also to them and they
will never abandon their claim to the Arab portion. What Arabs want from the
West is respect! They want their dignity as human beings recognized and not
simply be regarded as pawns in a power play between the great nations.
After we were seated at the table a
colleague from India
joined us and here I was in the middle between a Muslim and a Hindu which
should have led to an interesting conversation, but this goal was only
partially fulfilled because of official events. First the host, Professor
Shibasaki, dressed in traditional Japanese attire gave a welcoming speech and
then he introduced a young lady, Nozomi Miyanishi, who was to entertain us with
traditional Japanese music played on the Koto. A little note which had been
supplied to each one of the guests explained that this instrument had come from
China via Korea
about 1300 years ago but may have existed in Japan
even before that time. It is a 13 string instrument plucked with three fingers
and the expert can produce beautiful soothing sounds. After having listened to
the expertise of Miss Miyanishi, Professor Shibasaki returned, this time in
Western clothes, gave another speech and announced that dinner would now be
served. An orchestra emerged which played Western music à la Japonaise at the current inappropriate sound level which
effectively inhibits conversations, while a host of waiters and waitresses
descended upon our tables from all directions.
For the sake of my brother who
dutifully reads these epistles and loves the French language I cannot resist to
treat you to the menu which was printed in French and Japanese. The only
English words were ICCN 2010 Gala Dinner at the top and October 31, 2010Heian
Ballroom at the bottom. Here goes:
SoupeChinoise aux Aileron de Requinet les Oeuf de Crabe
Granité SAKE de “NADA”
Fillet
de Boeuf Grillé aux Hakureidake,
Sauce
aux Graines de Moutardeet Legumes
Mousse
aux Agrumes, Seroie avec Marron, Fruits fraiset Glace Rouge.
Café
Well, that was it! What I got out
of it was that we would get a variety of appetizers, which I didn’t need,
followed by a Chinese soup which one might try. Sake was understandable but
nada has a different connotation in the Spanish speaking American West.
Nevertheless, the fillet de Boeuf Grillé readily translates into our Filet
Mignon of which I am quite fond and the dessert description as well as coffee
was also quite clear. The problem was that we could hardly talk above the noise
level created by the musical entertainment and I did want to hear from my Hindu
colleague what he regarded as the major problem in his neck of the woods. He
works in a city North of New Delhi, has modern equipment and is content with
how things are going professionally. As far as the larger problem the country
faces, the immediate answer was: Pakistan.
While the Palestinian hardships are
the prime political problems for Muslims, the plight of the people in Kashmir
and what is regarded as Pakistan’s
continued fomenting of unrest with terror attacks in the area as well as India
proper, receives top priority in his country. When I, naively, suggested that
the best solution might be if India
and Pakistan
were to agree for a united Kashmir to become an
independent state he told me that this would not be allowed to happen. The
reason given was important and although he did not mention it, this also
applies to China
and the Tibetan problem. My colleague explained that India
consists of several major ethnic groups and numerous different languages. If
the Indian portion of Kashmir were to be separated from
the mother country all the other ethnic and language groups would clamor for
independence and that would be the end of India.
China also is
not homogeneous, hardly any nation is, and when ethnicity and regionalism begin
to dominate, countries begin to fall apart in civil strife.
In this connection I have a hunch,
although not yet reported on Wikileaks, that our CIA is currently busy promoting
ethnic unrest in Iran,
Russia, China
and Pakistan to
remove these countries from being able to play a major role in world affairs. This
is not pure fantasy because the book See
no Evil by Robert Baer, an ex-CIA operative, explains how he worked with
Kurdish independence fighters in the 1980s to topple the Saddam Hussein regime,
but was abandoned by Washington
at a crucial moment. The same happened with an earlier uprising in Tibet
and from other sources I have heard that the Chinese believe the Dalai Lama to
be on the CIA’s payroll. The truth of the matter is unknown but people operate
on perceptions and our government does not give us a chance to find out the
facts, although we are paying for them and will be held responsible. The
obvious reason for secrecy is the most sacrosanct aspect of our republic “National
Security.”
This brings me to the midterm
elections and the re-emergence of ex-President George W Bush who is currently
on a book tour where he defends the decisions he has made. The most blatant
aspect is the assertion that his major achievement was that he has kept America
safe from another 9/11 attack. The fact that 9/11 should never have been
allowed to happen on his watch in the first place and that the response i.e.
two wars against countries which did not commit the act was totally
inappropriate, is ignored. Mr. Bush did not tell us in his book what he did to
protect our country while vacationing on his ranch during the month of August
and especially on August 6, 2001,
when he was told that Osama bin Laden was preparing to strike “the homeland.” Apparently
there is also no mention in the book that the Taliban government of Afghanistan
had not just simply refused to hand over bin Laden, but had demanded proof of
his complicity in the attack before doing so. This was not provided by our
government and remarkably enough Osama is not even wanted by the FBI for the
9/11 attacks. Although he shows up on the FBI’s Most Wanted poster it is “in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200
people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other
terrorist attacks throughout the world.” http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden.
Although the FBI poster is dated
June 1999, it also carried the comment, “Poster Revised November 2001.” This
was after the attack on Afghanistan
had been started. The lumping of 9/11, the most significant event of the 21st
century, under “other terrorist acts throughout the world,” surely strikes one
as strange. To the best of my knowledge no evidence has ever been provided
which could be placed before the International Court in regard to bin Laden’s
responsibility for the 9/11 attack. I know that this goes counter to accepted
wisdom but we deserve to see facts which stand up in court rather than
suspicions and questionable statements on a videotape.
There is no hope that our
ex-President will ever own up to these facts but some of us had hoped that our
current office holder would not shy away from investigating what had led us
into the current military and economic difficulties. According to an article by
Leslie Gelb in the current issue of Foreign
Affairs, the two wars have cost by now “almost $3 trillion and counting,” and
there is no end in sight. The economic disaster was also initiated by the Bush
administration and we now have the paradoxical situation where the neglect of
measures which could have prevented the Wall Street collapse in October 2008 is
regarded as the cure for our economy by the newly elected Republican majority
in the House as well as a significant portion of the American public at large.
The expectation that Obama would
shine light on the 9/11 catastrophe which lies at the heart of all that
followed militarily and economically was too much of an “Audacity of Hope.” The
president revealed himself as a person who didn’t want to rock the boat and sought
compromise where none was forthcoming. As mentioned in last month’s
installment, as well as earlier ones, the prime voice of Republicans is the
radio commentator and author Rush Limbaugh who had announced after Obama’s
inauguration that his presidency must fail. His inflammatory rhetoric, ably
assisted by other TV personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and
others who are utterly opposed to any government program which strives to bring
some relief to poor and middle class Americans as well as more equity to the
tax code, was taken up by Congress. I well remember O’Reilly’s vendetta against
Obama’s “redistribution of wealth” because the candidate had pledged to let the
Bush tax cuts expire in December 2010 and return those households with a net
income of more than $250.000 from the current 35% to the 39.6% tax rate which
existed under Clinton’s presidency.
The November 8, 2010 issue of Newsweek listed under “Power 50” the annual earnings of America’s
most influential political figures. The first 5 persons on the list are talk
show hosts while number 6 is Sarah Palin with a meager $14 million. I am
calling it meager because the list is headed by Rush Limbaugh with $58.7
million, followed by Glenn Beck $33 million, Sean Hannity $22 million, Bill
O’Reilly $20 million and John Stewart $15 million. Mind you these are annual incomes. With exception of John
Stewart all of these individuals promote “conservative values” and regard
themselves as good or even exceptionally good – as is the case with Sarah Palin
who got baptized twice – Christians. Yet what may be called a “social
conscience” seems to elude them. John Stewart is the exception because he makes
his millions by exposing the gaffes and hypocrisies of the people mentioned
above as well as politicians in general. When one considers these income levels
one really must wonder how much the lifestyle of these people who day in and
day out proclaim that the federal deficit must be reduced, would be cramped if
they had to pay not quite 5% more of their annual income in taxes and thereby
contribute their share to deficit reduction.
Smaller government and cuts in
spending were the slogans under which the election was won. But the winners
never explained which programs they would cut to achieve savings and they made
it clear that the defense budget is not negotiable. This leaves the
“entitlements” of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the new Health Care Reform
Act and contributions to individual states of the Union.
Furthermore, the budget cutters ignore that by lowering federal tax rates,
local taxes on the state and county level will have to go up because essential
services must be maintained. In contrast to the federal government they cannot
print money and have to operate within a balanced budget. To what extent the
Republicans will continue to play the role of obstructionists, as they have
already vowed, will become apparent early on next year.
When one reads the papers one finds
various reasons why the Democrats lost as badly as they did. Obviously the
major aspect was the economy with the high unemployment rate and the
uncertainty created by poorly thought out legislation with the health care act
a prime example (September 1, 2009, Obama’s Reality Check; October 1, 2010). But
the election was also a referendum on Obama’s first two years in office and the
Opinion page of the Salt Lake Tribune of
November 6 was instructive. Paul Krugman the recent Nobel Prize winner in
economics, who leans to the left, published an article under the headline,
“Obama’s mistake: Being too timid on economy.” His thesis was that the economic
“stimulus package” had been too small in order to have the desired effect. On
the same page was another article by Rich Lowry, editor of a conservative news
magazine and syndicated columnist, with the headline, “After election: the
shellacking that hubris wrought.” So what is it? Was Obama too timed or too
arrogant?
While I don’t necessarily agree
with Krugman’s advice and as mentioned previously, different economists have
different views (April 1, 2009;
Uncharted Waters), there was one sentence which was correct. It was in
connection with the charge that Obama had lacked “focus” and this is why he
suffered this defeat. Krugman wrote, “So where in this story, does ‘focus’ come
in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of
courage in his own convictions?Definitely.Lack of focus? No.” This goes to the character issue of a
president, which is always the most important aspect. Obama had tried to please
all and thereby pleased no one. There is a German proverb which was proven
right again: Allen Menschenrechtgetan, isteine Kunst die niemand kann (to do right by everyone is an art
possessed by no one). I sensed that this attitude of putting political
expediency above conviction might become a problem for Obama, after he had won
the primaries, in the way he had handled the problem his Pastor, Jeremiah
Wright, had created for him (July 1, 2008; Barack Obama’s Problems). Obama had
neglected Malcolm Xs advice: never let the adversary dictate the rules of the
game for you. Instead of sticking to his guns and using his eloquence to
explain to the American people why he did what he did, he tried to placate his
adversaries and, as the prime example, the health care act grew into a
monstrosity, which even he could not defend during the campaign.
I still believe that Obama means
well, wants to end the current wars and prevent another one from erupting which
really ought to be the number one priority. Under those circumstances, given
time, the economy will improve. But he cannot achieve this goal unless he finds
his authentic voice and sticks with it. The recent 60 minute interview, last
Sunday, showed him as hesitant, weighing each word, because it would be taken
out of context and turned into a millstone around his neck. Therefore, I shall
be sending this letter to the White House:
Dear Mr. President,
In order to achieve success during
the next two years please forget politics and concentrate on domestic as well
as foreign affairs. Unless you have not done so previously, read and learn by
heart Kipling’s “Ifs.” In your present situation the verses: “If you can keep
your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you
can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting
too . . . If you can bear to hear the
truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools . . . ,” are the
most important ones.
Do not concern yourself about a second term
because you have no control over election results. Act as if these were the
last two years of your presidency and you will leave the White House with a
clean conscience. We have read that your wife is not enamored with her current
domicile and as you well know there is a colloquial saying: When mama ain’t
happy, nobody is happy.
Give us a programmatic speech like
you did in Philadelphia two years
ago and then stick to its points. Foremost, in order to avoid another war in
the Middle East listen to the Israeli Peace groups and do not let yourself be
blackmailed by the Netanyahu government with threats of “nuking Tehran” in case
you were to cut off some aid if the Likud government continues to build new
housing for Jews in the Arab section of Jerusalem, thereby displacing current
inhabitants. Tell the Israeli government instead, that if they bomb Iran
they are on their own; the action will not only be condemned but all further
aid will be cut off and the U.S.
will support a vote of censure in the Security Council.
Mr. President you now have a choice
to make. You can decide to justify your premature Nobel peace prize or run for
re-election. These are mutually incompatible goals because the former course is
bound to alienate a significant donor element and you will be vilified by
segments of the media. Working towards justice for Palestinians is, however,
the only way to demonstrate to the Muslim world that you meant what you said in
Cairo as well as Jakarta
and America
will thereby regain the trust of the rest of the world which she currently
lacks.
With best wishes also for your
family
Sincerely,
Ernst Rodin MD
In all probability the delete
button will be activated immediately upon arrival of this letter, but when one
lives by Kipling’s Ifs this is of no concern. The outcome of our actions is
beyond our influence. We are only responsible for their initiation and for
failure to act when it was required.
December 1, 2010
CHRISTIAMITY
Attentive
readers might immediately jump to the conclusion that I had been somewhat
careless and hadn’t recognized an obvious typographic mistake in the title of
this essay. But you must wait, it wasn’t, and the reason for this neologism
will become clear later.
December is
what used to be called the Christmas season, but this is no longer the case in
our country. We now have the “holiday season,” although the vast majority of
our citizens are still, at least nominally, Christians. Last week’s
Thanksgiving holiday, which traditionally ushers in the season, was
overshadowed by what is called “Black Friday.” This term has to do with the
frantic shopping for bargain prices at chain-stores, some of which open at 3 or
5 a.m. on Friday after Thanksgiving
and are supposed to put the ledgers of the stores into “the black.” Thursday’s
newspaper contained nearly twice as many ads for bargains as the “news” pages,
and some eager shoppers, we were told, had camped out in the cold for 48 hours
prior to the 3 a.m. event when doors
would be opened and they could descend upon all the “stuff” that could be
bought. Less ardent souls started their vigil at 7
p.m. as we were told in Saturday’s newspaper. The traditional
family dinner has apparently given way to commercialism, which is running
rampant and the spiritual aspects have become the loser.
Emphasis on
shopping is, however, only one aspect of our changing society, the other is
that wishing somebody a “Merry Christmas” is no longer politically correct. We
might offend Jews who don’t want to hear the word Christ. This is not fantasy
but merely shows how far our country has gone down the road towards “Separation
of Church and State” and progressive secularization. Stephen Feldman’s wish has
been granted but whether we are better off as a result is not at all certain.
In 1997 Mr. Feldman, a professor of Law and Political Science at the University
of Tulsa, published a book which
received rave reviews. Some from the back copy state: “Clearly a superb work of
scholarship;” “Feldman marshals a persuasive body of evidence, most notably
legal cases, to demonstrate that the separation of church and state is invoked
to further Christian domination of American society;” “At a time when debate
rages around issues associated with the establishment clause of the First
Amendment and at a time of resurgent anti-Semitism, Feldman’s carefully
reasoned and meticulously documented case is particularly welcome.” The title
of the book was: PLEASE DON’T WISH ME A MERRY
CHRISTMAS, A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State.
I have
discussed the book in considerable detail in the chapter “The Talmudic Way of
Thinking” of The Moses Legacy and
since it can be downloaded from this site, free of charge, I can be very brief
here. Mr. Feldman felt that there was pervasive antisemitism in this country,
cited several legal cases and ended his book with: “I ask for one small
political act. I request each reader to make a simple and direct statement
questioning Christian imperialism. My idea: next, year, when someone wishes you
a ‘Merry Christmas,’ just say, ‘Please don’t! Don’t wish me a Merry
Christmas.’”When I typed this,
Microsoft’s automatic spell-check informed me that I have committed another
faux-pas because I spelled antisemitism in the way it was spelled originally
and as a matter of fact used in Feldman’s book. This change in spelling had
also upset one of our Jewish acquaintances who had been interested in my
experiences during the Nazi era and to whom I had sent a copy of War&Mayhem. Whereupon he wrote a one
and a half page letter stating that the correct spelling should have been
anti-Semitism, because unless there is a capital S the word degrades Jews and
is by itself anti-Semitic! Well, I told him that one need not get flustered over
spelling; he should read on and let me know what he thought about the substance
of the ideas which were contained in the book. This was too much for him and
there was no further reply.
So let us
ask what is this American anti-Semitism Feldman complained about, and what had
upset him to the point that he felt he had to express his views so vigorously
in the mentioned book? In the Introduction he stated, “I am Jewish. In the fall
of 1993, my four year old daughter began a prekindergarten program in an experimental
public school in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
when my wife and I learned that the school, called the MayoDemonstrationSchool,
had displayed and decorated a Christmas tree during the previous year.” To
avoid a repetition of this event he wrote an extensive letter to the school
authorities in which he requested that this practice should be abandoned
because it places minority children in a situation where, “a child will, at a
minimum, feel a distance and exclusion from the Mayo community, or worse, the
child might risk overt ostracism from peers and a loss of self-esteem.” Yes, it
is true that children who belong to a minority are likely to be ostracized and
bullied but this can be dealt with in the home and turned into a learning
experience. I shall return to this aspect later.
Feldman
defined antisemitism as follows,
Unlike someone
with a more typically modernistic conception of antisemitism, I do not limit
the definition of antisemitism to intentional or conscious anti-Jewish actions
and attitudes. Instead, in this book, ‘antisemitism’ refers broadly to the
intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, hatred, dislike,
oppression, persecution, domination, and subjugation of Jews qua Jews for
whatever reason or motivation, whether it is religious, cultural, ethnic
racial, or political.
Since this
definition is rather broad I wrote in The
Moses Legacy that one really can’t fault Louis Farrakhan for having defined
the term anti-Semite as, “anybody whom Jews don’t like.” The definition also brought
to mind a lecture I had attended in the late 1960’s by an Israeli psychiatrist
who had examined Adolf Eichmann during the latter’s trial in Jerusalem.
His name carried no particular meaning for me and I have forgotten it but he
was originally from Hungary
and his physical stature, demeanor, as well as fine sense of humor reminded me
of my grandfather. During the discussion after the lecture he was asked whether
or not Eichmann was antisemitic to which he replied, “If you define an
antisemite as someone who hates Jews more than is necessary, then, no he wasn’t
an antisemite.” If this definition were uttered by someone else it would nowadays
by itself be regarded as antisemtic and this is how far the road we have gone
because you can’t speak your mind any more, even in jest, when it comes to
Jewish concerns.
Feldman’s
views have carried the day and although he decried the term Judeo-Christian
tradition it is now the accepted norm. In public life those of us who have been
baptized into the Christian faith are now mainly hyphenated ones. Although this
fact of American society has been decades in the making the last ten years have
clearly been a quantum jump in that direction. In the same year, 1997, that
Professor Feldman published his book, Professor Peter Schäfer (Jewish Studies
at Princeton and Director of the Institut für Judaistik
at Freie Universität Berlin)
published Judeophobia, which deals
with The Attitudes toward the Jews in the
Ancient World. The book is, likewise, very well researched and is a
valuable balanced resource to understand the plight as well as the
resourcefulness of Jews during Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. The last
paragraph of the book is highly à propos.
On the whole,
however, the peculiarity of the Roman attitude toward the Jews seems better
expressed by the term ‘Judeophobia” in its ambivalent combination of hate and
fear. One may argue, of course, that ‘anti-Semitism’ also carries, and always
carried with it, an element of fear. This is certainly the case, but the Roman
fear is peculiar not only in that it projects onto the Jews an irrational
feeling of being threatened by some mysterious conspiracy but also, and mainly,
in that it responds to the very real success of the Jews in the midst of Roman society,
that it is the distorted echo of sympathy.
As the course of
history shows, this [italics in
original] fear was well-founded. The vanquished did succeed in giving laws to
their victors: at first as Jews and later, and most effectively, in the guise
of Christianity.”
This
conclusion is important because it pertains to the current American scene where
Jewish lawyers have imposed their views on how the Constitution should be
interpreted. But the legal changes are not restricted to the Constitution; they
pervade all aspects of our society. Christians have largely abandoned the
Hellenistic aspects of their heritage and embraced the Jewish ones. While
Protestantism, and especially its evangelical and Mormon segment, has always
looked with great favor upon the Old Testament and are in part more fervent
Zionists than some Israelis, the Catholic Church had in the past been more
circumspect. Up until Vatican II it had regarded God’s Covenant with Moses and
the Hebrew people as having been rendered obsolete by Christ’s sacrifice and
only acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior would lead to heaven. This “supercessionism”
was abrogated and Jews can now go to heaven even if they don’t believe that
Jesus was the Messiah. Equality of these two belief systems was established,
while the inferiority of all other religious beliefs was retained. As such we
have in fact a Judeo-Christian country and dedicated Jewish lawyers no longer
need the “guise of Christianity” to enforce their views. As such, a book called
Judeophobia, although the word is certainly more accurate than anti-Semitism,
whichever way one may want to spell it, could hardly be published today in
regard to American society. Judeophobia has now been replaced by Islamophobia because it was Muslims
after all, as Bill O’Reilley keeps reminding us, who were responsible for the
9/11 attacks.
This brings
me to the evening prior to Thanksgiving. Our daughter had come to visit with us
and she had found a DVD at Redbox entitled “My Name is Khan,” which we viewed on
that night. The film was made by “Bollywood” and featured an Indian-Pakistani
view of America’s
post 9/11 scene towards Muslims in our country. The film clearly has flaws: the
subtitles of the Hindi dialogue are too small and difficult to read; the movie
is also rather long and requires oriental patience, rather than America’s
drive to “get to the bottom line.” But it does highlight the problem of
intolerance some Muslims are subjected to, simply for being Muslims. As
expected the amazon.com reviews are mixed ranging from ridicule to praise. In
spite of its flaws I would recommend that you view this film because its
message is of such importance especially during the Christmas season when the
spirit of good will towards all ought to predominate.
As
mentioned, genuine Christianity has fallen on hard times. My book, The Jesus Conundrum, which highlights
the current situation and was intended to provide our educated classes with an
appreciation why his life and teaching ought to be taken seriously, has been a commercial
failure. There has not been a single review, although I had sent copies far and
wide, and even some of my colleagues at the university to whom I gave the book,
have begun to look askance at me. I had ventured into a field which one
shouldn’t be talking about in academia. The comment by the chairman of our department
will remain unforgettable. I had sent a copy for review to The Salt Lake Tribune and thought that our chairman should know
what I really had written in case some reviewer would take aspects out of
context and distort my views. Since we are not close friends I felt a little
uncomfortable giving it to him but didn’t want him to be surprised if a review
were to appear. I explained the situation and then said, “It’ll be good for
your soul.” To which he replied, “A Chairman has no soul.” I was taken aback by
that statement because it had come so spontaneously, but subsequent events
revealed that what may have been irony was correct. The chairman of an academic
department, regardless of what faculty and of what university, is currently so
hemmed in by regulations and the need to procure money for the department that human
considerations have to give way to the needs of the moment. Well, I am grateful
for being as old as I am, retired from official duties, and not receiving money
for my work. Otherwise it would carry obligations to the source of the funds
and thereby automatically limit my hard-won freedom of thought and speech. I
had never intended to make any money on the Jesus book because I felt that it
would have been inappropriate and had promised that any possible income would
be donated to the Abbey of Our Lady of
the Holy Trinity in HuntsvilleUtah,
where a small group of elderly monks live in poverty and are praying for our
souls.
Since my Jesus Conundrum had the subtitle Searching for Truth beyond Dogma I was
fascinated when I came across a book by Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematics
and Physics at TulaneUniversity)
entitled The Physics of Christianity.
I had deliberately shied away from dogma because I felt that Jesus – whom I
regarded as a rebel against Jewish dogma – was now being imprisoned in another
set of dogmas. New wine was put into old wine-skins. But Professor Tipler tried
to convince me and others who feel that way, that we were mistaken and that the
Christian dogmas as well as the miracles of Jesus are perfectly understandable
because they conform to the laws of physics rather than contradict them.
This
remarkable assertion is based largely on quantum physics, which I do not
pretend to understand and have briefly mentioned in regard to Truth and Reality
in these pages (July 1, 2009; Faith and Science) as well as in the Jesus book.
Professor Tipler does his level best in his book to make us not only understand
the major aspects of “The Standard Model of Particle Physics” but also provides
the mathematical underpinnings, which unfortunately, because of my limited
understanding, I cannot check for veracity. In spite of its complexity, and
detractors on amazon.com, the book can usefully be read as a glimpse into the
future which may or may not happen. Let me state at the outset that I don’t
believe that Tipler has proven his points scientifically and that, in my
opinion, the book should be regarded as scientism rather than science. While
science refers to hard data obtained by measurements which are independently
reproducible by others, scientism is an unwarranted faith in generalizations derived
from specific scientific data. The most glaring example is global warming.
There is no doubt that glaciers are melting, the oceans are warming and general
temperatures are rising. Even the rosebush in front of my window has lost its
good sense because it started sprouting buds in November! Clearly something is
happening but the cause(s) is open to speculation and this is where scientism
comes in.
We are
confronted with a fundamental problem of human existence, which in my field of
specialization, is called the search for “the inverse solution.” The direct
solution for a cause and effect event would be the experiment where we know all
the conditions which went into the experiment and then judge the outcome
accordingly. While this can work to a considerable extent in the laboratory,
the process breaks down in daily life. At all times we see only effects from
which we then infer cause(s). From observable facts we develop ideas which might explain them. Scientists
nowadays employ computer models from which the likelihood of future events is
predicted. This is fine, as long as one remembers that we are dealing with models rather than facts and that
everything depends on a) what factors went into the model and b) how the
results are interpreted. The general public needs to realize that everything we
“know” is a result of an interpretation of events by our brains and that a full
understanding of all the causes that went into them eludes our understanding. The
non-recognition of this fact has led and still leads to a great deal of tragedy
in our world.
Professor
Tipler had this in mind when he wrote in regard to evil: “All evil acts can
ultimately be reduced to a violation of one and only one ethical rule: Thou shalt not impose thy theories on other
living beings by force [italics in the original].” On the other hand he tried hard to persuade us to believe a
number of statements of which I shall mention only some to provide a flavor of
his thoughts.
In his opinion Quantum Physics
demands the existence of parallel universes. Our universe and the total multiverse
originated in a “Singularity,” which is beyond the laws of physics and not
bound by them although all of creation is. The universe(s) heads towards an
Omega point, its annihilation, which is another Singularity and the intervening
period is governed by a third Singularity, which spans the time between
beginning and end. This physical trinity corresponds to the Christian one where
the Holy Spirit was the first Singularity, the Father is the Omega point and the
Jesus Christ Singularity acts in the present. The Omega point will be reached
within the next forty years and is accompanied by the resurrection of all human
beings who have ever lived but as computer generated identities whose every
wish will automatically be granted because we will have unlimited power.
Technology will have produced quantum computers which will make all of this
possible. The “baryon annihilation process” with “quantum tunneling” will be
the means and provide the ultimate energy source with which we can move among
the stars. Jesus’ miracles, such as walking on water and the resurrection,
resulted from his ability to use this process and we will also learn how to do
it. The Virgin birth was necessary and Jesus was an XX male. Evil is genetic, it
came into this world when bony structures developed and is located on the X
chromosome.
All of this reads, of course, like
science fiction and reminds one of The Matrix and the Star Trek series with
“Scotty” doing the beaming of people to and from the starship Enterprise, while
the holodeck provides the wished for entertainment. As such, the natural
inclination is to dismiss the entire book; but that would be unfair. I believe
that Tipler wanted us to think and abide by the difference between a critic and
a cynic. The critic says, “I don’t believe it because your proof is inadequate
and needs to be reworked,” while the cynic says, “hogwash” and is done with it.
I prefer the stance of the constructive critic and here are some of the reasons
why I cannot subscribe to Tipler’s explanations. To discuss all of the
statements listed above would require several articles.
His fundamental assumption is based
on Quantum Mechanics, which in his words, “asserts that every object in the
universe–an electron, a chair, you and me, the planet Earth, and the entire
universe itself–is simultaneously both a particle and a wave.” He agrees that
this is counterintuitive but regards it, nevertheless, as true. But is it? I
can’t argue with the physics of the statement, but I can raise one critical
question. I agree that under certain laboratory conditions a human observer can
see that at the quantum level a particle can behave like a wave and vice versa.
But to extrapolate from that limited observation to your and my behavior, as
well as to that of the universe, seems to me a mental quantum jump which may or
may not be permissible.
There exists a trite statement that
“the sum is always greater than its parts.” This is such common knowledge that
it evokes immediately a “so what” response. But think about it. 2+2 make 4 but
4 is not only 2+2; it is also 3+1, 9-5, the square root of 16, in addition to
numerous other possibilities. The question but what is it “really?” is, of
course, meaningless. It is all of the above and more, but what all of the
“more” is we can’t fathom. Tipler’s book promotes the idea that we are already basically
computers because the brain is “a wet computer.” I agree that the brain
computes, but is this its only function? The answer is clearly no; it does a
host of other things some of which we know others we have no idea of. In regard
to behavior we know that a nerve when sufficiently excited responds in an all
or none fashion; it is digital: either-or. But the brain gives graded responses;
some weak others strong. Tipler seems to subscribe to a mechanistic view where
parts make up wholes and that from the behavior of a given part we can judge
that of the whole. The biologist, on the other hand, sees an organism, which is
a whole entity. It can be split into parts but in so doing we have
fundamentally altered the totality. This is a basic question, and I shall
discuss this with Professor Tipler via e-mail because both of us are interested
in what’s called “the truth.”
As mentioned, I cannot argue about the
math or physics but when it comes to biology and the proof that Jesus was an XX
male, Tipler ventured into my field. The proof for that assertion is supposed
to reside in the Shroud of Turin. It has an image of a person who is regarded
as having been crucified and many believe that it is a picture of Christ.
Although the Catholic Church has not formally stated so it leans towards that
interpretation and the Shroud is venerated as possibly the holiest of all
relics. An unbiased observer merely looking at the image (which can be viewed
on the Internet) has, however, considerable difficulty seeing all the aspects
which are attributed to it by others and I now specifically refer to an article
by Dr. Robert Bucklin who examined the picture with the eyes of a forensic
pathologist http://www.shroud.com/bucklin.htm.
The shroud also contains reddish
spots, which have been regarded as human blood of the AB type but there was not
enough material to establish the Rh factor. Tipler told us that Dr.
Garza-Valdes had sent a sample for DNA analysis to a laboratory in Texas
and a male genotype with an XY chromosome was found. Since this did not conform
to Virgin Birth dogma, Tipler was then happy to find an article by Dr. Lucia
Casarino, published in Italian, which provided DNA data from a different shroud
sample. But since she apparently could not make definitive sense out of the
data she only published raw numbers. Tipler put these in tabular form and
stated, “But I was able to interpret the data at once. They are the expected signature of the DNA of a male born in a Virgin
Birth [italics in the original].”
Since I am not a geneticist I had
not known about XX males prior to reading Tipler’s book. They do exist,
although their occurrence is quite rare. The tables upon which Tipler based his
evidence for virgin birth are, however, what we call “hard data,” which could
be evaluated by professionals. I, therefore, digitized the tables and sent them
separately to two colleagues who are internationally known for their DNA work. Prior
to doing so I removed the captions and simply stated in my e-mail that these
are DNA data and I would tell them their origin after they had given me a blind
interpretation of the numbers. This is the way I do all of my EEG/MEG work. I
look at the data first, then get the clinical information and correlate the two
because in that way I am least biased. The answers came back the same day. The
blind responses were essentially identical and stated that the DNA material was
apparently processed by a technique used in former years (Casarino’s paper was
published in 1995) and contains DNA fragments with multiple markers, but
without further information they are uninterpretable. After I had told them the
provenance of the sample they did not agree with Tipler’s conclusion. One colleague’s
comment was uncomplimentary, while the other stated that the material could
have come from a perfectly normal XY male.
In my opinion the search for Jesus’
DNA on the shroud is useless because a) we don’t know what the image really is;
b) if it was indeed a person whose image appears, it need not be Jesus; c) the
shroud has been handled throughout the ages by numerous individuals who may
well have left portions of their DNA on it. But reading Tipler’s book also
acquainted me with the one by Leoncio Garza-Valdes (former adjunct Professor of
Microbiology at the HealthSciencesCenter of the University
of Texas), The DNA of God? which deals exclusively with Shroud data. Just as
Tipler, he is a devout Roman Catholic, but in contrast to Tipler he does not
let his religion interfere with the interpretation of objective data. This
admirable trait has brought him, however, considerable grief from the Catholic
hierarchy, for whom he has become persona non grata and he is no longer allowed
to examine shroud tissue.
Garza-Valdes does believe that the
blood on the shroud contains an XY chromosomal pattern but more importantly he
found that carbon 14 dating can be influenced by a previously unknown artifact.
Microbes thrive on ancient material, of whatever sort, providing a “bioplastic
coating” and their carbon 14 can lead to an artificially higher date than is
necessarily the case. The shroud material has been dated to between 1260 and
1390 A.D. and it was assumed that it could, therefore, not be Jesus’ burial
cloth. Garza-Valdes who examined some shroud fibers microscopically found,
however, bacterial and fungal colonies which add their carbon 14 to that of the
shroud material. The linen of the shroud itself could be considerably older
than the current dating suggests. One might be able to prove this theory by
removing this coating and perform another radiocarbon test, but since this
involves tissue destruction, the Church will not allow it at this time.
Inasmuch as Garza-Valdes reported that he and his co-workers had cloned from this
tissue sample the betaglobin gene segment from chromosome 11 the Church became
alarmed. The Vatican power structure jumped to the
conclusion that one could now clone Jesus and demanded that all samples be
returned. The cardinals need not have worried because the shroud tissue is so
degraded that, even if it were the original burial cloth, complete cloning of
the individual, whose DNA was left on the shroud is impossible.
While all of the foregoing comments
deal with various aspects of Christianity and, therefore, the Christmas season,
I still have to explain the title of this essay. The thought came from a book
which our daughter had given me as a Christmas present last year. It was
written by Paramahansa Yogananda – who is also the author of Autobiography of a Yogi – and carries
the titles The Second Coming of Christ; The
Resurrection of the Christ Within You. It is a massive tome of two volumes
and harmonizes the gospels with Hindu philosophy. I was, of course, pleasantly
surprised that, although we came from completely different cultural backgrounds
on separate continents, our mental outlook was the same. Both of us believe
that the Christian dogmas do not unite us, they divide, but that the message of
Jesus is universal and can be resurrected in our minds. Once this is done,
behavior will follow and we will create a better world. In the Jesus book I
mentioned that Hindus or Buddhists will have no problem with Jesus as Christ
because they will recognize him as an avatar; the incarnation of the Spirit of
God. This is also the central thesis of Yogananda. He has great respect for
Christianity but no use for “Church-ianity” into which Christ’s ideals have
degenerated. To denote the difference he regarded “Christ-ianity” as a better
way to express the thought. When I saw this I felt that this is not necessarily
the best way to get the message across and therefore changed the n to an m
which leads to “Christi-amity.”
The essential message of Jesus was:
if you love each other then you are my disciples (paraphrased from John 13:35). Christian love, agápē, as has been repeatedly mentioned, is parental rather
than erotic love and even if we cannot muster love towards others we can be
amiable! This is how Jesus Christ wanted us to behave and it should not be too
hard, although some effort will be required. We are intermittently told that we
ought to put Christ back into Christmas and in this spirit I will not wish you
a “Merry Christmas” but as some say in German speaking countries: Gesegnete Weihnachten (Blessed Holy
Nights). For Spanish speaking people of the world who wish each other Felice Navidad I would suggest to invert
“Christmas” and to wish each other “Más
Christ.” Let there be more of Christ’s spirit in and for each other. There
are sufficient natural disasters; we do not need to add human made ones and if
we were to work on the Resurrection of Christ’s Spirit within us the future
would be considerably brighter than it looks at present.
Finally since I never intended to
make any money on the Jesus book I will put it on this website from where it
can be downloaded for free. Inasmuch as I could not keep my promise to give the
proceeds to the monks, because there were none, here is their website in case
you feel it in your heart to help a few genuinely worthy people: http://www.holytrinityabbey.org
January 1, 2011
AMERICA'S KARMA
When people use
the Hindu concept of karma in conversation they tend to think of individuals
and how their current actions may lead to desirable or undesirable future results.
In the Orient, where reincarnation is an additional commonly held view, karma
extends even beyond the current life of the person into the next one until
sufficiently good karma has been accumulated to make further reincarnations on
this planet unnecessary.
We
in the West tend to be disdainful of reincarnation and the idea that current
actions have unavoidable future consequences also tends to be unpalatable. Nevertheless
we use expressions such as “what goes around comes around” or the “pigeons are
coming home to roost,” which are just another way of recognizing the basic
truth of karma. As mentioned in earlier issues, even the ancient Egyptians were
aware of it and under the concept of Maat (truth, justice, order)
used to say that “the deed returns to the doer.”
On
the other hand, the idea of a “national karma” still seems strange. Especially
in America we see ourselves mainly as individuals with relatively little
connection to the larger forces which govern our lives, although the Wall
Street collapse in the fall of 2008 should have taught us better. A handful of
greedy speculators managed to bring financial disaster to hundreds of millions
around the globe from which it will take years if not decades to recover.
Nevertheless, Americans since the early 19th century have adhered to
the idea of a “Manifest Destiny” which provided the moral legitimacy not only
for the expansion of the country across the continent but subsequent military
interventions around the world.
According to Wikipedia,
the historian William Weeks noted that the concept of “Manifest Destiny” rests
on three pillars: 1.) the virtue of the American people and their institutions;
2.) The mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking
the world in the image of the U.S.;
and 3.) the destiny under God to accomplish this work. When this notion is
combined with that of “American Exceptionalism,” which dates back to the
Puritans, and John Winthrop’s sermon about the “city on a hill,” re-used in the
recent past by President Reagan, we have the potential makings of hubris and national
karma. Inasmuch as some of our leading citizens still subscribe to these ideas
and try to force them on other nations, we should not be surprised when some of
them do not see our “virtue” but rather perceive a grab of power, which
conflicts with their national interests and needs to be resisted.
Each rising nation is
convinced of its own goodness and the 19th century slogan: am deutschen Wesen wird die Welt genesen
(the German spirit will heal the world), which had such disastrous consequences
in the next one,immediately springs to mind. Germany’s and England’s karma
played itself out during that time in the form of two World Wars, so let us
look at where their inheritor on the world stage is headed. The idea for this
investigation was born during the recent trip to Japan where the German slogan of
the first half of the 20th century “Volk ohne Raum” was exemplified. I knew that Karl Haushofer was
associated with the idea that people need Lebensraum,
sufficient room to live in, and that it was, therefore Germany’s destiny
(should we add “Manifest?”) to acquire it in the vast reaches of the East,
because the West was obviously already chock full of people. This was, of
course, the reason for Hitler’s war and its initial extension to England and France
was, at least in Hitler’s view, due to the machinations of the Jews in these
countries who could not tolerate their having been excluded from influence in Germany
through racial legislation. This much I knew from having lived during that era
and having read Mein Kampf later in
life in the attempt to understand what drove Hitler. But since this was the end
of my information, I was curious who Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) really was, and
how he had arrived at his concepts.
As usual Wikipedia came
to the rescue. For the present purpose it is sufficient to know that after
having finished Gymnasium in Munich Haushofer became, during his required tour
of duty, so enamored with the military that he remained in the Imperial army.
In 1908 he was sent to Tokyo
to study the Japanese army and serve as an artillery advisor. In this capacity
he had the opportunity to meet with the most influential people of the time,
including the emperor, and to travel extensively not only in Japan proper
but also Manchuria and Korea. He spent
somewhat over a year in the Far East and after his return home in 1910 was
given a leave of absence from to army to write his PhD thesis at the University
of Munich which was based on his experiences in Japan. It was published in 1913
under the title: Dai Nihon (Das grosze Lichtursprungland;
The Great Country where Light Originates) which is the name the Japanese use
for their islands. The subtitle was: Betrachtungen
über Grosz-Japans Wehrkraft,
Weltstellung und Zukunft
(Reflections on Greater Japan’s Military Strength, World Position and Future).
During WWI he rose to the rank of General, but after Germany’s defeat left the
army and became Privatdozentfor Geopolitics at the University of
Munich where the young Rudolf Hess (who later became “Deputy to the Fuehrer”)
was not only one of his students, but a friend and assistant. During Hitler’s
imprisonment in Landsberg, after the failed “Beer Hall Putsch,” where Mein Kampf was written with Hess’s help,
Haushofer spent about half a day with the two of them but was not impressed
with Hitler’s simplistic ideology. Hess remained, however, a friend and used
his position to protect Haushofer’s wife, who was half-Jewish.
For me the interesting
aspect was his doctoral thesis and I wondered if it had survived the
devastations the U.S. Air Force had wrought on that city. To my great surprise
it had not only done so but was even digitized by the University of Michigan
and is available on amazon.com. The 377 page book reflects Teutonic thoroughness
and provides a detailed picture of the changes Japan was undergoing as a result of
Commodore Perry’s “opening the door” and its subsequent victorious wars first
against China
(1894-1895) and then Russia
(1904-1905). The key aspects of the treaty of Shimonoseki, which China had been
forced to sign, were: China had to recognize the full autonomy of Korea (which
had hitherto been a dependency; paying tribute), had to cede “in perpetuity” Formosa
(Taiwan), a smaller island group, and the eastern portion of the Bay of the Liaodong
Peninsula along with its fortifications. In addition, the Chinese had to pay a
considerable war indemnity, open several harbors to the Japanese and grant Japan favorite
nation trading status. This was obviously a disaster for China but Japan’s joy
over the treaty, which was signed on April 17, was short-lived. By April 23 the
Europeans: France,
Russia
and Germany
got into the act and forced Japan
to relinquish the LiaodongPeninsula. This in turn
became the cause for the Russo-Japanese war as well as Japan’s fury
against Germany
which vented itself by joining the Allied side in “The Great War.” This Triple
Intervention, as it has been called, did not endear the Westerners to China either
because the three powers thought that the Japanese would be satisfied if they
just forced prostrate China
to give more money to the Japanese.That
money for blood was an insult to Japanese honor did not occur to them.
The reason for Russia wanting
the peninsula was obvious. The battle for the Pacific was on. Russia had built
the trans-Siberian railroad and needed an ice-free harbor because Vladivostok
was useless for about half the year. This led to the drive through Manchuria to
the Liaodong Peninsula as home of Port Arthur, Russia’s future base for control
of the Eastern Pacific. That Japan would not tolerate this situation for any
length of time should have been obvious to anybody, but the court at St.
Petersburg was pursuing its “manifest destiny” and “civilizing efforts” in the
East. The French had no choice in supporting the Russians because they were
bound to do so by treaty but why the Germans joined the two of them in
humiliating Japan
is inexplicable. They had nothing to gain and thereby ruined the good relations
which had previously existed between the two countries. Since the Westerners
were used to dealing with the Chinese and other Asiatic people as racially
inferior, they probably did not even give a second thought to how they felt.
Life was good and continued European dominance seemed assured. As mentioned,
Haushofer’s book was published in 1913 and if anyone would have told him that a
year later Europe would embark on collective suicide and that by the end of the
decade the German empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Russian empire and
the Ottoman empire would be gone he would have regarded the fellow as ready for
a lunatic asylum.
While
Haushofer failed to foresee the looming WWI, his prognostications in regard to
the Far East, especially Japan, were
accurate. He genuinely appreciated Japanese culture and since Russia had lost
the battle for the Pacific at Tsushima, where
its fleet was thoroughly demolished, the obvious next adversary was America. In the
chapter PazifischeAusblicke
(Views across the Pacific) he wrote: “does the historic development indeed go
from the Mediterranean, via the Atlantic in our days to the Pacific?” He then went on to
quote from the minutes of a meeting at Clarke University: “It is not a question
whether or not the United States want to be the dominant power in the Pacific,
they have to be on account of their geographic situation, their numerical,
industrial and cultural strength.” This excerpt was attributed to Harvard’s
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, which in turn led me to examine the latter’s
writings. This effort was quite rewarding because several of Hart’s books are
available. The Foundations of American
Foreign Policy (1901) and The Obvious
Orient (1911) are the most relevant for this essay. The first one can be
downloaded from the Internet while the second one can be obtained from
amazon.com. On the potential eve of WWIII we, therefore, have an opportunity to
see how the Chinese, Japanese, Germans and Americans saw the unfolding of the
20th century and if we are not totally bereft of good sense might
even draw the appropriate lessons.
Let
us stay for the moment with Japan because Haushofer, as well as Hart, agreed on
the fundamental cultural difference between that country and the U.S. Haushofer
wrote that two contrary currents clash in the Pacific: America’s wave of unbridled
individualism and Japan’s Altruism [limited towards its own citizens one must
hasten to add], and State socialism. He quoted Hart as having said that: “No
country has ever developed according to its own laws to the extent Japan has, none
is more homogeneous. Unity of language, love of country and
national desires, have deep roots. It is the best governed country on
earth for rallying its resources towards a specific goal. … We now have the
anomaly where a proud self-reliant people which possesses
a thousand year old culture is being drenched with ideas which are utterly
foreign to their innermost being. Portuguese, Dutch and English influences
couldn’t gain a firm foothold only Commodore Perry, with a typical American
bluff, opened the way to diplomats, traders, missionaries, educators and
journalists.” If anyone had told Perry that his 1854 braggadocio would lead not
quite a hundred years later to Pearl Harbor he
would not have believed that either.
Yet
karma, like the Fates in the ancient Greek dramas, is inexorable because human
behavior has so far proved itself to be remarkably immune to change. ‘My way or
the highway” has always been the rule or as a Bavarian drinking song has it: Und willst Du
nicht mein Bruder sein, so hau
ich dir den Schaedel ein (If you don’t want to be
my brother, I’ll just smash your brains out). So how did America look to a
concerned Japanese politician a hundred years ago? Haushofer explained: Perry
forced foreign trade upon Japan
and thereby brought about the demise of feudal power. In 1900 over the protest
of Japan,
Hawaii was
being fortified. In 1898 the Philippines,
always a goal of Japan’s
secret ambitions, were being cashiered inspite of promises to the contrary. Manila was being heavily
fortified. Russia
was given money to wage a proxy war against Japan, and the treaty of Portsmouth made sure that
Japan
wouldn’t get any further money to build up their navy. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great
White Fleet” trip around the world was seen in Japan as a reminder of America’s
mailed fist, lest they get uppity. In 1910 Secretary of State Knox tried to
“neutralize” the Manchurian railroad which had the opposite effect by reconciling
the former enemies, Russia
and Japan,
against that intruder into their bailiwick. In 1912 the “progressives,” who had
been educated in America,
overthrew the Chinese monarchy and thereby “liberated” [quotes are in the
original] it not only from its dynasty but also its border regions of Mongolia and Tibet, and in
addition brought the Manchurian question from its latent into the acute stage.
1915 would see the completion of the Panama Canal
and with it a massive highway for world trade from the powerful resources of
the United States
via Panama
and Pearl Harbor to Manila.
This
assessment was essentially correct apart from the financing of the
Russo-Japanese War. An article from The
New York Times archives (1906) lists the war loans for Russia and Japan. Russia had
received a total of $280 million from Paris
and Berlin,
while Japan
obtained $360 million from London
and New York.
For reconstruction after the war Paris
loaned Russia
another $50 million, while New York
and London
continued to be more generous to Japan with $125 million. The reason
for this uneven distribution of money was discussed in War&Mayhem, which can now be downloaded from this site.
In conclusion:
Haushofer felt, from personal observations, that the desire for friendly
relations with the great neighbor to their East existed only in a minority of
the Japanese people while the majority was convinced that America had the firm
intention to dominate the Pacific as their private ocean; Japan was the major
obstacle to this desire and, therefore, would have to be rendered harmless.
The events of the 20th
century proved this notion to have been correct. The Japanese thought that
their Lebensraum lay in the southeast
with the natural resources of French Indochina and the Dutch
East Indies, while they had to protect their flank in Manchuria and thereafter the coastal regions of China. Franklin
Roosevelt objected, demanded that they withdraw their troops from China, which
was regarded as America’s exclusive sphere of influence, and just in case they
didn’t understand he embargoed steel and oil imports in the summer of 1941.
Since Japanese honor could not tolerate what was not only regarded as arrogance
but as a threat to their livelihood December 6, the “Day which will live in
Infamy,” had become inevitable. The Japanese knew that they couldn’t win a
drawn out war against America
but thought that by replicating the 1904 Port
Arthur surprise they might be able to forestall
disaster. With America’s
Pacific fleet out of commission they hoped to gain enough time to obtain South East Asia’s resources and if worst came to worst
they might even have to rely on a replay of Tshushima. Yes, history repeats but
not exactly in the same way! The battle of Midway in June of 1942 crushed the
Japanese navy and the A bomb made a forceful invasion of the main islands
unnecessary. Japan
had lost the battle for the Pacific and now serves essentially as our aircraft
carrier to keep China
at bay. There is an additional irony. Initially we forced the Japanese to write
a Constitution which forbids the country to establish a major military force,
but now, since our priorities have changed, we insist that they repudiate this
article and build up their strike forces again so that we can use them against
the Asian continent in case of need.
With
Japan,
not only out of the way as an adversary, but “our trusted friend and ally,” we
can now turn to China
where the next battle is shaping up. For that it is helpful to know what Professor
Hart found on his trip to the Far East during
the fall, winter and spring of 1908-1909. But
first a few biographic notes and his general views on American foreign policy
as outlined in the previously mentioned book are appropriate. He was a nearly
exact contemporary of Haushofer (1854-1943), a friend and classmate of Teddy
Roosevelt and a member of Harvard’s faculty for 43 years. In 1909 he served as
president of the American Historical Association and in 1912 of the American
Political Science Association. As such his views on American history and potential
future deserve to be listened to. He was a prolific writer and the previously mentioned
books are only a small fraction of his literary output. Another one which is
most important for this website is The
War in Europe Its Causes and Results, which was published soon after its
outbreak in 1914. It can likewise be downloaded from Google and in view of its
obvious interest I shall discuss it in detail on another occasion.
When
one reads The Foundations of American Foreign
Policy it becomes immediately apparent that Hart was a scholar and patriot who
had no use for Jingoism. He reported the facts as he found them and limited
himself only to a few editorial comments. The book is actually a series of
articles published between 1896 and 1901 mainly in Harper’s Magazine but also the Bond
Review and the American Historical
Review. Since the material is quite extensive I shall limit myself here to
two main aspects: America’s military expeditions and the origin of the Monroe Doctrine.
In regard to the first aspect I was amazed to read about the military role the U.S. has played
on the world stage from its very beginnings. As Hart pointed out even the
Revolutionary War was not strictly defensive but Canada was also to be
conquered. Later on President Buchanan (1857-1861) had intended to create
“’a
temporary protectorate over the northern provinces of Mexico;’ he
even tried to arrange with one of the factions to invite his intervention.
Mexican steamers were captured; he thought he ought to have general authority
‘to enter the territory of Mexico, Nicaragua, and New Granada for the purpose
of defending the persons and property of American citizens;’ he negotiated a
treaty for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [southwestern part of Mexico of which I
have fond sailing memories because wind speeds commonly exceed 50 mph, which
results in extremely choppy seas and makes life miserable for sailors]. The
scheme of Buchanan would have made the President the dictator of Latin America, backed up by the army and navy and
resources of the United
States; it marks the high tide of the policy
of intervention. Though there was but one foreign war in the period 1836-1861,
there were about twenty-five cases of armed intervention: The United States was
rapidly becoming the policeman of the Americas and the terror of the
Orient.”
Nothing came of
Buchanan’s plans because the Civil War got in the way, but this was just a
glitch in America’s expansionism and the high tide was really reached after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But to return to the mid 1800’s, here is
a list of armed interventions as presented by Hart: Japan 1849-1852, 1863;
China 1854-1856; Lobos Islands 1852; Nicaragua 1851, 1854, 1857, 1884; Paraguay
1858; Syria 1858; Trent case 1861; Colombia 1862; Canada 1864, 1881; British
Northwest 1864; France 1865; Austria 1866; Cuba 1873; Bering Sea 1886-1890; Mexico
1874-1886; Chile 1881, 1891,1892; Venezuela 1895; Hawaii 1889, 1893; Samoa
1877, 1878, 1886, 1893; Crete 1867; Armenia 1895; Greece 1896; Korea 1871. Hart
noted that “many of these incidents … have no great significance in themselves
but they enable us to judge the progress and methods of armed interventions …
and to make some generalizations as to causes, geographical distributions,
methods and results.” He listed the causes as: “the desire to take the
territory or damage the defences of a public enemy;
border difficulties; the protection of Americans and their property.… For
another group of interventions the only explanation is the desire of
administrations or of our ministers or consuls to increase the area and
prestige of the Union, as in the cases of Samoa and Hawaii.” To these causes
one might add the current ones namely the quest for oil, gas and other mineral
resources from the Middle East and Central Asia.
As far as the Monroe Doctrine
is concerned it has also proven itself extremely malleable. Hart pointed out
that the document was probably written by John Quincy Adams and the basic idea
was Jefferson’s: “Our first and fundamental
maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe.
Our second, never to suffer Europe
to meddle with cisAtlantic affairs.” We have
adhered to the second part but keep ignoring the first one which will continue
to cost us dearly during this century. The doctrine as proclaimed in Monroe’s
December 1823 annual report stated in essence: “The American continents, by the
free and independent conditions which they have assumed are henceforth not to
be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power… It is
impossible that the allied powers [European] should extend their political
system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and
happiness.”Over the subsequent years
the Monroe Doctrine has been cited as grounds for a variety of interventions
which led Hart to quote an Oxford’s “undergraduate’s account of a football
game: ‘It would have been just as good a fight without the ball; the ball was
only in the way.’”Jefferson’s warning
against foreign “entanglements” was, however not the only piece of advice our
politicians have steadily disregarded the other was on state finances to which
I shall return later.
When Hart entered Shanghai he immediately noted
that there existed two Chinas side by side. One where the weak imperial
authority held sway, and the other where Westerners ruled the roost as a result
of the British Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860. The Chinese had forbidden
the smuggling of opium into their country because it was deleterious to the
health of the nation, but when money is to be made and you have the power to
enforce your will over a weaker opponent morality has always been the loser. China was then
forced to open a number of “treaty ports” where foreigners enjoyed complete
extraterritoriality, unimpeded by Chinese laws, and where they could in essence
behave as if they were at home. In addition, over the protests by the Chinese
authorities, European and American missionaries were spreading far and wide
over the land bringing their “values,” and when trouble arose on the local
level they were not satisfied with relying on God’s help but enlisted the
military aid of the foreign power they were nationals of. As such Hart found a
country in ferment; Western culture and education was acquired as well as
resented. The then recent so-called Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901; the Chinese
called the organization: The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists) was the
first organized attempt to re-assert national self esteem and although it
failed its goals became reality half a century later under communist rule.
Let me close this
section with an excerpt of Hart’s final conclusion: “Whether China is
westernized or not, it is certain to be great. The people are humiliated by the
weakness which has made other nations look upon China as a cow to be milked…. The
more China
knows the West, the stronger will be the cry of ‘China for the Chinese.’... Think of
what a nation of three or four hundred millions may do to the world? When once
the railroads are built China
could put into the field every year an army of a million men, and if it were
lost, could furnish another million the next year, and so on indefinitely. Such
a force, seated in the midst of Asia, on a
splendid sea coast, is bound to react on the history of the Eastern
hemisphere.”
One hundred years later
we can now talk not only about millions of Chinese but a force of 1,331,460,000
hard working, industrious and largely educated people with a strong sense of
their national history and culture. Do Americans really believe that we can
still enforce our wishes upon them as we did 100 years ago? If we follow the
trodden path of the past there will be a rude awakening and even Hart knew
already that a war with China
would be disastrous. This is why he wrote: “…it is a wise nation that seeks by
fair treatment to hold the friendship of such a mighty weight as the empire of China, for the
most populous, richest and powerful people in Asia
are certain to affect the destinies of both Europe
and America.”
Knowing, what we now
know about the course of America’s
past conduct in the affairs of the world, where the mailed fist was hidden
under a façade of pious do-goodism, can we deduce an
inkling of our conduct in the next year or decade? One aspect is obvious: if we
continue to behave as if we were “the lone superpower” which practically owns
the world, we shall come to grief. We have neglected not only Jefferson’s first
rule, as mentioned above, but also another equally important one, which was also
mentioned by Hart: “No people has a legal right to
incur a national debt to be paid by the next generation.” To quote from Wikipedia:
“As of November 30, 2010
the ‘Total public debt outstanding,’ was $13.9 trillion and was approximately
97% of 2010’s fiscal year-end GDP of $14.4 trillion.” How this astronomic sum
can be amortized is a mystery, but one thing is sure: more wars will not solve
this problem. Anyone who is seriously concerned about the future of our country
in light of its present conduct should go to www.usdebtclock.org which gives a
running account of our financial situation.
When one looks back at the
America of 1911 and compares it with that of 2011 it appears that karma is
catching up and that the wave of American unilateral superiority has crested.
The overriding question for the nation is: Will we start to acquire some good
karma, by truly selfless, cooperative actions, and thereby begin to remove some
of the bad we have allowed to accumulate? Individuals do it, but can the
aggregate? For that to have a chance to happen we would, however, first have to
agree that this is how the world really runs.
At this time it is
customary to wish each other a happy New Year and I shall certainly do so, although
for the majority of us it is likely to require more belt-tightening. The
outlines of 2011 will become clearer at the end of the month when Congress is
back and we know the reception President Obama’s State of Union speech has received by the media and
our politicians. This will be discussed in the next issue which also will
review in more detail the major decisions of the past decade which have led us
to our current unenviable situation.
February 1, 2011
TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY
From
John Ashcroft to Jared Loughner
When I started
this website 10 years ago the initial purpose was to acquaint a potentially
wider publicwith my first
non-scientific book, War&Mayhem,
because I felt that contemporary Americanswere receiving a one-sided view about the events which surround what is
now called “The Greatest Generation,” or “The Good War.” This goal has, as yet,
not been achieved because only a few copies have been sold and this is the
reason why I have now placed the book on this site from where it can be
downloaded free of charge. The beginning of 2001 coincided with the
inauguration of George W Bush as the 43rd president of our republic
and after the disgraceful personal conduct of President Clinton in the Oval
Office a fair number of us had hoped that Bush the younger would step into his
father’s shoes and bring decency as well as statesmanship to the presidency.
Although ex-president Clinton has today achieved the status of elder statesman,
which allows him to travel the world giving lectures for considerable fees, we
should not forget why he had been impeached by the House of Representatives in
1998. The reason was not necessarily that he had his personal sexual needs
serviced in the Oval Office by an all-too willing female intern, but that he
had lied about it on public TV while wagging his index finger at us.
Furthermore, in the deposition, under oath, he provided his personal definition
of what “sexual relations” meant, by artfully excluding oral sex, and insisting
that in order to judge his testimony one needs to consider “what the definition
of ‘is’ is.”As it has it been said in
regard to President Nixon, it wasn’t the malfeasance itself but the subsequent
cover-up which created the problem because people just don’t like a president
who openly lies to them. The mitigating factor in Clinton’s situation, as
advanced by his proponents, was that he had “just lied about sex and everybody
does that.” But a statement of this type tells us more about our society than
what we should expect from our president.
The
beginning of the Bush administration also coincided with the failed Camp David
II summit, in the summer of 2000 where the Palestinians were again portrayed as
having been inflexible, in spite of Clinton’s assurance to Arafat prior to the
talks that if the discussions failed the Palestinians would not be singled out
as the culprits.Nevertheless,
negotiations continued between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at Taba during
January 2001 and it seemed that in spite of what became the second Intifada,
the “peace process” might still have been salvageable.This prompted me to publish an excerpt of my
second book, The Moses Legacy, under
the title Whither Zionism?.I had hoped that if the history and facts around
political Zionism were put into simple language in a brief brochure, that any
politician or media pundit could read over a weekend, a more even-handed
approach to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination might ensue. As
mentioned on other occasions I had then sent the booklet to all the members of
the incoming Bush administration as well as the members of the Foreign
Relations and Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate. This attempt
to influence the course of events was, of course, also useless because, with
one rather strange exception (April 1, 2002; Palestinian State or Israeli
Protectorate), there were no acknowledgments of its receipt. The only personal
satisfaction was that I had “put my money where my mouth is,” and that I had
taken one small step towards assuaging personal “metaphysical guilt.” The
concept was coined by Karl Jaspers and covered in the June 2001 issue. It
refers to the guilt the German people were expected to feel for allowing
Hitler’s atrocities. Although the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians
clearly do not rise to that standard, they nevertheless involve serious human
rights abuses and behavior which is illegal under the United Nations charter.
Yet, the U.S. as the self-appointed apostle of freedom and democracy throughout
the world not only turns a blind eye towards them but actively supports the
state financially and with high-tech weapons.This, of course, turns us into hypocrites in the eyes of the Arab world
but this fact still fails to get acknowledged.
The
first Hot Issue article dealt with the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney
general of the U.S. because he was pilloried in the press for having called
Jesus the “king of America” in a speech at a religious college.As usual, the headline was more inflammatory
than the context but the first sentence of that quote is worthwhile recalling
in regard to the historical developments of the past decade, “Unique among the
nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and
eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our
source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus.” This
was and still is the self-image of a large segment of America’s evangelical
Christian population which makes the foreign policy of the Bush administration
such a sham. Although I readily agree that Mr. Ashcroft meant what he said,
when he said it, his subsequent conduct was, however, not commensurate with
that sentiment.Under his auspices the
so-called PATRIOT act was devised, submitted to Congress and passed by Bush,
which gives the federal government wide latitude to intrude into the private
lives of its citizens. He also had no problem condoning torture by the CIA and
joked about it later on.
While
Ashcroft and his idea of America’s divinely ordained exceptionalism can be
regarded as one bookend of this decade Jared Loughner is its fitting other. I
shall return to him later, for now it suffices to say that during his shooting
spree at a political rally in Tucson last month he killed six people and
wounded 14 others. Among them was the prime object of his wrath, Representative
Gabrielle Giffords. The media have labeled him “schizophrenic” and they cited
as part of the evidence his conduct at a political rally in 2007. At that time
Giffords had brushed off Loughner’s question, “What is government, if words
have no meaning?” This left Loughner incensed because she had not taken him, a
citizen and voter, seriously and he vowed vengeance.Yet, was the question, although poorly
expressed, indeed nonsensical? If words lose their common sense meaning we have
arrived in what I have called the Humpty Dumpty Society (February 1, 2010).
When politicians, in the style of Ashcroft or Bush, pronounce lofty ideas which
are contradicted by their actual behavior, trust in government disappears and
eventually chaos threatens.
As
mentioned above I had welcomed the incoming Bush administration and was full of
hope that America was on a course for becoming a constructive force in the
world. Little did I know that the cards were stacked against this idea because
the real government was in the hands of what subsequently became known as the
neoconservatives or more aptly the neocons because they did behave in a
criminal manner and “conned” us into the Iraq war under false pretenses. This
fact dawned on me only as a result of the Bush administration’s response to the
9/11 disaster. The events of that day became not only a turning point for the
country but also led to a personal growing skepticism about the conduct of
American policy. This change from an unquestioned belief in the moral goodness
of our actions is clearly documented in the Hot Issue installments from
October-December 2001. What I had regarded as a crime by Arab hijackers was
turned into a “War on Terrorism,” which has remained open-ended from that
moment on and allowed the government to enact increasingly stringent measures
ostensibly designed to “ensure our security.”With the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Hot Issues segment of
this website assumed further meaning because they document history as it is was
made, at the time it was made, and reported by a professional student of human
behavior.
As mentioned in last
month’s installment, the future is not entirely unpredictable because it builds
on actions which are taken at any given point in time and the consequences of
which can be foreseen to a certain extent by an unbiased observer. World
history is human history and the conduct of a small number of human beings who
are in position of power has far reaching consequences for the current and
long-term future of all of us in a world which is as interconnected as the
present one. The ostensible key player of the naughts (Fareed Zakaria’s term for
the years which contained two zeroes) was, of course, President Bush and his
legacy will haunt us for years to come. When he came into office he had no
definite idea what he would do. He promised to be a “uniter and not a divider”
as well as becoming the “education president.” Beyond that he seemed to be
willing to let others run the government and he spent more time away from
rather than in the Oval Office. During the critical month of August he was in
Crawford and warnings that Osama bin-Laden was planning an attack on “the
homeland” did not deter him from spending his time cutting underbrush and
pursuing other hobbies on the ranch. When disaster struck he was mentally
unprepared and let others, the neocon group around Vice-president Cheney,
dictate the course of events. Although the ultimate decisions were his the
climate which led to them was prepared by others. Most important of all was the
idea that he now would be a “War President” and would follow in the footsteps
not of his father, but his hero Winston Churchill who had stood up to evil and
saved the British empire. This flattered his imagination but the analogy was
profoundly mistaken.
Not only was Osama
bin-Laden, Mullah Omar of the Taliban leadership, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq no
Hitler, but the Second World War merely hastened the end of the British Empire
which had become unaffordable. Instead of regarding Churchill merely as a war
hero Americans would be well advised to look at the reasons why the British
voted him out of office in the summer of 1945, why Attlee had to pick up the
post-war pieces, and eventually liquidate the empire. Nevertheless in the
American mind the image of Britain’s finest hour stuck and for the neocons it
was the time for America to assert her stature as the “lone superpower” which
could impose its will upon whoever was regarded as an adversary. If you are not
with us you are against us became the slogan. Any adversary was automatically
defined as a “terrorist,” which put him beyond the pale of international norms.
This rendered aspects of the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” as well as
“obsolete,” as Alberto Gonzales counsel to President Bush and future attorney
general put it. Although there was a “war” on terrorists there were no
“prisoners of war” because whoever was taken on the battlefield or, as was
common especially in Afghanistan, denounced for money, was labeled an “unlawful
combatant” and thereby deprived of all human rights. America established a
concentration camp at its Guantanamo base in Cuba, thereby claiming that since
it was not on American soil, American laws did not apply. This ruse did not cut
any ice with the rest of the world because it was and is, the American flag
rather than Castro’s which flutters in the trade winds
over the camp. The unnecessary invasion of Iraq was even by our own definition,
ever since the Nuremberg trials, a war crime. German generals had been hanged
for carrying out Hitler’s order to prepare invasion plans, yet Tommy Franks,
his Pentagon superiors and the president, did not see any parallels. The
administration’s view was that due to “American exceptionalism” international
norms of conduct did not apply.
The apparently easy
initial success first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq bolstered national pride
and all of it was seen as just retribution for the 9/11 attack, although
neither of those country’s citizens had been involved. I shall never forget a
T-shirt worn by a clerk at the State liquor store (Utah’s laws are “quaint,” in
regard to alcohol. You have to buy your wine at State stores so that the State
can level a higher “sin tax” on consumption of alcoholic beverages) which
depicted the burning Twin Towers and underneath the caption, “9/11 Proud to be
American.” Pride in America’s apparently unlimited power became the hallmark of
the day. The president kept the returning aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln,
waiting off San Diego’s shore so that he could arrive on a fighter jet and
under a banner “Mission Accomplished” declare that “major combat operations in
Iraq have ended.” May 2003 was the high water mark and the situation got
steadily worse from then on. Civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, and to a
lesser extent with Kurds, erupted. The inadequate number of American troops was
unable to deal with it and the real combat with steady increase of lost
American lives began. The scandals of Abu Ghraib, a direct outcome of the
policies regarding interrogations of “terrorists,” revealed to the rest of the
world that America’s ostensible campaign for human rights and decency to have been
nothing but propaganda slogans.
While the US was
preoccupied with Iraq the Taliban regrouped and re-entered center stage by
2008. Although I had correctly predicted in October 2001 that an invasion of a
Muslim country would only serve Osama bin-Laden’s goals; in December of 2001
that the Taliban would likely melt into the mountains in order to return at a
more opportune moment and throughout 2002 that an Iraq invasion would simply
further complicate our problems, these opinions were not shared by the media
and events took the course all of us know by now. There was one aspect,
however, where my prognostications were wrong. I had little faith in the
“Petraeus troop surge” of 2007 because this was after all a civil war. Our
troops would be forced to favor one side which would inevitably alienate the
other. We now know that fighting between Sunnis and Shias did indeed subside
but recently documents have appeared which show that “religious cleansing” in
Baghdad was the major reason. Sunnis were driven out from previously
religiously integrated neighborhoods, especially in Sadr City, and Shia
militias on the one hand; Sunni militias on the other began to patrol their
neighborhoods. In addition the major Shia rabble rouser Muqtada al-Sadr had
fled to Iran after the defeat of his troops in Basra and this allowed for a
relative calm to descend on major portions of the country. An Iraqi government
began to take shape and all American military forces are supposed to leave the
country by the end of this year.
We may now ask what has
really been accomplished with the Iraq invasion. Yes, Saddam Hussein has been
hanged and instead of a secular dictatorship there is now a fragile elected
government, which may or may not have the power to sustain itself once American
troops have gone home.This is a
question which cannot be answered at this time but we can look at the price
that has been paid for this achievement. As far as American losses are
concerned they have been tallied at somewhat more than 4,400 killed and somewhat
over 32,000 wounded; 20% of whom had serious brain or spinal cord injuries and
an additional 30 percent of veterans have developed serious mental health
problems upon returning home. Yet, this needs to be compared with Iraqi
casualties of the war: nearly 10,000 Iraqi police and military service
personnel were killed and so were about 55,000 Iraqi insurgents. These numbers
are, however, dwarfed by civilian casualties for whom accurate figures are not
available. An ABC report in
October of last year, quoting secret American documents, placed the death toll
at well over a 100,000.
To
these casualties one needs to add that over 4,700,000 people have been uprooted
from their homes (more than 16 per cent of the total population)of whom about 2 million have fled the
country, while the rest are internally displaced. Western countries, including
the U.S., did not show themselves charitably disposed because they accepted
only 1 per cent of those who had left the war-torn country, with the U.S.
having accepted a meager 1,608 refugees. The numbers are even starker for the
future of Iraq when one learns that about 40 per cent of Iraq’s middle class
have fled. These figures are readily available on the Internet but are not
reported by the official media. There was, however, an article on December 25
of last year in The Salt Lake Tribune
headlined, “U.S. troops in Iraq celebrate Christmas” with the byline, “Those on
repeat deployments are pleased with the progress in the country.” The article
concluded with a quote by Captain Diana Crane, “The fact that (Iraq) is
starting to be a country on its own again, makes many realize that all the work
and sacrifice has not been in vain.” Neither Captain Crane nor the Tribune inquired, however, how the Iraqi
Christians felt. The New York Times,
on the other hand, did carry a report on December 24, which is excerpted below,
“Throughout Iraq churches canceled or toned down Christmas
observances this year, both in response to threats of violence and in honor of
the nearly 60 Christians killed in October, when militants stormed a Syrian
Catholic church and blew themselves up. Since the massacre, more than 1,000
Christian families have fled Baghdad for the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq,
with others going to Jordan or Syria or Turkey. Though the exact size of Iraq’s
Christian population is unclear, by some estimates it has fallen to about
500,000 from a high of 1.4 million before the American-led invasion of 2003.
Iraq’s total population is about 30 million…. Churches in Kirkuk, Mosul and
Basra canceled or curtailed services for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and
warned congregations not to hold parties or mount displays. In Baghdad,
decorations were seen in stores, but many churches scaled back or held only
prayer sessions. While Our Lady of Salvation, the church attacked in October,
was among those that canceled services for Christmas Eve, it planned to hold
services on Saturday. The Epiphany Dominican Convent canceled midnight Mass and
then early Mass on Christmas morning so worshipers could avoid risky travel at
vulnerable times. During the week, the church moved one Mass to a convent, so
the nuns would not have to travel in religious dress. “People are lost,” said
the Rev. Rami Simon, one of five brothers at the convent. “They don’t know
where they live now. Is this Iraq?” For those who dare to attend services, he
said: “I say, you must accept to live like the first
Christians. They celebrated in a cave, and no one knew about it. So we are not
the first to live it.” But he added: “If I wasn’t a priest, I would not stay
one minute in Iraq. As a priest, I find myself a missionary in my country. And
some stay because we are here.”
Is this what the
“born-again” President Bush and his evangelical followers who cheered the war
had intended? Hardly; but that is what happens. Once you start a war you lose
control of its outcome. In a famous quote Condi Rice remarked in a somewhat
flippant manner that we are witnessing “the birth pangs of a new Middle East”
to which I commented, that the baby may arrive with a turban on its head
(December 1, 2006; The People Have Spoken).The future of Iraq is still undecided especially since Muqtada al-Sadr
has returned last month from exile and is now part of the new government. His
negative views on America have not changed and it is unlikely that he will
agree to an extension of the American presence in his country beyond this year.
But our politicians have a Plan B; they are simply going to “privatize” the
situation. Instead of the defense department and the military being in charge
the responsibility will be transferred to the Department of State. Private
contractors will guard the remaining bases as well as the expanded embassies
throughout the country. Does anybody think that Muqtada will be fooled by this ploy?
Furthermore, since these private companies work for profit rather than out of
patriotic duty we can expect higher costs.
The situation in
Afghanistan, nearly ten years after our invasion, remains likewise fluid and
when I wrote in 2004 that Karzai is simply mayor of Kabul rather than president
of a country this is also still true (February 1, 2004, Retrospection and
Introspection). While I have in part covered the human cost of these wars in
the preceding paragraphs, the financial one has not yet been fully accounted
for and will continue long after we have finally withdrawn because the injured
veterans will require long term care. At present, cost estimates range from
$350 - 700 billion because there are no official figures available from the
government. A private website shows a number of over 1 trillion dollars (http://costofwar.com/en/) which keeps
climbing. Wikipedia noted that their figures need updating but a 2007 report by
the Congressional Budget Office indicated that by 2017 the wars will have cost
at least $2.4 trillion.Joseph Stiglitz,
Nobel Prize winner in economics and former chief economist of the World Bank,
estimated that more than 3 trillion dollars will have been spent and this
refers only to the U.S. rather than costs incurred by other countries around
the world. The problem is compounded by the fact that we are financing these
wars with borrowed money for which we have to pay interest. All of this misery
in lives and money is a result of revenge for the 9/11 attack, where not quite
3000 lives were lost and a few buildings were destroyed. We should now ask
ourselves: Is this a record to be proud of? Yet, ex-President Bush has shown no
insight, no guilt, and he defended his decisions in a recent book which brings
him millions in revenue. By falling into his trap Bush has fulfilled Osama bin-Laden’s
most cherished hope, involving our country in unwinnable wars and thereby
bankrupting it.
For the neocons the
response to 9/11 wasn’t about revenge but the security of the State of Israel
and they have successfully managed to delude our country into believing that
Israel’s security is identical with ours. Although responsible people have
pointed out the fallacy of this idea (October 1, 2007; The Israel Lobby) it has
made no impact because nowadays a president’s prime goal is re-election and for
that he needs the Jewish vote. This is also the reason why America has
consistently failed in its role as “honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process and why nothing can be expected even from the Obama
administration in this respect. The Israelis hold all the cards and with
America sidelined the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with. The Bush
years presented us with an additional disconnect between words and actions.
First the administration insisted on democratic elections in the West Bank and
Gaza but when Hamas, instead of Fatah, won fair and square we declared the
elections illegitimate and subsequently instigated in Gaza a civil war between
Fatah and Hamas. When it was won by the latter group we colluded with Israel in
isolating Gaza and essentially starving its population into submission. Up to
now this policy has likewise failed and contributes to Israel becoming a pariah
state among the rest of the world’s nations (July 1, 2007; Saving
the Bush Legacy. New York Review of Books February 10, 2011: Who’s Afraid of
the Palestinians). The country’s only remaining
“friend” is the U.S. We keep supplying Israel with an annual $3 billion arms
subsidy and when in view of our current massive budget deficit Representative
Rand Paul suggested that this largesse should be terminated he was promptly
shouted down.
At the time of writing
these lines the Middle East is in turmoil again with popular uprisings in
Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt. The outcome is still uncertain, but other North
African and Middle Eastern countries with autocratic governments are likely to
follow suit. One aspect is becoming clear: young people are disenchanted with
their governments and demand that their voices be heard. They are taking
American propaganda about freedom and democracy to heart without realizing that
we prefer pliable dictators to popular rule which may tilt towards Islam.
Although thousands of miles away and a completely different culture this does
bring us back to Jared Loughner and his question, “What is government, if words
have no meaning?” As mentioned the media have called him schizophrenic and we
can be grateful that he wasn’t Muslim because then he would have been labeled a
terrorist, for the same offense, and further stringent methods to curtail our
liberties might have been passed. We don’t know as yet to what extent
hallucinogenic drug abuse was responsible which may have aggravated an
underlying mental illness but we can and should address his 2007 question
because there are tens of thousands potential Loughners walking our streets
with some of them carrying firearms. He is a product of our culture and this
aspect needs to be taken to heart.
In former years a
deranged individual with a grievance would fire one shot from a pistol at a
political figure or head of state because that was the extent of its magazine.
Today the same person has the capability of emptying a magazine which in
Loughner’s case contained 31 rounds. These handguns and other assault weapons
are readily available, sold over the counter, and if questions are asked it’s
easy to lie. In addition our popular culture glorifies violence because there
is hardly a TV program where mass shootings do not occur. To say that these
pictures, as well as the constant portrayal of bedroom scenes, have no
influence on young minds is nonsense. We are visual animals and these images
seep into our minds from where they may be difficult to dislodge. Why is this
state of affairs allowed to persist? Money and elections! The National Rifle
Association is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington and any attempt
to limit the distribution of assault weapons is met with vehement resistance.
The country’s love for guns is perhaps best exemplified by a report that since
the Tucson shootings the sale of Glocks, Loughner’s weapon, has skyrocketed and
Utah’s House of Representatives has passed a bill last week to make the
Browning handgun the official state firearm.The reason given was to honor the long deceased Utahn Moses Browning who
had created that pistol. Is this really what our “lawmakers” should spend their
time on?
The abundance and ready
availability of firearms is, however, only the means to create havoc. The root
causes, including drug abuse, go deeper. Many of our young people feel
spiritually clueless. With God dead, as Nietzsche and his forerunners had
declared, reason was supposed to reign supreme. Freud declared religion to have
been a delusion and substituted the superego for a conscience which had been responsible
to God. In addition the notion that “what feels good is good” grew roots,
especially in the 1960’s. Since religious dogmas not only do not satisfy the
intellect, but frequently conflict with it, church attendance continues to fall
and there has been no satisfactory substitute. Yet, young people are
idealistic, they instinctively know and want to do what’s right but when their
elders fail to provide guidance the popular culture, which hardly deserves this
name today, takes over. At this time we know too little about the mental stages
Jared Loughner went through before the shootings but the major cause seems to
have been wounded pride. Not only did Giffords ignore his question but when he
got the one purpose suits all formal “thank you” note from her for his
attendance, he wrote “die bitch” on it. The note probably contained the usual
platitudes which bear no relationship to the concern the citizen had expressed,
demonstrating again that all the high sounding phrases politicians utter are
just that and no more. As such it is easy to conclude that no one pays
attention to the real problems individuals are confronted with. In addition,
Loughner had problems with the local community college he had been enrolled in
for some time. Apparently he came to conclude that the “education” which was
offered was likewise a sham and it would be important to know what his real
grievances in regard to that college had been. We don’t know when he shaved his
head to indicate his break with society but what can only be called a satanic
smirk on the photo of his arraignment says everything, “You ignored me; well
you can’t do that any longer! If I can’t build I shall destroy!”
Yet, thoughts like
these will not be pursued by the official media. Instead they will be content with
pinning a label on Loughner, which is supposed to explain his actions. They are
thereby doing us a disservice because, as mentioned, Loughner is simply only
one example of a rootless generation which has seen through the lies it is
confronted with on a daily basis and wants to be heard. The “post-God” world is
stirring; people want “the rights” they have been promised and we should not be
surprised when these “birth pangs” are accompanied by violence. Looking back at
the past decade and its disastrous response to a limited calamity it is obvious
that this karma will not allow the next decade to be more peaceful.The dams Western-Christian civilization has
erected against the evil inherent in man are leaking and when they fail turmoil
is bound to follow.
March 1, 2011
EGYPT'S EXAMPLE
February
2011 was a month for the history books. In last month’s installment I wrote
that Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson was triggered by the lack of
respect he had experienced from a Congresswoman who wanted his vote. This was
the same emotion which gave rise to the revolt in Tunis. It subsequently spread
to Egypt and from there to other North African and Middle Eastern countries.
Ordinary people cried out: we are not your pawns, we are human beings and we want
our human rights, which have been promised to us in the Charter of the United
Nations and, let us not forget, were to be supported by America in Obama’s
speech at the University of Cairo on June 4, 2009!
Let
us now back up and re-visit the early 1960’s and Viet Nam. For those of us who
were adults at the time this is not history one reads in books but something we
read in newspapers and saw on TV. In 1963 the U.S. had only a small contingent
of “military advisors” in that country which propped up the unpopular dictatorial
Diem regime. We (Eisenhower and Kennedy) thought we had to do so lest South
Viet Nam were to be reunified with the North under the Communist rule of Ho Chi
Min. Unfortunately the Catholic Diem did not live up to his faith, which
required charity and love thy enemy, but persecuted the Buddhists who formed at
least 70 per cent of the population, as well as other groups he didn’t like.
While most of the people who wanted reunification, regardless of the flag under
which it was achieved, quietly or openly supported the Viet Cong, Hòa thượngThíchQuảngĐức, a Buddhist monk, born
asLâmVănTức, took his master’s
parting words, “Make of yourselves a light!” literally, and publicly immolated
himself on June 11, 1963 in
one of Saigon’s busiest intersections. Others of his order followed the example,
and the TV pictures of burning human beings in saffron robes outraged the
world. Washington decided that Diem had to go and conspired with that country’s
military leaders to topple his regime, with the understanding that they would
be better able to deal with the menace from the North.
The generals succeeded,
but for good measure also killed Diem and his brother. Mrs. Diem was outraged
at Washington’s betrayal and cursed Kennedy whom she made responsible for the
death of her husband, although the murder had not been in the original plan.
But as our former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, so nonchalantly said in
regard to the Iraqi chaos he had helped unleash in 2003, “Stuff happens!” Five
months after the murder of her husband the Catholic Kennedy was assassinated
and I am sure that Mrs. Diem regarded this as an example of divine justice. She
also predicted that her husband’s removal from power and murder would only
produce more bloodshed, which was correct. Twelve years later, with millions of
people dead and wounded in that country, the last Americans were evacuated by
helicopters from the roof of the Saigon embassy on April 30, 1975. For the
situation which unleashed LâmVănTức’sself-sacrifice,
and of which Americans had been kept in the dark please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c.
But the match which lit the gasoline
soaked monk remained in memory and the example was followedin January of 1969, in
Czechoslovakia byJan Palachwho
felt that he could not tolerate any longer the demoralization of his country
under Communist dictatorship. Well, when Buddhists – “Asiatics”
– do that it’s rather sad but for a Central European to publicly set himself
aflame was totally unheard of. Communism had to go and it did, although it took
another 20 years. First in the CSR, then in Poland; East Germany followed and
eventually the Soviet Union. The march for freedom in Europe, which was
achieved without bloodshed, did not go unnoticed in the rest of the world.
Our president, George H.W.
Bush, to his credit, intended to seize the moment in 1991 and dragged the
reluctant ex-terrorist Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli Prime Minister, to a
conference table in Madrid to settle the Palestinian problem once and for all
in a peaceful manner. Shamir came but the Palestinians were not allowed to
plead for their country and had to be part of a Jordanian team. Arafat, who was
the only one who had the power to negotiate on behalf of his people, had to
stay in Tunis. Since he had no country, but wanted one, he still used Shamir’s
previous tactics and was, therefore, a terrorist with whom one does not negotiate.
Shamir had no intention to follow up on the recommendations of the conference and
knew that whatever document the conference produced would remain just a piece
of paper. His group of loyal followers in our country would undermine any
enforcement of the concessions which Israel would necessarily have to make. This
power lay in the hands of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee.http://www.aipac.org)
which I have previously discussed here in several essays and can be consulted
with the “edit find” function when the entire documents are downloaded. Some of
the most important ones are, in alphabetic order, Annapolis Déjà Vu, December
1, 2007; The Israel Lobby, October 1, 2007; and Whither Zionism?Revisited, March 1, 2009.
When Bush, the Elder, insisted that the loan guarantees Shamir had wanted would
not be given unless the latter stopped settlement building, he had sealed his
fate. In spite of the joy over the victory during the brief 1991 Gulf War against
Saddam Hussein, reelection had become out of the question. He would have needed
Jewish money but that went in overwhelming amounts to Bill Clinton. The latter
learned the lesson and stayed away from the troublesome Middle East until the
end of his second term when he thought he might be able to duplicate Jimmy Carter’s
feat. Instead of peace with Egypt there would be peace with the Palestinians
and the Nobel Prize would be his. It was not to be because the Israelis then,
now, and ever had absolutely no interest in making any deal with the Palestinians
which, by necessity, would force them to make territorial concessions. The
conquered land in the West Bank and Jerusalem is being tenaciously held and
settled because, according to the Bible, God had been promised it to them about
three thousand years ago, although He is irrelevant for most other day to day
activities. That this claim would be laughed at if any other religious or
national group were to advance it does not matter.
The Palestinian problem
was allowed to fester. The Israelis built more settlements, partly with our tax
money, erected a virtual apartheid wall from the Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza and when we complained they acted on the principle enunciated by Moshe
Dayan, “The Americans give us money, they give us weapons and they give us
advice. We take the money and the weapons but ignore the advice.” This stance
reminded me of words our grandmother told us and had been told to her by our
grandfather, “Wenn man dirgibt, so nimm,
wenn man dirnimmt so schrei.” Whenever
someone gives you something take it, but whenever someone takes something from
you then yell bloody murder! This maxim has worked marvelously for the
Israelis, especially after the 1967 war, but is likely to come to an end in
this century because another match has been lit.
On December 17, 2010 an obscure young Tunisian in an
obscure little town decided he couldn’t take it anymore. Mohamed Bouaziziof Sid Bouzid was 26,
unemployed, and tried to support his family by selling produce on the street. The
authorities asserted that he did not have the proper permit and when a female law-enforcement
officer slapped him in the face this was the proverbial straw which broke the
camel’s neck. Not only was the slap itself intolerable but for a woman to do
this to an Arab man was twice the insult. He went to the governor’s office to
complain but was turned away without being listened to. He then vowed publicly
that he would set himself on fire, and when that had no effect he followed
through on the threat an hour later in front of a government building. In
former years the episode would have gone unnoticed but no longer; we are
“wired.” The Internet and cell phones have connected us to remote parts of the
world and when something dramatic happens to one of us the rest of the world
instantly knows about it. We have become one huge organism although we, as yet,
don’t want to draw the consequences from this fact. News of the self-inflicted Auto
da fé, first sparked local riots, which were brutally responded to, but they
subsequently spread to the capital. When huge crowds of unemployed and
underemployed people appeared in the streets President Ben Ali got frightened and
left the country for safer pastures. Tunisians celebrated their Jasmine
revolution, although the freedom they had temporarily achieved is still on
shaky ground.
The spark lit by Bouazizijumped across Tunisia’s
neighbor, Libya which initially remained calm, to Egypt plagued by similar
problems as Tunisia. These consisted, apart from the dictatorial regime, of a
well-educated citizenry which had no possibility to use its talents. Let me now
digress and relate a few personal experiences from the middle1980’s when I had
been invited by my colleague Dr. E. Reynolds of London, England, to participate
in a week-long epilepsy training seminar for Middle Eastern physicians in
Kuwait. The Iran-Iraq war was on and we could hear cannon fire from the Shatt
el-Arab. The local organizer was originally from Iraq and since I knew that the
next International Congress for Epilepsy was scheduled to be held in Jerusalem
in 1987, I asked him naively if he would come and we would meet again there. He
looked at me astonished and asked, “Would you, as an American, have gone to
Berlin in 1942?” It had totally eluded me that, apart from Egypt and Jordan,
Israel is still at war with the rest of the Arab
world.
Since the Kuwaitis not
only paid for the trip and all its attendant expenses but also gave me a
handsome honorarium I thought I might as well take the opportunity and spend it
in Egypt, a country I had long wanted to see. The flight over the Sinai was
impressive. I was especially struck by the ravines in the mountains which in earlier
millennia must have carried water and while admiring the view I was served with
an excellent goulash accompanied by Viennese waltzes on the speaker. The
relevant aspects of the Egypt visit were twofold. In War&Mayhem I described my visit to a “pharaonic village” which
immediately reminded me of gypsy huts I had seen and photographed at the
outskirts of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, during my stint as a Wehrmacht soldier. The
point here is my conversation with the cab driver. By the way wherever I am I
always talk with the drivers because they represent the genuine voice of the
people. He was trained as an engineer, had continued his studies in America but
had subsequently gone back to his family. Since there was no job for him, he
resorted to taxi driving which occasionally earned a reasonable baksheesh. This
was my first inkling that all was not well with the Mubarak regime. In Luxor I
admired not only the magnificent temple and Karnack as well as the Valley of
the Kings, with the obligatory visit to Tut’s tomb, but also had a hankering to
go for a sail on the Nile.
I stayed at the Winter
Place Hotel which is famous not only because Lord Carnarvon as well as Howard
Carter had stayed there, but the first skulls X-rays of Tutankhamen, obtained
by Prof. Harrison’s team of Liverpool University, were developed in one of its
bathrooms. Thanks to the generosity of the Kuwaitis I could afford it. Falluccas
were docked near the hotel and after lunch one day I engaged a late middle aged
Egyptian to take me on a brief sailing trip. Initially all went well but then
Shu, god of the wind, decided to take a nap and the man with his boy, who was
about 10 or so, had to paddle. Fortunately Shu felt their plight, woke up after
a while and we got safely back to our shore. But in the interval a brief
conversation took place which burdened me with guilt for the rest of my life.
It consisted only of two sentences because his English was limited and my
Arabic non-existent.
As usual every
conversation starts with, “Where are you from?” When I said, “America,” he
asked, “Take my son to America.” The request was utterly sincere because he saw
no future for the boy in his country. I felt that it was impossible for me to grant
his request but was so ashamed that I remained mute. Contrast this with another
conversation I had with a cab driver in Rhodos which I visited a few years
later, courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s money, where I had likewise been invited to participate
in a course on epilepsy. Next to Egypt, Greece had always held a special
attraction for me and in Rhodos I even found Rodini Park, which established
some kind of kinship.The cab driver asked
the usual question of “where are you from?” and I said America; he replied,
“America is good, Rhodos is better!” He was right because a life like in Rhodos
is indeed worthy to be lived. The island has a long history. According to the
Iliad it had supplied some ships for Agamemnon’s fleet when he went to Troy; it
was known for its philosophers in Greco-Roman times and the Colossus of Rhodos,
which guarded the harbor, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A
third taxi cab ride, this time in the current century and in Vienna was
likewise relevant. The driver was Egyptian and vented his fury on Mubarak and
his regime. At the same time he castigated America for perpetuating that dictator
simply because we want to make the Middle East safe for Israel, while at the
same time guarding our oil supply, which largely has to travel through the Suez
Canal. Although the cab driver knew that I was from America we talked in German
and that may have loosened his tongue.
This was the Egypt
America did not want to see and which exploded on February 11.To this must be
added that the average American has only a very limited interest in history,
which at times even extends to that of his own country. When George H.W. Bush announced
at the beginning of the Gulf War that he would “bomb Iraq into the stone age,”
I was appalled. Iraq is just the modern name for Mesopotamia which, together
with Egypt, had laid the foundations for our civilization and this was to be
obliterated! One really wonders if a country, which is led by such ignorance and
disrespect for others, can retain its pre-eminence in the world.
As far as Egypt is
concerned the main mental image the average American tends to have is of “Ol’ Pharaoh” who refused to let Moses and his people “Go”
as it says in the Negro (dare I still use this word?) Spiritual.
Protestant America reared on the Bible’s Old Testament has a thoroughly
distorted view of ancient Egypt. Social justice was not invented by Amos and
the other biblical prophets in the first millennium BC. They were latecomers
who had cribbed from the then proverbial “wisdom of Egypt.” I have discussed
this to some extent in The Moses Legacy
(which can be downloaded from this site) and would like to encourage readers to
familiarize themselves with the contents of the chapter on Moses. Jewish
writers also have belittled the Egyptians for not having had a written book of
law, thereby implying that it was a lawless or autocratic society with a thin
upper crust and a fearful, ignorant slave population on the bottom. When one
reads ancient Egyptian literature this was far from true and I would encourage
whoever reads these pages to familiarize themselves with The Dawn of Conscience by James Henry Breasted. Unfortunately the
book is out of print but available in major libraries and ought to be
digitized.
The Egyptians didn’t
need law books and their concomitant curse, lawyers whose job it is to twist
words. Their laws were written, as the Bible recommends to the Israelites, into
their hearts. They had a conscience and the hallmark of the society was Maat:
the goddess of truth, justice and order. I have discussed the concept
previously (Our Need for Maat; August 1, 2007) as well as in The Moses Legacy and The Jesus Conundrum and will, therefore,
use only one example which bears a direct relationship to Mohamed Bouazizi’s
self-immolation. It is the story which has been called “The Eloquent Peasant,” and
can be found in Breasted’s book as well as in Ancient Egyptian Literature by Miriam Lichtheim. The original papyrus was dated to the Middle
Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 BC) but the oral version may well have been older. At
any rate: Khun-Anup was a poor peasant from an equally poor village whose
family was on the verge of starvation. He, therefore, loaded some donkeys with
the meager products of his village to trade them for barley at Heracleopolis.
But on the way he had to pass the house of Nemtynakht, a greedy rich man, who
devised a plan to rob the peasant of his goods. He made the passage for the
peasant and his donkeys so narrow that he had to trespass on the edge of
Nemtynakht’s grain field. Donkeys tend not to be aware of property rights and one
of the animals helped itself to a mouthful. This was the pretext for Nemtynakht
to claim the legal right to confiscate the donkeys including their wares. For
good measure he also gave the peasant a sound thrashing when he complained
about the theft. But Khun-Anup knew his rights and sharply criticized the rich
man for his disrespect of Maat. When this proved fruitless the peasant betook himself
to the local governor, Rensi, who had a reputation for justice. The governor
put the situation before his council but, as cronies do, they favored Nemtynakht
and opined that the peasant was probably lying. When Khun-Anup was told of this
outcome he went before Rensi himself with a discourse on the duties of good
government and an appeal to Maat. The governor was impressed but did not
immediately act on the peasant’s request. Instead he informed pharaoh who
advised that Rensi should play a little game and pretend not to hear. Now we
need to know that “not to hearken,” was one of the most severe offenses a
public official could commit. Khun-Anup was aware of this major sin but did not
know that a game was being played and his pleas became increasingly sharper
including the words, “Do justice [Maat] for the sake of the Lord of justice …
For justice is for eternity. It descendeth with him
that doeth it into the grave when he is placed in the coffin and laid in the
earth. His name is not effaced on earth, but he is remembered because of right.
[Breasted’s translation]” Since this speech was also of no avail another
similar one followed. Rensi then betook himself again to Pharaoh who ordered a
complete inquest into the matter. It revealed that the peasant’s claim was just
and not only his property, but also that of Nemtynakht was restored to him.
Obviously this was a story and real life may well
have been different but the concept of how one ought to conduct oneself
including officials, as well as pharaoh himself, clearly existed. Had there not
been justice in the realm, the Egyptian dynasties could not have existed for
the thousands of years they did. The story obviously also reminds one of the
hard headed judge who initially refused to listen to the plight of a poor widow
but eventually relented as told in the gospel of Luke. Dignity and justice are
what people want from their governments and when they are consistently refused,
they will rebel. In a way Khun-Anup’s plight of bygone millennia, was quite similar
to that of Mohamed Bouazizi, but when the governor of his province refused to
listen to his complaint it was not a game, and it led to the known fatal
outcome. Yet, when officialdom does not listen to the just complaints of its
people it invites retribution and that is what we are currently seeing in the
Middle East and North Africa.
We must now ask: what is America’s role in all of
this turmoil? Our administration officials are currently thoroughly confused
and have no idea what to do because the concept of Maat eludes them. They
preached human rights for all but when they are taken at their word they don’t
know what to do because their friendly dictators are under siege. President
Obama, the latest champion of freedom and dignity for all, has now also been
exposed in the Arab world as a windbag who says the right things but when the
chips are down does the opposite. I am referring to his actions on February 18
which showed to the Arabs that America does not really care for them but only
for the Israelis. I am referring, of course, to the infamous veto of the Security
Council Draft Resolution to condemn Israeli settlements on occupied territory
in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Susan Rice, who vetoed it, obviously only did
what she was told, was embarrassed, but had to follow orders.
It is Obama who has to shoulder the blame.
Let us take a closer look at that Resolution. All
it really said was that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the resolution all
final issues within one year should be resumed and stressed their urgency; it
reaffirmed the illegality of settlements on occupied territories and that they constitute
a major obstacle to a just and lasting peace; both parties were to behave according
to international law and act on previous agreements and obligations. It also stated
that “Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely
ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory;
including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in
this regard.” There is nothing in this resolution which American
administrations have not subscribed to in the past but yet it had to be vetoed.
Support came from 130 countries and 14 Security Council members with America the lone
dissenter.
Why did Obama act the way he did? The answer is
simple, he put re-election above justice and thereby violated the pledge he
gave to the Arab world in his speech at Cairo University in June of 2009. This
cost him the trust of the Arab and Muslim world who will henceforth disregard his
words and we may have to brace ourselves for more anti-American feelings, which
may well translate themselves into official policy by newly elected leaders in
the Muslim world. Apart from Palestinians, Pakistanis are especially incensed.
Ask yourself how you would feel if a member of your innocent family: wife,
husband, son, daughter, brother, sister were to be regarded as “collateral
damage” in a war against the Taliban which is none of your concern. When the killing
is done by a drone which is operated by someone who sits in Virginia, Nevada or
some other State of the Union at a video-console and with his joystick
unleashes death and destruction your anger would be even greater. Is this what
America really stands for? Would you be satisfied if you got some money for
your loss, as tends to be the practice? The fact that there are aspects of life,
such as respect and dignity, which cannot be bought, has yet to sink in. But it
may well be brought home in a rather painful manner in the not too distant
future when Pakistan’s U.S. friendly government falls
victim to the fury of its people.
There exists a misconception in
our country. The people who demonstrated and are demonstrating today in the
various Middle Eastern countries and Libya do not necessarily want democracy. They
want a government which is honest, provides essential services and justice
which are all encompassed within the one word MAAT. If we look at our own
country, the beacon of democracy, we can readily see that we are falling far
short of this mark. Although we elect our “leaders” the election process is
deeply flawed and the two major parties have only one main goal to gain and
then stay in power. Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the
solution of the vast problems the country faces is as rare as the proverbial
blue moon. This is not a model which should be advertised for the rest of the
world to follow.
As long as a country has a
Constitution which guarantees equal rights to all of its people and not only
abides by it but also listens to, and acts, on the legitimate concerns of the
citizenry it doesn’t matter if the titular head is a king/queen, as for
instance in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and
others, an Emir as in the Gulf States, or a President as is the case in
Democracies and Republics.
As far as Egypt is concerned we can only hope
that its current military government will respect the lessons of its own
history; hearken to the voice of the people, and re-establish Maat in their
country. In so doing it would set a powerful example not only for Arab and
Muslim countries, but for the rest of the world which so sorely needs it.
April 1, 2011
THE MARCH OF HISTORY
In last month’s installment I wrote that
February 2011 was a month for the history books. It is now apparent that the
same can be said for March 2011 and the next upcoming months. The popular
uprisings or rebellions, the word one uses for the same events depends entirely
on one’s point of view, are continuing in ever widening circles. The fire the
young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, with which he immolated himself in December
of last year, has spread to Central and Eastern North Africa as well as Arab
states in the Middle East such as Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Syria. While the
Palestinians have, so far, largely shown restraint it is doubtful that they
will do so for much longer because they also have profound grievances.
The West, and foremost the U.S., is now confronted
with a dilemma which is hard to resolve. Ever since Wilson we have preached
freedom and self-determination as the desired goal for all people of the world
but have found it inconvenient when some emerging nations took us at our word
and created governments which were inimical to their former colonial masters;
our most trusted allies such as Great Britain and France. Instead they looked
for help to the Soviet Union whose interest it was to foster these independence
movements because “socialism” could be advanced and the West’s access to the
emerging markets thwarted. That was in essence what the Cold War was all about.
The Kremlin had its proxies and we had ours in form of military dictators. When
one of them stepped out of line a CIA sponsored coup, such as in Viet Nam,
Chile, and other countries, could readily rectify the situation although it
might need several years as for instance in Nicaragua, or fail as in Viet Nam.
But the situation changed drastically in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The bipolar world had disappeared; America had
emerged as “the sole superpower” and felt itself free, especially under George
W. Bush, to bring “democracy” to the rest of the world. That there is a potential
inherent conflict between self-determination, i.e. establishing a nation of
one’s own and the form of government this nation subsequently creates was not
under consideration.
Our idealistic Wilsonianists, as we
might called them, assumed that the emerging nations would choose a democratic
form of government but that ignored reality. Nations are born in chaos; various
individuals vie for power and whoever gains the most followers at a given time
will become the autocratic leader and suppress the losers of the struggle. The
winner may or may not legitimize his power grab by elections, after the
opposition has been muzzled, until the latter has become strong enough to start
a civil war and turn the tables on the ruling circles. Everybody promises democracy,
but with few exceptions this promise is hardly ever kept. The situation was
compounded in Africa because the colonial borders, with which the new nations
were supposed to have been satisfied, frequently bore no relationship to the
tribal distribution of the new country. In addition, tribes which for various
reasons had been at war with each other for decades if not centuries and had
only been held together as a colony by Europeans now felt free to pursue their
own goals with the inevitable result of mass slaughter. Although the “developed
world” decried these human rights abuses they had no problem selling arms to
the various factions because there was money to be made. Individual “merchants
of death” were prosecuted, but when the Western world or the Soviet
Union did so, no one objected. It’s obviously not the fact that
“rebel” groups should not be armed but who does the arming makes the
difference. An individual becomes a criminal; a state can do so for
“humanitarian” causes or in the “national interest.”
As long as these events happened in
sub-Saharan Africa, apart from the
southernmost portion of the continent, the West usually paid scant attention,
but the situation differs in the Middle East
where not only oil and gas are at stake but where there is the additional
problem of a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world. That peace in that area
will never be achieved until the Palestinians have at long last obtained their
“human rights,” as enshrined in the UN Charter, is obvious even to our governing
circles in Washington.
But the will, which would be required is lacking because, as has so frequently been
pointed out here, domestic elections are at stake. The Jewish vote counts and
the Palestinian vote is negligible. These are the
realities behind our foreign policy in that part of the world which is at such
variance with our professed ideals that it opens us up to the charge of
hypocrisy.
When the Ottoman
Empire was dismantled after WWI religious and ethnic communities
were thrown arbitrarily together, with Iraq as one prime example. The
Kurds in the North are not Arabs and their desire for nationhood has been
steadfastly denied because it would mean territorial loss for Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Sunnis
and Shiites hated each other for religious reasons and only British occupation
held these factions together. Installation of a monarchy under British
protection was tried thereafter, but it soon gave way to a military coup with
eventually Saddam Hussein grabbing the reins, which were only taken from him recently
by the American invasion. We know all this too well but I mention it now
because the same situation is playing itself out in Libya where we find
ourselves entangled in another military experiment for “regime change.”
Last Monday evening President Obama
explained to us why we intervened in what was obviously a local uprising which
had developed into a civil war. The cause was noble, he said. We had to prevent
a humanitarian catastrophe because Gaddafi was killing “his own people,” a
phrase which is a left-over from the “Butcher of Baghdad’s” behavior. The
latter had the gall to use the poison gas, which we had sold him, on the Kurds
when they sided with the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war. Since we wanted
Saddam to win, rather than the Ayatollah, we did not object at the time,
although we complained about it later when it suited our purposes. Yet, it
needs to be said that the Kurds were not “his people” in the tribal sense some
Middle Eastern and Africans are still caught up in. They were rebel subjects
which had to be put down by any and all means. Saddam is gone and apart from
the old standby Ahmadinejad, as the bête noir of American-Israeli policies,
Gaddafi’s sins of the past are now being resurrected to paint him as a danger
to the world which has to be eliminated.
True enough Col. Mouammar Gaddafi is
indeed a rather strange person and his unpredictable antics have earned him the
epithet of “the mad dog of the Middle East” by
President Reagan during a 1986 Press Conference. When one of the reporters then
pointed out that this was rather strong language, Reagan smiled and said he had
only used the words he had heard from another reporter. Since our hate-love
affair with the colonel goes back at least thirty years and I never believe the
noble phrases which are given to justify military adventures, I tried to
educate myself about the man toward whose political, if not physical, demise we
are now spending our tax money.
As a physician and behavioral
neuroscientist I am not swayed by propaganda, especially since I had more than
my share in adolescence under Hitler, but instead am always looking for motives
in human behavior. The fact that I tried to do so even with Hitler in my book War&Mayhem, has earned me some epithets
by not so well meaning others, which do not deserve repeating, but failed to
deter me from subsequent efforts. The usual way politicians and media pundits
deal with someone who stands in the way of one’s own desires is by declaring
the adversary as either devoid of morals and thereby no longer belonging to the
human race, or providing a psychiatric label which is usually schizophrenia.
Every so often the two aspects are combined as is currently the case with Gaddafi.
There is no doubt that the man’s behavior is strange, to say the least, but
whether or not he is legally or medically insane is another question. In
addition, when I read up about him an old German proverb, which again hits the
nail on the head, came to mind: Kinder
und Narrensprechen die Wahrheit; children and crazies speak the truth. Since
the purpose of this website is to discern whatever truth may be gleaned from
the wealth of disinformation which is spread, let us now look at Libya and its
colonel in more detail.
When one studies the history of the
country it is immediately apparent that it has always consisted of two major
portions: the Cyrenaica, with Benghazi as the major port and capital in the
East, and Tripolitania, with Tripoli as its head, in the West. The Cyrenaica had been settled by Greeks in pre-Roman times
while Tripolitania was colonized by the
Phoenicians. Eventually they were integrated in the Roman and subsequently Ottoman
Empire, but their tribal composition remained relatively distinct. When the
Italians came in during the early 20th century, following the
example of the British and French in the quest for colonial glory, they combined
the Cyrenaica with Tripolitania plus a swath of southern tribes and thereby
created Libya; the country whose people’s freedom we are now defending.
The Italian dream of empire ended with
the Second World War. For a while the British took over and then in the true
and tried fashion of imperial policy they appointed the Emir of Benghazi as
King of Libya and went home. But they were pursued by what has been called Wilson’s Ghost. The
Egyptians next door had gotten tired of their King, who had likewise been appointed
by the British to keep the Suez Canal out of the hands of undesirables, and the
military under Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser deposed him in 1952. The fact that
kings can be made to disappear with relatively little effort was not lost on
neighboring Libya where another young colonel our Mouammar Gaddafi followed the
example in 1969. While King Idris was in Italy for some medical condition
Gaddafi led a coup at home and installed himself as the leader of the country. Nasser was his hero and role-model. When the latter had created
the United Arab Republic by uniting Egypt with Syria the dream
of a secular Arab Umma seemed close to realization and Gaddafi wanted to join
the fray. Unfortunately for him, Nasser
overreached. First there was the inconclusive war with Yemen and then
came the crushing defeat by the Israelis in 1967. It seems that if there was
one life-changing event in the political thoughts of Gaddafi this was it. Nasser had failed and it was now up to him to take up the
burden of his legacy.
Gaddafi then made several
efforts to achieve Union with other African
countries (e.g. Egypt,
the Sudan,
Tunisia,
and Morocco)
but all came to naught. When he invaded Chad his troops got a bloody nose
which was the second major wake-up call. Nasser
had failed and now his own troops were worthless. To overcome the problem of
personal security he created his private mercenary army and in order to annoy
the West he would liberally fund a variety of terrorist organizations. The
intent was to destabilize the existing political order which would elevate him
to a hero’s position in the eyes of emerging Africa.
He was rather indiscriminate in his largesse and even the IRA profited from it.
A great deal of money also flowed to the revolutionary Palestinian cause with
Abu Nidal as a major beneficiary. That this would bring the ire of the Israelis
and thereby America
upon him was, of course, a given. The Mossad spared no effort to discredit
Gaddafi in the eyes of the West and there is some suggestion of “false flag”
operations where Mossad whose motto is “by deception you shall win” was
actually responsible for the terror acts.
After the bombs which went off at
Vienna’s and Rome’s airports as well as the Berlin discotheque, where two
American off duty soldiers were killed, Reagan decided to put a stop to these
actions and sent some bombers to teach Gaddafi a lesson. Whether or not he
learned it is another question because terrorist activities continued with the
Lockerbie disaster having been the most egregious example. But after the 2003 Iraq
invasion, Gaddafi who is, regardless of what is said about him, at times also a
realist felt that his position vis á vis the West was sufficiently precarious
and he voluntarily renounced his nuclear ambitions. This, as well as his
acceptance of responsibility for Lockerbie and the payment of $1.5 billion to compensate
the relatives of the Lockerbie bombing, led to his rehabilitation in Western
eyes. Condi Rice paid a visit to Tripoli
in September of 2008 and money was again to be made by the West with Libyan
companies.
Under these circumstances one
wonders why Gaddafi should all of a sudden have evoked again the ire of the
West and especially of the French who were the first to send their aircraft
over Libyan soil in support of the Benghazi
rebels. We don’t have the definitive answer as yet but some suggestions have
been published by Stratfor which will be discussed later. According to
Wikipedia the seeds for the uprising itself were sown in Benghazi and other cities in the Cyrenaica during January of this year in a dispute over
government housing projects and corruption in general. This was temporarily
squelched by providing a $24 billion investment fund. But there were other
grievances. The families of prisoners, who had been killed at the Abu Salim
prison in 1996, staged a demonstration and when YouTube showed videos they were
blocked by the government. Calls for greater freedom then went up and the
serious uprising began on February 15. A crowd of 500-600 protesters had
gathered in front of the police station in Benghazi chanting slogans to which
the authorities, as is common in dictatorships, responded with force. The
demonstrators were dispelled and thirty eight were injured. In other towns
hundreds of protesters set fire to police and security buildings while calling
for an end to Gaddafi’s regime. It should surprise no one that under these
circumstances the colonel would send his tanks and aircraft to quell this
rebellion in the eastern part of his country. At this point it is noteworthy
that the uprising had originated in the Cyrenaica and was largely based on
local grievances because Gaddafi’s policies had favored the western part of the
country to the detriment of the eastern.
Gaddafi had, of course, been fully
aware of the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt but he obviously thought that
this would never happen in his country because he regards himself as the friend
and liberator of his people. On February 13 Reuters reported a speech by Gaddafi,
which was also reprinted by Haaretz, but not in our media. It is noteworthy
because it reveals his mindset. The speech was given the previous day in honor
of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and the major points were: “This is a time
of popular revolutions . . . We need to create a problem for the world. This is
not a declaration of war. This is a call for peace . . .” Nevertheless he went
on to say that the movements in Tunisia and Egypt were a response to Western
arrogance and “its hegemony of the Islamic world.” The “green color” should
unite against the “white color.” He also stated that while he could understand
the reason for the emergence of militant Islamists “the violent acts committed
by Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network went against Islam because they killed
innocent people.” In regard to the Palestinian exiles who seek a return to
their homeland he suggested that “a fleet of boats should take Palestinians …
and wait by the Palestinian shores until the problem is resolved [ellipsis in
the original].” Furthermore, “All Arab states which have relations with Israel are
cowardly regimes.” What is important to note is that he agreed with the revolts
because they were in his mind directed against Western supremacy. Three days later
reality intruded but since he firmly believes in the love of his people towards
him, the rebels must have been, as he declared, on hallucinogens or paid by the
West.
The rebellion was initially quite successful.
By February 25 most of Libya except for Tripoli, Sirte and Sabha was in rebel
hands, and the flag of the previous kingdom, rather than Libya’s current one,
fluttered in Benghazi’s breeze. Although Gaddafi was momentarily confused as to
his options he had recovered his wits by March 6 and counterattacked. Since the
rebels did not have an army, in the true sense of the word, they were soon
pushed back and on March 12 or 13, dates vary, his troops had retaken the
important oil port
of Brega and the road to Benghazi was wide open.
Since its fall was regarded as imminent the West sprang into action.
France had already unilaterally
recognized the Benghazi government on March 10 as the only legitimate one for
all of Libya, and Sarkozy had to do something to prevent a fatal loss of
prestige. The UN was mobilized and with U.S. support a no-fly zone was
established under the ostensible reason to prevent a massacre of the civilian
population in Benghazi.
Whether or not such a massacre would have taken place can be questioned because
Gaddafi had offered amnesty to all who laid down their weapons, but he also
promised “to show no mercy” for those who did not. But the real goal was to get
rid of Gaddafi, and since a no-fly zone could not accomplish it, the mission
was enlarged to attack all of Gaddafi’s military installations with bombs and
rockets. The Security Council had approved the no-fly zone on March 17 but with
the abstentions of Germany,
Russia,
China,
India
and Brazil.
Inasmuch as the entire rationale for the no-fly zone was to protect innocent
civilians the UN soon began to have second thoughts how this could be
accomplished by bombing, which inevitably would bring about civilian
casualties. To pre-empt such concerns the Western powers decided to take the
matter out of the UN’s jurisdiction and turn it over to NATO. After Gaddafi’s
military forces had been to some extent degraded by air strikes, the rebel
forces gained some ground again but came to a grinding halt in the vicinity of
Sirte, Gaddafi’s home base. At present the situation on the ground is fluid
because the revolutionaries have once more been driven back towards Benghazi.
I have already mentioned President
Obama’s speech which tried to explain why we are involved in Libya and what
our goals are for that country. In sum and substance: we are to protect the
rebels (civilians?) and if possible get rid of Gaddafi. How this can be
accomplished by air-power and diplomatic pressure but without putting boots on
the ground was left open. Time Magazine of April 4 (for reasons that are not entirely
clear, the issues are always predated by a week which means that the dates
don’t necessarily match events) asked: Why are we in Libya? The explanations given fell
short of substance because they confined themselves mainly to the military
operations and left the question how to get rid of Gaddafi open. Furthermore
there was no mention of any aspects which Stratfor had reported on March 25.
Stratfor, http://www.stratfor.com, is a
somewhat unusual website because they want your Email address to download the
articles and they also encourage you to subscribe to their reports. On the
other hand the site does provide a great deal of useful information, which is
supplemented by charts and tables. The series of articles is headlined as
“European Intervention in
Libya,”
which immediately places the responsibility where it belongs, and then deals
with the separate interests of the various European countries. For now I shall
deal only with France and the UK because they have been the most active to drag
a reluctant President Obama to their side.
As far as France is concerned there are
domestic as well as international reasons for its interventionism. On the
domestic side Sarkozy experienced a major embarrassment in regard to the
Tunisian uprising. The foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie had initially
offered the Tunisian government official help in dealing with the protesters
but three days later President Ben Ali had fled and France was discredited in
Arab eyes; especially by the large Tunisian minority in that country. The
foreign minister had to be replaced and for “Super Sarko,”
as he is known at home, it was time for dramatic action to rehabilitate his
image towards his Muslim countrymen and the Arab world at large. The
presidential election is less than a year away and his prospects for
re-election are not exactly bright. But there are also international
ramifications which may bode ill for the future. As a result of the European
debt crisis austerity measures had to be put in place and these were enforced
by Germany,
which was supposed to bail out all the debt ridden countries. France was not in
major difficulties but as a member of the Euro zone it had to agree to Berlin’s
demands. This upset Gallic sense of honor, although Chancellor Merkel had
consulted with the French on every step of the way. But France had seen
itself, ever since WWII, as the foremost military power in Europe
and to have to take a backseat to the solution of Europe’s
economic problems by Germany,
was hard to swallow. To counter the Germans economic and political power, London and Paris concluded on November 2, 2010 a military
alliance. Since France
lags behind Germany
in economic power she now tries to use her military strength to impress the
Arab world with her leadership for liberté and egalité. Fraternité has never lasted longer than a few days anyway.
None of this has been reported by our
major media and it is obviously an ominous development because the economic and
political rivalry between the Entente Cordiale (France and England) of
April 1904, which was directed against Germany, was one of the major
causes of WWI. What influence this new “Entente” will have on NATO is now an
open question. The reasons for the British to enter the fray were more financial
in nature. Just as in France
the first weeks of the Middle East uprising
were dominated by vacillation. But as it became clear that public opinion in
the UK would no longer tolerate making profits through supporting Arab
dictators, official policy began to crystallize. This was helped to a considerable
extent by BP’s interests. As we well know the Gulf Oil spill has cost the
company billions which it now seeks to recoup somehow. This is where Lockerbie
comes in again. In order to be able to start drilling in Libya a deal
had to be made with that government for the release of Abdel Baset al Megrahi,
one of the convicted Lockerbie bombers, from a prison in Scotland. This
was achieved for ostensibly humanitarian reasons in August 2009 because the man
was regarded as having suffered from terminal prostate cancer although as of
now he still seems to be alive. At any rate BP announced that it planned to invest
$20 billion in Libyan oil production over the next twenty years. As such, the
free access to the development of Libyan energy resources, vast quantities have
supposedly as yet remained untouched, is important for the UK’s economy.
How will this play out in terms of an
“exit strategy” from the European point of view? France and England would
settle for a partition of the country between east and west, keeping the east
with its oil and gas, while Gaddafi in Tripoli
would no longer have the money to create serious harm. For the Italians the
situation looks different since an angry Gaddafi could be a serious thorn in
their side. Although the Obama administration has, to use a colloquialism, “no
dog in this fight” and would have liked to leave Libya at the earliest
opportunity, the Republicans would not allow it. American prestige as the
“Leader of the Free World” is at stake and they are already chiding the
president for letting others do the heavy lifting. Furthermore, while the
Republicans complain about the budget deficit, and insist on spending cuts they
seem to have no problem underwriting the future cost of this war. On March 30 it
was reported that Obama had signed a “presidential finding,” several weeks ago,
which allows the CIA to train and arm rebel forces in addition to providing
other logistic support. While military “boots on the ground” have been ruled
out, we are now allowing what has been called “shoes on the ground.” This identifies
us with the rebel forces and undercuts the legitimacy of the entire operation.
It goes counter to the UN Mandate as well as its arms embargo and provides
fodder for Gaddafi’s propaganda in the Arab world who had insisted all along
that the CIA had instigated the revolt in the first place.
As mentioned earlier the conduct of the
war has now been turned over to NATO, which can be regarded as another “mission
creep.” The intervention in former Yugoslavia could be justified as having
been on European soil. Afghanistan
was already a stretch because the Afghans had not attacked us and the
justification of the country having “harbored the terrorists” was not in line
with the initial goals of the organization. These were spelled out in admirable
simplicity by Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the alliance: To keep
the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Inasmuch as this was
accomplished by 1991 one wonders what NATO’s future role should be, especially
in light of the separate British-French alliance mentioned above. This brings
up the question if NATO, rather than existing alongside the UN should become
the enforcer of decisions made by the UN? That the latter organization is also
in urgent need of overhaul was brought to the attention of the membership of
the General Assembly by none other than the centerpiece of this essay: Colonel
Gaddafi.
Although the man certainly sounds
incoherent he does not seem to be totally devoid of reason. I am basing this
opinion on the speech he gave at the UN in 2009, which has been ridiculed by
the media rather than accurately reported. One can watch it on YouTube and a
Pakistani group which calls itself MetaExistence Organization has published the
transcript. The speech was supposed to have lasted 15 minutes but autocrats
don’t follow rules. He rambled on for about 96 minutes, literally tore up a
copy of the UN Charter, and threw a copy of his “White Book,” which spells out
his proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, into the face of the
President of the General Assembly. This buffoonery even exceeded the famous
shoe pounding of Nikita Khrushchev and one can readily understand why the man
is regarded as crazy. But what were the reasons for denouncing the UN, albeit
in an uncalled for manner?
Leaving all rhetoric aside Gaddafi
made the following points: The Preamble of the Charter of the UN which calls
for equality of all nations, big or small, is vitiated by the subsequent Charter
provisions. These were made by the victors of WWII who sought to perpetuate a
then existing order. The General Assembly is merely a sounding board with no
executive power and as such similar to Hyde Park
where orators stand on their soap boxes, give speeches and go home again. The
Power resides in the Security Council which serves, however, the interests of
the big countries and with their veto they can nullify the just complaints of
the weak. Under these circumstances the UN has failed in its primary mission to
keep the peace in the world and 65 wars have occurred either with its collusion
or in disregard of the organization. The UN is necessary but needs to be
reformed. The power should be vested in the General Assembly which should be
the decision making body. These decisions should then be referred to the
Security Council which will enforce them, instead of just having veto power. The
mentioned White Book, published in 2003, declares that only the creation of a
bi-national Jewish-Palestinian state called the “Federal Republic of the Holy
Land” can solve the conflict. Equal rights are to be guaranteed to all its
citizens, there would be free and fair elections, weapons of mass destructions
would not be allowed and the Arab League would recognize the state. He also
suggested a relocation of the UN since the U.S. cannot be regarded as neutral
soil and foreign diplomats can currently be denied entry visas.
These are not the thought processes
of any schizophrenic patient I have known. They are rational and factual but,
of course, Gaddafi is the wrong messenger and the way he presented his plan is
bound to hurt the cause rather than help it. The “OneState”
solution for the Holy Land is also no longer
as outlandish as one might think because it is under consideration even by some
Israelis who prefer peace over the endless state of war. Having said all this
there is one more aspect which has until recently not been stressed by our
media. Gaddafi is a secularist who heartily disliked al Qaida and all it stands
for. He denounced the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and has jailed and killed
former jihadists when they returned from Afghanistan. But whether or not he
will retain this commitment after having been the recipient of Western bombs
only time will tell.
While uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa
were one focal point of the news, March 11 was a day of catastrophe on the
other side of the world in Japan.
An earthquake triggered tsunami devastated the northeastern portion of the main
island causing serious damage to the nuclear reactors stationed in that part of
the country. We don’t know yet the full extent of the damage and the consequent
radiation leakage but one aspect is clear. The Japanese have shown outstanding
behavior in the face of catastrophe, which can serve as a model for the rest of
us. There were several factors which contributed to the absence of riots and
looting and that everybody pulled together to help everybody else. In addition
to the natural human instinct to do so, which can be seen in all disasters,
there were two specific aspects in Japan. One of which is the ethnic
homogeneity of the country where what befalls one hurts everyone. The other is
the remarkable blending of its religions: Shintoism and Buddhism. Shinto teaches
reverence for all of nature. It also includes worship of ancestors and thereby
establishes unity between past, present and future. Buddhism teaches the
transitory nature of all creation and its concomitant of suffering when one
tries to hang one’s heart on a given possession such as home or even family.
Since suffering is unavoidable compassion is needed to ameliorate it and in
this instance the U.S. military stationed in Japan has been put to good use
earning the respect and gratitude of the survivors.
This is what our role in the world
should be and in this Easter season it would be useful for our politicians and
media pundits to consider what Jesus has really tried to teach us. The key
towards a successful overcoming of current difficulties lies in that badly translated
admonition: Love your enemies.” As mentioned in these pages and The Jesus Conundrum, the word for “to love”
in the original Greek is agapete
and in the Latin translation diligete. Both mean the same thing: esteem your enemy! Why
should we do so? Because he has a truth to tell us about ourselves, which we frequently don’t want to hear. We need to listen to
our enemy and learn from him about “the beam in our own eye.” As the Chinese
said: What is a good man? The teacher of a bad man! As long as we teach by
bombs and economic sanctions, which hurt the innocent, we can expect payment in
the same coin. This will be a hard lesson to learn but learn we must if we want
to survive this increasingly dangerous century.
History is on the march again; tectonic plates
are shifting. This is not only literally true in the physical world as
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis testify to, but it pertains
equally to the mental world. The “Spirit of 1776” which had made its way to
Paris in 1789 has reached Africa, the Middle East and is likely to unleash revolts
in other parts of the world. In the past most revolutions have had serious long
term bloody consequences and there is no reason why it should be different now.
To adequately assess the challenge America is confronted with, would first require
truthful introspection into the complexities which underlie the current turmoil.
Thereafter measures should be taken which preserve our neutrality, but at the
same time provide genuine help to the victims of these man-made tsunamis with the
example having been set in Japan.
May 1, 2011
POST-EASTER REFLECTIONS
Nearly 2000 years have passed since
the “Prince of Peace” died on the cross and the firm belief of some of his
followers in his physical resurrection has made precious little impact towards
the prevention of wars. There exists a story of a tumult in the streets of Jerusalem on that first
Easter Sunday and when a rabbi asked what it was all about he was told that
“the Messiah has come!” The rabbi looked around, shook his head, and said: “I
see no change.”
When one contemplates the state of our
world today one is bound to agree with him. Lip service is paid to love thy
neighbor and Christians are exhorted in church services to joyfully await the
return of Jesus. Yet, when one views the representatives of the Church marching
in solemn procession through St. Peter’s Cathedral, on festive occasions, one
sees mainly old men some of whose faces seem to reflect bitterness rather than
the joy they are supposed to demonstrate. Deep down they know that the Master’s
teachings are incompatible with worldly success and they have made their
compromise. Dostoyevsky, who has looked deep into the heart of man, was right
in his appraisal of what would happen if Jesus were indeed to return to this
world. In The Brothers Karamazov he
recounted a dream of Ivan to that effect. The people flocked around Jesus but
when hauled before the Holy Inquisition he was told to please go away because
an image has been created in which he no longer has a place.
Sad to say this is true. If Jesus were
indeed to come back and visit the Vatican, the Pope, who is trying to meet his
dual obligations of serving God and the Institution of the Church, would
probably welcome him.But the same
cannot necessarily be said for the Curia and certainly not for the State. Since
he would draw huge crowds, indict our cherished democracy as a sham and say
things such as “woe to you hypocrites” he would create uproar. For speaking out
against the three wars we are currently conducting the good Catholic Bill
O’Reilly from Fox News, who divides the American people into “pinheads” and
“patriots,” would surely put him in the former category. Sooner or later the
authorities would step in. Jesus would be arrested again, there would be a
trial and since he hasn’t murdered or defrauded anybody, but regarded as
dangerous to the established order, he would be declared legally insane,
remanded to a StateHospital and supplied
with a hefty dose of tranquilizers to cure him of his delusions.
Yet, what he would say would be the
truth. The fact is that we are lying to each other and are being lied to by our
government on a massive scale. Take the latest and most glaring example: our
intervention in Libya. We are currently sending drones with “precision guided
rockets,” to support one side of a civil war in order to “protect civilians.”
Although the goal of the enterprise is to get rid of Qaddafi we deny it and
when we bomb his headquarters in Tripoli
this is not in order to kill him but merely to attack the “command and control
center” from which he terrorizes the country. I have no use for the Israelis’
“targeted assassinations” but at least they are honest about it, something that
cannot be said for our leadership. We try to imitate the method but do it
safely from the air with unmanned vehicles so that nobody gets hurt except the
people on the ground. Since “precision guided rockets” can’t distinguish
between civilians who don’t carry a weapon from those who do it is hard to see
how this method advances the cause of “protecting the civilian population,”
which is supposedly our sole reason for engaging in these practices.
I have tried to find out what is really
behind our Libyan involvement but to date information is rather sparse and we
may have to wait for Wikileaks to provide us with thetrue answer. As mentioned last month President
Obama was only reluctantly dragged into the fight which the French President
had, for reasons of his own, gotten involved in. Human rights abuses and
potential civilian massacres were clearly only the excuse rather than the
reason. If this had been the case Sarkozy, as well as we and the Brits, would
have had ample opportunity to intervene in any of the numerous African tribal
wars of the past and present. We would also have done away with the North
Korean regime long ago. But since Kim Jong Il knew us quite
well he got himself the bomb which produced the respect we denied to Saddam
Hussein as well as the Afghans. Qaddafi probably now rues the day in 2003 when
he gave up on his atomic ambitions and tried to enter into the good graces of
the West. The message is obvious: if you are in charge of a poor country you
are relatively safe from Western intervention, especially if you have the bomb,
but if you are sitting on oil and gas better watch out.
Although the real cause of the Libyan
involvement is still unknown two aspects have come to attention since last
month’s installment. They have not been properly aired by our media but can be
gleaned from the Internet. One is Operation Mistral and the other Libyan money.
Ask anyone here what Operation Mistral was all about and you’ll get blank
stares, but Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who blasted our involvement in Libya in the
House, knew about it. As such it is neither a secret nor a fantasy but a fact
which has been hushed up. It is indeed a curious affair and here is the gist of
it as it can be found on the Canadian site http://www.globalresearch.ca.
Under the title, “When War Games Go
Live” one can read that on November 2nd 2010, more than four months prior
to the onset of Operation “Odyssey Dawn,” France and the UK announced the
conduct of war games called “Operation Southern Mistral" against an
imaginary country "Southland", living under a dictatorship, which
allegedly was responsible for an attack against France's national
interests. It was to be carried out as a Franco-British air operation
pursuant to a UN Security Council Resolution 3003. The war games were scheduled
to start on March 21, 2011.
They never took place, instead we got the real war on
March 19, 2011, two days prior to the scheduled date in accord with Security
Council Resolution 1973. Our media never told us anything about these “games”
but, as mentioned, they were known to Rep. Denis Kucinich who said on the floor
of the House:
"While war
games are not uncommon, the similarities between ‘Southern Mistral’ and
‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’ highlight just how many unanswered questions remain
regarding our own military planning for Libya.
Scheduling a
joint military exercise that ends up resembling real military action could be
seen as remarkable planning by the French and British, but it also highlights
questions regarding the United States’ role in planning for the war. We don’t
know how long the attack on Libya
has been in preparation, but Congress must find out. We don’t know who the
rebels really represent and how they became armed, but Congress must find out.”
(Kucinich:
President Had Time to Consult with International Community, Not Congress? |
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Press Release, March 29, 2011).”
Has Congress stepped up to the plate and
started an inquiry? Of course not. Democrats and
Republicans are much too busy to win points for re-election by debating how to
cut the deficit without raising taxes.
In regard to money, Libya had
considerable foreign assets which were seized and are “held in trust for the
Libyan people” by the US and Western European countries. The sums are sizable; at
least $ 30 billion were taken by the US and additional billions by various
countries of the EU. But who are the Libyan people for whom we ostensibly hold
this money? Obviously, only when they are represented by a government of which
the West approves. At this time we have no idea who is in charge of the rebel
forces. As we were told last week at least one of the commanders is an
ex-Guantanamo jihadist who had been released to Libya and whom Qaddafi, who had
no taste for these ideas, had promptly imprisoned again. Since Col. Qaddafi
obviously had his uses in the “War on Terror” it is difficult to see what our
motive is for removing him all of a sudden, unless we were forced into this
adventure by the French and Brits which seems increasingly likely.
While the theoretical Operation
Mistral never took place, the real “Operation Odyssey Dawn” soon presented a
problem for NATO when the US tried to stay aloof. They ran out of “precision
guided” missiles and instead bombed the civilians they were supposed to
protect. That’s when the plea for help and the request for the drones arrived
in Washington
which forced Obama, probably against his better judgment, to comply. But all
this mendacity, which hides the real causes for a given war, is nothing new and
has been the rule throughout history.
It is, therefore, instructive to read an
honest book written by Francis Neilson on “The
Makers of War.” Neilson was a Member of Parliament in 1914 but resigned his
seat in 1915 when he found out how his country had really been maneuvered into
entering the war against Germany.
We may regard this as “ancient history” and irrelevant but as noted in a
previous installment nations also are subject to the law of Karma from which
there is no escape (January 1, 2011). The way the book is written indicates
that Neilson had been thoroughly fed up with the lies the Parliament as well as
the public were told and he was eager to expose them for posterity. He was an
exceedingly colorful person of whom more will be said on other occasions,
mainly because of useful quotes from knowledgeable personages. When one looks
at the dust cover of the Second Edition of the book, which was published in
1950, one is immediately impressed with a quote which substitutes for a subtitle,
“We are in the
hands of an organization of crooks. They are politicians, generals,
manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for
unlimited expenditure, and go on inventing scares to terrify the public and to
terrify Ministers of the Crown.”
If this sounds like Eisenhower’s warning
in regard to the “military-industrial complex,” it simply shows that mankind is
immune to change, especially when it comes to greed. The quote came from Lord
Welby (former head of the British Treasury) who said it in relation to the 1908
panic, precipitated by Austria’s annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina, which nearly
led to war as described in War&Mayhem
and in the January 2008 issue (2008 Outlook). Although papered over at the
time, it paved the way for WWI, the aftermath of which we are battling with
today in the Middle East. The “War to end all Wars” had spawned the “Peace to
end all Peace.”
Neilson’s book is of interest because he
looked “Behind the Scenes,” one of his chapter headings, to find reasons for
the war rather than the common excuses. He dates the beginning decay of the British Empire to the now practically forgotten Boer War
which started in 1899. Its obvious aim namely to seize the gold and diamond
mines from the Dutch settlers, the Boers, was hidden under the pretext that the
British miners, Uitlanders, were
oppressed and had not been given a vote. No one in Europe believed this ruse
and when it became known that in their fight against the Boers the British had
installed concentration camps where the women and children of Boer fighters
were kept under inhumane conditions, there was universal revulsion. For a time Britain
became a pariah among nations; a situation which reminds one of how the US was
viewed in 2003 after the Iraq invasion and which was compounded by the Abu
Ghraib scandal.
In the first decade of the twentieth
century Britain
found herself in a precarious position. Not only because of the drawn out war,
which ended in 1902, but her industrial base had been shrinking, while Germany’s had
been growing. The British Empire was about to
lose its role as the primary world power and German ship building even began to
cast doubt on the proud slogan of “Britannia rules the waves.” While everybody
acknowledges that the German Hochseeflotte (military navy) was a thorn in the British
side, it is less well known that Germany’s commercial fleet, which carried the
transatlantic traffic, was also in ascendance. For instance, the passenger
liner Deutschland had made the
crossing from Cherbourg
in the then unprecedented time of five and a half days. For Britain to retain
the leading role in Europe, Germany had to be fought
and an ally on the Continent was needed. Since France, wanted revanche for her defeat in 1871, centuries old enmities against the
“Frogs” were set aside and the “Entente
Cordiale” was signed in 1904. The public portion settled their colonial differences
in Africa but a secret addition divided the military responsibilities between
the two countries. This became the real reason why Britain had to enter the war
regardless whether or not Germany invaded Belgian territory. The German violation
of Belgium’s neutrality was the excuse for Britain’s entry into the war rather
than the reason. Germaniam esse delendam;Germany
was Carthage in
British eyes which had to be destroyed. Not necessarily because of its
potential military threat but because of its industrial success. The
destruction was realized in the Versailles
treaty, which as everybody knows, was not a treaty between partners but only signed
by the Germans under extreme duress.
Poor President Wilson had no idea as to
the rats’ nest of secret diplomacy and treaties that had been made among the
Allies during the war, when he went to Paris to preside over what he thought
would be a just settlement of all grievances. The Memoirs of the Peace Conference by David Lloyd George give us an
official British view how the current Middle East
and its troubles came about. Lloyd George was British Prime Minister at the
time and the chapter on Palestine is most revealing in regard to our current
predicament. Although I have referred to it previously (January 1, 2007; The
Year of the Middle East) more extensive direct quotes are important in view of
the situation we find ourselves in today. The first one provides the mindset,
“The intentions
of the Allied Powers regarding the future of Palestine up to the end of 1916 are
practically embodied in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The country was to be
mutilated and torn into sections. There would be no more Palestine. Canaan
was to be drawn and quartered. But 1917 saw a complete change in the attitude
of the nations towards this historic land. . . . It was a historic and sacred
land, throbbing from Dan to Beersheba with immortal traditions, the homeland of
a spiritual outlook and faith professed by hundreds of millions of the human
race and fashioning more and more the destinies of mankind. . . . In 1915 and
1916, Britain
massed huge armies to check the menace of the Turk on the Suez
Canal. At first they crawled drearily and without purpose across
the desert towards the land of the Philistines. But in 1917, the attention of
her warriors was drawn to the mountains of Judea
beyond. The zeal of the Crusaders was relumed [sic] in their soul. The
redemption of Palestine
from the withering aggression of the Turk became like a pillar of flame to lead
them on. The Sykes-Picot Agreement perished in its fire. It was not worth
fighting for Canaan in order to condemn it to
the fate of Agag and hew it to pieces before the
Lord. Palestine,
if recaptured, must be one and indivisible to renew its greatness as a living
entity.”
This was the view of the devout
Protestant and I don’t doubt that he was sincere in holding it. It is also,
without doubt, today’s view not only of the major portion of Israel’s Jewish
citizens but of a highly influential segment of US evangelicals, including
former, and possibly future, presidential contender Mike Huckabee. Finally, it
is, also without doubt, the major stumbling block towards genuine peace in the Middle East. But in addition to the high flown rhetoric
we must ask ourselves what had changed in 1917 that roused the British army,
which was bogged down in Gaza, to its “crusade.”
Ever since the start of the war the
British were eager to enlist the help of the Arabs in evicting the Turks from Syria-Palestine
thereby safeguarding the Suez Canal. There
were a series of promises made in the so-called McMahon correspondence with the
Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. In it the latter was given to understand that
he would be recognized as king and sovereign over Arab lands up to somewhere
north of Damascus and in the East Mesopotamia. This was an example of the left
hand not knowing what the right hand was doing because the mentioned Sykes-Picot
agreement had parceled out the Middle East into five zones. The northern
portion of Syria
was to go to France;
Mesopotamia to the Brits; while the Arabs were
to have received two zones in the middle; one under French and the other under
British tutelage. The Mediterranean littoral between Haifa and Gaza extending to the East to include Beersheba and Jerusalem, but not Amman, was regarded as a
“Brown” zone for which some form of international administration was envisaged.
This understanding between the British and the French was a closely held secret
and the British administration in Cairo
may or may not have known of it when it negotiated with the Arabs. Hussein, who
ruled over the Hejaz (the major portion of the
ArabianRed SeaCoast
from south of Mecca
to Aqaba in the north) under Turkish suzerainty, initially dragged his feet but
was subsequently galvanized by Captain Lawrence to throw in his lot with the
British against the Turks.
Who can forget the dashing Peter O’Toole
as Lawrence of Arabia who practically single-handedly forged an Arab striking
force to harass the Turks? After taking Aqaba from them he crossed the Sinai essentially
by his lonesome to bring the news to his superiors in Cairo and begging for
money to pay his troops. Well, it wasn’t quite that way because he did have a
party of eight to accompany him, but his bedraggled entry into British
headquarters in Arab garb was factual. It was Lawrence’s good luck that the
former rather ineffectual Sir Archibald Murray had just been replaced by the
more seasoned General Sir Edmund Allenby who now saw the potential of a
breakthrough with his forces going north from Gaza and Lawrence’s Arabs doing so
likewise in parallel from Aqaba. The plan worked and by December 8 of 1917 Allenby
was in Jerusalem.
The year 1917 was, however, otherwise a
rather grim one for the Allies. The fate of the war seemed to hang in the
balance and at this point the thought of enlisting the help of the Jews became
official policy. Lloyd George had previously met Chaim Weizmann, a Manchester
chemist and leader of Britain’s Zionist movement, “one of the greatest Hebrews
of all time,” who had provided a valuable service to the British munitions
industry by developing a better process for cordite production. Not only did the
Prime Minister feel gratitude but since he and Weizmann’s goals for returning
the Jews to their ancient homeland were in full accord, he introduced the
latter to the leading members of the War Cabinet including the Foreign
Secretary, Sir Arthur James Balfour, after whom the Declaration, which
proclaimed the establishment of a “national home” for Jews in Palestine as one
of Britain’s war goals, is named. But apart from religious motives there were
more substantial ones. To quote from Lloyd George’s Memoirs,
“The Balfour
Declaration represented the convinced policy of all parties in our country and
also in America, but the launching of it in 1917 was due, as I have said, to
propagandist reasons. I should like once more to remind the British public, who
may be hesitating about the burdens of our Zionist Declaration to-day of the
actual war position at the time of that Declaration. We are now looking at the
War through the dazzling glow of a triumphant end, but in 1917 the issue of the
war was still very much in doubt. We were convinced–but not all of us– that we
would pull through victoriously, but the Germans were equally persuaded that
victory would rest on their banners, and they had much reason for coming to
that conclusion. They had smashed the Roumanians. The Russian Army was
completely demoralised by its numerous defeats. The
French Army was exhausted and temporarily unequal to striking a great blow. The
Italians had sustained a shattering defeat at Caporetto. The unlimited
submarine campaign had sunk millions of tons of our shipping. There were no
American divisions at the front, and when I say at the front, I mean available
in the trenches. For the Allies there were two paramount problems at that time.
The first was that the Central Powers should be broken by the blockade before
our supplies of food and essential raw materials were cut off by sinkings of our own ships. The other was that the war
preparations in the United States should be speeded up to such an extent as to
enable the Allies to be adequately reinforced in the critical campaign of 1918
by American troops. In the solution of these two problems, public opinion in Russia and America played
a great part, and we had every reason to believe that in both countries the
friendliness or hostility of the Jewish race might make a considerable
difference.”
The
Prime Minister then acquainted us with the difficulties the proposed
Declaration had met in the Cabinet. I have covered these in Whither Zionism? but one of the objections of Lord George Curzon (notable to
this day for defining the Eastern border of Poland, the Curzon line), who was
familiar with the East bears repeating:
“I spoke earlier
of the dreams of a Jewish state, with possibly a Jewish capital at Jerusalem.
Such a dream is wholly incapable of realization by the conditions of Jerusalem itself. It is a
city in which too many peoples and too many religions have a passionate and
permanent interest to render any such solution even dimly possible. . . . next to Mecca
and Medina, Jerusalem is the most
sacred city of the Mohammedan faith. The Mosque of Omar, on the site of the Temple of Solomon is one of the most hallowed
shrines of Islam. . . . it is impossible to
contemplate any future in which the Mohammedans should be excluded from Jerusalem. Hebron is a site scarcely
less sacred to Islam. . . .
His recommendation was to give Jewish
immigrants full equality with the current population but one should not expect
that Muslims will tolerate to be governed by Jews. This was also the opinion of
the King-Crane Commission (likewise reviewed in the January 1, 2007 essay) which had been
sent to Palestine
after the Peace Conference in order to assess which country, Great Britain
or the US,
should become the mandatory power. Hands off, was the advice for America and it
was heeded until after WWII when the US assumed the inheritance of the British Empire. The British had nothing but grief when
they tried to administer the country. Eventually they threw up their hands in
despair and left in 1948. We thought that we could do better by providing
unquestioned support for highly questionable Israeli policies. It has not
worked and cannot work because Arabs are telling us now that they will no
longer tolerate regimes which do not have popular consent. The failure of
British policy in regard to Palestine was pre-ordained. The British wanted to
win the war and in order to do so vague promises i.e. a homeland instead of a
State (although that was always implicit) were made to the Jews, while at the
same time promising full sovereignty over Arab lands, which obviously included
Palestine, to Hussein and his sons. Since neither Jews nor Arabs, then or now,
wanted to live under the dominion of the other the ceaseless wars since 1948
had become inevitable.
There is one more point in the Memoirs
which is worth recalling because it has direct bearing on WWII and the resultant
Holocaust. It deals with Jewish help after the Declaration had been issued,
“Immediately the
declaration was agreed to, millions of leaflets were circulated in every town
and area throughout the world where there were known to be Jewish communities.
. . . In Russia
the Bolsheviks baffled all the efforts of the Germans to benefit by the
harvests of the Ukraine
and the Don, and hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian troops had to be
maintained to the end of the War on Russian soil, whilst the Germans were short
of men to replace casualties on the Western front. I do not suggest that this
was due entirely, or even mainly, to Jewish activities. But we have good reason
to believe that Jewish propaganda in Russia had a great deal to do with
the difficulties created for the Germans in Southern
Russia after the peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans themselves
know that to be the case, and the Jews in Germany are
suffering to-day for the fidelity with which their brethren in Russia and in America
discharged their obligations under the Zionist pledge to the Allies.”
Lloyd George thereby validated part
of the DolchstossLegende, that
Jews were at least co-responsible for Germany’s defeat. The campaign against
Hitler launched in the US with a call for a “Holy War,” already in 1933,
aggravated the situation further and helped him to portray “the Jews” as the
real culprit for Germany’s difficulties, which culminated in the war with the
West, which he didn’t want. The measures taken, including the attempted
extermination of European Jews, were from that point of view nothing else but a
“Strafgericht
[deserved punishment handed down by a court for offenses].” The topic is more
fully covered in the installments on Understanding the Holocaust (February
2006).
The revolts we are currently witnessing
in North Africa and Middle Eastern countries
are a belated echo of Europe’s 1848 and 1917-19
revolutions. They will pass, just as those in Europe did, but the
Palestinian-Zionist problem will remain and require a constructive solution. The
Israeli government prefers the status quo but it will become increasingly
untenable. They banked on the disunity of the Arab world and especially that of
the Palestinians but the latter have now adopted a new and better strategy.
They have realized that armed struggle, while useful to attract the world’s
attention to their plight, is now counterproductive and have opted for
achieving the good will of the world through demonstrating that they have an
organization in place which provides for a viable state. They intend to ask the
UN General Assembly in September of this year to recognize their state within
the 1967 borders, regardless of the expressed wish of the Israeli government to
the contrary. It is now show-down time for the US, and the Obama administration
knows it. Are we going to stand by our professed principles, i.e. freedom for
the oppressed, for which we are supposedly carrying on all these wars, or will
we cave in to the power of money, which controls our elections? This is the
question current events force upon us and staying with principle over
expediency would be the only correct answer.
Neilson’s book ended with a
recommendation how to avoid future wars. Remarkably enough he found it in the
Old Testament. “Perhaps if we take up the Bible and study it afresh, we shall
find it is the most comprehensive work on political economy that was ever
compiled. The whole basic problem which confounds politicians and trade
unionists of every State is presented by the prophets of Israel, all the
way from Deuteronomy to Malachi.”
It is surprising that a person with
Neilson’s insights has not realized that the Old Testament is a book written by
Jews for Jews and he has completely neglected the political doctrinaire problem
which promises world government to the Jews. “… for out of Zion shall go forth
the Law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [Is. 2:3];” and “Thus saith
the Lord GOD, Behold I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my
standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. And kings shall be thy
nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to
thee with their face toward the
earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the
LORD; for they will not be ashamed that wait for me [Is. 49:22, 23 King James
translation; italics are in the original].”
The Christian world needs to fully
realize the political dimension of the Old Testament which has no use for “the
nations – goyim” except as servants of their god, whose will only Jews can
interpret. I realize that this is not the stance of all Jews. As a matter of
fact there is even in Israel
a “Struggle for Israel’s Soul,” which
is the subtitle title of a book published by YoramHazony. I shall return to him on another occasion, for now
the important point he makes is that ideas and ideals, rather than armed forces,
move this world and this is correct. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to
study each other’s’ ideals for their compatibility with the modern world and
when one does so the political legacy of the Old Testament will no longer do. In
order to survive we will have adopt that of the New with the guiding light of
the “Good Samaritan.” Once we Christians take that mental jump we will be in
synch with the aspirations of the rest of the world’s people. Fear will be
banished, greed limited, and the kingdom
of God, which we have
been told is within us, can be realized. Obviously this is a utopian fantasy at
this time in history but unless it is regarded as a program to be worked
towards it will never happen. What is required now is
what the Greeks called metanoia and
which has been inadequately translated as “repent.” Its original meaning could
be regarded as “think again,” rethink what you are really doing and what the
likely consequences of your acts will be. “The Deed returns to the Doer,” said
the ancient Egyptians; or “As you sow will you reap.” The choice is ours: If we
sow bombs we will get bombs! If we bring good will accompanied by good deeds
the resulting harvest will benefit everyone. A preoccupation with the physical
Resurrection of Jesus, on that first Easter Sunday should no longer concern and
divide us; the Resurrection of his Spirit is the task for our time.
June 1, 2011
BIBI’S FINEST HOUR
The past month was again one for
the history books. On May 1 our president startled the nation with the news that
Osama bin Laden had been found in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He was killed while
resisting arrest in a nocturnal raid by a Special Forces team, which included
Navy Seals. His body had been taken to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea where it was given up
to the waters in order to avoid his burial place from becoming a shrine. We
were also informed that DNA tests had identified his remains with 99.7%
accuracy and “justice has been served.” While one may have questions about some
of the specifics which we have been told, the main fact that the man is now
officially pronounced dead can be regarded as good news. Whether or not this
will benefit the ill-conceived “War on Terrorism” remains to be seen and so
does what the lasting effects on our relationship with nuclear armed Pakistan
will be.
This piece of good news was, however,
more than offset by the shameful conduct of Congress which bodes ill for the
future. At some time during the past months our Republicans had, for unfathomed
reasons of their own, invited Israel’s President Benyamin Netanyahu, fondly
referred to as Bibi in the media, to address a Joint Session of Congress on
Tuesday May 24. In order to pre-empt any misunderstandings and to assure the
country who is in charge in regard to our Middle East policy the president gave
a speech on the day prior to Netanyahu’s arrival which also touched briefly,
very briefly, on the Palestinian issue. There needs to be a “two state
solution” he declared, where the Jewish state lives peacefully alongside a
Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and mutually agreed land swaps to
account for some of the settlements. When Bibi read “1967 borders” he became
apoplectic and vowed “Never Again!”
Next day’s meeting in the Oval Office
with Obama was frosty. Although Obama pledged all of America’s might to the
security of Israel this fell on deaf ears and “1967 borders” became a battle
cry. Inasmuch as it was known that Netanyahu would give a talk not only before
Congress on the following Tuesday but also to the major Israeli lobby group,
AIPAC, on Monday, Obama decided to present his own version to AIPAC on Sunday.
It brought no news but tried to reassure the Jewish leadership of our country
that our heart is with Israel, come what may, and that the dispute is really a
tempest in a teapot. The Palestinians will be made to see reason and any
attempt on their part to unilaterally declare a state in September before the
UN will not be viewed with favor here. He then promptly left town for Ireland
and the UK where he found a warmer welcome than he nowadays receives in
Washington.
Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was merely a
dress rehearsal for next day’s before Congress and I must say that the latter
was masterful. Dr. Joseph Goebbels could not have done better. But let me start
with the pomp and circumstance as I saw it on CNN that morning. In last year’s
February issue (The Humpty Dumpty Society) I mentioned the ceremony which
accompanies our presidents’ annual State of the Union speech and this event was
an exact replica. The only difference was the missing herald who would have
announced, “Mr. Speaker: The Prime Minister of the State of Israel.” But
everything else was there: the thunderous applause, handshakes and embraces as
he made his way to the podium. There was more applause when he was officially
introduced and at least 26 standing ovations during the 45 minute speech. One
lone heckler was promptly removed from the scene and what has been called the “Lovefest”
continued unabated.
The substance of the speech was: Israel
wants peace and needs peace! He welcomes the changes in the Arab world where
the people are demanding democracy and this is completely in line with Israel’s
aspirations, “an epic battle is now unfolding in the Middle East between
tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber
Pass to Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states and toppled governments.
And we can all see that the ground is still shifting. Now this historic moment
holds the promise of a new dawn of freedom and opportunity. Millions of young
people are determined to change their future. We all look at them. They muster
courage. They risk their lives. They demand dignity. They desire liberty.”
But Israel as the lone nation in the
Middle East has already achieved this goal. “Israel is different. As the great
English writer George Eliot predicted over a century ago, that once
established, the Jewish state ‘will shine like a bright star of freedom amid
the despotisms of the East.’ Well, she was right. . . . Of the 300 million
Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy
real democratic rights. This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is
not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the
Middle East. Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to
live freely.”
He then proceeded to castigate Iran’s
leadership for their quest to obtain nuclear weapons and after this brief
detour ended up with what is on everybody’s mind: the Palestinians. “We must
also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians.” In order to
achieve it “I am willing to make painful compromises . . . this is not easy for
me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts
of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria the Jewish people are not foreign
occupiers. . . . This is the land of our forefathers . . . . But there is
another truth: the Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace
in which they will be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should
enjoy a national life of dignity as free, viable and independent people in
their own state.”
What should this state look like? There
was no word in regard to what the painful compromises would consist of but a
return to the pre June 1967 armistice line with minor corrections was clearly
out of the question. Furthermore, the Palestinian state must be demilitarized
and the Jordan River valley must remain under Israeli military control. The
major settlement blocks must be incorporated into the Israeli state and
Jerusalem “must remain the united capital of Israel.” Furthermore, “Hamas is
not a partner for peace . . . So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact
with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state!”
As mentioned, our “lawmakers” were
ecstatic and another scene of more than half a century ago came to mind. It was
Goebbels’ speech in the Sportpalast
in February of 1943 where he raised the rhetorical question: “Wollt ihr den totalen
Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt
erst vorstellen können?” It received frenetic applause
and can be rendered into English as: Do you want total war? Do you want it, if
need be, to be more total and radical than we are even able to imagine today?
The analogy is not altogether inept. The war was already going badly at the
time with the Wehrmacht in retreat on all fronts and a massive effort by the “homefront” would be required to prevent
the expected Bolshevization of Germany and Europe. The folks who enthusiastically
clapped at the Sportpalast can be excused because their lives were
literally at stake. Israel today feels itself likewise beleagured and under
existential threat, at least in the minds of its leading politicians. If
Netanyahu had given this speech at the Knesset and it had received this welcome
it would, therefore, also be understandable, but for our lawmakers to act in
this manner is simply inexcusable. Were they really so bereft of all good sense
not to realize that hey had applauded the death of any lasting Middle East
peace and thereby fostered further wars in which we are bound to be
inextricably involved?
May 24, 2011 is likely to have been Netanyahu’s “finest hour,” to use Churchill’s phrase,
who didn’t realize when he uttered it that it was also the beginning of the end
of the British Empire as he had known it throughout his life. But Netanyahu is
no fool. He knew precisely what he was doing. As an apostle of peace and
praising Obama ever so often, while playing the role of the previously
eternally victimized who is now at long last standing up for freedom and
democracy, he sounded all the notes Americans love to hear. Even when they were
pure propaganda. To claim solidarity with freedom loving Arabs and at the same time
exempting the Palestinians from their right to self-determination is the height
of hypocrisy. To state that Abbas must disavow approximately half of his people
who had voted for Hamas, while at the same time his coalition in the Knesset
includes equally radicalelements, is
disingenous. To state that “Only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all
faiths”in Jerusalem is equally
dishonest. Jews were forbidden to enter the city only after the disastrous
Bar-Cochba revolt during the 2nd century of our era and it was the Muslim
Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab who granted the Jews unhindered access into the city
after he had conquered it in 638. Religious freedom was also granted to
Christians who lived there at the same time, although they had fought against
him while the Jews had been his allies. Access to the Western Wall was denied to
Jews thereafter only from 1948-1967 when the city was divided between Israel
and Jordan. Netanyahu knows that observant Jews regularly came to live and die in
the Holy Land, especially after the demise of the “Crusader kingdom,” and that Muslim rulers had
always been more generous to Jews than Christians had ever been. He also knows
that, while he was speaking, Muslims from the West Bank have only restricted
access to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, while the inhabitants of
Gaza have none at all.
Some of these glaring discrepancies between fact and fiction were, of
course, picked up in the foreign media and even our Christian Science
Monitor wrote under the headline, “Netanyahu’s real message to Congress: There will be nopeace talks.OK, those words
didn’t come out of his mouth. But that’s the practical meaning of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this morning.” The article
also mentioned that an Abbas aide had called it “a declaration of war.” Although
one may take exception to that blunt opinion the fact remains, as even the Salt Lake Tribune conceded in an
Editorial, that Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel must be able to retain
troops on the Jordan River “is a deal breaker. No sovereign state of Palestine
can be expected to tolerate Israeli troops along Palestine’s border with
Jordan.”
More significantly there were also
Jewish voices raised, both here as well as in Israel, who saw through
Netanyahu’s ploy and condemned it. In regard to the vigorous protestations over
Obama’s Middle East speech MJ Rosenberg, who used to work for AIPAC in the
1980s, wrote under the headline, “Mission impossible. Keeping
Israel happy.” “Trying to appease Netanyahu and AIPAC empowers the right
and cuts moderates off at the knees. It’s time for Obama to treat these people
as what they are: enemies of everything he aspires to do and be.Why would the president think that he can
possibly find friends on the right? He can’t.” A few days later Rosenberg wrote
an article, “Congress to Palestinians: Drop Dead. Netanyahu’s address to
Congress demonstrated that he has no intention of making peace with the
Palestinians.” In the article he pointed out that “If anyone had any doubt
whether the Palestinians would declare a state in September, they can’t have
them now.”
This is likely to be correct. Netanyahu,
fully supported by the American Congress, has left them no other choice and
Palestinian envoys are currently traveling around the world to garner support
from abroad. Sandy Tolan, associate professor at the Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism at USC, headlined his article on the problem with
“The surreal solution. Following Obama’s weak speeches and Netanyahu’s
rejection of any compromise, Palestinians look elsewhere for support.” He
pointed out in the article that, “By making a new demand, Netanyahu has moved
the goal-posts – insisting that a nation where one in five people is Arab be
formally recognized as a state for Jews only. This may make sense for a
delusional Congress, but why should any Palestinian leader agree to that?. . . Obama, who raised genuine hopes in the
West Bank with his Cairo speech nearly two years ago, has now utterly lost the
Palestinians. As September approaches, and a talk of a third intifada builds,
America may find itself virtually alone on the question of Palestine, far less
able to influence events in the region.”
The hour of truth for American Jews is
rapidly approaching. They have to come to grips with the fundamental question: Where
does my primary loyalty reside? The problem was highlighted by Aaron David
Miller in his book on the ill-conceived second Camp David negotiations which
had been initiated by the Clinton administration in its waning days (March 1,
2009. Whither Zionism? Revisited). Miller defined
himself as “an American who happens to be Jewish” while Denis Ross’ attitude,
the chief negotiator for our side, was the opposite. For Israel’s died in the
wool Zionists this is a distinction without a difference because as Golda Meir
had quipped when confronted with Kissinger’s stance of being an American Jew, “I
don’t care. I read from right to left anyway (Kissinger Years of Renewal p.375).”
America’s Jews are now worried because
soul-searching is required. This was expressed in print by Jane Eisner who
wrote an article in The Guardian with
the headline, “Don’t be fooled by the applause, Binyamin Netanyahu. Israel’s PM
received a rapturous reception from Congress, but US Jewish opinion at large is
frustrated with his intransigence.” In the article one finds statements such
as, “Jews in the United States do not like finding themselves in the position of
choosing between their president and the prime minister of Israel. . . .
Netanyahu’s defiant stance puts us in a heart-wrenching conundrum. We can
choose to support his view of the world, in which an aggrieved Israel bears no
responsibility for the occupation and for the impasse in negotiations – and
many American Jews will. They will side with him and the Republican Congress
who offered him this unusual platform without, of course, any reciprocal chance
to hear another point of view. But I don’t believe that all or even most
American Jews share that position. . . . Most of us dread what will happen in
September, if the UN vote is successful and Israel will become even more
isolated and demonised. You are making us choose,
Prime Minister Netanyahu. Please don’t.”
This article is important not only for
the truth it tells but that it was published in the UK rather than the US. I
have yet to see a similar one in the American press where it would make the
impact it deserves. Who knows, let alone reads, The Guardian here? The fact that these views by an American Jew could
only be published in a major foreign newspaper testifies to the censorship the
average American public lives under.
Politicians always like to present their
position as the only legitimate one for whatever people they speak for.
Furthermore, they always act as if they were speaking for all of the people of
the given nation they represent. Zionism’s spokesmen: Herzl, Weizmann,
Ben-Gurion, always confronted the Gentile world with an image that their views
and desires were those of all Jews, which was never the case. Netanyahu is no
exception and he simply follows in their footsteps. But the fact is that he
does not speak for all of his citizens in Israel and neither does he for world
Jewry at large, although he’d like us to think so. The Diaspora Jews have
fundamentally different needs from those in Israel. They want to pursue their
personal goals in peace and prosperity in whatever country they live in. They
will support their relatives abroad but the Zionist dream of emigrating to that
patch of land for which they are supposed to “eternally yearn,” holds little
attraction. The limited applicability of the idea was clearly demonstrated
after 1948 and especially after the Soviet Union was forced to let their Jewish
citizens emigrate. About eighty percent of them chose Western nations rather
than Israel, and one must say for good reason.
Zionism’s problem with the Jewish
Diaspora is not new and points to what may be called the dual identity of the
Jewish soul. Some Jews have always regarded themselves as members of a Jewish
nation, albeit in exile, while others have mainly felt themselves as either
religiously or ethnically associated by tradition and shared fate with other
Jews. The German word Schicksalsgemeinschaft
is, therefore, quite appropriate. This duality is the reason why Zionism, which
emphasized nation status above everything else, was originally met with such
hostility by the majority of Jews in the West. They did not want to go to
Palestine and the specter of being accused of dual loyalty was a very real one
of which, as we know, Hitler took full advantage. His war was not only against
the Allied nations it was also against the “Jewish nation” which had been the
first to declare “holy war” on him by initiating boycotts of German goods
immediately within two months of his ascension to power in 1933. Subsequently Weizmann
promised Chamberlain in September of 1939, that the Jewish people would extend
all possible help to the Allies in the war effort. Deliberately inflated fears in
March of 1933 as to what Hitler might do as well as attempts to destabilize his
regime had turned into a genuine horror when he took vicious revenge during
WWII. The German Jews had warned their American cousins before the war not to make
life any harder for them than it already was, but these voices remained unheard.
The propaganda mills ground on with the well-known disastrous outcome (Understanding
the Holocaust Parts I-III).
This is history but what are the “facts
on the ground” today? We owe the term to Ariel Sharon in regard to the
settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and it was duly echoed by
George W Bush, thereby no longer making them illegal in American eyes. But let
us start at home. The overriding aspect which limits Obama’s choices is the
election campaign for 2012 which is already in full swing. He cannot alienate
major Jewish donors and regardless of what his real feelings are in regard to
the Palestinians he is forced to at least pay lip-service to Jewish opinion in
our country. Although there are some warning voices in the Jewish community which
point out that continued unquestioned support of the Netanyahu government is a
disaster, this has not yet reached the mainstream papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post or the LA
Times. This would be a pre-requisite to counter the claim by Republican
presidential aspirants that he is “abandoning our most faithful ally.” Mitt
Romney has already set the tone, by declaring that “Obama has thrown Israel
under the bus.” This is the type of rhetoric we can expect for the rest of this
year and up to November of next. It will be a serious hindrance for the conduct
of a foreign policy which serves American rather than Zionist interests. A
foreign policy which is of “the honest broker type” could only happen if the
distinction between Zionism and Judaism were to be fully recognized. But this
depends now entirely on our Jewish community. Unless it speaks out and
dissociates itself from Likud policies it will bear the responsibility for the
disasters which are in the offing. This is America’s current tragedy: we cannot
pursue an independent foreign policy in the Middle East because the propaganda
of the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” makes Israel for all practical purposes
already the fifty first state of the Union. American Jews, who see what the
future holds if the current course is maintained, need to muster courage and
declare themselves unequivocally on the side of universal human rights which
grant equality to Palestinians. If they were to do so they would not be alone
but merely be helping the Israeli peace camp which is in urgent need of it.
In Israel Netanyahu, for all of his
bravado, is also in a real bind. Even if he wanted to make a viable peace
agreement with the Palestinians it is too late for a number of reasons. First
of all he would lose his job because his government coalition would never
ratify any agreement. Netanyahu has placed emphasis on Hamas as the chief
reason why there can be no negotiations with the Palestinians but this is
merely a ploy. First it was Arafat who was no partner for peace, then Abbas
failed the test, when Hamas won the election there could not be further
negotiations with Abbas because he could not speak for all of the Palestinians
and when the Palestinians reconciled there can be no negotiations because Hamas
is a terrorist organization and as such unqualified to participate. The offshoot
is in essence: there can be no serious negotiations although we need to talk
about them endlessly. Furthermore, Americans are by and large unaware of what Netanyahu’s
coalition partners in government really stand for. This was highlighted by Elliot
Spitzer who is a former governor of New York, and now hosts the CNN prime time
news slot. Last week he had Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian educator
and legislator, for a few minutes on his program. Spitzer, who is Jewish,
dominated the conversation with the usual assertion that it’s all the
Palestinian’s fault why there is no peace and that they must disavow Hamas.
Ashrawi, who happens to be Christian, was not given a proper chance to disabuse
him of some of his notions and when she told Spitzer in regard to Hamas that Netanyahu’s
government is full of people who want to get rid of the Palestinians he scoffed
and broke off the conversation. But Ashrawi had a point which Americans don’t
want to recognize.
Currently
Netanyahu’s coalition government consists of six political parties of which
Likud is the largest and it has steadfastly refused the establishment of a
Palestinian state. The current apparent agreement is a sham because the
conditions, before negotiations even start, are unacceptable and everybody
knows it. Next comes Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our
Home) under the leadership of Avigdor Li(e)berman (the
name is spelled both ways in various documents) whose family emigrated from the
Soviet Union to Israel in 1978. He is also currently Deputy Prime Minister and
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. His party aims to establish an exclusively
Jewish state in as much of the conquered territories as possible, including the
Golan Heights. Li(e)berman’s
attitude towards Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is largely one
of disdain. It has been reported that in 1988 he had called for the flooding of
the Aswan dam in retaliation for Egyptian support of Yasir Arafat and in May of
2004 he has been quoted as having said that 90 per cent of Israel’s 1.2 million
Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get
lost.”
After these comes Labor under Ehud Barak
whose views I have discussed previously on these pages (March 1, 2007 Barak in
Salt Lake City). Although he would agree to a Palestinian state, the attached conditions
would not be accepted by any Jew if the situation were reversed. The other
three coalition partners come from the religious and settler organizations.
Shas opposes any negotiations over the status of East Jerusalem, and so does
United Torah Judaism. The Jewish Home party rejects the return of any of the
Occupied Territories.
When confronted with a government of
this type, reasonable persons must ask themselves: who is the negotiating
partner the Palestinians are supposed to have? Yes, everybody will agree that
all Israeli governments, including the present one, want peace. But they want
it on their terms. The demand is: give me what I want now and don’t be
surprised if I want more later on. This was precisely the tactic Ben-Gurion had
successfully used with the British. When partition of Palestine was offered in
1937 the Arabs rejected it but Ben-Gurion wisely decided that half a loaf is
better than none and that he would get the rest through military action later.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot Israelis have no incentive to give up
their conquests unless forced to by world opinion.
As mentioned earlier, for peace
negotiations to begin the Palestinians must recognize not merely the existence
of the state of Israel but that Israel is a “Jewish state.” What this means
precisely is not quite clear. Is it supposed to be a theocratic state based on
the laws of the written and oral Torah? Or is it to be a secular state where “Jewish
values” govern? How these differ from universally agreed one, has never been
defined. But whatever a “Jewish state”
is it cannot be democratic because the non-Jewish minority in the country can
by definition never be full-fledged citizens. Inasmuch as any Palestinian
government sees itself as responsible for all Palestinians wherever they live
it can never agree to this demand unless the rights of Palestinians in the
Jewish state are clearly and precisely spelled out. If one were to say that the
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no right to speak for their
relatives in Israel and the diaspora a fair minded person would immediately counter
with: but this is the right Zionists are appealing to when it comes to Jews
anywhere in the world.
Netanyahu and his partners have,
however, an additional problem which they know but don’t talk about. The
settlements on occupied land after the 1967 War were originally a secular
military enterprise to keep the land for “security reasons.” But by now they
have acquired an additional religious dimension. The ground is holy, all of it,
and no government has the right to give up an inch. To evict a Jew from any
part of Eretz Israel is a sin punishable by death. Rabin was murdered for
precisely that reason. In the current climate any government which proposes to
do so is likely to fall and there is even the danger that the army may refuse
to evict the settlers, because it has also been imbued with orthodox religious fervor.
The facts on the Palestinian side have
also changed in the past few years. As mentioned, Jewish settlements have
proliferated and bypass roads, which Palestinians are prohibited to use, crisscross
the West Bank. Travel within the territory has also been impeded by numerous
checkpoints as well as by the “Wall of Separation” which has gone up. Ian
Buruma reported in the New York Review of
Books that it could take between three and five hours “to get to Bethlehem
from Ramallah, depending on the Israeli checkpoints. Normally a trip would take
only thirty minutes via Jerusalem. But Ramallah is also now surrounded by
settlements and cut off by the wall. Some Palestinians have permits to go to
Jerusalem . . . but it can take them three, four or five hours to get there,
even though the trip can be made by car in fifteen minutes.” One may ask: how
long are people supposed to put up with this kind of chicanery?
During the past two years the
Palestinians have largely given up the idea that violence will lead to
independence and have charted a different course. Under its Prime Minister,
Salam Fayyad, the infrastructure has been developed in preparation for
independence. Construction is rapidly proceeding in Ramallah and even a sushi
restaurant has opened. The Palestinian economy in the West Bank is currently
booming and the goal of independence, which was announced in September of 2009
for two years hence, seems now to be in grasp. Add to this President Obama’s
statement of last September “that he expected the framework for an independent
Palestinian state to be declared in a year [New
York Times April 2, 2011].” In this context reconciliation with Hamas was a
necessity because the Palestinians have to speak with one voice come September.
These developments including the
Egyptian opening of the Rafah border to the people of the Gaza strip puts the
Netanyahu government in an extremely difficult position. As the above mentioned
New York Times article also reported
time is not on the Israelis’ side any longer and they know it. The article
quoted Ehud Barak as having told a conference in Tel Aviv, “We are facing a
diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and
that will peak in September. It is a very dangerous situation, one that
requires action. Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of
Israel.” What would the consequences be if the UN admitted the Palestinian
state with the borders which existed prior to the 1967 Six Day War? Israel would
then automatically become an occupying power of another member state of the UN
and as stated in the same New York Times
article, “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the
sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.”
In this light Netanyahu’s triumph in
Congress and the enthusiastic reception upon his return to Israel is quite
meaningless. He said correctly in Washington that the ground is shifting but he
and his followers have not drawn the proper lesson. He had insisted on
“security” for Israel which in today’s world is ephemeral. Not even the people
in the Twin Towers had security on 9/11, and rockets know no borders. Security
can no longer be obtained by “strategic depth” or a powerful military. The
bomb, which Israel has, is still the most effective deterrent as the example of
North Korea versus Libya as well as Iraq has proven. The optimal deterrence is,
however, conduct. If Israel were to give up plans of
dominating the Palestinians and instead concentrated its efforts on economic
and scientific developments, in conjunction with the Arab world, it would be
accepted as a partner and fears of invasion and/or obliteration could be
shelved. But this is too much to hope for because emotions, religious as well
as political, stand in the way.
September, which bodes ill for Zionists,
is only 3 months away. The clock is ticking and if the Palestinians can avoid
the temptation of another intifada within this period their statehood might
come to pass. But their problem is again the US. Although there is no veto in
the General Assembly its president, Joseph Deiss, has already said that
membership without approval of the Security Council is out of the question. As
such, the ball will again be in Obama’s court. Will the US veto the resolution
as we did on the legality of the settlements earlier in the year, will we
attempt to have the Brits veto it for us, or will we simply abstain from
voting? This is the question Obama faces and no one can answer it for him.
The Arab spring is turning into a hot
summer and Netanyahu’s problems can only grow rather than diminish. What
politicians have done in the past in situations of this type was to make a war
to detract attention. This may take the form of Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear
plants or an invasion of Lebanon or Syria. We don’t know what the plans of
Mossad and the Israeli Army are but judging from past experience they may well do
something to avoid the September tsunami, to use Ehud Barak’s term. I would not
doubt that a major “false flag” terrorist attack on the US may also be under
consideration. It is a dangerous time and Congress has deprived us of the last
hope for a peaceful future. We have squandered our freedom of independent
action and are now thoroughly enmeshed in the support of a reactionary regime
in Israel, to our and the rest of the world’s detriment.
Most Americans don’t see what’s on the
horizon and those who do resign themselves to the notion that they can’t do
anything about it. This is not quite true. Currently it is only propaganda
which keeps us captive and theoretically it could still be counteracted. But
where are the people of stature in our country who would be willing to take up
this task? Yet it is urgent because unless the pro Likud stance of our media is
reversed we will have a war which will be far more serious than the ones we are
currently engaged in.
July 1, 2011
THE GOEBBELS TRAP
In the May 1 installment
(Post-Easter Reflections) I had referred to Francis Neilson’s book The Makers of War which was first
published in the wake of his resignation from Parliament in 1915. Thereafter he
moved permanently to the U.S., married in 1917 and started writing a series of
books as well as becoming a major patron of the arts. In 1940 he published: The Tragedy of Europe. A
Day by Day Commentary on the Second World War.The book was reprinted in 1986 and is a very
valuable resource which shows how the American public was once again driven to
enter the European war. I will return to the book later but for now the
important point is that it contains a reference to H. C. Peterson’s: Propaganda for War. The
Campaign against American Neutrality 1914-1917
(University of Oklahoma Press 1939). It likewise is highly
informative and as will become apparent has direct relevance to current
American domestic and foreign policy.
Prior to publishing War&Mayhem I read for the first time
Hitler’s Mein Kampf which he had
written in 1925, while imprisoned at Landsberg for the misfired “Beer hall
Putsch.” I remembered that he had praised the British WWI propaganda and
thoroughly condemned Germany’s amateurish countermeasures. After having read
Peterson’s work, in order to refresh my memory, I pulled Mein Kampf from the bookshelf and saw that he had devoted an entire
chapter to Kriegspropaganda.
The next paragraph provides the essence.
There
was no effective propaganda from the German side. Everything that was attempted
in this respect was from the beginning so insufficient and utterly wrong that
at minimum it was useless and at times harmful. Propaganda is the means towards
a purpose and has to be adapted to serve this purpose. When nations are
confronted with a struggle for their existence, questions in regard to humanity
and aesthetics become irrelevant. Propaganda has to be directed towards the
masses and the message has to be at the level of the lowest common denominator.
It was completely wrong to ridicule the enemy because the soldier at the front
knew better. The British and American propaganda was psychologically correct.
By presenting the Germans as Huns and barbarians the Allied soldier was
prepared for the horrors he would be confronted with in battle. When they eventually
occurred they not only reinforced what he had been taught to expect but also
increased his rage and hatred against the accursed enemy. The German was told
that both sides had to some extent been responsible for the war. But there was
no such equivocation by the enemy who declared categorically that Prussian
militarism and the Kaiser were the sole culprits. The message that the war was
not conducted against the German people but only its ruling class paved the way
for the 1918 revolution. Anyone who studied this flood of enemy propaganda
which descended upon Germany could learn a great deal.
Hitler took the lesson to heart and
immediately upon ascension to power created the Reichsministerium für Propaganda und Volksaufklärung
under Dr. Joseph Goebbels. The term Volksaufklärunghas
no counterpart in the English language because the words “information,” “elucidation”
or “explanations” do not convey the real intent. One can describe it as: clarification
of the important issues of the day for the nation. With other words:
indoctrination in the party line. Everybody, friend and foe alike, had to admit
that Goebbels was a master of his craft and in addition had, what is popularly
called, the gift of gab. His strength was that he didn’t just make up stories. He
was a true believer who had transferred his earlier faith in Catholicism to
National Socialism as incorporated in Adolf Hitler. Unlike others, such as
Goering or Himmler, who would have gladly attempted negotiations with the
Allies, Goebbels stood by his Führer and followed him into death. He had come
to believe his own propaganda to the extent that he was able to convince his
wife, Magda, to poison their six children with cyanide before shooting her as
well as himself. Such is the power of propaganda people can ensnare themselves
in. This Medea like act by Magda was not in order to spite a faithless husband,
but stemmed from the firm conviction that she and the children were doomed once
the “Asiatic hordes” had taken over.
Let us now return to Peterson and see
what he has to tell us about how reluctant Americans were dragged into WWI.
This is not an academic exercise because whoever has eyes to see will
immediately notice that the same forces are at work today to ensure that
America remains entangled in never ending wars. It should be mentioned at the
outset that intelligence provides no immunity against the vicious effects of
propaganda as the examples of Goebbels as well as President Wilson prove. On
the contrary, intelligence merely serves, under those circumstances, to
rationalize what propaganda has already instilled in the mind.
I was always puzzled by Wilson’s
behavior. He had won the November 1916 election under the slogan, “He has kept
us out of the war,” yet entered the war in April of 1917, regardless of the
fact that nothing particularly untoward had happened to Americans in the
intervening five months. The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by
Germany was not the cause but an invaluable excuse. The British blockade had
become increasingly effective and the German civilian population was
dangerously close to starvation. This forced Germany, as countermeasure, to curtail
transatlantic supplies to the UK which could have ended the war. Had Wilson
indeed been neutral he would have insisted that freedom of the seas applied to
the illegal British blockade just as much as to the German measures trying to
break it.
The Zimmermann telegram, which was one
of the major German blunders, also became a powerful propaganda weapon. Arthur
Zimmermann, German Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had anticipated that the
resumption of the unrestricted submarine warfare, which would inevitably
involve the sinking of U.S. ships once they entered the war zone, would lead to
an American declaration of war. It must be remembered that the situation was
quite difficult for German U boat captains because British merchant vessels were
armed and at times sailed under the American flag. Only at the last moment,
when they were already engaged in chasing the submarine, they hoisted the Union
Jack. In search for Allies, Zimmermann
authorized the German ambassador, on January 16 1917, to tell the Mexican
government that unrestricted submarine warfare would commence on February 1. In
case of a declaration of war by America, Germany would provide financial support
to Mexico for a Reconquista of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The telegram was
immediately intercepted and decoded by the British but, because of its obvious
propaganda value, they waited to inform the U.S. government of its contents
until February 24 and it was not released to the public until March 1. The fact
that German help was promised only in case the U.S. had declared war on Germany
was downplayed, and the emphasis was on a violation of the Monroe doctrine and
the specter of a German invasion via Mexico.
As mentioned, these were, however, only
excuses rather than reasons. While Wilson had publicly proclaimed complete
neutrality in his heart he had always been pro-British. Even in August 1914 he
has been quoted in a private conversation to say, “Let us pray that Germany
will not develop a von Moltke.” Wilson apparently didn’t know that Helmuth von Moltke, a nephew of the renowned general, was
in charge of the German army. Later in the war Wilson mentioned “that he was
‘heart and soul for the Allies’, as well as ‘that he had been on their side
‘since the first day the Germans moved.’” It was this conflict between his
private views and his official duties to the country which made his policies,
as Peterson called them, “unneutral” from the very beginning
of the war. Peterson wrote,
“In order to
remove the causes for German submarine warfare, some Americans desired that
pressure be exerted on Great Britain forcing her to relax the illegal blockade
of the Central Powers. Wilson, however, refused to do anything which would
embarrass the Allies. Many Americans wished an embargo on munitions; Wilson
objected. Bryan [U.S. Secretary of State] prohibited loans to the warring
nations; Wilson lifted the ban. Bryan asked for permission to warn Americans
from traveling on foreign ships; Wilson refused. Congress tried to pass a bill
preventing Americans from traveling on the armed ships of belligerents; Wilson
personally defeated the measure. The President’s partisanship was so apparent
that even the British stated: ‘During the period while America was neutral all
the issues in dispute between England and America were decided in England’s
favor.’”
By January 1917 not only Germany’
situation was precarious, but the Allies had run out of money to pay for their
weapons imports from the U.S. Since both sides to the conflict had been
virtually exhausted, a truly neutral America could have brokered a peace
without victory. But this was impossible. Not only had, as a result of British
propaganda, public sentiment begun to swing toward the Allies, but without
extracting reparations from Germany the huge war debts the Allies had
accumulated in the U.S. could not have been recovered. America’s entry into the
war, which assured an Allied victory, had become an economic necessity.
Let us now take a closer look how the
British propaganda really operated. There were two aspects: the mechanics and
the content. As far as the former is concerned the first act by the British
government was to censor the news America was to receive from the continent.
This was achieved by simply cutting the transatlantic cable on August 5, 1914
from Germany to the U.S. During the all-important first months of the war the
only news even official American government sources had available was what
London permitted them to know. As such, what has been called Greuelpropaganda
(atrocity stories) in regard to German conduct in Belgium could not be checked
for veracity and allowed for the emergence of the mental image of the “Hun.”
Even when wireless telegraphy came on the scene later in 1914, its facilities
were limited and the German dispatches arrived considerably later than the
British. As is well known the first news make headlines while retractions or
corrections are buried in small print in the inside pages of newspapers or
magazines.
The British also immediately established
censorship of the press and mail. The mail censorship office started with 14
persons in August of 1914 and grew to 3700 in London alone by 1917. An official
War Propaganda Bureau, under Charles Masterman, was established in September
1914, and different individuals were appointed to head the departments dealing
with individual countries. For the U.S. it was Sir Gilbert Parker and one of his
first official actions was to arrange a meeting in the offices of J.P. Morgan
on August 23, 1914 where “’ it was determined to appoint English editorial
writers on forty American newspapers.”’ Since the source for this information
was the German military attaché, Franz von Papen, Peterson was skeptical, but “there
is every indication that the Morgan firm did engage in propaganda work in
connection with the floating of loans.” He also cited a conversation, published
by the French historian Gabriel Hanotaux, where a former Morgan partner, Robert
Bacon (also U.S. statesman and diplomat), had commented, ‘“In America … there
are only 50,000 people who understand the necessity of the United States
entering the war immediately on your side. But there are 100,000,000 who have
not even thought of it. Our task is to see that the figures are reversed and
that the 50,000 become the 100,000,000. We will accomplish this.’” Peterson
went on to say, “it would be very interesting to know just what he did to
fulfill his promise.”
We know, however, that some of the means
were
“to make an ordinary political power struggle appear to be a
fight between good and evil. Beyond this, they must make the Allies’ cause
appear to be America’s cause – there must be developed a belief in the identity
of interests between the United States and Great Britain. In developing the
idea that this new war was a holy war the British were very fortunate. The
struggle between weary old England and boisterous new Germany readily adapted
itself to the stereotype of virtue versus iniquity.”
The biggest aid in this effort was, of
course, the common language and as far as molding the content of propaganda
messages is concerned the British adhered to the following rules:
“(1) they told
only that part of the truth which benefited their cause; (2) they utilized
background material for which there was no evidence; (3) they exploited to the
fullest the emotions and ideals of those being educated; (4) they gave their
propaganda an aura of authority by using big names, by quoting their enemy, or
by appealing to legality; (5) they made their arguments simple and eliminated
all qualifying statements; (6) they used endless repetition. ….
The
elimination of all arguments which tended to warrant German entry into the war,
and the accentuating of all those which justified French and English
participation, aided in establishing the concept of war guilt. … By omitting
mention of good Germans or good actions of Germans, these people were made to
appear unregenerate. And by omitting reference to evil Englishmen, the Germans,
by contrast, were made to appear even worse. This technique of exploiting
part-truths is characteristic of all propagandists. At the hands of the British
it became high art.”
To this one needs to add the previously
mentioned Greuelpropaganda
which started in the first weeks of the war. It hammered on the statements that
not only had Germany wantonly ignored Belgian neutrality but had also been truly
barbarous in the conduct of the war in that country. Alleged atrocities included:
the poisoning of wells with bacteria, inoculating exchange prisoners with
tuberculosis, bayonetting babies, chopping off the hands of a baby, and the
manufacture of soap from dead German soldiers. The latter two are of special
interest because chopping the hands off children, as well as adults, had
actually occurred in the Belgian Congo by Belgian supervisors when certain work
quotas had not been met by the locals. The soap story experienced a
resurrection in WWII except that it was the remains of Jewish concentration
camp victims who were supposed to have served that purpose. The destruction of
major portions of Louvain including its famous library also became a cause célèbre, because it was used to
prove Germany’s total disregard for mankind’s cultural heritage.
What the propagandists failed to mention
were the reasons for German misconduct. The violation of Belgian neutrality was
a military necessity and during the war the British showed no concern in regard
to the Greek’s neutral status or about the routine interference with shipping
by neutral states. As far as German actions in Belgium were concerned they
resulted first from panic and subsequently they represented attempts to deal
with a hostile population which took aim at an occupation by means of what is
now called asymmetric warfare. When the outmatched Belgian forces resorted to
guerilla tactics and sniper fire erupted in the rear of the front from private
houses in cities and villages, the ordinary soldier was gripped by fear because
he never knew where the next shot might come from. That men would begin to
react irrationally under those circumstances should not be surprising,
especially when they were at times inebriated from the ever present wine
supplies. To what extent commanding officers were involved remains unknown, but
that an official policy of reprisals existed is a fact. When culprits could not
readily be identified hostages were taken, including at times women and
children, and some were executed. When church towers were used, or suspected of
being used, as watch towers they were shelled, regardless of their cultural
value, as for instance the cathedral of Rheims.
One might think that when a war is
finished rational behavior would come to the fore again. Far
from it. The propaganda which had been so useful during the war, such as
the exclusive German war guilt, was no longer regarded as a means to win the
war but had been elevated to historical fact by 1918. It was enshrined in the
so-called “peace” treaty. Germany had to be punished and WWII had become, for
all practical purposes, inevitable. Niall Ferguson, who also detailed the
causes and subsequent conduct of WWI in The
Pity of War, concluded not only that it had been totally unnecessary but
that “was nothing less than the greatest error
of modern history.” He was correct and by deliberately ignoring the causes of
that error we have paved the way to the wars we are currently engaged in
because all of them are the consequences of what Archibald Wavell had called:
the Peace to end Peace. He had referred to the dismantling of the Ottoman
Empire but it applied equally to Versailles.
As mentioned the methods perfected in
the propaganda war of 1914-1918 were not abandoned in 1919 but reached full
fruition during WWII and are still with us today right here in our country.
While WWI is gradually being shorn of propaganda this does not hold true for
WWII. On the other hand the British, after having lost their empire as a result
of it, have re-examined the reasons. Clive Ponting, who has been mentioned in
regard to his book on Churchill
(President Bush’s choice, July 1, 2003), has also published 1940 – Myth and Reality as well as Armageddon – The Second World War. These
paint a far more realistic picture than what Americans are still being told.
Moreover, Madeleine Bunting’s The Model
Occupation – The Channel Islands
under German Rule, 1940-1945 is practically unknown here. Although
published in hardback and available on amazon.com it had only one review. The
reason is that it has never been reviewed in newspapers and journals. The
islanders had made their peace with the occupying force, in part intermarried, and
there was no resistance movement to speak of because the occupation was not too
onerous. These facts did not fit the propaganda concept of the mortal danger
Germany was supposed to have presented to England as well as America and
destroyed the notion that all Nazis were evil.
Clive Ponting’s
books did not fare better either. 1940
received four favorable reviews, while Armageddon had to make do with one,
which actually referred to another book by Ponting with a similar title. Contrast
this with for instance The Greatest
Generation by Tom Brokaw or the numerous books by Stephen Ambrose on
aspects of WWII which are all best-sellers. The problem with the American
literature on WWII is not necessarily in regard to what it says but what it
fails to report and thereby fosters the propaganda stereotype.
This is also highlighted by Neilson’s
above mentioned Tragedy of Europe.
The strength of the book resides in the fact that it depicts, just like these
pages, history as it occurred rather than in hindsight, which by that time is
influenced by the outcome. It is unfortunate that it covers only the period of
May 18, 1939 - 0ctober 29, 1940. It would have been interesting to read to what
extent Neilson might have changed some of his views as the war progressed and
eventually engulfed his adopted country, the U.S. The Introduction to the book
was written by Robert M. Hutchins (Dean of Yale Law School, subsequently
President of the University of Chicago and later in life Editor in Chief of The Great Books of the Western World)
and a key sentence bears repeating, “The ordinary American reader, who like me,
knows nothing of history except the distortions of school texts and nothing of
international politics except the distortions of the daily press, will find
here a fund of material that will make him stop and reflect.” As mentioned
earlier the book is full of insights and the author has authenticity because of
his previous service in Parliament where he had occasion to mingle with all the
luminaries of the day. He knew and respected Churchill, although having been at
odds with his policies at times, and most importantly the fact that some of
Churchill’s prescient words prior to the rise of Hitler, whenever he was temporarily
out of power, did not match his actions when he had the opportunity to enforce
them.
The key message of the book is: the rise
of Hitler and the Nazi party was completely preventable had the injustices of
the Versailles dictate been addressed in time. Since they were left to fester one
should not have been surprised when a person like Hitler subsequently removed
them by force at which point the British had to step in to save a treaty they
didn’t like in the first place. To bolster his argument he cited Churchill who
said in the House of Commons on October 23, 1922,
“… I would
follow any real path, not a sham or a blind alley, which led to lasting
reconciliation between Germany and her neighbors. .. Removal of just grievances
of the vanquished ought to precede the disarmament of the victors. It would be
safer to open questions like those of the Danzig-Corridor and Transylvania with
all their delicacy and difficulty in cold blood and in a calm atmosphere and
while the victor-nations still have ample superiority, than to wait and drift
on inch by inch, and step by step, until once again vast combinations equally
matched confront each other face to face. . . We might find ourselves pledged
in honor and in law to enter a war against our will and against our better
judgment in order to preserve those very injustices and grievances which sunder
Europe today, which are the cause of present armaments and which, if not
arrested, will cause another war. ..”
I have shortened the comments by
omitting another insert prior to the last one to save space because the message
is already abundantly clear. Neilson reinforced it with another Churchill quote
from 1932, “If the English government really wants to do something for the
promotion of peace, it should take the lead in revising the peace treaties, and
should open up the question of Danzig and the Polish Corridor.” As we know this
was not done until Hitler forced the issue in 1939.
As to pre-WWII opinions on Hitler he
also quotes the early Churchill, “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet
admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we
should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back
to our place among the nations.” The quote came from Churchill’s book Step by Step which Neilson had been
asked to review. The book “purports to be a series of letters” written during
1936-39 but Neilson found a number of anachronisms and wondered if at least
some of these letters were written by Churchill to himself as recipient. Neilson’s
own feelings on Hitler were reflected in, “The devil may be as black as he is
painted; he may be all the Allied journals say he is, but I cannot get away
from the fact that he knows thoroughly well what he is saying and what he is
doing. He must know that, if the war is to continue [written October 7, 1939],
and if he and his forces are defeated for the sole purpose of wiping out
Hitlerism, France and Great Britain will be prone at the end of the job.”
My greatest surprise when I read
Neilson’s book, was the absence of a discussion of Jews and their problems. It
comes up only once in the 676 pages of text in connection with Hitler’s speech
after the victory in Poland [likewise October 7, 1939 entry]. He summarized the
main points of the speech as,
“(1) a
conference of nations;
(2) disarmament or, failing that an agreement
to forbid the use of poison gas in order to reduce the horrors of war; a return
of armaments to a ‘sensible’ level as the most important precondition to
security and peace;
(3) a solution to the
European Jew ‘problem’ [Judenproblem];
(4) a possible
restoration of a Polish State under German-Russian suzerainty, to contain only
Poles;
(5) the matter of
return of the former German colonies.”
The West ignored the speech and the war
ground on. There are two more aspects of Neilson’s book which are most á propos
to our current situation. One is the need for evildoers,
“It was the Kaiser
then; it is Hitler now. Indeed in all such great imbroglios, it is absolutely
necessary to have a Kaiser or a Hitler. The war folks can’t get on without one.
Remember the little Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte … It is well known that during
the Napoleonic Wars people on the south coast of England believed that the
Little Corsican occasionally had a feast of babies.”
Truly, nothing changes when leaders want
to make war. In the past decade it was Saddam who was a Hitler, afterwards
Ahmadinejad filled the role but eventually we became more generic and the
Radical Muslim Terrorist now serves this purpose. In addition we haven’t given
up on regime change which was likewise commented on by Neilson in relation to
the WWII propaganda that the Allies have no quarrel with the German people;
it’s just Hitler and his cronies who had to go.
“It is a curious
world my masters! Suppose the German people had said to the French: ‘We have no
quarrel with you at all, but we don’t like your Daladiers
any better than we liked your Blums, so we are going
to drop bombs on Paris with the intention of giving you the leader we think
will suit you [October 6, 1939].”
All one has to do is to change
German people to American people, Daladiers-Blums to Gadaffi, Paris to Tripoli and seven decades have vanished! Churchill’s
dictum,
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be accompanied by
a bodyguard of lies," is still the governing principle of our day.
We are again subjected to a relentless
propaganda war which will in all probability ensnare us into additional
military adventures against Muslim nations. The Israelis have succeeded in
convincing major portions of our people that their goals are identical with
ours and we have become chained to Israel. This has been a propaganda coup of
major proportions as demonstrated by Netanyahu’s reception by Congress in May.
It was aided by pounding on the “Judeo-Christian tradition” and the fact that Israeli
politicians look like us and speak English fluently, frequently with hardly an
accent. The Palestinians on the other hand are the strangers and when they talk
in English they are at times hard to understand. Since the appeal is to
emotions rather than the intellect it is obvious that Israel is likely to
retain the upper hand.
The current propaganda Americans are subjected
to follows all the rules laid down during WWI by the British: censorship of
information, deliberate use of the half-truth, picturing the adversary as
utterly depraved and instilling fear of what he might do. Although censorship
is used for the most part, at present, by the media rather than the government it
is no less effective because as Peterson has stated in regard to British
efforts during WWI, “the almost complete capture of American newswriters resulted in a press consistently friendly to
the Allies.” The only independent information Americans get today is from the
Internet and these sources are not always trustworthy either.
What can individuals do under these
circumstances? Obviously not much, but it behooves us to become aware and
beware of the propaganda which engulfs us on a daily basis. We need to take a
stand, in private as well as public discussions, for truthful information even
in the face of its current unpopularity. Among this is that our Christian “Bible-thumpers”
need to be informed that the “Good Book” has two parts. It is the second one
which ought to be given preference and the first part should be read for its
spiritual meaning rather than as a political roadmap to justify 21st
century decisions. The mixture of politics with religion has always been fatal
and when one turns the clock back to more than 2000 years the same results are
bound to be achieved.
We have allowed the injustices
perpetrated against Palestinians to fester, just like the British did in regard
to Germany after the Versailles treaty. Inasmuch as Israel has misguided public
opinion in our country on its side no American president has summoned the
courage to take action. This failure will come to haunt us. Propaganda is a
powerful sword and when one starts believing in it as being the truth one is
liable to be killed by it. This is another lesson of history which we were
supposed to have learned.
Our country is in serious financial
difficulty. We can no longer afford the wars we are engaged in, let alone new
ones. But unless we begin to distinguish between facts and propaganda we cannot
expect any progress, in the domestic as well as international arena, to take
place.
August 1, 2011
MISGUIDED ARROGANT INCOMPETENCE
One may think that this headline
refers to the current scandalous behavior of Congress, but although it does
apply to it, that topic will be covered in the September installment when we will
know what happened on August 2 and its aftermath. The present essay deals with
the causes which led us to the brink of default on our debts. Although the
Republicans are holding Obama responsible, we have to go back to the decisions
of the Bush administrations (Bush 41 and Bush 43) to understand what is
happening now. Obama inherited two wars, a national debt which had doubled over
the past 8 years, and an impending economic meltdown. None of this was his
doing but the attempt to dig the country out of the hole which the Bush
administration had dug by creating more debt has not yielded the expected
gains. Unemployment is still unacceptably high and the true figure, which
includes laid off workers who no longer actively look for employment and those
who are underemployed (e.g. MBAs packing grocery bags) is, of course, way
beyond the 9.2 % official figure. But, as mentioned, this aspect will be
covered in more detail next month when we will know what the power brokers in
Washington have inflicted upon us.
As readers of these essays will
readily appreciate, our library is beginning to overflow. The bookshelves in
our main living quarters are full and ever so often some have to be relegated
to the lower level of the house, where they are still available but not quite
so readily. This was the case last month and in sifting what will go into the
basement I came across a pristine book by Hans Walter Berg entitled: Das Erbe der Groszmoguln – VoelkerschicksalezwischenHindukusch und Golf von Bengalen, which might be translated as: The Mughal
Legacy – Fate of peoples between the Hindu Kush and the Gulf of Bengal. It was
published in 1988 and I had bought it in the early 90s during one of my visits
to Vienna but never found the time to read it. When I now looked at it I was
amazed at how topical the contents were. Had the Bush people read it, and taken
the contents to heart the history of the past decade might have been
considerably different. President George W Bush himself could not have been
expected to know something about the countries he invaded because he had stated
openly that “I read only headlines” and that he relies on what others,
especially Condi Rice, told him. Responsible officials in the State Department
did know, but they were overruled by the neocons who wanted to remake the world
in their image.
The author of the book, which
unfortunately has not been translated into English, had been since1952 the Asia
correspondent for ARD, the major German news network. He was thoroughly
familiar with the area and had interviewed the leading political figures of the
time in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. He holds a PhD from the
University of Munich and also a MA from the University of Michigan for Far East
History. He is, therefore, clearly a person one should listen to. For today’s
essay I shall limit myself to the essential features about Afghanistan and
Pakistan because these are the areas of major concern right now.
Berg used the Mughal Empire as
background because the current states in the area are still influenced by
Mughal traditions which form an essential part of their history. The empire
lasted about two hundred years (1526-1726) and in its heyday stretched from
Afghanistan through the northern half of India to what is now Bangladesh. The rulers
were Muslim but managed not to alienate the Hindus to any appreciable extent.
As far as the character of the kings was concerned it was a strange mixture of
barbaric ruthlessness with a love of architecture, the arts and poetry. The
world has to thank them for the beautiful buildings in Lahore and northern
India, especially Agra. On the other hand, the rule was that “a king has no
friends.” This extended to the king’s sons because their choice was “either
kingship or the bier.” Some of them did not want to risk waiting for the
father’s death and instead imprisoned him as had happened to the most
celebrated Mughal, Shahjahan. He had built the Taj Mahal as the final resting
place for his beloved wife but was never allowed to complete the planned
identical monument, but of black marble instead of white, on the other side of
the river which was intended to house his remains. His son, Aurangzeb, made
sure that no more money would be spent on these building projects. Shahjahan
had to spend the rest of his days locked up in the Red Fort from where he could
view, but never visit, his wife’s tomb.
The Mughal Empire decayed because of
constant internecine fights among the princes and this provided the British
with the opportunity to expand and eventually consolidate their rule over
India. Although they tried to gain possession of Afghanistan they failed in
this endeavor. Even after three wars the country retained its independence due
to the fierce fighting instinct of its inhabitants. The spirit of the Mughals
with constant fights against attempting conquerors, and between the various
tribes, extends into our time and only the names change under which the fights
are carried out. My initial information came from the book and it was
subsequently supplemented from articles on the Internet.
To understand our current problem in
Afghanistan we have to go back to the second British-Afghan war which was
concluded in 1893 with an agreement between the British Foreign Secretary for
India, Henry Mortimer Durand, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. Durand drew a line,
which has been named after him, which delineated the border between British
India and Afghanistan and which is today the major source of our problem in the
war against the Taliban (the name means “student”). Although the Amir was
forced to accept the Durand line at the time, the people never have because it
split the Pashtun tribal area in half. In 1947, with the partition of India,
the western portion became Pakistan but the Durand line remained unchanged as
the western border.
The Taliban are Pashtuns and they do not
recognize the Durand line. For them it is part of the colonial past which has
been imposed by infidels and they will continue to do their level best to
correct that injustice. Although the fight is carried out in the name of Islam,
to counteract Western secular modernity, the underlying ethnic problem is not
to be minimized. It has been said that all Taliban are Pashtuns but not all
Pashtuns are Taliban, which is correct. What Pashtuns want is a country of their
own “Pashtunistan,” (land of the Pashtuns), a term I had never previously heard
of. This is the reason why the Soviets have failed in their military effort and
why ours is destined to follow that example. It is the same situation as in
Vietnam where the Viet Cong and Viet Minh could readily cross the border to
Cambodia but we were according to international law not supposed to do
likewise. Now the border is with Pakistan but since that one does not exist for
Pashtuns our troops are exasperated that when they chase the Taliban they just
wave to them from across the Pakistani border. When we hector Pakistan to “seal
the border” and aggressively carry out the war against the Taliban we fail to
understand that Pakistan is an artificial country cobbled together from various
Muslim tribes for the sole reason to prevent Muslim subjugation by a
predominantly Hindu India. The separation in 1947 was accompanied by a
bloodbath where millions of Hindus and Muslims were killed and it has stained
the relations between the two countries to this day. Since, as a result of the
Durand line, half of the Pashtuns reside in Pakistan and the other half in
Afghanistan it is hopeless to assume that the Afghan war can be won with our
current mindset. Quetta in the south and Peshawar in the north are the main
supply and refuge bases for the Taliban and these are in Pashtunistan.
One would think that after 10 years
of war between us and factions of the Afghan people our media would have told
us something about the aspirations of the locals but that is obviously too much
to expect from our “free society.” Yet, Pashtunistan exists not only in the
minds of some Afghans but can be found in Berg’s book and on the Internet. Its
flag consists of three snow-covered mountain peaks on a red background and the
maximal wished for borders are depicted below. The map comes from the Internet
and is in the public domain.
The green area represents Pashtunistan
and the line delineates the current international border. It is obvious that
Pakistan can never be expected to give up more than half of its territory but
it is equally clear that nationalistically inclined Pashtuns are not likely to
accept their current borders in perpetuity. Looking at this map one can also
see why the complaints of our government about the porous border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan are useless because, as mentioned, the Afghans don’t
regard this line on the map as a border and freely travel among members of
their tribe, regardless what country Western politicians have assigned them to.
To understand what our troops are
confronted with one has to know something about Pashtunwali, the code of honor, or dignity, Pashtuns are to live
by. It predates Islam and is still enforced in rural areas where tribal chiefs
rule. The hope to replace it with Western values in the short span of a few
years is a dangerous illusion. As one Afghan is reported to have said to an
American, “you have the watch but we have the time.” Westernization can work to
some extent in the major cities but the majority of the people live in rural
areas where the ancient rules apply. But as we have seen again in the last few
weeks even Kandahar is not safe because first the governor of the province,
Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, and then the mayor were assassinated. How long
Karzai himself will be allowed to live is another question.
Islam is supposed to unite all the
tribes, but Pashtunwali demands in
addition: Nanawati, which guarantees
a fugitive asylum; Mehmastyia which
orders hospitality even to a mortal enemy once he has crossed the threshold of
your house, and Badal which demands
“blood for blood.” When a member of your family has been murdered a member of
the assailant’s family has to be killed. Americans believe that everything can
be solved with money and in the second half of September 2001 the CIA walked in
with briefcases literally full of millions of your and my dollars to hand out
to the “Northern alliance.” It consisted of Afghan warlords from various tribes
who were only too happy to fight the Pashtuns in the south regardless whether
they were Taliban or not. A look at the map, shown above, reveals that the area
controlled by the Northern Alliance represented a fraction of the northern
portion of what is labeled as Afghanistan. Obviously they took the money and
with the help of our bombing campaign defeated the Kabul Taliban government.
But, this ended their obligation to us. Thereafter they continued with their
tribal wars and planting opium to fund them, which had been banned under the
Taliban. As our troops found out, “you don’t buy an Afghan; you rent one!” This
truth has yet to sink into the minds of our policy makers, especially when they
complain about Karzai’s unpredictable behavior. He is a Pashtun after all.
Likewise, the obligation of Badal is ignored by us but honored by
the rural locals who make up the majority of the people in the aptly named
“graveyard of empires.” We believe that we can win the war by drones, but for
every insurgent they kill there is “collateral damage”: fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters and children whose death has to be avenged. Badal does not end with one generation
but can extend to subsequent ones. The bereaved family will take the money
which is offered, but in addition exert some type of blood revenge whenever
possible. The fact that these killings of innocents are perpetrated not only by
impersonal machines but that they are guided by infidels to kill Muslims is a
ready recruiting source for new mujahedeen’s for years to come.
Had the Bush administration known about Nanawati it would not have been
surprised that the Taliban did not deliver Osama bin Laden to us when we asked
for his extradition into American hands. He was a fugitive in their country and
therefore enjoyed the right of sanctuary. While they ostensibly agreed to turn
him over to the International Court, provided evidence for his crimes had been
presented, they could not hand him to his enemies just because they demanded
it. But Bush never wanted bin Laden to be captured alive or handed over, he was
merely the excuse for the invasion. The reason was, as we shall see,
considerably more mundane and in the spirit of American capitalism.
As far as the personality structure of
Afghans in general is concerned Berg quoted from the 1895 edition of Germany’s
counterpart to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “they are born warriors, unafraid
and courageous in attack, treasonous and insatiable in revenge.” Berg noted
that this was an oversimplification and could not be extended to every Afghan
national, but as we have seen it does hold true for the Afghan enemy our troops
are currently facing. The word treasonous in the statement needs modification.
They can be loyal to friends and family but since the code of honor does not
apply to foreign occupiers, especially infidels, they have no compunction about
disregarding those sentiments.
The American public has also been misled
about the goals of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We were told that they
wanted to export communism as part of “World Revolution” and that was all there
was to it. Berg documented the reasons in more detail. Suffice it to say that
Afghan government leaders had been murdered in rapid succession and chaotic
terror reigned in the country. The latest victim, on April 27, 1978, was Prince
Daud Khan, who although friendly with the neighboring Soviet Union did not want
to establish communism in his country. The military Putsch was carried by a
handful of officers who had been trained in the Soviet Union. They wanted to
bring communism, although officially they declared themselves merely as
reformers who carried out the will of the people. Moscow had been surprised by
these “facts on the ground,” but was now placed into the position of having to
support this new government come what may.
During a reception at the German embassy
in Kabul, Berg met with the information minister of the new regime, Suleiman
Laeq, and asked him why foreign correspondents were no longer allowed to enter
the country, since he himself had to cross the Khyber Pass illegally. Laeq
replied that the country needed to be protected from false propaganda and then
went on to explain: “We want a People’s Republic in the true sense of the
word, a state in which the hitherto disenfranchised workers, peasants and
intellectuals exercise power instead of feudal lords. We want an independent,
block-free, foreign policy and finally end 150 years of colonial past, in which
Afghan kings were mainly lackeys of foreign powers. We want to free our people
from the fetters of an ossified societal order and secure them a socialist one
as well as economic progress and freedom.”When Berg asked how he could reconcile the Islamic tradition of the
people with his Marxism, he replied: “Islam is the religion of our land and we
are ready to respect its ordinances. This is why all our edicts are issued in
the name of Allah, the Almighty, Beneficent and Merciful. Our socialist
policies serve only the well-being of the people, and since Allah wants his
believers to prosper he will certainly bless our efforts.”
I have mentioned this not because it
reflected what was happening under the new regime but for the fact that the
rhetoric is the same as ours and all one has to do is substitute the word
“socialist” for “free enterprise.” In spite of Laeq’s assurance that the
foreign policy was to be “block-free” the Kabul government increasingly used
Soviet advisors, and the reforms were resented by the faithful in the rural
areas. The mujahadeen movement arose, which began to spread terror throughout
the country. They not only became active in 25 of the 29 provinces but also
operated in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, western Afghanistan’s provincial
capital. During these terror attacks Soviet assistance missions were also
attacked and their people murdered. A major massacre occurred in March of 1979
in Herat where the rebels, aided by deserting troops from the Afghan army,
attacked the residential area of Soviet advisers and killed everyone in a most
brutal manner. The fighting between government troops and the rebels steadily
escalated which eventually left Moscow no choice but to intervene militarily to
establish a degree of order in that chaos.
In 1985 Gorbachev called the Afghan war
“a bleeding wound,” a term which also characterizes our current predicament.
Berg’s book ends in 1988 with the Geneva accord signed between the Foreign
Secretaries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In it the
USSR committed itself to withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan within nine
months. The treaty also regulated the relationship between Afghanistan and
Pakistan and imposed the obligation upon the US as well as the USSR to no
longer interfere in any form or fashion into the internal affairs of
Afghanistan. Since the mujahadeen were not part of the negotiations they
ignored the agreement and continued their war against the Kabul government with
help from their Pashtun relatives in Pakistan. Mohammad Najibullah’s regime
survived the withdrawal of the Soviet troops till 1992 when he was forced to
resign and make way for an interim government, which in turn was overthrown by
the Taliban in 1996. In the process Najibullah, who had not left the country,
was murdered.
Before continuing with the post-Soviet
history of Afghanistan a few words need to be said about our love-hate
relationship with Pakistan which goes all the way back to the Eisenhower
administration. In those days we gave the Pakistanis $500 million (1962 value)
for military aid and built their intelligence services (ISI) on the model of
the CIA. This was to counteract India. Nehru had formed a block of non-aligned
nations but was suspected of favoring the Soviet Union over us. Gary Powers’
doomed U2 flight over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, which wrecked the Paris
summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, did not start as we had been
told from Turkey, but Peshawar Pakistan. When India detonated its atomic bomb,
Pakistan felt duty bound to follow suit but while we only admonished India we
cut off all aid to Pakistan.
As Berg wrote, the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan was for Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq a gift from
Allah. Not only could he legitimize his autocratic rule as a response to the
danger the Soviet Union might pose to his country, but in February 1980 he was visited
by Zbigniew Brzezinski, at that time President
Carter’s national security advisor. He offered Zia $400 million of military and
economic aid which was refused with the comment, “peanuts.” After some tough
negotiating a contract was signed in September of 1981 which guaranteed aid to
the tune of $3.5 billion over the next six years. Our largesse waned after the
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan but was resumed in full force after 9/11
until a few days ago when, after the row over the bin Laden raid, Washington
suspended payment of $800 million.
This attitude of on-again,
off-again is understandable from the point of view of our lawmakers who feel
that they can mete out praise and punishment whenever and to whomever they
please, but it is seen by the recipient as America’s unreliability. We also regard
Pakistan as a “normal country” with a government that can control its various
provinces but that is likewise an illusion. The current civilian government is
relatively powerless and within the country there are numerous factions
pursuing their various aims independently. Even within the army and the ISI
there are circles within circles where the left hand doesn’t know what the
right hand does. This situation is actually not all that different from what goes
on in Washington especially in regard to the CIA. The major point is that we
can demand that Pakistan accedes to our wishes in regard to the war against the
Taliban, but the government is simply unable to follow through. Pashtuns are in
leading positions in the army as well as the ISI and are reluctant to shoot
their tribe members because Americans want them to. It’s literally against
their religion.
Leaving Pakistan’s problems aside for
the moment it is useful to look at the timeline of our relationship with the
Taliban and a major reason for the October 2001 invasion. In the 1890’s Lord
Curzon, who has been previously mentioned in these pages for the Curzon line
which delineated the borders between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1919,
stated that: Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Transkaspia, Persia …[are] for me
pieces of a chessboard upon which a game for world domination is played. This
was the much cited “Great Game” between the Russian and the British Empire
where each side was worried about the intrusions of the other. It was
dramatized by Rudyard Kipling in his Kim. With the demise of the British
Empire, America stepped into its shoes and is eagerly trying to woo the area
into our fold. It abounds with natural resources, which we want, and is in
addition a nodal point for traffic from East Asia to the West.
When
we lost “our man in Tehran,” the Shah, Iran became a headache which thirty
years of effort have failed to cure. Since the world is in urgent need of oil
and gas which abound in that strategic region and since we trust neither the
Russians nor the Iranians another way has to be found to gain access to the
Caspian’s wealth of oil and gas. This is where the route of a new pipeline
enters the field of history. The easiest would be through Iran but that country
is hostile and in addition the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of
the Persian Gulf, through which most of the world’s oil travels, could be
blocked at any moment. It was, therefore envisioned that the pipeline should go
from the Caspian through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian
Sea. It was an ideal solution. The ex-Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan would no longer have to rely on Russia and the Strait of Hormuz
problem would also be solved.
The
website http://ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm
provides a timeline for some of the negotiations which have been carried out to
bring the pipeline to fruition. Unfortunately not all of the information can be
trusted and the references which are provided in the text do not appear at the
end. I shall, therefore only summarize aspects which are also documented
elsewhere.
Unocal’s official quest
began in 1995 when the company signed an agreement with Turkmenistan to
purchase natural gas rights for transport through the proposed pipeline route.
Negotiations continued off and on till 1988 and in January of that year Dick
Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton at the time, was quoted as having said, “I
cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become
as strategically significant as the Caspian.” I shall return to this statement
later. Also in January Unocal signed an agreement between Pakistan,
Turkmenistan and the Taliban to arrange for funding of the gas line project.
But in May of the year Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the project due
to Afghanistan’s continuing civil war and in December Unocal issued a statement
that it had withdrawn from the pipeline project due to “business interests.”
The conditions were clearly not conducive to this type of enterprise.
Nevertheless, the pipeline dream was not dead
because the Bush-Cheney administration had exceedingly close ties to oil
companies. Although the discussions during the “energy summit meetings” in
February of 2001 have never been fully disclosed there are, two articles of
importance. One is by George Monbiot of the Guardian
under the title “America’s Pipe Dream”, which contains the mentioned Cheney
quote. The article was published two weeks after the Afghanistan bombing
campaign began and lays out the background, including the relationship to
Pakistan, as well as the goal. In regard to the latter the author stated, “If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and
replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US
then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will
have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia
and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of
Asia.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11.This was the goal, but it has eluded us.
The other report from BBC
News was dated May 13, 2002 with the headline, “Afghanistan plans gas
pipeline.” The article stated that “Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his
Pakistani and Turkmenistan counterparts later this month on Afghanistan's
biggest foreign investment project, said Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for
Mines and Industries, told Reuters. ‘The work on the project will start after
an agreement is expected to be struck at the coming summit,’ Mr. Razim said.”
The summit was indeed held on May 30 in Islamabad and another memorandum of
understanding was signed but in view of the deteriorating security situation
nothing has come of it since.
Thus, it is clear that Lord Curzon’s Great Game is still in full
swing with all of us serving as the pawns. But the era of these colonial
enterprises is about to come to an end even for America. Nationalism is still
on the rise and we will soon be unable to afford the wars to sustain our global
predominance. It is obvious that a military solution to the Afghanistan debacle
is out of the question. We have been there longer than the Soviet Union and the
accomplishments are as fragile for us as they were for them. Obama is reducing
the troop levels with the goal of total removal in a few years. What comes
thereafter is the proverbial $64 question. There is no likelihood for peace in
the Afghan-Pakistan relationship unless the question of Pashtunistan is
resolved and none for peace between India and Pakistan unless the Kashmir
problem is removed. The end of Islamic terrorism likewise cannot be expected
unless all our troops are withdrawn from Muslim countries and a just settlement
has been achieved with the Palestinians.
Let us summarize what has happened since the Soviet Union’s
military arrived in Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular regime which was
threatened by forces of fanatical Islam. The reason for the invasion was fear
because it was felt that militant Islam was about to spill over into the
southern Border States. We interpreted it as aggression and as an opportunity
to destroy the evil empire. In so doing we supported the mujahadeen thereby
creating the instrument of our own problems which would come to haunt us
decades later. We supported bin Laden and built the Bora Tora fortress complex
with CIA money.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, which had prior to WWI been
part of the Ottoman province of Basra and thereby Mesopotamia, we jumped on the
opportunity to get rid of his regime although we had supported him in the
Iraq-Iran war. The war had bankrupted Saddam; he was in debt to the Kuwaitis
who, furthermore, behaved arrogantly when he tried to negotiate the debt. In
addition his forerunners had previously tried to regain Kuwait. It is an
artificial emirate carved out of the Ottoman province of Basra by the British
for their purposes, and which denied Iraq direct access to the Persian Gulf. In
our quest to get rid of Saddam, because he was seen as a threat to Israel, we
persuaded the Saudi king to allow our troops into his country for his
protection. It was claimed that his country was next on the list of Saddam’s
insatiable greed, but the evidence was manufactured just as that for Saddam’s
possession of WMDs. We simply wanted to station bases on Saudi soil.For the pious bin Laden this was the ultimate
outrage because “Crusaders and Jews have no place in his Holy Land. This event
galvanized him to form Al Qaeda to pursue jihad on his terms.
We then used the 9/11 tragedy as the pretext for “just revenge” to
first invade Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq. But even the Afghanistan
invasion had less to do with our security or bin Laden but was a continuation
of the Great Game for natural resources. The war was not conducted in a manner
to ensure the capture of bin Laden, and the destruction of Al Qaeda, but to establish
a friendly regime in Kabul. It was to give us what had been denied to the
Soviet Union. An example for this statement is that the Bush administration
failed to provide our marines with the wherewithal, which they had asked for,
to take Tora Bora and instead delegated the capture of bin Laden to Afghans,
who were known to be unreliable. The validation of this statement is in Bush’s Wars by Terry Anderson. What was
the result? The same as for the Soviet Union! Bin Laden, the patsy, is now
officially dead but his organization has metastasized. Our troops will come
home to glorious speeches about their bravery, just as those of the Red Army as
described in Berg’s book, and the people of Afghanistan will have to bear more
hardships. The pipeline is not likely to be built by us and the other natural
resources the country has, will likewise not be developed by us.
This should really give us pause to think what the human race is
all about. Three aspects come to mind. In Goethe’s Faust we can read a
self-description of Mephisto: “I am a part of that force which forever desires
evil yet creates good.” I believe there is a corollary in the conduct of our
politicians: they always desire good yet create evil!Another aspect is the Taj Mahal, the
structural Mughal legacy which should be pondered. A magnificent structure,
beautifully adorned with Holy Writ, which houses decayed corpses! Finally the
ultimate wisdom of the ages which we also ignore in this hour of national
peril: Whom the gods want to destroy they strike with blindness. To this one
might add: There is none as blind as he who doesn’t want to see!
September 1, 2011
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
This
memorable advice was given by “Deep Throat” to Bob Woodward in a Washington
garage in 1972 which led to the exposure of the illegal activities conducted by
the Nixon administration. They included the Watergate break-in and eventually
forced Nixon to resign from the presidency. The speculation about the identity
of “Deep Throat” had been going on for decades but Bob Woodward, who did know
it, followed the journalist’s code of ethics and never revealed the name. Bob
Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of Staff, suspected all along that Mark Felt, then
Deputy Associate Director of the FBI, was behind the leaks but told Nixon that
their hands were tied. If they moved against Felt, he would air all the dirty
laundry and the presidency would be finished. Felt’s motives can only be
surmised. He did admit that he had wanted the FBI directorship but strenuously
denied having been the leaker of information to the press. Only three years
before his death in 2008 did he unburden himself of this load and admitted to
the truth in public.
There was, however an additional
irony to this case. Nixon was brought down, by Felt, ostensibly for having
violated the Constitution by authorizing illegal wire-taps, search and seizure
of US citizens suspected of having revolutionary plans, and similar
malfeasance. But we must remember that these were the days of the Vietnam War
protests, the Civil Rights movement and American cities had been going up in
flames. As Associate Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt was intimately
involved in searching out “enemies of the State” and had authorized on his own
the search against members of the Weather Underground Organization.These were “black bag jobs” which included
breaking into people’s homes without a search warrant. They had occurred during
1972-1973; the same years when Felt blew the whistle on the Nixon White House
activities. After Congressional hearings in 1978 a Grand Jury indicted Mark
Felt along with another FBI member (Edward Miller) but he got away with a fine
of $5000 and Miller with $3,500. During the trial ex-President Nixon testified
for the defense in behalf of Felt and when President Reagan subsequently
pardoned Felt and Miller, Nixon sent each of them a bottle of champagne with a
note, “Justice ultimately prevails.”
The point of bringing this up now
is two-fold. Nixon’s as well as Felt’s defense was: “when the President (the
government) does it, it’s legal,” which explains his famous statement on TV “I
am not a crook.” His detractors answered: “We are a country of laws, and have a
Constitution which Presidents are sworn to uphold.” This is true, but what they
fail to mention is that the Constitution has proved to be marvelously flexible
and in actual practice we are not a “country of laws,” but one of lawyers and
judges who decide at any given time what is or is not compatible with the
Constitution. This brings me to the second point and the major topic of this
essay: Money, which tends to be on most people’s minds in these debt-ridden
days. You may now wonder: but what does this have to do with the Constitution?
Until earlier last month I had no idea either but for an essay which deals with
the causes of our current fiscal woes I had to educate myself on the source of
our money. To my surprise I found out that the latter is actually regarded by
some as unconstitutional. This obviously came as a shock and requires a fair
amount of explanation.
When the first greenback I ever saw
was handed to me by my mother for travel to this country, I noticed that it
said on the front in large print The United States of America, but above in
small print: Federal Reserve Note. I had no idea what the latter meant but
assumed, probably like most everybody else, that “Federal Reserve” is part of
the Treasury Department, therefore, the U.S. government, which in my naïve mind
of those days could not possibly do anything wrong. After all if you can’t
trust the government of the beacon of liberty to which all who want to better
their lives are attracted, who can you trust? Obviously the 25 year old had
other concerns at that time. He had as the saying goes to, “get a life.” As a
fervent anti-communist I defended the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Reagan’s
wars in Nicaragua and Grenada, but began to worry that things might not be the
way they were presented in the media when we bombed Belgrade and “accidentally”
the Chinese embassy. By that time I was about ready to retire from earning a
living in academia and began to have the time to inquire into the behind the
scenes activities which lead to the historical events that shape our lives.
Nevertheless hope sprang eternal and I welcomed President Bush’s appointment,
by one vote of the Supreme Court, which actually violated the Constitution, to
the Presidency because I thought that after the scandals of the Clinton administration
honesty and decency would be restored to the White House. But his response to
9/11, the cover-up of what really happened, and the two wars he launched under
false pretenses, put a serious dent in my optimism in regard to how this
country is really run. I began to study why things happenedthey way they did and put the results on the Internet
over the past ten years.
For the present search as to why we
are in the economic mess we find ourselves, I was aided by three books and
Wikipedia, as well as government sources to check some of the assertions that
were made in the books. The first one I read was: The Global Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI
Century. It contains a series
of essays edited by Michael Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall and was
published in 2010. I have mentioned Chossudovsky and his website www.globalresearch.ca on an earlier occasion, suffice it to say here that Chossudovsky is a
Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, with a left of
center political orientation. The Initial “Overview” section pointed out that,
“The 2008 financial meltdown has nothing to do with free market forces: it is
characterized by financial warfare between competing institutional
speculators.” The major culprits were: the financial instruments known as
derivatives, the repeal of some Congressional oversight provisions in 1999;
artificially low interest rates especially in the housing sector with the sale
of fraudulent “insurance papers” against loss. Banks were overextended, some
collapsed while others which were regarded as “too big to fail” had to be
rescued by the Federal Reserve Board in order to prevent a repeat of the 1929
Great Depression.
This is, of course, the reason why
“The Fed”, as it is popularly known, was created in the first place. The
government website explains its functions:
“to address the
problem of banking panics; to serve as the central bank for the United States;
to strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized
responsibility of government; to mange the nation’s money supply through
monetary policy; to maintain the stability of the financial system and contain
systemic risk in financial markets; to provide financial services to depository
institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including
a major role in operating the nation’s payment system; and to strengthen U.S.
standing in the world economy.”
These are obviously laudable goals
but looking at our current situation it is obvious that “the stability of the
financial system and a strengthening of the U.S. standing in the world” have
not occurred. On the contrary we have achieved a previously unknown low in the
confidence of foreigners in our dollar to the extent that its role as the
“reserve currency” of the world is in serious doubt. These are facts but the
reasons which are given depend on the political orientation of authors. Those
on the left blame lack of government regulation, those on the right too much
government regulation and those in the middle are simply scratching their
heads.
Nevertheless, both the left and the right
agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Fed. The third book
I read is entitled: End the Fed. Its
author is Ron Paul who used to be an obstetrician but has given up his medical
practice for a life in politics because he thought that he could do more good
on a wider scale. Although nominally a Republican he is at heart a libertarian
who fully endorses the 18th and 19th century laissez faire principle which believes
in Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the free market economies of the
world to ever greater prosperity. Some more sober-minded people might argue
that if this had been the case in the mid 19th century Karl Marx
would have had no reason to write Das Kapital. Furthermore, since the invisible hand was
devoid of a conscience, the social legislation, which has been enacted over the
past 150 years in countries around the world, was a necessity to bring a
modicum of justice into the economic sphere rather than to reward laziness, as
its detractors claim.
Dr. Paul has presidential
aspirations and is at this time engaged in his third try towards that goal. I
happen to like him because from the current crop of Republican candidates he is
the only one (possibly with the exception of our former governor, Jon
Huntsman), who speaks the unvarnished truth as he sees it. This includes that
we have no business conducting all the wars we are engaged in. The media hailed
Michele Bachman’s straw poll success in Iowa, which had no lasting meaning at
all, but largely ignored the runner-up status of Ron Paul although he had garnered
only 152 votes less than Bachmann out of a total of 16,892.
In End the Fed published in 2009, Paul, whose official job is a Texas
Representative to Congress made the following points: the institution is
unconstitutional; as a result of its inflationary policies it has led since its
inception in 1913 to a massive drop of the value of the dollar (currently 0.05
of the previous $1); our money is “fiat money” backed by nothing but thin air;
the Fed itself has no capital but is simply a lending institution which lives
on providing the greatest numbers of loans and thereby becomes the greatest
debt creator. Although in theory Congress has oversight, this breaks down in
practice because of exemptions. It is a bank created by bankers for bankers
which privatizes gains and socializes losses. The bankers get their bonuses, as
in the recent bailouts, for which we pay with our tax dollars.
These are not mere allegations
because he documents them in the book and as member of the House Banking
Committee he had the opportunity to meet with and asks questions of Fed
Chairmen: Volcker, Greenspan and Bernanke. To a particularly incisive question
he was told by Bernanke that it would be “counterproductive” to answer it. With
other words “bug off, you bother me.” How can this happen when he is by law
responsible to Congress for his actions? This is where the government oversight
comes in. Wikipedia tells us that the Federal Reserve System,
“has both private and public components, and can make
decisions without the permission of Congress or the President of the U.S. . . .
The seven-member Board of Governors is a Federal agency and is the main
governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is charged with the overseeing
of the 12 District Reserve Banks and setting national monetary policy. It also
supervises and regulates the U.S. Banking system in general. Governors are
appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate for
staggered 14-year terms. The Board is required to make an annual report of
operations to the speaker of the House of Representatives.”
Let us look at this statement for a
moment longer. The Fed is part of the government but, since it is also private,
government can’t tell it how to conduct its business. This strikes one as somewhat
strange because it is our money, after all, which is at stake. On the other
hand the analogy is with the Supreme Court. The President appoints the judges,
the Senate confirms them, but then they are on their own to interpret the law
as they see fit. In regard to the Supreme Court “We the People” have to obey
and as far as the Fed is concerned, we have to pay. While the Supreme Court has
nine judges, which guarantees a majority opinion, the Fed has seven governors
(by the way at present only five, because two positions are vacant) and
theoretically the 12 District Bank Directors also have their say. But we are
not privy to their deliberations and it is obvious that the biggest Federal
Reserve Bank i.e. that of New York will call the shots. There is an additional
potential ominous aspect in this statement. The Fed not only supervises but
“regulates” banks throughout the U.S.. It has a
monopoly and can mete out favors or punishment to small banks as it pleases.
All it is required to do is to tell Congress once a year what it has already
done and there is of course no dearth of excuses that can make even atrocious
malfeasance appear perfectly proper. In addition the Chairman of the Fed is
intermittently requested to testify before Congress but as mentioned above, he
can just refuse to answer when it comes to specifics.
All government agencies are,
however, supervised by the General Accounting Office, GAO, and one would think
that this agency would tell us if or when the Fed has engaged in improper
activities. Far from it, and Ron Paul gives us the
details. While title 31 chapter 7 of the Money and
Finance section of the Code gives the GAO the power to audit all financial
institutions, including the Fed, it carries this proviso
“Audits of the
Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks may not [italics in the original] include: Transactions for or with a
foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or non-private
international financing organization;
Deliberations,
decisions, or actions on monetary matters, including discount window
operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits,
and open market operations;
Transactions made
under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or a part of a discussion
or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and
officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)-(3)
of this subsection.”
To put it bluntly: we have a small
group, an oligarchy, which decides in secret what to do with our money and when
we want to know what they are doing we are told it’s none of our business. This
statement is my own but in Ron Paul’s spirit. When I read this and similar
information in Chossudovsky’s book I wondered: but
what in all the world is the Treasury Department’s
role in all of this. So I went to the Internet and now it gets quite
Byzantine.
The government website is rather
detailed but abounds in generalities and under Mission we can read:
“Maintain a strong
economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions
that enable economic growth and stability at home and abroad, strengthen
national security by combating threats and protecting the integrity of the
financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources
effectively.”
Well,
that’s nice but not only has the department obviously failed to do so the
statement is so similar to that of the Fed that one wonders why two
organizations are needed to accomplish these goals rather than one.
Ok, let’s read on and see what else we can find. Under the headline Organization one can read,
“The basic
functions of the Department of the Treasury include: Managing
Federal finances; Collecting taxes, duties and monies paid to and due to the
U.S. and paying all bills of the U.S.; Currency and coinage; Managing
Government accounts and the public debt; Supervising national banks and thrift
institutions; Advising on domestic and international financial, monetary,
economic, trade and tax policy; Enforcing Federal finance and tax laws;
Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders, counterfeiters, and forgers.”
This likewise suggests at
least partial duplication of effort with the Fed and we are not much further in
our quest towards understanding how these two systems interact. The next step,
therefore, was to go to Wikipedia and now it gets “curious and curiouser” as Alice found out in Wonderland. We are told
that,
“The Fed serves both as a banker’s bank and as
the government’s bank. As the banker’s bank, it helps to assure the safety and
efficiency of the payment’s system. As the government’s bank, or fiscal agent,
the Fed processes a variety of financial transactions involving trillions of
dollars. Just as an individual might keep an account at a bank, The U.S.
Treasury keeps a checking account with the Federal Reserve, through which
incoming federal tax deposits and outgoing government payments are handled. As
part of this service relationship, the Fed sells and redeems U.S. government
securities such as saving bonds and Treasury bills, notes and bonds. It also
issues the nation’s coin and paper currency. The U.S. through its Bureau of the
Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing actually produces the nation’s cash
supply and, in effect, sells the paper currency to the Federal Reserve Banks at
manufacturing cost, and the coins at face value. The Federal Reserve Banks then
distribute it to other financial institutions in various ways. During the
Fiscal Year 2008, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing delivered 7.7 billion
notes at an average cost of 6.4 cent per note.”
In other words: Although
the Fed is our agent we have no say so in regard to how it uses our money for
what purposes. As a “bankers bank and the government’s bank” there are dual loyalties
with plenty of room for conflict. With this as background we can now look how
the Fed came into being in the first place. This is explained in the second
book I read, The Secrets of the Federal
Reserve by Eustace Mullins. It can be downloaded for free on the Internet
underhttp://www.whale.to/b/mullins5.html,
or purchased through amazon. This book has a fascinating history because it is
the only one which was officially burnt in Germany after the Nazi era (while
Americans were in charge) and the author lost his job at the Library of
Congress. Mullins (1923-2010) had served during the war in the US Air Force and
thereafter joined the research staff of the Library in Washington DC. In the
Foreword to the book he wrote:
“In
1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal
Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed
me a ten dollar bill marked ‘Federal Reserve System’ and asked me if I would do
some research at the Library. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as
he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States
government.”
This startled
me because although I had heard Pound’s name as a renowned poet I didn’t know
that we kept “political prisoners” in a mental hospital á la KGB. I, therefore,
consulted Wikipedia again about what was reported on his life and here is the
essence. Pound (1885-1972) was born in neighboring Idaho but soon moved to
England. In 1915 he had become incensed over the senseless slaughter of WWI,
which he blamed on usury and international capitalism. He moved to Italy, where
he became enamored with Mussolini. He gave regular broadcasts on Italian radio
on a variety of topics including the evils of capitalist society, Jews, and the
Roosevelt administration. He persisted in doing so even after American participation
in the war, and in 1945 voluntarily surrendered himself to the U.S. Army. After
initial interrogations he was sent to a detention camp near Pisa on May 24. For
about three weeks he was held in what was called “’death cells’—a series of six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cages lit up all
night by floodlights. He was left there in isolation in the heat, denied
exercise, eyes inflamed by dust, no bed, no belt, no shoelaces, and no
communication with the guards, except for the chaplain.” After about two and a
half weeks he broke down; was examined by psychiatrists and transferred to one
of the officer’s tents. In November of that year Pound was repatriated to
America and during his trial for treason his lawyer pleaded insanity. This
resulted in his incarceration at St. Elizabeth’s butspared his life.
Due to continued efforts of Mullins and highly respected American writers he
was finally released from custody in 1958.
When I
read about the “steel cages,” Guantanamo immediately came to mind and it is obvious
that little had changed since 1945. Mullins then mentioned that he had
originally intended to write a detective novel but Pound had persuaded him to
use the Fed book in the manner of a detective story which shows the strands
from which the system emerged. Mullins had the background material at the
Library, some financial support from Pound, and additional critical input from
George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club. He began his efforts to
market the manuscript in 1950, but 18 publishers turned it down. The 19th
told him “I like your book but we can’t print it. Neither can anybody else in
New York. Why don’t you bring in a prospectus for your novel, and I think we
can give you an advance. You may as well forget about getting the Federal Reserve
book published. I doubt if it could ever be printed.” Mullins didn’t give up.
With the help of some of Pound’s friends, private printings did ensue and in
1955 a German edition was published in Oberammergau. The book was seized by the
American authorities and all 10,000 copies burned. The book was subsequently
rewritten and expanded. The current edition is dated 1991 and, needless to say,
again privately published.
With
this information as background we can now look for what was so subversive in this
book that it was not supposed to see the light of day. It contains 14 chapters
which begin with the inception of the Fed and end with an August 1976
Congressional Study Report. Since the latter provides the gist of the
information I shall give the essentials as presented by Chairman Henry S. Reuss (D-Wis),
“As the study makes clear, it is difficult to imagine a more narrowly based
board of directors for a public agency than has been gathered together for the
twelve banks of the Federal Reserve System. Only two segments of American
society – banking and big business – have any substantial representation on the
boards, and often even these become merged through interlocking directories. …
Small farmers are absent. Small business is barely visible. … In Summary, the
Federal Reserve directories are apparently representatives of a small elite
group which dominates much of the economic life of the nation.”
The
reason why the book was relegated to relative non-existence resides in the fact
that Mullins meticulously provided names, their family relationships and dates
for how these few members of the “elite group” have created American history as
we know it. Since this also involved the financing of political campaigns,
including Hitler’s in January of 1933, it is clear that the establishment would
do everything to suppress it. The main thesis could be summarized, in analogy
to Michael Douglas statement in the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good,” as “War
is good.” I shall not go into the merit of this statement but readers are
encouraged to look at Mullins’ data and then form their own opinion. The book
is meticulously referenced but one may not want to take the author’s
conclusions at face value and I shall, therefore, limit myself to the genesis
of the Fed.
It began
with a secret railroad trip during the night of November 22, 1910 from Hoboken
NJ to Georgia’s Jekyll Island which had been purchased several years earlier by
J.P. Morgan and friends as a winter retreat. They called it the Jekyll Island
Hunt Club but duck hunting was not the main purpose. Its solitude provided the
opportunity for policy sessions away from the prying eyes of reporters. The
group consisted of Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich (wealthy senior member of
the Senate’s Finance Committee and father in-law to the only son of John D.
Rockefeller); his secretary Shelton; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and
Special Assistant to the National Monetary Commission A. Piatt Andrews; in
addition to four prominent New York bankers of whom the recently arrived German
immigrant Paul Warburg was the most important. Their task was to create a U.S.
central bank, but without it appearing to be a central bank, and Aldrich was to
push it through the Senate. The term “central bank” was abhorrent to the public
because it implied Wall Street control. To put it bluntly: the American people
were to be hoodwinked by the idea of a Federal Reserve System which was to be a
central bank in everything but name. To accomplish this goal absolute secrecy
was necessary. Mullins’ book has been labeled as conspiracy theory but the
creation of the Fed was actually the result of a conspiracy by a small group of
NY bankers. This was verified a few years later by Malcolm Forbes, grandfather
of our current Steve Forbes. To avoid the appearance of one central bank there
would be 12 Federal banks distributed over the country. To ensure that only
those people are considered for election to one of these Boards who are
approved by the club this power was given to the President of the U.S. rather
than Congress, where too many questions might be asked.
There
was some urgency to this trip because after the 1907 stock market crash,
brought on by ill-advised speculation, the need was felt to create an
instrument which would prevent the boom and bust cycles thereby stabilizing the
economy. A Monetary Commission had been created and Senator Aldrich was in
charge. The final product contained all the elements we know and after some
political haggling it was signed into law on December 23 1913 by President
Wilson, who had also given us the income tax on February 3rd of that
year. There is one more interesting aspect to the Warburg family. While Paul
was largely responsible for the vast loans, by the Fed, to the Allies which led
to America’s entry into WWI (The Goebbels’ Trap, July 1, 2011), his brother Max
who had stayed in the old country financed the war effort in Germany. It
reminded me of the Rothschilds during the Napoleonic
wars. The Viennese brother financed the Austrian effort; the one in Frankfort,
Prussia’s, the one in Paris, Napoleon’s; and the one in London, the British.
Regardless who won, the family would make out all right.
Finally three more aspects
need to be clarified. Since the Fed controls our money it is the “lender of
last resort” and in this manner it can decide which bank is allowed to go under
and which one is “too big to fail.” It rewards the giants of industry but for
the little guy it’s just “tough luck.” The next one is “fractional banking.”
This means that the banks, including the Fed’s banks, retain only a fraction of
the deposit and all the rest is loaned out at various interest rates. Now comes the “curiouser”
point. Wiki explains,
“This means
that available funds (called bank reserves) are only a fraction (called the
reserve ratio) of the quantity of deposits at the bank. As most bank deposits
are treated as money in their own right, fractional reserve banking increases
the money supply, and banks are said to create money.”
This is a
rather neat trickof creative bookkeeping which inflates the bank’s numbers
with non-existent assets. The retained fractions range from
2.6-20%. This miracle of “wealth creation” can be examined in detail on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking.
We, therefore, have no idea of how much actual asset money, capital, is really
out there and its relation to the existing debt.
The last point
is “fiat money.” Our dollar bills have no intrinsic value apart from the paper,
which can be used for other purposes. Originally coins or paper were backed by
some tangible asset, usually gold and to some extent this was true even here
until President Nixon “went off the gold standard” and let the dollar “float.”
This was fine as long as the U.S. had positive trade balances and the world
wanted some of our goods. But things changed in the 90s when we began to move
from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. With the manufacturing
economy shrinking, and the dollar “floating” down the river some people now
worry that Niagara Falls might not be too far in the distance.
If all of this
strikes you as incomprehensible and/or unbelievable you have plenty of company;
even in Congress. Mullins published excerpts of a hearing on September 30,
1941when Representative Patman asked Fed Governor
Eccles: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars
worth of government securities in 1933?” Eccles: “We created it.” Patman: “Out of what?” Eccles: “Out of the right to issue
money.” Patman: “And there’s nothing behind it, is
there, except our Government’s credit?” Eccles: “This is what our money system
is. If there were no debts in our system, there would be no money.”
Well, here it
is: substitute billions for trillions and we have arrived in the 21st
century. With the creation of the Fed the D in Dollar has come to stand for
Debt. When individuals follow this example they go to jail but, and here we are
back to Nixon and Felt, “When the government does it, it’s legal.” What I have
presented here is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg and there are now
numerous books which explain the issue further, including an extensive update
on Mullins’ book by G. Edward Griffin, The
Creature from Jekyll Island. A Second Look at the Federal
Reserve. These books need to
be read, taken to heart and the fraudulent system changed.
Until the recent past the Chinese have bailed
us out by buying our Treasury bills, but since short term interest rates are
practically 0% and our Fed Chairman has promised us that they will remain there
for the next 2 years, they obviously had second thoughts and have started to
look for better investments. The reason why Mr. Bernanke keeps these rates at a
near-nonexistent level is his study of the Great Depression. He and others
concluded that it was prolonged by higher taxes and higher interest rates,
which may or may not have been the cause. At any rate the opposite course is
now being pursued. Some of the results are: retirees who live on their savings
have to eat up whatever capital they have accumulated rather than relying on
interest income; gold speculation is rampant; so are fraudulent investment
schemes which rob average middle class persons of whatever real assets they
still possess. An economy, which depends on buying when wages and savings
shrink, is not likely to flourish. Less government income from taxes is
probably inevitable and the foundation of our society, the average middle class
person, will be facing reduced government services while the oligarchy which is
in charge of our money will continue to flourish.
This is hurricane season
and the perfect economic storm is brewing in the oceans of this world. It has
to hit us because past policies have led to the failure of multiple systems of
our society and when that happens to an individual the physician knows that the
patient’s recovery is in jeopardy. This is also election season when
politicians promise the blue from the sky. But because of multi-system failure
there is no “quick-fix” possible. The causes of this perfect storm will be
presented in a subsequent essay which also will include suggestions for genuine
positive change.
October 1, 2011
9/11 REMEMBERED
The ten year anniversary of this
disastrous day has come and gone. It was marked by patriotic celebrations,
flags on our lawns and memorial services with speeches about heroism and
resilience. But for anyone who had hoped that it might also finally bring some
clarity into what had really happened on that day there was only
disappointment. Among all of the words spoken and printed there was not a
single one which questioned the official dogma that 19 fanatic Muslim hijackers
under the command of Osama bin Laden had pulled off the greatest security
breach of the most carefully guarded airspace of our country without
encountering any problem. Three planes reached their goal and only the fourth
one was prevented from doing so by heroic acts of the passengers.
America was at war, our President
defiantly declared. But, as he told us, we will emerge triumphant by not only
hunting down the terrorists who committed this act but we will also
appropriately punish all those countries that “harbor terrorists.” We would get
Osama “dead or alive” and in addition relentlessly eliminate evil from this
world. Nevertheless, in spite of all sorts of color coded terror alerts and
increased vigilance, Americans should go about their business as usual.
With few exceptions the American
public bought this scenario. The people did not object to the invasion of Afghanistan and
Iraq
and only when the Iraq
war began to deviate from the script, as envisaged in Washington, did second thoughts emerge in
some segments of the public. Nevertheless, these were not of a magnitude to
prevent the re-election of “The President of Good and Evil,” as Bush had been
called in a book by Peter Singer. By now most people have finally come to realize
that the Iraq invasion had been “a mistake,” although the media pundits still
insist that the Afghanistan war was justified. Some responsible citizens have
also pointed out that cutting taxes when one is fighting a war is
contraindicated and can only lead to economic disaster. Their voices went
unheeded and, sad to say, although the day of reckoning has arrived our
Republicans in Congress still adhere to the dogma that lowering taxes, while
pursuing a number of military actions is the right course.
Some of us who had voted for Bush in
2000, were subsequently sorely disenchanted by his conduct in office, and had
hoped that by electing Obama in 2008 the country would finally be put on the
right course again. But we had another disappointment coming. Instead of the
promised “change,” we got what has been called “Bush-light,” in analogy to the
reduced alcohol content of beers on sale in grocery stores. Obama, in spite of
nice speeches, has shown himself unwilling or unable
to confront the wrong policies of the Bush administration and initiate the
promised program of accountability and transparency which would have opened the
books on the real reasons behind the Bush policies. At this point it should be
unequivocally stated that the Iraq
war was not simply a “mistake,” but a geopolitical move to consolidate America’s role
in the vital Middle East. Even the invasion of
Afghanistan
had less to do with bin Laden and more with getting access to the riches of the
Caspian basin. But Americans are not supposed to see beyond the ends of their
collective noses, instead they are to cherish the idea of injured innocence.
“Why do they hate us?” President Bush
asked and I believe that he was probably sincere in his ignorance. The only
answer he could come up with, and many Americans agreed with him, was that
“they hate our freedoms.” To which one can only say, “No Mr. President, they
hate our policies!” Unless and until the American people at large have been
giventhe full picture of 9/11 in the
context in which these catastrophes took place we will continue to pursue
unwinnable wars and chase shadows instead of their substance. The events of
9/11were a crime by groups of individuals and should have been treated as such.
To immediately, even before an investigation into the
perpetrators of the crime had begun, declare the event as an act of war was not
a mistake; it was worse than that: a deception of the public for ulterior aims.
I fully realize that this sounds harsh but I regard it as a truth which must
reach the public because otherwise we will continue to be led from one disaster
to the next.
I
have previously discussed a number of these aspects on this website, but let me
summarize the most puzzling features of the official account and put the event
into its historical context. We are urged to believe that the Twin Towers had
collapsed due to the impact of the aircraft and the resulting fires. That a
third building, WTC7 which had not been hit by a plane, also collapsed later in
the day in a similar manner was not taken into account in The 9/11 Commission Report. We are also to ignore that the
buildings collapsed neatly into their “footprints,” and that fire cannot
destroy simultaneously all of the core steel structures which held up the
Towers and pulverize cement. We are asked to believe, furthermore, that this
destruction by fire did not merely happen once but three times in the same area
within a matter of hours. The most reasonable hypothesis is, of course, that
the buildings succumbed to controlled demolitions but this would have required
pre-positioned charges. If this were to have been the case the government’s
position that the hijackers were the sole responsible agents for the collapse
of the three WTC buildings would become untenable.
We
are also supposed to believe that an inadequately trained pilot could smoothly
steer AA flight 77 at maximum speed from a height of 7000 feet to near ground
level into the west wing of the Pentagon. It has been pointed out that this
maneuver would be difficult to perform even for a military pilot and that the
hole left in the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 757. Finally we are to
believe that a plane which crashes into an open field (UA flight 93,
Shanksville, PA) can create only a crater without leaving substantial debris or
human body parts. These inconsistencies demand better explanations than we have
been given.
In regard to the historical context for
the destruction of the Twin Towers we have to go back to about a decade
earlier. The plan was hatched by Ramzi Yousef and cohorts with collusion of
“the blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman. On February 26, 1993 a truck bomb was detonated in
the underground garage of the NorthTower of the WTC which
killed six people and injured more than one thousand others. The intention was
for the building to collapse and fall on the neighboring SouthTower.
When this did not occur Yousef vowed that they would do better the next time.
According to Wikipedia, Yousef had sent a letter to The New York Times after the 1993 attack which provided the motive: "We declare our responsibility for the
explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the
American political, economical [sic], and military support to Israel, the state
of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”
Yousef’s uncle Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM),
who had contacts with Pakistan’s
security service ISI, had purportedly supplied the funds. Yousef as well as KSM
have subsequently been captured. The former is imprisoned in Colorado and the latter, who has confessed
to planning the 9/11 attack, is currently in Guantanamo facing a military tribunal. Two
aspects are important in this connection. The Pakistani ISI role was not
emphasized in the official 9/11 report and KSM is to be tried in a military,
rather than civilian court. Although Attorney General Holder had initially
desired open court hearings, this attempt came to naught because it was feared
that KSM would unload a history of events which would be counterproductive to keeping
the current 9/11 myth alive.
There exists an additional account of
the 1993 WTC bombing in 9/11 Synthetic
Terror Made in USA
by Webster Griffin Tarpley, which was published in 2006. Tarpley asserts that
“The FBI set it up and let it happen.” This is difficult to believe especially
since he did not give a reference to documents which could be checked. On the
other hand the idea that some people in the FBI did not have entirely clean
hands, especially in the post 9/11 cover-up, is documented by the extensive
problems a Turkish-American interpreter, Sibel Edmonds, had when she alerted
her supervisor to several improprieties in regard to translating important
material. Edmonds was fired and the supervisor promoted! The documentation for
this event is extensive and can be found on the Internet as well as in
Tarpley’s book. While I have reservations about some of Tarpley’s conclusions,
the instances where he provides verifiable documentation should not be ignored.
In the Tarpley book one can also find
the allegation that “the blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who resided in the
New York-New Jersey area had come on a visa which was
signed by a CIA officer at the Sudanese consulate. Wikipedia only relates that
he was admitted in 1990 on a tourist visa and later on received a “green card,”
although he had been on the terrorist watch list and had been incarcerated in
his native Egypt
in connection with the murder of Anwar Sadat. Having been tortured in prison
did not increase his love for the USA, which he regarded as the
sponsor of his torturer, Hosni Mubarak - a friend of Israel. In his sermons in our
country the Sheik made no bones about his views and in 1995 was convicted of
plotting a number of terrorist attacks in NYC, which included: blowing up the
WTC, the Holland
and Lincoln
tunnels as well as a variety of other targets. He currently serves a life
sentence without possibility of parole in a Federal Prison in North Carolina.
If the CIA had indeed had a hand in
issuing that visa, one wonders why this should have happened. The most likely
reason would have been to keep a closer eye on him because he might lead them
to sleeper cells in the US.
While this is laudable there exist, however, other elements within the CIA of
whose activities the official government and even the president have hardly any
information. A glimpse into this nether-world was provided by the now-deceased
Col. L Fletcher Prouty in his book The
Secret Team. The
CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World.
One is likely to immediately react with: oh, another conspiracy theory book,
but please hold your emotions and read on. Prouty was the liaison officer
between the Air Force and the CIA and had, therefore, first-hand information
about what was going on in the years from 1955-1964. As he stated in the 1972
edition of the book he was “Chief of Special Operations (clandestine
activities) with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. These duties involved the
military support of clandestine activities of the CIA and were performed under
National Security Council Directive No. 5412/2.”
Although published long after the events
he describes, the book was clearly unpalatable to the powers and disappeared
from bookshelves including those of the Library of Congress, where the author
had previously seen it. This, of course, reminds one of the fate
of Eustace Mullins’ The Secrets of the
Federal Reserve, which was discussed in last month’s installment. But Col.
Prouty did not give up and re-published the book in 1997. The current 2011
edition has a Foreword by ex-governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. The book
should be read by everyone who wants to know how our government really works.
Perhaps the most important statement is in the first paragraph of the 1972
Preface,
“From President to Ambassador, Cabinet
Officer to Commanding General, and from Senator to executive assistant – all
these men have their sources of information and guidance. Most of this
information and guidance is the result of carefully laid schemes and ploys of
pressure groups. In this influential coterie one of the most interesting and
effective roles is that played by the behind the scenes, faceless, nameless,
ubiquitous briefing officer.”
Col. Prouty was one of these briefing
officers and, therefore, aware how the process works: the person who is being
briefed knows only what the briefer wants him/her to know! Prouty saw that
there exist, what may be called, “circles within circles” of which only few are
aware and which operate entirely outside the law. This was the reason why he felt
that he had to go public and to state unequivocally that the major role of the
CIA is not the collection of information for policy makers but a government
agency whose functions, as well as funding sources, are “off the books.” They
are secret and within the agency the decision as to what is secret and what can
be divulged is not necessarily made by the Director but by groups within groups
who have their separate agendas. No one can tell one’s co-worker what he/she is
working on and there are only “cover stories;” ergo lies upon lies. Prouty
gives numerous examples and when one reads this information it is no longer
surprising that we have not received a straight answer to all the questions
raised by 9/11.
In regard to The 9/11 Commission Report one needs to realize that it was a
political document for a political purpose. It focused entirely on Al Qaeda and
ignored the Pakistani connection with the CIA’s counterpart: the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). Yet this aspect is crucial in order to understand the full
picture. The ISI was throughout its existence in close contact with the CIA.
Since Pakistan’s major enemy, India, was under Nehru flirting with the Soviet
Union it was only natural that we would cultivate the Pakistani military regime
and the ISI for our purposes. During the Cold War Peshawar was our main base to
spy on the Soviet Union (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). This
relationship intensified during the Soviet-Afghan War when CIA money as well as
weapons to the mujahadeen, were funneled through the ISI. Steve Coll’s book: Ghost Wars. The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan,
and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 which was published in
2005, can be regarded as a sequel to Prouty’s and provides extensive
documentation. While we used the ISI to defeat the USSR, the ISI used us to foster
militant Islam. These were some of the pigeons which came home to roost on
9/11. At present we are on a diplomatic collision course with Pakistan
because democratic India
is our friend and militant Islam the enemy. But this enemy, including the
current bête noir, the Haqqani network in North Waziristan,
was raised with our money!
Currently we are chiding the ISI for
having sheltered Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad and the Pakistanis deny it. We
don’t believe the denial but the ISI, in all probability, operates just as the
CIA with circles within circles where the information is restricted to a “need
to know basis.” Since the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does,
plausible deniability is maintained. The President of the country is kept out
of the loop and thus can honestly and angrily refute
all allegations of collusion. This pertains, of course, also to our country.
While the Pakistani connection to 9/11
is now becoming public knowledge, the Israeli connection is still shrouded in
deepest secrecy. There is as yet no reliable documentation in book form, which
I have come across, and one has to join bits and pieces together from the
Internet where the sources are not necessarily reliable. That there has to be a
connection is obvious when one asks oneself which country has the most to gain
when Americans become incensed against Arab Muslims. Israel has been in perpetual war
with Arabs since its inception and the country cannot survive for any length of
time without America’s
protection. The Mossad, Israel’s
Intelligence Service, likewise operates on the “need to know” basis. Although
it takes our interests into account, and shares with the CIA whatever
information it wants to share, it keeps the rest of it close to its vest. This
aspect was documented in The Niger Forgery (August 1, 2003) with the example of the warning
the CIA had received prior to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983.
Although a warning was given it was sufficiently nonspecific so that no action
could be taken. A similar situation took place in regard to 9/11. The Mossad
had warned the CIA that an attack was imminent but at that point their
obligations ended and whatever additional information they had was not divulged.
The Mossad also possesses a unique
advantage over all the other spy agencies of the world. While other countries
have to either bribe or blackmail their prospective spies, Israel has a
large reservoir of Sayanim
(assistants) who will give our most guarded secrets to that country. This is
done not for the sake of money or out of fear but simply because of a sense of
identity beween the goals of the two nations. The documentation is in Victor
Ostrovsky’s By Way of Deception The making of a Mossad officer. The book was published
in 1990 and I discussed it in the mentioned Niger Forgery essay. The only
requirement for these assistants is 100% Jewish ethnicity and an unwavering
devotion to the well-being of the State of Israel. If the host country were to
find out about the activities of a given sayan
the latter would merely take a plane to Israel where he/she would be
welcomed home. This is not some anti-Semitic fantasy and I would urge the
reader to check whatever I am writing here with the sources which are provided.
Needless to say, facts relating to an
Israeli connection with 9/11 are not welcome and efforts are made to suppress
them. A case in point is the series by FOX News in December of 2001where Carl
Cameron reported on the “Israeli art student” spy ring in connection with 9/11.
Sixty Israeli citizens many of whom “stated that they served in military
intelligence, electronic surveillance, intercept and/or explosive ordnance
units,” had infiltrated a variety of government agencies and were detained in
the wake of the 9/11 disaster. Cameron also reported on AMDOCS, the phone
system which records every call made by land line in the US, as well as
COMVERSE INFOSYS which furnished wiretapping equipment for US law enforcement
agencies. These as well as a number of other high-tech firms with defense
department contracts are joint American-Israeli companies. The original tapes
have been removed from the FOX website but can be viewed among a host of others
on “911- the Israeli Connection” and the essential information is also
available in Tarpley’s book. There is little doubt that national security
computer systems were compromised on 9/11, which required sophisticated inside
knowledge as was discussed in The 9/11 Cover-up
(October 1, 2006) and Sayanim
may well have been in a position to do so.
Where does this leave us in regard to 9/11 Truth? Surely there is a great
deal of smoke and equally surely the true facts are deliberately suppressed.
Peter Lance’s Foreword to Paul Thompson’s The
Terror Timeline quotes the now famous passage by the Roman satirist
Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
– who oversees the guards? In the current context: who oversees our government?
Congress is entirely subservient to Israeli Likud policies, so are the media.
President Obama has likewise abdicated his responsibility for an independent
foreign policy when he vetoed the UN resolution against Israeli settlements and
now threatens to veto a resolution for Palestinian statehood. Let’s face it: we
have no standing in the Muslim world at this time and our unquestioned
allegiance to Likud policies invites further disasters. Although the bin Laden
network has been significantly compromised, the Pakistani and Israeli
connections remain and unless these are addressed in a constructive manner we
are in danger of further attacks.
What is to be done? As Paul Thompson stated: We the People have to become
the guardians of the government and spread the word that there is something
seriously wrong with the official 9/11 interpretation from which all policy
decisions have flowed and will continue to flow. It is now high time that we
recognize the 9/11 events as a crime and proceed with criminal investigations
instead of a continued “War on Terror” which will continue to cause infinite harm.
When we remember 9/11 we should not confine ourselves to the nearly 3000
victims who died on that day and the thousands of our troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq since then, but the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died and
been maimed by our arrogant military interventions. In addition we have lost
some of our civil liberties in the cynically misnamed PATRIOT act and we may
well lose the rest of them when martial law is declared in case of another
major terror attack on our soil. This is not fantasy but a very real danger to
our Republic. A patriot is not somebody who meekly accepts what the government
tells one to do but a person who stands up and holds it to account. We in “the
land of the free and the brave,” as the National Anthem proclaims, can still do
so and this is why we need to seize the moment.
Apart from writing articles for the Internet we should be doing something
else which propels the search for 9/11 Truth to our living room video sets and
the mainstream press. I am, therefore, putting forth this
PROPOSAL
To arrange
for a two day “INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE 9/11 CRIME,” in New York City,
where professionals who have good standing in their respective fields have an
opportunity to discuss the inadequacies of The 9/11 Commission Report and issue
recommendations. The 2007 book by David Ray Griffin: 9/11 and American EmpireIntellectuals Speak
Out could serve as blueprint. The major news media would be invited
and Michael Moore could film the event as a documentary. The mornings could be
given to presentations while the afternoons could be devoted to the public
asking critical questions of the invited speakers. Funding would have to be
provided from private sources; for instance The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, Warren Buffett or George Soros.
An event of
this type could no longer be ignored and relegated to conspiracy theories but
would open the events of that day to public discussion. Since all of the
relevant government documents are kept secret, and whistleblowers lose their
livelihood, Wikileaks could be an excellent initial venue to bring some of them
to light. Thereafter it might be possible to refer the matter to the
International Criminal Court in The Hague for a judicial inquiry. 9/11 was and
is not a problem for the US alone it impacted the entire world and the world
deserves to know the truth.
We live in
extremely perilous times and for the reasons stated above can no longer rely on
our government to assure that our children and grandchildren will have at least
a peaceful, if not prosperous future. This is our task now and we owe it to them.
Please
distribute this essay to your friends and colleagues in the hope that the above
outlined suggestion will be implemented and I appreciate your comments via erodin@pol.net. Thank you.
November 1, 2011
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
These well-known words, which
Shakespeare placed in the mouth of the fatally wounded Mercutio
in Romeo and Juliet, reflect the feelings of a great many Americans when they
view the state our country is currently in. Our Democrats and Republicans, like
the Capulets and Montagues
of medieval Italy, can’t stand the sight of each other and although the battles
are currently still fought with words, rather than swords, the outcome is equally
deleterious to the health of our country.
In the September
installment (Follow the Money) I mentioned that our Republic suffers from
multi-system failure. Although the condition is as yet not fatal, it is indeed
serious. Unless sweeping reforms at various levels of government were to take
place, we might well see a descent first into chaos and subsequently autocracy.
Plato was the first to enunciate this cycle from autocracy to oligarchy, to
democracy and back to autocracy. The reason why he was correct lies in human
nature which has been immune to change over recorded history. Unbridled
democracy, where excessive individual freedom trumps the common good has to lead to the Hobbesian fight of all against all.
When society can under these circumstances no longer
function, a Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Lenin will arrive on the scene.
Although Caesar and Napoleon have now been hallowed by history this was not the
case during their lifetime as can readily be ascertained by reading Cicero on
the one hand and British publications from the era of the Napoleonic wars on
the other. This literature is important because only contemporaries can see the
flaws of the “great man” and the viewpoints of opponents need to be taken into
account.
As far as America is concerned it has
so far been able to avoid Europe’s fate, but the country is still young. Before
discussing the sad state our country is in at present, it is important to
review how we got to where we are. Looking at the America as I have personally
experienced it, I believe that its high water mark was the morning of November
22 1963. With the assassination of President Kennedy in the early afternoon of
that day the country underwent a fundamental change. Lyndon Johnson meant well
but was unduly influenced by a host of “advisors” who had their pet agendas
which led us into the Vietnam debacle. It was America’s first defeat (after the
Korean stalemate) and has rankled America’s self-esteem ever since. As an
example one might mention that the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were
hailed as having overcome the Vietnam syndrome.
The rest of the sixties were dominated by the Civil Rights movement
including its ugly side of burning cities, more political assassinations (Bobby
Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X), beginning opposition to the Vietnam
War, and above all what one may call hippiedom. This
consisted not only of the widespread use of psychoactive drugs but the overall
stance of “if it feels good it is good.” Women were promised “you can have it
all,” namely a happy family life as well as success in business, and “the pill”
provided them with previously unknown sexual freedom. Everybody was “liberated”
and draft cards were burned.
The election of Richard Nixon, a
conservative with Quaker roots, was supposed to have been the antidote. The
young stopped marching when the draft was abolished and the people at large
began to forget about the war. In order to counter the threat posed by the
Soviet Union, which by the way was of equal concern to Chou en Lai of China, he
responded positively to the latter’s peace overtures and “Nixon in China” even
became an opera. But Nixon overreached on the domestic side and Mark Felt,
vigorously aided by reporters Woodward and Bernstein, became his nemesis as discussed
in the September installment. Both of his successors Ford and Carter were
decent people but the toxins of the sixties, which had infected the public, had
remained and continued to affect society albeit in a more gradual manner.
The seventies also accelerated the
identification of America’s foreign policy goals with those of the state of
Israel, which had begun in 1967 during the Six-Day War. The official American
media never told us that Israeli armed forces deliberately tried to sink the
USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai shore. As mentioned in Abuse
of Secrecy (August 8, 2008), 34 US sailors were killed, 171 wounded but
President Johnson deliberately hushed up the event. This particular war, the
aftereffects of which still bedevil us in the current Israeli-Palestinian
stand-off, led to a marked rise in self-esteem of the American Jewish
population. But the subsequent Yom Kippur war in 1973, which was initially
nearly lost by Israel, was the catalyzer for a sense of renewed Jewish victimhood
and vulnerability. This in turn gave rise to raising the disasters which had
befallen the Jewish people during WWII to new prominence with Eli Wiesel
becoming the spokesperson of the newly named Holocaust. A national Holocaust
Museum was erected on Washington’s mall and although it was financed originally
through private sources its upkeep is now funded by us, the taxpayers. The
requested budget for the fiscal year 2012 (the total 2011 budget is still being
discussed in Congress) is for $52,694,000, which represents an increase of
$3,572,000 over that for FY 2010
(http://www.ushmm.org/notices/budget/2012.pdf). How many of us know these
numbers in our cash strapped times? For comparison purposes I might point out
that the FY 2011 budget for the Medical School of the University of Utah is
$32,164,000. The Holocaust now serves as the means to effectively stifle any
opposition to Israel’s policies to the extent that as one of our current
Republican presidential hopefuls declared, “An attack upon Israel is an attack
upon America.”
President Carter was and is a decent
man who tried to do the right thing under difficult circumstances. But the Arab
oil embargo of 1973-1974, in response to our preventing Israel’s defeat in the
Yom Kippur war, combined with the budget deficits accumulated from the Vietnam
War, had created economic misery. Prices rose so did interest rates on
purchases needed for daily living while wages stagnated. The Tehran hostage
rescue failed and the media gave us a daily count of how many days the embassy
hostages were already in captivity.
July 3, 1979 was another key day in
America’s foreign policy and we have to thank President Carter’s foreign
security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski for it. Contrary to published opinion of
the time, our involvement in Afghanistan did not start in response to the
Soviet invasion of that country on December 24, 1979 but six months earlier
with Carter’s directive to the CIA for secret aide to the opponents of the then
existing Kabul regime which was friendly to the Soviet Union. As Brezinski
explained to a reporter from NouvelObservateur (Paris) in 1998, he had told Carter that
this directive would lead to Soviet military intervention which in turn would
drastically weaken the USSR. When asked by the reporter, “you don’t regret
anything today?” He replied,
“Regret what? That secret operation was
an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the
Afghanistan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets
officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the
opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years
Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that
brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”
When the reporter then asked, if he regretted having supported Islamic
fundamentalists, the answer was, “What is most important to the history of the
world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire?Some stirred up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe
and the end of the Cold War” (Chalmers Johnson Blowback and also Michel Chossudovsky.America’s War on Terrorism).
Let us pause here for a moment to
consider the momentous consequences of that logic from which we have been
unable to extricate ourselves. “Some stirred up Moslems” havepresented us about three years later with
9/11, which in turn led us, as successors of the Russians, into Afghanistan
where we still remain after more than 10 years and have no prospect of doing
any better than they or the British before them. Although our country is not
likely to disintegrate into component parts as the Soviet Union did, the war
against these “stirred up Moslems” in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped bring us
to the sorry state our economy is in. The lesson ought to be that whenever you
make a Faustian bargain you have lost your freedom of choice and the devil wins
in the long run!
With Carter’s high negatives, the
election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was no surprise. He was literally the man on
the horse who would restore America to its immediate post WWII glory. His plan
to rescue the country from its doldrums was denounced by his early rival for
the nomination and subsequent Vice President George H. W. Bush, or in short
Bush 41, as voodoo economics, but this epithet has been quietly dropped by
Reagan’s still evolving hagiography. The slogan was that “a rising tide lifts
all boats” i.e. massive tax cuts would free the latent ingenuity of the
American people and the economy would thereby rebound. This was combined with
patriotic fervor to destroy the “evil empire” in all its potential outposts as
well as terrorists such as Libya’s Gadhafi whose compound had to be bombed in
retaliation for an attack on a Berlin discotheque where two US service
personnel had been killed and more than 70 wounded. One might remember now that
killing of US sailors while performing their duty on the Liberty had previously
elicited no response from our leadership. It seems that it is not the killing
of US personnel which matters but who is doing it. But the problem was that
lower tax revenues didn’t keep the government solvent and the deficit kept
soaring. Although Republicans were in charge they couldn’t care less at that
time, and borrowing oneself out of debt was the order of the day.
Again let us pause. Ronald Reagan is
currently the hero and role model for most of our Republican presidential
aspirants and they tout “Reaganomics” as the cure for our current economic
woes. That the 1980’s improvement was due to fiscal irresponsibility they have
as yet not admitted and inasmuch as the deficit has by now skyrocketed they
intend to cut services to those people who need them most while keeping the
massive defense spending largely intact.
Bush
41 saw the realization of Brzezinski’s goal and with the emergence of America
as the sole superpower there was a brief moment where the country could have
been steered into calmer waters for the benefit of the whole world. It was not
to be. A second term which would have provided that opportunity was denied to
him by the combined forces of Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The former drew
needed Republican votes into his unsuccessful effort, while the latter was able
to overcome the questions in regard to his sexual appetite with James
Carville’s successful campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Clinton’s
campaign advisors also had him constantly repeat the mantra that Bush couldn’t
be trusted because he had promised during his run for the presidency, “Read my
lips. No new taxes,” but had raised some during his
term in office.
The Reagan-Bush years had an
additional impact because they saw the rise of corporations for the sake of
corporations regardless of the detriment to their employees. Companies were
bought on borrowed money and merged with others while ruining some of them in
the process. Employees lost their livelihood and the CEO’s bailed out with
“golden parachutes.” The 1987 film “Wall Street” was emblematic and rings
especially true in 2011.
The Clinton 90’s continued to be the
“era of greed” and decay of the social mores which had held the country
together for over 200 years. Although the country was largely at peace,
Madeleine Albright who had been on Clinton’s National Security team and became
Foreign Secretary in 1997, was made of sterner stuff.
At one point in 1993 she told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell,
in regard to Bosnia “What are you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we
can’t use it?” as recounted in her memoir (Read my Pins). Powell, who had seen
war and knew what it led to, nearly became apoplectic. Eventually she did get
her wish. It resulted in the establishment of an independent Kosovo, which by
some is regarded as a “Narco State” (Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State by Tom Burghardt, February 29, 2008 in globalresearch.ca).
This is not irrelevant for today’s events because the unilateral decision to
declare independence from Serbia has been questioned on legal grounds, but was
agreed to by the UN. It can serve as a precedent for the Palestinians seeking
recognition as an independent state at present.
The foreign
policy objectives were, of course, declared to serve either “humanitarian”
purposes or to fight terrorism. One may question, however, to what extent the
bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of bridges across the Danube improved
the lives of civilians living there. Especially, since the ostensible goal the
removal of a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, was not achieved until about a
decade later. An ulterior motive such as the establishment of a brand new US
military base, in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, has been swept under the rug and
hardly anybody knows anything about it. For that information I encourage the
reader to “google” the name of the camp and you will be amazed what you find.
Whoever thought that the demise of the
Soviet Union would at last bring some modicum of peace to the world was, of
couse, sorely mistaken. The Cold War seamlessly morphed into the “War on
Terrorism,” which received a massive boost under Bush 43. Prior to the 2000
election he had promised a “Compassionate Conservatism,” which some of us
interpreted that he would pursue a course where private enterprise thrives, but
is sufficiently regulated to avoid the excesses of speculation and greed. Well,
that did not work out either. His presidency became the greatest disaster in
regard to foreign as well as domestic policies the country has seen. This is,
of course, well known to most of us, but it shows that the general public by
and large knows too little about the character and knowledge base of the person
we elect to the presidency.
At this point a mea culpa is in place
because I also believed that the son of a competent previous president and
sitting governor of a large state would have the experience level which is
required for the highest office in the country. I was aware that George W was
deficient in regard to foreign policy but thought that competent advisors from
the Reagan and Bush 41 era would prevent him from making serious mistakes. This
assumption was based on having been ignorant about the fact that these
advisors: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice had been hijacked by the Neocons where the
“con” stands not only as an abbreviation for conservative but also convict.
Since I have discussed this aspect in a number of previous essays on this site,
which can be found by downloading the entire issues and then looking for the
word “neocon,” nothing further needs to be said to this point at this time.
This brings us to the Obama presidency
and 2011. Unfortunately, just as Bush 43, he has not been able to keep the
promise upon which he was elected. This was in part due to similar reasons,
with the most important one: lack of experience. As mentioned above I thought
in former years that a lack of experience in certain areas of government could
be made up by having competent advisors, but this was a false hope. Advisors
have an agenda and unless the president has a sufficient background of
information from personal experience he/she will be unable to sift fact from
fancy. This is bad enough on the corporate level but disastrous when it happens
to the CEO of the country.
In the beginning of this essay I
mentioned that our country suffers from multisystem disease which now affects
all levels of government. The framers of the Constitution had tried to avoid
this fate. They had followed the advice of Montesquieu and created a system of
checks and balances. An independent Judiciary was to watch over an independent
Legislature which in turn curbed the power of the Executive. To Juvenal’s question Quiscustodiet ipse custodias –
Who oversees the guardians? the answer was: a Free
Press. None of this is true at present because all four levels have been
corrupted by the power of money and fear.
Let us start with the media. The ones
which stream into our living rooms have been, to use the Nazi phrase, “gleichgeschaltet,”
which might be rendered as “enforced uniformity.” Although they seemingly
present different points of view they have to adhere to certain unspoken
guidelines. There exists a censorship which is exerted not so much by
government, as in authoritarian states, but a tacit understanding of the limits
which are tolerated by the editor. These limits exist regardless of whether one
deals with the print media or TV. The truth of this statement can readily be
verified by consulting the Internet on controversial issues, such as the ones
discussed here, and by reading the newspapers from countries other than ours.
This is essential if one wants to obtain a reasonably accurate view of the
forces governing our world. It is especially wholesome to read the views of
those who are regarded as enemies because they can serve as teaching material.
We don’t learn from people who agree with our point of view but only from those
who disagree. But labeling them with some pejorative based on the political
correctness of the time and country one lives in only perpetuates the cycles of
fear and hate.
The Judiciary has likewise lost its
independence by having fallen victim to party politics. Supreme Court Justices
are appointed by the President and have to be confirmed by the Senate. As such,
the President will only nominate those candidates who reflect the views of the
political party he owes his own position to, while the senators of the two
parties will probe the candidate for views which might disqualify him/her based
on their own prejudices. The candidates have, of course, seen through this and
learned to hide their personal views on such sensitive issues like abortion,
and nowadays give bland answers. But a given party needs to fill only five of
the nine seats with candidates who reflect its point of view. This leads to the
current situation where a five against four vote
frequently becomes the law of the land. It can even give us a president as was
the case with Bush 43. Although all judges swear to uphold the Constitution,
this document is constantly interpreted and re-interpreted to suit the whims of
the individual judges. While minority reports can be rendered they have no
force behind them.
I have already mentioned the election of
Bush 43 by one vote of the Supreme Court which nullified the separation of the
three powers, but another egregious 5-4 ruling also needs to be mentioned. In
2010 the Court used the 1st amendment to the Constitution, which
guarantees free speech, to rule “that government may not ban political
contributions by corporations in candidate elections.” This ruling gutted all
previous attempts by Congress to rid the election process of undue influence by
big donors with the result that the money spent during the current election
cycle is likely to reach $1 billion or more. Is this how we should spend money
at this time? Furthermore, are labor unions also to be regarded as corporations?
In addition, the individual member of a union or stockholder of a corporation
may not agree with the choice of candidate the corporate powers chose to
support. So how can the average citizen’s voice be heard in the most important
aspect of the democratic process: a free and fair election?
The legislative power of Congress has
also been corrupted. Inasmuch as it nowadays takes a great deal of money to be
elected, the candidate will be duty bound to pay the piper thereafter. If
he/she fails to do so re-election becomes out of the question. But re-election
is the goal before the candidate even first sets foot into the Senate, House or
White House. One term is regarded as failure and all the effort which should go
into governing is diverted to chasing after money for re-election. To this one
must add the 24 hour news cycle which focuses on the next election as soon as
the new member of government has been sworn into office. Off-year elections are
now geared towards the prevention of either party gaining a filibuster-proof
majority. This renders Congress ineffective and results in its current dismal
approval rating of 9%. But unless the election process is thoroughly revamped,
which may actually require another Amendment to the Constitution, no improvement
can be expected.
The President, as chief executive, is
supposed to simply ensure that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully
executed and nothing happens under his aegis which violates the Constitution.
Well, this has also become fantasy. The most important aspect, namely to engage
in acts of war, is now single handedly decided by the president, and Congress
simply gets notified of the fact. Furthermore, presidents have discovered the
power of the pen by issuing “signing statements,” which have the force of law.
For instance when Bush 43 signed the Bill which prohibits torture, he added
exemptions which rendered the intent of the law ineffective. In addition,
executive orders can be issued which are to remain secret, such as the above
mentioned one by Jimmy Carter in 1979. President Obama has also discovered the
joys of wielding the executive pen. He joined the NATO effort to remove Gadhafi
in Libya without congressional approval and his aides remarked that it was not
taking sides in a civil war but merely a “kinetic military action.” He has also
ramped up the drone war and engages in remote-control assassinations of people
regarded as terrorists. Most recently he told Congress that he has dispatched
one hundred military advisors to Uganda to help quell a rebellion. That the
president of that country has engaged in the same atrocities as the rebel
chief, and that the area where the rebels operate is also a newly discovered
source of oil, one learns not from our free press but only the Internet.
It is obvious that the government as
well as our two political parties, which serve as its base, have failed to
address the real needs of the people whom they are supposed to represent. There
is, therefore ample reason why people are thoroughly disgusted with the current
state of affairs and a global climate change, not only in the meteorological
but also the political sense, is under way. This aspect and additional reasons
which feed the protests that have now reached our shores will be discussed in
the next installment.
December 1, 2011
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
Part II
In
the previous installment I discussed in part how our country ended up in dire
straits with a debt of $15 trillion and unfinished wars. All three branches of government:
the Legislative, Judiciary and Executive, as well as the Media which are
supposed to expose malfeasance, have become corrupted to an extent that some
observers of today’s scene are comparing it to Germany’s Weimar Republic. The
major difference is, of course, that America has not (should we say “as yet?”)
to deal with the disastrous aftereffects of a lost war and Carthaginian type
peace treaty. Nevertheless when one considers the gridlock in Congress on the
one hand and the popular “culture,” as presented by the entertainment media on
the other, the comparison is not all that farfetched.
In the past week Congress has again
demonstrated its inability to come to grips with a meaningful plan to reduce
the staggering deficit, which is beginning to threaten the status of the dollar
as the reserve currency of the world. The crisis in September over raising the
limits of government borrowing was resolved by the appointment of a
Congressional “Super Committee.” Its task was to cut the debt by $1.2 trillion
and in case of inability to do so, automatic spending cuts of that magnitude
would go into effect, half of them coming from defense appropriations. The
committee was made up of six Republicans and six Democrats and from the outset
it was difficult to see why these people, who are beholden to their parties,
would agree on anything their party leadership opposes.
In addition, the whole process was a
sham. The budget cuts were scheduled to be achieved over a ten year period and
would not have started until 2013 after a new administration had been voted
into office next year. The “automatic cuts” which are now on the table as a
result of the committee’s failure to achieve agreement remain empty words
because election season is in full swing and, unless some foreign policy
disaster intervenes, the entire year from now till November 6, 2012 will be
taken up by political posturing on how to rescue the economy.
When one looks at the current scene one
gains the impression that there seem to be three separate ideological universes
pursuing their goals. As yet they have not met but they will have to collide in
the not too distant future. One is what can be called the “Beltway,” the other
the “Protest Movement,” while the third one operates in the background with the
ruling circles in the various countries of the world deciding on monetary
policies and the overarching question of war and peace. In this essay I shall
limit myself, however, only to the first one.
When one talks about the Beltway
(Interstate Highway 495, which encircles Washington DC)) one refers to the
politicking and lobbying within Washington. The concept deals not only with the
people in the government buildings, where decisions are made and executed, but
also with what is called J Street and K Street. Although listed in alphabetic
order, K Street is the infinitely more important one because it harbors the
headquarters of numerous lobbying groups and “thinktanks” which influence the
politicians in Congress to pass legislations according to their specific
interests rather than those of the public at large.The people at the J Street address are
another lobbying group, mainly composed of Jewish members – although non-Jews
are welcomed – who try to defuse the Arab-Israeli conflict through constructive
engagement of both sides and are, therefore, in opposition to the more powerful
K Street AIPAC lobby, which has no use for the concerns of Palestinians.
The number of lobbyists who operate
currently on Capitol Hill has variously been reported as 12,000; 17, 000 and
22,000. There are 2,500 firms and at least 12,000 clients. Expenditures have
steadily risen from $1.2 billion in 1988 to $3.5 billion in 2010. The firms
represent the interest of every imaginable subgroup of the American people
ranging from industry through unions and other organizations of which, in
alphabetic order, the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), AIPAC
(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and NRA (National Rifle Association)
seem to be the best financed as well as the most effective. Their Boards of
Directors make the decisions what legislation should be pursued and what should
not see the light of day. This is accomplished not only through direct contacts
with Senators and Representatives but also, what is more important, through
their staff members.
The assumption that legislation which
carries the name of a given Senator or Representative was also written by that
person is, of course, obsolete. Legislation is written by appointed staffers
who follow the general guideline of the elected legislator but insert pet
projects, for which they tend to get paid by the lobbyists, into every specific
act which comes before the House and Senate for a vote. This leads to the
absurdity that not only can a given piece of legislation run into hundreds of
pages but also the situation that the elected legislators don’t even have the
time to read what they are expected to vote on.
The classic example is, of course, the
“Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” It was originally intended to
provide universal health insurance to all citizens but has degenerated, prior
to passage, into a monstrosity of 906 pages. It had taken about a year of
haggling and the final vote was on Sunday March 21, 2010 when after numerous
hidden backroom deals the Democrats had enough votes to push it through against
the wishes of the Republicans. Obama hailed it as a triumph but the Republicans
immediately launched court challenges and are united in their efforts to repeal
“Obamacare” the moment they get the majority in both Houses, and possibly the
Presidency, next year. Thus, the entire first year of Obama’s presidency was
wasted. Lawyers are currently kept busy and the next year will be devoted to
electioneering with the intent to either save what is salvageable from this
misbegotten bill or eliminate it altogether (see also September 1, 2009 Obama’s
Reality Check).
Lobbying is lucrative and has led to the
“revolving door” situation where former lobbyists become legislators or
staffers and former members of government become lobbyists. Thus, we don’t have
“Government by the People for the People,” as Lincoln had proclaimed, but
government by some people for some people with mutually conflicting interests.
One may naively hope that by voting for a new crop of legislators the situation
would improve but this is likewise no longer realistic. The goal of the
politician is to gain power and then keep it for years to come. Here is how it
works on the state level for instance in Utah where I have the most direct information.
The electorate is largely Republican to the extent that of the 29 state
senators only seven are Democrats and of the 75 representatives 17 are
Democrats. On the Federal level our two senators are Republicans and among the
three Representatives there is one Democrat who hails from the Salt Lake City
area. But Mr. Matheson, who has been elected several times since 2000, is a
thorn in the side of the establishment and just a few weeks ago a second
attempt was made to definitively remove his chances for re-election next
November by redrawing the borders of his Congressional district. This is
popularly called gerrymandering. The term goes back to the Boston of 1812 when
its Governor Elbridge Gerry redrew the map for Senate seats and it was thought
to resemble a salamander.
When Matheson won the 2000 election in
his mostly Democrat district, the legislative powers were disappointed and
promptly changed the borders to include Republican dominated areas. This
process nearly lost Matheson the re-election in 2002 when he barely beat his
Republican challenger. Since it is legal to engage in redistricting every 10
years, based on census data, our current State legislature grasped the
opportunity. While they were considering how to draw new borders they thought
that it was also time to add a fourth Representative to the current three. But
in order to ensure that there wouldn’t be a Democrat elected they changed
Matheson’s Salt Lake County district to an extent that it now includes a
considerably larger portion of rural Republican areas.
In actual practice this means that
Martha and I can save ourselves the time and effort next November to go to the
polls because the process is rigged to an extent that with a non-Republican
vote one merely registers one’s discontent without having any effect on the
outcome. When we used to live in Michigan the opposite situation was the case.
Affluent Grosse Pointe, which consistently voted Republican, had no chance for
representation in the House because the district’s borders include the East
side of Detroit as well as heavily Democratic suburbs.
Gerrymandering has also very practical
consequences on the presidential level. Since candidates have to win their
spurs first on the local level the districts they come from is an all-important
variable. In the 2000 election Obama challenged Representative Bobby Rush for
his African-American dominated district in Congress. After he lost that contest
against the incumbent he mobilized his friends in the state legislature, as
well as wealthy donors who saw him as a rising star. The district’s borders
were then changed to include this white, affluent, liberal constituency. Obama
won the 2004 election to the Senate, without having to change his address. The
information comes from the Internet and is also contained in a documentary by
Jeff Reichert entitled “Gerrymandering.” Both parties participate in this
process which, apart from vote buying through campaign donations and outright
fraud at the polls, is the third widely underappreciated effort to influence an
election outcome.
Voting, every two or four years, is
about the only way the public has to express its wishes in a democracy because
in theory it allows to “throw the rascals out.” But our two-party system has
become so rigged that in essence one only exchanges, most of the time, one
“rascal” for another, regardless of party affiliation. A third party candidate
does not have a chance under the current system and will only lead to splitting
votes from the existing parties without being able to win the election. As
examples one could cite Teddy Roosevelt’s attempt to defeat President Howard
Taft which brought in Woodrow Wilson who had been given no chance previously.
Another more recent example is that of Ross Perot. His failed attempt to gain
the presidency helped defeat Bush 41 and gave us Bill Clinton whose sexual
proclivities had seemed to make him unelectable.
As mentioned earlier, the upcoming year
will be devoted by the Republicans to win the November election, and it is
obvious that they will not allow any major legislation to be passed which might
give the Democrats, and thereby Obama, a chance to claim success. They and the
country are now being held hostage, which needless to say is unconscionable to
say the least. We live in exceedingly turbulent times and don’t have the luxury
to “fiddle while Rome burns.”
While Obama has no rival among the
Democrats, all attention is riveted on the Republicans and after 11 debates
there are still eight hopefuls on the scene. Although the debates are highly
redundant, and the candidates tend to give scripted answers, it is beginning to
become possible to discern what each one of them stands for. All are united in
the theme that Obama has failed dismally, that the economic woes are his fault
and, with one exception, that Israel must be defended at all costs. Obama’s
economic “stimulus” measures were ill advised because government cannot create
jobs. This can only be done by private industry. The cure is to cut spending on
entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But since the country’s
security is paramount, defense appropriations must not be touched, although
they represent 20% of the discretionary budget which is clearly out of line in
comparison with our potential enemies. Yet, any tax increase to cover part of
the deficit is off limits.When the moderator asked in
one of the debates that candidates should raise a hand if they were willing to
accept a compromise where for every ten dollars of cuts there would be one
dollar of tax increase not a single hand went up.
The media keep conducting polls and
declare front runners. The first one to achieve that status was the
Congresswoman from Minnesota Michele Bachmann after she won a nonbinding straw
poll at the Iowa State Fair in August. That she was ahead of Ron Paul by only
152 votes out of 16,892 was ignored at that time. She became an instant
Republican star and was seen as the improved version of Sarah Palin. She is
clearly better educated but, like Palin, worships at the Judeo-Christian altar,
with emphasis on the first part. In addition she is a firm advocate of “the
right to bear arms” by everybody and therefore has the support of two of the
three above mentioned major lobbying groups. Her religion, just like that of
most of the other candidates is, however, sufficiently flexible so as not to stand
in the way of political expediency. It allows her to, as a British observer of
the American scene had said in earlier years about Hillary Clinton, be
“economical with the truth.” This is, of course, also the hallmark of most of
the other candidates.
She was, however, soon eclipsed by the
debating skills of Mitt Romney. As mentioned on, another occasion, I liked his
father when he was governor of Michigan and I appreciated that Mitt had rescued
the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002 when it was mired in debt and corruption. The
Olympics were an unqualified success and winter sports enthusiasts from all
around the world now enjoy the facilities which were created for that occasion.
In addition we, the citizens of Utah, didn’t lose any money but actually came
out ahead (The Mormon Olympics. March 1, 2002). But
something happened to Romney since then. He became governor of Massachusetts in
November of that year and his major legislative achievement was a universal
health care bill for that state. He was initially proud of it but when it was
pointed out that the bill had actually served as a model for Obama’s, he
distanced himself from that success and now insists that it has no
applicability to the nation at large. He did not run for re-election because he
had his eye on the presidency and the past five years were spent on
electioneering. His 2008 bid failed but he learned from the mistakes made,
brushed up on his debating technique and now provides very polished
performances. The problem is that in the process he has given up on principle
and says whatever appears to be politically opportune at the moment. His other
major handicap is his Mormon faith which is viewed with suspicion by a
significant segment of the electorate.
The next media darling was the current
Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. After initially riding a wave of enthusiasm he
performed poorly in the first debate and it got worse thereafter. The low point
came on November 10 when he eagerly announced that one of his deficit cutting
measures will be to eliminate three federal departments. When he started to
list them he mentioned education and commerce but then blocked on the third
one. His colleagues tried to help him but to no avail. He later remembered that
it was obviously the energy department, but it was clearly too late. Well,
mental blocks happen intermittently to all of us, but when a candidate in the
full flush of eagerness to convince the public of his prowess succumbs to it,
the media take note and won’t let him forget. While the event was not fatal his
front runner status disappeared and he slipped into the single digit of
approval ratings.
With Perry having flamed out the next
great Republican hope was the current governor of New Jersey Chris Christie,
whose name surely should appeal to the Evangelical segment of our society.
After surveying the field for a few weeks he had the good sense to decide that
his current job is better than one he might not get and declined to enter the
race.
His place was then taken by the next
comet, Herman Cain. As a genuine African-American, in contrast to Obama who as
being half white is regarded as not understanding that community’s needs, Cain
proclaimed that he knows how to set the country on the right course. The way to
achieve it was the 9-9-9 formula, which in mantra like fashion, he kept
repeating at every appropriate and inappropriate moment. Everybody agrees that
the current tax system is an abomination and if you give the same income data
to five different accountants they will come up with five different answers in
regard to how much you owe the government or vice versa. People in government
can’t even agree how many pages the code contains and one can read numbers
ranging from 2,500 to 2.5 million (http://www.trygve.com/taxcode.html).
As they say: “Go figure!” So a revision of the code is clearly urgently needed
and, as mentioned above, Mr. Cain’s answer is 9-9-9. There would be a universal
9% flat income tax rate, a 9% corporate tax rate and 9% VAT (value added tax)
on all purchases. He insists that this formula is fair and revenue neutral
(would bring in the same amount of money as the government gets currently).
When experts went over the numbers, which supposedly validate Mr. Cain’s
assumptions, they found them wanting. In addition to other problems with 9-9-9
it is, of course, obvious that the VAT, which affects consumers most directly,
will sit on top of the sales taxes inflicted on us by the state we live in and
will rise with inevitable inflation. It will, therefore, hit the poorest
segments of our society the worst. Michele Bachmann, showing her Bible
proficiency, pointed out that when you inverse the numbers you get 666 – the
Antichrist!
While this dented the enthusiasm for the
new Messiah somewhat, his complete lack of experience in foreign policy could
not be plastered over with 9-9-9 and when it became known that complaints of
sexual harassments had been filed against him in the ‘90s, Republican
enthusiasm cooled somewhat further. As usual it wasn’t the complaints but the
way he handled the issue, by providing different answers on different
occasions, that sealed his fate and he lost his front runner status.
This has now been taken up, for the time
being, by the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In the debates he lent
“gravitas” to the situation and assumed the position of elder statesman
bolstered by his professional degree in history. But Mr. Gingrich brings a lot
of baggage with him which he had accumulated during the 90’s. While being
Speaker his unyielding confrontation with Clinton was responsible for the
government shut-down. Furthermore, while vehemently arguing for Clinton’s
impeachment for the dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, Newt carried on a sexual
affair of his own. After divorcing his sick wife he legitimized the paramour
with marriage, his third one. These “Christian values” do not endear him with
the evangelical segment of the party which any candidate will need to gain the
nomination. To make matters worse it has just come to light that he was paid
between $1.6 and $1.8 million “consulting fees” by Freddie Mac, which jointly
with Fanny Mae was responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis that was a
major reason for the 2008 financial collapse. Gingrich’s campaign office denied
any malfeasance and declared that he had merely offered “strategic advice.”
Knowing these aspects of his personality raises the question whether we really
want a person of this type in the White House regardless of all the campaign promises.
Among the other candidates is Rick
Santorum ex-senator from Pennsylvania who likewise expounds on his Christian
principles and he is in fact an only once married Catholic with the appropriate
number of seven children. Having failed to win re-election in 2006 he is
currently in full-time campaign mode but fails to excite the public with
innovative reasonable ideas. This leaves us with two candidates who differ from
the rest. In Follow the Money (September 2011) I have already mentioned Ron
Paul who does not fit into the currently expected politically correct
Republican mold because he is at heart a Libertarian. It is refreshing to hear
him tell us the unvarnished truth that we should get out of Afghanistan, get
rid of the numerous bases around the world in countries where they either don’t
need or don’t want us and that security begins at home. Instead of telling
others constantly what they should do, we ought to put our own house in order.
Since his solutions are radical by any standard he has no chance of being
nominated and he knows it. He is simply using the forum to serve as our
conscience and when, with exception of the next candidate, all the others said
they would support Israel if she were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he
flatly declared that this is none of our business. They have enough nukes to
take care of themselves and as far as Iran’s nuclear ambitions are concerned
they are no threat to our security. Let the Israelis fend for themselves. These
are not words one hears from the establishment.
The final candidate and the only one who
has the experience, strength of character and a reasonable outlook on foreign
as well as domestic issues, is our former governor Jon Huntsman. Having been
born in 1960 he is in his intellectual prime, comes from a highly respected
family and his billionaire father, who is still alive, established the Cancer
Institute at the University of Utah. Early on Jon worked as a staff assistant
in Reagan’s White House and under Bush 41 served as Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Commerce for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, as well as Ambassador to
Singapore. During the Clinton years he held executive positions in the family’s
varied enterprises and under Bush 43 became one of the two Deputy United States
Trade Representatives. He resigned from that job in 2003 to run for governor in
Utah and was elected in 2004 as well as re-elected in 2008. When President
Obama picked him for Ambassador to China in 2009 he left Utah with an approval
rating of over 80% and Utah was named the best managed state by the highly
respected Pew Center on the States. Earlier this year he relinquished his
ambassadorship and entered the presidential race.
When one adds to the above that he is
fluent in Mandarin, having lived both in Taiwan as well as mainland China, one
would think that this is precisely the person the country needs at this time.
As a centrist he would appeal to Independents, the mainstream Republicans as
well as some Democrats and thereby present a formidable challenge to Obama. Yet,
this will in all probability not be allowed to happen by the “Tea partiers” who
are in charge of the Republican Party at this time. Furthermore, as a Mormon,
although more relaxed about his faith than Romney, he is not palatable to the
Evangelicals and in addition he has none of the other major lobbying groups
working for him. His is the old-fashioned approach of trying to win the people
in New Hampshire’s all-important primary as the stepping stone for subsequent
success. But the powers are arraigned against him and the major state-wide
newspaper has just announced its support for Gingrich. There is a saying here,
“As New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation” and under these circumstances a
Gingrich endorsement is typical for the country we have, rather than what we
should have but are likely to keep next November.
January 1, 2012
A TRANSFORMATIVE YEAR?
At this time of the year it is
customary to look back at the past to get an inkling of what might transpire in
the future. Although the past is not an infallible guide to the future the
latter is to a considerably extent predicated by it, as has been shown in a
number of previous issues on this site. There are also some key years in human
history which set events in motion which then reverberate for decades and even centuries.
For Americans it was 1776 but Europeans have memories which go back considerably
further. One could arbitrarily start at 1618 which means nothing here but was
the onset of one of the most disastrous European wars. It lasted for 30 years,
resulted in the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire into numerous
principalities and thereby allowed the French, British and Russians to dominate
European events. The first two, joined by the Dutch, were also put into the
position of creating overseas empires thereby challenging Spain and Portugal.
The re-creation of a German empire, but without Austria, in 1871 was clearly
too late for being welcomed by the existing powers because they only saw a
rival whose ambitions needed to be curbed.
I picked 1618 as the start of this
little excursion into history because it was Austrian policies which had
started this war, just as Austrian policies gave rise to the next disaster in
1914 and what is hardly known: one of the fatal strikes which killed the
monarchy in 1918 was a revenge of the Czechs for 1618. History is not some
impersonal force, as Marxists would have it, but also consists of grievances
and hatreds which are nourished over a period of decades and sometimes
centuries as was the case in the situation that is discussed here. Picking on
Austrian examples of bad decisions is not due to some animosity against the
country of my birth but simply because I am most familiar with its history. The
cause of the 30
Years War, which
actually consisted of a series of four campaigns interrupted by some brief
armistices, was ostensibly a battle over religion; just as our current “War on
Terrorism” is regarded as such. Yet in both instances religion also served as a
screen to hide naked power politics. What September 11, 2001 was for the U.S., May
23, 1618 was for Austria.
In 1609 Emperor Rudolf II had granted
religious freedom to the Bohemian Estates (Stände)
but this edict was gradually undermined by his successor Matthias II (1557-1619)
who prior to his death forbade the Protestant religion altogether. A protest
note by the Bohemian nobility in March of 1618 was answered with an edict which
not only disallowed a meeting of the Bohemian Estates to debate this question,
but threatened military reprisals if it were to take place. On the mentioned
day in May an armed multitude appeared before the Castle (Hradschin)
in Prague and some members of the Bohemian nobility then confronted the
imperial administrative officials with their grievances. The discussions became
an argument and when it became fruitless a member of the Bohemian group
supposedly yelled, “What’s the use. Throw them out the window in good-old
Bohemian fashion.” This advice was followed and the Prager Fenstersturz entered history.
Reprisals started promptly and in the subsequent war the Czechs were soundly
defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. But it was not just the
loss of a battle; the estates of the nobility were confiscated, given to loyal
Catholics, and all vestiges of Bohemian independence were gone for the next 300
years.
The Czechs, however, neither forgot
nor forgave, and the drama continued into the 20th century. Tomáš Masaryk
(1850-1937) a Moravian politician had served intermittently in the
Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat (Parliament)
but concluded in 1914 that independence for Czechs (who included Bohemians and
Moravians) as well as Slovaks could best be achieved by joining the Allied
cause. He left the country and his peregrinations took him from Switzerland
through France, England and Russia to the United States. Throughout his travels
he advocated the formation of an independent Czechoslovakia, and he is credited
with having been instrumental with the formation of the Czechoslovak legions
from Austrian POW’s who then fought on the Russian side. Masaryk reached
America in the spring of 1918 and was given a hero’s welcome in Chicago where
he had previously (1902, 1907) lectured at the University. Since his wife was
American and had influential friends, among whom was Charles R. Crane, he
obtained access to President Wilson who lent a more than willing ear. I have
previously mentioned Mr. Crane (January 1, 2007. The Year of the Middle East)
as a member of the King-Crane Commission which had been dispatched by Wilson in
1919 to determine as to what role the United States should play in the dispute over
Palestine by the Zionists vs. the newly sovereign Arab states in the region.
His advice was “hands off” and it was heeded until 1948 when President Truman,
within a matter of a few hours, recognized the new State of Israel. This
remarkable speed resulted from his being told that he could not win the
November election without the Jewish vote which would surely turn against him
unless he promptly acted in the recommended manner.
At the Versailles Peace conference
Czechoslovakia was established as an independent country and Masaryk became its
first president. This was done, of course, under Wilson’s guise of independence
for the oppressed people of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Yet, it cobbled
together a nation which consisted of Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Germans,
Poles as well as some other smaller nationalities. If ethnic uniformity had
been the goal it was clearly wanting and this had its brief revenge in March 1939
with the separation of the Slovaks from the Czechs. Hitler is usually regarded
as having broken the Munich Accord by annexing rump Czechoslovakia. But what
tends to be ignored is that the Slovaks had seceded under JozefTiso, and Hitler then took the opportunity to declare
Bohemia and Moravia (their ancient names) a Reichsprotektorat.
The fact that in so doing he gave the Poles another piece of the defunct
Czechoslovak state also tends to be ignored by contemporary historians.
In 1945 Czechoslovakia was resurrected
and Jan Masaryk, son of Tomáš, became its first president. Yet on March 10, 1948
history came full circle because he was found dead below the bathroom window of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague. The official cause of death was “suicide”
but persistent rumor has it that this was another instance of the “good-old
Bohemian custom,” defenestration. This time it wasn’t Protestants who were
responsible but communists and the people lingered under their rule, which was
considerably more oppressive than anything they had to endure under the
Habsburgs, for another 40 years until the Velvet Revolution in December of 1949.
But the Slovaks were not happy and again demanded their independence. It is to
the credit of Vaclav Havel that he let them go peacefully in 1993. In contrast
to the crop of politicians we currently have, Havel, although by profession a
playwright, was a statesman who knew right from wrong and always had human
rights and needs, rather than affairs of state and the nation, in the forefront
of his thoughts. He died last month and his memory will be revered by “all people
of good will,” which is another reason why I have started this essay with the
30 Years War. Havel put a final end to all the animosities which had started in
1618, then erupted again in 1918, 1939 and 1945 accompanied by untold human suffering.
I have used
this “ancient history” as another example to show the continuity in human
affairs and that any arbitrary starting point will always do violence to the
truth. This brings me to the current political scene and the question whether
or not 2012 will be another year for pivotal events. In last month’s
installment I mentioned that one of our Republican aspirants for the presidency
is the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. He is of interest in this
context because by profession he is a Professor of History which should qualify
him as having a broad outlook on world affairs. But what did we hear from him
on the campaign trail? Last month he had this to say to a Jewish audience “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state, it was part of
the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people,
who are in fact Arabs and were historically part of the Arab community. And
they had a chance to go many places."
This
is remarkable for the mindset it portrays: Say anything that might get you
votes! Hitler could say with the same right: “there are no Czechoslovaks; they
are an invented people by the Versailles dictate.” But I guess Professor
Gingrich would object to that. Furthermore, Jews are to a considerable extent
urban as well as mobile. They can, therefore, pack up their belongings and
leave for greener pastures whenever the need arises. This is what Gingrich
suggests to the Palestinians without taking into consideration that they are,
or at least were, largely rural and that they can’t pack up their olive trees. In
addition Professor Gingrich surely knows that Palestinian history did not start
in the 20th century. What was the official name for The Holy Land the Crusaders
went to? To what land did the Jews emigrate in the late 19th century
and up to 1948? They didn’t go to the Ottoman Empire or Arabia, they went to
Palestine! The land, of course, regained official recognition after WWI when it
was declared a British Mandate. The people living there or coming to it were
Palestinians regardless whether their religion was Muslim, Jewish or Christian.
Again, this is all so elementary that one is actually ashamed of having to
bring it up but this is the level of information upon which the next American
President will be chosen and this should give us ample reason for concern.
Last
month the presidential campaign shifted into high gear and currently the TV
news channels saturate the airwaves with the impending Iowa caucus on the
upcoming Tuesday as if the fate of the Republic was hanging on it. But let us
remember that this is not even a primary where all the voters of a given party
and in some states even Independents can cast their votes for a given
candidate. No, this is a “Coffee Klatsch” where the various proponents of the candidates meet
some citizens and try to convince them to cast their vote for the candidate of
their choice. At the last election about 120,000 Republican Iowans cast their
votes in this manner which amounted to about 20 percent of registered
Republican voters. The winner at that time was Mike Huckabee and we know how he
fared subsequently. The arcane process of how America elects its presidents was
discussed in more detail in the March 1, 2008 installment (Voting in America).
The
reason why 2012 may well become another year for the history books does not
necessarily reside in the end of the Mayan Calendar, Nostradamus’ quatrains,
which are continuously milked for doomsday scenarios, or the celestial
alignment of December 21, as we are informed about on the “History” channel on
our TV sets. It tends to be considerably more mundane and consists of the
numerous tensions which have been building up here and abroad. The kettles are
boiling and any one of them may explode at any moment.
Let
us start with the fact that the leadership of the U.S., Israel, Russia, Egypt
and possibly a number of other nations faces elections in this year. These are
not routine because in the current economic climate the issue of war and peace
hangs in the balance. The biggest danger continues to emanate, of course, from
the Middle East and it is in regard to that part of the world where the
decisions by the leaderships of the countries mentioned above, in addition to China,
will have the greatest impact. Elections in times like these are fraught with
danger because the leadership of any given party,
regardless in which part of the world, is intent on retaining its power and
will do so even if it were to provoke a war. There are enough examples from
past history which could be cited but let it suffice to refer to Niall Ferguson’s
Virtual History – What Could Have Been,
where he showed that England’s entry into WWI, which turned a continental
European war into a global war, was not necessarily foreordained. Party
politics, Liberals vs. Tories, had also played a role. This is the point which
will be crucial this year.
At
present the Republican Party in our country has come to be dominated by its
extreme right wing elements. With one exception all the candidates for the
nomination drape themselves in Christian virtues, although some Evangelicals
feel that Romney and Huntsman don’t really qualify as Christians because
Mormonism is, in their eyes, a cult whose members need to be shunned. Christian
charity, one of the hallmarks of the religion, is woefully lacking. In the
attempt to win the slogan: all is fair in love and war, seems to be the rule
and the candidates outdo each other not only in promises how to set the country
on the right course but in attacking each other and obviously, Obama. In
ordinary times this would be par for the course but when in these dangerous
times promises are made in regard to foreign affairs and specifically towards
Israel they cannot be taken lightly.
In
the previous installment I have mentioned that from all of the Republican
candidates only Jon Huntsman represents centrist views the country could rally
around. Unfortunately even he has succumbed to the seeming necessity to flatter
Jewish voters. In the New Hampshire debate with Newt Gingrich he declared last
month that we have to stand with our friends and allies and that Israel is “our
anchor in the Middle East.” If he truly believes this we have a serious problem
because we thereby have “outsourced” our freedom of action to another country.
This is precisely the situation George Washington had warned us about in his
Farewell Address to the new nation.
When
it comes to U.S. foreign policy one can detect two strands. One is the
continuation of the 19th century “Great Game” between England and
Russia over the riches of Central Asia which is now pursued by the U.S. as heir
to the British Empire. It is explained by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President
Carter’s national security advisor, in The
Grand Chessboard-American Supremacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. The
book is important because of the author’s stature as well as candor and most of
all because it was written prior to 9/11. Brzezinski made it quite clear that
for America to maintain its dominance in the world it has to have a prominent
role in what he called the “Eurasian Balkans.” These consist of: Afghanistan,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; all of which, apart
from Afghanistan, are successor states of the defunct Soviet Union.
While
Brzezinski did not advocate American hegemony in the region, especially one
based on military might, he did stress its economic importance and a balancing
of the interests of Russia, China, Iran and Turkey with those of America. He
made it clear that continued antagonism to Iran is not in America’s best interest
and neither is a resurgent Russian influence in the region. “It is this
consideration that has made the pipeline issue so central to the future of the
Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.” Russia needs to be bypassed and “if
another pipeline crosses the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and thence to Turkey and
if one more goes to the Arabian Sea [bypassing the Strait of Hormuz] through
Afghanistan, no single power will have monopoly over access.” Thus it is clear
that 9/11 was a welcome excuse for the Afghanistan invasion which obviously
also served ulterior motives on the “chessboard.” It explains in addition why
we have no interest in leaving the country and the current date of 2014 is
likely to be postponed if the Afghans allow it. The pipeline “pipedream” has
been discussed here on previous occasions especially in the October 1, 2002 (One
Year Later) and August 11, 2011 (Misguided Arrogant Incompetence) essays.
Brzezinski’s
book was published in 1997 and Iraq is already treated essentially as an
American protectorate while Israel is mentioned only in the context of the
Palestinian problem which might lead to a radicalization of the Muslim world.
On the whole the book was optimistic in its outlook as to how America might
retain its global predominance in the 21st century. But the actual
policies pursued after 9/11 brought a rude awakening and led to another book in
2007: Second Chance-Three Presidents and
the Crisis of American Superpower. President Bush 41 was criticized for
having failed to grasp the moment after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire to
enunciate a global vision for America and for not having moved decisively on the
Palestinian issue. Nevertheless, Professor Brzezinski rated his overall
performance as deserving a “Solid: B.” President Clinton got only an “Uneven:
C,” while Bush 43 was a catastrophe and received a “Failing: F.” The reason for
the F was, “A simplistic dogmatic worldview prompts self-destructive unilateralism.”
Brzezinski concluded the book with these words, “It is essential that America’s
second chance after 2008 be more successful than the first for there will be no third chance [italics in the original].
America urgently needs to fashion a truly post-Cold War globalist foreign
policy. It still can do so, provided the next president, aware that the
‘strength of a great power is diminished if it ceases to serve an idea,’
tangibly relates American power to the aspirations of politically awakened
humanity.”
Three
years into the Obama administration it is obvious that this has not happened.
The second chance is gone and the outlook for a third one is indeed bleak when
one considers the current state of American domestic politics. This interaction
between foreign and domestic issues is the second strand, which has been
alluded to above, and has received only scant attention by Brzezinski. In our
country the president does not really have the power popular imagination
ascribes to him because as leader of his party he is restrained by its wishes
and the need to keep the administration in office. There is, therefore, an
inherent conflict and Bush 41 became its victim. He could not have achieved the
breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Brzezinski chides him for because
domestic Jewish interests trumped his foreign policy goals. The same applied to
Clinton who could not make major concessions to Arafat while his wife, Hillary,
was running for a Senate seat in heavily Jewish New York. These are realities
and unless the country comes to grips with them there is no hope for the type
of enlightened global policy Brzezinski had in mind. Our Iran policy is
dictated by the fear that the “mad Mullahs” would use a nuclear weapon, once
they have one, against Israel which would lead to another holocaust. This has
to be prevented at all cost, “with all options against Iran on the table.”
Translated this means a pre-emptive strike which might produce exactly what one
wanted to avoid. Under these circumstances Israel instead of being an anchor,
as Huntsman proclaimed, could actually be a millstone around our neck.
What
our domestic friends of Zionism, be they Jewish or Christian neglect to see is
that Israel has not escaped from the current protest movements sweeping the world.
Shimon Peres, its aged President, warned last week that there is a battle going
on for “Israel’s soul.” He referred to the increasing power of the
ultra-orthodox segment which now clashes with the secular element of the
population. But the metaphor of “Israel’s soul” is inadequate because as Faust
complained: ZweiSeelenwohnen ach in meinerBrust (Alas, two souls reside in my breast) and one
wants to separate itself from the other. In the Jewish context it goes back to
Napoleon’s question to the French Sanhedrin: are you a religion or are you a
nation? The answer then was “a religion and loyal Frenchmen;” now in Israel it
is “Both.” This, of course, brings up the question what kind of a nation: a
theocracy where Talmudic law rules, or a liberal democracy with equal rights
for all the inhabitants of the land. A student of history will immediately
detect the similarity to the Maccabean era of the 1st century BC and
its civil wars, with the only difference that the “Hellenists” are now called
“secular” and the “God fearing,” “orthodox” or “ultra-orthodox.” The Israelis
must sort this out for themselves and it is a grave error on part of our
Zionists, who unfortunately have a great deal of influence on our election outcome,
to enforce their idealistic tunnel vision on our foreign policy. Prime Minister
Netanyahu also faces an election and whether or not he will try to avoid defeat
at the polls by a foreign policy adventure, such as bombing Iran, is another
question.
The
Iranian nuclear quest is, however, only one of the many areas of concern. Last
month Kim Jong Il of North Korea died and his son Kim
Jong Un is an untested unknown individual. His youth and inexperience present a
potential hazard. We don’t know what he will do with this impoverished but
nuclear armed country and the hope is that older generals will curb his
appetite for glory. On the geostrategic level a divided Korea, regardless of
the wishes of the population, remains a priority for America because once the
two halves are united they may no longer want our troops there. Under these
circumstances our “Far East anchor,” as Brzezinski called Japan, would also be
in jeopardy because our bases there are officially needed to protect the Korean
“tripwire.”
All
of these problems are compounded by the economic woes of the world. Our
employment situation is still grim, the gap between the have and the have-nots
continues to widen and street protests, with or without violence, are bound to
arise again once the weather gets a little warmer. The same applies to Europe
where the Euro continues its slide and how long Mrs. Merkel can retain German
support for her pan-European policies is another question. The Brits have
already bailed out and put their bets on America rather than Europe which does
not bode well for the continent. In Russia, Putin is fighting for his political
life and the opposition is liberally supported by America’s NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) as well as probably the CIA, because the
weaker Russia becomes the better for our prospects in Central Asia. Obviously
Putin knows this and how he will react cannot be fathomed at this time. But one
thing is certain it is not likely to make him more well-disposed to our
country.
In
view of the visceral dislike Republicans harbor against Obama it is highly improbable
that any meaningful legislation for the public good can be enacted this year.
All eyes are on the November election as if this could solve any of the
problems which have been touched on here. So what can one say about our
prospects? Let’s hope that we can somehow “muddle through,” and avoid the
looming disasters so that 2012 will get only a passing glance in the history
books rather than becoming another hallmark.
February 1, 2011
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
As part of my subscriptions to journals
and magazines I receive Foreign Affairs
which is published bi-monthly by the “Council on
Foreign Relations.” This is a private nonprofit nonpartisan organization and
represents this country’s most influential foreign policy “thinktank.” As such
it has also been attacked as a cabal which is out to destroy the United States
in favor of a one world government, single currency and economic policy, controlled
by a hidden, small, unelected oligarchy. Although anyone can submit an article
to the journal only those which come from, what the editors assume to be,
authoritative sources are published. As everything else they are not free from
bias by the contributors. Nevertheless, since I am curious and like to
entertain all viewpoints before making up my mind on a given issue and since it
does represent the Zeitgeist among
the professionals who shape our present, and thereby the future, it is a
valuable resource. After initial semi-retirement I often went to the Marriott
library of the University and looked up old issues of the 1930s and 1940s in
order to see how events of which I had been an eyewitness in Austria were
reported here and found them fairly accurate.
Two weeks ago came the January/February
issue which was devoted to the 90th anniversary of the magazine and
is a rather hefty tome of 208 pages. Its theme was, “The Clash of Ideas. The ideological battles that made the modern world–and will shape
the future.” It was gratifying to see that the emphasis was on “ideas”
rather than Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” After the collapse of the
Soviet Union Huntington had agreed with Fukuyama’s thesis that Hegel’s “End of
History” was about to make its debut. Liberal
democracy had emerged triumphant over all its foes in the 20th century and
Huntington wrote that ideologies had become obsolete. In his opinion the
problem the world faced now was cultural and more specifically the battle lines
were drawn between the West and the Muslim world. As a result of this notion we
have seen during the past two decades the seamless replacement of
“Islamofascism” for Communism, which allows for the perpetuation of wars. But ideologies
are not obsolete, because the mental concepts of leading people drive their
actions, and if these are supported, for whatever reason, by a large segment of
the people in their respective countries, history is made. The anniversary
issue gives us a glimpse of how foreign leaders of the epoch making 1920’s to
the 1940’s were portrayed.
Since the issue is, as mentioned, large I
shall limit myself to portions of the chapter, “How We Got Here” and one
contemporary article. In the Preface “Making Modernity Work” the editor, Gideon
Rose, wrote: “The basic question of modernity has been how to reconcile
capitalism and mass democracy, and since the postwar order came up with a good
answer, it has managed to weather all subsequent challenges.” Rose admits that fault
lines exist, as evidenced by the current serious economic problems brought
about by “reckless and predatory financial practices.” But he also reminds us
that in view of the “far greater obstacles that have been overcome in the past,
optimism would seem the better long-term bet.” This may be true, but when one
listens to the Republican debates as they are shown on our TV screens and the,
I must say partly vicious, denunciations of President Obama’s policies which
must be reversed at all cost, one can be forgiven for harboring some serious
concerns about the immediate future.
The articles in the mentioned chapter
could not be printed in full but are excerpts, nevertheless they do provide
valuable insights and I shall largely let the authors speak for themselves
through extensive quotes. The first one entitled “Lenin and Mussolini,” by
Harold Laski (Professor in the London School of Economic and Political
Science), was published in September 1923. Some key sections are:
“It is common to
both movements that their power is built upon the force they can command. It is
common to them, also, that they have rigorously suppressed all opposition to
themselves and dismissed as unimportant the forms of constitutionalism.… For
Lenin, the state is in fact a method of protecting the owners of property; and
the true division of men is into those who do not own possessions other than
their power to labor. The life of the state is an eternal struggle between
them. They have no interests in common.… The method he advocates…a dictatorship
of iron rigor is to consolidate the new regime until the period of transition
has been effectively bridged.…
The Italian movement is different in
origin, but its ultimate spirit is in no-wise different. Leninism has been the
dictatorship of a party, Fascism is a dictatorship of
a man.… Liberty, for him, is the parent of anarchy if it implies hostility from
opponents and the proof of disloyalty, involving expulsion from the party, if
it comes from his declared supporters.”
In
view of the basic similarity of the systems which differed only in the ruthlessness
with which their goals were pursued, Laski wondered why Lenin had received
international disdain, including an allied invasion of his country, while
Mussolini “has been the subject of wide-spread enthusiasm.” He concluded that this
difference “is the outcome of their antithetic attitudes to property.” It is
noteworthy that Laski spoke of Lenin in the past, although the latter died only
in January of the following year. He was, however, already disabled by a stroke
and no longer in charge of the government.
The next article, written by Victor Chernov (Russian Social-Revolutionary writer; Minister of
Agriculture in the Kerensky Government) and published in March 1924, entitled
“Lenin,” can be regarded as a summation of this man’s character and
achievements.
“Lenin was a
great man. He was not merely the greatest man in his party; he was its
uncrowned king, and deservedly. He was its head, its
will, I should even say he was its heart were it not that
both the man and the party implied in themselves heartlessness as a duty.…
Nothing to him was worse than sentimentality, a name he was ready to apply to
all moral and ethical considerations in politics.… Lenin would undoubtedly have
reversed this dictum [war is continuation of policy by other means] and said
that politics is the continuation of war under another guise…and as politics is
war the rules of war [murder of the enemy is valor, robbery is requisition,
deceit is tactics etc.] constitute its principles.… His power lay in the
extraordinary, absolute lucidity … of his propositions. He followed his logic
unflinchingly even to an absurd conclusion and left nothing diffuse and
unexplained unless it were necessary to do so for
tactical purposes.… Ideas were made as concrete and simple as possible. This
was most evident in Lenin’s rhetoric. … He never rose too high above its [he
audience’s] level, nor did he ever omit to descend to it at just the necessary moment,
in order not to break the continuity of the hypnosis which dominated the will
of his flock; and more than any one he realized that a mob is like a horse that
wants to be firmly bestrode and spurred, that wants to feel the hand of a
master.… His love of the proletariat was the same despotic, exacting and
merciless love with which, centuries ago, Torquemada burned people for their
salvation.”
After
Lenin’s death a power struggle ensued between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky believed
that the Soviet revolution could not last unless the model was exported
world-wide. Stalin opted for the nationalist solution of “socialism in one
country” first. Russia had been defeated twice within a span of 15 years and
this had to be prevented in the future, regardless of cost. It could, however,
only be achieved by rapid industrialization of the entire country. Lenin’s New
Economic Policy (NEP), which was instituted in 1921 and had allowed a limited
return of private property, especially for the peasants, was abandoned. The peasants
were “collectivized” and resistance punished with death or expulsion to the
Gulag archipelago. That this policy led to massive starvation and millions of
deaths was for Stalin simply the price that had to be paid to secure the
country against the enemies from abroad. The article on “Stalin’s Power”
published by Paul Scheffer (former Moscow
correspondent for the Berliner Tagblatt and at the time of writing stationed in
Washington) in July 1930 described the character of the man.
“Stalin is not a
man who appeals to the sympathy of crowds or stirs their imaginations. He is
not an electric person. Let us be more blunt: he is
frankly unattractive, and all the more so since he knows he is, and shows by
his demeanor that he does not care.… You feel at once that he is dangerous. …
What worried Lenin in Stalin’s case was the latter’s secret, slinking,
anonymous expansion of personal power in the party and his preference for the
backstairs to more conspicuous routes. The tactics which Stalin was later to
use with such success against Trotsky, first to silence him and then to reduce
him to complete helplessness, he used against Lenin, the moment the latter fell
sick.… Stalin is the dictator of dictators. Only he prefers not to look the
part. He is not Mussolini. Yet he has one trait in common with Mussolini–an
extraordinary suppleness and pliancy–and he demonstrates it under a more
difficult test.… He understood, without shirking any responsibilities that
active socialism and private initiative were incompatible in the same economic
area, and he acted resolutely on the perception that the only salvation for the
Soviet power lay in the ruthless socialization of the entire country,
irrespective of the immediate consequences.… His success is closely bound up
with his perceptions of these factors. At the same time his success seems to be
inseparably bound up with Lenin’s characterization of him: ‘crude and narrowminded.’”
The
change of small individual farms to the large collectives was, however, only
the beginning. For Soviet society to succeed repression by the government was
not sufficient; a complete mental change of the citizen’s role in the relation
to the state had to be achieved. This effort was described in “Making the Collective
Man in Soviet Russia” and published in January 1932 by William Henry Chamberlin
(Soviet correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor).
“The individual
human personality is fighting a losing battle against heavy odds in Russia
today.… What is perhaps not generally realized is that man himself is the first
and most important objective of Soviet planning and that the tendency to
replace man, the individual, by collective man, the product of social groups
and forces, is one of the most important and interesting currents in Soviet
life.… From the cradle to the grave the life and thought of the Soviet citizen
are mapped out for him so far as external influences can be mobilized to
achieve this end.… From the Young Pioneers [entry at age 8] it is a natural
upward step to the Union of Communist Youth with a membership of more than four
million young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Here the
clay of human personality that has been given preliminary shape in the Pioneer
stage is subjected to further and more vigorous psychologic
kneading.… The tremendous pressure of “obshestvennost,” which might be loosely translated as
organized public opinion, does not slacken when the Soviet citizen grows out of
Communist Youth age and takes up his regular work in life.…When the Soviet
citizen picks up a newspaper, no matter which one it may be … he gets precisely
the same picture of political and economic events.… The radio, which is
entirely under state or public control, broadcasts a vast amount of political
agitation and economic exposition.… Even concerts are often accompanied by
short explanatory lectures in which the class origin of the composer is
analyzed and his music is discussed as reflecting both his
origin, whatever it may be, and the general historical problems of his time. …
So the individual personality is attacked from every side by forces which are
all controlled from a common center and which are in accordance with a
prearranged plan to remake the traditional human individualist into a collective
man, a citizen of the future communist society.”
Stalin
was, however, not the only one who pursued this goal he had a counterpart in Italy.
Giovanni Gentile, “philosopher and member of the Italian
Senate; Minister of Public Instruction in the first Cabinet of Premier
Mussolini,” discussed “The Philosophic Basis of Fascism” in January of 1928.
“In the
definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the comprehensive, or as
Fascists say, the ‘totalitarian’ scope of its doctrine, which concerns itself
not only with political organization and political tendency, but with the whole
will and thought and feeling of the nation. …Fascism is not a philosophy. Much
less is it a religion.… Mussolini himself has boasted that he is a tempista, that his real pride is ‘good timing.’ He makes decisions
and acts on them at the precise moment when all the conditions and
considerations which make them feasible and opportune are properly matured.…
For Fascism the state is a wholly spiritual creation. It is a national State, because,
from the Fascist point of view, the nation itself is a creation of the mind and
is not a material presupposition, is not a datum of nature.… The Fascist State
… is a people’s state and, as such, the democratic State par excellence.… Hence the need of the Party, and of all the
instruments of propaganda and education which Fascism uses to make the thought
and will of the Duce the thought and will of the masses. Hence the enormous
task which Fascism sets itself in trying to bring the whole mass of the people,
beginning with the little children, inside the fold of the Party.… The Fascist
conception of liberty merits passing notice.… Freedom can exist only within the
State, and the State means authority.… Fascism has its own solution to the
paradox of liberty and authority. The authority of the State is absolute. It
does not compromise, it does not bargain, it does not surrender any portion of
its field to other moral or religious principles which may interfere with the
individual conscience.… The Fascist corporative State supplies a representative
system more sincere and more in touch with realities than any other previously
devised and is therefore freer than the old liberal State.”
For
space considerations I gave only the essence of Signore Gentile’s article but
what comes through loud and clear is that the State, as personified by
Mussolini, brooks no dissent and just as in the Soviet Union a new “Uomo Italiano” has to be created
starting with little children. We can also see here the first beginning of what
later became the “People’s Democracies,” as sponsored by the Soviet Union after
WWII.
Emphasis now shifted to the gathering
storm in Germany as described by Erich Koch Weser, “former Minister of Justice
if the German Republic, recently leader of the Democratic Party.” His article
was entitled “Radical Forces in Germany,” and published in April 1931. It deals
with the economic catastrophe which had overtaken Germany at the time and its
insights should not go unheeded, especially in the current economic crisis.
“Economic
depression and political radicalism go hand in hand. When economic distress
reaches a certain point, the individual citizen no longer uses his political
power to save the public weal, but only to help himself. His ideal of political
liberty pales before his ideal of economic equality. Once this sentiment has
eaten its way into the hearts of the majority of the nation, any political
system is doomed to failure. It is useless to tell the embittered masses that
their political and economic rulers are not responsible for their misfortunes.…
Intelligent and orderly as the German people are, patiently as they have borne
the sufferings of war and inflation, they are in danger of falling into this
reckless state of mind.… Here is a population, well-equipped from the point of
health and intellect, which in general is forced to be satisfied with an income
barely sufficient for a minimum existence. One-eighth of those who are able and
eager to work are unable to find any opportunity to do so. And those who are
employed see no possibility of little by little rising to positions where their
abilities will have fuller scope. Above all–and this is perhaps the worst
aspect of the situation–not only are great numbers of persons forced to abandon
any hope of advancement themselves but they must also relinquish the idea of
giving their children an adequate education and thus opening up a way for them
to better their situation.”
By
the following year conditions had deteriorated further which prompted the
previously quoted Paul Scheffer to write “Hitler:
Phenomenon and Portent” in April of 1932. In the article he described the mood
and background of the people who attended Hitler’s speeches.
“Hitler
is the most successful orator that Germany has ever possessed…. It is an interesting and a stirring experience
to listen to Hitler–his bitterest enemies have often fallen under his spell…. The predominant element in the picture
[audience at Hitler’s speeches] is what is so aptly described in Germany as the
‘declassed’ middle class: creatures visibly down at the heel, spiritually
crushed in the struggle with everyday reality, distraught under a perpetual
worry about the indispensable necessaries of life…. They are all people who have had conceptions
of life, and conceptions of their personal rôles in life, with which their present situation stands in
violent contrast…. Fundamentally it is a
question of the hard times which have settled over Germany ever since the war.
Great fortunes have come into being, though they are probably more apparent
than real. Meantime … [for] the middle classes, which used to be Germany’s
backbone, the standard of living is far below the pre-war level. Since 1929 it
has sunk to unprecedented depths…. The
effects of the capitalist system also weigh down upon them. They hate the
‘plutocrats.’ Their battle cry is what they call the ‘Jewish financial tyranny’….
Hitler’s idea is to give the people a
common meeting ground of convictions which abolish all distinctions and in
which all share…. Hitler can lay hold on
them in their innermost sensibilities when he raises his cry for unity,
promises them the ‘respect’ of the world as the fruit of unity…”
The
next article, by Hamilton Fish Armstrong (editor of Foreign Affairs) published in July 1933, describes the beginnings
of Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship. Although I lived at the center of these
events and my socio-political memories extend to February 1934 I had never seen
in the American literature the clear line which led from Marx through Lenin to
Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. In America Hitler is seen in isolation as a
“megalomanic madman who wanted to rule the world.” Yet, all of the mentioned
four dictators had, whether they admitted it or not, Karl Marx as their
Godfather and they were all cut from the same cloth. One does not associate
Hitler with Marx because he presented himself as the antithesis but he
personified National Socialism and the social anti-capitalistic aspects did
result from the writings of Marx and Engels. The same goes for Mussolini. It is
remarkable to what extent their two lives paralleled each other and I might
write an article, on another occasion, which provides a comparison.
The ideal the four dictators aspired to
in their own way were Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” and his “Antichrist.” Regardless
of nationality they subscribed to the same basic ideology that human society
has to be totally transformed. The individual citizens of a given nation would have
to realize that they are only cogs of a vast machine. This can be the State or
the Party which will see that their needs, as perceived by the operators of
that machine, are met according to Marx’s dictum: “From each according to his
abilities to each according to his needs.” Under these circumstances absolute
obedience by the individual is the norm. Anyone who disagrees is either insane
or a traitor and must be dealt with accordingly. But it must also be admitted
that the idea of the totalitarian state would never have taken root without the
devastations of the preceding war and the resulting treaties which were
regarded as unfair even by the victorious Italians. To the material losses one
needs to add the psychological impact which had demonstrated that human life
was cheap because millions were killed on the battlefields and additional
millions died from disease and starvation. The German word for battle, Schlacht, is
actually more descriptive and accurate because it denotes “slaughter.”
I shall return to the fundamental
question about the role of the individual in the state and capitalism vs.
socialism in another installment and stay for now with the most important issue
of war and peace. It is dealt with in the previously mentioned article about current
events in Foreign Affairs. The
article is by Mathew Koenig (Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations) and entitled, “Time to Attack Iran. Why a strike is the
least bad option.” He believes that “Iran’s rapid nuclear development will
ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict
and a possible nuclear war.” But are these really the only options? Is there
not a third one which removes Iran’s perceived need for a nuclear shield to
protect itself from an increasingly belligerent America because the latter
feels obligated to defend Israel? There is only one Republican candidate for
the presidency, Ron Paul MD, who has the courage to say this in public and he
has no chance to be nominated, let alone elected.
When one looks at the remaining four
Republican candidates for office one cannot but feel apprehension. Apart from
Ron Paul who has Christian values, but doesn’t speak of them, the other three,
who tout their Christianity, have no problem with advocating war. When in one
of the debates Ron Paul said that it might be time to consider extending the
golden rule to our foreign policy, some members of the audience booed. When the
moderator then asked the Mormon Mitt Romney what we should do with our enemies
the answer “Kill ‘em!” rang out, and the two Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick
Santorum heartily agreed. This is serious and it gets worse. In last Thursday’s
debate a gentleman in the audience who identified himself by name and as a
“Palestinian American Republican,” asked how a given candidate would help the
Palestinians in case he were to become president. Romney, as the would-be
frontrunner immediately began to lecture the poor man that the impasse in the
peace talks is the fault of the Palestinians. The Israelis would be happy with
a two-state solution the moment the Palestinians gave up terrorist attacks, as
well as the right to return to their previous domiciles, and assure Israel of
the right to exist as a Jewish state. Gingrich concurred and added that on his
first day in office he would sign an order that the American embassy be
transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Santorum also chimed in and in addition
lectured us on the danger of jihadists coming to Cuba, Venezuela and Central
America.
That the suggested embassy transfer
would immediately inflame the Muslim world, create thousands of new Jihadists
and make further conflict inevitable seems not to have occurred to these
gentlemen. There are alternatives to war and our politicians could learn
something from sailboat racers. There exists a set of international rules we have
to abide by and in order to win you don’t ram your competitor’s boat but you
use tactics within the rules. One of the most effective, for a given situation,
is to literally take the wind out of his sails. This is what should and could be
done. The forces which prevent us from following this path will be discussed in
the next installment as well as other pertinent articles from Foreign Affairs.
March 1, 2012
FOREIGN AFFAIRS PART II
In last month’s installment I
discussed mainly those articles from the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs which dealt with the
leaders of totalitarian states who shaped the history of the 20th
century. I also briefly mentioned the article by Matthew Kroenig, “Time to
Attack Iran. Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” in the context of the
current debates by the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination.
In view of the importance of this issue the article and its logic behind it
will now be discussed in greater detail.
The magazine tells us that the author of
the Iran article is “Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations [the magazine’s parent organization] and the author of “Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and
the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.” During the year spanning July 2010 to July
2011 he also was a “special Advisor in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, responsible for defense strategy and policy on Iran.” In addition, the
Internet informs us that Dr. Kroenig is Assistant Professor in the Department
of Government at Georgetown University in Washington DC, received his Political
Science Ph.D. in 2007, is a frequent guest on various TV programs and has
published extensively on nuclear issues. Given his age and CV he is not likely
to have experienced war at first hand and may only have a theoretical awareness
of the suffering it entails for its innocent victims on both sides of a given
conflict.
Let me give his conclusion first and
subsequently deal with its rationale.
“With
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq winding down and the United States facing
economic hardship at home, Americans have little appetite for further strife.
Yet Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to
choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war. Faced with
that decision, the United States should conduct a surgical strike on Iran’s
nuclear facilities, absorb an inevitable round of retaliation, and then seek to
quickly de-escalate the crisis. Addressing the threat now will spare the United
States from confronting a far more dangerous situation in the future.”
In
essence Dr. Kroenig feels that war is inevitable so let’s have a limited one now,
rather than a big one later. Yet this was precisely the logic of the German
General Staff in July 1914. They were aware that Russia was rapidly building up
its military forces in order to avoid another defeat such as they had suffered
by the Japanese ten years earlier. It was generally assumed that by 1915 Russia
would be fully armed and in view of its massive manpower would inevitably
emerge victorious in a European war. Germany and Austria thought they could get
by with a limited war but instead lost their empires.
This is a lesson Dr. Kroenig has not yet
considered. Let us now concentrate on his major assumption that, “attempting to
manage a nuclear-armed Iran is not only a terrible option but the worst.” The purpose
of the article was to provide the justification for this statement. In it Dr.
Kroenig first set out the points made by critics of a pre-emptive nuclear
strike by the U.S. and tried to demonstrate that they are not valid. He then
discussed the potential reprisals by Iran which are likely to take place and
ended up with the benefits to us and the world if his advice were to be heeded.
The dangers of a bombing campaign
against Iran’s nuclear facilities were listed as: a raid would fail to stop its
nuclear production, would bring about not only retaliation but a global
economic crisis and might even lead to full-scale war. While the author did not
negate these potential problems he made a determined effort to minimize them.
He believed that if the attack were to be carried out by the U.S. instead of
Israel its chances of success would be immeasurably increased because we not
only have better bunker-busting bombs, but also precision guided missiles and
better intelligence information than the Israelis.
Civilian “collateral damage” would be
limited by attacking at night. Under these circumstances “the majority of the
victims would be the military personnel, engineers, scientists and technicians
working at the facilities.” I found this pseudo-humanitarian stance amazing and
would like to ask Dr. Kroenig if he would feel the same way if he had been
working at Los Alamos in the early 1960s and the Soviets had decided on a
surgical strike to obliterate that facility. To further minimize civilian
casualties he suggested that the assault should concentrate on the
“uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan, the heavy power reactor at Arak, and
various centrifuge-manufacturing sites near Natanz and Tehran, all of which are
located aboveground and are highly vulnerable to air strikes.” These sites are
also supposedly sufficiently distant from built up areas which would limit
civilian casualties.
This scenario left him, however, with
the problems of the nuclear plant in Natanz and in Qom. But these can be
dismissed in his opinion, because
“…although it
[Natanz] is buried under reinforced concrete and ringed by air-defenses, would
not survive an attack from the U,S. new bunker-bustingbomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator,
capable of penetrating up to 200 feet of reinforced concrete. The plant in Qom
is built into the side of a mountain and thus represents a more challenging
target. But the facility is not yet operational and still contains little
nuclear equipment, so if the United States acted quickly, it would not need to
destroy it.”
Dr. Kroenig assumed furthermore that
once the mentioned targets were eliminated it would take years to rebuild them
and apparently he thinks that the moment our spies in the sky see something to
this effect the bombing would resume. As to the inevitable reprisals by Iran
they would be quite limited.
“Tehran
would certainly feel like it needed to respond to a U.S. attack, in order to
reestablish deterrence and save face domestically. But it would also likely
seek to calibrate its actions to avoid starting a conflict that could lead to
the destruction of its military or the regime itself.”
So
let us get this straight. The “mad Mullahs” are such a threat to us and Israel
that they must be prevented from getting the bomb by any and all means. Yet
once they are being bombed they return to sanity and knuckle down to our demands.
This logic defies the facts of nature: a mad dog won’t become docile by
repeatedly hitting him on the head. It’s obvious that he’ll just become more
furious.
Among the retaliations against U.S.
troops or Allies which we might face under Dr. Kroenigs
scenario, are the
“launching of missiles at military installations or civilian
populations in the Gulf or perhaps even Europe. It could activate its proxies
abroad, stirring tensions in Iraq, disrupting the Arab Spring, and ordering
terror attacks against Israel and the United States. This could draw Israel or
other states into the fighting and compel the United States to escalate the
conflict in response. Powerful allies of Iran, including China and Russia, may
attempt to economically and diplomatically isolate the United States. In the
midst of such spiraling violence, neither side may see a clear path out of the
battle, resulting in a long-lasting devastating war, whose impact may
critically damage the United States’ standing in the Muslim world.”
These
are indeed dire consequences including the additional one of closing the Strait
of Hormuz. In the face of all these disasters Dr. Kroenig remained optimistic
that most of them could be avoided if the U.S. were to initially prepare its
allies and publicly proclaim “red lines.” The major one would be that we assure
Iran that we are only interested in destroying their nuclear capability rather
than seeking regime change. In his opinion the mullah’s will believe this and
limit their response to a token retaliation. I personally regard this as a
dangerous fantasy which totally ignores well known facts about how human beings
react when their vital interests or ideals are threatened. The massive
outpouring of hatred against us in Afghanistan, which included killings, after
the accidental burning of copies of the Koran ought to give those who advocate
further acts of war against Muslim countries some second thoughts. The
expectation that acts of war elicit reason in the attacked has no precedent in
human history. That Israel got by with bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor and the
presumed one in Syria does not compare, because these were single strikes while
the destruction of Iran’s program would require a sustained effort.
While these concerns are, of course,
known to responsible people the war mongering continues unabated. On February 18
Naftali Bennett, was a featured guest on the Saturday night weekly Huckabee
Show. Mr. Bennett, whose views were fervently endorsed by the host, is a
high-tech millionaire Israeli businessman who holds the rank of major in the
reserve of the IDF. From 2006-2008 he was the current Prime Minister’s,
Benjamin Netanyahu, Chief of Staff and in January 2010 he became Director
General of the Yesha Council (an umbrella
organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank),which led the fight against the
settlement freeze. In April 2011 he co-founded MyIsrael, Israel's largest national movement, with over 75,000 Israeli members. Mr.
Bennett told us that
Iran has a “maniacal radical Islamic regime” and is “an octopus of terror.” Furthermore,
“We have to stop them, and yes, it is imminent.” While he preferred the U.S. to
do the bombing because of our better weaponry, he also stated, “If necessary
we’ll do the job for the world but please, please don’t tell us to stand back
and just wait and I guess pray for something good to happen. We’ve got to do
the job. If Obama won’t do it, please let Israel do the job.”
When one
considers Mr. Bennett’s background these views are understandable but they
hardly deserved the fervent applause by Governor Huckabee and his audience. Yet
these
events must be seen in the context of an intense Israeli propaganda war to
convince the American public that Israel would be doing us and the world a
great favor if she were to undertake the onerous task of bombing Iran rather
than leaving that job to us. This propaganda effort does not stop at the U.S.
public in general, as well as Congress, but will extend directly to the White
House on March 5 when Prime Minister Netanyahu will confer with President Obama
on this issue. The timing is not accidental because it coincides with the March
4-6 annual meeting of AIPAC, Israel’s prime lobbying arm in Congress, which has
repeatedly been discussed in these essays.
Jeffrey Goldberg published an article in
Atlantic onFebruary 25 under
the title: Coming Up: The Definitive Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The article,
which can be found on the Internet under http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/coming-up-the-definitive-obama-netanyahu-meeting/253497/,was based on the opinion of Ari Shavit who
is a senior correspondent and editor for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. Mr. Shavit is quoted as having
stated,
“The
Netanyahu-Obama meeting in two weeks will be definitive. If the U.S. president
wants to prevent a disaster, he must give Netanyahu iron-clad guarantees that
the United States will stop Iran in any way necessary and at any price, after
the 2012 elections. If Obama doesn't do this, he will obligate Netanyahu to act
before the 2012 elections. The moral responsibility for what may happen does
not lie with the heirs of Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. The moral
responsibility will be borne by the man sitting in the chair that was once
Franklin Roosevelt's.”
The
word that immediately came to mind upon reading this was: Chutzpah! Americans have
to be made to feel guilty, and lacking in moral courage, if they don’t do
Israel’s bidding in a matter that is clearly against our national interest.
Even Goldberg, who is Jewish, voiced mild disapproval of this stance but it shows,
nevertheless, the tremendous pressure that will be brought upon President Obama
to knuckle down under Israel’s demands.
The views of the three authors
Kroenig, Bennett and Shavit which were discussed here and are endorsed by all
but one (Ron Paul) of the Republican candidates for the presidency are,
however, not unopposed. Although all authors agree that a nuclear armed Iran
would change the situation in the Middle East for the worse, there is
considerable disagreement about when military action should be taken and even if
it is necessary at all. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Martin Dempsey, has publicly declared that an airstrike on Iran is at this time
not in our best interest. He has also recently gone to Israel to convince his
counterparts that they ought to abstain for the time being, because it would do
more harm than good. Our Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, also shows little
enthusiasm for the urgency of a war.
While our warmongers portray the Israeli
public opinion as uniformly in favor of a bombing campaign this is likewise
propaganda rather than fact. There is a peace movement in Israel, not only with
the Palestinians but the region in general, which gets undercut and is not
reported on by our media. Readers of the Internet can inform themselves,
however, of what other people in that country, albeit currently out of power,
really think. For instance ex-Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy expressed his
opposition to Netanyahu’s bellicose attitude by stating last November that
“Iran is not an existential threat. … The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,”
and that “An attack on Iran
could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.” This
view was echoed by “Retired army general Nathan Sharony, head of
the Council for Peace and Security, which includes over
1,000 former high-ranking security officials with dovish
views, says the positions of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and ex-army intelligence head Shlomo Gazitagainst an attack on
Iran are ‘acceptable’ to him” (http://972mag.com/warriors-against-war-with-iran/34831/).
Dagan has also been quoted as having said that an attack on Iran “is the
stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Warning voices are likewise not lacking
in our country but they are not getting the attention they deserve because the
major TV networks fail to air them. The left of center Jewish magazine Tikun Olamstated
in an article on February 17 entitled “Understanding Iran,” that
the current bellicose rhetoric can get us “sucked into a military escalation
that will likely spiral out of control. Barack Obama ought to ask himself if
this is what he wants his foreign policy to look like going into a presidential
election?”
Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke
Chair in Strategy at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) and
is a recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal,
published an extensive review on Iran’s nuclear capability and noted that, “Iran will be
limited to relatively low yield, non-boosted fission weapons for some years
into the future while Israel already has high yield boosted and thermonuclear
weapons. … In actual practice, Israel can already deliver an existential strike
on Iran, and will have far more capability to damage Iran than Iran is likely
to have against Israel for the next decade.”
A more recent well-reasoned article on
the issue was published by Scott Peterson in the February 27 issue of the
Christian Science Monitor entitled “If they get the bomb … then what?” Peterson
carefully laid out the consequences of an attack and also quoted the Israeli
military historian Martin van Crefeld in answer to the question raised in the
headline: “Absolutely nothing will happen. Israel has what it takes to deter
Iran, and the Iranians know it.”
To my surprise even Dennis Ross, who has
been called “Israel’s lawyer” by Aaron David Miller (Wither Zionism?Revisited. March 1, 2009) ,
wrote in a NY Times article on February
14, “But before we assume that diplomacy can’t work, it is worth considering
that Iranians are now facing crippling pressure and that their leaders have in
the past altered their behavior in response to such pressure. Notwithstanding
all their bluster, there are signs that Tehran is now looking for a way out.
The Obama administration has now created a situation in which diplomacy has a
chance to succeed.”
Finally and equally surprising, while I
wrote these pages the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs was delivered to our
mailbox which contained an article by Colin H. Kahl “Not time to Attack Iran.
Why War Should Be a Last Resort.” The surprise lay not so much in the article
itself but in the author. Dr. Kahl is an Associate Professor in the Security
Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service and a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.” We are
also told that in 2009-11 he was a U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for the Middle East. It is clearly unusual for a member of the same university
to publicly voice his disapproval of the views advocated by a junior member and
shows how sensitive and important this issue really is. In the article Dr. Kahl
took great pains to systematically refute each of the excuses given for the
attack by Dr. Kroenig and the minimization of the adverse consequences which
can be expected.
Although most of them have already been
mentioned there are some additional specifics which have not been. Among these
is the effect on the Arab Spring. This popular uprising is far from over and it
is likely that if we or Israel were to attack Iran, Muslim solidarity would
overcome the Sunni-Shia divide. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may promise to
pump more oil, as mentioned by Mr. Bennett, but he doesn’t do the pumping! This
chore falls on his subjects who toil away on the Western shore of the Gulf and
they happen to be Shia rather than Sunni. Will they sit idly by when their
cousins across this narrow waterway get bombed, or will they go on strike?
Under those circumstances one may also ask how stable the Saudi monarchy will
turn out to be.
Even if the oil workers were to remain
on their job the result of their efforts will still have to go through the
narrow Strait of Hormuz to reach the Indian Ocean. From there it has to go
through the Suez Canal, which is no longer in absolutely dependable friendly
hands, in order to get to Europe and the West. In the East there is another
chokepoint: the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, through which
about a quarter of the world’s oil-tanker transport passes. If it were to
become impassable the economies of India, China, South Korea and Japan would be
seriously compromised. I have mentioned that Egypt is no longer the friend it
once was when “our man in Cairo,” President Mubarak, was in charge.
Anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments are coming to the fore and although
the military regime has no interest in reneging on the peace treaty with Israel
the street protests may force them to. It would also be wise for our friends of
Israel, of the evangelical Huckabee type and AIPAC, to consider that over fifty
percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian. King Abdullah II might likewise
find himself in difficult straits once some of his people were to get “spring
fever.”
The impact on the fragile economic
recovery would, of course, be massive. Gas prices at the pump have already
reached unprecedented heights for the time of the year in our country and Bill
O’Reilley chastised Obama for having allowed this to occur. It has nothing to
do with our president and everything with speculation and uncertainty about the
constant banging of the war drums. The mentioned choke points and especially
the Strait of Hormuz need not be deliberately closed by the respective
governments, the “accidental” sinking of some ships at strategic locations by
rogue groups might suffice to render the passage of large carriers unsafe.
Under those circumstances insurance premiums will go up and the cost passed on
to us in form of still higher prices at the pump. Under these circumstances the
Occupy Wall Street movement would really get some wind in their sails and our
pundits will wring their hands.
So where does this leave us in regard to
what we can expect from the upcoming Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The Prime
Minister will use the occasion for a massive propaganda blitz. He will appear
on a great many TV talk shows and do his best not only to frighten us but also
to remind us that we are duty bound to support little helpless Israel come hell
or high water because it is the only democracy and reliable friend we have in
the Middle East, surrounded by an ocean of enemies. That this poor beleaguered
country has an estimated 200 nukes at its disposal and is, therefore, in no
real danger will remain unmentioned. How our president is going to react to
this propaganda effort is as yet unknown. Will he give Netanyahu the “ironclad
guarantee,” the latter wants, or will he stand up for America’s and the world’s
need for stability in these uncertain times, which cannot be achieved through
military means? Time will tell.
Finally it is sobering to consider that
all our talk of individual liberty, democracy, will of the people, government
by the people for the people, currently stands exposed as a sham. The fate of the
industrialized societies of the world now hangs on the ideas and actions of two
men: Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama! Congress is irrelevant because war is
no longer declared, it is merely waged. If the Prime Minister walks away
dissatisfied, Israel may well commit some provocative act towards Iran,
possibly under a false flag, which will result in some type of retaliation and
we will be drawn, willy-nilly, into the maelstrom. The situation in the Gulf is
already fraught with danger and a Gulf of Tonkin event may happen at any
moment.
What should be done? The Cuban missile
crisis could serve as a model. A back channel to Tehran should immediately be
established which includes a Hot Line between Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the
person who is really in charge at this time rather than President Ahmedinajad,
and the White House. We talked to Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, etc. and kept the
world from disaster. It is now vital to do so with our current adversary,
because unless we talk to each other we will kill each other and no good can come
from that.
April 1, 2012
NETANYAHU’S GIFT
In last month’s installment I
mentioned the impending visit of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
to our country and its president. It tends to be common courtesy that guests
present the host with a present and this particular occasion was no exception
although the papers never mentioned what Mr. Netanyahu might have brought along
for the edification of Barack Obama. This omission was up to the astute Fareed
Zakaria, one of the few reliable media personalities of our time, who is not
only a syndicated journalist and Editor-at-Large of Time magazine but also host to a Sunday morning TV program entitled
GPS. The abbreviation does not stand for the usual “Global Positioning System,”
which it might as well, but for the “Global Public Square.”
Dr. Zakaria, who got his political
science PhD at Harvard, was born in Mumbai, India, and thereby brings a much
needed Asian perspective to the American scene. As Wikipedia informs us “he is
a self-described centrist,” which is another welcome difference from our
increasingly polarized and vituperative media circles. Furthermore, in contrast
to some others who dominate our TV screens he asks polite questions of his
guests, doesn’t interrupt them and doesn’t give speeches which expound his
point of view regardless of what his guests might want to say. As such he is
worth listening to and the transcripts of the programs can be found onhttp://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com.
The
March 11 Panel discussion (the transcript bears the date of March 12) dealt
with, “Iran, Israel and a Palestinian State.” Journalistic etiquette nowadays
demands that the public is presented with programs which are “fair and balanced;”
a slogan which is much abused by the network (FOX News) who proclaims it. But Zakaria
really tries to be and in the introduction of his guests he limited himself to:
“Daniel Levy is co-director of the Middle East Task Force of the New
America Foundation. Bret Stephensis the foreign affairs columnist for
the Wall Street Journal. Rula Jebreal is an Israeli-Arab
journalist who has worked as an anchorwoman in Italy and Egypt. Elliott Abrams
was deputy national security advisor in George W. Bush's administration.” Obviously,
considerably more could have been said especially in regard to Elliott Abrams’
past history (Saving the Bush Legacy, July 1, 2007). Bret Stephens is also an ardent
Jewish American Zionist, while the Israeli Daniel Levy represents that
country’s peace movement. Ms. Jebreal as the only non-Jew on the panel and an
Arab-Israeli citizen seemed to be in a somewhat difficult position. But as the
conversation went along it was fascinating to see how our two American Jews
were clearly in conflict with what one may call “the views on the ground” as
represented by Levy and Jebreal. Before going into the substance of the
discussion let me quote the first paragraph of the transcript.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Obama a gift in
Washington this week. It was a copy of the book of Esther, which tells the tale
of a benevolent king who saved the Jewish people from an enemy who wished to
destroy them - a Persian enemy (not very subtle).”
Since most
of us, who are neither Jewish nor bibliophiles, have only a fleeting
acquaintance with this piece of literature I shall now present its essence. The
book comes in two versions, a Hebrew and a Greek one, which differ to some
extent because they were written for different purposes. Since our president probably
got the Hebrew version, which is also in our Bibles, I shall limit myself at
this time to a synopsis of its contents and will discuss in the next
installment how it differs from that in the Greek Septuagint, as well as its
historical context.
The story
starts in the royal residence of Susa with a feast Ahasuerus, king of Persia,
had given for his nobles and when in his cups had ordered the queen, Vashti, to
come from her quarters to display her beauty. When she refused to do so the
king was puzzled and consulted with his wise men what to do about the
situation. He was told that that this behavior must not be tolerated because if
the king’s wife disobeys orders so would the wives of commoners and this could not
be condoned. Vashti should lose her crown and a beauty contest should be held
for a new regal consort. The scene now shifts to Mordecai, an exiled Jew. He had
a beautiful niece, Esther, who he had raised as his daughter after the death of
her parents. He enlisted her in the contest but insisted that she not disclose
“her race.” Esther did as ordered, won and became queen. A plot to kill the
king was then discovered. Mordecai, who apparently had some minor functions at
court, then informed the king - via Esther. The perpetrators were executed and
Mordecai’s good deed was recorded in the royal annals but apparently without
further reward.
A little
while later the king promoted Haman, “an Agagite,” to the equivalent of Prime
Minister. All the people at court paid the required honors, which included
bowing before the person, but Mordecai refused to do so. When Haman was told
that this refusal stemmed from Mordecai’s Judaism he not only became incensed
against the individual but the entire Jewish people and approached the king
with these words,
“There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people
in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all
people; neither keep they the king’s laws: therefore it is not for the king’s
profit to suffer them. If it please the king let it be
written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of
silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it
into the king’s treasuries.”
Kings have
never been averse to take money from whatever source but Ahasuerus was even
more gracious by supplying the funds from the royal treasury. A decree was sent
throughout the empire, “to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews
both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the
thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the
spoil of them for a prey.” Upon hearing this Mordecai was distressed and asked
Esther to intercede for her people. After initial trepidations she did and the
king relented. Haman as well as his ten sons was hanged and Mordecai advanced
to Haman’s position with full authority over the empire. In the king’s name he then
issued a decree for the Jews who “were in every city to gather themselves
together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to
perish, all the power of the people and province that would assault them, both
little ones and women, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.”
The Jews
were delighted, did as they were told
“and no man could withstand them; for the fear of
them fell upon all people. And all the rulers of the provinces, and the
lieutenants, and the deputies, and officers of the king, helped the Jews;
because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them. For Mordecai was great in the
king’s house, and his fame went out throughout all the provinces: for this man
Mordecai waxed greater and greater.”
A slaughter ensued; 500 non-Jewish men
perished in Susa and 75,000 in the rest of the empire. Days of rest and
feasting followed thereafter and because Haman had determined the day on which
the Jews were to be destroyed by lot (pur), the
festival received the name Purim, which is celebrated to this day. The Biblical
account ends with, “For Mordecai the Jew was next to king Ahasuerus, and great
among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the
wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.” The quotes come from
the King James translation, which I have found the closest to other
Hebrew-English translation from Jewish sources e.g. the Pentateuch (five books
of Moses) published by the Soncino Press.
Let us now consider
the purpose of Netanyahu’s present. It does not take much imagination to
recognize that he saw himself as Mordecai and Obama as the somewhat
simple-minded king who merely follows the advice he receives without raising
any questions or concerns. But the enormity of the idea that American foreign
policy of the 21st century should be guided by a fairy tale from
about the 5th or 4th century B.C. seems to have
completely escaped Israel’s Prime Minister’s mind. He likewise seems not to
have appreciated that people who are not particularly fond of Jews might read
the message which this story contains in a considerably different way. Nevertheless,
“fear of the Jews” is apparently still with us, especially when one considers
the actions of our Congress and the state of our media which censor every
comment which could be regarded as critical of Israel’s policies.
I called the
book of Esther a fairy tale because there is no historical evidence that a
Persian king had ever issued a decree to annihilate all Jews. It is of the same
genre as the Egyptians having slaughtered all Hebrew male newborns, a fate from
which Moses miraculously escaped. These stories properly belong to Aggadah, which contains Jewish folklore,
as discussed in The Moses Legacy. The Jerome Biblical Commentary, from
which I gleaned historical information, appropriately groups Esther together
with Tobit and Judith. The latter two books are not canonical but exist in the
Apocrypha, which also has the Greek version of Esther. All three can be
regarded as falling in the category of what in the German language is called Bildungsroman; a novel written in
pseudohistorical garb to educate and/or edify the reader. While Tobit is meant
to demonstrate how piety and justice can bring about wealth and well-being to
Israelites, Judith and Esther are clearly made of “sterner stuff.” Inasmuch as
the book of Judith tends nowadays to be even less well known than Esther, but
is clearly connected with it, I shall summarize it here.
The book
starts out with, “In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who
reigned over the Assyrians from his capital, Nineveh, Arphaxad was ruling the
Medes from Ecbatana [The New English Bible with Apocrypha].” Let us pause for a
moment. By the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the Assyrian empire had been supplanted
by the Babylonian, Nineveh no longer existed and later in the text we are told
that all this happened after the Jews had returned from the exile and rebuilt
their destroyed temple. The point is that spurious history, by providing names
and dates down to the month, was used to bolster credibility for this literary
product.
According to
the book Nebuchadnezzar then conducted a victorious war against Arphaxad, whom
he “speared” for good measure, and then sent an army under General Holophernes,
to bring order to the western part of his realm. Most of the Syrian cities
surrendered peacefully but little Bethulia, which guarded “the pass” to Judea
and Jerusalem, refused to do so. When the populace was on the verge of
starvation, due to a siege by Holophernes’ forces, a young widow of
extraordinary beauty, Judith, told the elders to be of good cheer because with
the Lord’s help she would single-handedly deliver the city and country from the
threat. Adorned in her finery she entered the enemy camp and was brought to
Holophernes’ tent who was promptly captivated by her beauty. She told him that
the Israelites were already in despair and she would show the Assyrian army a
path by which to enter Bethulia. She stayed in the Assyrian camp for a few
days, refusing all advances upon her chastity, and one night when she had seen
to it that Holophernes had drunk more wine than was good for him, decapitated
him with his own sword. Mission accomplished she returned home with
Holophernes’ head in a satchel to great rejoicing by the people. Next morning
when the Assyrians were confronted with the severed head of their leader they
fled in panic. The city and the country were saved and, as was pointed out, not
by strong valiant men but by a woman’s faith in the Lord.
Why do I
bring up these stories? Because, as I explained in The Moses Legacy, they tell us how the minds of some Jewish story
writers works. Bible scholars believe that Judith was written in the second
century BC during the Maccabean Wars in order to bolster the sagging spirits of
the faithful. It is also generally agreed that it is a work of fiction,
although attempts have been made to locate Bethulia, and the flight of the
Assyrians has been compared to that of Sennacherib’s army after the fruitless
siege of Jerusalem around 700 BC. But there is an additional morsel of
information in the book which throws some light on its genesis. It was stated
that “the approach [the pass to Judea and Jerusalem] was only wide enough for
two men.” My immediate thought on reading this was: Thermopylae! Greek history records
that this narrow pass, bounded on one side by the sea and on the other by mountains,
indeed guarded the passage to Greece and Athens. Xerxes, the Persian king,
could vanquish the Spartan defenders only after a spy had shown him a goat path
which enabled his troops to attack the defenders from their rear. It is
apparent that the writer of Judith had made an amalgam from bits and pieces of Jewish,
Assyrian, Greek and Persian history which he then presented as authentic by
providing spurious names and dates, even down to the month.
This is the
problem and it must be confronted as such. Judith is not part of the Tanakh, or
the official Christian Bible, but the book of Esther is. Unless we recognize
that the Bible is not history as we know it from other sources, but contains
accounts by Jewish writers for Jewish purposes, we will continue to kill and
maim each other in the name of the “Lord.” To reduce God to a killing machine
in favor of His chosen people is to my mind blasphemy. This applies also in
part to the New Testament where the book of Daniel, which likewise is regarded
to have originated during the Maccabean wars, was the model for the writer of
its last book Revelation. All of these
books were written for the communities of their time to strengthen them in
their fight against forces which tried to destroy their belief system and as
such were appropriate propaganda tools. It is, however, impermissible to apply
them to our era. Even worse, some Evangelicals in our country try to hasten the
demise of this world. They assist Jewish national religious fanaticism by
encouraging the rebuilding of the temple on its ancient site. If they really want
that “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light …” they
can get their wish. It will be in the form of a nuclear winter! Anybody who
today promotes ideas of this type, which involve extinction of all life on vast
portions of the globe, should really be regarded as criminally insane. If,
instead of preaching apocalypse, these individuals would practice the virtues
Jesus tried to teach, our world would have considerably fewer problems.
This brings
me back to Fareed Zakaria’s panelists. Abrams and Stephens argued that Obama
had not done enough to reassure Netanyahu that the U.S. will indeed bomb Iran
in the near future. The promise that Iran will not be allowed to develop a
nuclear bomb was insufficient. The Israelis on the other hand, Jew and Arab
alike, were adamantly opposed to it. Ms. Jebreal pointed out that the Iran
issue is used as a diversion from the very real problems their society has at
home, not only in regard to the Palestinian issue but also the economic
situation. Cost of living has risen and there were protests in the street, of
which our media reported nothing. Levy agreed, “This is a fantastic distraction
issue - both in terms of domestic, social, and economic issues and, of course,
in terms of internationally the Palestinian issue. For an Israeli leader to
come to the United States, make a load of speeches, not mention the
Palestinians, a dramatic success in his terms for his right wing coalition.
This is top-down driven. Not bottom-up inside Israel.” He also stated that
Netanyahu’s use of the Holocaust in this context, before the AIPAC audience,
was regarded in Israel as “scaremongering” and “shameful” by the opposition to
his government.
Zakaria then
shifted the topic and asked Levy, in regard to the settlements and the general
Palestinian situation, if he thought that “Obama kind of miscalculated” and was
“outmaneuvered by the Israeli government.” Levy agreed and pointed out that the
current Israeli government does not support a two-state solution and that this
will inevitably lead to a South African type apartheid state. He also mentioned
that there is no unanimity among American Jews in this regard, because there
are also “people who represent the majority of American Jews, who have a
liberal predisposition.” These need to be heard, and “We need the help of the
American president to do that because there are those of us who won’t support
apartheid ….” The conversation then
became somewhat heated with Abrams and Stephens stressing that neither settlements
nor the Wall are the issue, but terrorism emanating from a Palestinian state.
It became obvious that no agreement would be reached and I believe that Jebreal
said it best when she remarked: … today in Israel you have to be – like on this
table, polarized and either with or against. You know what, there’s one side.
We are all losers here today, all losers.”
Unfortunately
this is only too true in the beginning of spring 2012. Let us look at the
situation realistically. Netanyahu is trying to keep a diverse coalition
together which refuses to accept the two-state solution. In addition sections
of his government would like for the Palestinians to simply disappear so that Eretz Israel can be whole. The Iranian
threat is blown out of proportion to salvage a domestic agenda. He and Ehud
Barak, his defense minister, feel that they cannot trust Obama to keep his
promise after his re-election in November but America is the key for a successful
operation against Iran. What options are there? Only three come readily to
mind. One is to use the American media to discredit Obama by any and all means
to ensure his defeat in November, because the only Republican candidate who has
any chance of winning the general election, Mitt Romney, has already declared
unconditional support for Likud policies. But this is risky because Obama might
still manage to eke out a narrow win.
If this were
to be the case here comes Plan B. Although Obama believes, as he stated in
another context to President Medvedev, that he will have more flexibility after
November, this is another miscalculation. In regard to Iran he has already
boxed himself in by insisting that he will not allow that country even to
obtain the means which could lead to the building of a bomb. This was done to
reassure the Israeli government but they are not convinced. Nevertheless, the
guarantee exists and in so doing Obama has put himself in the position of
Chamberlain in March of 1939. Let us remember what happened at that time. After
Hitler had solved his Czechoslovak problem and made noises about Poland,
Chamberlain gave the Poles his unconditional assurance that England would not
tolerate any aggression against their country. The Poles then felt no need to
negotiate any kind of agreement in the Danzig/Corridor question and by
September Chamberlain had to honor this pledge with WWII as the result. What
did this guarantee accomplish for the Poles? Their country was devastated,
millions of their citizens killed, wounded, deported, and although the country
was reconstituted with different borders after the war it is doubtful that many
people would agree that the price was worth it. As mentioned, the current
guarantee to Israel exists and might be regarded by the Israelis as a fallback
option which allows them to cash in the blank check next year. As a popular
saying has it, “the can got kicked down the road.”
These
scenarios neglect, however, the very real possibility of Israeli impatience.
Likud circles don’t trust Obama to keep his promise as to what he will do next
year. It seems quite likely that they may try to force his hand before the
election. This would involve some type of provocation against Iran and in turn would
lead to a response, which would then drag us into a major war. I would not even
rule out that “false-flag” operations on some of our forces, or terrorist
attacks here, are being considered which would automatically lead to war. There
are abundant precedents for such a scenario including some home-grown ones as “Operation
Northwood” in regard to Cuba documents (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). That
one was vetoed by the Kennedy administration but the President was also
murdered thereafter and the full circumstances of November 22, 1963 are still
shrouded in secrecy by our government.
Are any of
these possibilities inevitable? No, the future has not yet been written. But
unless we were to take a stand, even at this late hour, and say: “Enough of
lies, prevarication and fear mongering,” events will overtake us. Since no
winners can emerge from this impeding contest it would seem imperative that
“the people” here as well as in Israel speak out and hold their governments
accountable. The official government excuse for military action will obviously
be that of “National Security.” But to insist that Iran is an existential
threat to the U.S. is ludicrous. Our forces surround their country not vice
versa. Even for Israel, Iran represents no “existential threat” because the
retaliatory power of their nuclear arsenal is a sufficient deterrent. That is
precisely the reason why Ben Gurion began to develop his country’s nuclear
program half a century ago. Seymour Hersh’s The
Samson Option why and how Israel’s nuclear arsenal came into being. Although
published in 1991 it is exceedingly relevant for the present crisis.
As far as
the Iranian government is concerned, contrary to news reports, it has never
officially declared its intention to annihilate the Jews in Israel, as
Netanyahu wants us to believe with his gift to Obama. In the 1980s Ayatollah
Khomeini stated that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the
arena of time,” and this was later echoed by President Ahmadinejad. With
other words, Israel, as an exclusively Jewish state, has no future in that part
of the world. But this does not mean that the Iranians had, in the words of the
Bible vowed, “To destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews both young
and old, little children and women.”
Was Khomeini
correct in his assumption that the State of Israel would not survive for much
longer, as it is constituted at present? Judging by the past conduct of Jewish
leadership this may well be the case. As my book Whither Zionism?shows I have previously believed in the two-state solution
but as a result of the actions of the Bush and now Obama administration can no
longer do so. At present the only question is likely to be: will there be a
peaceful transition to a democracy in one state with a Constitution which
guarantees equal rights to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity and religion,
or a cataclysm which will dwarf that of the Jewish wars of the first and second
century of our era? This question and America’s responsibility will be
discussed next time.
April 15, 2011
NETANYAHUS'S GIFT PART II
In the first of the month
installment I discussed the gift which Prime Minister Netanyahu presented to President
Obama on last month’s visit to the White House – the biblical book of Esther. His
intention was to highlight that Jews have been persecuted for millennia, have
repeatedly faced the prospect of extinction, and seem to find themselves in the same situation today because of a
potential threat from Iran. The purpose of the current essay is to place this
story in its historical context and demonstrate why it is necessary today to
understand what Jews believe happened to their ancestors more than 2000 years
ago.
To recapitulate briefly: the story of
the Book of Esther takes place at the Persian Court where the King, Ahasuerus,
had married a Jewish virgin, Esther, without knowing her nationality. Her
uncle, Mordecai, who had been instrumental in placing his niece in this
position refused to pay the customary respect to a high court official, Haman.
When the latter found out that Mordecai was a Jew he became incensed and had
the king order the extermination of all Jews in the Persian Empire. Esther
intervened with the king and the verdict was not only reversed but the Jews were
allowed to destroy their enemies en masse. Haman and his sons also were
executed and Mordecai was placed in charge of the Empire. The Jews rejoiced and
the event is annually celebrated as the feast of Purim.
It seems to have escaped Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s attention that when one reads this synopsis it is apparent
that Mordecai had brought on that fateful decree by himself because he failed
to behave like everybody else at court. Mr. Netanyahu also apparently didn’t
make the connection that the story can simply be read as a grab for power over
the empire. This seems to be a blind spot in the awareness of some otherwise
intelligent Jews and denotes an inability to perceive how others might feel
about Jewish conduct.
I also mentioned in the previous
installment that this story exists in a Hebrew and Greek version. It is the
latter which provides more of a historical context and also explains Mordecai’s
conduct from a religious point of view. While the Lord is not mentioned at all
in the Hebrew version He figures prominently in the lengthy prayers of Mordecai,
as well as by Esther, which point to their piety. Mordecai’s refusal to bow to
the Persian official was grounded in the commandment that “you shall not bow down
to their idols,” and the inflicted punishment was, therefore, totally
unwarranted. That his, as well as Esther’s, adherence to the commandments was
selective in order to make Esther queen, which clearly violated the commandment
that forbids the intermarriage of the Jewish Esther with the pagan king, was
ignored.
The Greek version also allows us to
provide some time frame as to when this story entered the Septuagint. It is
stated that the document was translated in Jerusalem and brought to Alexandria
during the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Since there were several Ptolemies as well as Cleopatras
bible experts have settled on the second century BC. Its purpose was to stiffen
the faith of diaspora Jews in face of all the problems their relatives
(Maccabean wars and aftermath) had to endure at home, by making the celebration
of Purim obligatory. The actual story itself is regarded as considerably older
and is probably related to the troubles the Jews encountered when some of them
returned from the Babylonian exile.
These have been narrated in the
biblical Books of Ezra and Nehemiah which, although separate at present, were
originally one narration. They are important because this era was formative for
Judaism as we know it and for the first time used the name “Jews” for the
people rather than Hebrew, Israelite, or the specific name of one of the
tribes. I shall not go into detail but limit myself here to two key aspects.
The first one is recounted in Ezra and
the other in Nehemiah. After Cyrus had conquered Babylon he allowed the
deported Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple and also gave them the
previously looted treasures. Some took advantage of the opportunity while others
stayed, and still others migrated to the new seat of power the capital of the
Empire, Susa. When the exiles arrived in devastated Jerusalem and began to
rebuild the temple the locals, who had either escaped from deportation or were
newcomers from other regions of the Middle East, offered their help. This was
refused with, “the house which we are building for our God is of no concern of
yours. We alone will build it for the Lord, the God of Israel [New English
translation Ezra 4:3].”This separatism angered
the locals and troubles began which during the reign of Artaxerxes led to an
official complaint. In this connection it is important to point out that the king
in Esther, Ahasuerus, is also regarded as having been Artaxerxes. The historical
problem is that there were three Persian kings by that name from 465 to the
defeat by Alexander in 331 BC. But the letter which was supposed to have been sent
from Jerusalem can be dated to Artaxerxes I (465-423) because the edict which
he wrote for the Jews to cease and desist from temple building was revoked by
Darius II (423-404).
The mentioned letter to Artaxerxes is
important because it sheds light on how the Gentiles viewed Jewish behavior at
that time. The salient excerpts are,
“Be it known to
Your Majesty that the Jews who left you and came to these parts have reached
Jerusalem and are rebuilding that wicked and rebellious city; they have
surveyed the foundations and are completing the walls. Be it known to Your
Majesty that, if their city is rebuilt and the walls are completed, they will
pay neither general levy, nor poll-tax, nor land-tax, and in the end they will
harm the monarchy. . . . You will discover by searching through the annals that
this has been a rebellious city, harmful to the monarchy and sedition has long
been rife within its walls. That is why the city was laid waste. We submit to
Your Majesty that, if it is rebuilt, and its walls are completed, the result
will be that you will have no more footing in the province Beyond-Euphrates [Ez
4:12-16].”
This is an interesting document
because it accurately portrays why Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC. Zedekiah had refused to continue paying
tribute to Nebuchadnezzar and instead relied on Egyptian help. The subsequent destructions
in 70 and 135 AD resulted from rebellions against Rome. When Palestine was
partitioned by the UN in 1947 it established Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum”
under international auspices to avoid the inevitable strife which would ensue
if the city had been allotted to either party. The 1948 war voided this hope
and Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. The 1967 war brought about
reunification under Jewish sovereignty and we are in a situation which is akin
to the fifth century BC. Jewish settlers have again returned from the Diaspora,
have claimed the city as their “eternal capital” and are currently busy evicting
local Arabs from their homes in East Jerusalem while extending “the wall of
separation” to encompass more and more Arab neighborhoods. The city thereby has
again become a flashpoint and the ancient epithet of “rebellious” is not
misplaced.
The major take-home point from
Nehemiah is that he was “cupbearer” to an, otherwise unspecified, Artaxerxes and
as such held in high esteem at court. When he was informed about the troubles
the Jews were experiencing in Jerusalem he approached the king for help. His
pleas were granted and he was not only given permission for the Jews to rebuild
the city and its walls but also the physical means to do so. He might well have
served as the “Mordecai model” for the Book of Esther. After the walls were
finished, the temple rebuilt and dedicated, it was brought to Nehemiah’s
attention that there had been widespread intermarriage. Since all the disasters
that had befallen the Jewish people in the past were attributed to this
fundamental neglect of what would nowadays be called “racial purity,” the
Deuteronomy law of separation from the rest of the population was strictly
enforced. That this led to a great deal of personal grief is obvious. But it is
equally obvious that the Gentiles would not take kindly to what they must have
regarded as snobbery and this became the root of all the problems the Jews have
experienced ever since as discussed in The
Moses Legacy.
Apparently the recipe how to not only
survive but also prosper was: keep yourselves separate, but also always ally
yourselves with the dominant political power of the time. This worked well especially
during the Maccabean era when Rome’s help was solicited against the Greeks. The
example was followed ever since and is still practiced to this very day. The
documentation for this statement is provided by non-other than Elliott Abrams who
was a participant in Fareed Zakaria’s discussion on Iran last month. During the
Reagan administration he was initially Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs and subsequently Assistant Secretary for
Inter-American Affairs. He was fined for his involvement in the Iran-Contra
scandal but pardoned by President George H. W. Bush. He subsequently served in
the Bush II administration as “deputy national security advisor for Global
Democracy Strategy.” In this capacity he was instrumental in fomenting the
Palestinian civil war between Fatah and Hamas, after the latter party had won
an electoral sweep in 2006. This victory at the polls was supposed to be undone
by force of arms but the strategy backfired. In spite of our support of Fatah, Hamas
won and is now entrenched in the Gaza strip.
During the Clinton administration, while
temporarily out-of office, Abrams wrote a book “Faith or Fear. How Jews can survive in a Christian
America,” which was published in 1997.
When one considers that America had at that time a Jewish Secretary of State
and there was no animus whatsoever against Jews in the country at large one
really wonders about Mr. Abrams’ mindset. His fears were grounded in the
secular Jews’ refusal to obey Nehemiah’s reform edicts. Intermarriage was wide-spread
and Abrams feared that the Jewish community is “facing in fact a demographic
disaster.” Abrams commented that this is the paradoxical result of the
achievement of Jewish goals. America’s Jews sought safety by insisting not only
on the strict separation of church and state but also by proclaiming the identity
of Jewish and American values. He quoted Supreme Court Justice Brandeis as
having said “’America’s fundamental law seeks to make real the brotherhood of
man. That brotherhood became the Jews’ fundamental law more than twenty-five
hundred years ago.’” Abrams stated furthermore, “Safety through secularism,
integration rather than separatism, and life under the new sacred Law of the
Constitution rather than the old Law of the Torah, became the American Jewish
ideology, and the community pursued it with zeal. By the 1960s the battle to
disestablish Christianity as the nation’s public religion had largely been
won.”
Yet, this victory was tainted because in
Abrams’ opinion the Jews lost their specific distinction of Jewishness. He
concluded that “Jews will decline if they are driven by fear of their
neighbors, fear of their own traditions, and fear of their distinct identity
their covenant imposes on them as an article of faith. They will survive if
they cling to their faith–to their Torah. It–and it alone–is for the Jews what
the Book of Proverbs calls it: a tree of life.”
Let us try to follow this reasoning. The
Jewish Law, the Torah, is emphatic about Jews being a separate nation
specifically chosen by the Lord to serve Him, and if they do this faithfully He
shall reward them with long life and prosperity in the Land which He had
promised them. Yet Mr. Abrams and the majority of American Jews failed to
return to the ancestral home when return not only became possible but was
ardently desired by the government of the resurrected state in 1948. When
immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union became possible the vast majority
chose the good life in the West, especially in the seat of power, the U.S.,
rather than moving to the “promised land.”
Abrams’ use of the term “Torah” as the
solution for problems is common in Jewish literature but as I have pointed out
in The Moses Legacy, it has no precise
definition. Nevertheless, even when one restricts the term as referring to the
Pentateuch one cannot in good conscience extol the idea of the universal brotherhood
of man and at the same insist on strict separation of laws and customs from the
people one is supposed to be a brother to. This conflict plays itself out not
only in the diaspora but also the state of Israel.
Ever since the formation of the state it
found itself in an identity crisis. Was this state to be a modern democracy
with equal rights for all and brotherhood with its non-Jewish citizens? Or was
it to be the biblical Eretz Israel which has finally been redeemed, especially
after the 1967 war, where the Lord’s chosen rule according to the Law of the
Torah? This fundamental problem is hotly debated in Israel but ignored by our
media because a supposed unanimity of Jewish goals and identity with those of
America has to be maintained. Furthermore, in order for Israel’s internal
problems to remain hidden from public debate, external dangers have to be
portrayed in the most lurid colors.
In order to make this point the
adversary is always painted as Hitler and Israel is always on the verge of annihilation.
Only massive military aid and pre-emptive wars either by Israel itself or its
allies will save the day. At present our media propaganda presents Israel again
as a country on the verge of extinction by an Iranian nuclear device, which has
not even been built. The Iranians are accused of getting ready to acquire the
potential to build a bomb and delivery systems simply in order to destroy our
“faithful friend; the only democracy in the Middle East.” Furthermore, we are
told that they are blatantly lying to hide this goal. It is ironic that this is
exactly how Israel behaved since the 1950’s when it first realized the need for
a nuclear deterrent. This is detailed in Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book The Samson Option. Israel’s
nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy.
Since Hersh is Jewish he has considerably more access to Israeli sources than
other journalists, but since he is also an honest reporter he pulls no punches.
I have mentioned last time that the book ought to be read for its relevance in
regard to today’s events. This pertains not only to the nuclear issue but also to
how and why our government stifles any possible critique of Israel’s policies.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founder and
first Prime Minister, had always regarded the state as exceedingly vulnerable
and as Hersh wrote, “Ben-Gurion’s private nightmare … was of a second
Holocaust, this time at the hands of the Arabs. . . . ‘what
is Israel? …. Only a small spot. One dot! How can it
survive in this Arab world?’” The final straw which led to bomb-building was the
Suez debacle in 1955. Eisenhower had thwarted the intentions of France and the
UK to retake the Canal from Nasser, and Israel was forced to withdraw from the
captured Sinai Peninsula. As one former Israeli government official told Hersh,
“’You Americans screwed us. . . . If you hadn’t intervened Nasser would have
been toppled and the arms race in the Middle East would have been delayed. . .
. We got the message. We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and
Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.’”
Ben-Gurion and like-minded others were
now convinced that Israel could not rely on foreign help for its defense and
serious negotiations started with the French to build an Israeli bomb. Guy
Mollet, the French socialist Prime Minister, had a guilty conscience for having
coaxed the fellow socialist Israelis into the Suez War in the first place and
was only too willing to lend a hand. Work on the Dimona project started soon
thereafter and the first reactor was operational by 1962. Although it proceeded
in deepest secrecy it was estimated that by the early 1980s Israel had between
twenty-four and thirty warheads. As far as delivery systems were concerned, America
had provided Israel with F4 fighter jets, which had bomb carrying abilities as
early as the Johnson administration. In addition Israel had started its own
rocket program and the first Shavit left the launching pad in 1961. Since that
time delivery systems as well as numbers and types of warheads have steadily increased.
Currently the arsenal consists of a variety of thermonuclear weapons, estimated
in the several hundred, which include neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons
and suitcase bombs. For delivery there are F15I and F16I Sufa aircraft
available, as well as the Jericho intercontinental ballistic missiles. In
addition Israel has German made submarines which have been modified for
launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles. One of them made a trip through the
Suez Canal in 2009, and it is not hard to guess what its likely destination was.
When one adds to this arsenal a
stockpile of chemical and biologic weapons as further deterrents against
attacks, it is obvious that Iran does not present an existential threat to the
state of Israel at this time. The information mentioned above is available to
anyone who wants to know and while numbers are in dispute the fact that Israel
can destroy not only Iran but do serious harm to other countries, such as
Russia and China is no secret. An added touch of not so subtle irony is that Israelis,
who are in the know, refer to this arsenal of death and destruction as their
“temple weapons.” This designation is probably used in analogy to Samson who
brought the temple down on the Philistines as well as himself and Hersh
mentioned a 1976 article written by Norman Podhoretz that made the connection.
But since these weapons are indeed an “abomination which brings desolation [Mt.
24:15]” believers in the impending biblical apocalypse might see this nightmare
come true.
How was it possible that Israel has been
able to secretly acquire this arsenal in face of the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT) and potential inspections by the IAEA? The problem started with
the Kennedy administration. JFK wanted the NPT and pushed the Israelis to come
clean on what they were doing at that time. But, and this is America’s fatal
flaw, he needed Jewish money and Jewish votes for re-election in 1964. It was
known that he owed his 1960 election to Jews who had not only provided
substantial financial support but also given him 81 percent of their votes,
while Catholics provided 73 percent. This was the rock upon which Kennedy’s
best intentions foundered. For example: when he tried to push the Israelis to
accept a UN resettlement version of the Palestinian refugee problem, they demurred
and he gave up. Philip Talbot, assistant secretary of state for Near East and
South Asian Affairs, confronted him about it but Kennedy replied, “Phil, that’s
a great plan with only one flaw–you’ve never had to run for election.” This is
the terrible truth about our government which explains why each and every
administration has yielded to Israel’s demands even when it was against our
country’s best long-term interest.
Kennedy tried to convince the Israelis
to accept international inspection of the Dimona facility but they refused on
grounds that it would violate their national sovereignty. Eventually they
agreed to inspection by an American team but visits had to be announced way in
advance, which allowed them to present a Potemkin façade behind which they hid
what they were really doing. The Israelis also had their Mr. Fixer in
Washington, Abe Feinberg, who would spring into action whenever the American
government stalled on one of their periodic requests. Paul H. Nitze, a senior
aide to Defense Secretary McNamara, recalled that when he refused to sell
advanced fighter aircraft to the Israelis, unless they admitted what was really
going on in Dimona, Feinberg stormed
into his office saying, “’ You can’t do this to us.’” When Nitze told him it
was already done, Feinberg said, “’I’ll see to it that you get overruled.’”
Nitze threw him out of his office, but three days later a call came from
McNamara to release the sale of the planes.
This was not an isolated incident;
Hersh’s book is full of such anecdotes. When officials either in the State
Department or the Pentagon balked at Israeli demands or complained about them
they were told, “You’d better be careful. Especially if you
have a career.’” When President Johnson was informed by CIA director
Richard Helms that the Israelis were building a bomb he “exploded” and demanded
that the document be “buried.” Helms was forbidden to talk
about it even to the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, or Defense Secretary
McNamara. During the Nixon years it was known that, “’whenever you moved an
inch in that direction [relaying information on Israel’s nukes], you had to
decide whether you wanted to make a crusade or move on with your job.’” But on
September 29, 1979 an incident occurred which could not be hushed up and this
is when Plan B became operational.
The US had a spy satellite over the
Indian Ocean and on that day it detected a flash which in all probability
resulted from a nuclear test explosion. The CIA concluded that Israel, jointly
with South Africa, had tested a nuclear device and this information was relayed
to President Carter. But the president had other worries. The SALT treaty was
supposed to go to Congress and proliferation by Israel was the last thing he
wanted to hear about. In addition the Shah of Iran had just been toppled and
wanted to come for medical treatment. So the solution was to create a panel
under Professor Jack P. Ruina of MIT to investigate whether the satellite
signal, “was of natural origin, possibly originating from the coincidence of
two or more natural phenomena. . . .” Since only technical data were allowed to
be investigated, rather than the possibility that Israel might have been
involved in a nuclear test, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. “Although we
cannot rule out the possibility that this signal was of nuclear origin, the
panel considers it more likely that the signal was one of the zoo events [a
signal of unknown cause], possibly a consequence of the impact of a small
meteorite on the satellite.”
Hersh’s book is fundamental for everyone
who wants to understand how our government really functions and why the
descendants of Mordecai are still able to instill fear even at the highest
levels of our government. Nuclear blackmail by Israel is a potential reality.
It has already been used once during the 1973 Yom Kippur war when Kissinger
dragged his feet to the request for replacement of arms the Israelis had lost
in the first few days of that conflict. Israel’s nuclear missiles were also put
on alert during the Gulf War in case Saddam’s rockets inflicted serious damage
or carried poison gas, and there is every reason to believe that they would
resort to the use of nuclear weapons if they felt the need to do so.
Israel has succeeded in a massive
cover-up of its nuclear capability and to this day the country has not owned up
to it in public. Our government was involved in this cover-up and the similarity
to how the 9/11 events were handled will be discussed in the May issue.
May 1, 2012
AMERICA'S GALILEO MOMENT
Although this title sounds
cryptic it does convey a fundamental truth about our country which will become
apparent when we briefly revisit Renaissance Europe.
Observations of the heavens by
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and others had shown that increasingly complex
mathematical formulations needed to be put forward to support the then
prevalent theory that the sun revolves around the stationary earth, which had
been advocated by Claudius Ptolemy during the 2nd century AD.
Copernicus, therefore, consulted ancient Greek literature and found that a
heliocentric idea had been advocated in the third century BC but had never been
fully elaborated. When he subsequently did the appropriate mathematical
calculations he noted that heliocentricity led to much simpler and more elegant
solutions. The results of these investigations, which had also been aided by
his pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574), were
published in 1543 in a book On the
Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It achieved wide circulation,
cemented Copernicus’ fame, and started the furious dispute between the geocentric
and heliocentric theories which reached its climax under Galileo.
Galilei Galileo (1564-1642) had
initially studied Greek, Latin, logic and medicine, but subsequently gravitated
to mathematics and astronomy. He made several fundamental discoveries for which
he was rewarded with professorships; first at Pisa and later at Padua. His
mathematical studies led him to adopt the Copernican theory and when he became
aware of the discovery of the telescope he produced his own in 1609. Initially
it had only a threefold magnification but eventually he constructed instruments
with considerably larger ones which were sold throughout Europe.
As mentioned above an intense battle
was going on at the time between adherents of the geocentric and heliocentric
theories. The scientific community favored Copernicus but common sense and the
Church was for Ptolemy. By 1611 Galileo assumed, on basis of his excellent
reputation, that he could convince the Pope to speak in favor of the
heliocentric system. In spite of having been warned by his Paduan friend and
colleague, the equally well known philosopher Cesare Cremonini (1550–1631), in
regard to the dangers the Inquisition might pose, Galileo traveled to Rome in
1611 where he demonstrated to the most important people the wonders of the
heavens by means of his telescope. The positive reception encouraged him to
have MacchieSolari (The
Solar Machine which dealt with the movement of sunspots) published in Rome
(1613) where he advocated the heliocentric position. He thought that he could
evade the theological implications by aligning himself with St. Augustine that
not every biblical assertion needed to be taken literally. But the Church was
not convinced and the pendulum swung definitively in favor of geocentricity. Heliocentrism
was officially declared as heretical and Galileo was ordered in 1616 “not to
hold, teach, or defend,” the doctrine.
He left Rome for Florence and
continued his scientific work. But when Pius V was succeeded by Urban VIII, Galileo
published another book in 1623, the Saggiatore, with a
dedication to Urban. Since heliocentrism was only hinted at, the book achieved
wide acclaim which led him to attempt a revocation of the 1616 decree. This
effort was unsuccessful but Galileo, to his credit, was not one to give up
easily. In 1632 he published the work which earned him eternal fame, but also
the condemnation of the Church.
In the book Galileo thought
that he could get around the interdict by publishing his views in form of a
conversation between a scientist, a neutral observer and a representative of
the geocentric public opinion. Since the latter was called Simplicio in the book, which was
immediately translated into simple-minded or simpleton, the resulting furor
from ecclesiastic circles is fully understandable. Galileo was forced to "abjure,
curse and detest" the heliocentric theory. The Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was banned and publication of
any of his works was forbidden, including anything he might write in the future.
But the imposed prison term was reduced to house arrest. He returned to
Florence where in spite of the limitations imposed upon him by the Church, and
later by blindness, he continued to work until death in 1642. Reviled,
denounced, as well as praised in his time, he is today regarded as the Father
of Physics and Einstein called him the father of modern science.
You may now ask: but what does this have to do with us in
21st century America? The answer comes from Galileo’s previously
mentioned friend, Cesare Cremonini. Theirs was an unusual friendship because
Cremonini was one of the most vociferous defenders of the Ptolemaic system and
had even refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. It is an example for the
fact that people can compartmentalize and opinions on one topic do not
necessarily influence the person’s overall character which expresses itself in
friendship. Cremonini was “a free thinker;” he did not believe in the
immortality of the soul, had doubts in regard to the existence of Satan and
even of God. But he realized fully well that if he were to utter these opinions
in public he would be executed by the Inquisition. His motto, therefore, was,
when loosely translated into colloquial English: Privately you can think
whatever you want, but publicly you must toe the line(Intus ut libet, foris ut morisest).
This is the point where the past becomes the present. Although the Church
is no longer in the position to mete out punishment, deviation from accepted
thinking is still not tolerated by the State and, unfortunately, also by the
official media. In the previous issue I have demonstrated how our government
has systematically, over a period of decades, colluded with Israel in the
cover-up of that country’s atomic program and also mentioned its potential
relevance for the 9/11 events. This cover-up of Israel’s efforts required that
complaints by responsible government officials who did not agree with this
policy were either ignored or they were threatened with loss of job as related
in Seymour Hersh’s book the Samson
Option.Israel’s
nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy.
Here are some examples which show
how the system worked in 1959 as related to Hersh by Dino Brugioni, a CIA
analyst who had evaluated U2 photos of the Dimona plant,
There was a lot of policy that we didn’t know about–and
we didn’t care to know. We weren’t stupid; we could put two and two together.
But the hierarchy decided to play it cool–and that’s the way it was. If you’re
a senior officer, you learn to read the tea leaves quickly–and keep your mouth
shut. Period.”
On the
scene in Tel Aviv, Walworth Barbour, the American Ambassador, told his deputy
chief William N. Dale in 1964, “I’m here under orders from Johnson who told me,
‘I don’t care a thing what happens in Israel, but your job is to keep the Jews
off my back.’ Everything I do is designed to keep the Jews off the President’s
back,” Barbour added. ‘To keep them happy.’” These
comments go a long way to explain why the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty by
Israel’s armed forces in 1967, with the resultant loss of 34 American sailors,
was deliberately hushed up (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). When during the
1970’s officials in the CIA, the State Department or Pentagon wanted to learn
more about the Israeli nuclear program they found out that the subject was
“taboo.” As a Near East State Department expert told Hersh, “Whenever you moved
an inch in that direction you had to decide whether you wanted to make a
crusade or get on with your job.”
With this information as
background we can now look at what is happening in our country at the present
time. The government’s explanation in regard to the 9/11 catastrophe has become
official dogma. Washington has assumed the role of the Church which tolerates
no dispute. Individuals who are not satisfied with the officially promulgated
explanations, because they stretch credulity, are relegated as “conspiracy
theorists” to the lunatic fringe, When they repeatedly voice their concerns in
public they lose their jobs. Before providing examples for this statement the
enduring importance of 9/11 needs to be mentioned.
The government’s explanation
has spawned the War on Terrorism which resulted in the invasion of Afghanistan,
as well as Iraq, and since this “War” is open-ended 9/11 is likely to be used
as the excuse for military action against Iran when and if it were to occur. On
the domestic scene it has given us the PATRIOT Act, which removes several
constitutional guarantees, and government spying on private citizens has
reached unprecedented levels. The latter shows no signs of abatement even under
the Obama administration. Right now a $2 billion complex is being built, less
than ten miles from where I am writing these lines, which is dedicated solely
to information gathering on potential enemies of the state. It goes under the
bland title “Utah Data Center” and I shall devote the May 15 installment to
this building complex and its purpose. What is its justification? The War on
Terrorism with its increased need for national security!
I have mentioned that the
government’s explanations for the events on 9/11 are not necessarily credible
and I have dealt with the reasons why this is the case in previous installments
(The 9/11 Cover-up October 1, 2006; 9/11 Remembered October 1, 2011). For now I
shall limit myself to the collapse of the WTC buildings which, when one accepts
the government’s position, defies the laws of physics. It is still not widely
known that three buildings crumpled into their “footprints” on that day, rather
than only the Twin Towers. The collapse of Building WTC7 at 5:20 p.m., was not
even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report but has given rise to intense
controversy. Since it looks to all intents and purposes like a “controlled demolition,”
which requires the prepositioning of explosives, it presents a serious problem
to the government’s contention that uncontrolled fires and damage from debris
of other buildings had been the cause. “Architects and Engineers for 9/11
Truth” have prepared a short video on it, narrated by Ed Asner, which deserves
the widest distribution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw.
Professor David Ray Griffin,
whom I have mentioned in the previously cited articles, has also published a
book in 2010 which is devoted entirely to The
Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7. Why the official report about 9/11
is unscientific and false. In it he mentioned a comment by Danny Jowenko, a
controlled demolition expert from the Netherlands, who is featured on the youtube video.
“Jowenko also explained why controlled demolition experts
in the United States have not stated this obvious fact. When the interviewer
mentioned that he had phoned the US company Controlled Demolition Inc., which
said: ‘Oh it’s possible it came down from fire,’ Jowenko replied: ‘When… you
have to earn your money in the States as a controlled demolition company and
you say, ‘No it’s controlled demolition,’ you’re gone.’”
Is this just an assumption or
reality? Well, let us look first at the case of Dr. Van Romero who was vice
president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Engineering.
On the day of 9/11 he was quoted by the Albuquerque
Journal: “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that
after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive
devices inside the buildings that caused the building to collapse.” As Griffin
noted, from whose book the quote is taken, “Ten days later Romero had changed
his tune: ‘Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail.’” There had
been no new data in the meantime, but Dr. Romero had adapted to the current
wind direction and the Institute thrived on government contracts to combat
terrorism.
On the other hand when one
fails to do so one engenders dire consequences. Kevin Ryan was laboratory
operations manager and then site manager at Environmental Health Laboratories,
a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). His expertise led him to question
the official report on fire having been the cause of destruction of the WTC
buildings, but when he expressed his doubts his employment was terminated. His
experience is narrated in the above mentioned book as well as Griffin’s 9/11 and American Empire. Intellectuals
speak out.
Here are the salient details.
Underwriters Laboratory evaluated the “Pancake” collapse theory in 2004 by
testing the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings and could not achieve the
hoped for result. When Ryan found out that UL’s CEO, Loring Knoblauch, had been
involved in certifying the steel used in the construction of the WTC he wrote
to Knoblauch about it and received a note that, “We test to the code
requirements, and the steel clearly met those requirements and exceeded them.”
Since NIST’s (National Institute of Standards and Technology) evaluation, which
relied in part on UL data, was in apparent conflict with this statement Ryan
sent a letter to Dr. Gayle at NIST asking for more information. When there was no
answer he allowed the letter to be published and a few days later his
employment was terminated.
Kevin Ryan’s experience does
not stand alone, that of Professor Steven Jones has previously been mentioned. His
technical expertise and experimental work convinced him that the government’s
explanation for the pulverization of the three WTC buildings could not possibly
be true. But when he violated Professor Cremonini’s
17th century dictum, in the reasonable assumption that we have
progressed since then in our free country, he learned otherwise. He was forced
into premature retirement from Brigham Young University. It is clear,
therefore, that even our top notch research institutions and universities are
at present in no position to question official dogma. Since this word is used
mainly in a religious connotation let me hasten to add that it also refers to, “An authoritative
principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered
to be absolutely true.” As such, it clearly applies
to the government’s stance on the 9/11 events. But a truly independent
international investigation into the events of that day has never taken place.
The 9/11 Commission Report does not qualify because it was a political process
as has been explained in a previous essay on this site (The 9/11 Cover-up.
October 1, 2006)
Last year there was a chance
that we might have obtained further information on 9/11 when bin Laden was
located in Abbottabad. But instead of allowing his testimony in a court of law
he was assassinated. Our president told us that justice had been served, but
this was according to the law of the jungle rather than that of a civilized
society. An additional piece of evidence that we shun the possibility that
unpleasant facts may come out when a trial is held in a civilian court is the
case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He is the confessed “mastermind” of 9/11, has
been in Guantanamo since 2003 and is supposed to be arraigned on May 5; with the
trial still months in the future. The Obama administration attempted to have
him tried in criminal court, where there are stringent rules of evidence to be
adhered to, but was overruled by pressure groups. There will be a military
trial in spite of the fact that this man is a civilian. The precedent of Ramzi
Yousef, responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, who was tried and sentenced in
New York criminal proceedings, has been disregarded. Why? What is the
difference between these two crimes apart from the number of victims and amount
of destruction?
As mentioned, the final NIST report on
the collapse of WTC7, which was made public in August 2008, insisted that
uncontrolled fires had brought down the building. But doubters of this opinion
who argued for controlled demolition got support from two unexpected sources.
In September 2002 PBS aired a program dealing with the catastrophe under the
title America Rebuilds. It contains a
24 second segment where the lease holder of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, said: "We've had such terrible loss of life
maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull
and we watched the building collapse.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WYdAJQV100.
Silverstein and his spokespersons later tried to retract the obvious implication
of this damaging comment by indicating that he had meant for the building to be
evacuated. This is, however, contradicted by the fact that this had been done
several hours earlier.
The real reason for “pulling”
the building may have been considerably more mundane: money. On April 22, 2010
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro wrote an opinion piece for Fox News, “Shame on Jesse
Ventura.”
“Governor
Ventura and many 9/11 ‘Truthers’ allege that government explosives caused the
afternoon collapse of Building 7. This is false. I know this because I remember
watching all 47 stories of Building 7 suddenly and silently crumble before my
eyes.
Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison
workers told me that Larry Silverstein,
the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would
authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation
was already unstable and expected to fall. . . .[Emphasis added].”
Are we allowed to put two and two
together and regard this as evidence for a controlled demolition and that NIST
is deliberately misleading us? The mystery about
how the WTC7 collapsed is only one of the puzzles involving this building;
there are others. It housed, apart from several financial institutions, a
number of government offices which included the SEC (Securities and Exchange
Commission), CIA, IRS and Secret Service. All of their files including those
from the financial institutions, some of which were in litigation with the SEC,
became rubble. In addition the 23rd floor of the building housed the
Mayor’s, Rudi Giuliani, “Office of Emergency Management” (OME). This was
especially created as the headquarters for the mayor from where he could
coordinate police, fire fighter and other emergency personnel efforts in case
of a man-made or natural disaster. Construction on these floors lasted from
1996-1999 and the security measures, which also included the most up to date
electronic communication systems, were such that New Yorker’s referred to it as
“Rudy’s bunker.”
One would
now assume that as soon as the first but by the latest when the second plane
struck, Mayor Giuliani would head for the “bunker” and start the relief
operations. But the fact is that he never set foot in the place because he was
told that the building was not safe. Who knew that it was not safe, and why?
Nobody expected the Towers to collapse, because steel structures have never
done that before, so why should WTC7 which hadn’t even been hit? Eyewitness
testimony of people who were in the building earlier in the day indicates that the
OEM was never used because workers who tried to were ordered to leave,
ostensibly for safety reasons. That this anomaly feeds numerous speculations is
obvious. I won’t engage in those, but the questions as to: who pre-positioned
the charges, when and why, remain. We don’t know the answers but deserve to
know them!
This is the crux of the problem. Our
government projects a view abroad of America as the beacon of democracy, but
fails to live up to its responsibilities at home. Secretary Hillary Clinton
told the world in Brasilia a few weeks ago: “Transparency and open governments are
the best way to combat corruption.” All of us agree on that but we want to see
it enacted here and now. Clarity in regard to what happened on 9/11 is long
overdue. We don’t want to be reduced to speculations about what our government
may or may not have done. What we do want is an impartial international
investigation into the events of that day by a duly constituted judicial panel
which has subpoena power. This is urgent because some of the main actors in
that drama of more than ten years ago, who made the decision to use it as the
basis for the War on Terror, are no longer young and we need their testimony
under oath.
In the April 1 installment I mentioned
that the current political situation reminds me of 1939 and the run-up to WWII.
For Americans who have not lived through these days this is ancient history but
let me remind you of 2002 and the drumbeat for the Iraq war, which is amply
documented on this website (September 1, 2002 October Surprise? December 1,
2002 Wanted: Good Judgment! February 1, 2003 Rhetoric of War).
We remember that the then National Security Advisor, and now possible vice
presidential nominee Condoleezza Rice, told us that we cannot wait for proof
that Iraq has nuclear bombs until it comes in form of a mushroom cloud. She
also told the 9/11 Commission that, “before September 11 the country was simply
not on a war footing. Since then, America has been at war. And under President
Bush's leadership we will remain at war
until the terrorist threat to our nation is ended. The world has changed so
much that it is hard to remember what our lives were like before that day
[Emphasis added].”
This type of thinking, which persists
into the present administration, is a disaster. It is used to justify foreign
wars and domestic spying which in the long run will lead to a police state.
Instead of worrying about Iran’s mushroom cloud we ought to find out what
caused the real ones all of us saw when the Twin Towers collapsed and spread
their pulverized cement throughout lower Manhattan. As individual citizens we
now have a choice: are we to believe our government, which behaves like the
corrupted Church of Galileo’s day, and fear the new Inquisition or by following
reason and science live up to the ideals of the founders of this country.
The May 15 installment will document how
far we have already progressed on the road to an authoritarian police state.
May 15, 2012
THE NS STATE
Had I written an essay with this
title during my High School years everybody would automatically have assumed
that I am extolling the virtues of National Socialism under which we were living
at the time. It was inconceivable that I would have to write it seven decades
later in the “country of the free and the brave,” as our national anthem still
declares, and where NS now stands for National Security. The inspiration for
the title came from Steve Coll’s article in The
New York Review of Books: Our Secret
American Security State, in which he mentioned three recently published
books on that topic. I have ordered two of them Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy by Paul R. Pillar and Top Secret America by Dana Priest and
William M. Arkin. They will be discussed in a subsequent installment.
National Security has come to dominate
our lives and the tragedy is that the majority of our citizens accept the
restrictions imposed on our personal freedoms as simply a fact of life over
which one might complain but can’t do anything about. I am, therefore,
beginning to live in a déjà vue situation where I am increasingly being
reminded of my youth under Hitler and Stalin. We are not yet threatened with
concentration camps, but on this day eleven years ago no one would have
believed the stories which subsequently became known about Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib. Neither would we have expected that domestic spying would occur at an
unprecedented extent. For that we can “thank” the events of 9 /11.
In the May 1 installment I mentioned
that we, the taxpayers, are currently buying ourselves in Bluffdale a $2
billion computer complex, run by the NSA, the sole purpose of which is to keep
us “safe.” A few years ago the good citizens of Utah were told by one TV
network how this facility will bring much needed jobs to the depressed economy of
our state http://www.ksl.com/?sid=7105272&nid=148,
but
it was not regarded as newsworthy bythe other stations. A second installment
at the “groundbreaking ceremony” was likewise only carried by that station http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13908592
. But
in March of this year an article appeared on the Internet http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1,
which brought
the topic to national attention.
The author, James Bamford, has previously
published several books on the National Security Agency (NSA), with the most
recent one: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the
Eavesdropping on America. It was published in 2008 and
the article in Wired brought the topic up to date. What one reads there is
truly disconcerting and I shall try to summarize the essential features
starting with The Shadow Factory.
The book begins in Yemen where
Khalid al-Mihdhar and his friend Nawaf al-Hazmi (future hijackers), who had
followed Osama bin Laden’s call for Jihad, were packing their bags in late
December 1999 for a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The purpose was to attend a
conference with like-minded others on how to inflict maximal harm on America.
They had been notified by phone and the call had not gone unnoticed; it was
duly recorded by the NSA in Ft. Meade, Maryland. The scene then shifts to General
Michael Hayden who was Director of the Agency from 1999-2005, and subsequently
CIA director from 2006-2009. Currently he serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Mason University School of Public
Policy and was elected to the Board of Directors of Motorola Solutions effective January 4, 2011.This appointment is not
irrelevant because when one looks up Motorola Solutions one finds that this
organization deals with “Government and Public Safety” and provides “A New
Standard of Intelligence. A New Level of Safety.” His
career from the Air Force through government service to private defense
industry is typical for the revolving door for public
servants which has been mentioned by Bamford in other contexts.
As NSA director, at the end of the
Clinton administration, General Hayden was very concerned about the strict
rules the Church Committee had placed on domestic spying in the wake of the
Watergate scandal under the Nixon administration (Abuse of Secrecy August 8 and
August 15, 2008). The critical component was “The Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA),”which had become law in 1978 under President Carter.
Its intention was to “provide judicial and congressional oversight of the
government’s covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals
in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national
security.” The NSA, which tries to fly under the radar as much as possible (the
acronym is also used by insiders as standing for: No Such Agency and Never Say
Anything), had fallen on hard times. The Cold War was over, budgets were slashed
and worst of all Hollywood had gotten wind of it. The movie “Enemy of the
State” exposed its nefarious activities for all to see. In May of 1999 Congress
became concerned and the Georgia Representative Republican Bob Barr, who had
started his professional life as a CIA operative, wanted to know more about a
NSA operation called “Echelon” which he said,
“‘engages in the
interception of literally millions communications involving United States
citizens over satellite transmissions, involving e-mail transmissions, Internet
access, as well as mobile phone communications and telephone communications.
The information is apparently shared, at least in part, and coordinated, at
least in part, with intelligence agencies of four other countries: the UK,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia.’”
Barr wanted not only more transparency
from the agency but he also sponsored an amendment to the Intelligence
Authorization Act and this effort was backed by two other Republicans, Porter
Goss of Florida, later President Bush’s CIA director, and Dan Burton of Indiana
who promised to hold hearings on Echelon. The media got hold of it and ABC
asked, “Is Uncle Sam illicitly reading your e-mail? Listening in on your phone
calls? Scanning your faxes?” Even the conservative BusinessWeek was concerned
and stated “They’re Listening to Your Calls: Echelon Monitors Phones, E-Mail
and Radio Signals. . . . Run by the supersecret
National Security Agency, it’s the granddaddy of all snooping operations.
Business and political leaders are waking up to the alarming potential of the
hush-hush system.”
This was the climate in which General
Hayden took over the agency and he vowed to steer clear of trouble with
Congress by playing strictly within the rules the law had imposed upon him.
This would have been fine but he bent over backward and did not even use the
existing FISA court system to the extent he might have. Bamford makes it quite
clear that had Hayden fully used the powers granted to him within the law, the
9/11 hijackings could have been prevented. By January of 2000 Mihdhar and Hazmi
were already in the San Diego area and phone calls from San Diego to the Yemen
al Qaida operations center were monitored by the NSA. But this information
never left the premises. Bamford wrote,
“In the NSA Ops2
B building, counterterrorism specialists continued reading the cryptic
conversations between Mihdhar and the Yemen ops center that had been picked up
while targeting the center. But inexplicably, the fact that the calls from
Mihdhar had a U.S. country code and a San Diego area code–something that should
have been instantly obvious to the NSA’s signal intelligence experts– was never
passed on to the FBI, CIA, or anyone else. Overly concerned about being accused
of domestic eavesdropping, Hayden made a drastic decision. He secretly pulled
the plug on intercepting all international communications to and from the U.S.,
even those involving terrorism. The ban apparently went even so far as to not
reveal the fact that suspected terrorists were present in the U.S. Thus, as
analysts and agents searched for Osama bin Laden, they had no idea that his men
were already here.”
While this ban was one facet, Bamford
also relates that there was bad blood between the three spy agencies which
prevented effective cooperation. The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC)
treated the NSA not as equal partners but subordinates “like an ATM for signals
analysis,” as one NSA member put it. In addition there was active hostility
between some members of the CIA and the FBI. The CIA knew that Mihdhar had been
on his way to Kuala Lumpur and at his stop in Dubai officials copied his Saudi
passport, on American request, which showed “a multi-entry visa” for the U.S.
with the destination New York. When the fax arrived, an FBI agent assigned to
the CIA, Doug Miller, saw it and immediately became concerned. That a known
terrorist – who could legally enter the U.S. at any time of his choice – was on
his way to a conference with other terrorists was potentially bad news and he
intended to notify his FBI superiors. But his CIA boss, Tom Wilshire, stopped
him in his tracks. Miller was told to hold off with the notification and when
he remonstrated on the following day he was told that, “the next attack is
going to happen in Southeast Asia–it’s not the FBI’s jurisdiction. When we want
the FBI to know about it, we’ll let them know.” To some extent the animosity
was personal and CIA officials especially disliked John P. O’Neill, chief of
the FBI’s National Security Division in New York. These are some of the strands
from which the 9/11 tragedy was woven: personal insecurity by General Hayden,
as well as turf wars and hostility among agencies which should have cooperated.
The morning of 9/11 was literally a gift
from heaven for the NSA. Its budgetary concerns were immediately over and money
began to flow in unprecedented amounts. In addition, while General Hayden had
been overly cautious prior to that date he now tacked into the exact opposite
direction. There was no longer a difference beween domestic and international
spying, everybody became fair game. At first only calls involving American
citizens from and to Afghanistan and Iraq were given extra attention but like
everything else in life “stuff grows.”
Nevertheless there were some responsible
individuals among NSA signal analysts who didn’t like what they were told to do.
One was Sergeant Adrienne Kinne who had been deputized to the NSA because she
was fluent in Arabic. After the collapse of the Iraqi regime her job was listening
to calls emanating from Baghdad, especially the Green zone. This included
“incredibly personal conversations between Americans–husbands, wives, and
lovers.” Kinne on her own deleted these from the system because she felt that
it was totally inappropriate to be there in the first place. “’I just can’t
believe they were frigging recording them, and I don’t know why they would ever
have to begin with.’”
David Murfee Falk who likewise worked at
the Georgia station related a similar as well as a different problem. One of
his friends at the facility told him that he was fed up listening to intimate
American conversations within the green zone and had gone to his supervisor
because it just wasn’t right. “’So they got somebody else to do it. There is
always somebody else who will do something like that. The whole agency down
here, at least the way it operates in Georgia, there’s a lot of intimidation,
everybody’s afraid of getting in trouble, and people just follow orders.’”
Faulk’s personal problem was that he had to distinguish when Arab speakers used
code words for a specific activity which would lead to an airstrike and when
the speakers were just harmless civilians.
“’You would
transcribe it word for word and then after the word melon you put a little ‘op comment’ in, to the effect that ‘in
terms of voice inflection it does not seem this guy is truly talking about
melons.’ It comes down to inflection, a lot of gut reactions to things. The
problem is, we never really got good feedback,
post-mission feedback, whether the targeted people are truly guilty of
terrorist acts. After the house was blown up, did you indeed find weapons and
bombs in it? . . . So you always run the risk that you’ll kill some innocent
people who really are selling melons and not IEDs. . . . It left me thinking we
killed a lot of innocent people, but I have no real way of knowing. . . . And
that was one of the reasons I got out. . . . It’s not the kind of mistake I
want to make.’”
It is apparent that people with a
conscience can’t do this type of work but unfortunately there are plenty of
others who will, because the pay is good and the job safe.
In the aftermath of 9/11 NSA has not
only vastly increased its own government resources but contracted with the
private telecommunication industry to the extent that virtually all major
companies from AT&T down have allowed government agencies to use their
facilities. We always hear how interconnected the world has become but for most
of us these are just words and we accept them without second thought. But when we learn that practically all
communications, regardless where they arise from, go through U.S. nodes and
hubs the situation begins to look different. Geographic distances have vanished
and which way a given message goes depends not on the shortest but on the
cheapest route.
Bamford provided several examples but I
shall mention just two.
“One example
might be a person in Tokyo sending an e-mail at three in the afternoon to
someone in Beijing–a very busy, and expensive, time for the message to pass
through the Asian switch. As a result the ISP [Internet Service Provider] in
Tokyo might instead automatically route all messages at that hour via
AT&T’s WorldNet switch in San Francisco, or one of its peering partners
there. At ten in the evening West Coast time, the communications traffic in San
Francisco would be greatly reduced, and thus lessen the
chance for a delay. Also the off-peak time would provide a significant price
break. Because the communications travel at the speed of light, and since both
Japan–U.S. and China–U.S. fiber-optic cables pass through the San Louis Obispo
landing station, there would be no time delay caused by the extra thousand or
so miles.”
While this example dealt with
intercontinental traffic the other one is even more surprising. The routing can
apply even to two people communicating within the same city. NSA deputy
director Bill Crowell told Bamford “’ I have seen a communication that went
from Memphis to Pakistan to Japan to whatever in order to get to another phone
in Memphis.’”
You may now ask: how does the NSA deputy
director know that? It’s simple, the agency has access to all telecommunication
from anywhere around the globe. With cooperation of the telecommunication
industry messages are being “split” so that a copy automatically lands at the
NSA. Since this, obviously creates a horrendous amount of data, bigger data
warehouses and faster computers are needed and that’s where Bluffdale comes in again
with its data acquisition, storage and code breaking abilities.
It is obvious that computers need a
variety of software so that eventually a human being can make sense of the bits
and bytes that are collected. Although the NASA, CIA, FBI etc. do have software
engineers they rely for the most part on specific programs which have been
developed by private companies. There exist a huge number of them for a variety
of purposes. I shall just use some of the Acronyms and their functions rather
than explaining what each letter stands for. The most important ones in common
use by the spy agencies are Narus and Verint. While Narus looks for
preprogrammed targets from all the messages which arrive, Verint is more
versatile, has a number of systems and advertises itself as “Better Business
and a Safer World” as well as “Intelligence in Action.” According to the
company’s information sheet it is a leading provider of Actionable Intelligence
Solutions with worldwide offices 10,000 organizations operating in 150
countries including more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 http://verint.com/corporate/.
Bamford tells us considerably more about
these various spy companies and their annual get-together at what he called the
“Wiretappers’ Ball” in Crystal City, Virginia, to search for the “ultimate
bug.” Here are some of the items that were on the highly confidential 2006
lecture program: Combining Data and Voice over Broadband into a Unified
Interception Solution; Broadening the Scope of Interception: Data Retention;
Comprehensive Data Extraction for Flexible and Accurate Intelligence;
Comprehensive solutions for Packet Data Collection: DEEPVIEW; Unifying
Telephony, VoIP and IP Interception for a Complete Overview of your Target’s
interactions. There was also a lecture on “NSC Spotter,” which “is a key-word Spotting
engine designed for locating predefined words in audio conversations in
real-time and off-line calls. The engine is used for speech analytics and call
surveillance.”
From allof these programs DEEPVIEW is perhaps the one we should be especially concerned
about because as the conference brochure stated it, “is a packet data
collection system with the comprehensive functionality to penetrate deep into
communications and turn raw, intercepted data into actionable intelligence and compelling evidence [bold print added].”
Let us think this through for a moment: computer programs can decide who to
target and then from a whole host of unrelated data construct a profile that
can turn you into a terrorist or enemy of the state.
One may now take comfort and say, well
ok, these things exist but we in the U.S. are protected because we have a
government of laws and constitutional guarantees. Well, think again. First of
all if you believe that these programs are under government control and rely on
strict authorizations by the judiciary you are mistaken. It is the president
who has the last word as to what is legal or not. This was the case under the
Bush era and Obama has not appreciably deviated from that stance. Inasmuch as
this is secret information, in order to protect our freedom, we will not get a
straight answer from Washington. Example: Oregon’s Representative Peter deFazio had become concerned about secret plans the White
House might have for what is called “Continuity in Government” in case of
another terrorist attack. As Jeff Koseff
from The Oregonian wrote: when deFazio, who was a member of the House Homeland Security
Committee, asked to see the relevant documents he received initial approval but
this was promptly rescinded by the White Househttp://www.rense.com/general77/cong.htm.
It is true that this happened in the Bush era but there is no evidence that the
situation has substantially improved since 2009.
There is one final point in the Bamford
book which gives ample food for thought. Some of the above listed spy programs
were not developed by our government and didn’t even come from American firms.
The country of origin was Israel, which supports what one may call equal
opportunity spying. The Israelis sell these programs to anybody including the
most repressive governments in the world because it makes money. Since these programs,
were initially developed by a special unit of the IDF in cooperation with the Mossad,
Israelis now have potentially ready access to whatever the users find. You may
want to think about this for a moment and the implications of what is really
being done “to keep us safe.” Some of Bamford’s points can be watched on video
by entering “nova spy factory” on google.
When one keeps all of the foregoing in
mind it is obvious that the Bluffdale facility which is in the process of going
up in my neighborhood is just another piece of the massive expansion of what
may now be called The National Security Industry, financed by our taxes. Now comes the next absurdity. Since the government is only in
charge but pays private industry to do the work we are paying considerably more
than we would have had the government done it. This marvel of capitalism where
taxpayers support private companies to do government work, using programs developed
by other countries, is surely remarkable.
Declaring an atrocious crime as an act
of war, simply because the president said so, was pure genius. It not only
prevented true information of what happened on 9/11 to come into public view
but spawned the open-ended War on Terror and the National Security State. Since
the “Security Industry” is exceedingly lucrative it is probably unrealistic to
hope that any president will soon give up on it. But this “security” is a fake.
Even we in our peaceful Salt Lake Valley will be less secure next year when
Bluffdale becomes operational, because the Russians and Chinese are not stupid
and will target their rockets on us.
In addition we will have to come to
grips with the fact that we are in the process of outsourcing human
intelligence and conscience to machines which gather bits of data and turn them
into information, but lack the unique human capacity of ethical judgment. The
pursuit of ever bigger and faster computers which already perform a quadrillion
operations/second (petaflop) ought to be given
serious second thoughts. What are we going to use them for except for spying
and killing each other? Do we really want the day, which was portrayed decades
ago in cartoon? In it a scientist was depicted as standing in front of a huge computer
asking: “Is there a God?” “Now there is!” was the answer.
When one considers these fundamental
questions and compares them with the pablum we are being fed by our media I am
again back in the Nazi era. Goebbels made sure that the masses were entertained
and Hitler made sure that we had enough to eat during the war so that the food
riots of WWI would not recur. If you were Aryan, kept your mouth shut, did not
belong to an outlawed organization and did what you were told, the government
would leave you alone. Is this the road we are on here where “the Jew” will
have been replaced by “the Muslim” or some “Terrorist?” Those of us who didn’t
like what the Nazis did had to shut up because the consequences were either
prison or death; we are not there yet. But if we continue to believe more in external
threats, which can be manufactured ad libitum, rather than the internal ones to
our freedoms, and don’t raise our collective voices due to fear and apathy we
will surely get there. To avoid this looming fate we will also have to have an
open discussion about everything that happened on 9/11. Unless our government
can be forced to come clean on the various improbabilities we are supposed to
believe in, the NS State will become permanent.
June 1, 2011
THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT
There was a time when I, in company with
most of America’s citizens, believed what our government as well as the media
told us and that our country stood for all that was good in this world. For us
the Cold War was a necessity against what President Reagan had called,
appropriately we thought, the “evil Empire,” which had to be defeated. We
rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down and when President George H. W. Bush
began to create a “New World Order,” which included peace between Israel and
the Palestinians, as evidenced by the Madrid Conference. We were deeply
disappointed when he lost re-election because Bill Clinton’s unbridled sexual
propensities, which were well known prior to election, as well as his political
orientation, did not inspire confidence. The Monica Lewinsky scandal, where he
wagged his finger at us while pronouncing, “I did not have sexual relations,
with that woman [pause], Miss Lewinsky,” was famously contradicted by his DNA on the “blue dress.” Dropping bombs on innocent
citizens in Baghdad
while impeachment proceedings were getting under way, for having lied under
oath, was obviously regarded as a diversionary tactic. In addition, not only
the cuts in the military, but forcing their male and female members into close
physical proximity such as in nuclear silos was regarded as lack of judgment,
if not worse.
These sentiments were expressed in the
Conclusion section of War&Mayhem
and I, again in company of many of our countrymen, welcomed the appointment of
George W. Bush by one vote of the Supreme Court. We assumed that “the apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree” and that the son would follow the policies
which his father was unable to bring to fruition. Since the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict was the root of turmoil in the Middle East
I thought that President George W. Bush would now let General Powell, as
Secretary of State, continue with the “peace process.” In order to help in this
effort I wrote Whither Zionism?and sent copies not only to all members of the
administration, but also of the relevant committees in the House and Senate. In
addition, I started in February of 2001 this website to acquaint my fellow
Americans with some aspects of history they might not be aware of. I felt that
this was needed since the personal experiences of my generation of Central
Europeans who had lived through the tragedies of the first half of the 20th
century differed from what one nowadays reads in history books. I had called
the website “thinktruth” because lying, or the deliberate use of the half-truth
is what we had experienced in the Nazi as well as the Clinton era and when government or the media
engage in it they should be held accountable.
The first article on this website
dealt with John Ashcroft’s nomination for Attorney General. Not knowing
anything about his subsequent conduct I went to his defense and continued to
believe in the righteousness of our government for the next several months.
This sentiment found full expression in the article “September 11th”
which was published in the October issue of that year. It makes interesting
reading today. In the section on “What should be done now?” I was correct in
the analysis of bin Laden’s and Israel’s
goals. I was also correct in stating that a retaliatory attack on Afghanistan or
any other Muslim country would be ill-advised and simply fulfill bin-Laden’s
intent. But I was wrong in the assumption what our government’s reaction would
be. The reason for this mistake was inadequate information in regard to the
geopolitical beliefs of key members of the Bush administration. This
information was available on the Internet but I had felt no need to consult it
because I trusted the media and the administration.
Truthfulness, and this is what this website
is all about, requires that first one admits one’s mistakes and then tries to
find out why one was mistaken. I am making this point because my attitude
towards 9/11 was typical for the vast majority of our citizens. We had no
problem believing that 19 devout Muslims, under the direction of Osama bin
Laden, had hijacked four commercial airplanes and in a kamikaze type holy furor
smashed two of them into the Twin Towers, another into the Pentagon, while the
fourth one was prevented from reaching its goal in Washington by heroic
passengers who overcame the hijackers and crashed the plane near Shanksville,
Pennsylvania. This was and is the only legitimate version of the events of that
day and it has now achieved the status of religious dogma which must not be
questioned. But while a great many of our countrymen still adhere to this dogma
others, including myself, have tried to educate themselves by reading relevant
articles and books. When one does so it becomes apparent that the Bush
administration has not told us the full truth in regard to what really happened
on that day. The 9/11 Truth movement was born when the government refused to
provide better explanations for a variety of improbabilities
The first account of some of the
problems with the government version was by a French journalist, Thierry
Meyssan, who published in February 2002 L’Effroyable
Imposture, which soon thereafter appeared in English under the title The Big Lie. The book consists mainly of
three parts. The first one is called: The bloody stage is set; the second: The
death of democracy in America
and the third: The empire attacks. It is followed by an Epilogue and a section
on: Documents and Appendices. The cover shows a color picture of black smoke
arising from one façade of the Pentagon in the background with an unblemished
lawn, fire trucks and other emergency response vehicles in the foreground.
Underneath is an excerpt attributed to The
New York Times “… challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11
attacks.”
This book is an important historic
document because it set the pattern for all the numerous subsequent ones which
deal with the improbabilities that are inherent in the official account. The
books which appeared after the 9/11 Commission Report had been published, added
reasons why this Report, which was to have clarified the issues, was not only
inadequate but actually further stretched credibility. I shall deal with this
part of the 9/11 tragedy later and for now concentrate on Meyssan’s book.
The mentioned cover picture is
important for two reasons. The pristine lawn contradicts the idea that an
airplane had just flown over it at practically ground level – which must have
occurred in order to impact the ground and first floor of the building.
Furthermore, this feat would not only have required a highly skilled pilot but
a hijacker would not have chosen such a difficult target and instead simply
crashed the plane into the roof of the building. This was actually pointed out
in quotes from Egypt’s
President Mubarak who was interviewed by CNN on September 15. “… something like
this done in the United
States is not an easy thing for some pilots
who had been training in Florida
. . . I am speaking as a former pilot, I know that very well. I flew heavy
planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this
is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions now.” While
this makes the official pilot version unlikely, the lack of debris from a
crashed Boeing 757 is an additional facet which has never been explained by the
government.
This is serious. Because if the story of
flight 77, which was supposed to have hit the Pentagon, does not hold up,
Pandora’s box has been opened and all the rest of what these 19 hijackers
accomplished can be called into question. Meyssan then continued with the
destruction of the WorldTradeCenter.
He pointed out that given the speed of the planes and their low maneuverability
it “would have been a remarkable feat even for an experienced pilot, let alone
trainees. . . . The professional pilots we talked to confirmed that few amongst
themselves could envisage performing such an operation and completely ruled it
out in the case of amateur pilots.” Meyssan continued, “There is, however, one
infallible method of achieving this result: The use of radio beacons. A signal,
transmitted from the target, guides the plane in automatically.” While Meyssan
agreed that the impact of the planes damaged the TwinTowers
this did not account for their collapse. He pointed out that, “the New York’s
firemen’s association and the professional review, Fire Engineering, which, backed up by calculations, claimed that
the structures could have resisted the fire for a long period. The firemen
affirm that they heard explosions at the base of the buildings and demanded the
opening of an independent investigation.” He then mentioned Building 7, which
likewise collapsed on that day but was not hit by a plane and stated, “The
question is no longer ‘was it dynamited?’ but rather, ‘what other hypothesis
can one formulate?’” But if explosives were used, they must have been
prepositioned and this would necessitate help from within the U.S.
Meyssan mentioned one additional item in
regard to loss of life which resulted from the destruction of the Towers. It
was far lower than the expected estimates based on the number of office workers
who would ordinarily have been in the building at that time. He, therefore,
suggested that “prior intervention was required to ensure that numerous
persons, at least working on the top floors, were absent from their offices at
the critical hour.” He then mentioned the same anomaly in the Oklahoma City
bombing where “a large portion of the civil servants working in the Alfred P.
Murrah building were given a half-day off so that the car bomb explosion only
killed 168 persons.”
Foreknowledge was also suggested by the
fact that an unusual number of “put options” (bets that the stock would lose
value) had been placed on certain specific companies in the days preceding
9/11. The irregularities were first noted by the Chicago Securities &
Exchange Commission. “Insiders had made capital gains of 5 million dollars on
United Airlines, 4 million dollars on stock in American Airlines, 1.2 million
dollars on Morgan Stanley Dean Winter & Co. and 5.5 million dollars on
Merrill Lynch & Co. [the latter two companies had offices in the WTC]. On
October 15 the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO)
presented an interim report. “It appeared that the illicit gains added up to
several hundred million dollars, constituting the ‘biggest case of insider
trading ever committed.’” Meyssan added that Osama bin Laden’s bank accounts
had been blocked by the Clinton
administration since 1998 and that Afghanistan’s Taliban government
likewise did not have the financial means for these speculations.
The chapter called “Moles in the White
House” is also worrisome. It deals with phone calls received in the White House
around 10 a.m. of September
11 which directly threatened the president, who was at that time on Air Force
One. They indicated that the caller had access to the secret codes not only of
the White House, but also of a number of other government agencies such as: The
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Air
Force Intelligence (AFI), Army Intelligence (AI), Naval Intelligence (NI), the
Marine Corps Intelligence (MCI) and the intelligence services of the State
Department and the Department of Energy. As Meyssan stated, “Each of these
codes is known only by a very small group of officials. No one is authorized to
possess several of them.” The common denominator was, however, a computer
program PROMIS. It had been stolen by the FBI spy Robert Hanssen and sold to the
Russians who may have circulated it to others. I have previously addressed the
topic in the August 1, 2008
installment, “The National Security Scam,” and while the presidential
spokesman, Ari Fleischer, as well as Karl Rove initially admitted the credible
threat, it was subsequently denied by the administration.
The rest of Meyssan’s book deals with
the unreliability of the passenger list on the doomed flights; Osama bin
Laden’s precarious health; our government declaring not only Al Qaeda as the
single responsible culprit but in President Bush’s words “the beginning of a
monumental struggle of good versus evil;” the enactment of emergency powers
which curtail civil liberties; the attack on Afghanistan and previous secret
operations, planned or executed by the U.S. government especially against Cuba.
Although the war against Afghanistan was officially portrayed as the just
revenge against the Taliban which sheltered bin Laden, Meyssan demonstrated
that this was an excuse rather than the reason. Negotiations with the Taliban
in regard to a UNOCAL pipeline from the Caspian basin through Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, which had been going on for some time, had failed
because the Taliban required that they be recognized by the U.N. as the
official government of the country. This was not possible and, “According to
the Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, the American delegation became threatening
and announced in mid-July that the dispute would be decided by arms.” Plans
were then made to install the former King, Zaher Shah, who lived in exile in Italy, as head of
a puppet government in Kabul.
I have mentioned the pipeline project in
other installments and especially in August 1, 2011 under “Misguided Arrogant Incompetence,”
but had not been aware of additional details provided by Meyssan. He added a
Chinese stone to the mosaic. Pakistan,
“Fearing overly strong Anglo-American pressure looked for new allies before the
storm broke. It invited a Chinese delegation to Islamabad and promised that it would open a
doorway for China
to the Indian Ocean in exchange for military
aid.” We and the British did not like this interference and “The Sea of Oman
became the theatre of the biggest deployment of the British fleet since the
Falklands War, while NATO transported forty thousand troops to Egypt.” These
statements were not referenced but can also be found in the “911 Encyclopedia”http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/WarWasPlanned.shtml.
Let this suffice for Meyssan’s book,
which ought to be read in its entirety, because as will be shown later this
information, although published in 2002, had as of March 2010 not yet reached
an Editorial writer of the Washington Post.For now let us address the next book which likewise was published in
2002. Its author was Eric Hufschmid and the title Painful Questions Analysis of the September 11th Attack.
I have discussed it in the October
1, 2006 article (The 9/11 Cover-up) and it supplements much of
Meyssan’s information especially in regard to the Pentagon and the WTC. The pictures
Hufschmid provided are of high quality and can hardly leave any doubt that the
WTC buildings did not just collapse. The TwinTowers
appear to have exploded in mushroom clouds, while Building 7 imploded in a
manner typical for controlled demolitions of buildings. The Pentagon pictures
are likewise more detailed and cast serious doubt on the statement that the
damage resulted from a crashed Boeing 757.
When one realizes that the essential
information, which raises serious questions in regard to the veracity of the
government’s account, was already available in 2002, it should come as no
surprise that people began to demand an impartial investigation into the 9/11
events. It started with firemen who had lost their friends and they were joined
by four young women from New Jersey,
later somewhat derisively referred to as “the Jersey
girls,” who had lost their husbands in the TwinTowers
destruction. With likeminded other 9/11 widows they formed a steering committee
which began to demand answers from our government. This initiated the second
phase of the disaster: the deliberate cover-up – there is no other word that
can be applied – by the Bush administration. If the government had promptly
established a genuine impartial investigation into the events of that day the
subsequent “conspiracy theories” could have been forestalled. But the
administration did exactly the opposite. It took the stance that there was no
need for an investigation because everybody knew that bin Laden and his
hijackers were responsible. Furthermore, Vice-president Cheney called the
Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Tom Daschle, to abstain from launching a full
investigation. When the latter did not agree he was summoned, four days later,
to the White House, where the president reinforced the request, as reported by
CNN on January 29, 2002http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-29/politics/inv.terror.probe_1_daschle-house-and-senate-intelligence-intelligence-committee?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS.The reason given was that it would take
resources away from the war on terrorism. This was hardly credible and lent
fuel to the smoldering suspicion that the government was hiding something it
didn’t want to become known.
When the Jersey widows persisted in
their quest for the truth and approached Congress, the administration had by November
2002 no longer a choice. Although a commission was appointed the cards against
impartiality were stacked against it. I have discussed the inadequacies of the
Commission report previously in “The 9/11 Cover-up” (October 1, 2006) and
Professor David Ray Griffin has published in 2004 an entire book about them; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions.” The two major problems were: the process was controlled
through its entirety by the White House and that its mission had been limited
to establish intelligence failures and means to enhance future security. As has
been pointed out it was a matter of “The White House investigating itself.”
This left the bereaved families, 9/11 emergency personnel and other concerned
citizens disgusted and they called for further investigations.
Since then an ever growing number of
articles and books have appeared that added information and at times engaged in
a number of theories as to what might have happened. I shall not deal with
speculations, which at this time cannot be verified, but will simply refer the
reader to the series of books by Griffin with the latest one of September 2011;
9/11Ten Years later: When State Crimes
against Democracy Succeed. They limit themselves largely to a detailed
discussion of the problems with the government theory and the inadequacies of
the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report in regard to
the destruction of the WTC. The author concluded that without some type of
involvement by agencies within our government the attacks could not have been
so spectacularly successful. On the other hand Prof. Judy Wood’s Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of
Directed Free-Energy Technology on 9/11, while showing high quality
pictures in regard to the Twin Towers’ destruction, presents a novel theory
which is, however, not shared by the majority of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
All members agree on the overall goal of
the Movement, namely the establishment of a truly independent international
9/11 fact finding commission. But there are differences on how this is best
achieved and in regard to the extent a variety of “conspiracy theories” are
advocated. There are several websites readers can acquaint themselves with. For
starters one may go to http://st911.org/ where
the major two different points of view can be evaluated. Scholars for 9/11
Truth prefers to engage in theoretical speculations as to what might have
happened, while Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice stays on the academic
experimental side and publishes a peer-reviewed journal. Unfortunately, since
evidence has either been destroyed or not released by the government, the
factual data are quite limited. Since I prefer to stay with personal experience
information from professionals in their respective fields I was impressed with http://patriotsquestion911.com, a
website where a number of professionals argue for the need of a new
investigation. These individuals include: senior military, intelligence
service, law enforcement as well as government officials; architects and engineers;
pilots and other aviation personnel; members of academia, survivors and family
members; artists, entertainers and media professionals as well as medical
professionals.
Some of the supporting statements are
highly relevant to what Meyssan had been told by French pilots. For instance
Commander Ralph Kolstad, a former AirCombat
Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun),
who flew commercial planes after 20 years in the Navy wrote, “At the Pentagon, the
pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of
flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown it the way the
flight path was described.” Furthermore, pilots stated that at top speed they
would have had great difficulty, even in the simulator, to hit such narrow
targets as the Towers. Architects, as well as other professionals have
challenged the NIST report and pointed out that the models which were used to
explain the destruction of the buildings had fatal flaws. Physicists have
likewise challenged the “fire only” explanation as was advanced for the
destruction of WTC7. It is remarkable that this event was not even mentioned in
the 9/11 Commission Report. When one considers Jeffrey Scott Shapiro’s
statement that, in the afternoon of September 11 Larry Silverstein, who held
the lease of the WTC buildings, was contacting his insurance company for
authorization to destroy WTC7 (May 1, 2012 America’s Galileo moment), one
wonders why Mr. Silverstein and the insurance carrier had not been deposed
under oath in order to establish whether or not this was true?
At present the absolute numbers of people who
have signed the petition for a new investigation is still fairly small and the
reason is twofold: suppression of truthful information by the media and fear of
losing one’s reputation and/or job. The latter is a real danger which few of us
can ignore. This should not prevent, however, anyone from consulting the
Internet and informing him/herself about the truth of the matter to the extent
as it exists. I have already mentioned some of the books and sites although
these provide in part conflicting information and viewpoints. Yet, even a
cursory glance at The Terror Timeline,
by Paul Thompson, which stays strictly with material published by the media,
will be an eye-opener. Thompson did not editorialize in the text and merely
quoted published reports on a year by year, day by day and minute by minute
basis. This meticulous piece of honest work ought to be widely read. For anyone
who has not been previously exposed to the data which were presented here and
still finds it difficult to doubt the official explanation I would recommend http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory.
Although it is presented as a spoof please watch not only the five minute video
but read the transcript and while doing so click on the red portions because
they provide the documentation.
This brings up the final question: why have
our public media, the supposed guardians of government accountability, failed
us so miserably? Especially after the 9/11 Commission Report they have not only
abrogated their responsibility but have heaped scorn on any and all who want
genuine answers. Here is a typical example. On March 8, 2010 the Washington Post published an unsigned Editorial under the headline.
“A leading Japanese politician espouses a 9/11 fantasy.” The key paragraph
states,
“Yukihisa Fujita is an influential member of the ruling
Democratic Party of Japan. Mr. Fujita's ideas about the attack on the WorldTradeCenter, which he shared
with us in a recent interview, are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually
bogus to merit serious discussion. He questions whether it was really the work
of terrorists; suggests that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot
played the stock market to profit from it; peddles the fantastic idea that
eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well; and hints that controlled
demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at
least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center, which was adjacent
to the twin towers.”
One really wonders: is this writer of one
of the nation’s most respected newspapers really so intellectually lazy of not
having checked the vast literature which exists on this topic, or is the writer
deliberately misinforming the public? Unusual trading had already been dealt
with by Meyssan and so was the destruction of the WTC. The evidence for the
“living hijackers” had been presented between September 16 and 23, 2001 in
major newspapers from around the world and was summarized in pages 496-498 of The Terror Timeline, which was published
in 2004. Furthermore, Andreas von Bülow former Bundesminister in Germany’s Federal Government had
published in 2003, Die CIA und der 11.
September Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste. The
author, who had personal experience with the ways various secret service
agencies around the world work, likewise felt that our government’s account is
not sustainable.
The 9/11 Truth Movement will not go
away because too much is at stake. The next war, against Iran, is in the
planning stage and complicity of that country in the 9/11 tragedy is about to
be trotted out again as it was in the case of Iraq. The “War on Terror” must be
exposed for what it really is: a quest for global domination and a never ending
sinecure for what Eisenhower had called the “military-industrial complex,” to
which now needs to be added the “information and security industry.” On September 27, 2001 the New York Times published a guest
Editorial by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the title, “A new kind of
war,” which was reprinted in Meyssan’s book. In it Rumsfeld stated, “Forget
about ‘exit strategies’: we’re looking at a sustained engagement that carries
no deadlines.” Is this really what we want for our children and grandchildren:
perpetual war against some phantom enemy who can morph at any moment depending
upon the whims of our leadership? I doubt it. But if we don’t act now this is
what we will get, in addition to a police state.
In the July 1 installment I shall
present information on the ways the Truth Movement has tried to gain public
traction since the 9/11 Commission Report; the impediments encountered and a
potential way forward.
July 1, 2012
THE "TRUTHERS"
The previous three installments have
provided evidence that there exists a serious credibility gap in regard to the
government’s explanations for the 9/11 tragedy. There is also more than enough
information indicating that this crime has been exploited by the Bush
administration to launch a War on Terrorism, which Donald Rumsfeld has assured
us, will last at least a generation.
We now have to be clear in our language.
Although President Bush immediately declared the 9/11 crime to have been an act
of war, this was not entirely truthful. Up to September 11, 2001 wars were mainly
regarded as military actions between nations. Individuals commit crimes, nation
states make wars. Since there was no evidence that Afghanistan’s Taliban
government was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attack our
response to it, namely toppling the Taliban government by military action,
although popular, lacked legal justification. This point is vital because it
was a break with past precedents.
As mentioned in the previous installment
the first WTC bombing in February of 1993, which killed 6 persons and injured more
than a thousand, was appropriately regarded as a crime and the perpetrators were
tried and convicted under the criminal justice system. On 9/11 the scale of
damage at the WTC was bigger and additional targets were involved. But the
official statement by President Bush that our nation is, therefore, at war was
unconstitutional because section 8 reserves this right for Congress. It is true
that several administrations since WWII have bypassed Congress by camouflaging
a war as a “police action” e.g. Korea, but this does not alter the
fundamentals. President Bush declared a War on Terrorism, which is pursued with
the full military power of the government and this war is illegal under our
Constitution. He compounded the problem by subsequently invading Iraq. Although
Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator his government had not been involved in
the 9/11 attacks and ever since the establishment of the United Nations an
unprovoked attack by one country upon another is regarded as a war crime. This
was what the Nuremberg trials were all about and German generals were hanged
for having followed the orders of the then legitimate government and having
prepared plans for the invasion of Poland. These are facts and since the US was
instrumental in creating the UN and its statutes it ought to abide by them. Our
country has obviously not done so and only uses the UN whenever convenient,
ignoring it when not.
This is deeply disturbing, because when
the government breaks the law no one is safe. The powers which are in charge of
us are, of course, aware of the above cited unpleasant facts and when they are
reminded about their dereliction of duty they strike back. People who feel that
they have been deceived and want to rectify the situation are first intimidated
and if that is ineffective, reviled. If they are members of one of the numerous
government branches, they are persecuted. An atmosphere of fear is spread and
even private citizens who voice their displeasure with the way the Bush
administration reacted to 9/11 are ostracized. They are referred to as
“Truthers” and labeled as: “conspiracy nuts,” “morons,” “idiots” and similar
epithets.
These terms and their authors are
documented by Griffin in 9/11 Ten Years
Later. When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed.
So let us now look who these “idiots” and “morons” really are. The person who
has done the most to shine some light on facts which contradict the government
version is David Ray Griffin, who has been repeatedly mentioned in these pages.
He is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont
School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont California.
He is also currently co-director of the Center for Process Studies. When a
person with this type of background questions the government’s explanations he
deserves a hearing. One may now ask why, in his late years of life, he would
engage in what obviously seems a fruitless effort to not only challenge the
government, but declare unequivocally that the hijackers alone could not have
accomplished everything they supposedly did without some help by insiders in
our government. Obviously this strikes one as so preposterous that one is
inclined to automatically say nonsense. But this is a “gut reaction,” and
especially scientists should not react with their gut but their brains.
Let me now relate how I came to know about
Professor Griffin. In previous installments I mentioned my long-standing
friendship with Professor Hellmuth Petsche, who established the first
Neurophysiology Institute at the University of Vienna. In spite of the distance
we have stayed in contact over the decades since we first met in 1950. A common
bond, apart from neurophysiology, was our interest in philosophy. Since mine
tended towards the more practically oriented stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus
and Marcus Aurelius I found little use for the modern speculative types such as
Heidegger which would have required serious study to discern the meaning of
what they tried to convey. But Hellmuth was more widely read and very diligent
in his efforts at trying to educate me. Among other questions he once asked me
what I knew about Whitehead. The immediate answer was: nothing! I hadn’t even
heard of the man let alone his philosophy. But since I had been asked I felt
that I should correct this ignorance and ordered from amazon Whitehead’s
writings.
The book came and the Title was Process and Reality Corrected Edition,
Alfred North Whitehead edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.
The inside cover page states the title as: Process
and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology.Gifford Lectures delivered in the University
of Edinburgh during the session 1927-1928. This is Whitehead’s magnum opus
and as stated in the Editor’s Preface, “one of the major philosophical works of
the modern world.” The editors also explained that Whitehead was a genius who
had little patience for the tedium involved to bring his notes into proper
order and then proof-read the material. This was the reason why they found the
first publication of the lectures unsatisfactory and had to issue a corrected
edition. Even a first glance, when pages are taken at random, shows that this
was no easy task. One cannot just “read” Whitehead, one has to immerse oneself
in his world view, which is compounded by the fact that he used terms such as
“concrescence” which require explanations. A classification of societies into
“enduring objects”, “corpuscular societies” and “non-corpuscular societies,” is
also not immediately meaningful. I am mentioning these aspects only to
demonstrate that a person who undertakes to edit a volume of this type cannot
be a fool, moron or idiot and that his views ought to be taken seriously.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with his conclusions can be a matter of debate
but it should be civil and name calling reflects only on the person who uses this
tactic rather than the recipient.
Why should a person like Griffin become
so involved in 9/11 that he spent nearly a decade of his life on this thankless
task and write numerous books to direct the attention of the public to this
unresolved crime. The answer is that this is what his professional life was all
about. Philosophy is supposed to be the pursuit of wisdom, and religion should
deal with man’s moral compass. When both of these aspects are violated by one’s
government decent, caring people become concerned because societies, just like
the family, are built on trust and when one’s trust is abused trouble becomes
inevitable.
Now let us go back to basics again, the
meaning of words. As mentioned in a previous essay we live in a Humpty Dumpty
world where the word means “what I
say!” rather than the commonly agreed upon meaning (The Humpty Dumpty Society,
February 1, 2010). This is especially important when it comes to “Truth.” I
have written a separate essay on the topic and for the current purpose will
limit myself to that aspect which can be called “truthfulness in interpersonal
relationships” (What is Truth? September 1, 2001). It is the opposite of using
lies. It is another remarkable fact of our society that most everybody agrees
on what a lie is but truth is supposed to be a matter of opinion. While this
may be the case for some concepts about our world, it does not hold across the
board and this difference needs to be clearly articulated.
The need to be truthful was literally
beaten into me, as readers of War&Mayhem
will have noted, because I was an inveterate liar in childhood. Why did I lie?
I was afraid of admitting to wrong behavior. Since I am no exception to the
rest of humanity this is a universal fact of our biology because it seems to be
the easy way out of a difficult situation. But the opposite is the case as I
found out later in life. The first lie will be found to have been inadaquate
and further lies have to be produced to justify the first one. In this way the
original problem gets compounded rather than resolved. On the other hand
telling the truth in spite of one’s fear has in all probability saved my life
during WWII. The reviled “truthers,” therefore, have a point in calling the
government to account even if some of their theories seem outlandish.
9/11 has become the proverbial third
rail of our society which must not be touched and the media have succeeded in
giving the truthers such a bad name that one is even afraid of mentioning the
topic in polite society. Let me speak again from personal experience. After
having read some of Professor Griffin’s books I became convinced that in order
to break through the curtain of silence the media has drawn, one needs to have
an international conference, on 9/11 in New York City near the WTC site, which
the media could not ignore. I expressed this idea also in last year’s October
issue and afterwards started to correspond with Griffin and some other members
of the truth community. Griffin pointed out that this would require a fair amount
of money which neither one of us has and suggested that we have a conference in
Salt Lake. I immediately demurred because Mormonland hardly seemed to be the
right venue. Nevertheless, we continued our conversations and he was very
helpful in providing me with e-mail addresses of responsible, professional
people within the 9/11 truth-seekers. He also pointed out that there had been
such a conference last year in Toronto and another one would be held in
Vancouver in June of this year. But before dealing with further events I now
have to deal with a significant problem within the 9/11 community.
As mentioned in last month’s essay the
truth movement has split into two major components. One is the
Griffin-Jones-Gage camp which concentrates mainly on scientifically verifiable
information and especially on extracting from the government a valid
explanation of how the WTC disintegrated. They do not deny that planes hit the
Towers but their experience, based on professional advice, indicated that
although the Towers had suffered structural damage from the impact of the
planes and the resulting fires they should not have disintegrated in the manner
all of us saw. In addition, there is the problem with WTC7 which had not been
hit by a plane and had not suffered major damage from fallen debris, yet it disintegrated
in a manner which is typical for controlled demolitions. The reason for largely
limiting the inquiry to physically verifiable data was to avoid getting trapped
in unprovable theories. I regard this as a sound strategy. There are two
clearly defined positions: the government claims as presented by NIST based on
models on the one hand, and scientific studies as well as reports from
eye-witnesses, that explosives were responsible, on the other. This is a matter
of science where each side can present its evidence and we can then judge which
of the two positions has greater probability. Under those circumstances there
is no room for acrimony or name-calling. Let science have the last word and
then deal with the consequences of the outcome.
James Fetzer Ph.D. and professor
emeritus of the University of Minnesota Duluth was, however, not content with this
limitation and felt that all of the anomalies contained in the government’s
account need to be investigated. Furthermore, he insisted that all potential
theories which might explain the photographic evidence we are familiar with,
ought to be explored. This is, likewise, a legitimate stance but does, of
course, lead to some theories which many of us will regard as “outlandish.” The
problem with this approach is that whatever theory is proposed, even if it
sounds reasonable, may not be scientifically verifiable because there are no
primary reliable data.
Just like Griffin, Fetzer has an
academic background in philosophy but there are clear differences between these
two persons. I have already mentioned some of Griffin’s background and how I
came to know about his work, but I knew nothing about Fetzer and had to rely on
Wikipedia. It tells us that he studied philosophy at Princeton where he
graduated magna cum laude in 1962. He then joined the Marines for four years,
rose to the rank of Captain, and resigned thereafter to obtain his Ph.D. in
Philosophy from Indiana University. He taught at several universities and eventually
held a tenured position at the University of Minnesota Duluth from 1987 till
2006. He has published extensively on computer science, artificial intelligence
and cognitive science. It is clear, therefore, that “conspiracy nut” and moron
or idiot likewise does not apply to him.
Nevertheless in spite of the somewhat
similar university background there are clear differences in personalities
which have led to the split in the Truth movement which I mentioned last month.
Griffin is the polite academician who chooses his words carefully and calmly
while Fetzer struck me as the Marine Captain whose word must be obeyed or you
get shouted down. Under those circumstances a parting of the ways was
inevitable.
In my correspondence with Griffin he had
told me not only about the Toronto Hearings which had been held at Ryerson
University in September of 2011, under the auspices of Professor Graeme MacQueen,
but that there would be another conference of this type in Vancouver during
June of 2012 arranged by Fetzer. I shall have more to say about the Toronto
Hearings in the August essay, for now it is necessary to concentrate on the
word “Hearings.” The meeting was designed to have an international body of speakers
present their evidence on why they disagreed with the official explanation and
a panel of distinguished academicians would then evaluate the data and write a
report. An introductory interview with Professor MacQueen can be seen on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hkIA1UdXM.
Since persons adhering to what may be called
“the Fetzer group” had not been invited there was dissension, and the decision
was made to have an analogous Hearing in Vancouver. The invited speakers would
present their data under oath. After the Hearings the two judges would then
write a report. The announcement and program can be viewed athttp://www.911vancouverhearings.com.
After having looked at the program on the Internet and the topics to be
discussed I was not particularly impressed because the Mission Statement to
“Expand the Boundaries of 9/11 Truth,” and some of the titles of the
presentations did not lead me to expect a presentation of verifiable facts and
legally actionable proposals. That is, however, what I would like a conference
to achieve.
Nevertheless Griffin encouraged me to
attend because I could then form my opinions on basis of what I had personally
experienced and that I would be able to meet some “good people” for whom he
provided me the e-mail addresses. I, therefore, did attend and shall present my
impressions in the September issue. At present I shall only relate my feelings
when I entered and left Canada. I had been there several times to scientific
meetings over the past decades and the passage through immigration was always
unremarkable. But this time was different. When the official asked why I was
coming to Canada I replied: “For a conference.” He then asked: “What is the
conference about?” When I said: “9/11,” he looked at me and then asked: “What
are you doing there?” I replied that “I have come to listen to what they have
to say.” This satisfied him and he returned my passport. The odd aspect was
that I felt embarrassed to admit that I was going to a meeting of “conspiracy
nuts.” A similar situation occurred on leaving Canada and for a moment I even wondered
if somebody had already put me on a “no-fly list.” You may now say that this is
paranoia. Yes it is; but after one has read what has happened to whistleblowers
and is aware that our government does read our e-mails and does listen to our
phone conversations one may be excused for feeling uneasy.
The interesting aspect is that I was not
the only one who had experienced these feelings on entering Canada. At the Hearings
I had extended discussions with Dwain Deets, retired Chief of Research Engineering
and Director of Aeronautical Projects at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. He
clearly was no “conspiracy nut,” neither was he a moron or idiot. I shall have
more to say in regard to his scientific accomplishments in the September issue
which will deal with the Vancouver Hearings. Afterwards Mr. Deets sent me an
e-mail about his impressions of the Hearings and I shall quote from the first
paragraph:
“The memory of
the Canadian customs official questioning me as I entered Canada is vivid in my
mind. After asking me what conference I was attending, I replied, ‘the 9/11
Vancouver Hearings.’ While hoping that would be a sufficient answer, he
followed quickly with another question. ‘And what is your role?’ he asked. ‘As
a speaker,’ I replied. ‘Okay you may go.’ And as if to add an exclamation
point, he came down with the stamp machine on my passport. With an inner sigh
of relief, I promptly moved on, almost afraid I would be called back for
further questions.”
It is truly sad that as an American
citizen one should feel like a potential outcast, but it shows the power of propaganda
which has thoroughly poisoned the atmosphere.
There is more. Last year Martha and I
had to renew our passports and when they came in the mail I just looked at the
expiration date. When I saw October 2021 I was relieved because it is in all
probability the last passport I’ll ever need. Outwardly it looked the same as
my old one from August 2001 but inside they had introduced a number of changes
which I noticed only when I had to write the passport number on the immigration
form. The passport has become “patriotic!” The back of the cover page simply
used to show your picture and identifying information. No longer; now we have a
picture of the siege of Baltimore during the war of 1812 with Francis Scott
Key, author of the National Anthem, standing on the deck of a battleship
looking at Fort McHenry with the US flag flying high, and the handwritten
notes: “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.” What an irony I thought, the truly free and the brave
are the truthers, and they are at best ridiculed and at worst hounded. The
first page which used to have the request in English, French and Spanish that
this document should be honored by all countries now carries above it the quote
by Lincoln, “And that government of the people, by the people, for the people
shall not perish from the earth.” Similar patriotic slogans appear on the top
of each page. What a farce I thought. We no longer have a country that lives up
to these noble sentiments. Instead we have a plutocracy. Elections for
political office are won by the candidate who is able to raise the largest sum
of money. Obscene amounts are spent even on primaries and the Salt Lake Tribune
reported that our Senator Orrin Hatch had spent $10 million to achieve his
victory last month.
The topic will be continued in the August
1 issue which will deal with Mr. Richard Gage’s efforts in the Truth movement
and the Toronto Hearings.
August 1, 2011
ATTEMPTS AT RAISING 9/11 AWARENES: RICHARD GAGE – TORONTO HEARINGS
As mentioned in previous installments
the 9/11 Truth Movement consists essentially of two groups. One which
concentrates on evidence which is incompatible with the official 9/11
Commission Report and limits itself to the attempt to bring these to the
attention of the general public. It does not engage in speculation as to who
did what but merely presents facts which require better explanations than the
government has provided. The second group approaches the problem from the viewpoint
of a murder investigation – nearly 3000 innocent civilians were, after all,
deliberately killed in a mass murder of previously unprecedented magnitude – and
in the popular phrase as a “who-done-it?” Since this approach is obviously more
speculative at this time it readily invites flights of fancy.
Although both groups demand a genuine
unbiased, independent international investigation of this crime, the strategy
how to achieve this goal differs.The
“fact-finding” group believes that it can be most readily accomplished when the
improbability of the government’s theory in regard to the destruction of the
Twin Towers and WTC7, as proposed by NIST and which has become official dogma,
is clearly demonstrated. I emphasize the word “theory” because the government
has never provided proof of how this disaster happened. The currently advocated
sequence of events was not derived from facts obtained from the crime scene but
from computer models performed under the auspices of the government. This must
be clearly kept in mind when the results are evaluated. If it can be proven
that impact of the planes and subsequent fires could not have caused the total
destruction of the WTC, with nearly free fall speed, the implications are
serious indeed. The only reasonable alternative for the events we all saw on television
is that some type of explosives had been used to bring the buildings down. But
if this had been the case, the destruction was deliberate. This is a thought
most of us don’t want to entertain because it renders the government’s statement,
that Osama bin Laden with 19 Muslim hijackers had alone achieved this feat, untenable.
Yet, unless we think the unthinkable our government will have license to potentially
keep deceiving us in other matters; especially in regard to the War on
Terrorism, which is still pursued by the Obama administration.
This is what makes the 9/11 catastrophe
so important. But every effort is made by the media and our politicians “not to
go there.” Nevertheless, there are some determined individuals who will not let
the matter rest in spite of the personal attacks they are subjected to as a
result. One of these is the architect Richard Gage. He founded the group
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006, and has currently 1,704
signatures by these professionals demanding a new investigation. Mr. Gage has
been extremely active in bringing the signatories’ point of view to the
attention of the general public and has earlier this year taken a multi-city
bus lecture tour from Vancouver across Canada to Montreal. Subsequently he
toured most of the major cities in the US showing the video “9/11 Explosive
Evidence – Experts Speak Out.” Salt Lake was not on the schedule and if I had
not been an Internet surfer I would not have known about it.
Since the mainstream media have failed
to adequately provide information on this topic an international conference was
held last September on the campus of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. In
contrast to the usual conferences with speakers and discussion it was modeled
to some extent on the Grand Jury concept as it exists in the United States.
Since my European readers may not be familiar with it let me quote from
Wikipedia:
“Unlike a trial
jury – which operates under the unanimous system – a grand jury can indict a
defendant with a majority vote. Moreover, trial juries will decide whether a
defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime in question, whereas, a grand
jury will listen to evidence and decide if a suspect should be charged with a
crime. As a result, the grand jury is responsible for determining probable
cause, and not “innocence” or “guilt.”
Because the
grand jury’s primary responsibility is to determine probable cause, the body
will not hear all the evidence or conflicting arguments associated with the
case. The information provided to the grand jury is delivered by the
prosecutor; this individual must present conflicting evidence for the grand
jury to accurately determine probable cause. The suspect’s lawyers (the defense
team) are not allowed to be present during this evaluation process. The defense
team cannot present evidence, but may consult with witnesses outside the
courtroom.”
Ordinarily a Grand Jury consists of at
least 12 members but at the Canadian Hearings four “panelists” served in this
function. There was no prosecutor but the speakers were the “witnesses” who
laid out their case to the panel which would subsequently render a verdict
whether or not probable cause existed for this case to be further investigated.
It was envisioned that the witnesses would provide their written reports to the
panel members who would then issue their final opinion. The proceedings
including the panel’s verdict would subsequently be published.
Members of the assessment panel were: FerdinandoImposimato,Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy. Herbert
Jenkins, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at McMaster
University. Richard B. Lee,Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the
University of Toronto. David Johnson,Professor
Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Tennessee. The
names of the witnesses and their qualifications will be listed in the context
of their presentations. The date of the four-day Hearings was determined in a
manner that the last presentations were on September 11, 2011, the 10th
anniversary of the catastrophe.Ryerson University did not sponsor the
meeting but leased facilities to the organizers and helped in a variety of
other ways.
Graeme MacQueen a Professor of Religion,
who had retired from McMaster University and was a member of the steering
committee for the Hearings, was interviewed by CTV News about two weeks
prior to the meeting. The
segment was introduced by Jacqueline Milczarek and the interesting aspect was
the banner under her image. It read, “911 skeptics will meet in Toronto” and in
smaller letters “Conspiracy theorists to converge on Ryerson University.” When
Professor MacQueen was introduced we were not told that he has been an
academician for 30 years, the banner read instead: “Graeme MacQueen” and
underneath “Conspiracy Theorist.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hkIA1UdXM.
Thus, any dissent from official dogma receives automatically a pejorative label
by the media, even in Canada. Characteristically this is the case before the
guest on the program has even uttered the first sentence. The media
indoctrination has been so successful that no second thought is given to the
potential substance of what the program’s guest might say. We have, therefore,
a situation where anyone, regardless of professional status, who merely
questions specific aspects of the official account, is automatically a
conspiracy theorist with all of its negative connotations. This is the problem
the Toronto Hearings was also intended to overcome.
Since the official publication of the
Proceedings and the verdict by the panelists on the merits of the individual
presentations have not yet appeared, I shall summarize the information from the
DVD “The Toronto Hearings on 9/11 – Uncovering Ten Years of Deception,” as
produced by “The International Center for 9/11 Studies and Press for Truth” http://www.ic911studies.org/Home_Page.html.
It can be obtained from http://torontohearings.org
and the site also provides further details.
As far as speakers and topics are
concerned they were “bookended” by Mrs. Laurie van Aicken who lost her husband
and the father of her children in the destruction of the North Tower and Mr.
Bob McIlvain who lost his son, likewise in the North Tower. Mrs. van Aicken was
instrumental in creating the New Jersey group of widows, which has been
somewhat derisively called “the Jersey girls” and was discussed in the June 1
installment. She related their quest for clarity about the disaster and the
difficulties experienced with the 9/11 Commission. She was “outraged” that Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the Commission,
had allowed President Bush and Vice President Cheney to testify together
without a transcript and recording devices.The ladies had hoped for a real investigation to take place and were
concerned about Zelikow’s appointment because he had major
conflicts of interest. Not only was he a personal friend and closely associated
with Condoleezza Rice, but he had also served on President Bush’s transition
team and had retained close White House ties. Mrs. Van Aicken regarded it as
incredible that there has never been a real independent investigation, even 10
years later, and wished for one to take place in a real courtroom where there
is subpoena power and cross-examination of witnesses.
This
sentiment was echoed by Mr. McIlvain who stated that he had lost faith in the
9/11 Commission, 90% of whose hearings he faithfully attended. He “got disgusted”
when he heard National Security Advisor Condi Rice’s testimony. “She
filibustered and talked nonsense. Everyone was smiling; they shook
hands, that’s when I lost my cool. . . . The investigation was a total
sham. Even some of the commissioners admitted that it was a sham.” An objective
nonpartisan investigation was required.
I will now present some key aspects not in
a chronologic manner, as seen on the video, but group them in terms of the
topics which were covered. Since the destruction of the WTC is iconic for the
9/11 disaster it was extensively discussed by six different speakers. Richard
Gage, the above mentioned San Francisco architect, provided an overview. He pointed out that the scientific method is required to
validate a given hypothesis but this was not done by NIST. Destruction of steel
frame high rise buildings by fire has never occurred in the past in spite of
the fact that some buildings had been exposed to fire for considerably longer
durations. As an example he showed the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel fire of
2009. The steel structure remained standing in spite of the inferno having
lasted considerably longer than the WTC fires. Furthermore, whenever buildings
did collapse from “natural” causes they would not do so with nearly free fall
speed and they would fall over onto one side. The debris are recognizable e.g.
after earthquakes, and not pulverized. He then showed examples of explosions by
controlled demolitions which are usually vertical and symmetrical. This was
clearly also present at the WTC and as such did not fit with NIST’s computer
models. He concluded that for the type of destruction we saw to have occurred at
the Twin Towers and building 7, one needed access to the elevator shafts and
from there to the core columns. It takes time to prepare a building for demolition
and the media should be asking: who had the means and the opportunity? He
emphasized that Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth don’t speculate, they
go by the laws of physics and an impartial investigation is required.
David Chandler,
a teacher of physics and mathematics, concentrated on WTC7 and demonstrated
that the NIST calculations for the duration of the collapse were faulty,
because it had occurred in two stages. First the penthouse disappeared, but the
building remained standing and a few seconds thereafter the entire structure
went straight down. The latter event occurred at free fall speed which is
evidence for controlled demolition. If there had been falling mass, as NIST
said, there would have been deceleration which did not occur.
Kevin
Ryan who had previously worked at Underwriters Laboratories (which certified
the steel used at the Twin Towers and who was mentioned in the May 1 issue),
pointed out further specifics in regard to the inadequacy of the NIST
explanation. The additional main points were that the explanation of sagging
floors having pulled the external columns inward and thereby initiated the
collapse of the Towers was not valid. NIST never performed any kind of physical tests but
relied only on computer models. When the initial models did not come up with the desired
result the data were manipulated to fit the desired results. When NIST was
asked to show how the model was arrived at, “they refused because it would
jeopardize public safety.” In as much as NIST did not share its results with
the scientific community, they cannot be independently verified. But this is
the hallmark of science. He also pointed to extreme heat which was found in the
basement of the WTC and which persisted for weeks after the collapse of the
buildings. Molten steel was observed which required temperatures in excess of
1500 degrees C, but NIST listed maximum gas temperatures as 1000 degree C
having occurred. On the other hand, if an explosive such as thermate had been
involved, temperatures of 3000 degrees could well have been achieved.
Jonathan Cole, an
engineer, also discussed, “The Official Account and the Experimental Method –
How did the Twin Towers fall?” His main points were that if the collapse had
been initiated by the sagging floors having pulled the peripheral columns
inward, the core columns should have remained standing. In addition, in as much
as National Geographic had produced a documentary which claimed that thermitic
material cannot cut through steel; he did the experiment in his backyard. He demonstrated
to the audience that the National Geographic scientists had been mistaken and
thermitic material can indeed do the job, albeit to the detriment of some of
his trees and bushes which had suffered in the process.
Retired
Assoc. Professor Dept. of Chemistry University of Copenhagen, Niels Harrit also
worked with physical data and found, “Incendiary/Explosive Residue Evidence in
the WTC Dust.” Iron laden microspheres were observed in the dust, which resulted
from molten steel, in addition to nanothermite residue. Furthermore, a team from
the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Sloan Kettering Institute, NY, had
reported in 2010 on carbon nanotubes (probably derived from thermitic material)
in lung tissue from 9/11 emergency responders. http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901159.
Professor
Graeme McQueen presented examples from 156 eye-witnesses who reported that explosions
had occurred in the Twin Towers. Although some of these persons had testified
before the 9/11 Commission, their testimony was omitted in the final report.
The NIST report likewise did not include a single eye-witness testimony.
While
these presentations dealt with evidence for explosions at the WTC, Barbara
Honegger a “Former
White House Policy Analyst & Senior Military Affairs Journalist at Naval
Postgraduate School,” showed that this was also the case
at the Pentagon. The
official version of “A surprise Pearl-Harbor like Kamikaze plane attack on the
West Outer Wall of the Pentagon by Arab/Muslim terrorists in control of FL 77,
a large commercial 757 impacting near ground level at exactly 9:37:46,
diagonally penetrating through 3 of 5 rings, causing a single ‘Exit hole’ on
the inner wall of the middle C ring,” is not tenable. She had interviewed eye-witnesses who actually worked at the
Pentagon on that day and was told that the event had not been totally
unexpected, because bomb-sniffing dogs had been present earlier in the day. Furthermore,
the only video which was released by the FBI (five frames), which purportedly
shows the impact of AA 77, has significant problems. The pre-impact pictures
show only a white streak and the impact itself a huge fireball. There is no
evidence for a Boeing 757 in these frames. Ms. Honegger also pointed out that
an early version of these frames had been “leaked” in 2002, but it showed the wrong
date and time stamp, while the same official FBI released frames in 2006, had
time and date removed. Yet if these were authentic surveillance pictures they
would have had the time and date imbedded. The witnesses who had worked inside
the Pentagon at the time of “impact” reported bomb explosions and that the
damage was most severe in the innermost rings, rather than in the area of
impact. Finally the official term the FBI uses for the 9/11 disaster is
PENTTBOM which stands for Pentagon –Twin Towers – Bomb. Ms. Honegger’s
presentation was full of further details which will be omitted for now because
she presented an expanded version of her data in Vancouver. It will be related
in that context next month.
The
rest of the presentations covered a variety of other inconsistencies of the
9/11 commission report and on account of space considerations I shall present
only a few highlights. Prof. David Ray Griffin mentioned that Mohammed Atta,
the ringleader, was far from a devout Muslim. He had visited strip clubs, lived
for some time with a stripper and used alcohol as well as cocaine. Furthermore,
Atta’s
teacher in Hamburg, Professor Machule, said that this was not the Atta he knew
because the latter was indeed very religious and small, about 5’4, while the
American Atta was 5’8 or 5’10. At least six of the purported hijackers had
actually turned out to be alive after 9/11 and there were conflicting reports
for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s whereabouts at the time of the Pentagon explosion.
The 9/11 commission stated that he was in his office while Richard Clarke in
his book “Against all Enemies” wrote that Rumsfeld had been in the conference
room participating in Clarke’s video-conference. The same discrepancy applies
to General Richard Meyers who was the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. There is also conflicting evidence between early versions and the
Commission Report in regard to when NORAD was notified about flights 77 and 93
having gone off course. Furthermore, the Commission Report gave an incorrect
time for when Vice-president Cheney was taken to the “bunker” and omitted the
crucial evidence provided by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. He
recalled that while he was with Cheney in the bunker prior to the Pentagon attack,
a “young man” came in intermittently saying that, “the plane is 50 miles out,”
“the plane is 30 miles out,” “the plane is 10 miles out. Do the orders still
stand?” Cheney turned, whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders
still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” What were these orders?
As far as the crash site of UA 93 in Shanksville is concerned it was incommensurate
with what one would have expected. Neither recognizable plane debris nor human
remains were encountered and there was no contamination of the soil from oil or
jet fuel. Additionally, the FBI had not only cordoned off the supposed crash
site but an additional one 6-8 miles distant. Why was this done? In sum and
substance: the Report is untrustworthy.
James Kolar,
a freelance writer, presented inconsistencies in the released passenger lists
of the doomed flights; the videos from Dulles airport which showed the
purported hijackers had no security stamp; and the bin-Laden videos did not
always show the same person. Paul Zarembka’s, Professor of
Economics State University of New York, presentation dealt with “Insider
Trading.” Although the 9/11 Commission mentioned it briefly it denied that
substantial insider trading had occurred before 9/11. Yet, even one month after
9/11 the mainstream press reported that huge profits were made via “Put
options.” Prof. Zarembka cited three studies two of which had so far been
published. One of these appeared in the 2006 Journal of Business and is readily
available. In it Professor Allen Poteshman of the University of Illinois concluded,
“That there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading
up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance
knowledge of the attacks.”
Other speakers dealt with what one may
call local and global implications of 9/11. Lance De Haven-Smith, Professor
Public Administration & Policy Florida State University, felt that a term
was needed for crimes such as Watergate, Plamegate, Iran-Contra etc. and came
up with SCADS, which stands for State Crimes Against
Democracy. He defined the term as: concerted actions or inactions by government
insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular
sovereignty. They are the type of crime about which the conspiracy label
discourages us from speaking. He noted that they tend to end up in wars and
that there is a progressive trend from Watergate via
Iran-Contra to Iraq with increasingly larger numbers of different agencies
involved. Laurie
Manwell, a PhD candidate in behavioral neuroscience and Toxicology at the University
of Guelph, then presented, “SCADS and Psychological Resistance to Alternative Accounts.”
She provided a neurobehavioral explanation for why people are resistant to look
at evidence which conflicts with their firm opinions and why it is necessary to
overcome this barrier.
Peter Dale Scott, a former English
Professor at the University of California Berkley discussed, “9/11 and Deep State
Politics.” The key quote came from the Commission Staff team leader John Palmer,
that in regard to 9/11 we are dealing with, “either unprecedented
administrative incompetence or organized mendacity on the part of key figures
in Washington.” Michel Chossudovsky, emeritus Professor of Economics University
of Ottawa, dealt with “Global Consequences of 9/11.” He presented the reasons
for his conclusion that 9/11 was an “inside job” to create a pretext for the
global war on terrorism, which benefits the military establishment. Former
Representative Cynthia McKinney stated that when Congress asked questions they
were simply given “talking points” instead of serious answers.
This was also the point made by former Senator
Mike Gravel from Alaska in his presentation on, “State Deceptions in the Past
and Today.” He was unusually blunt in his summation about how Congress works,
which was due to both his age and the fact that he is no longer in Washington.
The key statements were, “This knowledge [the 9/11 information] has to get out
to the people. But if the people have no means to act on the information all
you create is a new generation of cynics. You must have a vehicle to act upon
it. The people without the ability to make law are disenfranchised. I got
elected, several times, and that’s how it works: I took money from special
interests and then looked down on you. I fooled you, I just got elected. That
is the way it works.”
This certainly has the ring of truth and
equally certainly does not want to be acknowledged. But sooner or later we will
have to face facts, rather than wishful fantasies, if we want to keep our
Republic. Senator Gravel’s recommendation will be dealt with in another
installment but it needs an amendment to the Constitution, which would
obviously take time to get ratified. Due to the increasing danger of a military
conflict with Iran prior to the November elections a separate issue will appear
on August 15, and the Vancouver Hearings will be discussed on September 1.
August 15, 2012
THE IMPENDING WAR WITH IRAN
In the previous
issue I mentioned that the Iranian situation is becoming increasingly dangerous
and this was highlighted also by the events during the first week of this month.
On August 1 former Governor and current presidential candidate Romney gave a
speech in Jerusalem which was characterized by the Israeli paper Haaretz as, “Romney’s voice but
Netanyahu’s words.” Here are some highlights:
“It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel…. For
an American abroad,you
can't get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you
do in Israel. We're part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the
same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in
peace… ours is an alliance based not only on shared interests but also
on enduring shared values. In those shared values, one of the strongest voices
is that of your prime minister, my friend Benjamin Netanyahu…. When Iran's leaders deny the
Holocaust or speak of wiping this nation off the map, only the naïve - or worse
- will dismiss it as an excess of rhetoric….It would be foolish not to take Iran's leaders at their word. They are,
after all, the product of a radical theocracy…. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that containment is an option. We
must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear
weapons capability. We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the
Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is our fervent hope that
diplomatic and economic measures will do so. In the final analysis, of course,
no option should be excluded. We
recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and that it
is right for America to stand with you.Finally, we both believe in freedom of expression, because we are
confident in our ideas and in the ability of men and women to think for
themselves.We do not fear open debate…. I believe that
the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of
America is more than a strategic alliance: it is a force for good in the
world.”
Let us now look at some of the key words: Jerusalem the capital of
Israel, the ideals and convictions of the U.S. the same as Israel’s, Iran’s
containment is not an option, and no fear of open debate.
As far as Jerusalem is concerned the city has been regarded
as holy not only by Jews but also by Muslims and Christians. It is clearly an
international flashpoint and the unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, after
the 1967 war, is still regarded as illegal under international law. This is the
reason why no major country has its embassy in that city. The embassies are in
Tel Aviv. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, on the same day, Romney
stated that he would relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. Blitzer wasn’t sure
that he had heard right so here is the relevant portion of the transcript.
“BLITZER: You consider Jerusalem where we're sitting, the
King David Hotel here in Jerusalem; do you consider Jerusalem to be the capital
of Israel?
ROMNEY: Yes, of course. A nation has the capacity to
choose its own capital city, and Jerusalem is Israel's capital.
BLITZER: If you become president of the United States, would
you move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
ROMNEY: I think it's long been the policy of our country to
ultimately have our embassy in the nation's capital, Jerusalem. The
decision to actually make the move is one, if I were president; I would want to
take in consultation with the leadership of the government which exists at that
time. So I would follow the same policy we have in the past. Our
embassy would be in the capital. But that said,
the timing of that is something I'd want to work out with the government.
BLITZER: With the government of Israel?
ROMNEY: With the government of Israel.
BLITZER: But every Israeli government has always asked every
U.S. government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital and to move the embassy
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
ROMNEY: Well, that would make the decision easy, but I'd
still want to have that communication with the government leaders.
BLITZER: So just to be precise. If you're president,
you would consult with the Israeli government. And if they said, please
move the embassy, you would do that?
ROMNEY: I'm not going to make foreign policy for my nation,
particularly while I'm on foreign soil. My understanding is the policy of
our nation has been a desire to move our embassy ultimately to the
capital. That's something which I would agree with. But I would
only want to do so and to select the timing in accordance with the government
of Israel.”
These are rather amazing statements. The only government
which is to be consulted on this issue is that of Israel! World opinion and
even our Congress are completely irrelevant. One really wonders about the
thought processes of this man. But it gets even better. These statements had
been preceded by:
“BLITZER: You're in Jerusalem right now. You're a religious
individual. Give us a little sense of what this city means to you, the Holy
Land, as someone who obviously believes in God. You have a deep commitment to
his faith.
ROMNEY: Well, as you know, I'm running for a secular position, not
a religious position. But on a personal basis, being in the Holy City is very
moving for me. I believe very deeply in the promises that were made in this
place. I believe in the mission of Jesus Christ. I believe he walked the very
streets that we were walking.”
When I saw the speech and the interview transcript I wondered: has
the governor ever read the New Testament and compared it with the Torah –
Jewish Law? Does he not know that Jesus mission was a rebellion against the
literal fulfillment of that Law? Does he not know that the much vaunted Israeli
democracy extends only to Jews, even within the pre-1967 War borders? That the
roughly 20 per cent of non-Jewish Israeli citizens are systematically
discriminated against in housing and other aspects of life? That Israel does
not have a constitution? That there are massive human rights abuses going on in
the occupied territories? That our “freedom of expression” and “open debate”
has severe limitations, especially when it comes to questions about what
happened on 9/11? That any legitimate criticism of the
policies of Israel is automatically regarded as anti-Semitic? That Israeli
religious fundamentalism, which abhors not only Muslims but also Christians, is
steadily increasing?
Yes, one has to be polite to one’s hosts but this glaring
sycophancy was hardly called for. If the governor is truly ignorant of the
above mentioned basic facts he does not deserve to be elected. I realize, of
course, that the speech was directed to the American Jewish audience whose
votes he would like to get in November. But regardless of that aspect he has
outsourced our Middle East foreign policy to Israel, which is hardly in our
national interest.
There was one more interesting aspect of the speech. It was
broadcast from a rooftop overlooking part of the Old City wall, thereby
emphasizing its Jewish character. But everybody who has ever been to Jerusalem,
or even seen a picture of it, knows that its skyline is dominated by the golden
Dome of the Rock mosque which bespeaks of its Muslim heritage. It is clearly an
eye-sore for fundamentalists, but has stood there for about 1300 years and its
symbolism is immense in the Muslim world. Israeli interference with it, as well
as that of the neighboring Al Aqsa mosque, would undoubtedly result in a major
war with the Arab, if not all of the Muslim nations. Glib talk about Jerusalem
being the capital of Israel disregards these aspects and can have fateful
consequences.
In order to counteract possible inroads into the Jewish votes
Romney might have gathered, President Obama
immediately released $70 million to strengthen the “Iron Dome,” which is
supposed to protect Israel from missile attacks. To further demonstrate the
Obama administration’s commitment to Israel’s security Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta was dispatched. His job was to plead with the Israelis not to start an
Iran attack during election season and he promised additional Iran sanctions.
These were promptly voted on by an obedient Congress and HR 1905 now sits in
the White House awaiting the president’s signature. On July 31, the day before
the final vote, AIPAC sent an urgent message to all Representatives which
outlined the essentials of the bill and added “We
strongly urge you to vote YES.” Below is the abstracted essence from the AIPAC
message,
“… will: place
virtually all of Iran’s energy, financial, and transportation sectors under
U.S. sanction. Companies conducting business with Iran in these sectors face
losing access to U.S. markets; impose sanctions designed to prevent Iran from
repatriating any proceeds from its oil sales, thus depriving Iran of 80 percent
of its hard currency earnings and half of the funds to support its national
budget; impose tough new sanctions on the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC),
the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC); target Iran’s use of barter transactions to bypass
sanctions, the provision of insurance to Iran’s energy sector, and the
provision of specialized financial messaging services to the Central Bank of
Iran.”
AIPAC also stated that these are “the
strongest set of sanctions ever enacted to isolate any country with which we
were not in armed hostilities.” While our government still insists that we
don’t want a regime change in Tehran, only their abstention from pursuing
nuclear ambitions, the Israelis are more honest in this respect. The nuclear
issue is the wedge to obtain Western cooperation for a plan which has been in
existence for decades. This information is not available in our “free press”
but in Israeli Hebrew language newspapers which are, as Romney correctly
stated, considerably more critical towards their government’s actions. To
access those we have to read Israel Shahak’s book “Open Secrets – Israeli
nuclear and foreign policies.”
The author’s personal information, which
is now related, comes from Wikipedia. He was born (1933) in Warsaw, Poland,
into a secular Zionist Jewish family. During the German occupation the family
lived in the ghetto from which his brother succeeded to escape and thereafter
joined the RAF. Israel’s mother paid a poor Catholic family to hide him but
when the money ran out he was returned to his parents. In 1943 the family was
deported to a concentration camp near Lublin where the father died. Mother and
son managed to escape, returned to Warsaw but within one year were sent to the
Bergen-Belsen camp where the mother died. After the camp was liberated in 1945
Shahak moved to Palestine. After completion of his military service he attended Hebrew
University where he received a doctorate
in chemistry
and became an assistant to Ernst David Bergmann, the chair of
Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. After a two year post-doctoral study at
Stanford he returned to Israel and eventually became professor of Chemistry at
Hebrew University. He was beloved by his students, published extensively in the
scientific literature and died in Jerusalem in 2001.
It is,
therefore, obvious that he has excellent credentials and his views need to be
taken seriously. Having been a devoted Zionist his disenchantment came during
the 1956 Suez war when Ben Gurion declared as the war’s aim to “re-establish
the borders of the kingdom of David and Solomon.” Furthermore, as a secular
humanist he became increasingly concerned about the treatment of Israel’s Arab
citizens and the influence of religious fundamentalism on the policies of the
state. The book, published in 1997, is important because he translated for us
Hebrew newspaper articles dealing with interviews of policy-makers between 1991
and 1995.
In the
following I shall only excerpt some key sections as they pertain to Iran and US
Jews. The
key sentence is already in the Introduction: “Israel does not want peace with Iran under any circumstances.” He
explained the reason in terms of recent history. After the founding of the
state, Ben-Gurion envisioned an “alliance of the periphery,” (Turkey, Iran and
Ethiopia) to counter the immediate Arab threat. Iran was an ally until the fall
of the Shah and during the subsequent Iraq-Iran war Israel supplied both sides
with arms because the longer the war lasted the greater the exhaustion on both
sides. Iraq’s military potential was thereafter decimated by the first Gulf war
and ceased to be a threat. This pushed the armed Iran into the foreground and
our story starts in February of 1993 when he wrote:
“Since the spring of 1992 public opinion in Israel is being prepared for
the prospect of a war with Iran, to be fought to bring about Iran’s total
military and political defeat. In one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in another it would ‘persuade’ the West to do the
job. The indoctrination campaign is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by
what could be called semi-official horror scenarios purporting to detail what
Iran could do to Israel, the West and the entire world when it acquires nuclear
weapons as it is expected to a few years hence. A manipulation of public
opinion to this effect may well be considered too phantasmagoric to merit any
detailed description. Still, the readers should take notice, especially since
the Israeli Security System does envisage the prospect seriously. In February
1993 minutely-detailed anticipations of Iran becoming a major target of Israeli
policies became intense.”
What Shahak
regarded as “phantasmagoric” nearly 20 years ago is now the daily diet of the
American media. Here are some additional pertinent excerpts which deal with the
Israeli mind-set in regard to Iran.
“I am well aware that a lot of expert opinions and predictions quoted here
will sound to non-Israeli readers like fantasy running amok. Yet I perceive
those opinions and predictions, no matter how mendacious and deceitful they
obviously are, as politically quite meaningful.… Whether one likes it or not,
Israel is a great power, not only in military but also in political terms, by
virtue of its increasing influence upon US policies….Israeli enmity toward Iran stemmed from the
fact that it ‘could aspire to [the] regional hegemony’ to which Israel
aspires…. Last year Rabin said that Iran was the main threat to Israel’s
security. The Chief of Staff Ehud Barak described the monster of Tehran as the
most terrible danger to peace in the whole world…. The Iranian regime poses a
danger to the very foundations of world order.… Rabin’s strategy was ‘to push
the US and other western powers into a confrontation with Iran’ because if
‘Israel confronts Iran on its own, it may get involved in a religious war
against the entire Muslim world. To forestall this danger ‘Israeli propaganda [Hasbara;lit. “Explanation”] was ordered to depict the rulers of Iran as ‘a
danger to peace in the entire world and a threat to equilibrium between Western
civilization and Islam’…. In the Middle East there is no room for nuclear
deterrence as it was used in the Cold War, because the enemies of Israel are
not as rational as the rulers of the USSR were, to the point that under the
influence of the Ayatollahs they may court disasters for the entire world
[attributed to a speech by Shimon Peres].”
Please note that these are the same words which Mitt Romney used in
Jerusalem two weeks ago. In regard to “organized Jewry” in the US, by which Shahak
meant members of exclusively Jewish organizations with political goals, he
wrote:
“The proportion of organized Jews within the body of US Jewry can be
roughly estimated as about 50 percent…. Israel wields a tremendous influence
within the US, in my view regardless whether Israeli policies accord with US
interests or not…. Through years of Likud rule the US Jews learned a sequence
of Pavlovian reflexes: ‘Never withdraw, say no to any contacts with the
Palestinian diaspora, no to contacts with any Palestinian representatives from
East Jerusalem, no to any improvement of US relations with any Arab state.’…
The bulk of the organized US Jewish community is totalitarian, chauvinistic,
and militaristic in its views. This fact remains unnoticed by other Americans
due to its control of the media, but is apparent to some Israeli Jews.”
Had these
words been written by a Gentile in our country he/she would surely have been
branded as an anti-Semitic propagandist or worse. Please
remember that all of this material stems from nearly twenty years ago and in
regard to Iran we are now supposed to believe that not only our country but the
entire western civilization is under immediate threat of annihilation by the
“mad mullahs” and the “monster of Tehran.” Have we already forgotten the
“butcher of Baghdad” who was supposed to have accomplished the same goal ten
years ago?But some of us have not
forgotten the propaganda during the run-up to the Iraq war and to refresh ones
memory it is useful to re-visit this site for the issues of September 1, 2002 -
December 1, 2002 (For the Goyim they sing, One year later, Israel the Fifty-First
State, Wanted – Good Judgment). The proverbial handwriting was on the wall then
and so it is now.
The general public here and
in the rest of the world may wonder: what’s the rush towards a showdown with
Iran? For the answer to this question one has to realize that the timetable is
not set by America but by Israel. The decision to destroy Iran’s military
capability (atomic and/or conventional) was made decades ago. The only question
was when and how. As mentioned by Shahak a serious effort began in the early
nineties, but the U.S. was preoccupied with Bosnia and subsequently the Oslo
accord, the Lewinsky affair and Camp David II. It needed the 9/11 tragedy to
create sufficient animosity against Muslims in order to align our country
completely with Israeli policies. In its immediate aftermath we were engaged in
the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which left us with little appetite for an
additional one with Iran. But currently our troops have been removed from Iraq
and President Obama intends to be finished with the Afghan war in another year
and a half. This leaves our “military-industrial complex” with the prospect for
reduced defense spending which is, of course, anathema.
For Israel the next few
months are ideal because there are no external threats. Iraq is practically
demilitarized, Egypt is in transition to a government which may or may not
honor the peace treaty, Syria is engaged in a civil war and Turkey, as a NATO
member, is unlikely to interfere. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan, and
Lebanon cannot engage in serious military action without the danger of massive
reprisals. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy patrols the Persian Gulf and American
troops are still ensconced in Kuwait, other Gulf States, some successor states
of the USSR and Afghanistan. Iran is encircled and only needs the coup de
grace. On top of it all we have elections coming up and the Netanyahu
government doesn’t trust Obama. Although his re-election is far from assured
the Israeli government may not want to take any chances and will be tempted to
force his hand with some type of fait accompli. The only remaining question is:
who will fire the first shot?
There are two theories. A
popular one has the Israelis bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. But I regard this
as not particularly likely. It would only anger the Iranians rather than
destroy their war-making potential, which is the overarching goal. Furthermore,
the onus for initiating the war would be on the Israelis, which is hardly to
their liking. They want us to be involved and carry the major burden. This can
be achieved relatively easily because our navy is in a vulnerable position. A
Gulf of Tonkin type incident can readily be engineered and if the Iranians
don’t cooperate with procuring one, a false flag operation can take its place.
Since war with Iran has already been decided upon by Israel, and we are no
longer in a position to assert our independence from Jerusalem, it appears that
only divine intervention can save us and the rest of the world from another
looming disaster. Let us hope that I am mistaken in this assessment but the
next few weeks or months will provide the answer.
September 1, 2012
THE VANCOUVER 9/11 HEARINGS
In the July 1 issue I mentioned that I
attended in June of this year the “Vancouver 9/11 Hearings” and would report on
them in September. There were two major reasons for the delay. Since the
Toronto Hearings had preceded Vancouver and the latter were to some extent a
response to them, they needed to be covered first. In addition, the Vancouver
speakers were supposed to have submitted their presentations to the judges by
August 1 which would then give me time to work from written material rather
than merely the rather scanty notes I had made at the time. The Toronto
material was indeed presented on August 1 but the hope that complete Vancouver
data would become available during that month was only partially fulfilled and
the judges, therefore, extended the deadline to September 1. Rather than
waiting any longer I shall now present my impressions, which will convey the
essence.
As mentioned in previous installments
the 9/11 Truth movement is not monolithic. It consists of a wide variety of
people from diverse backgrounds and educational levels who are united only by
the belief that our government has not told us the full truth about what
happened on that fateful day. The hallmark is individualism rather than conformity
and, as such, exhibits the spirit of America’s frontier days. There is the
neighborliness of kindred thoughts but also the rowdiness of “my way or the
highway.” Since whatever minimal organization exists comes from the bottom up
rather than the top down one should not expect any kind of uniformity. This is
important to know because it also means that there is no funding agency which
can then enforce its demands. Furthermore, whatever opinions a given individual
may utter they need to be regarded strictly as personal, with the only backing:
the integrity of the individual.
Nevertheless, as mentioned on previous
occasions, two major groups have crystallized over the years which differ in
their outlook how the common goal, namely an impartial, politically independent,
legally constituted, inquiry into the events of 9/11, can be achieved. One
group limits itself to acquainting the public with the fact that major portions
of the data of the 9/11 Commission Report do not appear to be scientifically
sustainable. The other looks at: who had the motive, means and opportunity, to
commit this dastardly crime? Both are legitimate approaches but since human
beings are involved, with considerable differences in temperament, acrimony
exists not only between but also within these groups. This is readily apparent
when one looks at some comments on 9/11 Internet sites and it came into full
bloom on the last day of the Vancouver Hearings.
Although, as mentioned, there is no
official leadership the, what one may call, “who done it?” group is largely
represented by James Fetzer Ph.D. whose credentials I have previously
mentioned. He was not invited to speak at the Toronto Hearings because this was
the forum for the “how what was done” and he felt that this limitation needed
to be corrected. Specifically: the Toronto Hearings dealt only briefly with the
Pentagon attack and omitted altogether the “noplane theories” as well as the potential role of our and Israel’s
government in the disaster. The Vancouver Hearings were designed to overcome
the latter deficiency under his Chairmanship and that of Joshua Blakeney, a
graduate student from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Since my
personal preference is geared towards facts rather than speculations, which by
their very nature are not amenable to proof, I was hesitant to attend but since
Dr. Griffin had encouraged me because I “might meet some good people,” I went.
In contrast to Toronto, where the
venue was on a university campus the Vancouver Hearings were held in a movie theater
which had, however, the advantage of the hotel being next door. There were 19
speakers scheduled for sessions on Friday evening, all day Saturday as well as
the evening and all day Sunday. The program can be viewed on http://www.911vancouverhearings.com.
The meeting was to start at 6 p.m. on Friday evening and I thought that with my
plane arriving from Salt Lake at 4 p.m. I would have time to have dinner with
former Navy Commander Ted Muga and his wife whom Griffin had urged me to meet.
Since Commander Muga had in his younger years landed fighter jets on aircraft
carriers, and had subsequently flown for Pan Am, I thought he would be a good
source to enlighten me about the ease with which with the hijackers were
supposed to have achieved their objective.
As it turned out my flight did not
leave Salt Lake until 6 p.m. (Vancouver time 5 p.m.) so I had to cancel dinner
and told the Mugas I would meet them at the Hearings.
This is not necessarily irrelevant because it reminded me what Griffin had told
the audience in regard to his experience on the flight to Toronto, which had
likewise been delayed by more than hour. He pointed out at that time that
Mohamed Atta, the leader and chief hijacker, who allegedly flew AA 11 into the
North Tower had, according to the 9/11 Commission, driven on September 10 from Boston
to Portland Maine. He stayed at a Comfort Inn overnight, then left the car with
incriminating evidence at the jetport and took a 6 a.m. flight back to Boston
to board AA 11 which was supposed to have taken off at 7:45, but the actual
departure was delayed to 7:59. Although he made it in time his luggage, which
contained further incriminating evidence including his will, did not. Since
airline delays are common we can now ask ourselves: why would someone risk ruining
one’s major mission in life, if that’s what it was, on the chance that the
Portland plane might be delayed? Furthermore, assuming that Atta wanted his
luggage on AA11, why carry one’s last will and testament on a suicide mission
where it would be burnt to cinders? But these are just some of the questions
one is not supposed to think about.
As it turned out I had not missed
anything as far as the Keynote address was concerned. When I arrived at the
theatre, having skipped dinner, I saw what appeared to be a somewhat elderly
rather agitated hippie on the stage addressing the audience in what is best
described as a rant. I had no idea what he was trying to tell us but he was
indefatigable. The program informed us that he goes under the name of
“Splitting the Sky,” had attempted a citizen’s arrest of President George W.
Bush in Calgary in 2009, was near the Twin Towers the day before 9/11, had
participated in the Attica Prison Rebellion and has become a staunch advocate
for the marginalized and the dispossessed. Eventually he did give up the podium
and the scheduled presentations could start. Obviously he was a well-meaning
person but the delivery of his message was not conducive to making converts
from unbelievers.
In accordance with the title
“Hearings,” the format was quasi-judicial. There were two judges (one male, the
other female) who were supposed to listen to the evidence presented by the
speakers – witnesses, and eventually decide whether or not certain persons in
the US had engaged in criminal conduct as part of the 9/11 tragedy. To this end
Judge Alfred Lebremont Webre administered an oath to each of the witnesses at
the time of their speech that they would “present the truth, the full truth,
and nothing but the truth.” In addition the witnesses had to declare what
qualifications they had in regard to the topic they were about to address and
to conclude with names of persons of interest who should be subjected to a
judicial inquest. Although this sounds rather respectable it in no way
guarantees that unbiased actionable evidence will be forthcoming. I am
convinced that all of the witnesses presented their information in good faith
and to the best of their knowledge. But since there was no cross-examination
and presenters had in addition, for the most part, only second hand data, of,
at times, questionable reliability, this format is not necessarily conducive to
ascertain actionable facts. There is an additional aspect to witness testimony
which holds even for legally constituted proceedings. Witnesses in general do
not lie, but they have their bias which they at times hold to a fanatical
degree because it is their subjective truth. I have discussed this aspect in other
contexts on this site and it will become especially pertinent in regard to one
of the potentially most important talks of the hearings.
The presentations themselves can be
mainly be grouped under: means of the Twin Towers’ destruction; what happened
at the Pentagon; faking of video evidence in regard to the plane impacts; the
hijacked passengers; culpability ofgovernment circles here and/or in Israel and one or two miscellaneous
items. I shall not discuss all of them but limit myself to merely a few which
provided, at least for me, new information. As far as the Twin Towers are
concerned Charles Boldwyn, a retired physics and chemistry teacher, explained
that the steel columns which held up the buildings were tapered, as had also
been mentioned in Toronto. Since the lightest material was on top and the
heaviest on the bottom it does not make good sense that the buildings should
have fallen down in the way they did. Lighter mass cannot completely destroy a
heavier one. In Toronto the top of the building was compared with a VW beetle which
was supposed to have crushed the Mack truck underneath.
Jeff Prager was scheduled to present
data which indicated that nuclear charges had been involved in the destruction
of the buildings but since he could not come the presentation was given by
Donald Fox who added his own material. In essence: the US Geological Service
had found tritium and deuterium, which are nuclear fission products, in ground
zero basement water as well as other fission byproducts in the dust which
covered lower Manhattan. A full exposition of Prager’s ideas can be found on his
e-book America Nuked.
On basis of the book, “Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of
directed free-energy technology,” Dr. Judy Wood had been invited to present
her thesis but she didn’t come and the paper was given by Ms. Clare Kuehn. Regardless
of the validity of the Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) theory the book contains
excellent photographs which are worthwhile pondering in relation to the explanatory
value of the government’s collapse model.
In as much as there are at present,
apart from the official explanation, essentially four theories how the collapse
of the Twin Towers could have come about Mr. Dwain Deets tried to approach the
problem scientifically by examining each one in relation to the major known
observations from ground zero. Mr. Deets has an interesting scientific
background with an MS degree in physics as well as one in engineering. He worked
for many years in a research capacity at NASA and in 1996 was appointed Director, Aerospace Projects Office at the NASA Dryden
Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA. His NASA career is documented at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/NewsReleases/1996/96-10.html.
In the 1970s he published work on prototypes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs), which then evolved, via Global Hawk, to the current Predator. As such,
he is a person who deserves to be listened to. Being a scientist he was not concerned
with value judgments as to which collapse theories are legitimate and which
ones off the pale this is why he included: ROOSD, nanothermite, DEW and
mini-nukes.
Like most everybody else I had not
heard of the ROOSD model (Runaway Open Office Spaces Destruction) before but Deets
explained that the fundamental idea is:
“If the OOS [open
office space] portion of the originating floor is ‘separated’ from the columns,
it will drop unimpeded to the floor below. This separation could be [achieved] by
carefully placed cutter charges, or by a more dramatic displacement of the
upper block of floors laterally, such that one side of the upper facade drops
free of the row of columns below. This could ‘strip away’ the first several
floors below serving the same effect of ‘separating’ the floors from their
supporting columns. The floor below, not designed to arrest this fall, will
join in a runaway cascade of OOS floors to the bottom, known technically as a
progressive floor collapse.”
Mind you, Mr. Deets did not invent any
of these four theories he merely evaluated them within certain parameters which
included:Crush rates;
Debris patterns; Nano-thermite; Temperatures (immediate); Persistent heat;
Vehicle anomalies; Tritium; Basement blasts; Radionuclides. He then created a
rating scale and scoring system as to which one of the four theories would
correspond best to observed data. Based on this limited material mini-nukes
achieved the highest probability of having been involved in the destruction of
the towers. Deets emphasized that this should not be taken as the final word
but merely as an example for how the scientific method can be used to assess
explanatory probabilities for a given event.
Three speakers dealt specifically with
aspects of the attack on the Pentagon. Enver Masud, an engineer by profession,
who has also written 9/11 Unveiled
which can be downloaded from the Internet, showed a video clip from the morning
of 9/11 where Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent stood in
front of the building and stated: "From my close up inspection there's no
evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . The only pieces left that you can see are
small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail
sections, wing sections, fuselage -- nothing like that anywhere around which
would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. If you look at the pictures of the Pentagon
you see that all of the floors have collapsed, that didn't happen immediately.
It wasn't till almost 45 minutes later that the structure was weakened enough
that all of the floors collapsed." This clip was subsequently withdrawn
from the CNN website but exists on YouTube. Jamie McIntyre stated years later
that his words had been quoted out of context but this is hardly credible
because the absence of debris from a Boeing 757 has been commented upon also by
other credible witnesses. Masud mentioned furthermore that:
“In January
2003, the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology
released the ‘Pentagon
Building Performance Report’ (removed from NIST website).
Page 35 of this report reads: ‘An examination of the area encompassed by
extending the line of travel of the aircraft to the face of the building shows
that there are no discrete
marks on the building corresponding to the positions of the outer
third of the right wing. The size and position of the actual opening in the
facade of the building (from column line 8 to column line 18) indicate that no
portion of the outer two-thirds of the right wing and no portion of the outer
one-third of the left wing actually entered the building.’”
Barbara Honegger,
whose contribution to the topic has been mentioned in part in the August 1
issue provided a very detailed .ppt presentation which demonstrated that the
AA77 flight pattern as described by the government does not conform to observed
facts and that the first blast at the Pentagon occurred not with the officially
reported impact at 9:37 a.m., because clocks at the helipad and inside the Pentagon
stopped at 9:32. Debris corresponding to those from a small plane, possibly a Global
Hawk, was found not in the area of the supposed Boeing impact but further north
by the helipad and there were numerous credible reports from witnesses of bombs
having gone off inside the building.
Dennis Cimino, who used to be a Navy
Command System specialist and was involved in Flight Data Recorder (FDR)
testing, reported in detail on the problems associated with the supposed flight
pattern of AA77. To me the most interesting aspect was his analysis of the AA77
FDR. It revealed that there could not have been a struggle in the cockpit
because at no time was the autopilot disengaged which would have inevitably happened
under those circumstances. Furthermore, the preamble of the FDR file, which normally
carries identifying information of the plane it came from, had 000. This indicated
that the file did not originate from AA77. For the sake of accuracy I need to mention,
however, that I have subsequently found on the Internet a critique,
by Frank Legge Ph.D., of Cimino’s report which had originally been published with
Jim Fetzer in Veteran’s Today. It was subsequently withdrawn from that site but
can be retrieved from others.
I shall now skip the other
presentations and go to that of Ms. Susan Lindauer’s “Confessions of a CIA
Asset.” If what she said is correct, all previous major scandals would pale in
comparison. I had read Ms. Lindauer’s book Extreme
Prejudice – The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11
and Iraq The Ultimate Conspiracy to Silence Truth,
and was interested to personally evaluate her credibility. At the Hearings she
made the following statements under oath: As a CIA asset she had been a
back-channel liaison to the Libyans and Iraqis at the UN and her “handler” was
Dr. Richard Fuisz. In the middle of April 2001 she was told by Dr. Fuisz to
confront the Libyans and Iraqis with the demand to hand over any intelligence they
have in regard to conspiracies involving airplane hijackings and/or airplane
bombings. They were also to be told that if they would not produce this
evidence and any such attack were to occur, their
countries would suffer severe military retaliations. Ms. Lindauer relayed the
message but not the threat upon which Dr. Fuisz became furious and insisted that
the threat had to be delivered in unmistakable terms. He also insisted that the
Iraqis and Libyans be informed that “Those threats originate from the highest
levels of government, above the CIA Director and the Secretary of State.” She delivered
the message but neither the Iraqis nor the Libyans had any information. During
June the emphasis shifted only to Iraq and it was felt that the WTC would be
the target because “it would finish the cycle which had started in 1993.” Baghdad
wanted to cooperate and offered to accept FBI operatives into their country to
check for jihadists. The offer was not taken up. Although it was known by the
CIA that an attack was imminent, precise information as to airports of origin
and flight numbers was missing. “9/11 was not the result of mistakes. It was a
deliberate execution. Though 90 per cent of U.S. intelligence tried to stop the
attack, the compartmentalized structure of the intelligence community made it
possible for a minority 10 percent to undercut all the good work and proactive
planning.”
After 9/11 she continued contacts with
the Iraqis in order to forestall the impending war but was thwarted by the
administration. After the invasion she informed members of Congress and the
administration about the war’s false pretenses but was arrested and charged
with spying for Iraq in 2004. Since she insisted upon her innocence she was
declared mentally ill and imprisoned in a military facility. She was to be
forcibly drugged to cure her so that she could stand trial, but she refused the
medications. She insisted that her statements regarding the impending attack were
verified by a Canadian friend, Parke Godfrey a professor of computer sciences,
who was in Washington in those days.
She did not mention that she was
released from prison in 2006, but declared mentally incompetent to stand trial
and that in 2009 all charges were dropped. What are we to make of testimony of
this type? The prison episode is objectively verified but how are we to assess
the claims that the highest levels of the Bush administration facilitated 9/11 in
order to allow the Iraq war to go forward? There is no doubt that what she
testified to was her subjective truth but was it “the” truth and is it
verifiable? I tried to get a personal feeling of her current mental state by
inviting her for dinner but the meeting dragged on and by the time I got back
to the hotel she had left her room and could no longer be reached. It is easy
to write her testimony off as “delusions of grandeur” and she may well have
overemphasized her role in the scheme of things. But there is by now
considerable evidence that 9/11 was not merely an “intelligence failure” and
that the Iraq war was a top priority for the Bush administration immediately
after the inauguration.
I shall forgo for now a discussion of
the other presentations and refer the reader to a succinct summary by Craig
McKee who captured the essence on http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/911-vancouver-hearings.
Instead I shall present two personal encounters. I had read Webster Tarpley’s
book Synthetic Terror Made in USA and
was eager to engage him in conversation. I told him that “the Bush
administration may well have allowed some type of attack to happen, but
underestimated its magnitude, similar to the original Pearl Harbor when Roosevelt
baited the Japanese to fire the first shot.” This immediately released a
torrent of anger. He told me in no uncertain terms that Roosevelt was a great
man who saved Western civilization and that I am undoing years of work with my
LIHOP suggestion (Let It Happen on Purpose), when it was really MIHOP (Make It
Happen on Purpose). Since it was obvious that I was confronted with dogma there
was no purpose in continuing the conversation.
The other one was a brief conversation
with Judge Webre about where these Hearings might lead and he thought that
eventually it might go to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The
program had told us that the judge was on the “Kuala Lumpur War Crimes
Tribunal” and since I had not heard of it previously I looked it up after
returning home. Wikipedia tells us that this is a Malaysian organization
established in 2007 by former Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad to investigate war crimes.
It was to be an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The Hague,
which Mahathir accused of bias in its selection of cases to cover.The tribunal
does not have a UN mandate or recognition, no power to order arrests or impose
sentences, and it is unclear that its verdicts have any but symbolic
significance.
Nevertheless, in May 2012 after hearing testimony for a week from
victims of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
the tribunal unanimously convicted in absentia former President Bush,
former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General John Yoo
and Jay Bybee,
former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former counselors David
Addington and William
Haynes II of conspiracy to commit war crimes, specifically torture.
The tribunal referred their findings to the chief prosecutor at the International Court of Justice
in The Hague.
It seems doubtful to me that the Court will take the case but this seems to
be the model upon which a 9/11 investigation could be built. On the other hand
even if The Hague International Criminal Court were to hear these cases it
would have only moral impact here because “American exceptionalism” does not
recognize international jurisdiction over its citizens.
In sum and substance I came away from the meeting with the conviction that
the 9/11 Truth community still has a long way to go before it will achieve
general acceptance, but that with good will progress can and will be made toward
uncovering this enormous crime. In view of the tremendous importance of this
topic for the future of our country, and the world, further discussions of
specific aspects will appear in subsequent installments.
October 1, 2012
THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS
In a little over five weeks from now
Americans will exercise their democratic rights and try to elect their
president for the next four years. I said “try” deliberately because it is in
no way guaranteed that the voice of the people is really heard, as the 2000
elections proved. President George W. Bush was not truly elected in that year
but appointed by one vote of the Supreme Court, which had such fateful
consequences. I have previously discussed our country’s arcane and even archaic
election laws, which were designed in the “horse and buggy days” (Voting in
America, March 1, 2006), but let me just mention again the key features so that
my European readers can get an impression of how this republic of ours really works.
As is well known “We the People” don’t
directly elect our president and vice president. For the presidency we have the
“electoral college” and the vice president is selected by the presidential
nominee. If the president were to die in office we would
get the vice president, who was the add-on in the November election, regardless
whether or not we like him. The actual electors are determined in primaries,
which are held by the political parties and to participate in them the person
must belong to the party for which he intends to vote, although there are some
states which allow cross-overs and independents to vote in the primary.
Inasmuch as only a small minority of the most dedicated citizens actually
bothers to show up for the primaries the vast majority is then confronted in
November with a candidate who may not be to their liking at all, which has
relevance for November 6 as will become apparent later.
These comments dealt with the Presidency
and the elections to the Senate; for the House of Representatives another
variable enters into the equation: the gerrymandering of the district a given
person is supposed to represent. I have likewise commented on the origin of the
term previously but we need to remember that our current president would never
have reached his exalted office had Chicago politicians not changed the borders
of the district he lived in from a predominantly low middle class area to
include a considerably more affluent one. This border change has nothing to do
with the will of the people but is the exclusive purview of the politicians in
control of the State House and the ability to raise the money to influence them
in one’s favor.
A more recent example is the current
situation here in Utah. The state is largely rural and predominantly of the
Mormon religion. For some reason which I currently am unaware of, Mormons
initially voted largely as a block for the Democrats but have subsequently
shifted to the Republicans. The only areas where a Democrat has a reasonable
chance to win an election are sections of Salt Lake City and Park City which
have a considerably more diverse population. Our state is, therefore, the most
Republican in the nation and a Democrat or Independent doesn’t need to go to
the polling place for the presidential elections because the outcome is a
foregone conclusion. The same applies to the Senate; it is for the House and
local offices such as mayor or judges where we have more choice. But since
state government is heavily Republican our lone Democrat Representative, Jim
Matheson, from the district we live in, currently has to fight for his
political life because the district borders were changed earlier this year to
include more Republican voters. This leads to the spectacle on our TV screens
where Jim Matheson now assures us that he actually has voted more commonly for
Republican interests and against the wishes of his party as for instance in
regard to the mislabeled “Affordable Health Care Act,” which has become a major
campaign issue.
The latter is now a classic case for
political demagoguery. The law, which is derisively called “Obamacare,” was
actually modeled after the medical insurance provisions of Massachusetts which
had been passed under then Governor Mitt Romney. In his 2008 run for the
presidency he could still regard the passage of this law as a major
achievement, but in as much as Obamacare is anathema for Republicans he had to
disown it and has vowed to repeal the law as soon as he gets into the White
House. The excuse for what Democrats have promptly called “Romneycare” is, that it was designed specifically for his state and
should not be applied to the country at large. Whether or not this stance has
merit I leave for the reader to decide. We can also question if it would not be
better to improve the existing law rather than ditching it altogether and start
from scratch again. But this would require reason rather than political
emotions and the former is rather hard to find.
The fact that the president is not
elected by popular vote means that a candidate has to gain 270 electoral votes
in order to win the race. This makes the election outcome dependent on how a
given state rather than the country at large votes. From past experience it is
obvious that some states, such as ours, are Republican dominated and a Democrat
doesn’t need to spend time and money here. The opposite is the case, for
instance, in New York. This puts the election outcome into a handful of “swing
states.” The current situation was summed up in a Newsweek article by Michael
Crowley in the September 24 issue. It carried the title “Ad Nauseam” with the
subtitle “Romney and Obama are spending more money to woo fewer voters than at
any time in history. Will it make a difference?” The main title referred to the
fact that in the swing states 30 second political advertisements flood the TV
screens to an extent that people get fed up.
In the article Crowley presented some
details. As of last week there were nine states for which the election outcome
was in doubt. Of these, five are regarded as crucial. They consist of: Florida,
Ohio, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado. Together they have 77 electoral votes and as
mentioned 270 are needed to win the election. Omitting these five states Obama
has currently 237 committed delegates to Romney’s 191 while 110 (who include
the mentioned 77) are regarded as toss-ups. Thus, Romney needs to garner more
than twice as many electors in the next five weeks as Obama (79 vs. 33). This
formidable task is to be solved by money, which is in more abundant supply for
Romney than for the president. It is expected that the cost of this campaign will
total in excess of $1 billion; about 600 million of which are to be spent in
the next few weeks. Let me now quote from Crowley’s article,
“The only thing
more astounding than all this spending is the uncertainty of campaign pros and
political analysts over what difference the money will make in the end. The
hundreds of millions already spent has produced weeks of a virtual tie, with
the only significant movement occurring after the nation focused on the parties’
national conventions: democrats threw the more energizing celebration, and Barack
Obama went home from Charlotte with a small bounce in the polls.
But now the campaigns are like two
armies fighting intensely over a few hundred yards of bombed-out terrain.
Campaign pros estimate that a tiny 6% of the electorate remains undecided about
whom to vote for …”
This is, however, not the only way
that our democracy exists more on paper than in reality. There has always been
the problem of voter fraud. In former years ballot boxes were stuffed with
nonexistent or deceased voters and it is well known that John F. Kennedy won
the crucial West Virginia primary with his dad’s money, which also bought the
Chicago Mafia. The latter came to haunt him during his presidency when he and his
brother Bobby went after them. They resented this ingratitude and it has been
reported to have contributed to his murder in November 1963. The computer age
has made ballot stuffing obsolete and those who are interested in changing the
outcome of a given election merely need to assure themselves that the programs
which tabulate the results perform according to their specific desires as has
been the case especially in the 2004 and 2006 elections (Why Bush won, December
1, 2004; Diebold to the Rescue, November 1, 2006).
In as much as the demographics of the
country are changing with more Latino, Asian and to some extent African votes,
Republicans now find themselves in a minority, especially in the big inner cities.
This handicap is currently being overcome in two ways. Under the guise of
preventing voter fraud some Republican leaning states have now passed a law
that a drivers’ license needs to be shown before one is admitted to the voting
machine. Since a number of elderly and the poor, who otherwise might vote for a
Democrat, have no drivers’ licenses their constitutional right to vote has
become non-existent. The same applies to the quality and quantity of voting
machines that are available at a given polling location. There are no problems
in suburban areas but in inner cities such as Cleveland they were in rather
short supply during previous elections. This resulted in inordinately long
lines, people turned away in disgust and it was “mission accomplished” for the
Republican election supervisor who had promised to Bush that he would deliver
the necessary votes for the 2006 election.
The magic of computer programming should
also not be underestimated. The news networks base their election forecasts on
exit polling, which has been perfected to an extent that it mirrors the
eventual actual count down to a decimal point. But to use 2004 again as an
example the final official vote especially in the mentioned swing states bore
no resemblance to the exit polls and it was later observed that in some
instances more votes had been cast for Bush than people existed in that
particular election district. I am bringing the 2004 and 2006 examples up now
because Republicans find themselves today in difficult circumstances and similar
tactics may well be resorted to again on November 6.
The problem the Republicans face in
winning the election is not only their diminishing demographic base and their
candidate, Mitt Romney, but the fact that they have alienated a considerable
proportion of former Republican voters. This was accomplished by yielding to
the neocons’ aggressive foreign policy which regards the world as their
dominion, and a domestic policy which abhors any form of government regulation
(The Neocons’ Leviathan, April 1, 2003). While George W. Bush could still
campaign in 2000 on a “compassionate conservative” platform this would be
political suicide for Romney today. Regardless of his personal feelings he has
to toe the party line that the underprivileged are freeloaders who are just
lazy and really ought to work for their living. The wealthy are the “job
creators” and they deserve further tax cuts. The off the cuff remark that 47%
of the general public don’t pay any federal taxes at all and since they won’t
vote Republican they are not Romney’s problem, as he declared at a private
fundraiser earlier this year, has become a bonanza for the Democrats. They
pointed out that this figure is quite misleading because it includes people
whose taxes are withheld from their payrolls, and the working poor whose low
income makes them exempt from federal taxes.
While this shift in the attitude of
the official Republican Party has brought dismay not only to some former
Republican voters, even long standing conservative commentators are now voicing
their concern. David Brooks who was on the staff of National Review, a
conservative publication, who now writes for the New York Times and acts as counterpart to the Democrat Mark Shields
on the Friday night PBS news broadcast, wrote a column on September 26 under
the title “GOP misses traditional conservatives,”
“Some people
blame bad campaign managers for Romney’s underperforming campaign, but the
problem is deeper. Conservatism has lost the balance between economic and
traditional conservatism. The Republican Party has abandoned half of its
intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but
not as parents, neighbors and citizens.”
The article also appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune and hits the nail
on the head. But there is an additional problem some of us have with Romney’s
candidacy. We just don’t know what he really stands for. One gets a sense of
lack of sincerity and of a person who will say whatever is expected to win over
a given audience. While this can frequently be seen in politicians it is
outright dangerous for a person who aspires to an office where he will hold the
fate of the world in his hands. Once in office the donors who put him there
will want his promises kept.
Up to now the Romney campaign has
focused nearly exclusively on domestic matters and seems to have adopted James
Carville’s slogan which defeated George J.W. Bush in 1992: “It’s the Economy
Stupid.” That Obama has not been able to correct the economic meltdown he was
confronted with in 2009 is regarded as evidence of incompetence. But the fact
that the presidency does not equate with the status of a CEO of a private
company is deliberately ignored by the Republican public opinion makers.
Furthermore, while everybody agrees that the world is vastly more inter-related
than even a few years ago, the fact that the US president has no influence on
how Europe tries to emerge from the 2008 economic disaster goes likewise
unmentioned. Yet, it is the potential break-up of the Euro zone which may stall
our recovery, or even bring on a new recession, regardless who is president
here. This is the danger and to forestall it would require cooperative rather
than unilateral actions. This seems to elude our Republicans and although they probably
know it, they can’t use it to win the election, which is the only goal.
In this effort they are also painting
Obama as a social revolutionary who, if re-elected will turn the country not
only into a European type Social Democracy but practically a communist state.
These are scare tactics which are also to some extent employed in the foreign
affairs arena. Romney lacks experience in that area and that he is not a
particularly good diplomat was shown at the London Olympics as well as
subsequently in Jerusalem. In London he offended his hosts by pointing out that
their security arrangements might be inadequate and in Jerusalem he insulted
the Palestinians (The Impending War with Iran, August 15 2012). The Jerusalem
speech was in all probability directed at America’s Jewish voters, but is it
wise to deliberately affront the Palestinians whose suffering under Israeli
occupation is a concern to a large number of Muslims?
It is axiomatic that there can be no
peace in the Middle East unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.
Obama has initially tried to re-animate the moribund peace process, which
requires, first of all, for Israel to stop its settlement policy in Jerusalem
and West Bank areas, but he ran into Netanyahu’s concrete wall. Domestic
electoral realities, where the Muslim vote is negligible but the Jewish vote
powerful, prevented him from pursuing the matter, but at least we know that he
will continue to try if he were to be re-elected. On the other hand if Romney
were to win his foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but in regard to
the rest of the world, seems to be that of George W. Bush: if you are not with
us, you are against us. I am saying this because it has been reported that his
foreign policy advisors stem largely from the disastrous Bush era. They are
wedded to the idea of absolute American domination on land, the sea, the air,
and outer space. Their blueprint remains The
Project for the New American Century as discussed here on The Neocons’
Leviathan and further details can be found at its website http://www.newamericancentury.org.htm.
But we have to realize that this cannot be accomplished without new and even
more devastating wars and this is why a Romney presidency is likely to be just
as dangerous as a McCain presidency might have been four years ago.
Currently the Middle East is in turmoil
with the events in Libya, Egypt and especially Syria taking center stage. Obama
stayed out of the Egyptian revolution, because it was up to Egypt’s citizens to
decide what form of government they want. He was reluctantly dragged into
Libya’s when France and Britain ran out of NATO equipment. He also has, so far,
abstained from entering into the fray in Syria which is an even more complex
civil war. He is being criticized by Romney for this “lack of leadership” which
he countered with the correct statement that if Romney “wants war he should
just say so.” President Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq wars have unleashed forces
of which they had only been dimly aware. When Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice stated in July of 2006 that we are witnessing “the birth pangs of a new
Middle East,” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1219325,00.html
I commented in December of that year that “the baby may well arrive with a
turban on its head and may have no use for Westerners dictating what it should
or shouldn’t do. The era of colonialism is over” (The People Have Spoken).
This was correct then and as subsequent
events have shown is still true today. It is truly appalling that these simple
realities which are clear to everyone who brings a minimum of understanding,
and an open mind that tries to see the needs of both sides to a difficult
problem, has not penetrated Republican consciousness. Unfortunately we have a
voting citizenry which has either been turned offby the inability of the two political parties
to come to a modicum of agreement for the good of the country, or is simply too
lazy to inform itself about the vast issues that are at stake and is swayed by
political propaganda. This is why the election outcome is currently in doubt
and everybody is waiting how the three scheduled October debates between Romney
and Obama will turn out.
In August of this year (The Impending
War with Iran) I mentioned that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has also
tried to insert himself into the elections. Since he used to be an American
citizen he may feel that he has a right to do so but his insistence that Obama
should not only condone an air-strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities but actually
participate in it, has apparently failed. In spite of potential adverse
political fall-out at the elections Obama has drawn his own red line when
America should intervene militarily. This became clear in his speech before the
UN General Assembly last week and when he did not meet with Netanyahu while in
New York, the message may have sunk in.
There was very little reporting on the
UN proceedings in our media except to praise Israel and bash Ahmadinejad, but
fortunately we do have the Internet where we can get the relevant transcripts. As
far as the Iranian President’s speech goes it was his farewell address because
next year he will be out of office. It did not bring any news and he was also
somewhat constrained in his comments on Israel, obviously trying not to make a
bad situation worse. There were only two sentences dealing with Zionism and
Zionists. In the first one he deplored that the world’s media have not been
allowed to “criticize the hegemonic policies and
actions of the world Zionism.” In the second he commented on the “Continued
threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our
great nation.” That was all he said in 35 minutes about this particular problem
but the US as well as the Israeli delegates did not want to listen and had
walked out.
On the other hand
Netanyahu’s speech was well attended and received several rounds of applause. In
the first half he started with King David having made Jerusalem the eternal
capital of Israel, then recited Israel’s continued presence in the Middle East
for three thousand years, Jewish resilience in face of unrelenting persecutions
and eventually turned to Israel’s modern scientific and cultural achievements.
The second half was entirely devoted to the threat Iran presented not only to
Israel but the entire world which must be met now before it is too late. In the
speech he took some liberties with the truth, as is common in political
discourse, but the most important one was in regard to a diagram he showed the
assembly picturing Iran’s bomb-making capability and Israel’s current red line which
Iran must not be allowed to reach.
Above is a copy of the picture. He explained that any bomb needs explosive material and a
fuse. The fuse is undetectable; therefore efforts have to be made to prevent production
of the fissile material. Please note that the “1st stage” of uranium
enrichment has a line at 70 % and the red line is at the top of the 90%. With
other words Iran must be stopped somewhere in the second stage (the Prime
Minister’s left index finger points to it) and the sooner the better. But he
went overboard in his zeal by insisting that Iran has already entered the
second stage i.e. has achieved 70% enrichment of which there is no evidence
from the IAEA or any of the world’s intelligence services. The latest IAEA
report from August 2012, condensed from Wikipedia, said that: “since 2010 Iran had produced about 190 kg of
20%-enriched uranium, up from 145 kg in May.The report also
noted that Iran had converted some of the 20%-enriched uranium to an oxide form
and fabricated into fuel for use in research reactors, and that once this
conversion and fabrication have taken place, the fuel cannot be readily
enriched to weapon-grade purity.”
Nevertheless, the Prime
Minister does seem to have given the world a little breathing room by
apparently postponing any Israeli military action to next spring or early
summer.This would be a welcome relief
for a war-weary world although as we say in German: aufgeschobenist nicht aufgehoben
– postponed doesn’t mean abandoned. So let’s hope that there won’t be any
disastrous “October surprise.” Obama doesn’t want a new war; neither does Ahmadinejad,
so let’s hope that Netanyahu’s government doesn’t want it either.
In view of the upcoming
elections the next issue will not appear on the customary first of the month
but on the 10th so that the results can be commented upon.
November 11, 2012
THE ELECTIONS OF NOVEMBER 6
When Americans went to bed on that November
night about half of them breathed a sigh of relief while the others were either
despondent or had divorced themselves in disgust from the political process
altogether and didn’t care anymore. The most disappointed man, apart from
Governor Romney, was probably the widely listened to conservative radio show
host Rush Limbaugh. On the day of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 he
vowed that his presidency needed to fail and that he must become a one-term
president. This became the battle cry for the Republican Party at large and, after
the 2010 elections, was also taken up by the newly-minted Speaker of the House,
John Boehner.
Although the Democrats had in 2009 a majority
in the Senate and the House, the Republicans used all the procedural rules at
their command to delay or cripple proposed legislation. The most effective one
was the threat of filibuster and the Democrats needed to muster a supermajority
of 60 votes in the Senate to overcome it. Although there were in theory 60 votes
available to the Democrats, they consisted of 58 Democrats
and two Independents who were expected to vote with the Democrats. But
two of the Democrats had serious health problems: Senator Byrd of West Virginia
was elderly and ailing, while Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was suffering
from a brain tumor. Neither man’s vote could necessarily be counted on for
medical reasons. In addition, not every Democrat would automatically toe the
party line. It, therefore took one and a half years before the Affordable Health
Care Act reached Obama’s desk for signature. During this time a series of compromises
had to be made which resulted in a document, which most people agree is a
monstrosity. Its major provisions were to become fully effective in 2014 but
obviously will need some revisions before then.
The Republicans were unhappy and since
they had lost on the federal level they pursued their goal to abolish this act
on the state level. Several states, including Utah, filed law suits to declare
the Act as unconstitutional. They were taken all the way to the Supreme Court
who to everybody’s surprise actually upheld the constitutionality of the law on
June 28, 2012 by a 5 to 4 decision. The cost for this exercise is obviously
borne by us, the taxpayer, but nobody seems to care very much about this
expenditure of scarce funds.
After the 2010 midterm elections,
which gave the Republicans control of the House and gathered them seven more
seats in the Senate, they smelled victory for 2012 and Mitch McConnell, the
Senate Minority leader together with John Boehner the House majority leader
took up Rush Limbaugh’s standard and devoted their entire efforts to make Obama
a one-term president. They adopted Vyshinsky’s famous
“nyet” to
prevent fiscal reform and last year brought the country to the brink of default
on its debts by blocking a raise of the debt ceiling, which had been automatic
heretofore. The irony of the situation is that the debt is being created by
Congress for bills which are unfunded and when the money needs to be put on the
table it simply isn’t there. Republicans and Democrats are responsible for
these unfunded or underfunded mandates and not to face the consequences is pure
hypocrisy. Republicans also refused to accept the fact that the Bush
administration had inherited a modest budgetary surplus from the Clinton
presidency but that this had changed into a $438 billion deficit for fiscal
2008. Since a fiscal year is not identical with the calendar year and goes from
October to September it overlapped the two administrations. The total US debt
at the beginning of the Bush administration in January of 2001 stood somewhat
over $5.7 trillion and had risen to $10.6 trillion by January 2009 when Obama was
sworn in. This inconvenient fact, published by http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway,
resulted from the inappropriate response to 9/11, with a massive expenditure on
defense in the name of War on Terrorism, the invasion of two countries, as well
as several stimulus packages which were largely in form of tax cuts to aid the already
ailing economy. The latter was a consequence of the stock market crash of 2000 which
resulted from Wall Street’s “irrational exuberance” during the nineties, as Fed
Chairman Alan Greenspan had called it.
As mentioned, in their effort to
regain the White House the Republicans turned raising the debt ceiling, which
had been automatic before, into a Rubicon which must not be crossed and
sabotaged every reconciliation effort. In the end they “kicked the can down the
road,” as the saying goes, and adopted a strategy which they thought would
never take effect. The final solution was that if no compromise on the deficit
is achieved by January 1, 2013 automatic drastic spending cuts and tax
increases will take effect. This is the infamous looming “fiscal cliff”
everybody is talking about now. But it was utterly avoidable had the
Republicans been more reasonable early on.
Everybody agrees that the federal
debt, which has further risen under Obama to the current $16, 2 trillion, has
to be addressed. The only way to do so is by increasing revenue and decreasing
expenses. Republicans and Democrats agree on that. The devil, as usual, is in
the details, and those we were supposed to get during the election campaign. Since
they will be onerous it is no surprise that both candidates shied away from
them and kept to vague generalities. The Republicans painted Obama as a
profligate spender whose social programs will lead to fiscal bankruptcy and
only an austerity program, similar to that which is currently pursued in the
Euro zone, coupled with further tax cuts will bring about fiscal health. The
Democrats on the other hand might have said: OK look at the Euro zone; their
economies are stalled and unemployment, especially among the young, is reaching
intolerable and dangerous levels. They did say that sufficient revenue cannot
be raised by closing tax loop holes and cutting funding for social programs;
taxes on the wealthy will have to be raised.
“Read my lips, no new taxes” was the
promise by George HW Bush prior to his 1988 election victory, but reality
intervened and it couldn’t be kept. This time around the Republicans tried to
make sure that it will be. During one of the Primary debates last year the
moderator asked all the candidates if they would accept a $1 increase in taxes
for a $10 decrease in spending. Not a single one agreed to that suggestion.
It’s obvious, nobody likes to pay more taxes but how are you going to fund the
“defense” industry, and burgeoning social costs resulting from an aging
population? One of the proposals was to shift some of the cost burden to the
states. This is, however, to put it bluntly, fraudulent. Where are the
individual states going to get the money from to deal with these new and
unexpected burdens? They can’t print it, as the federal government does, and
they also have, unlike the federal government, a balanced budget mandate. So it’s
obvious, we the individual citizens will have to pay higher taxes and if it isn’t
to the Fed it’ll be to State government. This is simply a fact some of my
Republican friends refuse to accept.
One of the other preferred Republican
solutions is “privatization.” This is already done on the federal level in the
defense industry, where contracts are issued to private firms even for projects
which carry top secret classifications. Since these contractors have to be paid
from our tax dollars, and private industry works for profit, rather than out of
the goodness of their hearts, the absurdity arises that we are actually paying
more for what the government could do for less. On the state level it exists
for prisons and some schools. The prison example is especially interesting
because it’s obvious: the more prisoners, the more profit. It has been
estimated that about half of all the non-violent offenses for which people are
incarcerated are related to the “war on drugs.” Fox News reported in May 2010 that
after 40 years we had spent $1 trillion without achieving any of its goals. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/.
Keeping this “war” going, although there are considerably better ways to deal
with drug abuse, is profitable for the large dealers while the small fry are
put in jail to swell the prison business.
It should be obvious that the Republican
plans, when examined in detail, have not only considerable problems but are
actually potentially dangerous for the economic future of the country. The
Democrats likewise propose pie in the sky solutions and are not angels from
heaven but what I want to emphasize is that this should be a time when the top
economists sit down with each other and reach some type of consensus. The
president should then endorse it and the political parties would need to stop
fighting each other and do what’s right for the country. This is actually what
Obama had tried in 2009 but the result was a “stimulus package” which some
economists scorned as extravagant and ruinous, while others, like Nobel
Laureate Paul Krugman, regarded as too small for the magnitude of the problem.
At any rate after a fierce primary
season, where each candidate outdid the other not only in righteousness but
also in proposals which became increasingly more radical, Mitt Romney emerged
not so much as a beloved victor but the last man standing. The game plan was:
gang up on the current media favorite and destroy him/her by exploiting a
“gaffe.” Texas governor, Rick Perry, committed the sin of having favored
education stipends for children of illegal immigrants and when, in the heat of
the moment, he failed to remember the third of the three departments he wanted
to eliminate from the federal government, his fate was sealed. On such moments
American history hangs. By the beginning of the year Newt Gingrich was riding
high but when he, likewise, endorsed a way to citizenship for the millions of Mexicans,
who have walked across the border without first asking the immigration service
for a visa, his chances also evaporated. Mitt Romney and the only other remaining
candidate, Rick Santorum, took him to task and in the end the amount of money
which flowed into Mitt’s coffers, as well as his résumé of success in business,
the Utah Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts carried the day.
Romney, the businessman, won the
nomination with the assumption that he was the only one who understands how
business works and he would bring with him sound business principles to
effectively govern the nation. As noted in the previous installment I had some
doubts that experience in business translates automatically into good government
on the federal level, and I also had considerable concerns about his reliability.
While there is no doubt that he is faithful to his family and the tenets of the
Mormon Church, he seemed to have considerably flexibility on most everything
else in the sense that he would say whatever was most opportune for the moment.
In addition, his economic as well as his foreign policy plans were a replica of
the Bush administration, which has landed us in the troubles we are trying to
dig ourselves out from. Since he, like George W, had no experience in foreign
policy one needs to look at his advisors. In so doing it was clear that they
are the same neocons who gave us Afghanistan and Iraq. Currently they are eager
to start war with Iran sooner rather than later.
When
I wrote the October 1 article, in which I voiced these concerns, I had not yet
taken time to look in detail at the vaunted successes of Mitt Romney’s life.
That he had made a great deal of money, of that there is no doubt. But the
questions of how he made it, what made the Olympics so successful and what he
accomplished as governor, were not addressed at that time. So let us take a
look at them in succession. This is not an idle exercise. Although the election
is over and Governor Romney is again a private citizen there are lessons to be
learned for all of us. In essence it is an education in the current American
political-financial system which will persist regardless who is the temporary
occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. Furthermore, it is
important to realize that the information which is presented below was
available on the Internet during the summer but was not reported by the
official media.
The key word for Romney’s financial
success is “leveraged buyout” or LBO in short. Although the average person may
know that something like this exists most of us, including me before I began
writing this essay, have no idea what it really amounts to. A detailed
description is available on Wikipedia but when reduced to its essence this is
how it works. A financial institution A wants to get control or actual
ownership of another company B. In order to do so A puts up as small amount of
its own money as possible and borrows a large amount (usually from 60-90%) from
an institution C based on the assets of B. A now has ownership or a controlling
interest of B but B is still responsible for the debt and interest payments
which have to be met from the successful operation of its company. When an
economic downturn occurs, the revenue of B decreases, it cannot meet its
payroll plus the debt load and B goes bankrupt. On the other hand A has
received continued benefits during the operation of B and even when B goes
under the actual loss is negligible because A had only put a minimum on the table
in the first place and C is saddled with the debt. In other words this is legalized
gambling where the bank .i.e. company A, always wins and only the amount of
gain is in question.
With this background we can now look
at how Bain, Romney’s firm, operated. Mitt Romney joined Bain&Co., a Boston
consulting firm, in 1977, became a vice-president in 1978 and left the parent
company in 1984 to co-found “the spin-off private investment firm” Bain
Capital, where he soon switched from financing start-ups to LBOs. This is
important because in the presidential campaign Romney emphasized that he was a
“job creator” and listed as the prime example Staples, which indeed had
received money from Bain Capital to improve and expand its operations. This
occurred, however, before Romney switched from job creation to debt creation
with LBOs. This aspect is dealt with by several reports which are available on
the Internet.
The one by Matt Taibbi
on http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
is entitled Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney with Bain Capital.
Although written in a somewhat acerbic style it does present the essential
facts in lay language and provides several examples how Bain Capital really
worked. Key portions are: Romney switched from financing startups to leveraged
buyouts because, “there’s a lot greater risk in a startup than there is
acquiring an existing company.” Once an LBO of a given company, B, has been
achieved Bain Capital charged B a substantial ongoing
managing fee, which of course had to come out of B’s revenue. In order to stay
profitable in view of the added debt burden, its interest payments and the
management fees, B had to trim its work force. In other words people were
fired. This explains the famous statement in one of the debates: “I like firing
people.” Now comes another wrinkle how the Federal Government actually
encourages this type of activity. The interest payments on the debt are tax
deductible, just like home mortgages. With other words, we the taxpayers
subsidize this debt creation because of lost revenue for the IRS. Now it gets even
better. As mentioned the person at Bain Capital who does the “managing” receives
management fees for operating B. One would assume that whoever gets this fee
would have to pay regular income tax on it, as all of us do for our work. But
that does not hold true for the rarified atmosphere of high finance. Their
lawyers have found a loophole by immediately transferring this income into an
“investment.” Thereby, depending on income, instead of the usual 25-35% or so
which all of us are being taxed, the financiers pay only the capital gains tax
of about 15%. This is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This
“gimmick” which is the only word that properly describes this type of swindle
is currently under investigation by New York’s District Attorney Eric
Schneiderman. Since he is a registered Democrat and his investigation does not
merely cover Bain but all of these financial institutions it is obvious that
his probe is accused of playing politics.
Taibbi is not the only
one who has described Romney’s personal wealth creation. David Stockman
published an article in Newsweek on October 15, 2012 with the title, “Mitt
Romney: the Great Deformer.” While Taibbi could be
dismissed as a Romney hating Democrat, this cannot be said about Stockman who
was Ronald Reagan’s budget director. Stockman has written a book, “The Great
Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy,” which
will be published in March of next year. But last month he provided what
amounts to a summary for Newsweek. It is written in a professional authoritative
style and needs to be taken to heart, especially by Romney supporters. It can
be found at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/14/david-stockman-mitt-romney-and-the-bain-drain.html.
Another article, “Decoding Romney” which should be read, was posted by Paula
Gordon on 10/28/2012 at the Huffington Posthttp://www.google.com/search?q=Paula+gordon+Huffington+Post+romney+10%2F28&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1and she has since then published several
additional ones on that website.
In order not to belabor this aspect
further let me now turn to Mitt Romney’s major Utah achievement, the Olympics.
We were all very grateful for his effort and I would like at this point to
refer the reader to “The Mormon Olympics” published here on March 1, 2002, which
represents the view of all of us who were here at the time. They provided a
lasting major boost for our economy, created a light rail line which reached
from Salt Lake City south to Sandy with a spur to the Olympic stadium and the
university. The southern route is currently being expanded to Draper and
another spur to the airport will be opened next year. In addition a Winter Sports
Training Park was created which provides athletes from around the world with up
to date facilities. For all this we are very grateful to Romney. In addition
the Olympics did not leave us saddled with a deficit but had actually a surplus
of $101 million. We didn’t know where all the money for these improvements of
our infrastructure had come from and what’s more we weren’t even interested in
finding out.
When I now
checked on this aspect I found out that Romney had persuaded the federal
government to shell out $1.3 billion, which far outstripped previous government
expenditures for these events. Senator John McCain had become enraged in 2000 over
this “pork barrel” project and his actual words can be found in an article athttp://www.politicolnews.com/romneys-2-7-billion-olympic-bailout-by-john-mccain,
which also contains a video clip. In fairness
we have to admit that it is indeed difficult to see why a farmer in South
Dakota or Tennessee should have to support an event, which is of little to no
interest or benefit to him. Another article from 2001 on this topic was
published at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mitt-romney-expensive-olympics-federal-funding.
As
mentioned we Utahns were happy that the Fed helped us but under these
circumstances Romney’s current attacks on government spending ring hollow. The
US Government did create jobs here which Romney’s friends in industry failed to
do.
As to his record
as governor there are also significant aspects which have been omitted from
public discussion but can be found on Wikipedia. He did inherit a deficit and
had to balance the budget in his first year of office which required drastic
spending cuts. He had also promised not to raise taxes but since not enough
revenue could be created from cuts in spending he raised fees for birth certificates, new car purchases,
driver’s learning permits, firearms permits, professional licenses, and
billboards advertising, as well as for many state services. For the individual
citizen who now had to pay more for something that used to cost less it is
irrelevant whether you call it a fee or a tax. Furthermore, these fee increases
hit the middle and lower income segment of our society the most while upper
income people could shrug them off. When Romney mentioned that he didn’t care
about the 47% who don’t pay taxes this was not a gaffe; it came from the heart.
For a complete description of his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts please go
to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorship_of_Mitt_Romney
because it gives you an idea of how he would have conducted himself as Chief
Executive in the White House.
While President Obama can also be
taken to task for not having performed according to expectations, his failures
are understandable when one considers the magnitude of the problem he had
inherited. We don’t know what the next four years, or even the next year, will
bring and all the 10 year projections economists are so fond of are utterly
meaningless. We may be engaged in a war with Iran which will further drain
resources which we don’t have. We can only hope and pray that Obama will not
let himself be pushed into this potential disaster which can bring no good for
anybody. Let him justify his premature Nobel peace prize! Under these circumstances
his next four years are likely to be successful because the economy, although
not growing by leaps and bounds, will probably gradually improve. Provided that
the Eurozone does not collapse, we may avoid a double dip recession. Some aspects
of Obama’s conduct in office, which disappointed a number of us, will be taken
up next month.
This brings me
back to our Republicans and their guru Rush Limbaugh. On Monday he and Dick
Morris, a favorite of Bill O’Reilly on FOX News, had confidently predicted that
Romney would win in a landslide. When it was not to be he told his audience on
Wednesday: "I
went to bed last night thinking we'd lost the country. I don't know how else
you look at this. The first wave of exit polls came in at five o'clock. I
looked at it, and I said ... 'this is utter BS, and if it isn't, then we've
lost the country.’”
What Limbaugh and
people who think like him have not understood is that what I called a tectonic
shift had taken place with the first Obama election (Audacity of Hope; November
8 2008). Whites, although still in the majority, are gradually losing their
privileged status and Hispanics as well as Africans and Asians are finding
their voices. We are a multicultural society and the Republican Party must come
to grips with that fact. It must also realize that “crony capitalism” has
ruined the middle class and is unsustainable. The failure to do so, and especially
if it persists in the previous obstruction of the legislative process can only
spell doom for the party and grief for the country. This is the legacy and
lesson of November 6.
Since I shall
be attending the American Epilepsy Society Meeting in San Diego at the end of
this and beginning of next month the December installment will not appear on the
1st but on December 8.
February 1, 2013
THE U.S. HEALTH CARE SYSTEM: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
The past two
months were highly educational although in a rather unexpected manner. As
mentioned in the December comment I got a firsthand view of how the U.S.
“health care system” currently works. For a physician to be on the receiving
end was an eye-opener because one knows how care should be dispensed and can
evaluate it against observed facts. But before going into the details let me
provide the background.
With my co-workers Dr. Constantino and
Dr. Bigelow I had prepared a poster to be shown on December 1 at the American
Epilepsy Society Meeting in San Diego on “Interictal EEG Intracranial Infraslow
Activity.” This is completely new information, not yet appreciated by
epileptologists, but is likely to become important in our understanding of
epileptogenesis. The poster evoked interest and I had planned to give a live
demonstration on December 2 to key epileptologists in order to show what
additional features can be seen in the EEG when appropriate software is used.
The demonstration was planned for the
morning and in the afternoon I was scheduled to meet with some members of the
9/11 Truth movement which is very active in California and especially the
greater San Diego area. It consists largely of professionals who are now
retired, which allows them to express their true views without fear of
repercussions in regard to their job. This is a real problem and I shall report
my personal experiences on this topic in the March issue. I had met some of the
participants in Vancouver and was glad to have the opportunity to renew
contacts and exchange views on various aspects of what is, up to now, the
greatest crime of the current century.
For the evening of December 1, I had
invited my co-workers to join me for dinner at the Convention Hotel dining
room. Since they attended a meeting at the Convention Center next door which
ended at 8 pm I had made reservations for that time. Inasmuch as the late
afternoon meeting was not in my sphere of interest I had returned to the hotel
earlier and presented myself at the hostess desk at 8 pm intending to meet the
guests at the table. Then fate stepped in.
While walking behind the hostess my
right leg gave way, I fell on the artificial hip and the right leg was bent out
of shape as well as paralyzed. Every slight movement caused excruciating pain
and since I had suffered two previous hip dislocations with similar symptoms I
assumed that this was what had again occurred. Hotel personnel immediately
gathered while I managed to get into a sitting position propped against the
wall. It was obvious that I needed an ambulance to get to a near-by emergency
room where an X-ray could be taken and since I thought that it was merely a
dislocated hip I assumed that once it is put back in place I could continue
with next day’s schedule. This assumption was not unreasonable because, as
mentioned it had happened twice before here in Utah and the replacement had
taken only a few hours before I was home again and could continue with my
routine activities. But this time was different.
When the hotel called 911 (the US
emergency number) a “fire truck” appeared on the scene 20 minutes later rather
than an ambulance. This was beyond comprehension and I kept insisting that I
wanted an ambulance because that’s what was required.Another 20 minutes passed the ambulance did
come and I was taken to Scripps Mercy hospital with Dr. Constantino
accompanying me. The mystery of the fire truck resolved itself later because
their personnel, rather than the ambulance have the emergency medical
technicians. That this does not make good sense and simply increases costs seems
not to have penetrated the minds of decision makers unless cost is the actual
the purpose because the whole system is designed “for profit” in this
capitalist country of ours.
Now let me digress to 1950-1951 when I
was an intern at Staten Island Hospital. The hospital had its own ambulance and
when an emergency arose the intern on call for the emergency room rode with the
driver to the scene of the problem where a preliminary diagnosis could be
established and a decision was made whether or not the patient needed
hospitalization, was actually already dead (I personally saw some of the
weirdest circumstances which made even veteran NY police officers sick), or
could be treated on the scene and then referred to his/her regular physician.
The system was efficient and cost effective but those days are gone for good.
By 9 p.m. I was admitted to the ER of
the hospital and then came the surprise. Here in Utah, on the two previous
occasions, I was immediately taken to X-ray, the orthopedist on call assessed
the situation and, as mentioned, put the hip back in its place. But in
California there was no orthopedist anywhere to be seen. A young physician, who
never introduced himself, stood around rather helplessly while lab personnel
became busy with drawing blood for lab tests and did ECGs but what was needed
namely the X-ray had to wait several hours.
When it was taken only the pelvis area
was X-rayed on the assumption of hip dislocation, but although the hip was in
place it was noted that the proximal end of the femur, which could be seen, had
been shattered around the shaft of the prosthesis. Now it would have made good
sense for the technician who saw this problem, which was obvious even to a lay
person, to show it to the radiologist and they would then reposition the X-ray
to view the entire length of the femur to see how far the fracture extended.
But that would have been logical and I was reminded of the saying in the
Wehrmacht: leave the thinking to the horses; they’ve got the bigger heads. I
was taken back to the ER and lingered there for another several hours until I
was returned to X-ray for further study. Mind you, by now it was way past
midnight and I had not yet seen an orthopedist. Dr. Constantino to her eternal
credit stayed with me (not having had any dinner) and since by 2 a.m. there was
still no sign of a physician I insisted that she return to the hotel because
there was nothing that she could accomplish at the hospital.
Eventually I was taken from the ER to
a hospital room and the waiting for a physician continued there. Now it is true
that it was a Saturday-Sunday weekend but that is no excuse for not having ER
physicians of the various specialties on call. My mood which initially had been
rather stoic gradually changed to suppressed fury and when in the morning there
was still no hide or hair of the orthopedist to be seen I demanded that they
call him and let me know where exactly he was physically located at that time
and when I might expect a visit. Eventually sometime after 11 a.m. Dr. Bawa, the orthopedist on call, did show up and seemed
clearly annoyed with having been bothered on a Sunday morning. He explained that
the fracture was serious; the prosthesis had to be removed, a new one inserted
and the fracture stabilized. But by that time I had lost all confidence in him and
told him that I would not let him do the operation. I then requested another
orthopedist with whom I could establish human contact
and discuss options. Needless to say we did not part on good terms but nursing
personnel did get in touch with Dr. Fabi who came later in the day. In contrast
to Dr. Bawa’s robotic attitude Dr. Fabi was a genuine
physician who evoked trust and the operation was scheduled for 8 am next
morning. As it turned out it didn’t take place until 5 pm that afternoon. In
other words approximately 44 hours had elapsed before the necessary action was
taken.
Let me now go back to the middle 90’s.
Martha and I had been skiing at Snowbird, when for no good reason at around 2
pm her leg gave out and she fell. We had just started on the slope; I was ahead,
when I heard an expletive and on turning around saw that she was disabled. As luck
would have it the skier right behind us was an ER physician who immediately
called for the toboggan. She was X-rayed right at Snowbird, a hip fracture was
diagnosed and an ambulance was called. For unknown reasons the ambulance didn’t
make it up Little Cottonwood canyon and another one had to be summoned. But by
around 6 p.m. Martha was at Alta View hospital, wheeled directly into a room. The
orthopedist, Dr. Gordon, started the operation at 7 p.m. and was finished by
around 9:30 p.m. Those had been prior experiences which showed what could and
should be done.
Whether or not the California events, as
related above, are nowadays the general rule or specific for Scripps Mercy
hospital (SM) I cannot tell. Due to sports related injuries and other conditions
I had several operations in the past and, therefore, extensive experience with
general anesthesia. On all of these occasions I had been allowed to awaken
spontaneously from the various drugs which had been administered. This time I regained
consciousness as a result of rather vigorous slapping of my cheeks, an event
which had not taken place since adolescence and the circumstances that
warranted it at that time were described in War&Mayhem.
It seems that the hospital was working on an assembly line principle where
drugged patients have to be gotten out of the recovery area as fast as possible
to make room for the next victim. By the way, the word “patient” has become
anachronistic and when you enter the health care system you become a “case” or
“client.” Another change which has occurred over the years is that you are
routinely addressed by first name only. This annoyed me; I pulled rank and
insisted that they call me Dr. Rodin. This was not just arrogance but
caregivers should have some idea who the person is they are dealing with because
we are not all cut from the cloth.
I was returned to my room from the OR
sometime around 10 p.m. and hospital rules demanded that you were not allowed
to sleep any length of time because blood pressure, heart rate and blood
oxygenation have to be checked every few hours. The fact that a patient with a
fractured leg does not necessarily need these is not only irrelevant but
actually harmful because tissue repair proceeds best
during sleep. By now it was Wednesday morning and at 9 a.m. a physiotherapist
showed up. I was still hung over from the anesthetics, as well as lack of sleep,
and clearly in no shape to engage in any kind of physical activity. By refusing
I became a “bad patient” but that didn’t concern me because there was a
conflict of interest. Thehospital
wanted to keep me while I was bound and determined to get out as soon as
possible because there was no way I could improve under those circumstances and
Martha, alone at home, could not be expected to come to San Diego for several
weeks. I had to get back to Utah and the faster the better.
That’s when the “system” kicked in
again. For SM hospital to discharge me a Salt Lake Hospital would have to
accept me. I tried to convince them that I wanted to return to the facility
which had done the second hip operation but was told that they refused to
accept me in my condition because of the danger of deep vein thrombosis with
emboli or fat emboli from the fracture. I was stuck; yet come hell or high
water I had to get out of that hospital. For arranging this feat I am indebted
to friends from the 9/11 Truth community who explored all possible means how to
get me back to Utah, even if it had to be done against medical advice. Since
the Salt Lake hospital refused acceptance we decided that I just go home and
subsequently make arrangements for a proper Rehab facility in our neighborhood.
Commercial airline flying was out of
the question because the right leg was paralyzed and I couldn’t possibly have
gotten into a seat. Private Air Ambulance was an option but it would have cost
$25,000 and it was not clear if flying in my debilitated state would be
advisable. Fortunately my San Diego friends and our daughter, Krista,
discovered two ambulance services which would undertake the arduous trip from
San Diego to Salt Lake. The first one was located in New York and that would
have involved a trans-continental trip for them with all the added expense. But
the second one was based in San Diego and for $7,500 they would take me home while
lying on a stretcher, admiring the rather desolate scenery of the southwestern
U.S. through the back window.
The earliest they could do so was at 3
a.m. on Friday morning and 12 hours later I was at home ensconced in a rented
hospital bed, surrounded by loving family members. In sum and substance the SM
medical experience was rather dismal and the only bright spot, apart from Dr.
Fabi, were the nurses’ aides who were genuinely interested in the needs of
their patients. They were courteous, available when called and even respected
my wishes for privacy by posting a sign on the door that visitors needed to be
cleared by the nursing desk. I was surprised that practically all of them came
from the Philippines and even Dr. Fabi, who was interested in my well-being,
was second generation Filipino. It seems that the hospital couldn’t have
functioned at all without personnel from these Pacific islands.
It was obvious that I was too ill to
stay at home and there are several Rehab facilities in Sandy. We picked HealthSouth
because it is on the way to one of our favorite restaurants, can be easily
reached by Martha within 15 minutes and I was admitted on Tuesday, December 11.It turned out to have been an excellent
choice. The personnel: physicians, nursing, physio- and occupational therapy,
was mainly local and had, with a few exceptions, the amiability one is used to
find in our state. The primary care physician, Dr. Rada, was not only competent
but also a person who took time with his patients and actually listened to
suggestions I made in regard to my problems, which in the meantime had
multiplied. Former esophageal and gastric ulcers, which had been under control prior
to the accident, flared up leading not only to intense pain and inability to
eat but also bleeding. Medication changes, as well as two blood transfusions,
were required to bring it under control. Nevertheless it took about a week
before I was capable of engaging in meaningful physiotherapy. This nearly
proved to be my undoing.
On Christmas Eve I was presented by a
lady from hospital administration with the news that the Medicare (which paid
for the hospitalization) limit assigned by some bureaucrat on basis of some
number ended on Friday the 27th. HealthSouth was designated as an Intensive
Rehabilitation Facility (IRF) and I could either go home or head for a nursing
home where only minimal rehab facilities were available. This Christmas present
was clearly a shock because neither of these two so-called options was
realistic for my condition but this is how the system works. I shall explain
the maze of intricacies and alphabet soup which all falls under Medicare at the
end of this essay.
Needless to say this was a sad Christmas
Eve but Martha, Krista and I celebrated with some Kahlua hoping for better
times. On Christmas Day the physiatrist Dr. Elovic arrived and found that the
entire femoral nerve was disabled which led to the mentioned paralysis of the
leg. He not only suggested an EMG but more importantly told us that we could
appeal the Medicare decision and ask for an extension of my stay due to the
intervening additional illness. This was a ray of hope and since Christmas is a
federal holiday, Krista spent most of the 26th to convince somebody
at Medicare that I needed to stay longer at HealthSouth. She was told that the
hospital would have to send a report and they might then reassess the
situation. The hospital did so and we were informed that the answer would
arrive in 48 hours.
This not only left us in suspense but
also with the problem how to get an EMG to determine precisely which muscles
and nerves are functional. The hospital did not have the necessary equipment
and visiting another one as an outpatient was problematic in my condition. Dr.
Constantino came again to the rescue. She knew from her church an elderly
physician, Dr. Duerksen, who actually travelled to outlying communities around
the state with his portable equipment and provided this important service. The
only problem was that on Monday, December 31, was his 70th birthday
and the last day where he would see patients. By that time it was Thursday the
27th but Dr. Duerksen agreed to see me at HealthSouth on Friday
later in the day. The complicating factor was that he was actually in St.
George, which is about 300 miles to the Southwest. Depending on road conditions
in the winter takes a minimum of 4 hours driving and his last patient was
scheduled for 1 p.m.
Now comes an
example that natural goodness and willingness to help still exists in some
members of our species although it does not seem obvious when one limits
oneself to news reports via print or electronic media. The patient Dr. Duerksen
was supposed to have seen at 1 p.m. was late, the exam took longer than
expected and he showed up at my hospital room at around 9 p.m. He had not had
any dinner and in spite of driving all this distance was in good cheer and
proceeded with the exam. The result was that all the muscles supplied by the
femoral nerve showed absence of activity when an attempt at voluntary
innervation was made. One can speculate about the cause, which I won’t do, but
the verdict was, of course, serious and unimpeachable. Prospects for recovery
appeared dim. We were both disappointed and since he had literally gone the
extra mile to see me I offered him some compensation apart from the rather
ridiculously low fee he would be getting from Medicare. He absolutely refused and
told me that he never charges colleagues. This reminded of the other good old
days at the Mayo Clinic which likewise did not charge physicians or members of
the clergy for their services.
Thinking subsequently about the
situation I remembered a lecture I had heard several years ago when an East
Coast professor had shown videos of children with muscular dystrophy (MD) who
had experienced remarkable improvement when treated with the drug prednisone.
Well, if it works in MD why not try it I reasoned. Next day I discussed the
possibility with Dr. Elovic, who was lukewarm about it, but Dr. Rada was
willing to give it a try. Within 48 hours some strength appeared in the
quadriceps and the physiotherapists as well as the physicians were impressed
that improvement was actually taking place to the extent that after a few days
I could take a few steps in a walker. This is an excellent example of what can
be done if competent physicians trust each other, can rationally discuss a
difficult situation, and are willing to try unorthodox solutions. Unfortunately
this avenue is not available to the average lay person who has to take the
physician’s fiat, which is dictated not only by his limited personal and
literature experience but also, at times, bias. Progress continued, Medicare
relented, and on January 17 I could return home for continued physiotherapy as
well as assistance with bathing and other activities of daily living, such as
taking a shower etc. The quadriceps has regained some function by now, but flexors and abductors are still too weak, which makes the wheel chair the main means of propulsion, although we are working hard to graduate to a walker for shorter distances.
Before discussing IRF, PPS and the CMG aspect
of the “system” I need to express my gratitude to the nursing and therapy personnel
at HealthSouth. Regardless of shift, all of them were not only genuinely
helpful but exuded an air of friendly optimism. From all of the people working at
the hospital there were only three persons who performed their job in a sullen
manner. In order to fully appreciate this fact one has to know that a
considerable number of the people working at HealthSouth do not hold permanent
jobs there but are regarded as “temporary help.” This means that they do not get health
insurance or any other benefits and their salaries are quite low. In order to
make ends meet most of them have at least one and at times two additional jobs
which can lead to a work week of up to 80 hours. Our Republicans who rail
against the “benefits” which the government doles out seem to be quite unaware
of how the capitalist system really works even for the middle class
Now a few additional
words about the “system,” apart from the previously mentioned acronyms.Upon discharge from the hospital I was given a
prescription for necessary medications but when Martha tried to fill them at
the pharmacy she was told that our insurance was no longer valid. This was a
shock because there seemed to be no reason why it should have been cancelled.
The pharmacist who knew us, spent hours on the phone with Lansing (we are on
the State of Michigan Retirement Plan) and got it temporarily straightened out.
When I called Lansing the next day I was told that as of January 1 Medicare had
switched insurance carriers, without notifying anybody about it, and we would
get our new card within two to three weeks. You can readily imagine the problem
this can create when a patient needs medications on an emergency basis because
drugs have become prohibitively expensive and the few items we did need would
have cost us over $400.
Let me now return to Medicare and its
subsidiaries. During our working days Martha and I had Blue Cross-Blue Shield
health insurance as part of the benefit package of the State of Michigan for
its employees. When I stopped working for money at age 65, I was told that
Medicare was now the primary insurance and the “Blues” would only cover some
aspects which Medicare does not provide. This was a surprise because we now
have two bureaucracies to deal with instead of one. When reflecting upon this
situation it seems that the private insurance lobby had been very active in
Congress to rid itself of expenses for the elderly, who are notoriously in more
need of medical care, shifting the major burden to the federal government. As
such it is no surprise that with an aging population the Medicare budget is
ballooning. But when Congress tries to reduce expenditures the cuts come
through inadequate compensation for physicians and for services rendered.
There is no doubt that not only a great
deal of waste but also actual fraud (billing for services not provided) does
occur and that the system needs a thorough overhaul. But “Obamacare,” which
will become fully effective in 2014, cannot do so because the provisions are so
complex that it will need still more bureaucrats to implement it and physicians
will have even less time to deal with patients because of all the forms which
need to be filled out. While the affluent can, of course, get optimal care this
does not pertain to the majority of our citizens.
This brings
up the fundamental question should medical care be a “for profit industry” or
should some type of basic insurance be available to everybody with co-pay for
extra services? This was Obama’s battle with Congress in 2009. He lost; and the
enacted compromise will neither fulfill its goal of cost reduction nor better
service.
“After an
illness, injury, or surgical care, some patients need intensive inpatient
rehabilitation services, such as physical, occupational, or speech Therapy.
Relatively few beneficiaries use intensive rehabilitation therapy because they
generally must be able to tolerate and benefit from three hours of therapy per
day to be eligible for treatment in an inpatient rehabilitation setting. Under
the PPS (prospective payment
system), discharges are assigned to case-mix category groups (CMG) organized by
clinical problems and expected resources.Each case-mix category has a national relative weight reflecting the
expected relative costliness of treatment for patients in that category
compared with that for the average Medicare inpatient rehabilitation patient….”
What this actually amounts to is that
optimal medical practice, as dictated by the needs of the patient and certified
by the treating physician, is hardly possible anymore because the decision
which treatment facility you can go to for how long a period of time is now
dictated by a complex computer algorithm which has placed the patient into a
“case-mix group” from which there is no escape. This explains the mentioned
Christmas Eve surprise. HealthSouth is designated as an IRF which means that
patients have to actively participate in rehabilitation efforts about 3 hours
each day. If this goal is not met the patient has to be discharged or the
hospital will lose its Medicare accreditation. Since I was too ill in the early
stages of hospitalization, and nobody had told us about this restriction, the
mentioned notice had to be served and only the persuasiveness and persistence
of our daughter supported subsequently by the physicians’ appeal saved the day.
These are the facts as of January 2013
and with increasing reliance on computers for medical decisions the situation
can only get worse. Private pay has risen to astronomic levels and is as such
only available to a minute fraction of our society. This is the brave new world
we are creating by insisting on the capitalist mantra that everything has to be
“for profit” even when it comes to the most basic aspect of life namely the
opportunity to get the best possible medical care in “The Land of the Free and
the Brave!”
Finally I must thank our three
children who came in installments from various parts of the country to provide
help. Eric, the pilot, visited even in San Diego and was with Krista on site
when I returned home for the first time, making arrangements to ensure that
their crippled father was as comfortable as possible. Peter, our physician son,
not only was the essential liaison with Dr. Fabi in San Diego as well as Dr.
Rada here in Sandy, but also removed the 91 staples with which the extensive
incision had been closed. The brunt of worry fell, of course, on Martha, who
although not in good health herself, rose to the occasion. She visited
practically on a daily basis and since hospital food was not always to my
liking she brought extra supplies for lunch and dinner. This truly showed the
importance of a caring family without whose help I would not nearly have
regained even the limited function in the legs and certainly not my capacity to
engage again in meaningful work.
February 15, 2013
PROOF OF HEAVEN
The October 8,
2012 issue of Newsweek carried on its cover page a picture of a hand stretched
out beyond heavenly clouds to the cosmos, with the captions:
“Heaven is real. A doctor’s experience of the afterlife.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html.
The article discussed a neurosurgeon’s, Dr. Eben Alexander III, experiences
during coma from bacterial meningitis which left him to conclude that heaven
and the afterlife are real and scientists better face up to that fact. Although
a nominal Christian he, just like most other scientists, had adhered to the
current concept that consciousness is a result of brain function and cannot
occur in its absence. Yet
“In the fall of
2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my
brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that
it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death…. When I
entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything
beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent.
For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain
functions totally offline…. There is no scientific explanation for the fact
that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and
well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the
bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to
another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed
existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to
explain was a simple impossibility.
But that
dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of
near-death experiences [NDE] and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and
what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a
world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not
the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably
positive, journey….
All the chief
arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the
results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My
near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was
malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity
and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement
documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current
medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I
could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in
the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent…”
The article was actually part of a
promotion for his about to be published book, “Proof of Heaven. A
Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife,” Inasmuch as I had previously published,
in the scientific literature as well as on this site, my views on NDE’s I
ordered the book from Amazon to find out what “proof” Dr. Alexander could offer
the scientific community for his assertions.
Since the book itself switches back
and forth between snippets of biography, the experience itself, the genesis of
the book, medical observations, scientific data including quantum mechanics and
assertions about consciousness and reality, I shall be more systematic here and
take the essential points in sequence followed by a personal assessment.
His
experience during coma consisted of three parts. First he found himself
disembodied, with no recollection of his actual life, underground “like being a
mole or earthworm buried deep in the ground.”There were also some visions of what he regarded as roots which then
changed to grotesque faces and accompanied by a roar and foul smell. Near panic
set in and this part he subsequently called “the earthworm’s eye view.”
He was rescued by pure white filaments,
tinged with gold, spinning around at the center of which was an opening. This
was accompanied by the “richest, most beautiful music you’ve ever heard.” He
realized that he had to move up through this entrance, which he later called
the “gateway.” He went through and “found myself in a completely new world. The
strangest, most beautiful world I’d ever seen.” He was flying over a valley populated
by happy people and then realized that he was actually on a wing of a butterfly
accompanied by a beautiful young woman who reassured him that, “You are loved
and cherished, dearly, forever;”“You
have nothing to fear;” There is nothing you can do wrong.” These were not
spoken words but direct thought transfers. They were surrounded by millions of
other butterflies and there was synaesthesia of beautiful sound and vision
without separation as well as a sense of oneness.
As he moved forward he entered the third
phase which he called “the Core.” “[I] found myself entering an immense void,
completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch black
as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come
from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. An orb that was living and
almost solid, as the songs of the angel beings had been.” He then compared his
situation with that of a fetus floating in the womb except that “the ‘mother’
was God, the Creator, the Source who is responsible for making the universe and
all in it. This Being was so close that there seemed to be no distance at all
between God and myself. Yet at the same time, I could sense the infinite
vastness of the Creator, could see how completely miniscule I was by comparison.”
“The Orb was a kind of ‘interpreter’ between me and this extraordinary presence
surrounding me.” His questions were immediately answered telepathically and he
was provided with knowledge which surpasses terrestrial understanding; the
words to transmit it simply don’t exist in our vocabulary. “The knowledge given
me was not ‘taught’ in the way that a history lesson or a math theorem would
be. Insights happen directly, rather than needing to be coaxed and absorbed.
Knowledge was stored without memorization, instantly and for good.” Eventually
he returned through the same stages and found himself again in the earth-worm’s
view but this time it was no longer accompanied by fear.
When he came out of coma he experienced
paranoid psychotic ideation for several days, but he clearly differentiates the
reality of the “experience” from his psychosis, which lacked this feature. He
believes the psychosis was a result of the neocortex, which in his opinion had
been dead, gradually returning to its pre-coma functions.
Let us now look at some of the biographical snippets, in order to see
to what extent they might have flavored the above cited experience. There are
two aspects which stand out. One is that he was, since adolescence, a dedicated
skydiver which may have contributed to the second stage of his experience. The
other, namely the message that he is “loved and cherished, dearly, forever” was
wish fulfillment. His biologic mother was 16 when he was born and he had been
adopted by the Alexanders (Dr. Eben Alexander II was
a prominent neurosurgeon, whose obituary can be found on Wikipedia) at the age
of 4 months. He insists that he had always known about the adoption and was
clearly loved by his new parents. Nevertheless he had a lifelong feeling of
having been abandoned by his biologic parents. “For in fact, ‘thrown away’ was,
on a deep level, how I had indeed felt all through my life–in-spite of the best
efforts of all of my family to heal that feeling through their love.”
Over the years Dr. Alexander had made
several efforts to find his biologic parents and in February of 2000 he discovered
that his biologic parents had actually married several years after his birth
and that he had two sisters and a brother. One other sister had died in 1997.
When he tried to contact his birth mother she refused to see him. It was a
devastating blow. His career as well as family life began to take a nose dive.
His work suffered and he left Harvard. The accompanying guilt over having
disappointed the expectations of his renowned adoptive father was a further
complicating factor. He had been brought up in the Christian religion and had tried
to hang on to his belief in God in spite of the doubts a scientific life
creates in this regard. But after this rejection he lost the remnants of his
faith entirely. The situation changed, however, in 2007 when he succeeded in
contacting one of his biologic sisters and thereafter the rest of his family,
although he did not meet the father until summer of 2008. Good relationships
with his biologic mother and siblings persisted but he could never get over the
loss of the sister who had died.
Although
the book always emphasizes the reality and even “super-reality” of the
experience, the author does admit to intermittent nagging doubts because the
NDE literature emphasizes that one is met by deceased friends or relatives in
the afterlife. This had not happened in his case. Since he was close to his
adoptive father who had died four years earlier he wondered why he had not met
him. Inasmuch as the presence of deceased relatives is taken in the literature
as evidence for an afterlife, their absence was worrisome. This problem
resolved itself when he received a photograph of his deceased sister Betsy in
the mail. “She looked so strangely hauntingly familiar. But of course she would
look that way. We were blood relations and had shared more DNA than any other
people on the planet with the exception of my other two biologic siblings.” He
put the photo on the dresser but made no mental connection to his experience.
This changed dramatically when he read the next morning in the book On Life After Death
by Dr. Kuebler-Ross an account of a 12 year old girl who had a NDE. At first
she had kept it from her parents but then told her father of “traveling to an
incredible landscape full of love and beauty, and how she met and was comforted
by her brother. ‘The only problem’ the girl told her father, ‘is that I don’t
have a brother.’ Tears filled her father’s eyes. He told the girl about the
brother she did indeed have, but who had died just three months before she was
born. After reading this account when Dr. Alexander looked at the photo on the
dresser it was clear to him that the deceased sister was indeed the young woman
who had accompanied him during the second and third stage of his voyage. “In
that one moment, in the bedroom of our house, on a rainy Tuesday morning, the
higher and the lower worlds met.”
Genesis of the book. After his
health had reconstituted to some extent he was, of course, confronted with the
dilemma of how to explain what he had experienced because it violated current
scientific principles. At first he thought that he would study the literature
on NDEs but his son, Eben Alexander IV, who was a college student at the time,
told him that he should first set down in writing what he had experienced. He
followed the advice and “For the next six weeks [approximately the beginning of
December to middle of January 2009] or so most days went the same. I woke up at
2 or 2:30 a.m. feeling so ecstatic and energized by simply being alive that I
would bound out of bed. I’d light a fire in the den,
sit down in my old leather chair and write. I tried to recall every detail of
my journeys in and out of the Core and what I had felt as I learned its many
life-changing lessons. Though tried [italics
in the original] isn’t really the right word. Crisp and clear, the memories
were right there where I had left them.”
For further information one has to go
the Acknowledgment section of the book. There one finds that among others
“Raymond Moody and Ken Ring, pioneers in the near-death community, whose
influence on me has been immeasurable.” He also cites additional “thought
leaders" of the “Virginia Consciousness” movement and gives thanks to “My God-sent
literary agent Gail Ross and her wonderful associates, Howard Yoon and others
at the Ross Yoon agency. Ptolemy Tompkins for his scholarly contributions from
unparalleled insight into several millennia of literature on the afterlife, and
for his superb editorial and writing skills, used to weave my experience into
this book, truly doing it the justice it deserves.”
WhenI
looked up Mr. Tompkins on the Internet I found that he has a webpage http://ptolemytompkins.net which
announces: “Welcome – sort of
My
name is Ptolemy Tompkins and this is my website. A website which, to be
perfectly honest, I didn’t want to create, and which I still have my misgivings
about, now that it’s pretty much done.” As far as his belief system goes he
states: “If a label must be produced, then “Reincarnational crypto-Christian with some Buddhist/Taoist
leanings but Stronger Hindu ones, with a pronounced interest in current ideas
about the evolution of consciousness such as put forth by people like Owen Barfield,
Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, Rudolf Steiner, Douglass
Fawcett, Michael Whiteman, and (with reservations) Teilhard
de Chardin, who also believes very much in the
Persian/Islamic metaphysical model of the personal imagination as outlined by
Henry Corbin will do as well as any.” When one looks up Mr. Tompkins on
Wikipedia he is referred to as “the collaborative ghost author of Dr. Eben
Alexander’s Proof of Heaven.” He has published several books and the most
recent one carries the title: The
modern book of the dead: A Revolutionary Perspective on Death, the Soul, and
What Really Happens in the Life to Come; which
obviously alludes to the well-known Tibetan
Book of the Dead and possibly also The
Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Dr. Alexander’s
book was published in late October 2012, an interval of nearly four year since
the experience, and we don’t know when the actual writing took place. But it is
apparent that he had immersed himself during that time in what might be called
“new-age mysticism” rather than resuming medical/scientific work. In this
connection it is also of interest that “Gateway,” the word he used for the
second phase of his journey is apparently linked to the Monroe Institute in
Faber, Virginia, which devotes itself to the study of Out of Body experiences. Wikipedia
tells us that the main method of inducing these sensations is “a program called Gateway
Voyage, a training course that uses binaural soundtracks to facilitate
exploration and replication of specific altered states of consciousness known
as Focus levels.
Gateway Voyage is a six-day intensive [set?] of exercises using custom-designed
sound booths (CHEC units), talks, and group interaction.” Dr. Alexander was
familiar with the institute, which is within easy driving distance of
slightly over 40 miles from his home in Lynchburg, and describes how the Hemi-Sync
techniques not only helped him in his recovery period but also to recreate some
of the aspects of his coma experience.
There is an additional point about the
bibliography which deserves to be mentioned. The overwhelming majority of books
and articles listed were published between 1995 and 2011. The earliest is a 1952
publication and one looks in vain for Dr. Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind which
was originally published in 1901, but has since been reprinted several times
and is available on amazon. Likewise, one fails to find William James’ The Varieties ofReligious Experiences – A Study in
Human Naturewhich consists of The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion
delivered in Edinburgh 1901-1902. There is also no mention of the Tibetan Book of the Dead yet all three
are classics which serious students of human consciousness need to familiarize
themselves with. As far as the title of the Dr. Alexander’s book is concerned, he
had intended to call the book N of 1 to
emphasize the uniqueness of his case but was persuaded by his agent to adopt, for
commercial reasons, the current one.
The medical facts which are presented to justify the opinion that
consciousness can exist in the absence of a functioning brain; that we are
immortal; and a loving God cares deeply for each one of us, are scant. Appendix
A contains a brief statement by Dr. Scott Wade, who was the major attending
physician. It consists of only one and one third of a page and merely tells us
that Dr. Alexander had E. coli
meningitis and that the prognosis for recovery was quite poor. The key
sentences are: “Dr. Alexander presented to the hospital with seizures and a
markedly altered mental status both of which are risk factors for neurological
complications or death (mortality over 90 per cent).” After six days of coma
the mortality rate was regarded as having risen to 97 per cent and “the fact
that he went on to have a full recovery from this illness after being in a coma
for nearly a week is truly remarkable.” No further details are given about the
depth of coma, the seizure types and their treatment as well as the laboratory
tests that were performed throughout this week apart from CT and spinal fluid
examination.
This information one has to retrieve
from pieces which are distributed through the various chapters of the book. I
shall now try to reconstruct the course of his illness. Although the diagnosis is
always referred to as simply “meningitis” he had a sub-form which is called
“subpial toxic encephalopathy.” Since the bacteria do not penetrate the
immediate thin covering of the brain (pia mater) but accumulate above in the
subarachnoid space and ventricular fluid, the damage is assumed to be toxic in
nature. The textbook symptoms are: confusion, stupor, coma, and convulsions all
of which occurred in Dr. Alexander’s case and we can therefore safely refine
the diagnosis to this condition.
Although the book ascribes the coma exclusively
to the meningitis there were other factors at play namely seizures and their
treatment. That part of the coma had been iatrogenic is hinted at in a
conversation Dr. Wade had with family members just before the patient emerged
from the coma. It is in the chapter called The Rainbow and represents the
memory of Dr. Alexander’s wife, Holley. She was told that her husband had not
properly responded to the antibiotic treatment and if the coma persisted for
another twelve hours he would at best end up in a vegetative state. Under these
circumstances it might be better to discontinue the antibiotics and let him die
as a result of the meningitis. The wife protested, “’But I saw his eyelids move
yesterday, really they moved. Almost as if he was trying to open them. I am
sure of what I saw.’” Dr. Wade replied: “’I don’t doubt you did. His white
blood cell count has come down as well. That’s all good news, and I don’t for a
minute want to suggest that it isn’t. But you have to see the situation in
context. We’ve lightened Eben’s sedation
considerably [italics mine] and by this point his neurological examination
should be showing more neurological activity than it is.’”
The first seizures (apparently status
epilepticus) had occurred on Monday (the day of admission) and had a focal
onset in one hemisphere, rather than the brainstem. This is not stated as such
in the book but apparent to an epileptologist because the book says that “Just
as troubling to Laura [the ER physician] as the seizures was that I seemed to
show an asymmetry in the motor control of my body. That could mean that not
only my brain was under attack but that serious and possibly irreversible brain
damage was already under way.” What he described here are focal onset seizures
which then led to temporary postictal paralysis of one or both extremities on
the opposite side of the body (Todd’s paralysis). Todd’s paralysis is
independent of the cause of seizures and has an excellent prognosis It also disappeared promptly in Dr. Alexander’s case.
He continued to have intermittent seizures during
hospitalization but these are poorly described apart from having occurred
“early in the week” and he was given “more sedation.” He reported of having
shown divergent strabismus when his wife passively opened his eyelids, a
finding which is common in purulent meningitis but, contrary to his assertion,
not in other causes of coma. As far as laboratory tests are concerned we are
only told about the results upon admission and one further spinal tap in the
middle of the week. Upon admission the spinal fluid examination was typical for
purulent meningitis and a CT scan had shown that “the meningeal lining of my
brain was dangerously swollen and inflamed. A breathing tube was put in my trachea,
allowing a ventilator to take over the job of breathing for me–twelve breaths a
minute exactly–and a battery of monitors was set up
around my bed to record every movement within my body and my now all-but-destroyed brain [italics added].”
I have used italics to highlight the sense of drama which is conveyed
throughout the book. The statement was hardly applicable to the first day.
The premise of the book is that during
the coma “the brain hadn’t been working improperly. It hadn’t been working at all [italics in the original].” Retention
of consciousness while the brain is not functioning at all is one of his chief
arguments against current scientific theories which postulate the necessity of
the brain for mental activities. Yet, the crucial evidence for absence of
hemispheric activity is missing! The word “electroencephalogram (EEG)” never
shows up, but it is the single most reliable laboratory test for assessment of
the physiological capabilities of the brain. In as much as this is my
professional specialty and it is routine practice to obtain EEGs when a patient
has seizures, or is comatose, the question immediately arises why we are not
given the results. CT scans provide evidence for structural changes, but tell us
nothing about residual function. The EEG on the other hand provides objective
facts on current brain activity down to the millisecond range. At this time I
could only speculate why this vital piece of information is missing but will
refrain from doing so because I shall first try to obtain facts and report on
them thereafter.
During the years when I was in charge of the EEG
laboratory at Childrens Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, and later at Harper Hospital,
the EEG was routinely used to establish cerebral death, which is difficult to
do with certainty when patients are on respirators. We certified patients as
“brain dead” when two consecutive EEGs over at least a 24 hour period showed no
cerebral electrical activity i.e. the tracings were “flat.” It is highly
unlikely that Dr. Alexander ever had a prolonged “flat EEG” which was not
related to seizure treatment because the family would have been notified of
that fact and discontinuation of the respirator would have been advised. This
leaves us with three other main possibilities: the EEG could have shown diffuse
slow wave activity with or without spikes in various regions, PLEDS (periodic
lateralized epileptiform discharges) or burst-suppression. Although these
findings indicate a very sick brain they do not justify the statements in the
book that his “brain wasn’t working at all;” or “no neocortex functioning.”
Although the book provides no evidence for
nonfunctioning hemispheres Dr. Alexander makes this the central thesis and
repeats it in all interviews he gives as well as in a second Newsweek article.
It was published on November 18, 2012 to answer critics of the book which had
been published on October
23, 2012. In that article, entitled The Science of Heaven, one finds statements
such as: “complete absence of neural activity in all but the deepest most
primitive portions of my brain;” “the only difference between my experience
[near-death, NDE] and those of others is that my brain was, essentially, deader
than theirs;” “Most people who had them were in bad shape, but they weren’t
really near death. But I was. My synapses–the spaces between the neurons of the
brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain
function–were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped [italics in the original]. Only
isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad
networks capable of generating anything like what we call ‘consciousness.’”
Assessment of the claims. From a
neurologic point of view the opinion on absence of hemispheric functions cited
above is not sustainable because as mentioned no evidence for it is provided at
any time. Yet, it is the hallmark of all of Dr. Alexander’s current
presentations and interviews. The statements are made to impress a lay audience
and possibly non-specialists but carry no weight among neuroscientists. Dr. Sam
Harris, whose work was discussed in Our Atheists (May 1, 2010), as well as Dr.
Oliver Saks, published rebuttals, but these are ignored. The book has been a
bestseller since its publication and Dr. Alexander’s website, states that
translations into numerous foreign languages are pending.
There are a number of aspects in the
book I agree with, such as: that subjective mental activity can persist when
patients are comatose, especially during the process of emerging from coma;
that our purely materialist view which permeates current scientific work is not
adequate; that science and a spiritual outlook on life are not incompatible;
that all of us are connected to a larger universe; that scientific exploration
of this interconnectedness is needed; and that he has “a responsibility to tell
my story right.”
As readers of this site know, I have
been interested in what came to be called the NDE phenomenon and its reality
for decades and, therefore thought that a dialogue between us on this topic
would be useful. I, therefore, sent him, after having read the first Newsweek
article, an autographed copy of The Jesus
Conundrum, directing him to the chapter on What is
Truth? as well as the Conclusions. I also asked him to
write to me after he had a chance to peruse the material. The book was never
returned as undeliverable, but there was also no acknowledgement of its
receipt. Since we are both neuroscientists a doubt about his sincerity began to
arise.
In preparation for this essay I looked
at his website and as a matter of fact there are actually two. One is the
“personal” one “Life Beyond Death” http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net/ and
the other for Eternea, an organization Dr. Alexander founded prior to the
publication of the book. I shall return to Eternea http://www.eternea.org/ later. What struck
me on the personal site was the first sentence one reads when going to “About
the Author.” It states: “Dr. Alexander, a renowned academic neurosurgeon, spent
54 years honing his scientific worldview.” Inasmuch as he was born in 1953 this
is obviously not correct. When one looks at his CV one finds, based on papers
published, that his scientific career started in 1980 and ended in 2001.
Furthermore of the 97 papers which are listed, he is first author on only 15.
The current inflation of co-authors has been commented upon previously. One
other point is that he lists under academic appointments: 2008-present Assistant
Professor of Research in Neurological Surgery University of Virginia Medical
School, Charlottesville.
On the Eternea site, which is devoted to
“The Convergence of Science and Spirituality,” one finds under “Medical
Background” that his appointment ended in 2010 but the CV on the same site had
not been changed. More important, however, is how Eternea operates. It offers
three “options” for membership: Friends of Eternea, Frontier Science Forum and
Blue Butterfly Society. You can join Friends of Eternea as a “supporter”
“advocate,” “angel” and “archangel” with dues ranging from a minimum of $50 for
the supporter to a minimum of $1200 for the Archangel. The Frontier Science
Forum has Bronze, Silver and Gold members with minimum dues ranging from
$150-$1200 for the various levels. The Blue Butterfly Society has minimal
annual dues of at least $10,000 or more. For an annual contribution of at least
$25,000, or a one-time contribution of at least
$50,000 one can become a “governor” of the society.
I have listed these facts because they
show that Dr. Alexander no longer works as a scientist but crass commercialism
has taken over his life. His book and the websites represent an “objective
reality” in the sense that anybody can check on what is written there. But
since they are not trustworthy for scientific assessment how can we trust his
subjective coma reality? Yet, the topic of consciousness, or mind, is of major
importance for our understanding of who we are and what we are doing on this
planet. It clearly deserves rigorous investigation.
What
should be done now?
For the sake of truth and scientific integrity Dr. Alexander should 1) authorize
Lynchburg General Hospital to make the entire medical documentation in regard
to his coma week public. He has forfeited his right to privacy because he is
earning a living and giving lectures on his illness. These provide dogmatic
statements but, as mentioned, crucial medical details are missing. Most importantly
we must be able to see the EEG results and those of the CT scan(s). The EEG(s)
will show the functional state of the brain and the CT(s) the degree of
pathology. Only when these objective data become available can we place his experience
into the proper context. As mentioned on an earlier occasion the deliberate use
of half-truth is the most vicious lie. 2) He should also publish the unedited version of his initial six
weeks of documentation. These contained genuine personal information and were
not yet influenced by other interests. Currently we are given an exaggerated
account, which was in part written by Mr. Tompkins, and we don’t have enough
objective medical facts. But these are required before the scientific community
can accept his assertions.
There is no doubt that Dr. Alexander had
a profound subjective life-changing religious experience which led him to
abandon his profession of neurosurgery and become a missionary for his belief. But subjective and objective reality can be
quite different. The problem of how we know what we think we know and what NDE’s
might be able to teach us will be taken up in the March 1 issue.
March 1, 2013
NDEs, COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND BUDDHA
In my quest for objective verification of Dr. Alexander’s
claim that his near-death experience (NDE) occurred in absence of a functioning
cortex, and that the brain is not necessary for consciousness to survive, I
contacted the administration of Lynchburg General Hospital with a request for the
e-mail address of Dr. Wade and that of the neurologist who took care of Dr.
Alexander during his coma. The administrator, Mr. Bill Ashe, wrote back that he
had forwarded my letter to Dr. Wade and Dr. Alexander. Dr. Wade declined to be
further involved in the matter but Dr. Alexander would respond within two
weeks.
I did receive within a few days thereafter the following
letter,
“Ernst,
Dr. Scott Wade and one of his main
administrators, Bill Ashe, forwarded your inquiry concerning my medical records
and more details about my neurologic condition during my 7 day coma with
gram-negative bacterial meningitis.
I have discussed my detailed records
with several colleagues in an effort to better understand my experience.
Initially, I was my own worst skeptic, and knew that I could explain it all as
a brain-based phenomenon, although to have such a rich odyssey as the memory of
my entire existence when I was first coming out of coma (memories of life
before coma returned in layered fashion over 3-5 weeks), given the severity and
duration of my meningitis, seemed a serious challenge - I should have
experienced nothing, according to my beliefs about neocortex
and consciousness before coma.
I am interested in open-minded
discussions about the implications and lessons of my experience with
like-minded professional colleagues. I had to learn a tremendous amount about
consciousness that I never had to know as a neurosurgeon to even begin to
fathom what I experienced. Those colleagues who are versed in "The Hard
Problem of Consciousness," the enigma of quantum mechanics, and similar
deep mysteries hinting at the fundamental nature of consciousness and
existence, have much to offer in helping explain my experience.
Sadly, it does not reveal the thinking
of an "open-minded professional colleague." Some of your language in
picking apart my CV, pointing out that I was lead author on so many papers
versus the 97 peer-reviewed articles, etc, your conjectures about Ptolemy's
role in writing the book and about influence of Monroe Institute on my story
(the "Gateway", trying to imply some fabrication and lack of actual
writing by me), your attacking of Eternea without
paying any attention to what we are trying to do to educate the public about
frontier science and provide a robust data base for the reporting of a wide
variety of spiritually transformative experiences, reveals a closed mind intent
on debunking my story and credibility no matter what. Then I got to "Crass
commercialism has taken over his life." You seriously expect me to take
time discussing the profound nature of my experience with you?
I have no time to enter into discussion
with such closed mindedness -- your mind is already made up on the matter, you
are not willing to learn anything new, or to enter a productive dialog. I
suggest you read
1. Irreducible
Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, by Kelly, Edward F.,
Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld,
Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson.Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 20072.
2. Consciousness
Beyond Life: The Science of Near-Death Experience,
by Van Lommel, Pim.New York: HarperCollins, 2010.
Good-bye.”
I have reprinted the entire message
because it is obvious that he will
enter into discussion only with “like-minded”
individuals, but under those circumstances one is talking to the choir and only
subjective truth is likely to emerge. It is understandable that “crass
commercialism” hit a raw nerve and in spite of his “Good-bye” I sent a
conciliatory reply which was followed by his, which started with the words:
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” But he also pointed out that he will be quite
busy in the coming weeks and showed no inclination to release the requested
medical information. I followed up with another request but so far there has
been no reply to it. Since the question: can consciousness exist in absence of
a functioning brain? is of fundamental importance I
don’t intend to let the subject rest and will try to also pursue it in the
neurologic literature.
When one reads the NDE literature it becomes obvious that we are
dealing with a genuine subjective event which should not be denied by
professionals. The only question is its interpretation. This is where we run
into trouble because the subjective reports are then taken as evidence not only
for objective reality but also that the person who had the experience was at
that time not merely in the process of dying but already dead. This is an
unwarranted assumption. Clinical death does not equate with brain death and
even the latter can occur in two ways. In one the cortex has ceased to function
but the brainstem continues to work. This was originally called the “apallic” syndrome, but has subsequently been renamed to
“persistent vegetative state.” Unless death supervened it would have been the
likely outcome had Dr. Alexander not emerged from coma. These patients present
an ethical dilemma as to continued care, especially when spontaneous
respirations are present. The Schiavo case would be a
good example (Pain and Suffering April
1, 2005).
The other condition is “brainstem death”
and rare. I have seen only one case but since it was quite remarkable I
published it in 1985 under that title. The abstract is available on PubMed
under Rodin E and the full paper can be obtained from me. The case is important
because the patient was clinically dead without brainstem or any other reflexes
but the EEG showed an unmistakable sleep pattern. The patient was then
maintained on artificial life support which was terminated when the EEG became
isoelectric 14 days later. In as much as we know that dreams occur not only in
the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep, it is perfectly possible that the
patient had subjective dream experiences but their content – be it of heaven,
hell, or mundane – is, of course, unknown.
There was an additional fascinating
point. As mentioned in the Pain and Suffering article, assessment of cerebral
functions is not limited to the raw EEG but we can perform evoked response
studies. The responses to external stimuli consist of a primary wave form,
limited to the specific receptor area of the brain, and a more wide- spread
secondary one which is compatible with cognition. In this patient’s case
electrical stimulation of the median nerve resulted only in activity below the
brainstem and the same was the case for auditory stimuli. But visual
stimulation, which does not require brain stem participation, not only produced
primary and secondary responses from each eye but they were of unusually high
amplitudes. This probably resulted from the fact that the patient’s brain did
not receive other external stimuli and could, therefore, respond in an
exaggerated manner to the only available ones. This fact might be of relevance
to the “reality” of NDEs, which will be discussed later.
While NDEs refer by definition only to
life-threatening circumstances, we should not omit similar spiritual
experiences as having occurred in healthy human beings. William James’ classic The Variety of Religious Experience (The
Gifford Lectures 1901-1902)and Dr. Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the
Evolution of the Human Mind (1901), provide
examples from ancient as well as more contemporary history. Bucke felt that the
phenomenon is a relatively recent acquisition of the human mind (historical
times) and pointed out that even the sense of color has not always been
present. He bolstered this assumption by pointing to the absence of words
denoting colors in the Vedas and Upanishads. Even the Iliad and Odyssey never
mention that the sky is blue, although I might mention that we can repeatedly
read about “rosy-fingered dawn.” Bucke believed that the appreciation of black
and red emerged first. From red yellow split off and later white. From black the
first separation was green, while the appreciation of blue was last. The
relative absence of color vision might also account for the fact that dreams
tended to be in shades of grey, which was also the depiction of Hades, the
underworld. Be that as it may, but it is a fact that my dreams were “black and
white movies,” which at one point in adulthood switched to Technicolor.
Bucke used the color example only to
indicate that evolution has not stopped and human consciousness also continues
to expand. He described the following stages: initially there was only mental reception
of events. Then came the jump from reception to perception, which involved
cognition, and this in turn was followed by concept formation, abstract
thinking, and the development of language. The last and current stage is
intuition namely the appreciation of being linked to the entire cosmos, “cosmic
consciousness.” As such it is not supernatural but simply “a new sense” which
he believed will become more commonplace as time goes on.
The hallmarks of the Cosmic Consciousness
Experience (CCE) consist mainly of:
a subjective light, moral elevation, intellectual illumination, sense of
immortality, loss of fear of death, loss of the sense of sin and suddenness of
awakening. It is apparent that these also apply to NDEs, although the Out of
Body Experience (OBE) is more common in NDEs than CCEs. This may or may not be
important. But what is important is that a factor analysis of NDEs, carried out
by Noyes and Slymen showed three statistically independent factors. The first
one, which they called mystical, corresponded to CCEs,
the second was called depersonalization and contained the OBE, while factor III dealt with clarity of thinking (in Greyson and Flynn The
Near Death Experience 1984 pp.20-23). This is the type of work NDE researchers should engage in because it clearly
shows that the phenomenon is not unitary but consists of a variety of
experiences which are then, more or less arbitrarily, subsumed in the category
of NDE.
This leaves us with the problem to what
extent this mystical experience corresponds to reality as we know it. Bucke
wrote:
“It seems that in every,
or nearly every man, who enters into cosmic consciousness apprehension is at
first more or less excited; the person doubting whether the new sense may not
be a symptom or form of insanity…. The first thing each person asks himself:
Does what I see and feel represent reality or am I suffering from a delusion?
The fact that the new experience seems even more real than the old teachings of
simple and self consciousness does not at first fully reassure him, because he
probably knows that delusions, when present, possess the mind just as firmly as
do actual facts.”
How does Bucke
solve the problem? In the first instance he points out that the delusions of
insane patients are “distinctly amoral or even immoral,” while the CCEs are
“moral in a very high degree.” Although Dr. Bucke was a psychiatrist and in
charge of a mental hospital, my own experience does not necessarily bear this
out. Some religiously deluded patients believe that they are Jesus, for
instance, and try to conduct themselves accordingly. They only become
obstreperous when the environment they live in does not accept their idea. In
the second instance, Bucke explains, “in all forms of insanity self-restraint –
inhibition – is greatly reduced, sometimes even abolished, in cosmic consciousness
it is enormously increased.” “In the third place (whatever scoffers of religion
may say) it is certain that modern civilization speaking broadly) rests (as already
said) very largely on the teachings of the new sense.”
It is likely that our atheists will
disagree and we need some firmer distinctions especially in regard to dreams,
which also are real to us at the time of their occurrence and are labeled as
dreams only in retrospect largely because memory has become hazy. On the other
hand there are a few dreams which remain clearly in memory. For instance I have
had an OBE where I thought I had crashed the car into a wall. I felt that I was
standing somewhere above the scene, saw the wrecked car with my body in it and
said to myself: “aha, he’s dead” without any kind of emotion; it was just a
fact. By the way, I commonly refer to my body and its activities in the third
person. In the distance stood my dead grandmother but she made no effort to
meet me and I didn’t either. Instead I thought, since I’m dead I might as well
go and see God and wandered off without meeting Him. On awakening I realized
that it was a dream but since it was so different from usual dreams it stayed
in memory thereafter. Another one was where I felt that I was lifted out of my
body by some unseen helpers. Since this “substance” seemed very fragile I said
to the helpers: “don’t drop him.” The answer was: “don’t worry,
we do this all the time.” Although these were real experiences during the dreams
and left a memory trace which has lasted decades, they lacked the extraordinary
intensity which is present in NDEs and my own 1953 experience.
So what does make
the NDE and CCE so real? Obviously I don’t know, but this is an
area that could lend itself to neurophysiologic research. As mentioned above
Bucke felt that in contrast to mentally ill patients inhibition is greatly
increased in the CCE. But one
could actually posit the opposite. The hallmark of both experiences is the
total absence of doubt. In our waking lives we always weigh unusual events in a
critical manner. We use discriminative thinking which is mainly verbal. Dreams
and NDEs are mainly visual. It seems likely that the prefrontal portions of the
brain, which are the latest evolutionary attributes of our brains, are resting
while the dream plays itself out in the limbic system and its subcortical
connections. With prefrontal inhibition lost, the rest of the relevant cortical
circuitry might have free play in analogy to the markedly enhanced visual evoked
potential of the brainstem dead patient. I have no evidence for this idea but
it is at least plausible and clearly a question
neuroscientists might pursue in their laboratories.
Over the last
several years numerous books have appeared on the market dealing with NDEs and
the subject has become a veritable growth industry. Unfortunately there is a
great deal of redundancy in these books and even some case reports from the
1970s and 80s get recycled in a number of them. The overall thrust is to
provide evidence that the “scientific reductionist” model which relates NDE’s to aspects of brain function is invalid. The
main emphasis now is that “science” has disproved previous assumptions because
physicists have moved from classical Newtonian physics to the quantum sphere. I
have previously briefly discussed quantum mechanics on these pages (Faith and
Science July 1, 2009, Christiamity December 1, 2010 as well as in The Jesus Conundrum) so let me just
point out that the fundamental problems quantum mechanics present us with
namely: non-locality, simultaneity and “collapse of the wave function into
particles,” depend entirely on processes within the observer’s brain. This
seems to be an unpleasant fact which is not commented upon. Everything we do is
dependent upon the functions of our brain and while it is nice to think about
astral planes or what not, proof in the here and now will have to come through
what our brains allow us to do and transmit to others.
It will now be
argued that this statement is too limited because OBE and reincarnation reports
prove that mind can exist without a brain. In regard to OBEs Dr. van Lommel, a
Dutch cardiologist, mentioned in his book that when signs had been placed in
the operating room which could not be seen by the patient lying on the table,
but were visible from an “above view” “.… there has been no published case
where patients during CPR have perceived this hidden sign despite perceiving
veridical details of their resuscitation previously unknown to them.” This
unpleasant fact was explained as being due to the patient being more
preoccupied with watching his body and the procedure, rather than looking around
for other trivia. While this might be the case one could surely design an
experiment where something obvious was placed in a position next to the
patient, which could not be missed on a view from above.
I had read Dr. van
Lommel’s original article in Lancet
(2001) where he reported on his prospective study of 344 patients who had
undergone 599 resuscitations during the four years of 1988 to 1992. What
immediately struck me was the relative paucity of patients who reported a
definite NDE namely 12 %. When one
added another 6 patients who claimed to have some indistinct memory one still reaches
only 18%. Although most other studies report higher percentages they were not
retrospective in nature.
After having read the article I ordered
the book in the hope of getting more medical details. This was in part
disappointing because of the 340 text pages only 23 deal with medical
information which included three additional prospective studies where NDEs had
occurred respectively in 11, 15.5 and 23%. The rest of the book consists of
overall descriptive data, the “debunking” of current explanatory theories and
personal views on the phenomenon. He believes in a “nonlocal and endless
consciousness ….[which] preceded birth and will
survive death independently of the body and in a nonlocal space where time and
place play no role.” Furthermore, “… death as such does not exist.”
At this point we
have to pause and think what he is really talking about. Although I may be
immortal to myself, I am certainly mortal to my family, friends and
acquaintances. This is a fact which NDE
aficionados seem to disregard. What is this consciousness they are talking
about? First of all it is an abstract noun and the German word Bewusstsein
expresses the meaning better. If one were to translate it more accurately it
would mean “being aware.” It is an active process which requires, however, some
object, thought, or picture one is aware of. It is the content of awareness and
its reality all the arguments are about.
The current idea of, what one may call, “free floating
consciousness” seems to have come from Buddhism which declares that mind is
supreme and produces matter. Most relevant for the present topic is The BardoThoedol (Liberation
by Hearing; better known as The
Tibetan Book of the Dead), which informs the dying person what s/he is
going to experience on the “after death plane.” Sogyal
Rinpoche has more recently expounded on it and published The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying where he extends the Bardo, i.e. plane of consciousness, also to
the living person. The key word in regard to consciousness is Rigpa which refers to the substratum
from which our ordinary day to day awareness arises. Songyal explains it as: “a
primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant,
radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge
itself.”It is this Rigpa, which is regarded as immortal, the NDE
researchers are apparently talking about. But as I understand it Rigpa is unformed, devoid of personal
content and its appreciation is only reached at the deepest level of
meditation.
We now have to go
to the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (c. 563-483), himself in
order to arrive at a modicum of understanding. Before doing so a word of
explanation: “Rinpoche,” just as “Buddha,” are not proper names but titles. The
first one means “The Precious One” while the latter denotes “Enlightened” or “Awakened.”
A very readable version of Siddhartha Gautama’s life and thought has recently
been published by Deepak Chopra under the title Buddha – A Story of Enlightenment. Siddhartha did not concern
himself with the mysteries of life and death, and he did not engage in
philosophical speculations about the gods. His sole goal in life was to find a
way to get rid of suffering and this was then expressed in the Eightfold Noble
Path. There is no esotericism, anybody can embark on it, but it is arduous,
takes a lot of work meditating and this is why people shrink from it.
The fundamental point was the insight
that everything is in constant flux, an idea which was also propounded by
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535-475). But since Siddhartha insisted also that
there is no abiding, eternal “self,” he found himself immediately in conflict
with the ruling Brahmins, because the assertion denied the existence of Atman, the divine spark which connects
the person to Brahman, the ultimate
Reality – God, which was the basis of Hindu religion. In as much as Atman corresponds in essence to the
Christian concept of soul we are thereby warned that it likewise has no eternal
existence. This is, of course, what some NDE investigators, who insist on
eternal personal life, don’t want to hear. But Siddhartha tells us that this
desire for an unchanging eternity is due to ignorance and arises from a desire
to cling at, or grasp for some pleasurable object or experience. Nevertheless,
this desire will eventually again end up in suffering once wish fulfillment has
ended.
This is important in the NDE context and
our concept of heaven. Most individuals who had a NDE are bitterly disappointed
when they find themselves back in their own bodies. We must, therefore, ask
ourselves: What is Heaven? Answer: The ultimate wish fulfillment! Dr.
Alexander’s heaven was the experience of unlimited love, while mine was
unlimited freedom. Heaven is a highly personal emotional experience and should
not be looked for in geographic terms as “out there.” Remember what Jesus said:
“The Kingdom of God is withinyou!” It is personal because your heaven
might be my hell and vice versa.
For Siddhartha reality meant constant
metamorphosis. As such the deceased soul, while remembering earthly life for
some time, will eventually experience rebirth in one of the various worlds of
the universe. Even when good karma has landed one in the world of the gods of
unbounded leisure and happiness, this will not last and the soul will eventually
have to go to work again and participate in the unceasing creation of the
cosmos. But creation requires destruction of existing forms. All forms are
evanescent and this can be experienced during meditation.
I realize that this may be difficult to accept but is vouchsafed
by a number of Buddhist monks who have spent their lives trying to fathom
reality. One of my favorite ones is Nyanaponika Thera whose book The Heart of Buddhist Mindfulness I have
mentioned on another occasion (Perceptions of Reality August 26, 2004). What I
have not pointed out at that time was that this name was given to him on his
initiation into monkhood. He was born as Siegmund Feniger in 1901 in Hanau
Germany of Jewish parents and over the years had developed some interest in
Buddhism. When Hitler came to power in 1933 Feniger removed himself to Ceylon
(currently Sri Lanka) and sent his mother to Austria, which was at that time
still a safe haven for Jews. But as mentioned nothing lasts and when Hitler temporarily
erased Austria from the map Feniger arranged for his mother to join him in
Ceylon where she eventually entered a Buddhist monastery. To recognize these
biographic snippets is valuable because they show the stuff a person is made of
and lend credibility to his writings. Furthermore, they combine the
perspectives of West and East, which is all to the good.
For
the current topic the seventh and eighth point of the eightfold noble path are
most relevant: right mindfulness and right concentration. The latter is a potentially
somewhat vague term and better expressed in German as: richtigesSelbstversenken (Buddha
– LebenLehreWirkung. Der östlicheWegzurSelbsterlösungby Johannes Lehmann, 1980).Versenkung stands
in this context for deep meditation, but in ordinary parlance for sending a
ship to the bottom of the ocean. Erlösung is liberation but again the point is that the
individual must do the work towards it rather than relying on faith that an
outside agency will provide it. All Siddhartha did was to show us the way he
had traveled and since he succeeded so can we. That is at least the assumption
Nyanaponika’s book deals with right
mindfulness and is a very valuable vade mecum. He not only provides instruction
but also excerpts from the Pali Canon. An abbreviated version of the stages, or
levels, of meditation is as follows. The first one consists of rapture and joy
which is accompanied by discursive thinking. In the second stage joy and
rapture persist, but discursive thinking has disappeared. In the third stage
joy and rapture have vanished and only happiness, equanimity and mindfulness
remain. In the fourth stage even happiness has vanished and only a “pure and
lucid mind” remains. Since thinking occurs in words as well as pictures the
first two stages could be an analogue to NDEs. But the essential point is that
only a progressive divestment of thought and emotions will lead us from
ignorance and illusion to the final reality.
As mentioned the NDE literature has
swollen to vast proportions and is currently a growth industry. In as much as we
have left the “Age of Faith” and have moved to what can be called the “Age of
Science,” various authors feel obligated to provide a scientific façade to
their opinions. This is also exemplified by Dr. Alexander who wrote: “The
further I dug, the more convinced I became that my discovery wasn’t just
interesting or dramatic. It was scientific
[italics in original].” This claim will be discussed further in the next
installment which will deal with what may be called: The Science of Mind.
April 1, 2013
THE SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS – MIND
In the previous installment I
mentioned that my efforts to obtain Dr. Alexander’s medical records, which
would verify that his brain was “dead” at the time of his near-death experience
(NDE), had not met with success. I also pointed out that I shall pursue the
topic further in the neurological literature. Since JAMA Neurology contains a
section called Viewpoint it seemed to be an appropriate venue to bring the
topic to the attention of neurologists. Inasmuch as contributions are limited
to 1200 words one has to be very concise and I presented my opinion under the
title: “Can consciousness exist without a brain? Near-death experiences reappraised.”
It is reprinted below.
“Dr. Eben
Alexander III, a neurosurgeon, has recently published a best-selling book “Proof of Heaven” (1) in which he
describes his near-death experience (NDE) during coma from E. coli meningitis.
This convinced him that consciousness exists in absence of a functioning brain.
Although
Dr. Alexander repeatedly emphasized that his brain was “dead” during his
experience, he furnished no proof. He stated that a CT scan had been obtained but we were not provided with the official
interpretation which would allow us to estimate the amount of damage at that
time. Furthermore, since he had status epilepticus upon admission, as well as
intermittent seizures during coma, one or more EEGs were in all probability
obtained and we should be allowed to know the results.
In
order to obtain this information I contacted the administration of Lynchburg
General Hospital with a request for the e-mail address of Dr. Wade, his primary
physician, and that of the neurologist who took care of Dr. Alexander during
his coma. The administrator, Mr. Bill Ashe, replied that he had forwarded my
letter to Dr. Wade and Dr. Alexander. Dr. Wade declined to be further involved
in the matter but Dr. Alexander would respond within two weeks. This was indeed
the case and he pointed out that “I am interested
in open-minded discussions about the implications and lessons of my experience
with like-minded [italics added]
professional colleagues.” Apparently even well-meaning skeptics seem not to
fall into this category and he has not acceded to my request for the release of
the EEG(s) and CT scan(s). But the medical profession has a right to know the
objective extent of his brain damage during coma. Since Dr. Alexander is giving
public lectures on his experience I believe that he has thereby forfeited his
right to privacy of his coma data and since he insists on being a scientist he
should welcome the input from experts in EEG and neuroradiology. His case is
important and all of us could potentially learn something from his undoubtedly
subjectively real experience.
Dr.
Alexander has also published a brief article in the medical literature (2)
emphasizing that the brain is not necessary for consciousness anda reply is, therefore, indicated; especially because I have
previously published a personal experience of the knowledge that “I am dead,” while under the influence of
anesthesia. Let me emphasize that this was not simply a thought but firm and
absolute knowledge/reality. The blissful emotion was powerful but its immediate
interpretation that “I am dead” was erroneous. This forced me to take issue
with publications which regarded these phenomena as evidence for an afterlife
(3, 4).
Dr. Alexander’s book is only the latest
among a large number which point out that the “materialist-reductionist”
attitude of neuroscientists towards the nature of consciousness is flawed and
one needs to take the information provided by quantum physics into account.
This is not the place to enter into this argument which is extensively
presented by Kelly et al. (5) and in the context of NDEs, among others, by the
Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel (6). But it is important to note that
“consciousness,” is an abstract noun, just as “mind,” and can be, therefore,
endlessly debated. The German word for consciousness, Bewusstsein, is more descriptive. It points to an active process of
“being aware” which in turn requires some kind of an object, even if it as
immaterial as a thought.
It is true that the NDE phenomenon
presents a fundamental challenge to the scientific community and it should not
be ignored. It is intensely emotional, which provides the “reality” aspect, and
deals with thoughts in form of words and/or pictures, that are associated with
the “afterlife.” But any theory about its nature and the problem of
consciousness will be flawed because we don’t know what a thought is and how it
is produced. Since thoughts are a form of energy the scientific question is: do
they fall within the electromagnetic spectrum or are we dealing with a
currently unknown form?
In regard to scientific work we must
also recognize another limitation. Since it is descriptive and involves
measurements, which can be replicated by others, it can only be carried out in
the eyes open state when discriminative thinking dominates. It, therefore,
lends itself less well to the other half of our life which is spent in the eyes
closed state where fantasies, daydreams and nocturnal dreams occur. These have
varying degrees of subjective reality and can usually be shared with others
only to the extent retrospective memory is available. The NDE is regarded as
different from dreams because of its intensity/reality. This leads to the
question: how do we experience reality? Judging from my own experience it is
the complete absence of doubt. We know that discriminative thought, which
weighs probabilities, is a function of the frontal lobes especially in their
prefrontal portions. One could thus speculate that their temporary
disconnection from their usual network components during sleep, coma, or other
altered state of consciousness might furnish the biologic substratum for the
subjective reality of NDEs and similar experiences.
Since dreams do not occur only in REM
sleep but also in the delta stage, although recall is usually absent, there is
no theoretical reason why they could not occur in comatose patients especially
when awareness begins to reconstitute itself. In this connection it should be pointed
out while the most extensive studies towards linking local brain functions with
mental events have used fMRI this is not the best available tool. It relies on
increased blood flow which has a delay in the range of seconds and cannot show
connectivity. The EEG/MEG on the other hand registers events in the millisecond
range; can show connectivity; and source models can be displayed as images. As
such, its use in the exploration of mental functions, even for events which
currently fall under the category of “paranormal,” should be strongly
encouraged.
The EEG might also elucidate the
possibility of subjective awareness in coma. In deep coma only the primary
response of evoked potentials, which is limited to the specific sensory input
site, is present, while the secondary more widespread response, related to
cognition, is absent. Thus, evoked potential measurements could provide
important information. We also need to remember that the Glasgow coma scale
only provides information about reaction to external stimuli but tells us
nothing about a potential subjective awareness of the patient.
While subjective reality does deserve
the attention of the scientific community, the NDE related literature at this
time contains a great deal of what one may call “mental quantum jumps.”
Clinical death, which is only one stage of the dying process, is equated with
final death; the mental content of dying patients is regarded as proof of an
eternal afterlife; and since the experience is regarded as common it is
asserted that we don’t die. These are non sequiturs and it behooves us to be
more modest in our statements about the unknown and currently unknowable. The
final conversation in the book by Fenwick and Fenwick (7) perhaps expresses the
situation best:
“A nobleman asked Master Hakuin: ‘What
happens to the enlightened man at death?’ ‘Why ask me?’ ‘Because
you are a Zen master.’‘But not a dead one.’”
I have omitted the references here but
they can be obtained from me. In the middle of last week came the rejection. The
manuscript had been sent to four reviewers. Two of them had “no comments for
the author” the other two comments were, “Interesting thought piece focused on
near death experiences. However, this would seem out of place in a general
neurology journal;” and “While this article reviews an interesting topic, it is
probably not appropriate for this section/journal.” In other words “don’t make
us think about things we don’t want to think about.” Why the relationship of
consciousness to the brain, with the latter obviously one of the main aspects
of a neurologist’s scientific work, should not be relevant to be presented in a
major neurology journal eluded me. But it apparently confirms what Max Planck,
the discoverer of quantum physics, has been quoted as saying: “A new scientific
truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation
grows up that is familiar with it.”
That Planck’s experience is correct I
can vouch for because it has happened to my own work in EEG and is still
happening. In the 1960’s and throughout the first half of the 1970’s we
investigated the extreme high frequencies of the EEG (>100 Hz). The method
was cumbersome and the investigations could be carried out only in animals. Since
cats do not differ from humans in regard to the genesis of epileptic seizures
the work was obviously important. Nevertheless, in spite of numerous
presentations on the national and international scene it was largely ignored by
my colleagues at the time. One of them dubbed it, not in my hearing but as
relayed by a friend to whom it was said, “Rodin’s folly.” Forty years later,
there is now not a single national meeting of the American Clinical
Neurophysiology Society or the American Epilepsy Society where these extreme
high frequencies are not on the program. Currently, in advanced age, when
everything slows down, it is appropriate to explore the opposite end of the EEG
frequency spectrum, namely extreme slow activity. This, as well as the
investigation of fast frequencies, has now been aided by the change from analog
to digital EEG technology which allows us to see these data with a couple of
mouse clicks. I have diligently tried to publish these observations for several
years only meeting with rejections, some of which questioned my competence.
Even the eventual publication in the major international journal Clinical Neurophysiology, which led to
the invitation to present the data before the 2010 International Federation Congress
in Kyoto, Japan, has so far not resulted in its routine clinical use.
I have mentioned these personal facts
only to demonstrate that my fellow scientists are loath to tackle topics which
provide genuinely new information and/or challenge previous assumptions.
Inasmuch as this is the case even with relatively innocuous topics, such as the
EEG frequency band, it should come as no surprise when mind-brain relations are
at stake. Here we are at the interface of religion, philosophy and science and
our society, as it is currently constituted, does not allow for integrating
viewpoints from different disciplines, except in literature for the general
public. But when this is done we run into another problem. Scientific
experimental data are presented in a general format, crucial experimental
details tend to be omitted and what was science becomes scientism. I have
pointed out this phenomenon in regard to Tipler’s
book, The Physics of Christianity
(Christiamity; December 1, 2010). The problem was also taken up by Charles T.
Tart in the Foreword to Ring and Cooper’s Mindsight. Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind. Tart, an emeritus professor of
psychology, wrote:
“Scientism
occurs when real science is stopped by the psychological process of being too
satisfied with the answers we have and becoming intellectually and emotionally
invested in them, attached to them. Scientism, more formally defined is a
psychological process of taking the current scientific theories that work well
about how the universe functions and subtlety [sic] starting to regard them as
if they were the absolute truth, beyond any further serious questioning. A
theory, always subject to further test and refinement, becomes a Law. Thus the
process of science becomes an “ism,” becomes a psychological stopping point,
becomes a dogmatic belief system, like many of our most dogmatic religions.
Scientism is
extremely widespread in our culture, and has an especially pervasive and
pernicious influence on us because we think we’re being scientific when we’re
actually being dogmatic and scientistic.”
This is a correct observation and
numerous examples from the literature could be cited. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven is obviously only one.
Chris Carter’s book Science and the
Near-Death Experience is another one. The book is actually a very readable,
succinct summary of the field but the subtitle, How Consciousness Survives Death, goes beyond current scientific
data as the above mentioned Zen master has pointed out. To equate a near-death
experience with death, even when it occurs under circumstances which would
ensure final death, unless the process was stopped, is scientifically
impermissible and all conclusions regarding the afterlife based on these data
have to be regarded as speculative.
The problem becomes compounded when
persons of scientific standing engage in scientism. I shall now discuss only
one most recent example. Theory
of Reality. Evidence for
Existence beyond the Brain was published in 2012 and I owe my acquaintance
with it to a correspondence with Dr. van Lommel whose work was discussed last
month. By the way he also sent me a copy of his most recent paper on the
subject: Non-local Consciousness. A Concept Based on Scientific Research on
Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest (Journal
of Consciousness Studies 2013, 20:7-48). The paper summarizes his current
opinions on the topic and I may return to it on another occasion. For now I am
going to concentrate on the Theory of
Reality. Its author, David O. Wiebers, is listed on the cover as Emeritus
Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic Rochester Minnesota. Since I received my neuropsychiatric
and electrophysiological training at that institution I immediately ordered the
book but was rather surprised at its contents.
Apart from the Preface, with which I largely
agreed, the book has three main sections. The first one deals with the Theory
per se (abbreviated as TOR); the second one presents corroborative evidence,
while the third one is best described as “self-help” to gain access to higher
dimensions of consciousness. An aspect which I immediately found disconcerting
was the massive redundancy of the material but as the author explained this was
done on purpose so that each chapter can be read in isolation. Another unexpected
element was the style which reminded me of Wittgenstein’s TractatusLogico-Philosophicus even down to
numbering the various apodictic statements.
The “Condensed Messages” of the Theory
consist of 27 assertions among which are: “1. You are
not your brain or body–they are temporary vehicles rather than your core
identity; 4. You can exist and function without your brain; 7. It is important
to know your deeper identity (higher self); 9. The brain facilitates consciousness and our expression and application to
this plane of existence, but it does not create
consciousness; 11. NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) are valid, real phenomena and
not hallucinations, seizures or some other aberration. 13. Blind people can see
during NDEs and OOBEs (Out-of-Body Experiences); 23. The universe is a deeply
unified living process rather than a collection of separate objects; 24.
Consciousness is not contained within
matter or the world–it contains all
matter and the world; 26. Our tendency to fragment and to see ourselves as separate
from the universe, the earth and from other human and nonhuman beings is at the
root of our neither being at peace as a species nor as a society; 27. The TOR
provides the underpinnings to address the most basic universal questions of
humankind–Who are we? Where are we going? How do we fit into
the universe?–and an approach for personal and societal transformation.”
The words which are written in italics appeared as such in the original.
The Evidence for the Theory is presented
as Primary and Secondary. The key elements for primary evidence are NDEs and
OOBEs, while the secondary evidence rests largely on results of quantum physics
and some from neuroscience. The latter deals in part with EEG information, which
I have not yet had time to check out, but will report on when I have obtained
the papers from the library. There is, however, one aspect of the primary evidence
which can be discussed now namely point 13 which deals with the blind. It is
asserted that even congenitally blind people can see during NDE’s and OOBEs.
Although I had read a key case in van Lommel’s book I failed to follow up on
the reference given by that author. But since this is such a startling
assertion I did obtain the above cited book by Ring and Cooper which deals with
the topic.
The book is an excellent example for
scientific investigations in this field as well as some of its pitfalls, which
are recognized by the authors.In
addition, it shows the necessity to read all of it and not just snippets or
conclusions. The data consist of interviews with 31 blind persons who had
experienced NDEs or OBEs. The latter abbreviation differs among authors but the
phenomenon is the same. Of these persons 14 had been blind from birth, mainly
due to prematurity and excessive use of oxygen. This led to retrolental
fibroplasia of the eyes which in turn prevented the development of the brain’s visual
system. The other individuals had been either adventitiously blind or had
severe visual impairments. Since in these cases some visual memories may have
persisted I shall concentrate only on the congenitally blind segment of the
data. The first point was that there was no difference in the NDE reports from
these individuals and persons who have sight. When one stops here, as
apparently Wiebers and others did, one is justified in concluding that the
blind can have vision under these circumstances and that the brain is
irrelevant for this purpose.
Careful reading of the case material
revealed, however, a psychological element in the interviewers. This is not
meant to impugn the character of the interviewers but to emphasize the all too
human tendency to try to obtain information that would corroborate the result
one desires. It became apparent in the use of language where the blind person
was pressed to state that he/she did “see” what they had reported. This can
then be compounded by the interviewee’s desire to please the interviewer. On
reading the case material it became apparent that the information was to some
extent obtained by “leading questions” in a manner that would have been
objected to in court proceedings. I am mentioning this only because one has to
guard against this natural tendency in future studies of the phenomenon.
That something might be not quite right with
these “visual images” became apparent in the case of Brad who reported that in
his OBE he had seen snow on Boston’s streets from a previous storm.
“Brad: I think
that everything except for the streets was covered with snow. It was a very
soft snow. It had not been covered with sleet or freezing rain. It was the type
of snow that could blow around anywhere. The streets themselves had been plowed
and you could see the banks on both sides of the streets. I knew they were
there. I could see them. The streets were slushy. The snow had fallen when it
was almost at the freezing mark, so it was basically slushy. The snow was very
soft, kind of wet. I don’t remember anything in particular that the snow rested
on, like trees or anything like that. I can’t recall that.”
This reply came in response to
previous questions where Brad had been urged to recall other elements of the
snow in spite of his having earlier said that it was “very dark, generally a
wintry kind of cloudiness … but I didn’t spend much time looking at that
because as soon as I had a look I was in that tunnel.” Nevertheless, the
authors seemed to have taken the long reply at face value. They stated: “What
is perhaps most striking in Brad’s narrative is the precision of his apparent
visual perceptions during this stage of his experience, as, for example, in the
description he has just given of the qualities of the snow that had fallen the
day before.” But any skier will immediately notice that there were two
different kinds of snow in this description: one was classic Utah powder which
is in such demand and the other a city type slush you don’t like under your
skis. We must now ask “so what did he ‘really see’”?
Since these descriptions do not square,
a cynic might literally close this book and be done with it. But this would be
wrong because towards the end of the book the authors, to their credit, did
approach the crucial question of the type of “seeing” involved. They concluded
that the term was used loosely in the way sighted people might say “Oh, I see”
meaning that they now understood. This is a crucial point which has gotten
utterly lost in apodictic statements that the blind can see during NDEs or
OBEs. As Ring and Cooper point out when the congenitally blind refer to
“seeing” it is a synesthetic experience where the individual perceives a
different reality. This can include elements of what they would regard as sight
although it may be far different from what sighted people experience. But since
we live in a sighted world the language of even congenitally blind people contains
the words “see” or “vision” in their day-to-day conversations. But they are
used in the sense of knowing, or having become aware, rather than referring to
the same experience sighted people have. It is apparent that in congenitally
blind individuals the brain reorganizes itself and the areas which ordinarily
would be used for vision are devoted to the remaining senses which then have an
opportunity to become more acute.
Inasmuch as details like these throw a
completely different light on some of Wiebers’ evidence one now would have to
go through all the other points he cited but, as mentioned, I shall limit
myself only to the EEG/MEG and fMRI literature which I am competent to assess.
In regard to the secondary evidence for
TOR only two typical points will be presented. Under point 8 we find:
“Consciousness
is the fundamental wave aspect in deeper dimensions, including all of what has
been labeled as non-local space by physicists (and all that has been referred
to as one’s subconscious by psychologists and psychiatrists). Consciousness
manifests as the various attributes and dimensions of the physical world. The
particle aspect of one’s individual consciousness corresponds to the materially
oriented (of this physical dimension) manifestations of one’s “inner world” which
occur in association with one’s day-to-day thoughts, words, actions, and other
brain-mediated activities as they relate to this physical plane and to time and
space (which are of this physical plane).”
In point 11 of that section he stated:
“The C field
[consciousness field] is an even deeper
wave function or ‘base wave-form building block’ of all that exists, including
all of the wave functions mentioned above which correspond to all matter and
all material manifestations of our personal consciousness for example. …”
So what has Wiebers really done in this
section? He used as “evidence” for TOR an extrapolation of quantum physics
experiments which have shown that a wave can manifest itself also as a particle.
The observation that under certain circumstances particles can become
“entangled” whereby the behavior of particle 2 depends on particle 1 regardless
of distance involved, has been generalized to “non-local consciousness.”
Wiebers is not alone in these thoughts, they pervade the NDE literature.
When our scientists write about the
universe and our role in it they don’t like the word God. It has been changed
to “higher consciousness” or, by Wiebers, as “all in all (God).”But some of the TOR points have a very
familiar ring to anyone who has read not only Buddhist literature but also the
Hindu Upanishads, which preceded it by probably a millennium. There we find:
“The reality behind all these [contents of the organic world] is Brahman, who is pure consciousness [italics added].
All these, while they live, and after they have ceased to live, exist in him.
Thus Brahman is all in all [italics
added]. Self-luminous [italics added]
is Brahman, ever present in the hearts of all. He is both that which is gross
and that which is subtle. Attain thou him. He is the principle of life. He is
real. He is immortal. Attain him, O my friend, the one goal to be
attained.”The way to achieve this goal
is meditation which has freed itself from the material world. The notion that
“you are not your body” is common to both Hindu and Buddhist tradition and so is
the essence of Wiebers’ self-help section in his book.
The fact that these thoughts, under
different names, have been property of some members of the human race for
millennia neither affirms nor denies their potential validity, but they are not
experimentally verifiable. To regard them as scientific evidence stretches the
meaning of the word in a manner that would not be acceptable in scientific
publications or in a court of law. Yet, this type of evidence is needed to
convince the skeptic. Furthermore, Wiebers accepted the NDE and OBE reports not
only as subjective reality of the experiencer but apparently as an objective
fact. That subjective reality does not necessarily agree with the truth, as it
can be established by independent observers, was disregarded. In this
connection I’d like to point out that I have contacted Dr. Sam Parnia, who is in charge of the collaborative project to
objectively investigate the veridical value of OBE’s, for the results. But
although the three year limit of the project has expired, he told me that it is
still not finished. As of now there are, therefore, no prospective data which
would support this aspect of TOR.
Finally one needs to stress the obvious.
The most profound experience of “reality” is useless unless it can be
communicated to other human beings. But this requires an intact brain and
proper use of language. If the experiencer were to have become aphasic
immediately thereafter no meaningful communication could have been achieved.
This also applies to the quantum physics experiments. First of all they are
designed with the aid of human brains which also interpret the results by
putting them into language. In general, we rarely argue over results when they
have been independently reproduced. We argue over interpretations which become
a “free for all.” While I agree that the realization that we are all part of a
vast Whole, the Hindu “tat tvamasi” (That Thou art), is important to create a
healthier society we should not blind ourselves to the fact that matter/brain
and mind are interdependent. Energy, even when experienced as consciousness,
requires matter to act upon and NDErs frequently report that they are sent back
to this valley of tears, mostly against their will, because they still have
work to do. This selfless work, for the benefit of others, is the foundation of
the major religions. But it requires what the Greeks insisted on “a healthy
mind in a healthy body” and must be done here rather than some hereafter.
In conclusion: the transcendental
aspects of NDEs and OBEs are not verifiable and can be left in the realm of
faith. But the subjectively real terrestrial phenomena, which defy currently
held concepts, should be rigorously investigated for objective validation.
May 1, 2013
EEG AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY
In the previous installment I voiced
concerns over Dr. Wiebers’ Theory of
Reality (TOR) and mentioned that I would check on the EEG references which
were used to bolster the idea that reality is not what we are used to think of
as such. Since I don’t like to go behind people’s backs and believe that they
are entitled to know how others feel about their work I sent the April issue to
Dr. Wiebers and Dr. Ring, whose book was likewise discussed. Ring wrote back,
and we have since engaged in very fruitful discussions of the topic which will
be reported on at another time. For now I am merely grateful to acknowledge
that he sent me the e-mail address of Mr. John Audette who is a close friend of
Dr. Eben Alexander and who might prevail on the latter to release his EEGs and
radiographs.
Since Mr. Audette is also Executive
Director of Eternea, the organization I had mentioned previously with some
misgivings, I did not expect a reply. To my surprise a very gracious one came
back, and Mr. Audette promised to get in touch with Dr. Alexander to discuss
the request. He did indeed and wrote back again that they are planning to
release the data at the time of the anniversary of the book Proof of Heaven. In the meantime Dr.
Alexander is discussing them in his talks. I answered
that most of us don’t have the opportunity to attend these sessions and at any
rate we should not contend ourselves with reports on the data but should see
the actual material. I offered to pay Lynchburg General Hospital for putting
the EEG as well as CT/MRIs on CDs and sending them to me. I also mentioned that
I regularly receive such EEG data, free of charge, from colleagues here in the
States as well as Europe. In regard to the X-rays I pointed out that Dr. Boyer (neuroradiologist) had previously been an outstanding
collaborator in regard to Tutankhamen’s skull X-rays and has now expressed his
interest in reviewing Dr. Alexander’s material. Our careful evaluation had
proven that the “splinter,” which was supposed to have been due to a skull
fracture, inflicted with murderous intent, was a postmortem artifact. We
published the findings in The American
Journal of Neuroradiology (reprints available on request) and suggested
that a CT scan would be indicated to be 100 per cent certain. Scanning was
indeed performed a few years later and corroborated our conclusion.
The full “Saga of Tutankhamen’s Skull
X-rays” was presented here on October 17, 2002 and a follow up under
“Tutankhamen’s CT scans” in November 2005. I am mentioning these installments
now because they show a) that sometimes perseverance pays, even if it takes a
decade or so, and b) the politics of science. The second letter to Audette has
gone unanswered and I really don’t have too much hope for getting the data.
My message to Dr. Wiebers also went
unanswered which, considering what I wrote about TOR, was no particular
surprise. Nevertheless, the TOR book had the advantage that it provided a great
many references, and as stated last month I subsequently investigated those
which dealt with my favorite professional hobby of the past 61 years, the EEG. At
this point I need to mention that in respectable circles the word “psi” has now
been introduced to investigate these parapsychological phenomena. It’s simply a
new label to make “parapsychology,” which has given rise to outlandish claims,
palatable to the scientific community. It is the Greek letter ψ and stands
for “psychic,” to which one mentally adds “phenomena which are not explainable
by current theories about how the universe works.” Dean Radin, about whom more
will be said later, listed in his book The
Conscious Universe ten areas of extrasensory perception (ESP) which are
subsumed under psi “as a neutral term for all ESP type and psychokinetic
phenomena.”
Before discussing this material I want
to express my gratitude to Ms. Julie Quilter and her co-workers at the Eccles
Medical Library of our University for providing me with older reprints and
those for which I could not get an e-mail response from the authors. The first
paper linking psi with the EEG was published by Duane and Behrendt
in 1965 under the title: Extrasensory Electroencephalographic Induction between
Identical Twins (Science 1965; 150 (3694): 367). A discerning reader notices
immediately that a one page article will hardly be able to provide the details
required to substantiate a claim as unusual as reflected in the title. The Abstract
consisted of a single sentence: “Alpha rhythms have been elicited in one of a
pair of identical twins as a result of evoking these rhythms in a conventional
manner solely in the other.” The authors were not electroencephalographers
(EEGers) but worked in the Department of Ophthalmology of Jefferson Medical
College in Philadelphia PA.
The experiment involved 15 pairs of
identical twins. They were seated in separate rooms and “instructed to open and
close their eyes only on command.” Since eye closure usually allows alpha
rhythm (8-13 Hz) to emerge the appearance of alpha in the twin whose eyes were
open when the other twin closed the eyes was taken as evidence for an
extrasensory event. A single EEG channel with the electrode positioned over the
occipital protuberance was used. The phenomenon was observed in 2 of 15 pairs
and did not occur in a control situation when the pairs were not related. The
accompanying figure shows neither a time scale nor calibration signal and would
not have passed muster by reviewers of articles submitted to the EEG
literature. In addition, one must add that alpha is not as reliable a
phenomenon as is implied in the paper. Some of us, which includes me, produce
hardly any alpha and the opposite is also true. When a person has a strong
alpha rhythm it may show up after a few moments even in the eyes open state. Unless
these factors are controlled for, the evidence cannot be regarded as conclusive
and possibly not even as “suggestive,” especially since it was observed only on
two occasions.
The next paper, “Information
transmission under conditions of sensory shielding” by Targ and Puthoff, is far
superior (Nature 1974; 251 October 18: 602-607). The authors worked in the
Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory of the Stanford Research Institute (ISR)
at Menlo Park and have scientific credibility. The goal of the study was, “to
resolve under conditions as unambiguous as possible the basic issue of whether
a certain class of paranormal perception phenomena exists.” The investigation actually
consisted of three separate experimental procedures. In the first one Uri
Geller, the well-known Israeli spoon bender, was asked to reproduce simple
drawings which were located in sealed envelopes in one room while Mr. Geller sat
in a soundproofed and electromagnetically shielded different room. Geller’s
drawings were then subjected to judges who decided on the similarity. Since
only two of them matched to a reasonable extent and statistics proclaimed that this
could have been due to chance the experiment was regarded as having been
negative. In fairness to Geller I must admit that these two drawings were
actually very similar to the target. In one a bunch of grapes was correctly
reproduced and in the other instead of a camel a horse. Furthermore, he
performed significantly beyond chance when it came to identifying the face of a
die in a doubleblind experiment At one
point the authors had him connected to an EEG system but he felt sufficiently
uncomfortable with the wires in place so that he did not produce any drawings.
The second experimental paradigm dealt
with the possibility of remote viewing. Mr. Pat Price, former California Police
Commissioner and City Councilman, was asked to describe scenes and happenings
far removed from his actual physical location at the ISR. Nine target locations
were involved and the descriptions were submitted to five judges. The judges,
who had independently visited these nine locations after the experiment, were
asked to find a narrative which best corresponded to the place they had been
to. “By plurality vote, six of the nine descriptions and locations were
correctly matched” and this result was statistically highly significant.
The third set of experiments dealt with
the EEG and used the well-known observation that when light flashes of a given
frequency are delivered to a person the brain will respond by producing the
identical frequency. This phenomenon, called photic driving, is readily
reproducible and has the advantage that it can be precisely quantified by
subjecting the data to frequency analysis, a method I have repeatedly used in
my own studies. It was hypothesized that if one person whose driving response
is recorded, while located in an electromagnetically shielded room, another
individual in a distant room whose EEG is simultaneously recorded, but without
stimulation, might show a similar response. The experiment consisted of a ten
second epoch which either contained flashes delivered to the “sender” or, in a
random sequence, no flashes. The ten second epochs were heralded by a brief
tone burst delivered to sender and receiver. Only the last four seconds of the
epoch were analyzed to avoid the alerting effect of the sound signal. This
yielded three sets of numbers one for the zero condition one for 6 flashes per
second and one for 16 flashes per second with 12 trials for each condition
within one recording session. Only one EEG channel was available and recorded
from the mid-occipital region. No photic driving response was observed in the
receiver at these flash rates although such a response was present when that
person was stimulated.
Since this was a negative result the
authors might have called it quits and never published this aspect because one
inherently dislikes publishing negative data. But they persisted. One of their
subjects, a lady, had an exceptionally good alpha rhythm centered at 10 cycles
per second and the authors wondered that, although there was no evidence for
photic driving, something might have happened to the alpha when a sender was
stimulated. Thirty six trial runs revealed that there was a measurable decrease
in alpha for average power as well as peak power when the sender was stimulated
with 6 and 16 f/p/s. The data were statistically highly significant for the 16
f/p/s segments. Translated into everyday language, the result showed that a
small but measurable degree of alerting had occurred in the receiver’s brain. She
was unaware of it because when asked to indicate the flash vs. no flash condition
the answers were randomly distributed.
The authors concluded,
A channel exists
whereby information about a remote location can be obtained by means of an as
yet unidentified perceptual modality.
As with all
biological systems, the channel appears to be imperfect, containing noise along
with the signal.
While a quantitative signal-to-noise
ratio in the information-theoretical sense cannot as yet be determined, the
results of our experiments indicate that the functioning is at the level of
useful information transfer.
In the final sentence of the paper they
stated, “… experiments in the area of so-called paranormal phenomena can be
scientifically conducted, and it is our hope that other laboratories will
initiate additional research to attempt to replicate these findings.”
This was subsequently done, here as well
as abroad, and I shall report on some of the results from six different
laboratories. They will not necessarily be in chronological order because some
came from the same laboratory and reported on replication attempts. Jiri
Wackermann and co-workers from the Department of Empirical and Analytical
Psychophysics (EAP), Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology in Freiburg, Germany,
published in 2003, “Correlations between brain electrical activities of two
spatially separated human beings,” (Neuroscience Letters 336: 60-64). The
sample consisted of 38 subjects, 17 pairs and four single persons. The pairs
were separated into two groups of seven. The first subgroup pairs (E1) were
emotionally related e.g. spouses, relatives or friends, while the other
subgroup (E2) consisted of unrelated individuals. The control group was
composed of three related pairs and four single subjects. Prior to the test
period the participants of group E1 had to spend about 20 minutes together to
establish further empathy, while the E2 pairs were unaware of the presence of
their partner in another room and were simply told to relax.
Six electrodes recorded from the
central, parietal and occipital areas bilaterally and instead of light flashes
a checkerboard reversal pattern was used. This is also common practice in EEG
circles and referred to as “pattern visual evoked potentials” (PVEP). The data
were averaged and although a PVEP was clearly present in the stimulated sender
none occurred in the receiver. Similar to Tart and Puthoff this study also was negative
in regard to its most crucial feature which I would have loved to see, namely
either a flash or pattern VEP, albeit with possibly diminished amplitude or
increased latency, in the receiver. But it was not to be.
Likewise similar to Tart and Puthoff,
the authors then subjected the data to further analysis with a variety of
complex statistics and found a “high co-incidence of variations of the brain
electrical activity in the non-stimulated subjects with brain electrical
responses of the subjects.” But there was still a problem. The change in the
receiver’s EEG was not always in the same direction. Voltages could either be
increased or decreased and there was no preferred location. The authors
concluded, “…we are facing a phenomenon, which is neither easy to dismiss as a
methodological failure or a technical artifact nor understood as to its nature.
No biophysical mechanism is presently known that could be responsible for the
observed correlations between EEGs of two separate subjects.” The correlation
had existed only within the experimental and not the control group but
“relatedness” had no influence.
I wrote to Dr. Wackermann and he kindly
sent me some further reprints on the topic. He and his co-workers had attempted
to replicate the study and published the results in the following year under
the title, “Event-related Correlations between Brain Electrical Activities of
Separated Human subjects. Preliminary Results of a
Replication Study,” (The Parapsychologic Convention
2004:465-468). The experimental procedure was identical but since the
previous investigation had failed to show that an emotional link was required
for the demonstration of the phenomenon, the twenty minute pretest period was
omitted. Sixteen pairs of related subjects participated, but this time 19 EEG
channels were available for registering the PVEP as well as other EEG changes
and the electrodes were placed in accordance with the international norm,
usually referred to as the 10/20 system. Each experiment consisted of two
halves. In one, the subject was stimulated, while in the other the monitor,
which delivered the checkerboard pattern, was covered by an opaque shield. In
this way the subjects served as their own controls. Unfortunately,
statistically significant differences were discovered in the receivers’ EEG for
both the “covered” (control) and the uncovered (test) condition. The values
were predominantly negative in the first and predominantly positive for the
second condition.
For further analysis it was then decided
to use only the uncovered condition, i.e. actual checkerboard reversals, for
comparison with the EEG of the receiver. Under these circumstances it was found
that background EEG activity was indeed reduced to a statistically significant
extent in the left parieto-occipital and right frontal region in the receiver.
The authors were puzzled by these results and stated that:
We are facing an
enigmatic situation, unless we assume that the subject B’s brain [receiver]
responds to the physical presence of the stimulus rather than to the subject
A’s [sender] brain response to the stimulus. Even with such an ‘ESP-like’
interpretation it remains unclear why should subject B’s brain response go to
two opposite directions, depending on whether the stimulus has or has not been
perceived by subject A. Yet another interpretation might take into account an
‘experimenter effect’: the experimenters were not exposed directly to the
visual stimuli but they were aware of their occurrence. These interpretations
imply that our experiment was a kind of unintentional ESP-experiment: an
assumption more disturbing than compelling. We hope to obtain more clarity from
the next replication study, using a protocol with experimenters being unaware
of stimulus presentations, and varyingstimulus parameters to modulate the subject A’s brain response
magnitude.
Apparently Wackermann’s further
studies did not clarify the issue and the next publication on this type of data
came from Wolfgang Ambach from the same Institute in Freiburg, Germany. The
2008 publication carries the title, “Correlations between the EEGs of two
spatially separated subjects – a replication study,” (European Journal of
Parapsychology; 23/ 2: 131-146). Seventeen pairs of related subjects were
studied under identical conditions as reported by Wackermann but conducted in a
different laboratory by a different investigator. Checkerboard patterns were
used for stimulation and the EEG was recorded from the standard 10/20 electrode
placement system. Although there was no difference in data acquisition between
Wackermann’s and Ambach’s study the statistical work-up differed and corrected
for what Ambach had felt were possible sources of artifact. Under these
conditions the Wackermann observed findings evaporated, although they could
partly be reproduced when Wackermann’s statistics were employed. But under
those circumstances the statistically significant differences were not found in
form of decreased activity in the right parieto-occipital and left frontal area.
They appeared instead as “an increase in EEG power in parietal, predominantly
left-hemispheric regions and a decrease in the bilateral temporal regions.”
When the new statistics were used the changes were below significance level.
I am not qualified to enter into
arguments about statistics but Wackermann responded with an article, “Dyadic
EEG-correlations re-examined: A commentary on the replication study by W. Ambach,”
in the same journal issue (pp.147-153). Although Wackermann defended his
statistics and their results, he concluded that taking his own replication
attempts and those of Ambach into account “it is highly doubtful that there is
anything such as a ‘real’ effect. This negative evidence arises from the
remarkable lack of consistency, in terms of direction and spatial distribution
of the effect measures ….” He then added a general comment for the psi
community in regard to the “entanglement” hypothesis, which will be discussed
in another installment.
As to our
knowledge, none of these high hopes has ever been fulfilled, and none of those
approaches developed into a really working experimental paradigm – that is, one
yielding reproducible results across laboratories, results that would visibly
stand out of the bush of error bars. There are no signs of real progress. We
take the lesson seriously and turn to more productive research topics, not to
spend our lives in a heroically ‘relentless’ but ultimately unproductive
search.
Dr. Dean Radin, with whom I likewise
corresponded, emphatically disagreed with the comments expressed in the
paragraph quoted above but before going into his own studies I’d like to
briefly mention those by Standish as well as Richards who worked in the same
laboratory, which was associated with the University of Washington, but
appeared as first authors on different papers.
Leanna
Standish published in 2004, “Electroencephalographic Evidence of Correlated
Event-related Signals between the Brains of Spatially and Sensory Isolated
Human Subjects,” (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine;
10/2:30-314). Thirty pairs of individuals were tested. The standard
checkerboard pattern stimuli were delivered, the EEG 10/20 electrode system
placement was used and statistically significant differences for the stimulus
on vs. stimulus off condition, in terms of “higher brain activation,” were
noted in the receiver’s EEG in five subjects, although the accompanying table
shows significant levels in six subjects. Although not specifically mentioned
the implication is that PVEPs did not occur in the receiver and “brain
activation” dealt with background EEG activity. A replication study was
performed in four of these pairs but was successful in only one. This subject a
51 year old man had also previously been reported on by Standish as a single
case study when functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) had been used
(Standish et al. Evidence of Correlated functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Signals between Distant Human Brain. Alternative Therapies.2003; 9:120-125). For the sender checkerboard stimuli
were used while the receiver was in the MRI scanner. The figures showing actual
curves are difficult to interpret for me but the pictures show increased blood
oxygenation in the parieto-occipital areas.
The
fMRI data were subsequently replicated by Richards on two new pairs of
volunteers (Replicable Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence of
Correlated Brain Signals between Physically and Sensory Isolated Subjects. 2005;11:955-963). Statistically significant increase in
oxygenation was observed in the occipital regions and the result was
reproducible in one of the two subjects. Another fMRI study was carried out in
Hawaii by Achterberg et al. (Evidence for Distant
Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging Analysis. The Journal of Alternative and
Complementary Medicine. 2005; 11/6:965-971). Eleven “healers” (persons
who were regarded as having the ability to perform psychic healing of
illnesses) were asked to concentrate on a person with whom he/she had a special
connection while this person was in the scanner. Activation was observed in the
recipients’ brains in the parietal, frontal and cingulate areas. This was the
result of a group analysis of ten subjects and no individual results were
reported.
I shall not comment on the fMRI data
because, although intriguing, there is more potential subjectivity in their
interpretation than is the case with EEG. I shall, therefore, conclude with a
paper by Radin on “Event-Related Electroencephalographic Correlations between Isolated
Human Subjects,” (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2004;
10/2:315-323) Thirteen pairs of volunteers participated in the experiments
which were structurally similar to those of the other EEG studies. The
differences were: instead of flashes or checkerboard stimuli, the face of the
receiver was intermittently projected to the sender’s monitor and only one
electrode, placed at the vertex, was used for recording. The reason was that a
facial image was regarded as more meaningful to the sender than tones or
flashes and what is called the P300 (around 300 milliseconds after stimulus
onset), or cognitive evoked potential, is usually maximal at that location. For
the group aggregate a sizeable P300 analog was recorded from the sender at
around 368 milliseconds and a considerably smaller peak occurred
64 milliseconds later from the receiver. When individual test data were
investigated it was noted that a significant effect was present in three of the
13 pairs but ten “showed positive EEG peaks.” Unfortunately, only statistical
group data are shown in the figures and the professional EEGer would have liked
to see the raw data for sender and receiver in order to gain an impression of
the magnitude of the sender’s and receiver’s signal amplitudes in microV. To
the best of my knowledge there has been no independent replication of these
observations.
What is one to conclude from these
studies? The Duane and Behrendt alpha report can
safely be disregarded because of too many uncontrolled variables, but the
others have to be taken seriously. They suggest that some type of effect exists.
But it requires statistics for its observation; it is variable, inconsistent
within the same subject group, and is only partially reproducible. For the
professional EEGer it was especially disappointing that evoked potentials,
which would be the clearest demonstration of EEG transmission, were present
only in the sender and not in the receiver. With the possible exception of
Radin’s study only a small nonspecific effect was noted in the EEG background
activity.
It appears that although there is smoke
we have yet to find the source of the fire. The results also reminded me of
mercury which is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature and if one
tries to grab one of the drops it escapes one’s grasp. When written with
capital M it is the name for the Roman god one of whose functions was to serve
as a messenger from the gods to earthlings. In other words we might be getting
some kind of message but it is buried in “noise.” We don’t know what to do with
it and how to interpret it. Psi researchers like to relate the phenomenon to
the quantum observation of entanglement and, as mentioned, I shall try to
evaluate the validity of that assumption in a subsequent installment after
having presented further experimental psi data next month.
June 1, 2013
THE QUEST FOR PSI
In last month’s installment I discussed
some of the experimental evidence for what used to be called parapsychological
events. Since the word parapsychology tends to be tainted by a variety of anecdotal
reports, which also include communication with the dead, respectable scientists
now prefer the Greek letter ψ “psi,” for their experimental work in this
field. This brings up the question why one should bother with something that
belongs in the realm of science fiction and even more personally why should I,
a specialist in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy, be concerned about a
subject as esoteric as psi, and report on it here. But please remember that the
name of this website is “thinktruth.” This requires
that one needs to investigate all of the phenomena our society is confronted
with, and attempt to ascertain to what extent reported opinions or beliefs
conform to what one generally regards as the truth. Let me emphasize again that
I am not concerned with absolute truth, which is a philosophical concept and
inaccessible to human beings, but only the everyday meaning which distinguishes
it from falsehood. This is the unifying theme which urges one to critically
examine all the issues we as a society are confronted with, for their adherence
to what we regard as truthful standards.
For a human being who has embarked on
this quest there should be no taboos and theoretically all our commonly
accepted notions of what is “true” can be questioned. But this is not how our
society operates. There are taboos which must not be opened to investigations
and the two most obvious ones are the Holocaust and 9/11. In the former
instance you will be sent to jail in Austria or Germany if you question any
aspect of it (Today’s Democracy in America. January 1, 2004. Understanding the
Holocaust Part II February 21, 2006), and in the latter you are relegated to
the ranks of crazies if you merely hold the belief that something is not quite
right with the official version. If you become too vociferous and especially if
you were to act on your feelings that the government has engaged in a massive
cover-up you are liable to run afoul of the “Patriot” Act. This occurs in our
“free” society in spite of the fact that it is the patriotic duty of a citizen
to hold his government responsible for its actions.
One would think that this situation
pertains merely to politics and that the hallowed halls of academia are still
engaged in search for the truth wherever it might lead. But this is likewise a
mistake. We, who publish in scientific journals, also have to toe a line and
are not allowed to deviate too markedly from accepted opinions. Even if one is
in the lucky position, as for instance in my situation, where one doesn’t have
to rely on funding for one’s research, one can’t publish unorthodox work in the
top journals of the field because our “peers” who are wedded to orthodoxy will
reject the manuscript. This is not fantasy but actual experience. Since this
happens in as innocuous an area as epilepsy, for instance, it is obvious that
psi research will have an even tougher row to hoe.
Given these facts why should one bother
with psi? The simple answer is that these phenomena profoundly rattle the cage
we have built around our thinking. It seems that the time may have come to
start re-assessing to what extent our notions of time as unidirectional,
flowing only forward, and that cause has to precede effect, conform to reality.
This is what psi research attempts to do. Dr. Dean Radin, part of whose work I
have mentioned in last month’s installment and to whom I am indebted for having
provided me with valuable references, has so far published two books on the
subject and a third one will appear later this summer. In the
first one, The Conscious Universe. The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena,
he wrote in the Introduction,
In science, the
acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1,
skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates
the Laws of Science. This stage can last for years or for centuries, depending
on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage2, skeptics
reluctantly concede that the idea is possible but that it is not very
interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the
mainstream realizes not only that the idea is important but that its effects
are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is
achieved when the same critics who previously disavowed any interest in the
idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually no one
remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.
As far as psi research is concerned we
are currently in Radin’s Stage 2 and in the following pages I shall demonstrate
why this is so. While The Conscious
Universe (published in 1997) is a good introduction to the overall topic,
the second book Entangled Minds
Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, presents the data as they
were available in 2006 and the third one, Supernormal,
which I haven’t seen as yet, will bring the topic up to date. The books are
well referenced and demonstrate the rather vast literature which now exists on
the topic. This presents the skeptical reviewer with a literally huge problem
because it is impossible to sift through all the scientific publications in
order to detect flaws either in reasoning or methodology. I shall limit myself,
therefore, largely to samples of electrophysiological work and since even here
the literature is substantial mainly to Radin’s efforts. But before doing so
here are some aspects of his bio as it appears on www.deanrdain.com.
He holds a BSEE degree in electrical engineering,magna cum laudewith honors in physics, from the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD
in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a decade
he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories
and GTE Laboratories. For over two decades he has been engaged in consciousness
research. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held
appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of
Nevada, and several Silicon Valley think-tanks, including Interval Research
Corporation and SRI International, where he worked on a classified program
investigating psychic phenomena for the US government. Currently he is Chief
Scientist at the Institute for Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California,
and on the Adjunct Faculty of Sonoma State University.
Because of his
background in engineering as well as psychology, he deserves to be listened to.
From the large number of his publications I shall discuss only two which deal
with the electrophysiology of precognition, also referred to as presentiment, as
well as the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). In a 2004 publication, Electrodermal Presentiments of future
Emotions, normal individuals were presented with randomly selected
photographs which depicted either calm scenes or violent events while their
electrodermal activity (EDA) was monitored. The latter is also known as the
galvanic skin response and depends on the fact that the sweat glands in our
fingers react to emotional stimuli thereby changing the electrical conductance.
It is routinely used as one part of “lie-detector” variables. The trick in all
of these studies is that not only was the response after the stimulus evaluated,
but also for 5 seconds before the stimulus was delivered. While one has no
problem understanding that the EDA would be larger after emotional stimuli, it
is difficult to find a rationale why the reaction to calm vs. violent pictures
should differ before these pictures were even presented. But this is what the
paper shows and the difference is statistically
significant.
We now have to pause
for a moment because a few statistical terms have to be mentioned. These are: Z
scores, effect size, and significance. In simplest terms z scores represent
deviations from a standardized mean; effect size is a descriptive statistic in
regard to the strength of a relationship between two variables, while
significance refers to the probability how often the observed phenomenon could
have occurred by chance. While z scores of 1 or 2 standard deviations (SD) from
the norm are not necessarily regarded as pathological in medicine, a SD of 3 is
clearly abnormal. For effect sizes there are no uniform criteria but in general
0.1 is regarded as small, 0.3 as medium and 0.5 as large. Statistical
significance has to be at least 0.05 which means that the probability of a
given event having occurred by chance, is 5 times in one hundred. With <0.01
it shrinks to one in a hundred and the more 0s before the one the probability
that a given phenomenon had occurred by chance shrinks to extremely unlikely.
Now comes the hooker. While effect size is not
necessarily dependent on the number of observations, statistical significance
is. The more observations which are available for the
calculations of a given effect, the higher the statistical significance.
This is fundamental for the assessment of psi data because effect size is
usually small, but statistical significance can be huge. This is especially the
case when Meta-analyses are performed. These are necessary, especially in psi
research, because in a given experiment the effect size is usually small and to
demonstrate significance large numbers are required. This is why some
investigators, including Radin, have resorted to meta-analyses. These studies
evaluate literature reports on a given topic for the reliability of the data as
well as their analysis, and then combine the numbers obtained for a given
phenomenon. In this way large numbers are accumulated and statistical
significance can reach astronomic levels. There is, of course an obvious
problem with meta-analyses because judgment is involved which studies are to be
included or excluded and one has to rely on the integrity and the statistical
acumen of the author(s) of these analyses.
When we now
return to Radin’s EDA paper, we find that 860 trials by 24 participants had
resulted in a z score of 2.92, an effect size of 0.1 and significance level of
0.002. Small variants of the basic test procedure were then performed which in
one instance raised the z score to 3.34 and the statistical significance to
0.0004, while the effect size had actually declined to 0.089. From a
statistical point of view there can be no doubt that something had happened
that allowed the calm from the violent curve to differ even before those
pictures had been shown. We can, therefore, no longer talk about a response
because there was nothing to respond to at that time period. Radin believes,
therefore, that the observation suggests presentiment. In the Discussion
segment of the paper he presented various “alternative explanations” but felt that
they do not stand up to scrutiny.
Although EDA is, as has
been mentioned, commonly used as a measure of emotional arousal it does have a
variety of technical problems and the EEG is a considerably more reliable tool
for a variety of purposes. Radin, therefore, published EEG results in 2011
under the title, Electrocortical Activity
prior to Unpredictable Stimuli in Meditators and Nonmeditators. There are,
as is well known, a large variety of meditative practices and it is important
for scientific work to specify which ones the practitioners, who form the test
group, are engaged in. Radin’s meditators practiced “non-dual awareness.” By this
is meant that they train their minds to achieve states where “common
distinctions – between subject and object, me and you, and past, present and
future – begin to diminish.”
Eight experienced
meditators were matched with eight controls, and 32 EEG channels recorded their
brains’ activities before, during, and after unpredictable light and/or sound
stimuli. In one experimental set-up, “on demand,” the participants had to start
the trial by pressing a button whereupon three seconds later a random number
generator (RNG) selected a stimulus and presented it immediately to the test
person. There were three possible stimuli: a light flash, a sound tone, a combination
of both, as well as a non-event i.e. no stimulus was delivered. Three seconds
after stimulus onset a click informed the subjects to start a new trial at any
time of their choice. Light and sound stimuli were used because it was expected
that different electrical responses would occur and their field distributions
could be plotted. The other two conditions, light and flash as well as no
stimulus, were intended to serve as distraction, and reduce bias. In the second
experimental setup, “free running”, the subjects were told that they may hear a
sound or see a flash but they should react by button press only to the sound.
For each condition, epochs of 200 trials were extracted from the continuously
recorded EEG and averaged after those trials which contained artifact had been
removed.
I won’t go into the
details of the statistics that were employed and merely limit myself to present
the results for different stimuli in meditators and controls. In the post
stimulus portion EEG differences between light and flash condition were present
to a statistically significant extent in nearly all electrodes in the control
group, but in the meditators the differences were limited to about half of the
electrodes. This is what one might expect from individuals who have trained
themselves in controlling their thought processes and this part of the data
work-up mainly served the purpose of demonstrating that the system worked. When
it came to a comparison of the two groups for the pre-stimulus period there
were no differences between sound and light in the controls but five electrodes
showed significant differences of <0.5,in the meditator group. When comparisons were made between the two
groups there were no differences prior to flash stimuli, but in the meditator
group 15 electrode sites were significantly different prior to audio
stimulation. When the investigators then used only the “free running” condition
it became apparent that the noted differences had mainly resulted from the free
running trial with attention to the audio stimulus. The authors felt that these
results were not due to “conventional forms of anticipation” and this is the
point where my scientific problems with the data start.
I shall not go into
detail here and will take them up with Radin personally because we are in the
realm of opinion. I just want to point out here, that a sizeable literature
exists, which shows that the brain reacts for variable periods of time before
an actual voluntary movement or an anticipated event begins. Benjamin Libet has
written a book about it Mind Time The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (2004). He noted in
his experiments, like others before him, that the brain starts preparing for
action several hundreds of milliseconds before a voluntary movement takes place.
But when he measured conscious awareness of the urge to move he found that this
had occurred only about 200 milliseconds before the actual movement. He then argued
that since the movement is unconsciously initiated, free will could be
questioned. He solved the problem by limiting its role to a “veto function”
over the processes which had started earlier. In other words, one has about 200
milliseconds to voluntarily stop the movement from occurring but one has no
control over the previous brain processes that prepare the brain for it. One can
question the validity of the free will conclusion but I am presenting the data here
because until recently the brain’s anticipatory effect was regarded as mainly
limited to hundreds of milliseconds or maximally for one to two seconds. But a
Japanese group has recently shown on basis of fMRI data that it can actually extend
for up to ten seconds. This means that our own finding of increased EEG
activity about seven seconds before voluntary hyperventilation, when a
frequency range of 0.1-0.9 Hz is used, need no longer be regarded as artifact
and we can urge our colleagues to repeat this simple experiment for validation.
The importance of these
data for presentiment experiments is obvious. If trials follow in short order a
“left-over effect” may be present. I noted that in practically all presentiment
trials the baseline is adjusted only a few seconds before the stimulus and one
doesn’t know what had happened in the brain prior to that time. These are some
of the details which must be sorted out before presentiment conclusions will be
generally accepted. Another aspect in the presentation of purported evidence
for psi is that actual raw curves be they EEG or EDA which show the differences
are only rarely presented. We see statistical evaluations and diagrams rather
than the wave forms on which they were based. There are two exceptions in the
material I have so far seen. Radin et al.’s figure 5 of the mentioned paper does
provide the complete curves for the mean potentials with one SD for flashes and
sound over a period from 2 minutes prior to the stimuli up to one minute after them
for one electrode location of controls and meditators. Although the figure clearly
shows that there was no difference for the pre-stimulus portion in the controls
and a good post-stimulus response, there are still some technical questions
remaining which need to be taken up with the author. The devil after all is in
the details.
Another paper which
deals with Differential Event-related
Potentials to Targets and Decoys by Donough and co-workers also presents
the differences of actual EEG curves for evoked potentials. The subjects
guessed which one of four cards would subsequently be randomly selected by the
computer and presented as “targets”. The other three cards served as “decoys,”
“non-targets.” The investigators found that although the verbal guessing
accuracy did not deviate from chance expectations, the brain responses did to
some extent. A negative slow wave, which occurred especially in the late
segment of the response, showed significant differences for six electrode sites
in the right hemisphere. The difference was statistically significant at the 5%
level and taken to “indicate an apparent communications anomaly because no
viable conventional explanation of the ERP differential could be identified.”
When one looks at figure 2 of the paper which provides the grand average comparisons
for all electrodes, clinical electroencephalographers would not be impressed. Especially
when one reads that the differences were 0.15 µV with the actual responses at
that time measuring about 4 µV.
In order to assess the
validity of the presentiment claims, Julia Mossbridge
of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a colleague from Padova, Italy, as well as another one from the University
of California, performed a meta-analysis of 26 reports that had been published on
this topic between 1978 and 2010. The authors found a small but highly
statistically significant effect and also noted that higher quality experiments
had yielded both a larger effect size and a greater significance level. But in
view of the diversity of studies, they suggested that multiple replications by
different laboratories with a common standard protocol are needed to shed more
light on this currently unexplained phenomenon. They also felt that the cause
of this anticipatory effect “undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural
physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal) ones.”
While one can occasionally
expect weird behavior from our fellow human beings, machines should be immune
from such quirks. But that seems to be another mistaken assumption. Random
number generators (RNGs) which ought to produce 0s and 1s in a truly random
manner can, at times, defy their pre-ordained behavior and assume a more
regular pattern. Well, one might say that anything can happen once in a while. But
when they are supposedly doing so at a time when meditators, who specialize in
healing thoughts, are engaged in an attempt to make astrocytes (a type of brain
cell) grow in a culture medium one really scratches one’s head. Radin reported
on this event in Entangled Minds stating
that on day three of the experiment several RNGs not only in the laboratory but
throughout the San Francisco Bay area showed significant deviations from
randomness. In addition the astrocytes apparently enjoyed the attention they
received and grew more than a control group which was left to its own devices.
Radin believed this indicates that concentrated thought can produce a
consciousness field which can then interact with matter.
To test the idea of
“field consciousness” Roger Nelson of Princeton University and colleagues,
including Radin, started in 1998 the previously mentioned Global Consciousness
Project http://gcp.grama.co. The project has currently over 60 RNGs which are distributed
worldwide and the data are examined in relation to events which have
significant emotional impact on large numbers of people. It seems to have been
catalyzed by the death of Princess Diana when some RNGs in different countries
stopped their randomness during her funeral. The hallmark event of the current
century is, of course 9/11, and by that time a global network was in place comprising
37 RNGs. We are told that on this fateful day “all of the RNGs behaved in the same way, even though they were
located thousands of miles apart, scattered around the world [italics in the
original].” With a z score of 3.5 the observations reached a significance level
of 0.00024. To add a further intrigue to the already unexplainable finding, the
RNGs started to deviate from their routine about two hours before the first
plane hit the North Tower.
One can now spin any
number of theories about why the RNGs did and still do the things they are not
supposed to do, but first one needs to know whether or not these psychokinetic
effects can be duplicated. HolgerBösch
(University of Freiburg, Germany), together with Fiona Steinkamp
(University of Edinburgh) and Emil Boller (University
of Freiburg, Germany) provided in 2006 a meta-analysis of published articles
dealing with the interaction between human intention and random number
generators. The result was equivocal; depending upon the statistics used a small
but statistically significant effect was found. But the heterogeneity of the
material was such that it “provides no directive as to whether the phenomenon
is genuine.” The editors of the journal had sent the article to two other
research groups for comment and while David Wilson of George Mason University
and William Shadish of the University of California
agreed that the jury is still out on the reality of psychokinesis; Radin, with
Roger Nelson and York Dobyns of Princeton, and JoopHoutkooper of the Justus
Liebig University in Giessen Germany, disagreed and felt that the “studies
provide evidence for a genuine psychokinetic effect.”
Where does all of this
leave us? Essentially in the same situation as last month only more puzzled
because of the RNG results. There exists a small but statistically significant
effect which may or may not be genuine. The theoretical model for this effect
is assumed to be quantum physics and we will explore this explanation in the
next installment. We shall also discuss at that time why the effect, provided
that it is not some artifact, is as small as it has repeatedly shown to be.
July 1, 2013
Consciousness and Quantum Physics
In last month’s installment I mentioned
that parapsychological investigations have revealed a small, but consistent,
statistically significant effect which is currently unexplained by our
scientific models. The same applies to near-death experiences (NDE’s) and
out-of body experiences (OBEs). Subjectively real phenomena are repeatedly
reported with some degree of consistency and these are taken to indicate not
only that consciousness can exist without a brain but that we don’t die.
Quantum physics is regarded as the link which can account for these statements.
It is, therefore, necessary that we examine and define what we are talking
about.
First of all, and most important, is
the use of language and the difference between concrete and abstract nouns.
This becomes immediately apparent to a person, who is fluent in at least two
different languages. I, for instance, can think and speak equally well in
English and German using either as the occasion demands. When I translate the
concrete noun “brain” into German the corollary is Hirn, or Gehirn.” Both refer
to the same lump of matter we carry around in our heads. But when it comes to
abstract nouns difficulties arise. Although there is only one word for
consciousness in English and German, the connotations and implications can
differ. The English word can be taken to imply some type of static phenomenon while
the German term Bewusstsein indicates
an active process. Literally translated it says: “to be aware.” This
immediately brings up the next question: to be aware of what? Yet this does not
necessarily follow from “consciousness,” which just is!
The problem got worse when I tried to
find the German counterpart to “mind.” When I found myself unable to think of
one I looked it up in my Wildhagen English/German dictionary and found that it
wasn’t bad memory on my part. The word simply does not exist as a single
concept. Here are some of the translations provided in the order they appeared when
re-translated into English: memory, point of view, intention, will, inclination,
conviction, spirit. So when we talk about “mind/brain relationships” we need to
define what aspect of the mind we are talking about. The same applies to “consciousness”
and “reality,” which likewise have several different dimensions. Unless these
are specified our conversations and arguments can create a great deal of heat
but very little light.
Take for instance the titles of Dr. Pim
van Lommel’s book “Consciousness beyond Life,”
Dr. Dean Radin’s “The Conscious Universe”
or the subtitle of Chris Carter’s book “How
Consciousness Survives Death.” Are they all talking about the same thing?
Van Lommel and Carter probably refer to what the Hindus called atindriyawhich means: trans-sensuous,
infra-sensible, and transcendental. But does this necessarily mean the survival
of personal memories, will, and intention for ever and ever more? Possibly, but
as Gershwin’s Porgy would have said: it ain’t
necessarily so. When it comes to Radin’s “Conscious Universe” I must admit that
I am lost, because I have to go back to my German. This is important because
unless two different languages agree on a given meaning of a word we have no
common ground. If for instance the moon, as part of our universe, has Bewusstsein, what is it aware of?
As mentioned the common denominator for
a universal consciousness into which parapsychology as well as NDE’s and OBE’s
are fitted is quantum theory and unless we come to some rudimentary
understanding of this extremely complex field of human endeavor we will not be
able to talk intelligently with each other. But unless we do so we cannot
progress in our concepts of what we, and the world we live in, are all about. I
shall, therefore briefly review my understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) and
the conclusions which have been drawn therefrom. Let me emphasize that these are
my personal opinions, which may well be challenged on a number of grounds. If
experts in the field were to read these comments I would appreciate it if
obvious mistakes, from their point of view, were to be present that they should
let me know. This is, after all, the only way learning can take place.
My information about the topic comes
mainly from three books as well as chapters which appeared in others. These
are: The Tao of Physics – An Exploration
of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Fritjof
Capra who is a nuclear physicist; How the
Hippies Saved Physics –Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David
Kaiser who is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and
Quantum – Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate
About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar who has degrees in physics and
philosophy. Capra’s book explains the relationship to mysticism, Kaiser details
the soil of the American scene from which consciousness and psi became, to use
a QM word, entangled, while Kumar describes the history of the fundamental
differences in interpretation of the same QM phenomena. The books complement
each other and I can strongly recommend to anyone who thinks about current
society in terms of where we are going to read these books.
The
Tao of Physics
was first published in 1975 and the 2010 “35th Anniversary Edition”
is the fifth in the English language. The book has been translated into 23 languages,
has remained a bestseller and it is clear that it has met a need of the reading
public. Yet it presents us with a curious blend which has proven disconcerting
to some critics. Far Eastern mystic thoughts are interspersed with fairly
detailed mathematical aspects of quantum physics. The reason for this amalgam
is not clearly discernible from the book, but is clarified by Kaiser who
devoted Chapter 7 of his “Hippies” book to: Zen and the Art of Textbook
Publishing. We now have to return to the late 60s and the San
Francisco-Berkeley counterculture spawned by Timothy Leary’s psychedelic cult
under the mantra: tune in, turn on, drop out. Kaiser
explained that some young physics Ph.D. degree holders with slim job prospects
gravitated to Berkeley where they founded the “Fundamental Fysiks Group” which
met weekly on the campus of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The unusual
spelling of physics was in all probability derived from Niels Bohr’s “UniversitetesInstitut for TeortiskFysik” in Copenhagen.
Capra, a native Austrian, had obtained his
PhD in molecular physics from the University of Vienna in 1966 and received a
post-doctoral fellowship in Paris thereafter. He witnessed the 1968 student
riots in that city and was deeply impressed. In the same year he was invited to
the University of California Santa Cruz for a postdoctoral fellowship which he
gladly accepted. To quote from Kaiser’s book: “he led ‘a somewhat schizophrenic
life’ in Santa Cruz: hard-working quantum physicist by day, tuned-in hippie by
night.” He was fully immersed in the counterculture including its drug,
communal living and sexual aspects. He also started to explore Eastern
mysticism and while sitting on the beach, possibly under the influence of one
of the psychedelics, he had a powerful life-altering experience. This is how he
described it in his own book:
I was sitting by
the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling
the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole
environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist, I
knew that the sand, rocks, water and air around me were made of vibrating
molecules and atoms, and that these consisted of particles which interacted
with one another by creating and destroying other particles. I knew also the
Earth’s atmosphere was continually bombarded by showers of ‘cosmic rays’,
particles of high energy undergoing multiple collisions as they penetrated the
air. All this was familiar to me from my research in high-energy particle
physics, but until that moment I had only experienced it through graphs,
diagrams and mathematical theories. As I sat on that beach my former
experiences came to life; I ‘saw’ cascades of energy coming down from outer
space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I
‘saw’ the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this
cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I ‘heard’ its sound, and at that
moment I knew that this was the dance
of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers, worshipped by the Hindus.
A pictorial approximation appears in
his book on page 224. When his visa was about to expire in December of 1970 he
returned to Europe but without having any job prospect. At London’s Imperial
College he did obtain some small office space with a desk, but no position and
no income. Finances became increasingly problematic and he began to entertain
the thought of writing a textbook of quantum physics. It would provide some
income but more importantly land some paying job at a university. With an
outline in hand he contacted Victor Weisskopf, a fellow Viennese highly
respected physics professor at MIT, whom he had earlier met, for advice.
Several letters ensued and although Weisskopf liked Capra’s writing style he
was pessimistic in regard to any financial reward. But life is unpredictable
and Capra received, at that point, an invitation to return to California where
his former Santa Cruz advisor encouraged him to combine his interest in
subatomic physics with Eastern mysticism in a book for the general public.
Capra got to work and added the chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen
to the already existing ones on physics. There were the usual rejections but
when it was accepted by a small British publisher he contacted Shambala Press
(located in Berkeley), which publishes books on Far Eastern mysticism, for a US
edition. The Tao of Physics appeared
simultaneously in the two countries and Capra’s financial worries were
immediately solved.
I shall leave Capra for now and turn
to Kaiser because, as mentioned, he provides an excellent background to the
culture from which the American “new physics” arose. During WWII physicists had
hit a bonanza of which the Manhattan project, devoted to the A bomb, was just
one aspect. After the war the “military-industrial complex,” which also included
the CIA, funded physics departments all over the country and the emphasis was
on potential practical applications rather than theoretical speculations in
regard to what it all might mean. When some youngster was not satisfied with
that, he was told in Kaiser’s words: “shut up and calculate!” This attitude
prevailed throughout the forties to the early sixties. But with the Cold War
winding down somewhat funds became scarce again, the
need for meaning re-asserted itself and found fuel in the mentioned California
Hippie movement.
Berkeley became the center for the
“search for meaning” which resulted in the confluence of QM interpretations
with mysticism as well as psi. This, of course, does not deny that extremely
valuable practical scientific work went on in parallel. I am merely emphasizing
the esoteric aspects to show where and how this school of thought originated.
In this connection Kaiser’s chapter 4 “From ψ to psi” is highly relevant.
It is prefaced by Jack Sarffati’s (a member of the Fysiks group) statement,
In my opinion,
the quantum principle involves mind in an essential way […such that] the
structure of matter may not be independent of consciousness! … Some component
of the quantum probability involves the turbulent, creative sublayer of ideas
in the mind of the ‘participator.’
The word “participator” rather than
“observer” was chosen because some QM experimental results were interpreted as
the observer having actually influenced the result through the mere act of
observation. In QM there is nothing tangible, there are only shifting patterns
with changing probabilities and it is assumed that the observer is part of the
induced changes. I am saying assumed because, although this is part of the classical
Copenhagen (Bohr/Heisenberg) interpretation of the phenomenon, it is not
universally accepted by QM physicists.
“Observer” was changed to “Participator” by
John Wheeler, a prominent physics professor at Princeton University, who had
collaborated with Bohr as well as Einstein. He was known for creating neologisms
of which “black hole,” “quantum foam” and “wormhole,” are some examples. He
also worked on achieving Einstein’s unified field theory and had little use for
parapsychology. He wanted the American Association for the Advancement of
Science to expel the Parapsychology Society from its ranks but did not succeed
in that endeavor. Yet, as Kaiser wrote, he “had grand ambitions for these
‘participators.’ Not only did they fix reality in the here and now, they could
even do so retrospectively.” Wheeler proposed an experiment to prove this point
but it is too complex to be adequately summarized and apparently has never been
carried out.
While Wheeler shunned parapsychology,
the CIA was interested because of an assumed telepathy and telekinesis gap
between us and the Soviets. If we could read their minds, and see their secret
installations without the use of aerial photography, that would have been a
real breakthrough. In the May 1 installment (EEG and Parapsychology) I had
mentioned the work of Puthoff and Targ in relation to the EEG, Uri Geller’s
feats and remote viewing. Kaiser provides information on the physics background
of these investigators, its CIA funding and that the remote viewing experiment
could not be replicated. The statistical results were at chance level but there
was one instance where the “remote viewer” apparently accurately described a
scene which took place the following day
in that location. If this had indeed been the case it would be of major
importance because not only does it suggest precognition, but also points to a gap
in QM theory. Since QM in its current incarnation (I use the term advisedly
because it is human beings who invented the math, perform the experiments and
interpret their results) exclusively deals with statistical probabilities, individual
events which deviate from expected group behavior are not accounted for.
Kumar’s book, originally published in
a hardcover edition in 2008 and paperback in 2011, gives us an up-to date overview
of the debate among physicists on fundamental points of data interpretation.
The Copenhagen School maintains that subatomic reality consists of waves and
particles in a state of superposition which “collapses” into either wave or
particle upon observation. A particle has momentum and position but only one
can be measured at a given time (the uncertainty principle). When a particle
collides with another the two become correlated in regard to spin direction or
polarity, regardless of separation over time and distance. Nothing exists in
reality until it is observed and, as mentioned above, the observer additionally
influences the observed result.
Einstein
vigorously disagreed and Kumar wrote in the Prologue: “Einstein said years
later that ‘this theory reminds me a little of the system of delusion of an
exceedingly intelligent paranoic, concocted of
incoherent elements of thought.’” According to Einstein “physics should
represent reality in time and space free from spooky action at a distance.” It
would take us too far afield to go into the details and I shall limit myself to
showing how “entanglement” as well as “Schrödinger’s cat” (July 1, 2009; Faith
and Science) were born. This information comes from a series of letters between
Einstein and Schrödinger in relation to a “thought experiment” which Einstein
in collaboration with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen had published in 1935. This
publication, which elicited vigorous debate, has subsequently been referred to
as the EPR paper. It demonstrated to the satisfaction of the authors that the
Copenhagen interpretation failed to account for “hidden variables” and was,
therefore, incomplete.
Schrödinger, the author of the wave
function which later earned him a Nobel Prize, agreed with Einstein and in the
mentioned interchange of letters Einstein suggested,
Imagine two
closed boxes, one of which contains a ball. Opening the lid of a box and
looking inside is ‘making an observation.’ Prior to looking inside the first
box, the probability that it contains the ball is ½, in other words there is a
fifty per cent chance that the ball is inside the box. After the box is opened,
there is either a probability of 1 (the ball is in the box) or 0 (the ball is
not in the box). But, says Einstein, in reality the ball was always in one of
the two boxes. So, he asks, is the statement ‘The probability is ½ that the
ball is in the first box ‘a complete description of reality? If no, then a
complete description would be, ‘The ball is or is not in the first box.’
Einstein, in a subsequent letter, substituted
for the boxes “a keg of unstable gunpowder that spontaneously combusts at some
time during the next year. At the beginning the wave function describes a
well-defined state – a keg of unexploded gunpowder. But after a year the wave
function describes a sort of not-yet and of already exploded systems. ‘Through
no art of interpretation can this wave function be turned into an adequate
description of a real state of affairs … in reality there is just no
intermediary between exploded and not exploded.’” Schrödinger substituted for
the keg of gunpowder a steel cage which contained: a tiny amount of a radioactive
substance, “’so small that perhaps in
the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also with equal
probability, perhaps none.’” At the first moment of decay it hits a hammer
which shatters a cyanide vial releasing its content and the resident cat in the
box dies. According to the Copenhagen interpretation the cat exists during this
hour in a state of superposition where it is both dead and alive until the box
is opened at which time its “real” state is determined.
These
thought experiments were intended to show the limits of the Copenhagen
interpretation but they also added another word to our vocabulary. Inasmuch as two
particles, once they have collided, share certain properties Schrödinger used
the term Verschränkung, in his
conversations with Einstein to point out their connection. He subsequently translated
it into English as “entanglement.” Yet the German verb verschränken, from which the noun is derived, encapsulates not only
limit but also opposite directionality which is missing in English. The
simplest way to explain this is when you cross your arms. They overlay each
other from two different directions. The same occurs at some railroad-crossings
“Bahnschranken,” where the barrier
posts descend from opposite sides of the road. In this way the German word
includes the notion of electron spin which the word entanglement does not.
The above mentioned Einstein/ Schrödinger
thought experiments highlight the fundamental question: is probability the
exclusive way in which everything in the universe operates? In other words, is
there only a “maybe” in this world, or does “either-or/yes-no” have at least an
equal place? That the latter is obviously the case is proven by computer
technology where a “bit” of information is designated as either 0 or 1. The
problem resides in the fact that in order to make mathematical equations
meaningful for others we have to use everyday words as metaphors rather than for
what they commonly mean. For instance how can a wave be simultaneously a
particle? Capra explained,
This state of
affairs is bound to be paradoxical as long as we adopt the static view of
composite ‘objects’ consisting of ‘basic building blocks.’ Only when the
dynamic, relativistic view is adopted does the paradox disappear. The particles
are then seen as dynamic patterns, or processes, which involve a certain amount
of energy appearing to us as their mass. In a collision process, the energy of
the two colliding particles is redistributed to form a new pattern, and if it
has been increased by a sufficient amount of kinetic energy, this new pattern
may involve additional particles.
The same applies to the “wave,” or more
precisely speaking the “wave function.” Kumar wrote: “The wave function itself
has no physical reality; it exists in the mysterious, ghost-like realm of the
possible. It deals with abstract possibilities, like all the angles by which an
electron could be scattered following a collision with an atom.” At this point
we should note that the symbol Erwin Schrödinger used for the wave function was
ψ, which has subsequently been appropriated by parapsychologists for their
work. But what does all of this mean? In 1926 a little ditty appeared which
asked this question:
Erwin with his psi can do
Calculations quite a few,
But one thing has not been seen:
Just what does psi really
mean?
In 1999 a poll was conducted among 90
physicists who had attended a conference on quantum physics at Cambridge
University. Only four voted for the Copenhagen interpretation, 30 for a “many
worlds” explanation, while 50 chose the box which said “none of the above or
undecided.” In 2013 the situation is no better, as the June issue of the Scientific American testifies to. It contains
an article on “Quantum Weirdness? – It’s all in your Mind” by Hans Christian
von Baeyer, an emeritus particle physics professor. It focusses on the “probability”
aspect and points out that the Bayesian model – probability based on belief of
what is likely to occur – might be better suited to explain QM than the
commonly used model which is based on the expected frequency of occurrence of a
given event. The article also lists the pros and cons of the current
explanations.
As I have repeatedly mentioned in this
essay, when one deals with abstract concepts the correct choice of words is
important. We have to define what we are talking about or we will be talking at but not with each other. I shall, therefore, now provide my own definitions
of QM and consciousness. QM could be defined as, “A set of mathematical
equations, which has been remarkably successful in technological applications.
But when expressed in everyday language, difficulties arise in regard to the
interpretation of experimental results and most of all, to its meaning for our
understanding of the world we live in.” For consciousness I would suggest,
“Human consciousness is a process resulting from internal and external
sensations and consists of an emotional as well as intellectual component.”
Although it may seem redundant, I have added “human” to emphasize that this is
what we commonly mean by consciousness. If we were to meet an alien we would
still be limited in our understanding of that life form by our biologic
heritage and socially acquired biases. If a rock were to be conscious I have no
idea how I could communicate with it. But whatever communication might
conceivably happen it would still be my concept of what the rock experiences.
Furthermore, the definition emphasizes process
as the important aspect of the concept. Since we never see the actual
processes, which constantly go on in and around us, we describe and judge results. This is not commonly realized
but probably the essence of what Whitehead has tried to tell us. I am saying
“probably” because I still have not mustered the time and energy to study his
magnum opus Process and Reality. I
have used the word “study” advisedly because each sentence in the book has to
be thought about and one can’t just “read” it.
As I understand it, the link between QM
with consciousness resides in non-locality and entanglement. QM in its
classical interpretation posits that when a particle collides with another it
imparts “information” on it which then controls the latter’s behavior
regardless of distance or time. To put it crudely: particle A tells particle B
from now on you do what I say, particle B complies. But one of the facts is
that nobody has seen a particle and its travels across time and space. It
exists only as a pattern which appears in one spot and immediately pops up at
another. This discontinuity does indeed have some analogy to our thought
processes, which I shall discuss in some detail on another occasion, but it does
not necessarily lend itself to the conclusion that our personal consciousness
lives forever.
Dr. Pim van Lommel, whose book I have
previously mentioned (March 1, 2013; NDE’s, Cosmic Consciousness and Buddha),
has sent me a copy of his recent article “Non-local Consciousness – A concept
based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences during Cardiac Arrest.”
The first sentence of the final paragraph states: “It often takes an NDE to get
people to think about the possibility of experiencing consciousness
independently of the body and to realize that presumably consciousness always
has been and always will be, that everything and everybody is connected, that
all of our thoughts will exist forever, and that death as such does not exist.”
This is obviously somewhat lengthy and although Dr. van Lommel holds it out as
a possibility others may readily jump to the end where “death as such [italics are mine because I
don’t know what this qualification means] does not exist.”
Let us now think somewhat more about
this statement, as well as similar others which try to reassure us that our
consciousness will survive physical death. These are, of course, statements of
faith because even if NDEs are indeed the mental accompaniments of the
beginning dying process, we have no idea what happens to consciousness
thereafter when the brain and body have decomposed and the remains disposed of.
What type of consciousness will remain? Our personality with the attributes it
has acquired during life? But this is a static concept which defies what we
know about the universe and its functions including QM. As far as we know there
is only constant flux and interchange of matter and energy. These two aspects
of nature are interdependent. So is it not more likely that even if we conceive
of consciousness as thought patterns, which are or can become independent of
our brain, that they will either disintegrate or form other patterns which our
human thinking cannot even imagine? This is one aspect advocates of eternal
life based on QM seem to ignore. Another aspect is the previously mentioned fact
that QM deals with statistical probabilities of what may happen to groups but
has nothing to say about individuals. Yet it is the individual who wants
his/her life prolonged in eternal bliss. QM is of no help in this respect and a
better course to achieve this goal might be what the gospel song calls “the old
time religion … it was good for our mothers, it was good for our fathers and
it’s good enough for me.”
I believe, therefore, that we are being
led astray by imprecise language and by taking metaphors literally. I further
believe that when dealing with such abstract nouns as “consciousness” we need
to be very careful and specify not only that aspect of it we are talking about
at a given time (e.g. will, memory, sensation, external phenomena etc.), but
also the dimension in which it occurs. This aspect, as well as what we mean by
“reality,” will be discussed next time in the context of John C. Lilly’s
remarkable life and work.
August 1, 2013
PSYCHONAUTS
In last month’s installment I
mentioned that I would discuss what we mean by “reality.” The question is: How
do we differentiate between fantasy, dreams and the “real” world we live and
work in? But before addressing it a relevant event which transpired during the
past month needs to be mentioned.
The Internet version of Esquire featured an article by Luke
Dittrich called The Prophet. It is an important contribution to the ongoing
Eben Alexander saga because it puts his trip to heaven into perspective and
adds important details. The article is based on an initial extensive interview
and a subsequent follow-up, as well as an interview with Dr. Laura Potter, who
was the emergency room physician when Alexander was admitted to Lynchburg
General Hospital, in addition to drawing on some official legal documents. It
details Alexander’s professional career, with its ups and downs, and shows that
his neurosurgical life was in shambles prior to his illness. He faced a $3
million lawsuit for having operated on the wrong cervical vertebrae. Since this
had not happened only once but twice, he had lost his
surgical privileges at the hospital a year earlier. I shall not go into some of
the other points which raise questions about his professional ethics; they can
be read in full at: http://www.esquire.com/features/the-prophet?click=pp.
Friends and supporters of Alexander called the article “a hatchet job” but I
would encourage everyone to read it and form their own opinion on what is
presented.
From a medical point of view, Dr.
Potter’s statements are important. Based on the book, I had previously stated
that he was, upon admission, in status epilepticus, which is accompanied by
coma and necessitated anticonvulsant medications and if refractory, even
anesthesia (February 15, 2013 Proof of Heaven). But this was not the case. Dr.
Potter stated that at the time of admission Alexander was delirious and
thrashing about to an extent that he had to be put immediately under anesthesia
in order to perform the necessary spinal tap, CT scan and the other laboratory
procedures. This point is important because it raises a question about
prognosis. Patients usually recover from delirium, but if there is indeed
spontaneous coma during the first few hours of the illness, as we are led to
believe by the book, a fatal outcome is more likely. Dittrich also asked Dr.
Potter about the “God help me” plea before Alexander completely lost
consciousness. But not only could she not recall such an incident, she said
that it would have been medically impossible because she had intubated him
immediately upon arrival in order to start anesthesia. She also stated that
whenever anesthesia was lightened delirious combative behavior re-emerged. One
may now say: okay, he exaggerated a little. But although Alexander admitted in
the first interview with Dittrich that he had taken some poetic license in the
book, his attitude subsequently hardened and in the second interview he
insisted that every word in the book is true.
Does this matter? Yes it does, because
Dr. Alexander now travels around the country and the world telling a story,
based on subjective reality, major aspects of which are highly questionable. He
could readily resolve this question if he were to adhere to the statement, “I
am still a scientist, I am still a doctor, and as such I have two essential
duties: to honor truth and to help heal.” This could readily be achieved by
opening his medical records dealing with that week for inspection by qualified
physicians. Unless and until he does so it will be impossible for medical
professionals to trust his word. In view of this impasse, and since Alexander
presents a one-sided view of this difficult topic, I have submitted a
manuscript to the Journal for Near-Death Studies (JNDS) with the title: The
Reality of Death Experiences – Three Decades Later.
In the article I compared the state of
NDE interpretations from 1980 to the present and noted that actual progress in
the understanding of the near-death phenomenon has been quite limited. I then
discussed under what circumstances we regard something as “real” as contrasted
with fantasies, dreams, delusions and hallucinations, and ended with
suggestions how genuine scientific advances might be made in this area. I did
deal fairly extensively with the Alexander phenomenon but at the time of
writing had not yet immersed myself into John Lilly’s life and work. But since
one was limited by the journal to about 20 pages it could not have been
adequately discussed anyway.
My information on Lilly comes from
four of his books which I have read, supplemented by information from Wikipedia
which described him as, “physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut,
philosopher and scientist.” I found the term “psychonaut” very appropriate
because in contrast to our astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts who explore
outer space, he devoted himself to inner space. Lilly is important because his
life and work contain many lessons for us personally as well as our society. There
are also some interesting parallels with Alexander. Both were highly
intelligent and held MD degrees, both dealt with the brain in their
professional lives, both had extraordinary experiences and both abandoned their
professional work and devoted themselves to informing the world about what can
be called inner reality. But while Alexander has at this time completely
surrendered to mysticism and regards the brain as irrelevant for “higher
consciousness,” Lilly retained a degree of skepticism at least until 1978 when
his The Scientist – A Metaphysical Autobiography was
published. Yet his major professional scientific work, judging from PubMed
listings, ended in 1968. The CV in the book states that he was a member of the
American Electroencephalographic Society from 1951-1967 which also indicates
that he seems to have lost interest in “hard science” around that time.
The important aspects of his life are
as follows. He was born in 1915 a middle son to Catholic, professionally highly
successful parents; developed a scientific interest in childhood; devoutly
believed in the teachings of the Catholic church; had at age 7 a religious
vision in church; was profoundly disappointed when the nun told him that only saints
have visions; became completely disgusted with the church in early puberty
after a priest in confession had asked him about his sexual habits; went for
his graduate education against the wishes of his father to Cal-Tech rather than
Harvard; to medical school in Dartmouth and Philadelphia; graduated in 1942;
remained on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania till 1956; joined the
NIH as section Chief for “Cortical Integration” with a joint appointment in the
Institute for Neurological Diseases and Blindness as well as the National
Institute for Mental Health from 1953-1958; was in psychoanalytic training from
1949-1957; founded and directed the “Communications Research Institute in St.
Thomas and Miami for work with dolphins in 1959-1968;also helda Research Career Award fellowship from the National Institute of Mental
Health during 1962-1967. From then on he devoted his time to private research
on the exploration of inner space – the mind.
Within this bare-bone outline,
taken from The Scientist, there are
several additional key elements. One of these is what he regarded as his
mission in life which will later be discussed in some detail. The book gives
the impression of ruthless honesty where even some of the most intimate details
of his life are presented for public scrutiny. He avoids criticism by the
method of talking about himself in the third person, a technique he also used
during psychoanalysis, and emphasizes that the book can be read not only as an
autobiographical account but also as science fiction, if the reader so desires.
I shall not go into details here but encourage anyone who is interested in
these aspects not only to obtain this book but also the earlier ones: Programming and Metaprogramming
in the Human Biocomputer (1967) and Center of the Cyclone – Looking into Inner
Space (1972). The Dolphin work is summarized in The Communication between Man and Dolphin – The possibilities of
Talking with Other Species (1978).
His mission in life, as explained
to his analyst, Dr. Robert Waelder, was to conclusively settle the question:
Does the mind result from the activities of the brain or is the brain simply a
tool for the mind? This would be accomplished by implanting tens of thousands,
not readily detectable, electrodes into the brain, for
ethical reasons at first in his own, video record all of his activities over a
certain period of time and after a proper interval stimulate these electrodes
and record what he was doing while the stimuli were delivered. If these two
videos matched, the problem was solved in favor of the brain, if not the mind
would have won. Dr. Waelder just shook his head at this obviously hare-brained
scheme and warned him of the potential consequences not only in regard to his
own health, but also what the government could do with this type of mind
control. Lilly insisted that the electrodes were safe and so were the stimuli
because he had already worked out the method. But even if he had done this
experiment with tens of thousands of electrodes it would have been meaningless
because a) they would not be nearly enough to properly cover all cortical and
subcortical structures and b) who would guarantee that the electrical stimulus
parameters that were to be used would produce the same results as what the
brain’s electrochemistry does on its own.
Nevertheless, Lilly did go ahead
with the implantation work during the fifties in monkeys and produced
scientifically valid data for reward and aversion zones in the brain. It
obviously aroused government interest and when he saw a secret presentation
where a mule, carrying some type of load, had been programmed with his
electrode technique to pursue a direct undeviating line over most difficult
mountain terrain, he realized that this could well be used to transport a nuclear
bomb undetected into some enemy’s territory. Although the cat was now out of
the bag, he stopped further electrical stimulation work, especially since
histological evidence had shown that the technique did in fact leave some minor
damage to the brain’s cellular structures.
During the years he was doing
electrical stimulation studies he had also been engaged not only in official
psychoanalysis, but also in private self-analysis. This was done first in an
isolation tank, where he would float for varying lengths of time deprived of
almost all sensory input, apparently simulating the intrauterine experience.
Subsequently he added LSD for even greater effectiveness in the exploration of
his mind. I don’t know if monkeys were also beneficiaries of LSD but some dolphins
did receive electrical stimulations as well as LSD. The brain was for him a biocomputer and since the dolphins’ brains are at least as
big as ours and they had existed as a species far longer than humans, they were
regarded as perfect models for telling us something about ourselves.
This resulted in the Biocomputer book
which was intended to present the conclusions of his neurological work. When
one omits the computer language one can say: the brain has an inborn set of
structures and functions upon which learning is imposed. This occurs on a
voluntary and involuntary basis through conscious as well as unconscious
processes, which go on throughout the individual’s entire life. Here are his
conclusions in regard to the reality of the isolation tank and LSD experiences,
Experiments in programming in this innermost space [during isolation tank
with or without LSD] showed results quite satisfying to a high degree of
credence in the belief that all experiments in the series showed inner
happenings without needing the
participation of outer causes. The need for the constant use of outer causes was found to be a projected
outward metaprogram to avoid taking personal
responsibility for portions of the contents of his own
mind. His dislike for certain kinds of his own nonsensical programs caused him
to project them and thus avoid admitting they were his [bold print and italics
are in the original].
It is obvious that he was using
third person language as well as psychoanalytic and computer terms so as not to
offend his superiors and thereby endanger his livelihood and reputation. But he
did go further. After providing the scientific explanation of the brain as the
originator of these experiences as the “safe” one, and stating that it neither
validates nor invalidates other viewpoints he wrote,
I wish to
emphasize that there is a necessity not to espouse a truth because it is safe. Being driven to a set of assumptions
because one is afraid of another set and their consequences is the most
passionate and nonobjective kind of philosophy [bold print in original].… Those who must find a communication with other beings in
this kind of experiment will apparently find it. One must be aware that there
are (as in the child) needs within one’s self for finding certain kinds of
phenomena and espousing them as the ultimate truth. Such childlike needs
dictate their own metaprograms. If ever good,
hard-nosed, common sense, unequivocal evidence for the existence of currently
unaccepted assumptions is presented by those who have thoroughly attenuated
their childish needs for particular beliefs, I hope, I am prepared to examine
it dispassionately and thoroughly. The pitfalls of group interlock are quite as
insidious as the pitfalls of one’s own phantasizing.
Group acceptance of undemonstrated theorems and of seductive beliefs adds no
more validity to the theorems and beliefs than one’s own phantasizing
can add.
Lilly then went on to describe
the safeguards individuals who engage in this type of experimentation must use
because serious harm can readily result.
Let us now take a look at his
first LSD experience as described in Center
of the Cyclone. He was no novice in regard to metaphysical events because
his isolation tank experiences had acquainted him with some of the phenomena.
In preparing for the 100 microgram intramuscular injection he had already laid
out the questions he would pursue during “the trip” and an experienced empathic
female guide, who could intervene if the necessity arose, was also present. The
house was in an isolated area and to avoid any contamination by the mores of
civilization both had shed their clothing. One other external component which
deserves mention is that initially a stereo set played Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony. The total event, with some breaks in between when external reality
re-asserted itself, lasted eight hours. “I moved with the music into Heaven. I
saw God on a tall throne as a giant, wise, ancient Man. He was surrounded by
angel choruses, cherubim and seraphim, the saints were moving by his throne in
a stately procession. I was there in Heaven, worshipping God, worshipping the
angels, worshipping the saints in full and complete transport of religious
ecstasy.” His guide later told him that he was kneeling at the time looking
upward towards heaven with his hands in the prayer position. “I then looked
into the mirror at my own face and saw multiple ‘projections’ onto my own
face.” His face morphed into numerous others. Some of them very old, others
from childhood, still others with sickness, as a cripple, his father’s, and
even that of a “hairy anthropoid.” “Since I was on a high I thoroughly enjoyed
this experience and elaborated it further. I didn’t stop to explain to myself
what was happening I watched it happen ….” Eventually he found himself back in
childhood: “being suckled by mother, being back in the uterus, floating in
empty, wonderful, ecstatic space, surrounded by light. I became smaller and
smaller in the uterus, going backwards in time until I was the fertilized egg.
Suddenly I was two. I was in a sperm; I was in an egg. Time reversed and they
suddenly came together. There was a fantastic explosion of joy, of
consummation, as I became one and started through all the embryonic stages.” He
then went on to describe the shock of the birth experience as well as the joy
of the first nursing experience. This description served in 1980 as the base
for the movie “Altered States,” just as some of his cetacean work was used for
“The Day of the Dolphin,” in the 1973 film.
Lilly summarized this and other
sessions from his tank and LSD experiences in the dictum; “What one believes to
be true, either is true or becomes true in one’s mind, within limits to be
determined experimentally and experientially.” Since the event was so joyous he
tried to repeat it fourteen days later but this turned into a “bad trip.” His
professional and personal life situation was difficult and the family was
unhappy. Under LSD he first berated the wife, then himself and simply was at
odds with himself and the world. Since LSD has an additional delayed effect, he
had been careful in his first experiment to have adequate time for adapting
again to what he called “human consensual reality.” But this was not the case
the second time around. He had to fly from California to New York to give a
speech the next day to a scientific society. Then things went from bad to
worse. It is not quite clear what happened after the speech, because he had
amnesia and his accounts differ somewhat. In one he stated that he had passed
out after pushing the elevator button to go back to his room, but in another
version we are told that he had injected himself in his room with what he
thought was an antibiotic, but it was “foam with a detergent.” This created
bubbles in his blood stream some of which lodged in his brain and he was
comatose for several days.
At some point during that time he had
additional transcendental experiences. He stated that it was difficult to put
these into language and since the complete description covers one and one third
book pages I have to abbreviate
… a golden light permeating the whole space everywhere …I am a
single point of consciousness, of feeling, of knowledge. I know that I am. That
is all … no need for a body… just I. … suddenly in the distance two similar
points of consciousness, sources of radiance, of love, of warmth…. They
transmit comforting, reverential, awesome thoughts. I realize that they are
beings far greater than I.… They tell me I can stay in this place,
that I have left my body, but I can return to it if I wish…. They tell
me it is not yet time for me to leave my body permanently.… They give me total
and absolute confidence, total certitude in the truth of my being in that
state. I know with absolute certainty that they exist. I have no doubts…. They
say that they are my guardians, that they have been
with me before at critical times and that in fact they are with me always, but
I am not usually in a state to perceive them…. [He can do so only] when I am
close to the death of the body. In this state, there is no time. There is an
immediate perception of the past, present, and future as if in the present
moment.
Lilly recovered from the illness
but unfortunately he did not provide a date. Nevertheless, by 1968 his frequent
trips into inner space had exacted their price. His day-to-day behavior had
changed. His second marriage ended in divorce, his professional credibility had
suffered and official funding sources had dried up. He then became a full time
psychonaut. In September of 1969 he joined the Palo Alto Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences as well as the Esalen Institute, which is
devoted to personal growth and humanistic alternative education, where he gave
workshops and lectures. While there he also heard about the Instituto de Gnosologia under the direction of
Oscar Ischazo in Arica, Chile. He spent several
months of 1970-1971 in that Institute and was taught how to enter the highest
levels of consciousness called satori in Japan or samadhi
in India. The second half of the Cyclone
book is devoted to these experiences.
While lecturing at Esalen he also
started to experiment with ketamine. Throughout his life Lilly had suffered
from debilitating migraine attacks and during one of the Esalen workshops a
young physician friend suggested that he might try ketamine, a short lasting
anesthetic agent, to get some relief. The effect, which began ten minutes after
injection, was presented in The Scientist
rather than the Cyclone: “Very
rapidly I am floating through space. My pain is moving away from me. I am in a
luminous domain, isolated from the pain.”The effect lasted 20 minutes, the pain returned and he received another
injection.“The pain moves away again. I
become isolated in the luminous space.Something begins to approach me. I see new domains, new spaces. I leave
my body totally and join some Beings far away. The Beings give me instructions.
I am to continue using this chemical agent for educational purposes.”
Since LSD had been banned by the
government, he followed the advice and did so for a thirteen-month period. This
had nearly fatal consequences on two occasions, as well as some psychotic
episodes which necessitated psychiatric hospitalizations. He had become
addicted; gave himself increasingly higher doses and then “decided to live in
the internal reality continuously for an extended period.”This was accomplished by injecting himself
with “50 milligrams of ketamine every hour on the hour, twenty hours a day,
with four hours out for sleep.” He maintained this regimen for three weeks,
living in internal as well as external reality, when a near fatal bicycle
accident put an end to it.
Before addressing the “reality”
of Lilly’s experiences further, a few words are needed in regard to his dolphin
work and on the information the Beings provided. The most important aspect in
regard to the dolphins was Lilly’s insistence that we should not regard them,
as well as other cetaceans and elephants that have highly evolved brains, as
animals to be exploited for our purposes, but as valuable partners in exploring
non-human consciousness. It is inappropriate to try to establish contact with
aliens from outer space unless we have first established effective
communications with highly evolved alien species on our own planet.
As far as the mentioned Beings
are concerned Lilly felt at one point that they are part of what he called the
Earth Coincidence Control Organization (ECCO). The two previously mentioned
guardians report to a third one from a still higher level, who in turn is
responsible to others who were inaccessible to Lilly. These Beings arrange for
what is regarded in our everyday world as coincidental events. But these
occurrences are actually intended to allow the fulfillment of the plan which
has been arranged for that particular individual. Lilly also traveled
throughout the multiverse on different occasions far into the future up to
3001. He brought back two separate versions. One was disastrous for the human
race because solid state intelligences (computers) had eliminated us, while the
other was a happier human race, which had left its current exploitative
behavior behind and existed in harmony with nature.
Most of us will now ask: but what
did he really believe about all of this? His answer would probably have
depended upon the mood he was in.But in
the Introduction to the Cyclone he
wrote,
My skepticism is
intact-please keep yours. Skepticism is a necessary
instrument in the exploration of the unknown. Humor is even more necessary,
especially in regard to our own self and our observations and records. Full
dispassionate detachment implies cosmic comedy with each of us a fun-loving
player. Cosmic love is ruthlessly loving: whether you
like it or not, it teaches you, teases you, plays with you, surprises you.
After the Introduction and prior
to the first chapter of the Cyclone Lilly
wrote,
One’s centered
thinking-feeling-being, one’s own Satoris, are in the
center only, not outside. One’s push-pulled driven states, one’s self-created
hells, are outside the center. In the center of the cyclone one is off the
Wheel of Karma, of life, rising to join the Creators of the Universe, the
Creators of us. Here we find that we have created Them
who are Us.
This echoes the message of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead where during the process of dying, and in the
intermediate state before rebirth, the person is constantly re-assured, that
regardless of what is experienced: Do not fear! Flee not! The visions sounds
and feelings are not real; they are conjured up by “your own consciousness.”
So how is it possible that we
regard the experiences during these states of consciousness as “real,” or “more
real than real,” “ultra-real?” Lilly’s answer, in the Biocomputer book, was, “Because
of the lack of sensory stimuli, and lack of normal inputs into the computer
(lack of energy in the reality program), the space in the computer usually used
for projection of data from the senses (and hence the external world) is
available substitutively for the display of thinking
and feeling.”
I have come to essentially the
same conclusion in the manuscript which is currently under review by JNDS. It
does not refer to Lilly because I had at the time of writing not yet immersed
myself in his books. I shall do so if and when it were
to come back for revisions prior to acceptance for publication. I have,
however, additionally addressed the problem of absence of doubt in some detail,
because it is a crucial part of the metaphysical experience. In my opinion it
results from the temporary inactivation of discriminative thought processes.
These are operative in the eyes open state of consciousness, diminish in the
eyes closed state, and are absent in dreams and other altered states of
consciousness.
I believe that it is unreasonable
to look for absolute, ultimate
reality. Instead we should divide it into external reality, Lilly’s human
consensual reality, and internal reality. The latter can be further subdivided
into the circumstances under which deviations from consensual reality occur.
The same applies for consciousness. We should distinguish between consciousness in the eyes open versus the eyes closed state.
In the latter it may be useful not to think and talk about “levels,” which not
only have a physical meaning but contain value judgments: higher is better,
lower is worse. This is inappropriate and it may be more useful to think and
talk in terms of “states.” This word is more accurate because it is devoid of
such meanings. We can then specify under which circumstances a given state
occurred without prejudging reasons or causes. When talking about higher and
lower there is also the danger which Lilly had pointed out in the Biocomputerbook. Since some of
the experiences are highly pleasurable, they may become “overvalued” and could
begin to dominate the person’s life. He warned of the hedonistic use of
psychoactive agents and insisted that these activities need to be pursued
strictly for self-knowledge. He wrote
As one opens up the depths, it is
wise not to privately or publicly espouse as ultimate any truths one finds
in the following areas: the universe in general, beings not human, thought
transference, life after death, transmigration of souls, racial memories,
species-jumping-thinking, non-physical action at a distance, and so forth. Such
ideas may merely be a reflection of one’s needs in terms of one’s own survival.
Ruthless self-analysis as to one’s needs
for certain kinds of ideas in these areas must be explored honestly and
truthfully. The rewarding- and positively- reinforcing effects of LSD-25 must
be remembered and emphasized: one overvalues the results of one’s chemically
rewarding thinking [italics and bold print in the original].
He then stated that while keeping
the hedonistic danger in mind, these experiences need to be thoroughly
integrated into the human consensual reality of the individual. This takes time
and considerable honest soul-searching, devoid of wishful thinking.
Unfortunately, as Lilly’s life showed, this is an extremely difficult job. He
succumbed during the most important period of one’s professional life (age
40-60)) to the lures of the “altered states” and thereby lost not only
credibility in professional circles, but funding for the “hard science” work
with dolphins. He tried to revive it later, but it was too late, as his website
www.johnclilly.com shows. Updates end
in 2001, the year of his death. Although some of his books are republished and
a John C. Lilly Research Institute exists under the presidency of Philip Hansen
Bailey (but without a website under that name), his work is largely ignored by
writers on the topic. Recently published books, which deal with altered states
of consciousness, do not mention Lilly’s name. Among them are: The Conscious Mind by Chalmers, Irreducible Mind by the Kellys, TheConscious Universe by Dean, Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality
by Nunez, and Theory of Reality by
Wiebers. Even the 856 page Oxford
Companion to the Mind, published in 1987, has nothing to say about his work
and views. It seems that our society demands that one identifies with one
viewpoint on the topic or the other and Lilly was “too far out” even for the supporters
of “higher consciousness.” “Ruthless honesty” is apparently not desired in our
society.
I intend to continue the
discussion of Lilly’s inner sights, especially in regard to the role of
computers and the future of mankind, in a subsequent installment. It will also
provide an answer to the question “what is real,” by the first, historically
documented, psychonaut. But this will have to wait till October because the
September 1 issue has to be devoted to the memory of the 9/11 crime and its
victims, here and abroad. This is also an area where “ruthless honesty” is
clearly lacking, but urgently needed.
September 1, 2013
9/11: CONTEXT AND AFTERMATH
The 12 year anniversary of that
dreadful day is coming up and it is safe to predict that we will be treated to
a number of patriotic speeches which will emphasize the strength and resilience
of the American people in the face of terror. The media will dutifully
extensively report on these happenings, but judging by precedent, they will
also studiously avoid reporting on meetings held by concerned citizens who find
themselves unable to believe the official government version of events. These
will take place in a number of cities around the country, including one in
Virginia, literally overlooking the Pentagon.
The location is symbolic because, as will be
discussed later, the Pentagon attack is a crucial link to understanding what
really happened on 9/11. The government insists that the 19 hijackers under the
command of Osama bin-Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) were the sole
responsible agents for all that happened, and this
version is now enshrined in the “ National September 11 Memorial and Museum” on
the site of the former Twin Towers. Nevertheless, there are several books from
reputable persons which point out that the complexity of the 9/11 events is of
an order of magnitude which is beyond the capability of any outside group such
as al Qaida.
I have previously discussed
Thierry Meyssan’s book 9/11The Big Lie, which
already raised serious questions about the government’s version of the events
in 2002 (The 9/11 Truth Movement, June 1, 2012). His observations were
supported in the following year by Andreas von Bülow,
a former member of the German Bundestag as well as Secretary of Defense and
subsequently for Technology and Research. In Die CIA und der 11. September – Internationaler
Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste,
he pointed out that 9/11 cannot be understood simply as the action of some
fanatic Muslims. Members of various secret service intelligence organizations
must have acted as enablers.
While the official version,
contained in The 9/11 CommissionReport,insisted that the success of the hijackers was due to the government
having failed to “connect the dots,” as a result of interagency rivalries,
Kevin Fenton, who carefully studied all the relevant open source material, came
to a different conclusion. In Disconnecting
the Dots – How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evade government
investigations he pointed out that information, which would have thwarted
the impending hijacking was deliberately, rather than accidentally, withheld
from the FBI and that there was also a disconnect within the FBI between the
field agents and their superiors. He concluded “…there are major flaws in The 9/11 Commission Report, the 9/11
Congressional Inquiry report, the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s
report and the CIA Inspector General’s report. The only way that this issue
will ever be satisfactorily resolved is by a new, credible investigation.” It
needs to be pointed out that these four reports are the only official documents
the government has ever produced to explain the success of the hijack
operations and thereby justified the notion of “intelligence failure.” This was
to have been corrected by the establishment of a new bureaucracy and the
appointment of a National Director of Intelligence.
The idea of “intelligence
failure,” and its remedy, was thoroughly debunked by Paul R. Pillar who had
served for decades in senior government intelligence positions and who is
currently a professor in the Security Studies Program of Georgetown University.
In his book Intelligence and U.S. Foreign
Policy – Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform he made the point that it was not
the intelligence community which failed, but that information was created to
provide the justification for the government’s foreign policy. Although he
concentrated especially on the Iraq invasion, the deliberate deceptions in The 9/11 Commission Report were also
highlighted. The remedy, as far as Pillar is concerned, is not more
bureaucracy, but government policies need to change. Currently foreign policy
is politicized and “The narrow focus toward reform–extremely narrow in the case
of fixation on the intelligence community’s organization chart–has missed most
of the images that shape policy and most of the reasons those images are often
flawed.” These images are provided via “think tanks” to the media, and are in
essence nothing else but propaganda efforts by groups to get their agenda
enacted.
The most glaring example of
manufacturing “intelligence” was the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the
Pentagon. It existed officially from September 2002 to June 2003 and was
created by then Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and headed by Douglas Feith. Its purpose was to provide links of Saddam Hussein
to 9/11 and thereby a pretext for the Iraq invasion which the official
intelligence community failed to come up with. The operation was “Top secret”
and Feith reported directly to “Scooter” Libby in
Vice-President Cheney’s office.
A small group of neoconservative
Zionists needed the elimination of Saddam Hussein as Israel’s most dangerous
enemy. Intelligence, from unreliable sources, including Ahmed Chalabi (The Niger Forgery, August 1, 2003), was slanted
and presented to Cheney to provide the needed pretext for the Iraq invasion.
Everybody in the intelligence community knew that Saddam had nothing to do with
9/11 but the American people had to be made to believe otherwise for the war to
occur. The fact that this unprovoked aggression was a crime under international
law, ever since the Nuremberg trials, did not matter.Details can be found in Seymour Hersh’sNew Yorker
article, “The Stovepipe” http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/27/031027fa_factand James Bamford’sA Pretext for War – 9/11, Iraq, and the
Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies.
It is, therefore, obvious that if
we want to understand 9/11 we cannot simply focus on bin-Laden and Muslim
fanatics but we also have to study the perceived needs of the Israeli
government and the political forces which drive its leadership. Since this is
what has been called “the third rail” of American politics, which must not be
touched, and which receives practically no media attention, one has to be very
careful not only in one’s choice of words but also in presenting whatever facts
are available. One fundamental fact is that the establishment of the State of
Israel in 1948 has profoundly changed the power constellation in the Middle
East. Herzl, its ideological founding father, knew that a Jewish state could
not exist in the Muslim world without the backing of a foreign power. He had
initially hoped that it would be Germany, but during WWI Zionists settled for
the U.K. When the Brits had second thoughts about the wisdom of the enterprise
they were made to yield through terror tactics (Bowyer Bell Terror out of Zion – The Fight for Israeli
Independence), and the patronage was bestowed on America. President Truman
was the first to recognize the country and by small steps Israel advanced from
a friendly state, which could still be made to accede to America’s wishes by
Eisenhower, to our most important ally in the region whose foreign policy goals
have now become identified with ours.
The Ben-Gurion government, as
well as all subsequent ones, never defined Israel’s borders and never produced
a codified Constitution which would ensure equal rights to religious and ethnic
minorities. The wars of independence from 1947-1949 created the Naqba, the
forcible expulsion of Arabs from their homes and confiscation of their
property, with the resulting Palestinian refugee problem. From the Zionist
point of view which desired, and to some extent still desires, a Greater Israel
on both sides of the Jordan, the absence of internationally accepted borders,
of a codified Constitution and expulsion of Arabs was, of course, a means to an
end and these fundamental factors are still operative today. The assumption was
and still is that Palestinians, who have no power, are irrelevant.
Palestinians on the other hand
didn’t see it this way. After the 1967 war the West Bank and East Jerusalem
were de facto annexed by Israel, and when King Hussein of Jordan declared
himself uninterested in the West Bank, its Muslim and Christian inhabitants
became stateless. Since the rest of the world likewise did not care about the
Palestinians’ problem some of them resorted to the only means available to
attract attention – terrorism. There was the Israeli athletes’ hostage taking
and their subsequent murder during the failed rescue attempt at the Munich
Olympics. This was followed by several plane hijackings with the most
spectacular one of Air France 139, which resulted in the raid on Entebbe
airport. It led to the death of its Israeli commander, Jonathan Netanyahu, the
brother of the current Prime Minister. In his memory the Netanyahu family
founded the Jonathan Institute which from July 2-5, 1979 sponsored a
“Conference on International Terrorism,” at the Jerusalem Hilton Hotel. It was
the blueprint for what became America’s “War on Terrorism” after 9/11.
The Conference proceedings were
published by Benjamin Netanyahu in 1981 under the title International Terrorism – Challenges and Response. I strongly
recommend to readers of this article that they study this important document.
It is readily available on Amazon.com and lays out the strategy which the world
community was urged to employ to meet a supposed universal threat. The language
of the Israeli participants, largely echoed by other speakers, became that of
President George W. Bush on the evening of September 11, 2001 when he declared
that we shall make no difference between terrorists and states that harbor
them. The underlying theme of the Conference organizers and their like-minded
participants was: Terrorists, of whatever stripe, but especially the Soviet
Union and the PLO, have declared war on all democracies and it therefore
behooves the world to act in unison in the defense of the free world. The
Conference’s goal was a call to arms. “There is no room for compromise. If free
society does not awaken to the danger, that danger will threaten its very
existence.” “Our main problem: The climate of Appeasement” was the title of
Lord Chalfont’s presentation. In it he chastised journalists who did not refer
to terrorists by that name and regarded it as Orwellian “newspeak” when they
were referred to as “commandos, urban guerillas, or even ‘freedom fighters.’”
He also urged that “the democratic countries of the world must act with great
deal more courage, resolution, and even
ruthlessness [emphasis added], than they have shown in the past.” It was a
call to war with only a few dissenting voices from Europe and Canada who
insisted that these acts need to be regarded as crimes.
The irony that some of the Israeli
participants had officially been labeled terrorists by the British prior to
1948 seems to have eluded the attendees. For instance when then Prime Minister
Begin talked about “Freedom Fighters and Terrorists” he excused the tactics
which created the state of Israel with the statement that it was a “… fight for
physical survival. That was the fight we, the Jews, conducted in the country
historically known as Eretz Israel or the land of
Israel since the days of the Prophet Samuel.” That the area was known as
Palestine for the past 2000 years was not to be remembered.
The conference proceedings are a
superb example of propaganda which eventually bore fruit. When the Soviet Union
collapsed, the war advocates immediately shifted their attention to the Arab states
in the Middle East. In 1996 a group of neoconservative American Zionists
prepared a position paper for the newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” I
have brieflymentioned it in the April 1, 2003 article (The
Neocons’ Leviathan) and pointed out that not only did it urge the abrogation of
the Oslo accords but also pushed for regime change in Iraq, Syria and Iran as
well as a missile defense system. Furthermore,
To
anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those
reactions,Prime Minister
Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language
familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations
during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain
propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time would
be before November 1996 [U.S. presidential elections].
The
chief architect was Richard Perle who after 9/11
became one of the driving forces for the war against Iraq and among the
co-signers was the already mentioned Douglas Feith. http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm.
Their efforts did not stop with
advice to Netanyahu. The same group, on an enlarged basis, created a think tank
in 1997 under the name “Project for the New American Century [PNAC],” which
urged increased military spending to make the U.S. the unrivaled global power
for the 21st century. Any perceived threat should be met in a
“preemptive manner” by overwhelming military force, with allies when available
without them when not, and democracy was to be spread throughout the world.
(December 1, 2005 (Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples).
In September 2000 PNAC published an extensive Position paper, “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.” It outlined in detail what military and political steps
the U.S. should take in order to enact the 1997 recommendations and also
pointed out that the suggested “transformation strategy” should be carried out
“in a manner so as not to unduly alarm America’s allies.” “Further, the process
of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a
long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl
Harbor.”http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.
These ideas found no fertile
ground in the Clinton administration but with the appointment of President Bush
by the Supreme Court the entire neocon group became the dominant voice. Some of
the signatories of the 1997 document like: Elliott Abrams, PaulWolfowitz,
Dick Cheney, ZalmayKhalizad,
I. Lewis Libby and Donald Rumsfeld moved into government positions, while
others lent a helping hand with the media. It, therefore, should surprise no
one that the positions advocated by this group became official policy as the
“Bush doctrine” on the very day of 9/11 and the catastrophe was promptly called
the “New Pearl Harbor.”
Although there have always been
lingering doubts about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor having been entirely
unforeseen, the majority of Americans still believe that it was an unprovoked
surprise attack. But Robert Stinnett has recently done his best to put this
myth to rest in Day of Deceit – The Truth
about FDR and Pearl Harbor, which was published in 2000. His diligent
search of documents, aided by the Freedom of Information Act, produced a key
position paper by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, dated October 7, 1940,
which detailed a proposed American Strategy towards Japan. The main aspects
were: Japan was to be deprived of all natural resources, not only by the U.S.
but also the U.K. and the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). China’s Chiang
Kai-shek was to be logistically supported in his war against Japan, heavy
cruisers and submarines were to be deployed in the Orient and the Pacific fleet
was to be kept permanently in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. Since Japan
has no natural resources of its own it was felt that the economic measures
would force it to go to war.
The memorandum was immediately
sent to President Roosevelt, who over the coming year implemented all of its
measures. Keeping the fleet in Hawaii was bitterly opposed by the Navy because
its exposed position was regarded as dangerous and Admiral James O. Richardson
urged it be returned to its home port in San Diego. He was overruled by FDR,
relieved of his command, and replaced by Rear Admiral Husband S. Kimmel who
also was promoted to full admiral. Roosevelt knew that sooner or later America
would have to join the British in their fight against Hitler, but the country
was vigorously opposed to entering the war. This is why the Japanese strategy
was employed as a “backdoor” approach. Japan had to be maneuvered into firing
the first shot. The attack did not come as a surprise to the Roosevelt
administration because the U.S. had broken not only Japan’s diplomatic code but
also that used by the navy. FDR was at all times fully aware of Japan’s
activities. By November 1941 it was obvious that war was imminent but Admiral
Kimmel and General Short, who were in charge of the defense of Pearl Harbor,
were not included in the distribution of critical information. The fleet was
sacrificed for the greater good: the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan.
Stinnet concludes the
book by stating that the moral justification for provoking Japan to go to war
will be argued for years to come, but Roosevelt “must be viewed in the total
context of his administration, not just Pearl Harbor.” In view of the “new
Pearl Harbor” the following sentences deserve to be taken to heart.
The real shame
is on the stewards of government who have kept the truth under lock and key for
fifty years. It may have been necessary for wartime security to withhold the
truth about Pearl Harbor until the war ended, but to do so for more than half a
century grossly distorted the world’s view of American history. … Because they
[cryptographers, interceptors, other military leaders and witnesses] were never
called to testify for their country, we have been denied a full account of what
happened from their perspective.
It is, therefore, clear that the
American people have been deceived for decades about the full truth of December
7, 1941 and it is equally clear that we have not been told the full truth about
September 11, 2001. I can say this with confidence because the Bush
administration, instead of immediately calling for a full inquiry into this
massive crime, first obstructed the Joint Inquiry by the Senate and House
Intelligence Committees, and subsequently the establishment as well as the work
of The 9/11 Commission (The 9/11
Cover-up, October 1, 2006). There has never been a full and impartial
investigation and those members of our society who call for it are maligned as
conspiracy theorists, and whistleblowers are persecuted. This bodes ill for the
future of our country.
While one can understand the government’s
motive to shield itself, it is more difficult to fathom why some obviously
intelligent and thoughtful British writers would pour scorn on those who regard
the government’s explanations as inadequate. Summers and Swan have recently
published a magisterial tome of over 500 pages The Eleventh Day – The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin-Laden
which, although faulting the Bush administration for having hidden the
potential culpability of the Saudi and Pakistani secret services, gives full
credence to the explanation of the destruction of the WTC, the damage to the
Pentagon, and the fate of UA93. When one studies this book it becomes obvious
that selective reading was involved in its genesis and that in some instances
the wish to exonerate the Bush administration overcame reason. One example is
the treatment of the attack on the Pentagon. The authors document that Hani Hanjour, the purported hijacker of AA77 which was supposed
to have inflicted the damage, was a terrible pilot. But on the same page he is credited
with having performed a manoeuver which military pilots stated they could not
have performed (see Pilots for 9/11 Truth). Although Barbara Honegger, a former
senior Military Affairs Journalist with the Naval Postgraduate School, has
spent years on elucidating what happened at the Pentagon her work was not
mentioned and the name appears only in an endnote as one of reputable persons
who take issue with the government’s account in regard to the WTC.
The Pentagon attack has always
taken a back seat in favor of the dramatic Twin Towers destruction but as Ms.
Honegger points out it was the crucial aspect needed to turn a crime into a
war. A destruction of private property, regardless of scale, might not have
been sufficient but an attack on the country’s foremost military installation
surely was. This was the second Pearl Harbor!
I have previously discussed why
the government’s explanation is untenable (The 9/11 Cover-Up, October 1, 2006;
9/11 Remembered, October 1, 2011; The 9/11 Truth Movement, June 1 2012; The “Truthers,” July 1, 2012; Attempts at Raising 9/11
Awareness, August 1, 2012; The Vancouver 9/11 Hearings, September 1, 2012) and
will, therefore, add only a few examples of misleading information by Summers
and Swan. The authors mention that April Gallop, an Army information management
specialist, had brought her baby boy to work because the baby-sitter was sick
and that “After the plane hit, and waist deep in debris, she was horrified to
see that the infant’s stroller was on fire–and empty. She found the baby,
however, curled up in the wreckage and virtually unscathed, and both were
rescued.”
Honegger had interviewed Gallop,
who under oath provided a different version. Gallop stated that when she turned
on her computer, rather than “after the plane hit,” a massive explosion
occurred. Furthermore, she was not in the area of the plane impact but more
than 100 feet to the north, in Wedge 2. She also smelled cordite and thought
that a bomb had gone off. “Being in the Army with the training I had, I know
what a bomb sounds and acts like, especially the
aftermath, and it sounded and acted like a bomb…. There was no plane or plane
parts inside the building, and no smell of jet fuel.” Finally this event did not occur at 9:37,
which is the official time for the plane impact, but Gallop’s wristwatch had
stopped at 9:30 or just thereafter. That a major destructive event had occurred
between 9:31 and 9:32 is also apparent from the stopped clock on the heliport
firehouse, as well as an additional one from inside the Pentagon. Since these
early times are indisputable, the 9:37 plane impact could not have been the
only event.
Summers and Swan must have known
this but they failed to report on it in their “FullStory.” They also knew about Meyssan’s book but did not mention that he had quoted an
important CNN interview on September 15, 2001 with Egypt’s then President
Mubarak.
You remember
Oklahoma… there came rumors immediately that the Arabs did it, and it was not
Arabs, who knows… let us wait and see what is the result of the investigations,
because something like this not an easy thing for some pilots who had been training
in Florida, so many pilots go and train just to fly and have a license, that
means you are capable to do such terrorist action? I am speaking as a former
pilot, I know that very well, I flew very heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think
we should not jump to conclusions for now.
Although
Summers and Swan had mentioned Mubarak on several occasions
in regard to pre 9/11 intelligence reports, the omission of this interview
practically amounts to deception. The authors also used the tactic employed
earlier in The 9/11 Commission Report of putting
material which does not quite fit the version to be propagated, into the
endnotes where readers usually don’t look. As all of us know the anticipated
investigation Mubarak alluded to never took place.
As far as the Pentagon is
concerned other eyewitnesses also stated that bombs had gone off at different
times in various sections of the building including the innermost A and B rings
which are far distant from the supposed “exit hole” in the C ring. High level
military officers likewise stated that they had smelled cordite rather than jet
fuel. In addition one needs to know that the section of the Pentagon, which the
government states was hit from the outside, had recently been reinforced to
withstand such terrorist attacks. It was used by military intelligence
personnel who were trying to track $ 2.3 trillion
which Secretary Rumsfeld had declared as missing only the previous day,
September 10. Important financial records also disappeared in the destruction
of the Twin Towers and WTC7 which included offices of the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC). Crucial records for uncovering illegal financial
operations were thereby lost. None of this critical information is mentioned in
official reports or in Summers and Swan’s book. An
extensive exposition of Honegger’s work exists on a DVD “Behind the Smoke Curtain
– What happened at The Pentagon on 9/11, and What Didn’t, and Why it Matters,”
which can also be seen on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fvJ8nFa5Qk
and a summary is available in The 9/11
Toronto Report.
I have previously discussed the
Toronto 9/11 Hearings (Attempts at Raising 9/11 Awareness, August 1, 21012),
which were held from September 8-11, 2011 at Ryerson University, and the
Proceedings are now available Amazon.com in the above mentioned Report. This book is currently the best
account of the numerous questions the 9/11 Commission has left us with and it
deserves the widest circulation. It also includes the comments by the four
panelists who assessed whether or not the various speakers had indeed shown
that a prima facie case exists, which demands a full inquiry by a duly
constituted legal body with subpoena powers. Although one panelist felt that
not enough evidence in favor of the government’s view had been presented, what
was shown did create serious doubts in regard to the veracity of the
government’s explanation. It was agreed that a crime had been committed which
has never been properly investigated. As Italy’s former Supreme Court Justice, FerdinandoImposito, stated
In case of inert
behavior of the State, which has the duty to punish the culprits, it is
possible to access the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction
complementary to national criminal prosecutions. In 9/11, we have 1) Crimes
against humanity committed as part of the widespread attack directed against
the USA and civilians of other States; and 2) The case has not been
investigated or prosecuted in the USA or any other country that has
jurisdiction over it. The only possibility to have justice is to submit the
best evidence concerning the involvement in 9/11 of specific individuals to the
ICC [International Criminal Court] Prosecutor and ask him to investigate ….
Judge
Imposito then listed the relevant statutes under
which this could be done. If one were now to object that Osama bin-Laden was
the guilty party and by killing him “justice was served,” as President Obama
declared, we have to answer that civilized societies do not execute their
adversaries without a proper trial. The same applies to KSM who likewise never
had a public trial in criminal court. He is still in Guantanamo under military
detention and the full transcript of a trial has never been made public. Since
his “confession,” not only for 9/11 but a whole host of other terrorist acts, had
been elicited by torture it would not be admissible in a public criminal court
of law.
Inasmuch as the U.S. is not a
signatory to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court it could
ignore its proceedings, if the case were ever brought before it. Nevertheless,
indictments would send a powerful message that U.S. citizens, regardless of
their status, are not above the law of civilized countries and their conduct
can be censured. Why is this important? The “new Pearl Harbor” succeeded in
promoting the goals of a small fraction of neoconservative Zionists. Israeli
security has become fully identified with American security and attacks against
Israel have become attacks against America. The Netanyahu sponsored 1979
conference goals were achieved via 9/11. Since “Pearl Harbor” appears to have
worked twice for a powerful insider group, if we do nothing now a third one is
virtually guaranteed.
While the role of some members of
government members in the perpetration of 9/11 remains unclear, that an ongoing
cover-up exists is obvious. We must remember Watergate. It was not necessarily
the burglary which cost Nixon the presidency, but the subsequent cover-up. “I
am not a crook” he told us on TV because “when the president does it, it’s
legal.” This holds for authoritarian states but cannot be condoned in a
republic. Covering up malfeasance is a crime and this crime also needs to be
investigated by a special prosecutor.
Unless our country comes to grips with
these fundamental aspects of 9/11 we will go from war to war and disaster to
disaster. This is also exemplified by the current drive to “punish Syria.” The
planned military action makes no sense from an American point of view, but the
destruction of the Syria-Iran axis has been a long standing goal of Israel, as
documented by Israel Shahak in his book Open
Secrets – Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, which was in part discussed
on August 15, 2002 (The Impending War with Iran). Only when we begin to listen
to authentic Israeli voices who disagree with their government’s policies and
those of America’s neoconservative Zionists will there be a possibility for a
more peaceful future.
The War on Terror and “national
security” will continue to be the pretext for increased secrecy and erosion of
civil liberties. This is why the people of our country have to rise from their
lethargy and demand government accountability. We need an international
impartial investigation of all the 9/11 events and a special prosecutor who
deals with the subsequent cover-up. This is the only way to save our democracy
and regain the trust of the world.
September 29, 2013
SYRIA – IRAN AND THE USA
For personal reasons this installment is written a few days earlier than usual but I do not expect any major events to occur over the weekend which would invalidate its contents.
The last part of August and the month of September were again filled with events for history books and thus displaced 9/11 memorials from the headlines. Their nature and consequences will be debated for decades to come. During the night and early morning of August 21 rockets containing Sarin gas, were unleashed on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. According to our government 1429 persons were killed including more than 400 children. Syria’s President Bashar al Assad was immediately made personally responsible for this atrocity and contingents of our fleet were ordered to move towards the Syrian coast as well as the Red Sea. Assad was to be “punished” by a barrage of tomahawk missiles. This measure was, according to our government, intended to degrade his capacity to continue the civil war and bring him to the negotiating table. President Obama assured us, however, that our ground troops would not be used in an invasion of Syria. Last year our president told us that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line,” which if it were crossed by the Syrian government, would bring about immediate counteraction. Now the time had come to show that this was not an idle threat.
Although it was “full steam ahead” for the administration, the country was clearly in no mood for another slide into war because the Iraq adventure with its still uncertain outcome was clearly on everybody’s mind. For some unexplained reason Obama then reconsidered and thought that before sending missiles into Syria it would be better to have approval by Congress. He would not have needed to do so because previous presidents, including Clinton, have readily sent cruise missiles into other countries without asking Congress. Nevertheless, he probably felt that it was better to err on the side of caution and, I am guessing now, in his heart of hearts he really didn’t want to do it anyway. We know that even his good wife, Michelle, was against it and potential domestic discord might also have entered into the decision.
As it turned out Congress was in no mood either to send tomahawks to undefined targets in Syria and the military likewise wasn’t fond of the idea. Obviously, you can’t bomb the chemical weapons depots because they would poison the atmosphere, so what are you going to destroy in this “teaching lesson?” It now looked that Obama might lose this vote of confidence in Congress and he would be worse off than before. In the meantime not only American ships appeared off the coast of Syria but also some from Russia, and even China was interested in observing the show from close-up. A showdown appeared inevitable.
Then the miracle happened. Putin threw Obama a lifeline which he eagerly grabbed. How this happened will probably also be debated for quite some time. The official version was that at a news conference, Secretary of State Kerry, who sounded quite bellicose, was asked what would happen if Assad were willing to surrender his chemical arsenal to international control by the UN? His offhand reply was that under these circumstances we would agree and there would be no missile strikes. Putin immediately endorsed the idea; put his full weight behind it, and for the time being the tomahawks remained securely on America’s offshore fleet.
Kerry and his Russian counterpart then met in Geneva to hammer out an accord which would lead to a resolution by the UN’s Security Council. The talks were complicated because we insisted that any formula which orders Assad to surrender his chemical weapons must include a statement that if he failed to do so military action would follow. The Russians didn’t want to include a threat of force, but remarkably enough a face saving formula was agreed upon which sailed through the Security Council without a hitch on the night of the 27th.
During the month there also was a great deal of activity by leading players for the hearts and minds of people. Assad gave a number of hour-long interviews to French, Russian and American journalists in which he made his views known. The Americans were actually granted two interviews: one by PBS (Public Broadcasting System) with Charlie Rose and one by Fox News where former Congressman Dennis Kucinich participated. The Rose interview was characterized by an aggressive inquisitor who was convinced of Assad’s guilt on all counts, while the Fox News interviewers were more respectful. In all instances Assad kept his emotions under control. He did not rise to Rose’s baits and simply provided his version of the events. He insisted that the attack was perpetrated by rebel forces because he had no reason to resort to chemical weapons since he was already winning the war. He would be happy to put his chemical arsenal under international supervision and let the UN get rid of it. He also stated that the rebel army has been largely taken over by foreign Muslim extremists and the Syrian people, as a result of concessions and amnesties, are rallying to his side. It is up to the international community to get the foreigners out of his country by refusing to pay and supply them with weaponry. Once this has been achieved there will be general elections. Although he will be a candidate he would abide by the will of the voters and step aside if his party were to lose. On one point he was adamant: foreign intervention must stop and it is up to the Syrian people to solve Syrian problems. Furthermore, if there were to be military action by Western powers he could not be held responsible for the consequences. The conflict has become regional in the Mideast and Muslim extremism would be strengthened everywhere. This message was the same in all interviews regardless who he was talking with.
President Putin also did something else which was rather unusual; he wrote an opinion editorial for the New York Times which was quite conciliatory although he did not believe in “American exceptionalism.” This raised the ire of our conservatives, and former presidential candidate Senator John McCain weighed in by sending his editorial to Pravda. In it he lectured the Russian people that they deserve someone better than Putin and the implicit message was that the sooner they get rid of him the sooner they would be in America’s good graces. The editorial was typical for the mindset of a great many of our Republicans, namely that we are ordained by God to impose our will on other nations. It reminded me of a spoof on a Munich beer hall song during the Nazi era: “… und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, dann hau ich dir den Schaedel ein” – and if you don’t want to be my brother then I’ll smash your head to bits.
The Putin attempt to reach the American people was promptly taken up by another one of our “sworn enemies,” the newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who sent a conciliatory opinion editorial to the Washington Post. With Russia and Iran as well Syria appearing reasonable, our hawks immediately rose to the challenge and pointed out that the Assad-Putin-Rouhani trio is hardly trustworthy. They asserted that this charm offensive was simply a trick to let Assad off the hook, and as far as Iran is concerned a play for time while they continued to work on the development of their bomb.
On the morning of the 24th of this month the sun seemed to finally shine on peace after Obama’s speech before the UN General Assembly. CNN assembled its most prominent commentators and it was agreed that peace might be at hand. Later in the day Obama and Rouhani would meet face to face and shake hands. Well, that hope lasted about a couple of hours. Then came the announcement that there wouldn’t be a meeting because the Iranians had placed obstacles in the way. It is axiomatic that the other side always gets the blame but as Reuters, in a more neutral tone, pointed out, the American and Iranian staff members had failed to reach agreement on the meeting. Rouhani afterwards mentioned that this high level meeting would have been too early.
In his speech later in the day Rouhani insisted that his country does not want to develop nuclear bombs and will never do so. But he also pointed out that the belligerent tone of other countries with “the military option remains on the table” is not helpful. He asked for respect, but he did not get it from the country that matters most. The Israeli delegation had been ordered by Prime Minister Netanyahu to leave the hall before Rouhani had even uttered a single word. He called Rouhani’s statements on the nuclear issue a “smokescreen” and the policy, as reported in the SL Tribune of the 25th, as “smile but enrich.” Schooled in psychoanalytic thought this immediately brought to mind Freud’s projection theory and Israel’s policies in regard to the negotiations with the Palestinians, “smile but proliferate settlements.” So for respect Rouhani had to make do with the French Prime Minister, the Austrian chancellor, and Pakistan’s as well as Fiji’s president and several Foreign Ministers.
This was essentially the narrative as presented to the American public and will likely be enshrined as “history.” But as usual the story is one-sided and for a fuller picture we have to go to the Internet and read what the “enemy” has to say. The events of the Bush and now Obama era with the concomitant unilateral propaganda vividly reminded me of my adolescence where in 1942 and early 1943, when my brother was already in the Wehrmacht and my parents were at mother’s store, I sat every afternoon at 5 p.m. with my ear glued to the radio listening to BBC’s “Sendung für die deutsche Wehrmacht.” The volume had to be turned to a minimum because listening to enemy broadcasts was punishable by death. A habit was born in these days. Since any dispute involves two people with each one claiming to have the only truth it behooves one to listen to both sides and then decide which one appears more plausible. Fortunately, we still have a relatively uncensored Internet and one no longer risks one’s life when one investigates the views from the other side.
Right from the start, I was bothered by the statement that Assad was personally culpable for the chemical attack because I could see no reason why he should have ordered this massacre. Even we had acknowledged that he was gaining the upper hand over the rebels and UN inspectors had actually been in the country since August 18 to investigate chemical attacks which had occurred earlier in the year. The UN team was there on Assad’s invitation; so why would he order a Sarin attack on suburbs of Damascus when the inspectors were sitting only a few miles away in a downtown hotel? It just didn’t make good sense. The opposite scenario, namely an attack by rebel forces seemed considerably more reasonable. They were losing, needed outside support and a chemical disaster could be turned into a propaganda coup of unmatched proportions.
Before pursuing this alternative view, we have to study the UN inspectors’ report which was released earlier this month. Their mission was a simple one: find out whether or not Sarin had been used as alleged by the rebels and the U.S. government. Their task did not include ascertainment of who fired the rockets. Our government was against the inspections and asserted that they were unnecessary; we already knew what had happened and who had done it. It was also alleged that Sarin readily decomposes and negative results would be meaningless. Nevertheless the inspectors did proceed and succeeded against all odds in establishing that, “… the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected, provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in Ein Tarma, Moadamiya and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus.”
Appendix IV provided medical data and Appendix V dealt with recovered munitions. It was established that two separate attacks had occurred during the night, one involving the eastern suburbs of Zamalka-Ein Tarma and another on the southwestern suburb Moadamiya. From the medical point of view I noted that only a relatively small number of survivors could be clinically examined (36 persons), but blood and urine samples were found positive for Sarin in “a large proportion.” Apart from interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, a chart review of eight patients who had been admitted to Zamalka hospital was performed. “Records of survivors who demonstrated moderate to severe symptoms and signs were prioritized.” The probable reason for these small numbers, of what has been portrayed as a massive massacre, may have been related to the fact that the investigators had very little time for their work because only temporary cease-fires could be arranged. The total time spent in Ein Tarma - Zamalka was five and a half hours on two separate days, while Moadamiya was visited once for two hours. Nevertheless, the data were obviously sufficient to establish the fact of Sarin having been used.
Appendix V, although not dealing with who fired the rockets, did establish trajectories from impact craters which could be used to ascertain the site of firing. Two such landmarks were available in Moadamiya and one in Zamalka. The trajectories for the Moadamiya sites were 215 and 214 degrees respectively indicating that the rockets came from the same launcher. The Zamalka site showed a trajectory of 105 degrees. Although Moadamiya does not show up under this spelling on Google Earth the location can be found on other maps of the Damascus area and Zamalka does show up. When I plotted the 215 degree trajectory of Moadamiya and the 105 degree trajectory of Zamalka they converge on the area around Mount Qasioun, where a detachment of the Republican National Guard was stationed. This is in accord with what our government has concluded. Two rocket motors had also been found with one having, in addition to numbers, Cyrillic letters. The UN report makes it clear, therefore, that at least these impact sites came from government held regions. Although the UN report noted that ordinance had been handled and moved prior to the inspectors’ arrival as well as during their visit, the Zamalka crater was in an open field and the “projectile had remained dug in until investigated.”
These are the facts we have been presented with, and notably, there is no official number for the victims of the attack. As mentioned the Obama administration immediately stated that 1,429 persons were killed among whom were over 400 children, but no explanation was given how such a precise number could have so soon been available. The UN report did not give numbers and merely stated that chemical weapons had been used “also against civilians, including children on a relatively large scale.” We know the old saying that “figures don’t lie but liars figure” and this truth is fully borne out in the present case. Here are some of the numbers for persons who have been reported killed in these two attacks: France Intelligence Services 281, UK intelligence services 350, Doctors without Borders 355, Damascus Media Office 494, Violation Documentation Syria 624, Human Rights Organization 1,222, Syrian National Council 1,300, U.S. government 1429 and Free Syrian Army 1,729. Obviously they can’t all be true and equally obviously the highest numbers come from the rebel side that has the most to gain from inflated counts.
The evidence upon which we were to go to war with Syria was supplied by videos. These had to come from the rebel side because no one else was on the scene right away. We were shown only a few of these videos but Congress was supposedly treated to more of them which were regarded as highly impressive. When I tried to find them on the Internet I noticed that most were difficult to interpret except for some groups of about a dozen dead children. But what struck me was that they were dressed for daytime activities rather than in nightclothes. With a sufficient dose of Sarin death is instantaneous and the two attacks occurred respectively between 2-3 and 4-5 a.m. I wondered: why would somebody dress these children before putting them into the white shrouds required for burials?
One possible answer came from an unlikely source hardly anybody has ever heard of before: Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross who is Mother Superior of the monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. The monastery is ancient, dating to the 6th century, and has frequently been destroyed. But in 1994 the aforementioned Mother Superior took the reins. The monastery was restored with the help of the Syrian General Directorate of Antiquities and at last report housed an international community of 14 people. But Mother Agnes Mariam has an additional job: President of the International Support Team for Musalaha in Syria (IST). Needless to say, I knew nothing about the existence of such an organization and what Musalaha stood for but Wikipedia enlightened me.
We are told that Musalaha is a non-profit organization that works towards reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians based on the biblical principles of peace, justice and love. The name Musalaha is Arabic and denotes reconciliation. Its Board members are Messianic Jewish Israeli as well as Palestinian Christian leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The organization was founded in 1990 after the first Intifada by Dr. Salim J. Munayer, an Israeli Palestinian from Lod. Their vision was to create a neutral space for Messianic Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians to meet with each other and receive training in reconciliation.
I originally found Mother Agnes’ writings on the Canadian website http://www.globalresearch.ca which has informative reports about trouble spots from around the world. Although the site has what may be called an “anti U.S. imperialism” bias, an intelligent person is able to sift facts from fancy. On September 9 it published an interview of Mother Agnes Mariam with reporters from the news network Russia Today (RT) headlined: Mother Agnes Mariam: Footage of Chemical Attack in Syria is a Fraud.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/mother-agnes-mariam-footage-of-chemical-attack-in-syria-is-fraud/5348939. In this interview she raised several questions about the videos which were the purported evidence for the intended missile strikes. Her contention was that the video footage was a “frame-up.” “It had been staged and prepared in advance with the goal of framing the Syrian government as the perpetrator.” She did not deny that an attack had taken place, but she questioned the reliability of the footage. She also mentioned a double standard by the western media having failed to report on a massacre by extremist rebels on villages in northern Syria where 500 people including women and children were killed. Her major concern about the videos in that interview was the timing of the release of the footage. How is it possible, she asked, that Reuters could publish these pictures at 6:05 in the morning when the attack had barely ended? She also asked: Where are the parents? She promised the interviewers that a full description of the video problem and its relationship to the mentioned tragedy in northern Syria would soon be submitted to the UN.
We found that, as a whole, the videos present a clear absence of a normal Syrian family life, with no signs of a resident civilian population. While the proliferation of young males and children everywhere, dead or alive, let us wonder who they are and what they are doing in East Ghouta without their families.… Moreover, our study highlight [sic] without any doubt that their little bodies were manipulated and disposed with theatrical arrangements to figure in the screening.… Thus we accuse the editors of the videos of artificial treatment of what should have been honest information footage…. We present this work to distinguished Spiritual Leaders, Heads of States, Heads of Delegations, Senators, Members of Parliament, Humanitarian Actors and to any person that has a heart for truth and justice and that seeks true accounting for evil deeds.
When one views the footage shown it is apparent that this very extensive material was assembled in some haste with limited resources. Some of the captions do not seem to match the content of the pictures and the video sources which are provided are as yet not linked. I could also not copy and paste the URLs and they were, therefore, difficult to access. Furthermore, the conclusions in regard to some of the statements can be questioned. Nevertheless, the overall substance does indeed give rise to concern. For instance: a picture is shown purported to have been used to document the Sarin attack, yet the same picture had previously been published in Egypt showing victims of the revolution in that country. On other occasions the rebels had used pictures of the same child as a gas attack victim but supposedly obtained from separate geographic locations.
The presentation closes with a discussion of the massacre by rebel jihadists in 11 Alawite villages of Lattakiah province in northern Syria. Hundreds of civilians were killed with conventional weapons on August 4, 2013, and 150 women and children were abducted. It is the contention of the Mother Superior’s video review that some of these children may have been used in the Sarin attack footage. She provided the names of 59 of the abducted children as well as of six who were killed in these attacks. The list also contains the names of over 200 adults who were killed, missing, or abducted and is as yet incomplete.
When I then typed “Sister Agnes Miriam” into Google, I received within 0.26 seconds 196,000 results! Her current Internet popularity resulted from the fact that Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, had hinted at her writings, and journalists then looked into her background. I now shall summarize only the information from recent articles in the New York Times. Sister Agnes Miriam is the daughter of Palestinian refugees and was born in Lebanon. After a somewhat turbulent adolescence she converted to Catholicism and eventually became Mother Superior of the mentioned monastery in Syria. In 2011 she published an open letter to President Assad about the disastrous conditions in some Syrian hospitals and prisons, also complaining about torture which had taken place in some of them. When the Syrian revolt became dangerous for Christians, she spoke out against the jihadist elements who in turn threatened her life. She then temporarily left the monastery and moved to Lebanon, although she continues to visit Syria. The above-mentioned detailed video-analysis report was written feverishly on her laptop over a few weeks in a Geneva hotel. The site was chosen to provide an opportunity for personal contact with members of the UN Human Rights Commission.
I believe that this explains the previously mentioned unevenness of the video-analysis report and why she is persona non grata for our media. She is regarded as a propaganda tool for Assad and Russian endorsement hardly works in her favor as far as our ruling circles are concerned. Yet it behooves us to listen to her; the UN should look at her report and then perform a professional investigation of the videos. The matter is too serious to be left in the hands of amateurs and parties with conflicting interests.
The Sarin attacks also immediately brought to mind another galvanizing event for our first war against Saddam Hussein – the baby incubator story. Saddam’s finances had been depleted in the Iraq-Iran war in which we had supported him. He was in debt to Kuwait and tried to negotiate a settlement. When the Emir balked, Saddam decided to annex Kuwait which had actually always belonged to Iraq even when it was part of the Ottoman Empire before the British snatched it and created a separate Emirate under their protection. President Bush 41 was not interested in this takeover because Saddam after all was the counterweight to Iran. The American public likewise didn’t care. But two things happened. The Iron Lady, Maggie Thatcher, took our president to task at a symposium in Aspen with “Now George, don’t you go wobbly on us,” or words to that effect. The Brits still considered Kuwait as their stomping grounds and had no use for Saddam getting more oil. Bush, who still smarted from the Chicken Kiev epithet he had received earlier for not sufficiently standing up for Ukrainian rights, promptly fell in line. But there was still the problem of how to make a war against Saddam palatable. Kuwait’s emir, who had fled to Saudi Arabia, hired an American PR firm to make propaganda for Kuwait’s “liberation.” Their coup was a story which had begun to circulate that the Iraqi soldiers had thrown babies out of their incubators to the floor where they died and the incubators were shipped off to Baghdad. When an “eye-witness” to this event testified before a Congressional Human Rights Caucus, albeit not under oath, an outcry against this dastardly deed occurred and popular support for the ensuing Gulf War was assured. But this was not all; our forces needed a staging area and Saudi Arabia was the only reasonable place for it. The Saudis had to be pressured to allow foreign troops on their soil which was strictly against their grain. Therefore, the fiction that Saddam was about to invade Saudi Arabia was peddled for which there was not a shred of evidence. This in turn was deeply resented by devout Muslims and especially one by the name of Osama bin Laden who might have used the Arab equivalent of Bush’s words in regard to the Kuwait problem: “This will not stand.” We know what Osama did thereafter, but that the baby incubator story was a lie, just as the danger to Saudi Arabia was, did not make headlines. As it turned out the “eye-witness” hadn’t seen anything at all and was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA. This is how countries are driven into war, and it looks like we may well be in for another round. This is also the reason why the Mother Superior should receive help from everyone to bring out the truth about these videos.
As mentioned above, the trajectories of the rockets examined by the UN, leads to the conclusion that they were fired from a Syrian government base. But this does not necessarily mean that the order came from Assad. It has been pointed out that gas grenades might have been mistakenly loaded among regular shells or that there are renegade elements within the Syrian army that might have been responsible. We don’t have facts and one can be reasonably certain that both sides will be lying.
Next week we are going to be treated to a speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN and a visit with Obama in Washington. Whether or not there will be a repeat of his June 2011 Congressional triumph (Bibi’s Finest Hour) is not yet known. Although “peace” will again be touted in public, it may not come to pass any time soon. I am saying this in spite of the conciliatory efforts by Obama who even phoned Rouhani on the 27th before the latter left American soil. The reason for my skepticism resides in the awareness that the current peace offensive deeply troubles not only our homegrown hawks but also those from abroad.
All of this is taking place against an internal background of massive dissension over government spending with a threat of shutting down the government altogether unless Obama’s “Affordable Health Care Act” is defunded. There was worry earlier in the month about Obama’s credibility in the world after he had failed to go through with the military strike, but the disgraceful spectacle our lawmakers are now providing for the world does not seem to concern them. That a credible foreign policy depends on having your own house in order appears to elude them.
Today the world has a genuine opportunity for a peaceful resolution of various conflicts. But it must be tightly grasped lest it will slide out of our hands for a long time to come. Since events are moving rapidly, and this website has as its goal to present Zeitgeschichte, the next installment will appear in the middle of October. It will discuss Netanyahu’s visit and the overall Israeli-Palestinian question which Obama has vowed, in his UN speech, to devote himself to during the rest of his presidency.
October 15, 2013
BEREFT OF GOOD SENSE
Last month’s installment ended on
a note of optimism because military intervention in Syria was avoided and
President Obama had agreed to hand this messy problem over to the UN. I was,
however, concerned that Israel might not look with favor on this change of
affairs and especially on a potential rapprochement with the clerical regime in
Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu had made his position of profound distrust in
regard to Iran’s “charm offensive” clear, even prior to his speech at the UN.
The Iranians, therefore, reciprocated the Israeli’s walkout before Rouhani’s
speech and likewise didn’t listen to what Netanyahu had to say. In essence the
Prime Minister was miffed and promised that even if Israel had to stand alone
against Iran’s presumed nuclear armaments, it would take unilateral action. He
was emphatic that there could be no compromise on Israel’s security. While this
may sound reasonable, “security” is such a flexible concept that it can be
invoked for any and all activities one may want to pursue, as the continued
West Bank settlements demonstrate.
Although a domestic crisis was already
brewing when I wrote the last sentences of the September 29 installment, I had
hoped that our “lawmakers” in Washington would show some good sense and achieve
a compromise on the budget issue rather than shut down the government. It was
not to be. “Non-essential” aspects of government such as the National Parks and
monuments, the Library of Congress, medical research funding etc., were closed
and hundreds of thousand government workers “furloughed.” At the time of
writing the shutdown continues although last week some attempts were made to
re-open certain government aspects piece-meal. Subsequently, our so-called
representatives decided that they might as well keep most of the government
shut down until they come to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling. This
needs to be done by the 17th to cover the costs of programs which
have exceeded the budgeted expenses. Currently there are dire warnings that if
the impasse in Congress continues the government would default on loan payments
and not only our economy but that of the rest of the world would be in serious
trouble. Christine Lagarde, managing director and chairman of the International
Monetary Fund, has already expressed concern over another global recession if
no compromise between the two parties is reached by Thursday. Unless Congress
were to show utter callous irresponsibility it is likely that some last minute
deal will be struck and its members will again fall back on the true and tried
method of “kicking the can down the road.” A temporary budget and short term
extension of the debt ceiling will be passed. Theoretically this would give the
two sides breathing time to work out more lasting solutions. But this was done
last year, no compromise was reached and automatic across the board spending
cuts, “sequesters,” are already in progress. Unless repealed, they are
scheduled to last for years to come.
Our friends around the world must be
scratching their heads and wonder how a great country like ours, which claims
“leadership of the free world,” can behave in such a foolish way. In my
opinion, part of the problem dates back to President Obama’s first inauguration.
Within hours Rush Limbaugh, a highly influential Republican radio personality,
announced that “I disagree fervently [with Republicans who say about Obama]
we’ve got to give him a chance.” His reason was that Obama is an out and out
liberal whose programs would ruin our country and “I hope that he will fail.”
An excerpt of the talk can be seen on http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rush-limbaugh-passes-out-his-marching-o
. This was the rallying cry some diehards had been waiting for and the
intention was to block all of Obama’s legislative efforts so that he would
become a one-term president. Although both the Senate and the House had slim
democratic majorities in 2009, Obama’s legislative proposals were fought tooth
and nail by requiring not only a simple majority vote but a “super majority” of
two thirds of the votes. This could only be accomplished if the Democrats made
significant concessions to Republican demands. As a result bills were either
obstructed or when passed, they contained aspects that were disliked by both
parties.
The best example is, of course, the
“Affordable [health] Care Act” (ACA), which was supposed to see to it that
every American has health insurance. The legislation was vigorously fought
against by the Republicans who saw it as Obama’s attempt toward creating a
European type Social Democracy in our country. The fight occupied all of
Obama’s first year in office and when a final version was passed it had such
significant flaws that both sides were dissatisfied. The Republicans then vowed
that, instead of making some needed improvements, the legislation has to be
repealed altogether. Furthermore, our legislators have come up with a new
wrinkle. Potentially controversial pieces of legislation are endlessly debated
and amendments are included which lead from a simple document of a few pages,
which anyone could understand, to a final piece of legislation that contains
hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The compromises are hashed out by
committees and are then voted on by the full House and Senate. This has led to
the absurdity that the final bill that was to be voted on reached the full
House and Senate on such short notice that the individual lawmaker didn’t have
a chance to read what he/she was really voting on.
Although the ACA was a windfall for
private insurance companies, Republicans continued their fight by declaring it
unconstitutional. The legislation had to go all the way to the Supreme Court
which, to most everyone’s surprise, sided with Obama and the ACA is currently
the law of the land. In addition the last election was also a referendum on
“Obamacare.” Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, had declared that he would
abolish it as soon as he sat down in the Oval Office. Although the Republicans
lost the presidency, they gained a majority in the House which now lies at the
root of the current impasse. Instead of passing a budget, as was routinely done
in most other years, the Republican House members attached a rider which would
have defunded the ACA. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, was the thought
behind it. There was, of course, no way, for the Democrat majority in the
Senate to pass such a budget and the government shutdown was on its way.
Both sides dug in their heels.
Republicans tried to somewhat water down their objections by limiting them to
certain key aspects of the ACA but the Democrats insisted that the Speaker of
the House, John Boehner, should allow a vote on the budget without any strings
attached. Since it was regarded as highly likely that the Republicans would
lose this vote he resisted and the stalemate dragged on. One of the main
Republican objections to the ACA is a provision that everybody has to pay
something for health insurance. If one is not insured at present, one will have
to buy insurance on the open market and whoever is unwilling to do so will be
fined a certain sum. This raised the fury of the defenders of freedom. Yet the
provision is necessary because unless young and healthy people buy insurance
the companies would go broke. Without this income the costs for the ageing
population and those with “preexisting conditions,” such as diabetes, epilepsy
and others, could not have been covered. Yet if one thinks about it the appeal
to loss of freedom is really just propaganda because, for instance, we have to
buy insurance if we want to drive a car. If we don’t we get fined. While our
Republicans fret over loss of liberty in the ACA they have absolutely no
problem with the PATRIOT act which has much more profound restrictions on our
constitutional freedoms.
While the immediate budget and debt
ceiling problems will be plastered over, hardly anyone of our media pundits talks about the long term consequences of a
polarized country and a legislature that periodically immobilizes itself. But
this is precisely what we should be concerned about. As a Viennese, the current
sad spectacle brought to mind events which occurred during my lifetime in
Austria. Although the child obviously could not understand the background of
the political events as they unfolded in March of 1933, in February and July of
1934 and the final catastrophe of March 1938, this deficit was made up later
and resulted in the book War&Mayhem.
March 4, 1933 was the day when Austria’s First Republic died. The reasons are
largely unknown in the USA but since they bear a distinct similarity to what is
happening here at this time I shall briefly summarize them here.
The collapse of the Kreditanstaltin 1931, as a sequel to the Wall Street collapse of 1929, had
plunged the country into a deep economic depression. The two major political
parties, the Social Democrats, popularly referred to as the Sozis or Reds, were in fierce
opposition to the Christian Socialist party, the Blacks (the color of the
clerical garb). In addition the Groszdeutschenwere
represented in Parliament. This party
felt that the post-1918 mutilated Austria was not viable and they wanted union
with Germany, although it was forbidden by the victorious Allies. The
Legitimists, who favored a return of the monarchy, the National Socialists
(Nazis) and Communists had not garnered sufficient votes to be represented in
Parliament. The government under the Christian Socialist chancellor, EngelbertDollfusz, had 83 votes
while opposition Social Democrats could muster 82. Under these circumstances
parliamentary wrangling over pieces of legislation was inevitable and the
government could fall at any moment. Furthermore one must know that there was
intense dislike, if not outright hatred, between the major parties which dated
to the beginning days of the Republic in 1918 and was exacerbated by events in
1927. I have chronicled them in the first part of War&Mayhem, which can be
downloaded from this site. They can be found under the key word Schutzbund.
The immediate precipitant for the
crucial March 4, 1933 vote was about an aborted general strike by railroad
workers. As mentioned, the country was practically bankrupt, and the government
was forced to pay the salaries and pensions for the railroad personnel in three
installments instead of, as usual, a monthly lump sum. In addition cuts in
salaries and pensions were envisaged for the future. A strike could have been
disastrous because the population depended on the railroads for bringing the
necessities of daily life to the people of the country, the same way we depend
on the trucking industry. A decree had been in existence ever since the war to
allow the government to ensure the livelihood of the population and this was
now enacted. The army occupied the railroad terminals and the ringleaders were
arrested. The question before Parliament was: what to do with the leaders of
the strike? The opposition demanded amnesty while the government wanted to set
an example that in those difficult economic times strikes were not tolerated.
Since the government coalition had only
one vote to spare an effort was made to coral all members of Parliament for
this crucial session. But in the end the opposition had 81 votes and the
government 80. The president, Karl Renner a Socialist, was not allowed to vote.
When the votes were tallied the government representatives became frantic and
challenged the vote. A parliamentary farce ensued thereafter. In order to garner
more red votes the Social Democrat president was persuaded to yield the chair
to the Christian Socialist 2nd president. With this stratagem they
would get an additional vote while the government would lose one. But the ruse
backfired. The 2nd president resigned and the Groszdeutsche 3rd president refused to serve. Without a
president business could not be conducted and everybody went home in disgust.
Dollfusz, whose term of
office had only started in May of 1932, and who had labored under similar difficulties
as Obama has experienced with Congress, then decided that since Parliament had
in essence defaulted on its duties he would run the country without it. The
situation was to be temporary to gain some breathing room until new general
elections could be held. But there was a problem. Not quite two months earlier
Hitler had taken over in Germany and the Reichstag had gone up in flames a few
weeks later during an election campaign with the votes to be cast on March 5.
Since it was certain that he would win, it was a foregone conclusion that not
only propaganda would now flood Austria but German money would abundantly flow
to the Austrian Nazi party. This would bring them into Parliament, a fate which
had to be avoided. The rest of the story can be found in War&Mayhem. Suffice it to say
that the Christian Socialists tried to run the country, but without the Social
Democrats they were always in the minority and therefore had no chance when
Hitler made a temporary end to the country in March of 1938.
It is obvious that analogies should not
be stretched, but there are commonalities. The most important one is a chief
executive, be it chancellor or president, who is, for a variety of reasons,
disliked and distrusted by a major segment of the population. The second one is
the polarization of the two major political parties where at least in one the
most extreme elements have become dominant and spread fear about what the other
side is planning to do. In Austria it was the fear of civil war, which had been
threatened by the Reds, while the Reds feared an authoritarian government which
would deprive them of their hard won social success for the underprivileged. In
the US the fear is currently spread by Republicans who paint Obama and the
Democrats as arch liberals who will not only take over the major private
industries and will curb Wall Street but will even impose restrictions on one
of the people’s most cherished possession – guns. Thus, fear propaganda was and
is the tool. But those who promote fear forget Job’s lament: What I have
feared, has come to pass!
The differences between the Austrian and
American situation are obviously major ones. Austria was a small country in the
throes of a severe economic depression and her great neighbors Germany and
Italy had authoritarian governments. America is a superpower on a continent
with friendly democratic neighbors and the economic recession is at present
still manageable. Nevertheless imagine for a moment what would happen if the
current bitterness between our two parties not only persisted but got worse.
Senate and House would remain deadlocked, the
government would run out of money to pay its bills. Social security checks,
government pensions, Medicare and Medicaid payments would not be forthcoming,
investors would start selling stocks and bonds, Wall Street would crash and the
economy would take a nose dive. Under those circumstances there would be riots
in the streets and the government, regardless of which party would be in
charge, would declare a national emergency and assume autocratic powers. We
would be told that these measures are temporary but as the Russians under the
Czar wryly commented: nothing is as permanent as a temporary ukas
(proclamation). This scenario obviously will not happen in the near term but unless
America’s people, including our lawmakers, come to their senses it will become
inevitable in the future.
It is commonplace to compare the USA
with ancient Rome and a visit to D.C. will readily demonstrate that the city
abounds with Roman style architecture. But although Rome ruled the world for
centuries, the empire first broke into half and subsequently disintegrated
altogether. In the past all empires have fallen and America is not likely to
become an exception to the rule. I have come to the conclusion that history
repeats not because of inevitability but because people’s emotions have not
changed and each generation regards itself superior to the previous one. This
inhibits learning from the past. America is especially vulnerable in this
respect because world history and the humanities in general, are not properly
taught in high school and college where increasing emphasis is on “practical”
subjects such as science and technology. This mistake is bound to extract its
price.
In 1957 the French historian Amaury de
Riencourt published a treatise: The
Coming Caesars, which can be regarded as a sequel to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published somewhat
over one hundred years earlier. In it the author explored the difference
between culture and civilization and drew comparisons between ancient
Greece/Rome and Europe/America. Just as Greece and its Hellenic culture in
Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa had been absorbed by Roman civilization,
America has taken over Europe’s cultural heritage. The distinction between
culture and civilization lay in his opinion in the time domain. A young and
restless individualistic people produce new thoughts and values, which in time
become organized, mechanistic and egalitarian.
Civilization
aims at the gradual standardization of increasingly large masses of men within a rigidly mechanical framework–masses of “common men”
who think alike, feel alike, thrive on conformity, are willing to bow to vast
bureaucratic structures, and in whom the social instinct predominates over that
of the creative individual. It could be said metaphorically that Cultures are
the systoles and Civilizations the diastoles of human evolution, relaying each
other endlessly, the pulsating heartbeat of history.
This
interpretation of history’s inner development has a special meaning for us
today because we are in the very process of switching from European Culture to
American Civilization.
In de Riencourt’s
opinion the long term evolution of Civilizations, as far as the political
organization of the society is concerned, has always been from a democratic to
an authoritarian rule. This does not come suddenly and against the wishes of
the people but rather gradually. The transitions can be marked by violence as
in the Roman civil wars prior to Augustus but these are only way stations.
Caesarism allows the form of democratic institutions to persist but their power
has been handed over to one individual. Why does this happen? People get tired
of their freedom which requires individual choices and the responsibility for
their outcome. He wrote
More honest and
more perceptive than many of our contemporaries, Cicero, without the benefit of
our historical perspective, pointed it out clearly: ‘It is due to our own,
moral failure, and not to any accident of chance that, while retaining the
name, we have lost the reality of a republic.’
New emergencies
and the ceaseless trend toward democratic equality brushed aside Rome’s conservative
reaction. There was no more ruling class and there was urgent need for a
strong, farsighted ruler.
This ruler appeared first in the form of
Julius Caesar and subsequently Augustus. One may now think that this is ancient
history and has nothing to with us in the 21st century. But America
is a de facto empire and overstretched. The separation of powers in government
is no longer working, there is a national debt of nearly $17 trillion and the
country totters on the brink of a serious economic recession. In addition we
have, as de Riencourt remarked, already a potential proto-Caesarian chief
executive. I had never thought of our presidency in this manner but he was
correct when he wrote,
In truth, no
mental effort is required to understand that the President of the United States
is the most powerful single human being in the world today. Future crises will
inevitably transform him in a full-fledged Caesar, if we do not beware. Today
he wears ten hats–as Head of State, Chief Executive, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Chief Legislator, Head of Party, Tribune of
the People, Ultimate Arbitrator of Social Justice, Guardian of Economic
Prosperity and World Leader of Western Civilization. Slowly and unobtrusively
these hats are becoming crowns and this pyramid of hats is slowly
metamorphosing itself into a tiara, the tiara of one man’s world imperium.
One may regard this as an exaggeration
but he pointed to Franklin Roosevelt as the first proto-Caesar who in fact
drove America by sheer strength of will into the direction he desired. Through
adroit maneuvering, Congress became his willing tool and although he could not
“pack” the Supreme Court he filled vacancies with persons of his choice and
thereby achieved the same purpose. Subsequent presidents have not used all the
potential powers inherent in the office. Obama last month even returned the
power to militarily intervene in foreign countries to Congress although he had
previously used it in Libya. Judging by precedent the current Syria solution is
likely to remain an exception especially as long as Congress is at war with
itself.
If we are not to repeat Rome’s fate we
have to seriously study the reasons for the failure of its Republic and then
not only apply these lessons but also look back at the wisdom of our founding
father: George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Addresshttp://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.
After having thanked his countrymen for
the opportunity to serve them over a 45 year period he felt obliged to warn
them of several potential dangers they need to avoid. These dealt with
secession, weakening of the government, debt, political parties and foreign
affairs. Secession was dealt with by Lincoln, but today we are confronted by
all of the others. I shall discuss his foreign policy admonitions on another
occasion and limit myself to his comments about political parties because they
deal with our current congressional problem. Below I have excerpted and pasted
some key passages.
The alternate domination of one
faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party
dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most
horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to
a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result
gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute
power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction,
more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the
purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an
extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight),
the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to
make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public
administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false
alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments
occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and
corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through
the channels of party passions.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful
checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the
spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in
governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not
with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in
governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their
natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for
every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort
ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not
to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a
flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
At this time we are so
enmeshed in party politics that there hardly seems to be a way out. The problem
starts with the electoral map where districts have been gerrymandered to fit
the needs of a given party which ensures that only that this particular party
will have its Representative in Congress. Elections have become so expensive
that ordinary citizens cannot win without powerful, wealthy supporters who will
then extract their price from the candidate regardless whether he/she serves in
the House, the Senate or the Presidency. To prevent our falling into Caesarism,
under whatever name, a complete overhaul of our political system would be
needed. There would have to be genuine election reforms which limit not only
the amount of money involved but also terms of offices. At present when a
Representative is elected he/she is already concerned about re-election two
years hence and a substantial amount of effort is diverted from governing to
fund-raising. This applies also to the four year term of the president.
Senators have at least six years before they have to face the voters again but
even this span does not prevent them from constantly enlarging their “war chest.”
They are looking for sinecure rather than regarding themselves as temporary
servants of their constituents as was the original purpose.
The major bane is the
corruptive influence of “big money” which prevents genuine meaningful long-term
reforms. This applies also to the tax code which cannot be properly simplified
because the financiers are against it. But without these major reforms our
government will be lurching from one crisis to another, one war to the next,
and may eventually end up with the worst possible situation: a one person
dictatorship and perpetual warfare. A harmonious world where America is primus
inter pares and conflicts are settled by the UN and the International Court is
not in the offing in the foreseeable future. It seems that a great deal more of
blood and treasure will have to be spilled before it comes to pass. It took a
catastrophic war for Austrians and Germans to come to their senses and the
question for Americans is: can they do so without such a disaster?
November 1, 2013
SHATTERED TRUST
As anticipated in the previous
installment, Congress has indeed postponed a solution of the budget problem
until January of next year when we may or may not be treated to a repeat
performance. In the intervening two weeks we have encountered two more problems:
the disastrous “rollout” of Obamacare and the NSA spy scandal. On October 25
the Salt Lake Tribune published an article on the latter under the headline,
“Merkel: Obama has shattered allies’s trust.” The
first paragraph stated,
European leaders
united in anger Thursday as they attended a summit overshadowed by reports of
widespread U.S. spying on its allies – allegations – German Chancellor Angela
Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama administration and undermined the
crucial trans-Atlantic relationship.
For Mrs. Merkel, who had grown up
under a Communist dictatorship, allegations that the NSA may have tapped her
cell-phone hit a very personal nerve. I know how she must have felt upon
receiving this news. Having spent the major portion of my youth under the Nazis,
I can well understand her feelings and this dislike of the political system at
the time was part of the reason to immigrate to America, the bastion of
freedom.
I must admit that I remained a true
believer in the honesty of our government, with only occasional slight
misgivings, until the aftermath of 9/11. The drum beat for the Afghanistan and
then the Iraq war was a re-run of Goebbels’ propaganda and my faith in our
system of government, including the justice department as well as the media,
yielded to agnosticism. As a result I began to look into the history of this
country in order to see if the Bush debacle was simply a temporary aberration
or a long-standing feature of American politics.
Fortunately we have the Internet which
makes access to historical information infinitely easier, although its
trustworthiness can likewise not be guaranteed. In my previous articles I have
tried to steer a middle course and provided the sources for crucial statements
so that readers can refer to them and form their own opinions. This is
especially important for the two most critical events: the Kennedy
assassination and 9/11. The literature is quicksand and the well-meaning
historian is confronted with a massive problem which boils down to the simple
question: who can be trusted?
Later this month will be the 50th
anniversary of JFK’s murder and one can predict with reasonable certainty that
we will be treated to officially sanctioned scenarios. The Warren Commission’s
final word was and to a large extent still is: Lee Harvey Oswald, a mentally
deranged malcontent, was the lone gunman who fired three shots from the Texas
Book Depository Building which killed the President and injured Governor Connally.
But, is this the truth and if so how was it arrived at?
Anyone who is trying to find out will
immediately face the problem that apart from the thousands of pages of the
Warren Commission’s report there exists a plethora of
books, and when you type “Kennedy assassination” into Google you will receive
within 0.16 seconds about 28,300,000 citations. Who can read, sift, and absorb
all of this material? I shall, therefore, try to simplify the task by
concentrating on five specific aspects: how the Warren Commission arrived at
its verdict, the state of the country at the time, Oswald’s background, the
Zapruder film and finally the medical data.
The answer to the first question is
simple because there is unanimity. The dictum of Oswald having been the only
culprit was created by FBI Director Herbert Hoover on the afternoon of Friday
22 immediately after Oswald’s arrest. It was consolidated on Sunday, after
Oswald had been murdered by Jack Ruby. The assassin had been found, eliminated,
justice was done, book closed. The Warren Commission was to be the fig leaf to
confirm a preordained conclusion. This is not to say that Chief Justice Earl
Warren, the Commissioners and their staff were corrupt.They were not, but they yielded to political
pressure. The Chief Justice was told by President Johnson that unless he
accepted the task and the verdict of the lone gunman, there was great danger
that the American public would accuse Castro and/or the Soviet Union. An atomic
war with the loss of approximately 40 million lives might well be inevitable.
This sounded reasonable at the time and we
have to put ourselves into the mindset of November 1963. The missile crisis of
the previous year is for most Americans merely a historical fact but for us,
especially those who lived in big cities, it was literally a matter of life and
death. In those days Detroit was still regarded the “arsenal of democracy” and
I vividly remember discussing with my colleagues over cups of coffee whether or
not we would still be here the nextday.We were among those 40 million who
would go up in radioactive smoke. This memory also is responsible for my
allergic reaction to the NSA’s brand new spy center next door in Bluffdale. We
are now again on the list of potential Russian and/or Chinese missile targets.
This is not paranoia but results from life experience.
Both Kennedy and Khrushchev had shown
reason and reached a compromise: his missiles would leave Cuba and ours would
leave Turkey. That was the proper way to resolve problems, but this is not what
we were told at the time. The newspaper headline was: “Khrushchev Blinked” and
the country was happy that we had successfully stared the Soviets down. The tit
for tat came out years later and only for intrepid souls who devoted time and
effort to the study of those days’ affairs. The media perpetrated other pious
frauds. Kennedy was portrayed as the counterpoint to the aging Eisenhower. The
young, intelligent, erudite, athletic war hero who played touch football with
his brothers and sailed his boat was picture perfect. His beautiful, charming
wife and the two children rounded out the picture of Camelot. Those were the
days of the new frontier. With brother Bobby, as Attorney General, the Mafia
was to be put out of business; an end to the Cold War, which Eisenhower had
sought at the failed Paris peace conference, was to be achieved via détente;
our Negro citizens were to be granted equal rights; the Federal Reserve
prerogatives were to be re-examined and a space program was initiated with the
goal of reaching the moon in 10 years. We knew nothing about Kennedy’s health
problems, his insatiable sexual appetite and other behind the scenes political
shenanigans.
Although we were aware of the usual
discontent with presidents we knew nothing of the intense hatred his policies
had aroused in some circles. The Bay of Pigs disaster had left him thoroughly
disenchanted with the CIA and he was determined to drastically reform the
agency. He disliked FBI director Herbert Hoover and did not want to renew his
tenure beyond mandatory retirement age of 65. The feeling was mutual and Hoover
met this danger by collecting as much potentially incriminating evidence
against the Kennedy brothers as he could. The Cuban exile population and the
extreme right regarded Kennedy as a traitor for not having lent air-support to
the Bay of Pigs operation which guaranteed its failure. He also had profoundly
alienated the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the decision not to invade Cuba during
the missile crisis. In addition there was the likelihood that he might even
pull out of Vietnam. The policy of détente and the nuclear arms reduction
treaty, which was signed in September 1963, were regarded as further evidence
for Kennedy being “soft on communism.” “Big money” was concerned that he might fuss
with the Federal Reserve Board by ordering the treasury to issue its own money
thereby avoiding the detour of Federal Reserve notes. Then there was the Mafia.
One faction wanted to re-establish the good old times in Cuba making money on
the casinos and the drug trade. Another was more concerned with Bobby’s
vendetta which threatened income and power at home. Finally there was the Vice President,
Lyndon B. Johnson, who loathed both Jack and Bobby.
There were, therefore, numerous powerful
enemies who did not want to give Kennedy the chance to implement his programs
in the upcoming second term.Similar to
the 9/11 Commission, the Warren Commission proceedings had to be concluded in a
hurry lest they interfere with the 1964/2004 elections and, as we now know, the
outcome was foreordained in both instances. Likewise, in both instances
responsible government officials lied to the Commissions, crucial witnesses
were not called or their testimony was disregarded, and the CIA as well as FBI
withheld vital documents. For the 9/11 Commission this also extended to the
FAA, the NTSB and the military including NORAD. These seem to be harsh
allegations but for 9/11 I would like the reader to watch first 9/11 In a Nutshellhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_quLjUHwM
which takes no time at all and for extended documentation September 11 The New Pearl Harbor,http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167.
This presentation consists of three sections with a total play time of 5 hours.
The viewer is encouraged to download the data but the DVDs can also be
purchased from amazon. Because of the extensive amount of information I
recommend that it be viewed in increments.
When one now looks into the background of Lee
Harvey Oswald Wikipedia provides us in 0.19 seconds with about 3,760,00
entries. For the purpose of this brief overview I have consulted Wikipedia as
well as the book The Kennedy Conspiracy?by the British author Anthony Summers. It has recently
been republished under the title, Not in
Your Lifetime. I have previously referred to Summers
in connection with his The Eleventh Day:
The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden (9/11: Context and Aftermath; September
1, 2013). In contrast to the 9/11 book, Summers was
considerably more critical of the government’s performance in regard to the
Kennedy assassination although he did not endorse any of the numerous theories
which swirl around it.
The bare bone substance of Oswald’s
brief life is as follows: Born in 1939 he was raised fatherless by a mother
with rather strange personality characteristics and intermittently by an uncle
who had Mafia ties. At age 17 he enlisted in the Marines. He became a radar
operator, ran into difficulties with superiors and was discharged on September
11, 1959. He had always been interested in communist ideology and in October of
that year travelled to the Soviet Union. He renounced his American citizenship
and in 1961 married a young Russian woman who happened to be the niece of a MVD
colonel, the Soviet Union’s FBI. Oswald returned to America with wife and
infant daughter in 1962 to live in Fort Worth, Texas. In April of 1963 he was
supposed to have attempted to kill a major right wing figure in Dallas, retired
Major General Edwin A. Walker, but missed his stationary target. He then moved
alone to New Orleans, where he created a public uproar while distributing
leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. In August of that year he went
to Mexico where he applied at the Cuban embassy for a visa to Cuba and he
contacted the Soviet embassy for a visa to again visit that country. Both were
denied and he had to return to the U.S. within a week. The marriage was on the rocks;
through friends he got a job as “order filler” at the Texas Book Depository and
moved to a boarding house in Dallas. These data are undisputed but when one tries
to go into details the situation becomes considerably murkier.
There is no doubt that he was a misfit.
His behavior in regard to the USSR trip as well as his subsequent return and
the aborted Cuba visit was certainly strange and invites numerous questions. So
does his conduct on 11-22. The government states that he shot the President
from the SE 6th floor corner window of the Book Depository Building
at 12:30 p.m. while the presidential motorcade slowly proceeded down Elm Street
at Dealey Plaza. The government also claims that Oswald
used a WWII Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a
telescopic sight which he had purchased via mail-order. The gun, as well as
three expended shells, was found in the mentioned location. This was all the
evidence needed to confirm Oswald’s guilt. Critical investigators have,
however, raised questions as to Oswald’s exact whereabouts and the choice of
weapon.
After his arrest Oswald insisted that
he had “never killed anybody” and had been in the lunch room of the building rather
than on the 6th floor. Since three shells were found and Oswald was
designated as the only culprit, it was determined that no more than three shots
could have been fired. This led to some convoluted reasoning. It was asserted
that the first shot hit Kennedy in the back and that this “magic” bullet exited
through his neck to hit Governor Connally, who was in the front seat, in the
back. It exited through the chest into his right arm and wrist, proceeded to
his right thigh and then was found in nearly pristine condition on the governor’s
stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Another shot had missed and struck a curb
slightly injuring a bystander while the third shot was the fatal one.
Although the course of the magic bullet
considerably stretches one’s imagination, it had to be insisted on because an
additional shot which hit Connally would have required a second assassin and
therefore an admission of conspiracy. Questions have been raised in regard to
the quality of the Mannlicher-Carcano, of its
telescopic sight, as well as Oswald’s marksmanship. But I shall forego those
and instead briefly mention his stint in the Marines at the Atsugi airbase in
Japan. This base also housed the CIA and America’s most secret reconnaissance
tool the U2. This plane could reach 70,000 feet and was, therefore,
invulnerable to enemy aircraft and rockets. As radar operator Oswald was
familiar with these flights and had initially a “Confidential” security
clearance, which was later upgraded to “Secret.” His expensive living habits
led to rumors that he might have been recruited by the CIA.
If he had indeed worked for the CIA it would
put his trip to the USSR and his subsequent return into perspective. The money
which paid for the voyage could not have come from his savings, especially
since he stayed at expensive hotels during transit in Helsinki. In Moscow he
ingratiated himself with the officials by saying that he would provide them
with “all information concerning the Marine Corps and
his specialty therein,” and “that he might know something of special interest.”
The latter obviously referred to whatever he had found out about the U2 flights
which were of vital importance to the Soviets. Whether or not this had anything
to do with the downing of Gary Powers’ U2 on 5-1-1962, which wrecked
Eisenhower’s Paris peace summit with Khrushchev, is open to speculation. But it
would certainly be valuable if one of our historians could get together with one
of his Russian counterparts and look at Oswald’s KGB files.
This would be especially interesting
because of another pertinent revelation in Summers’
book. At the time of Oswald’s defection and subsequent return he was not the
only one who underwent these experiences. The CIA had a program which sent
pseudo-defectors to the Soviet Union to gather whatever material they could and
subsequently return to this country. There is sufficient evidence that Oswald
was known to the CIA, as well as the FBI, prior to November 22 but it has been
withheld and to the best of my knowledge is still not in the public domain.
Let us now look at the Zapruder film
controversy. Mr. Zapruder had stationed himself with his 8 mm Bell and Howell
movie camera on a pedestal on the “grassy knoll” from which position he could
film the entire motorcade as it came down Elm Street in front of him. The film
used was a Kodachrome color double 8. This has become an important element in
the dispute surrounding the authenticity of the pictures we are currently shown
and has spawned a literature all of its own. The details are technical and
fully discussed in two recent books. One is by David R. Wrone,
professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s
Assassination, and the other by Richard B. Trask National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film: Mr. Zapruder’s
home movie and the murder of President Kennedy. Mr. Trask does not come
from academia but is listed as “archivist and historian.” The books are amply
illustrated and in spite of viewing the same material in great detail the
authors came to opposite conclusions. They agree that the film was not
deliberately altered. But Wrone insists that it
proves conspiracy because Governor Connally reacted too late for the magic
bullet theory and the fatal shot could not have entered Kennedy’s head in the
back and exited in front. Trask believes that the film proves a rear entry
fatal wound. I shall return later to another dissenting view.
The critical frames of the Zapruder film
consist of two portions. The first one showed the motor-cycle police escort coming
from Houston Street into Elm Street. When Zapruder realized that this was only
the beginning of the motorcade he turned the camera off to save footage for the
main event. In this way he was able to focus, with his telephoto lens, on the
President’s limousine from the moment it entered Elm Street, when it passed
directly in front of him, and then disappeared in the triple under path. As
such we have direct information on these crucial seconds of history and anybody
can buy from amazon the DVD Image of an
Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film. It provides the history
surrounding the creation of the film and shows the event in regular as well as
slow motion. This allows one to form an opinion about the plausibility of the magic
bullet theory and the origin of the fatal shot.
It now needs to be pointed out that in the
late 1970s, as a result of popular discontent with the Warren Commission’s
findings, the House of Representatives reopened the question and issued its
report in 1978 (United States House Select Committee on Assassination; HSCA).
Although it endorsed Oswald as the assassin it found evidence for a fourth shot
which led to the conclusion that the President “was probably assassinated as a
result of a conspiracy.” But the Committee failed to name likely suspects. In
addition Wikipedia states
Their report
concluded that the investigation [sic] on the assassination by FBI and CIA were
fundamentally deficient and the facts which have greatly affected the
investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies.
It also found that the FBI, the agency with primary responsibility on the
matter, was ordered by Director Hoover and pressured by unnamed government
official to conclude its investigation quickly. The report hinted that there
was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious
decisions not to disclose potentially important information.
This was, however not the end of
official involvement. In 1991 Oliver Stone’s film on the Kennedy assassination
created a furor around the country and by 1994 the government established the
Assassination Records Review Board (AARB). It was tasked with the survey of all
records held by the government in regard to the Kennedy assassination and to
release them into the public domain no later than 25 years after the enactment
of the legislation. This time frame ends on October, 26 2017. The large amount
of material which has so far been released provided new fodder for the pro and
con of conspiracy theories. The Board closed its activities in 1998 and one of
its members and subsequently Chief Analyst for Military Affairs, Douglas P.
Horne, published in 2009 a five volume tome entitled Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s
Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the
Assassination of JFK. I have not yet had an opportunity to study the
material but will report on it when I have done so. I am only mentioning it now
so that interested readers become aware of its existence and can form their own
independent opinions. Suffice it to say for the moment that Mr. Horne, who has
a B.A. in history, endorses the idea that the original Zapruder film was
deliberately tampered with by the CIA and provides his reasons. They are
extensive and can be viewed on http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig13/horne-d1.1.1.html.
This brings us finally to the medical evidence.
It is contaminated by the government’s insistence that the two shots which hit
the President had been fired from the rear. This was dogma to which the medical
experts at the Warren Commission and the House Committee had to adhere. Yet we
have the initial testimony from the physicians who had attended the President
at Parkland Hospital from a news conference immediately after he had been
pronounced dead. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm.
They
stated that they found an entrance wound in the throat and the shot, therefore,
had come from the front. As far as the major right parietal wound they could
not give a definite opinion whether or not this represented the exit wound of
the bullet that had entered the throat or had a different provenance. They had enlarged
the throat wound to perform a tracheostomy and this larger wound was then taken
by the autopsy pathologists as the exit wound of the previously mentioned magic
bullet. The Parkland physicians had been unaware of a wound in the back because
they were too busy with life-saving attempts.
In regard to the autopsy, which was
performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital under the auspices of the Director of
Laboratories Commander Dr. James Hume, it needs to be noted that the team did
not include a forensic pathologist which would have been indicated. The fatal
head wound was explained by a shot from the rear which had created a massive
defect as it exited. The X-ray reports showed multiple
fractures of the craniumwhich extendedinto
theanterior
and middle portions of the base of the skull. The most extensive damage was in
the fronto-parietal area (emphasis
added) and extended into the temporal region. Metallic fragments were seen throughout
the right hemisphere. When this material was presented to well-known respected
coroners, during the HSCA investigation, they agreed that the interpretation
was reasonable.
Theoretically this would
settle the issue, but there is a great deal of literature which purports that
the autopsy reports as well as the X-rays have been tampered with which renders
any conclusion based on them meaningless. We are now in the typical conspiracy
theories area. But need all of them be disregarded? The most important
testimony always comes from initial observations and here we find
discrepancies. At the previously mentioned press conference Dr. William Kemp Clark,
director of neurosurgery at Parkland Hospital, stated that “A missile had gone
in or out of the back of his head
(emphasis added), causing extensive lacerations and loss of brain tissue.”
During the Warren Commission Hearings Dr. Clark testified in regard to the head
wound, “This was a large gaping wound in
the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and
exposed” (emphasis added). Dr. Robert
Nelson McClelland, associate professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, was giving a lecture
at the hospital when Kennedy’s limousine arrived. By the time he reached the emergency
room the tracheostomy had already been performed. McClelland testified at the Warren
Commission in regard to the head wound,
I
noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted.
It had been shattered apparently by the force of the shot so that the parietal
bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along
its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured
in its lateral haft [sic], and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in
such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and
see that probably a third or so, at least, of brain tissue, posterior cerebral
tissue had been blasted out.
We now can take our pick: do
we believe the autopsy report which places the major skull defect in the
fronto-parietal area with some extension into the temporal lobe, or the physicians
from Parkland Hospital who found the wound in the occipital-parietal region
with loss of cerebellar tissue? Both can’t be right!
This brings up another
question: where did the fatal shot come from? Zapruder was at the scene and initially
reported hearing the shot coming from behind him. In addition he wasn’t sure if
it was one shot or two in extremely close succession. Zapruder’s
presumed origin of the shot was documented in a brief note to Washington on
Friday night by Secret Service agent Max D. Phillips, which accompanied a copy
of the Zapruder film.
The possibility that there
may indeed have been two shots in extremely close succession need not be
dismissed out of hand because Summers reported that the driver of Kennedy’s
limousine, secret service agent Greer as well as his partner, agent Kellerman, who
sat next to him, heard two shots in close succession. As Kellerman put it “like
a double bang bang–bang! … like a plane
going through a sound barrier.” Summers book can be recommended for an
overall assessment of the assassination because it is filled with facts and contains
a minimum of theory.
There exists still another relevant
book; JFK and Sam: The connection between
the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations co-authored by Dr. John R. Hughes,
who is director of neurophysiology, director of the Epilepsy Center and professor
of neurology at the University of Illinois Medical
Center in Chicago. I have known Dr. Hughes for decades, have high regard for
his work and respect his integrity. The book’s first author is listed as
Antoinette Giancana, the daughter of Mafia boss Sam Giancana, and the third
author is Thomas H. Jobe MD, professor of psychiatry
and associate director of neuropsychiatry at the University of
Illinois Medical Center. The book was published in 2005 and provides testimony by
an inmate of the Illinois State Prison system, James E. Files, who is
incarcerated for an unrelated crime. He claims to have fired the fatal shot
from the grassy knoll with a Remington X100 Fireball weapon. Files stated that
he, as well as ChuckieNicoletti
and John Roselli, worked for the Chicago crime boss
Sam Giancano and were sent by him to Dallas on the
assassination mission. In regard to the fatal wound Files stated that Nicoletti fired one shot from the Dal-Tex building which hit
the back of the President’s head on the right side and caused it to briefly
snap forward. Files fired his weapon practically at the same time which led to
the clearly seen marked backward motion of Kennedy’s head. Files claimed
furthermore, that he bit the shell of the bullet he had fired and placed it on the
stockade fence on the grassy knoll. The book contains a picture of this shell
casing and below it one of John C. Rademacher who found it in 1987. Giancana
was summoned to testify before the HSAC but was gunned down in his own house
during the night before he was scheduled to travel to Washington.
Files
is a convicted felon and one may or may not want to believe his
claim. But I found two YouTube videos from interviews he gave. One is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtrFoh3Pao&list=TL2rYsJlxanVM.
It is somewhat over 10 minutes and provides
background but cuts off before the crucial admission of his guilt. This is
provided in the other video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6YtIKtWpBU,
which seems to have come from the same interview. One has to realize that whenever
Files talks about the left side he refers to his view and is, therefore,
Kennedy’s right side.
Regardless whether Files did or did not
fire the Remington 100X there seems to be some probability that a weapon of
this type was used. I have always been puzzled by Kennedy’s massive skull
defect and the statements from witnesses that his “head exploded.” This seems
uncommon as a result of conventional ammunition fired by a Mannlicher-Carcano.
The Remington Fireball on the other hand does just that as this YouTube video
testifies to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAkkncfJ9Y.
Another discussion of this weapon can be found at http://jfkmurdersolved.com/fireball1.htm.
Apart from its power, the fact that it can readily be concealed would make it
an assassin’s weapon of choice when a short range target is involved.
Where does all of this leave
us and what is the truth? Summers wrote that when Chief Justice Warren was
asked if all the investigation’s findings will be made public he replied: “Yes,
there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime.” He also added
that there “may be some security concerns.” This implies that some of them
might never see the light of day. When Hoover was asked privately, eight months
after the Kennedy murder, whether Oswald had really been the assassin, he
replied, “If I told you what I really know it would be very dangerous to this
country. Our whole political system could be disrupted.” Congressman DonEdwards remarked
after a session of the HSCA, “There is not much question that both the FBI and
the CIA are behind this coverup. I hate to think what
they are covering up–or who they are covering for.”
Fifty years after Dallas the
coverup persists and we must ask ourselves what is
this awful secret which has to be protected at all cost? Could it be that the
assassination was really a coup d’état, a conspiracy within the highest levels
of government to remove a President whose policies they hated? Under these
circumstances the question: Who killed Kennedy? becomes
irrelevant. It needs to be rephrased to: Who set the assassination project in
motion? This is the question I shall try to shed some light on in the next
installment. It is vital because we appear to have had a replay in 2001 when
similar powerful players may well have been involved. But if this were to be
the case the entire vast National Security system we have erected is not only a
phenomenal waste of money and talent but also utterly worthless because another
coup d’état can readily be engineered whenever these powerful entities feel
themselves threatened.
National Security has now
become the new divinity in our country. Its ways are inscrutable and must not
be questioned. But we have to expose this false idol and get at the truth of
the mentioned two key events. As far as the Kennedy assassination is concerned
we may only get important glimpses of the truth because too much time has
elapsed, documents have been destroyed, and major witnesses are dead. This
makes, however, a complete reassessment of 9/11 urgent and essential. More than
12 years already have elapsed and we are still suffering from the consequences
with the current NSA scandal only one of them. Unless Americans start educating
themselves on these events and not only demand but enact the necessary changes
in our political structures, the arrival of dictatorship and/or atomic war, as
outlined in the previous installment, is unavoidable. George Orwell was absolutely
correct when he wrote: He, who controls the past, controls the future. This is,
therefore, my urgent plea for the sake of our children and grandchildren: study
these two pivotal events of our recent history while there is still time, sift
fact from fancy, insist on an honest accounting and then restructure our
political institutions to conform to the goal of a more peaceful world for
which President Kennedy had to give his life.
November 15, 2013
MONUMENTAL MEDICAL COVER-UP
As anticipated in the November 1,
installment the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s
assassination has spawned at least three more books, several articles and some
TV coverage. Fact and fiction are liberally mixed and after looking at the
material one is no wiser and still left to draw one’s own conclusions according
to individual bias. Inasmuch as the current installment builds on that of
November 1, I would like to suggest to the reader to start with that one
because it provides the overall context. The current installment will deal
exclusively with what Adam Gopnik has called in his TheNew Yorker article of
November 4, (Closer than That: The assassination of JFK), David Lifton’s
“obviously mad idea.”
In
the previous installment I mentioned the discrepancy between the observations
of the physicians who attempted to resuscitate President Kennedy after his arrival at ParklandMemorialHospital and the
observations made at the time of the autopsy. I also quoted Dr. McClelland’s
testimony before the Warren Commission. He attended the President at ParklandHospital in his capacity as surgeon and
reported the head wound as “… the right posterior portion of the skull had been
blasted …. The parietal bone seemed to be fractured almost along its right
posterior half, as well as some occipital bone being fractured in its lateral
halt [sic] … probably a third or so, at least, of brain tissue, posterior
cerebral tissue had been blasted out.” The full quote is in the November 1
installment.
Since then I had the opportunity to
study the relevant aspects of the available literature, including the entries
into the medical charts at Parkland by
attending physicians. These were made between 4 and 5 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday November 22nd
and, therefore, represent primary data. All medical personnel who saw the
President’s head wound at Parkland Hospital reported that it was located in the
back of the head on the right side or in medical terms the occipital-posterior parietal
area. Dr. Kemp Clark, the attending neurosurgeon, reported not only a massive
injury to that region but that he could even see cerebellar tissue. Here are
relevant excerpts of Dr. Clark’s Summary Report. They can be found on the
Internet as Warren Commission (WC) Exhibit No. 392.
Neurological evaluation revealed the
President’s pupils to be widely dilated and fixed to light. His eyes were
divergent, being deviated outward; a skew deviation from the horizontal was
present. No deep tendon reflexes or spontaneous movements were found.
There was a large wound in the right
occipito-parietal region, from which profuse bleeding was occurring. 1500 cc.
of blood were estimated on the drapes and floor of the Emergency Operating
Room. There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and
cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound.
Although non-medically trained readers
may have difficulty with some technical terms, such as “skew deviation,” they
can ignore those and merely concentrate on the wound location. I am
deliberately including complete relevant medical data in original quotes
because of the seriousness of the problem they uncover. It was also stated by
attending medical personnel that if one were to casually look at the President’s
head one might not have noted any obvious wound, especially on the top of his
head.
These statements are important in
regard to what was observed at the autopsy. FBI agents Francis O’Neill and
James Sibert were in continuous attendance and their report, dated November 26,
is also available on the Internet. In it the agents stated that after the
President was placed on the autopsy table it was “apparent that a tracheotomy
had been performed, as well as surgery of
the head area, namely, in the top of the skull [italics added]. Since no
such surgery was ever performed at Parkland this part of the sentence led David
Lifton who was a graduate student in engineeringat UCLA to study in great detail the aspects
surrounding the President’s death and subsequent autopsy. The result was the
book mentioned earlier by Gopnik, Best
Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy,
which was published in 1980. The book’s title reflected the fact that in murder
cases the autopsy results are regarded as the “best evidence,” which trumps
eye-witnesses’ reports. After carefully amassing a large number of facts from
official sources and private interviews of witnesses he concluded that at some time
the chain of evidence in regard to the transport of Kennedy’s body must have
been broken and the official autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital was performed
on a body whose wounds had been altered. I shall not go into the merits of his theories
when and how this could have been accomplished and shall remain strictly with
medical data which are available from Parkland Hospital, the Bethesda autopsy,
the Warren Commission (WC), the Clark panel (CP), the House SelectCommittee on Assassination (HSCA) and the
Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB).
When one now looks at the official
autopsy report, the sketches of the wounds made at that time by Dr. Boswell,
Chief of Pathology who assisted Dr. Humes, as well as the X-rays which were
taken at that time, one cannot fail to note that there are massive differences
in relation to what was seen in Dallas. The official report signed by Dr. Humes,
Boswell and Finck stated:
There isa large irregular defect of the
scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending
somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions.In this region there is an actual absence of
scalp and bone which measures approximately 13 cm in its greatest diameter.
From the irregular margins of the above scalp
defect tears extend in stellated fashion into the more or less intact scalp …
Situated in the posterior scalp
approximately 2.5 cm laterally to the right and slightly above the external
occipital protuberance is a lacerated wound measuring 15 x 6 mm. In the
underlying bone is a corresponding wound through the skull which exhibits
beveling of the margins of the bone when viewed from the inner aspect of the
skull.
Clearly
visible in the above described skull defect and exuding from it, is lacerated
brain tissue which on close inspection proves to represent the major portion of
the right cerebral hemisphere. At this point it is noted that the falx cerebri
is extensively lacerated with disruption of the superior sagittal sinus. Upon
reflecting the scalp, multiple complex fracture lines are seen to radiate from
both the large defect at the vertex and the smaller wound at the occiput. These
vary greatly in length and direction, the longest measuring approximately 19
cm. These result in the production of numerous fragments which vary in size
from a few millimeters to 10 cm in its greatest diameter. The complexity of
these fractures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal
description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which
are prepared.
The
brain is removed and preserved for further study following formalin fixation.
It is, therefore, apparent that the
FBI agents’ statement in regard to “surgery at the top of the head” was not necessarily
their fantasy but a genuine observation that something was drastically wrong at
the top of the head, as was reported by Dr. Humes. It seems that the agents
faithfully reported what they heard the autopsy physicians say while they were
doing their work. The following paragraphs, taken from the O’Neill-Sibert report, also shed light on the back wound, which is
now commonly referred to as a “neck wound,” as well as the genesis of the “magic
bullet” theory.
During
the latter stages of the autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared
to be a bullet hole which was below the
shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal
column.
This
opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was
determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had a downward position of 45-60 degrees.
Further probing determined that the distance travelled by this missile was a
short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the
finger.
Inasmuch
as no complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area and
likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other area of the body
as determined by total body X-rays and inspection revealing there was no point
of exit, the individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why
they could find no bullets.
A
call was made by the Bureau to the Firearms Section of the FBI Laboratory, at
which time SA Charles L. Killion advised that the Laboratory had received
through Secret Service Agent Richard Johnson a bullet which had reportedly been
found on a stretcher in the emergency
room of ParklandHospital, Dallas, Texas.
This stretcher had also contained a stethescope [sic]
and pair of rubber gloves. Agent Johnson had advised the Laboratory that it had not been ascertained whether or not
this was the stretcher which had been used to transport the body of President
Kennedy. Agent Fillion [sic] further described
this bullet as pertaining to a 6.5 millimeter rifle which would be
approximately a 25 caliber rifle and this bullet consisted of a copper alloy
full jacket.
Immediately
following receipt of this information, this was made available to Dr. Humes who
advised that in his opinion this accounted for no bullet being located which
had entered the back region and since external cardiac massage had been
performed at Parkland Hospital, it was entirely possible that through such
movement the bullet had worked its way back out of the point of entry and
fallen on the stretcher.
Also
during the latter stages of the autopsy, a piece of the skull measuring 10 x
6.5 centimeters was brought to Dr. Humes who was instructed that this had been removed from the President’s skull.
Immediately this section of skull was X-rayed, at which time it was determined
by Dr. Humes that one corner of this section revealed minute metal particles
and inspection of this area disclosed a chipping of the top portion of this
piece, both of which indicated that this had been the point of exit of the
bullet entering the skull region.
On
basis of the latter two developments, Dr. Humes stated that the pattern was
clear. That the one bullet had entered the President’s back and had worked its
way out of the body during external cardiac massage and that a second high
velocity bullet had entered the rear of the skull and had fragmented prior to
its exit through the top of the skull. He further pointed out that the X-rays
had disclosed numerous fractures in the cranial area which he attributed to the
force generated by the impact of the bullet in its passage through the brain
area. He attributed the death of the President to a gunshot wound in the head [italics
were added by me].
To reiterate some of the major points: The
term that a piece of skull had been “removed” is unusual language. One would
have expected words such as “blasted away” or “torn out.” The wound in the back
was “below the shoulders” and shallow, “with a downward angle of 45-60 degrees.”
This effectively rules out an exit through the neck in the area which was
obliterated by the tracheotomy wound. In this regard it is also important to
point out that the anterior neck wound, which was regarded by the Dallas physicians as an
entry wound, was termed “small.” Although the tracheostomy involved a
transverse incision to allow the introduction of the tube, it was limited to
that diameter. It also was reported by nursing personnel that after removal of
the tube the skin had closed over. From what I have read,
tube sizes seem to range 7-10 mm and could hardly have produced the gaping,
ragged, large anterior neck wound, which is now seen in the literature on all
the photographs from the autopsy. This size and type of wound was apparently
not present when the President’s body left Dallas and neither was an exit wound “at the
top of the skull.” Furthermore, the location where the “magic bullet” had been
found was not known at the time of the autopsy and only at some later point in
time assigned to Governor Connally’s stretcher. In
this connection the Parkland surgical report
by Dr. Tom Shires is important. It is dated November 22, 1963 and reads in part
There
was a 1 cm. punctate missile wound over the juncture of the middle and lower third,
medial aspect, of the left thigh. X-rays of the thigh and leg revealed a bullet
fragment which was imbedded in the body of the femur in the distal third. …
Following this the missile wound was excised and the bullet tract
explored….”
It
is therefore obvious that the practically intact bullet which was allegedly
found on Governor Connally’s stretcher is not likely
to have been the one which was described above. Let us now look what the
autopsy report states in regard to the wound which was observed in the
President’s back.
The second wound presumably of entry is that described in the upper right posterior
thorax. Beneath the skin there is ecchymosis of subcutaneous tissue and
musculature. The missile path through
fascia and musculature cannot be easily
proved. The wound presumably of exit
was that described by Dr. Malcolm Perry of Dallas in the low anterior cervical region.
When observed by Dr. Perry the wound measured ‘a few millimeters in diameter’
however it was extended as a tracheostomy incision and thus its character is
distorted at the time of autopsy. However there is considerable ecchymosis of
the strap muscles of the right neck and the fascia about the trachea adjacent
to the line of the tracheostomy wound. The third point of reference in
connecting these two wounds is in the apex (supra-clavicular portion) of the
right pleural cavity. In this region there is contusion of the parietal pleura and of the extreme apical portion
of the right upper lobe of the lung. In both instances the diameter of
contusion and ecchymosis measures 5 cm. Both the visceral and parietal pleura
are intact overlying these areas of trauma [italics were added by me].
We now need to know that the main
official autopsy report was finished on Sunday the 24th and
represents a final version of at least one previous draft. Dr. Humes stated
that he had burned the original notes at home in his fireplace because they
were stained with the President’s blood and he did not want them to become
collectors’ items. But he also admitted that he had burned the first draft for
reasons he was unable to recall later. By the time he wrote the final version,
the currently official theory of connecting the wound on the back of the thorax
with the anterior neck wound was already dogma to which the autopsy physicians
apparently had to bow. Therefore we note the omission of probing the back
wound, finding it shallow, and its downward path. The word “contusion” in
regard to presumed bullet path also is unusual. “Laceration” of lung tissue
might have been more appropriate had this indeed been the bullet trajectory.
The signers of the final report were deliberately vague by using words such as
“presumably,” and that “the missile path cannot be easily proved.” In other
words, the “magic bullet” theory is conjecture but foisted as fact upon the
American people and the world.
The appearance of the brain was
provided in a Supplementary Report which was signed only by Dr. Humes and
forwarded on December 6 to the White House physician. Relevant sections are
excerpted below.
Following
Formalin fixation the brain seighs [sic] 1500 grams.
The right cerebral hemisphere is found to be markedly disrupted. There is a
longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in
position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from
the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe
anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below
the vertex in the white matter. There is considerable loss of cortical
substance above the base of the laceration, particularly in the parietal lobe.
The margins of this laceration are at all points
jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varying
directions and for varying distances from the main laceration. In addition,
there is a laceration of the corpus callosum extending from the genu to the
tail. Exposed in this latter laceration are the interiors of the right lateral
and third ventricles.
The report continues with descriptions
of the left hemisphere, which was regarded as essentially intact, and of a
basal view, which showed considerable damage to the President’s deep brain
structures. It then states “In the interest of preserving the specimen coronal
sections are not made.” Since these are part of a routine evaluation of
autopsied brains, and could have shown bullet tracks, one wonders why the brain
was not sectioned and only some tissue samples were retained from portions of
the brain for microscopic examinations. Again it must be emphasized that although
the description of the damage to the brain is consistent with the overall
autopsy report as well as the X-rays, it is completely inconsistent with what
was seen in Dallas
and what one would have expected had Dr. Rose, the Dallas coroner, been allowed to perform the autopsy.
Previous authors also have commented on the brain weight; 1500 grams is the
average of a normal human brain and not likely to be correct when major portions
of it have been torn out.
Since as the ancient Chinese said “a
picture is worth a thousand words,” let me now show WC Exhibit 399, the “magic
bullet,” and some of the graphs that were made on basis of the autopsy reports
and X-rays. In the row below we see the “magic bullet” and a diagram made as
part of the official death certificate which depicts the President’s wounds as
seen from the back. This picture as well as the following ones were obtained
from Horne’s Inside the Assassination Review
Board and were digitized after he had given me permission to do so.
This
bullet is supposed to have: entered the President’s back, or neck, exited at
the throat; entered Governor Connally’s back,
destroyed the fifth rib, exited below the nipple; entered his lower forearm,
destroyed bones and exited at the palmar surface of the wrist; entered the left
thigh, lodged in the femur but was recovered from the Governor’s stretcher. In
regard to the sketch please note that the back wound is clearly in the thorax
rather than the neck and a bullet entering from above and behind could not have
shown the trajectory as sketched for the Warren Commission and shown below. Therefore
Dr. Boswell reversed himself for the HSCA testimony and sketched a neck wound,
which is now compatible with the official bullet path. Yet this is clearly at
variance with the autopsy report as well as that from the FBI agents.
Reversals
of testimony at a later date by physicians who were either involved in
emergency care or the autopsy of the President are not uncommon. As noted previously
Dr. Perry had consistently regarded the small puncture wound in the front of
the neck as an entry wound, but under pressure during WC testimony he agreed
that it could have been either an entry or exit wound.
The next row of pictures shows a sketch of the
fatal bullet’s trajectory, which was prepared for the WC, and a sketch of the
head wounds as seen from the top which Dr. Boswell had made during the autopsy.
The
sketch is complex and somewhat difficult to interpret. I am including it
because it reflects what was seen during the evening of November 22 and is
uninfluenced by subsequent political considerations. Apart from other damaged
areas a massive skull defect at the vertex measuring 10 x17 cm, rather than 13
as in the written report, is apparent.
The
next two pictures show a lateral and an anterior-posterior view of the President’s
autopsy skull X-rays.
Please
disregard the obvious dark areas. They do not necessarily mean missing bone and
have been interpreted by expert radiologists as air which entered the skull at
some unknown time. Although the X-rays appear to correspond to the verbal and
written autopsy descriptions they are at profound variance with the observations
made in Dallas. They show a shattered central parietal-frontal region with a
relatively intact occipito-parietal area, which is the opposite of what was
seen in Dallas.
At
the time of the ARRB activities Mr. Horne had Dr. Boswell sketch once more his
impression of the skull wounds and these are shown projected on a skull model
in the following pictures.
These
areas of large damage can now be compared with pictures drawn for Horne by Dr.
Crenshaw who was present during the attempted life-saving measures at ParklandHospital.
Although
this wound is large, it is clearly not of the massive dimensions seen on Dr.
Boswells’ sketch, in the X-rays and the autopsy report. It is also incompatible
with the picture on Wikipedia which was “taken at the beginning of the autopsy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_autopsy.A wound of
that size would have been obvious to everyone who attended the President at
Parkland Hospital. Horne also obtained sketches of the head wound as seen in
Dallas by Dr. McClelland and Nurse Audrey Bell and both drew an occipital wound.
A completely different sketch was provided to Horne by Dr. Grossman who had likewise
been for some time in Trauma Room One.
One
needs to realize that the sketches for the ARRB were made in 1996, more than
thirty years after the event. They are drawn from memory which is not
necessarily reliable Dr. Grossman also
appeared as co-author of a “Special Article” published in the November 2003
issue of Neurosurgery.It contains an extensive description of the November 22nd 1963Dallas’ events
and I am extracting here some portions of Grossman’s personal recollections which
raise questions about the accuracy of his memory.
We
stood behind the President’s head, Kemp [neurosurgeon Kemp Clark and Grossman
who was in Clarks’ neurosurgery department] Kemp
on the left side and I on the right. The President’s hair was very thick and brushlike, making it difficult to see his scalp without
parting his hair. However, without touching his head we could see that, in the
right posterior parietal area, the scalp was lacerated and was avulsed outward
(Fig.5). A large plate of bone had been lifted upward and was protruding from
the wound. The protruding edge lay superiorly, parallel to the direction of the
superior sagittal sinus. The plate was approximately 4 inches [10.2 cm] in
length in the anterior-posterior (frontal-occipital) dimension and
approximately 2 inches [5.2 cm] in width. …The tissue was very white, and there
was no active bleeding. Brain tissue was exposed in an area that extended, in
the medial-lateral direction from the plate of bone to below the level of the
superior temporal line. … The President was lying supine, with his occiput on
the stretcher. Kemp and I lifted his head to inspect the occiput. There was a
laceration approximately 1 inch [2.6 cm] in diameter located close to the midline
of the cranium, approximately 1 inch above the external occipital protuberance.
Brain tissue, some of which I thought had the appearance of cerebellar folia,
was lying in the laceration. There was no active bleeding.
The
mentioned figure 5 is inserted below as well as a drawing of the brain which
was prepared from autopsy photos and published by Horne in Vol. I.
It
seems that Dr. Grossman’s description, the picture, and his sketches for the
ARRB correspond somewhat better to the autopsy report than the Parkland physicians’ chart entries. But even these
sketches are clearly at variance with the above mentioned picture of the
President’s head which is shown on Wikipedia. Dr. Grossman was not involved in
any of the procedures which were carried out on the moribund President and I
have not found a medical chart entry of his from that day. The absence of
blood, which he mentioned twice, is incompatible with Dr. Clark’s statement
which was quoted earlier and one cannot see cerebellar folia from a wound which
is located above the external occipital protuberance. The report, therefore,
lacks scientific validity.
The
drawing of the brain is as mentioned a scan of Figure 35 from Horne’s Vol. I
and the full caption states:
HSCA
artist’s rendering of autopsy photographs showing the superior view of a brain
represented to be that of President Kennedy.
Artist
Ida Dox drew this image of one of the autopsy photographs of a preserved brain.
This artist’s conception is representative of autopsy photos 20, 23, 24, 25,
50, 51 and 52. It appears that there are no
‘bootleg’ autopsy photographs of the brain, so the only visual image that can
be published is this drawing commissioned by the HSCA for use in its public
hearings. The official autopsy photographer, John Stringer, and former FBI
agent Frank O’Neill both testified to the ARRB that the photos represented by
this image cannot be images of
President Kennedy’s brain [bold print and italics are in the original].
Apart from the mentioned Neurosurgery
article there are several others but for now I shall mention only two. One appeared
in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of May 1992 with the
title “JFK’s death–the plain truth from the MDs who did the autopsy.” In the article Dr. Humes and Boswell provided
their views on the autopsy and defended them against the criticisms which had
been raised. The article is narrative and does not provide new data. On the
other hand there also exists a brief article “The postmortem examination of
President Kennedy is invalid: the evidence,” by Dr. Salerian in “Medical
Hypothesis” of October 2008. The author uses as evidence three points: 1) the
purported brain weight of 1500 grams is incompatible with the reported loss of
1/3 of brain substance. 2) The asserted bullet trajectory for the back wound
violates the laws of physics because it cannot travel upwards after having
entered on a downward path. 3) Dr. Humes “destroyed part of the autopsy records
and personal notes inconsistent with accepted ethical and judicious medical
practice.” Salerian concluded that, “President
Kennedy’s postmortem examination conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital by
Commander Humes is invalid and unworthy of scientific reliability.”
The reason for the numerous conspiracy
theories is the excessive secrecy of the government. Even the medical data were
not released to the public until the ARRB had finished its work in 1998, and we
still have been shown only a fraction of all the documents which are in
existence. An example of what appears to be absurd secrecy is the fact that the
report of Nurse Patricia Hutton, who had accompanied the transfer of the
President’s gurney from the limousine to Trauma Room One,
was stamped “Top Secret.” This was either automatic because everything
surrounding the murder of JFK had to be top secret or because she wrote that
she saw a wound in the back of the head and this was no longer acceptable. One
also needs to know that as soon as the autopsy was finished, photographs and
X-rays had to be turned over to Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman never again
to be seen until the HSCA, the proceedings of which were likewise kept secret.
Even Mr. Stringer never saw the developed photos he took because the camera
film had to be given to Mr. Kellerman.
I have deliberately refrained from
conjectures as to why the autopsy findings differed so markedly from what the
medical personnel in Dallas reported on the afternoon of that fateful day. The
discrepancies are of a magnitude which practically forces one to conclude that
the body had been tampered with. It appears that the head as well as anterior
neck wounds were deliberately enlarged before Drs. Humes and Boswell began
their reported work. This also means that neither the written autopsy report
nor the photographs and X-rays can be used to establish the number and
directions of the bullets which wounded and killed President Kennedy. This
leads to the further conclusion that the entire literature, which uses autopsy
material to either prove or disprove theories about the assassination, cannot
be trusted. It appears that two crimes were committed. One involved the person(s)
who planned and executed the assassination and the second which involved
persons within the government who falsified legal evidence.
In the next installment I shall attempt
to present a timeline for the period between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST, at which
time the Humes-Boswell autopsy began, as well as Horne’s opinion when the chain
of custody of the President’s body might have been interrupted. We owe our dead
President, who saved us from nuclear disaster, the truth and remarks like Mr. Gopnik’s, as cited earlier, are not helpful in
reachingthis goal.
December 1, 2013
THE COVER-UP CONTINUES
In the two previous installments I have shown
that there are serious discrepancies between the observations by medical
personnel in Dallas and the official autopsy report of President Kennedy’s
wounds. I have also mentioned in the November 15 article, which deals
specifically with the autopsy findings, that the report by FBI agents Francis
O’Neill and James Sibert, which was sent to the Bureau, differed from the
official autopsy report as it was delivered by Navy Commander James Humes to
his superior officer, and the assassinated President’s personal physician Rear Admiral
George Burkley. In addition, I have pointed out that these differences were not
random but apparently intentional in order to solidify the lone gunman theory.
There are numerous theories about who
might have done what in Dallas and for what reason but I shall leave those
aside because they cannot be proven and concentrate instead on what I have
called in the November 15 installment the second crime – the cover-up. The
various theories on the assassination are well known but the behind the scenes
events which occurred later on that day are hushed up. But if we can
demonstrate that there was a cover-up, which still persists, this is important because
current political affairs can continue to be influenced by a misrepresentation of
facts which are potentially available.
On the box which contains the DVD Superpower there is a quote attributed
to President Truman: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t
know.” It is most apt for what I now shall present. There will be no theories
only data from official government sources which are available on the Internet.
The information has been either supplemented by or compared with the following
books: William Manchester’s The Death of
a President: November 20 –November 25 1963, David Lifton’s Best Evidence, Vincent Bugliosi’s Four Days in November as well as Reclaiming History: The Assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, and Douglas Horne’s Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. The four authors
represent different viewpoints: Manchester and Bugliosi provide the official
theory about the assassination while Lifton and Horne dispute it.
In order to clarify in my own mind why
the autopsy findings differ to such an extent from the observations at Parkland
Hospital, as shown in the November 15 installment, I mentioned that I would
present a time line of the Friday 22 events for the hours between 2 and 8 p.m. I
was specifically interested in who was responsible for the autopsy to have been
carried out at Bethesda Naval Hospital instead of Walter Reed, which would have
been the more appropriate venue because it housed the nation’s foremost
Forensic Center. I also wanted to know if there was any reasonable possibility
that Lifton’s theory of the body having been switched to a different coffin and
tampered with before the official autopsy began, contains even a shred of reason.
The only apt description of what I
subsequently found is by Churchill referring to Russia: “A riddle, wrapped in a
mystery, inside an enigma ….” When one compares official testimony among key
witnesses one finds glaring differences which cannot simply be written off as
memory problems. Because of the massive amount of material, as well as
contradictions on most any item one wants to clarify, I shall limit myself to
the time between 6 p.m., the arrival of Air Force 1 at Andrews Air Force Base
(AFB), and around midnight when the autopsy formally ended.
The decision in favor of Bethesda Naval
Hospital was reached during the flight to Andrews Air Force Base but we don’t
know who made it. Initially the autopsy was planned to be held at Walter Reed
and transportation arrangements were made, but someone countermanded this
order. The official version is that during the return flight to Washington Rear
Admiral George Burkley the President’s personal physician, approached the
distraught Jackie and explained that since her husband had been a Naval Officer
Bethesda would be the appropriate place for the autopsy and she agreed. The
change of venue from Walter Reed to Bethesda has introduced an additional
element of confusion and led to the “mystery of the two coffins.” It is based
on Lifton’s as well as Horne’s data and extensively discussed on the Internet. But
the keyword “shipping coffin” does not exist in Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.
The official version is quite simple and
appears on pp. 229-233 of the Four Days
book under the time 6:55 and the identical paragraphs are reprinted in Reclaiming History. It states that the
presidential motorcade had arrived in a Navy ambulance which contained the
bronze Dallas casket accompanied by Jackie, the President’s brother Robert, Rear
Admiral Burkley, some members of JFK’s staff and Secret Service agents. The
ambulance arrived at the front gate of Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55. Jackie
and Robert Kennedy were taken to the Presidential Suite on the 17th
floor where they awaited the release of the body for transport to the White
House after the autopsy. Secret service agents as well as General McHugh,
President Kennedy’s Air Force Aide, remained outside talking. While agent
William Greer, the driver of the ambulance, remained in the car, Roy Kellerman,
his superior, entered the hospital to find out where the entrance to morgue was.
FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, who had been tasked to stay with
body of the slain President at all times, became concerned about the delay. According
to Bugliosi, they then “approach the group of men and ask what the delay is all
about. Larry O’Brien [Secret service] says they don’t know where the autopsy
room is. The FBI men tell them to follow them around to the rear of the
hospital.” They are led to the loading dock and in the process of carrying the
extremely heavy bronze casket up a few stairs it suffered some damage. Bugliosi
did not provide a time for the coffin’s arrival at the morgue and merely listed
four references to the ARRB reports for this event. Of these the “After Action Report”
by Lieutenant Bird, who was in charge of the honor guard, is the only relevant
but also the most confusing one in this respect.
As mentioned, Bugliosi timed the arrival
of the casket at “some minutes” after 6:55. But Bird’s official “After Action
Report” stated the transport from the ambulance to the morgue occurred at “2000
hours.” This is also the time provided by Dr. Humes for when the autopsy had
started. Yet, this presents us with a serious problem because it conflicts with
the testimony of Dr. Finck which will be provided later. Bugliosi’s statement in
regard to the discussion by the “group of men,” which delayed the drive to the morgue,
was likewise inaccurate. Furthermore, although he mentioned in the endnotes Bird’s
time when the Presidential party left from Bethesda for the White House, he
failed to provide the time for entry of the coffin into the morgue which was
clearly shown in the same document.
I
would strongly urge readers who are seriously interested in what happened on
11-22-1963 and the subsequent cover-up, to consult this official information.
The relevant data start at 4:05 when Gawler’s funeral home was contacted by Col.
Miller, Chief of Ceremonies and Special Events of the Washington Military
District. It was initially tasked to send a hearse to Andrews AFB for the
transport of the body to the funeral home, while the military escort was to be
flown by helicopter to that location. An honor guard, “the death watch,”
arrived at Gawler’s soon thereafter and started practice drills. At some point
this order was rescinded because it had been decided to transfer the body by
ambulance to Bethesda. The discussion, which in part was quite heated, by the
“group” outside the hospital entrance did not deal with the question where the hospital
morgue was located but where the morticians were supposed to do their job. Was
it to be at Gawler’s which had the facilities or at Bethesda which did not have
them? Supposedly the Kennedy family insisted that everything be done at
Bethesda and that portable equipment was to be used. This was abbreviated in
Bird’s report to “After considerable confusion as to where the President’s body
was to be taken the joint casket team removed the casket from the ambulance at
the mortuary entrance in the rear of the hospital.” The report carried the date
of December 12 which is quite late when one considers that the funeral, which
ended Bird’s official functions, had taken place on November 25.
Lt. Bird’s 8 o’clock arrival of the Dallas
bronze casket cannot possibly be correct. It was contradicted even by Humes who
testified before the Warren Commission (WC) that, “The President’s body was
received at 25 minutes before eight and the autopsy began approximately at 8 on
that evening. You must include in that fact that certain X-rays and other
examinations were made before the actual beginning of the routine type autopsy
examination.” He was not asked what these “other examinations” had consisted
of.
The two main autopsy physicians were
Commander James Humes, Director of Laboratories of the hospital, and its chief
pathologist Commander Thornton Boswell. When Humes had earlier been asked
whether or not he might want assistance of forensic specialists from Walter Reed
he declined because he felt that there would be no necessity for it. His job
was delineated at the outset by Rear Admiral Burkley as “find the bullets.” It
was not to be a complete autopsy in the conventional sense. Instead bullets had
to be found which could be matched to Oswald’s rifle that had been displayed on
TV during the afternoon. The single shooter theory had already been established
and the autopsy was to be limited to its confirmation. Although Burkley and
Humes had provided sworn testimony that it was a complete autopsy this was
contradicted by Finck who initially refused to sign his name to that statement.
He finally succumbed to pressure and justified his reversal in sworn testimony
by stating that since the purpose had been to recover bullets and fragments
therefrom this was accomplished. He, therefore, could put his name to the
official autopsy report of November 24.
“Find the bullets” as the main purpose
of the autopsy was also used by the radiologist Dr. James Ebersole. He was
officer of the day for his department on November 22 but quite junior and not
yet Board certified. He was later criticized for his relative lack of
experience but countered it by pointing out that since his task was quite
circumscribed, he had no problem meeting it. After the skull X-rays were
developed and only small bullet fragments could be seen, Humes and Boswell
decided to seek assistance from Walter Reed Hospital. Humes telephoned Lt. Col.
Dr. Pierre Finck of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), chief of
the Wounds Ballistics Pathology Branch, at his home and asked him to come
immediately to Bethesda. Finck testified that he had received the call at 8
p.m.
Dr.Finck also testified that when he arrived at 8:30 the autopsy was in
progress and the brain, heart and lungs had been removed. Finck’s
time data are undisputed and can, therefore be taken as valid for scientific
purposes. But since he arrived after the brain had been removed he cannot have
had firsthand information about the appearance of the skull upon arrival of the
body. Although he was extensively pressed by the WC, the Clark panel, the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), the Clay Shaw trial and the ARRB, on
the interpretation of the skull wounds, his testimony is not necessarily valid
because he was not present at the time the X-rays were taken and when the brain
was removed. For this he had to rely on statements by Humes. This would have
been hearsay and inadmissible in a genuine criminal trial.
This brings us to the critical
questions: when were the X-rays taken and at what time was the brain removed?
The answers are of major importance for an accurate assessment of what the
X-rays show. If the brain had already been removed before they were obtained
they would be contaminated by the unavoidable damage to the skull in the
process of removal and lose much of their value. Since they are the most
important medical evidence it is, therefore, essential to know at what time
they were obtained. Unfortunately this area is full of contradictions and vital
evidence is not available. I now shall provide what can be garnered from the
technicians who assisted at the autopsy. The official autopsy report does not
provide this information, neither does the one by the FBI agents who were in
attendance and Bugliosi likewise fails to do so. In regard to the time the
autopsy was started we have only one sentence from the FBI report: “Upon
completion of X-rays and photographs, the first incision was made at 8:15 p.m.”
This statement is also only partially correct because photographs and sketches
were taken throughout the autopsy as well as thereafter, during reconstruction
of the head by morticians.
The two X-ray technicians were Edward
F. Reed and Jerrol F. Custer, while the lab technicians were Paul Kelly
O’Connor and James Curtis Jenkins. Their testimonies are typical for the depth
of the problem one is confronted with in the search for truth. Let us remember
that according to Humes’ testimony “X-rays and other investigations” had been
performed between 7:35 and 8:00 p.m. The National Archives contain 3 skull X-rays:
one anterior-posterior view (A-P) and two lateral views. Reed testified that he
took only one lateral and an A-P view. Yet Custer, who was Reed’s supervisor, reported
that he had taken five skull X-rays: the A-P, two
lateral and two tangential views. The latter have apparently disappeared. The
technician’s testimonies to the ARRB are in Volume II of Horne’s report but
unfortunately neither one was asked for a clock time when they started to take
the X-rays.
We know that by 8 p.m. all of the
skull X-rays, regardless whether they were three or five, had been taken and
studied by the autopsy physicians because that is the time Dr. Humes called
Finck for help. Reed as well as Custer emphasized
that the X-Rays were taken and developed one at a time rather than as a batch.
If we accept Humes’ statement that the body had arrived at 7:35 it is
impossible that even the currently existing three films had been taken and
evaluated within 25 minutes. In those days developing one cassette required 5
minutes. To this must be added the time needed for adequate positioning of the body
and the camera before the film is taken, the time needed to commute between the
morgue and the main laboratory on the fourth floor as well as the return to the
morgue, and an inspection of the developed films. Even if there had been only
three films and they were developed in a batch (contrary to the technicians’
statements), rather than successively, the Humes 7:35 time of arrival time of
the body cannot be correct.
The problem gets worse when it comes
to details of Custer’s sworn testimony. There were apparently at least two
series of X-rays taken: First a set of skull and cervical spine films and
subsequently others dealing with the rest of the body. This is the only way one
can make sense of Custer’s otherwise unintelligible testimony. The confusing
aspects start when Jeremy Gunn, the ARRB interviewer, asked Custer when the
first X- rays were taken. “Approximately, I would say, it would have to –the
first thing I remember–it would have to be after the Y-incision was made, so
the autopsy was already in progress.” Gunn then asked “Approximately how much
time passed between the time you first saw President Kennedy‘s body and the
time you took the first post Y-incision X-ray?” Answer, “I would safely say
within an hour. May be a little less. Maybe a little
more, but it wasn’t any more than that.” It should be noted that the “Y
incision” refers to the opening of chest and abdomen and indicates that the
brain had already been removed by that time. Gunn then inquired about the
number of skull X-rays and in what series all of the X-rays were taken. Custer
replied that there were five different series, at the most, at different times.
The set of skull X-rays had been taken first. When he then was asked if he had
seen the Presidential party upon its arrival at the hospital, Custer affirmed
it. He had seen “Jacqueline Kennedy in her bloody dress” when she entered the
rotunda while he was on his way to the fourth floor to have the first X-rays
developed. Gunn asked the question because Custer had previously reported this
observation to Lifton, and Gunn wanted to have it repeated under oath.
This testimony presents us, with an obvious
problem. Custer could not have taken “the first X-rays” after the Y incision
because the skull X-rays had come first. The post 8:15 X-rays dealt with the
rest of the body.If he was indeed
on his way to have the first X-ray developed, the body must have arrived before
6:55. When Custer was asked if there were any other records which relate to the
autopsy, he replied that there was a duty log in the radiology department. He
believed that he had made an entry when he was dispatched to the morgue to take
the films of President Kennedy. He was then told by Dr. Ebersole to eradicate
the entry. “In fact, I was told to tear the whole page out.” Custer then said
“I gave it to Ebersole and he destroyed it.”
One
may now feel that this type of confusing testimony is just happenstance.
Unfortunately it is the rule as the testimony of the laboratory technicians Paul
O’ Connor and James Curtis Jenkins proves. O’Connor testified for the HSCA on
August 29 1977 that he was on duty with Jenkins that night. He stated that
“The casket was a pink shipping casket
and it arrived at approximately eight o’clock. He said the body was in a body
bag and the head was wrapped in a sheet. O’Connor said he helped unwrap the sheet. He recalls seeing “… massive head wound …”
and a “…gaping wound in the neck …” as well as “… two chest incisions.”
O’Connor says he was choked at what
he saw. He said the head had “nothing left in the cranium but splattered brain
matter.” O’Connor said he noticed this particularly because it was “… part of
my job to remove the brain and fix it.”
This is the type of testimony which
has fueled speculations but at least the time must be wrong. Had the HSCA been
a court trial one would immediately have attempted to corroborate O’Connor’s
statements with those of his co-worker Paul Jenkins since both of them were
together at all times. Jenkins’s testimony was, however, quite unrewarding in
this respect. He was interviewed on August 29, 1977 per telephone, and I shall
present only relevant data. He “told Ms. Boland in their phone conversation of
August 17 that he was very hesitant to talk over the phone because he had
information which was controversial. He indicated to us that he will apply for
a government insured loan for his graduate medical education.” His autopsy companion
usually was Mr. Miller but he was for some reason unavailable and Mr. O’Connor
had filled in. Jenkins logged the autopsy number in the ledger book but was
told not to put the name in the log.He stated
that he helped put the body on the table, but was never asked about the time
and the type of casket the body was removed from. In regard to the appearance
of the head he said that he couldn’t recall whether or not the brain was already
removed when he first saw the body but did state that “… it is normally my
function to remove the brain and infiltrate it,” indicating that in this
instance someone else had done so.
Mr. Jenkins reticence to provide
controversial information is understandable when one considers his life
situation. But it is also apparent that during the HSCA information gathering
process there was no clear line which would have allowed comparing the
statements of one witness with those of the other as would have been
appropriate for the X-ray as well as the laboratory technicians. We are left
with snatches of information which are not corroborated. There is, however,
additional testimony about the shipping casket and time of the arrival of the
body in the morgue.
The first call sheet of Gawler’s
funeral home listed a casket order for a Marsellus
710 mahogany casket to be delivered to the Naval Medical Center. Under remarks
we find “body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH Bethesda.” A former
mortician of Gawler’s, Tom Robinson, was interviewed for the ARRB on June 18,
1996. He was one of the three “hands on” embalmers who worked under the
supervision of Mr. Joseph Hagan on that night. He confirmed the original plans
of having the work done at Gawler but “About suppertime plans changed.” He was
told by Joe Hagan to get the portable embalming equipment and at “high speed”
they drove the hearse with the flag draped mahogany coffin to Bethesda. They arrived
early, prior to the chest incision and “just as the gross examination of the
head was starting.” He recalled seeing
the damaged bronze coffin and confirmed other witnesses’ impression of the
chaotic atmosphere in the autopsy room which he likened to “a cocktail party”
or “like a circus.” He stated that “he
saw the brain removed from President Kennedy’s body and that a large percentage
of it was gone ‘in the back of the head from the medulla.’”The large open wound in the back of the head had
to be covered with a rubber sheet so that embalming fluid would not leak. He
estimated its size as a large orange. Although this seems straightforward the early
arrival was contradicted in separate testimony by Hagan who stated that he
drove the hearse with the casket to Bethesda, accompanied by Mr. Joe Gawler, “sometime
near midnight,” although some members of the team had arrived earlier around 11
p.m.
There are two additional documents which
further confuse the issue as to the time when the casket with President
Kennedy’s body arrived at the morgue. Sergeant R.E. Boyajian sent on November
26 a memo to “Commanding Officer, Marine Corps Institute Company,” on the Subject
of “Security detail, Bethesda Naval Hospital, 22 November 1963.” The sergeant
stated that “at approximately 1700 hours a detail of 10 men was sent to
Bethesda Naval Hospital with orders to report to Admiral Galloway,” the
Commanding officer of the Bethesda Medical Center. It arrived at “approximately
1800 …. The word was changed several times as to which entrance the ambulance
was going to utilize and as a result a cordon detail of seven men was seen
several times double-timing through the hospital on the heels of the Security
Officer…. At approximately 1835 the casket was received at the morgue entrance
and taken inside.” It is noteworthy that
Bugliosi was aware of Boyajian’s report because he correctly listed when the
autopsy was finished and the time of return of Kennedy’s body to the White
House, but he failed to give the arrival time at the morgue. One may now wonder
if there was a typographic error and the time should have read 1935 instead of
1835. But that this is not necessarily the case was documented by Naval Petty
Officer First Class Dennis David who was Officer of the Day for the Medical
School.
During his deposition for the ARRB in
February 1997 Mr. David reported that at about 5:30 he was called to the office
of the Chief of the Day for the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC– the entire
Bethesda complex including the medical school and the hospital), a Chief
Ledbetter, who had 3 or 4 Secret Service agents in his office. The Secret
Service agents told the Bethesda duty officers that the autopsy would be at the
NNMC Bethesda, and directed them to secure all entrances and exits to the
Bethesda complex which could lead to the morgue and laboratory areas.… At about
6:30 p.m. Mr. David said he received a telephone call in which someone said,
“Your visitor is on his way; you will need some people to offload. He then
gothis own duty sailors together,
borrowed some more from the dental school, and assembled them outside the
morgue at the loading dockby about 6;40
p.m. Five or six minutes later, at about 6:45, he said a black hearse drove up
at the morgueloading dock. He said the
driver ‘and the person riding shotgun’ (i.e. front seat passenger) were wearing
OR (operating room smocks). Four or five men in blue suits, whom he assumed were
Federal Agents, exited the back of the hearse, and supervised and observed
while the navy sailors (approximately 7 or 8 people) working for him offloaded
the casket which was in the hearse. He said it was a simple, gray shipping casket
such as he frequently saw used later during the Vietnam war.
His group of sailors took the casket into the anteroom directly adjacent to the
morgue. He then dismissed them and went back upstairs to an administrative
office on the second floor of the tower building, ‘out front’ toward the lobby.
… About 30 minutes later, he said,
he saw a motor cavalcade, including a gray Navy ambulance,
drive up outside the front of the Bethesda Tower. He looked out on the curved,
open second story balcony above the Bethesda Tower Lobby and observed
Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert McNamara and several others immediately enter the
Bethesda lobby from the motorcade, and go directly up to the 17th
floor suite on the elevator (without stopping or pausing for anything). Mr.
David knew what their destination was by watching the number indicators on the elevator.
He was firm in his recollection that the motorcade out front with the gray
ambulance arrived well after the gray shipping casket at the rear of loading
dock.
There are some obvious inconsistencies
in this testimony. If the hearse was unloaded at 6:45 this would have been only
10 rather than 30 minutes before the arrival of the ambulance. While this is a
relatively minor point it does show that it is impossible to establish a
precise time even for the arrival of the President’s body.
Bugliosi did not enter into the
substantive aspects of David’s testimony but only discussed aspects in regard
to a memo he had been asked to type, by an unnamed FBI agent, in regard to
bullet fragments which were found during the autopsy. Since the statement was
not corroborated by others Bugliosi dismissed it for lack of credibility
because David’s name did not appear among the attendees in the morgue. But
David had never claimed that he was in the morgue during the autopsy. He only
testified that the event had occurred “late in the evening” and in the vicinity
of the morgue.” More serious for credibility is what Bugliosi has correctly
pointed out in regard to the final paragraph of David’s report, although he
omitted mentioning that the statement was made voluntarily to the ARRB. In 1992
Dennis David, James Jenkins, Paul O’Connor, Jerrol Custer, Floyd Riebe
(assistant photographer) and Dr. Cyril Wecht (forensic pathologist) underwent
hypnosis to recover further memories. As we know false memories can readily be
implanted under these circumstances making any testimony based on them
unreliable. Bugliosi used this fact to discredit David’s account but did not
refer to the rest of the five page document which contains the above quoted
testimony: http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md177/html/md177_0005a.htm.
But the conclusion of false memory cannot be sustained. Bugliosi knew of
Lifton’s book, derided its contents, but failed to mention in the text of Reclaiming History, as well as in the
endnotes, that David had provided the identical information about circumstances
surrounding the autopsy in a telephone conversation with Lifton on July 2,
1979! The full account can be found on pages 571-582 of Best Evidence.
In this report I have provided only some
of the examples which show the inconsistencies in official documents to which
several others could readily be added. Let us summarize what we have been told:
Sergeant Boyajian received “the” casket at the morgue entrance at approximately
6:35; Petty Officer David received “a shipping casket” at about 6:45; the navy
ambulance arrived at the front of the hospital at 6:55 and Dr. Humes met a coffin
outside the morgue at about 7:35. The official autopsy with inspection of the
body was listed as having started at 8 p.m. which was also the time Lt. Bird
had delivered the bronze casket and the phone call to Dr. Finck was placed. The
Y incision, which led to access of the body cavities, was reported at 8:15 and
Dr. Finck arrived at 8:30.
There were two coffins delivered and it
is obvious that only one could have contained the body of the President.
Lifton, Horne and others believe the timetable which corresponds to the arrival
of the shipping casket and this has led to the inevitable “body snatching”
idea. As shown above, one can arbitrarily pick a given time above any other and
arrive at the conclusion one desires. The only point most everyone who was
present at the autopsy agreed upon was that this was “no ordinary autopsy.” It
was chaotic and most of the lower ranking observers felt that it was intended
to confirm a preconceived outcome. All participants also agreed that they were
sworn to secrecy in regard to anything they had observed during the autopsy.
This demand was only lifted for HSCA testimony and thereafter, which enabled
Lifton to write his book.
In all this chaos, confusion, duplicity
and secrecy there was one voice of human compassion which now needs to be
mentioned. The problem was how to break the tragic news that their father had
been murdered to Caroline and John Jr. The latter presented no difficulty
because he was only 3 years of age, but Caroline was six and dearly loved her
Dad. William Manchester provided us with the information. Jackie as well as
Bobby was devastated by the event and incapable of bringing the news to
Caroline. Jackie’s mother, Mrs. Auchincloss, thought it would be best to have
the children’s nurse Miss Shaw, who had been with Caroline since she was 11
days old, perform this sad duty. She tried to refuse but had to give in at the
end. Caroline had looked forward to the birth of her baby brother, Patrick, and
was quite distraught when he had died only 3 months earlier, two days after
birth. This would be the second time where she was suddenly confronted with the
death of a beloved family member. Here is how Manchester described the scene:
In Caroline’s bedroom Miss Shaw said
slowly, ‘Your father has been shot. They took him to a hospital, but the doctors
couldn’t make him better. There was a pause.
‘So’, she continued, ‘your father has gone
to look after Patrick. Patrick was so lonely in heaven. He didn’t know anybody
there. Now he has the best friend anyone could have.’
She paused again.
‘God gives each of us a thing to do,’
she said. ‘God is making your father a guardian angel over you and your mother,
and his light will shine down on you always. His light is shining now, and he’s
watching you, and he’s loving you, and he always
will.’
These comforting words to a child are
indeed the best anyone can come up with. But our government has treated, and
continues to treat, all of us as children who must not be allowed to know the
awful truth of what happened on that November day fifty years ago. We don’t
know what the government is hiding; we only know that we are not given the full
truth and, as Bugliosi’s Reclaiming
History demonstrates, the cover-up and distortion of important documents
continues. If we cannot even know when the President’s body arrived at the
morgue, and whether the X-rays were taken before or after the removal of the
brain, all the conclusions in regard to bullet tracks, which are based on them,
are scientifically worthless. This applies also to the autopsy photographs
because we don’t know at what stage of the event they were taken and some which
look like photos are actually sketches by medical illustrators.
According to a Salon article of May 31,
2012 more than 50.000 documents were still being withheld in full, while
numerous others have been partially released with relevant data blacked out. This
secrecy not only does not enhance national security, but actually diminishes it
because nefarious acts, for which we are held responsible, can occur without
our knowledge. We must insist on full disclosure lest we lose our remaining
constitutional rights.
The third week of November was also the
150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address which concluded with these
words “… that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” It is now more
urgent than ever that “we the people” act on this resolve and demand full
accountability from our government.
January 1, 2014
THE 2013 CHRISTMAS SEASON
Initially
I had considered continuing the discussion of questions related to the
government’s cover-up of President Kennedy’s assassination, but then decided to
postpone this task until the February installment. This is still, after all,
the Christmas season and it is more appropriate to discuss its meaning in
contemporary America.
According to Wikipedia, a Gallup poll conducted in 2011
showed the following breakdown of Americans’ religious affiliations: 76.1 per
cent of the population Christian (Protestants/ other Christians 52.5 per cent,
Catholic 23.6 per cent), Jewish 1.6 percent, Muslim 0.5 per cent, other
non-Christian religion 2.4 per cent, none/atheist/agnostic 15 per cent, no
response given 2.5 per cent. As a Utah
resident I was surprised to find that “Mormons” had been given a separate slot apart
from “Christians” and showed up with 1.9 per cent somewhat ahead of the 1.6
percent who regarded themselves as Jews. Inasmuch as the official designation
of the “Mormon” religion is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”
and belief in Jesus as savior is the common
denominator of all Christians it is reasonable to add this 1.9 per cent of the
population to the Christian 76.1 percent. This brings the total to 78.0 per
cent. One might now expect that this overwhelming proportion of believers in
Jesus Christ would reflect itself in the conduct of our political
representatives and the media. But unfortunately this is far from the case. During
the past few decades our society has become “sensitive” to the feelings of
non-Christians and it is now officially the “holiday season.” Christian
religious displays have become banned on public property. Whenever some
intrepid souls defied these ordinances there were plenty of lawyers willing to
take up the challenge. Needless to say we who don’t mind seeing a crèche in
front of City Hall will have to foot the bill in taxes.
This
year there was a new wrinkle in the Church-State separation: in Utah same-sex couples
got a holiday present. Our state is known for its “family values” and in the
2004 elections Utahns voted for an amendment to the Constitution
of the State which reads: 1. Marriage consists only of the legal union between
a man and a woman. 2. No other domestic union, however denominated, may be
recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially similar legal
effect. The vote was 66 per cent in favor of the amendment, which, with similar
wording, was also passed in ten other states. But on March 25, 2013 three same-sex couples,
including one already married in Iowa,
filed a law suit seeking to overturn this vote as unconstitutional. The case
was heard early in December in District Court and on December 20 Judge Robert
J. Shelby struck down the ban as violating the 14th amendment to the
U.S. Constitution. The State appealed to the next higher court which upheld the
ruling and it is now scheduled to go to the Supreme Court. Approximately 1000
same-sex couples have by now achieved their goal and it is obvious that lawyers
will have another bonanza. Not only in fighting the legal battles but since
divorce rates among heterosexual couples hover around 50 percent we can expect
a similar phenomenon for homosexual couples.
For Utah the irony is that
the “peculiar institution” of polygamy led to the Mormon Exodus in 1847 from
the U.S.
into Mexico
which had no objections to this practice. But President Polk’s War (1846-1848) which
cost Mexico
about half of its territory, landed Brigham Young and his followers back in the
USA
in what was then Utah
territory.Statehood had to be postponed
for more than 50 years until President Wilford Woodruff, Prophet and Seer of
the Mormon Church, received a revelation in 1890 that polygamy was not part of
the divine plan for his flock and had to be abandoned. The way was then clear
for statehood in 1896. This surrender to U.S. moral principles was due to
financial considerations. The Church had lost a great deal of money in its
legal battles and was in danger of disenfranchisement as well as seizure of
property including the temples. O tempora o mores the ancient Romans said. In the middle
nineteenth century a man having several wives was regarded as the height of
iniquity and the idea that same-sex people could marry each other was not even
dreamt about.
The
mentioned 14th amendment to the U.S Constitution was passed in 1868,
as part of post-Civil War legislation, in regard to issues resulting from the
abolition of slavery. The critical passage states: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws.” The extension of this formula to justify same-sex marriages seems to be
a stretch but inasmuch as marriage is no longer entered into for procreation
but also financial advantages it is likely that Utah will fight another losing battle for which
we will be taxed. On the other hand this will open the floodgates. When the 14th
amendment is reinterpreted in the above manner there seems to be no reason why
polygamy should not become constitutional again. While “love” is regarded as
the mainspring for marital desires the reality is more mundane and also has to
do with tax and other incentives.
In
the popular culture Jesus had to give way to Santa Claus who is considerably
more marketable. Several decades ago I heard a joke which roughly went like this:
A man approaches a priest and asks him to petition the pope to include a
mention of Coca-Cola in the liturgy of the mass. The priest was obviously taken
aback and asked why he should do this. The reply was: Well; you are doing it
for Fiat why not for Coca-Cola. By now some Catholics have forgotten their
Latin and it needs to be explained that the comment referred to the Lord’s
Prayer: fiat voluntastua – Thy will be done. When I first heard the
joke I smiled but was not aware of an important antecedent. I didn’t know that
“Santa” is a relatively recent addition to the Christmas scene and his first
job in the 1920s was to sell Coca-Cola in advertisements. Over the years his
tour of duty has expanded from the day after Thanksgiving in November till
December 25. Since the economy is still relatively depressed the holiday store
season started this year even before the third Thursday of November. With
increasing commercial pressure we may even see it advance to soon after Labor Day.
Some
of us do, however, retain a fondness for Jesus and want to celebrate his birth
at Christmas time. During the night of the 24th we watched three
season related programs on TV. The first one was on CNN where four worthy
pundits discussed the U.S.
diplomatic achievements of the past year. Although they were rather meager and
consisted mainly in the avoidance of military intervention in Syria and Iran I
found it remarkable that all four, plus the interviewer, agreed that even these
successes had only come about by credible threats of war against the regimes of
these countries. In essence we were told that unless we bully people we don’t
like, they will not do what we want them to. That our so-called enemies, adversaries,
rogue states, terrorists, or whatever name they go by, may have reasons of
their own why they act the way they do, is something we don’t want to hear
about.The idea that we might listen to
what our adversaries want to tell us, and then to adjust our actions
accordingly, seems to be positively un-American
The
second program was on the BrighamYoungUniversity
channel. It featured a Christmas presentation by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and
was exceedingly well done. There was singing, dancing and some scripture
reading with St. Luke’s Christmas story as the highlight. The performers were
mostly young and exuded happiness. This was followed a while later by Midnight Mass
at St. Peter’s in Rome
which I viewed on the Internet because I didn’t feel like staying up till the
wee hours of the morning. The contrast between the Mormon and the Catholic
celebration of the same event could not have been more startling. While the Mormons
were young and happy, the mostly elderly Catholic clergy was solemn and dour
looking. I know that High Mass liturgy does not lend itself readily to evoke
joy and that Exultate,
Jubilate is not necessarily to be
taken literally, but the contrast between these two events was startling.
Although the Basilica featured a crèche with a cherubic little Jesus, upon whom
the pope bestowed a tender kiss on one of its knees, the overall tone impressed
me as more funerary than, to coin a neologism, birthdayish. Seventy-seven year
old Pope Francis put forth his best effort but I had the feeling that these two
hours were more of a duty than an expression of joy. It was also clear that
Pope Benedict, who had resigned from the office earlier in the year, probably would
have dreaded the occasion.
Since I am familiar with Catholic liturgy
there were no surprises but inasmuch as Pope Francis is a warm, genuinely humane
person I was wondering if he might even make some changes in next year’s
celebration. He is clearly reform-minded but when one looks at the faces of the
senior clergy it is obvious that he will have great difficulties in achieving
his goals. Nevertheless there would be a biblical justification in the Gospel
of Luke. As all of us know, the shepherds were told by the angel that he is
bringing them “good news of great joy.” It now needs to be pointed out that in
Latin, the language of the Church, there are two words
for “joy.” Laetitia is quiet inward
happiness while gaudium (from which
the Viennese “Gaudee”
is derived) denotes outward happiness or “jumping with joy.” It is the latter
connotation which is used in Luke’s Christmas story. I realize that change in
an ancient liturgy is not going to come over night but it might not be a bad
idea to introduce some gaudium into
the Church for Christmas and Easter.
Like
Pope John XXIII, whose encyclical Pacem in Terram I discussed in a previous essay (Peace on Earth;
April 2007), Francis stands up for the underprivileged and tries to bring the
fundamental tenets of Jesus’ message to the powerful, not merely by preaching
but personal humility and good humor. As such he might be the person to effect
some changes, which a more doctrinaire pontiff would not even consider.
On
the international scene Pope Francis could also play an important role. The efforts
of the Polish born Pope John Paul in hastening the demise of the Soviet Union are, of course, well known. The trio: John
Paul (supporting Poland’s
Solidarity movement), Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan succeeded in
persuading Mikhail Gorbachev to let the Germans dismantle the Berlin Wall which
brought freedom to the USSR’s
European satellites. I had not known, however, that in the summer of 1963 there
existed a definite possibility for an end to the Cold War. When I wrote the
April 2007 article I had not yet read the books about Kennedy’s presidency and
therefore had not known the context out of which Pacem in Terram arose. Since it is important
and relevant for our current situation I shall now discuss it.
The
missile crisis of October 1962 had brought the world to the brink of nuclear
disaster. Kennedy and Khrushchev had stared into the abyss and stepped back.
Both statesmen realized that this insanity, where the world could be destroyed by
a touch on the proverbial button, must end and sought means to do so. Kennedy,
therefore, established, via the KGB, a secret back channel with Khrushchev. Pope
John XXIII, although already terminally ill, also served as intermediary between
the two warring nations. Secret negotiations for nuclear arms control were in
progress and the Pope’s mentioned Easter encyclical was intended to hasten them
along.
As a
result of the work of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and
the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which I mentioned in the
previous installments, we now have considerably more information on the hidden
history of the Kennedy years which was so unfortunately disrupted in Dallas. Khrushchev and
Kennedy had come to respect each other during the missile crisis and were
convinced that only cooperation between the two social systems could save the
world from disaster. But in both instances the internal power structures were
opposed to “peaceful coexistence” and argued, especially in the U.S., for
complete victory over the foe. Those of us who remember the movie “Dr.
Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb,” will recall how
Air Force General Buck Turgidson jointly with Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper
had launched an unauthorized bomber attack on the Soviet Union. The film
depicts the frantic but futile attempts by the American President and his
Soviet counterpart to recall the planes. It was satire and few of us who saw
the film realized that the two generals were modeled upon the real live Air Force
General Curtis Le May. Ironically, the screen test for Dr. Strangelove was
scheduled for November 22,
1963 but had to be postponed for obvious reasons. The film “Seven
Days in May,” which deals with a coup
d’état by a rogue Air Force general who opposes detente, was likewise to be
released in late 1963 but had to wait for its debut till February of 1964.
Wikipedia tells us that Curtis Emerson Le May, whose
nicknames included: “Old Iron-Pants,” “The Demon,” “Bombs away,” and “The
Cigar” was born in 1906 and during WWII was responsible for the massive
destruction of Japanese cities as well as the mining of Japan’s inland
water ways. From 1961 until his retirement in 1965 he was Chief of Staff of the
Air Force. Wikipedia, however, does not tell us that during the 1950s and early
1960s, when the U.S. had clear nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, Le
May argued for a first strike not only against the USSR but also its European
satellites, and for good measure China as well as Southeast Asia. Since in 1954
President Eisenhower had rejected the suggestion by the military of a
“preventive war” against the Soviet Union the word “preventive” was changed to
“preemptive.” This still allowed for a first strike by the U.S. in case it
was deemed that the Soviets were about to launch an attack. To appreciate the
seriousness of the situation one also needs to know that President Truman had
kept the nuclear arsenal within the jurisdiction of the civilian Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC) but in 1959 President
Eisenhower had allowed himself to be persuaded to place it under the Strategic
Air Command (SAC) where Le May was in charge. Even the launch codes were in his,
rather than the President’s hand. There was no “failsafe” mechanism in place at
that time. This situation was only beginning to be remedied during the brief Kennedy
administration.
Douglas Horne provides extensive documentation of
these dangerous times in his ARRB volumes and he also quotes from James W.
Douglass book, JFK and the Unspeakable –
Why he died and why it matters.” Douglass wrote that: “At the July 20, 1961
NSC meeting [after the failed Bay
of Pigs invasion], General Hickey, chairman of the ‘Net Evaluation
Subcommittee’ of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a plan for a nuclear
surprise attack on the Soviet Union ‘preceded by a period of heightened
tension.’… Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s military aide, Howard Burris, wrote
a memorandum on the meeting for Johnson, who was not present.” The memo stated
that Kennedy listened to the presentation and then asked about the casualty
figures which were expected on both sides and for how long Americans would have
to sit in fall-out shelters. When told he abruptly stood up and left the
meeting. On his way out he said to his Foreign Secretary Dean Rusk: “And we
call ourselves the human race.”
As mentioned, Kennedy had by the end of 1962 come to an
understanding with Khrushchev who in turn had to patch up relations with Fidel
Castro who was furious at not having been consulted before the Soviet missiles
were removed. He, therefore, invited Castro for a one month trip to the Soviet Union where he not only explained the high stakes
of the nuclear arms race but also informed him that Kennedy’s word could be
trusted and direct negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. were
feasible. Although Castro was in the beginning doubtful about this prospect, he
kept an open mind and by the middle of 1963 a back-channel to Cuba had been
opened. A French journalist, who was authorized to feel out Castro on this topic,
was actually with the Cuban President when the news from Dallas arrived over the air waves. Both were
shattered and Castro said: “This changes everything.” The irony as well as
tragedy of 1963 will be further discussed in the next installment because now
is the time to consider prospects and hopes for this New Year.
In the concluding chapter of The Jesus Conundrum I wrote
When we look at the ethical essence
of the messages the great sages of our world have sent us, we find remarkable similarities,
and with those as our base we could construct a more humane society. East and
West are no longer incompatible and the best of both can be taken to form a
worldview which will benefit all. Yet organized religions, as they exist today,
have historical roots in different countries and cultures. They are burdened
with past histories of conflict and are not likely to become universal in their
present form. The currently established Churches would be well advised to
reflect on the original teachings, their origin and their purpose. They could
subsequently retain the universal aspects and gradually discard the parochial
ones. This will not occur over night but is a process that ought to be set in
motion. The world has become too interconnected and what now hurts one hurts
all. We will either live together in relative harmony or die together in
distress. While organized religions divide, the “religious experience” unites.
It is universal and can be tapped into.
Inasmuch
as the Catholic Church is the largest of the world religions with 1.2 billion
members and now has a pope who puts the welfare of human beings above dogma he
could begin this process. The Holy Father could initiate a personal dialogue
perhaps first with his Holiness the Dalai Lama and subsequently with
representatives of the other major religions. Theoretically, by temperament,
Pope Francis would be in an ideal position to assume this role but in this
world peace makers are not popular. We don’t know if the Curia would support
him and what fate may have in store. But hope springs eternal and the people of
the world are weary of constant wars.
Those
of us who call ourselves Christians have a special duty. We should reflect on
the meaning of the Evangelion
which translates into Good News. What is this “good news?” The overarching
message is “don’t be afraid!” This was the preface by the angel Gabriel at the
annunciation, to the shepherds in the fields and on other occasions. But our
political leadership tells us that we are in dire danger which we have to guard
against by expanding what Eisenhower had called “the military-industrial
complex,” to which now a vast structure for spying on our citizenry, as well as
everybody abroad, has been added. It is assumed that a fearful population will
be docile but this violates the principles of a free society we are supposedly
standing for. In the Gospel of Mark we read that Jesus’ first words of his
ministry were: “The time has been fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is approaching.
Repent and believe in the good news.” The original Greek word which was
translated into “repent” is “metanoia”
which goes beyond a religious context. It denotes “think differently,” a
profound change in thinking patterns or colloquially: think outside the box.
From
Christmas we now turn our thoughts to the hopes and wishes for 2014. My hope
for our country in this upcoming year is that we change our mental attitude
from paranoia to metanoia. For Pope Francis
I wish that he will be able to continue on the path he has set out which
includes unstinting efforts towards the resolution of international conflicts. For
our President I wish that he can, just like Kennedy, stand up to the pressures
by the military to bomb and invade countries that have done us no harm
ostensibly because we don’t like their societal structure. This is Vietnam all
over again: we have to destroy the village to save it! Let President Obama
justify his premature Nobel Peace Prize and the world will be grateful. From
the politicians and other agents, who work behind the scenes and hold our fate
in their hands, I devoutly request: Give Peace a Chance!
To
the world’s athletes and sports lovers I wish joyful Winter Games in Sochi without political
disruptions. To my readers I would like to extend best wishes for health, a
degree of economic security and contentment in their family lives. In addition
I have a request. Please don’t just believe what is written in these pages or
what is proclaimed by the media. Limit the time spent on TV shows as well as
electronic “apps.” Use it instead to gain information, via the Internet and
relevant books, on the critical issues of our time. Only an informed citizenry
can make informed decisions which help all and hurt none.
At
the end of the second part of “Faust” Goethe discussed the efforts by the
people of the Netherlands to wrest arable land from the sea and proclaimed, “Das ist
der WeisheitletzterSchluss: nur der verdientsichFreiheitwie das Leben der taeglichsieerobern
muss.”I am not a poet and therefore will present only
a somewhat literal translation: This is wisdom’s final conclusion: Only he
deserves freedom and even life itself who conquers its
difficulties on a daily basis. Let this be our program for 2014.
February 1, 2014
THE ENEMY WITHIN
Part I
In last month’s installment I mentioned that I would
continue to discuss the government’s cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. The
reason why this is not “ancient history,” which is “dead and buried,” as our media
want us to believe, resides in the fact that it set a pattern which persists to
this day. Only if we can uncover the forces that bear the major responsibility
for the continued disinformation campaign which we are exposed to, can we hope
to achieve a degree of genuine security. It will be shown why our government is
inherently incapable of providing it regardless of huge financial expenditures
and the imposition of measures which increasingly infringe upon our constitutionally
guaranteed rights. It will be demonstrated how the Kennedy murder cover-up
provided the blueprint not only for the Warren Commission but also its
successor the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and most recently
the 9/11 Commission.
Before doing so it is, however, necessary to discuss
briefly the annual ritual of the President’s State of the Union speech, which
took place last Tuesday evening. As pointed out on a previous occasion (The Humpty
Dumpty Society, February 1, 2010) not only is the content quite predictable, but so is
the frenetic applause at the time of the President’s entry; when he is trying
to start his talk, and after every few sentences. For the latter event there
is, however, some difference. When Democrats applaud their President’s laundry
list of programs, Republicans largely remain unmoved and when Democrats stand
up to applaud, Republicans tend to sit on their hands. This year was no
exception. The only interesting aspect was to watch the Republican Speaker of
the House, John Boehner, as he sat next to Vice-President Joe Biden. For the
most part he appeared rather bored and when his seat-mate, Joe Biden, stood up
and clapped his hands furiously Boehner remained phlegmatically unmoved. His demeanor
actually reminded me of the bygone era of “Mr. Nyet,”
the Soviet Union’s Andrei Gromyko. On occasion he did feel obligated
to applaud but this was likewise mainly done in a perfunctory manner. The only
exception was the ovation to Army Ranger Cori Remsburg at the end of the President’s
hour-long speech. Sergeant Remsburg had suffered a severe brain injury in the
line of duty in Afghanistan and was in the process of a slow and difficult
recovery. His efforts were applauded by Democrats and Republicans alike and
were cited by the President as an example that Americans never give up. I am
mentioning these observations because they suggest that regardless what
President Obama wants to get enacted, the Republicans are likely to balk.
On the whole there were no surprises and since the economy
is still not up to par and the gulf between Republicans and Democrats shows no
signs of diminishing, the President did his best to put a good face on a
reasonably bad situation by adding vigor to his speech and the promise of “a
year of action.” He told us that if Congress were to find itself
unable to get meaningful legislation done, he’d simply ignore these ineffective
lawmakers and issue executive orders. That these may have a life expectancy of
only about three years, because they can be rescinded by the next incoming President,
doesn’t matter because by that time he no longer bears the responsibility for
what his successor(s) do. The speech was mainly devoted to the domestic agenda
which, apart from “Affordable Health Care,” had been stalled in the previous
years. But even this achievement is still vigorously assailed by Republicans who
continue to do their best to get rid of it.
In regard to foreign policy there were only three points of
interest. The main one was the statement that it is time “to get off the war
footing” and let diplomacy do its work. This would be a welcome relief if the
real powers that run this country were to allow it. A specific point was his
warning to Congress that if it were to place further economic sanctions on Iran while delicate negotiations in regard to their
nuclear program are in progress, he would veto them. While making the usual
optimistic pronouncements on the moribund Israel-Palestinian “peace process,”
with the goal of an independent Palestinian state next to a Jewish state, he
also by necessity reaffirmed our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security. Anyone who has taken the trouble to
inform himself about the historical background and the current facts of Israel’s political structure will know that these goals are
quite unrealistic and that Israeli politicians have absolutely no interest in
having a truly independent state of Palestine as their neighbor. I have discussed this topic
previously on several occasions with the April 1, 2002 article, “PalestinianState or Israeli Protectorate?” the most pertinent.
Although written nearly twelve years ago nothing has changed to invalidate the
opinions expressed at that time.
This brings me to the main topic as shown in the headline
of this installment. There exist actually two books with this title. One was
published in 1960 by JFK’s brother, Robert (Bobby), and deals with his efforts as
Chief Counsel for the McClellan Committee (United States Select Committee on
Improper Activities in Labor and Management) to expose the infiltration of the Labor
Unions by organized crime. He pointed out that Hoover’s FBI had no interest in the matter because it was
chasing communists as the major internal enemy. When Bobby became Attorney General
in the following year after his brother’s accession to the presidency, he
continued his campaign against organized crime with great zeal and there is
good reason to believe that this may have been a contributory element to JFK’s
assassination.
The
other book with the same title was authored by Rev. Kris Lundgaard, a
Presbyterian minister. As the subtitle Straight
Talk about Power and Defeat of Sin shows, the book concentrates on
intrapersonal problems. I shall not deal with this important subject at this
time but devote the rest of this installment to the hidden domestic political
forces which shape the history of our country. We are not being told about
those by our media which harp instead exclusively on various real as well as
imagined foreign enemies.
It
is a common misconception that the President is in complete charge of the
country. He is not. His powers are quite limited apart from the initiation of
wars which used to be, according to the Constitution, the privilege of Congress.
But even when a war is unleashed the President does not have the power to end
it as even President George W. Bush learned. This fact had already led
President Johnson to the rueful conclusion, when he found himself unable to get
out of Vietnam, “They talk about the awesome power of the presidency.
The only power I really have is nuclear and that I can’t use.” This should be a
powerful lesson to all of our politicians who dream of America’s military might and they also ought to reflect on
what happened in Europe during that fateful summer of one hundred years
ago.
There is another aspect to the presidency which tends to be
ignored. It is a fundamental axiom that the higher the position within an
organization a person has reached, regardless whether it is government or
private industry, the less he knows about what is really going on inside it. He
is absolutely dependent on what he is told by his aides. This is where the
problem arises. These “briefers” may well have their own views on what the
chief executive is supposed to know and what should be withheld. This is the
point where mischief can readily occur because groups of individuals within the
government may not agree with their President’s program and quietly sabotage
it.
This fact was most eloquently presented by Colonel Fletcher
Prouty in his book The Secret Team. The CIA in Control
of the United States and the
World (October 1, 2011; 9/11 Remembered). The book should be required
reading because it demonstrates how our government really works and how its
policies are achieved through a variety of pressure groups. Of these one of the
most effective is the CIA.
When
we talk about the CIA we have to realize that we are talking about two
quite distinct segments. One is the intelligence gathering and interpreting
component which is entirely separate from the other “clandestine” or “black
ops” segment. Although the CIA director is responsible for both, the latter has
created real problems for our conduct of foreign policy and standing in the
world. The “black ops” budget is largely off the books and oversight by
Congress negligible. Whenever Congress tries to assert its prerogatives,
investigations are thwarted. Potential witnesses who are regarded as cooperating
with the investigative agencies are either intimated or may even get killed, while
those witnesses whose allegiance is to the CIA rather than the official government are free to lie under oath.
I realize that these are harsh allegations but they do
explain the otherwise unexplainable from the Kennedy assassinations (Jack and
Bobby) up to 9/11. While individual CIA operatives may or may not have been actively involved in the plots,
the organization was demonstrably part of the subsequent cover-up of the real
facts. The first example is the Warren Commission and its investigation of
President Kennedy’s murder. The official report lauded the CIA for its cooperation but this was based on a deception. Former CIA director Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster, had a seat on the Commission and was, therefore in a
position to influence what data would or would not be allowed to come to the
Commission’s attention. An example is Oswald’s CIA files which were withheld and their existence denied. This culture of
secrecy and deception was highlighted by none other than Allen Dulles in a
conversation with colleagues during the Commission’s tenure as reported by
Anthony Summers in The Kennedy Conspiracy.
The question was how a CIA official would deal with inquiries about an agent he
had recruited:
Dulles: … he wouldn’t tell.
Chief Justice Warren: Wouldn’t he tell it under
oath?
Dulles: I wouldn’t think he would tell it under
oath, no.
Chairman: Why?
Dulles: He ought not to tell it under oath. Maybe
not tell it
to his
own government, but wouldn’t tell it any other way [sic].
Chairman: Wouldn’t he tell it to his own chief?
Dulles: He might or might not.
It is obvious that under these circumstances we have
allowed the creation of a segment of government which regards itself as above
the law and thereby provides ample opportunity for rogue operations of which
only a few people may be aware. Congressional oversight is a sham because
members of Congress are only told what the agency wants them to know in order
to extract appropriations. But when some operations go sour, the official
military is supposed to step in and rescue a botched undertaking. This was the
essence of the Bay of Pigs disaster.
The
Cuban invasion was planned and executed by the CIA with the understanding that if it were to be in peril of failure U.S. military forces would come to the rescue. When the
newly minted President was informed about the invasion plans he also was told
by the CIA that the Cubans would rise up against Castro and
military aid would not be needed. Kennedy approved the plan with the proviso
that under no circumstances would he authorize U.S. armed forces to participate, regardless of need. His
words were not taken seriously and the CIA trained Cuban invasion force was assured by its CIA handlers of U.S. military help. When Kennedy stuck to his word,
because he did not want his new presidency to be tainted right from the start
with “Yankee Imperialism,” the disaster ensued. But the CIA’s duplicity which a) had provided false information about the internal
affairs in Cuba, by denying Castro’s popularity in the island; b) executed a
risky military adventure without adequate means and c) pressured the President
to come to the rescue, was not allowed to see the light of day. Kennedy
shouldered the responsibility, which left him open to the charge that he had
abandoned the freedom fighters who had counted on him. He received the undying
hatred of the Cuban exile community, was branded as ineffective by others and
the Editor of a Dallas newspaper stated that when a man on horseback was
needed Kennedy came on Caroline’s tricycle.
It
took the Watergate scandal and the subsequent Church Committee (1975-1976; officially
known as “The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities”) to bring some of the CIA’s most egregious activities to light. Among which were the
assassinations of several foreign leaders who were popular in their country but
not ours, creation of terrorist armies to fight legitimately elected
governments, as well as false flag plans
to overthrow the Cuban regime. Operation Northwoods (Abuse
of Secrecy, August 8, 2008) which was actually endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, but rejected by Defense Secretary McNamara, was only one of them which have
been declassified.
The
House Select Committee on Assassinations is another typical example of how
Congress was deceived by the CIA. The HSCA
was an outgrowth of the Watergate scandal. Initially Representative Henry
Gonzalez, who never believed the Warren Commission’s conclusion, had introduced
a Resolution in the House to investigate the murders of John Kennedy, Robert
Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the attempted assassination of Governor George
Wallace. It was never acted upon. But continued pressure from various sources
including Dr. King’s widow, Coretta, did succeed in the formation of the HSCA
in September of 1976. Its charter was, however, limited to the investigation of
JFK’s and Martin Luther King’s murders. I have previously discussed some
aspects of the Committee’s work but had been unaware of the behind the scenes
activities.
In regard to the Kennedy assassination even the
official Committee Report faulted the Warren Commission for having “failed to
investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the
President.” It laid the blame on “the failure of the Commission to receive all
the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and
departments of the government.” In other words vital information had been
withheld. In addition it was noted that the “Warren Commission presented the
conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definite.” When one
translates this into everyday language one could say: the conclusions should
not be regarded as the last word on the matter. Since the Committee was aware
of these shortcomings its own Conclusion stated:
The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence
available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a
result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or
the extent of the conspiracy.
Please
note the rather vague terminology of “believes” and “probably,” while the last
sentence could be translated colloquially as: “after all of our efforts in
regard to time and money we don’t have the faintest idea what really happened.”
Why should this be so?
The
Internet provides some of the answers but I was surprised to find out that
Wikipedia, which ordinarily provides reasonably accurate information, failed to
mention important data. But before quoting the relevant section, a potential
source of confusion must be mentioned. There were two persons by name of Richard
Sprague connected with the Committee: Richard A. Sprague and Richard E.
Sprague. The former was a noted prosecutor who served as chief counsel of the HSCA, while the latter was a computer
specialist who had done work with photographs of the Kennedy assassination and
acted as consultant for the committee.
Although
the Wikipedia entry noted that the Committee’s work started in 1976, it merely stated
under the headline Committee Staff: “G. Robert Blakey
was Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the 1977
House Select Committee on Assassinations. He was appointed by Louis Stokes and
succeeded Richard A. Sprague.…” This omits crucial information on why Richard A. Sprague
was replaced and when one tries to find biographic information in Wikipedia
there is no entry. One is referred instead to Richard E. Sprague.
For
data on Richard A. Sprague one has to consult not only the Internet http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsprague.htm
but also Gaeton Fonzi’s book: The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of
JFK, which deals with the workings of the HSCA. Fonzi
was a highly respected investigative journalist who worked on the staff of the
HSCA and the book provides evidence for how the investigations were waylaid. I
intend to discuss it in more detail in the next issue and for now concentrate
only on the two persons called Sprague.
The bare bones account about Richard A. Sprague, as reported here,
comes from the Spartacus website. He was appointed Chief Counsel and was determined
to overcome the shortcomings of the Warren Commission. He envisioned an
unbiased approach which impartially examines all available evidence regardless where
it might lead to. In pursuit of this goal he assembled in 1976 a staff of 170
lawyers, investigators and researchers. But when he submitted his budget of
$6.5 million for 1977, the chairman of the Administration Committee, Frank
Thompson, regarded it as excessive. The press as well as House members started
to impugn Sprague’s character and described the investigation as a
multi-million dollar fishing expedition. This led first to the replacement of
Committee Chairman Thomas N. Downing with Henry Gonzalez who “immediately
sacked Sprague as chief counsel.” Sprague
objected, Gonzalez resigned and was replaced by Rep. Louis Stokes who in turn
appointed G. Robert Blakey as chief counsel.
For the essence of the conflict which drove Richard A.
Sprague from his position we can now consult Richard E. Sprague’ book, THE
TAKING OF AMERICA, 1-2-3. It
is no longer in print but the author has placed it on the Internet under http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAauthor.html.
One may or may not agree with all the author’s conclusions and the names of
supposedly guilty parties cannot be readily verified, but the main point is
quite clear. The problem was not merely money but secrecy and specifically that
of the CIA. The proceedings of the committee were to be kept
secret from all outsiders and the files were to be sealed for 50 years. Why
this should be so in an “open society” like ours is a mystery, but it
demonstrates what we really permit to occur and are paying for.
The Appendix of the book contains as Exhibit A the detailed
16 point non-disclosure form which Robert Blakey had ordered all staff members
to sign. It is a lawyer’s dream and a layperson’s nightmare. Subsequent Exhibits
are mainly correspondence with the Committee chairman and show Sprague’s
increasing frustrations. In Exhibit F, a letter to committee member Rep. Yvonne
Burke dated September 22,1978 , he pointed out that after having originally met
with Committee Chairman Stokes he had great faith,
but I now
have lost all of that faith. The farce that is going on is almost unbelievable.
All witnesses (except Cyril Wecht), all panels employed by the committee, the
staff and the committee members doing the questioning, obviously made up their
minds a long time ago that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and that
the Warren Commission was right.
He
continued with a plea for Ms. Burke to insist that a number of witnesses, who
would testify to a conspiracy and whose names he provided, be called and that
the photographic evidence be introduced. As we know the Committee did settle on
Oswald as having fired all the shots and for the conspiracy aspect relied only
on acoustic evidence which has subsequently been challenged. Sprague was
correct. What had begun as a serious investigation under Richard A. Sprague had
indeed turned into a farce.
Chief
Counsel Blakey, who subsequently re-joined academia had been loath to tangle with
the CIA and had tried to remain in its good graces throughout
the years. But by 2003 even he had an epiphany and in a postscript to a PBS
interview he had given earlier he declared:
I no longer believe that
we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central
Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... I do not believe any
denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule
that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony.
We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it
would have followed a different path in its investigation.
The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full
truth, which will now never be known. Significantly, the Warren Commission's
conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in
retrospect, not the truth. We also now know that the Agency set up aprocess that could only have been designed to
frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information
that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of
the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust
it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in
that camp.
Better
late than never one can only say, but why do we have to read this on the Internet
instead of seeing what is reported here on our TV screens? The media have
abrogated their responsibility as the “fourth estate” and now are complicit in
the cover-ups. This bodes ill for the future and responsible citizens have to
continue to do their best to bring the truth to the general public regardless
of cost. Part II of this series will discuss Fonzi’s book on the workings of
the HSCA, as well as inside reports from the 9/11 Commission, and Part III will deal with the enemy who resides in each one of us.
February 15, 2014
THE ENEMY WITHIN Part II
Sabotaged Investigations
Previous installments provided some documentation which
demonstrated that not only the Warren Commission Report on the Kennedy
assassination was misleading but so was the last and final investigation by the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Investigators who studied
these two documents concluded unanimously that government agencies, foremost
among them the CIA and FBI, had deliberately
impeded both investigations in order to prevent the full truth to come to
light. These cover-ups were crimes against our democracy and have enabled a
similar cover-up for the 9/11 catastrophe. The reaction to 9/11 with the
resultant invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the War on Terrorism was based on
deceptions of the American public by its government. Inasmuch as they persist
to this day not only in regard to the Kennedy assassinations (Jack and Bobby),
but also to 9/11, it behooves us to learn as much as possible about how the cover-ups
were perpetrated. Unless we recognize that our republic’s main enemies are not
assorted terrorists and rogue states, but forces which are operative within our
own government we will be doomed to perpetual war instigated by hidden self-appointed
oligarchies, which under the slogans of national security and freedom will
provide us, our children and grandchildren with neither.
These
are serious matters and all of us who care about the future of our country will
need to shed our lethargy and assume the responsibilities citizenship in a
“free” country demands. The first step is to raise the public’s awareness to
the fact that our official news media, print as well as TV, present us with
biased information, which deliberately omits crucial data.
In
the November 15, 2013
installment I demonstrated why the single bullet theory defies logic as well as
the laws of physics. To repeat once more: the theory requires us to believe that
the bullet first entered Kennedy’s upper back and exited through the low neck.
This means that the bullet fired from above and behind must have changed course
after its entry and traveled in an upward
direction in order to exit in the low neck. In addition it was asserted that it
then entered Governor Connally’s back, exited at the chest, entered his wrist,
lodged in his thigh and was subsequently found in nearly pristine condition on
a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This flight of fancy requires more faith than
most of us can muster. But it had to be maintained by the government because an
additional bullet, which hit the governor, could not have been fired by Oswald.
There simply was not enough time to do so. Since two bullets hit the President
and a splinter of a third one, which went astray, had hit a bystander, at least
four shots must have been fired. This was the problem Arlen Specter, the
Commission’s counsel and future Senator, had to overcome. He solved it with the
ingenious “magic bullet” idea. But Specter and the Commission deliberately
disregarded Governor Connally’s testimony that he had been hit after he had turned around to see what
had happened to the President when he heard the first shot. Four bullets would mandate
more than one shooter and would, therefore, be clear evidence of a conspiracy.
While the government’s motive to hide a conspiracy, which led to the murder of
the President, may be understandable the fact that the official media to this
day endorse Specter’s theory as fact speaks volumes about our so-called free
press.
As
mentioned in the February 1 installment the HSCA was intended to put all the
doubts, which arose from the contradictions within the Warren Commission’s
Report, to rest. The most relevant section of House Resolution 1540 (published
on September
15, 1976) reads,
The select
committee is authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete
investigation and study of the circumstances surrounding the death of President
John F. Kennedy and the death of Martin Luther King, Junior, and of any others
the select committee may determine.
The
language is unequivocal and everyone assumed that this was to be a complete
investigation where the world would be told the full truth. But as mentioned this
goal was not achieved. Richard E. Sprague’s experience, who was consultant to
the Committee, was mentioned in Part I and so was, briefly, Gaeton
Fonzi’s. The latter served as an investigator for the HSCA and wrote a book, The Last Investigation - What insiders
know about the assassination of JFK, The book is important because it
highlights the profound problems within our democratic system when it comes to
the investigation of malfeasance within its own ranks.
Fonzi
was by profession an investigative journalist who had initially taken the
Warren Report’s conclusions at face value. But when serious discrepancies, between
the actual data and the conclusions of the report had been pointed out to him,
he began his own investigations. He did so first as a private citizen, and subsequently
for Senator Schweiker of the Church Committee. Fonzi lived in Miami and was in close contact with the Cuban exile
community. It was a hotbed of hatred for Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs debacle and especially after his subsequent failure to invade Cuba during the missile crisis. Fonzi’s contacts with the
leaders of the various anti-Castro groups made it apparent that they were not
autonomous but functioned largely under the aegis of the CIA, which provided money and resources. Additional funds came from
wealthy private right wing individuals who had their own reasons to hate
Castro’s Cuba.
Fonzi
had high hopes for the HSCA and thought that it would allow him to conclusively
demonstrate CIA ties to the anti-Castro Cuban community as well as to
Oswald. He was encouraged when Richard A. Sprague (not to be confused with the
consultant Richard E. Sprague) was appointed Chief Counsel. But in concert with
other staffers he became progressively more disenchanted later on and wrote:
The truth is, the last investigation was simply not broad enough, deep
enough, ambitious enough, nor honest enough to yield any firm conclusions about
the nature of the conspiracy. To give the impression that it was, is a charade.
Let
us now look at why this was the case. In chapter 21, under the title,
“Programmed to Self-Explode,” Fonzi wrote: “What Sprague discovered when he
arrived in Washington was that his first order of business was not to set up an
investigation but simply to keep the Assassinations Committee alive.”
Congressional Committees legally expire at the end of each Congressional year
and Congress has to authorize their continuance for the subsequent year.Ordinarily this tends to be automatic. But
this was not an ordinary situation and on February 1, 1977 the House Rules Committee provided funding of the
Assassination Committee, under the Chairmanship of Rep. Henry Gonzalez, for
only two months during which time it was to show why its work was needed at
all.
The
problem was compounded by the fact that there was bad blood between Committee
Chairman Gonzalez and Sprague. In December 1976 Gonzalez had told Sprague that
the Committee could operate with a monthly budget of $150,000 until it was
officially reconstituted. But Gonzalez had been mistaken because House Rules
permitted only a monthly expenditure of $84,337. Gonzalez then ordered Sprague
to fire some of his newly hired staff and claimed that Sprague had done the
hiring behind his back. This was not true. Friction continued between them as
to how the investigation was to be performed and on February 11 Gonzalez fired
Sprague. He also ordered the Capitol police to evict him from his office. But
Gonzalez had overstepped his authority and within hours the Committee overruled
its chairman and rescinded the order.
Money
had not been the only area of concern. Sprague had begun to investigate CIA connections and had thereby stepped on extremely sensitive toes.
Public attacks appeared in the media and his integrity was questioned. Nevertheless,
the Committee stuck with Sprague. Since Gonzalez had lost the Committee’s
support he resigned on March 1, and Rep. Louis Stokes of Ohio became chairman with Sprague remaining at his job.
But the attacks against Sprague had taken their toll. By the end of March
Stokes concluded that Sprague had acquired too many critics and if the
Committee was to survive Sprague would have to resign.
Stokes’
concern was realistic because Congress did not really want an impartial
investigation. 1976 had been an election year and members of Congress had
yielded to pressure from its Black Caucus to investigate the Martin Luther King
(MLK) murder. But elections were over and therewith any
sense of urgency. Since no political gain would accrue from either JFK’s or MLK’s murder investigation, Congress would henceforth go through the
motions of appearing interested but without putting its shoulder to the wheel.
On March 29, when it was apparent that the
Committee might lose the vote for its reconstitution, Sprague resigned. This
fact, in combination with the apparent suicide of a key witness the day before
his expected testimony to the HSCA, ensured the Committee’s survival, albeit on
a much reduced annual budget of $2.5 million. This was far short of the
projected $6 million Sprague had felt was needed in order to do justice to the
Committee’s mandate of a “full investigation.”
In
September 1976 the duration of the Committee’s work had been projected for two
years, but the new Chief Counsel, Robert G. Blakey, was not appointed until June 20 1977. Nine months had been frittered away. This hardly
left enough time for the Committee’s investigative tasks, public hearings and
to write a report. In contrast to Sprague, who was a seasoned prosecutor,
Blakey came from CornellUniversity where he taught criminal law and he was also in
charge of its Organized Crime Institute. Since he had previously served in the
Justice Department under Robert Kennedy ferreting out organized crime, he was
regarded as the top expert in the country on that topic. This background
inevitably influenced the direction of the committee’s work because it was evident
to Blakey that in any potential conspiracy organized crime would be a, if not the major component.
In
contrast to Sprague, who was street-wise in the pursuit of solving crimes but
the proverbial “babe in the woods” when it came to the Byzantine machinations
of Washington, Blakey was fully attuned to them and knew “how to
play ball.” At his first general staff meeting in August 1977 Blakey explained
that he had to promise Chairman Stokes that the staff would finish its
investigation and write its report by December 31st 1978. There was absolutely no possibility that the
Committee would be extended beyond this time. Fonzi was flabbergasted because
it was obvious that a complete investigation could not possibly be performed
within this time frame. But Blakey went on: “Our primary duty, he pointed out,
was not to conduct a criminal investigation.… Our goals were to gather evidence
to be presented at public hearings and, after that, produce a final report.”
This was a new learning experience for Fonzi. He, like the
rest of us, had assumed that Washington was serious in establishing the truth of what had
happened to JFK and MLK but this was obviously not the case. As Fonzi found
out that in government
What’s important
is not what you do, but how what you do looks
while you are doing it, how it looks
after you’ve done it, and how it will eventually look in relation to everything else you’ve done looks. The inside of government is a
funny house of mirrors and it was instant frustration [italics in original].
While Sprague had given his investigators leeway to follow
leads, Blakey insisted on a strict protocol. The staff had to define, over a
period of weeks, key issues which were to be investigated. Any deviation which
might result from new information that had been gathered required permission
from Blakey and was usually withheld. This approach might work if one wants to
prove a theory but cannot lead to the discovery of the truth in a situation as
complex as the assassinations. The reason was time pressure as well as
financial. In June of 1978 the budget was slashed further and 25 staff members
had to be let go. This left only four Kennedy investigators. While this seems
incredible to an outsider who believes that his government is serious about its
business it does have logic of its own. This was explained to the staffers when
Blakey took over. His lead coordinator for the JFK murder was Gary Cornwell who
was attuned to the ways Washington
works. According to his advice to the staffers “there was the real world” and
“the legislative world.” Here are excerpts of the conversation as reported by
Fonzi. Cornwell stated
‘Congress gave us a job to do and
dictated the time and resources in which to do it. That’s the legislative
world. Granted it may not be the real world, but it’s the world in which we
have to live’…. Then it dawned on me: ‘Realistically, that doesn’t make any sense [italics in the original]!’ I
almost yelled, struck by my sudden realization. Cornwell let go a loud whoop of
a laugh, ‘Reality is irrelevant!’ he yelled back with a big grin.
It was not a joke this is
the reality of the legislative process. As a result of outside pressure,
investigations are ordered with a broad mandate which looks good to the public.
But Congress subsequently impedes the process and the final report becomes the
goal to which everything else is subordinated. In addition, the fundamental
conclusion of the report is frequently preordained regardless of what the
actual investigations show. It is small wonder that the people who do the
investigating in good faith are frustrated, become cynical and conspiracy
theories are inevitable.
When I subsequently looked at the Appendices in the
Committee Report it became clear what had happened. Congress had deliberately
sabotaged the Committee’s original mandate! Please look again at the original
HR Resolution 1540 as quoted here on the second page. The paragraph in question
ended with “… any others the select committee shall determine.” The next
paragraph dealt with procedural details. This was the charge the staffers and
investigators believed they were to work on. But even Fonzi apparently had
failed to read early on the Congressional Record. Congress had pulled what is
proverbially called “a fast one” in HR 9 of January 7, 1977 when it gave the
Committee another two months to show results or else.
The mentioned resolution looks on superficial reading quite
similar to HR 1540 but instead of the period after “… shall determine” the
sentence continues without break and radically alters the committee’s purpose. It
now reads
… any others the select
committee shall determine in order to ascertain whether the existing laws of
the United States, including but not limited to laws relating to the Safety and
Protection of the President of the United States, assassinations of the
President of the United States, deprivations of civil rights, and conspiracies
related thereto, as well as the investigatory jurisdiction and capability of
agencies and Departments of the United States Government are adequate, either
in their provisions or in the manner of their enforcement; and shall make
recommendations to the House, if the select committee deems it appropriate, for
the amendment of existing legislation or the enactment of new legislation.
With the stroke of a pen the original purpose of “who had
done what?” was completely changed into “forget that; just tell us what new
laws we should pass!” This explains why Cornwell roared with laughter when
Fonzi objected with his common sense argument. Cornwell was right. Reality is irrelevant for Congress and we are
fools to believe otherwise. This lesson is not taught in Civics class, neither
are we so told on our TV screens or from our elected representatives and
senators who profess to be servants of the public. Yet it needs to be shouted
from the rooftops in order to save whatever is salvageable from Washington’s current mismanagement.
It is obvious that we can no longer rely on our government
to ever tell us what is really known about the CIA’s involvement not only in the cover-up but JFK’s assassination. Lying
under oath is not only permissible in this subculture but as former CIA director Richard Helms declared: “A badge of honor.” Loyalty, as a
former CIA agent explained to Fonzi, does not extend to Congress
which constantly changes, but to the Agency which weathers all storms.
I have discussed the 9/11 Commission on the fifth and tenth
anniversary of the 9/11 catastrophe on this site (October 1, 2006; The 9/11 Cover-up; October 1, 2011; 9/11 Remembered) and the Commission Report, in spite
of its inadequacies, is still dogma. It followed the pattern set by the Warren
Commission and the HSCA. Neither the Republicans in Congress nor the President
and Vice-President had any interest in setting up the Commission in spite of
the fact that the attacks had been the worst ones ever within the continental United States. The White House did actually everything in its power
to prevent an investigation. When the families of the 9/11 victims were
relentless and a major scandal brewed, Bush/Cheney had to yield. They retained,
however, control by appointing chairmen who were attuned to their ideology.
First it was Henry Kissinger but the families revolted and he had to be
replaced with the less well known Philip Zelikow, about whose close ties to the
Bush administration the public was not informed. The White House also insisted
on being privy to the investigation’s proceedings and the final Report had to
be submitted for editing prior to its publication. When the Report stated in
its Preface that “We have sought to be, independent, impartial, thorough and
nonpartisan,” we can grant the commissioners the intention, but the outcome was
predetermined and did not conform to what the sentence states.
The Warren Commission had to prove the deranged Oswald lone
assassin theory. The HSCA had to write a report which gave a semblance of an
honest investigation without having been able to do so. The 9/11 Commission had
to a) firmly establish Osama bin Laden and the 19
hijackers as the sole culprits and b) demand a new bureaucracy for our national
security. According to the Commission the hijackings had succeeded because “the
dots were not connected.” Had the FBI and CIA talked to each other, the disaster would never have happened, was the
short answer.
The Commission
Report is also similar to the mentioned precedents in other respects. The main
text presents a cohesive story and contradictions are relegated to endnotes.
For instance in regard to AA Flight 77 which supposedly hit the Pentagon while piloted
by Hani Hanjour, we read that he had obtained a private pilot’s license in 1997
and in 1999 received “a commercial pilot certificate issued by the FAA.” This
leads one to believe that he was a competent pilot and that the accompanying endnote
would endorse that conclusion. But the opposite is the case. The endnote does
not mention how Hanjour obtained his commercial pilot license and stated
instead that he “was nervous, if not fearful in flight training” and that his
instructor regarded him as “a terrible pilot.” The report did not mention that
his license was no longer valid, because he had failed to renew it. Even more
damning is the news report that in the second week of August 2001 Hanjour was
denied rental of a Cessna in Maryland because he was unable to control and land it, http://web.archive.org/web/20020405020924/http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story.
It is inconceivable that an individual, who could not even fly a Cessna, would three
weeks later perform a highly complex maneuver in a 757 in order to hit the Pentagon
at ground level. As the website “Pilots for 9/11 Truth” points out, even 757 pilots
with military training admit that it would have been extremely difficult, if
not impossible, for them to do so. By the way, the pilots also stated that
hitting the Towers at the reported speed of the planes was no mean feat.
In
addition, and this is again an item the official media didn’t tell us, the Pentagon
section which was hit housed Naval Intelligence whose personnel was engaged in
finding $2.3 trillion (!) which Secretary Rumsfeld on the previous day
(September 10) had declared missing, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU.
Furthermore, it was no secret that not only were the TwinTowers reduced to rubble on the 11th, but so was WTC7 which had
not been hit by a plane, but this event also failed to show up in the Report. Why
do we have to read about these vital pieces of information on the Internet and
in books by genuine truth seekers rather than in the official report?
In
line with the mentioned precedents the Report also expressed thanks to the
White House and various government agencies for their help. The obstruction
from the White House has already been mentioned but obstruction, prevarication
and destruction of evidence had also occurred by other government agencies.
John
Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, published in 2009 The Ground Truth – The Untold Story of AmericaUnder Attack on 9/11.
The book specifically explored the question how it was possible that the most
heavily defended air space in the U.S. could have been so readily breached. Let us remember
that for the hijackings to succeed the following security measures had to be
overcome: the hijackers’ visas had to be granted by the State Department, their
names must not have shown up on the no-fly list, they had to pass airport
security and on board they had to overpower experienced airline pilots who had
military training, not once but four times! After the hijackings the FAA had to
be unusually slow in recognizing them and notifying NORAD, which in turn responded
only when it was too late. If all of this can happen so readily without inside
help, then we really ought to stop paying taxes for defense related expenses.
Farmer
and his staff were absolutely amazed by the contradictions they turned up in
their investigation and the testimony that some of the most important FAA
documents had been destroyed. He wrote:
It was difficult
to decide which was the more disturbing possibility.
To believe that the errors in fact were simply inadvertent would be to believe
that senior military and civilian officials were willing to testify in great
detail and with assurance before Congress and the Commission, to be interviewed
by major media, to appear on national and international television and answer
the same detailed questions, to cooperate in preparation of an official Air
Force history, and to brief the White House on what happened on 9/11 without
bothering to make sure that what they were saying was accurate. Given the
significance of 9/11 in our history, this would amount to an egregious breach
of the public trust. If it were true, however, that the story was at some level
coordinated and was knowingly false, that would be an egregious deception.
Farmer, who is currently Dean of the LawSchool at RutgersUniversity, had to leave the question open because the
Commission had neither the time nor the money to pursue this most important
aspect. But he was emphatic in another respect.
9/11 was the
product of a government that doesn’t work, and the false story put forward
about the event of that morning allowed the government to avoid the kind of
searching reexamination of government that was appropriate to the situation,
given the bureaucratic collapse that culminated in 9/11.… the principle
response to the failure of bureaucracy was not an attempt to redefine
government itself, but the creation of more government, more bureaucracy.
Any rational human being will immediately notice that this
is an expensive bureaucratic sham. Does anyone really believe that these
agencies will tell Lt. General Clapper, the current director, everything he
needs to know? How can he possibly be aware of what is really going on in the
FBI, CIA, NSA etc., especially when they vigorously protect
their turf against outsiders? In addition, even within these agencies groups of
individuals act on a “need to know” basis, where even your closest co-worker, let
alone the boss, may not know what you are up to. The ODNI has an impossible job
and it is not surprising that in the nine years of the office’s existence there
have so far been four directors and one interim director.
The major lesson from these three official investigations
into the two recent pivotal events is clear: We cannot expect our government to
give us honest answers regardless of how hard we try. The Kennedy assassination
was a crime and so was 9/11, but in neither case was a criminal investigation
allowed to take place. This is an indictment of all three branches of our government.
The media have been co-opted, history is falsified and decent citizens who look
for the truth are maligned. These facts must be faced and bode ill for the
future of our country. In the March 1 installment I shall further discuss this situation
and also report on efforts which are currently undertaken by private
individuals and organizations to deal with our dysfunctional federal
government.
March 1, 2014
REFLECTIONS ON SOCHI
As noted in the previous installment I had intended to
write part III of the “Enemy
Within” at this time but as a former Austrian and skiing enthusiast I just
can’t bypass the Sochi Olympics. Thanks to the powers above, the games went
exceedingly well. There were no terrorist attacks, no scandals and the people
of Sochi, as
well as the officials, proved themselves competent, efficient, helpful and
friendly.
While one might expect this from other venues which have a
long existing infrastructure this was not the case in Sochi. The city had previously been twice
denied its bid for the Olympics and the IOC President, Thomas Bach, had feared
a debacle. In his news conference prior to the closing ceremony he mentioned
that he had visited the proposed site to assess its second bid and was appalled
at what he found. “I came here and said ‘impossible.’” “We were here and you saw (an) old
Stalinist-style sanatorium city where you entered the room and you were looking
at the roof so you would not be hit by something falling down. It was
terrible.” But that was in the past and at the closing
ceremony Bach said:
… Athletes - you have
inspired us over this last 17 days. You have excelled in competitions and
shared your emotions with us and the whole world. You have celebrated victory
and defeat with dignity.
By living together under
one roof in the Olympic village you send a powerful message from Sochi to the world, that
of a society of peace, tolerance and respect. I appeal to everybody implicated
in confrontation, oppression and violence to act on this Olympic message of
dialogue and peace.
Tonight we can say Russia delivered
all that it promised. What took decades in other parts of the world was
achieved here in Sochi
in just seven years. All the people of Sochi
and Russia
deserve our deep gratitude. …
Twelve new events made the games the
largest ever. The athletes performed phenomenally well and the acrobatics in
the “half pipe,” were truly amazing. One is also grateful that no serious
injuries had occurred under at times quite adverse conditions. Mikaela Shiffrin
of Vail had remarked that she’d really think twice to come to a competition
where “you ski on slush.” But on the next day she beat two Austrians for the
gold medal in slalom. As a resident of Utah
it was especially pleasing to note that 15 of America’s 28 medals were achieved
by athletes from the SaltLake valley and ParkCity
area. The Salt Lake Tribune reported
that if Utah
were a nation we would have placed ninth in the overall medal count. This is a
clear tribute to the success of the 2002 Olympics and the training facilities
which were created at the time (The Mormon Olympics, March 2002). The Austrian
team also did quite well with 17 medals which placed them number seven in the
overall count.
The major disappointment was the reporting of the events by
the media and especially television. NBC had the usual monopoly, and during the
prime time viewing hours we were treated to a barrage of advertisements. We saw
mainly events where American athletes had a chance to win a medal and after two
runs of a given event the commercials were back. The closing ceremony was
truncated and I wondered to what extent politics played a role. For our
politicians and media people the Cold War has never ended and Russia is still
painted as an enemy. That the Russians could do something right was difficult
to swallow. Even IOC President Bach was censored by NBC and the line “What took decades in other parts of the world was achieved
here in Sochi in just seven years,” was not heard but can be read on the
Internet.
NBC also did an abysmal job in other
respects. For instance, they
could have taken us on a tour of Sochi
and its environs instead of showing an old
film on the 1992 Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding skating scandal. We might also have
been informed that a world transforming event had taken place in its
surroundings in April of 1963 and that Krasnya Polyana (which means
red/beautiful) glade, where the Alpine events took place, was the site where
Russia’s longest war formally ended in 1864. I regard it as rather sad that one
has to consult the Internet and/or books to get this information and that our
official media feed us propaganda and trivialities.
Mr. Bach’s comment about the “Stalinist
sanatorium city” sent me to the Internet for the context and it was quite
interesting what one found there. The Sochi
area was supposed to have been inhabited since 100,000 BC although I wonder how
one would substantiate that claim. There is, however, a cave in Sochi with human and
animal remains, as well as human artifacts, which has been dated to 50,000-30,000.
In historical BC times it was an important trading post where Greeks exchanged
their goods for slaves and in the 19th century it was hotly contested
between the British, French and Russians who wanted to profit from the decaying
Ottoman Empire. The city itself is quite new. It
was incorporated in 1917 and was indeed devoted to sanatoriums. During WWII it
served as the Soviet Union’s main convalescents’
center for wounded soldiers. Subsequently it flourished to some extent as a
summer resort but with the collapse of the Soviet Union
the city fell again on hard times.
We have frequently been told of
Putin’s comment that the collapse of the Soviet Union
was a catastrophic event and he is chastised for it. Nevertheless, from the
Russian point of view one must admit that he was correct. Not only did Russia lose the
Central Asian republics with their immense oil and gas reserves, but Yeltsin also
sold the previously nationalized natural resources of the remainder of the
country to unscrupulous capitalists. Overnight obscenely rich “oligarchs” came
to the fore while the common people sank into deep poverty. The social safety
net was largely done away with and ordinary Russians were even worse off than
immediately after WWII. The situation was apparently similar to that in Germany and Austria
immediately after WWI when money was devalued by inflation; fortunes were made on
speculations by some while the rest of the people had to sell whatever property
they had to avoid starvation. It is small wonder that the majority of Russians
have no problem with Putin who helped the country get on its feet again and has
now shown the world what Russians can do if they put their minds to it. When we
criticize Putin for not living up to Western expectations we should remember
that his responsibility is towards the Russian people, rather than to the West
and currently about 70 per cent approve of his performance in office.
Krasnya Polyana likewise has an interesting history. It was
regarded as the capital of various Circassian tribes who waged a fierce fight
against Russia’s
imperial ambitions. The battles of the so-called Russo-Circassian War for
dominance over the Caucasus region raged from 1763-1864 when four Russian
armies converged on the village which later became Krasnya Polyana and the
Circassian leadership took an oath of fealty to the Tsar. The battles were
fought with excessive cruelty and Tolstoy’s HadjiMurád provided a glimpse of what life
was like on both sides. After the war “ethnic cleansing” occurred on a massive
scale. The Muslim inhabitants were expelled to various provinces of the Ottoman Empire and mainly replaced by ethnic
Russians.
While this may reinforce the typical picture of
Russian cruelty we should remember that massive forced population exchanges
were the rule not only in those days, but even during and after WWII in central
Europe. Israeli leaders also were confronted
with the same problem of what to do with a conquered population of a different
faith, which became especially acute after the 1967 war. Although some
championed expulsion of the Arab people from biblical Eretz Israel,
international standards have changed and this option is foreclosed. The problem
is currently allowed to fester but will inevitably come to a head in the not so
distant future.
In this connection we in this country also have no reason
to cast stones when one considers how our Presidents disregarded the treaties made
with the native population. I am not sure that events following the “Indian
Removal Act” of 1830, which dealt with the relocation of five nations who lived
in the southeastern part of the U.S. to west of the Mississippi, are given much
prominence in our history classes. A good description of them can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears.
Our self-righteous citizens who believe that evil only resides in others should
read this article.
In
regard to Russian cruelties during the Russo-Circassian war Tolstoy describes a
scene in Chechnya
where a Russian detachment comes under rifle fire. They respond with cannons
and when the local fighters fade back into the woods the Russians come upon a
deserted village which they burn to the ground. For good measure they loot
whatever they can lay hands on, poison the well, desecrate the mosque, cut down
apricot and cherry trees, destroy the apiary and stab an adolescent boy to
death. On the Russian side the feeling was “mission accomplished,” because the
Chechens who fought for their way of life were dzighits against whom one had to
defend oneself. Have we not seen the same in recent wars where the enemy is
dehumanized by a label? We know about My Lai
but how many other atrocities have gone unreported?The same applies to the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars where segments of our troops and “contractors” behaved abysmally. We are
not shown these scenes on our TV screens but examples can be found on the DVDThe
American Century by the Italian director Massimo Mazzucco whose 9/11 series
I have previously mentioned (Shattered Trust; November 1, 2013).
We
don’t want to see these pictures because they are profoundly disconcerting and
we are content with President Bush’s answer to “why do they hate us?” with: “they
hate our freedoms.” This is dangerous nonsense. They hate us because of our
conduct in or towards their country! But in our current wars is it just hatred,
or does it go deeper? Let me now give the word to Tolstoy who described the
reaction of the villagers when they returned to their destroyed homes.
No one spoke of hatred of the Russians. The feelings
experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger
than hate. It was not hatred for they did not regard those Russian dogs as
human beings; but it was such a repulsion, disgust and perplexity at the
senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them –
like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders or wolves – was as
natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.
This
surely shows the timelessness as well as universality of human responses during
war. Unless we realize that these feelings are a natural consequence of
inflicting senseless violence on “terrorists,” to use current terminology, we
will continue to ensure their proliferation. Put yourself into the mind of a
young Afghan or Pakistani whose family has just been decimated by a drone
strike. Put yourself into the minds of the people of Fallujah whose city we he
have leveled and poisoned, possibly with radioactive dust from our “depleted”
ammunitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah_during_the_Iraq_War.
We won’t do it because it would require
empathy and that in turn would get rid of war. But let’s face it; war is hugely
profitable for those who really run the governments of this world. This is the
reason why wars will persist and potential peacemakers have to be removed.
This
brings us back from Krasnya Polyana’s 1864 treaty to
Sochi and the events of 1963 as presented by Norman Cousins in The Improbable Triumvirate – An Asterisk to
the History of a Hopeful Year, 1962-1963. The book is no longer in print,
but since we prefer to spend money on war rather then education our libraries
are cash strapped and they sell some oftheir books which have limited readership to amazon. The book is clearly
more than an asterisk because it provides insights into the minds of three men
who were determined to steer the world into calmer waters after the October
1962 missile crisis.
Norman
Cousins (1915-1990) was a remarkable person. Professionally a journalist and
longtime editor of the Saturday Review
he was also sincerely devoted to making ours a more peaceful world. This why in
1960 he formed, at the height of the Cold War, the little known Dartmouth
Conferences where leading scientists and cultural representatives of the Soviet
Union and the U.S. would get together for a week-long exchange of views how a
peaceful co-existence between these adversaries could be achieved. The first
one was held at Dartmouth College, hence its name, the second one in June of
1961 in the Crimea. These conferences, as well as other signs, had signaled to
the Vatican a possible change of the Soviet Union’s rigid attitude towards
religion and the time was felt right for potentially improved relationships. In
addition, Pope John XXIII was extremely concerned about the possibility of
nuclear war and although already seriously ill with cancer thought he needed to
do everything within his power to forestall that event. In the spring of 1962 Father
Felix P. Morlion, President of Rome’s Pro Deo
Institute was, therefore, authorized to personally contact Cousins in New York
in order to explore if he might be willing to serve as the Vatican’s unofficial
emissary to the Chairman of the USSR, Mr. Khrushchev.
Father Morlion
assured Cousins that the Pope had “profound respect for people of all faiths”
and also explained that
From a
theological point of view nuclear was not just a war of nation against nation,
or even man against man – it was a war against God. Man was now on the verge of
smashing at the conditions of life not just life itself. Nuclear war could
alter man’s genetic structure; it could disfigure his life and create a
deformed environment. If concern over such facts was not a matter for Papal
intervention, it was hard to determine what was.
He also mentioned that anti-war forces
were gathering strength in the Soviet Union and it was important “to develop
access to the Russian leaders so that the Pope’s appeal would carry weight.”
The conversations continued through the
summer into fall, and Father Morlion asked whether he might be permitted to
talk to some of the Soviet delegates at the time of the upcoming third Dartmouth conference,
with the understanding that he could not be a formal participant in the
proceedings. The pre-conference evening get-together on October 21 was,
however, dominated by President Kennedy’s speech announcing the blockade of
Cuban waters for Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba. Since this placed the Soviet
delegation in a precarious position a vote was taken whether or not the
Conference should be postponed, but both sides agreed that it ought to proceed.
During the week-long crisis the gravely
ill Pope wrote a brief note which was broadcast by Vatican Radio.
We beg all governments not to remain deaf to this cry of
humanity. That they do all that is in their power to save peace. They will thus
spare the world from the horrors of a war whose terrifying consequences no one
can predict. That they continue discussions, as this loyal and open behaviour has great value as a witness of everyone’s
conscience and before history. Promoting, favouring,
accepting conversations, at all levels and in any time, is a rule of wisdom and
prudence which attracts the blessings of heaven and earth.
This
appeal was printed world-wide and even Pravda carried it in full under the
headline: We beg all governments.” Commentators have mentioned that this had
given Khrushchev the opportunity to appear as a man of peace by withdrawing the
missiles. The Dartmouth Conference ended on a jubilant note and led to an
invitation for Cousins to visit Moscow
in December of that year as an unofficial representative of the Vatican. The
most pressing immediate
goal was to achieve the release of Cardinal Josef Slipy who had been imprisoned
for several years.
As an
American citizen Cousins had to clear this trip with our government and
specifically President Kennedy who told him
… I don’t know if the matter of American-Soviet relationships
will come up. But if it does, he will probably say something about his desire
to reduce tensions, but will make it appear there’s no reciprocal interest by
the United States.
It is important that he be corrected on this score. I’m not sure Khrushchev
knows this, but I don’t think there’s any man in American politics who’s more eager than I am to put Cold War animosities
behind us and get down to the hard business of building friendly relationships.
The
interview with the Chairman was fascinating because it showed him as a human
being interested in family matters. For instance he chided Cousins for not
having brought his children. When Cousins explained that they were in school,
Khrushchev replied: “School? Nonsense! They don’t teach anything in the schools
as important as they could learn traveling with Papa.” I am mentioning this
because it had always been my opinion that concern for his grandchildren had
been an overriding issue in the peaceful resolution of the missile crisis.
Joint Chief of Staff Curtis Le May’s counterpart in the Soviet
Union would hardly have had such scruples.
Khrushchev then told Cousins about his
problems with the press how they distort things and make life hard for him. He
provided a specific example and for those of us who have been indoctrinated in believing
that the USSR
was a monolithic rigidly controlled society this conversation revealed a rather
different picture. The interview was wide ranging, lasted several hours and at
the end Khrushchev said that if President Kennedy really wanted peace he “would
not find me running second in racing toward that goal.” He then penned two
personal notes. In the one to the Pope he conveyed his good wishes for the
“Christmas season” and in the note to Kennedy he used “holiday season.” It is
these little nuances that define a person and the ostensibly boorish shoe
banging at the UN was just for show.
The
apparent brief thaw in relations began to freeze again during the winter over
the problem of the nuclear test ban treaty. The negotiators were deadlocked on
the question how many on the ground inspections the Soviet Union would allow to
take place. A second meeting with Khrushchev was therefore arranged in April,
which took place at his country retreat in Gagra, about 30 miles from Sochi’s airport along the
Black Sea shore. Prior to the visit Cousins
had stopped over in Rome
where he had received an advance copy of the Pope’s Pacem in Terris Encyclical (Peace on Earth; April 1, 2007) which he was
asked to deliver to the Chairman. Also, heeding Khrushchev’s advice he had
brought his daughters along and as the saying goes, “a good time was had by all”
in Gagra. Cousins was shown the sports house with its facilities where they
played badminton, which revealed Khrushchev to have been in excellent physical
condition, and the swimming pool was enjoyed with and by the kids when the
adults had to attend to more serious matters.
Several
substantive issues were discussed and again revealed the limitations a given
President or Chairman is faced with. For me the Russian interpretation of the
failed Paris
summit was news. Khrushchev had intended to keep the Gary Powers’ shoot-down
quiet so as not to endanger the summit, but when the papers published the
incident he had to make it official. He nevertheless, wanted to continue with
the summit because, as he told the Politburo, Eisenhower had been kept in the
dark about the flight. When Eisenhower, after initially having denied the spy
mission, assumed full responsibility he pulled the rug out from underneath
Khrushchev’s peace efforts, who now stood exposed of
having misled the Politburo. Under these circumstances there could not be a
summit meeting and there is some speculation that Power’s provocative CIA mission on May Day was actually planned to
result in failure in order to sabotage the summit (Abuse of Secrecy; August 1, 2008. Misguided
Arrogant Incompetence; August
1, 2011).
The
interview takes up 27 pages of the book and it is impossible to even present
all the highlights at this time. I shall, therefore limit myself to the nuclear
issue. The argument revolved about how many annual inspections were required to
verify that the Soviets were not cheating. As Khrushchev told Cousins
People in the United
States seem to think that I am a dictator
who can put into practice any policy I wish. Not so. I’ve got to persuade
before I can govern. Anyway, the Council of Ministers agreed to my urgent
recommendation. Then I notified the United States Iwould accept three inspections. Back came the American rejection.
They now wanted neither three nor even six. They wanted eight and so once again
I was made look foolish. But I can tell you this: it won’t happen again.
The
Soviets had earlier been led to believe that the U.S. would settle for three
inspections and this is what Khrushchev alluded to. The “once again” comment referred
to the U2 Eisenhower experience. We also need to know that the Chinese had put
pressure on the Soviets not to agree to any test ban deal. While Kennedy was
attacked for being soft on the communists, Khrushchev was vilified for being
soft on the capitalists. Those were the realities in 1963. But Cousins was a
skillful negotiator and convinced him that the President was serious and these
misunderstandings could be dealt with. Nevertheless, Khrushchev insisted that
he needed some concrete action from Kennedy to demonstrate his good faith.
When
Cousins reported back on what had transpired, Kennedy requested that a proposal
for a speech be drawn up. It became the “peace speech” in form of the Commencement
Address before the AmericanUniversity on June 10 of
that year. Wikipedia gives excerpts but in the introduction omits Cousins’
vital contribution to its genesis. I shall quote here only three excerpts which
clarify Kennedy’s stance and speak to our current situation.
Today
the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the
purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace.
But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles—which can only destroy and
never create—is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring
peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational
men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war,
and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more
urgent task….
First examine
our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too
many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to
the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are
gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems
are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he
wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings….
For
in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this
small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's
futures. And we are all mortal.
Kennedy
subsequently devoted his full effort to getting the nuclear test ban treaty
signed and ratified by Congress. It went into effect on October 10, 1963 and is
still observed today. Norman Cousin received the Pope’s personal medallion for
his efforts of having achieved the release not only of Cardinal Slipy but also of
Archbishop Beran, who had been imprisoned in Czechoslovakia, and U Thant
awarded him the Peace Medal of the United Nations.
Kennedy
and Khrushchev were well on the way towards détente. In his last two months of
office Kennedy not only considered a reduction of American forces in Vietnam but
also ordered NASA to explore how the moon landing program could be modified
from a purely American space race into a cooperative enterprise with the Soviet Union. His speech to the UN on that point is known
but that he was serious and had issued National Security Action Memorandum
(NSAM) 271 to that effect on November 12 is not.
Peacemakers
are not in demand. Kennedy was murdered ten days after the mentioned NSAM. The
President’s death gave the hardliners in the Kremlin their chance to depose
Khrushchev and he accepted “voluntary retirement” on October 14, 1964. Pope John XXIII
died of cancer on June 3, 1963 leaving Pacem in Terris as his unfulfilled legacy. Norman Cousins
continued his elusive search for peace and died on November 30, 1990. As mentioned, Cousins book
was titled The Improbable Triumvirate,
but there were actually four improbable allies. On reading the book I had
assumed that Cousins was Catholic. He was not, and this is the final
improbability: he was Jewish and was buried in a Jewish cemetery with members
of his family.
Without
the Khrushchev-Cousins meeting in Sochi’s environs there might not have been a
test ban treaty of which the world still benefits.
So, thank you Sochi and good bye for now; may you continue in your role not onlyas a
venue for healing the sick and providing recreational joys, but may you also
serve again as a meeting ground between conflicting ideologies in the cause of
peace. For the immediate future we sincerely hope that the Paralympics, which
will begin next week, will be crowned with similar success and that they will
lend further luster to Sochi and her people.
March 15, 2014
UKRAINE CRISIS
During the past two weeks the
focus of attention has shifted from Olympic joy on the eastern end of the Black
Sea to disaster on its northwestern area, with the focus on the Crimea. Putin’s
triumph of the “New Russia” was short lived, and the cuddly bear that shed a
tear at the closing ceremony has given way to the more usual menacing one. The
Cold War is in full swing again and the people behind the Project for the New
American Century (The Neocons’ Leviathan, April 1, 2003; Albert Wohlstetter’s
Disciples, December 1, 2005; 9/11: Context and Aftermath, September 2013) are
experiencing a revival. We are again inundated with propaganda where evil,
which resides purely on the other side, must be exterminated.
President
Obama is portrayed as a weakling in contrast to “real men” like Senator John McCain
who would teach the Russians to mind their manners. The cover of the March 6
issue of a popular magazine, pictured below, says it all.
Since we don’t get the full story on our
TV screens and the print media, one has to resort to the Internet and books. When
one does so a rather different picture emerges. Several years ago I bought
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine – The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism but had only glanced at it. I was in no mood to
read 600+ pages so I put it on one of our bookshelves. For some reason late
last month my eye was drawn towards it and here was a major explanation for the
events we are witnessing today in Ukraine. Unless one knows the
contents of this book, the current propaganda makes sense and this is why the
large majority of the people in our country is
apparently satisfied with the official explanations.
Briefly stated the media version is:
Putin is a power hungry, tyrannical autocrat who wants to re-establish the
Soviet Empire against the wishes of the former SovietRepublics
that had declared independence when the USSR collapsed. The heroic people
of the Ukraine
now are standing up against Putin’s blatant imperialism. They have chased off Moscow’s corrupt lackey,
Yanukovich, and are demonstrating their will to integrate with the West. The
new interim Prime Minister Arsenyi Yatseniuk, who visited Obama earlier in the
week, vowed that he will not give up one centimeter of Ukrainian soil and is
praised for this stand. But we are not told that this stance presents us with a
major Crimean problem.
From 1783, when Catherine the Great
wrested the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire, the peninsula belonged to Russia.
But in February of 1954 Khrushchev, for reasons only he was aware of, gave it
“as a present” to Ukraine.
Ostensibly it was a birthday gift “to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's
merger with the Russian empire,” but this was
hardly the full reason. Speculation has it that a) he was drunk when did so b)
he wanted to atone for the havoc he helped oversee during the famine in the
1930s when Stalin industrialized the eastern portion, c) he wanted to
repopulate the Crimea with Ukrainians after Stalin’s mass expulsion of Tartars
as punishment for their alleged cooperation with the Germans in WWII.
My own opinion is that there may also
have been some other very personal reasons. He was born in Kalinovka, Russia,
close to the Ukrainian border and his major political fortune had unfolded in
that SovietRepublic. This led to considerable
attachment to Ukraine. Sentimentality aside we must, however, also recognize Khrushchev’s
political situation in Moscow
at the time.Stalin had died on March 6, 1953 and there was
a power struggle for succession. Initially Malenkov assumed Stalin’s dual role
as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Presidium) and as First Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Politburo). But within one week Malenkov
was made to resign from the post of First Secretary of the Party and Khrushchev
assumed that post. The most serious rival for the top of Soviet hierarchy, Beria,
was arrested in June and executed in December. Malenkov remained head of the
Presidium but from his power base in the Party Khrushchev intensified his
intrigues against Malenkov around February 1954 (dates are according to
Wikipedia). The latter was deposed in January of 1955 in favor of Bulganin, while
Khrushchev remained in the seat of actual power. Giving the Crimea
to Ukraine
during those crucial times might well have served the purpose of shoring up his
credentials with the powerful Ukrainian faction in the Kremlin who would then
help him rise to the top.
We are told that Khrushchev had first
ventured the “gift thought” while walking with colleagues to lunch, and the
Council took only 15 minutes to turn a thought into the reality which currently
presents us with a considerable problem. It was “no big deal” in those days
because the Soviet Union was in their eyes
sound as a rock, here for eternity, so what’s the difference which Republic the
peninsula belonged to on paper. When the Soviet Union
broke up and Ukraine
declared its independence a future problem began to rear its head in form of Sebastopol which harbored the Russia’s Black
Sea fleet. Its presence there is vital because it is the only way
to get on short notice into the Mediterranean.
Imperial Russia
had paid dearly in 1905 at Tshushima for having had to send its major Baltic
fleet all around Europe and Africa
before it could reach its base at Port
Arthur which had been taken over by the Japanese.
When
Ukraine
became independent it not only ended up with a fair share of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal but also the entire Black Sea fleet. For the new rulers, who were actually
old communist comrades anyway, it wasn’t a major problem. The nukes would go to
Russia and as far as the fleet was concerned it was to be a share and share
alike. In good comradeship it was split on a fifty-fifty basis. The friendly
relations were anchored in the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation,
and Partnership between Ukraine
and the Russian Federation. It was ratified
in May of 1997 has never been cancelled and is, at least on paper, still in
force. Article One states: “As friendly, equal, and sovereign states the high contracting parties base their relations
on mutual respect and trust, strategic partnership and cooperation.”
The key word is “strategic partnership.” A strategic re-alignment of Ukraine towards
the West cannot be tolerated by any Russian ruler worth his salt. If Ukraine were to
join the West, it is likely that after a suitable interval it would also become
a member of NATO, as was the case with Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovakia. But
under those circumstances Russia would have NATO troops and missiles not only
on its immediate eastern border, but also in the Crimea and Sebastopol, which for
any Russian statesman is obviously out of the question. As long as there is
confrontation between Russia and the West, the Crimea has to stay with Russia
regardless what its people or the rest of the world want. Consider for a moment
what would happen if the Hawaiians were to decide they wanted independence.
There is no way we would give up our Pearl Harbor
base. Instead, its sailors would just walk into town and take over the
government. No help from the mainland would be needed and that is essentially
what happened in the Crimea. Tomorrow the
people of the Crimea are supposed to vote whether they want to belong to Russia
or Ukraine. The outcome is a foregone conclusion and serves only as a fig leaf
for keeping the naval base.
While the Crimean problem is mainly a
military one, the one concerning the rest of Ukraine is predominantly economic.
But the two are conflated because it makes for much better propaganda to dupe
the masses. Let us remember the “liberation of Kuwait.” Saddam Hussein couldn’t
pay his bills to Kuwait for his Iran war and the Emir was in no mood to reduce
or cancel the debt. So Saddam simply moved in to take Kuwait’s oil. That was
his goal and for him it was “mission accomplished.” But some of our folks saw
an opportunity. They accused him of also wanting, for good measure, to take
over that of Saudi Arabia. Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense at the time, convinced King Fahd that Saddam’s tanks were
about to descend on his country unless he granted us bases to evict Saddam from
Kuwait.
It was pure fantasy; there were no tanks on the border but the lie worked. We
got bases in Saudi Arabia,
evicted Saddam first from Kuwait
and then from Iraq.
In return, as blowback, we received Osama bin Laden who couldn’t tolerate
infidels in his Holy Land and as they say: the rest is history. But since it is
history as well as one of the reasons for our present War on Terrorism we
ignore it at our peril.
Similar to the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia
situation there is no evidence that Putin wants to invade the eastern sector of
Ukraine which has a predominantly Russian population. But military fears are
stoked to allow economic shock therapy to proceed. It is a classic case right
out of Naomi Klein’s book as will become apparent in a moment. As mentioned
earlier the book, published in 2007, is massive and documents how the US has
used serious economic pressures on countries which aroused our displeasure for whatever
reason. The author is Canadian and the book is written from a European type
social democratic perspective. While socialism is a dirty word here,
practically equated with communism, the social democratic parties in Europe have found a sustainable partnership with
capitalism in their countries. Especially the Scandinavian countries are quite
content with this arrangement and the Danes have been reported as being the
happiest people in the world in regard to their socio-economic situation.
During the past century two major
economic models have been adopted by various countries. One was developed by
John Maynard Keynes of the UK and can be taken as the prototype for a capitalist
system tempered by government regulations. The other was propounded by Milton
Friedman of the US who postulated that any government interference with the
market leads to distortion of the free flow of goods and services and must be
resisted. Friedman was in charge of the Economics Department at the University
of Chicago and his principles of: free international markets, deregulation of
industry and banking, privatization of government enterprises, as well cuts in
social spending were absorbed by his students and subsequently spread to other
universities before they entered the political mainstream. Since his students
became advisors to governments, initially in the southern cone of Latin America,
they were referred to as “the Chicago Boys.” In our country the Keynesian model
was responsible for Roosevelt’s New Deal while
Friedman’s gained ascendance with Reagonomics and is currently pursued by the
right wing of the Republican Party as well as Tea party conservatives.
Friedman’s model was first put into
practice in Chile
and The Shock Doctrine shows how
economics, political repression and torture go hand in hand. One may not
immediately see a connection between psychiatric experiments which were carried
out during the 1950s at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, torture and
the economic life of nations, but there is indeed logic to it.The purpose of “shock therapy” in Montreal was to create in
the patient a “clean slate.” It was not limited to electroshock in massive
doses, but included sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation
and administration of hallucinogens. The delusional thought patterns were to be
erased and healthy ones implanted thereafter. Therapeutic results were nil and
many patients got worse. But this did not stop the CIA
from funding these studies and thereafter adopting them, with some further embellishments,
in their training manuals for prisoner interrogations. We saw the result in the
Abu Ghraib pictures, but not even the Members of the 9/11 Commission were
allowed to find out what went on in Guantanamo.
As far as the economy is concerned, the
Chicago Boys knew that the unregulated free market model, as explained above,
would be highly unpalatable to the citizenry of a given country because of the
inevitable rise in prices, inflation and unemployment, coupled with cuts in the
existing social safety net. It, therefore, could not be achieved on a gradual
incremental basis but must be ordered by government in one swoop over a brief period
of time. Only a “shocked” populace that has been numbed by events would
passively accept a fait accompli. The shock included terror in form of the
arrest and torture of persons who had sympathized with the previous regime. The
purpose of torture, apart from psychopathic joy, was not only to obtain names
of other potential dissidents but also to add to the shock of the average
citizens who would think twice before complaining about the terrible lot that
suddenly befell not only the poor but also the middle class.
When in 1970 the people of Chile elected
Salvador Allende, an avowed socialist, and possibly crypto-communist, for their
President the Nixon administration became deeply concerned. One communist in
Cuba was bad enough there must not be another one; not only because of the bad
example it would set for other Latin American countries, but nationalization of
industries was a direct threat to our multinational corporations in Chile.
President Nixon took prompt action and ordered CIA
director Richard Helms “to make the economy scream.” It took till 1973 until
conditions were ripe in the country for a military coup by General Augusto
Pinochet during which Allende was killed. A reign of terror ensued and the
Chicago Boys immediately went to work on implementing their economic program. A
number of state-owned companies were privatized, “cutting-edge new forms of
speculative finance” was allowed, foreign import barriers were removed and
government spending was cut by 10 percent except for the military which
received an increase.
The result was a disaster for the people
of Chile.Klein wrote:
In 1974, inflation
reached 375 percent–the highest rate in the world and almost twice the top
level under Allende. The cost of basics such as bread went through the roof. At
the same time, Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet’s
experiment with ‘free trade’ was flooding the country with cheap imports. Local
businesses were closing, unable to compete, unemployment hit record levels and
hunger became rampant.
Friedman and his disciples had assured
Pinochet in 1975 that these problems were temporary and he needed to go ahead
with further implementation of the full program. Therefore, public spending was
cut further “by 27 percent in one blow – and they kept cutting until, by 1980,
it was half of what it had been under Allende. Health and education took the heaviest
hits.” Between 1973 and 1983 177,000 industrial jobs were lost and “By the
mid-eighties, manufacturing as a percentage of the economy dropped to level
last seen during the Second World War.”
These numbers are not necessarily
meaningful but André Gunder Frank who had received his PhD from the Economics Department
of the University of Chicago in 1957 and had subsequently worked in Chile
during Allende’s tenure, calculated the human cost of the Pinochet experiment.
Klein quoted from an open letter to Milton Friedman, which Gunder had published
in 1976.
Roughly 74
percent of a family’s income went to buying bread, forcing the family to cut
out such ‘luxury items’ as milk and bus fare to go to work. By comparison under
Allende bread, milk and bus fare took up 17 percent of a public employee’s
salary. Many children weren’t getting milk at school either, since one of the
junta’s first moves had been to eliminate the school milk program. As a result
of this cut compounding the desperation at home, more and more students were
fainting in class, and many stopped going to school altogether.… Friedman’s
prescriptions were so wrenching, the disaffected Chicago boy wrote, that they could not ‘be imposed or carried out without the
twin elements that underlie them all: military force and political terror.
Pinochet ruled for 17 years and although
the political repressions were uniformly condemned, the economic reforms have
been lauded as the “Chile economic miracle.” But Klein pointed out that as a
result of shock therapy financial speculations ran rampant and Chile’s economy
crashed in 1982. The event was caused by the same forces which presented us
with the 2008 market collapse from which we have not yet fully recovered. Pinochet had to change course and
re-nationalized some vital industries. As an aside I might mention that
President George W. Bush had to resort to aspects of the Keynesian model in
September 2008 in order to prevent a complete economic meltdown. If Friedman’s
model of free market without any government intrusion had been adhered to, it
would have been “tough luck” for the banks and the auto industry when they
collapsed and taken all of us with them.
I have dealt so extensively with the Chile unregulated
free market experiment because it set the pattern for the future. Among a host
of other countries that were subjected to shock treatment, Klein details
Russia’s bargain basement sell-out under Yeltsin and that of the Asian Tigers after
false financial rumors had led to economic disasters. The pattern is always the
same. The IMF and/or World Bank will provide needed funds but only with the
stipulation that the Friedman formula of free trade, privatization and cuts on
social services is adhered to.
This leads us back to Ukraine and its
problems. At the present time we have only incomplete information about the
background of the current crisis. President Viktor Yanukovich, who was elected
in 2010, had initially pursued closer ties with the EU but broke off further
discussions on the “Ukraine-European Association Agreement” (AA) last November.
The primary reason for approaching Europe was money, because Ukraine was and is
in difficult financial straits. Yanukovich wanted a loan of $20 billion but the
EU offered $838 million with certain strings attached. Russia, on the other
hand, offered $15 billion plus reduction in gas payments and no other
conditions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan).
Although from a purely rational point of
view it would seem that the Russian proposal was more to the point, protests
broke out upon the news that there was to be no signing of the AA. People
converged on Kiev’s
central square, Maidan, and while the demonstrations were initially peaceful,
clashes with the police followed in subsequent weeks and months. February 20
was a major turning point when indiscriminate shooting took place which killed
at least 77 people and wounded about 1100. Yanukovich, who left Kiev the following
day, was deposed by parliament on the 22nd and an interim government
under Arsenyi Yatseniuk was established.
We are led to believe that this was all
a purely European matter and that we had no hand in the events. But this is
hardly the case. On December 13 of last year (during the Maidan protests) Victoria
Nuland, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State
Department, gave a presentation at the National Press Club to the US-Ukraine
Foundation where she stated:
Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has
supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they
promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions
for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion
to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and
prosperous and democratic Ukraine.
A
leaked telephone conversation of February 6, 2014 between Nuland and the
American Ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, which went viral on the Internet
for a while because of a colorful phrase used by Nuland, shows who really was
in charge of the Maidan demonstrations. An article by Tyler Dryden, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-06/fuck-eu-us-state-department-blasts-europe-revealed-alleged-mastermind-behind-ukraine,
reported on the conversation which dealt with the formation of an interim
government of the Ukraine in case Yanukovich could not be made to see our point
of view. The key excerpt is:
In
apparent frustration with the EU –which
has failed to join the US in threatening sanctions against Ukraine’s leaders if
they violently crush the protests–
thevoice resembling Ms
Nuland at one point exclaims "Fuck the EU". As the two US
diplomats decide whether "Klitsch" or
"Yats" should be 'in' or 'out', listeners
will be reminded (uncomfortably) that thegovernments
of Ukraine and Russia previously alleged that the protests are being funded and
orchestrated by the US.
Needless
to say, as the FT adds, "[this clip]could
also bolster a propaganda campaign by the governments of Ukraine and Russia
alleging that the protests that erupted against Ukraine’s President Viktor
Yanukovich last November are being funded and orchestrated by the US."
Its release ahead of the day the Sochi Olympics start is also somewhat disturbing.
An excerpt on the US meddling...“I think Yats [Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience,
the governing experience,” Nuland says. “What he needs is Klitsch
[Klitschko] and [Oleh] Tyahnybok
on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I
just think Klitsch going in, he’s going to be at that
level, working for Yatsenyuk, it’s just not going to
work.” Pyatt agrees.“Let me
work on Klitschko,” he can be heard saying, “and I think we should get a
Western personality to come out here (to Ukraine) and midwife this thing.”[bold
print, italics and underlining are in the original]
The
conversation was authentic and Ms. Nuland has officially apologized to the EU
for her bad language. But language is not the point. When she said “f… the EU,”
she meant it and it reflected her true feelings as well as those of the people
she works for. It is becoming apparent that the EU is the poster child and what
is really happening is a continuation of “The Great Game” of the 19th
century between Imperial Russia and the British Empire. With the demise of
these Empires we have moved into the British slot while Putin tries to undo the
damage caused by the collapse of the USSR.
“Yats” is indeed “the guy” we are working with and as
mentioned he has reported for duty at the White House last Wednesday.
Klitschko, the former boxing champion and current Maidan opposition leader, has
been frozen out from the interim government. But there is more. The massacre on
February 20 may not have been perpetrated by Yanukovich’s people. Another
leaked phone conversation on February 26 between the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas
Paet and his EU counterpart Catherine Ashton, revealed that there is
considerable doubt about what really had transpired on that day. The authenticity
of the conversation was confirmed by Paet and it can be found on http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/ukraine-bugged-call-catherine-ashton-urmas-paet.
The phone connection is established at
about 1:58 in the video where Paet explains to Ashton what he had observed
during a one day visit to Kiev. He stated that the Maidan demonstrators have no
faith in the new government (some of its members have criminal and/or
neofascist backgrounds) and that physicians who were on the scene at the time
of the shootings testified that the same type bullets were recovered from
demonstrators and police. This suggested
that other forces than the government were
responsible. Since the new government had not immediately called for an inquest
into the massacre, the question of complicity was raised.
The
possibility that the February 20 event may have been the means to hasten along
the sluggish February 6 process raises serious questions for us as US citizens.
Keeping the Chilean example in mind we can hardly automatically expect clean
hands from our governing circles. False flag operations are a common staple in
everybody’s political hamper and so is secrecy. Since we don’t know what really
happened, but are paying the bills for the still unfolding Ukrainian venture,
we have the responsibility to call on our government to provide us with facts. I,
therefore, believe that before we engage in
further confrontations with Russia we should demand from our government: 1) an
accounting how the $5 billion have been spent, 2) congressional hearings where Ms.
Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt testify as to their role in creating the new
government, 3) publication of the background of all members of the current Ukrainian
interim government and 4) an international unbiased investigation into the
February events on the Maidan which led to the current crisis.
We know that Yanukovich was a corrupt crook.
The Ukrainians who had elected him in 2004 were well aware of his past criminal
record but were willing to ignore it. They now should not act surprised at the
luxurious mansion he built for himself and which has been opened to visitors.
But the 60 minutes piece on the past Sunday provided us with propaganda rather
than insights. We don’t know what we have bought with our $5 billion and for
what purpose we are now about to provide another billion. Are the people of the
Ukraine going to be “shocked” into compliance with the Friedman model where new
oligarchs are created while people go hungry? Is this what we really want to
happen? Looking back at Iraq there is considerable danger that we are again
being herded into a serious East-West confrontation under false pretenses.
In War&Mayhem
I mentioned that my first typing test for the US occupation forces in the
summer of 1946 was to hammer out: “Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of the party.” It is not a political party that needs our aid now,
because they are all a profound disappointment, we have to aid our country. We
have to raise our voices to an extent that eventually the papers will listen
and subsequently Congress. Naomi Klein is doing her share and she has even
co-produced a full length video documentary based on her book. It can be bought
on amazon or viewed on YouTube as part of one of her lectures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ.
She also co-produced a short film that can be seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPTBZrBmlfI.
But lectures and video documentaries, although helpful, don’t have the impact
they deserve because they are relegated to interested Internet surfers. What is
needed is a full length feature film like Oliver Stone’s JFK. Although derided
by critics it did lead to the previously discussed Assassinations Records
Review Board (ARRB) which opened a treasure trove of previously secret
documents. This suggested film dealing with the effects of misguided economic
policies on the lives of average people should be shown in the theatres around
the country and subsequently made available on DVDs. When people come face to
face with the evil that we have created they would demand an accounting from
our government.
Obama’s meeting with Yatseniuk on
Wednesday confirmed that we are on a collision course with Russia. Sanctions
are in the offing but nobody on our side seriously discusses the effects they
will have on the people of the Ukraine, Europe, the US and Russia. Sanctions
against Russia will lead to those against the Ukraine as well as the EU and us.
They will not hurt the top leadership but us, the common folks, via stock
market losses and consumer goods price increases. An additional feature length
film which would show what our sanctions have done to the people of Iraq before
we delivered the final invasion blow should also be produced. The general
American public is blissfully ignorant of what is being done in its name and an
appeal to our collective conscience is urgently needed.
Since
the Ukraine crisis is still in its opening stages the April 1 issue will
provide further information on the topic.
April 1, 2014
UKRAINE: LET TRUTH BE TOLD
The past month was again one for the
history books. After the hasty referendum, where the majority of the Crimea’s
people voted for a return to Russia, the peninsula was annexed by the Russian
Federation. President Putin signed the treaty on March 18 and it was ratified
by Parliament thereafter. Since then the American public has been bombarded
through the official media with what amounts to a Kriegshetze. The German speaking
people of my generation remember well the propaganda effort to make Hitler’s
1939 war palatable to the citizens of the “Third Reich,” who had absolutely no desire
for a replay of 1914-1918. Unfortunately a similar situation pertains to our
country at the present time. The Cold War has been re-vitalized and
confrontation has replaced cooperation. TIME magazine’s cover of March 23
depicts the current American view.
Propaganda works on the principle that
a) you personalize your opponent, who is to be portrayed as utterly evil; b) you
present only your point of view as the single correct one; and c) you make
exaggerated claims with inflammatory words to frighten the home audience. Realistic
considerations which the other side to the conflict might have,
are either not reported at all or ridiculed. The Crimean annexation is a
typical example. It is portrayed in the US simply as a brutal “land grab”
by Putin who wants to re-establish the Soviet Union
on KGB lines. It is also asserted that he will not stop from taking further
actions to aggrandize his country unless the West shows vigorous determination
to prevent it. This point of view was exemplified by a series of cartoons in
the Sunday March 16 edition of The Salt
Lake Tribune, two of which are shown below.
In regard to personalizing the adversary
as evil let us remember that only names change: in 1914 the Kaiser was the
culprit, he was followed by Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, Osama bin-Laden, Saddam
Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, the Taliban and, prior to Putin, Assad of Syria. All
of them were and are regarded as prime villains for upsetting the Western World’s
ideas of what their “World Order” should
look like.
During the past month we frequently
read that Putin “invaded” the Crimea. For
instance on March 3 our Foreign Secretary, John Kerry, opined on CBS: "You just don't in the 21st Century
behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely
trumped-up pretext." This is a rather remarkable statement and the only
excuse I can find is that he must have suffered from temporary amnesia. To
ignore our invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq
is astounding. But this is how propaganda is intended to work. You are not
supposed to remember the past! What is even more remarkable is that a usually
sensible person such as Fareed Zakaria, who hosts a weekly session on CNN and
writes for TIME, chimed in. On March 6 he wrote under the headline “Looking
back in anger,”“Vladimir Putin
may control Crimea, but his 19th century
tactics do not bode well for Russia.”
In this article, as well as an
essentially identical one on March 26, headlined “Putin trapped by history,” he
stated that the Russian President is looking back to 19th century
geographic power politics instead of forward to the opportunities this new
century offers.
I shall return to these statements later
but please note that Kerry and others keep talking about an “invasion” of Ukraine’s
territory. This suggests that a substantial force arrived from outside the
province by land or sea, because paratroopers alone can’t “invade.” The word
usually means foreign boots on the ground as for instance in Iraq and Afghanistan, to
mention only 21st century US wars. But Russia has no
common border with the Crimea and the only
land access is the narrow Isthmus of Perekop in the northwest corner of the
peninsula. The isthmus is easy to defend and has been the scene of numerous
bloody battles throughout history. In 1941, it took the Wehrmacht and its
Romanian ally more than one month to break through this 5-8 kilometer wide
strip in order to reach the Crimea and its prize, Sebastopol. An invasion by
land from Russia
during the past month was, therefore, out of the question. If Putin had sent an
invasion force by sea to Sebastopol we would have
heard about it. So there was no “invasion.” Instead, Russian soldiers/sailors
and paramilitary personnel who were already based in Crimea
took charge of Ukrainian installations. A proper word for that event would have
been “coup,” similar to what happened in Kiev after the February 20 events,
which were recounted in the March 15 installment.
On the other hand, “invasion” serves
much better for propaganda purposes as the March 14 incident at Strilkove
demonstrates. When one enters “Strilkove attack”
into Google one receives 59,800 listings within 0.44 seconds. Some typical
headlines read: Ukraine
reports Russian ‘invasion’ on eve of Crimea
vote; Ukraine
army repels Russian troops in Crimea; Proof: Russia is about
to invade? Pictures reveal tanks and troops; Russian troops invade Kherson
Oblast. We may, therefore ask: What happened there? Well, it depends on whom
you ask. On March 14 the Huffington Post reported:
Russian forces backed by helicopter
gunships and armored vehicles Saturday took control of a village near the
border with Crimea on the eve of a referendum on whether the region should seek
annexation by Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.
The action in Strilkove appeared to be
the first move outside Crimea, where Russian
forces have been in effective control since late last month. There were no reports
of gunfire or injuries. The incident raises tensions already at a high level
before Sunday's referendum.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry
denounced the foray outside Crimea, and said Ukraine
"reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military
invasion by Russia."…
A spokesman for the Ukrainian border
guard service, Oleg Slobodyan, told The Associated Press the Russians, about
120 in all, took control of a natural gas distribution station in the village.
The Foreign Ministry said the force consisted of about 80 and didn't mention
the station, but said the village was seized.
We were also informed that this village
is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the Crimean border in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Curious as I am I then went to Google Earth to find out
where Strilkove really is. Within seconds the computer takes one to the
northeastern corner of the Crimea and the
western bank of the Sea of Azov. From this
picture it is also obvious that this border is merely a line on administrative
maps which separates provinces.
The next question was, of
course, why would Russia
have undertaken this action? The answer came from RT (Russia Today). There we
read:
Crimean military and self-defense forces
have prevented an attempt to sabotage and cripple the gas distribution center
that feeds a number of socially critical facilities in the peninsula, including
schools and medical centers, Crimean authorities said.
Around 11:00 GMT
on Saturday the gas supply to Crimea was halted at one of the distribution
centers near Strelkovaya, effectively cutting gas delivery to a number of areas
in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula. As a result a number of
hospitals, medical centers, schools and apartment buildings were cut off from the
gas supply. A group of gas technicians, escorted by the Crimea’s
newly created military, comprised of former Ukrainian troops who have
sworn their
allegiance to the republic, responded to the supply disturbance and set out to
check the gas station.
“There they encountered a group of at
least 20 armed men in camouflage,” the Cabinet of Ministers of Crimea
announced. “These people were planting explosives at the facility in
order to knock it out of action completely.”…
The gas supply has been restored,
Crimean authorities said, adding that the “distribution station was
taken under control by self-defense forces of Crimea
in order to halt similar provocations in the near future.”[Italics in the original].
It is obvious that this throws a different light on
the situation and demonstrates that one has to pay attention to both sides of a
conflict in order to get a semblance of truth. What seems to have happened was
that the Russians either acted proactively to avoid energy supply problems, or
reacted to an interruption of essential services. In
either case the military action was defensive rather than offensive in nature
and did not justify the exaggerated claims of invasion of sovereign territory. This
fact must be stressed and since we cannot be expected to know the location of small
Russian or Ukrainian villages and cities, Google Earth is an invaluable tool to
place events in perspective.
Another example is the mentioned “Proof:Russia is about to invade?”
headline. Underneath a picture of
Russian tanks is shown with the caption, “Military might. Russian tanks roll
into the Belgorod
region in advance of today’s Crimea poll.”
Since the first print item after the headline is entitled “Russian troops seize
village of Strilkove according to Ukrainian
officials” one may be led to believe that Belgorod
is somewhere close by. Again Google Earth comes to the rescue and shows that
this town is in the southwestern corner of Russia on Ukraine’s border
rather than in or near the Crimea.
The Strilkove incident is important
because unless Ukraine
re-establishes friendly relationships with Russia it is bound to be repeated
on a larger scale. For energy supplies the Crimea
is dependent on southeastern Ukrainian facilities and any Russian government is
duty bound to provide the necessities to their people. If the Ukrainian
politicians, as well as the US
do not recognize this fact of life, further seizure of Ukrainian territory by Russia will
become inevitable and will be of necessity rather than purely of choice.
This brings us to the question why Russia annexed
the Crimea. Contrary to Kerry, Zakaria and
most of our other pundits, Putin did not only look back, he also looked forward
and what he saw was of great concern. His nightmare was NATO in Sebastopol! While we see NATO as a force for good, which
defends democratic values, he remembers Serbia of 1999. The ties between Moscow and Belgrade stretch back to
somewhat more than a hundred years and every European knows that WWI started
with Russia
coming to the aid of Serbia
in 1914. These ties are cultural as well as religious and for Russia, because
of its post-Soviet collapse weakness, having to impotently stand by while NATO
did its unauthorized work was a hard pill to swallow. It may well have resulted
in the resolve of: never again! For a view of what happened during Operation
“Noble Anvil” please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia. Here is an excerpt:
The operation was not authorised by the United Nations and was the
first time that NATO used military force
without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a threat
to members of the alliance. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999. …
In the course of the campaign, NATO launched 2,300 missiles
at 990 targets and dropped 14,000 bombs, including depleted uranium bombs and
cluster munitions. Over 2,000 civilians were killed, including 88 children, and
thousands more were injured. Over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to leave
their homeland in Kosovo. NATO airstrikes destroyed more than 300 schools,
libraries, and over 20 hospitals. At least 40,000 homes were either completely
eliminated or damaged and about 90 historic and architectural monuments were
ruined. …
Our official sources, as well as the media
emphasize that Russia’s actions in the Crimea were illegal according to
international standards, but we set the precedent in 1999. The humanitarian purpose
was more of an excuse rather than the cause for the war. Apart from this
particular event our media fail to report that the interim Ukrainian government
was in violation of a treaty when it turned away from Russia towards
the West. The 1997 Russian-Ukrainian Friendship treaty stated in article 12
that the parties: “shall ensure the protection of the minorities on their
territory of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious originality on
their territory, and create conditions of the encouragement of their
originality.” This clause was violated by the proposed abolition of the
existing language law. Key aspects of Article 13 are: “deepening economic
integration …. Strive to coordinate, financial, monetary, credit ... as well as
customs policies. …” This indicates that Ukraine has to look for its economic needs
to Russia rather than the West. According to the treaty, Ukraine should have
joined the customs Union of the Russian Federation with Belarus and Kazakhstan
when it was offered earlier in the year. Article 6 is also relevant because a
turn to the West tends to be associated in Europe
with NATO membership. The article states in part “Neither of the parties shall
permit its territory to be used to the detriment of the security of the other
party.”The full treaty and its
discussion are available in a Master’s Thesis by US Army Captain Dale Stewart
on http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a341002.pdf.
As mentioned above according to current
punditry we are not supposed to look back. Are we to forget that Kennedy could
not tolerate Khrushchev’s missiles in Cuba? Why should Putin stomach what
we couldn’t? When Julia Timoshenko, immediately after her release from prison,
said on March 5 that “the Russian Black Sea fleet should be withdrawn” and that
“Russia’s
Black Sea fleet is a threat to Ukraine’s
independence,” alarm bells must have sounded in the Kremlin. The fact that
Timoshenko is currently running for the Presidency of Ukraine in the scheduled
May elections will hardly provide reassurance to Moscow’s leadership about Ukraine’s
peaceful intentions. Last week one of her phone conversations from March 18 was
leaked to the media where she revealed her feelings about the loss of the Crimea. The topic and anger were justified, but her
language and attitude cannot be condoned. Among other comments she said, that
she is personally ready to shoot “that scumbag [Putin] in the head,” as well as
“We should take up arms and kill the f…ingKatsap’s [Russians] along with their leader;” and “I hope
that as soon as I can do it I will raise all my connections and alert the whole
world so as to turn Russia into a burned field.” Her phone partner, Nestor Shufrych
currently a Member of Parliament, concurred and added that he had a
conversation earlier in the day with other party members and they discussed
“what should be done to the rest of the 8 million Russians still living in Ukraine. They
are the outlaws.” Timoshenko: “Damn, we should fire nukes at them.” The
conversation is on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te2E1R5YHBI,but I
read it about it first on http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/timoschenko-kandidatur-in-ukraine-kritik-von-lammert-a-961106.html. The
Kiev Post reported that Timoshenko had admitted to the conversation but said
that certain portions in regard to Russia had been edited in order to
discredit her. Be that as it may, the important point is that these feelings do
exist in a certain segment of the Ukrainian population. Although Timoshenko is
given little chance to win the Presidency that her party seems to share these profoundly
hostile attitudes in regard to Russians, even when they are Ukrainian citizens,
casts a serious pall over the future of the country.
Putin’s speech on March 18 to both houses
of Parliament, where he proclaimed the incorporation of the Crimea and
Sebastopol into the Russian Federation, has to the best of my knowledge never
been published in full in our papers. We only saw brief comments, mainly of a
derogatory nature. The full speech is, however, available in English via the Prague Post at
http://praguepost.com/eu-news/37854-full-text-of-putin-s-speech-on-crimea.
A key excerpt states:
… I want you to hear me, my
dear friends. Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia,
shouting that other regions will follow Crimea.
We do not want to divide Ukraine;
we do not need that. As for Crimea, it was and
remains a Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar land.
I repeat, just as it has been for centuries, it will be a
home to all the peoples living there. What it will never be and do is follow in
Bandera’s footsteps!
Crimea is our common historical legacy and a very important
factor in regional stability. And this strategic territory should be part of a
strong and stable sovereignty, which today can only be Russian. Otherwise, dear
friends (I am addressing both Ukraine
and Russia),
you and we – the Russians and the Ukrainians – could lose Crimea
completely, and that could happen in the near historical perspective. Please
think about it.
Let me note too that we have already heard
declarations from Kiev
about Ukraine
soon joining NATO. What would this have meant for Crimea
and Sevastopol
in the future? It would have meant that NATO’s navy would be right there in
this city of Russia’s
military glory, and this would create not an illusory but a perfectly real
threat to the whole of southern Russia.
These are things that could have become reality were it not for the choice the
Crimean people made, and I want to say thank you to them for this.
But let me say too that we
are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case.
For all the internal processes within the organisation,
NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance
making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I
simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course,
most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and
visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round. …
This seems to be the problem in a nutshell. Should
we believe Putin that he does not want to divide Ukraine? It is too early to tell.
But assuming that he is a rational person who balances risks versus benefits it
seems likely that for the time being there will not be an invasion of Ukraine unless
events were to occur which adversely affected the Crimea,
or a definitively hostile government were to take charge in Kiev. In my personal opinion the next
sequence of events will not be initiated in Moscow but in Washington. If we persist on the current
course of “punishing Putin,” as if he were a bad schoolyard bully, and also
foment unrest in Eastern Ukraine, we and the rest of the world will be in for a
great deal of grief. Our warmongers should remember that “Who sows the wind,
will reap the whirlwind.” Have they forgotten that Iraq, although a military push-over
has never lived up to the expectations which led to the invasion? Have they
forgotten that Afghanistan is still not in our orbit and that the pipeline,
which was the real cause for the invasion, has remained a pipe dream (Barack
Obama’s Challenge, January 1, 2009; Misguided Arrogant Incompetence; August 1,
2011)?
The ultimate responsibility for Ukraine’s
future should theoretically rest with the Ukrainians but this is unrealistic
because they are bankrupt and at present have a country which is deeply divided.
Even the EU, although used by us as a fig leaf to cover our goals, cannot act
independently. Victoria Nuland’s “f..k the EU” comment, prior to our installation of
Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister, which was discussed in the March 15 issue,
represents the true feelings of the Washington
power elite.
One now needs to ask oneself: who is really behind
this confrontational posture in our country, which makes a peaceful resolution of
the crisis so difficult? It is not Obama who desperately tries to keep a lid on
the situation. For his efforts he is criticized as being weak and not showing
leadership. In the eyes of his critics “leadership” amounts to bullying other
people and nations to toe the course we set for them. But this type of
leadership is resented by those countries of the world which are not dependent
on American help. True leadership would be if we were to provide exemplary
conduct that other nations would want to emulate. But this is far from the
case. The people in our country who promote America’s global “defense” policy
for the 21st century where we have absolute superiority on land,
sea, air and outer space, are the ones who are stuck in the past century when
America ruled the world (9/11: Context and Aftermath; September 1, 2013). But
times have changed and in order to get to the international space station our
astronauts currently have to hitch a ride on Russian rockets with a price tag
of $70.7 million for a seat. In regard to “the new world order” which we
intended to initiate after the collapse of the Soviet Union I remembered that
even Hitler was more modest in his ambitions. He only proclaimed a “new order”
for Europe. The other continents he really
didn’t care about.
It appears that the current agitation stems from
the “military-industrial complex.” A war on terrorism hardly justifies the
purchase of F35 fighter planes and other expensive hardware. According to
Wikipedia the cost per plane depends on the model and ranges from $153-199
million. The total cost for the F35 fleet is projected at $857 billion over 55
years. This is, of course, Pablum for politicians because the planes will be regarded
as obsolete within a decade or so and newer even more expensive ones will be
demanded by the Air Force.
The current crisis may also be designed to stop
further cuts in the defense budget including the aircraft carrier fleet. But the
political forces in our country which preach hostility are making a fatal
mistake. They ignore Newton’s
Third Law of Motion which states that for each action there is an equal and
opposite reaction. This also holds in world affairs except that the reaction
may not be equal in strength. We must therefore ask: What will be the
inevitable consequences if our country is allowed to persist on its current
geopolitical course? By “isolating” Russia we will drive her into
friendly Chinese arms! I assumed this on basis of common sense and was
surprised to read last Friday evening in the German magazine Der Spiegel
that a military treaty between Russia and China is already being discussed http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/militaerbuendnis-china-und-russland-naehern-sich-strategisch-an-a-959430.html
3-28. Inasmuch as this has to my knowledge not yet been
reported here, I shall translate a few key sentences.
While
the West attempts to isolate Russia,
China
places itself on Vladimir Putin’s side. Moscow and Beijing are already at work,
behind the scenes, on a military-political treaty – an alliance which can
dramatically change the power relationships of the world. …
In
regard to Ukraine the Chinese leading medium comments: “Russia, under the
leadership of Vladimir Putin, has shown the West that there is no victory in a “Cold
War.” The West, according to the Global Times, has underestimated Russia’s will
to defend its essential interests in Ukraine. The West’s strategy,
according to the paper, to support a pro-Western Ukrainian government does not
work. This attempt leads to “a chaos for the removal of which the West has
neither the ability nor the wisdom.” According to the Chinese prognosis, the
West “will be the loser in the Ukraine
fiasco.”
While we may regard this preamble as
Chinese wishful thinking, it was followed by hard data.
Experts
in the Russian Foreign Office are currently working on a treaty draft in regard
to “military-political cooperation” with China. … Both states are in the
Shanghai Organization for Security which includes joint military maneuvers.
Roughly 23 per cent of weapons exports from Russia went to China in the
years 2004-2011. The Chinese bought, among other items, from the Russians,
fighter planes, aircraft engines, diesel submarines and rockets.
In
consideration of the Americans Moscow has up to now not acceded to the entire
Chinese wish list.This could soon change.
Beijing would
like to acquire atomic submarines of the Russian “Projects 949A,” which carry
rockets. In case of war, they could sink even American air-craft carriers.
China’s interest in
regard to armaments cooperation also explains Beijing’s attitude towards Kiev. According to estimates by the Stockholm
Research Institute Sipri, Ukraine is the third largest
weapons exporter to the People’s Republic. In 2012 alone Ukraine
delivered weapons valued at $690 million to China. China is concerned that a closer
relationship of Ukraine
with NATO could end this cooperation. This is why China is interested that Ukraine remains
within Russia’s
area of influence.
The Chinese, in contrast to some Western
nations, are not given to knee-jerk responses. They deliberate, hedge their
bets while keeping their long-term interests uppermost. When one is aware of
these facts one wonders if our current warmongers have even a glimpse of the
fire they are playing with.
Is there a way out of the current imbroglio? Since a
friendly Ukraine
is currently not in the cards, the only realistic solution Moscow could live with is a genuinely neutral
Ukraine
on the model of Finland,
Austria
and Switzerland.
In this connection it is of interest that Austria is actually trying to use her
good offices to mediate in the conflict. The Foreign Minister, Sebastian Kurz, visited
Kiev last week
and tried to explain to the Ukrainians how to navigate through the dangerous
shoals of East-West confrontational politics. The American public is unaware
that Austria
has considerable experience in this regard and Ukraine, or at least portions of
it, is not necessarily a foreign country. The city of Lviv used to be
called Lemberg in 1914 and was the capital of the
Monarchy’s Province
of Galicia. While the
people’s language is currently called Ukrainian the term in those days was “Ruthenian,” which is etymologically linked to Rus /Russian. Although the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was
unsuccessful in dealing with the nationalist feelings of the South
Slavs and Checks, it had no problems with their Polish and
Galician population because their rights were respected.
One should welcome the Austrian attempt at calming
the waters in Kiev
because if it fails the situation may well spin out of control. Within Ukraine
the division between the eastern and western portions of the country is a major
problem and if it cannot be resolved we may see a replica of the Syrian
situation in Europe. Since this would inevitably bring about a military
confrontation between the US
and Russia
it should be avoided at all costs.
Even under the best of circumstances the people of Ukraine are in
for hard times. The country is bankrupt and since the Maidan revolt has
alienated Russia no help is likely to be forthcoming from that quarter any time
soon. The people of Kiev had been seduced by visions of sugarplums if they
joined the European market, but that was a fantasy. The World Bank and the IMF
are not charitable institutions. They are privately owned and dispense
tax-payer money from contributing countries while making a profit. The loan
conditions are stringent and Yatseniuk has already warned his countrymen that
tough times are ahead. He should know, he is a banker
after all. Prices will rise, taxes will go up and social services, especially
pensions, will be cut. Whether or not the full “shock doctrine” as practiced in
South America in the past century and discussed in the previous installment
will be applied, remains to be seen. One aspect is clear, however: the rich
will get richer and the poor poorer. This is what our economic model has
produced at this time here and it is inevitable that it will do so elsewhere.
As far as our country is concerned everything will
depend on whether or not Obama can convince Congress and the media to “cool
it.” Unfortunately he may not have the power to do so. His approval rating has
hit a new low of 44 percent, Congressional elections are in November and the
Democrats may be losing the Senate in addition to the House, which is already in
Republican hands. Peace-making does not win votes and he is in danger of
becoming irrelevant.
In order not to end on a completely pessimistic
note it’s time to recount a joke which I first heard in July of 1950. Vienna was under allied
occupation and the Korean War had just started. It went like this: “What is the
difference between an Optimist and a Pessimist?” Answer: “The Optimist learns
Russian and the Pessimist Chinese.” Today one might add: “The Realist learns
both.”
Apri 15, 2014
WHAT DOES AMERICA REALLY WANT?
This surely must be a question on the minds of people around
the world who observe our conduct in foreign affairs. I have tried to answer it
for the first time on these pages in October 2001 in relation to the 9/11
attack in an attempt to formulate what our response to this crime should be
(September 11th). Re-reading the article with hindsight is
interesting because it reveals the typical mindset of an educated American who
believes in the goodness of his country and limits his information on current
political events to the daily news programs on TV, newspapers and some
magazines. Although the Internet was available I used it only for scientific
purposes rather than in an attempt to get the view “from the other side.”
In
the mentioned article I speculated what the key players wanted to accomplish by
this attack and I am reprinting the relevant section here:
What is to be done now? In order to formulate
a correct strategy we must first of all understand what each side to
the conflict really wants. But In order to do so we must see ourselves
through the eyes of the adversary. We will disagree with his perception
but that does not make it less real for the perceiver. Osama bin Ladin, as the symbol of radical Islam, sees the United
States as a decadent country bent on the pursuit of material happiness in
disregard of the moral laws of God, and controlled by Jewish interests. America
supports and props up the state of Israel as a colonial outpost in an area of the
world which, apart from the Crusades' era, has always been Islamic. Jewish
secular culture perverts established morals and customs while political Zionism
strives for an enlargement of their state. In order to rid the land of
Palestine from Infidels the power of the United States must be broken. This is
best achieved by involving America in a drawn out war especially
in Afghanistan where other superpowers of the past (Imperial Great
Britain and the Soviet Union) have ground out their eye teeth. In addition, the
Muslim masses who hate their non-elected secular regimes, as stooges of
the Great Satan, must be mobilized, especially, if and when an Islamic
country is invaded by foreigners. The disenfranchised young people in the
Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change and Islamic
revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about. Therefore, major
military action by the United States is a requirement to bring this plan
to fruition and continued provocation through a variety of terror
attacks is the only way to accomplish this objective.
What does Israel want? Here the answer is less clear
because there are too many factions in the country. The majority of the people
just want to live in peace with their neighbors but this is at present
difficult to achieve. We, therefore, have to ask what the leadership wants.
Obviously it also wants peace but there are considerable differences of opinion
as to how this can be accomplished. The governing Sharon faction
believes that only a hard line military approach will succeed while
the Peres group has not yet given up on a negotiated settlement.
In addition, the country is quite divided as to what kind of state it is
supposed to be. Is it to be a secular democracy with majority rule or a Jewish
state governed by ancient Jewish law? Ever since the creation of the state
there were two major factions which co-existed uneasily. These may be
called political Zionism and religious Zionism. Political
Zionism, which founded the country, was secular in nature and as such opposed
by religious Zionists who felt that the state was illegitimate because only the
Messiah can bring about the ingathering of the dispersed and the erection of
the Third and Final Temple. Over the years political and religious aspirations
were fused by some visionaries in the attempt to create a Greater Israel
beyond the UN established 1948 borders. For them it is not Israel which is the
intruder onto Muslim lands but Israelis are simply reclaiming their
inheritance, promised by God, which they had lost temporarily. This goal has
not yet been abandoned as the settlement policies of the various Israeli
governments prove. Although the settlements have considerable popular approval,
the problem what to do with a relatively large and probably hostile minority
Arab population within the Jewish state tends to be ignored. There are,
however, some fanatics who envision a Final Solution (to use a well known phrase) which in their eyes will ensure a
permanent peace. The autocratic governments of neighboring Arab states such
as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and may
be Jordan have to be toppled and regimes favorable to Jewish values
installed. This can only be accomplished by war with the help, or at least the
tacit approval, of the United States. To achieve this end terrorism against the
United States can be silently welcomed because it is expected to lead to an
intensification of hatred against Arabs in the U.S. and thereby a
further identification of America's goals with those of Israel. America's
current war on terrorism is to be not only fully supported in its present stage
but needs to be expanded to other Muslim "rogue" states. With America
fully occupied and radicalized by subsequent further acts of Islamic terrorism
Israel, can then finally achieve its borders promised to Abraham.
Let me make it unequivocally clear that the overwhelming
majority of Israelis do not harbor such Machiavellian fantasies and are
genuinely distressed about the loss of innocent lives on September 11; but it
is also dangerous to ignore the latent streak of fanaticism in a small minority
which pursues only its goals regardless of the costs to others.
What does America want? There is absolutely no doubt
that the vast majority of the population just wants to be left in peace to
pursue its own personal goals in freedom. This is why most of us came here in
the first place. Even our leadership does not want war but to get the economy
moving and to work for global prosperity. Nevertheless in spite of the current
unity the country's opinion makers are split on how to set things right in the
world. On account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term
which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews), there are strong emotional
ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is urged by
the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group which
regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media. This is
bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.
For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in
the best interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of
Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel. The Eye for an Eye
policy which has been tried by Israel for decades is inappropriate for the
United States and a paradigm shift has to take place.
The
assessment of Bin-Laden, that he wanted to draw America into a war with Muslim
countries, was correct and so was the observation that the 9/11 disaster
benefited Israel’s security needs. I was, however, completely mistaken about
America’s goals. In retrospect it is painfully obvious that I, with the rest of
Americans, was what can only be called naïve, about what our leadership wanted.
This
naiveté included the assessment of the 9/11 events where I found no reason to
question the government’s version. Our misguided response to them was the
eye-opener which forced me to consult the Internet for the real reasons behind
our actions. The unprovoked invasion of Iraq was the final straw that broke my
confidence in what our government and media tell us. German generals were
hanged after the Nuremberg trials for having carried out their government’s
orders in planning and executing the attack on Poland and all the subsequent campaigns
of WWII. Under this precedent George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
General Tommy Franks should have been subjected to a trial by the International
Criminal Court. In a country that is ruled by Law, as we always publicly
profess, we should have insisted that bin-Laden be tried by an international
criminal court in order to unequivocally establish his exclusive guilt in the
attacks. I am emphasizing “international” because it was not only Americans who
were killed in the WTC Towers’ destructions. The fact that the Bush
administration not only failed to initiate an unbiased investigation into the
9/11 events but actively obstructed the work of the 9/11 Commission showed that
forces other than those that were seeking truth and justice were operative.
Although the information on “The Project
for the New American Century” and its proposal for “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses” were available on the Internet they had not been discussed in the
standard media which made the subsequently unfolding events difficult to
understand by peace-loving individuals. The word “Neocons” was not in my
vocabulary at that time and neither did I know that neoconservatives were
really in charge of the Bush administration. Thus, when my brother asked me in
one of our phone conversations: “Who is Kagan?” I replied that I’d never heard
of him. Robert Kagan’s “Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus” had made
headlines in Austria, but in early March 2003 was known only to a few select
people here. My brother’s question sent me to the Internet and it was answered
in the April 1, 2003 issue “The Neocons’ Leviathan.”This is also an example how a simple question
can change one’s entire outlook on life because it started a learning
experience which completely revamped my views of what stands behind America’s
pious phrases of bringing “democracy, freedom and justice” to the rest of the
world. I began to read more intensively the relevant books and immersed myself
in the Internet to get the information which is either routinely hidden or
distorted by our official news media.
The answer which emerged to the question raised in the
headline was
POWER! All human beings want a
degree of power to achieve what they regard as better life circumstances. But
for some it is not only a desire, which can be modulated according to need and
circumstances, it is a craving. It afflicts foremost politicians who want to
shape the country and the world in their image. This is why they chose this
profession in the first place. My
will be done, is the rule and the solution to any given problem will be
pursued, in Hitler’s favorite words, “entweder so oder so” (one way or the
other). In today’s America we tend to be a bit more circumspect and talk about
our goals in regard to countries whose leadership we dislike that “all options
are open,” which amounts to the same mindset. The bombing or invasion of
countries has simply become “the military option.”
Although neocons and their dreams of
perennial American hegemony over the world are currently not in Obama’s
cabinet, they have not vanished.They
have moved into academia as well as “think-tanks” and since money is plentiful
for their cause they have the opportunity to influence the media in favor of
their dreams. But the neocons are only the most recent incarnation of the
desire to dominate others by any and all means and their ideation is not
specific for Americans. On the other hand since America has, however, at
present the greatest opportunity of influencing world history for good or evil
it behooves us, as American citizens, to look at who directs the media chorus,
to which politicians respond, and who instigates events which seemingly are
initiated by the government.
In Goethe’s Faust there is a scene
called the Walpurgisnacht (witches
Sabbath on April 30 or May 1) and re-reading it recently I was struck by one
sentence.Faust found himself in the
middle of a mass of beings all of whomstrove to get to the top of the mountain where Satan held court. It
reads “Du glaubst zu schieben
und wirstgeschoben.”
Translation: You believe that you are pushing when in fact you are being
pushed. This insight needs to be taken to heart because it does explain a great
many political events which otherwise seem to defy reason. It dovetails with
Shakespeare’s: “all the world is a stage.” Our politicians and government
officials are mainly the actors but behind them is the script writer, the stage
director, the lights’ operator, the producer and the director. To assume that
the official government, and especially the President, set the tone for what
happens in world affairs is good for propaganda but only part of the truth.
I’ll always remember Lyndon Johnson’s lament when he couldn’t end the Vietnam
War: “They always talk about the awful power of the Presidency. The only power
I have is nuclear and that I can’t use.”
Our current Ukraine imbroglio is the
perfect example of where pure power politics leads to. But it is only the
latest one and has been the cause of all wars initiated by America as well as
the rest of the world. In the previous installment I mentioned that the current
propaganda in our country, and there really is no other word for what the media
are doing, assumes that history is irrelevant; that the 21st century
has sprung de novo into existence and should be unencumbered by actions of past
decades and centuries. This is dangerous nonsense. To put it in medical terms:
you don’t get cirrhosis of the liver on Monday because you have gone on an
alcohol binge over the weekend. It takes years of binges and that is your very
personal history to which the body eventually responds. This is also the reason
why the physician has to take a careful history of the patient’s previous
illnesses and habits in order to arrive at the correct diagnosis. Nations are
made of people and people’s emotions have not changed in thousands of years.
This is why history repeats and technology makes wars ever more
abominable.
Inasmuch as Americans mainly tend to get
what may be called a Reader’s Digest’s version of history which simplifies
complex events for the lowest common denominator, let me now provide a glimpse
from the history of my own lifetime. World War II is a perfect example. It is
history for our children and grandchildren but living memory for members of my
generation. Its European phase is portrayed in the US as a crusade of the
“Greatest Generation” against a brutal Nazi dictatorship to finally achieve
Wilson’s goal “to make the world safe for democracy;” while the war against
Japan was entirely due to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The fact that
victory over Nazi Germany mainly came about through the help of an equally
brutal dictatorship, the Soviet Union, which carried the brunt of the burden
for three years before the Normandy invasion, is minimized. So is the history
of how Roosevelt had maneuvered Japan into this desperate act. It never made
headlines and can only be found in books which require a person’s interest in
history.But the real irony of history
was displayed in WW’s outcome for Europe.
Although I mentioned earlier that hidden
operators, who work behind the scenes, are usually the dominant forces, which
shape historical events, there are times when strong-willed personalities are
at the helm of nations who have “making history” as their goal. This was the
case for WWII, in contrast to WWI when nations drifted into that catastrophe.Let us now look at the four key players of
WWII, their war aims and what was accomplished.
Hitler started the war to re-establish
a direct land connection with East Prussia which, as a result of the Versailles
treaty, had been left stranded in Poland. In addition, he was obsessed with the
then popular idea of gaining more “Lebensraum”
for the German people which was to be found in the East rather than in overseas
colonies. The war against England and France was for him a sideshow that had
been forced upon Germany by “the Jews” who controlled their governments. His
foreign policy conception had been spelled out in Mein Kampfand he
systematically pursued it once he had the power to do so. Gaining soil for the
German farmer was the goal and we can follow his fantasies in that respect in
his conversations during meal times which have been translated under the title:
Hitler’s Secret Conversations.
Reading these documents it becomes obvious that he wanted a free hand in Europe
and was not interested in the rest of the world. The supposed threat to America
was as non-existent as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. In the envisioned peace treaty
with England and France after June 1940 he intended to leave their colonial
empires intact because the “inferior races” needed to be kept under control.
For Stalin the situation differed to
some extent because his country was invaded and, at least in the beginning, it
was merely a fight for survival. Later when the tide began to turn he attempted
to re-establish the borders of Imperial Russia to the greatest possible extent.
This also explains his subsequent war against Japan where the losses of the
1905 peace treaty had to be remedied.
For Churchill, who was an infinitely
more complex person than the way he is portrayed here, Hitler was public enemy
number one who had to be eliminated in order to save British influence on the
continent and, in his view, to maintain the Empire. But after the fall of
France it was obvious that England, even with the Soviet Union’s help, could
not win the war and America had to come to the rescue; just as she did in 1917
when there was danger of the Central Powers emerging victorious.
Roosevelt may or may not have been
interested in joining the European war in 1939 and 1940 because his focus was
initially on negating Japan’s conquests of Manchuria and portions of
China.But by 1941, when England had
shown resilience during the Blitz and Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union,
Churchill’s pleas for help were answered with the lend-lease program, which
effectively ended America’s neutrality. The Churchill-Roosevelt meeting at Nova
Scotia’s Placentia Bay in August of 1941 was the time when Roosevelt not only
committed himself to entering the European war in support of England and the
USSR, but also revealed his post-war plans.
For this information we are indebted
to Robert Smith Thompson’s: A Time for
War – Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor, which was
published in 1991. In the book Thompson reported on dinner meetings between
these two leaders on board the Augusta
as they were relayed by Roosevelt’s son Elliott, who was in attendance. Because
of their importance I shall quote the relevant portion in full:
‘Of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of a
lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade. No
artificial barriers. As few economic agreements as possible.Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy
competition.
“’Churchill’s neck reddened and he crouched forward. ‘Mr.
President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position
among the British dominions. . . .
“ ‘You
see,’ said father slowly, ‘ it is along in heresomewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you ,
Winston, and me. I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable
world peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward
peoples. . . . I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery,
and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward
colonial policy.’
“Around the room, all of us were leaning forward
attentively, Hopkins was grinning. Commander Thompson, Churchill’s aide was
looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
Roosevelt ignored the danger signals.
“ ‘The
peace’ he concluded, ‘cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of
the peace demands and will get equality of peoples.’ With that said, he allowed
Churchill hurriedly to change the subject.”
Elliott Roosevelt may have exaggerated but the leitmotiv of
the Argentia Conference was clear to all present. America was going to make the
rules.
This dinner meeting concluded the
day which had started in the morning with Roosevelt joining Churchill for
Sunday morning Services on the deck of The
Prince of Wales which featured: For Those in Peril on the Sea; Onward,
Christian Soldiers and O God, Our help in Ages Past.
During Monday’s dinner meeting
… Churchill apparently exploded in anger, according to
Elliott Roosevelt. Pacing up and down the cabin and waving a ‘stubby
forefinger,’ he burst out: ‘Mr. President, I believe you are trying to do away
with the British Empire.Every idea you
entertain about the structure of the post-war world demonstrates it.’
That Churchill was correct in his
assessment is borne out in another book: Churchill
at War 1940-1945 by Lord Moran, Churchill’s personal physician. At the 1943
Teheran Conference Roosevelt confided privately to Stalin that “he hoped that
Malaya, Burma and other British colonies would soon be educated in the arts of
self-government.” Moran’s book which has previously been discussed in more
detail (Churchill and Hitler; June 1, 2003) is important because it also shows
a side of Roosevelt’s character, as seen by the British, which is not commonly
reported in the US. In the US the partnership between these two leaders is
portrayed as warm and friendly, when in fact the real partnership was between
FDR and Stalin with Churchill on the sidelines as the junior partner. Moran’s
book, which consists of diary entries at the time of the events, provides the
details. FDR was focused on Asia and had no problem with leaving Europe to
Stalin over Churchill’s vigorous but useless protests.
Roosevelt had decided on the demise
of the British Empire with America taking over the inheritance. What he said
about freedom etc. was phraseology which he may or may not have believed. The
key war aim was to establish free trade throughout the world with unfettered access
to markets and exploitation of the natural resources of any and all nations.
This was the goal behind America’s de-colonization efforts. When some of the
newly freed countries tried to assert their independence they were dealt with by
economic strangulation as documented by Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (March 15, 2014), and the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Obstacles to
Peace, May 1, 2007). When this “soft power” of economic sanctions failed to
yield results, undesirable governments were removed by Washington instigated
coups, or outright war. This was the pattern since 1945 and it continues
unabated to this day.
The previously mentioned irony of
history is that Hitler thought the German people needed more space to prosper
and that he would eradicate Bolshevism. Instead, his war brought communism from
the periphery into the center of Europe and the German people ended up with
less space than they owned in 1939 but, nevertheless, are better off
economically. The same applies to Churchill. He wanted to maintain British
dominance in world affairs but bankrupted the country, lost the empire, had to
see it become a second rate power and was plagued by remorse in his old age. In
this connection it is important to read books published by British historians
to get a better view of Churchill and his time of glory. America’s hagiography
is not shared in Britain and in addition to the mentioned book by Moran I can
recommend Clive Ponting’s Churchill
as well as 1940 Myth and Reality. In Churchill,Ponting wrote:
Increasingly he came to view the Second World War, the
period when he scored his greatest personal triumph, as a failure too. He mused
for hours at a time on where it had gone wrong: he saw that one evil state had
been destroyed but at vast cost and replaced by another almost as bad, with
which Britain had been allied. He had been the great anti-Bolshevik but had
finished up making agreements for their domination of half Europe. At the end of
the war two world superpowers had displaced Britain and the world now lived in
fear of an even more terrible war. Churchill therefore made a conscious
decision not to bring his History of the
English Speaking Peoples into the twentieth century. It would have been too
painful to record the decline of Britain, two wars that at best were only
partial successes and the replacement of Britain by the United States as the
most powerful English-speaking state. He told Moran: I could not write about
the woe and ruin of the terrible twentieth century . . . We answered all the
tests. But it was useless.
These facts should theoretically be
a lesson for American hawks who believe that the wars they work so diligently
for will achieve the goals they have in mind. Unfortunately for us and the
world these history lessons still have not been learned as current events
prove. There was a real chance for a durable peace in the decade of the 1990s
but it was squandered. If the US had offered a Marshall plan to Boris Yeltsin
in 1992, instead of insisting on drastic economic measures, which further impoverished
Russia’s people, and if we had abstained from putting NATO on their borders the
present confrontation over Ukraine is likely to have never happened. We took
advantage of Russia’s weakness and now are paying the price. We are upset that
the Russian bear does not dance to our tune and that Putin is trying to
re-establish the Russian Federation as a player that has to be reckoned with in
world affairs.
In this connection it is also
important to look at the 1999 Kosovo war from the Russian point of view. Ever
since the battle at the Amselfeld in 1448,
Kosovo had been part of Serbia and that country has always
had fraternal ties with Russia. When Kosovo, under NATO’s auspices,
declared its independence from Serbia, we and most of the other countries
around the world recognized the new government although it had been established
by the force of arms. But when the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
declared, in a peaceful referendum, their secession from Georgia, this was
regarded by us as illegal and the will of the people to re-establish ties with
Russia was ignored. Senator McCain wanted to go to war with Russia when Russian
troops came to the aid of the South Ossetians after Georgia’s President, and
McCain’s personal friend Mikheil Saakashvili,had sent tanks into the secessionist province. The fact that
the South Ossetians simply wanted to join their North Ossetian relatives in the
Russian Federation is not mentioned here. Instead the Russo-Georgia War of 2008
is regarded as the first invasion of a former Soviet Union country and is used
as an example of Putin’s imperial ambitions.
It is apparent that if a referendum
or coup benefits the West it is applauded, as in Ukraine after February 20, but
it is condemned if Russia is the beneficiary. This double standard bodes ill
for the future and President Obama, who may be called our “Community Organizer
in-Chief,” may or may not have the power and ability to hold in check the behind
the scenes forces, which drive us to war. If he and his successor(s) are unable
to do so it is likely that the 21st century will bring even greater catastrophes
upon the world than all the previous ones.
May 1, 2014
CAIN’S QUESTION AND AMERICA’S FUTURE
The headline is likely to be
counterintuitive because on first glance it is hard to see how an ancient
biblical myth could be relevant for the future of our country. Yet, as I hope
to show, our personal conduct, as well as that of the politicians who are
responsible for our fate, is not mainly guided by reason but by myths. So
please bear with me on this journey from the present through the past to the
future.
For most of us the year 2064 does not carry any
particular meaning because it is obviously in a distant future which we can
hardly imagine. But for Martha and me, as newly minted great-grandparents, it
has special relevance. During this past Easter season we were given the
opportunity to not only see the baby but hold him in our arms and if God and
our politicians allow it, he will celebrate his fiftieth birthday in that year.
This thought was inevitably succeeded by others dealing with the type of world
we are leaving for him. When one is holding a baby in one’s arms these are no
longer abstract considerations but very real concerns.
While this event prompted the topic of
the current installment the difficulty of prognosticating happened to be
highlighted last Friday by Gail Collins in a New York Times article which carried the headline: “In ’64, the
future seemed to be jet-packed with possibility.” The occasion for this
reminiscence was the golden anniversary of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in
Queens and she pointed out that “everyone was thinking about building stuff,”
which would make life easier in the 2000s. In regard to reality she wrote, “And
who would have imagined 50 years ago that we’d get to the moon and then gave up
on it?” Instead of following through with this thought, Collins then switched
to our current social ills in form of the shrinking middle class and pointed
out that in this respect the Canadians are now better off than we.
Although this is certainly a problem
there are two additional ones which will profoundly affect our future. One is
the fact that our behind the scenes leadership has succeeded in resurrecting
the Cold War from its ashes and the second is the increasing impact computers
will have on our society in terms of dehumanizing us. I shall discuss this
aspect more fully in a separate installment and only mention for now that we
are in danger of computers graduating from their status as servants to becoming
our masters. This is already the case with automated trading on Wall Street and
glitches can lead to world-wide market crashes. Since our nuclear weaponry is
also computerized the resurgence of the Cold War should be a cause of immense
concern. As a result of heightened tension nuclear tipped missiles may be
launched at any time, accidentally or on purpose, to create untold havoc which is not going to spare our country. Nevertheless this reality
hardly causes a ripple in the media which welcome an increasingly harsher
attitude towards Russia,
regardless of potential consequences.
Parents, grandparents and great-grandparents
ought to be protesting the course our politicians have embarked on in this new
century, but whenever dissenting voices are raised they are stifled. We
complain about Putin’s Russia
where freedom of speech is curtailed, but fail to talk about what is going on
here. A characteristic example how many, if not most, Americans still think
about our country can be found in an interview with Rwanda’s President, Paul
Kagame, which appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs [FA]. The following exchange took place:
Question by FA: Can you give me concrete
examples of how Rwanda
is making progress in political openness?
PK: What does it mean political
openness?
FA: Are you asking me?
PK: Yes, [Laughter.]
FA: Well, it means having a free press
that’s able to function without fear of government reprisal. It means the
freedom to register political parties based on ideology and to hold contested
elections where parties can compete on an even footing. And it means the
freedom for individuals to speak freely and openly, without fear of
repercussions, except may be in extreme cases. In the United States,
for example, you can say terrible things, but it’s still legal.
This is our official stance which is
proclaimed around the world as the example all other nations need to follow. But
is this the true state how our country functions at this time?The brief answer is No and the reasons will
be presented later in the appropriate context.
To understand the present it is axiomatic
that we must take into account not only the immediate past but also more
distant events because present decisions are to a large extent determined by
past experience. This in turn leads to a future which is, within certain limits,
predictable because it is based on the interpretation of present and past
events. But past history which gave rise to the present and will influence the future
is biased. It is selectively remembered for certain events which have become
mythologized to present a glorified view of the achievements of one’s country.
While we tend to think of history as a recitation of factual events, only the
names and dates tend to be correct while the context in which they occurred is
usually omitted or distorted. Only a partial picture is presented, which then
is regarded as the correct one. In this manner myths are created and current
decisions will be based on mythical rather than true history.
In
the September 1, 2010 installment I have discussed “Mythistory” in relation to
the history of the Jewish people but it is obvious that Jews are no exception
in this respect; the process is universal. It, therefore, behooves us to look
at what we regard as “myths.” There are two official definitions. One is: “A traditional story, especially one
concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social
phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” The other:
“A widely held but false belief or idea.” The following discussion will deal
with both of them and I shall start with the mythical Cain.
The story is, of course, well known. Cain, the
older of the two brothers, was a farmer who tilled the ground while Abel tended
sheep. Cain sacrificed to the Lord some of his produce while Abel offered
lambs. The Lord, for unstated reasons, seemed to have preferred meat over
vegetables and Cain got angry. An admonition by the Lord, that this was not
useful and that he ought to look at his own conduct before blaming someone else,
was ignored. To make matters worse he took the brother out into the fields and
killed him. When the Lord then asked Cain: “Where is thy brother?” Cain lied,
feigning ignorance, and added the question alluded to in the headline: “Am I my
brother’s keeper?” Punishment was then meted out.
This story is typical for religious myths and
their purpose was to make people think about their conduct and its
consequences. When we now look at the story from a psychological perspective we
can discern the following mental processes in Cain: resentment that the younger
was preferred over the older and when no explanation was forthcoming it changed
to hatred. This was originally directed against the Lord as the cause of the
preferential treatment but since the Lord was immune to punishment, hate was
directed to the recipient, the younger brother. When Cain was taken to task the
reflexive lie took over, protesting innocence to which insolence was added with
the mentioned question. When we look at it from this point of view we can see
that not only does the whole sequence make good sense but it is also played out
with minor variations in contemporary society. This is what makes Cain’s
insolent answer so important and I shall return to it later.
While past pseudohistorical myths can have the
mentioned beneficial effects they can also become toxic if they are regarded as
the proverbial “gospel truth.” They then turn into religious dogma, which must
not be questioned and whoever has the audacity to do so will have to bear the
consequences. These are at minimum ostracism and at maximum death.But this process is not limited to religion
it is also played out to our detriment on a daily basis in the secular realm.
This is where the second part of the above stated definition: “A widely held
but false belief or idea” comes in. It is most toxic in the field of foreign
affairs because it gave rise to past wars and is now being played out before
our eyes without most of us recognizing what is going on. In order to
understand the modern parallels I would like to submit an expanded definition
on the genesis of myth. It can be regarded as: An assertion that serves as a
useful explanation of an event which, over time, comes to be regarded as full
unalterable truth.
In the following examples I shall limit myself
only to some key events which have affected my personal life. The first one was
the “War guilt” clause of the Versailles
treaty. Article 231 stated
The Allied and Associated
Governments affirm and
Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which
the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected
as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and
her allies.
It is hardly known
today that this wording, which was merely intended to be the legal basis for
reparations, was written by two Americans, Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles.
For Germany
this clause was unacceptable because it not only offended national pride but it
was also untrue. Nevertheless it was enforced by the allies as absolute truth and
became one of the major causes of Nazism and WWII. The true causes of WWI were
infinitely more complex and since we are currently in the process of repeating
the same mistakes which led to the outbreak of that catastrophe one hundred
years ago. I shall devote the next issues to the history as it is known today.
While WWI and II are “history”
we have been presented with another myth in the beginning of this century. I
am, of course referring to the explanation which our government has provided
for the 9/11 events. I realize that this will raise eyebrows but again please
bear with me. It is inconceivable for me, who has seen massive
destruction from firebombing during WWII that two solidly constructed towers
can be turned within seconds into crumpled bent steel and the rest pulverized
into ash, from plane impacts with resulting fires. Not only did one Tower
disintegrate but both did so within minutes of each other in essentially the
same manner. This was followed in the afternoon by the disintegration of Building
7 which had not been hit by a plane. The odds against such an occurrence are
astronomical, yet we are supposed to believe that this was solely the work of
Muslim terrorists. I realize that the government sponsored computer models
confirmed the official opinion, which was first uttered immediately after the
event, but we have to recognize that a model depends exclusively on the
parameters which are included and NIST did not use a model dealing with the
possibility of explosives having been responsible (Attempts at raising 9/11
awareness; August 1, 2011).
The improbable
assertion for the cause of the disintegration of the WorldTradeCenter buildings was
compounded by the explanation for the disappearance of United Airlines Flight
93. Mark Danner discussed some books on the former Vice-President Dick Cheney in
the current issue of the New York Review
of Books (May 8, 2014). In regard to the question whether or not the plane
had been shot down by one of our fighter jets, Danner wrote: “Indeed, despite a
lot of misleading testimony to the contrary, the simple fact (italics added) is that if the passengers on that
plane hadn’t desperately tried to seize control of it, causing it to crash into
a field, the plane likely would have destroyed the Capitol or the White House itself.”
If this were indeed a “simple fact” one would have expected to find large parts
of the plane, as well as recognizable body parts of passengers, on that field.
But this was not the case as early reports from the scene showed. (Crisis of
Trust; October 1, 2009). First responders found only a hole in the ground and
the coroner left after about half an hour because there was no work for him to
do. This contrasts with verified airplane crashes such as the Pan American Flight
103 which was brought down by a bomb over Lockerbie, TWA Flight 800 which
crashed off the New York shore into the
Atlantic, and the Air France plane which was recovered from the bottom of the South Atlantic. In all of these instances, as well as
numerous others, large plane parts were found on the scene, yet there were none
in the field at Shanksville. The government reported that some small items were
later retrieved from the hole but these assertions are open to doubt. Evidence
can be planted and first impressions by reliable witnesses are the most
important. There are, therefore, serious concerns about the official
explanation. But the tale of heroic passengers was needed at the time to
demonstrate that the American people are not sheep. They take charge of their
destiny even if it means certain death. This story has now assumed mythical
proportions. A Memorial has been erected and official commemorations, attended
by our highest politicians, are intermittently held there. Yet, in all honesty
we, the public, have no idea what really happened to the plane and its
passengers.
To the
above mentioned unlikely explanations we have to add the disappearance of
American Airlines Flight 77 which supposedly had hit the Pentagon earlier in
the day. Yet, Carl Cameron of Fox News, who was at the scene, reported that
there was no evidence of a plane crash. There was only a hole in the Pentagon
wall and a section of the building had subsequently collapsed. Some years later
he retracted this statement, but so did Galilei and the truth is usually closest
to the first observation. The fact that two large commercial airplanes have
vanished in the timespan of less than an hour, without immediately leaving
recognizable parts after impact, is unheard of in the annals of air crash
investigations. When
one considers all of these facts in toto, rational individuals will have to relegate the
government’s 9/11 explanations to the realm of myth. But anyone doing so risks
repercussions, because they are regarded as fact in spite of the real fact that
no independent investigation has been allowed to take place. The truth of “what
really happened on 9/11” has been hidden from us and we are reduced to
guessing. When our government and the media, which have this information,
deliberately withhold it from the public and insist on their version of events,
we and the rest of the world are not only confronted with a serious credibility
problem but become victims of false conclusions. 9/11 was the excuse for “The
Global War on Terrorism” with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq having been
the first victims. Although we have removed ourselves from Iraq and are in the process of leaving Afghanistan,
the havoc we have created lingers on in both countries. In Iraq we exchanged a secular dictatorship for a
Shiite clerical one at a cost of over 4,000 US service personnel killed and
over 33,000 wounded. For the Iraqi population it was a total disaster: the
number of killed and wounded extends into the hundreds of thousands and mayhem
continues on a daily basis. More than 4.7 million have been displaced from
their homes and about 40% of the middle class have fled. Hardest hit was the
Christian population which is now persecuted by Muslims of either the Sunni or
Shiite persuasion. In dollars the war has by now cost us over $750 billion,
which is a conservative estimate, and expenses continue to climb because of ongoing
medical care for our veterans. This is hardly a record to be
proud of and one would think that rational individuals would now think twice
before engaging in another military campaign on an even larger scale either
with Russia over Ukraine, or China over islands in the South China Sea. But the
above named costs are already ignored and since the acquisition of expensive
military hardware, such as F35’s, can hardly be justified by a war on Islamic
terrorists, the mentioned new enemies have to be brought into play. This brings
us to the embryonic myth of Putin’s sole responsibility for the disaster which
is unfolding in Ukraine.
It will enter post-embryonic life if the threatening war were to become
reality. While it is true that Putin
would like to see Russia restored to the status of a “Great Power” and the
borders to those of the former Soviet Union, it is false to deny our hand in
bringing about the current Ukraine disaster. I have mentioned in previous
installments that we had given $5 billion to Ukraine opposition forces prior to
December 2013 in order to install a pro-Western government. This largesse paid
off because we had the opportunity to appoint key members of such a government
after the February 20 shootout on the Maidan (Ukraine Crisis; March 15, 2014).
But what have we accomplished? There is now a divided bankrupt country on the
brink of civil war and in danger of a war with Russia, which is bound to involve
us. How have the Ukrainian people benefited? They are worse off than before. Not
only are they already subjected to insurrections but the oil and gas prices
have shot up. Would they not have been better off had we allowed Yanukovich last
year to accept Russia’s
bailout which guaranteed continued cheap oil and gas? This also would have
avoided all the current problems including the annexation of Crimea. Why was this path not followed?
The simple answer seems to be that there are forces in our country which need
war. I have already mentioned the material benefits for weapons manufacturers
but in addition there is the long term strategic goal which insists on American
hegemony over the globe and any fledgling newcomer who wants his rights
respected will suffer our ire. Some newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal admit that the current Kiev
government is regarded as illegitimate in the eastern portion of Ukraine. They
also correctly point out that the country consists of two sections. The western
segment had previously belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and Poland. It has remained
oriented toward towards the West, while the eastern part had always belonged to
Russia and a portion of its population
still has allegiance to Moscow rather than Kiev. The Russian
proposal of turning the country into a Federation with greater autonomy for the
provinces seems under these circumstances to make sense but it is vigorously
opposed by us. These aspects can be gleaned
from official media accounts, but for others which shed additional light on
Russia’s behavior we have to go to the Internet. When I ask my friends and
colleagues what they know about the Sea-Breeze exercises I draw a blank. The
information exists on the Internet but one has to be diligent and spend some
time.I have mentioned on a previous
occasion that the crux of the problem is NATO because Russia’s
politicians feel betrayed by the West in this regard. An article in Der Spiegel pointed out that German re-unification
hang on a thread. The European countries opposed it out of fear of a resurgent
revanchist Germany.
Only the U.S.
insisted on it, but with membership in NATO, which would curb nationalistic
ambitions. James Baker, our Foreign Secretary at the time, promised Gorbachev
that if he agreed to this arrangement there would be no further eastward
expansion. The incoming Clinton administration
did not feel itself bound by a verbal agreement and NATO was enlarged to
include the European members of the defunct Warsaw pact. Russia was reduced to protesting. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-unlikely-diplomatic-triumph-an-inside-look-at-the-reunification-negotiations-a-719848.html. To add insult to injury we then started in
1997, practically on a yearly basis, joint NATO maneuvers with Ukrainian
military forces in the Black Sea off the Crimean coast near Sebastopol and
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 2006 the exercises were intended to include land
maneuvers in the Crimea. On June 1 of that
year Jan Maksymiuk reported for Radio Free Europe
The U.S. cargo ship "Advantage" anchored in
Feodosiya on May 27, bringing what Ukrainian Defense
Minister AnatoliyHrytsenko
described as U.S.
"technical aid." Seamen offloaded construction materials to build
barracks for Ukrainian sailors at a training range near the town of StaryyKrym, not far from Feodosiya. Two days later, Feodosiya residents, mobilized by local chapters of the
pro-Russia Party of Regions, the Natalya Vitrenko
Bloc, as well as the Russian Community of Crimea, began to picket the port.
Displaying anti-NATO slogans written in Russian, they are continuing to block
the U.S.
cargo from getting to its destination. The BBC reported that several hundred
people were present at the demonstration. "Advantage" has also
reportedly left a group of U.S.
servicemen in Feodosiya to guard the unloaded cargo,
but their presence has not been officially confirmed. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1068836.html.
Subsequent reports mentioned that in
addition to the “seamen” there were 200 U.S. marine reservists who, as a
result of the protests, remained confined to Ukrainian barracks and were not allowed to venture
outside. We don’t know what their intended job had been but it is doubtful that
they were merely there to help build barracks for Ukrainian sailors. We had
permission from Ukraine’s
pro-Western President Victor Yushchenko for this excursion onto Crimean soil,
but he had overplayed his hand and the Ukrainian parliament disavowed his
decision. After two weeks the Advantage left with its marines having
accomplished nothing except getting Putin as well as some of the Crimean
population upset. President Bush, who had intended to visit Kiev in June of that year, had to cancel that
trip. The incident was reported by various media outlets, including the International
Herald Tribune, and can be found, apart from Russian and other sources on http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/americas/11iht-kiev.1947814.html?_r=0. The Sea-Breeze exercises were
also canceled for that year but they were resumed in 2007 in the Black Sea,
albeit off shore and from Odessa. In 2013 the US commanding officer congratulated
everyone to the successful conclusion of the 16th exercise. As of
April 2014 we were still planning to hold joint military maneuvers in Ukraine and the Black Sea
during the summer of this year.http://news.yahoo.com/russian-pm-medvedev-visits-crimea-reports-075219445.html.
Ask yourself now what would happen if the
Russian Federation held joint naval maneuvers with Mexico in the Caribbean
including the Gulf of Mexico! In April two more articles were
published which painted a rather dark picture. One was by Dave Hodges and appeared on April 3 http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/04/03/world-war-iii-is-imminent.The other by Rick Rozoff, entitled NATO’s Incremental Absorption of Ukrainehttp://www.voltairenet.org/article183470.html,
was published on April 26. The
articles are similar in content and differ mainly in extent. Both contend that
we have been systematically baiting Russia
to start a war with Ukraine
which would then allow us to come to its aid and crush Russia’s
ambitions once and for all. There is a deadline of about two month when the war
is expected to break out. It was deduced from the planned maneuvers in the
summer by which time NATO would have its forces in place to effectively
counteract a Russian invasion. Since Putin knows this, he has a narrow time
frame during which he still enjoys military superiority. Currently he can take
over Ukraine
in a Blitzkrieg type manner with a minimum of casualties. But if he misses this
opportunity a long drawn out period of Cold War will ensue. To make the
situation even more dire for Putin, Rozoff also
mentioned that we have asked Romania’s
permission to place extra ground troops into that country as well as more
planes. The planes’ task will be to take out Russia’s
Black Sea Fleet when Putin moves into eastern Ukraine
and our land forces will re-occupy the Crimea for Ukraine. It is furthermore asserted
that we have a secret understanding with Israel
in regard to Iran.
By locking Azerbaijan into
the upcoming summer war games, Russia
will be denied land access to Iran
and will not be able to help that country when bombs start falling. I don’t
know what the facts are and doubt that Putin will indeed invade eastern Ukraine
in the near future, but it is obvious that the situation is highly dangerous
and anything can happen at any time. We now need to consider the
question: why do we have to read these obviously important reports of current
events on the Internet instead of the papers and also hear them discussed on TV?
The answer is that the ownership of the print media as well as of the TV
stations has become concentrated into a few hands and the free expression “by
the people for the people,” to use Lincoln’s
words, has become limited to those who follow the ideology of the owners. In Russia, China and other authoritarian countries
the state determines what the people are supposed to know; in our country the wealthy
owners do it. The result is the same: the public gets unilateral propaganda and
is “dumbed down.” Although we currently still have the Internet, where people
can speak out, it seems that this freedom is likewise coming to an end. In
authoritarian countries it is already censored. In the Western world censorship
will in the near future not be enforced by the state but by commercial
interests. There are likely to be fees for publishing and these may well
eventually become prohibitive. But without a truly free press and the ability
to express our opinions democracy becomes a sham. Our much praised freedom to
vote for candidates of our choice, as mentioned above by Foreign Affairs, it likewise leaves much to be desired as was
pointed out on this site in the March 1, 2008 installment: Voting in America. These
are the realities which bring us back to Cain’s answer. The only way we can
avoid the looming catastrophes of this century is if we were to start taking
responsibility for our actions. Denials will not do because others know that we
are lying and “Am I my brother’s keeper?” has to be answered with a resounding:
Yes! Although the Bible as well as the Jewish Tanakuse the word “keeper,” I didn’t like
it because it reminds one of a zoo-keeper and the animals living there. The
Septuagint employs the word phúlax which translates into watchman, sentinel or guardian.
I believe we might be best served if we were to regard it as: responsibility.
If we were to start feeling responsible not only for our private actions, but also
as to how they will affect everyone else, we would indeed have made in Neal
Armstrong’s words “a giant leap for mankind”. In addition we should take
Epictetus’ advice on: “What is and is not in our power” to heart. He reminded
us that the only power we have is over our own actions rather than those of
others. If we were to extend this dictum to our nation and our conduct were to
be truthful as well as beyond reproach in domestic affairs, our example would
be followed by others. In this way we would accomplish the goal of bringing
freedom to other countries without the constant attempt of imposing our will
upon them which creates resentment. But this would require a mental paradigm
shift on a national scale. Unfortunately we cannot expect this tohappen in the foreseeable future and we, together
with the rest of the world, will continue to have to suffer the dire consequences
of the dominant political myths.
June 1, 2014
WWI Part I PRELUDE TO DISASTER
For Americans WWI is distant history
they read about in the papers or watch in movies but for my generation of
Austrians the consequences of June 28, 1914 carry indelible personal meaning.
So let me introduce this essay with a brief excursion to how my family lived a
hundred years ago. June 1, 1914 was Pfingstmontag
(Monday after Pentecost) and all of Vienna enjoyed the holiday. The previous
day, Pfingstsonntag, my grandmother,
who was in her early forties at the time, would have taken her two children in
the morning to the nearby Gertrudkirche
or the about equally distant Weinhauserkirche
for High Mass while grandfather, who was likewise in his early forties, would
have stayed home reading the papers. He was Gottglaeubig,
had faith in God, but had no use for organized religions and their rituals. He had
been born into a Jewish family in Hungary but at age 14 left for Vienna to seek
a better life and later on converted to the dominant religion, Roman
Catholicism. It was not necessarily love of Jesus which prompted him to do so
but the girl he wanted to marry made it a precondition for the sake of their future children. Since he was, what the Viennese call,
“a guater Latsch” – a kind person who
easily got along with everybody, and since there is only one God anyway, it was
no hardship.
After a festive lunch of soup followed
by Wienerschnitzel with rice and
salad, Apfel - or Mohnstrudel afterwards, the family of
four would have set forth to fetch “Gretl,”
their horse, which would already have been hitched to the buggy to take them to
the Prater where the kids would have had a ball with the numerous amusements
and their parents enjoyed the restaurants. As a special treat they might even
have gone to the Eisvogel which
featured a Damenkapelle, a ladies
orchestra. They would not have gone alone. Grandfather had a leather goods
store with an attached small factory where they manufactured the goods which
grandma sold in the store. They had worked hard and prospered. The store next
to theirs belonged to Mr. Oesterreicher, a glacier, and a little further down
the Waehringerstrasse was that of the
furrier Mr. Petr. They also had children of similar ages and the three families
were quite inseparable. For the Monday holiday, all of them would have taken a
ride to the Wienerwald or even taken the Zahnradbahn
(funicular) from Nussdorf up to the Kahlenberg.
Life was not perfect but as good as it
gets and although their kids, my mother who was ten and her couple of years
older brother, were intermittently rather obstinate but that was something one
had to put up with. Even the political situation had improved. There was talk
of war the previous year but the crisis had passed. The economy was still in
recession from the Balkan wars and the stock market was wobbly but the old
Kaiser, the symbol of stability, was still in the Hofburg and there was hope that the domestic problems, most of all
the fight between the various nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
would simmer down, as it had in the past.
If some Cassandra or Jeremiah had told
my grandparents during those holidays that within 2 months there would be a
catastrophic war, that not quite four and a half years later there would no
longer be an Austro-Hungarian monarchy, no German Reich, no Ottoman Empire, and
that Russia would be ruled by Bolsheviks, that person would have been declared
as insane. If they had been told in addition that Anni Petr, the nineteen year
old daughter of their friend’s family, would be dead of Spanish influenza in five
years and furthermore that the Jewish Oesterreichers and Petrs would not only
lose their stores 24 years hence but subsequently their lives, in what is now
called the Holocaust, they could not possibly have believed it. Yet all of this
became fact and shows how slender the thread is on which the expectations and hopes
for the future hang.
Apart from Anni, whose grave we visited
intermittently on Sunday mornings, I knew all the people mentioned here and
this lends poignancy. In the following pages I shall discuss how this
catastrophe was unleashed in Vienna, and in subsequent installments how what
was thought of as a strictly Balkan campaign against Serbia engulfed the rest
of the world. The purpose is not to cast stones but to show how key people thought
and I shall let the reader judge to what extent we are now going down a similar
road.
As mentioned grandpa would have spent the
holiday mornings reading the papers, but his favorite one, the Neue Freie Presse, had given their
employees Sunday as well as Monday off and did not appear until the following
Tuesday afternoon. The Neue Freie Presse
was the equivalent of the New York Times
and read by the middle and upper classes. The workers had the Arbeiterzeitung and similar ones, while
those citizens who hankered after Germany, the Deutschnationalen, read the Reichspost.
There was no dearth of papers and information covering the various political
and societal viewpoints from all of the provinces of the Monarchy was readily
available, especially in coffee houses where they could be read for free. Just
as grandfather could not have imagined the events mentioned above, he would
likewise have been flabbergasted that one of his grandsons would have the
chance to read these newspapers in America a hundred years later. But that is
one of the boons of modern technology. The Austrian National Library has
digitized all the major newspapers and if you go to http://anno.onb.ac.at and then hit Jahresuebersicht der Zeitungen you will
find that papers are available from 1568 to 1943. The earliest ones up to 1602 are merely
letters and there are gaps. Annual continuity of actual newspapers, although
not necessarily on a daily basis, starts in 1719. It allows one to follow the
French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the subsequent Vienna Congress, as it
was reported at the time rather than through the eyes of later historians. By January
of 1848 there were three papers and as a result of the revolution later in the
year, when censorship had been removed, the numbers increased steadily so that
by Tuesday June 3, 1914 there were over 40. They represent a most valuable
resource for professional and amateur historians especially for turbulent times,
which now are overlaid by myths.
Inasmuch as grandfather was prevented
from reading the Neue Freie Presse on
that holiday weekend he probably made do withthe Illustriertes
Oesterreichisches Journal which was published by Moritz Deutsch on the 1st
and 15th of the month. The front page carried a picture of Kaiser
Wilhelm II and the major item was his upcoming visit with Austria-Hungary’s Crown
Prince Franz Ferdinand at the latter’s castle in Konopischt (south of Prague)
on the 12th. I shall now translate key sections.
After a period
of serious danger to European peace, which was fortunately mastered only by the
unity of the treaty partners, the Kaiser will certainly feel the need to
discuss important foreign policy problems with the Crown Prince. The visit is
more than one of friendship and an occasion for hunting but mainly to show that
the world events have not only not strained the cordial relationship between
the two courts and their peoples but, if at all possible, deepened them .… Even
todaytheperiod of crises cannot be regarded as finished
since Albania stillcauses a great deal
of concern ….
Austria-Hungary
with its considerable Balkan interests could only energetically pursue these
interests, without it resulting in the catastrophe of a world war, through the
treaty with Germany and Italy…. The Dreibund
has emerged newly fortified from the serious crises of the past year ….
Change “Albania” for “Ukraine” and you
have arrived in June 2014. Please note that Weltkrieg,
world war, was already talked about as having been avoided. Yet, it was an
abstract thought just as we talk today about the possibility of nuclear war. The
other main political item of the Illustriertes
Journal dealt with the reasons why Parliament had been dissolved earlier in
the year and the government had to work on basis of paragraph 14 of the
Constitution i.e. by emergency decrees rather than popular consent. The paper
insisted, however, that these difficulties will be resolved and Parliament will
again be able to resume its functions.
For the following reconstruction of the
situation the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, from now on abbreviated as the Monarchy,
found itself in May and June of that year I shall rely largely on The Sleepwalkers – How Europe went to War
by Christopher Clark, Franz Ferdinand
Europas verloreneHoffnung by Max Polatscheck, newspaper articles as well as
encyclopedias. All efforts to explain certain events must have some, largely
arbitrary, starting point. Clark began his book with the 1903 murder of King Alexandar and
his wife Queen Draga in Belgrade. The Obrenovic dynasty, which had been
friendly with the Monarchy, was replaced by the Karadjorjevic, who harbored
thoughts of Serbia’s past glory and future greatness. Absorption into the
Ottoman Empire, which resulted from the lost battle at the Amselfeld in Kosovo (1389), had deeply rankled
the popular psyche and given rise to nationalistic poems and literature with
the goal to redeem from foreign domination not only all Serbs, but all South
Slavs. That this could only be achieved by war with the Monarchy, which held
Slovenia, Croatia and Dalmatia, was obvious and accepted as a necessity. In
Serb nationalist circles it was only a question of time when it would come
about.
We may now wonder how intelligent,
educated people, as some of the Serbs clearly were, could hold on to presumed
past glory, dating back hundreds of years, and forever look for redress. But as
the following will show this is not some peculiarity of Serbs. We have to
conclude that the human race, when it acts as a political aggregate, is governed
by myths. Under these circumstances it is largely immune to reason and emotions
rule. To prove this point we need look no further than the current State of
Israel which still wants to re-establish mythical borders that have disappeared
millennia ago. In the context of the present topic it is the guilt for WWI.
Although historians have shown that the causes for the war were quite complex,
involving different motives by all of the participants, the popular mind has
latched on to the German war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty. Here is a
little vignette which highlights this statement.
A few weeks ago while driving home from
Salt Lake City I listened to the Brigham Young University radio station which
plays classical music throughout the day. Ravel’s PianoTrio in A minor was
about to be broadcast and the announcer provided us with a little introduction.
He explained that the composer had started on it in early summer of 1914. When
war broke out he immediately intended to enlist but then decided to first
finish the Trio. Upon completion of the work he wrote to Stravinsky that he had
finished it in five weeks what should have taken five months. The announcer
then said: “So if it sounds a little disjointed and slapped together at the end,
I guess we can blame the Kaiser.” The comment was supposed to have been cute or
funny but shows how stereotypes live on in the public mind.
Although the Serbian problem was indeed
the proximate cause for the 1914 catastrophe, its roots can be traced back to at
least 1848 when the 18 year old Franz Joseph ascended the throne after the
revolutions of that year. On March 15 Hungary had revolted under the leadership
of Lajos Kossuth, and full fledged war ensued thereafter. The Austrians
suffered several defeats and Franz Joseph had to ask Russia’s Nicholas I for
help. The Russians initially did not do well either against the Hungarian
freedom fighters, but eventually the Austrians got the upperhand and when Nicholas promised another30,000 troops it was time for the Hungarians
to surrender on August 13, 1849. The memory of this defeat remained a sore spot
in the Hungarian psyche, Kossuth achieved legendary hero stature and the
problem was only partially patched up by the Ausgleich in 1868, which created the dual Monarchy. When the
Crimean War broke out in 1853 with Russia on one side and England,
France, Piedmont-Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire on the other, Czar Nicholas
thought that it was now time for Austria to show gratitude and asked for help.
England on the other hand wanted Austria to join her coalition, which created a
serious problem for Vienna. In the end the decision was to remain neutral. This,
however, alienated both sides and especially Russia when it lost the war in
1856.
The 1848 revolution had not only spawned
the Hungarian War of Independence but also that of Italy. It was, however,
crushed by Austria’s Field Marshall Radetzky which inspired Johann Strauss, the
father of the Waltz king, to compose the Radetzky march, which is still played today
as the Finale of the annual New Year’s concert by the Vienna Philharmonic
orchestra. For the Italians the motto was: if you don’t win the first time, try
again but with an ally. Having successfully dealt with the Russians, the
Piedmontese under Cavour and the French under Napoleon III were ready to tackle
the Austrians three years later with the goal to achieve a unified Italy that
was friendly to France. The war started on April 29, 1859 and although the
armies were fairly evenly matched the Austrians, who in the later stages were
commanded by Franz Joseph in person, suffered several defeats with the one at
Solferino the most serious. Napoleon III was eager to finish the war before
Prussia might enter on Austria’s side and in the ensuing peace treaty (armistice
on July 12, 1859) Austria got by with the loss of Lombardy, although two of the
fortresses in the area were retained. Carvour, who had been kept in the dark
about the armistice negotiations, was furious about the precipitous end of the
war because it deprived him from capturing the province of Venetia in addition.
Nevertheless the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1862 under Victor Emmanuel
II of Piedmont-Sardinia. The battle of Solferino involved such carnage that a
Swiss citizen, Jean Henri Dunant who had visited the battlefield, wrote a book
about it, which set the process in motion for the creation of the International
Red Cross and the Geneva Convention.
Fresh on the heels of this disaster came Austria’s next defeat by Prussia in 1866 over who was
to have the dominant voice in German affairs. This war although equally short,
lasting only seven weeks, had even more disastrous long-term consequences for
Europe. Austria lost all influence over the various German states and
eventually ended up as the junior partner in the alliance. This victory enabled
Bismarck to push for the war with France in 1870. The outcome in 1871 was that the
French Empire was replaced by a unified German Empire. France became a republic,
lost Alsace-Lorraine and was saddled with a large financial burden of war
reparations. Needless to say this settlement did not win Germany the hearts and
minds of the French people, which came to haunt them in 1914 and its aftermath.
On the other hand, for Germany the addition of Alsace-Lorraine to the Reich was
simply a matter of justice because Louis the XIV had stolen Alsace in the 1600s
from the prostrate Reich and Louis XV had then followed up with Lorraine in
order to achieve the “natural border” on the Rhine.
To compensate for the loss of influence
over German affairs in 1866, Austria then directed her attention to the Balkan Peninsula.
But this had to bring her into conflict not only with the Ottoman Empire but
also Russia and the newly emerging Balkan states. This was the era of the
formation of nation states in central Europe with the idea that the various
ethnic/racial groups all needed to have a country of their own. Obviously this
required wars and equally obviously it left ethnic minorities in the newly
formed countries, which then had to be dealt with in some form or another.
Italian unification especially was taken as the model for the various Balkan
states which lingered under Ottoman rule. Serbia achieved independence from
Turkey in 1877, Romania in 1878, Bulgaria in 1908 while
Greece had already achieved its freedom from Turkish rule in 1832. By 1914 the
Ottoman Empire’s European possessions had been reduced to a relatively small
strip west of Constantinople. The days of multinational empires in Europe were
over and only Austria-Hungary as well as Russia remained. Yet, these two
countries were the largest in regard to territorial extents.
In view of all of these changes, Turkey
had become “the sick man on the Bosporus” and the Europeans wanted various
slices of the rest of the Ottoman Empire. When Britain and France agreed to
divide major portions of North Africa, still nominally under suzerainty of
Constantinople, between each other, Italy saw potential gains and invaded Libya
in 1911. Clark points out in The
Sleepwalkers that this was the first war in which aerial bombardment,
although in a rather primitive manner, was used. When the Balkan states saw
that Turkey, which was still engaged in the war with Italy, was vulnerable,
Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece formed a league in 1912 and drove Turkey out of
Europe apart from the mentioned small sliver to the west of Constantinople. The
war provided huge gains for Serbia as well as Bulgaria which practically
doubled their land holdings. Nevertheless, immediately thereafter frictions erupted
among these treaty partners. Serbia, Romania and Greece ganged up on their
former ally, Bulgaria, and deprived it of major portions of Thrace and
Macedonia in the second Balkan War of 1913.
These wars had brought Serbia onto the
Adriatic coast which was intolerable for the Monarchy as well as Italy. Serbia
had to remain landlocked! On Austria’s urgings a new country, Albania, was
established as a buffer zone between Serbia and the Adriatic at the Conference
of London in 1813. But two mistakes were made. When the borders were drawn the
ethnic composition of the area was neglected; a great many Serbs remained on
the Albanian side and vice versa, especially in Kosovo. If you think that this
is ancient history it is not, because what was called in 1999 “Madeleine’s War [Albright,
Secretary of State]” with Serbia was precisely over Kosovo. Russia’s
humiliation by NATO in that war is part of the reason for our present troubles
with that nation. The other mistake was that a German prince, Wilhelm of Wied,
was put in charge of a predominantly Muslim country. That this would not sit
well with the populace should have been a foregone conclusion. Finally, Serbia
was enraged for having had to give up its conquests and access to the sea. War
threatened, but the Serbs had to yield to Austria’s ultimatum in December 1913
because Russia was not yet ready for war.
I shall now limit myself to mainly portraying
the events which led up to the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz
Ferdinand at the end of the month. I have already discussed the major antecedents
of the war in War&Mayhem and
since the book is available on this site, I merely refer the reader to it as
well as to the Hot Issues of January 1 and September 1, 2008 (2008 Outlook;
Images). They deal with the 1908 Bosnian-Herzegovina annexation crisis which
brought Europe to the brink of war in that year. It was avoided by Russia’s
weakness after the defeat by Japan in 1905 and the ensuing revolutions. To briefly
recapitulate: the Monarchy had been awarded trusteeship over Bosnia-Herzegovina
in 1878 and began developing the provinces on the European model, although they
nominally remained under the suzerainty of the Sultan. When in 1908 a new
government took over in Constantinople, the authorities in Vienna became
concerned that it might call for elections in the trusteeship. To forestall
this potential event, Austria’s Foreign Minister Aehrenthal and Russia’s Izvolsky
hatched a plan. Austria would be allowed to annex the provinces and in return
push for free access of Russia’s Black Sea fleet through the Bosporus and
Dardanelles. The agreement was meant to be a secret until a mutually agreed
time, but it was leaked to the press and created a public uproar. Izvolsky
initially denied the deal but when Austria threatened to publish relevant
documents, he was relieved of his job by the Czar. He was down but not out. He
was subsequently appointed ambassador to France where he did his level best to
poison the atmosphere between France and Germany as well as Austria.
In 1908 Serbia stood alone against the Dreibund, Triple alliance of
Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. The Serbs knew that they could not win a
war and reluctantly submitted to the Monarchy’s ultimatum which required her to
cease anti-Austrian agitation. Although Serbia had to sign under duress this
only intensified plans for revenge and led to a strategy which is today pursued
in eastern Ukraine as well as in Syria. Weapons were smuggled into
Bosnia-Herzegovina, volunteer fighters imported and terrorist acts instigated.
Within the Serbian government a separate one was created by the Chief of Army
Intelligence (Serbian equivalent of our CIA, NSA plus all the other
intelligence operations by the various departments of our government) Colonel Dragutin
Dimitrijevic, nicknamed Apis after the Egyptian god for his bull-like
characteristics. Its avowed goal was unification of all South Slavs under
Belgrade’s rule. Since Apis’ ministry operated largely in secrecy it allowed
the official government “plausible deniability” of its actions. The most
important ones, in the current context, were providing the training and
equipment for the conspirators of the Sarajevo crime.
As mentioned peace was saved in 1908 and
1913 by what was regarded at the time “firm action of the Dreibund.” Italy had been
added to the original German-Austrian partnership in 1882, largely on Germany’s
insistence. There was no love lost between the Monarchy and Italy because both
wanted pieces of each other’s territory, but Germany thought that Italy might
be a counterweight against France which grieved over the loss of
Alsace-Lorraine. Although Mr. Deutsch who wrote the article in the Illustriertes Oesterreichisches Journal,
which I quoted above, credited the Dreibund for the
successful mastering of the recent crises, cracks had already appeared. Those
between the Monarchy and Germany were not particularly serious because each
side knew that they needed each other lest they would be totally isolated. It
was different with Italy. To the previously mentioned conflicts of interests,
Albania was added. Italy’s territorial ambitions could not be properly satisfied
within the alliance but only through its adversaries the Triple Entente. Its
genesis will be presented in the next issue and for now I shall only mention
one additional aspect of the Dreibund
treaty. It contained two critical points. Military help was to be provided only
if one of the partners had been attacked and for any gains by the Monarchy,
Italy had to be compensated with some territory. These points became crucial in
July 1914.
To these external problems one must add the
Monarchy’s domestic ones with its restive minorities, of whom the Czechs were
the most vocal. They had never forgotten their loss in the battle of the White
Mountain in 1618 (the start of the Thirty Years War) and the subsequent
expropriations of the lands of their nobility. The Austrian half of the
Monarchy had tried to placate its various nationalities by a series of
compromises, but this only made matters worse. The language regulation which
permitted each nationality to use its own language led to chaos in Parliament.
Speakers filibustered in their mother tongue which might be Czech, Polish,
Ruthenian (today’s Ukrainian) and a host of others which nobody else could
understand. It needs to be pointed out that German was spoken by less than a
quarter of the dual Monarchy (23.3 percent) and Hungarian by less than fifth
(19.5 percent); even in the province of Tyrol 42 per cent spoke Italian.
While the Austrian half of the Monarchy pursued
conciliation which, as mentioned, led to a breakdown of parliamentary
procedures and rule by paragraph 14 after March 1914, the Hungarians followed
the opposite course: Magyarisation. Everybody had to learn Magyar which was the
only official language. This added to frictions between Vienna and Budapest.
All of this was, of course, known to the rest of Europe and the spectacle of the
Monarchy being apparently unable to govern herself led to the epithet of “the
sick man on the Danube.” The impending collapse of the Monarchy was on
everybody’s lips.
The major remaining hope resided in the
person of the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. He was 51 years old, energetic,
goal directed and knew how he would rescue the Monarchy from impending demise.
He had no use for the dual monarchy with the incessant demands for more
autonomy by the Hungarians and he also had no use for messy parliamentarian
democracy. He intended to re-establish a strong absolutist monarchy with the
help of the military. But for this program he needed peace and this could only
be achieved through rapprochement with Russia. The goal was to replace the Dreibund with a re-establishment of
Bismarck’s Drei-Kaiser-Bund, an
alliance between the Monarchy, Germany and Russia which Germany had allowed to
lapse in 1887. Inasmuch as Franz Joseph was already in his eighties, the crown
was in sight and with it absolute power. Although details of these plans may
not have been known at the time, everyone was aware that in addition to the
government in the Hofburg and Ballhausplatz there was one in the Belvedere where Franz Ferdinand’s plans
were hatched and the future government composition discussed.
Franz Ferdinand was not an easy person
to get along with. In addition to the mentioned characteristics he was
arrogant, brusque, suspicious of the motives of others, and an excellent
unforgiving hater. For the people’s admiration he had little use and his love
was limited to his family and the military. His personal love for Sophie von Chotek, was sincere and he fought for several years with the
Emperor for permission to marry her. Although she came from an old Bohemian
aristocratic family, it did not rank high enough for imperial eligibility.
Eventually the marriage was allowed to take place but only with the proviso
that their children would never succeed to the throne. Needless to say this
quarrel had further embittered Franz Ferdinand and he kept score on whoever had
initially opposed the marriage and thereafter slighted his wife. The family
life, blessed by three children, was exemplary, but they were embattled and
subjected to constant humiliations by the powers in charge of court ritual.
This extended even beyond death where Sophie’s coffin was placed lower than his
in the Burgkapelle.
In retrospect it seems doubtful that if
Franz Ferdinand had gained the throne he would have accomplished his goals. The
times had bypassed absolutism and the Monarchy might well have collapsed in
revolution. But these are idle speculations and for those who insist that the Monarchy
was doomed anyway one can only say that this is a retrospective appraisal. In
politics nothing is certain until it has happened and as the next installment
will show the catastrophe could potentially have been avoided; even towards the
end of July.
When we look at June 1914 up to the 28th
and compare it with the present, there are some unsettling parallels. America
has replaced England as arbiter of world affairs and instead of two hostile
alliance blocs, NATO, directed by Washington, is the dominant force. With
taking advantage of Russia’s weakness in the past two decades and placing NATO
on Russia’s doorstep we have alienated that country which now has to seek an
ally in China. At present, as far as we know, thealliance is economic, but a military one to
counter America’s prerogatives in East Asia, may not be too far in the future,
especially if Washington keeps pushing Russia and gloating over its success in
Ukraine.
The ignorance of history and arrogance
of our media pundits, as well as some members of Congress, is appalling. One
hundred years have passed when peoples were led to slaughter on basis of myths
and not only have we not learned from these events but we are busy creating new
ones. In the last installment I mentioned the 9/11 explanations, but a column
by Thomas Friedman of May 29 renewed one from 1962. The article carried the
headline: “Eyeball to eyeball, and it was Putin who
blinked.” Friedman referred to Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s comment when
Soviet ships turned back at the conclusion of the missile crisis: “We’re
eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” So it seemed to
Rusk and all the others in government and the press who didn’t know that
Kennedy and Khrushchev had arrived at a tit for tat: Soviet missiles came out
of Cuba, American missiles came out of Turkey. If there was a blinking it was
by both sides who realized that a nuclear war is unacceptable. These are by now
well known historical facts, so why does Mr. Friedman perpetuate this “blinking
myth?” He certainly should know better and he should also know that Putin, in
all probability, never wanted to invade Ukraine proper. The reason for the
annexation of the Crimea was to protect his Black Sea fleet in Sebastopol from
NATO’s inroads and this was accomplished. The rest is hype by the West.
In contrast to Wilhelm II, for instance,
who was impulsive, blowing hot and cold at a moment’s notice, or Nicholas II
who vacillated and then did what the most recent advisor of the day suggested,
Putin is deliberate and used to waiting. But it seems that similar to Franz
Ferdinand he doesn’t readily forgive and forget. He is a Judo master and
willing to wait for the time when conditions are right for his ultimate goals
which he may or may not even know himself at this time. But whatever they are
he, like Franz Ferdinand, knows that he now needs peace to strengthen his
country and unless we push him into an extreme position he may well succeed. If
this brief historical overview serves any purpose it should be obvious that
wars hardly ever solve anything but carry the seeds for the next one. This will
be further highlighted in the next two installments.
July 1, 2014
WWI Part II THE DISASTER UNFOLDS
In the previous installment I
discussed some of the history which went into the making of WWI with special
emphasis on the situation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (henceforth simply
called the Monarchy) and her relationship to Serbia as well as Italy. I also mentioned
the opportunity that has been provided for historians, as well as history buffs,
by the Austrian National Library’s publication of the digitized versions of all
the major newspapers of the Monarchy on a daily basis. It can be accessed at http://anno.onb.ac.at.
This is important, because historians piece together past events, when the
outcome is known. It is then inevitable that the pieces they chose, and those
which they omit to mention, depend on individual bias. Even if the historian
tries to be completely impartial an unconscious bias tends to intrude, because
each book or article has the purpose to advance a given thesis. This trait of
the human race has to be taken into account when one deals with the assessment of
historical events. Churchill is reported to have said: “History will be kind to
me, because I shall write it.” This is correct; the losers hardly have an
opportunity to set the record straight because what they produce, if it gets
published at all, will be classified as “revisionist history” unless it confirms
the official versions.
Although history, as reported in books
and articles, can teach us certain lessons which should guide our thinking, we don’t
live in the past. We live in the present, the immediate past – grammatically
speaking the imperfectum – and phantasies about the future.
Events are reported to us by the media on a day to day basis, but we have no
idea how they will play out in the long run. Once the outcome is known,
hindsight will pronounce inevitability, although a seemingly minor change at a
given moment might have produced a different result.
This is the reason for studying old
newspapers. They describe the contemporary scene on a daily basis as it is
happening. The articles will still show the bias of the editor of the paper,
but common sense and a general education allow one to sift facts from
propaganda and to form a cohesive picture. I have mentioned in the past that theNeueFreiePresse(NFP) was the most widely read paper not
only in the Monarchy, but also abroad. The editorial bias of the paper was
conservative and largely supportive of the government. I am mentioning it
because it was obviously not feasible to read all the newspapers (up to 61),
from all corners of the Monarchy, that are available for a given day. A choice
had to be made to depict the information middle and upper class Austrians
received on a daily basis. In addition, I need to point out that the paper did
not limit itself to report news from the Monarchy and abroad but intermittently
quoted foreign newspapers on events of the day. The importance of this aspect
will become apparent later. The cynic is now likely to say: so what; who cares?
But this stance is ill-advised; the following material is not some exercise in
futility, but allows the reader a comparison with the information we receive
today from our media about the various trouble spots around the world which
threaten to involve us in another war at any moment.
I shall now summarize the information
which was provided to the public for the last part of May and the month of June
1914 up to the 28th when two revolver shots from a 19 year old
Bosnian changed our world forever. They not only led to WWI but WWII and now
the Ukraine and Iraq crises. Thereafter I shall translate key statements from
the paper for specific dates up to August 1 when the Serbian war, which had
started on July 28, metastasized. This will be supplemented by information from
Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers
and Thirteen Days – Diplomacy and
Disaster. The Countdown to the Great War, by Clive Ponting. Although these
two books cover the same basic material, they complement each other in
important details and ought to be studied by every American who is interested
in the future of our country.
My readings of the NFP started with the May 25 issue in
order to provide the socio-political context of the June 28 assassination. Since
the Albanian situation was the foremost news it is necessary to briefly recapitulate
what was reported in Part I. Albania was established upon the Monarchy’s urging
to prevent Serbia from getting access to the Adriatic. In the 1913 Second
Balkan War, Serbia had wrested the northern portions of today’s Albania from
the Ottoman Empire and had reached the Adriatic shore. The Monarchy could not
tolerate a hostile Serbia on the Adriatic because it would have been a direct
threat to Austria’s navy which was based at Pola, today’s Croatian Pula. One
can compare this situation with this year’s annexation of the Crimea by Russia,
because a potential NATO presence in Sebastopol was unacceptable. The
Conference of London, therefore, created an independent Albania under the
German Prince Wilhelm of Wied. Serbia was ordered to remove her troops but did
not promptly respond. This created the December 1913 crisis when war appeared
imminent. But Serbia failed to get the needed support from Russia and had to
submit to an Austrian ultimatum. This precedent of Serbia yielding to the Monarchy’s
demands became important six months later.
When reading the papers one has to keep
in mind that they reported the events of the previous day(s), and that the date
reported here is that of publication rather than occurrence. I shall also keep
the present tense whenever direct quotes were used. The major item in the May
25 issue was that Albania’s Sovereign Prince Wilhelm, threatened by the revolt
in his country, had to seek refuge on an offshore Italian battleship. This was
temporary and he returned to his residence in Durazzo,
today’s Durrës, later in the day.
On the 26th the Albanian problem
was again topic number 1. The paper declared that the official optimism in
regard to the situation was unjustified when one considered the daily events. A
Christian Sovereign would not be accepted by the Muslim population. It was a
peasants’ revolt, but they were well armed and “the question who
pays for the weapons, remains unanswered.”
In the May 28 issue we read that
France’s Baron Rothschild opined that the economic downturn had not yet reached
bottom. France was especially affected because of its massive credits to
Russia. Although Russia also experienced serious economic problems she planned
to hold extensive military manoeuvers in the fall. With the call to arms of
reservists, 1.8 million soldiers would be ready in the European section of the
Empire and an additional 400,000 in Asia. Serbia also proposed a massive arms
increase.
On May 29 it was noted that the Monarchy’s
military budget was approved. Four battleships were to be added to the existing
four. In addition there were to be three new cruisers as well as torpedo boats
to be constructed. The next day’s issue reported frictions with Italy over
Albania.
The May 31 issue carried the headline: “The
Right to Joy, Suggestions, how Austria could experience joy again.” The article
stated that the Balkan wars of the previous two years had not only engendered
an economic downturn but had also created apprehension and uncertainty. The
gist of the article was: The Monarchy’s borders in the East, North and South had
become vulnerable. Germany was threatened by war on two and possibly three
fronts. Italy stood politically isolated. Fearful France had extended
obligatory military service to three years. The Monarchy’s governing by decree,
rather than parliamentary procedures, raised doubts about the durability of
public law and there was additional concern over the question of the Monarchy’s
very existence.
During the first week of June, Albania
again dominated the news and the June 2nd edition pointed out that
Italy not only showed no cooperation but open hostility. The other major news
was the forthcoming visit of the Czar to Constanza, Romania.
This was regarded as an ominous development because this country had been informally
allied with the Triple Alliance and the Russian visit signaled a potential
shift into the other camp. The paper asked:
Is this a
deliberate step in the drive towards war? This can hardly be assumed. Such a
decision has undoubtedly not been made in the highest responsible circles of
Russia’s government and the economic situation is such that any clear thinking
statesman must even regard the mere thought of war as insanity… No one of the
leading political statesmen can ignore the dreadful economic and social dangers
of war, which would produce a steady increase in the revolutionary mood of the
working class. Yet, unfortunately, none of them has sufficient insight to
bravely oppose those who are playing with fire and create the impression as if the
apex of their ambition is the achievement of a position from where Russia can
at any moment successfully attack the neighboring Great Powers.
Concerns about Russia’s goals were,
therefore, already prominent prior to the Sarajevo murders. During the following
week Albania’s Civil War and the Greco-Turkish Conflict, which might erupt in
warfare, was reported on, as well as the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm with Austria’s
Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand at the latter’s castle in Konopitsch
which was discussed in Part I. The NFP
furthermore reported on dress rehearsals of Russia’s mobilization plans. For
those, in addition to arms procurements, Russia was spending 216 million
Austrian crowns. The Monarchy, on the other hand, spent 10 million for all of her
maneuvers. During the planned Russian maneuvers in the fall, where the
previously mentioned 1.8 million soldiers would participate, Austria would have
200,000 and Germany 300-400.000 men under arms. The Serbian military had asked
for and received a budget of 123 million. The paper asked: “For what purpose does
Serbia, a state of 4 million people, need this?”
During the week of 15-21, the highlight
was the Czar’s toast during his visit to Constanza.
It emphasized Russia’s concern for her co- religionists and the long-standing
friendship with Romania. These comments were not regarded as reassuring,
especially since the friendship had existed with the Monarchy rather than the
Russian Empire. There also were the usual reports about the Albanian problems and
the Greco-Turkish dispute over some islands in the Aegean.
The Albanian crisis persisted in the
following week, but the Greco-Turkish conflict was nearing a peaceful settlement.
On the 26th it was noted that England’s Foreign Secretary Sir Edward
Grey refused to get drawn into the Albanian problem. Serbia’s King was ill and
had handed over his duties to his son. Austria’s negotiations with Serbia over
a railway link to the Aegean were proceeding. On the 27th the paper
reported that 1200 Austrian volunteers had registered to fight in Albania and a
brawl between Germans and Czechs was expected to take place on Sunday in Brno
during a Czech demonstration.
The Sunday 28 entry stated: “In view of
the upcoming holiday the next issue will appear on Tuesday.” It also was noted
that efforts to recruit volunteers for Albania had been forbidden. From all of
this it is noteworthy that Franz Ferdinand’s visit to the maneuvers in Bosnia,
which took place on the previous Friday and Saturday, was apparently regarded
as routine and didn’t merit any particular discussion.
The events of that Sunday morning in
Sarajevo are well known and merely need to be summarized. The maneuvers had
gone reasonably well and while Franz Ferdinand was busy with his military
duties his wife, who had accompanied him to Bosnia, had gone shopping in
near-by Sarajevo. For Sunday a brief official visit to the city was planned,
and they were to return home later in the afternoon. At somewhat after 10 in
the morning, while the motorcade was on its way to Sarajevo’s Town Hall, a
Bosnian youngster, NedeljikoCabrinovic,
threw a bomb at the Crown Prince’s car. It rolled off, exploded under the rear
wheel of the following car and wounded one of its passengers, Colonel Merizzi. The motorcade sped off to the Town Hall where all
the dignitaries, who had no idea of what had happened, were assembled. The
mayor launched into his prepared speech which emphasized the friendly spirit of
the Bosnian people towards the Monarchy and this, obviously, didn’t sit right
with the Crown Prince. For a moment his well-known temper ran away with him,
but he collected himself and the mayor was encouraged to finish his speech. At
a private meeting thereafter the question what to do next was discussed. Some
argued for an immediate return home, but Franz Ferdinand decided that it was
his duty to defy adversity and stay with the official program. In addition he
asked that before the scheduled visit to the Konak (the governor’s residence) he be taken to the military
hospital to visit the wounded Colonel, although he had been told that the wound
was quite minor. It was this humanitarian gesture which killed the heir to the
throne and subsequently the Monarchy.
In order to avoid further mishaps the
motorcade route was changed to avoid the “dogleg” at the junction of Franz
Josef Street and Apple Quai. But somebody had forgotten to tell the drivers of
the route change. When the first two cars turned into Franz Josef Street the
driver of the third car, with Franz Ferdinand and his wife, who had insisted of
accompanying him in spite of him having asked her not to, likewise began to
turn. But General Potiorek, who was also in the car,
stopped the driver, said that this was the wrong route and that he should
instead continue at high speed on Apple Quai. But this was precisely the corner
where another one of the six conspirators happened to stand. While the car was
temporarily immobilized Gavrilo Princip fired two shots at the stationary
passengers, killing both the Arch Duke and his wife. Princip was promptly roughed
up by the crowd and arrested. But the plan had succeeded and Princip is still
accorded high honors by some of his compatriots for having allowed the dream of
Greater Serbia to come to fruition
Austrian authorities immediately began
legal investigations and within a few days the details of the assassination
plot became public knowledge. There was no doubt that certain circles within
the Serbian government had been involved. As mentioned in Part I, it was known
that the Chief of Serbian Army Intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijvić,
was also the leader of the secret societies which attempted to achieve a Greater
Serbia, at the expense of the Monarchy, through acts of terrorism. This was the
reason why Austria insisted that her legal experts need to participate in
Belgrade’s investigation of the crime. But since the Colonel’s activities were
supposed to have been secret, the Serbian government had to reject the demand
for what now would be called reasons of “national security.”
As mentioned in Part I Franz Ferdinand
had been the peace advocate and Polatschek in his book Franz Ferdinand –EuropasVerloreneHoffnung quoted several comments the Crown Prince
had made in February 1913. The Austrian military, under the leadership of its
Chief of Staff Conrad von Hoetzendorf and the Minister of War Alexander von Krobatin,
had constantly urged war with Serbia in order to rid the Monarchy of the pesky
neighbor who kept agitating for a Greater Serbia. Here is an excerpt of how
Franz Ferdinand saw the situation:
Without giving
anything away, we have to work towards maintaining the peace. To get into the Great
War with Russia is a disaster. If we engage in a local war with Serbia, we’ll
cut them down in short order, but then what? What good will it do for us? First, all of Europe will be upset about us and
regard us as disturbers of the peace and, may God protect us, we annex Serbia;
a country that has massive debts and is chock full of regicides and scoundrels …
We can throw billions into that country and will always have a dreadful Irredentism… First of all we must create order in our own
house, then others willno longer regard
us as a state which is about to collapse, then we shall again receive respect
in the concert of nations, and can pursue a strong foreign policy.
He furthermore stated that the best
policy was to sit by and watch how the Balkan states “bash each other’s heads
in.” On another occasion when he was told that the Chief of Staff had again urged
immediate war, even at the risk of war with Russia, Franz Ferdinand exploded:
Conrad’s idea is
insane. A war with Russia will kill us. When we go against Serbia, Russia
stands behind them and we have war with Russia. Shall the Emperor of Austria
and the Czar of Russia mutually shove each other off the throne and give free
reign to the revolution? Tell Conrad that I shall decisively decline any
further suggestions of this type.
Those were his genuine feelings, but
the good advice died with him. As soon as the burial ceremonies were over, the
question how to respond had to be addressed. The Austrians, with Conrad in the
lead, pushed for final tabula rasa,
war with Serbia, regardless of consequences, if Germany were to approve. The
Hungarians under Prime Minister Count István Tisza
were more cautious. They were not only concerned about Russia’s attitude but
also, and especially, that of Romania. Hungary had a large Romanian minority in
Transylvania, which already was restive, and there was fear that open revolt
might break out with Romania coming to their aid. In addition, there was Franz
Ferdinand’s question: what do we do after we have won? This became a critical
issue in July when Russia and England wanted an answer to this question. Furthermore,
the Hungarians did not want any increase of Slavic people because it would
threaten the dual nature of the Monarchy and a tripartite state, with
corresponding less influence of the Hungarians, might emerge.
Since, as mentioned in Part I, the
Austrian parliament had been suspended as of March 1914 and the government
ruled by decrees, no information about its plans became public in the early
days of July. But we now know from the historical literature that the tentative
decision for war with Serbia was made in meetings on July 2nd and 3rd.
The Foreign ministry’s Chef du Cabinet,
Count Alexander Hoyos, departed for Berlin during the evening of the 3rd
in order to ascertain Germany’s attitude. The sum and substance of the
conversations, which included the Kaiser, was: do what you must, but do it fast
while the world is still appalled by the regicide; we shall support you in the
court of public opinion and if need be militarily. This has subsequently been
termed Germany’s “blank check,” which allowed war preparations against Serbia
to go forward.
Germany’s reply was gratefully received
in Vienna but now a glaring defect in Conrad’s fiery warmongering became
apparent. As Christopher Clark in the Sleepwalkers
reported, the option of an immediate attack on Serbia was rejected in the
meeting which followed Hoyos’ return. Tisza, whose agreement on a matter of
such importance was constitutionally necessary, insisted that before any
military action Serbia should be diplomatically humiliated. In addition, this
was summertime and the “Austrian General Staff had devised a system that
allowed men on active service to return to their family farms to help with the
crops and then rejoin their units in time for the summer maneuvers … troops
serving in the units at Agram (Zagreb), Graz, Pressburg (Bratislava), Cracow,
Temesvar (Timisoara), Innsbruck and Budapest were currently on harvest leave
and would not be returning to service until 25 July.” These were the regions
from which a strike force would have been assembled and this explains the
month-long delay between the assassination and the declaration of war. It
should be noted that in the mind of Austrian politicians, which included the
Emperor, war with Serbia had already been decided upon on July 7, and by the 14th
agreement was reached that Serbia should be served with a harsh ultimatum which
contained terms it was unlikely to accept (e.g. Austria’s participation in
Belgrade’s criminal investigations). Upon its rejection war would be declared.
These discussions were meant to be kept secret, but the Germans were to some
extent informed, and word about the unacceptable ultimatum also reached Russia.
When the Czar was appraised he is reported to have said: “’In
my view, no country can present demands to another, unless it has decided to go
to war.”’
Clark noted that the Serbian authorities
had also heard about it by the 17th and “this prior knowledge
facilitated the formulation and coordination – in advance of the presentation of the ultimatum to Belgrade [italics
in the original] – of a firmly rejectionist position, eloquently expressed in Pašić’s [Serbian prime Minister] circular of 19 July
to the Serbian legations abroad: ‘We cannot accept those demands which no other
country that respects its own independence and dignity would accept.’” The
French President, Raymond Poincaré, was scheduled to arrive in St. Petersburg,
for a long planned state visit, on the 20th and the Austrian
politicians, still assuming that their war plans were secret, did not want to
give the Russians and French an opportunity to coordinate their plans. This is
why the delivery of the ultimatum was postponed to 6 p.m. of the 23rd
when Poincaré was on his way home. Yet, as hindsight shows, both countries were
fully aware of the game that was played and had ample time to coordinate their
response. “The notion – promulgated by Sazonov [Russian Foreign minister] and
later put about in the literature – that the news of the ultimatum came as a
terrible shock to the Russians and the French on 23 July, when the note was
presented to the Serbian foreign ministry, is nonsense,” Clark wrote. In Austria’s
quest for secrecy the Germans were not even sent a copy of the ultimatum’s text
until the day before it was delivered and the third partner of the Triple
Alliance, Italy, was ignored. The Italians had to read it in the newspapers,
although they were of course aware of the leaked general information. The
Austrian authorities also assumed that even if Italy did not immediately join
the war alongside its treaty partners, it would at least stay neutral. That the
country’s desires for the Italian speaking provinces of the Monarchy, which
were well known in Austria, could not be satisfied by a victorious war against
Serbia, but only by the Monarchy’s defeat, was not taken into consideration.
In
hindsight we, therefore, know that Austria had decided on war with Serbia no
later than the 7th of July and everything thereafter was either
eyewash and/or the attempt to limit the war to that country. We now can ask: what
were the common people, who bear the brunt of the war’s burdens, told about the
affairs as they played out in the chancelleries of the world? In its editorial
of July 4 the NFP asked: “What is the
crime of Sarajevo?” Here is the essence of the answer:
It is the result
of a policy which believes that it can split itself into official
responsibility and unofficial irresponsibility [amtliche und nichtamtliche]. The official policy
puts forth its hands to show that there is not a trace of blood on it. It has
only words of friendship and peace. With a harmless face it wants to leave the
impression of good will. The unofficial one dares to play a demonic game with
the worst passions, race-hatred and all animal lusts which the heart harbors,
and when unleashed engages in the worst cruelties. Yet they are celebrated as
national heroism. It prepares the next wars. It considers itself to be above
all moral law and arms the criminals in its pay with bombs and revolvers. The
unofficial policy wants war.
The
words referred to Serbia but I am printing them here because the same applies
to some extent to the “Intelligence Services” of most governments of major
powers, including ours. On July 6 the paper expressed surprise that Russia had joined
Serbia in the rejection of the request that Austrian legal experts participate
in Belgrade’s investigation of the crime’s perpetrators. In addition, it wrote,
“In Russia the drum-roll pronounces that Serbia will not be alone in its fight
for independence.” The London Times
was also quoted, but I don’t have the original English version only the German
translation which I am re-translating into English. “It would be utter
foolishness [nichtswaereunweiser] for the Austro-Hungarian government if it
were to leave the impression that it wants to use this crime for political
purposes.”
On
July 8 the NFP complained that the
official report on the July 7 ministerial meeting, at which the government had
made the decision for war, was scant [kaerglich]. Serbia had been mentioned in only two
non-committal sentences. But on the following day the paper reported that Tisza
had addressed the Hungarian parliament and the essence was that the Monarchy
wants peace, but not at any cost. On July 13 further tensions between the
Monarchy and Serbia were reported and memories of the 1908 annexation crisis
were evoked. It might have led to war at that time had England not prevented
it. In Hungary, Tisza had stated that the relations between Serbia and the
Monarchy will have to be solved for good; mere words of good will were not
enough. There had to be guarantees that the constant vicious agitation (Hetzerei) would
stop. On the 16th it was reported that Tisza stated: “Serbia still
has a choice and that he regards war only as the last measure if all else
fails. Serbia and Greater Serbia are mutually exclusive.”
The
July 17 edition dealt with Poincare’s visit to Russia, and in a previous
article it had been noted that France had spent billions, on re-arming Russia
after the 1905 defeat. She now wanted to re-direct Russia from the Balkans
against Germany for the future World War. In regard to the overall situation
the paper wrote that Serbia was tied to Russia. But neither Russia nor France
would want to get sidelined in a corner of the Balkans. The edition also
reprinted an article from the German press, which provided a glimpse into the
thoughts of the military. It was written by Lt. Colonel Frobenius
ret. and the headline was “The German Reich’s fateful hour.” Here is a
translation of its essence:
In view of the
military alliance between France and Russia the situation is beginning to look
so serious for Germany that she will be unable to remain patient for much
longer and one has to reckon with the probability of a military solution in the
not too distant future. England’s goal is the destruction of our navy but not
our power on land. Russia has no quarrel with Germany but will be involved
through the Balkan problem of Austria-Hungary. Russia knows that her goals
there will conflict not only with Austria-Hungary but Germany and she is,
therefore, chained to the treaty with France. Pushed by France, Russia is
preparing for an offensive war. France’s three years of military duty are
nothing else but a constant readiness for war. This cannot be maintained for
any length of time and France has to push for war in 1915 or 1916. Up to now
there was no war because England did not see any potential profit. On the other
hand, France is obsessed with revanche, and Russia with the elimination
of Austria-Hungary. War readiness will be achieved in the spring of 1915 and
one can then expect the armies to march at any moment.
The
pamphlet had been sent to Germany’s Crown Prince who thanked the author and
advocated its widest distribution. The NFP
did not provide the date when it was originally prepared and published. On July
19 the opinion was offered that France and Russia wouldn’t go to war for Serbia
and on the 20th that Germany and England didn’t want a world-wide
conflagration. On the 21st it wrote: “There is still the choice
between war and peace. The Monarchy has not the slightest desire to settle this
conflict with the sword. The toasts in St. Petersburg by the Czar and Poincaré
were peaceful.”
On
July 24 the paper stated: “The ultimatum has been delivered. Serbia has done
nothing in the past four weeks but spewed hatred against the Monarchy. War and
peace is now in Serbia’s hands. We do not believe that its government was
unaware that the assassins, who had confessed to it, were trained and equipped
by Belgrade.” The overall political
situation was described in this way: England certainly did not desire that the
quarrel with Serbia leads to World War. France was in Russia’s tow but her
desire was for the maintenance of peace and the enthusiasm for Serbia had
markedly cooled. France would work for moderation in Belgrade and St.
Petersburg. Russia had the choice whether or not she would provide the spark
for war between the Great Powers of Europe. The Czar’s peaceful intentions were
known.
From
the foregoing it is obvious that the editors of the NFP either had no concept of the real situation or, more likely,
followed their government’s orders to “keep things cool.”On July 26 Serbia’s rejection of the
ultimatum was common knowledge and the NFP wrote of the imminence of the war
with Serbia, but England would prevent a general European war. On the 28th:
“A World War can come about only through a “heinous sin (frevelhafteSünde) against humanity. Russia will
engage in some hard thinking before she unleashes untold ruin.”
The
edition from the 29th carried the Emperor’s War Manifesto from the
previous day. He declared that although he had intended to spend the last years
of his life peacefully, it had now become a matter of honor for the Monarchy.
He was fully aware of the consequences that might follow, but he put his faith
in the army and the Almighty that victory would be achieved. The paper then
discussed the question of local vs. general war with the decision up to Russia.
Count Andrassy of Hungary opined that a World War was not necessary; on the
contrary it was not even probable. From Germany it was reported: “One hopes
that, through the influence of the Powers, Russia will be obliging. On the
other hand, if there were to be even a partial mobilization of her army the
entire German army will be mobilized.”
From
then on fate took its inexorable course. Although Wilhelm sent a personal
telegram to Nicholas pleading for peace, and the Czar likewise responded in a
peaceful manner, the events were no longer in their hands. The Russian military
had already ordered a partial mobilization on the 28th and when on
the 31st the message of full mobilization was received in Germany
there was no turning back. War on Russia
was declared on the 1st of August and, in accordance with the
Schlieffen plan, two days later on France. This military plan, will be
discussed in relation to England’s entry into the war in the August
installment.
It
is, therefore, apparent that, for public consumption, the blame game was
already front and center. Austria had early on decided that the Serbian problem
could only be solved by war, which she hoped, against all odds, could be localized.
But Serbia had Russia’s backing all along and could afford to remain defiant.
The NFP also misjudged Poincaré who
was from Alsace-Lorraine and wished for war with Germany in the hope of
regaining the provinces. He, therefore, did his best to inflame Russia against
Germany, although Russia’s real quarrel was with Austria. In France’s War
Manifesto he had included “Vive
Alsace-Lorraine.” But since these words smacked of revanche, they were omitted in the official publication. The guilt for the
war had to be placed entirely on Germany’s shoulders.
In
the next installment I shall discuss England’s role after August 1, while the war
was still limited to the European continent. I also shall provide some
instructive snippets of war propaganda as well as unlearned lessons of WWI. These
affect our current political decisions in regard to the Middle East as well as
Russia and China.
August 1, 2014
WWI Part III THE CATASTROPHE AND ITS AFTERMATH
In the previous installment I
covered the events after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, up to England’s entry
into the war. I also mentioned that I would discuss England’s reasons for doing so. But
first let me return to Vienna’s newspapers on anno.onb.ac.at,
and specifically the NeueFreiePresse (NFP), for the critical week of July 31 to
August 6, while keeping in mind that the paper always reported and discussed
the events of the previous day. The reports, therefore, deal with the period of
July 30, when Germany had developed second thoughts about the Monarchy’s rush
into war with Serbia and tried to use its influence to moderate Vienna’s rigid
course, to August 5 by which time all the major European powers were at war.
The reason for doing so is twofold. It removes impersonal history from books
that were written after the fact and places it into daily reporting so that we
can follow what the average citizen, who always bears the brunt of wars’
burdens, was told. It also allows a comparison with today’s news reports about
the currently ongoing wars. The importance will become apparent in later pages.
One more word of explanation: the translations are not necessarily literal
because the editorial writer(s) used at times flowery language. I, therefore,
tried to capture the meaning as it might be appropriate for our century.
On July 31, after the Monarchy had
already declared war on Serbia,
the NFP reported: “European peace is not yet dead; it lives with a feeble pulse
and labored respirations…. The Czar does not want war and neither do the
Russian people. But the military is pushing for war.” On page 2 we read:
“Highest tension in all of Europe. The great
international crisis is nearing its climax. Russia’s
main concern is the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s [henceforth abbreviated as the Monarchy]
plans for Serbia
after the war. It wants the Monarchy to abstain from its demand to participate
in Serbia’s investigation of
the Sarajevo
crime and its attendant Greater Serbia machinations. It should never make Serbia its
protectorate.” The paper then editorialized: “But we have no intention to do
so, all we want is that we should at long last be left in peace…. But the
question remains if the cabinets are still masters of the situation and whether
there are already other considerations. The Russian newspapers are not
belligerent and believe that peace can be preserved. Are Russia’s
diplomatic efforts merely a smokescreen to drag things out so that military
preparations can proceed? To expect from Austria to already declare what it
will do when the war is over is a non-starter.”
The August 1 paper carried the
headline: “General mobilization. The Monarchy and its ally Germany under
arms.” The paper wrote:
Today’s events are too enormous for comprehension…. There
are no historical parallels to provide guidance … only the feeling remains that
the world stands before events for which no comparison exists. Russia has
forced the war upon us because it hates the Monarchy and wants to crush it [herabdruecken]….
Reuters reported that on the 28th a partial mobilization of the
Russian army had been ordered for the south and southwest. This does not mean
that relations between the Monarchy and Russia have been severed and one
confidently hopes that the European powers will succeed in achieving an accord.
Russia’s attitude will now clarify itself through the German demand that it
declares its intentions. Then there will be no doubt if the principle of the
dual face, which on the one hand tortures domestic terrorists, but supports
them with all of the state’s official power when another country is concerned,
will be victorious.
France, obviously, will stand at the side of her ally
Russia. It is, however, still highly questionable what stance England will
take. If England also were to but in [sicheinmengen)]
then we would truly have, what a diplomat called, the greatest political crime
ever. At stake is a struggle of armies of millions, the loss of billions [Milliarden], and
the destruction of what decades of diligent efforts have created.”
The August 2nd Editorial
stated:
Kaiser Wilhelm has ordered the mobilization of all of
Germany’s military forces. Perhaps before this summer night has passed and dawn
colors the sky, there will be the great event, the declaration of war, which
has become unstoppable in the tumult of divergent views. Five major powers
enmeshed in a war, battles on land and sea, under water and in the air, weapons
of fantastic perfection, and the millions who, on this beautiful August day,
when nature seems to be pleased about herself, leave their fields and meadows,
offices and factories, to throw themselves against the enemy! All of this is on
such a grand scale that it defies description. Only the sense remains that a
Sophocles would be needed to put the looming tragedy for humanity into words
which convey what now moves the hearts.
When the children in coming ages will ask what their fathers
and mothers, who experienced these events, felt, the answers will depend on
individual predispositions. But some might admit, that when the world lost its
way [ausihrenFugengeriet], they felt
helplessness against the inevitable. In the knowledge that the individual is
unable to exert any influence they became, so to say, spectators of themselves;
full of curiosity what would become of them after all these convulsions [Erschuetterungen].
In analogy to the public which views a theatrical performance, accompanies it
with compassion and tears, and yet cannot do anything other than absorb these
streams of impressions [Einwirkungen].
In regard to England, the paper
asked: “Is it conceivable that England will join the Czar in this imminent life
and death struggle who is one of its most dangerous enemies? It seems that England is
going to adopt a wait and see attitude. An alliance of the British Empire with Russia would be
a monstrosity against nature.”
Under the date of August 1 we find:
This is the day when diplomacy leaves off and looks back in
horror on a field of rubble [Truemmerfeld] where nearly all possibilities for a peaceful
solution are buried. There was no reply to Germany’s 12 hour ultimatum for
Russia to declare its intentions. Kaiser Wilhelm regards himself as having been
shamefully deceived [schmaehlichbetrogen]. On
the Czar’s personal request he had begun efforts to influence the Monarchy
towards a peaceful solution of the crisis, but this was undercut by the general
mobilization of Russia’s army and navy. The German government has announced
that unless Russia stops preparations for war within 12 hours and, in addition,
will provide an official statement to that effect, Germany will mobilize her
forces. France was given a similar ultimatum with a deadline of 18 hours.Russia, and no one but Russia, is responsible
for this impending disaster by having fostered a Serbian megalomania which
drove this state to crave the impossible and the arrogance to carry it to
extremes.
By August 3 Germany had declared war on Russia. The
Russians were “deceitful” because they mobilized while Germany was working
with the Monarchy for preserving peace among the Great Powers. French planes
were spotted over western Germany
and Russian patrols had crossed the German border even before the ultimatum had
expired. Bombs were thrown from a plane over Nuremberg, which was “a flagrant violation of
international law and an act of barbarism.”
On August 4 the paper stated: “A
general mobilization has never previously happened…. Millions are under arms…. France is
dragged into the war against her will…. Russia has entered the war because
of the Balkans and the people living there have the feeling of being stalked by
a beast of prey. No one in the Monarchy could say that this war is not a
defense of life itself.
The August 5 edition stated under
the headline “Danger of War between Germany and England: A war between England
and Germany would be the most dismal event for all of humanity. The war England intends to lead against Germany would
be the ghastliest crime which has ever been recorded. This war would be
insanity, nothing but insanity.”
On August 6 the NFP tried to explain
why England did enter this
“fratricidal war” against Germany:
“England
is addicted to monopoly, which is fueled by a sense of superiority through
which it regards the entire world as destined to become British property.”
It is, therefore, apparent that England’s entry
into the war came as a complete shock. The more so since relations between England and Germany had improved earlier in the
year. Toland noted, in the previously mentioned 13 Days, that in January of 1914 Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent
Secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote to Sir William Goschen, Britain’s
ambassador in Berlin, “’I think there is no likelihood of serious friction
among the big European powers.’” “On June 15 Germany
and Britain finally
concluded the difficult negotiations over a railway construction through the
Ottoman Empire to Baghdad,” and “on June 23 a
large number of Royal Navy ships arrived in Kiel
on a courtesy visit as part of the Kiel
regatta.”
This
was the background against which England’s war declaration was seen
by Germans and Austrians. It made no sense whatsoever. Yes, Belgian neutrality
was violated by Germany, but that was a matter of necessity rather than choice
and Germany had officially declared that Belgium’s integrity would be preserved,
and reparations paid for damages incurred, if no hostile actions were taken and
free passage was allowed for its armies. It was felt that there were numerous
historical precedents for this and for England to insist on the letter of
the law, which guaranteed neutrality, was hypocrisy.
To
understand England’s action in August 1914 we have to go back to the Boer War
of 1899-1902. The reason for that war was greed. England
wanted the Transvaal gold mines and used
grievances by hired workers, mostly English and Irish, as an excuse for a
full-scale invasion. An 1895 half-hearted incursion (Jameson expedition), which
had been expected to lead to an uprising by the workers, had failed and
subsequent negotiations between the parties had likewise been fruitless. Britain then
thought that overwhelming force would lead to a quick result, but it was not to
be. The Boers defended their homeland with vigor, and when military means
failed against the guerilla tactics of the Boers, Lord Kitchener employed more
drastic means. Boers’ farms were burned to the ground and the women and
children of the fighting men sent to concentration camps. This was meant to put
pressure on the husbands to surrender. It didn’t work; the war went on.
Conditions in the camps became increasingly worse and eventually even
children’s rations were cut in half. When this became known throughout Europe, England was not
only shamed, but stood abandoned by the civilized world. It is, however, to the
credit of the British that their newspapers published these abuses of power.
More than 27,000 civilians reportedly died in the camps of whom more than
22,000 were under the age of 16.
Eventually
a peace treaty was signed and the damage to Britain’s
prestige in Europe had to be repaired. This
could only be achieved via France with whom it had mutual interests in North Africa. The relationship with Germany had already somewhat
soured in 1895 after the Jameson raid when the impulsive Wilhelm II had sent a
short congratulatory telegram to Transvaal President Krueger on the occasion of
his success. It was only one paragraph, but thoroughly upset British pride and
added fuel to the already beginning fire over German naval armaments.
The
Entente Cordiale between Britain
and France was signed in
1904 and, although it did not contain official military clauses, it was quietly
agreed upon that France
could send its fleet to the Mediterranean while England
would defend France’s
northern shore. This aspect became crucial ten years later. The presumed adversary
was Germany which had offended both England and France. England’s concerns were not only in regard to
the German navy but German industrial production had overtaken that of Britain. Russia was added to the Entente in 1907 when England and Russia
came to an agreement over their central Asian domains specifically: Persia, Afghanistan
and Tibet.
Thus the Triple Entente was born and there were now two power blocks facing
each other. While this sounds impressive the relationships within these
alliances were not necessarily harmonious, as has been mentioned in regard to Austria and Italy,
but it was also tenuous between England
and Russia.
The Triple Entente did not contain military obligations for England, but the agreement between Russia and France did stipulate military
intervention if either country were to be attacked.
As
mentioned above, British relations with Germany
had improved by the summer of 1914 and there were no significant problems
between these two countries even up to and including the Monarchy’s declaration
of War against Serbia.
During July, Parliament’s concern was over “Home Rule” for Ireland which was
bitterly opposed by Ulster (essentially today’s Northern Ireland). Earlier in
the month there was even talk about civil war in that country, which would have
required British troops to put it down. Toland noted
in regard to the July 25 London events that Prime Minister Asquith wrote to his
friend Venetia Stanley about “the view in some quarters of the government that a
[European] war might be a way out of the Irish crisis.” Negotiations continued
but were subsequently postponed when war against Germany was declared.
Belgium’s
neutrality was indeed a sore point for the British but, as both Toland and
Clark (The Sleepwalkers; mentioned in
the previous installments), pointed out, neutrality per se was not the sticking
point. If Germany had merely
advanced through the southern portion of Belgium,
England
might not have entered the war. But German control of the channel coast was
deemed to have been out of the question and a
casus belli. In addition there was Britain’s
fragile relationship with Russia.
There was no love lost between these two empires. On the contrary, as the NFP
had correctly pointed out, they were bitter rivals. Russia had made inroads
into Persia, controlled its northern portion, and England feared that if the
Russians were to move further south the oil fields would fall into their hands.
This would have been a serious problem because the Royal Navy, Britain’s only
strength and shield, which already had to a considerable extent converted from
coal to oil, would be seriously adversely impacted.
There
was also the problem of India.
Russia had, with French money, vastly expanded her railroad network that now
reached to the frontiers with Afghanistan and northwestern India. This would
allow the Czar to rapidly move his troops into that area. England would have to come by sea and her troop
strength was, of course, no match against Russia’s. England could
not rely on native Indian forces as the rebellion of 1857 had shown. The
British suffered from Imperial overstretch, but had to defend the Empire the
best they could. This was also the reason for the naval treaty with Japan in 1902.
It was intended to curb Russia’s
moves into China and Korea. The
treaty was re-negotiated in 1905 and called for Japanese support of British
interests in India while Britain obligated itself to support Japan in Korea. After having been renewed
again in 1911, the treaty remained in effect in 1914 and led to Japan’s
declaration of war against Germany on August 14 and against the Monarchy on
August 25. As Toland pointed out, “Britain’s policy during the July crisis of
1914 can only be understood within this wider imperial context and the latent
threat posed to the British Empire not by Germany, but by Britain’s friends
France and Russia.”
Nevertheless,
even during the morning of August 2 the British cabinet was still divided in
regard to intervention because public opinion was against it. But by the
afternoon some clarity began to emerge. A declaration of war would depend on
the actions of the Belgian government. “If Belgium reacted like Luxembourg and
made a token protest or did not resist the transit of German troops through the
southeast of the country then Britain could not intervene – it was impossible
to be more ‘Belgian than the Belgians.’” But the Belgians decided to resist and
in their rejection of the German ultimatum on August 3 stated that “ … if they
were to accept the proposals submitted to them, they would sacrifice the honor
of the nation and betray at the same time their duties towards Europe …” In the
afternoon ofthat day Foreign Secretary
Grey concentrated in his speech to the Commons on “’British interests, British
honor and British obligations,’” which meant that,“Britain could not stand aside and see
France and Belgium defeated.” War was declared the following day.
We
must now ask ourselves why did Germany not wait for a few days and let France
make the first move, which its treaty with Russia required. France likely would also have gone through Belgium and the
shoe would have been on the other foot. The problem was the Schlieffen plan,
named after the former German Chief of Staff. It was a military operational
plan in disregard of political consequences and there was no Plan B!
After
the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 it became increasingly apparent that if a
major European war were to break out Germany
would have to face both France
and Russia.
Furthermore, as a result of the 1905 defeat, Russia’s military forces were
completely re-organized and it was assumed that by 1915, or the latest 1917,
they would have achieved a size that would have made them unbeatable.
Schlieffen’s original plan envisaged only war against France, but as
a result of the Franco-Russian alliance a two front war had become inevitable.
Since France
was regarded as the weaker partner it would have to be eliminated first. But
after the 1871 defeat, France had fortified its border against Germany, which
made a rapid victory possible only if these fortifications were bypassed. This could
take place either via Holland, as envisioned originally by Schlieffen, or
Belgium as carried out by his successor, Moltke.
Since full Russian mobilization was known to take about three weeks, time was
of the essence. France had
to be dealt such a serious blow in the first few weeks that some German forces
could thereafter be withdrawn and thrown against Russia. That was the plan, and it
seemed to initially have worked. But Moltke, confronted with the danger of a
Russian invasion of East Prussia, reduced the Western forces prematurely and
the four-year stalemate resulted. Hitler’s generals modified the Schlieffen
plan in 1940, by adding a main thrust through the Ardennes, and France was
defeated within 6 weeks.
In retrospect one wonders how all the
belligerents could have expected “to be home by Christmas,” but such is the
power of wishful thinking. When the carnage had become obvious it was too late for
either side to end it, because propaganda had inflamed passions to an extent that
made rational thinking impossible. The casualty lists in 1916 staggered the imagination
and a German military song of those times was “In Flandernreitet
der Tod” – Death rides in Flanders.
During the Battle of the Somme
approximately 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed. On the first day of the
offensive there were 57,400 British casualties, 19,240 of whom were killed. At
about the same time the Battle of Verdun resulted in estimates of casualties
ranging from 714,231 to 976,000. The Brusilov
offensive in the East, which led to a defeat of the Monarchy’s army and forced
Germany to withdraw forces from Verdun, led to 1,446,334 total casualties. That
was the insanity the NFP had envisioned before the outbreak of the general war
and it had become reality.
Let
us now look at the final outcome in terms of casualties and financial losses.
It is estimated that the total loss of life for both sides exceeded 31 million,
which made it the costliest war up to that time. When one considers only the
military forces in terms of: killed, wounded, prisoners of war and missing in
action, and furthermore limits them to over 50 per cent for a given country one
finds that, on the Allied side, Russia lost 76 %, France 73 % and Romania 71 %.
Among the Central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey), the
Monarchy lost a staggering 90% and Germany 64%. http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html.
While
these numbers are chilling, they conceal an even greater tragedy. They deal
with the mentally and physically best young men in their respective countries.
What could these people have accomplished had they been allowed to pursue their
careers in civilian life? What could their children, who never had a chance to
born, have achieved? This is another aspect of this crime against humanity,
which now is called WWI.
As
far as financial losses are concerned, Wikipedia tells us that the Allies
spent, in 1913 billions of dollars, about 147 and the Central powers 61. It is
obvious that the Allies had more resources and, therefore, could be more
generous in their expenditures but there is another fact which the popular
media shy away from. On the Allied side the brunt of the financial burden was
carried by the British. They financed, in addition to the empire’s war effort,
all of Italy’s and two thirds of that of France and Russia. In as much as in
those days the world’s currencies had to be backed by gold, London had depleted
its reserves by the fall of 1916 and had to appeal to the U.S. for loans. If America had been
truly neutral it would have had to deny that request. The war would have ended
right then and there, probably with a victory for the Central Powers. This had
to be forestalled and was the true cause of America’s entry into the war. The
Allies had to win and the financial losses would have to be made up by the
defeated countries in form of reparations.
What
was accomplished by this human catastrophe? It brought us WWII and the current
political instability, which could again lead to a World War at any time. The
“peace treaties,” which followed the war, were dictates by the victors who drew
arbitrary borders. The Monarchy was totally dismembered into its various
nationalities, which became “successor states.” But they in turn contained
significant ethnic diversities within their borders that made future conflict
inevitable. The German speaking part of the Monarchy became the Republic of Austria. But when its leaders,
Socialists at the time, felt that this rump country was not viable they wanted
to join Germany.
The Allies said no. Hitler temporarily redressed the situation, but Austria again
regained independence in 1955. As a constitutionally guaranteed neutral state
within the EU, the country is now at least as well off, if not better, as in
the spring of 1914 and unencumbered by the woes of a multinational empire. Serbia temporarily achieved its dream of a Yugoslavia, but
it fell apart during WWII and finally in the early 1990s. The Kosovo war of
1998-1990 reduced Serbia’s
size again to about what it was after the first Balkan war in 1912. Russia lost
major portions of its empire. The Czar, together with his family, was murdered
during the civil war and the country had to suffer under Communism for nearly
the rest of the 20th century. Germany
lost Alsace-Lorraine and East Prussia was
severed from the rest of the country by the Polish Corridor to the Baltic Sea. The German city Danzig (today Poland’s
Gdansk) was established as a “Free City” under the protectorate of the League
of Nations and became the proximate cause for WWII. France regained Alsace-Lorraine but
the human and financial sacrifices were of such a magnitude that it never fully
recovered its status as one of the “Great Powers.” England had turned into a
debtor nation to its former colony and keeping the empire intact became
increasingly difficult. WWII was fought for its preservation, but that effort
failed and led to the national liberation wars around the world. Is this really
what its statesmen had in mind on August 4 a hundred years ago?
Anyone
who believes that WWI is ancient history and that mankind will not make the
same mistake again is caught in wishful thinking. The U.S. has moved into the
position of the British Empire and now regards itself as the arbiter of world
affairs. But how many people know that Ukraine, currently one of the major “hot
spots,” was first established as a client state by and for Germany in the
spring of 1918? The Brest-Litovsk treaty carved it out of Russia, just as
Belarus. The Soviet Union, after it recovered from its civil war, again reabsorbed
these states and their current independence dates to 1991. At present Ukraine
seems to have moved into a position somewhat analogous to 1914 Serbia. We want
to pull it into our area of hegemony, but the Russians are not willing to let
go of it. This weeks’ TIME Magazine carried on its blood-red cover page the
headline “Cold War II,” and the Wall
Street Journal proclaimed a few days ago: “U.S., Europe to Turn Up Heat on Russia.” This is the same insanity,
there is no other word for it, that led to WWI. Instead of accommodating
Russia’s, and I might add China’s, legitimate concerns and working with these
countries to counter the common jihadist threat, we are deliberately antagonizing
them. This can hardly end well.
In
the Middle East, the Allies dismembered the Ottoman Empire according to their
wishes, in disregard of those held by the inhabitants. The borders were
arbitrary and in addition England created a “Homeland for Jews in Palestine” which
grew into the State of Israel with its attendant unceasing wars. The Israelis
thought, and still think, that they can enforce their will by military might.
The current carnage in Gaza is only the latest example. But they disregard a
fundamental fact of human nature namely, that permanent peace between adversaries
can only be established by meeting mutual interests rather than by continued
threats and intimidation. In the quest for a purely “Jewish state,” instead of
a constitutional democracy, Israeli politicians neglect the feelings of the
about 20 percent Arab population of Israel proper (pre-June 1967 borders).
Although this segment of Israel’s people has so far been relatively quiescent,
the current chaos in Syria and Iraq will not stop at Israel’s borders and even
Jordan’s monarchy may have a limited life expectancy. All of this misery is the
result of bad decisions, which were based on wrong assumptions, after the end
of WWI and were perpetuated thereafter.
WWI
and WWII, its inevitable successor, should have taught mankind that wars hardly
ever achieve what those who initiate them intend to accomplish. It may now be
argued that the wars did prevent the world from falling into the hands of
Prussian militarism, which would have disregarded international law and snuffed
out freedom all over the world. This prevalent Western view was again expounded
earlier this year by Isabel V Hull, Professor of History at Cornell University
in A Scrap of Paper – Breaking and Making
International Law during the Great War. I shall discuss the sections that
are relevant for America’s current conduct in the next installment.
Unless
we learn that wars beget wars there will be no end and they will become
increasingly disastrous. The tragedy of mankind is that we have achieved
phenomenal technological progress, but have emotionally remained mired in the Stone
Age. We have thereby now become the most dangerous species this planet has ever
harbored. But we refuse to recognize this and speak today of atomic war as an
abstraction, just as in the days of my grandparents one spoke about a World
War. “It’s not going to happen they thought,” and that is what most of us now think.
Why
is there a likelihood of a catastrophic WWIII? Because the
fundamental lesson of WWI has not been learned. The war resulted from aspirations
of hegemony (the Monarchy vs. Russia over the Balkan Peninsula) and alliances that
created power blocks. This limited the ability of the various states for
independent action. Each country had to show “strength, defend its honor, and
stand by its ally,” lest it be regarded as weak and unreliable. Finally, and
this is perhaps the most important aspect, the leadership of each country only
looked for its potential advantage,
disregarding how the other party(ies) to the conflict
might feel and act. There was, and I must add there is today, a pervasive
paranoia of what “the other” will do to one unless one forestalls it. This is a
prescription for disaster. Regardless what calamity may befall us, we can deal
with it, unless we escalate the problem by inappropriate responses as happened
in 2001 and 2003 with the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. Let us remember that the main cause for WWI
was not merely the Monarchy’s quarrel with Serbia, but fear of Russia and its
increasing military strength. It was automatically assumed that this strength
would be used for offensive purposes and this is why Germany could not tolerate Russian
mobilization, which started the unstoppable avalanche. The Czar told the Kaiser
on July 31 that mobilization was only a precautionary move and need not lead to
war. But Germany felt that it could not trust this promise and started the
“preventive war,” on the next day before Russia could fully mobilize.
As
mentioned above we are currently in a somewhat similar situation. Putin wants
to re-establish Russia
as a “Great Power” which has to be reckoned with. The U.S. seems to be
determined to prevent it. Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. But one
thing is clear, the suggestion by one of our senators that “we need to punish
the Russian people” for tolerating Putin, so that they will depose him, is, to
put it bluntly, nonsense. We in our democracy and our “freedoms” could not stop
the Bush administration from its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq,
which were, since Nuremberg, war crimes under International Law. So, what are
the Russians supposed to do in a more regimented society?
Wars,
economic or military, should no longer be tolerated. They have become too
dangerous. Belligerence needs to give way to awareness of “the other’s”
legitimate concerns, and cooperation to reduce, rather than increase,
frictions. Only when we come to
recognize the Buddha’s ancient wisdom that everything, including wars, starts
in the minds of human beings, and we carefully examine the validity of the
assumptions which guide our course, will we have a chance to successfully emerge
from our current perils. Had this been done in the early summer days of 1914
the people of the world would have been spared a tremendous amount of suffering
which extends not only into our days, but also into the foreseeable future.
In
the next installment I shall discuss relevant aspects of Isabel Hall’s book as
well as some of the NFPs editorial comments that were mentioned here and
demonstrate that our current policies are again shaped by assumptions and rush
to judgments rather than facts; just as one hundred years ago.
P.S.
Two days ago CNN informed us that our country will resupply Israel with the
ammunition it is using at this time in Gaza. If this were to be the case it
would be a crime against humanity and make us co-responsible in the eyes of the
world for this carnage. Our name, including President Obama’s, would be
besmirched for a long time to come and our word in regard to “standing for
justice and freedom of the oppressed,” will have become a travesty. But, unfortunately,
we can only protest and hang our heads in shame, although our tax money is
being used for this nefarious purpose.
I,
therefore, sent the letter, which is pasted below to The Salt Lake Tribune, although I doubt that it will be published.
George Will and Israel
On
July 31 George Will [a well-known columnist] quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu to
the effect, “The point [sic] of Israel is that Jews shall
never again … depend on the kindness of strangers. Such dependency did not work
out well for Jews, so Israel exists for Jewish self-defense.” But Mr. Will
might also have quoted what Moshe Dayan said several decades ago, “The
Americans give us money and advice. We take the money and ignore the advice.”
This statement is still valid and it is time to take Netanyahu at his word. Let
us stop the money and the advice, and let us not replenish the ammunition as
well as other war material which is currently used in Gaza. Supplying Israel in
this war makes us co-responsible for the carnage among civilians in Gaza.
In
addition, the Prime Minister does not speak for all Jews, only for the Zionist
segment of the Jewish population which has recruited the Christian evangelical
community. But our citizens are a microcosm of the entire world with all of its
diversity. They should not be equated with only one segment of society and be
forced, through tax-money, to support a cause, which they cannot agree with.
September 1, 2014
AMERICA’S CREDIBILITY GAP
In last month’s installment I
concluded the essay with these words
Wars, economic
or military, should no longer be tolerated. They have become too dangerous.
Belligerence needs to give way to awareness of “the other’s” legitimate
concerns, and cooperation to reduce, rather than increase, frictions.Only when we come to recognize the Buddha’s
ancient wisdom that everything, including wars, starts in the minds of human beings,
and we carefully examine the validity of the assumptions which guide our
course, will we have a chance to successfully emerge from our current perils.
Had this been done in the early summer days of 1914 the people of the world
would have been spared a tremendous amount of suffering which extends not only
into our days, but also into the foreseeable future.
While I believe this to be true, it
obviously was wishful thinking. The reality of how countries which either want
to retain or enlarge their power was expressed in a quote from Vienna’s NeueFreiePresse editorial of July 4, 1914, which I used in the
July 1, 2014 installment. In regard to the question how the crime of the
Archduke’s assassination during the previous week had come about it answered:
It is the result
of a policy which believes that it can split itself into official
responsibility and unofficial irresponsibility [amtliche und nichtamtliche]. The official policy
puts forth its hands to show that there is not a trace of blood on it. It has
only words of friendship and peace. With a harmless face it wants to leave the
impression of good will. The unofficial one dares to play a demonic game with
the worst passions, race-hatred and all animal lusts which the heart harbors,
and when unleashed engages in the worst cruelties. Yet they are celebrated as
national heroism. It prepares the next wars. It considers itself to be above
all moral law and arms the criminals in its pay with bombs and revolvers. The
unofficial policy wants war.
It is painfully obvious that nothing has
changed during the past 100 years and America is now steering Serbia’s and
Russia’s course of 1914. Let us briefly recapitulate the major events. The
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (the Monarchy) felt itself threatened by Serbia’s
nationalistic fervor, which intended to incorporate all South Slavs into its
regime at the cost of what was regarded as the decaying Monarchy. Serbia’s
plans were backed by Russia which wanted to extend its hegemony over the Balkan
Peninsula. The murders of June 28 (the Archduke’s wife was also killed on that
day) led to the secret decision to use the crime as a pretext for war with
Serbia after Vienna’s government had assured itself of Germany’s backing. It
was warned by Russia and England that because of treaty obligations such a war
could not be contained and would result in World War. But the Monarchy’s
government felt that this consequence was still avoidable if Russia were to
desist from its support of Serbia. In its quest for war it was motivated by the
need for the respect a great power deserves, and if it gave way to continued
Serbian machinations it would be regarded as weak and treated with contempt.
National honor was at stake. The crucial mistake was not to realize that
exactly the same situation pertained to Russia and that it could not afford to
tolerate a change in the Balkans’ status quo which would benefit the Monarchy.
Russia was in the process of recovering from the recent defeat by the Japanese as
well as the attempted 1905 revolution and any show of weakness was deemed
unacceptable. It is now regarded as historical fact that the Serbian government
would have accepted the Monarchy’s ultimatum had they not been assured by
Russia of help in case of need, just as the Monarchy was by Germany. In this
way reason gave way to passion and the potential disaster became reality.
When we now look at today’s world
situation the parallels are obvious. America’s “official policy” is drenched
with humanitarian phrases which will bring freedom and democracy to the
oppressed of the world, while the “unofficial” supplies money and weapons to
various rebel groups around the world in order to destabilize existing regimes,
which our ruling class dislikes for some reason or another. This is done in the
pursuit of the “New American Century” (April 1, 2003,The
Neocon’s Leviathan; September 1, 2013, 9/11: Context and Aftermath) which
requires absolute dominance on land, sea, air and outer space. Any potential
threat from a rising power must be met and nipped in the bud. Officially we
promote democracy and this is why Saddam Hussein as well as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi
had to be removed from power, and why we still insist that Syria’s Assad and
Iran’s mullahs have to be deposed. Please remember that none of these rulers
presented or present a direct threat to America and that we have absolutely no
problem when the military overthrows a democratically elected regime in Egypt,
which subsequently enforces its rule by brutally repressing all dissent.
This gap between pious words and what
amounts to criminal actions against international law has become increasingly
apparent. There is a very efficient propaganda machine at work in our country
which I have previously mentioned in these pages (July 1, 2011The Goebbels
Trap). It very effectively hides the bloody hands, while professing good will.
The currently most dangerous aspect is not necessarily the “caliphate” in the
Middle East to which I shall return on a later occasion, but our confrontation
with Russia.
As
TIME magazine of August 4 declared,
we are now in Cold War II against a resurgence of Russian might which under
Putin, who has replaced Czar Nicholas II in American imagination, threatens the
independence of its neighbors. Only a strong America with NATO as its guarantor
can preserve the peace by resisting this aggressor who wants to annex Ukraine,
if not the Baltic States, in order to re-establish the Soviet Union.
This is propaganda, rather than fact. The
major tool consists of asserting an assumption as fact without providing
evidence. In America this goes back to at least the Spanish American War with
“Remember the Maine.” While on a “goodwill mission” the battleship sank in
Havana harbor as a result of an explosion and the press immediately announced
Spain’s guilt, which Spain denied. There was no international investigation and
war was declared on Spain. The additional humanitarian reason for the war was Spain’s
maltreatment of Cubans who had to be freed. In the process of the war the
Philippines were conquered because these barbaric people had to be provided
with the blessings of Christianity, in spite of the fact that they had been
Catholic since they were originally taken over by the Spaniards in the 16th
century. That this war was one of bloody conquest was not mentioned. The real
purpose was to extend America’s hegemony over the Pacific and this eventually
led to the war with Japan; now clashes with China are on the horizon.
Another
immediate jump turning assumptions into facts was the Kennedy murder in 1963.
Within hours Lee Harvey Oswald was not only pronounced guilty but declared the
sole assassin. A proper trial was thwarted by Jack Ruby killing Oswald and even
an autopsy of JFK by civilian authorities in Dallas was not allowed. It had to
be performed in a military facility in Washington where the participants could
be sworn to secrecy and the official report made to conform to the government’s
desires. The subsequent Warren Commission’s purpose was to prove the
government’s assertion of the lone assassin. Testimony by Dallas physicians,
who had seen the wounds first hand, and made a single bullet cause highly
unlikely, had to be disregarded. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary,
which has accumulated in subsequent years and was summarized here last year,
the official story of the lone assassin is still dogma (November 1, 2013
Shattered Trust; November 15, 2013 Monumental Medical Cover-up; December 1,
2013 The Cover-up Continues).
There were other jumps to conclusions
in the subsequent years of the last century but the most glaring and dangerous one
occurred on September 11, 2001. The 13th anniversary is coming up
and the crimes that were committed on that day, which have profoundly altered
our society and America’s credibility in the eyes of the world, have still not
been subjected to an impartial criminal investigation. Within hours the media
and our government proclaimed Osama bin Laden as the only guilty party and this
myth which flies into the face of facts and reason is still stubbornly
maintained. Why is this so? The only explanation I can come up with is to hide
the real “bloody hands” of perpetrators as yet unnamed, and to follow the
policy of the “American Century.”
Although I have repeatedly discussed
the reasons why the official 9/11 explanation is mythical rather than factual,
let me just point to a few crucial facts. Osama bin Laden’s people may well
have organized the hijacking scenario, but they could not have turned the cement
of the Twin Towers and Building WTC7 into dust and some of the steel beams into
twisted metal. Plane crashes into buildings, or debris from falling structures,
just don’t do that. This is a fact of physics and anyone who still believes and
defends the government’s theories either acts on blind faith or has ulterior
motives. The second fact, which the government hides, is the absence of
recognizable passenger plane parts at the Pentagon as well and in Shanksville
PA, as reported by witnesses who were immediately on the scene. This does not
happen in real life. Crashed planes leave obvious fuselage as well as wing
debris and the engines are of titanium which defies fire as well as impacts.
These are facts and anyone who doubts this only needs to look at pictures from
Malaysian Airline Flight 17 (MH17) debris, which litters the fields of Ukraine.
When one puts this in context with the pristine lawn in front of the Pentagon
after AA 77 had supposedly crashed into that structure, and the crater
surrounded by minute particles supposedly from the impact of UA 93 in
Shanksville, this just does not make sense. If we had a government which is not
driven by ulterior motives it would admit to these impossibilities.
Let us now look again at Putin whose
shadow forms MH17 on TIME’s August 4 cover
page.
Putin
stands accused of violating international law by annexing the Crimea,
supporting rebels in Eastern Ukraine and being responsible for the downing
MH17. This required a response by the West in form of increasingly severe economic
sanctions and threats of NATO intervention. What are the facts?
I have discussed the Ukraine situation intermittently
since March 15 in these pages and nothing has happened in the meantime to
invalidate what was then written. As a matter of fact it has received
validation from an unexpected source. The current September/October issue of Foreign Affairs contains an article by
John J Mearsheimer on: “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault – The
Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.” The byline tells us that Mearsheimer is
“R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at
the University of Chicago,” and as noted on a previous occasion he is not
afraid of speaking truth to power. Readers of the Hot Issues might recall that I
have previously discussed his book, co-authored with Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
(May 1, 2006, What are they smoking?; October 1, 2007, The Israel Lobby). In
this book the authors pointed out that the “Lobby” has achieved a degree of
dominance over Congress which impedes our conduct of a rational foreign policy
in regard to the Middle East. As expected, it was severely criticized and its
effect on official policy was nil, in spite of change from a Republican to
Democrat leadership in Washington.
Fortunately, Professor Mearsheimer is
not deterred by adversity and although he is probably fully aware of the
futility of his endeavors he deserves our gratitude for saying what needs to be
said, even if no one will listen. In the current article he pointed out that
the West had violated a tacit agreement with Gorbachev not to enlarge NATO
beyond Germany’s borders. This was a precondition for his agreement to
Germany’s reunification. The deal was further sweetened by Germany paying a
substantial amount of money, ostensibly to help defray costs for resettlement
of Russian soldiers from East Germany. The exact amount is unknown but
estimates range between $31 and 50 billion. Although a hefty price, Gorbachev
needed the money to help his country’s staggering economy and for Germany’s Chancellor
Helmut Kohl it was the only way to get the deal done.
The NATO agreement on non-expansion to
the East was apparently never formally put on paper and existed in the form of
a Gentleman’s Agreement between the Bush 41 administration and the Soviets. It
is likely that had George H.W. Bush been re-elected in 1992 his administration
would have kept their word, but it was not to be. He was defeated by the
combined forces of Ross Perot, Bill Clinton and probably the “Lobby.” The
latter never forgave Bush for having dragged Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir,
against his will, to the Madrid peace conference where the PLO was for the first
time, in an unofficial capacity, represented. That Bush also had threatened to
withhold loan guarantees, ostensibly to help resettle recent immigrants from
the Soviet Union, was likewise remembered at election time. The May1, 2003 Hot
Issue on “Power Politics or Statesmanship” is well worth re-reading because it also
puts the current political scene in historical perspective.
To what extent the Clinton
administration was informed of the tacit agreement on NATO is unknown. But even if it knew, it did not feel bound by
it. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were added. In 2004
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined its
ranks. Moscow protested bitterly but it was of no use. Mearsheimer notes
During NATO’s
1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President
Boris Yeltsin said, ‘This is the first sign what could happen when NATO comes
right up to the Russian Federation’s borders…. The flame of war could burst out
across the whole of Europe.”
During the Yeltsin period, Russia was
too weak to pose effective countermeasures and by 2004 Putin also had not yet
achieved the level of power which would have allowed decisive action. This
changed in 2008 when NATO intended to include Georgia and Ukraine in its fold.
These countries were direct neighbors and the red line in the sand had to be
drawn. Wikipedia mentions in its article on “Background of the Russo-Georgian
War,” that Putin told President George W. Bush unequivocally in June of 2008, that
a NATO expansion to these two countries was unacceptable. “If Ukraine entered NATO, Russia would detach eastern
Ukraine (and likely the Crimean Peninsula) and annex them and, thus, Ukraine
would ‘cease to exist as a state.’"
Further
details on the “Promise” not to expand NATO eastward in order for the Soviets
to allow German unification can be found in the article by Mary Elise Sarotte,
Professor of History at the University of Southern California, in “A broken
Promise? – What the West really told Moscow about NATO expansion.” It follows Mearsheimer’s article in the same Foreign Affairs issue
Yet, America was undeterred in its
quest to turn Ukraine into a Western bastion. As mentioned here in the March 15
essay, and in Mearsheimer’s article, by December 2013,
we had spent $5 billion to woo Ukraine away from Russia. The Maidan protests
were not simply a local undertaking but had our support and the February coup
which brought Arseniy Yatsenyuk to power also was engineered by us. These
statements are not fantasies but documented by phone calls overheard by foreign
observers, as mentioned in the March 15, 2014 - Ukraine Crisis essay and Mearsheimer’s current article. To date there has been no
criminal investigation as to who was responsible for the February 21-22
massacre on the Maidan while Putin was basking in reflected Sochi Olympic
glory. Since the new Ukrainian government unequivocally aligned itself with the
West, and thereby raised the specter of NATO sailors in Sebastopol the home of
Russia’s Black Sea fleet, he had to act. From Russia’s point of view Putin’s
annexation of the Crimea forestalled this move and was a defensive rather than
offensive act. His citizens agreed and his approval rating soared in the
Russian Federation.
The West under America’s leadership
reacted with “targeted” economic sanctions and the confrontation leading to the
current crisis in the eastern predominantly Russian speaking part of Ukraine
was on its way. Secessionists, with Russian help, declared their own Peoples’ Republic
of Donetsk and after a May 11 referendum the areas of Lugansk and Donetsk
formed the Federal Republic of Novorossiya. But not even Russia has as yet
officially recognized it. A full scale civil war in that region is at this time
in progress and there is no sign that either side is willing to give way. The
current fighting, in south-eastern Ukraine, which includes Russian
“volunteers,” has the military goal of establishing a land bridge to the Crimea,
which at this time is quite isolated and cannot be properly supplied.
When one keeps these facts in mind, it
is obvious that the U.S. and Russia live mentally in two separate universes
which are about to collide. Last week William J. Perry and George P. Shultz
published an article in The Wall Street
Journal under the heading, “Helping Ukraine is a U.S. Imperative.” Mr. Perry
was Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration while Mr. Shultz held
that post during the Reagan years and we, therefore, have a bipartisan U.S.
view of the matter. The article declared that Putin has ignored the Budapest
Memorandum on security assurances of 1994, which was “critical to Ukraine’s
decision to give up almost 2,000 nuclear weapons.” The article goes on to state
that the situation demands U.S. action. While no “boots on the ground” are
needed, NATO should immediately help with training and equipping the Ukraine
forces and in addition should “deploy a rotating force” to the Baltic States.
This would tell the Russians “how seriously we take their military actions.”
For the average U.S, citizen, it may
be hard to see why Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be an “Imperative”
for us, but Russians are likely to agree with Putin that keeping NATO out of
Ukraine is indeed one for them. We did not tolerate nukes in Cuba, so why
should Russia acquiesce to what they regard as a threat on their border? Perry
and Schultz also conveniently ignored the 1990 “Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation,” which
was violated by Kiev in the spring of this year when it aligned itself with the
West. The Kiev government also violated the 1997 Russo-Ukrainian Friendship
Treaty by these actions. Mearsheimer was correct when he wrote that, “U.S. and
European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western
stronghold on Russia’s border.” His solution to the problem, which I had also
suggested earlier, was the neutralization of Ukraine on the Austrian or Finnish
model. Unfortunately, it may be too late for that. Three days ago Al Jazeera
reported that Ukraine was requesting full membership in NATO to meet the
Russian threat. This is another prescription for disaster. Before NATO can act Russia
may well recognize the Federal Republic of Novorossiya with a status similar to
that of Belarus and establish its needed link to the Crimea. This would amount
to a breakup of Ukraine and we may well see a bombing campaign by the Kiev
government, with Western help, to prevent the secessionist forces from reaching
the Crimea.
A further international complication
arose in early July when secessionists began to shoot down Ukrainian fighter
jets and on July 17 the Malaysian passenger plane MH17 was downed. True to form
our media and the government immediately declared that this was done by the rebels
with Russian supplied BUK missiles. This assertion was repeated by Secretary
John Kerry, who stated that he had evidence for it, but never produced it for
public viewing. Nevertheless, the West keeps blaming not only the secessionists
but also Putin in person, as the TIME
picture shows, in spite of the fact that we have never seen any actual
verification of that assumption. A different view which implicates the Ukrainian
Ministry of Interior was published on July 18 by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on
globalresearch.ca. It can be found under http://www.globalresearch.ca/was-ukraines-ministry-of-interior-behind-the-downing-of-malaysian-airlines-mh17/5391909.
Now the mystery deepens. The plane was
on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with the vast majority of its passengers
Dutch or Malaysian citizens, and crashed in secessionist held territory. The “black
boxes,” flight data recorders, were soon recovered by the insurgents and by
July 21 turned over to Malaysian authorities who were on the scene. Lacking
expertise to adequately assess the data, the Malaysians turned the boxes over
to the Dutch who in turn passed them on to the British. They were then taken to
the Air Accidents Investigations Branch in Farnborough and we were told that by
the first week of August the results would be made public. The Kiev government
provided a “summary” of the Farnborough data stating that shrapnel from a
ground to air missile had caused internal decompression and loss of the plane.
This was denied by the Dutch investigation team as premature and incomplete; a
full assessment was to be made available by the middle or end of August. But as
of this day this has not happened. Nobody should, therefore, be surprised that
in absence of data, and obvious secrecy in the assessment of a highly politicized
event, that this has become a fertile field for the rumor mills.
I shall not discuss the more
outlandish assertions but there are some statements from responsible observers
that deserve attention. On July 29 a Canadian citizen and member of the
international OSEC investigation team, Mikhail Bociurkiw, gave an interview for
CBC which can be viewed on http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-mh17-michael-bociurkiw-talks-about-being-first-at-the-crash-site-1.2721007.
He had close ties to Ukraine, spoke the
language, and had arrived soon after the crash, while debris was still
smoldering. He described the terrible scene and around minute 6:04 of the 8
minute 19 second interview he stated“…there
have been two or three pieces of fuselage pockmarked that looked like machine
gun fire, very heavy machine gun fire...“ He had not seen any rocket pieces but
admitted that with untrained eyes he might have missed them.
On
July 21 the Russian Defense Ministry held an international press conference
where Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov laid out
what had been seen on Russian Radar at the time as well as satellite
information. The conference can be viewed on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bNPInuSqfs
and a transcript can be found on http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine.
Kartopolov’s statements are in Russian with English
translations. He said that the previously mentioned BUK system was not in the
hands of the secessionists but under Ukrainian military control, and that Radar
data had shown not only that MH 17 made an unexpected deviation from its
course, and then returned to it just prior to the disaster, but also that a
fighter jet had been seen approaching the passenger plane. It was implied that
this jet may have shot down the plane. Satellite pictures showed a Ukrainian BUK
missile system on July 17th, close to secessionist held territory
and that it had been removed by the following day. General Kartopolov
asked that Kiev should provide an explanation why the system was there on the
17th and why a fighter plane should have approached MH17.
Chossudovsky’s above
mentioned article had also asserted the military jet’s presence, sometimes
stated as two jets, but this was denied by Ukraine’s government and branded as
a lie concocted in the U.K.. Regardless of the truth
of this aspect, retired Lufthansa Captain Peter Haisenko carefully examined
pictures of the crashed plane parts and reached the following conclusions: bullet
holes, resembling heavy machine gun fire, were seen on parts of the fuselage
which had been penetrated from both sides, because some were entry and others
exit holes. They were not randomly distributed over the entire fuselage and
wings but only seen on portions which belonged to the cockpit of the plane,
suggesting deliberate murder of the pilots. The relevant pictures that were
originally shown on the Internet have now disappeared from there, but the
article can be studied on http://www.globalresearch.ca/german-pilot-speaks-out-shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/5394111.
Although none of this was mentioned by
our news media the Pentagon apparently felt obligated to respond to this
assertion and explained that ground to air missiles are not designed to hit the
plane but to explode above it and shower it with debris that can look like
bullet holes. A picture was provided of the effects of a surface to air missile
(SAM) hitting a passenger plane. It does indeed look quite similar but since
the Pentagon is not in the habit of providing us with the full truth its
provenance has been questioned http://www.globalresearch.ca/evidence-is-now-conclusive-two-ukrainian-government-fighter-jets-shot-down-malaysian-airlines-mh17-it-was-not-a-buk-surface-to-air-missile/5394814.
On
the other hand, if the plane was indeed shot down in the air, for whatever
reasons, it might explain why we are not told what the flight data recorders
revealed. The cockpit voice recorder data might be crucial because if a fighter
jet had indeed appeared in the vicinity, and especially if it began firing, the
pilots would probably have commented on it. Since this is an extremely serious
matter, about which our media are totally silent, it needs to be immediately
brought to the attention of the general public. The Malaysian government should
press the Dutch authorities to publish the available data without further
delay.
If
the Dutch government were to stall on these requests Malaysia has a further
opportunity to advance its case in the public arena. Former President Mohamed
Mahathir, who is a fervent advocate of the truth in foreign affairs,
established in 2007 the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT). Its purpose is
to adjudicate cases involving individuals who have committed war crimes, but
are in such high positions of power that the case will never be heard by the
International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal has at
this time no legal standing anywhere else in the world, but is not a “Kangaroo
Court.” The judges are respected legal experts in their countries (mainly
Asian) and the accused are invited to be present either in person or by their
legal representative. It was apparently modeled on the Nuremberg post WWII
precedent except that it is not the victors who initiate the proceedings and
pass judgment, but aggrieved citizens who can bring their complaints. At
present its verdicts can be ignored and as will be shown not even reported. But
they do carry a moral dimension because when someone is convicted of war crimes
this label does, if not now then eventually, come to be attached to his/her
name. The person can then be arrested on travels to a foreign country which is
not dominated by the influence the individual has in his/her own. The fate of
the former President Augusto Pinochet is a case in point. Although not
prosecuted in Kuala Lumpur, he was arrested in London on an international
arrest warrant for crimes committed under his regime and extradited to Chile
where he spent the major portions of his waning years under house arrest. Citizens
do have, in some instances, legal power and this power should be exercised
while there is still time.
In
not quite two weeks it will be thirteen years since the 9/11 tragedy and no
Western Court of Law had the courage to investigate this crime and its
aftermath. But hardly any one of us knows, me included until writing this
essay, that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were tried
in Kuala Lumpur (November of 2011) and, using Nuremberg as precedent, found guilty
of instigating a criminal war. The defendants were invited to appear or send
their representative but this request was ignored. They were, therefore,
convicted in absentia.
A
second trial was held in the following year in regard to tortures committed
during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This resulted in the convictions of Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington
and William Haynes II. John Yoo et al. had been
responsible for writing the legal opinions which allowed Cheney and Rumsfeld to
give the orders. I found this information amazing because it shows the power
exerted not only over our media but also
those of the U.K.. For instance it is unclear whether
or not The Guardian or The Independent, who must have known of
these proceedings, had reported on them at the time. A key word search of these
newspapers for “Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal Blair” did not produce a
match. As mentioned, the convictions are at this time meaningless as long as
the named persons restrict their travels to countries dominated by U.S.
influence. But they could be in potential difficulties if they ventured into
less friendly territory and eventually the Kuala Lumpur verdicts may even enter
the history books.
Our
government and media feel at this time that they can safely ignore the KLWCT
because Malaysia is a small Muslim country and essentially powerless. But if
some of Malaysia’s citizens, who have lost loved ones on MH17, were to bring
the grievances to the KLWCT, which was created for just this purpose,the investigations might attract
the needed attention.
It
is highly unlikely that our satellites, which constantly observe all aspects of
the globe, have no information on what went on in a Ukrainian battle zone on
July 17. Why does the Pentagon, or any of the other “national security”
agencies, not release all the information they have, so that independent experts
can study the data? Our security is not enhanced by secrecy. Secrecy only leads
to wars, as was shown for WWI. It does not make us safer and now threatens to
engulf us in major disasters. Only by opening our data so that the world,
including the Russians and Chinese, can study and evaluate them, is there a
chance of restoring a degree of trust in our government. First impressions and
assumptions are frequently wrong and one should have the courage to admit it
when new information becomes available. If our cause is indeed just and our
policies are correct we have nothing to fear from world opinion, but if they
are tainted by lies it is utterly irresponsible to persist on a course that can
only lead to another catastrophic war.
October 1, 2014
LAND OF DECAY, DYSFUNCTION, DECEPTION AND DENIAL
In the previous installment I mentioned the current issue
of Foreign Affairs in connection with
Prof. Mearsheimer’s article on the Ukraine conflict.
But the issue also contains one by Francis Fukuyuma which led to part of this
month’s title. The magazine cover page is reproduced below and Fukuyama’s
article headline is “America
in Decay – The Sources of Political Dysfunction.”
The
article is preceded by an editorial written by Gideon Rose and Jonathan Tipperman headlined: Dysfunction Junction. The first
paragraph states:
American politics
today are marked by dysfunction, discontent, and ideological churn on both
sides of the aisle. Since distraction and paralysis of the world’s hegemon has
such obvious global significance, we decided to turn our focus inward,
exploring the sources and contours of the American malaise.
For this essay’s title I have kept the first two
components but added deception and on suggestion of a colleague, Dr. Michael
Johnson, denial. These are the additional ingredients which are not yet fully
appreciated by those who are in charge of our republic as well as the media.
Francis Fukuyama is “a Senior Fellow at the Center on
Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law” at Stanford University and the
article is a synopsis of his new book, Political
Order and Decay: From the French Revolution to the Present. I have
discussed his previous one, The End of
History and the Last Man on this site in the August 1, 2007 issue entitled:
Our Need for Maat. Maat was the
ancient Egyptian goddess of justice and order who was set against Isfet, the demon
of lies and destruction. She saw to it that pharaoh, as head of the state, as
well as the lowliest individual led morally correct lives. At time of death the
individual’s heart (the sum total of life’s actions) was placed on one side of
a scale with Maat’s feather on the
other. If the scales balanced, entrance was granted to a happy afterlife. If
they did not the person’s heart was devoured by the monster Ammut. I will not recount what I
wrote at that time but merely suggest that you look at this article because
whatever was then written is still valid today and the essence in regard to
political dysfunction is the heart of Fukuyama’s current article.
In
this respect it is useful to first look at his 1992 book and see
to what extent his opinions have changed in the intervening two decades. The End of History was written in the
excitement over the demise of the Soviet Union when America emerged as the world’s sole
superpower and arbiter of its affairs. The book achieved The New York Times best seller status and was lauded with words
such as: “Awesome … A landmark work … Profoundly realistic and important …”
The
book was intended to validate Hegel’s idea that liberal democracy is the best
of all possible forms of government to which all individuals aspire. It was
defined as popular government with maximal individual freedom. When this has
been achieved in the vast majority of the major nations of the planet there
will no longer be wars, people will live contented lives, and political history,
as we understand it, will have come to an end. Nietzsche’s “Last Man,” who
docile like a sheep simply engages in his professional work and unfettered
pursuit of happiness, will have arrived. Fukuyama,
like Hegel and Marx, rejected a cyclical recurrence of history, as advocated by
Plato and Aristotle, in favor of the unidirectional arrow, although he did
admit to some intermittent speed bumps. In so doing he distinguished between
the history of individual states and that of mankind. While individual states
may undergo Plato’s cycles from aristocracy to timocracy (the state is ruled by
the most honorable), to oligarchy, to democracy, to anarchy which then leads to
tyranny; the global order is headed arrow-like for liberal democracy.
Timocracy
never existed in any large state, especially in recent times, but for the
descent of democracy into tyranny we have numerous examples with the rise of
Fascism and Nazism the most glaring ones. Was this coincidence or actually
inevitable as Socrates via Plato suggested?It is instructive to look at Plato’s Republic Book VIII and read what
Socrates told his listeners about democracy during after-dinner drinks in the
home of Cephalus. These were the original symposia,
which have been degraded in our scientific meetings to sitting and listening
with some questions at the end. But I shall leave some of the most relevant
morsels for later and also let future historians decide whether Plato or Hegel
were right in regard to the future of global history.
Although
Fukuyama was firmly on Hegel’s side this is less important than the main thrust
of his book: the explanation of history on the basis of thymos. The concept came again from Plato’s writings on the
Socratic symposia. In Book III Socrates discussed the aspects of the soul, which
is nowadays referred to as mind. The first one is desire or the appetitive
principle which serves the functions of the body, the second is the rational
principle that distinguishes the good from the bad, the healthy from the sick
and in essence presents us with choices and their potential outcomes. This,
however, is not all because there is a third one, thymos, which has been translated as “spiritedness.” But thymos, just as logos, has several meanings some of which are: will, greed, spirit,
soul, passion, decision, anger, rage; as well as several others. Fukuyama chose for his
book “the individual’s need for recognition.” In other words, all of us would
like to be paid some respect by our fellow citizens and when this is denied we
get angry. Like Socrates, he agreed that what is true on the individual level
holds also for nations because they are composed of individuals. When a group
or nation is humbled, pride asserts itself and when thwarted anger results that
can then lead to war. Self-worth or the French amour-propre,
is indeed a powerful component of the human beings mental make-up. It is also
the basis of Adler’s Individualpsychologie
with the inferiority complex its best known aspect. Although not directly
relevant to the discussion of the current state of our democracy the concept of
“self-worth” is important for understanding our international conduct and
especially the wars we are at this time engaged in. Remember: our current
adversaries also have thymos and by
disregarding it we pave the way for never ending troubles.
While
Fukuyama’s
first book was thoroughly upbeat, the devolution of our society during the
intervening twenty years has left him rather discouraged. In the Foreign Affairs article he does not
refer to the End of History but
merely describes the decay of our institutions which were supposed to have
provided the checks and balances that sound government requires. Especially
interesting from my perspective was the fact that I had come to the same
conclusions in the November and December 2011 issues: “A Plague on Both your
Houses.” The September essay of that year (Follow the Money) dealt with our
financial situation and the one of February 1, 2008 (Is America Fixable?) with
the educational system. When taken together the articles show that our Republic
suffers from multi-system failure. Unless this is forthrightly addressed it
will have to lead to the demise of democracy and descent into autocracy. But
since the Hot Issues readership is quite limited, it was good to see that an
authoritative voice is now addressing the topic.
America in Decay – The Sources of Political Dysfunction
starts with the establishment of the Forest Service as a “new model of
merit-based bureaucracy.” It worked well for several decades but has recently
fallen into such difficulties that some people now argue that it should be
altogether abolished. The problem in a nutshell was that when people moved West
they settled in wooded areas and when nature or careless individuals started
fires homes burned to the ground. It became a matter of priorities. In previous
decades fires burned themselves out and the forest renewed itself. Now fires
had to be fought to protect homes and this change created another set of
problems for the Forest Service. Fukuyama
wrote:
It is still
staffed by professional foresters, many highly dedicated to the agency’s
mission, but it has lost a great deal of its autonomy …. It operates under
multiple and often contradictory mandates from Congress and the courts and
costs taxpayers a substantial amount of money while achieving questionable
aims. The service’s internal decision making process is often gridlocked, and
the high degree of staff morale that Pinchot had worked so hard to foster has
been lost.
With the Forest Service as an example Fukuyama then asked “Why Institutions Decay?”
He provided two answers. All institutions are initially created for a specific
purpose but over time conditions change and the institutions fail to adapt. In
addition there is “group interest: institutions created favored classes of
insiders who develop a stake in the status quo and resist pressures to reform.”
This holds true over the entire range of our government.
In theory “Madisonian democracy”
was designed to prevent the emergence of a “dominant faction or elite that can
use its political power to tyrannize over the country.” It was assumed that by
spreading responsibility over a variety of branches of government competition
among the different interests would lead to an equitable outcome. But this was
theory and practice differs to a considerable extent.
Modern liberal democracies have three main branches of
government: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. In theory, and
enshrined in our Constitution, Congress makes the laws, the President carries
them out and when disputes arise the Judiciary steps in. This may have been the
case initially, but it is no longer. We are now in Fukuyama’s words, “A State of Courts and
Parties.” There has been a “steadily increasing judicializiation
of functions that in other developed countries are handled by administrative
bureaucracies, leading to an explosion of costly litigation, slowness of decision-making, and highly inconsistent enforcement of
laws.” In this way instead of being a check on government the courts have
become a tool of its expansion.
A similar situation exists in Congress. Interest groups
have achieved inordinate power. They “distort both taxes and spending, and
raise overall deficit levels by their ability to manipulate the budget in their
favor.” In addition, the quality of public administration is undermined by
multiple mandates they induce Congress to support. This also erodes the trust
people have toward government, which in turn creates a vicious cycle. Distrust
leads to calls for reforms and more “legal checks” on government. But since
these have to go through the same process that created the original problem,
the cure is frequently worse than the disease. At the same time the public
demands from Congress new legislation for services that are difficult for the
executive to comply with. As a result we are confronted with “rigid,
rule-bound, uncreative and incoherent government.”
Fukuyama
then went into specifics. Under the headline “Judges Gone Wild,” he showed how
judicial decisions have led Congress to establish numerous new mandates which
resulted in new litigations. Conflicts, which in other countries are handled in
an administrative manner, are now litigated in the courts. Private lawsuits in
regard to the enforcement of certain pieces of legislation have risen
dramatically over the decades. They grew “from less than 100 per year in the
late 1960s to 10,000 in the 1980s and over 22,000 by the late 1990s.” Fukuyama
did not mention an additional aspect. The legal opinions upon which the rewards
are issued are indeed only “opinions,” although they carry the weight of law
for a given time. Yet each “opinion” can be appealed from district court to circuit
court, all the way to the Supreme Court where frequently the vote of one judge,
in a 5:4 decision, declares what the law of the land is. But that is also an
opinion dictated by the political climate and can be overturned on a later
occasion. This is hardly a way to ensure effective, trustworthy government.
Congress is in equally bad shape because it has been
corrupted by the previously mentioned lobbying groups. There is no longer the
old fashioned bribery where money changed hands but “reciprocal altruism.”
Donors make contributions and expect to be rewarded by appropriate legislation
thereafter. In 1971 there were 175 interest groups lobbying Congress. The number
rose to “roughly 2,500 a decade later, and then to 13,700 lobbyists spending
about $3.5 billion by 2009.” These are Fukuyama’s
numbers and they are bound to have increased since.
In addition to the inordinate influence of lobbyists
Congress has become inoperative as a result of the polarization of its two major
parties. There exists a de facto cold war where the members hardly talk to each
other and can’t come to an agreement even on such a fundamental issue as the
annual budget. Presidents prepare an initial proposal which is immediately
declared dead upon its arrival by Congress that has ultimate responsibility.
[The] Office of
Management and Budget has no formal powers over the budget, acting as simply
one more lobbying organization supporting the president’s preferences. The
budget works its way through a complex set of committees over a period of
months, and what finally emerges for ratification by the two houses of Congress
is the product of innumerable deals struck with individual members to secure
their support – since with no party discipline, the congressional leadership
cannot compel members to support its preferences.
The most recent result is that Congress has failed to pass a
budget for fiscal 2014 that ended on September 30 and the country limps along
on ad hoc appropriations.
Fukuyama
called our current political situation “vetocracy” because the various
competing camps prevent constructive solutions. Although it is axiomatic in our
country that one ends on a note of hope, he broke with precedent and the final
chapter heading is, “No Way Out.” As he sees it there are two obstacles to
reform. One is that neither political party is willing to cut itself off from
special interest funds and the second “a matter of ideas.” Reformers pushed for
more open primaries in the 1970s to make the electoral process more democratic
but most people don’t take the time to educate themselves on the complex
aspects of our society which require innovative solutions. The answer would be
to “roll back some of the would-be democratizing reforms.” But this is
politically impossible. His conclusion is honest and bound to be unpopular.
The depressing
bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise
is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the
decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock
comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into
action.
It is apparent that Fukuyama still does not want to give voice to
the other looming alternative, of which he is obviously aware. That the
“external shock” could, instead of an improved democracy, lead to tyranny, as
Socrates predicted, seems too difficult to accept. Yet, the makings of it are
ready to see for anyone who has eyes to see.
Deception
is currently rampant on the domestic as well as the international scene. At
home we are bombarded with advertisements which lure us into all sorts of
dubious “get rich quick” schemes and “Identity theft” has become a serious
problem. The CBS 60 Minutes program reported on the 21st of last
month that Social Security numbers have been stolen and on their basis
fraudulent tax returns, which claimed refunds, were submitted by these crooks.
The IRS promptly paid and a lucrative income resulted. This is just one recent
example, which could readily be multiplied, of how trust is abused and we are
gradually turned into a paranoid society.
The most
important problem for the current century, as I have never wearied to emphasize
and which is still not faced, is our response to the 9/11 tragedy. It did not
bring about a quest for criminal proceedings against the guilty parties as “a
country governed by laws” would have demanded. Osama bin Laden’s guilt was not
established in a court of law, as would have been the normal procedure in a civilized
country, but immediately and unilaterally declared by the government and the
media. When bin Laden was eventually located in Abbottabad he was summarily
executed and his body dumped into the Indian Ocean. He should have been arrested
and sent to The Hague
for trial by the International Criminal Court. Although the crime was committed
on American soil, citizens from countries around the world were the innocent
victims on 9/11 and a U.S.
venue of the proceedings would not have carried the same weight because of
obvious bias. The Obama administration failed to do so and we have to take its
word that the person killed was indeed Osama rather than one of his family
members.
On
the domestic scene, the crime was used to create another expensive bureaucracy,
The Office of Homeland Security, in addition to vastly expanding and funding
the national spy agencies. It also allowed the passage of the mislabeled
“Patriot Act” which can punish citizens who disagree with the way the
government is run and who blow the whistle on obvious misconduct. These are
only some of the deceptions our government has used so far and it is well on
its way, especially with the Patriot Act, to Orwellian “double speak.” Let us
remember Mark Twain: A patriot is someone who loves his country always and his
government when it deserves it. Our government and media at this time deceive
us to an extent that it has become nearly impossible for clear-thinking
individuals to trust them.
There
is an additional aspect, which is shrouded in secrecy and that is the
“Continuity of Government” plan. The “undisclosed location(s)” to which
Vice-President Cheney retreated on September 12, 2001 are listed on Wikipedia,
but the rest of the plan, which deals with the management of the country after
a disaster, remains hidden. Common sense suggests that martial law will be
declared, our constitutionally guaranteed rights will become “inoperative,” and
an autocracy will be instituted. It needs only another 9/11 type event, real or
manufactured, and the days of our republic will be gone. This is the real
danger rather than some terrorists who may want to do us harm. But fear of
terrorism is the tool that paves the way for the mentioned scenario.
Internationally,
just as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was used by Austria as a pretext to settle scores with Serbia in 1914, 9/11 was and is used as a
pretext to extend American influence over Afghanistan
and via Iraq to the rest of
the Middle East. The 9/11 victims were and are
callously used to justify military operations. In addition, guilt by decree has
become the norm in American foreign policy. Last year when Sarin was used on a
civilian population, President Assad was immediately declared the guilty party and
cruise missiles were about to fly before an inquest could be held. We still have
not been told if a proper investigation of this tragedy has taken place and its
results. On July 17 of this year Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down
over rebel held territory in eastern Ukraine. Russia and its rebel sympathizers
were immediately blamed. The tragedy then was used to level new sanctions on Russia in spite
of the fact that its guilt is based on allegations rather than established
fact. Earlier last month the Dutch authorities released their report on MH 17
but it provided no information in regard to who did what and merely stated its
preliminary nature with a final report to be issued a year from now.
On
Wednesday of last week President Obama gave the annual address to the UN in
which he tried to rally the world against Islamic extremism in general and ISIL
in particular. Some of the sentences struck me as quite ironic and I have the
feeling that even he has fallen victim to self-deception. For instance: “We
have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so” and
“First, all of us– big nations and
small – must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international
norms.” The words were probably meant as an admonishment for Putin but the
irony seems to have escaped him. Since when is it international norm to treat a
crime suspect in the way his administration dealt with bin Laden and where is
the international law that allows us to bomb any country in which activities
are carried out which are not to our liking? Apparently only international
ground borders are to be respected but the air space above seems to be a free
for all.
In
regard to events in Ukraine
he said: “Here are the facts,” and then conveniently started with the Maidan
protests and Yanukovich’s departure. But he ignored our $5 billion which fueled
the events, as well as the massacre on Maidan, the guilt for which has yet to
be established. Are we expected to assume that although some of us know these facts, he didn’t? Deception does not only
consist in what is being said, but also in what is deliberately withheld. As
mentioned on another occasion, the deliberate use of the half-truth is the most
vicious lie.
In
regard to MH 17 Obama repeated the statement that the insurgents refused access
to the crash scene for days. But we have testimony by a member of the
investigating team that he arrived soon after the crash while debris was still
burning and found some of the wreckage “pockmarked that looked like machine gun
fire.” Why did Obama’s advisors, who read the speech beforehand, not warn him
to tread carefully because the facts are not clear-cut? Why did Moscow give an
international press conference four days after the crash where the Russian
government presented its Radar and Satellite data, but Kiev and Washington
failed to do so? These are only some questions our President has avoided, but
they feed the distrust of government (September 1, 2014; America’s Credibility
Gap).
Referring
to Russia, the President repudiated the “vision of might makes right” and
insisted that “We believe that right makes might –that bigger nations shouldnot be able to bully smaller ones; that
people should be able to choose their own future.” But this also brings up a
few questions. Who gave us the right to bomb Syria? Why did we not tolerate a
democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine, and close our eyes when
the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood is overthrown in Cairo? The same
applies to the democratically elected government of Ukraine. The answers are
obvious: democratic elections are in our eyes valid only if the result is a
government which is to our liking.
I
shall discuss ISIL, as well as other aspects of Obama’s speech, on another
occasion and now return to around 300 BC in order to present Socrates’ views on
democracy. The reader can then judge their relevancy for 21st
century America.
When
oligarchy is overthrown democracy is established. “It is a charming form of
government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to
equals and unequals alike.” But unlimited freedom allows
the emergence of unsavory passions that are called “by sweet names.” When the
democratic man “is given good advice,” that some pleasures are noble while
others are not, “he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that
one is as good as the other.” “In households the father descends to the level
of his sons and fears them, and the son is on a level with his father, having
no respect for either of his parents and this is freedom. … The master
[teacher, professor] fears and flatters his scholars [pupils, students].” The
young and old are all alike. The young man regards himself on the same level as
the old one; the old person descends to the level of the young and there is
liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other. As the
insatiable desire for wealth was the ruin of oligarchy, the insatiable desire
for freedom brings about a demand for tyranny. “The truth being that the
excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite
direction … above all in government. The excess of liberty … only seems to pass
into excess of slavery.”
Is
this not an indication that even the distant past can teach us lessons which
ought not to be disregarded? The one which emerges here is that freedom
unrestrained by responsibility will inevitably lead to its demise. It also
points to a defect in our educational system which stresses science and
technology. These are of practical use, but for a human being to become a
valuable member of society more is required. This is taught in this country
under the name of “humanities” while in German speaking countries it is called “Geisteswissenschaften.”
For a properly functioning democracy both must be given equal weight. If you
have only technocrats without a humanistic foundation Auschwitz
and euthanasia are the prime examples of what to do with either “enemies” or
“useless eaters” (nutzloseEsser).
America still has a choice before it descends into the abyss.
But the country and its politicians live in a state of denial where they don’t
want to see where the present course will lead. As the ancients said, whom the
gods want to destroy they strike with blindness. With Congressional decisions hamstrung,
the President now issues orders that include acts of war against other
countries. Although we still have a republican form of government it has lost
its inner substance. The rest of the world sees it and it will become
increasingly difficult to convince even well-meaning nations to follow the
example we set.
Fukuyama’s
“external shock” may not necessarily be a replay of 9/11, but economic. When
the dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency a rude
awakening from our current dreamy state of denial is bound to take place. This
is no longer a question of if. “De-dollarization” is already in progress, as
anybody can verify by typing the word into Wikipedia. The overarching task of
our media should be to sound the alarm before it is too late.But since they are also largely subservient
to special interests we can only hope that some of the isolated voices, which currently
present the true situation, will coalesce and become a force that can no longer
be ignored.
November 1, 2014
EBOLA AND ISIL
On first glance these topics hardly
seem to be connected. Yet, they did dominate the news of the past month and
there is a common link.
The West African Ebola outbreak and
its potential consequences are currently endlessly discussed on cable TV,
especially CNN, practically to the exclusion of other news. The CDC provides
continuously updated safety measures and to quarantine or not to quarantine
asymptomatic persons in the U.S. who may or may not have been in contact with
an Ebola victim is a hot topic for discussions. The fact that Ebola is only
spread through bodily fluids of diseased individuals, which largely limits its
danger to caregivers, tends to be minimized by fear mongers. That the
likelihood of the average citizen to contract the disease is in the realm of
being killed by lightning in the middle of Manhattan is also hardly ever
spelled out in these terms.
One may, therefore, wonder what is
behind this fear campaign. There seem to be two possible reasons, which are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. One is the push for immediately creating a
vaccine that can then be sold worldwide at a high
price. Our military personnel are likely to become the first recipients and
since the vaccine’s long range side effects will be unknown they may suffer the
consequences years or decades later. But America is the country of short term
“quick fixes” and this aspect is likely to be ignored. The other has to do with
next week’s midterm elections. The public has to be further convinced that
President Obama is ineffective and that only Republicans know what’s good for
the country. Voters will then make sure that both Houses of Congress are in
Republican hands, which will further immobilize Obama. He will definitely
become a “lame duck” and his inability to constructively govern will then be
used in the 2016 campaign to put a Republican, as savior of the nation, in the
White House. Thus, the link between Ebola and ISIL is not only fear-mongering,
but the attempt to paint President Obama and his crew as incompetent and
neglectful of national security.
In all the TV sound and fury about
Ebola there seems to be a question that has gotten lost. What caused this
massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa during the spring of this year? One possible
answer appeared in an article at http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-liberian-scientist-claims-the-u-s-is-responsible-for-the-ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa/5408459
by Timothy Alexander Guzman “U.S. is responsible for the Ebola Outbreak in West
Africa.” This, obviously, suggests the usual conspiracy theories, and there is
the axiom: When in doubt blame the US government. Guzman quoted from an article
in the Liberian Observer, which is
Monrovia’s largest newspaper, by Dr.
Cyrill Broderick a Professor of Plant Biology, to the effect that our Defense
Department gave a $140 million contract to Canada’s Tekmira Company in order to
conduct Ebola research. The project, which supposedly involved injecting the
virus into healthy humans in order to test a vaccine, was started in January,
and the epidemic arose a few weeks later in March. Two precedents were quoted
for this nefarious scheme. One was the by now well-known Tuskegee experiment,
immediately after WWII. Healthy African-Americans were infected with syphilis in
order to test the efficacy of penicillin. The other, a largely unknown one, was
its precursor with healthy Guatemalans for which our government has officially
apologized in 2010.
Perhaps
most outrageously, Broderick attempts to cite a real source,The Guardian, alleging that a
report in the paper said,"The
US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by
top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering
a worldwide pandemic." A routine Internet search finds no evidence that
such a sentence was ever written in the pages ofThe Guardian.
Since Frances Martel at Breitbart News had struck out, I tried my luck with The Guardian and did findthe origin of this sentence. The part of “US government funding … came from Broderick’s
article in The Observer, but the
warning did originate in The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/virus-experiments-risk-global-pandemic.
Ian Staples, the Science Editor of the paper, wrote on May 20, 2014
Several groups of scientists around the world are
creating and altering viruses to understand how natural strains might evolve
into more lethal forms that spread easily among humans. But in a report
published on Tuesday, researchers at Harvard and Yale universities in the US
argue that the benefits of the work are outweighed by the risk of pathogenic
strains escaping from laboratories and spreading around the world.
Dr. Broderick’s statement in regard to U.S. government
funding also could be checked.
Reports
narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD)
funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the
Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that
the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to
Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This
research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly
Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a
collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which
started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West
Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US
government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town
at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
When one now searches
for NCT02041715 one finds under http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02041715 that Tekmira indeed got the mentioned contract from the defense
department and the trials were started in late January. The study was called: Safety, Tolerability and
Pharmacokinetic First in Human (FIH) Study for Intravenous (IV) TKM-100802. Under
current status one reads “This study has suspended participant recruitment” and
in brackets “this clinical trial has been suspended following a clinical hold
placed on the investigational new drug TKM-100802. The original protocol
was sparse and merely stated that the compound was to be administered in a
single blind manner initially as a single ascending dose, with the rather appropriate
abbreviation “SAD”. This was to be followed by multiple ascending doses which
led to the likewise highly appropriate: “MAD.” We were not told what TKM-100802 contained and
why the trial was abruptly halted, although it stands to reason that the
epidemic had something to do with it. When one now looks up Vancouver’s Tekmira,
their website states that Phase I (SAD) of the TKM study had been successfully
completed in May but Phase II (MAD) is on “partial clinical hold.” Nevertheless
“The partial hold enables the use of TKM-Ebola in individuals
with a suspected or confirmed Ebola virus infection.”
It, therefore, seems
that Dr. Broderick jumped to conclusions when he wrote that the project
involved injecting the Ebola virus into healthy Africans. It is considerably
more likely that this was a test for short-term tolerability of the vaccine in
humans and the attempt to establish an appropriate dose. But we don’t know the
composition of the vaccine and to what extent it contained “attenuated virus.” We
are, therefore, left to speculate how the current epidemic originated. There is,
however, no doubt that it is a financial bonanza for Big Pharma and the makers
of Hazmat suits. Tekmira’s stock went from $9 in mid-July to a high of $31.48;
although at present profit taking is under way and warnings have appeared that
no one knows if the vaccine really works. Other companies are also busy in
their attempts to cash in on expected huge future gains. Ethan A. Huff reported earlier this week on http://www.naturalnews.com/047441_Ebola_vaccines_legal_immunity_Big_Pharma.html#that “GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) CEO Andrew Witty told World Health
Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan that his corporation, which
is currently leading the way in producing Ebola vaccines, shouldn't have to
shoulder any of the burden of responsibility for their safety.” In other words:
the company should be allowed to reap all the profits, but if people were to
get sick from the vaccine, that would not be GSK’s problem. Their officers want
to be immunized against potential future law suits.
There is another morsel
of interest: The US holds “a patent on the invention of the Ebola virus.” How
this can come about staggers the imagination but Mike Adams tells us on http://www.naturalnews.com/046290_Ebola_patent_vaccines_profit_motive.html,
and the patent number is CA 2741523
A1.
If the deadly Ebola virus were a natural mutation, as all of us are led to
believe, it obviously could not be patented. But as the website http://www.google.com/patents/CA2741523A1?cl=en
informs us, several strains of the virus have been “invented” and this merits a
patent. We are now left with the puzzle: is the current epidemic due to our
biologists’ ingenuity to create more and more lethal strains of viruses and
bacteria or was it indeed a spontaneous mutation? We don’t know, but we do know
that our scientists at Ft. Detrick, and possibly other places, are hard at work
to “improve” nature’s ability to kill. There’s absolutely no telling what we
taxpayers pay for in the name of national security and even if we were to ask
we would be told it’s none of our business. Given this secrecy, it is no wonder
that conspiracy theories flourish.
This applies also to Kenema, the city in
Sierra Leone where the pandemic is supposed to have started. It is supposed to
have housed a Bioterrorism laboratory, funded by the US government, which was
closed in the summer of this year. But since I have only found sources for the
existence of this lab during the crucial period which could not yet be verified,
I have no opinion on the matter, except that Kenema is only about 320 miles
from the Liberian border, the country that has seen the greatest number of
victims. Was some type of mistake made, which facilitated the spread of the
disease? Which Ebola strain caused the current pandemic; one of the “patented”
ones? I doubt that the CDC or the DOD will open its book on this sad chapter and
it would take an Edward Snowden to give us the answers.
As mentioned in the title, the other big
news of the past month was the success of ISIL and the proclamation of an Islamic
State in portions of Syria and Iraq. Let us, therefore, now leave Ebola and
turn to this topic. The “Islamic State” is variously referred to as IS, ISIL or
more frequently ISIS. I have chosen the acronym ISIL rather than ISIS in the
headline because European readers, who still have a classical education, might
think that I am talking about the Egyptian goddess.
In the beginning and middle of last
month, before Ebola started to dominate the news, we were told that the
terrorists were anteportas and about to hoist the
black flag of jihad over the White House. I am not joking; somebody in the
organization said it as a propaganda ploy, and it was promptly snatched up by
our news-media as an imminent threat. It reminded me of the absurdity during
WWII when the American people were being frightened that Hitler was about to
invade the US. How he would do this with his submarines when he didn’t even have
a navy to cross the English Channel, was left unmentioned. But such is the
power of propaganda and the gullibility of people. Regardless what we call this
“Caliphat,” it is of interest that it has its most recent model in the Sudan of
the late 1870s and the 1880s. When one reads about that situation one only
needs to change the words “Sudan” for “Iraq/Syria,” “England” to “America” and
presto one has arrived in the second decade of the 21st century
where similar conditions prevail and the same mistakes are made.
In War&Mayhem
I mentioned that one of my ski instructors was Baron Slatin
whose uncle was Freiherr Rudolf von Slatin.
The latter had at first fought against the Mahdi in the Sudan but subsequently
became his prisoner and remained captive for more than 12 years before a
successful escape could be arranged through Austrian and British authorities in
Cairo. It should be mentioned that “Mahdi” is not a personal name but a title
for the “Redeemer of Mankind” who arrives immediately before Jesus and the last
judgment. I published a synopsis of Slatin’s ordeal in the book and little did
I know that this would be topical more than a decade later. Suffice it to say
that Slatin had an adventurous spirit that first brought him to the Sudan at
age 17, where he served the British in a number of ways. He was then recalled
to Vienna for military duty in Bosnia, but upon completion was given leave to
return to the Sudan where he was appointed by General Gordon as governor of
Darfur Province. The Mahdi uprising was in full swing, Slatin’s forces were
inadequate and although they personally liked him, as Muslims they ascribed
their lack of success to being commanded by an infidel. Slatin confronted with
this problem decided that the only remedy was to say in front of his troops the
magic words: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet.” The troops
broke out in cheers but success against vastly superior forces continued to
elude them. Slatin eventually had to surrender (1883) in order to avoid further
useless bloodshed. Initially he was treated reasonably well by his captors but
when he was asked to answer Gordon’s letter to the Mahdi, prior to siege of
Khartoum, he added a few German words indicating that the Mahdi was not
invincible and Gordon should hold out. This became known, Slatin was put in
chains and after the fall of Khartoum (1885) Gordon’s head was triumphantly brought
to Slatin, before even the Mahdi could view it. He remained captive for another
10 years but then succeeded to escape with the help of Austrian and British
authorities in Cairo and the unceasing efforts of Father Ohrwalder who had been
able to escape four years earlier. But most of all it was the money his
Viennese family had sent to enable hiring trustworthy Arab guides who would lead
him through the inhospitable desert from Omdurman to the Egyptian border and also
pay for the camels as well as the provisions. This trek, during which they
lived in constant fear of being discovered, took about three weeks and the
conditions imposed by nature were brutal to say the least. Upon arrival in
Cairo he immediately sat down and penned his notes from memory because writing
material had been forbidden during captivity. He became instantly famous and remained
in British government service. He was named by Queen Victoria an “Honorary
Member of the Order of the Bath,” an honorary major-general of the British
armed services and in 1909 by King Edward VII an Honorary Knight Commander of
the Royal Victorian Order.” Emperor Franz Joseph raised him to nobility as Freiherr, which equals Baron.
Originally I relied on Slatin’s German
edition of Feuer und Schwert im Sudan,
which I found at the Marriott Library of our university, but for this essay I
used an English translation Fire and
Sword in the Sudan by his friend Major Wingate. The original edition
appeared soon after his escape in October 1895, but he was then asked to
shorten it for a popular version which was published in June of 1897. This is
the version that has subsequently been digitized and is now available on
Amazon. Unfortunately, numerous errors crept into the text during this process
and the reader must have some patience and good will to overlook them. In
addition, it is chockfull of Arabic names which are difficult to remember by
Westerners because of our unfamiliarity with the language. Nevertheless, it is
an excellent resource for a comparison with today’s events and should be
studied by our politicians with its companion piece by Father Joseph Ohrwalder:
Aufstand und Reich des Mahdi im Sudan und
meine zehnjaehrige Gefangenschaft Dortselbst. This book has likewise been translated by
Major Wingate under the title: Ten Years
of Captivity in the Madhi’s camp 1882-1892 and also is available on Amazon.
I have not bought it because I prefer to read German speaking authors in their
own language rather than in translations.
These two books complement each other
because Slatin presents the military- political background, while Father
Ohrwalder, a Catholic missionary priest, the human element. Furthermore, there
is mutual agreement. Although they were hardly allowed contact, each one
validates the story of the other. I shall now combine the information and
present it in light of current affairs in Iraq and Syria.
The Sudan had been conquered by Egypt in
1821 which brought a degree of civilization to the tribal society. But the central
authority in Cairo was weak. The provincial governors were to a considerable
extent corrupt, tax collectors looked after their gains rather than those of
the state, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. When under the
influence of the British the slave trade was abolished, the local tribal wars,
that had been going on for centuries, broke out into open rebellion against
Egypt. To Cairo’s problems one must add that although nominally under the rule
of the Ottoman Empire the government had become semi-independent. This was a
mixed blessing because it now figured in the colonial power grab by Britain and
France. Egypt had been under French influence ever since Napoleon’s aborted
conquest (1798-1801) and the French built the Suez Canal, which opened for
shipping in 1869. This made Egypt a prize piece of real-estate for England
because it greatly reduced time and expense for travel to India, which had
fallen to the empire earlier in the century. By the late 1870s French influence
in Egypt had waned and the British were in ascendancy. When rebellion broke out
in Sudan (1881) the Egyptian forces were commanded by British officers under
whom a variety of other Europeans served. The local troops were only partially
motivated and their reliability was not necessarily up to European standards.
The situation got worse when the European officers tried to gain the allegiance
of local Sudanese tribes, to put down other rebel tribes among whom was enmity. For the Sudanese the words coined by one of
our troop commanders in Afghanistan were equally valid: You don’t buy an
Afghan, you rent one!” In the Sudan loyalties were fluid and when one side
appeared to be winning, other tribes joined them. Thereafter they fought just
as willingly for their former enemies as they previously had fought against
them. For a European or American this may be hard to understand, but when
fighting is the prime goal it really doesn’t matter who you are fighting
against.
There is another characteristic of the
Arab mind I learned from the above mentioned books. In school we were brought up
with the heroic deeds of the Spartans against Xerxes at Thermopylae. When the
Spartan mother gave her boy the shield with which he went to war she said: “Come
home with it or on it!” In other words don’t shame me by being a coward. The
Sudanese had no such scruples and gave Slatin a piece
of their wisdom. When roughly translated into colloquial English it says: “He
who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”This explains the Taliban who didn’t
uselessly sacrifice themselves in pitched battles. They used the hit and run
tactics of guerilla fighters and merged into the mountains whenever things really
got tough. It also explains the melting away of the Iraqi army earlier this
year when confronted with superior ISIL forces. As the colloquial saying goes:
They had no dog in this fight! They despised the Baghdad Shia government which
had deprived them of all their previous rights and saw no reason to get killed
for it. This is human nature. It is equally obvious that a fair number of these
disenchanted Sunni youngsters, who see no future in an Iraq that is governed by
Shiite Baghdad, may well join their Sunni brothers under the black flag of
jihad which promises them respect and eventually freedom from Washington’s long
hand and its mores. Preserving life, Slatin was told, is paramount: “He, who
lives long, sees much.” Its companion advice, which allowed both him and
Ohrwalder to endure their captivity, was: “be patient and obedient – God loves
the patient.” This is easier for Muslims who are trained to regard everything,
including brutality and misfortune, as the will of God. Westerners, especially
Americans, still have to learn this virtue. But even Muslim patience and
obedience is not infinite and can boil over into rage, some of which we are now
beginning to witness, especially in Jerusalem.
The major mistake the British made in
the 1880s was the attempt to run a large country with inadequate and
potentially unreliable forces. If Donald Rumsfeld had read Slatin’s and
Ohrwalder’s books he would have been duty bound to tell George W: Mr. President
this will never work! General Powell, at the time Foreign Secretary, tried when
he told him: “If you break it you own it!” Unfortunately, Powell did not have
the courage of his convictions. If he had resigned, then gone on all of the
national TV channels and explained the reasons, at least the Iraq disaster,
with its attendant human catastrophe, might have been avoided.
When the Egyptians woke up to the fact
that they might lose the Sudan altogether, they convinced the British to send a
detachment of 10,000 men under the command of General Hicks to break the back
of the Mahdi’s revolt. But Hicks had to rely on local guides who steered him
into waterless desert country. When he finally met the enemy his troops were
exhausted and dying from thirst. Like Custer’s Last Stand at Little Bighorn it
was a slaughter rather than a battle. Father Ohrwalder’s book contains an
excerpt of a diary by Major Hertl, an Austrian who served under Hicks, which
had fallen into Ohrwalder’s hands. Here is an abbreviated English translation.
These are hard
days, we are in some woods and all of us are depressed. The general orders
music to be played to lift the spirits, but it soon stops. Bullets come from
all sides, camels, mules and soldiers are hit. It’s impossible to miss because
we are all so crammed together. We are helpless and don’t know what to do. … Today
is Sunday, my brother’s birthday. May God allow me a few hours of talking with him. The bullets come ever closer and …
The diary stopped at this point and he
was probably killed by the fusillade. Hicks kept firing with his pistol and
when he ran out of ammunition he used his sabre to kill the assailants but it
was useless and he was run through by a lance. The Prussian Baron Seckendorf,
who was second in command, was decapitated and the trophy sent to the Mahdi.
One of Seckendorf’s servants, Gustav Klosz of Berlin, who knew what was coming,
had earlier deserted and gone to the Mahdi’s forces. Initially he was put in
chains but the Mahdi ordered that he be brought into his presence where he
reported on the sad state of Hick’s army, with Ohrwalder serving as interpreter.
Gustav Klosz, who had become a Muslim to save his life, was renamed Mustapha,
which seemed phonetically appropriate. He was then treated properly for some
time but later during the rule of the Mahdi’s successor he landed in jail and died
during an attempt to flee.
Once the Hicks expedition had been
slaughtered most of the rest of the Sudanese tribes flocked to the Mahdi’s
victorious banners and they headed for Khartoum. Again there was no pitched
battle, they simply encircled the city with their massive forces and waited
till starvation took its toll. The British made two other mistakes. They had only
sent Gordon to rally waning spirits. When they saw that this valiant man
couldn’t possibly accomplish anything, they sent a ship with some troops up the
Nile, which was supposed to demonstrate British resolve and frighten the Mahdi.
The reason for British dilly-dallying,
was that they were not all sure that the Sudan was worth the effort. They did
want to keep Egypt, but they saw no gain in Sudan. Once the news arrived in
London of Gordon’s death, the climate changed and war against the Mahdi became
a necessity. By 1898 they had assembled a sufficiently large force to crush the
Mahdists at Omdurman. The young Winston Churchill who was a war reporter at the
time, rode into battle with the British army, and these days remained his most
favorite memory even in old age when he had already forgotten most other
events.
America is currently repeating the
British mistakes in Iraq and Syria. Everybody knows that air strikes, and
especially drone strikes, are not only useless but harmful. For every “rebel”
or “terrorist” we kill five others will take his place and the supply is
inexhaustible. In addition, our “advisors” or “trainers” of the new Iraqi army
are also a waste of time, money and lives. The Iraqi’s know how to fight, but
why should they want to fight for us?
Iraq’s fate is likely to be mirrored in
Afghanistan when the major troop contingents have been withdrawn later this
year. What are our remaining 10,000 troops really supposed to accomplish? They
can’t defeat the Taliban. Pashtuns, will remain Pashtuns with their tribal
ethos and continue to ignore the arbitrary border with Pakistan which was
established by the British in 1893 (August 1, 2011; Misguided Arrogant
Incompetence). Why should Afghans forever be bound by their colonial borders?
The same applies, of course, to the current borders of the Middle East. Most of
them resulted from the interests of British and French politicians after WWI. They
are not carved in stone and there is nothing permanent about them as far as the
locals are concerned. Those are facts our politicians and “opinion makers”
disregard at our peril.
There is one more story in the above mentioned
books that has direct relevance to the fate of our current hostages held by
ISIL. It is independently reported by Slatin and Ohrwalder. The Mahdi’s forces were
commanded by three Khalifas (which translates into successor) of whom Abdullahi
ibn Muhammad was the most powerful. Slatin was given to him as a “personal
servant” i.e. slave. One day in 1884 a rumor began
circulating in the Khalifa’s camp that a French traveler had arrived and
Abdullahi told Slatin to be present during the conference where he wanted to
find out what the stranger wanted. Since the latter spoke Arabic quite poorly
he was ordered to speak in his native language with Slatin serving as
interpreter. He said that his name was Olivier Pain, a Frenchman, who like most
of his countrymen were very interested in the Sudan and since there was rivalry
between Britain and France he had come to offer French help in the Mahdi’s war against
the British. When asked if he was a Muslim he affirmed the question and the
Khalifa left to inform the Mahdi of the event. When they were brought in his
presence Pain repeated his story but the Mahdi told him:
I have heard
your intentions, and have understood them, but I do not count on human support,
I rely on God and his prophet. Your nation are unbelievers and I shall never ally
myself with them. With God’s help I shall defeat my enemies through my brave
Ansar [followers] and the host of angels sent to me by the Prophet.
When
the Mahdi then asked Pain whether or not he was indeed a Muslim, the latter
replied “Certainly” and recited the Creed. The Mahdi gave him his hand to kiss
but did not ask for the oath of obedience everyone else was obliged to take.
They then adjourned for prayers to the mosque. Eventually, when Slatin was
alone with Pain he got the real story. Pain was not an ambassador, but a
journalist for a Parisian newspaper. He had come out of curiosity and thought
that he would now be free to go home. Slatin had to tell him in so many words:
don’t bank on it. These are not your usual people and you don’t know what they
might do from one day to the next. Pain was then remanded to the Khalifa’s
custody, but since he couldn’t tolerate the local food and water he developed
dysentery.
The daily marches towards Khartoum further
sapped his strength and his health deteriorated. When Slatin brought this to
the Khalifa’s attention he was told: “If he dies here he is a happy man. God in
his goodness and omnipotence has converted him from an unbeliever to a
believer.” Pain died soon thereafter. When the Khalifa was informed he only
said: “He is a happy man.” As mentioned earlier, Slatin’s report was validated
by Ohrwalder who presented additional details, especially about the events
prior to Pain’s arrival at the Khalifa’s residence.
There is a lesson to be drawn from this.
Westerners, especially private citizens, have no business in a war zone
dominated by fanaticism. Our journalists who were recently executed by ISIL
members meant well, but they did not belong in this part of the world. In this
connection a recent report about the fate of Western hostages by ISIL is also
revealing. Twenty seven people were captured during the summer by ISIL forces
and the continental Europeans were released after their respective countries
paid ransom. The British and Americans did not and seven of their citizens
remained in captivity. To date three have been executed and the others are
likely to follow in good time whenever the best propaganda result can be
extracted.
If our country continues to insist that
no ransom will be paid, it should also publicly order all of our private citizens
out of danger in Iraq and Syria. Furthermore, it should be announced that if
someone, like Pain, were to remain, the person will lose US citizenship and his/her
future fate will not be mentioned by our official news media. This would on the
one hand deter a great number of thrill seekers and on the other deprive ISIL
of the propaganda value hostages can provide. Although the informal media such
as twitter and Facebook will continue to publish and attempt to inflame public opinion,
the official policy need not be swayed. In time the novelty will wear off and
fewer people will be willing to risk their life when it is not necessary. If it
were to be argued that we need Western information from the ISIL camp we should
rely on trustworthy locals, such as the ones hired by the Slatin family and
Ohrwalder’s church, who are fully familiar with the language, their country and
its people.
In the next installment I intend to
highlight the Mahdi’s personality with emphasis on aspects that lend themselves
to becoming a religious fanatic, the daily life of the people under Mahdia, and
the lessons for today’s events.
December 1, 2014
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S POLICIES
“Das ist der Fluch von unsermedelnHaus … zuhalber Tat
mithalbenMittelnzauderhaftzustreben.”
The above excerpted
quote appears in Franz Grillparzer’s drama Ein
BruderzwistimHause Habsburg. The entire sentence is longer so I just
presented the essence. Roughly translated it might read: This is the curse upon
our noble house ... to hesitantly strive with half actions and half measures
towards ill-defined goals. The drama was written in 1848 and dealt with events between
1606 and 1612 which initiated Europe’s Thirty Years War in 1618. Actions by our
President during the past month brought this stanza back to mind because they
proved again that classical literature is indeed immortal and insights gained
by poets have lasting significance.
On November 4 some of us went again to
the polls to exercise our democratic right by voting for our representatives in
Congress and State government. Martha and I did not do so because it would have
been an exercise in futility. As mentioned on other occasions our State
legislature which is, for practical purposes, a franchise of the Mormon Church
and entirely Republican, had re-drawn/gerrymandered the borders of our district
to ensure that we will no longer be able to elect a Democrat or Independent
(March 1, 2008 Voting in America; December 2011, A plague on both your houses
Part II). This was accomplished by including a large section of southern rural
Utah whose people are unstintingly devoted to their Church and the Republican
Party. Our lone Democrat, Jim Matheson, who had barely been able to keep his
seat at the 2012 elections saved himself the money and effort and did not run
for re-election. His shoes were filled by another Democrat who, although quite
able, didn’t have the proverbial chance of a “snowball in hell.” The
Republicans, who don’t suffer from the above mentioned curse, achieved their
goal and Utah’s citizens are now exclusively represented by their views. But
Republicans are not the only ones engaged in these shenanigans. When we lived
in Michigan affluent Republican Grosse Pointe was included in poor and middle
income Democrat Detroit and it was impossible for a Republican to represent
Grosse Pointe voters.
We were not the only ones who abstained
from the November 4 charade, which called itself a vote, because as The Salt Lake Tribune reported last week
Utah had the third lowest voter turnout in the nation. Only 28 percent of
eligible voters cast their ballots. It’s no wonder when many of us have in
effect been dis-enfranchised. Across the nation only 36 per cent voted and,
since they represented the most ideological segment of our population,
Republicans now control both Houses of the Legislature in Washington who will,
come January, make sure that none of Obama’s agenda gets enacted for the next
two years. On Inauguration Day in January 2009 Rush Limbaugh, a well-known
Republican radio host, announced: “I want Obama to fail.” All Republican
efforts were then single-mindedly concentrated on this task and even Obama’s
re-election in 2012 did not make a difference. The effort now has paid off and
we are faced with the prospect of another two years gridlocked government.
This wouldn’t matter if we were a small Central
or South American country, but the self-appointed “leader of the free world”
can ill afford this luxury. Yet, for truth be told,
Obama has helped his domestic adversaries by the half measures he has
hesitantly taken during his presidency. On July 1, 2008 (Barack Obama’s
problems) I wrote in regard to the flap over his Pastor’s, Jeremiah Wright,
“anti-American” comments that Obama needs to take to heart Malcolm X’s advice:
“don’t let your adversaries define you or your friends …. This is a new game;
you make the rules and explain why you do so.” The media circus of the day
demanded that candidate Obama not only disavow Wright’s views but also condemn
them and break all ties. He did, and this was the seminal mistake from which
all others flowed.
We now must remember that it was Pastor Jeremiah
Wright who had paved the way for Obama’s political career. If Obama had
backbone as well as foresight the controversial remarks could have been the
opportunity for a teaching lesson to the American public that explained the
major differences between the “black church” and the “white church.” Pastors of
the African American community do not only talk in abstractions about the world
to come, they foremost address themselves to the daily political-societal
issues their congregation is confronted with. Sunday services are emotionally
charged and there is “hollering,” and jumping, which, apart from some
Protestant Revival meetings, is unheard of among docile Caucasian parishioners.
In addition, Pastor Jeremiah only lived up to the example set by his
illustrious forebear in ancient Judea.
The prophet Jeremiah did not talk in
soothing tones to his Jewish compatriots and their leaders. He told them
frankly that if they were to persist on their present course their days would
be numbered and they would lose everything to the Babylonians. Did they listen?
Of course not; they threw him in jail for what might now be called “unJewish conduct.” Everybody knows what happened
thereafter.Nebuchadnezzar wanted the
tribute which was owed to him and when King Hezekiah refused to pay, he came
with his army to enforce his will. He had every right to do so because it was
he who had put Zedekiah on the throne some years earlier and the annual tribute
had been one of the conditions for this favor. Jerusalem refused to surrender
so it, including its temple, was burned to the ground. As Sherlock Holmes might
have said: Elementary my dear Watson! All Pastor Jeremiah did was to warn us
that if we don’t address the lies which are consuming our society, a similar
fate will be in the offing for us. A speech of this nature by Obama would have
been wholesome and the cause of truth would have been furthered.
It was not to be. Obama caved in and the
precedent was set. On the domestic scene he allowed his hallmark piece of
legislation “Obamacare” to be changed by special interests into a monstrosity
that became a windfall for insurance companies and increased the costs for the
ever growing patient population of the country. In addition, the legislation
provided for expensive bureaucracies which turned the lives of physicians into
a nightmare, while lawyers experienced a bonanza. Numerous law suits to either
kill the “Affordable Care Act” altogether, or modify it to unrecognizability,
were initiated at the State and Federal level. Guess who pays for all of this.
The answer is obvious: we the taxpayers! Our hard earned money is spent by
unscrupulous politicians to the tune of billions on their pet projects which
have little or nothing to do with our real needs. Obama sits on top of this
chaotic, run-away bureaucracy and feels helpless to do anything about it.
“Obamacare” is just one example of
letting his adversaries dictate his response; the foreign policy arena is
another. He promised to end America’s wars but is now engaged in prolonging
them into the indefinite future. But before discussing these recent events, his
address to the nation in regard to Immigration Reform needs to be dealt with.
The November 4 election result left him with the prospect of inability to
accomplish anything meaningful through the legislative route for the rest of
his presidency. He, therefore, decided to get around a deadlocked Congress by
wielding the executive pen. As other Presidents before him he can issue
directives which have the force of law but they can be overturned by the next
incoming President. This is the context in which the November 20 speech from
the White House needs to be seen.
In his address to the nation Obama made
several points. He acknowledged the fact that our country currently harbors
several million immigrants who have walked across our southern border without
having asked for a visa that would have allowed them to enter legally. Since
the quotas for legal immigration from Mexico, Central and South America are
minuscule they could not have obtained one anyway. “… give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free …;”as penned by Emma Lazarus, and carved in
stone at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, was intended for Europeans and
never considered to apply to the rest of the world. The President now declared
as his major humanitarian effort that illegal immigrants who have lived in this
country for more than five years and who have children who were born here would
be able to “come out of the shadows.” All they needed to do was to register with
the Immigration Service and they would get a temporary permit to live freely
without fear of deportation for three years. In addition, he promised stepped
up border security to prevent future illegal immigration, and that illegals who had committed a crime would promptly be
deported. These two aspects are already current practice and hardly needed a
White House speech occasion.
Let us now look closer at the “coming
out of the shadows” aspect, especially in regard to unwritten policies that are
already in effect. At present the Immigration Service is unable to track the
millions of illegal immigrants because they have melted into American society
and most of them perform vital functions for the service sector of our economy.
They give no offense and, therefore, never come to the attention of the
authorities. Faced with the inability to discern who is “illegal” the
Immigration Service has adopted a pragmatic measure: anyone who has entered illegally
but has lived in this country for 10 or more years, who has children born here,
and has not had a criminal conviction, will no longer be deported unless he/she
were to commit a crime.
This is a fact at present. Let me now
put myself in the shoes of an “illegal” who has come here let us say six or
seven years ago, lives unobtrusively with his family and has one or more
children who were born here. He obeyed all the country’s laws, paid federal and
state income taxes and even holds a State issued business license. You may
wonder about this, but neither the IRS nor State government asks about the
immigration status of individuals. All they are interested in is collecting the
money and if a business license will produce more of it so much the better.
Knowing, therefore, that he has to conduct himself properly without coming to
the attention of the authorities for the next several years until the 10 year
limit is reached, what interest does he have to register for a “temporary” work
permit with the Immigration Service? What was meant by “temporary” is anybody’s
guess, but if he were to register the authorities would now have his name and
address and only the Lord knows what they would do with it. Obama’s executive
order will undoubtedly be challenged in court and even if it holds up for the
next two years, a Republican President may well rescind it in 2017. My
hypothetical illegal immigrant, therefore, has nothing to gain by registering
and may actually be worse off because a Republican administration can readily
deport him at any time since it now knows his whereabouts.
It is, therefore, obvious that the
November 20 address was an ill-considered political gambit which clearly fits
the quote under the title of this essay. If Obama had really wanted to end the
plight of otherwise law-abiding illegals he could have announced that they will
have “guest worker” status which frees them from the fear of deportation but
does not include a path to citizenship. Since I can think of this so must have
numerous others, even those who are in political office, but since immigration
is a useful political football common sense actions are shunned. Republicans
are especially loath to establish meaningful immigration reforms because their
WASP (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant) image of America needs to be maintained.
Mexican and Central-American immigrants challenge all three aspects and since
they are the only ones who can arrive en masse on foot
they must be stopped. But the country is already ahead of the WASP view as
Obama’s election in 2008 proved, and this is why I called it at the time a
tectonic shift. Unfortunately it will take considerably more time before this
fact will be appreciated by our Republican “leadership” which stumbles behind
the actual changes.
As mentioned, the curse also affects our
foreign policy. As is well known Obama originally planned to end the
Afghanistan war this year. It drains our resources and our continued presence
in that country was regarded as useless. But the collapse of Iraq into four
warring factions (Shiites forming the “government,” some Sunnis partially
allied with it, other Sunnis in “The Islamic State” and Kurds) was extrapolated
to Afghanistan. Our hawks now insist that had we not withdrawn prematurely from
Iraq the current debacle would never have happened and that we have to prevent
a similar one in Afghanistan. But they ignore the fact that it was the
ill-conceived Cheney-Bush and their neocon advisors’ policy which created this
chaos in the first place.
It is true that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
was repressive and so was Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq, but this did not
automatically impose upon us the duty to rectify this situation and bring “freedom
and democracy” to their people. A threat to our national security had to be
used to justify the invasions of these countries. But it was a pretext for
ulterior gain rather than the true motive and the events of 9/11 were, and still
are, used for that purpose. Unless our citizens wake up to this fact we will
continue to be led in the wrong direction to our, as well as the world’s,
detriment.
The majority of people in our country
are unaware that our current problem in Afghanistan and the rise of Islamic fundamentslism is a self-inflicted wound. I have mentioned
this aspect previously but it bears repeating and needs to become wide-spread
public knowledge. The Soviet Union invaded that country in December of 1979 not
in order to further imperialist dreams but to prop up a friendly secular government
on their border that was threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. The concern was
realistic because a fundamentalist regime in Kabul would have encouraged Muslim
fundamentalism in their central Asian republics. But this event was used by our
then National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to convince President
Carter that this was an opportunity to inflict a fatal “Vietnam” on the Soviet
Union. Carter agreed and the Islamist mujahedeen became our friends, allies and
ground troops in the war against the USSR. With our tax money the CIA established
training camps in Pakistan. Money also flowed freely from the Wahhabi
fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia. After 10 years of fruitless warfare Gorbachev
realized that this drain of blood and resources had to be stopped and he
withdrew the troops. The collapse of the Soviet Union followed soon thereafter
and our historians are eager to connect it to the failed Afghanistan war.
By now we have been in Afghanistan
three years longer than the Russians and have equally little to show of it. We,
therefore, should have a public debate on what we really want to accomplish there
and what these 10,000 or so troops of ours are supposed to do. They cannot
eradicate the Taliban and pacify the country at large because it would need a
much larger force for that purpose. Even the 115,000 or so Soviets were
unsuccessful against guerilla warfare. At present the countryside is largely
under the control of the Taliban or various tribal chiefs and even Kabul is not
safe but subjected to suicide bombers. When we are told that our troops are
needed to train and advise the Afghan army many of us remember that the same
excuse was used to justify our incremental buildup in Vietnam.At this time our politicians get by with the
Afghanistan war because American casualties are kept to a minimum. If body bags
were to arrive in large numbers the country would demand an end. But since only
volunteer forces are used, largely aided by drones, the country really doesn’t
care about how many other human beings are killed. Obama has now decided that
he won’t be charged with the onus of “having lost Afghanistan” and left that
chore to the next President in 2017. This is a cop-out because the fundamental
problem, as stated by an Afghan some years ago, remains: the Americans have the
watch, but we have the time. Unless WWIII intervenes, the American public will
at some point get fed up with this drain on our resources and we will leave
this unfortunate country just as the British and the Soviets did in previous
years.
Drones have become Obama’s chief weapon
in the continued global “War against Terrorism.” But let us be quite clear on
what we are really doing thereby. The drone war also falls under the mentioned
curse. It cannot accomplish the goal of eliminating the Taliban, bringing down
the Islamic State (IS) and/or the government of Bashar Assad in Syria. We now
need to be honest and state unequivocally that it is worse than useless. Not
only can it not achieve its goal of eliminating terrorism but it also is state
sponsored murder. This is not ordinary warfare where one faces an enemy in the
open and gives him an opportunity to defend himself. The “target” has no
opportunity for defense and inasmuch as the individuals who are killed in this
manner come from tribal societies, where blood can only be avenged with blood,
we are creating more enemies than we can possibly kill. But this is not all. The
perception is created that all of our rhetoric about “human rights and justice”
is a farce because we disregard the lives of others, and “innocent until proven
guilty” likewise does not apply. Some official, somewhere in the U.S. makes a
decision that so and so in a given country is a terrorist. That name with some
supporting information is then submitted to the President who signs off on the
death sentence, knowing fully well that some bystanders may also be killed or
wounded. He thereby becomes what is
called in German a “Schreibtischmörder,”
a murderer by wielding the pen on his desk. This is in essence no different
from what a Mafia boss does, but the American people don’t want to realize it.
I am fully aware that these are harsh words but these are harsh facts which
have to be faced. Especially since, as was reported last week, Court approval
may be given for these extra-judicial executions.
On November 28 The Salt Lake Tribune carried on its front page a headline: A new
Court to ok U.S. drone strikes?The
article dealt with a proposal by a University of Utah law professor, Amos
Guiora and his University of San Francisco colleague Jeffrey Brand, to create a
special court which would hear arguments by a lawyer for the government why a
given strike should be carried out. An opposing lawyer would represent “the
target(s)” in absentia. Please note that we are no longer talking about human
beings that are to be killed but “targets to be hit!” This attempt to create a
veneer of legality to state sponsored murder is based, as The Tribune stated, on Guiora’s 19 years of experience in the
Israeli Defense Forces where “part of this time was spent as a judge-advocate general
reviewing plans to kill terror suspects or combatants and determining whether
the circumstances met the criteria for targeted executions.” This, what may be
called, “Israelization” of our security
apparatus has become pervasive after 9/11 and extends into our over-all foreign
policy as will be documented in a subsequent article. For now it is sufficient
to point out that Israel’s targeted killings have not made its citizens more
secure as suicide attacks, two Intifadas and a brewing third one prove. Why we
should follow failed examples is hard to grasp. Instead of providing a
pseudo-legal veneer, where the accused has no chance to answer the court, drone
warfare which is currently touted as the aerial warfare of the future, should
be outlawed, just as chemical weapons have been, and atomic weapons should be. Let
us be quite clear: targeted killings by drones, even when carried out by
states, are murders and need to be regarded as such.
In addition it needs to be re-emphasized
that aerial warfare, although useful as tactical support for ground troops,
fails miserably as a strategic weapon. The Third Reich did not collapse under
the weight of all the hundreds of thousands tons of bombs that were released
from above. It did so under the weight of Russian and Allied boots on the ground.
“No flight zones” did not bring down Saddam Hussein, American boots did. Even
in the Pacific Japan might not have readily surrendered after the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombs had the Empire not already faced an imminent invasion of the
home islands. The war was already lost before the two bombs and the credit goes
to America’s “island hopping” troops who had made utter defeat inevitable. Thus,
when Obama now pursues the drone war in Yemen, Pakistan (there are no good
“targets” left in Afghanistan), Iraq and Syria he does so out of desperation
because Americans are unwilling to shed more of their own blood in these
places.
The Syrian situation is even worse than
that in Iraq. In the latter country our policies have a semblance of legitimacy
because the Baghdad government, ineffectual as it is, at least wants us there,
but this is not the case in Syria. Obama, with his past rhetoric of “Assad must
go” has limited his options. He currently endeavors to fight both Assad and the
Islamic State for the benefit of some nebulous “Free Syrian Army” and “moderate
secular opposition” that exists mainly in the fantasy of émigrés. The locals
would settle for any form of stable government that provides reasonable
personal security and livelihood. The most recent example is Egypt. The
protests got rid of Mubarak; democracy brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power,
but this could not be accepted and a new Mubarak-type military dictatorship is
now providing law and order. Since we have no problem with al Sisi it is difficult to see why Assad is a bête noire. Clearly other forces than “freedom
and love of democracy” are at work.
The IS in portions of Syria and Iraq
will likewise neither be “degraded” nor “destroyed,” to use the President’s
words, by the means at his disposal. Massive American ground forces, the only way
that could achieve this end, have been ruled out because our country wouldn’t
stand for it. Therefore, the same useless Vietnam type approach of advisors to
and trainers for the new Iraqi army, just as in Afghanistan, is pursued. But as
has been pointed out in a recent New York
Times article some of the officers in this new army are corrupt and sell to
the opposition whatever material we provide them with. In addition, the local
Sunni tribes will flock, just in the Sudan of the1880s, to the winning side as
presented in last month’s installment. The current caliphate in portions of
Syria/Iraq is, as pointed out in the November issue, best understood in the light
of the Mahdi’s Sudan uprising and even the black flag of jihad was the one
Khalif Abdallahi used as his standard in that country.
The reign of the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad) as
well as that of his successor contains a useful lesson for our present problem
with the new Khalif al Baghdadi, about whom we know far too little. Lord Acton
was correct: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. After the
fall of Khartoum in 1885, which established the Mahdi as absolute ruler of the
Sudan, he abandoned modest clothing and devotion to religious services. The
days were spent lounging in finery surrounded by his favorite wives and
concubines and only for the obligatory official prayers did he assume his
previous modest attire. In other words he became a hypocrite which in the long
run would have become common knowledge. But he lived only a few months before
succumbing, to what probably was typhus, later in the year.
The real lesson can be drawn from the
conduct of his successor, Khalif Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, who ruled the country with
utter ruthlessness for the next 13 years. In the previous issue I mentioned
that I would describe some of the conditions under his rule as experienced and
narrated by Joseph Ohrwalder, an Austrian Catholic missionary priest, who was
the Mahdi’s and his successor’s prisoner for ten years. The hallmarks of the
regime were: terror and unpredictability. Minor offenses were punished by 80
lashes that drew blood and left the victim vulnerable to infections. Islamic
law, Sharia, orders cutting off the hands of thieves but this was modified to removal
of the right hand and left foot. The operations were adroitly carried out by
butchers who knew where to cut at the joints. Many of the victims also
succumbed to infections but as Ohrwalder reported a large number hopped around
on one leg and continued stealing because it was the only way to get some food.
Death
sentences, either by decapitation or hanging, were liberally pronounced, at
times even for trivial offenses, but could occasionally be mitigated to
imprisonment by bribes or flattery. The conditions in the Khalif’s prison were
abominable. The main one consisted of a mud and stone hut at the edge of the
Nile surrounded by a wall the prisoners had built. Everyone wore iron chains
and during the day they stayed in the open in the shade of the wall. During the
night they were crammed like sardines (Ohrwalder’s term) into the hut which due
to the day’s sunshine was infernally hot. There was only a small window opening
insufficient for the heat and the body odor of the prisoners to escape. To make
matters worse many of them suffered from diarrhea which further fouled the air.
Scorpions that bit the unfortunates abounded, and this led to cursing and wild
scenes. Sleep was impossible, because there was no room to stretch the legs. When
door was opened in the morning the surviving prisoners, a number died each
night, rushed into the open air. They did not receive regular food rations; it
had to be supplied by relatives or friends. This is only a small excerpt of the
atrocities committed by the regime and the totality of the barbarities, under
the false flag of religion, is best read in Ohrwalder’s Ten years captivity in the Mahdi’s camp.
Small wonder that the Sudanese became
restless and domestic order was only maintained by the Khalif through terror
and reliance on his own tribe that had a reputation for special brutality. When
in 1898 a force of 8,000 British and 17,000 Egyptian and Sudanese troops,
equipped with the most modern weapons, appeared at Omdurman, Abdallahi’s local
support had eroded to such an extent that defeat was inevitable. These events can
provide a guideline to our strategy in regard to the IS. We should not expect a
quick solution but prepare for the long haul, with minimal American involvement
at this time. Initially we ought to be content with establishing a defense
perimeter that prevents further inroads by the IS in Iraq. This can be done
with Kurdish forces in the North and Shiite militias, as well as whatever the Iraqi
army can muster, in the South. While the planned 2015 offensive may or may not
be successful, we ought to be mindful that permanent pacification of the
country can only be achieved through local effort. Thus, a great deal will
depend on the conduct of the IS leadership. If it follows Khalif Abdallahi’s
example of terror, corruption and reliance on one tribe, they will seal their
doom sooner rather than later, because the other Sunni tribes that currently
form their main support will become restive. That will be the time when outside
military intervention will have the best chance of success, especially if the Baghdad
government has been reformed and provides Sunnis with the same considerations that
are given to Shiites.
Obama has two more years in office and
over the upcoming holidays he should think deep and hard what his real
priorities are. I have so far mentioned only the current wars, but Ukraine is
an even more dangerous trouble spot. Talk by President Petroshenko of holding a
public referendum on NATO membership is a deliberate provocation of Russia and
should not be endorsed. It is a red line for Putin and in all probability he
will enforce it. Since NATO cannot function without the U.S. Obama should
reassure Putin that he can safely disregard this rhetoric.
Overall the President would be well
advised to absorb a dash of Buddhist mindfulness as it relates to our conduct
with others. The first admonition is: Clear comprehension of purpose! From it
follows the second one: Clear comprehension of the suitability of means! If the
purpose is clearly defined, the means to achieve it are available, and the
cause is noble, the curse under which he currently labors will be lifted and
all of us can breathe a sigh of relief.
January 1, 2015
STATE OF THE UNION
In last month’s installment I discussed
the failure of President Obama’s efforts to enact the goals he had set out in
his Audacity of Hope and first
Inaugural Address. Although a considerable portion of the blame for this
failure can be laid at the feet of his opponents who were, for a variety of
reasons including race, determined to prevent major achievements, his character
structure was an additional factor. Although personally likeable he did not
have Lyndon Johnson’s ability to persuade legislators to his point of view but
relied on an inner circle at the White House for his actions. This came to
haunt him especially in regard to his most cherished program the Affordable
Health Care Act. Although the Act does provide health insurance to millions who
had not previously been able to afford it, it is also riddled with bureaucratic
problems. This not only makes it more expensive than needed but also negatively
impacts on physicians and hospitals who are the care
providers. On the international scene he found himself unable to justify the
premature Nobel Peace Prize by enacting the goals set out in his Cairo speech
of and instead has turned from conciliation to confrontation which earned him the
epithet “Bush Light.”
We may now ask ourselves to what
extent this was avoidable and why he has disappointed many of those who had
voted for him. This disappointment was apparent even before the mid-term
elections. Democrats who were running for office distanced themselves from Obama
and his policies at their campaign rallies rather than pointing to his
achievements. The resulting defeat with the loss of Democrat majority in both
Houses of Congress was, therefore, preordained. My personal disenchantment started
when he declared that his administration “will not look back, but forward.” I
felt that this was thoroughly ill-advised because by not facing up to the failures
of the Bush years and investigating their causes the mistakes will be repeated.
We cannot learn from the present or imagined future, we have to rely on the
past and discern the lessons it teaches us. This is elementary but completely
neglected by those of our politicians who actually shape events. I am exempting
some better educated members of Congress in this indictment but although they
may eloquently present their views on the floor hardly anybody is there to
listen. What makes matters worse is that even the Press which is supposed to
give us a complete picture of Congress’ proceedings on vital matters fails to
do so. For instance on
December 3 the House passed a nearly unanimous resolution which urged the
President to take actions against Russia, which are uncalled for and merely
intensify the current hostile climate.Former
Congressman Ron Paul vigorously objected but the American public official media
failed to report on it. One has to resort to the Internet and a Canadian
website www.globalresearch.com to
get this information.
What is responsible for this state of
affairs? There are two books that have come to my attention that deal with this
question. One is by Sheldon S. Wolin, Emeritus Professor of Politics at
Princeton University. In Democracy Inc. –
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, he showed
how our government has been subverted by organized private financial interests
groups. The book was published at the end of the Bush Presidency, but the 2010
edition has a Preface which deals with Obama’s political inheritance and his
attempts to deal with it. The economic crisis forced a “scaling down” of some
campaign promises but left the fundamentals of a rotting system, with the
steady drift to totalitarianism, intact. He called it “inverted”
totalitarianism to emphasize the difference from the more common occurrence
around the world where totalitarian governments emerge as a result of popular
revolutions or coup d’états. In our situation the process is more gradual and
instead of starting from the bottom of society it arises from ruling circles
that steadily widen their grip on the elected government to the point where the
very word democracy has lost its meaning.
Similar to what has been pointed out
here on previous occasions Wolin condemns, as one of the major flaws of our
current society, the lies which we are inundated with on a daily basis.
In a preliminary
way lying can be defined as the deliberate misrepresentation of actuality and
the substitution of a constructed “reality.” The problem today is that lying is
not an isolated phenomenon but characteristic of a culture where exaggeration
and inflated claims are commonplace occurrences. For more than a century the
public has been shaped by a relentless culture of advertising and its
exaggerations, false claims, and fantasies – all aimed at influencing and
directing behavior in the premeditated ways chosen by the advertiser. The
techniques developed for the marketplace have been adapted by political
consultants and their media experts. The result has been the pollution of the
ecology of politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative
government, claiming to be what it is not, compassionate and conservative,
god-fearing and moral.
Wolin used the Iraq war as the prime
example for political lying but as I have repeatedly pointed out it started in
this century with the 9/11 crime which lies at the root of all our current
problems. It is a genuine tragedy that academicians, even in retirement like
Wolin, do not face up to the fact that fires from planes hitting the Twin
Towers cannot pulverize cement and bend solid steel beams. It is likewise
impossible for plane engines made of titanium to vanish as result of crashes
into buildings (Twin Towers, Pentagon) or an open field like in Shanksville. These
are facts of physics and until our government provides us with an explanation
of what really happened on that day people who think about these matters will
be unable to trust it.
Why successive governments, from Bush to
Obama, who came from opposite parties, do not change policies in a fundamental
manner is the subject of the other book; Michael J. Glennon’s National Security and Double Government.
He is Professor of International Law at Tufts University and the book is
unusual inasmuch as the text is contained in 118 pages while pages 119-234 are
the endnotes that provide the documentation for the author’s assertions. This
separation serves him well because most readers will be satisfied to extract
the essence from the text and leave the Notes for specialists who may or may
not want to examine them. This method is rarely used but deserves consideration
especially in our hurried times where one wants to “get to the bottom line”
with maximum speed and minimal effort.
In the book, Glennon presents a contrast
between the type of government envisioned by the writer of the Constitution,
James Madison, and the post WWII rise of what I have called the National
Security State (May 15, 2011; The NS State). All of us are familiar with the
Madisonian model for optimal government. It consists of the legislative,
judiciary and executive branches where potential excesses by any branch are
checked by the other two and in addition there is an independent press which
serves as watchdog over the entire system. This ideal was never fully realized
but did work to some extent during the first 150 years of our republic. Madison
already realized, however, that something else was needed for his dream to
become fully functional. As Glennon wrote
Essential to the
effectiveness of these checks and maintenance of balance was civic virtue – an
informed and engaged electorate. The virtue of the people who held office would
rest on the intelligence and public-mindedness of the people who put them
there. Absent civic virtue, the governmental equilibrium would collapse.
Madison was correct and we now see the
result of the decline of educational standards even among our college graduates,
let alone the general public, that was documented in the February 1, 2002 issue
(The Great Satan).Whenlarge portions
of the voting public have no information in regard to world history and
geography they readily fall victim to simple-minded slogans by politicians as
well as the media.
Madison’s model of government has now
been supplanted by what Glennon called “the Trumanite
model.” It came into being with the “National Security Act of 1947.” It not
only unified the three branches of the military under
one Secretary of Defense, but also established the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
National Security Council, the CIA and the NSA. The ostensible purpose was to
provide for greater efficiency in decision making by the President in the
atomic age.It was argued that Stalin
could attack the country at any moment and there simply would not be time for the
constitutionally demanded checks and balances to work themselves out towards a thoughtful
response. But what may have seemed reasonable in 1947 has since grown into a
monster that erodes the foundations of our country and is about to destroy
what’s left of our freedoms, without making us more secure from overseas’
threats. By the time Truman left office he regretted this decision, but it was
too late. This was also the basis of Eisenhower’s warning about the threat the
Military-Industrial Complex poses to our freedom.
Glennon pointed out that this complex, which
by now functions as a second government, should not be thought of as some cabal
of a small number of certain individuals who are out to subvert the country. In
actuality, it consists of a network of persons with common interests in and
outside of government who have the financial means as well as the clout to
enforce their will upon the policies and laws made by the elected members of
government. This assures continuity of purpose and the resultant subversion of
the democratic process. Similar to Fukuyama’s latest book, which was discussed
in the October issue (Land of Dysfunction and Decay) he pointed out that all
three branches of government including the media have been corrupted under the
guise of serving national security and he thereby validated what has been
presented in these pages over the past several years.
Although he details how Congress and the
Supreme Court have been subverted I shall concentrate at this time on the
Presidency as the ultimate authority. President George W. Bush told us that he
is “the decider,” but we have to keep in mind that Presidents do not have first-hand
information about events. They have to rely entirely on what they learn from
the media and what their advisors choose to tell them. The CIA as well as the
NSA frequently see no reason to inform any President,
going back to Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, about what they are really up to.
Only when the failures become obvious or there are leaks by the media, such as
the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Snowden revelations, does the White House become
officially involved in damage control. When Bush 43 was asked by an aide in the
summer of 2008 “what one thing surprised him most about the presidency his
presidency” His reply was “without hesitation ‘How little authority I have,’ …
with a laugh.”
When decisions, especially those dealing
with military matter, have to be made, Glennon noted, the President is usually
given three options. Two of them are so outlandish as to be unworthy of
consideration and the third, the preferred one, is couched in language which
will make it difficult to refuse. This is what happened for instance in regard
to the Afghanistan troop surge suggested by the generals during Obama’s first
term. He had to accept the basic demand in spite of the fact that he probably
knew very well that it was useless. All he was able to do consisted of haggling
about the numbers. The same applies to the decision not to withdraw our
military completely from that unfortunate country but leave somewhat over 10,000
advisors and support personnel. What they are to accomplish is anybody’s guess.
The inevitable casualties will serve no purpose and the noble slogan of “they
are heroes who are defending our country” is devoid of truth. This is Vietnam
all over again; Obama knows it but is helpless to do anything about it, lest he
be pilloried for “losing Afghanistan” as he has “lost Iraq.” No President can
afford to be regarded as “soft” on national security, this is the reason why
the military-industrial complex can no longer be tamed but will continue to
grow exponentially.
The tragedy for the future of our
country is that these measures to improve security will lead not only to
further restrictions domestically and eventually a totalitarian regime but will
actually make us less safe. The Ukraine disaster is a classic example of seemingly
good intentions having badly misfired. I don’t know what Obama was told about
the State Department’s involvement in the Maidan protests and especially the
coup which forced President Yanukovich to flee the country. Our proclaimed
objective was to bring democracy and responsible government to the people,
while the real one was to pry the country loose from Russia and exploit its
markets in the manner described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine (March 15, 2014; The Ukraine Crisis). But any
clear-thinking person would have known and told Obama that this is a game of
playing with fire because Russia will not allow a potentially hostile neighbor
to emerge. As a result of our meddling there is now civil war in the country
which serves as proxy for American-Russian rivalry. Although we publicly deny
it, the purpose of the current confrontation is obviously “regime change” in
Russia. Putin has to go because we need a pliable person like Yeltsin. This
disregards the fact that the latter was a disaster for the Russian people while
Putin has, in spite of restrictive measures on civil liberties, provided
stability and still enjoys their trust. The sanctions imposed on Russia’s
economy, although couched in terms of punishment for bad behavior in Ukraine,
are really designed to make the Russian people feel sufficient pain that they
will throw Putin to the wolves. This is the fantasy of our second government. The
fact that they thereby pave the way for a decline in the European economy and
probably eventually our own is ignored.
While these books did not present data
that had not been discussed here earlier in previous editions it was
interesting to note that at least some of them, especially in regard to the
government’s deceptions, are now receiving academia’s stamp of approval. The
American people will have to come to terms with the fact that “double
government” has become a reality and we must examine, in light of past history,
what the outcome is likely to be. As a native of Austria the antecedents to
WWI, as discussed here in the past June-September issues, immediately spring to
mind. By spring of 1914, it was common knowledge that two forces were shaping
political events in Serbia. One was the official government which proclaimed
peace and good-will towards the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the other
consisted of Serbian ultra-nationalists who worked towards the unification of
all South-Slavs (Yugoslavs) under Belgrade’s rule. This could obviously only be
achieved by the destruction of Austria-Hungary. While the official government
was, of course, aware of these aspirations, it denied them, yet some of the key
persons held government positions especially in military intelligence. They
were responsible for the Archduke’s assassination but the official government
could deny it. It is not clear to what extent the Serbian Prime Minister, Nikola
Pašić, knew about the plot, but it is reasonable
to assume that he was kept in the dark so that “plausible deniability” could be
maintained. The group operated strictly on a “need to know basis” which ensured
secrecy.
Secrecy, and lying about its true aim,
subsequently was also the stance of the government in Vienna. A secret decision
to go to war with Serbia had already been reached by July 5, after Germany had
agreed to Austria’s local war, without considering the wider consequences. The
Austrian ultimatum to Serbia at the end of the month, the rejection of which
was expected, merely served as the pretext for beginning military operations. Throughout
the month the Viennese government officially proclaimed that it did not want to
dismantle the Serbian state, although this was, of course, the goal. Under this
false pretense it tried to reassure Russia, Serbia’s unofficial protector, that Serbia’s current borders were to remain
intact. The Russians were told that only a punitive expedition was planned in
order to rid the country of its subversive elements, or terrorists in modern
parlance. The Russian military obviously knew better, and they were loath to
lose Serbia. When the Austro-Hungarians did declare war on Serbia, July 28,
they felt that the Russian army needed to be mobilized. This precipitated
Germany’s declaration of war against Russia, because of fear for its eastern
provinces. In view of Russia’s alliance with France, war also had to be
declared against that country and when the Germans marched through Belgium, the
British had their excuse to join the fray. In sum and substance the real lesson
of WWI, the consequences of which still haunt us in
the Middle East, has not been learned and is denied. It boils down to this: fear
of what the other might do and secrecy combined with lies about one’s own
plans. Secret organizations start a catastrophic event. Instead of assuming
responsibility and punishing the perpetrators the state protests its innocence.
The aggrieved party uses the event as pretext for the long-held desire to rid
itself of an irritant and secretly begins planning retaliatory action, lies
about it, while totally disregarding all the existing defense treaties among
the major powers.
This may seem like ancient history but may
well be our potential future. The secret organizations, double government to
use Glennon’s term, not only exist in our country, but have previously unheard
of powers. They are in the Pentagon, the CIA and NSA. The Senate has just concluded
hearings on CIA abuses in regard to torture. Although it condemned them, no
punitive actions will be taken and as the New
York Times reported on the 27th “its mandate” will remain
“untouched.” The article also quoted from a dinner conversation the former Church
Committee Staff member Loch K. Johnson, who is currently Regents Professor of
Political Science at the University of Georgia, had with William Casey the agency’s
director during the Reagan administration. “Mr. Casey told him that the role of
Congress was ‘to stay [expletive] out of my business.’”
This clearly shows the abysmal arrogance
of the people whose salaries we pay and who believe that they are responsible
to no one. For anyone who might argue that this was then, and the situation now
is different, here are the last three paragraphs of the article.
And as America’s
spying apparatus has grown larger, richer and more powerful than during any
other time in its history, it has become ever harder for those keeping watch
over it.
‘We are 15 people overseeing a $50
billion enterprise,” said Senator King speaking of his fellow members on the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
‘I can’t tell you I know with certainty
every intelligence program this enterprise is engaged in.”
A Church
Committee for the 21st Century—a special congressional investigatory committee
that undertakes a significant and public reexamination of intelligence
community practices that affect the rights of Americans and the laws governing
those actions—is urgently needed. Nothing less than the confidence of the
American public in our intelligence agencies and, indeed, the federal government,
is at stake.
Yes,
indeed! But the Senate having just concluded its hearings on CIA practices has shown
us how fruitless these efforts are. The people in responsible position do not
regard the senators as their superiors or even equals and treat them strictly
on a “need to know basis.” And as Casey pointed out what the intelligence
community does is none of anybody else’s business! What this means in practice
is that any of these officially unauthorized projects, which may well include
assassination attempts of foreign leaders, may create a 1914 type catastrophe
with NATO as the sequel of Europe’s alliances of the past century. Consider for
a moment the vast defense obligations we have shouldered. Not only for all the
NATO members, but also most of the Central and South American States, Israel,
South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. In addition we
need to consider that ever since the 1999 Yugoslavia bombing NATO is no longer
strictly a defensive organization but has changed from a shield to a sword.
Russia knows it, and this is the underlying fact which makes our relations with
that country, quite independent of Putin, so difficult. Any misstep by our
intelligence services anywhere in the world might, therefore, have catastrophic
results.
The
CIA/NSA attitude of unaccountability and self-righteousness also makes all our
hopes for a definitive government investigation into the 9/11 events illusory.
But since it was a crime of international dimensions the International Criminal
Court could possibly step into the breach. Yet even if this were to happen our
government is likely to stall and/or sabotage the proceedings. This is the true
state of our “democracy.” The rest of the world is fully aware of it and properly
accuses us of hypocrisy when we proclaim our right to lead the world towards
this blessed ideal. “Your actions speak louder than words” they will tell us,
and they are correct.
At the end of this month it is
customary for the President to appear before a joint session of Congress to
address the members, as well as the nation at large, with his notion of our
country’s current state and the goals for the rest of the year. This ritual, as
described in the February 1, 2010 issue (The Humpty Dumpty Society) has
unfortunately lost all meaning and is not likely to provide us with new
insights how the government might reform itself or how
relations with our adversaries will be improved. My comments on the event and
relatively realistic prospects for this upcoming year will be presented in the
February edition when the transcript of the speech will be available.
February 1, 2015
STATE OF THE UNION: FOLLOW-UP
When a physician meets a new patient s/he
is expected to first make an accurate diagnosis, provide a reasonable
forecastof what the condition will lead
to if it remains untreated (prognosis), and then prescribe the best available
treatment method. For some surgeons the job is finished after operation except
perhaps for a brief follow-up visit. But those of us who are engaged in the
non-surgical practice of medicine follow our patients, especially those with
chronic illnesses, for months and years. This allows us to assess the accuracy
of our initial diagnosis, prognosis and treatment efforts. Follow-up is
essential and the only way to know if what we are doing has any value, and this
is also the reason why I try to assess in these pages to what extent my prognoses
of political events were correct.
What I wrote last month about the
President’s annual State of the Union address did not require particular
foresight because the ritual is so well established, and the conduct of the
actors well known. There were indeed no surprises. Mr. Obama read a speech,
written by others, with appropriate emphasis, although an editor could have cut
it down to half of its more than an hour’s length and still get
the essential message across. The Speaker of the House Mr. Boehner sat
impassively staring at the back of Obama’s head and when the Vice-President
rose to enthusiastically clap his hands in support of one of the President’s
utterances he stayed put. So did the rest of the Republicans who now have a
solid majority in Congress. The signal they sent was: Work with us, or we’ll
obstruct!
The President’s speech, which painted an
upbeat picture of America’s health, can be summarized in regard to domestic affairs
as follows: We have made great strides in overcoming the economic disaster of
2008; we have not yet reached our goal of full prosperity for all, but are well
on the way. Instead of, as in past years, talking about “the poor” a new slogan
appeared “middle class economics,” highlighted by the inevitable rags to some
prosperity human interest story. In this instance it was the Erler family of
Minneapolis.In order to provide more
skilled workers for needed jobs he will propose in his upcoming budget to
abolish tuition fees for community colleges. In medicine he will be “launching
a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like
cancer and diabetes – and to give all of us access to the personalized
information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier.” Every
classroom and every community will have internet. Tax loopholes which only help
the rich will be closed and the savings used to help families for childcare and
send their kids to college. Later in the speech he touched on the reduction of
the Guantanamo prisoner population, race relations and immigration reform.
In regard to foreign policy the
President emphasized “that we lead best when we combine military power with
strong diplomacy and … coalition building ….” “In Afghanistan we have trained
their security forces, who’ve now taken the lead, and we’ve honored our troops sacrifice
by supporting that country’s first democratic transition.” In Syria and Iraq
ISIL is being stopped by a large contingent of international forces while the
moderate opposition to the Assad regime is also supported. NATO will meet “Mr.
Putin’s aggression” in Ukraine. “That’s how America leads - not with bluster,
but with persistent, steady resolve.” Among the other issues he touched on were
the new relations with Cuba, the Iranian nuclear talks, cyber-attacks, a
warning to China to play by the rules, Ebola and climate change. He then
pointed out that some Congress members are tired of “arguing past each other on
cable shows, the constant fund raising, always looking over their shoulder at
how the base will react to every decision. Imagine if we broke out of these
tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.” The difference he
wanted to achieve was that instead of argument, bickering and hostility there
was to be a spirit of cooperation for the common good where differences are
aired and resolved to a mutually agreeable conclusion. He did realize that he
was talking to a hostile majority and that bills will be introduced which go
against his convictions and, therefore, promised to veto them.
The routine Republican reply about a
half hour later was delivered this year by Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa. She is
a good example of how the American political system really works. Each party
has its “headhunters,” or more politely “talent scouts,” who scour the country
at primary season not only for who is electable but also of potential
presidential caliber. For 2000 the Democrat contingent stumbled on Barack Obama
of Illinois, for 2004 the Republicans on Sarah Palin of Alaska and in 2014 on the
lady from Iowa. In each instance there is a specific purpose. Obama, although
half-white, was to be the poster boy for the black community, Sarah Palin was
to show the country that Republicans are not misogynists and Joni Ernst has the
virtues not only of femaleness but being a Lt. Colonel in the Iowa National
Guard and having been raised on a farm. This is to demonstrate that the
Republican Party stands for sexual equality, and instead of being composed of
Wall Street plutocrats they are in fact hard working middle class Americans.
Another example for the pretense of color blindness is our newly elected Utah
junior Senator, Mia Love, the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her qualification
for the rise to national stardom was mayor of Saratoga Springs, a city of not
quite 23,000 souls on the northwestern corner of Utah Lake. I am mentioning her
at this time because unless she were to have a sudden
fall from grace we might well see her on the Vice-Presidential ticket at some
future election.
Lt. Colonel Ernst’s rise to fame has
been credited by Wikipedia to a campaign ad which centered on her prowess in
castrating pigs. This down to earth activity endeared her with the press
because of the promise to apply this surgery to the politicians who create bloated
budgets in Washington and “make them squeal.” But how she is going to castrate
the proverbial “fat cats,” who are really running the show, remained unsaid.
The irony which eluded the press is that this type of surgery also makes the piglets
fatter than they normally would grow to be. But let us now turn to what the
lady said.
She assured us that she knows our
priorities and the new Republican Congress will enact them. Her farming
background from near poverty through hard work to modest incomes was duly
emphasized to apparently serve as the model for future legislation. She then stressed
projects like the controversial “keystone pipeline” from Canada to the Gulf of
Mexico, which has been held up by the Obama administration over environmental concerns,
as the means to creating numerous jobs. Tax filing should be easier and
loopholes closed which is, of course, what the President had said some moments
earlier, but may have escaped Mrs. Ernst’s speechwriter(s). It is obvious that
whatever she said did not come out of her ten fingers typing on a keyboard but
was handed to her to read. She also stated in good old military fashion, “Let’s
tear down trade barriers in places like Europe and the Pacific. Let’s sell more
of what we make and grow in America over there so we can boost manufacturing,
wages, and jobs right here in America.” But what happens if these obstinate
“others” don’t want that and are more interested in keeping their own countries
afloat rather than helping Americans out of the dilemma they themselves have
created by offshoring and outsourcing their industries for greater profits? The
threats posed by terrorists were duly acknowledged and “we need a comprehensive
plan to defeat them.” Here is again the military mindset which ignores that
we’ve been trying to do this for fourteen years under a Republican and Democrat
administration with the result that the situation is worse than in the pre-
9/11 days. She then repeated the President’s theme on cyberattacks and that the
new Congress will “work to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” Please note that
we will not try to understand Iran’s position in regard to the nuclear issue,
but we will “confront” them with our demands. This is not how negotiations can
succeed. In sum and substance the message was: Republicans are now in charge,
the country can breathe a sigh of relief and “with a little cooperation from
the President, we can get Washington working again.”
While Senator Ernst’s response did not
outline any specific proposals, apart from the pipeline and repealing Obamacare,
her colleague Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky also weighed in. He is the son of
former Representative Ron Paul and like his father a physician. Although nominally
Republican he does not blindly toe the party line but calls things as he sees
them. He was not chosen by anyone to give this talk but simply went on YouTube
and spoke from the heart. His vision, as an ophthalmologist, who takes out
cataracts, was not as cloudy or rosy as that of the previous two speakers, but
sharper, and he did not shy away from nasty details. The opening sentences were,
“I wish I had better news for you but all is not well in America. America is
adrift. Something is clearly wrong.”
Among America’s numerous problems he
listed: the constant electioneering (my term), too much government intervention,
worsening income inequality, pitting one American against another, the enormous
debt burden, over-militarized foreign policy, racial strife, Obamacare, the
Intelligence director lying to Congress and not getting punished for it, as
well as collecting personal information without a warrant.
In regard to the proposed remedies he
reminded us of the physician’s overarching principle: nil nocere; first of all do no harm. This
indeed should be the prime consideration before any political and especially
military action is undertaken. Rand only listed Libya as an example of military
intervention without thinking through the consequences, but it goes all the way
back to 2001. The Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the current war against the
Assad regime have not only been unnecessary but turned the mentioned countries
into disaster zones with untold human suffering. The same applies to our
meddling in Ukraine where we have succeeded in creating a civil war. The
Senator did not talk about Ukraine and stayed with the Middle East, where “we
are foolish to believe we will solve this puzzle [Sunni-Shia war]. We must
defend ourselves and defend our vital interests, but we must not be deluded
into believing that we can remake the Middle East in an image of Western
democracy.”
His prescription to return the country
to a reasonable state of health included: term limits for Congress; legislation
that would make Congress live by the rules it imposes on the rest of the
country; not only new blood in Washington but a new way of thinking; if
Congress doesn’t balance the budget the Constitution should be amended to force
the government to do so; repealing Obamacare; for defense “ a lean, mean
fighting machine that doesn’t waste money on a bloated civilian bureaucracy;” a
fair tax system; a plan to bring prosperity to our inner cities, and real
justice to all Americans. He concluded his presentation with: “The President
tonight and for the past six years, had the wrong diagnosis for what ails our
country. I look forward to having a conversation with the American people about
this throughout this next year. Thank you and God Bless America.”
There are a great many aspects in Dr.
Rand’s address that need to be taken to heart and readers of these issues will
know that they echo many of the sentiments that have been expressed here over
the years. But he gave us the symptoms of the disease not its cause. I shall
return to this aspect later. For now I’d like to stay with the medical aspects:
Obamacare and what was not mentioned by the Senators, the “Precision Medicine
Initiative.” When Republicans talk about abolishing Obamacare and tell us that
we have to go back to the principles that guided medical practice in the past
they are deluding themselves. There is no going back to the “good old days.”
They ended when insurance carriers became the dominant factor in what is now
euphemistically called “the healthcare industry.”
Let me give you a personal example. As previously
mentioned in another context I had to undergo thoracic surgery in 1953 while in
specialty training at the Mayo Clinic. In those days the Clinic provided free
medical care for physicians and the clergy. The only cost accrued to me, who
had no medical insurance, was for the hospital bill. Since we did not have the
money to pay it there was the “Fellows Association” which provided an interest
free loan for this type of emergencies. The bill was not exorbitant and I could
pay off the loan within a year from my meager salary. In the early 90s I
returned to the Clinic for a back problem. As a former fellow I was still not
charged but my insurance carriers, Medicare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, were. This
was not greed on part of the Clinic but survival because costs for services due
to technological advances and fear of law suits have skyrocketed. When one has
to have a CT scan or MRI for every headache or back pain costs go up
automatically. If the physician does not order these tests and the patient is
later diagnosed of having suffered from a malignancy, a ruinous law suit will
be the result. So “better safe than sorry” is the rule which leads to a
tremendous amount of unnecessary tests, in some instances unnecessary surgery, and
the insurance companies are legally obligated to pay anyway.
If Obamacare were indeed completely
repealed, without a more reasonable substitute in place, it would be a disaster
for millions of Americans who cannot afford the insurance rates. Does anybody
really believe that the insurance carriers will lower their rates and improve
services when “government gets out of the way?” “Healthcare” is a business and
business has to show a profit! As long as the financial profit motive exists so
will greed, and the individual patient’s needs will be
secondary. There is no doubt that some aspects of Obamacare need to be changed
or abolished, but it would be a tragedy for many if Republicans succeeded in
getting rid of it altogether. You don’t throw out the baby with the bath water;
you clean, swaddle, and feed it. That should be the prescription.
When I heard the President mention the
“Precision Medicine Initiative” I had no idea what he was talking about.
Medicine is and always has been more of an art that relies on good judgment,
than a mechanistic science which runs on formulas. People, regardless whether
they are patients or physicians, are not “precision” machines, like a car where
everything is programmed to function when certain actions are taken. We have
only crude ideas in regard to the causes of various symptoms and all our
remedies have some side-effects. They are negligible in most instances but can
at times be “worse than the disease.”
When I then looked up on Wikipedia what
the President was talking about, I found out that it involves creating
everybody’s genetic blueprint and making it available to physicians and the
patient. This will then change the practice of medicine from “guesswork” to
scientific accuracy because the physician will not only be better able to point
to the cause of a given illness but also provide theknowledge which drug will be best suited
with least side-effects. The article also mentioned that the Initiative has
bipartisan support and is favored by the NIH. When I read this it immediately
struck me as science-fiction. The past decades have abundantly shown that the
fundamental idea: one gene for a given disease is wrong and it is worth
recalling what I wrote about stem-cell therapy on these pages in August of 2001.
The essay was in part a reply to the media furor over President Bush’s refusal
to spend government money on the destruction of fetuses in order to harvest
stem cells which will cure Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes
and a host of other illnesses. I noted at that time that there was no ban on
private industry to pursue this goal. There also were still considerable
medical and ethical issues that had to be addressed and “it would be useful not
to rush in where angels fear to tread.” The medical aspects discussed in the
article are still valid but it also shows my faith in the Republican Party and
the essential goodness of our political system which was fatally shattered
during the next two months by the Bush administration’s reaction to the 9/11
tragedy.
With these reservations in mind it was good
to see in the NY Times of January 29
an article by Dr. Michael J. Joyner: “‘Moonshot’ Medicine will let us down.”
The byline states that Dr. Joyner is an anesthesiologist and physiologist at
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. The substance of the article is that
For most common
diseases hundreds of genetic risk variants with small effects have been
identified, and it is hard to develop a clear picture of who is really at risk
for what. … Several high profile attempts to use genetic variants to target
patients with commonly used drug therapies have also failed in clinical trials.
… For relatively rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, exciting new drugs have
been developed using genetic information, but they have not been able to fix
defective genes via gene therapy as originally hoped. … The push toward precision
medicine could also lead to unintended consequences based on how humans respond
to perception of risk. … We have been down this road before. The idea behind
the “war on cancer” was that a deep understanding of the basic biology of
cancer would let us develop targeted therapies and cure the disease. Unfortunately,
although we know far more today than we did 40-plus years ago, the statistics
on cancer deaths have remained incredibly stubborn. … Medical problems and
their underlying biology are not linear engineering exercises and solving them
is more than a matter of vision, money and will.
Dr. Joyner is correct and as he pointed
out in regard to cancer the major breakthrough was the reduction of the use of
tobacco, which highlighted the role of culture and individual human conduct. In
his concluding paragraph he stated:
We would be better off directing more
resources to understanding what it takes to solve messy problems about how
humans behave as individuals and in groups. Ultimately we almost certainly have
more control over how much we exercise, eat, drink, and smoke than we do over
our genome.
Although Dr. Joyner’s points are well
taken they probably will be ignored and another program, with unforeseeable
ethical-societal consequences, is likely to be launched with great fanfare. If
this prognosis is correct there will be several reasons. The Democrats will
point to their eagerness in improving the health of people and providing “transparency”
of information between doctor and patient. The Republicans will emphasize that
they are not against government spending for “worthy” causes and that they can
cooperate with the President. While behind the scenes the drug companies of
“Big Pharma,” who stand to gain substantially from government money, will do
their level best on Capitol Hill to mute discordant voices.
In the three different State of the
Union messages the speakers agreed on only one point: praise of our military.
The President said that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. … And we
salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 generation
who has served to keep us safe. We are humbled and grateful for your service.”
Senator Ernst chimed in with: “We must also honor America’s veterans. These men
and women have sacrificed so much in defense of our freedoms, and our way of
life. They deserve nothing less than the benefits they were promised and a
quality of care we can be all proud of.” There is no question that these young
men and women who lost limbs and suffered irreparable brain as well as spinal
cord injuries, in addition to the psychological traumas, deserve the best
medical care we have to offer. It is, however, not true that they fought in
Afghanistan and Iraq to “protect our freedoms.” They were sent on false
pretenses and this is the ugly truth no one in power wants to face. The 9/11
crime needed an international judicial investigation rather than a series of
wars from which there is now no escape. Let us not delude ourselves.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are not going to be Western democracies in the near
future. In Afghanistan the Taliban have not been defeated and at present the
country does not even have a fully functioning government since, due a variety
of reasons, vital cabinet posts could not yet be filled. The authority of whatever
government does exist is limited and decreases proportionally to the distance
from Kabul. Why should we expect our 10,000 “trainers” to accomplish what the more
than 140,000 combat troops, who have served there over the past 14 years, could
not? This is the question that needs to be faced but cannot, because it would
expose the entire progressive system of lies that has brought us to the present
sad state of affairs.
Senator Paul did not discuss the fate of
individual service men and women but mentioned “a military that is second to
none in the world, and ready to defend us from all enemies.” He also promised
to propose “the first ever Audit of the Pentagon, and seek ways to make our
defense department more modern and efficient.” But here again good intentions
are going to founder on the rocks of reality. The fundamental changes in our
defense department resulting from the 9/11 tragedy, and its misappropriation
for ulterior aims which are now irremediable, are hardly known by the general
public. Yet literature on this topic is available for anyone who is interested
in the real state of affairs and will be the topic of another installment.
The points Senator Rand made in his
speech are valid but they deal with the symptoms of the disease rather than the
cause. The latter was actually discerned by Sigmund Freud on his visit to this
country in 1909. He did not like what he saw and coined a neologism: “America
suffers from dollarrhea!”
This was correct at the beginning of the previous century and has now reached
calamitous proportions. Most every facet of public life has been transformed,
or is being transformed, into a profit making venue. When profit is exclusively
defined by the $ symbol, society has reached a dangerous crossroads. We were
told 2000 years ago that one cannot serve God and mammon. If we leave, for the
sake of our atheists, God out of consideration, I believe we can agree that
even the physician cannot properly serve patients when the first priority is to
make money either for him/her or the hospital. This is the fundamental problem
none of our politicians dare to touch because their re-election money would
immediately evaporate.
The real State of the Union was shown
the day after the speeches. Without consulting with anyone, apart from Israel’s
ambassador, Mr. Boehner invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress in
a special session during early March, just prior to Israeli elections. It was
meant to show our President that he is irrelevant, relegated to “lame duck
status,” and better get used to it. What this means in practice is that the
proud ship USA now has a captain who is confronted by a mutinous crew! It is
obvious that no good can come from this state of affairs and it is time to remind
our “Christian” lawmakers that “a house divided against itself
cannot stand.”
March 1, 2015
NEOMEDIVEALISM
This article is all about “Back to the
Future.” Not in the sense of the 1985 movie and its subsequent offspring but
the bitter reality of our country and the world it pretends to lead.
One morning in late January, while driving
home from the weekly Grand
Rounds presentation of the Neurology Department, I listened to the Diane Rehm
show that usually has interesting guests. She was indisposed on that day and one
of her colleagues sat in for her. He interviewed Sean McFate who had just
published a book: The Modern Mercenary –
Private Armies and what they mean for World Order. It was a fascinating
interview and can be listened to on http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/shows/2015-01-21/sean_mcfate_the_modern_mercenary/@00:00.
Dr. McFate, who is currently a Senior
Fellow at the Atlantic Council, an Associate Professor at the NationalDefenseUniversity and also teaches U.S.
National Security Policy at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in WashingtonD.C., has
led a rather interesting life. Originally he was an officer and paratrooper in
the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He subsequently left the
army for private military service as offered by DynCorp International. Initially
he served as a contracted security officer to guard the President of Burundi
from assassination threats and then moved to Liberia. Charles Taylor, the
notorious warlord who had made himself President of the county had been forced
to resign when the capital Monrovia
was besieged by rebel troops, who already held most of the rest of the country,
during what is called the 2nd Liberian Civil War (1999-2003). The
new interim President, Gyude Bryant, decided, or was
persuaded by the U.S.,
to dissolve the army as unreliable and build a new one “from the ground up.”
Although McFate didn’t mention it, this is precisely what our “Vice-Roy” Paul
Bremer did in Iraq and our appointee Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.
We know what happened in these
countries, especially in Iraq. The now unemployed young men needed other means
of income. They became rebels, preyed on the civilian population and made
trouble for the occupiers. It was a sure-fire recipe for civil war and our politicians
were blind to this prospect. The situation differed somewhat in Liberia because there was no U.S. army in
the country. It is now of considerable interest to compare how the Liberian
situation is presented by Wikipedia and what McFate, who was our agent at the
spot, writes.
In the main article on Liberia Wikipedia
spends only one sentence on the event. “TheUnited Nations Mission in Liberiabegan arriving in September 2003 to provide security and
monitor the peace accord,and an
interim government took power the following October.” In the article on the
Second Liberian Civil War there is more information.
On September 11, 2003, UN Secretary GeneralKofi Annanrecommended the deployment of the
peacekeeping mission, theUnited
Nations Mission in Liberia,
to maintain the peace agreement. TheUN
Security Councilapproved the
mission on September 19 inResolution
1509. Nigeria
sent in peacekeepers as part of the interim ECOMILEconomic Community of West African
Statesforce. UNMIL was made up
of over 15,000 personnel, including both military and civilian troops.
The bulk of the personnel were armed military troops, but
there were also civilian policemen, as well as political advisers and
humanitarian aid workers. On October 1, the first peacekeepers changed their
berets and became a UN force, with many more troops earmarked. During three
days of riots in Monrovia
in October 2004, nearly 400 people were wounded and 15 killed. The UN slowly
built up its forces in the country, with 5,500 projected to be in place by
November 2003 [sic], and worked to disarm the various factions. However,
instability in neighbouring countries, an incomplete
disarmament process, and general discontent threatened Liberia's
fragile peace.
This is what the interested general public learns about the
situation: The UN did the job and there is not one word about our contractors. This
is also a good example why serious scholars are warned not to use Wikipedia as
their sole source of information. The importance of Wikipedia articles resides not
necessarily in the opinion of the article writer but the sources he/she cites that
can then be checked. McFate’s book is not mentioned in either of the articles
and they need updating.
Since in
2003-2004 the U.S. armed services were fully occupied with Iraq as well as
Afghanistan, Washington outsourced peace-keeping and building a new Liberian
army to DynCorp. This became McFate’s “primary job.” In 2004 the State
Department issued a request for proposals (RFP) to bid for the Liberian army
contract.Only two companies were
regarded eligible: DynCorp and Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E). Eventually
the contract was split for different types of activities with DynCorp becoming
responsible for raising the new Liberian army and PA&E building the infrastructure.
This became a problem. Funding was provided by the State Department and when
money became in short supply because of the Darfur
rescue operation, work on Liberian army building was temporarily interrupted.
This meant that the recruits who had already been hired by DynCorp had no base
to go to because it was to be built by PA&E. But the operation did turn
into a modest success and so far the country has avoided slipping into an
Afghanistan-Iraq type situation.
Although the Liberian
intervention worked to some extent it also demonstrated some of the problems
when the hiring agency, in this case the US government, provides services as
important as building an army for another country. DynCorp had no
responsibility to the Liberian government and vital decisions, as for instance
what to do with existing Liberian army soldiers, were settled between the State
Department and DynCorp. Liberia’s
president, as well as defense minister, had no say so and simply had to
announce the fait accompli to their
people. This was no particular problem in Liberia with its traditionally close
ties to the U.S., having been founded by ex-American slaves, but is less likely
to work in countries where America is eyed with suspicion.
Since McFate is one of the individuals
who asks himself what am I really doing with my life, he quit DynCorp after the
Liberian tour of duty and began the historical research which led to the
mentioned book and interview. But before getting to his conclusions we may ask:
What is DynCorp? The company’s website is impressivebut bland in content and deserves
to be visited, simply for the language that is used. http://www.dyn-intl.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQiApbunBRDs0fba3dz484cBEiQAMsx-p40Yn_sllLyiCyc5jF4hy5yMy2OFGrX9ebqHepDNSWgaAnHG8P8HAQ.
Under “What we do” we find two major headlines: Intelligence and
Security. The section states
Intelligence
The intelligence professionals of DynCorp
International (DI) work daily, protecting the United States and its allies,
enabling decision-making through agile, integrated intelligence solutions:
Educating, Training and
Certifying tomorrow’s intelligence
professionals
Enhancing Collection and
Analysis to deliver
decision-enabling intelligence
Assisting the Intelligence
Mission Globally through service in all
locations and conditions
DI proudly serves in all locations,
environments and conditions to support optimal decision-making and effective
national security action by delivering balanced and ever-improving
cross-discipline capabilities as a part of a single integrated team.
Security
The DI team works closely with customers around the world to
assess risks and apply the right mix of professional services and advanced
technologies, integrating the company’s full spectrum of capabilities to
provide sophisticated security solutions. Whether the need is rapid response to
meet surge requirements or a sustained presence to provide long-term security,
we provide the right solution.
DI is an industry leader in
providing experienced security professionals to missions around the world. A
global recruiting network allows us to select skilled and seasoned experts who
understand the professionalism required and sensitivities that come with
working across all cultures.
Reading this material one wonders why we have the CIA, FBI, and
Department of Homeland Security in addition to all the other “intelligence
services” by the various branches of the military, as well as the entire
military forces. One now also needs to realize that DynCorp is only one of
these “Security and Intelligence providers.” It competes with others such as:
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), LOGCAP (Logistics Civil
Augmentation Program), the former Executive Outcomes, the former Blackwater and
others. When I said “former” these companies didn’t just disappear when bad
publicity arrived, such as in the case of Blackwater’s agents shooting 17
civilians in Baghdad, they merely changed names. Blackwater became Xe Services and thereafter Academi. Erik Prince, the
founder of Blackwater, was a former Navy SEAL before he went into the
contracting business and the term was derived from his underwater exploits. He
is a firm believer in free market principles and declared the purpose of his
company as: “Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus
what FedEx did to the Postal Service.”
As McFate points out the “private military industry has surged
since the end of the cold war, and is now a multibillion dollar business.”So little is known about it because as private enterprises
they can be even more opaque than the government’s security forces. They
are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and there is no Congressional
oversight, “although Congress is writing the checks.” The companies trade on
Wall Street and their “boards consist of Wall Street magnates and former
generals, their corporate managers are seasoned Fortune 500 executives, and
their ranks filled with ex-military and law-enforcement personnel recruited
from around the world.” The market value of the companies is unknown but
estimates range from $20-$100 billion annually. It is, however, known, that from
1999 to 2008 the US Department of Defense (DOD) obligations increased from $165
to $414 billion. In 2010 it issued contracts for $366 billion. This amounts to
54 per cent of the DOD budget and is seven fold that of United Kingdom’s entire
defense budget. In addition this number does not include contracts issued by
the State Department and other government agencies. The entire amount spent
remains unknown but comes from our tax dollars. Let this thought sink in: You
and I are buying ourselves services from companies of whom we know practically
nothing, where there is no oversight, and who are accountable only to their
stockholders! In addition the companies’ incomes are at least in part held in
offshore accounts and we don’t know how much, if any, taxes they pay.
So, why do we have this industry? The simple answer is that America can’t wage
war without it. When the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, was
asked in testimony before Congress how many troops would be required in Iraq for post
combat occupation he replied: “something in the order of several hundred
thousand soldiers.” He was ridiculed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz who had been
dazzled by Iraqi ex-patriates with the promise of a “cake-walk,” and they
envisioned the immediate creation of a client government in Baghdad that would provide the needed muscle
to pacify the country. Had Shinseki prevailed this war would never have been
undertaken because Congress would not have provided the funds. Rumsfeld and
company wanted war on the cheap and we now know the result: It’s called the
Islamic State which requires more money to destroy. But Shinseki was right and
in 2010 we had 175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in that country. The
reason for this is simple. With the abolition of the draft and the creation of
an all-volunteer army we simply don’t have the manpower for extended wars. But
war is business and business is good.
This brings me to the heart of McFate’s thesis namely the
historical parallels. He pointed out that state supported armies, as the only
legitimate force to wage war, is a relatively new concept. Ever since ancient
times mercenaries were used and not necessarily only as auxiliaries. There were
the legendary Ten Thousand Greeks of Xenophon who had been hired by Cyrus the
Younger in his war against his brother Artaxerxes II, Hannibal’s 60,000 who
crossed the Alps and roamed Italy, as well as all the various forces which
waged wars in Italy during the high Middle Ages. Those were the days of the condottieri, private captains in charge
of mercenary forces. It was this state of affairs that prompted McFate to adopt
the term neo-medievalism because even the name has remained unchanged since it
translates into contractor.
The subsequent heyday came during Europe’s
catastrophic Thirty Years War. The Emperor Ferdinand II,
had outsourced the raising and commanding of the Imperial army to Count
Albrecht von Wallenstein who had made his fortune with a rich marriage and
subsequently extended it by expropriating Czech nobility after their defeat in
1620. As an aside I might mention that the Czechs never forgot and their
revenge came in 1918. Wallenstein’s army consisted of mercenaries from all over
Europe and so did the opposing army of Sweden’s King Gustavus
Adolphus. At the critical battle of Breitenfeld only 20 percent of his troops
were Swedes and at Luetzen only 18 per cent. Some
40,000 Scotsmen, 15 per cent of the total male population, fought on both sides
of the conflagration.
During the last 15 years the war had deteriorated into wanton
murder, plunder and indiscriminate burning of villages and towns to such an
extent that it was no longer sustainable and peace negotiations started around
1645. They were successfully concluded in 1648 with what is called the
Westphalian peace treaty because there were two separate ones: the treaty with France in Muenster and the one with Sweden at Osnabrueck. France,
the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden
achieved some territorial gains from what had been the Holy
Roman Empire. Although it continued in name the Emperor lost all
power over the numerous independent German states and mini-states that had
resulted from the war and were only loosely confederated. This situation
prevailed until 1866 when Prussia
defeated Austria and
thereafter unified North and South Germany in
1871. This left out the German speaking Austrians who had to seek compensation
in the Balkans; with WWI the result. The dismantling of the Austrian Empire in
1918 and Wilson’s proclamation of
“self-determination” for the various ethnic groups led to the Austrian attempt
to rejoin Germany
but this was denied by the Allies. Hitler then temporarily remedied the
situation and the end of WWII brought about the status quo ante for 1919 Austria.
I am mentioning these historical facts because they clearly
demonstrate that the current obsession of America’s politicians with the
inviolability of borders is bereft of reality. It would be wholesome for them
to get a copy of The Times Atlas of
European History that shows how a given country’s borders have changed over
the past 1000 years.To believe that
they can now be frozen by executive fiat is a dangerous delusion. So is the
idea that history proceeds arrow-like to ever greater human perfection and
happiness. It is a cyclical process of action and reaction, or to speak with
Hegel: thesis and antithesis which is resolved by synthesis. The Marxists’ dialectic
materialism was based on it but they forgot that the synthesis automatically
becomes the new thesis which in turn provokes another antithesis and the whole
process repeats until either everything will come crashing down or mankind comes
to its senses and replaces strife for profit with cooperation and good will.
Apart from the geographic consequences of the Thirty Years War,
the Westphalian peace had two other components that are highly relevant for
today’s events and form the basis for McFate’s book. One was the abolition of
private mercenary armies and the other non-interference into the internal
affairs of another independent state. Both have become law and the latter is
also enshrined in the UN Charter. But as he points out both of these concepts
are now being ripped apart. We are beginning to return to the Europe of 1618,
or possibly even to the era after the fall of the Roman Empire. McFate did not
coin the term neo-medievalism but took it from Hedley Bull’s Anarchical Society:A Study of Order in World Politics. It “explores
alternative models to the Westphalian system, including what he calls ‘new
medievalism.’ For this he imagines a future where sovereign
states ‘might disappear,’ replaced by ‘a system of overlapping authority
and multiple loyalty.’”In practice this
would mean, that although states will continue to exist they will no longer
have complete authority even over their internal affairs.
Bull assumed that when five conditions are met the result would then
resemble the political order of the Middle Ages. These are: the technological
unification of the world, the regional integration of states, the rise of
transnational organizations, the disintegration of states, and the restoration
of private international violence. In 1977 he saw little evidence for this to
occur, but it is obvious that all of them are currently present to varying
extent. The Internet connects the entire world; the UN is only one example
which exists in addition to other regional economic and security organizations
that have arisen; the transnational organizations are the “multinationals” from
Exxon-Mobile on down, states disintegrate under our eyes in Iraq, Libya and
Ukraine, and the documentation of the rise of private armies is the thrust of
McFate’s book because it is the most troublesome. When anyone with enough money
can buy himself an army that is equipped with the most modern weapons, even if
they are of the conventional rather than nuclear type, and is not beholden to
any government but operates strictly for profit, it is highly unlikely that our
children and grandchildren will ever see peace.
The private military companies (PMC) industry, which even has a
trade organization, International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) based
in WashingtonD.C., live on and for war. They need war. This
is no different from what went on in the 1300s. Instead of “DynCorp, Triple
Canopy, or Blackwater” there were “the Company of the Star, the Company of the
Hat, and the White company.” They also were organized as corporations, had a
“hierarchy of subcommanders and administrative machinery
that oversaw the fair distribution of loot according to employees’ contracts.
CEO-like captains led these medieval PMCs.”’ Similar to the ISOA their trade
association was the “confederated condottieri.”
Although our PMCs may not instigate a war their unaccountable actions may create
conditions for a given country that will have to make war inevitable.
We are deluding ourselves when we believe that our President or
Congress have supreme authority over our country even in regard to the most
important question of war and peace. The power resides with the multinational
or more accurately “transnational” corporations of which in addition to the
security industry the finance industry is potentially the most dangerous. Private
bankers (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) control the flow of money
and have ultimate say over the economy via interest rates and lending practices,
with Greece
the currently most flagrant example. Since the financial industry is just as
transnational as the PMCs, the ultimate fate of Greece will have its
repercussions here and so will the sanctions we currently impose on Russia. Whatever
reasons our politicians and the media give us for their actions we must
remember that they are merely pretexts for ulterior motives, couched in
euphemisms while playing on fears. The real motivating factors lie in the human
mind where those who have want to keep and enlarge their property, while the
have-nots will endeavor to take some if not all of it. This is the way human
conduct has been throughout recorded history and there are no signs that it
will be different in the future. We now have to face the fact that the global transnational
financial industry, with its concomitant funding of mercenary wars, is an ingrained
feature of our society and serious thought is needed how to tame this aspect of
the “free market.”
April 1, 2015
MARCH MADNESS
The past month was again one for the
history books, demonstrating the incredible foolishness of the people who are
in charge of our collective well-being. It started on March 3 with Netanyahu’s
speech before Congress; was followed up on March 9 with an “Open Letter” to
Iran’s leadership penned by the freshman Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton,
co-signed by 45 of his Republican colleagues and full page advertisements in
the New York Times (NYT) demanding that the U.S. government should not conclude
a nuclear arms agreement with Iran. In addition, on March 27 an op-ed article by
John Bolton, ex-Ambassador to the UN, called on the U.S. to bomb Iran. Furthermore,
Yemen collapsed into civil war among rival Sunni and Shiite factions supported
by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gulf Emirates on the one side and Iran on the other.
We tried to our wash our hands of the affair and evacuated all civilian and
military personnel. In Iraq the government offensive against the Islamic State
stalled in Kirkuk. We then started bombing IS strongholds, thereby killing
civilians as well as members of the Shiite militia. The latter became incensed;
major components ceased combat operations and withdrew to their bases.
Unrelated, but still a sign of the times, Germanwings’ 27 year old co-pilot
Andreas Lubitz locked the cockpit when his superior had to momentarily leave and
then deliberately crashed the Airbus into the French Alps killing everyone
aboard.
This tragedy was somewhat akin to the
mass indiscriminate shooting sprees by single individuals that have recently
occurred with increasing frequency. As yet we don’t know the full story. We do
know that Lubitz had been treated for depression in the past and it was reported
that a physician had declared him unfit to fly on the day of the tragedy. We were
also told that he was on antidepressant medication although we will never know precisely
which drug he took that morning and/or the previous night, in what dose, and whether
or not he had ingested some other, additional, agent that could account for
this irrational act.
We do know, however, that all currently
prescribed antidepressant agents are based on “selective serotonin reuptake
inhibition” (SSRI). Serotonin, like dopamine, is an important neurotransmitter
substance in the brain and an imbalance leads to a variety of physical and
mental symptoms. The dopamine effects have been portrayed in the film
“Awakening;” one based on serotonin effects is sooner or later bound to be
produced, possibly even as a result of the current tragedy.
It also was reported that Lubitz had
been concerned about a recent onset of visual difficulties. If this had come to
the attention of Lufthansa it might well have ended his career as a pilot.
Since flying was the major love of his life he would have been devastated had
his license been revoked. Unfortunately, apparently no one told him that visual
difficulties can be a side effect of antidepressant drug intake, especially of
Zoloft. Although vision problems are relatively rare, mental changes consisting
of: confusion, seeing or hearing things that are
not there, hostility, irritability, severe mood changes, unusual behavior, and suicide, are sufficiently
common for the package inserts to carry special “black box warnings” to that
effect. Caregivers
are urged to closely monitor the patient while he/she is under the influence of
these compounds. It is of special interest that suicide in conjunction with
antidepressant medications is most common in adolescents and young adults up to
age 24. The danger gradually tapers off thereafter and becomes negligible by
age 65.
The
authors studied 1527 case of violence and found that:
Acts of violence towards others are a
genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group
of drugs. Varenicline [used for nicotine addiction],
which increases the availability of dopamine, and antidepressants with
serotonergic effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs.
Prospective studies to evaluate systematically this side effect are needed to
establish the incidence, confirm differences among drugs and identify
additional common features.
Although the
study can be found on PubMed the general public has not been informed about it
by the official media. On the other hand there is considerable information
available on the Internet, which links antidepressants to the random shooting sprees,
starting with the one at Columbine High School in Colorado. The prime
initiator, Eric Harris, was under psychiatric care for depression and
complaints of suicidal thoughts. He had initially been given Zoloft but this
was later changed to a similar SSRI, Luvox. The implications of these correlates
are, of course, staggering and drug companies will use, similar to the nicotine
lobby, all efforts to minimize them. Nevertheless, psychiatrists will have to
come to terms with the reality of the phenomenon and considerably more caution may
have to be used by physicians who prescribe these compounds. Since patients can
dissimulate and no one knows the actual dosage of the compounds they are taking
we must be prepared for more such random acts of violence to occur in the
future.
To prevent these in the case of airline
pilots, they should be given a medical leave of absence while their depressive
illness is being treated and at least two physicians should independently certify
when a given pilot is able to return to duty. But since patients can hide their
illness, as seems to have been the case with Lubitz, it may become necessary
for physicians when they write a prescription for antidepressant agents to have
to notify the employer if the individual is in a position that is responsible
for the safety of other lives. I realize that legislation of this type faces
numerous justified hurdles, but the problem must be faced and discussed because
we are confronted with deliberate but at times involuntary acts of violence during which the individual is no
longer in charge of his/her conduct. While this assessment might somewhat help
assuage the huge burden of guilt and shame the Lubitz family is now carrying it
must be admitted, however, that the role of antidepressant side effects in the
current tragedy is an assumption that does not rise to the level of fact. It is
reasonable, but proof is as yet missing and may never be forthcoming.
Nevertheless an important lesson does emerge.
Our brains are electromagnetic-chemical
machines that create patterns which express themselves in outward behavior. But
the usually smooth interplay between voluntary actions and moral judgment –
conscience, superego – can be disrupted at times for a variety of reasons. One psychiatrist
has referred to the superego as: that part of the brain which is soluble in
alcohol. As we know it is not only alcohol abuse that can disrupt normal
behavior patterns, all psychoactive drugs can do so. In addition we have the
phenomena of sleepwalking and actions that are carried out under post-hypnotic
suggestions. For these we likewise don’t know the mechanisms. We also don’t
know why some individuals commit suicide/murder in altered states of
consciousness while the majority of others do not. But rather than be satisfied
with the notion that the persons who committed atrocities are just “evil,” we
ought to investigate how their brain functions differ from the rest of us. We
now have imaging tools available that allow us to watch the living brain during
some of its activities and these studies ought to be funded in order to better
understand why we do what we do. If tragedies of the type discussed above could
catalyze these investigations some good might yet come out of them.
While Lubitz killed “only” himself and
149 others, some of our politicians, in and out of office, are embarking on a
course that will kill thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, wantonly
destroy property, and make hundreds of thousands more, possibly even millions,
homeless. They are doing this even in absence of psychoactive drugs in their
respective systems and this can only be called criminal insanity. While the
legal definition for insanity is the inability to distinguish right from wrong
at the time of the act, it has also been used when people keep doing the same
thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. Those of our
politicians who advocate bombing Iran should have realized by now that bombs
alone never achieve the hoped for regime change. Inasmuch as an extensive
bombing campaign would have to be undertaken, with the inevitable loss of
civilian life, it would be regarded as an unprovoked act of war and the
responsible politicians could and should be indicted as war criminals based on
the Nuremberg precedent. The Malaysian Tribunal has done so for ex-President George
W Bush and senior members of his administration (September 1, 2014; America’s
Credibility Gap), but the International Criminal Court in The Hague will not
touch this proverbial Hot Potato and is content to prosecute small fry such as
Milosevic of former Yugoslavia and some of his cronies who can’t do any more
harm.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s thundering
speech against Iran, as the arch terrorist that is about to set the world
aflame with its intention of building nukes, received an ecstatic applause by
our Republicans. Joe Biden, who as Vice-President and Presiding Officer was
supposed to sit next to the Speaker of the House, chose to spend his time more
fruitfully visiting the EU Council in Brussels. He was replaced by none other
than our Utah senior Senator Orrin Hatch, which meant that the country was represented
mainly by Republicans. Only 57 Democrats had the good sense to absent
themselves from this affair.
There is a term in our country for
people like Bibi, as he is so fondly called in Israel, and that is “political
animal.” It is applied to politicians who do and say whatever they feel is useful
at a given moment to achieve a goal and repudiate what they have said or done immediately
thereafter. Netanyahu’s goal with his speech before Congress was twofold. One
was to enlist the American public, via Congress, in his quest toward regime
change in Iran regardless of cost. This has little to do with Iran’s supposed
intention to build nuclear bombs because it goes back to the Iranian revolution
in 1979, which deposed the Shah and established a theocratic regime. It,
therefore, is part of the long-term effort to deprive all potentially hostile
Middle East States of power, which has, so far, been remarkably successful. President
George W Bush solved the Iraq problem for Israel and with our help Syria has
become embroiled in civil war. This in turn brought Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters
to Syria’s aid, thereby removing another threat to Israel. Jordan never was a
problem because the current king’s father already had come to an agreement with
Israelis during the wars that helped establish the state of Israel in 1948.
Egypt concluded a peace treaty in 1979 and the freely elected Muslim
Brotherhood government was soon overthrown by the military that rigorously
stands by the treaty. Saudi Arabia not only was neutralized but even became an
ally in the continuation of Syria’s civil war and its hatred for Shiite Iran.
The latter is, therefore, the only remaining foe, even without the nuclear
issue. The current leadership has to be replaced by one that submits to
Israel’s and America’s wishes and/or demands. But since the Israelis can’t do
this by themselves they need us to do it either with or for them.
The second goal of Netanyahu’s address
to Congress was to bolster his standing at home for the upcoming election. In
this effort he also succeeded, but with rhetoric that has earned him disgust
around the world. As an unintended consequence he has further divided American
Jewry in relation to Israel. While many have very positive feelings for the
country they are less enthused with Likud policies and its current chief spokesman.
Rabbi Lerner, who is well known for his liberal magazine Tikkun, the counterpart to Podhoretz’ Commentary, published with more than 2400 co-signers on March 2nd
a full page comment in the NYT under the headlines: “No, Mr. Netanyahu – You do
not speak for American Jews.” And “The American People do not want a War with
Iran.”The next day it was followed by a
similar page written by Jewish Republicans. It featured a large picture of a
lecturing Netanyahu and the headlines were: “Watch Prime Minister Netanyahu’s
Speech Today. Urge Congress to Deny Nuclear Weapons to Iran.”
It was paid for by the Republican Jewish Coalition. The battle for the “hearts
and minds” of American Jews in favor of Likud type policies is now in full
swing. But the issue has wider implications.
Although Netanyahu won the election with
a sizable margin and will form another coalition government mainly with other
right wing groups, it may well turn into a Pyrrhic victory. His country will further
slide toward pariah status in the eyes of most nations. Netanyahu is not stupid
and realizes that to fulfill his dream of Israel becoming an internationally
recognized powerful Jewish State he needs American help as well as more Jews to
move to his country. Anti-Semitic outbursts in Europe and elsewhere are the
potential vehicle to achieve the latter objective. He thinks that when Jews
feel sufficiently threatened they will leave their homes and come to Israel. He
has already told European Jews to “come home,” and the April issue of Atlantic features on its cover a
fractured granite block in the shape of the Star of David with the caption: “Is
it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” But Jews are for the most part
pragmatists and if they were to be induced to leave Europe they would not
necessarily go to Israel. Who in his right mind would at this time take his
family to the cauldron of the Middle East? In addition Netanyahu and his
followers are sorely mistaken when they believe that Israel’s current status,
which includes the West Bank occupation and isolation of Gaza, can be
maintained ad infinitum. The idea
that the neighborhood wars between different religious and political ideas will
stop at Israel’s borders is fantasy and so is Netanyahu’s statement that
Jerusalem will be forever Jewish. Nothing lasts forever and even a spiritual
Jewish Jerusalem will have to be shared with Christians and Muslims.
On the other hand, rabid Republicans agree
with Netanyahu and believe in the “might makes right”
proposition. The idea is that if America uses its military strength it can ride
herd on the rest of the world. This is likewise a fantasy because neither
Russia nor China will agree to permanent American hegemony. This makes the open
letter Senator Cotton and fellow Republicans wrote to the Leadership of Iran
not only foolish but it even rises to the level of criminal conduct.
I must admit that I was not aware of the
existence of the Logan Act that prohibits private citizens from interfering
with negotiations carried out by the government and was only alerted to it by a
reader’s letter to The Salt Lake Tribune.
The Act was adopted by Congress in 1799 and has never been repealed. It states
under the headline “Private
correspondence with foreign governments”:
Any citizen of the United
States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States,
directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or
intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with
intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any
officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the
United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined
under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Although Cotton is a senator and so were
the 45 others who co-signed, they vented their “advice” to the Iranian
government as private citizens because they had no official authorization for
their act. They thereby violated the Logan Act and could be criminally
prosecuted. More than 165,000 citizens have by now sent petitions to the White
House to institute such proceedings, but they are unlikely to take place.Even a million signatures would have no
effect because the Act has never been enforced and some regard it as
unconstitutional. Of course, the definition of what is and is not
constitutional depends on who you ask and most importantly on the composition
of the Supreme Court. It is unthinkable that a Supreme Court of let us say 1915
would have, for instance, declared voluntary abortion a constitutionally
guaranteed procedure.
One may now ask: why make a fuss about a
letter? It was nonsense, so let’s get over it and go on with other business at
hand. Unfortunately it is not quite this simple because Tom Cotton is a rising
star in Republican circles and in 2013 Politico referred to him “as most likely
to succeed.” It seems quite obvious that his eye is on the Presidency. His
biography on the Senate website is quite short and the relevant section states:
Tom left the law
because of the September 11th attacks. Tom served nearly five years on active
duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.
Tom served in
Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial
Reconstruction Team. Between his two combat tours, Tom served with The
Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery.
When
one now examines his life story further, as presented in Wikipedia, one becomes
aware that he is, to use a phrase coined by a British observer of the American
scene in regard to Hillary Clinton, “quite economical with the truth.”
Here is a condensed version of the
Wikipedia article. He was born in 1977 in rural Arkansas, enrolled at Harvard
Law School, but after his B.A. degree did not stay and instead went to
Claremont College in California. This did not satisfy him and he returned to
Harvard obtaining his doctorate in Jurisprudence in 2002. He then became a law
clerk for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but left after a year for private
practice. This he found, likewise, unsatisfactory and joined the Army in
January 2005. Although he qualified for the rank of captain in the Judge
Advocate General’s Corp (JAG) he did not like lawyering and wanted combat. He,
therefore, enlisted with the rank of Private. But after two months he
reconsidered, began officer’s training and graduated with the rank of 2nd
Lieutenant in June 2005. Instead of deployment he continued officer’s training and
was sent to Iraq in May 2006. He led a Platoon whose task was to pacify the
countryside, but since the revolt was already in full swing the assignment
carried considerable personal danger. In June of 2006 during a rest period he
had access to the Internet and found an article in the NYT which discussed the
then secret government program in regard to the funding sources of terrorists
and how to disrupt them. This incensed Lt. Cotton who saw his buddies blown up
by the insurgents, aka terrorists, and he fired off an intemperate letter to
the NYT accusing the newspaper of violating the espionage clause of the U.S.
Constitution. He also expressed the hope that he would find the reporters as
well as the NYT executive director “behind bars” when he and his fellow
soldiers returned home.
The Army did not like this meddling in
political affairs by a 2nd Lieutenant and Cotton was “given
reprimands for lack of discipline, lack of adherence to protocol and refusing
to respect his chain of command.” Nevertheless he was promoted to 1st
Lt. in December, but re-assigned for two years of ceremonial duties here at
home. In October 2008 he was deployed to Eastern Afghanistan where he remained
till June 2009. He was honorably discharged from active duty the following September,
but re-enlisted in the Army Reserve in July 2010. In the meantime he had been
promoted to Captain. Although he seems to have liked war, active combat duties
were limited to 18 months.
After leaving military service it seems that
he didn’t quite know what to do with his life. He joined a business firm for
consulting work but quit after a few months and returned home to help run the
family ranch. Through a Claremont friend he was introduced to the Arkansas
“Club for Growth,” a Republican Political Action Committee (PAC) which paved
the way for a run for Congress in 2012. He won the race but Congress was only
the first step on the political ladder. The second one was election to the
Senate in 2014 and he was sworn in on January 6 of this year.
From this brief review several aspects
become apparent, but the most important one is that he is a young man in a
hurry. He is basically restless and someone who wants to leave his imprint on
the world; his current job is only a stepping stone towards the Presidency. He
is not above slanting the truth when it fits his needs because in spite of
jumping from one job to the next it took him about three and a half years to
find out that he wanted to join the army “because of the September 11th
attacks.” That he also has a streak of either Nazism or Old Testament fervor in
him is documented by a bill he introduced in the House. Wikipedia states:
In 2013 Cotton introduced
legislative language to prohibit trade with relatives of individuals subject
to U.S. sanctions against Iran. According to Cotton,
this would include "a spouse and any relative to the third degree,"
such as, "parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents,
great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids." When Cotton's amendment
came under harsh criticism regarding the constitutionality of the amendment, he
withdrew it.
Obviously this is Nazi “Sippenhaftung,” and even the Nazis stopped with
grandchildren in their definition of Aryanism. Whether or not the senator will
decide to run for President as early as next year is not yet clear, but he is
young enough to be able to build his base for 2020 and thereafter.
Although
Cotton’s Senate letter to the Iranians was ridiculed by Obama it served its
purpose. The freshman senator achieved national name recognition as well as
numerous fan letters urging him to run for the Presidency. But he is not the
only one who tries to use the Iran negotiations for achieving this goal. On
March 26 the NYT published an op-ed article by John Bolton, former U.S.
ambassador to the UN, that also urged Americans to prevent a nuclear treaty
with Iran and instead go on to bomb thatcountry’s nuclear installations. This obviously, is not only criminal
recklessness, but foolish because he assumes that the Iranians will just
acquiesce as Saddam did in 1981 when the Israelis bombed Iraq’s Osirak installation, or Assad after “Operation Orchard”
which destroyed Syria’s budding attempt towards nuclear power in 2007.
Times have changed and
the Iranians have made preparations for this eventuality. These include a
military cooperation agreement with Russia that was signed in January of this
year. But Mr. Bolton wants to run for President next year and is currently
testing the waters. It now becomes apparent that the Republicans intend to
model their campaign on that of Netanyahu and thoroughly frighten the American
public with visions of impending terrorist doom which only a “strong” foreign
policy can prevent. This will be Bolton’s chief campaign issue and “defense of
Israel,” equated with that of the U.S. will be paramount. This has already
started and the March 28 NYT full page ad which shows a picture of Obama in the
foreground and on dark background the NYT article of September 1938 on the Munich
pact and in an insert picture Chamberlain’s waving the accord upon his arrival
at home. The title was: Mr. President: “Fighting al-Quaeda
made you like Churchill. Appeasing Iran will make you like Chamberlain.” The
Conclusion of the article stated: “Don’t allow Iran to become a nuclear power.”
The ad was “organized, produced and paid for by The World Values Network” which
according to its website is “committed
to spreading the universal values of the Jewish people and making Israel a
light unto the nations.” The Times also published on the same day an
article by Peter Baker headlined: “For Republican Candidates, Support for
Israel is an Inviolable Litmus Test.” In the article one can find “Anything but
unquestioned backing of the Jewish state can mean trouble.” But that puts it
mildly; a candidate who will not toe the Israeli-Likud policy line is likely to
soon be out of money and out of the race.
Although Netanyahu
currently has a majority in his country there are other voices in Israel which
represent “Jewish values,” and these differ radically from those espoused by
the ruling circles. To make Americans pull Israeli chestnuts out of the fire
and subscribe to Likud policies is shrewd politics but morally reprehensible.
The only outcome of the policies the World Values Network and numerous other
similar organizations espouse is that the light they intend to bring to the
world will be created by an immense funeral pyre. This is not hyperbole, but
war rhetoric has always led to war and the future is unlikely to be an
exception.
The demise of the nuclear
talks in Lausanne would have been a fitting end to this eventful month. But Mr.
Kerry was persistent and managed to persuade his partners to continue the discussions
beyond yesterday’s midnight deadline. The negotiators went into overtime and
the result will be reviewed in next month’s issue.
May 1, 2015
THE DEATH OF MONEY
Before entering into the main topic a follow-up
on last month’s issue is in order. In spite of the valiant attempts of Prime
Minister Netanyahu and our Republicans, the negotiators in Lausanne did achieve
an interim compromise that postponed the heavy lifting until the beginning of
July. There was some agreement on vital aspects, but since there was no joint
communique each side interprets the accomplishments in their own way. But this
doesn’t matter because the longer the parties to the negotiations agree to talk
to, even if not with, each other the better. It certainly beats the alternative
of bombing, shooting and killing.
While it is doubtful a definitive
arrangement that pleases everybody will be reached in July, the nuclear issue
is in the process of becoming a side-show. The Middle East is tearing itself to
pieces, egged on jointly by us, the Saudis and Israel on one side, and Iran on
the other, with Yemenis the latest victims. It seems that European history is
repeating itself in the Middle East. The infamous Thirty Years War (1618-1648)
had likewise started over religious differences but degenerated into wanton
destruction by marauding troops and land grabs by the ruling circles. The fight
between Protestants and Catholics could have reached the compromise embodied in
the Westphalian Peace much sooner, had not the periphery especially Sweden,
France, Denmark and the Netherlands joined in the fight against the fratricidal
Germans and Bohemians. In a similar manner the Sunni-Shia war would play itself
out in short order if the current periphery i.e. Israel, the US and Iran, with
Russia behind her, kept their fingers out of the imbroglio. But, as pointed out
in in the March issue, war makes money and is, therefore, highly desirable by
powerful insiders, while one officially laments the carnage committed by the
“other” side.
Since money, or more generally the
hope for material gain in some form or another, has always been the driving
force behind wars it is unlikely that they will ever stop in the current
unenlightened mental state of the human race. The German language is
considerably more precise in this respect than the English. The word “War” has
only indirect meaning while the German “Krieg”
is derived from the verb “kriegen” i.e. to get or obtain something. Likewise the
English word “battle” is somewhat bland while the German equivalent “Schlacht” comes from slaughter and that’s what
it really is. This is also the reason why when in German speaking countries one
is fed up with euphemisms one says: Jetztwollenwirendlich Deutsch reden –now let’s have some straightforward talk. When
language obfuscates instead of clarifies we reach the current sad state of
affairs in our country where trust has been eroded and
cynicism, especially in regard to affairs of state, is the rule.
In a certain way I am currently
reliving aspects of my adolescence where, as citizens of Greater Germany, we
were fed daily doses of propaganda. As mentioned in War&Mayhem my parents had no use for the Nazis but any
expression of discontent was, of course, outlawed. We did have, however, an
excellent radio set which received foreign broadcasts and in the years from summer
1941 to spring 1943, while my brother had already been drafted into Labor
Service and the Wehrmacht, I was essentially alone in the afternoons in our
apartment. The parents did not return from mother’s store until the evening while
the maid was strictly relegated to the kitchen quarters and a small adjacent
room far from the parents’ bedroom where the radio was kept. Fed up with
propaganda I developed a ritual. At 5 o’clock I sneaked to the radio turned down
the volume to an extent that only the pressed ear to the loudspeaker could make
out the sounds and then tuned in to the BBC. After the first bars of
Beethoven’s Fifth a voice announced: Hierist London mit der Sendungfuer die
deutsche Wehrmacht. Intermittently I tried Moscow but the propaganda was so
crude that I soon gave up and stayed with the BBC. It provided factual
information why it was impossible for Hitler to win the war. This clandestine
effort on my part to gain a glimpse of the truth was, of course, forbidden and
had I been discovered I would immediately have received a one-way ticket to the
nearest concentration camp. But, as the lyrics of the Hitler Jugend theme song told us: JugendkenntkeineGefahren– youth knows
no dangers, I was oblivious to potential consequences.
There was nothing I could do with the
information so obtained but the era left an indelible imprint which is now again
coming to the fore. In spite of, or maybe because of, my upbringing I trusted
America’s leadership implicitly and it needed the shock of 9/11 to bring me
back to reality. It was not the event per se, because I had seen worse
disasters in my youth, but the lies by the Bush administration to cover up what
really happened and which persist to this day. This was the catalyst, and
instead of now having my ear glued to a radio set I sit down with the laptop
most evenings and scan the Internet for the “news behind the news.” Currently
this is legal but if one were to get too vociferous about one’s conclusions
that were derived from the “other” news, one would be ostracized and lose one’s
scientific credibility. This is the reason why official academia is silent on
the blatant 9/11 cover-up. It finds itself in the position of the German people
during the war years where it was much safer the keep one’s mouth shut and not
makes waves. Although one’s physical life is not at stake here at this time,
only one’s professional, this is sufficient motivation to keep quiet.
These visits to the Internet provide the
information upon which these essays are based and in early April I came upon an
interview on Money Morning where James Rickards, interviewed by Steve Meyers,
explained the CIA’s Project Prophecy and the coming Death of Money. http://jimrickardsprophecy.com/pp-home1.php?ad=search.
Rickards was very eloquent, made an excellent, informed, impression and at the
end of the three quarter of an hour long talk he promised to send us his book, The Death of Money, as well as an
unpublished updated chapter and six videos. These will inform us a) why a
financial crash is imminent and unavoidable and b) how we can avoid the
personal losses resulting from the crash. By simply pushing the button which
appeared at the end of the presentation we would get all this information for
free. Well, here was the proverbial gift horse, and when I clicked a personal “thank
you for listening to the interview” appeared from Jim Rickards followed by a long
series of explanation of what this “Prophecy 2.0 package,” that “will be rushed
to your door” will do for me. But there was no button to activate the “free”
gift and $4.98 shipping charge. Instead one was given at the very end a choice
between “The Gold Package: Best Buy” for $79 or the “Silver Package: Great
Deal” for $39.50. The difference apparently was that one would either get a two
year digital and print version subscription to his newsletter in addition to
the package, versus a one year digital one. I didn’t want a subscription, just
the book and videos for “free,” apart from shipping charges, but there was no
opportunity to do so. It had to be either Gold or Silver with the guarantee
that in case one was not satisfied one would receive a full refund. The offer
was signed with “Jim Rickards
Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor CIA & The
Director of National Intelligence.”
Since there was apparently nothing to
lose I signed on for the Silver package and then came the surprise. Instead of
book and videos I received an e-mail “Welcome” message from the company which
invited me to obtain newsletters from a group of other companies by not only listing
my e-mail address but also my password with which I could contact them. This
was amazing because the only time I had used the encrypted password was for the
presumed $39.50 VISA purchase. But since it was the one I routinely used for all
VISA transactions it now was obviously compromised and had to be immediately changed.
It seems that encryption of passwords is also apparently eye-wash because
anybody with a little savvy can read them! When I wrote to the company that I
simply wanted book and videos rather than the subscription and wondered how
they had gotten my password, I got a friendly letter back informing me that
they did not share my password with others but it had been placed in the welcoming
letter for “my convenience.” How they opened the VISA card encryption was never
explained.
From then on I received every day six or seven
e-mails with “investment advice” from various agencies but no book or videos.
By the middle of the month I remonstrated again and the book arrived on the 22nd.
But instead of videos there were some small brown paper brochures that
contained the advice. The daily deluge of e-mail advice persisted until I
“unsubscribed” from all the other companies by hitting the appropriate buttons
and then sent a personal letter to Money Map canceling my subscription. A nice
letter came back regretting my decision but they would credit my account with
the $79 annual subscription fee. This was the first time I heard that I was
actually charged $79 instead of the expected $39.50 and when I checked my bank
statement I noticed that the $79 had indeed immediately been withdrawn at the
first contact. The lady was true to her word and the amount was indeed fully
refunded within a few days. As a result I got the book, which sells at amazon
for $19, free of charge. I am mentioning this background because it is a
typical example of “Amerikana”
with deceptive advertisement. The so-called “value” of the package, which was
itemized, came to $322 when added up. How Mr. Rickards can give us a package
gratis that is valued for over $300 is, of course, a mystery. Yet this
deceptive practice is the rule for TV advertisements. They first promise to
send an item supposedly valued for over a hundred dollars for a fraction of
this cost and by the end of the commercial one gets two of them plus “a bonus”
for about 19.99.I don’t know who the
companies think they are fooling with this game but it is epidemic. In the case
of Money Morning there was no outright fraud because the money was refunded,
but the transaction wasn’t honest either.
To refresh my memory for this essay I
checked the Internet again and found the same interview on another website
where one can scan it for relevant sections. This was not possible on the above
cited one where one had to endure the entire 45 minutes. On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYW5OGWfqJc
one can choose selected portions and instead of “View the transcript here”
there is a button for subscribing. But one doesn’t need it because the same
information comes up on clicking “Get access here” which appears on the screen
at the end of the interview. The “View Transcript” button on the original
website is also misleading because instead of the transcript one gets the
package description and subscription invitation, but without the Gold and
Silver packages comment. http://jimrickardsprophecy.com/pp-home1.php?ad=search.
What one really gets when one sends
in the form I don’t know because I no longer want to have anything to do with
Mr. Rickards and his friends.
So
who is James Rickards? Wikipedia informs us that he graduated from the
University Of Pennsylvania Law School and also got an
LL.M in taxation from New York University. He then worked for 35 years on Wall
Street and was also “Managing Director for Market Intelligence at Omnis Inc.” In
2009 he testified before the House of Representatives about the risks of
financial modeling and the 2008 financial crisis. The article goes on to cite
the Money Morning website and that there is no evidence that Rickards ever had
an official association with the CIA or the Director of National Intelligence.
The provocative
title of the book, published in 2014,
The Death of Money obviously was
intended to grab one’s attention but is likewise deceptive. Minted coins have
been around for more than 2500 years and since it is a useful exchange medium
it will continue to enjoy longevity. The subtitle of the book The Coming Collapse of the International
Monetary System may be more accurate. But what Rickards is really talking
about is the reason why the world is beginning to move away from the dollar as
the world’s reserve currency and the consequences thereof. The first chapter
deals with “Project Prophecy.” It apparently was designed to establish the
author’s bona fides in high finance and government and rivets the reader’s
attention on the inside information he claims to possess. Rickards stated that
it had become known to the CIA that there had been highly suspicious trading
activity on airline stocks on the Chicago exchange, especially for United and
American, during the days immediately preceding 9/11 which suggested inside
information about a coming disaster involving these companies. I have mentioned
this aspect of the 9/11 tragedy in a previous article (August 1, 2011; Attempts
at Raising 9/11 Awareness: Richard Gage – Toronto Hearings) and Rickards did
not add new information. But while he endorsed this aspect of the crime he felt
obligated to otherwise stay with the government story of the 19 Saudis with
Osama bin Laden in the lead, having caused all the havoc. In addition, Rickards
felt obliged to pour scorn on the 9/11 Truth Movement. This was not only
unnecessary but damaged his own credibility by unwittingly insulting
professionals who have demonstrated that the events, as portrayed by our
government, couldnot possibly have
happened in this way. The laws of physics stand in the way (October 1, 2006; The 9/11 Cover-Up; May 1, 2012; America’s Galileo Moment). The
only reason I can imagine why Rickards did so is that he wanted to stay in the
good graces of government agencies, and especially the Defense Department,
which apparently provide him with consulting fees.
As Rickards explained in the book he had
come to the attention of the CIA while attending a plush private high level
conference of financial “movers and shakers.” This led to an invitation for a
meeting at Langley where he explained to the powers in attendance the insider
trading aspect of 9/11 and that suspicious trading activity can be a warning
prior to another disaster of the 9/11 type. CIA director Tenet had noted that “the
system was blinking red” during the summer of 2011 for other reasons, but the
warnings were ignored. The CIA now wanted to avoid another such debacle and
therefore authorized Project Prophecy where Rickards, in company with other
financial wizards, would keep tabs on stock market trading and alert the CIA to
suspicious activities. But since this amounted to spying on American citizens, which the agency is still forbidden by law from engaging in,
the CIA distanced itself from the project soon thereafter and Rickards moved
his skills to the Pentagon where no such scruples existed. As mentioned Wikipedia
tells us that Project Prophecy never existed within the confines of the CIA and
we are again in the position of not knowing who is telling the truth.
The next chapter deals with financial
warfare and seems to be a condensation of Richards’ previous book, Currency Wars (2011). Instead of
defeating a given country militarily the object is to ruin its economy by
sanctions and debasing its currency. China caught on to this game and started
buying gold to safeguard the yuan. In addition, assorted countries around the
world, including ours, are routinely hacking into each other’s computers
stealing their financial information and manipulating the markets accordingly.
Rickards points out that capital markets are far from “fail-safe,” that our
government knows it and is taking precautionary measures for the “Day After,”
which will be discussed on a subsequent occasion.
I shall now proceed only with a few
highlights of the book because some aspects are technical and I am not in a
position to form an intelligent judgment on their merits. The main point is that
finance and geopolitics are inseparable. He believes that, in spite of the
economic problems of Greece and other Mediterranean European countries, the
Euro is here to stay for the immediate future because it is a political tool to
keep Europe unified. The driving engine is Germany and it will not allow a
repeat of all the previous fratricidal wars that ruined the continent. “The
Gang of Four,” US, Europe, China and Japan account for 65 percent of the
world’s economic output. Among the other 35 percent we have various
combinations of countries that form separate blocks. These are the BRICS,
followed by BELLS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Gulf States and
what Rickards calls the Island Twins. Membership in these organizations is not
exclusive for a given country but can overlap with others. The common
denominator is that all of them are supranational.
BRICS refers to economic agreements
between Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa. The BELLS involve
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Although their economic value is
negligible they are geopolitically important because they represent the fringe
of Europe and act as buffers against Russia and Turkey. Next come within the
Eurozone the GIIPS: Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain. While BELLs and GIIPS may
be arbitrary designations of the EU’s subsections, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) is a more serious issue for the US. It was organized in 2011 and the
original members were Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Uzbekistan joined subsequently. India, Iran and Pakistan have observer status. The
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed in 1981 and includes: Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iraq was not
admitted because of its invasion of Kuwait and Shiite Iran has no place in an
Arab Club. This now leaves what Rickards calls the Island Twins namely the UK
and Japan. This seems quite arbitrary except that both serve as financial and
military outposts of the US.
Rickards then discusses in detail the
debt problem especially as it refers to the US. He points out that there is
nothing inherently wrong with debt as long as it is sustainable by the economic
output of a given country. He cites Japan as an example where the ratio of the
national debt in relation to the country’s gross national product (GDP) is over
220 percent, while it is over 100 percent and climbing for the US and the UK.
The countries can still function but there will come a point when as a result
of excessive printing of paper money inflation will become rampant, trust in
the currency lost with an ensuing financial crash. Although the exact time when
this will occur is unknown the outcome is inevitable unless profound structural
changes are made in the financial systems of these countries.
Other chapters deal with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the role of gold. The IMF is not just a
bank that provides loans to needy countries, with considerable strings attached,
but is also potentially on the way to issuing a one world currency. Its charter
provides for “Special Drawing Rights (SDRs or XDRs)” which translate in lay
language to printing paper money. The SDR value was originally determined in
relation to the price of gold but subsequently based on the major contributing
currencies to the fund. While the IMF’s SDRs are not yet ready to take over the
function of the world’s reserve currency they are moving in that direction and
Rickards believes that the IMF may become the “lender of last resort” when the
expected crash comes. To prepare itself for this situation it is buying gold in
large quantities. Gold is again becoming central to the financial markets
because its value is universally recognized and the country that holds most if
it cannot only keep its currency afloat but also dictate prices. This is the
reason why China, for instance, is no longer investing mainly in US Treasury
bonds but buying gold instead.
While Americans are kept in fear of
China’s growing might, Rickards sees a day of reckoning also for that country.
The massive housing boom investment over the past several years has resulted in
entire cities having been built that include the most modern facilities but
lack the essential ingredient: people. The cities are empty and the prices for
apartments unaffordable. China’s current economic policies are regarded as a
Ponzi scheme that will collapse under its own weight. Since the Chinese
financial markets are less tied to those of the other major powers the
immediate effect will not be catastrophic for the world but there will be
adverse long-term consequences with devaluation of the yuan making exports
cheaper leading to protectionist responses by the US.
To sum up the book one can say that the
interconnected financial world stands on shaky ground and a small shift in any
one country can have wide repercussion. The US is especially vulnerable because
of its huge debt load that erodes confidence in the dollar. As major countries
move away from the dollar its value will further depreciate. The only option is
for the Federal Reserve Bank to issue more money but this has to lead to
inflation, hyperinflation and the crash.
Rickards prescription for the average
investor is to buy his daily advice which will allow one not only to survive
the crash but let one prosper in adversity. The book provides only a sketch of
what to do. One’s financial portfolio should include: about 10-20% gold, but in
actual physical metal rather than gold stock certificates; 20 percent land; 10
percent fine art objects; 20 percent alternative funds (i.e. certain hedge and
equity funds) and 30 percent cash.
The brochures that came in the mail,
instead of the promised videos, were more specific. In regard to stock
investing he recommended companies that will survive the crash because people
can’t live without these commodities. They deal with water, food,
pharmaceuticals and assorted others. Obviously, which given company one invests
in is going to be a gamble and requires one’s trust in Rickards. There was only
one aspect that grabbed my attention. From the 10 cities that are best suited for
retirement Salt Lake City was listed as number three. Since the first two were
in Texas, which for various reasons is out of the question for our family, I
was glad to see that Rickards was right at least in this aspect because we had
come to the same conclusion 25 years earlier.
It is obvious that Rickards is likely to
be wrong on a number of details but it must be admitted that our financial
system is indeed “blinking red” as a spate of other books as well as the
Internet testify to. The world is becoming tired of American hegemony and begins
to bypass us. It is essential that our neocons and other warmongers start to
grasp this fact and that their illusion of an American 21st century
needs to be abandoned. If we are to prosper in this century it cannot be by
domination, regardless whether it is military or economic, but only by cooperation.
There are people, including President Obama, who realize this but there also
are powerful adversaries who will do their best to frustrate all such moves
with cries of “appeasement,” and “Munich” regardless of the fact that we no
longer live in 1938.
There are currently two geopolitical models
in play. The US relies on drones, bombs and sanctions to achieve its ends,
while China is building a new “Silk Road” via high speed railroad to connect
Beijing with Madrid. It takes little imagination which one has a better chance
of succeeding. In addition, China had a very good month in April. Its new Asian
Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), which was not mentioned by Rickards,
received a major boost when, in spite of
America’s remonstrations, practically all of Europe joined it. The next installment
will discuss this topic further and how our government is preparing for the
“Day After.”
June 1, 2015
CRONY-CAPITALISM “Nobody
understands these numbers”
This
memorable phrase was uttered by Reagan’s budget director John Stockman and the quote
comes from an article in Atlantic
magazine entitled “The Education of John Stockman” published by William Greider
in 1981. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/.
The
article is important because it imparts then current information about what is
called “Reagonomics.” This is especially relevant because the word has become a
Republican mantra and if they were to gain the presidency next year an economic
re-enactment of Reagan’s first term becomes likely. It, therefore, behooves us to
look at what really went on and the mentioned article provides the information.
It was based on a series of discussions Stockman had with Greider after he had
been appointed by the president-elect to the office of budget
director. But Stockman made the mistake of regarding Greider as a friend to
whom one bares one’s soul rather than a Washington
Post reporter for whom this is the “red meat” journalists drool for. When Greider,
somewhat prematurely, published the relevant aspects of these conversations a
firestorm broke loose and headlines screamed that Reagan had taken Stockman “to
the woodshed.” I remembered this headline and this is why I now bought
Stockman’s book The Great Deformation –
The Corruption of Capitalism in America. It was published two years ago and
I shall deal with it later. The book led me to the Internet and the mentioned Atlantic magazine article. Stockman’s
education consisted in the realization that as a member of the government one
is not allowed to speak the truth, especially to reporters, and that politics,
i.e. the quest for election/re-election, overrides all other considerations.
The country was in dire straits at that
time. We had what was called “stagflation,” with double digit inflation, rising
unemployment and President Carter’s famous “malaise” address, although he never
used that word. During the campaign Reagan’s advisors came up with the answer,
it was to be “Morning in America.” Tax cuts would make the economy grow again
and “a rising tide will lift all boats.” The tax cuts also would allow for
increased defense expenditures which would defeat the Soviet Union, and the
budget would be balanced over the coming three years. It was a daunting task
that had been described by George Bush, while he was running for the presidency
against Reagan, as Voodoo economics. The question by John Anderson, another
presidential contender, of how this miracle could be achieved also was left
unanswered during the campaign.
After the November election Stockman
was charged with squaring this circle and to come up with a budget the
president could present to the country after inauguration. He had only a little
over two months to meet this massive task. But he was 34 years old, full of
youthful enthusiasm for whom obstacles existed only for the purpose to be
overcome. He came from a farming town in Western Michigan and the parents had
instilled the values of truthfulness, hard work and thrift. For his education
he first went to Michigan State University where he studied farming and then
the humanities. After graduation he enrolled in Harvard’s Divinity School. But
he wanted to make a difference in the life of the nation and switched to social
sciences in order to satisfy his desire to find out “How the world really
runs.” In this endeavor we are actually kindred souls because my professional
choice of neurology, psychiatry and neurophysiology was dictated by the desire
to find out why human beings do what they do, quite often in defiance of their
better judgment.
The Atlantic article showed how Stockman intended to achieve Reagan’s
goals but he soon found out that the budget could not be balanced unless the
projected military buildup was also on the block. But Reagan was adamant on
that point and for Congress to agree with the proposed budget the individual
members had to be cajoled and bribed with goodies for their constituents which
increased, rather than decreased, the deficit. It had started out at $73.8
billion in 1980 and by 1983 it rose to $207.8 billion. Stockman’s conclusion:
Reagonomics was a fraud and should not be repeated. This is why he wrote The Great Deformation.
The book is a hefty one and I must
admit that I have not yet found the time and energy to read it from cover to
cover. Instead I picked his thoughts on the Great Depression, the Reagan years
and the crash of 2008. There is a connecting thread which Stockman calls
Crony-Capitalism and the Austrian equivalent would be Freunderlwirtschaft. Financiers, the large banks including
the “Fed,” work hand in glove with politicians in government to bring about
financial windfalls for themselves through dubious speculative enterprises,
which inevitably create economic bubbles. Once a sufficient size has been
achieved, they have to burst.
The termsFreunderlwirtschaftorcrony-capitalism are, however, not sufficiently inclusive
because they omit the shady aspects of the perpetrators conduct which border on
criminality or are outright criminal. This is why Austria’s socialists came up
in 1929 with the more descriptive “Lumpenkapitalismus.” It was an analogue to the “Lumpenproletariat,” a term which denotes the lowest
parasitic element of society that lives on theft, robbery and similar unsavory
activities. Lumpenkapitalismuswas meant to emphasize the ruthless
criminal aspect of capitalist behavior where the only goal is financial profit
regardless of means. This led to the Austrian pre-October 1929 situation where,
as HellmuthAndics in 50 JahreunseresLebens had pointed
out, “industries were deeply indebted to banks, capitalists were without
capital and the banks lent beyond their means.” Although the term was meant to
characterize the Austrian situation, these conditions were also present in the
US at the time and they persist to this day.
Most of us associate the Great
Depression with the October 1929 Wall Street crash, but there were actually two
events with the second one having occurred in March of 1931. For there ultimate cause we have to go back to WWI which had
ruined the economies of Europe. Even the victors, mainly England and France,
had become indebted to America and were expected to pay back their loans. They
did, but at the price of ruinous reparations from Germany and Austria, that in
turn paved the way for WWII. As soon as America’s initial economic depression,
caused by the change from a war to a peacetime economy, had lifted, the
“roaring twenties” ensued. Europe had to rebuild its industries and in the
meantime all the necessities for daily living, as well for future growth, had
to be imported from America. But Europeans had no money, and for that they
likewise had to go to America where the banks were only too happy to loan some
more. This led to the paradox that America paid the Europeans so that they
could buy American goods. It was all along our money that made this round trip
across the Atlantic.
A situation like this obviously couldn’t
last forever. Later in the decade Europe began to stand again on its own feet,
which led to drastic reductions of the need for foreign imports. But American
industry had been vastly expanded to meet the temporary need and now was stuck
with huge inventories in the farming as well as industrial sectors when the
need for these exports disappeared. In combination with rampant speculation on
the stock market and overextended loans by the banks the 1929 crash became
inevitable. Nevertheless, as Stockman points out, even without government
intervention the economy began to recover by 1931. But something else
intervened which deepened the depression.
1932 was an election year and as usual
big promises were made. Herbert Hoover was the incumbent Republican President
and ran for re-election. His Democrat opponent was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Democrat strategy for winning the election was to saddle Hoover and his
laissez-faire economics with the exclusive guilt for the 1929 crash. While it
can be understood that all is fair in war and election campaigns, the needs of
the country should come to the fore once the election is over. This is the
point at which serious questions can and have been raised over FDR’s conduct in
the interval between election and inauguration, which in those days was on
March 4. He not only deliberately refused to help Hoover during the transition to
ameliorate the country’s problems but actually undercut him.
Bank failures were still a daily
occurrence and something needed to be done. But Roosevelt not only failed to
help, he made the situation worse in order to saddle Hoover with the exclusive
guilt for the economic debacle, which would then allow him to implement his
“New Deal.” Let me now quote an abbreviated version of what happened as presented
by Stockman.
Indeed, the
increasing hints and leaks from FDR’s radical brain trusters
… that the incoming president would depreciate the dollar and pursue other
inflationary schemes had already begun to trigger a run on gold and currency.
Therefore, on February 18 Hoover penned an eloquent letter to FDR outlining the
peril from these developments and the urgent need for a reassuring statement
from the president-elect outlining his policies with respect to gold, currency,
banking and the budget.
In spite of the urgency of the
situation Roosevelt not only ignored the letter but became incommunicado until
inauguration day. “According to an insider chronicle written at the time, by
February 24 FDR and his inner circle had already embraced a purely cynical
outlook.” They would let the national banking situation collapse and the
responsibility could then be pinned on Hoover.
On Friday February
24 one of the new administration’s insiders leaked the “secret plan to place an
embargo on gold exports, suspend gold payments to domestic citizens, and
implement measures designed to inflate farm and industrial prices …. The
following Monday the leak spread throughout the financial circles with
resultant panic. Gold was bought at fever pitch and frightened depositors lined
up for cash. By February 23, the daily increase in currency outstanding had
risen from the $8 million early February level to about $40 million, and then
in the crisis week soared to nearly $200 million on Monday and hit $450 million
Friday, March 3, the day before the inauguration.
FDR’s total disregard of the acute
needs of the people in favor of a chimerical “new deal” was reprehensible. As
it turned out the deal did not work as proclaimed and the stock market remained
in the doldrums. The economy was not rescued by FDR’s domestic programs but
Hitler’s war when America became “the arsenal of democracy.” The “new deal” was
not only a failure but also started to deform the capitalist economy into crony-capitalism
with vastly increased public spending for political purposes and limited
effectiveness.
Reagonomics did not fare much better
in the book. “The Reaganite legend begins with the
false proposition that the Reagan administration stopped the march of “Big
Government” and brought a new fiscal restraint to Washington.” The opposite was
the case because the 1980 defense budget of $142 billion rose to $222 billion
for 1982 and $386 billion were projected for 1986. Stockman was appalled by
these numbers and asked what this Pentagon spending spree was to accomplish?
What were we defending against? The only enemy was the Soviet Union and it was
deterred by our nuclear arsenal. Since there was never any intention to invade
that country and the Soviets had no interest invading ours, what did we need such
a huge build-up for?
“What got built
with the $1.46 trillion Reagan budget was a conventional war-making capacity
and force projection ability that the only military expert to occupy the White
House in the twentieth century, Dwight Eisenhower, had rejected as of marginal
value against a nuclear adversary.The
fiasco inVietnam had already proven him
correct, demonstrating painfully and tragically that massive conventional
forces cannot successfully occupy, pacify and rebuild third world nations of
the unwilling.”
Stockman points out that although the
Reagan years had slightly increased the GDP this was the result of warfare
economics and that the federal debt was only brought under control in the last
years of the Clinton administration when substantial budget cuts that included
the military came into effect. But even then all was not well on Wall Street
and the first warning came with the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000.
Greenspan, the Fed chairman at the time, had warned of “irrational exuberance,”
but did nothing about it. The September 11 tragedy of the following year was then
taken as the excuse for massive defense spending, leading to trillion dollar
deficits although it was hard to conceive how tanks, rockets and submarines
will deter terrorists. But there was now an additional new wrinkle.
Intelligence failure was regarded as the cause of the event and the spying as
well as “homeland security” apparatus had to be greatly expanded at further
huge costs. As an aside I might mention that there was indeed an intelligence
failure but it resided not in the FBI, CIA or NSA and other assorted government
agencies. Its home was in the brains of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and
their cronies who ruined the country.
The tech bubble was, however, only the
tip of the iceberg; the housing bubble came next and with it the crash of
September 2008. The causes of the crash were similar to 1929 with excessive
Wall Street speculation and massively overextended major banks. They had not
been satisfied with their traditional roles of accepting deposits, keeping them
safe for the customer, lending a portion to businesses, charging a certain
interest fee for this service and paying the depositor some monthly sum to
incite further deposits. Although small banks around the country still
functioned and prospered in this way, greed had taken over and the large
financial institutions had gone into investment planning, speculations with
leveraged buyouts, derivatives, options and so on.These activities
not only do nothing for the real economy but enrich speculators and drive up
Wall Street stock prices to create the illusion of prosperity.
Stockman maintains that if the “conservative”
Republican administration had stuck to their professed principles and kept
their hands off Wall Street some banks would have gone under and so would some
bankrupt industries, but the country at large was in no danger of sinking into a
second “Great Depression.” A run on the banks as it had occurred in 1929 and 1931
was unlikely because the deposits were insured by the government and there was,
therefore, no need for panic. Although the financial industry is deeply
interwoven with that of the rest of world the danger was to the speculators
rather than to ordinary citizens. With a hands off
policy, the economy would have entered a temporary recession but corrected
itself in a few years and the country would have emerged stronger. All the
excess baggage would have been shed and the lesson: thou shalt not gamble with
other people’s money, would have been learned.
The opposite was the case. The
Republicans initiated the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which allowed
the Treasury Department to transfer up to $700 billion of our tax money to Wall
Street speculators and failing industries. Stockman called it “Crony Capitalist
Plunder” and put the major blame on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the
Federal Reserve Bank’s Chairman, Ben Bernanke. Paulson had come to his
government office via Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs financial institution where
he had held the post of Chief Executive of its Chicago Office. When Lehman
Brothers collapsed on September 5 and AIG appeared to be next. Paulson feared
that a total meltdown of the major banks, including Goldman Sachs, would be
next. This caused him paint an exceedingly dreary scenario for Bernanke in the
hope that the Fed would bail them out. Bernanke was singularly susceptible to a
threat of a Great Depression because he had been a university professor prior
to becoming banker and the study of causes of 1929 and the prevention of its
recurrence were his specialty. Together they conjured up a doomsday scenario that
was immediately sold to Congress and led to passage of the act in record time.
I cannot judge the validity of Stockman’s claim that the ship of state
would have righted itself without TARP but it is obvious that a signal was sent
to Wall Street: keep on speculating, your institutions are “too big to fail,”
and in case of trouble the government will bail you out.
This brings us to May 2015 where a pre-1929
situation is again in the winds. When a reader from Heber City, a small farming
community in rural Utah feels obligated to write toThe Salt Lake Tribune a
letter entitled “U.S. is bankrupt,” one knows that there’s something
drastically amiss. His was not the only voice of concern last month. Headlines
in The New York Times and the Salt Lake Tribune such as “Middle-class debt,”
“Tech Investors See the Froth, But None Call It a Bubble,”“Banks as Felons or Criminality Lite” one
gets an inkling that changes are afoot. The situation is actually worse than in
the summer of 1929 because at that time the federal budget was not encumbered
by huge interest payments on its debt, the social security and healthcare
expenses as well as the massive military cost, and the dollar was backed by
gold. Our national debt has reached $18 trillion and keeps climbing. How this
can ever be amortized nobody dares to even think about.
In
last month’s installment I pointed out that the US no longer has the ability to
impose its economic will on other countries through the IMF and World Bank. We have
competition in form of the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB)
which does not make demands on recipient governments’ a precondition for loans.
The dollar is also no longer the only currency foreign governments accept for
debt payment and how long the petrodollar, the sale of oil exclusively denominated
in dollars, will remain undisputed is also only a question of time. A major
correction from the current speculative economic environment is coming and the
effects will not be pleasant. Our government knows it and is making
preparations for how to deal with the resulting social upheaval that is likely
to be a considerably larger replay of 1968.
The exact plans are secret but “Operation Jade Helmet
15,” which will take place during the summer in some Western States, may well
be one of the first dress rehearsals. I was alerted to it by the Canadian site
globalresearch.com which cited an apparently official document that set off a
firestorm on the Internet. Below are the relevant URL and the main aspect. https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/258605525?access_key=key-dS1ZhJJ4ZgCH6XXhBqWp&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll
The Commander of United
States Army Special Operation Command (USASOC) seeks a written invitation and
approval from local officials to conduct a Realistic Military Training (RMT)
within their jurisdictions for joint military exercise Jade Helm 15
(JH15). … to improve the
Special Operations forces’ UW capability as part
of the National Security Strategy ….
It goes on to provide details of the
states involved and concentrates mainly on Texas Obviously I cannot vouch that
this document came indeed from the government, but Operation Jade Helmet 15 is
a fact as attested by numerous Internet articles which in part come from
mainstream press sources. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Operation+Jade+Helm.
Although the government denies ulterior motives we have to keep the adage in
mind that nothing is true until the government denies it. Since Utah will be
part of this exercise I intend discuss it again in the fall when it will be
over.
June is going to be another interesting
month because three and possibly four major events will take place with impacts
on our economy. Greece is essentially bankrupt and does not have the money to
make the IMF loan interest payment that is coming due. The sanctions against
Russia for the Ukraine problem will expire and the question of renewal, and in
what form, will have to be dealt with. In addition, David Cameron’s new
administration in Britain is likely to hold a referendum whether or not to
remain in the EU. The common element is not only the effect on the Eurozone but
on the continuation of the EU itself. To top it off the Iran nuclear negotiations
are supposed to be concluded.
Conventional
wisdom, as found in newspapers, magazines and TV, seems to have no solution for
these problems so let us do what we are frequently encouraged to do: think
outside the box, with leaving Iran aside for the moment. Let us assume that
Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are rational people who weigh the advantages and
disadvantage of a given course of action. They would then agree among each
other that the AIIB would lend Greece the money and then gradually wean the
country off its Western lenders. This would keep Greece officially in the Eurozone
but make it friendly to its new patrons. This in turn would have the effect
that the Greeks would vote against perpetuating the sanctions on Russia and
since all member states have to agree to renewal, they would die a sudden death,
as far as the EU is concerned. After his talk with Xi, Putin would next have a
quiet conversation with Angela Merkel, Europe’s Mutti. They have the unique
advantage that Putin speaks German and Merkel, as a former East German citizen,
speaks Russian. They don’t need an interpreter and can come to an agreement
under four eyes. The sanctions, which only hurt their countries, will be lifted
and the Russian economy privately realigned with Europe. Europe is incomplete without
Russia and it was the friction with Russia that caused the disastrous WWI. This
needs to be avoided. If the Brits decide to leave Europe so be it; they can put
1776 in reverse gear and join their former colony. A continental Eurasian
economic zone is unbeatable and human welfare would be assured.
This
is obviously a daydream and our politicians here would do their utmost to
prevent it. But it does sound rational. Here we come, however, to the real crux
of the problem. Human beings, for the most part, do not behave rationally. They
act on fears, real or imagined, and emotions top reason any day. This is also
why economics is not a science and two different Nobel Prize winners have
completely different theories how a given country would function best. They
operate on preconceptions upon which they build mathematical models. These are then
turned into actions that can plunge millions of people into disasters. Stockman
wanted to know how the world works. He will find his answer in human emotions
and since they have not changed in millennia neither has nor will human
conduct.
In
conclusion: Stockman wants us to know that political considerations by
Presidents of both parties have deformed the economy to an irreparable extent. Although
some social safety net is necessary, Social Security and Medicare should have
been means tested which would have limited costs. The Democrat welfare state
has been turned by Republicans into a “warfare state,” compounding our fiscal dilemma.
The problem has become insolvable and one must get prepared for the inevitable “fiscal
cliff.”
No
one likes to end on a dismal note but unfortunately it does appear to be reality
and in the next installment I shall discuss the probable consequences of our “warfare
state.”
July 1, 2015
THE ZERO-ONE SOCIETY
In the previous installment I
mentioned that I would discuss the effect of the “warfare state,” so dubbed by
David Stockman, on our society. But an event occurred during the middle of the
past month that brought me face to face with another fact of our lives: The
human race is literally outsourcing itself bit by bit! This may sound strange
when put in this way but when one says that the fundamental unit of computer
information is a “bit” that consists of a 0 and 1 this is no news. When one
also says that computers are displacing human labor, this is likewise common
knowledge. But have we really thought through where the road we have embarked
on, when we started to rely on computers for our daily lives, will lead to?
The idea for the current installment was
born out of frustration and in contrast to most of the others that have been
published here it is personal dealing with facts as they impinge upon one’s
life in the computer age. For more than half a century I have been submitting
scientific papers for publication and the process was relatively simple. I
wrote out the paper in long-hand, read it into a Dictaphone, gave the belt to
the secretary, she typed it, I corrected it, and off it went to the editor of
the journal via U.S. mail. Within a few days the answer came back that the
manuscript had been received and within about three months the verdict came
back. The paper was either accepted or more commonly conditionally accepted
with some revision, but it was hardly ever completely rejected. This process
worked to everybody’s satisfaction but computers have made it hopelessly
obsolete.
Nowadays one has to transmit a given
manuscript electronically and instead of simply putting it into the mail, which
took less than a minute, one now has to spend at least a couple of hours, if
one is skilled as well as lucky, on the electronic transmission process. In
addition, it no longer goes directly to the editor of the journal but to the
publishing company, which as a result of industry mergers has acquired a number
of different journals, and it then sends it out to the one the manuscript is
intended for. The journal I was in the process of submitting the paper to, states
that authors will be notified in four weeks after receipt, of “conditional”
acceptance or rejection. Please note that automatic acceptance no longer
exists. Upon “conditional” acceptance the manuscript can be resubmitted and if
it is accepted it then takes another several months before it appears as an
electronic version and after some more months in print. Thus the whole thing
now takes nearly a year before one sees the print version.
The electronic submission process is
strictly regulated by forms that have to be filled out. I no longer have
secretaries that can do that and it’s a strictly “do it yourself” chore. Unless
one does it on a regular basis this presents a challenge because different
journals have different requirements and forms. I dutifully did everything that
was required but when I hit “submit” I first got a warning that the artwork of
the figures was not quite up to snuff but the journal would ignore it for now. Then
came the message that critical information was missing
in regard to authorship. I checked and rechecked the information I had provided
found it correct but the computer wouldn’t budge and didn’t tell me what it was
complaining about. The paper could not be submitted. Obviously, this “didn’t
make my day,” as the saying goes here. This inflexibility by the computer reminded
me of the “perseveration” one finds as a symptom in patients with brain damage.
It forms part of what has previously been called the “organic mental syndrome”
– in contrast to psychological based dysfunction. This led me to diagnose
computers as suffering from the “inorganic mental syndrome.” There’s no arguing
with patient or computer, they are stuck in their groove and that’s the end of
the matter.
The website did provide, however, a
feedback section where one could contact the office for help provided one used
the options that were available for this purpose. I complied and within
nanoseconds the answer came back that a reply will be forthcoming in the next
several days. Since within 36 hours nothing had happened and I was itching to
get the manuscript off my hands, I called the office on the phone number that
had been provided. As everyone who has even a faint acquaintance with today’s
America knows, it is impossible to get a person on the first try. You get a
“menu” of options and in this situation it was: “If you know the extension of
the person you want to talk to please dial it now.” This was followed by a list
of names with their extensions but the person I really wanted was not on that
list. I gave up in disgust and instead decided to send another e-mail.
I should have remembered, however,
that in many instances there is still a way out of this program. You can
interrupt the “menu” at any time by hitting 0 and if you are lucky you’ll get a
person who speaks understandable English. This is not a given because large
companies, such as Comcast, which practically own the communications industry,
have outsourced their “help” service to third World countries because they
don’t want to pay American wages. Although these worthy souls try their best to
speak idiomatic English, and even attend courses before they get the job,
accents can’t be gotten rid of and when they speak rapidly and or softly, as is
commonly the case, any genuine communication is difficult to achieve. Initially
the 0 on the phone was meant to be an O for operator but computers don’t
recognize Os and thereby provided us with a deeper
truth: we are the 0 and the computer is 1!
The submission process was saved by an
e-mail from the publishing office which told me that I had not supplied the
copyright transfer form which was on a different module of their website and
the specific URL was listed. Hurrah I thought, that’ll
take only a couple of minutes. I went to the site but instead of getting the
form up came one which told me that the desired one would appear in a couple of
seconds and if it didn’t I have to install another program. Now I really hit
the ceiling because I’m not going to load up my computer with programs I’ll
never ever use again and which may muck things up even more.
So I sent the e-mail to one of the
co-authors and asked her to open the thing and then send it to me. She tried
with the same result. By that time it was evening I went to bed and as one says
in German: “Den Seinengibt’s
der Herr imSchlafe.”When I
woke up the next morning I wondered that the problem might have been with my
desktop which still runs on Windows XP. I, therefore, loaded the URL onto the
laptop, which runs on Windows 7, and lo and behold the form came up on the
first try.
Then came the
next surprise. It was not a simple one-page form which required an acceptance signature
on the bottom of the page, instead there were five pages of questions that had
to get their “x” or if this was not possible an explanation had to be supplied.
The questions were totally repetitive and all stated in some form or other that
I didn’t have financial support from anybody and would not make any money on
the paper once it was published. As you can see this is one sentence, but now
it took five pages and all conceivable funding or remunerative sources were
listed separately. This is obviously a joy for lawyers, a chore for everybody
else, and totally meaningless because if it ever were to come to court the
opposing lawyer would still find a loophole and tear the document to shreds.
For me it was just a waste of time that
had to be endured because I could “x” the document in good conscience. But one
of the co-authors is employed by the software company that supplied the program
upon which the paper was based. Being an honest person he had a problem with one
of the questions. It dealt with receiving any financial compensation, past,
present, or future resulting from this publication. His salary does not depend
on the success of the manuscript, but it is conceivable that he might get a
bonus at some time in the future which might be influenced by increased sales
resulting in part from the publication. He, therefore, asked me what he should
do and I told him “x” the thing as a no because his salary didn’t depend on it
and any potential bonus that he might receive in future years was irrelevant.
All in all it took about a week before the submission was sent off and its
receipt acknowledged by the company. We are now officially in the four week
waiting period before “conditional” acceptance or utter rejection.
In spite of trials and tribulations the
submission process was at long last a success story. But this is not guaranteed
in our electronic age, as another example from the fall of 2013 proved. Every
week I receive at least three or four invitations on my university e-mail
account to submit an original article to the journal the e-mail originated
from. These are for the most part “open-source” where you pay for the privilege
of authorship. I regularly immediately delete them but one struck my eye
because it was personal, referred to work we had recently published, requested
another one on that topic, and was signed by two professors. When I clicked on
the URL to which the reply was to be sent the answer came back from our
university “access denied.”
This raised my curiosity. I went to Plan
B and tried to forward the message to my private e-mail account. This attempt
was likewise unacceptable to the university computer so here came Plan C.I copied the entire message, sent it to my
computer for safe-keeping, and opened the URL on the private e-mail account.
Now came the surprise. It was indeed a legitimate
journal and the official publication of the Iranian Clinical Neurophysiology
Society. Since, as everybody knows, Iran is officially branded as a terrorist
state I had to give the matter some thought. The NSA computers, in neighboring
Bluffdale, probably read my mail because I may well be
on their list for talking on the phone to friends, relatives and colleagues
abroad. But science should have nothing to do with politics. It is an
international endeavor and since the journal reaches non-Western countries such
as Russia, China and India and I do want to get the message on the clinical use
of infraslow electromagnetic brain activity (< 0.1Hz) across to a global audience
I agreed to write such a paper.
The decision was warmly welcomed in
Tehran and the paper was ready for submission by the spring of last year. Now
the problem started. Half-way through the submission process it required a
format my computer does not support. I wrote to the journal explaining the
problem and asking that one of their secretaries should accept the manuscript
as is, since it was written upon special invitation and if there were to be a
problem to let me know.Well, this was
rational but what I did not appreciate was that I was not dealing with human
beings but with computers in some publishing house. There was no reply and over
the next several weeks other attempts to e-mail the request likewise remained unanswered.
Instead came a notification that I have an “incomplete
submission” that should be completed and my reply would be appreciated. This
would be reasonable except that it was an automatic “no reply” generated
message and any reply that I sent anyway was, of course, automatically deleted.
Now I was fed up and wrote a message to the original e-mail address notifying
them that I withdraw the paper. Of course, there was no reply and instead am
still getting every month the reminder that I have an incomplete submission.
The most recent one came on Saturday of last week
Theoretically I could still call the
company because a phone number was provided but there is a ten hour time
difference between Utah and Tehran, I don’t speak Farsi and there is no
guarantee that the person on the other end of the line speaks understandable
English. In addition it’s a publishing house rather than the journal itself and
a phone call to Iran would surely perk up the electronic ears of the NSA as a
potential terrorist suspect. Once you’ve got that label, deserved or not,
there’s no way of getting rid of it. Since I don’t need these potential
problems I just wrote off the whole thing as a learning experience and delete
the reminders.
Remaining
on Iran for a moment longer I need to point out that our daughter was last
month in that country for three weeks studying archeologic sites. Her reports
about the people, living conditions and government interference were most
informative. The blog with stories and photos can be found at http://journals.worldnomads.com/krodin/country/101/Iran.
My
love-hate relationship first with general purpose computers, then with
specialized ones, and finally the personal computer started in 1956. At that
time I was an instructor in the Psychiatry Department of the University of
Michigan which contained, in addition to its regular functions, a Mental Health
Research Institute and the EEG laboratory. Epilepsy had been my special
interest ever since Mayo Clinic days and the question to what extent the slow
injection of a convulsant drug (Metrazol-Cardiazol, originally used for treating impending heart
attacks) could predict future spontaneous epileptic seizures was a hot topic.
We paid student volunteers to undergo the test. By the way in those days were
no Institutional Review Boards - IRBs- our conscience was the guide of what was
and was not permissible. In contrast to previous studies that had been reported
in the literature, we did thorough neurologic, EEG and psychiatric evaluations,
coded the data and then subjected them to statistical analysis on the
university’s IBM computer. Numerous statistically significant correlations were
obtained and the findings were then published in the top international EEG
journal. This set the pattern for all the subsequent efforts that involved
statistical assessment of data.
While
I did publish the correlations that made sense there was also one that I
regarded as so outlandish that I did not include it. It had to do with the fact
that slightly more than half of the subjects reported within a few seconds a
strong sensation of an odor. It was usually unpleasant and its character
differed with individuals. Since this was a known fact from patients whom we
had given the drug to at Mayo to induce seizures and thereby study their origin,
I gave no thought to it but did include its presence or absence in the
correlation matrix. There was only one significant correlation: Marked
subjective odor correlated with higher IQ. This was so incongruous with
everything we knew at the time that I did not think it wise to include the
finding in the publication because it would simply throw doubt on the rest of the
data that were more in line with then current thinking. I stashed it away in
memory, but became more curious later when I had myself injected with the drug
in order to find out what my tolerance was. There was immediately a strong odor
of “bitter almonds” and the recognition: oh, that’s what they are talking
about. The drug had activated a childhood memory when I pried open apricot
kernels from our tree and ate them. Since they contained cyanide, which I
didn’t know at the time, it was my good fortune that I abandoned this practice
after a few trials. But there it was, more than thirty years later. Why do I
mention all of this? Because our fellow scientists have now found out that loss
of sense of smell can be an early predictor of dementia. There’s a simple test:
if you can’t smell peanut butter when the jar is about 10 centimeters (not
quite four inches) from your nose you’re potentially in trouble of dementing.
Loss of sense of smell preceded awareness of memory problems and what may be
worse it may even predict death within five years. I don’t know how accurate
these studies were but they are in line with the Metrazol experience linking a
sensation of odor with IQ. In retrospect the linkage to memory is not entirely
unexpected because the olfactory portion of our brains is intimately connected
to those that are involved with memory. The ancient Greeks told us “Know
Thyself,” so head for your peanut butter jar and if you don’t smell anything
see your doctor who will probably refer you to a neurologist.
When I subsequently moved to Detroit’s
Lafayette Clinic and Wayne State University everybody thought that I had gone
slumming. One just doesn’t move from Ann Arbor to Detroit if one has any hope
of professional scientific advancement. But the misnamed “Lafayette Clinic” had
its lure. It had been given that name by some bureaucrat simply because the
building was located on Lafayette Street. In reality it was the Psychiatric Research
and Teaching Hospital of the State of Michigan and funded through its Mental
Health Department. My job was to create a Neurology and EEG division within the
Clinic in order for the budding psychiatrists to learn that the mind does not
float in outer space but is intimately linked to the brain and its disorders.
The decision to move to Detroit turned
into one of the better ones of my life and also was aided by the fact that the
Chief of Outpatient Psychiatry was Dr. Peter Beckett a friend from Mayo Clinic
days and distant relative of the well-known author. He was convinced that if he
coded the histories, psychological test results and examination findings of
schizophrenic patients he might unlock the secrets of that disease with the
help of the computer that could grind out numbers with lightning speed. My goal
was to do this for epilepsy. Since I had already started on that road in Ann
Arbor, continued on it and modified his coding system for our epilepsy
patients, as well as for children who presented problems in school. In 1961 we
described it for the scientific community and presented initial results. But
before going into print I wanted some feed-back from the computer community and
presented the data at the annual IEEE meeting (Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers) in San Diego.
The memorable part was not the meeting
but the cocktail party beforehand where everybody stood around chatting.
Obviously, I was out of my depth but did strike up a conversation in regard to
our respective work. When I told one of the engineers what I was doing, I got: “Oh,
you’re just a consumer!” Well, that was and is correct, but if there were not
these “consumers” the engineers would be out of their jobs. In addition the
attitude of not listening to what we “consumers” want and really need, can lead
them into all sorts of alleys and byways that then saddle us with equipment
which only approximates what we’d really like to have. In this way medical and
scientific research in general, is largely driven by the gadgets that are
available and have to be made use of, rather than innovative thought which then
leads to breakthroughs. There are, of course, exceptions and in my field the CT
and MRI scans were truly revolutionary while EEG, although now digitally
recorded, has so far largely stayed put in regard to clinical practice.
Without computers my scientific life
would have flown into completely different directions and most of all I would
not have had the type of fulfilling retirement that I currently enjoy. Colleagues
from around the country and Europe send their data into my “drop box.” I
analyze them in my home while intermittently glancing up at the mountains that
remind me there’s another world out there that can get along perfectly well
without me.
This is the proper role of computers.
They should be our servants but are now on the way to become our masters. We
behave like Goethe’s magician’s apprentice who changed the broom into a servant
to prepare a bath for him. But this “servant,” kept pouring water into the tub
although it was already overflowing. Cutting it in half was of no use because
two brooms now kept fetching and pouring more water. It took the return of the
magician, who knew the right words, to send the broom back into the corner
where it belonged. There is a profound lesson in this poem. Without the master
magician who puts a brake on our robotic engineers, who are busy creating
“artificial intelligences,” we are about to lose our most essential ingredient:
humane-ness. The servant is well on its way to become the master and most of us
don’t even realize it.
By coincidence the July-August issue of The Atlantic came at the end of the week
and so did Foreign Affairs. Both deal
with various aspects of our computer society. The Atlantic cover page proclaimed: “Technology will soon erase
millions of jobs. Could that be a good thing?” The article itself, by Derek
Thompson, was entitled: “A world without work.” It discusses the ways people
might be able to cope with the impending massive lay-offs in our labor force.
The Foreign Affairs issue alsotackles the problem,
and its harbingers for the future, in a series of four articles. The cover page
shows a Robotic Hamlet pondering a robot skull and the title is: “Hi, Robot. Work and Life in the Age of Automation.” The Introduction by
Gideon Rose, editor of the magazine, briefly introduces the authors of the
articles as well as their topics and concludes:
Something is
clearly happening here, but we don’t know what it means. And by the time we do,
authors and editors may well have been replaced by algorithms along with
everybody else. Until then, we offer these dispatches from the frontlines of
the robotic revolution.
While the majority of the articles discuss
the profound economic and technological changes robots will bring about, the
article by Professor Illah Reza Nourbahksh: “The
Coming Robot Dystopia – AllToo Inhuman,”
goes to the heart of the question of who we are as a human race and what do we
want to be. Hamlet’s question needs an answer and Professor Nourbahksh provides
a guideline. Computer Science departments should “require that every degree
candidate receive sufficient training in ethics and some exposure to sociology.”
In addition, some government regulation of the industry will be needed. To this
I would like to add that the humanities in general, which are the foundation of
our culture, should no longer be sidelined in high school and college curricula
in favor of “math and science.” The production of technocrats was the desired
goal of Nazis and Communists. The outcome was Auschwitz on the one hand and the
Gulags on the other. Without an anchor in the past that allows us to discern
what our race did right and where it went wrong we are likely to unwittingly
create a future that will not be worth living in. At stake now is the
fundamental question who we are and what we see as our purpose on this planet.
All else will flow from the answer. Ignoring the question is also an answer
because it amounts to an abdication of responsibility for the future of our
children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren whose arrival some of us
are privileged to witness.
This article is intended to serve only
as an introduction and our interaction with computers will be further explored
in a subsequent issue. It may not be next month because world events, especially
in regard to Greece and Iran, are coming to a head right now. They will require
discussion in regard to their meaning for our future as well as that of the
rest of the world.
August 1, 2015
GREECE, IRAN, AND THE POPE
The title’s juxtaposition
of events dealing with a Greek Orthodox, an authoritarian Muslim country and
the leader of the Catholic Church may strike one as strange. But there is a
common denominator: the human condition with all of its hopes, fears and
prejudices. The past month was another example of the difficulties human beings
have in order to come to some type of agreement. Fortunately reason prevailed
over passion; although the situation in regard to the Greek bailout and the
fate of the nuclear agreement with Iran is still hotly debated.
Regardless
of cause or occasion it is always human personalities whose interactions decide
the fate of countries and at times that of the world. Although in the case of
Greece, the pundits in our country frame the situation as a conflict between
Western creditors and Greek debtors, it was more than that. The major
antagonists were the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the European Central
Bank, ECB, versus the Greek government. But banks and governments are run by
people who may hold different world views and certainly have different
priorities.
It
is correct that in the past the affairs of the Greek people were thoroughly
mismanaged by a series of corrupt governments. They bought favors with their wealthy
constituents through much too lenient taxation as well as a pension system that
was completely out of line with the rest of the world. When ship owners, of the
Onassis type, were exempt from paying taxes it is no wonder that many of the
common people cheated on paying their share. When the former group even managed
to have its tax-exempt status anchored in the Constitution, future trouble was inevitable.
Regardless
of country and political system it is, and always has been, a small group of
people, the oligarchs, who really hold the purse strings and thereby political
power. As pointed out on other occasions the official government is usually the
front (Aushängeschild)
behind which the power brokers go about their business, which has nothing to do
with the welfare of the people of their country. For them the official
government exists to provide the excuse for their actions and to keep the
people from revolting. Shakespeare knew this when he wrote “all the world is a
stage.” The politicians are the actors who dutifully recite the lines that are
prepared for them by the play-writer (s). In a democracy they will be rewarded
with re-election, but if they rebel they will be dropped or in some cases even
assassinated, with President Kennedy perhaps the most recent example (Shattered
Trust November 1, 2013; Monumental Medical Cover-up November 15, 2013; The Cover-up
Continues December 1, 2013).
It
should, therefore, not be surprising that the Greek public debt mounted and
Western lenders were only too happy to provide more money. One now has to
realize that banks are not charitable institutions. They have only one interest
and that is to make money for their bank! The more they lend the more they hope
to get back in form of the “interest” the debtor has to pay. This was the cause
of the housing bubble in our country where banks provided indiscriminant loans
to people who obviously would never be able to amortize them. It led to the
2008 financial collapse from which even we have not yet fully recovered.
The
Greek lending and spending spree went on for several years until the debt had
reached proportions when even interest rates could no longer be paid. In tried and
true fashion of brutal capitalism, as discussed in relation to Naomi Kline’s Shock Doctrine (Ukraine Crisis March 15,
2014), the bankers now tried to extract their money through“austerity” measures that threw people into
povertyand increased the unemployment
rate to 26% and among the younger population to more than 50 %. Under these
circumstances it should have come as no surprise that the Greek people got fed
up with their government and elected the Syriza
party, which is composed of a variety of left leaning elements who range from moderate
Social-Democrats to outright Communists, with Alexis Tsipras at its head. He
appointed Yanis Varoufakis as his finance minister whose hallmark was riding a
motorcycle. This certainly did not sit well with the bankers who immediately
vowed to bring down this elected government and re-establish a pliant one. It
was not only the insistent Greek demand for debt forgiveness and the blunt
confrontational attitude of Varoufakis that brought on the June crisis. The
bankers correctly perceived that the Tsipras government presented a fundamental
threat to what I like to call “robber” capitalism that had to be met.
Tsipras
had promised the Greek people that he would bring an end to the increasing
austerity measures, and he was elected last January on that basis. But he had
underestimated his opponents who simply demanded their pound of flesh and
couched the real reasons for their intransigence behind legalities. Their
stance was that debt forgiveness does not exist in the Euro zone and if the
Greeks didn’t like it, they could leave. The law had to be upheld and respected
because an exception for Greece would then be demanded by other debtors and the
whole building that had so carefully been erected for their benefit would come tumbling down.
Since
Germany, via the European Central Bank, was the major lender, with the IMF
playing a secondary role, the battle became personal with Angela Merkel and her
finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, in one corner and Alexis Tsipras with his
finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in the other. One must now know that there
has been bad blood between Greece and Germany ever since WWII, the background
of which is not well known in our country. A brief summary to put the conflict
in context is, therefore, in order because it shows how “der Fluch der boesen
Tat” (the curse of the evil act), as Schiller expressed it in his
Wallenstein trilogy, poisons the lives of the yet unborn.
The
Greek tragedy started with Mussolini, Hitler and Churchill. Mussolini was
miffed that his partner kept annexing or invading other countries in Europe
without even consulting him. His goal was to re-establish, at least in part, the
Roman Empire and in that pursuit had already conquered Ethiopia. After the
German victory over France he felt that the time was right to add Albania to
his rule. Since that country was a pushover he then tried his luck by invading
Greece. But the Greeks were fighters. They not only threw the Italian army out of
Greece, but during the winter pursued it into Albania.
The
situation in the spring of 1941 was complex. Hitler was the dominant force in
Europe and Churchill had few options to win the war. He, therefore, intended “to
put Europe aflame.” By that he meant to create crises invarious European countries which would keep
Hitler occupied in extinguishing these fires while he, Churchill, was
assiduously working to bring Roosevelt’s America aboard and, hoping against
hope, even Stalin. To execute his plan he offered the Greeks his help against
Mussolini but that resulted in the now famous oxi, thanks but no thanks. Hitler
then arranged for Yugoslavia to join the Tripartite Agreement (Berlin 1940,
between Germany, Italy and Japan) in order to protect his southern flank for
the upcoming invasion of Russia. The treaty was signed on March 25, 1941 in
Vienna.
Now Churchill
saw his opportunity and instigated a coup in Belgrade that negated the treaty with
Germany. Within days Hitler not only rectified that affront but also took the
opportunity to rescue Mussolini from his Greek debacle. In spite of valiant
opposition, which even Hitler acknowledged in his Reichtstag speech of May 4, 1941,
the Greek army succumbed to superior forces. Nevertheless, some elements of the
populace kept the war going through guerilla attacks. This became a turning
point. Had the Greeks accepted defeat and abstained from further hostile
actions, in the manner of Vichy France, it is likely that Hitler may not have harassed
them because he already had his hands full with the attempt to conquer the
Soviet Union and to bail out Mussolini in Libya.
As
mentioned above the Greeks are fighters and they now had an ally in Churchill
who kept supplying the guerilla forces in Greece as well as Yugoslavia.
Hitler’s answer was to relegate them guerilla fighters to the role of “bandits,”
or in modern parlance “terrorists,” who had to be dealt with in the most
ruthless manner lest the contagion were to spread. In pursuit of this goal, hostages
were taken and murdered and villages were razed to the ground and the country
was systematically plundered.
After
the war the Greeks asked for reparations from Adenauer’s West German
government, they knew that they wouldn’t get a penny from the East German
government, but were told to wait until German re-unification. When that came
they were told to be patient because Germany first had to solve all the
problems inherent in integrating a run-down communist economy into the Western part
of the country. Thereafter the German governments had other concerns until they
were rudely reminded by Greeks, earlier this year that they have no business to
talk of legalities when they themselves had defaulted on obligations towards their
country. Debt forgiveness could be regarded as reparations for actions during
WWII and one would be done with it.
This
reminder incensed the self-righteous Schäuble and further negotiations were
doomed. Even stiffer demands were made which in turn led to the Greek
referendum that gave Tsipras its vote of confidence in his negotiation efforts.
It was useless. Germany still had the upper hand, this time in financial rather
than military power, and the Greeks had to knuckle under in spite of even
stiffer “austerity” demands. Tsipras now had no choice but to accept defeat.
Nevertheless, the German government had done itself a great disservice which
will haunt the country for years to come. Instead of unifying Europe its
“rectitude” led to animosities that will continue to linger. The fact is that
the Greeks simply don’t have, and never will have, the $320+ billion to repay
the debt regardless how much austerity is practiced because the latter will
simply further ruin the country’s economy.
These
events reminded me of Sophocles’ Antigone which dealt precisely with this theme
of legal versus moral obligations. In Greek tragedies there are no happy
endings and we will see how the current one will play out in the coming months
and years. Will Chancellor Merkel, who has been dubbed Europe’s Mutti, have the
will, courage and political skill to find middle ground even in the face of
possible rebellion by her party’s doctrinaires? As Europe’s mother she has to
take care of all her children in equal measure and some of them are fervently
against a Greek bailout. It is an immense task, which may actually be beyond
the capabilities of a human being. The people in Germany as well as some other
European countries are largely against providing Greece with further loans, but
someone should remind them that the entire “Western civilization” is built on
the foundation laid by the Greeks and that this represents a moral debt than
can never be repaid. Also: what would we say if our creditors were to demand
the $18+ trillion we currently owe? This is an astronomical sum that as
everybody knows, but doesn’t admit to, will never be repaid.
Western
capitalism, as exemplified by U.S. conduct is at a crossroads that it
apparently fails to perceive. How long can an economy continue to function when
it is largely built on consumption which can only be financed by debt? How long
will it be until the middle class fully realizes that it is being
systematically robbed? Traditional savings accounts have been rendered useless
because interest rates are kept at near zero. In order to save for retirement
or major illness one has to “invest” in the stock market, which amounts to
gambling in Las Vegas. There may be a winning streak for a while but it always
ends in catastrophe. Our PhD economists need to put their heads together, lay
the facts on the line, and present our politicians with a viable alternative to
the current situation before it is too late.
The other major news of the past month was the
treaty with Iran, which is so vigorously opposed by Israel and its cohorts in
Congress. The treaty, as it stands right now, gives us some respite from constant
wars in its attempts to normalize relations with the clerical regime in Iran.
While most of the world breathed a sigh of relief, the Israeli government under
Benjamin Netanyahu did the opposite. It stoked fears of what Iran would do next,
once the sanctions are lifted. A doomsday scenario for Israel is depicted,
because the Iranians will cheat and continue to gear up towards the bomb in secret
and when the world wakes up to that fact it will be too late to prevent them
from actually testing one.
Now comes the irony of which the American public is to be kept
in blissful ignorance. Bibi, as he is so fondly called by some of his
countrymen, speaks from experience. This is precisely the way Ben-Gurion
handled himself while his scientists and technicians were secretly working on
creating the bomb at the Dimona nuclear plant. I have referred to Seymour
Hersh’s Samson Option previously (Netanyahu’s
gift Part II, April 15, 2011) but it is remarkably how this same scenario is
now playing itself out in the minds of the Israeli government and its adherents
here. Even Iran’s insistence that the UN inspectors have to notify the Iranian
government 24 days prior to their arrival had its Israeli counterpart. Ben-Gurion
completely rejected UN inspections and only relented to an American team given
access to the Dimona plant after Kennedy granted his wish for Hawk missiles and
agreed that the visits would be announced well in advance of the Americans
arrival. In order to mislead the inspectors Ben-Gurion built, as Hersh put it,
a Potemkin village complete with control room that was then paraded before the
Americans. Although they were shown around the fake plant, access to the reactor
core was not allowed. Please read the book and you will understand what is
really going on.
Netanyahu’s
stance of fear-mongering may seem to be un-understandable by some well-meaning
people who ask themselves: why can’t we all get along? The answer to that question
came from another Jew in another context. Sigmund Freud found that many of his
female patients developed a crush for him but accused Freud of having sexual
interests in them. He called the phenomenon “projection” and didn’t seem to
have realized that he had stumbled onto a universal aspect of human conduct.
Let
me explain. All of us live foremost in our thoughts and expect others to
conform to how we feel. Our thoughts are, however, personal and conditioned by
heredity as well as life experiences. Since we are not fully aware of this fact
we expect that the “other” will respond in the same manner as we would under a
given set of circumstances. In other words, I will ascribe present as well as
potential future conduct of the “other” to my concepts and if they go against
my grain will accuse him/her of planning to carry them out against me. This
scenario plays itself out daily in human interactions and is readily observable
in marital partners. It becomes, however, dangerous when it involves leaders of
nations. Unless one is aware of the ubiquity of this phenomenon world history
cannot be understood.
The
current Israel-Iran situation is a good example. Netanyahu ascribes nefarious
plans to Iran, not only in regard to bomb building but overall aggressive
impulses against Israel. He loves to point to the Book of Esther to show
Persia’s rulers hatred of Jews. He fails, however, to point to Cyrus who freed
the Jews from their Babylonian exile and allowed them to rebuild the Jerusalem
temple. This is an inconvenient truth that does not fit into the perennial
enemy image and must not be mentioned.
All
the hostile plans the Iranian mullahs are supposed to have against Israel are assumptions
based on actual Israeli plans against their country. The documentation for this
statement was provided by Israel Shahak in Open
Secrets – Israel’s nuclear and foreign policies, which I discussed in the
August 15, 2012 issue. It was entitled The Impending War with Iran and
occasioned by the belligerent speeches of then presidential candidate Mitt
Romney. In retrospect it might have been wiser to end with a question mark
rather than period. But the war of words is far from over and we don’t know if
or when it will spill over into military action. Our Republicans are already announcing
“that the treaty will be torn up by the next president,” obviously assuming
that he will come from their ranks.
In the
furor surrounding the merits of this treaty we should remember that, although
not perfect, it was the best that could be achieved under difficult
circumstances. For this our Secretary of State, Senator John Kerry, deserves
our gratitude. He has worked tirelessly around the clock to get the best
possible deal even in spite of a fractured leg. While on crutches he kept
negotiating in a cooperative rather than confrontational manner. Having been
able to establish good working relationships with his Russian counterpart, Sergei
Lavrov, he has already averted one potential war with Syria and its Russian
sponsor during September 2013, and with some luck the current treaty may hold.
The alternative is war which is in no one’s best interest. Thank you Senator
Kerry.
This
brings me to Pope Francis who seemingly has nothing to do with these political
fights. But when we think about it we realize that he represents the opposite
pole of the human condition. The politicians who were discussed above tend to
live on strife and some of them on stoking fears. Francis represents kindness,
compassion and help to the extent help is possible. He is a true Catholic in
the literal meaning of the word, as it was originally intended i.e.
“Universal.” He does not erect barriers but tries to remove them. As Archbishop
of Buenos Aires he formed a deep and lasting friendship with Rabbi Abraham Skorka,
the shepherd of its Jewish community. Rabbi Skorka is also a role model since
he is not wedded to a doctrinaire religious point of view but by profession a
biophysicist.
The
friends, again in the original meaning of the word rather than its degraded
form of Facebook correspondents, had a series of conversations about God and
the world which were published in 2010 under the title Heaven and Earth. The book can be highly recommended because it
covers all of the “sore spots” of contemporary society in an intelligent,
rational manner. While it provides a glimpse into the thoughts of Jorge Mario Bergoglio,
National Geographic Magazine gives us a close-up of his current life.
The
August 2015 issue has as its cover picture the pope standing at the entrance to
the Sistine Chapel looking at the distant altar and Michelangelo’s Last
Judgment above it. In the Introduction to the article Susan Goldberg, the
magazine’s Editor in Chief, wrote that Dave Yoder, the photographer, had unprecedented
access to the pope for six months during last year which resulted in “67,000
pictures and plenty of stories.” The article itself was written by Robert
Draper and is headlined “Will the Pope change the Vatican? Or will the Vatican
change the Pope?” The subtitle is “As Francis makes his first U.S. visit, his emphasis on serving the poor over enforcing
doctrine has inspired joy and anxiety in Roman Catholics.”
Yoder
and Draper tell the story of a simple Buenos Aires priest who started
professional life as a lab technician as well as, briefly, a bouncer at a club.
But he was an intellectual and for a poor young man the best way to get a solid
education and become a priest was the Jesuit Collegio
Maximo de San José. His professors soon noted that this was no ordinary person.
Bergoglio became “a spiritual advisor to students and teachers alike. He taught
unruly boys, washed the feet of prisoners, studied overseas.” His habit of
speaking truth to authority, his Jesuit supervisors, later got him into trouble
but his career was redeemed “by an admiring cardinal.” In 1992 he was made
bishop, archbishop in 1998 and cardinal in 2001. His rise to the papacy after
Pope Benedict’s surprising resignation was not entirely unexpected because he
had been the runner-up during Benedict’s election process.
Although
this is an extremely brief sketch, and more information will be contained in
upcoming book, it does provide us with a probable answer to the question asked
in the title of the article. A person, who washes the feet of the poor as a
student, falls to his knees to pray with Evangelicals at an ecumenical event as
archbishop and rides the subway instead of a limousine as a cardinal, is not
going to be awed by a Curia. He can say with Socrates: “Meletus
and Anytus can kill me, they cannot harm me.” He will
do his level best to change the system at a deliberate and measured pace and if
God grants him the time he will be able to completely revamp this ancient
institution.
The
reasons why I believe that this will be the case are threefold. A 78 year old
priest is no longer subject to the whims of the day and certainly not to the
dictates of Vatican bureaucrats. The secret to his success is that he combines
two facets of the Church in his person. What I am going to relate now is not
well known in this country but common knowledge and even a matter of jokes in Catholic
European countries. The major monastic orders of the Church are the Franciscans,
the Dominicans, the Benedictines and the Jesuits. The Franciscans practice the
virtues of Saint Francis and do not concern themselves with worldly events over
which they have no control anyway. They serve suffering humanity. On the other
end are the Jesuits. They are the intellectuals who do involve themselves in
politics. They tend to be practical but in defense of their order they erect
barriers. They follow the law but bend it whenever it suits their purpose and
then defend the change with equal vigor. The Dominicans and Benedictines tend
to place themselves somewhere in the middle. Thus our pope, I am speaking as a
Catholic, was always a Franciscan at heart but chose the Jesuits because he
needed the education for a life in the greater world, which only they could
provide. That he thereby would come into conflict with his Jesuit superiors was
a foregone conclusion.
Another
reason is the fact that here was “a dour priest” who was, as if by magic,
transformed into a joyful charismatic pope. Why this transformation? I believe
he feels deep gratitude that he has been given the opportunity to serve, in
addition to the poor and underprivileged, the wider needs of the suffering
world. A burden he had carried throughout his life of not being able to do more
for a world that is on its way to destruction, has been lifted. But he knows
that he has only a limited amount of time at his disposal. This is why he
published the Encyclical Laudato Si during the past month, which has
been both praised and attacked.
The
title will leave people wondering but it was taken from the AD 1225 Canticle of
the Creatures by St. Francis’ The second strophe starts with “Laudatosie, mi’ Signore
cum tucte le tue creature,
…. Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures.”
It is a sign of our times that the pope is told he has no business of
interjecting himself into the field of ecology, and foremost climate change,
because that is something scientists and politicians have to concern themselves
with. His critics, of course, refrain from saying that changing our attitudes
towards the pollution of our planet and its inhabitants will cost money. We
don’t have it because we have to spend it on arms to defend against an
assortment of terrorists as well as China and Russia. Although the Encyclical
is on the Internet for free I have ordered the paperback edition and after
studying it, will provide an opinion on its contents.
Let
me close for now with a joke that highlights the differences between the four
Catholic monastic orders and why tearing down the wall between the two extremes
by Pope Francis is so significant. On one of her trips to Europe our daughter
brought me from Austria a small booklet making fun of the clergy. It was
originally published in France translated into German and this is my
translation into English: Four priests are sitting together when suddenly the
light goes out. The Franciscan kneels down and asks the Lord for the gift of
light. The Benedictine recites his breviary, which he knows by heart anyway,
The Dominican starts a monologue about the nature of light and the cause of
darkness. When the light comes back on the Jesuit has vanished. He had changed
the fuse.
While
this points to the practical nature of Jesuits they are also known for a streak
of deviousness as the next little item shows. A Jesuit arrives in a town and
asks a passer-by for directions to the Cathedral. The answer was: “Oh, my. I
don’t think you’ll ever get there. You’d always have to go straight ahead.” The
Cardinals hoped they would get a Franciscan pope, the Curia banked on Francis’
Jesuit credentials.As it turned out he
combines both aspects in his personality structure and this is why I believe
that if he were given the time he would outfox the Curia.
In
these difficult times beset by strife Pope Francis surely deserves our prayers.
Given the chance, he may even be able to bring some sanity into our political-economic
systems that are destroying the dignity of the human being in favor of the
quest for money and power.
September 1, 2015
THE POPE AND THE WORLD
The
discussion in the previous issue revolved around the then most topical areas: Greece’s
default on its loan interest payments, the nuclear treaty with Iran and Pope
Francis attempt to arouse our conscience towards the world we inhabit. The
Greek crisis was temporarily resolved with another loan. But this only
postponed the final reckoning which inevitably has to come because one cannot
indefinitely borrow oneself out of debt. The Iranian treaty is still hotly
debated and will be taken up by Congress later this month. Pope Francis’
Encyclical has largely been given the “silent treatment,” but since he is a
determined person he will bring his message later this month into the lion’s
den of capitalism.
As
mentioned in the August issue there is indeed a common denominator to these
seemingly different events. The first two demonstrate Nietzsche’s “Will to
Power” by the ruling circles of our world, while the Pope re-interpreted
“dominion” of Genesis I from domination to stewardship. We are dealing here
with two completely different views about humanity’s place in the universe and
the choice our societies will make between them will determine the fate of our
children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At present we still have this
choice, but opportunity is fleeting and unless it is grasped now, it will be
lost for a long time and possibly forever.
These are
serious problems which require serious discussion and the mentioned choice
needs to be clearly formulated and then placed in simple language to the
citizens of the various countries of the world. I am emphasizing simple language
because even in our country the literacy level has sunk to an extent that a
book like On Heaven and Earth, which
presents the conversations of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge
Bergoglio-the future pope, with his friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka, has been
called by some readers: “boring;” “hard to understand;” “highly
intellectual-somewhat over my head.” Although these were the exceptions and the
overall rating was 4.8 stars out of 5, they need to be taken into account
because they now, unfortunately, represent a large segment of our society. This
is also the explanation of what has come to be called the “Trump phenomenon.”
Donald Trump, who wants to be elected president of our country next year, has
achieved remarkable popular success. This is due to the fact that he seems to represent
the quint-essential American success story. He also speaks bluntly and appeals
to the lower instincts of his audience, rather than their intellects and ethics.
Let me, therefore, spell out the philosophical underpinning of
our society and its current economic model. This will then be contrasted with
that of the Pope. Some readers may immediately balk at the word “philosophical”
and assume that what follows will be “over their heads.” Although this
assumption is justified by current word usage, it is too limiting. Here is a
little example from my life. In 1958 I was given the opportunity to set up a
neurology unit that contained twenty beds, at the State of Michigan’s
psychiatric research and teaching hospital, misnamed the Lafayette Clinic. The
future head nurse of the as yet non-existent unit approached me with the
question: “Dr. Rodin, what is your philosophy?” To put this question into
context one needs to know that Mrs. Dixon was not only of African-American but
also Sioux descent which proved to be a remarkable DNA mixture. I was immediately
taken aback by the question because “philosophy” for me meant Kant, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer of whom I had learned something in school but they had no
relevance for day to day life and by then had neither the time nor the interest
to study them. But obviously I had to come up with an answer so I said: “Well,
we’ll teach the psychiatrists that the mind has something to do with the brain,
carry out research on epilepsy, and at the same time help our patients the best
we can.”In other words the “philosophy”
was: We’re going to do what is expected of us and we’ll do it right. This
satisfied her and we got along famously. She did her part of the job well and I
did mine in a truly cooperative manner to the satisfaction of everybody
concerned.
While writing
this paragraph I was reminded of the question a reporter asked George W. Bush
at some point prior to becoming President: “Who is your favorite philosopher?”
Poor George W. who had hardly ever read a book in his life was dumbstruck for a
moment and then replied: “Jesus Christ.” Well yes, Jesus had a philosophy of
life, namely that as God’s children we have to take care of each other and it certainly
would have been nice if Mr. Bush had really meant what he said. If he had
adhered during his subsequent presidency, within reasonable limits, to what
Jesus had wanted us to do, he would have spared the world, and especially the
people of the Middle East, an immeasurable amount of grief. The question Mrs.
Dixon asked me was, therefore, the most appropriate one in order to find out:
who is this guy I’m supposed to work for.
So; what is the
philosophy of our ruling circles? Obviously it is Capitalism with a capital C
to which all else is subordinated. What is its official definition? “… an economic and political system in which
a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit,
rather than by the state.” The key words are private and profit, with the
latter restricted to financial gain. In practice this means: He who has
not only needs to keep what he has, but enlarge it to the maximum attainable
extent. As long as the private individual engaged in this pursuit has a social
conscience there is nothing wrong with this because it is in part a law of
life. Everything wants to grow and as long as growth stays within limits and
does not encroach on other living beings all is well. But when, for example,
the vine chokes the tree, the tree will be mutilated. The tree can’t help
itself; it needs a human being to deliver it from that fatal embrace. This is
the lesson, which keeps getting ignored. Not only does nature need us, we need nature
and each other.
We can take
another example from nature: cancer. Our organism is a unit composed of a
myriad of individual cells. As long as they are engaged in functions that
sustain the organism all is well and the organism, with its individual organs,
is regarded as healthy. But at times, for unknown reasons, a small group of
cells deviates from the path of common good and starts ravaging other cells for
their “profit.” The spread is initially at the cost of their neighbors but
subsequently via the bloodstream the rest of the organism. They thereby destroy
the organism and with it themselves. This can be regarded as the analog to our
current excesses of capitalism which is largely devoid of ethical
considerations. Although never expressed as crudely as in the movie “Wall
Street,” the dictum is: Greed is Good.
Now comes the problem: our current capitalist model, which we
try to enforce, either by war or economic “sanctions,” on the rest of the world
is, due to its excesses, becoming unsustainable. Why should this be the case? Because it is exclusively built on debt. The Bible warns us
for good reason: “Never a debtor or lender be.” Those
of us who grew up during the Great Depression know that it was brought about by
banks speculating beyond reasonable limits with their investors’ money. We, the
common people who were then confronted with the result, learned the lesson and
our parents taught us frugality as the proper way of life. It came in good
stead and our generation was able to prosper not only in this country but also
in Europe after the ravages of the war had
been repaired.
This model of living no longer applies. While we were encouraged to shun debt, the
current generation is encouraged to assume an ever greater load. There are
several reasons for this. One important one can be summarized in the word:
Outsourcing! Our present economic dilemma, where the middle class is losing its
footing and descending to lower levels, is to a considerable extent related to
it. A shift has occurred in our economy that started in the 1980s when
industries began to stop manufacturing their products and shifted the labor
overseas where costs were lower and profits for their companies thereby
greater. I well remember Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound,” during one of the debates
at the time of the 1991 Presidential campaign, where he predicted the
consequences of the impending NAFTA Agreement. Ross Perot was correct;
factories did open first in Mexico,
then Southeast Asia and finally China.
In our country workers were laid off and factories closed. I have quoted Ross
Perot’s famous phrase from memory and here is the context as it appears on
Wikipedia:
We have got to
stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14
an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border,
pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most
expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no
pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but
making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. ...when [Mexico's] jobs come up
from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars
an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the
country with these kinds of deals.
Our economic
planners reassured us that this would not be a long-term problem, but only a
temporary re-location of the labor force while our economy shifts from manufacturing
to the service sector. What they failed to tell us is that service jobs tend to
pay less and they also failed to mention automation. While Silicon
Valley produced jobs in the tens of thousands, workers were laid
off by the hundreds of thousands and maybe millions (I don’t have exact
figures) because their jobs could be performed so much cheaper and faster by
robots. They have numerous additional advantages: they don’t complain about
work hours, can’t unionize and don’t need healthcare or vacations. They are the
maiden’s dream come true for a capitalist society that values financial profit
as the ultimate good. Since the end of WWII to 2013 the labor force in the
manufacturing sector has dropped from nearly 40% to about 10%; http://qz.com/53710/robots-are-eating-manufacturing-jobs.
From factories robots have found their way into offices and as mentioned in the
July Issue (The Zero-One Society) will increasingly displace middle management
and entire professions. Why should I hire a CPA for instance to do our taxes
when an on-line computer program can do them so much faster and cheaper.
All of this has
consequences for the overall society. Computers don’t pay taxes, people do! In
order to pay them there has to be some income but income is shrinking and
people have become accustomed to a certain standard of living so they go into
debt. Credit/debit cards, a boon for banks and potential nemesis for consumers,
have become the norm and a great many users don’t have the money to pay their
debt at the end of the month. It is then carried over into the future with ever
rising interest costs. The website http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-state-of-american-credit-card-debt-in-2015
reports that at present the average American household credit card debt is
$7,281, but this number is misleading because it includes card owners who pay
their monthly expenses. When these are excluded the debt rises to $15,609. But
this is only the tip of the iceberg. “What’s more,
as of early 2015, the total outstanding consumer debt in the U.S. has risen
to $3.34 trillion. That figure includes car loans, credit card debt, personal
loans, and student loan debt — but not mortgage debt. (That would add
another $8 trillion to the pile.)” The student loan program, which was
well-intended originally, has grown into a nightmare. College education has
become a necessity and at the end of four years students have accumulated an
average debt of $35,000. How this is going to be repaid with vanishing
well-paying job prospects is a question only few dare to ask themselves.
If one thinks that this is the end of
the Jeremiad think again. The Robotics revolution is not limited to the U.S., it also affects
the rest of the developed world including China. Since technology has
interconnected the world what happens in one country immediately affects the
rest of the world as the current massive swings in the stock market show. China
is likewise undergoing an economic shift and how its leadership will tackle the
problem will not only be interesting to watch but have immediate repercussions
on what happens here. Let us, therefore, stay with China for one more moment.
This ancient civilization is currently
undergoing another transformation. The overarching goal of the country’s
leadership is to retain power, but this is incompatible with an open society. Although
nominally “communist” they have abandoned state control over all sectors of the
industry and allowed some free enterprise which led to the massive expansion we
saw in the past two decades. But while the economy did grow at a remarkable
rate and a considerable segment of the poor moved from their small plots in the
county into the urban middle-class, this created a new set of problems. Entire
cities were literally stamped out of the ground to accommodate the expected
influx from the rural areas of the country. But free enterprise only knows
money and when the “poor” entered the low middle-class they did not have enough
of that commodity to either buy property in these cities or even rent
apartments. They are currently ghost cities and to the best of my knowledge the
government has no idea what to do with them.
As in the West, there are two centers
of power. One is the official government and the other resides with some
financially extremely well endowed oligarchs who, similar to the defunct Soviet Union, got rich on the bargain basement sale of
previously state-owned property. I am now speculating, based on knowledge of
human behavior, as to what currently goes on in the official and unofficial
ruling classes in China.
There is likely to be a power struggle between them and we can only watch and
wait for the outcome. The oligarchs will continue to follow the U.S. model
which will further enrich them without regard to the consequences for the rest
of the people. The people in the official government, to the extent that they
have not been corrupted, have become concerned and put the brakes on the
overheating economy. In order to retain power they have to keep the people
reasonably satisfied which amounts to a difficult balancing act.
Let us now go back to the spring of 1989 and China’s Democracy
movement. Our media concentrate on its brutal repression: the Tiananmen Square
massacre. But earlier, in May, China’s leadership under Deng Xiaoping hosted
the first summit meeting with the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev. It was intended
to re-establish better relationships between the two countries without
interfering with the developing rapprochement between China and the US. During this visit the
authorities in Beijing
were deeply disturbed by the ongoing protest in the center of the city and official
ceremonies had to be re-routed in order to avoid Tiananmen that was occupied by
the protesters. Gorbachev had instituted glasnost
(openness) and perestroika (reconstruction)
in his country and this had become the rallying cry of the Chinese students.
But the communist leadership knew perfectly well where this would lead to.
Chinese glasnost was crushed in order
for perestroika to proceed at a measured
pace. Their foresight proved correct because the Soviet Union collapsed two and
one half years later. The Chinese leadership is now in a similar but even more
difficult situation. The question is: are they going to find the golden mean
between unbridled freedom and dictatorship? The answer they will come up with
will have major world-wide repercussions.
This discussion of current events has
so far omitted, apart fromglobal
warming and its consequences, another fact of life which has been accelerated
by our response to the 9/11 tragedy. The occupation of Afghanistan,
subsequently Iraq, the Syrian civil war and the overthrow of Kaddafi in Libya
have set forces in motion that have become unstoppable. While our Republican
presidential contenders rail against the wave of humanity that crosses our
southern border, the situation is even worse for Europe. Thousands of migrants
from the Middle East and North Africa arrive on a daily basis and there is a
veritable Voelkerwanderung
in progress which is somewhat akin to the one at the end of the Western Roman Empire. It cannot be legislated away, and
Donald Trump’s 2000 mile wall on our southern border is a propaganda ploy and
he knows it.
What does the Pope have to do with all
of this? He is fully aware of the above cited facts and has issued a call to
reassess our current conduct which unchanged can only lead to further human catastrophes
on a global scale. In his Laudato Si’
Encyclical, referred to in the previous installment, he laid out the current
global situation. Although his special emphasis was on global warming, our
ravaging of the earth’s resources and the fate of the poor, he left no doubt
where the major problem resides. It is human conduct epitomized by a system
where people mainly care for financial gain and their personal well-being.
There is by and large an absence of a sense of personal responsibility to
society, especially in leading political and economic circles. When this is
coupled with an undereducated apathetic public the outcome has to be disaster.
When I say “undereducated” I do not mean the technical knowledge which our
citizens do possess. But today the knowledge of the world’s cultural heritage is
neglected in a quest for “practical” information that will provide a good
income. Yet, as our founding fathers pointed out, it is essential if a
democracy is to live up to its ideals. Our fundamentally faulty educational
system cannot be remedied only by money. First of all it requires a rethinking
of what high school and college, in contrast to trade schools, should be all
about.This necessity of re-thinking our
priorities is what the Pope is trying to point out to us.
In contrast to the current society
that is bent on exclusive individualism he would like see one where members
genuinely care for each other. St. Francis viscerally felt the unity of the
cosmos and of our world within it. Most of us cannot do so on an emotional
basis but we should at least admit intellectually that this is correct and
adjust our conduct accordingly. Pope Francis says nothing new. But he brings us
face to face with the wisdom of past ages which has been shunted aside since
the Industrial Revolution. It began to substitute humanistic thought in favor
of the materialistic. The difference is profound. Humanism sees the universe and
our globe within it as one organism. The earth and all its inhabitants are one part
of the cosmos and all components should, therefore, cooperate with and nurture
each other. Materialism sees the world as composed of different pieces which
can be separated and arbitrarily re-arranged. It is the world of science and
the splitting of the atom for knowledge and eventually profit. Mind you I have
nothing against science. I am still occupied with scientific research in the
hope to enrich our knowledge about the electromagnetic properties of our brain
and their impact on our thoughts and feelings. But the scientist who does not
know the limits of his/her craft and overvalues the results, which always
require updating, has entered the arena of faith and dogma which belong to the religious
realm.
The Pope tries to re-establish a
humanism that takes scientific developments into account but is not overawed
and certainly not dominated by them. In Laudato Si’ he did
not go to any extent into the dehumanization produced by our robotic society,
but it is very likely that he will address the subject on another occasion,
because the question who is the master and who the servant is of profound importance
for the future of the human race.
Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Washington, New York and Philadelphia is slated
for six days which will give him ample opportunity to make his views known to our
leadership and diverse audiences. It will be most instructive to see how our
media will react to his message, which flies in the face of everything official
America
stands for. My guess is that he will be
politely listened to, some phrases will be taken out of context to create
controversy, and once he has left again for Rome it will be business as usual.
Jesus could not change the conduct of his countrymen so some cynics will say
what’s the use of trying? The reason why some of us, including the Pope, the Dalai
Lama and others, persevere against all odds in stressing awareness of the
impending disasters can be found in the Hindu Mahabharata which is the counterpart to the Greek Iliad. In it we are acquainted with the
concept of dharma or, for this
purpose, specifically our individual purpose in life. Once we grasp it we have
to follow it “regardless of gain or loss,” simply because it is the right thing
to do.
In
view of the above we can now put the choice before us, as individuals as well
as members of a society, in simple terms. It is between “I and Mine” versus “We
and Ours.” The first comes natural, requires no effort, but has landed us in
the current situation. The second one is harder, but if intelligently pursued
would offer the prospect of the “kingdom of heaven” right here on our earth.
October 1, 2015
OUR BROTHERS KEEPERS
From the various events of the past
month I shall only deal with those which are most characteristic for current
world affairs and the message they convey for the future. Among them are: the
Pope’s visit, President Xi’s visit, the Hajj disaster, the Syrian refugee
crisis, President Putin’s re-emergence in a leadership role and presidential
hopeful Donald Trump’s vision of America’s future.
The Pope was warmly received wherever
he went and there was not a single sour note during the entire six days of his
visit. He did not get a state dinner at the White House that was reserved for
President Xi, but he prefers to eat with the homeless and other outcasts of
society anyway, who appreciate his presence more than self-righteous
politicians. He did, however, get the opportunity to speak before a joint
session of Congress, which was denied to Xi although its members could well
have benefited from taking a personal measure of the man and listening to his
views.
As expected, the Pope used the
opportunity to acquaint our lawmakers with the essence of the Laudato Si’ Encyclical (August 1, 2015. Greece,
Iran and the Pope). We have to take care of our planet, our common home,
and all of its denizens because unless we do so, it will become uninhabitable
for subsequent generations. The key words were: caring, responsibility and
sharing which have to supplant the doctrine of domination. He also told
Congress, not in these words but more discretely, stop
your bickering over trivia and put your shoulders to the wheel in order to
solve the urgent common problems.
Listening to his speech that was
presented in a calm but deliberate manner, brought to mind his predecessor’s
before that forum earlier in the year, Israel’s Netanyahu. The contrast could
not have been greater. Netanyahu intended to achieve a political victory by
spreading fear of Iran in order to derail a potential nuclear agreement. His
demeanor was overbearing, and his speech pattern that of a teacher who is
frustrated with disobedient pupils who have to be made to toe the line. This
did not work. Americans resented being lectured on what they can and cannot do
in the conduct of their foreign affairs. They ignored the warning of impending
disaster originating from Iran and passed the treaty over Netanyahu’s vigorous
protestations. Why did this happen? Because Netanyahu offered
only fear rather than any positive alternative.
Although the Pope’s message likewise
dealt with danger he did not exhort or lecture but in his quiet manner
attempted to reach our conscience. He did not directly say so, but the
underlying message was that caring for each other and the environment is not
only a moral imperative but even a selfish one, because the choice in its
simplest terms is either to live together in an optimal manner or die together
miserably. As mentioned Netanyahu failed in his Congressional effort and time
will tell whether or not the Pope’s message resonated in more than one soul.
While watching the Pope’s speech, I was
struck by John Boehner’s demeanor. As Speaker of the House he had issued the
invitation and for him it was a dream come true. It is known that he has hyperactive
lacrimal glands and he was clearly overcome by the occasion. Born into a poor
large Catholic family in one of Ohio’s small towns he had risen to his current
position where he is third in line for the presidency if a disaster were to
befall the President and Vice-President. For him this was very personal and one
could see him intermittently wiping away a tear or two. The Pope’s speech
apparently crystallized his views on a problem he had been wrestling with for
most of the year.
As Speaker he is largely responsible for
what legislation will or will not be passed by the House. With a sizable
Republican majority this should not have been much of a problem.But the Republican Party as I knew it upon
arrival here, no longer exists. It now consists of three factions: the remnant
of what may be called Eisenhower Republicans of the old guard, the tea party
and the neocons. I have discussed the tea party and neocons previously and now only
need to mention that the latter two are united in their zeal to oppose anything
that does not fit into their narrow mental framework. Their agendas differ,
however, and thereby they have little use for each other. The tea party
supporters want to recreate an essentially Puritan America based on the “Old
Time religion,” as the gospel song has it. But it is not the religion of Jesus:
the New Testament and the Pope’s with stress on inclusion, love and forgiveness.
It is that of Moses’ Pentateuch with a vengeful Yahve hailing down fire and
brim stone. The neocons don’t care about these theological subtleties; they are
consumed by the quest for raw power. In their opinion “The Project of the
American Century” which was begun under George W. Bush and temporarily
sidelined by Obama, needs to be brought to fruition. In its simplest terms, it
consists of American control over the world and whoever doesn’t like it will be
crushed. Since control requires the mineral riches of Central Asia the
conflicts with Russia, China and Iran are preprogrammed.
Boehner came from the “old school”
Republicans where cooperation and compromise rather than confrontation were
still the art of politics. But over the past fifteen years he was sucked into
the current maelstrom of intraparty fights and found it increasingly difficult
to keep his ship on an even keel. Attempts were made to take the reins out of
his hands which led him, earlier in the year, to consider resignation. But a
budget fight with the threat of another government shut-down is again looming and
Boehner thought that he would see it through before leaving office in January.
Over the past months he seems to have realized that this impending battle is
likely to further rent the party fabric and with it its chances for victory
next November. This was the soil of the former altar boy upon which the Pope’s
words fell on Thursday morning. The tears liberated him from this dilemma.
During the afternoon he first confronted himself with the crucial question:
what is my personal responsibility in this mess we are creating? He likely got
the answer: what good is it to gain the world if you lose your soul! Having
achieved inner clarity he discussed the decision to immediately resign, and thereby
possibly stave off further party turmoil, with some friends. They tried to
dissuade him but he remained adamant and made the public announcement on Friday
morning. A burden had been lifted, his integrity had remained intact and after
a long struggle he had achieved some measure of inner peace because it was the
right thing to do. Obviously Pope Francis had no idea that his speech would
have an immediate direct influence on the American political landscape, which
was denied to Netanyahu. But this is a beautiful example how God works in human
affairs. One person at a time!
While the Pope hobnobbed not only with
the high and mighty but mainly those who have to live on the margins of
society, the representative of World Communism, President Xi, had other goals
for his visit. For him, social problems are only of indirect relevance. They
have to be dealt with not because of an intrinsic moral imperative but to
prevent their assuming dimensions that are dangerous to the regime. China’s
future success depends on stable sustainable economic growth and apparently the
goal of the visit was to reassure America’s business leaders that they not only
have nothing to fear from China but that there’s money to be made: lots of it. If
Karl Marx had been able to see the scenes in Seattle and the White House he
would have donned the biblical sackcloth and ashes. This is another example of
the meaninglessness of political labels. While idealists come up with schemes
of social utopias, hard headed realists, whose inner lives are dominated by
Nietzsche’s “Will to Power,” soon take over. Gaining and retaining power become
the only goals for which everything else is sacrificed.
This brings me to Beijing’s junior
partner Vladimir Putin and another unanticipated role reversal. Putin still
aches for an improved version of the Soviet Union and finds it difficult to
accept Russia’s diminished role. While the ostensible foe is, for good reason,
the US, I doubt that he has genuine warm feelings about having lost the influence
over China as it existed in former years. To go from senior partner to junior
is hard to swallow as even the Brits found out in relation to America. But he
is trying to make the best of difficult circumstances as was shown in last
Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview.
This program has degenerated since the
days when Mike Wallace conducted hard-hitting interviews with the notables of
this world, and now serves mainly propaganda Pablum to its viewers. But last Sunday
was an exception because there were back to back interviews with Vladimir Putin
and Donald Trump. Viewers had an opportunity to assess the personality of
Russia’s leader versus that of America’s “want to be” President. Putin came
across as: intelligent, well-informed, respectful, quick on repartee, friendly,
thoughtful and self-assured. One may disagree with his views but after all he
is the President of Russia and not of the US and thereby responsible to a different
constituency. He parried all the barbed questions by Charlie Rose especially in
regard to Ukraine, where he laid the blame for the Maidan coup squarely at
Washington’s feet. Rose, who clearly was not familiar with the information on
that coup that is readily available on the Internet, was taken aback and when
asked for details Putin, the former KGB operative, assured him in a calm manner
that Moscow has all the details. Rose saw himself on
shifting ground and promptly changed the subject. As far as the other content
was concerned, Putin made it clear that Russia cannot afford to let the Syria
problem fester indefinitely. He pointed to ISIS as a danger for Russia because
more than 2,000 fighters from Russia and ex- Soviet Union States have joined
ISIS and instead of simply waiting for their return it is better to help Assad
fighting them in Syria. When Rose confronted him with the official American
position that Assad’s brutal repressive regime has to be removed, Putin calmly
retorted with: what’s the alternative? Do you want a Libya?
Putin has, however, an additional
military problem with Syria which he did not mention and Rose, who really acted
only as a mouthpiece of the administration, failed to ask about. For
geopolitical reasons Russia needs its naval base in Tartus
which would be in danger of falling into ISIS’ hands if Assad were to be removed.
Nobody mentions Tartus in our country, similar to
Sebastopol in Crimea, which was the reason for the necessity of that
peninsula’s annexation. These protectionist countermoves are simply portrayed
as examples of Russian expansionism and aggression. Unfortunately the American
public is by and large not sufficiently motivated to educate itself about the
background of these events which allows our neocons to push their goals in the
official media.
Where is Tartus
and why is it important? When we go to Google Earth we find that it is on Syria’s
northwest coast in the heart of the Alawite segment of the population that constitute Assad’s key support. Its fall to ISIS would spell
the end of Russia’s only remaining naval base in the Mediterranean and this needs to be prevented. It seems, however, that Russia
may not be acting alone. The Chinese may also be getting into the act. The
website http://www.infowars.com/chinese-aircraft-carrier-reportedly-docks-at-tartus-syria/
reported on the 26th that, “The Chinese aircraft carrier
Liaoining-CV-16 has reportedly docked at the Syrian port of Tartus,
according to DEPKAfile website based in Jerusalem.”
The article emphasizes that the sources could not be independently verified and
one will need to wait for further information to arrive. The reason given for
Chinese help to Russia is that ISIS fighters also contain a sizeable number of
Uighurs from China’s northwestern predominantly Muslim province Xinjiang who
need to be eliminated. The Russian contingent of the Syrian expedition corps,
on the other hand, would be tasked to fight the Chechens, who reportedly
represent the most experienced cadre of the ISIS forces.
Here we now have another example of
unintended consequences or of the pigeons coming home to roost.Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter’s
national security advisor, persuaded Carter to arm the Afghan Taliban,
mujahedeen, in order to deliver a fatal “Vietnam” to the Soviet Union. We know
the outcome, and the fight against the Taliban is still consuming blood and
treasure. That we also supported the Chechen fundamentalists in their war
against Moscow is, however, not widely appreciated here. Furthermore, that our
“our friend and ally,” Saudi Arabia, is one of the main financial ISIS
supporters is not broadcast by our media, and neither is that the
fundamentalist Sunni Muslim strain that is the ideological backbone of ISIS is
Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s official religion. It has been reported that more
people were decapitated this year, in accordance with Sharia law, in Saudi
Arabia than by ISIS. Flogging is, of course also a routine punishment in that
country although the cutting off of limbs has been abandoned there. Assad now
finds himself in a Shiite Iran – Wahhabi Sunni Saudi Arabia proxy war which has
absolutely nothing to do with the “Arab Spring,” a fight for democracy and
human rights as our politicians and media try to convince us. This is not a
civil war of Syrians against Syrians for a better life, as Assad already tried
to tell us years ago, but of two “religious” ideologies for supremacy in the
Middle East.
The Hajj tragedy where more than 4000
people were killed and at least 943 wounded also falls into this framework. The
cause of the fatal stampede is still undetermined and currently the Saudis are
blaming the pilgrims for having lost their nerve. Since the Saudi media are
tightly controlled, it is not likely that we will soon get the full information
and the promised Saudi inquest is probably going to be as fruitful as our 9/11
Commission was. It is, however, clear that the pilgrim traffic was not properly
regulated. While the column moved towards the traditional site for “stoning the
devil” it was turned back at an intersection to allow “VIP traffic” to proceed.
Collisions with new arrivals were unavoidable and panic ensued. Regardless of the
ultimate cause the tragedy will be taken as an excuse to remove the current
King, Salman, from power. His conduct, as well as that of his son and deputy Mohammed
bin Salman, has become widely unpopular
not least because of the Yemen bombing campaign that by now has taken thousands
of civilianlives in that country. In
addition, Iran’s ruling circles now see an opportunity to challenge the Saudis
claim to be the guardian of Islam’s most holy places. They obviously have
learned from the West and are suing the Saudi government. If they were to be
able to create enough havoc in the kingdom a major ISIS funding source would dry
up and the Syrian situation might become more manageable.
Obama now finds himself trapped. In
regard to the Saudis he cannot sever ties for fear that they would drive up oil
prices which would hurt us and help Russia. His UN speech on Monday was an
example of good intentions that failed to take America’s conduct during the
past 15 years into account. Although he did allude peripherally to some of our
shortcomings his main thrust was still that we are the guardians of law and
order in the world and “cannot stand
by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly
violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to
any nation gathered here today. That’s the basis of the sanctions that the
United States and our partners impose on Russia.” But as long as our government
does not admit that the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions were, under the UN
charter, war crimes we have no moral standing in the world. The same
applies to the repeated assertion that Assad must go because of his brutality
against his own people including children. This self-righteousness rings hollow
when we support Israel’s repressive actions in the West Bank and towards Gaza
as well as those of al Sisi in Egypt. Most of all,
however, it is our refusal of accepting responsibility for the humanitarian
catastrophes our ill-conceived political destabilization of the Middle East has
engendered, that is so blatantly apparent to the rest of the world. We are not judged
by Obama’s good intentions but by the discrepancy between our professed values
and actual conduct.
It should have been obvious to the Bush
administration that simply removing a dictatorship without a viable alternative
would lead to chaos. Colin Powell knew it when he warned the President: If you
break it, you own it. He was ignored; the ensuing Iraq chaos spilled over to
Syria and we now have a human catastrophe that dwarfs all the crimes and abuses
of the Saddam and Assad regimes. We have set this human tidal wave in motion
that is currently flooding Europe and act as if it had been an act of God
rather than that of our politicians. While other countries provided refuge to tens
and even hundreds of thousands of desperate people, our acceptance rate was
limited to approximately 1500 persons, although we do provide considerable
financial assistance to refugee organizations.
Putin, for all his faults, was more
honest in his UN address, although he likewise put blinders on in regard to
Russian conduct. While praising the efforts of the UN and pledging to
strengthen them he also said “Whatever actions a state takes bypassing this
procedure [the UN] are illegitimate and defy international law.” He referred to
America’s conduct in the Middle East and North Africa, while completely ignoring
Russia’s reaction to the Ukraine coup. He emphasized that the refugee crisis
can only be solved by bringing stability to Syria and Iraq which in turn
requires working with existing government structures rather than overthrowing
them in the hope of some nebulous form of Western style democracy to
materialize in the aftermath.
It is both easy and fashionable to blame
Obama for the difficult straits America finds itself in at the present time.
But this does not take into account the immensity of the problems he is
confronted with. Not only does he have a hostile Congress to deal with, that is
currently dysfunctional, but even his White House is divided against itself.
About two weeks ago there was a debate within the White House whether or not
Obama should meet in private with Putin during the upcoming UN session. The
attitude was that Putin is beneath contempt who can only be treated with
sanctions and must not be accorded the dignity of being seen on the same level
as “the leader of the free world.” The absurdity of this stance seems not to
have occurred to these “advisors” and media hacks. How can one possibly hope to make inroads, especially on
the desperate situation in the Middle East, without talking to the undisputed
leader of a country that spans two continents? A decision was then arrived at
that Obama would graciously consent but only because Putin was “desperate” for
a meeting. The American public must be made aware that this meeting would be an
act of kindness on our part rather than a geopolitical necessity. A 90 minute
meeting did take place on Monday but it was far from private with numerous
“advisors” from both sides sitting in. It’s obvious that this was for show. Under
those circumstances nothing could be accomplished and the media on both sides immediately
put their respective spin on it. The most glaring was perhaps the Drudge Report
with “Red Planet: Putin Snubs Obama.” In Mr. Drudge’s
mind the “snub” consisted in Putin advocating a coalition of major countries
dealing with the ISIS problem in a concerted manner rather than the haphazard
bombings that are currently carried out. Fortunately Kerry and his Russian
counterpart Lavrov get along with each other and there is hope that they can
work out a compromise that will not only be mutually beneficial but bring
relief to the suffering Syrian people.
Whatever may be accomplished in this
respect during the next several months there will be scoffers in our country
because this is after all again election season with the current Republican
“front-runner” grabbing headlines. The contrast between Putin and Trump in the
mentioned 60 Minutes segment was stark. While Putin exhibited the above cited
demeanor Trump appeared as what one might call the personification of the “ugly
American.” He was the person who, in his opinion, not only knew how to rescue
the US from its current doldrums but also was qualified to enact a prosperous
future for everyone. This would be accomplished by a change in the tax
structure with relief for the poor and middle income segments of society while some
high rollers would pay higher ones. This would stimulate the economy to an
extent that everybody would become prosperous. Industries that have gone
overseas would be brought home and if they wanted to stay abroad their products
would be taxed to an extent that they would readily reconsider. China would not
be allowed to re-evaluate its currency because it hurts our economy. When Scott
Pelley, the interviewer, reminded him that he would not be President of China
and would have no such power he brushed it off with the mantra that he has
dealt with politicians before and knows how to handle them. The 12 million or
so illegal immigrants would be deported. A “beautiful” wall with a “big door” would
be built to keep the unwanted out but allow for legal return of the expelled as
well as others. That these schemes are fantasies, devoid of any basis in
reality, does not occur to his ardent fans who seem to feel that anything is
better than what we have at present.
The essence of the interview was that we
are confronted here with two different visions of how America should conduct
itself during this century. On the one hand we have the Trump attitude of: my
way or the highway, where America bullies the rest of the world into coercion. On
the other there is the visceral, not only intellectual, recognition of our
interconnectedness and interdependence. Unfortunately the awareness that problems
can no longer be unilaterally solved by a given country, but require the
cooperation of all affected parties, has not yet penetrated the American
conscience as the relatively large following Trump has gained testifies to.
Yet, Americans will have to be clearly shown that the Trump way will have to
lead not only to more war but possibly a nuclear one. This would engender the
destruction of not only what we now have but everything we want for our
children. Each one of us, therefore, now needs to ask her/himself the
fundamental question of our purpose on this earth: are we here to exploit
everything and everybody for our immediate personal gain, or are we indeed our brothers’
keepers? The way the majority of us answers this question will decide how we
vote next year.
November 1, 2015
IN MEMORIAM MARTHA RODIN R.N.; PhD.
During the forenoon of Sunday
October 11 a heart which only knew love and caring ceased to beat. When I say
that we had been married for 63 years this is more or less commonplace. But she
was not just my wife; she was my most trusted friend, comrade in arms, and soulmate
through all the vicissitudes of a long life. We met two weeks after my arrival
in the US and apart from professional trips, there was
hardly a day we were not together.
I had found my first employment in this
country on my 25th birthday as an intern at Staten Island Hospital
and was immediately assigned to the Emergency Room. Although I spoke fluent
English and knew medicine, inches, grains, ounces etc. were only words in my
vocabulary without their meaning, because most of the world uses the metric
system. In addition, although aspirin, digitalis, morphine and some other drug
names are universally recognized, most of the rest are idiosyncratic. There I
was alone in the ER with a patient when the door opened and a highly attractive
21-year old student nurse, Martha Kinscher, walked in
for assistance. She had pity for this somewhat lost soul and guided me to do
the right thing for the patient.
I was immediately smitten by her beauty
and kindness, and when I started dating her, found out that horses were the
great love of her life.
There was no thought of marriage because
I had a girlfriend in Vienna, Erika, likewise arecent medical graduate, with whom I was informally engaged and was
trying to obtain an affidavit of support (needed at that time even for
visitors) to bring her here to get married. I told Martha about this situation
and we agreed to stay friends. When after a few months I had succeeded to
obtain the affidavit from another Austrian physician who had emigrated years
earlier, I immediately wrote to Vienna with the good news. Two weeks later came
the reply that in the meantime she had agreed to marry an American officer
stationed in occupied Vienna whom she had also known for some time, but had
broken off the relationship when we started dating. Well, that was it; although
there was an immediate twinge of regret, I knew that Erika had been important
for my emotional growth but this was a new life and I was now free to get
semi-serious with Martha.
I’m saying “semi” because she was a
strong-willed young lady and what I wanted and what she wanted were not
necessarily the same. We kept dating and in September of 1951 when the internship
was over we went on a two week vacation to the Thousand Islands and talked of
marriage. Earlier in the year I had been accepted for a fellowship in Neurology
at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN where I was to start in October. We
continued to correspond and Martha thought that Easter of ‘52 would be a good
time to get married. Why wait till Easter, I wrote back, let’s do it for
upcoming Christmas; after some hemming and hawing she agreed. She and her
parents may well have had some reservations about this brash Austrian who had,
apart from his MD degree, no credentials in this country. When I asked her
father’s permission to marry his only child, who was the apple of his eye,
prior to the departure for Rochester, he agreed after I promised to take care
of her for the rest of my life. So Christmas it was, and we got married on the
23rd in the Episcopal Church she attended during childhood and
adolescence.
There had been some concern in her
extended family that she was marrying a Catholic. But although both of us were
friends of Jesus we had no use for church rituals regardless of denomination.
Since her father was a member of the Freemasons in Brooklyn, decency of
character was the criterion rather than formal religion. As soon as the date
had been set I asked my mother to send me my skis because there was plenty of
snow in Minnesota and I had started a friendship with a Norwegian colleague,
Rolv Slungaard, who obviously also had skiing in his
blood. They were sent to Martha’s family and her first Christmas as well as
wedding present was a pair of skis we bought in Manhattan the day before the
marriage rites. The honeymoon was a railroad trip to Minnesota in a
“couchette”, ideal for newlyweds.
Neither one of us had any money because
my salary was $150/month and she earned about $250 as a registered nurse, but
we consoled each other with the words: We’ve got no money, but we aren’t poor
and this is temporary. Prior to marriage I lived in a rented room and although
the landlady liked me, when I brought Martha to stay with me she got her dander
up and made life difficult for her. Both of us were brought up during the
depression and the idea of taking a loan, thereby going into debt, was
completely foreign to both of us. We’d make do, come what may.
Well, the Lord took pity on us and
within a week or so we were asked if we would want to “house-sit” for the
retired chairman of obstetrics and gynecology who intended to stay the rest of
the winter in Florida. We obviously jumped at the offer. Not only was it
rent-free, in walking distance of the Clinic and St. Mary’s hospital, but also
very pleasant and of the right size.
Although Martha desperately wanted
children, this seemed to be a vain hope. About a year and a half prior to our
meeting she had suffered strep throat which led to serious nephritis and she
was warned not to have children because of the danger of eclampsia. In addition
there was potential danger for the baby because her blood type was Rh negative.
This was fine with me, because I had wanted a girlfriend and as a result of my
experience with fathers (see War&Mayhem on this site) felt that I was
totally unfit for that job. As the German saying goes: Vaterwerdenistnichtschwer, Vater sein dagegensehr – to become a father is easy, to be a father is
tough. But what were my intentions against her will? Within two months she had
conceived and our daughter made her first appearance in November.
To say the least, Martha was delighted while I
was more skeptical. I was abruptly married to a mother and automatically
relegated to number two, which took some time getting used to. But one learns.
Peter arrived in 1955 and Eric in 1959. The family was now complete.
While in Minnesota, Martha learned to
ski. It was on a little hill where other fellows, the title of physicians in
training at Mayo, had built a rope tow and a warming hut against the brutal
cold. There we spent our Sundays with Martha carrying baby Krissie in a
transport bag to the hut. Martha was a quick learner and since one of the other
fellows, who also regularly skied there, kept talking about Colorado powder we
decided to go there as soon as the occasion arose. It came in 1956 when we had
already moved to Ann Arbor where I was working as a neurologist and
electroencephalographer in the Psychiatry Department of the University of
Michigan. Rolv and two of his other Norwegian friends, with whom we had stayed
in contact, told us that they were going to Aspen for a couple of weeks and
invited us to come along. Of course we accepted. Martha’s mother, Viva, came to
stay with the children. We drove from Michigan to La Crosse, where Rolv had
joined the Gundersen Clinic, and all five of us then piled into a car and drove
to Colorado to test the snow. It was indeed as advertised and all of us had a
marvelous time.
In 1958 life changed again. I had, from
the previous year, an offer from the newly established Lafayette Clinic to take
the position as Chief of Neurology and Electroencephalography with an
appointment as Assistant Professor at Wayne State University in the Department
of Neurology. In addition, the offer included part-time private practice with
Dr. Joe Whelan who was at that time the only neurologist and
electroencephalographer in the city. It certainly was tempting but jumping from
the University of Michigan with its prestige, where I had just been promoted
from Instructor to Assistant Professor, into the completely unknown did raise
some doubts. Both of us were never after money. My salary was sufficient to buy
a house on a small pond and we had joined the sailing club of the university.
In the summer we went sailing on Base Lake, initially in ten foot dinghies and
later Jet 14s, and in the winter drove occasionally north to Boyne Mountain for
skiing. We loved our little house and the pond where we could swim in the
summer and ice-skate in the winter. We had our two children who likewise loved
the pond and under Martha’s instructions became good swimmers at their tender
ages. We were content. So when the offer came in 1957 I was only modestly
interested, especially since the mental distance, by the cognoscenti, from
Detroit to Ann Arbor was 40 miles but from Ann Arbor to Detroit infinity. You
just don’t go slumming, especially when one is a reasonably bright young
neurologist who wants to make a name for himself.
There was another complication. The
newly appointed chairman of Neurology, whom I had met at the Ski meeting of the
Eastern EEG Society, while he was still working in Boston, was as strong-willed
as I and we just didn’t hit it off after his appointment to Wayne’s
chairmanship. We had pretty much of a row in Dr. Gottlieb’s office (director of
the Clinic) over who would be in charge of the 20 Neurology beds of this
otherwise psychiatric hospital. He insisted that he and his staff physicians
would be rotating through on a monthly basis. I insisted on the European system
where a given unit had its permanent physician in charge and that would be me
because otherwise “Chief” is just a meaningless title. It was the proverbial
Mexican stand-off. I went home, discussed it with Martha and we decided to stay
put. My salary was sufficient for a modest life-style and she could stay home
to raise our children.
In the summer of 1958 the university
sponsored Hungarian refugees from the 1956 uprising to be temporarily placed in
the homes of faculty members until permanent homes could be secured. Obviously
we volunteered and a young student, who spoke no English, moved in with us.
Then later in the summer my mother came from Vienna for a visit. All of a
sudden my salary didn’t cover the expenses. I already had a Board Certification
in Electroencephalography as well as Neurology and was in no mood to take out a
loan. So I went to one of my bosses (I had two. One directed the Mental Health
research Institute of the university, where I was his EEGer, and the other was
the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry because the EEG lab was in his
rather than the Neurology department) and asked for a raise. The answer was:
“For the money I’m paying you I can buy myself two good
electroencephalographers.” Well that was it. I said to myself go ahead; went
home discussed it with Martha and we agreed: o.k. let’s jump.
The decision was made somewhat easier
because one of the staff physicians at the Clinic was a friend of ours from
Mayo days, Peter Becket, and Jacques Gottlieb was a wonderful director. He saw
his role as hiring good people and then letting them do their thing in addition
to his lobbying the legislature for expansion of the facility and providing
state of the art equipment for research. The mislabeled Lafayette Clinic was
actually the psychiatric research hospital of the State of Michigan under the
Department of Mental Health. In addition Joe Whelan was a wonderful person,
competent and easy to get along with. He lived with his wife, Gloria, and their
children in Grosse Pointe and when he took us along Lakeshore Drive on the
shore of Lake St. Claire we knew that this was doable. It turned out to have
been the right decision also for Martha. The Whelans were a wonderful couple
who ever so often gave European style soirees in their home with guests from
the university and other professionals. This became of vital importance for
Martha six years later. As mentioned Eric came along in April of 1959 and
Martha, who was actually my intellectual superior, had become somewhat
unfulfilled. She went riding on Belle Isle and apart from the house, our first purchase was a 16 foot Rebel to sail on the
lake. But her intellect did not have an outlet. Nevertheless, the children were
her first priority and taking a job outside the home was never a thought until
all three of them were in school during the day.
At that point the Whelan dinners assumed
their destined role in her life. Martha had always wanted to go to medical
school. She surely had the mental wherewithal and would have made an excellent
physician. But Martha’s family was lower middle class where money was scarce
but love abundant and they simply could not afford the exorbitant cost. This is
after all, “Capitalist” America, where the buck rules and where you have to pay
through the nose for higher education, especially since in those days there was
no student loan program. Under the American system I could never have become a
physician because my family was also practically destitute in 1945, having lost
all valuables to the Russian occupiers and Viennese looters. But in “socialist”
Austria all education, including university, was paid for through income taxes
and essentially gratis. With medical school unattainable for Martha she had
chosen the next best thing by becoming a nurse. But regret remained because the
intellect remained unfulfilled. On one of the evenings at the Whelans the
Chairman of the Department of Anatomy was one of the guests. He immediately
took to Martha and after a brief conversation offered to enroll her into a PhD
program in his department. She grabbed it with both hands, studied furiously
and after graduation joined the department.
Her dissertation was on the adrenergic
innervation of the heart valves. She had observed that not only the heart muscle
receives nerves that can pour out adrenaline directly into the heart but so did
the valves, which was unknown at the time. Throughout these years we always
discussed our work and one evening she came home bewildered. All of her
students loved her, but this was the hippie era. On that day one of them, who
was clearly a member of the scene with the looks and eating a chicken during
anatomy lecture, had approached her with the desire that “he wants to do brain
research.” Martha wondered what in all the world do I
do with this guy, and asked me for advice. Obviously I had no use for a hippie
and just said: “Well, let’s sleep on it.” As we say in Austria: Der Herrgottgibt’sdenSeinenimSchlafe – the Lord provides advice to His own during
sleep. In the morning I had the answer. He’s a hippie, he smokes pot so let him
and his cronies smoke to their hearts’ content government-provided marijuana,
while he helps to run the EEG machine. In this way he’d get his wish and I can
find out what the drug does under controlled circumstances. Martha immediately
agreed, talked to the student who jumped at the idea and about a year later
“The Marihuana Social High” was published in the AMA Journal.
Martha was always the co-worker. Some of
my scientific work required the implantation of electrodes into the brains of
animals and she subsequently verified the electrode positions for the ensuing
publications. But she also did more than that. As a result of another series of
experiments in the late 1970s she made a fundamental discovery. Her electron
microscopic study showed that the first changes in brains that were subjected
to repeated small doses of a seizure producing drug were not in the nerve cells,
neurons, but in their supporting structures, the glia. This information was
unknown and unexpected at the time. We published the data in a first line
journal but the publication was ignored. The concept is only now being given
serious consideration by others, using different methods, without mention of
Martha’s previous work. A picture from a social gathering around that time is
shown below.
Life moved on; we skied, sailed, swam, took
trips and, of course, she engaged in her first love horseback riding, where she
won numerous ribbons. When I reached my sixties we started taking where we
would retire. I needed a place where I could continue with my hobbies: skiing,
sailing and science, and she needed horse country. For mine I needed mountains
with good snow, a sizeable body of water and a university. When one thinks
about this, there aren’t too many places in this country which fulfill all of
these criteria. But Eric, our pilot, had after his graduation from college
earned his spurs in form of flying hours that would enable him to get a job at
one of the major carriers, in Salt Lake. During the week he taught flying at
the airport and on weekends skiing at Solitude. It was an ideal arrangement. He
got his brother to come out for vacation to Solitude and that became their
mountain. Mom and Dad had to follow their lead and Utah instead of Colorado
became our ski destination.
I obtained a Utah medical license and in
August of 1990 we moved to our permanent home in Sandy. I had intended to spend
the first year of retirement on travel while Martha intended to remain at work.
Since Peter with his wife lived only a few minutes away from our home he could
have taken care of “Mom” in case of need, and I could have hopped on a plane to
get back in no time. Of course, all of us know what happens to the best laid
plans of mice and men. Our daughter had come back from Europe, where she had
stayed and worked for about two decades after having obtained her PhD at the
University of Salzburg. She moved to Salt Lake, got a job at the university,
married and was now on her way to produce another grandchild for us. The latter
fact I was not privy to at the time. This was the signal for Martha: We move
now! Krissie needs me! While I was engaged elsewhere she came to Salt Lake
ostensibly to ski, but in addition picked the house where we were to live. I
had no idea because my fantasies were still on travel so who needs another
house? She knew my problem in regard to an immediate move rather than waiting
an additional year and was concerned about my reaction. So she used reverse
psychology: “It’s such a nice house, I love it, that’s my house, but you won’t
like it” was the refrain for several hours. Regardless whether I did like it or
not, it was already a done deal because as the saying goes: If mother ain’t happy, nobody‘s happy. To make her happy I flew to
Salt Lake looked at the house and it did indeed serve our purpose admirably.
Thirty minutes to Alta for skiing, 30 minutes to the university and 45 minutes
to the Great Salt Lake fulfilled all of the criteria for successful retirement
even if it came a little earlier than hoped for. The house itself was large
enough to shelter the entire family. Since all three kids were married and two
with children of their own, it could accommodate them whenever they came to
visit. The next ten years were the happiest of our lives. In the winter we
skied together in the mornings and she spent the afternoons with her horse.
At one point she developed kidney stones
but these were taken care of with lithotripsy and hospitalization was not
needed. Sometime later cervical cancer was diagnosed. She had a vaginal
hysterectomy as an outpatient at Alta View hospital and after the three-hour
procedure we went home. The gynecologist apologized that he hadn’t been able to
reach the ovaries and this might become a problem later. The two of us, both
trained in medicine, decided: so what; if and when it were to happen we’d deal
with it at that time; right now let’s enjoy ourselves. We did, until one day
while skiing at Snowbird her right leg gave way; she fell and fractured the
femur. The fracture was taken care of within hours by an orthopedist at Alta
View and two days later she was home again, but skiing was no longer an option.
She continued to ride but increasing age
took its toll. She always had a slightly leaky heart valve, which gradually got
worse and atrial fibrillation also ensued which made life quite difficult for
her. The drugs against the fibrillation were useless and in view of her age,
she refused to consider surgery for the mitral valve insufficiency. Pain from
severe arthritis also became an increasing problem, to which was added last
year a bout of shingles. She bore all of these afflictions with stoicism and
her only concern was to take care of my needs, those of our children and our
home. We had in previous years enlarged the deck, where she could enjoy the sunshine
as well as shade from a magnificent maple tree.
During the early part of this year she
became increasingly incapacitated to the extent that all of us knew that her
life expectancy was limited to months and possibly another year or so. Krista,
therefore, applied in early August for a six month medical leave from the
University of Northern Arizona, where she holds the tenured position of Professor
of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, to help out
with the household chores and other needs as they arise. It was granted and she
has been living with us since the middle of August. It is obvious, however,
that she also needs a life of her own and Martha, therefore, helped her find a
house that is within 15 minutes driving distance from ours so that she can
immediately be available when needed. On August 30 we had a party for family
and friends to celebrate my 90th birthday. Peter’s oldest daughter,
Lindsay, had earlier in the year given birth to her second child and Martha had
the joy to see and hold her latest great-granddaughter.
The doctors had been wrong! Not only did
she give birth to three healthy children, who grew up to be the pride and joy
of any parent, but she outlived most, if not all, of her cousins and even met
our fourth generation.The third
great-grandchild is on the way and more will be coming in due time from other
grandchildren.
Martha and I, as rational beings, had
over the years frequently discussed what to do at the time of dying and death.
Legalities had to be attended to. Our Wills were identical, except for the
different first names, with one’s entire property going to the surviving
spouse. We also had a Living Will that specified that no artificial means (e.g.
cardiac resuscitation, mechanical respiration, infusion of nutrients) are to be
used to prolong the dying process. I had also made it clear to Martha and the
children that if I were to suffer a debilitating terminal illness I should be
allowed to stay at home, instead of being taken to a hospital, and no
medications, except for pain relief, were to be given. Food or fluids were not
to be forced into me and I shall die a natural death as our forebears always
did. Martha was in full agreement and insisted that this also was her wish.
Nevertheless, this was still personal
intention and no one knows what will really happen when the time comes. On
Tuesday October 6 Krista and the two of us went for brunch to the Silver Fork
in Big Cottonwood Canyon and on the way back I asked Krista to drive by the
house which she and Martha had selected but I had never before seen. She did
and it is indeed appropriate for her needs as long as I am alive. She will then
move to our home so that the rather beautiful property remains in the family.
On that afternoon the legalities in regard to Krista’s house were finalized and
she became the legal owner. Eric had also called that he might be able to take
a few days off and could come for a visit which I immediately urged him to do.
Wednesday morning I asked Martha for a
phone number I should have remembered but had forgotten. She tried to recall it
but gave up with an “oh shucks.”I told
her not to worry and went on with business at hand. But an hour or so later
noticed that she was aphasic. As a neurologist it was immediately apparent to
me that she had suffered a stroke that was limited to the speech area. At that
point Eric walked in and all of us felt that we had to take her to Alta View.
Instead of calling 9/11 we decided that we’d use her Subaru Crosstrack, which
had plenty of room, and a wheelchair was in the basement since my leg
fractures. Krista brought it up but when we tried to lift her into the
wheelchair she fought us to an extent that we knew that she intended to have
her previously announced wish respected. Her life was now complete, the
children were grown with thriving families of their own, Krista was here to
take care of my needs and now it was time to go.
Eric had come for vacation and was now
confronted with a disaster about which we could do nothing. Since he has
considerable problems of his own, with his wife currently undergoing
chemotherapy for breast cancer, I asked him to go up into the mountains in the
afternoon. He went to our favorite Big Cottonwood canyon and observed an
uncommon celestial phenomenon, which he photographed.
True; these are just two con-trails of
fighter jets from the nearby airbase but for us they had meaning. In the
evening we consulted with my friend and co-worker, Dr. Tawnya Constantino,
about what to do next. There were two options: home care or hospice. These are
separate entities with different responsibilities for the care providers. But this
division is arbitrary and there should be one system because death of the
elderly is becoming an increasing problem for the State and insurance
providers. We decided on hospice and a nurse arrived on Thursday to start the
formalities.
Another unusual event had occurred
earlier that morning. In spite of her general weakness Martha insisted on going
to the bathroom under her own power and one of the three of us had to follow
her to prevent a tumble. She refused a cane or even one of our arms. For the
past several years she had slept on the couch in the family room in order not
to disturb me with her frequent nocturnal trips to the bathroom and to be able
to watch TV into the wee hours of the morning because due to relative
inactivity her sleep cycle was disrupted. She had picked out the couch herself
at the furniture store some years ago. It exactly fit her needs and under ordinary
circumstances she always got up at 6:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom
but on that Thursday there was a difference.
I slept soundly in our formerly joint
bed when I had an unusual dream. A fully clad woman sat next to me on the edge
of the bed with her back towards me. Surprised I cried out Oh (and her private term
of endearment), tried to touch her, but woke up. I looked at the clock it was
6:18. While wondering in the dark what this could have meant I developed the
feeling that Martha might be in trouble. Through the bottom of the closed door
I then could see that the bathroom light was on. I got up and found her on the
floor next to the toilet where she had fallen and couldn’t get up. She was
fully conscious and I helped her onto the seat. Under her own power she
returned thereafter to the couch with me in attendance.
The three of us then decided that we’d
have to arrange some type of watch system as is common in long distance
sailboat races where one of us is always at the helm and can alert the others
in case of need. Since from Thursday on Martha shoved us away when we tried to
give her some food, even a teaspoon of honey, or fruit juice it was apparent
that death would occur within a couple of weeks. Her attitude was: I want to
die, so please, please let me. We were in daily contact with Peter who said
that he could come at any moment and had already made plans to come on Monday
evening. Yet on Saturday I had the feeling that the situation might be more
urgent and asked him to come instead on Sunday before she loses consciousness
and enters terminal coma. He agreed.
On Sunday morning she was resting
quietly with eyes closed, as usual, and slightly labored respirations. It was
not clear if she was merely sleeping or comatose but it made no sense to do a
neurological exam because if she were to be asleep it would be cruel to wake
her up. So I sat in the armchair by the couch where I could watch her
respirations and be available in case of need. It was my shift because the kids
had gone to bed after theirs. After an hour or so, respirations had become more
regular and I thought that even if she were to be in coma some sensations might
get through to her consciousness. I, therefore, put on a CD of Mozart’s
clarinet and horn concertos and when that had ended replaced it with one of his
piano concertos. About a third of the way through, the CD started to stick
keeping to the same notes over and over again as was common with the old
gramophone records when they got stuck in a groove. I took the CD out of the player
and saw that it had a slight smudge which seemed to explain the problem. In so
doing I also noted, however, that Martha’s respirations had ceased. I got a
mirror from the bathroom held it against her open mouth and indeed there were
no respiration effects. Eric had in the meantime come up, brought me my
stethoscope and there was only silence instead of a heartbeat.
She had accomplished her goals in life
and now was released from pain and suffering. It had always been her wish that
the body be cremated and we honored it. After the Memorial Service later this
month, which will be held at Millcreek Inn where our second granddaughter,
Amber, was married, we will spread some of her ashes over places she had loved
in the mountains. The main urn, which is very beautiful, we partially buried
next to our favorite maple tree and a Buddha sculpture she had given me for the
85th birthday. It thereby remains visible to friends and family,
while being protected against the deer. They roam our backyard and might accidentally
break it if they were to flee in some panic. It will be joined by my ashes when
the time comes. For us she is not dead but keeps living in our minds for the
rest of our lives. The tears that intermittently well up in our eyes are not
mainly an expression of grief, but of gratitude to have been allowed to share
our lives with such a wonderful human being.
For her 80th birthday I wrote
a little poem; it’s no great poetry but expressed the feelings of our family
and is printed below.
TO OUR MATRIARCH
Long ago
and far away
A baby
girl once saw the light of day.
The world
around was rather bare
But she
was nurtured by parents’ loving care.
They
taught her, though the times were bad,
Important
is the life you led.
Material things
they matter not
What
learning brings decides your lot.
With
diligence, good will and faith
You
overcome life’s wantonness.
Into a
lovely maiden did she grow,
Admired
for good looks by high and low.
To help
whoever came her way
Became
her life’s mainstay.
All
creatures: creeping, flying, walking
She loved
and cherished, without much talking.
Suitors
came from far and wide
To
take her as their bride.
In vain
they labored one and all
Because
she’s spotted a lost soul.
Across the
ocean he had come
For
fame and fortune to be won.
One glance
sufficed to know, here was his fate:
A
trusting, loving, caring mate.
Moved by
pity for the stranger
She
consented, unaware of danger
To become
his wife
And share
with him the rest of life.
He
promised her what was their need
Steadfast
love; security from hate and greed.
A girl
friend he thought he’d won
But don’t
you know: mother she would soon become.
Up and
down life’s roller-coaster
She never
wavered and only love did foster.
Children
in due time did come
Who loved
and honored her as Mom.
Grandchildren
they produced for her
With whom
unstinting love she’d share.
Now the
eightieth birthday has arrived
No mean
feat, considering what you’ve survived.
So on this
day and future years
Remember always:
There are no fears!
The love
you’ve spread among us all
Will keep
you safe regardless what may fall.
Inherent
goodness never fails
And over
sorrow joy prevails.
You have
achieved what’s rare today:
The
knowledge: that for you, we’re here to stay.
A family
you have around
Where each
of us is duty bound,
With
gratitude to ease your body’s pain
And let
peaceful charis
reign.
WITH LOVE FROM YOUR
FAMILY
December 1, 2015
DYING AND DEATH
Although I have discussed this topic
on these pages as well as in the scientific literature on other occasions, the
events of the recent past forced me to again face up to it in a personal
manner. We all know that death is unavoidable but we don’t like to think about
it mainly because it always happens to someone else, and most of us experience
some inner revulsion against the mere fact of its existence. Since we can’t do
anything about death, and might be afraid of it, we push it out of our minds,
go on with our daily tasks and spend the leisure hours in what may well be
called “trivial pursuit.” I shall try to demonstrate in the following pages,
why this attitude is a mistake.
For the reader who has not had the time
or opportunity to study what I have previously published on this site I suggest
that you do so now because it is impossible to condense the entire
materialinto a few pages and without
becoming repetitive. The first article dealing with the topic was “Perceptions
of Reality” in the August 26, 2004 installment. “Faith
and Science” appeared in August 2009, “Knowledge and Faith were discussed in
December 2012, and Eben Alexander’s “Proof of Heaven” was extensively dealt
with in a trilogy from February 26, 2013- April 1 of that year (Proof of Heaven;
NDEs, Cosmic Consciousness and Buddha; The Science of Consciousness – Mind). Additional
information is available through downloading all the articles with “View all”
and searching for key words, as well as in the chapter “What is Truth” in The Jesus Conundrum, that can likewise
be downloaded free of charge. Although the information contained in these
articles overlaps to some extent, each one discusses a related aspect that
reflects my informed opinions on the subject. It will be apparent that I have
thought and read a great deal about the topic and can now add some additional
comments.
First we must be clear in our language
and steer away from euphemisms. Only when we stare death in the face can we
liberate ourselves from the wishful thinking that dominates our current
society. Death is a fact, but as the ancient Hindus in the Upanishads explained
not necessarily the end of our life. We may think about this opinion in any way
we want but the Greek Stoics, foremost among them Epictetus, told us that death
is not an evil. I have discussed his philosophy on other occasions both here
and in my books and it centers on the chapter “What is and is not in our
power.” Once we internalize this teaching we stop being concerned about what
others may or may not do and how this may or may not affect us. Instead we
start to concentrate on our personal conduct and how it may be beneficial to
others. Following this thought I told our children and grandchildren: What you
do for yourself dies with yourself; what you do for others
lives in others.
Since the subject matter is vast and
especially what happens after we have been officially pronounced dead is hotly
debated, I shall now proceed in a somewhat systematic manner. Dying has two perspectives
that of the individual undergoing the process and that of the family/caregivers
who may want to help the dying person. Death on the other hand is exclusively
observed by others and also has a societal component. In this installment I
shall deal mainly with the personal, individual, aspect of dying and death. But
especially in view of the recent terrorist attacks the societal aspects had to
be included to some extent. Because of its importance this aspect of the article
should only be viewed as an introduction and the topic will receive a more
detailed discussion in January.
During October I and two of our children
had the opportunity to be with my wife, their mother, in her dying hours and we
witnessed a truth: you die as you have lived. Anyone who has read the November
installment had a glimpse of the type of person Martha was, and still is in our
minds. She did not shrink from death. She willed it because her job on planet Earth
was done! That was and is our perspective. Martha’s perspective we will never
know because it is inherently forever unknowable. Even if I were to meet her in
some type of hereafter it would still be my biased image and concept of her
based on decades of having lived together. Another person’s self-image cannot
be perceived by us and all we have to go by is that person’s conduct in word
and deed. But the emotional processes that were their basis cannot be accessed
and we, therefore, must admit that we don’t ever fully know the person whose
life we share even if it is over many decades.
Thus the question: Who this person we
are married to “really” is has no answer because reality, just like beauty, is
in the eye of the beholder. In previous installments I divided our appreciation
of reality into subjective, shared subjective and objective reality.Subjective pertains to how we thinkand feel about
something, shared subjective reality is what JohnC. Lilly termed “human consensual reality.”
This may have nothing to do with objective reality because it is manipulated by
politicians as well as religious figures often to our detriment, as the events
of this as well as past centuries clearly show. I used the term “objective
reality” not in the sense of an “end all and be all” but for facts that are
indisputable.As an example I have
stated on another occasion that you can argue about the content of the various
sentences that are printed here, but the argument stops when you ask how many
words a given sentence or this essay has. Anyone can count them and the
computer will give you the results in nanoseconds. This is also the difference between science and the rest of human
thought and action.Science measures and
whatever does not lend itself to measurement is outside of its domain. If this
simple statement were to become an active ingredient of human thought the
argument of faith vs. science would have become meaningless.
It is now important to realize that
all of us live in two worlds, or states of consciousness. One is the eyes open
state during which we perform our duties and engage in various leisure
activities. The other is the eyes closed state where we indulge in ruminations,
fantasies, expectations and so on.The
problem in our current society is that it devotes itself nearly exclusively to
the eyes open state without realizing that it is the eyes closed state that
lies at the base of all our actions and directs them to the intended goal. This
type of thinking leads to an emphasis on math, science and technology in our
educational system to the neglect of the “humanities” that represent our
cultural heritage. This aspect is very personal for me because I see the result
in our grandchildren and our daughter who teaches humanities at a university has
noted that funding for her department is progressively curtailed. The generation
of our grandchildren, even when they have a college education and are
productive citizens, has a remarkable lack of what is called in EuropeAllgemeinbildung
(a well-rounded education). They are trained as specialists for a robotic
society and this bodes ill for our country and the world.
You may regard the above as a side-track
but it is not. It is central to the topic at hand because during the process of
dying, be it days or weeks, we live in the eyes closed state. This is the time
when we are confronted with what Hindu/Buddhist society calls karma; the
accumulation of all our hopes, fears and acts. But these are conditioned by our
fund of information. Math, science and technology are irrelevant because we
have left the material world and live in mental desires and images from the
past and future. This mental activity is private and limited to the person who
is dying. In contrast to dreams and NDE’s there is no subsequent awakening
during which one could talk about the memory
of the experience. I have italicized the word memory because that is what we
are really talking about when we discuss NDEs and their meaning. The person
believes that s/he is retelling the correct sequence of their visions and
telepathic information, but this is retrospective and is likely to be tinged by
the personality structure of the individual. Although the NDE experience is
exceedingly vivid “more real than real,” as a number of experiencers testify
to, the content does not, in all likelihood, come from outer space but is based
on the religious/societal structure of the individual.
In previous correspondence with
colleagues about this topic I have pointed out that NDE’s are akin to dreams
over which we likewise have no control and appreciate them only as such when we
awaken. The word “control” needs to give us pause because this is the crux of
the problem. In the eyes open state we can exert a modicum of control upon our
immediate environment. In the eyes closed state we have no control over the
environment and that of our thoughts is limited to our personal concentration
span. In the average person, who has not undergone specific training in what is
called mind control, it rarely exceeds 30 seconds. The Greeks told us “Know
Thyself” and I therefore suggest this simple test: Take a stopwatch, close your
eyes, concentrate on a single simple thought or picture and hit the button. Hit
it again the very moment another thought intrudes. You may be surprised by the
result; but you must be ruthlessly honest with yourself in regard to the second
button push.
Since in most of us the concentration
span, during the eyes closed state, is quite limited, our mental content is
really most of the time beyond our control and our thoughts are similar to an
ant heap with each one going in different directions. To this we now must add
that this is what happens in the waking state in a healthy human being. But
during the process of dying our organism, including our brain, is far from
healthy. I have discussed the physiological changes during the dying process in
“The Reality of Death Experiences” (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 1980;
reprint available on request). All of these processes,
isolated as well as in combination, affect mental content. Under these
circumstances we become passive observers of the scenes our brains play for us
without the ability to change what we don’t like. Yet it is the mental content
of our dying thoughts which determines whether we regard ourselves in heaven,
purgatory, hell, paradise, the Buddhist Bardo, Nirvana and so on. We have to
think about what Jesus meant when he told us: The kingdom of god is within you (emphasis added). In like
manner the Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us not to be afraid of the visions in
the “after death” state because they are “thine
own consciousness.”
For persons who are unshakably firm in
their specific religious faith these comments may be irrelevant because as the
Viennese say: wer’sglaubtwirdselig, the believer will
be blessed. However, those of us who have an inquisitive mind and cannot regard
religious dogma as the final truth, they can be useful. Once one realizes the value
of these admonitions one can begin to train one’s mind towards a longer
concentration span and fill it, instead of the current pictures of sex and violence
on our TV and movie screens, with the cultural wisdom of our world in word and
music. This is a process that takes time but can be initiated at any moment and
its reward may be in our final one. The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, in the Evans Wentz translation, contains on the
page prior to the Preface several pithy sentences and I shall quote only the
two that are most appropriate. One is:
Against his will
he dieth that hath not learned to die. Learn to die
and thou shalt learn to live, for there shall none learn to live that hath not
learned to die.
The
other:
‘Whatever is
here, that is there; what is there the same is here. He
who seeth here as different, meeteth
death after death.
‘ By mind alone this
is to be realized, and [then] there is no difference here.From death to death he goeth,
who seeth as if there is difference here.
The first was a quote from The Book of the Craft of Dying and the
second from the Katha Upanishad.
In the Middle
Ages “the art of dying” was a favorite topic of Christian authors and The English arsmoriendi is available on amazon.com. I only have the texts from the Renaissance and Baroque era at
this time, but the instructions to the dying person are not likely to have
changed much from previous centuries. The book contains entries ranging from
ca. 1490-1689 and I shall mention only some highlights from William Caxton’s on
The Arte and Crafte
to Know Well to Die.
It
is written in Shakespearean English, but I shall use current language. The key
points to be remembered are: one ought to die gladly; how to face the
temptations at the hour of death; demands and questions that ought to be
addressed to the dying person and the prayers that ought to be said.
The “temptations” need some discussion
because they overlap with Hindu/Buddhist thought, which at that time was
unknown in the West. In Caxton’s article there are five main ones. The first is
loss of faith in one’s religion. The second consists of despair and loss of
hope in the goodness of God. The third is impatience especially in those
persons whose lives had lacked love and charity. It manifests itself by
complaining and bewailing one’s fatal illness. The illness should be borne with
patience and regarded as a part of purgatory into which the person will enter
after death. The fourth is complacency and pride in one’s spiritual maturity
for none can be certain to have deserved the love of God. The fifth, when
rendered into modern English, “troubles the secular and worldly men.” The hopes
and desires for externals, even in regard to family members, can no longer be
satisfied and must be abandoned. These worries are presented by the devil. But
he is too weak to overcome a determined will, and God is too good and just to
allow greater temptations than the person can bear. Pride must be abandoned and
the victory over temptations will be achieved through meekness, humility and
surrender into the hands of God.
The “Judeo-Christian,” as well as the
Muslim religion relies ultimately on the grace of God that will lead to entry
into paradise or heaven. Buddhism seems to take a more intermediate position. Siddhartha
Gautama, its founder, categorically denied the existence of a Deity who rules
over our fate. We are free, but ignorant, individuals who shape their lives
according to their desires. These should be kept in check during life. The
overarching principle should be constant awareness that life is riddled with
suffering and compassion towards all living entities has, therefore, to be
developed. It seems, however, that this absolutist stance has been slightly
modified in subsequent centuries and Buddhism now encourages prayers to one’s
tutelary Deity, especially in the “After-death State,” the Bardo. Nevertheless the main work of liberating the soul has to be done
by the individual. The Western analogue seems to be: God will help those who
help themselves.
The goal of the devout Buddhist is to
avoid rebirth in any of the various universes because even if there is initial
happiness some type of suffering will eventually return. The reason for this
thought seems to be that “forms,” be they human, animal, or whatever, are not
constant and eternal but merely temporary. Forms, therefore, cannot be ultimate
everlasting reality and their loss will be associated with unhappiness, if not
outright suffering. But in order to be successful, the pursuit of the eightfold
noble path has to start during life because the law of karma is absolute and
immutable.
The
Tibetan Book of the Dead is an instruction manual for the dying individual
so that one will not be afraid during the dying and after-death process.
Contrary to Western attitudes where dying patients are frequently under
sedation, the book insists that death must be faced fully conscious and in keen
awareness. The reason being that this is the most important work the individual
has to accomplish during a lifetime that is now about to end. The feelings that
accompany the dying process are then described. They consist of:
“(1) a bodily sensation
of pressure ‘earth sinking into water;’ (2) a bodily sensation of clammy
coldness as though the body were immersed in water, which gradually merges into
that of feverish heat ‘water sinking into fire;’ (3) a feeling as though the
body were blown into atoms ‘fire sinking into air.’ Each symptom is accompanied
by visible external changes in the body ….”
The mental accompaniment is the “dawning
of the clear light,” which the dying person is encouraged to remain in. But
since this requires extraordinary concentration ability the untrained person
will not be able to do so and consciousness will now enter that of the
after-death state the Bardo which lasts for 49 days (seven times seven). It is
filled with some pleasant but mostly fearful images and the dying individual is
constantly being reminded that these are products of his own mind and therefore
nothing to be afraid of. Throughout the Bardo state the person is also urged to
achieve “clear light consciousness” because it alone is immutable and provides
permanent relief from suffering. I believe, however, that the word “light”
should, in my current understanding, not be taken in its physical sense as it
pertains to our world, but as formless total awareness, which is the substrate
from which all subsequent forms arise. The Buddhist would therefore look at the
NDE phenomena as well as the Christian and Muslim heaven or paradise only as a
way station rather than final destiny of the human soul. Karma has to be
totally expiated, and this cannot be achieved in one life-time.
“TheBook of the Dead” is, however, an
inadequate translation because the original title is the Bardo Thödol or Liberation through
Hearing in the Intermediate State. In Tibet specific portions, as they pertain
to the time that has elapsed during and after death, are read to the dying person
and subsequently when the body has been disposed of to its effigy. I shall not
discuss its contents further at this time but suggest that you buy the book and
study it for the lessons it might teach. I used the word “study” because it
should not be read as one would a novel. It should be examined for the meaning
that may be contained in each of the paragraphs. There are several translations
available. My personal favorite is one that has been edited by Evans-Wentz, in
spite of its partially archaic language. It contains a Foreword by Carl Gustav
Jung and extensive footnotes to clarify meanings that would elude the untrained
Western mind.
Anyone who is interested in what might
happen after death can also consult the Katha
chapter of the Upanishads, Plato’s story of Er in The Republic, Plotinus’ Enneads, Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, The Sprits Book by Allan Kardec and Rudolf Steiner’s The Way of Initiation: How to Attain
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Obviously, these are just some representative
samples of the vast literature on the topic but they do provide an overview of how
intelligent human beings have tried to come to grips with the unavoidable.
Nevertheless, honesty compels us to admit that these are mental images of the
writers which may or may not have counterparts in our personal final reality as
we shall individually encounter.
As mentioned earlier dying has, however, two
aspects. So far the discussion has dealt with thoughts on what happens to the
dying person which apart from biological facts can never conclusively be
established. But the other and equally important aspect is that of the
survivors who find themselves deprived of the help and companionship of the
deceased. It is a difficult process, especially if the departed was a person one
loved. There will be a gap that cannot be filled and one has to make mental
adjustments. There is grief. But one must now decide for whom one grieves. Is
it for the departed or for oneself because of the loss one inevitably feels?
Reason tells us that the dead, if they have led a decent life, no longer suffer
and grief for them is inappropriate because, if they were to know about it, it
would hurt them witnessing despair in their loved ones. But if we grieve for
our own sake because we now have to cope with tasks the deceased did for us, or
in case of children who died prematurely our hopes for their future
achievements, we have to mend our attitude. This is best accomplished by the
thought: what would our loved one have wanted us to do now? The answer is
simple we carry on in the spirit of the deceased and conduct our lives
accordingly. Under these circumstances when tears well up in memory of the
person we loved, as they inevitably will, they are not tears of sorrow but of
gratitude for having been allowed to share our lives with this caring human
being.
Keeping the above in mind we can now
ask: Is there a purpose in praying for the dead? It depends in part on our
belief system. If they are in heaven they don’t need them and if consciousness
is extinguished at time of death, like a candle that has consumed its wax, they
are not needed either. But while prayers may not benefit the dead they are an
act of caring and as such have value for the survivors because this simple act
of caring may then carry over towards helping other living beings.
Death,
as mentioned above, has an additional societal component. Events of the past
month were filled with scenes of human despair: acts of mindless terrorism, as
well as displaced humanity seeking rescue from bombs and cruelty. Official
America, that is to a considerable part responsible for having unleashed these
disasters with the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, is bereft of a sense of
guilt. It refuses to acknowledge the consequences of President George W. Bush’s
actions and can only think in terms of revenge that is carried out by bombs. We
are intent to “destroy ISIS” and remove an “evil tyrant,” Bashar Assad. But
this goal cannot be achieved in this way. Bombs, including atomic ones, never
won a war! Wars end when either a given government surrenders, or both sides
are sufficiently exhausted that they see no purpose in the continuation of the
war. In addition, ever since Russia has entered into the fray, the situation
has become even more complex. The Russians have no problem with Assad, because
in their opinion any government is better than anarchy. Now we have three
separate entities showering bombs on the civilian population: we and our
“allies,” Russia, and the Syrian government. This is outright insanity and one
should not be surprised when people are leaving in droves with or without the
help of traffickers in human lives.
We now must also be quite honest with
ourselves and admit that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the “caliph” of ISIS is our
creation. We killed the “Al Qaida in Iraq,” leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
celebrated our victory, but at the same time bred his more vicious successor
who was incarcerated in Abu Ghraib. It was our treatment of the defeated Iraqis
that led to their uprising. The abominations we allowed to occur in Abu Ghraib
further radicalized some of the inmates who might have been decent persons
before their indiscriminate arrests. The same applies also to the Guantanamo
prisoners who were never given an impartial trial. These facts make us hypocrites
in the eyes of the world, especially those of our adversaries, but we fail to
recognize it.
What we currently see in the Middle East
is a replay of the European Thirty Years War which was fought ostensibly over
Protestantism vs. Catholicism but behind it was the question of political
control over the “Holy Roman Empire.” Its seat was in Vienna, but the Emperor
was more or less subservient to the Pope in Rome. “Los von Rom,” liberation from Rome, was the banner under which the
northern Protestant states fought the southern Catholic ones. The war, like all
previous ones when religion was a factor, played itself out with excessive
cruelty and displacement of human masses. It ended with the compromise of: cuiusregio, eiusreligio; whoever is in
charge of a given part of the empire has the right to determine its religion.
This is also the way the Middle East, if undisturbed by outsiders, would find a
peaceful resolution.
The Sunni-Shia conflict is the
counterpart of the split in the Christian religion of the 16th and
17th century, and will have to be resolved within the overall Muslim community.
Outsiders, the West as well as Russia, can only make things worse and prolong
the conflict in a similar manner as intervention of other powers did in the
Thirty Years War. But the West also must recognize that beyond the sectarian
strife there is a nationalistic component which rejects our “modernity.” Instead
of los von Rom a considerable segment of
Muslim society wants independence from the West and its cultural domination,
especially in some of its features that deeply offend the traditional societal
code. This aspect can likewise not be suppressed by drones and bombs.
Since there is a “religious” component to
the current upheavals, including the acts of terror outside the Middle East,
the problem can only be solved when it has been taken out of the equation. We
now must recognize that, as has been pointed out previously, ISIS’ religious
philosophy is nothing else but a more vicious extension of Saudi Arabia’s dominant
religious system: Wahhabism. ISIS’ money initially came from that country and
subsidies may or may not persist. Currently one of the major income sources is
the oil from the Mosul area which is illegally shipped to consumers via the
good graces of our “ally” and NATO member Turkey.
The proper way to defeat ISIS would be
to two-pronged. The religious aspect could be removed if Iran’s Supreme leader
the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Sheik Abdul-Aziz ibn
Abdullah Al-ash Sheikh, were to sit down together and officially affirm that
the Holy Koran does not allow Muslims to slaughter each other. Allah the “Compassionate
and Merciful” in whose name the Holy Koran is written and Who
is constantly evoked by both sides does not condone wanton killing and
especially the murder of innocents. It is the latter that is carried out by
misguided youths who are trained by evil adults to don suicide vests or explode
bombs by remote control. If these two religious leaders were able to lay their
personal articles of faith aside and meet each other not as Shia vs. Sunni but
as Muslims with a common Holy Book they would first embrace each other and then
issue a joint Fatwa. This would declare that anyone who incites or carries out
an attack on another Muslim is immediately expelled from the community of
believers (Ummah) and will not enter
paradise upon death but hell instead. This would have an immediate salutary
effect and influx of fighters from abroad would decrease to a trickle of
mercenaries. These two leaders are aware of the dangers ISIS presents to
Muslims around the world and have already criticized that group but never in a
joint communiqué which is currently needed.
The second prong is finances. If the
Saudis and other Sunni Gulf States were still to supply ISIS with needed funds
they should first be warned to cease and desist and if the warning were to be
ignored economic sanctions could be taken. The Turkish government could
likewise unequivocally be told that tolerating oil shipments through their
country is unacceptable and if they were to persist, NATO membership would be
reconsidered. Under those circumstances ISIS’ income would be reduced to
confiscatory taxes from the citizens under its control. This is, however, the
best way to create dissent and an uprising against the regime, especially when
the religious aspect has been removed. The political borders within the Middle
East could subsequently be redrawn by the people living there rather than by outside
powers.
I believe that this would be a rational
way to end the current war and its concomitant refugee problem. But as we also
know the majority of our fellow citizens around the world, and especially those
in positions of power, have not achieved a mental state that would justify the
title “Homo Sapiens.” They are driven by emotions and desire for gain and in
this manner cause as well as prolong immeasurable suffering. Throwing bombs is
much easier and also makes money for the armaments industry. If our leadership
were, however, to consider for a moment the implications of the previously
mentioned law of karma, it would change its thinking and conduct. Although
karma is the word for just retribution in Hindu/Buddhist thought, the idea was
known to the ancient Egyptians who said: the deed returns to the doer. This was
the basis of the concept of Maat which has been discussed in previous
installments (Our Need for Maat August 1, 2007; Counter-Religion September 1,
2007)). If we now were to apply this concept to our conduct as a nation one
would begin to shudder at the fate that may befall our children, grandchildren
and great grandchildren. The bombs which we so liberally dispense over most of
the globe will fall on us! From this point of view the so-called War on Terror has
to be stopped now and our ruling powers need to think of better ways to deal
with the evil ISIS undoubtedly represents.
The next installment will continue the
discussion of current events in the Middle East because the problem of
“religious fundamentalism” is not limited to ISIS and “martyrdom” for political
ends also requires constructive assessment.
January 1, 2016
ADRIFT
Traditionally Christmas is
supposed to be a time of good cheer and the New Year celebrations filled with
expectations of better things to come. But although the economy is improving,
according to the people who are supposed to know, it is certainly not on a
solid upswing for most of us. Wages are stagnant and since interest rates are
so low saving accounts are not producing a yield that will compensate for
inflation. Retirees can no longer rely on the interest of their savings but have
to spend whatever capital they were able to accumulate during a lifetime of
work The stock market is supposed to compensate for the inability to save one’s
money in the traditional manner, but since this amounts to gambling, that
especially older people are adverse to engage in, it cannot provide financial
security. In addition, market analysts foresee at best stagnation while more
pessimistically inclined ones, point to the unsustainability of the current
financial system because the causes of the 2008 crash
have not been eliminated. Speculation by banks, with our savings, is as rampant
as it ever was. In addition, further mergers of banks and industries have
occurred leading to monopolies and the few remaining banks are again “too big
to fail.” Are we supposed to bail them out a second time when the next crash
comes?
This sense of unease was given voice,
among other publications, in TIME magazine that placed the German chancellor
Angela Merkel on its cover as Person of the Year. The selection was appropriate
and the article well written. She is indeed the only one who at this time can
hold Europe together and thereby the Western World. TIME called her Chancellor
of the Free World which was correct but also a slap in the face of our ruling
circles. We boast of leadership but are unable to provide it because of the
massive political polarization that has taken place in the past few years. Leadership
would require that the President and Congress agree not only on principles but
also on the major aspects of their execution, which is currently not the case.
The House of Representatives and the Senate are in Republican hands but the
party is badly splintered. The election of so-called Tea-party candidates has
led to a massive shift towards the extreme right that rules out cooperation
with the Democrats, let alone the President whom they intensely dislike.
President Obama tried to retain some
momentum in the foreign arena during the past year, as for instance with the
conclusion of the Iran nuclear issue. But even this success hangs on a thin
thread and the upcoming November elections can cut it. He has been relegated to
“lame duck” status and if he were to wield his pen with executive orders they
could readily be undone next January if the Republicans were to win. In
addition, he has already been threatened with impeachment if he were to
overstep his authority as determined by his Republican adversaries. Under these
circumstances the practically year-long presidential campaign will continue to
paralyze the country which has lost its moorings. The USS America is now
drifting on an ocean of uncertainty; a toy of diverse conflicting interests
driven by currents that defy control.
We are, however, not alone in this
predicament because the world has become so interdependent that what hurts one
is felt by all. Our 2008 financial crisis had repercussions in Europe that came
to a head last year in Greece and threatened to tear the EU apart. It was
temporarily solved and Chancellor Merkel deserves the credit for steadfastness
in adversity. But this was then; the “now” is different. The Syrian refugee
crisis with a tsunami of displaced humanity has strained resources in the
neighboring countries and spilled over to Europe. The picture of two-year old AylanKurdi, who had drowned with
his mother and four year old brother during the parents’ escape from war and
destitution, aroused compassion and the newcomers were initially welcomed in
some European countries, especially Germany. The country absorbed about 800,000
arrivals but it is highly unlikely that it will be able to tolerate more
Muslims. In order to retain the chancellorship Merkel’s compassion has found
its limit. This is likewise true for the rest of Europe, which still has not
fully recovered from the 2008 crash. Compassion and good will are now replaced
by fear, which is stoked by irresponsible politicians in their quest for
office. The method is what is called in German: den Teufelan die
Wand malen – to paint a portrait of the devil on
the wall of the living room. He no longer sports horns and a cloven hoof, but
is currently represented by the twin specter of “Terrorism” and “Islamization.”
As all of us know this phenomenon is not
limited to Europe, but is also in full force here in the US.The Christmas message of “Fear Not” has been
replaced by a steady onslaught of the imperative: Fear! The future is no longer
to be welcomed as an opportunity for personal and societal growth but we have
to be afraid of everything and anything that might possibly befall us. We are,
therefore, urged to “protect” ourselves. Domestically, the political
representatives of the arms industry tell us that we have to protect our lives,
homes and property by a variety of guns including semi- or fully automatic
assault weapons. When these are then put to their use by irresponsible crazed
individuals, as in the San Bernadino shootings, the
blame is not placed on the ready availability of these weapons but on Muslim
fanaticism. While the latter is indeed a potent motivating factor the means to
create such havoc should not be so readily available both here and abroad.
There is absolutely no reason why possession of assault weapons should not be
outlawed for their use by private citizens and even police. They were never
needed for personal safety or hunting in all of the past centuries and they are
not needed now.
The only reason I can think of why possession of assault weapons is legal in our country
is the cowardice of Congress where some of its most influential members are
supported by the arms manufacture industry. The New York Times International section carried on December 26 an
article headlined: Arms Deals Ensure U.S. is Top Seller. Sales
to Countries Increase 35% in 2014.”The main message was: “The United States controls over half of the global
arms trade.” The actual number for 2014, as reported to Congress, was $71.8
billion. But there also was an inconsistency that characterizes our time and
may have escaped the attention of the typesetter who was responsible for
formatting this page. The report on what can only be called the “merchants of
death” was placed as a column on one side for the entire page while the main
center portion showed a picture of Pope Francis blessing the faithful who had assembled
for Christmas at St. Peter’s square. The caption was: “A call to the
Peacemakers. Pope Francis delivered his Christmas message from St. Peter’s
Basilica at the Vatican on Friday, calling for peace in Syria and elsewhere,
and praising countries that have taken in refugees. Religious leaders around
the world issued similar messages calling for peace. Excerpts from them are at
nytimes.com/world.”
The article above the picture carried
the headline: “Rugged Afghan Region Lies Beyond Reach
of Aid and Time. As Billions Are Spent Elsewhere, Nuristan Province is Deprived.” The bottom section, below the picture, was
devoted to: “In Blow to Syrian Insurgents, Airstrike Is Said to Kill Rebel
Leader. The head of a group seen as terrorists by the Syrian
and Russian governments.” The article also had an insert showing a
picture of the victim, ZaranAlloush
leader of the “army of Islam”, speaking at a wedding in July of last year. But
there is more to it. He was a terrorist only in the eyes of the Russian and the
Syrian government. Our government regarded him as useful in the quest to remove
President Assad from power. Alloush controlled an
outskirt of Damascus. It was assumed that he would have checked encroachment by
ISIL and might have participated in peace negotiations.
What this page tells us is that war and
its consequences are more important to report on than efforts by religious
leaders of the world to create an atmosphere that could make peace possible.
Those have to be excerpted and can then be found only on the Internet. Let’s
face it; war makes money while the pursuit of peace does not yield this
commodity which obviously rules this world.
Apparently the “War on Terror” also
requires that we have the means to terrorize ourselves by the mentioned
proliferation of assault weapons. As past experience abroad has shown, fear of
chaos is the best way to abolish a democratic government in favor of an
autocratic one where power can be wielded so much more readily. Let us remember
that without the economic depression, and the concomitant street battles
between Nazis and Communists, Hitler would never have been appointed
Chancellor. With impending chaos most people bite their lips and submit to the
only alternative. There is no reason to expect that what happened in Europe in
the 1930s cannot happen here because human beings are the same throughout the
world. On the other hand in America the picture of the “Wild West” is still
retained in television shows where every male has a gun and uses it with
minimal provocation. Some of us are, therefore, arming themselves against the
consequences of potentially impending chaos and, if need be, an autocratic
government. Although the latter attempt would be obviously
useless.
For our politicians who stoke fear it is
also necessary to have a foreign enemy and ISIS/ISIL/IS is now being portrayed
as an existential threat to the U.S. This is ludicrous. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi,
who was the runner-up for first place as TIME’s Person of the Year just doesn’t
have the wherewithal to defeat us on our shores. Yes, he can sponsor terror
attacks that might kill hundreds and if he were to get his hands on a “dirty
bomb” even thousands. He can create havoc, but he cannot destroy us unless we
follow his script and become an outright police state. This is the real danger
we are facing. We saw a preview after 9/11. Instead of a proper criminal
investigation to find the culprits, wars were started abroad and domestically the
“national security state” emerged. It created the deliberately mislabeled
Patriot Act and a “Department of Homeland Security” which, because of its far-flung
bureaucracy, cannot possibly achieve the goal that is supposed to be
accomplished. It not only absorbs tax money that should be spent on
infrastructure and other programs that benefit the citizenry but also makes
life more ornery because of ever increasing regulations that are camouflaged as
enhancing our “security.”
One enemy, such as al-Baghdadi, clearly
is not enough to create sufficient fear; we also have to fear the Russians and
Chinese. In order to make this credible we engage in deliberate provocations as
for instance removing a Russophile government in Ukraine, with its attendant
Russian countermoves (Ukraine Crisis; March 15, 2014. Ukraine: Let truth be
told; April 1, 2014), and patrolling the South China Sea’s artificial coral
islands, thereby inviting accidental shootouts, with the possibility of
escalation.
We have succeeded to some extent to
demonize Russia and its economy is faltering. The value of the Ruble is
steadily sinking and has not yet hit bottom. This is partly a result of
sanctions, lower oil prices and a fair amount of corruption within the ruling
elite. President Putin tries to divert attention from a looming crisis to
foreign affairs and the Syrian plight. For this endeavor he might even get some
help from our John Kerry who seems to be indefatigable and together with
Russia’s Sergei Lavrov would certainly be a candidate for a Nobel peace prize.
But Kerry is handicapped by our official stance that President Assad, who has
now reached in propaganda terms the status of Saddam Hussein, must be deposed.
It seems that our ruling circles in
Washington are incapable of learning. They know, but refuse to acknowledge, the
chaos we created in Iraq by removing a dictator who held a diverse country
together by force and we seem to be determined to repeat this failed experiment
in Syria. It should be abundantly clear that we can’t get Western style
democracy in the Middle East by executive fiat. So what is our choice: swallow
our pride and make do with Assad for some time or continuing chaos with an ever
increasing refugee problem and the danger of war with Russia? Our, as well as
Russia’s, fighter planes are flying separate missions in the relatively small
Syrian airspace and it is only a matter of time for some accident to happen
when both sides will accuse each other of deliberate provocation. The Turkish
air disaster was already a preview. The fact that we don’t share intelligence
information on our targets with the Russians, although they repeatedly asked
for it, is not only harmful to a successful prosecution of the war but amounts
to criminal negligence because accidents are bound to happen under present
circumstances. Is our leadership really too stupid not to understand this
danger or are other more sinister efforts at work?
With intolerable living conditions some
people who can will emigrate while others, who either don’t have the
inclination or the means, will be radicalized. This may take the form of random
violence or a “return to basics;” a fundamentalist type of religious thought.
The latter has now come to dominate the Middle East. ISIS, to stay with one of
the common abbreviations, was born in the chaos of Iraq when John Bremer, our
“Vice-Roy,” ordered “de-Ba’athification” and
dissolution of the Iraqi military. Hundreds of thousands were overnight
deprived of income and literally thrown out on the streets. When one adds to
this the indiscriminate incarcerations at Abu Ghraib and other jails one should
not be surprised when previously relatively decent human beings are subjected
to these experiences turn to their image of God and become fanatics.
Sections of the Holy Koran are then taken out of historical context,
pasted together and, in disregard of others which proclaim the opposite, are
formed into an ideology that justifies killing in the name of God. When this is
coupled with the assurance that to be killed in the service of god amounts to
martyrdom and ensures instant accession to paradise one has a mental state that
will defy not only reason but also threats and bombs. When initial fear is
turned into hate it cannot readily be stifled. When one adds an expected
heavenly reward for this conduct it is not hard to see why disenchanted young
people would want to join “jihad.”This
is so obvious that one may even regard it as a “normal” i.e. “common” human
mental mechanism.
While our media concentrate mainly on
the efforts of ISIS in Syria, Iraq and various African countries there is an
additional battleground in the making which will hit the headlines if not this
year then soon thereafter. The plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli
rule is not properly recognized by our media and ruling circles because the
“Jewish vote” is more important. Yet, it is an incubator for violence which has
to erupt sooner or later. Intelligent people, both here and in Israel, know
that the current status of the West Bank and the Gaza strip is untenable. Yet
the “two state” solution, as initially accepted to in the Oslo agreement, is
now dead and buried without an alternative in place. There is no “peace
process” and even John Kerry had to give up on it. Therefore, Israel although
it still has a leader in the person of Binyamin Netanyahu is also adrift
because he is not a free agent. To keep his post he has to make compromises
with the religious parties of the country some of whom are just as
“fundamentalist” as their Muslim counterparts although they do not export their
violence to the rest of the world. The reason is not that they are adverse to
violence, as the early history of the State of Israel shows (Bowyer Bell: Terror out of Zion). But it is currently
not needed and would be counterproductive, except as a “false flag” operation.
The Likud government and other Israeli rightwing parties live in a fool’s paradise
because the status quo is unsustainable.
Our official media stay away from
reporting on events in the Gaza strip where 1.8 million human beings are
crowded into an area that measures 25 miles in length and eight miles at is
maximal width. It is an open air prison where the borders are sealed, the air
space is filled with Israeli drones and the coast patrolled by Israeli
gunboats. Ask yourself now: how long do you think it will take for this powder
keg to explode? How long can unemployed young males be expected to tolerate
these conditions? The recent wars with Israel with their attendant destruction
of lives and property, have led to increasing loss of hope for outside help and
some youngsters are now turning to ISIS as the answer. In their eyes HAMAS,
which we regard as a terrorist organization, is not radical enough because it
has negotiated a truce with Israel that has brought no benefit to the
inhabitants of Gaza. There are to be no further negotiations and Allah, the
Compassionate, the Merciful, has to yield to the Old Testament God of Vengeance.
The January 14, 2016 issue of the New
York Review of Books carries an article by Sarah Helm that describes the
situation.
Many, if not most, people in our country
are not aware that the Holy Koran is a composite of Old and New Testament ideas
rather than a completely separate document. Yet, this is important to realize
because under those circumstances the Muslim religion is not something that is
fundamentally alien to Western thought. It derives its legitimacy from the
legend of Abraham and his first-born son Ishmael. Depending on political
circumstances the Koran emphasizes either the Old Testament wrathful aspect of
the Deity, or the Christian benign and merciful Father.
The “fundamentalist” aspects of the OT
religion are, for good reason, currently not emphasized in our country but they
are inextricable interwoven into the concept of the “Jewish State” of Israel. The
country is not, in spite of protestations to the contrary, a Western type of
democracy because a separation of Religion and State does not exist. To
appreciate the full extent of current Israeli fundamentalism it is important
that one reads “Jewish Fundamentalism in
Israel” by Israel Shahhak and Norton Mezvinsky.
It is available on the Internet in book form on amazon but also free of charge
as a pdf document. Unless one is familiar with this aspect of the Jewish
religion one cannot understand the Israeli political position in regard to what
in the West is regarded either as the “West Bank” or occupied territories but
in Israeli parlance Judaea and Samaria. Political Zionism has taken the Jewish
religion back about 2300 years, to Maccabean times, and is enacting policies of
that era as documented in Whither
Zionism? that can be downloaded from this website.
The cornerstone of the Jewish-Palestinian
debacle is the OT with its insistence that the Lord, is first and foremost the
God of Israel, “who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” Concern for “goyim” (other ethnicities) does not
belong to his priorities. The Christian church tried to change this view but it
is rejected by the true believers in the Jewish faith. For them the statement
in Ex. 14-12 is still divine revelation:
Behold I am
driving out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and
the Perrizite, and the Hivite
and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou
make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, whither thou goest, lest they be for a snare in the midst of thee.
When put into modern parlance: the Lord
will engage in “ethnic cleansing” and whoever remains in the land given to the
immigrants must not be fraternized with. Strict segregation or in modern terms “apartheid”
is to be enacted. Lest one think that the Exodus quote was an isolated
occurrence please consult Deuteronomy chapter 20:10-20. It deals with how the
inhabitants of besieged cities are to be treated. If a city that does not
belong to Israel’s patrimony voluntarily surrenders the males are to be killed.
The women, children and cattle are the “spoils” of war and to be used
accordingly. But if the city is in the land “the Lord, thy God giveth thee as
an inheritance thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes, but thou shalt
utterly destroy them.” The quotes are from The
Socino Chumash, an unimpeachable Jewish document
rather than the King James Bible translation.
We now must remember that this is not
just some man-made “Nuremberg law,” written by a secular government that can be
undone. It is an order of God as expressed in the Torah which when translated
into English stands for Law. It establishes an unbridgeable “them and Us” for all time. This has led in the past to the voluntary
establishment by Jews of Ghettos for Jews in Christendom, and in this century Israel’s
“Security fence” or ‘Wall of separation” behind which the Palestinians are
forced to live.
It is, therefore, obvious that “racial
purity” was not invented by the Nazis. They only adopted and adapted this
aspect of the OT. We may now say that this concept has no validity in the modern
world. But under these circumstances we avoid recognition of the power of faith
which drives fundamentalist religious thought. Racial purity is alive and well
in Israel where marriages between Jew and Gentile are not permitted. In
ultra-orthodox Haredim society it reaches the level where according to Shahhak
and Nemvitzky even the question of accepting blood transfusions from a
non-observant Jew, let alone a Gentile is debated.A similar situation exists for organ
donations.
One may now say that this is an extreme
example that is irrelevant for the conduct of Israeli policy. This is true, but
the separation from native Palestinians and the question to whom
this land belongs, are the prime movers of the conflict. Americans who limit
their information to the popular media are not aware of the views of Israel’s
current Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Hotovely on
this topic. She was appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu after the 2015
elections and, according to Wikipedia:
Hotovely
rejects Palestinian statehood aspirations,
supporting a Greater Israel spanning over the entire land of current Israel
along with the Palestinian territories.[12]She later reiterated her hardline
position in a speech to Israeli diplomats on 22 May 2015, rejecting criticism
from the international community regarding the West Bank settlement policies
and saying that Israel has tried too hard to appease the world and must stand
up for itself. She has also stated that she will make every effort to achieve
global recognition forWest Bank settlements(a move which is widely opposed by the international
community), as well as asserting that Israel owes no apologies for its policies
in the Holy Land towards the Palestinians. She justified her position as she
referenced religious texts to back her belief.
In October 2015, in an interview with theKnesset Channel,
Hotovely said: "It's my dream to see the Israeli flag flying on the Temple
Mount." She added: "I think it's the center of Israeli sovereignty,
the capital of Israel, the holiest place for the Jewish people." Despite the government's insistence that it has no intention of
changing the status quo at the site.
The British people were informed of this stance in The Guardian but America’s media are
silent on this obviously important topic. One might now argue that she is
“only” the Deputy Foreign Minister and policy is made by Netanyahu who is not
only Prime Minister but also Foreign Minister, and that Mrs.Hotovely is merely responsible for the bureaucratic
functions of the Ministry. But this would ignore the fact that Netanyahu
appointed her and, therefore, either agrees with these views or regards them as
sufficiently wide-spread that he has to placate this segment of Israel’s
citizenry. It is obvious that this attitude can only lead to a radicalization
of the Palestinian population not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank and
Jerusalem. The Jewish Temple Mount is for all Muslims the “Noble Sanctuary” and
any attempt to change its status would lead to a world-wide catastrophe. Hotovely’s statements are, of course, known in the Arab
world and thereby provide an excellent recruiting tool for ISIS.
When one keeps all the mentioned facts
in mind one can see that ISIS was created by despair and that the obviously barbaric
conduct of its troops is simply a regression to OT laws as incorporated in
sections of the Koran. Cutting off hands is, of course, also the way thieves
were to be dealt with in that document. In regard to the severing of the head
of one’s enemy it needs to be pointed out that decapitation was the method of
choice for centuries and the guillotine was used routinely in France, for
instance, until the death penalty was abolished in 1977.
Under these circumstances it is obvious
that although the “ISIS Caliphate” can be driven out of its strongholds with
sufficient military force, this will not affect the hate and religious fervor
that gave rise to the organization in the first place. The daily reports in our
newspapers in regard to ISIS leaders who have been killed by us and our allies
evoke memories of the body counts during the Vietnam War. They were useless
then and killing “leadership” now is based on a concept that does not take
religious fanaticism into account. The Romans couldn’t kill all the Christian
martyrs and we can’t kill all the Muslims who are sacrificing themselves for
the “greater good.”There is an
inexhaustible supply. When in 2006 we announced that we had killed Abu Musab
al-Zarquawi in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was already
in the wings.
The only way to end this war, with all
of its attendant human misery, will be when Sunnis and Shiites put their
sectarian differences aside in the manner presented last month and Israel
releases its stranglehold on the Palestinians. But for this outcome we would
need Divine intervention because the ruling circles on
all sides of the conflict have no such interest and there is no one who is
likely to initiate and can subsequently enforce such an agreement. Whether or
not this inherently unstable situation will come to a head during this year or
in a subsequent one cannot be foretold. But that some type of catastrophic
reckoning will take place looks increasingly unavoidable. Political events that
impact our society, and thereby our public lives, are truly adrift. All we can
do as individuals is to bring our inner house in mental and spiritual order so
that we can weather the oncoming storm. In that spirit I wish my readers a
healthy and personally satisfying New Year.
February 1, 2016
THE AGE OF DELUSION
The title of this
essay was inspired by two documents. One was the encyclopedic History of Civilization by Will Durant
and the other The God Delusion by
Richard Dawkins. As will become apparent these two authors represent opposite
poles of human thought and, therefore, suggestions for societal change. I have
discussed the Dawkins book in the May 1, 2010 installment (Our Atheists) but
the monumental work of the Durants has so far not
been properly addressed.
Will Durant was born in November 1885
of French Canadian Catholic parents and received his early education by the
Jesuits. Initially he became a newspaper writer but his inquisitive mind and
social conscience led him to teach at Seton Hall University. In 1911 he became
principal of the Ferrer Modern School that was intended to serve the
educational needs of the working poor, where he also taught classes. He fell in
love with one of his pupils, Chaya Kaufman of Russian Jewish parents, and they
married in October of 1913. Since the bride was only 15 years old, Will resigned
from the school and a life-long bond was established between the two. It was only
broken in 1981 when Chaya, whom Will had nicknamed Ariel, died on October 25.
Will followed her on November 7 of that year. Together they first explored our
world and its civilizations by touring the globe and their first-hand
experiences of the various cultures they encountered formed the background for
their monumental work.
The
History of Civilization consists of 11 volumes with the first one, Our Oriental Heritage published in 1935 and
the last one The Age of Napoleon in1975. The other volumes where “The Age
of …” appears in the title are Volume IV The Age of Faith,
Volume VII The Beginning of the Age of Reason,
Volume VIII The Age of Louis XIV and
Volume IX The Age of Voltaire. All of
them, in addition to a few others, reside in my library but I must admit to not
having found the time to fully read even one of them because each one exceeds
at least 800 pages and the Age of Faith required nearly 1200. Nevertheless,
they are available and can serve not only as reference for certain aspects when
needed but also as inspiration. They are written in a compassionate,
informative style which distinguishes them from the writings of some fervent
atheists, especially Sam Harris’ The End
of Faith and A Letter to a Christian
Nation.These books, as discussed in
Our Atheists (May 1, 2010), are a polemic not only against all religions but
also against religious tolerance. Dawkins on the other hand made his
impassioned plea for equal rights of atheists by adding useful scientific
information with a certain degree of British humor.
With this as background we can now
explore the meaning of the key word in the title of this installment “delusion.”
Although all of us commonly use the word in conversation, frequently to
criticize someone else’s utterances, it deserves to be further discussed. One
of the definitions is by Merriam Webster: 1) A belief
that is not true: a false idea. 2) A false idea or belief that is caused by
mental illness. Let us leave mental illness aside and stay only with normal,
i.e. common, human ideation. The key words are belief and the true-false
dichotomy. The latter is perfectly appropriate in the description of concrete
objects, usually as apprehended by vision. Since all of us have essentially the
same brain visual processing equipment any deviation from what others might experience
will readily be obvious and labeled as false. But the delusion definition does
not deal with physical objects. It has to do with mental events “a belief” and
under these circumstances the true-false dichotomy can become considerably
murkier.
In regard to
mentation we deal not only with rational thought but there is, in addition, a
constant interaction with past memories that are already emotionally flavored,
as well as with current emotions. This biologic fact tends to be ignored, but it
is essential to realize that unconscious bias can be co-responsible for
conscious ideation and its verbal result. This is why one should not only
listen to the message that comes from a given person but also investigate the
reliability of the messenger who wants us to believe what is being asserted.
But belief, especially when it rises to the level of faith, cannot be
objectively verified and is inaccessible to scientific endeavors. It is a
purely intrapersonal rule book upon which the individual operates.
Prior to
Hitler’s arrival in Austria we were taught religion in high school as one of
the subjects. The definition of faith, which I remember to this day, was: Etwas fest fürwahrhalten – to firmly
regard something as true. Please note that although the term faith, even in the
Durant example, is usually restricted to religion, this is not correct. Faith
moves all of us throughout our lives. It is only the mental content faith is
attached to that differs among individuals and can change during life. Thus the
dichotomy between faith and science for instance is a spurious one. Dawkins as
well as Harris expressed just as much faith in their atheistic belief system as
they condemn in others who do not share it.
In The God Delusion Dawkins vented his most
intense disgust with what has been called the “Abrahamic religions,” i.e. Judaism
and its offspring: Christianity and Mohammedanism. He characterized this belief
not only as a delusion but a pernicious one. His reason for calling it a
delusion is the conflict with scientific data and pernicious because of
religious wars which are perpetrated with a great deal of ferocity. But it doesn’t
need religious dogma for that, secular ones will perfectly adequately suffice
as we saw during WWII. Although the atheistic establishment is fond of pointing
to the current wars in the Middle East as an example of the evil caused by religion
we shouldn’t forget that they were unleashed by secular motives on our part.
Now we come to another
aspect intolerant atheists apparently do not want to recognize: the difference
between religious feeling and religious dogma. All the battles against religion
are not necessarily against the rules for human conduct but the stories and
fables that have evolved over centuries and achieved equal validity as “the
Word of God” enshrined in the Bible. Dogma, unquestioned belief in what is
being proclaimed, is the real problem. Not only must one not question it but if
one does one will at minimum be regarded as a crank, as long as one limits the
spread of one’s views to a small circle, and as a menace that has to be eliminated
if one attracts too much attention.In
former centuries punishment was meted out by the Church and now the State has
taken over this role.
Secular dogma has replaced
the religious one in the political-societal arena especially in our country.
Yet, in spite of the fact that we practically worship science, we completely
disregard its principles when it comes to adherence to officially proclaimed
“truth.”I can write the way I do in
these pages not only because this is “a free country,” but because I am
sufficiently old, living on my savings, and the readership is quite limited. If
I were still employed my superiors would have taken me long ago to task and
given the choice of either to stop writing and/or dismissal from my job. Let me
say it quite openly: our free society has quite narrow limits when it comes to believing
and asserting views that go contrary to officially sanctioned “truth.”
The most pernicious current
false belief in our country is the government’s version of what happened on
9/11. One must subscribe to it because if one publicly raises questions there
will be adverse consequences. This occurs in spite of the fact that the
government’s theory, which has risen to the level of dogma, is contrary to the
laws of physics as has been pointed out repeatedly on this site and a spate of
books. (May 1, 2012; America’s Galileo Moment)Fire, originally from plane
impacts and subsequently office furniture cannot bend steel beams and reduce
buildings to dust clouds. But when a respected professor of physics stated so
and gave lectures on it he had to accept premature retirement. When an engineer
of the company that had certified the steel of the Twin Towers for safety standards
stated that other factors than fire must have brought down the buildings, he
was fired from his job. So was Professor Judy Wood who published the book Where Did the Towers Go? It contains
extensive photographic documentation for her belief that other weapons of some
type must have been used.
In The Vancouver 9/11
Hearings (September 1, 2012) installment I presented information on my
participation at a conference that dealt with all the improbabilities of the
government’s 9/11 theory. But I did not mention that there was an additional
motive for attending. The NSA “Data Center” was about to open in near-by
Bluffdale and I was quite concerned about this misuse of our lovely valley.
Apart from the purpose, which I disagree with, the center’s computers use an
inordinate amount of water for cooling, which we as a desert state should not
waste on this ignominious project. I,
therefore, thought that I might organize in the winter of the following year a
two-day conference here in Salt Lake City on “9/11 and its Aftermath – To what Extent
are Freedom and Security Compatible?” Martha agreed in spite of the fact that a
personal financial commitment would be needed. The Vancouver meeting was,
therefore, intended to sift the attendees for individuals who were sufficiently
level-headed to present their data at our projected meeting. It was to be held
at the Marriott Hotel in the Research Park area of the university’s campus; a
very pleasant facility with reasonable prices. I then contacted a considerable
number of persons with academic degrees who had shown themselves knowledgeable
in their area of expertise and the recurrent question was: Is it sanctioned by
the university? When I told them that it was a private function for the purpose
to raise awareness of an important topic the conversation frequently ended at
that point.
Inasmuch as I still hold a professorship
at the university, albeit without financial compensation, I thought it wise to also
enlist members of other relevant departments for the meeting. The result was
surprising. Some were indeed willing to discuss the national security aspect
but not its mental parent the 9/11 disaster. When I mentioned the project in
private to some of my senior colleagues in the neurology department the uniform
response was: “Do you really want to do that?” and if so “Proceed with great
caution.” Since university tolerance, if not sponsorship, was important and we
have a Hinckley Institute of Politics I thought the conference could be held
under its auspices. But the director insisted that 9/11 is off limits and anyway
his personnel would have to choose the speakers. This speaks volumes about
academic freedom in our country.
Stubborn as I am, I went
ahead with plans anyway and at the end of the San Diego American Epilepsy
Society meeting in December of that year I was scheduled to discuss the plans
with members of the 9/11 Truth group that is very active in that city; some of
whom I had met in Vancouver. But, what I regard as a higher power intervened
and I severely fractured my right femur on the preceding evening. There was no
apparent reason for the fall; it just happened. I was incapacitated and all the
plans and commitments had to be canceled. I am mentioning this personal story
here to demonstrate the difficulties one encounters when one tries to elevate
the 9/11 events from the government conspiracy theory of the 19 hijackers
having been responsible for the entirety of the events, to the level of science.
As such the government’s theory can now be called a delusion as well as a dogma
because it flies in the face of established facts yet adherence to its veracity
is required.
Why did
universities succumb to State proclaimed public opinion? The original purpose
of a university, in contrast to a trade school, was to encourage free dialogue
in a search for truth about a given topic. But this is no longer achievable in
this country because universities now depend on federal government funding and
have thereby become slaves of the State that sends the checks. That this
situation can only have disastrous consequences when an entire “educated”
generation has to lap up what the government declares as “the truth,” does not
require the gift of prophecy.
Previously I have presented
the Merriam Webster definition of delusion but there are additional ones. The New
Columbia Encyclopedia defines it as: “a false belief based on a misconception of reality” and the
Oxford Dictionary states: “An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly
maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality
or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder: the delusion of being
watched.” We, therefore, have an
additional key word that requires discussion: “reality.” We use it constantly
without thinking about its implications. As with the true-false dichotomy there
is no problem in regard to objects that we are aware of through our senses. It
comes again when we deal with abstract mental concepts. This is the area we
know least about but are prone to argue the most.
Physical
reality is experienced when our eyes are open and we apprehend the happenings
in the outer world. These are universal and can readily be verified by others. But
this is not the case for the eyes closed state when our thoughts and feelings
are purely private and unverifiable by others. Nevertheless, the mentation in
the eyes closed state, in which we spend nearly half of our lives, carries over
into our thoughts and actions of daily waking life. This fact is ignored by
those of us, who regard science as the ultimate arbiter and insist that God
does not exist because science rules out this belief. Let me now be quite
concrete. Science is measurement and measurement requires vision. What we can’t
see we can’t measure and quantify. In the human being vision is by far the most
predominant sense, as can readily be demonstrated in neurophysiological
laboratories, but this should not blind us to the importance of the other
senses. In addition, all of them operate only within a given frequency range
and anything above or below that is inaccessible to us. To base one’s opinion
about reality, as is so commonly done, purely on vision - science is contrary
to reason and when one firmly believes that reality is limited to the human
eyes open experience one can regard this also as a delusion.
We,
therefore, have to come to grips with what is and is not believable when the
eyes open and the eyes closed mentation are given equal value. Under these
circumstances we will look for possible motives that led to the actual events
we experienced. There are occurrences in all of our lives which we have to
regard as misfortune because they run counter to the plans we have made. We
then try to find reasons for them and our subsequent conduct may not be
determined by the actual cause of the event but by the reason we assign to it.
Needless to say this assigned reason may be quite wrong. Our government’s
response to the 9/11 is an example for the deliberate misuse of a crime to
further its preconceived policies. More commonly we are confronted in our
private lives with untoward events such as accidents, illness or death for
which we want to find reasons. Depending on the character structure of the
individual one may want to extract vengeance by legal action against some
potential perpetrator of the presumed cause or it may lead, especially in
religious persons, to introspection about the possible meaning of the event for
one’s future life.
The
Christian religion posits an all-good Father and the obvious existence of
events in everyone’s life that may well be regarded as an evil seems
incompatible with that notion. But my own life has taught me that what was a
serious “evil,” that nearly drove me to suicide in adolescence, was actually a
blessing in disguise; a lesson I had to learn for a successful future life. Since
I have mentioned the details in War&Mayhem, which can be downloaded from this site, they need
not be repeated here. In retrospect a meaning could be assigned to the event as
the best thing that could have happened to me at the time because it brought me
face to face with a “reality” which required different sustained effort.
Another
example might be the fractured leg that prevented the above mentioned planned
9/11 conference. In retrospect, the timing was not appropriate for my life
situation. As a member of a university department and respected by
investigators of the neurophysiological/epilepsy community I would have become
“radioactive” for them to the detriment of future work in the field. Furthermore,
apart from gaining notoriety it would not have achieved its aim of leading to
an international criminal investigation of the tragedy. As any good physician
knows for the successful treatment of an ailment three factors have to be
considered: the correct medication, in the proper dose, to be taken at the
right time. If one neglects any one of these three components, the hoped for
outcome will not be achieved. Right timing of one’s planned actions is, of
course, the most difficult to ascertain. It may only retrospectively become
apparent but the notion can become important for future conduct as well as an
attempt to make sense out of the apparent senseless.
In America
we currently live in an era of socio-political turmoil and uncertainty as
pointed out in last month’s installment. That of America’s “lone superpower” has
come to an end and efforts to recreate the past century’s glories are doomed to
fail in spite of the promises our would-be presidents are currently making
during their debates. But for students of history this is not unprecedented. All
empires give way at some point and the attendant dislocations are always
painful. The Western Roman Empire decayed after Constantine and was first
replaced by the so-called “dark ages” and subsequently medievalism, The Eastern
portion held out longer until it succumbed to the Muslim onslaught. The glory
of the “Roi-Soleil,” Louis XIV, gave way to the more somber
assessment by his successor, Louis XV, who commented on the coming revolution
with: aprésmoi
le deluge.
The
way for “the Flood” was paved by the philosophes of whom Francois-Marie Arouet, pen name Voltaire (1694-1778), and Jean Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778) are best known. For the current context Voltaire is more relevant.
In his most popular novel Candide,oul‘Optimisme he satirized the notion that regardless what
happens in life it is always for the best. It is now called called the “silver
lining” of untoward events and as noted above I look for it in my own life, although
it can only be perceived in retrospect. There are numerous bon mots ascribed to Voltaire but for the current purpose
ÉCRASEZ L’ INFÂME
is the most important. The phrase has been translated
in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “crush the infamous thing,” which merely
shows the difficulties translators have to express the meaning of a succinct
French statement. The verb écrasez provides no problem because it does mean crush, L’Infâme is more difficult because it exists in French
dictionaries only as an adjective where it stands for: infamous; vile; or base.
What Voltaire meant by elevating an adjective to a noun was the abuse of power
by the church and royal absolutism as expressed by Louis XIV “L’Ėtatc’estmoi”–I am the
state. These revered institutions had to be crushed in addition to any kind of
dogma that limits the human spirit from free interrogation and discourse. Since
this is precisely what is needed today I have capitalized and set off the
phrase in its original French.
In
the West the Church has largely lost its power to physically punish its “black
sheep.” Although in certain Christian denominations, such as the prevailing one
in Utah, it is basically in control of the legislature. In private lives
malcontents are not only expelled from the faith but also frequently ostracized
by their family members. The power of misguided faith in the Muslim world is,
of course, today’s worldwide problem. But as mentioned above, it is not only
religious dogma which is L’Infâme. In the West it is the secular dogma with which
the religious one of the Middle East is to be defeated. This will never work
because violence, regardless of cause, tends to breed further violence in the
never ending spiral of ever more devastating wars.
What
would be needed to bring this disastrous state to a halt is for us to finally
heed the message of compassion as taught by the Buddha, and of agápē by Jesus. I am deliberately using the Greek word
of the New Testament that is translated as love because the translation
includes erotic love while agápē
deals exclusively with love’s spiritual component. There will be no peace for
Americans unless or until we as individuals and subsequently our elected
leaders make the mental quantum jump from Christi-anity
to Christi-amity as discussed here in the December 2010 issue.
We
now have to ask ourselves if this is obvious why people, and especially our
leaders, are not doing so. The reason is quite simple. It requires the effort
of independent thinking which is regarded as a luxury one doesn’t have time
for. In addition it can, of course, be dangerous as the statements in regard to
9/11 showed. While loss of job tends to be the punishment in our current society
it was worse under the Nazi regime. This is why we were told in the Wehrmacht:
leave the thinking to the horses, they have the bigger heads. Karl Pribram who recently summarized his neurophysio/psychological
lifetime work in The Form Within,
used a quote by the educator John Dewey:
The man in the street, when asked what he thinks
about a certain matter, often replies, that he doesn’t think at all, he knows.
The suggestion is that thinking is a case of active uncertainty set over
against conviction or unquestioning assurance.
When
one now considers that these are America’s voters, who decide on who will
become president of the country one can only shudder at the consequences of
this state of affairs. But it does explain the dire straits our country is in
as has been documented in previous installments.
The
physician has not only to make a correct diagnosis he also needs to suggest the
right treatment. In the case of our society we urgently need to rethink our
relationship to “the other.” Specifically each one of us should answer the
question: Who am I? Am I apart from others, or a part of others? The answer will
be fundamental for the future conduct of the person. If we were to truly
believe and actually were convinced that each one of us is only one part of an
immense whole to which one has to constructively contribute we would become
caretakers instead of exploiters.
Will
Durant firmly believed in the “one part” aspect. According
to Wikipedia, he was approached in1944 by a prominent Christian and a Jewish
leader to start “a movement, to raise moral standards.” Durant suggested instead
that they start a movement against racial intolerance, which at that time
included foremost the persecution of Jews. He then began to formulate in his
mind a “Declaration of Interdependence” which was formally read in March of 1945
at a gala dinner in Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel. For good measure it also was
read into the Congressional Record the following October. A copy can be found
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Interdependence.
It is obviously modeled after the Declaration of Independence with the “Whereas”
preamble followed by the “Therefore.” Although the title emphasizes Interdependence
that can be broadly interpreted to include the entire organic world, the actual
content was limited to mutual tolerance of all human beings regardless of race,
color or creed.
This was necessitated at the time by the war effort but now we
have to stress Interdependence in its broadest sense. Pope Francis and likeminded
others are trying to hammer it into our conscience, but judging by the response
he receives, as seen by the actions of our political leadership, success does
not seem to be in the immediate offing. Nevertheless we need to persevere
because in contrast to what our politicians want from us, namely to live in
fear of what “the other” will do to us, this is an effort upon which our
survival as a species may well depend. I am not the only one who feels this
way. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has restarted its Doomsday Clock
which was stopped at the end of the Cold War. It is now 3 minutes before
midnight when human life is supposed to terminate on our planet if the current
political course is maintained. http://thebulletin.org/three-minutes-and-counting7938.
Obviously this is another inconvenient reminder by scientists that will be
ignored by the media and our leadership. But listening to the debates of our
Republican presidential contenders and their plans for our country, if one of
them were to be elected in November, the clock may then well have to be reset
to one or two minutes before midnight. Time is running out and “business as
usual” simply will not do anymore; metanoia
- rethinking is urgently required.
Faith and its counterpart, doubt, are part of the human
condition. But we must guard against falling into either extreme to the
exclusion of the other. The danger lies in intolerance that breeds mental
aberrations, including delusions, which are presented as “reason,” “science” or
both. Voltaire’s crush infamy was an
attempt to abolish the misuse of authority but when we look at the result it
must be regarded as a failure. The subsequent French revolution led not only to
the erection of the statue of the “Goddess of Reason” in Notre Dame Cathedral, but
in in the same year, 1793, La Terreurwas initiated when thousands were sent to the
guillotine. This was followed by the Napoleonic wars, nationalism, as well as numerous
other “isms” in defense of which wars were fought. Their attendant evils far outshine
those that were committed by the Church and absolute monarchs.
“Crushing” convictions that run counter to one’s own is still
the preferred method of dealing with them. Yet it is counterproductive because,
as history has abundantly shown, the end of each war contains the seed for the
next one. The time may have come to replace Voltaire’s “crush infamy,” with “expose
infamy.” This was theoretically the function of the press, but since it has
been bought by the ruling circles it has become a propaganda tool for their pet
delusions. Nevertheless, we have the Internet where freedom of thought and
speech still exist. While it also provides patently false information, it does offer
the opportunity to look at a large variety of opinions from which an informed
judgment can arise. Once a conclusion on a given topic is reached and before
action in word or deed is advocated one should consider the physician’s prime
directive: nil nocere.
Whatever course of action is advocated one must first consider the potential harm
to others rather than one’s own benefit. Slogans such as: “the end justifies
the means,” and “right or wrong my country,” need to be exposed as false
thinking and then abandoned in whatever guise they night make their
re-appearance. I am specifically referring to the obsession of our current crop
of Republican presidential aspirants with “national security” regardless of the
means to achieve it. If we had an “educated public” it would reject these
notions and eventually a nucleus of responsible people would emerge that would then
reset the course of our country in the direction our founders had in mind. This
fervent wish may also be a delusion, but at least it is a noble one and ought
to be worked towards.
March 1, 2016
DOOMSDAY
In the February installment I
mentioned that the “Doomsday Clock,” which graces the cover page of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
currently stands at 3 minutes before midnight which symbolizes the advent of a global
catastrophe. The Bulletin was founded
jointly by Eugene Rabinowitch, professor of Botany
and Biophysics at the University of Illinois, with physicist Hyman Goldsmith in
the aftermath of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The date of the 1st
edition was December 10, 1945 and its rationale is expressed in the first
sentences. Under the headline: PEARL HARBOR ANNIVERSARY and the MOSCOW
CONFERENCE they wrote:
On this fourth
anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, American public opinion seems to be
much more concerned with assessing the responsibility for the disaster which
occurred four years ago, than with preventing a future “Pearl Harbor” on a
continental scale which may occur four years from now. … This catastrophe will
be inevitable if we do not succeed in banishing war from this world.
The
contributors to the Bulletin
represent academia, including 18 Nobel Laureates, and they intend to warn our
political leaders of the foreseeable consequences their decisions will have. It
appears bi-monthly and by 1947 this informal group had become so concerned
about the political direction the United States had embarked on, that they put
a symbolic clock face on the cover of each issue that estimated the time left
before a global nuclear catastrophe could be reasonably expected to occur. The
clock was initially set at 7 minutes before midnight, and it has been updated
on a yearly basis ever since. Originally the clock setting depended entirely on
the nuclear issue but in 2007 the threat associated with climate change was
added.
The June 1947 date for adding the
clock on the cover was not arbitrary but in response to the American foreign
policy course that had been set during the previous 12 months, and especially
in the first five months of that year. Let us now briefly review the
antecedents. In February of 1945, at Yalta, Churchill and Stalin had agreed on
mutual spheres of influence in Europe; the Eastern portion would be allotted to
the Soviet Union and the Western to Britain. Churchill had assumed that Stalin
would allow free parliamentary elections in Eastern Europe but when Stalin
instead established “Peoples Democracies” in all the countries where the Soviet
Union had soldiers on the ground (with exception of Germany and Austria which
were occupied by the four wartime allies in their respective zones), he felt
himself betrayed. His famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College on
March 5, 1946 was intended to alert Americans to the danger they faced if the
Soviet Union were to be allowed to persist in its efforts to subvert the “free
world.” He was, of course out of office, and Clement Attlee had to deal with
the problems Churchill had left behind.
Toward the end of the European phase of
WWII a civil war erupted in Greece. The communist side was supported by Albania
and Yugoslavia while the government received aid from Great Britain. Stalin
honored the Yalta agreement and did not interfere. But the war had left the
British nearly bankrupt and the Attlee government did not have the financial resources
to keep up these costs. Foreign expenditures, which also included the ongoing
war with the Zionists in Palestine and the turmoil in India, had to be
drastically reduced and the U.S. had to step into the breach. This was the
cause of the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) which initiated what later became
known as the Cold War. Truman asked Congress for $400 million to support both
Greece and Turkey against potential communist take-overs and his view was
shaped by George Kennan’s (Ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time) “Long
Telegram.” The content was classified but Kennan published his opinion in the
July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym X. Détente, a relaxation
of tensions, was to be replaced by containment, although a “rollback” was not
necessarily envisioned. Nevertheless the Soviet system was seen as being
permanently at war with capitalism and that it would use any and all means to
gain the upper hand. This was to be avoided at all cost. That this was an
assumption rather than fact and that the Soviet Union had prior to WWII
peacefully co-existed with the West, even under Stalin’s rule, was not taken
into account. As has been so amply demonstrated here and elsewhere, politicians
and their propaganda machines elevate assumptions to dogmas that have to be
adhered to. Thus 1946-1947 was the time frame when America embarked on its
mission of preserving the “free world,” which also included military
dictatorships as long as they were right- rather than left-wing. After the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, containment had lost its purpose and the time
had come for “roll-back” with the destruction of any government that did not
conform to Washington’s desires.
These years were also the origin of
America’s current military strategy which pretends to have the ability to win
wars on the cheap by strategic bombing. During WWII the U.S. also had
accumulated a massive deficit and the military budget had to be reduced. The
ensuing battle between Navy and Air Force commanders has become known as the Admiral’s
Revolt. The Air Force insisted that future wars would be won by atomic
annihilation of the enemy and there was, therefore, no need to spend much money
on the Army and the Navy. The admirals obviously did not relish having their
budget cut to the bone, especially when they already had commissioned the
building of another aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Forestall. They insisted that
the Air Force’s plan of strategic bombing, which foremost destroys civilian
lives, is not only immoral but cannot achieve its objective of winning a war.
Regardless of the merits of each case, bombers vs. carriers, the real question
was which branch of the Pentagon should get the lion’s share of limited funds.
The Air force won and the Forestall contract had to be canceled.The National Security Act, which turned these
policies into law, and also gave us the CIA, was introduced in the Senate in
March of 1947 and signed by Truman in July.
It is important for our citizenry, most
of whom were not yet born when these fundamental policy
decisions were made, to understand this background. The faulty doctrine of
waging war by air power alone, with or without nuclear weapons is still with us
and is likely to lead to the catastrophe all of us want to avoid. As mentioned,
initially the doomsday clock was set at 7 minutes before midnight. The shortest
time span, 2 minutes, was in 1953. The U.S. had successfully tested its first
thermonuclear device, and the Soviet Union reciprocated nine months later.
Thereafter the clock readings varied with the political events. The missile
crisis of October 1963 was too short to affect the clock setting although it
would have to have been less than 1 minute. It read 7 minutes at the end of the
Carter administration but was moved to 4 after Reagan’s election who had
promised an arms build-up. The hand was moved to 3 after the decision to deploy
Pershing and medium range ballistic missiles in Europe but moved back to 6
after the treaty to eliminate medium range nuclear missiles was signed. In
1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was set back to 17 minutes. But
from 1995 on the slide to the current 3 minutes began because the nuclear
issue, including its waste products, remained unresolved and global climate
change has become a threat. As mentioned last month the atomic scientists may
have to advance the clock to 2 or 1 minute, especially if one of the Republican
candidates were to win the November elections because all insist that this is
the “American century” and that we will bend the rest of the world to our will.
The Christian notion of a “doomsday”
originated from The Revelation of St.
John the Divine which forms the last chapter of the New Testament. I have
discussed this document in The Jesus
Conundrum as well as in “The Unholy Alliance” (May 1, 2002). Its
antecedents were presented in Whither
Zionism?and since this material is available on
this site I shall procced only with a summary and some additional information
that was acquired since the previous publications. The seminal text is the Old
Testament Book of Daniel. According to Matthew and Mark its apocalyptic
component was used by Jesus to warn his disciples about the impending disaster.
The words are practically identical in these gospels indicating a common
source. In the King James translation the key verse in regard to the event that
will precede the disaster is:
When ye,
therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, the
prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let
him understand). Then let them which be in Judaea flee
into the mountains … [Mtt 24:15-16] …, or … where it
ought not … [Mark 13:14].
The gospel of Luke omits the reference
to Daniel’s prophecy and lists the warning as “And when you see Jerusalem
compassed with armies, then know that the desolation
thereof is nigh. …” (Luke 22:20). It is not contained in the gospel of John.
Over the ensuing millennia a great
deal of speculation, and subsequently scholarly investigations of this passage,
has ensued. It is now agreed by the academic community that the Book of Daniel
is not a “prophecy” in the sense the word is used today. Its author did not
live in Persia during the Babylonian captivity predicting the future of Judaea,
but referred to then current events in Palestine. Scholars observed that the
apocalyptic portion of the narrative shows close correspondence to the
persecution of the Jewish religion during the Maccabean wars and it ends just
before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BC). The “fourth horn,”
i.e. kingdom, referred to Greece and the wars of the King of the South against
the King of the North were fought between Alexander the Great’s successors: the
Ptolemy’s of Egypt and the Seleucids of Asia.
This leaves us with Jesus’ mysterious
“abomination of desolation,” which Luther translated, from the Greek of the New
Testament, as “Greuel der Verwüstung.”It should be noted that the passage which
occurs in Christian Bibles in Dn. 9:27 is now given various translations but
the words “abomination of desolation” were taken from the Septuagint, the Greek
translation of the Old Testament that was used by the gospel writers. Scholars
agree that this passage refers to the erection of a statue of Zeus in the
Jerusalem Temple that bore the likeness of Antiochus IV. The Messianic Kingdom
for the “Holy People” was supposed to arrive when this abomination was removed
and the Temple rededicated to the service of the Lord.
This event did take place in 163 BC
and the Jewish state was re-established as a theocracy. But states have limited
life expectancies, and internal squabbles with continuing civil wars made the
country ungovernable. When the Roman general Pompey arrived on an inspection
tour of the Near East responsible citizens appealed to him to bring order to
the chaos. Jerusalem’s gates were supposed to have been opened for him but when
his emissary arrived he found them locked. One of the warring parties had
promised more then it could deliver and Pompey felt betrayed. He captured the
city and laid siege to the temple where the rebels had barricaded themselves.
Upon its capture Pompey paid a visit, but didn’t take any of its treasures.
Nevertheless, Jewish nationhood had ended for the third time.
Although these historical facts are not
commonly brought to the attention of the public we should never forget them. In
addition, we ought to remember that the original cause of the desecration of
the Temple under Epiphanes IV was due to internal Jewish rivalries over the
High Priesthood. Furthermore, we must realize that the Temple was not only a
religious institution. It served as the central bank for the country and the
High Priest was in control of finances. It is, therefore, no wonder that the
position was highly desirable, frequently intensely fought, and occasionally
killed for. The gospel narrative of Jesus chasing out the “money changers”
needs to be seen in this light. It was probably this act more than any others
that the Jewish authorities could not tolerate and which sealed his fate.
The Roman occupiers had, like the Greeks
before them, little taste for what may be called Jewish particularism. While
they did not interfere with the religion they did not tolerate nationalistic
aspirations. This applied also to their puppet King, Herod the Great, who
rebuilt the Temple on a grand scale, and vigorously suppressed what we would
today call “terrorists” or “freedom fighters,” depending upon which side one
supports. His successors were incompetent and the Romans were asked to provide
a procurator who would see to it that law and order prevailed again in the
country. Augustus complied, but the Jewish petitioners had not carefully
considered their request. The old saying: “be careful what you wish for because
you just might get it” proved to be true. Some of the procurators cared little
for the country and its people and were mainly concerned about enriching
themselves during their tour of duty in that undesired posting.
Rebellions again arose which culminated
in the Jewish War against Rome (66-73 AD) that was so eloquently reported by
Josephus. This book should be a “must read” by every educated person,
especially our politicians and current presidential aspirants. Although it is
“ancient history,” human behavior has not changed in the intervening millennia
and the current powers in Jerusalem seem to be bent on repeating the previous
mistakes. Since the book is important in relation to current events I have
excerpted the most relevant sections in Whither
Zionism?and can be downloaded from this site. The
destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. was not necessarily due to Roman malice;
it again had been turned into a fortress where the rebels made their last
stand. It was another self-inflicted wound.
It does not behoove us to blame the
Romans for cruelty and lack of appreciation of cultural values because war is
war. I have no doubt that the American forces would have destroyed Rome and the
Vatican during WWII if the Germans had defended it to the last soldier instead
of declaring it an “open city.” The leaders of Jerusalem’ revolt also had this
option in 70 AD. They had previously used it on other occasions, but failed to
do so at that time. A large part of the reason was their mental outlook. This
is currently not properly appreciated, but highly important.
The rebellion received its spiritual
nourishment through a variety of “prophetic” books that in retrospect can be
regarded, from a secular perspective, as propaganda tracts. The apocalypse in
the book of Daniel, written during Antiochus’ persecutions, was only the first
of several other similar “revelations” during the 1st and beginning
2nd century AD; that of St. John was merely the Christian version.
Their purpose was to strengthen the faithful during persecutions and thereby,
directly or indirectly, create the mental climate for the wished for final
result to take place. All of them painted the misery of the Jewish people in
dire colors and foresaw a great war of “Good against Evil.” After much
suffering and a variety of disasters it would end with the triumph of the “Holy
People” and the messianic kingdom would then endure for eternity.
These nationalistic treatises fostered
the hope that the Greeks, and thereafter the Romans, could be defeated. But
this hope was unrealistic. It led to the disaster in 70 AD as well as the
subsequent even worse one of the Bar Cochba revolt (132-136), who was hailed as
the Messiah. His rule was short lived and resulted in the total destruction of
the country which practically became uninhabitable. This was doomsday for the
inhabitants of Judaea, except that the ending profoundly differed from what had
been promised. Christians, for whom Jesus was the Messiah, refused to take part
in the rebellion which cemented the final split between the two religions.
The St. John apocalypse follows the model
of the preceding Jewish ones. It seems to have been written just prior to the
Bar Cochba war and apparently refers to the era of Domitian’s persecutions. He
did not distinguish between Christians and Jews and the former were merely
regarded as a sect of the latter. When he titled himself Dominus et Deus noster
- Lord/Master and our god, he became anathema to both Jews and Christians.
For Jews the situation was even worse because rumor had it that he was about to
repeat Antiochus’ mistake of erecting a statue of himself, under the guise of
Zeus, in Jerusalem. This is regarded as having triggered the revolt.
When I first read St. John’s apocalypse,
without awareness of the scholarly background that has been related above, I
was struck that it consisted of two parts. The first one contains epistles to
Christian communities in seven cities of Asia Minor, and the second apocalyptic
visions. These conform to Jewish rather than Christian thought patterns. They
are full of blood and gore and one meets a vengeful Yahweh rather than Jesus’
loving Father. Subsequent investigations showed that the author is indeed
regarded as a Jewish convert who thought in Hebrew/Aramaic. Although the book
is written in Greek the author had not properly mastered the language. This is
in contrast to the writings of the gospel of John, the Greek of which is
regarded as impeccable.
When reading the relevant literature I
also noted that the St. John apocalypse bears a striking resemblance to that of
Esdras and it seems that this book may have served as the main model. These
studies of the origin of biblical writings are highly relevant for our time
because our politicians are currently embarked on a course that will indeed
lead to a similar disaster as befell the Jewish people nearly two millennia ago
but on a much larger scale. The new Romans, the American people, have been
yoked to the Israeli wagon under the term of the “Judeo-Christian” faith which
demands our defense of Israeli policies regardless how harmful they may
actually be, not only to their, but to our country and the world at large.
In the May 1, 2002 issue I described the
“Unholy Alliance” between America’s “Evangelicals” and Jewish Zionists which is
against our best national interest. We have forgotten George Washington’s admonition
to stay away from foreign entanglements. We also have forgotten that the use of
religion for political goals, especially nationalistic ones, has always led to
catastrophes. Unfortunately, our Evangelicals have fallen victim to the same
type of thinking that doomed Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago. In the current
presidential campaign the contenders chase not only after the Jewish but also
the Evangelical vote with the latter group frequently acting more Jewish than
Jews. There is dissent in Israel, as well as in our Jewish community, about its
role towards the Palestinians and the world at large. But that no such thoughts
are permitted in our political arena was made clear in the February 24
Republican debate. America must not be an “honest broker” between Jews and
Palestinians but has to follow the dictates of the present day Maccabees. Yet,
hardly any one of our politicians seems to have read what the Maccabean era was
like and my effort to inform them by sending Whither Zionism?to all members of the
Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, was a
complete failure. I had spent my money on this venture because I thought that
we have a Republic where the voices of citizens are listened to. The intention
was to inform them that the unresolved conflict of the state of Israel with the
conquered Palestinian people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza was going to
lead to a disaster. There was no reply to all these letters. But about a year
and a half later I received a phone call from a senator’s aide who told me that
the senator does not accept gifts and asked what he should do with the book:
Read it! was my answer.
Most people watching last week’s
Republican debate were probably unaware that the statements by four of the presidential
aspirants reflected Zionist propaganda rather than facts, although it was
proclaimed with great moral conviction. These would-be presidents of our
country appeared to be completely ignorant of past history and that they were
advocating a course that would lead to a re-enactment of past events. This
bodes ill for our country. If as a result of these false policies a global
doomsday in form of mushroom clouds were to arrive, our Evangelicals should now
know that they would have had a major share in this disaster. The firm belief
in the authenticity and applicability to our time of St. John the Divine’s
visions is likely to become one of the catalysts for the catastrophe, since it
includes the conviction that through these disasters the messianic kingdom will
arrive. This is precisely what the Jewish leadership in the years between 66
and 136 expected and that outcome is known. Christians should not repeat this
failed experiment. Global doomsday is not fore-ordained as St. John’s
revelation wants us to believe. The future is still in our hands and we bear
the responsibility for it.
Our Evangelicals, especially
politicians, who claim to be “born again Christians,” should think again what
the term actually means. A number of those who are in positions of power
certainly don’t act according to what Jesus taught. Former President George W.
Bush is a prime example. He publicly declared himself a “born again Christian”
and refused to listen to the sage advice of his elders, including his father.
He told us that he listens to “a higher father.” This could not have been the
Father of Jesus because greed (Iraq’s oil) and pride (wiser than his father who
limited the Iraq campaign to the liberation of Kuwait) are two of the seven
deadly sins. The idea that once you have “received Jesus” you are saved for
eternity, is a fruit of pride and should be abandoned.
Our capacity to sin remains with us throughout our lives and only ceases at
death. The “saving grace of Jesus” should be regarded as potential rather than
an accomplished fact. It demands a conduct throughout our entire lives that
makes us worthy of it. This is a day to day task rather than a single event of
grace when thereafter it’s “business as usual.” Evangelicals, especially their
leaders, should take these thoughts to heart, meditate on them, and then,
hopefully, change their conduct to one that helps all and hurts none.
I have used the term sin, which may be
objected to by non-religious persons, but this objection loses its value when
one realizes that the New Testament was written in Greek and hamartánō, that has been translated as sin, means
“missing the mark.” It can, therefore, apply to all endeavors that are commonly
called misguided or wrong-headed. Jesus’ fundamental message was “Metanoéte, the
kingdom of God is at hand.” Metanoéte was translated as “repent,” but it has a wider
meaning in the sense of a commandment to “change thinking habits.” When one
does so, one also realizes that the Kingdom of God need not be a geographic
location somewhere in the universe but is an inner state of peace and
contentment. It can then lead to a conduct, in Lincoln’s words, of “malice
towards none, with charity for all.”This is what we should strive for as it may be the only way to avoid the
“prophesied” doomsday.
April 1, 2016
TWIN SPECTERS HAUNTING AMERICA’S POLITICIANS
“It wasn’t supposed to have been like
this, it wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all …” is the paraphrased theme
of one of Gordon Bok’s ballads about the Sea. It referred to the fact that the
fishing grounds had been depleted and that the fishermen now had to move on to
another more distant bay. The upcoming November presidential election also was
not supposed to have been like this. It was expected to be straight forward. The
Bush-Clinton dynasties were to have been re-anointed by their respective
parties and “business as usual” was to have reemerged. But as the proverb says:
“none are so blind as they who don’t want to see.”
Our Republicans, especially, have
misread the change in the mental attitude of the country that was heralded with
Obama’s 2008 election, which I called at the time a “tectonic shift” (November
6, 2008).” They regarded it as a temporary aberration
and vowed that he would not be allowed to succeed. The white middle and upper
class establishment expected to regain power with the next election. It was not
to be; Obama was re-elected. The Republican political leadership learned
nothing from these defeats and thought that one of their candidates would
easily win the nomination and then the presidency. But they lived in the 1980’s
with Saint Ronald as their role model. More than thirty years have passed since
Reagan’s inauguration and the country has fundamentally changed since that
time. In addition the Republicans now live by the Reagan myth rather than the
Reagan facts.
I owe the title of this essay to two
young revolutionary atheists who met in a Paris coffee-house. They soon became
friends, and with their combined intellects wrote pamphlets and books that
profoundly changed the world. Discerning readers will, of course, immediately
recognize that I am talking about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who published
on February 24, 1848 the Manifest der KommunistischenPartei;
better known, in its English translation, as The Communist Manifesto. Its first sentence reads: “Ein Gespenstgeht um in Europa – das Gespenst
des Kommunismus. A specter haunts Europe – the specter
of communism.”
The reason for bringing up this document
now is to demonstrate that when ideas are first pronounced they are ridiculed
as well as ignored but some of them refuse to die. They lie more or less
dormant until times change sufficiently for their enactment. This fundamental
fact also underlies the purpose of these essays: to put current events in their
historical context. Americans are no longer taught history and are, therefore,
incapable of learnings its lessons. This is why the country re-enacts European
imperialism and the unbridled “Manchester capitalism” that gave rise to
Europe’s revolutions of the 19th and 20th century.
The Manifesto was first published during
the Paris Revolution of February 1848, but with the defeat of that attempt by
students and manual workers to gain a voice in affairs of state it lingered in
obscurity until the next French Revolution of 1871 when in March of that year
the Paris Commune briefly established a communist regime. The Franco-Prussian War
ended the rule of Napoleon III’s Second Empire in 1870, and a provisional
Republican government was established. It resided at Versailles because the left
leaning Parisian populace was regarded as untrustworthy to accept the financial
burdens the country was forced to adopt in order to rid itself of German
occupation. As the March 1871 events showed, this precaution was justified and
the Paris spring rebellion was crushed by government forces within two months.
Nevertheless, since the causes of the revolt had only been partially remedied
the Communist Manifesto entered in the ensuing decades its glory days with
translations into the world’s major languages. After Marx’s death in 1883, Engels
brought the Manifesto as well as Das Kapital up to date and by 1894 these documents had
achieved their final form. They became Vladimir Ulyanov’s and Lev Davidovich Bronstein’s Holy Writ. These two comrades in
arms are, of course, better known by their nom de guerre as Lenin and Trotsky. Just
as in the case of Marx and Engels the junior partner was actually the more
effective one. Without Engels’ financial support of Marx’s writings as well as direct
stipends to Marx and his family, the books would never have seen the light of
day. A similar situation pertained to the other duo. The so-called October/November
(depending upon which calendar one uses) 1917 Revolution that established the
Soviet Union, and thereby provided the basis for the enactment of Marx/Engels’ political
ideas, was actually a Putsch against the Kerensky government carried out by
Trotsky with a handful of followers. They toppled the legitimate government within
one night while Lenin was still exiled in Finland. The popular revolution which
forced the Czar’s abdication had already occurred in February of that year.
Marxist-Leninist type communism went
against human nature and died a natural death with the collapse of the Soviet
Union. The Marx-Engels philosophy had, however, spawned a number of socialist
movements that were less radical. They permitted some degree of private
property and retained the family unit as the basis for a sound economy. In this
manner the socialists achieved political equality with the more conservative
elements of European society after WWI and especially after WWII. The specter
of communism has been laid to rest in contemporary European society.
The twin specters that haunt American
politicians at this time go by the names of “The Donald” for Republicans, and
“Bernie” for Democrats. The ascendancy of either one was quite unexpected and
the respective party leaderships are at a loss with how to deal with these
phenomena. Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont who competes with Hillary Clinton
for the nomination, is an anomaly in American politics. Although running on the
Democrat ticket he calls himself unabashedly “a socialist” on the European model.
He does so knowing fully well that the U.S. by and large still lives in a
mental framework that equates socialism with communism and that his chances of
winning the presidency are next to nil. Nevertheless the huge turnout of young
voters “for Bernie” in this primary season is an unexpected portent that sends
shivers down the backs of the more conservative elements in the party even when
they call themselves “progressive.” I shall discuss the Bernie phenomenon in a
subsequent issue and now discuss only his “Republican” counterpart Donald
Trump.
I have placed “Republican” in quotes
because just like Bernie he only uses the party label as a means for election,
since Independents, to whom he really belongs, have at this time no chance of
winning. Not only is Trump truly independent of the party hierarchy but he also
claims, as a billionaire, to be self-funding his candidacy. When he announced
his candidacy the powers in the Republican Party laughed and were certain that
this act of lunacy on his part was just a blip on the electoral radar screen that
would vanish as soon as the first votes were cast. They were forced to have
second thoughts when he systematically demolished his opponents in the debates
on a one by one basis. On August 6 of last year there were ten presidential
hopefuls that shared the stage at the debate. Now there are only three
remaining with Trump enjoying a considerable advantage over his rivals in the
delegate count.
I must admit that I did not watch all of
the Republican debates up to now. There were too many, and the rhetoric soon
became redundant. Those that I did see were, however, sufficient to form an
initial view of how he acts and what he stands for. Trump clearly dominated the
scene while being aided and abetted by the questioning media personalities. He
got the lions’ share of questions to which he responded with gusto. His method
of dealing with the co-contenders for the crown of nomination in the debates or
on social media was simple and ruthless. He belittled them. Marco Rubio was “little
Marco”, Ted Cruz “a pussy”, Jeb Bush “a stiff you wouldn’t hire in private
enterprise”, Governor Kasich a “weak baby,” and Dr. Carson was faulted for his
“pathological temper.” It is true, however, that some
of his opponents likewise descended into the gutter and the debates, apart from
the last one, became a circus rather than reasoned discourse. Governor Kasich
remained on the sidelines while the others hurled insults at each other.
The demeaning of his opponents reminded
me of Hitler’s characterization of Western politicians. They were “worms,” as
he had found out during the 1938 Munich Conference. The campaign slogan “Make
America great again” had its counterpart in Germany’s restoration to greatness
and instead of SiegHeil we are
treated to fervent shouts of “USA, USA” by Trump’s supporters who also have
started to imitate the SA by punching protesters at their meetings. The
language Trump uses is likewise vulgar and designed to appeal to the passions
of the underprivileged. He speaks off the cuff and fact checking is not one of
his virtues. Trump has already been compared to Mussolini but the Hitler comparison
is not yet en vogue because the latter is in American
circles nearly exclusively identified with the atrocities of WWII. But there
was a Hitler before 1938/1939 when the world woke up to the problem he
presented. It behooves us to pay just as much attention to the factors that
brought him to power as his conduct thereafter. For me there is simply no
denying the déjà vu of my adolescent years I experience when I watch the rise
of this new Messiah.
Hitler’s antisemitism finds its
counterpart in Trump’s treatment of Muslims. No distinction is made between
Muslim terrorists and ordinary people who either want to visit or live in
America in order to better their lives. All of them need to be prevented from
entry into this country. Other parallels with the Fuehrer’s conduct are the
boasting about his achievements and the use of massive exaggerations to make a
point. According to Trump, on 9/11 thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey
when the Towers came down. Our media were quick to expose this falsehood but
they failed to mention the source of this rumor. There was indeed some joy expressed
on the Jersey shore at that moment, but it was not by Muslims. A New Jersey
housewife who had a good look at the Towers from the rear window of her
apartment had watched the disaster but noted something else that struck her as
quite unusual. There was a white van in the parking lot with three people on
top who were filming the event. They were not shocked by it but appeared happy
and congratulated each other. This incongruous behavior prompted the lady to
write down the license plate and notify the authorities. It was then determined
that the van belonged to an Israeli moving company and the young men were
Israeli citizens connected to some extent with the Mossad. After lengthy
interrogations, which included lie detector tests, they were returned to
Israel. This event has never been properly reported by our official media but
there is considerable information on the Internet. An article based on recently
declassified FBI documents can be found at http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/11/911-revisited-declassified-fbi-files-reveal-new-details-about-the-five-israelis.
There exists, however, also footage by
MSNBC showing some Palestinians in the West Bank, especially children and young
men, celebrating what was purported to be the destruction of the WTC.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOZvbYJMvU.
It would seem that Trump
had conflated and exaggerated these stories during his speech in Birmingham
Alabama last November when he said that “thousands and thousands of people
[Muslims] were cheering as that building was coming down.” The speech, which
can be viewed on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p14xqPjKNA,
is a typical example of Trump’s oratory in regard to style and content. The day after the speech George Stephanopoulos
interviewed Trump and after showing the video clip dealing with the cheering
Muslims he took issue with the statement. This interview is important because
it shows Trump’s modus operandi. Here are the relevant segments from http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/22/abcs-george-stephanopoulos-fact-checks-donald-t/207020STEPHANOPOULOS:
“STEPHANOPOULOS:
You know, the police say that didn't happen and all
those rumors have been on the Internet for some time.
So
did you meek -- misspeak yesterday?
TRUMP:
It did happen. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS:
You saw that...
TRUMP:
It was on television. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS:
-- with your own eyes.
TRUMP:
George, it did happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS:
Police say it didn't happen.
TRUMP:
There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you
have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came
down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but
there were people cheering as that building came down -- as those buildings
came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time,
George.
Now,
I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time.
There
were people over in New Jersey that were watching it,
a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not
good.
STEPHANOPOULOS:
As I said, the police have said it didn't happen. …”
Well, anybody can make a mistake but when it is pointed out one should
correct rather than embellish it further. It should, however, also be mentioned
that the official media were, and still are, remarkably silent over the affair
of the Israeli “art students” in relation to 9/11 (9/11 Remembered. October 1,
2011).
On March 21
Trump used the invitation by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to assure this powerful lobbying group of his devotion not
only to the state of Israel but also its Prime Minister Netanyahu. He was, of
course, not the only one, all the current candidates for the presidency
regardless of political party had been invited and all with one exception had
accepted. Bernie Sanders, as a Jew, did not feel the need to spout phrases he
did not believe in and instead of going to Alabama for the Conference went to
Utah. The effort was appreciated; he received a rousing welcome and
subsequently 80 per cent of the primary votes while Hillary had to make do with
the rest.
To get the
full flavor of what a Trump presidency would look like in his eyes I suggest
that the reader not only views the essentially off the cuff speech in
Birmingham, Alabama which contained the Muslim statement, but also the scripted
one, read from the teleprompter, before AIPAC that has been referred to as: “The Most Presidential Speech
By Donald Trump Ever. http://time.com/4267058/donald-trump-aipac-speech-transcript.
Some
key statements were:
My
number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been
in business a long time. I know deal-making. And let me tell you, this deal is
catastrophic for America, for Israel and for the whole of the Middle East. I
will adopt a strategy that focuses on three things when it comes to Iran.
First, we will stand up to Iran’s aggressive push to destabilize and dominate
the region.
Secondly, we will
totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network which is big and powerful, but
not powerful like us.
Third, at the very
least, we must enforce the terms of the previous deal to hold Iran totally
accountable. And we will enforce it like you’ve never seen a contract enforced
before, folks, believe me.
Which brings me to my
next point, the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations … An agreement
imposed by the United Nations [on the Palestinian issue] would be a total and
complete disaster. The United States must oppose this resolution and use the
power of our veto, which I will use as president 100 percent.
We’ll get it solved. One way or the
other, we will get it solved. We will move the
American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem….The
Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United
States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable. And they must come to the
table willing to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and it will forever exist
as a Jewish state. I love the people in this room. I love Israel. I love
Israel.
It is obvious that
the speech consisted of declaratory promises without any indication how these
objectives could be accomplished. He emphasized his negotiating skills, but he
does not want to negotiate in the usual sense of the word; he wants to dictate.
Negotiations consist of give and take and the outcome should be mutually
agreeable. But that is not what Trump has in mind. What would he offer the
Palestinians, for example, when Israel holds all the cards and is unwilling to
give up any? The phrase “one way or the other” we will get it solved also comes
right out of Hitler’s vocabulary who kept telling us that his solution to the
political problems of the day would be so
oder so. In other words, if the negotiating
partner does not agree to his terms military force will be used.
There was a sequel to
Trump’s performance. AIPAC’s President Lillian Pinkus
apologized for his demeaning comments about President Obama because the theme
of the Conference was unity instead of division. Several attendees were shocked
at the applause Trump received and Haaretz’s reporter
(Israel’s left wing paper) walked out in disgust. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/22/aipacs-apology-for-trump-speech-is-unprecedented.
Trump’s oratory may have helped him in Likud circles, but American Jews are by
and large liberal with little regard for the extreme right that currently holds
power in Israel.
One may now argue
that these are campaign speeches and one needs to look at his official program
as laid out on his website. When one goes to https://www.donaldjtrump.com one finds
under Positions: Healthcare Reform, U.S.-China Trade Reform, Veterans
Administration Reform, Tax Reform, Second Amendment Rights and Immigration
Reform.
As far as Healthcare is concerned “Obabamacare” would be repealed. Its place would mainly be
taken by health savings accounts and all health insurance premiums would be
fully tax-deductible. The “free market” would
supply insurance coverage opportunities and “basic options for Medicaid” would
be reviewed in order to ensure that “no one slips through the cracks simply
because they cannot afford insurance.” In addition existing laws that
inhibit the sale of health insurance across state lines would be modified and price transparency from all health care providers
would be required.
While this sounds
reasonable it omits the mindset of insurance companies which requires profits.
It is highly likely that with the repeal of Obamacare insurance premiums would
rise and in the interval before any new system can be put in place hundreds of
thousands if not millions would lose their current benefits. All of us should
remember that while Congress was still debating Obama’s proposals insurance
rates already went up and they were not reduced thereafter.
In regard to trade
with China the website offered four goals: 1. Bring
China to the bargaining tableby immediately declaring it a currency
manipulator. 2. Forcing China to uphold intellectual property laws and stop
their unfair and unlawful practice of forcing U.S. companies to share
proprietary technology with Chinese competitors as a condition of entry to
China’s market. 3.Reclaim millions of
American jobs and reviving American manufacturingby
puttingan
end to China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental
standards. 4. Strengthen our
negotiating position by lowering our corporate tax
rate to keep American companies and jobs here at home, attacking our
debt and deficit so China cannot use financial blackmail against us,
and bolstering the U.S. military presence in the East and South China
Seas to discourage Chinese adventurism.
These statements are either naïve or
cynical. He should have read Epictetus’ chapter on: What is or is not in our
power? Only point 4 can be regarded as being within the power of an American
president. In regard to the other three how will Mr. Trump react if he were to
receive the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Union’s famous: Nyet!
The Veterans administration reform
plan would ensure that all the health needs of veterans will be met in a timely
and appropriate manner. Corrupt and incompetent VA executives would be fired.
This is likewise easier said than done and the costs would yet have to be
determined.
In regard to tax reform individuals
whose income is less than $25,000, or married couples whose income is less than
$50,000, would pay no taxes. The current seven tax brackets would be reduced to
four: 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%. Business taxes, regardless of size would maximally
be 15% and inheritance taxes would be abolished. The site explains why this
reform would be “revenue neutral,” but I have to leave this aspect to CPAs
although the statements that most deductions and loopholes of the very rich
will be eliminated, is open to considerable doubt. As long as there is a tax
code and there are lawyers, the very rich will always find ways and means to
evade taxes.The only way to ensure that
this would be impossible would be the introduction of a flat tax that does not
allow any deduction whatsoever.
The Second Amendment rights (i.e.
carrying arms by individuals) would not be infringed and existing laws on the
purchase of firearms strictly enforced. Violent criminals would have to be more
seriously prosecuted and the mental health system “fixed.” “We need real
solutions to address real problems.” That is true, but again: what would the
“fixed” mental health system look like?
Finally: Immigration Reform. All of us
already know about the wall on our southern border Trump promised to build and
that would be paid for by Mexico. In addition the number of ICE (Immigration
and Customs Enforcement) officers would be tripled, all criminal aliens
deported, sanctuary cities defunded, penalties for overstaying a visa enhanced,
and birthright citizenship would be ended. The ban on Muslims entering the
country was not mentioned.
In summary one can say that Mr. Trump
hardly meets the qualifications one would hope an American president,
especially in these perilous times, to possess. He comes across as an angry,
narcissistic, boisterous person who believes that he can force his will upon
the rest of the world. His fund of general knowledge seems to be meager and a
statement that his book The Art of the
Deal is his “second favorite of all time,” should give one pause. He
allotted the number one spot to the Bible. But although he publicly stated that
he was a “strong Christian,” his conduct casts considerable doubt also on that
assertion.
When pressed for details or caught on a
fundamental reversal of previously held positions he resorted to “unpredictability”
as a virtue. While this may be appropriate for some circumstances in warfare,
the American public needs to know where its future president really stands on
vital issues and how he plans to enact his goals. Mr. Trump is not likely to
meet this standard and should not be elected.
The Republican establishment knows this
and is trying its best to exorcise this specter either during the remaining
primary season or at the Convention in July. But they are confronted with
another difficult problem. The heir they apparently want to anoint, Senator Ted
Cruz, is also a deeply flawed individual who is disliked even by his senatorial
colleagues. How a person like this can not only unite the party but win the
general election in November is what is proverbially called “a good question.”
The only Republican candidate who might be able to achieve this feat would be
Governor Kasich but he consistently fails to get traction in the polls.
When one considers all of these various
aspects in the context of the difficult state our country is in at present, one
begins to think that we really are at the end of an era. Similar to what
happened in Europe in the past two centuries this is likely to terminate either
in a popular revolt or a general war. Let us hope that history will not repeat itself
and that evolution towards a more sane and just society rather than revolution
will take place.
May 1, 2016
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
In the previous installment I presented
some of the reasons why I believe that Donald Trump should not be elected
President of this country in November. They are common knowledge and Republican
Party bosses are trying their best to get rid of this interloper and loose
cannon they cannot control. But this seems to become increasingly more
difficult. After Trump’s loss in Wisconsin there was hope in their circles that
they could derail the Trump bandwagon by putting all their resources, and most
of all the money, behind his only other viable challenger Ted Cruz. The
strategy was, and still is, to deny Trump the required 1273 delegates in order to
allow the Convention delegates to vote for an alternative standard bearer, who
by the laws of delegate arithmetic would in all probability be Ted Cruz. But
Trump’s triumph first in New York and subsequently the entire five northeastern
states seems to be making this plan considerably harder to execute.
We now must come to grips with the
fact that the US, which regards itself as the paragon of democratic values, is
in fact quite undemocratic because the popular vote, the expression of the will
of the actual adult population, is meaningless. The most recent example is the
2000 election when Al Gore had won the popular vote but fell short of delegates
in Florida where George W. Bush’s brother, Jeb, was governor at the time. Our
fate lies in the hands of party bosses and when all else fails in the Supreme
Court where nine unelected judges decide who should be President. Let us
remember that the disastrous Bush presidency was bestowed upon us by one vote
of the Supreme Court.
This is what Jefferson feared might
happen but in his days when the vast distances as well as the desire to
safeguard the rights of less populous States prevented a genuine democracy,
where the plurality of actual votes cast is the deciding factor. The choice of
Representative government was the only viable solution. But his was the 18th
century and nearly 250 years later we are still saddled with a system that is
outdated and may potentially paralyze the country. Let me now briefly explain
the current electoral system because the full dimension of its arcane nature
had until recently been unknown to me. I have previously discussed some aspects
(March 1, 2008 Voting in America) but it bears repeating and to expand on some
aspects. Nevertheless I must admit that although having tried to take a crash
course in electoral politics I’m still not clear on all aspects of this arcane
topic. But I am in good company in my relative ignorance. Last Sunday’s Parade
section of The Salt Lake Tribune had
a special section on “Does your Vote Count?’ by Kathleen McCleary
where she quoted, Associate Professor of political science at Fordham
University Christine Greer, “ For most Americans, even those who study it, the
process is still a mystery.”
Keeping the above in mind I will try to
unravel this mystery to at least some extent. The official election process
starts in the beginning of February when the Democrat and Republican Party of
each State, hold either a “Primary” or “Caucus” where delegates are chosen. The
major difference between the two methods, which are anchored in the laws of the
various States, is that the Primary voting process is essentially the same as
in the general election with the exception that, depending upon the State one lives in, voting for a given candidate may be restricted to
registered members of that Party. In Utah the Democrats allow any registered
voter to cast their vote for one of the various democratic contenders. The voting
results of a caucus are less representative for the district the caucus is held
in because only the most stalwart supporters of a given party will make the
effort to spend an evening being harangued by a number of speakers who extol
the virtues of their contender for the nomination.
Every State is thereafter confronted
with quite a number of chosen delegates but although they can go to the
Convention not all of them are entitled to cast their
votes. Each State is only allowed a limited number of voting delegates and
these are no longer elected; they are appointed by the Party bosses. This is
how “the fix is in” upon which the Cruz supporters at this time put their
hopes. Trump in his victory speech after last Tuesday’s success kept pointing
to how many more millions have already voted for him rather than Cruz or Kasich,
which entitled him to the status of “presumptive nominee.” But those millions
are useless unless he can come up with 1273 delegates by June 8 when the
primary season ends. The Cruz campaign officials are, therefore, behind the
scenes eagerly working in each State, so that the voting delegates at the
Convention are Cruz rather than Trump supporters. Trump as a real-estate
entrepreneur and TV personality may not have had the political savvy to see
what was going on behind his back but may by now be learning the facts of life.
The beauty of the delegate process is,
as Cruz supporters see it, that 1) it can influence who can vote at the
Convention; 2) if they can get Kasich out of the way they may garner enough
votes in the remaining Primaries/Caucuses to keep Trump from reaching the magic
number of 1273, and 3) if Trump falls short on the first ballot even his
delegates are then free to vote for someone else who, as they hope, will be
Cruz. When one realizes that each party also has a given number of
“superdelegates,” who are not bound to any specific candidate, it is readily
apparent that Trump still has a fairly tough row to hoe before the “presumptive
nominee” becomes the actual one.
Trump, by now, is obviously aware of
these facts of life and that Cruz, whom he relegated earlier in the campaign to
“pussy” status, has grown into a veritable tiger who
might snatch the prize from him. He, therefore, resorted to threats.If the party establishment were to deny him
the nomination because he was a few delegates short of the required number and
gave it to either Cruz or Kasich who have far fewer delegates, or even to
someone from their party who has not even participated in the grueling
campaign, all hell will break loose. I am sure that he means it and since his
core constituents are what is in common parlance called “the street” he has the
clout to make good on the threat. But before we go into the question of Cruz’s
qualifications for the highest office of the land we need to remember that our
byzantine electoral process does not stop with the November election.
After the votes of November 8 have been
counted the Electoral College will come to the fore. This “College” has no
domicile anywhere and consists of 270 stalwarts from the two political parties
who will be doing the actual voting for our next president. This means that one
can vote for instance for Bernie Sanders in November but this would be simply a
protest vote because he will not have Electors who could vote for him after
November.
Each State has a certain number of
Electors allocated that is based on the population of the state. Thus
California has the most with 55, next in line is New York with 29 and Utah has
6. These people are chosen by the Party who had received the highest number of
votes in the general election in their State. In the case of Utah it will go
the Republican nominee because our politicians have sufficiently gerrymandered
the voting districts to effectively prevent a Democrat from gaining national
high office. Barring unforeseen circumstances the electors will have a meeting
in December where they cast their vote by paper ballot. The result will be sent
to the Vice President, as President of the Senate, and other high officials.
Their work is then finished and on January 6 of next year Congress will meet,
tally the votes and announce who the President will be on Inauguration day. I
have gone into this matter in some detail because this process, although no
longer reflecting the realities of the 21st century is anchored in
the Constitution and any genuine election reform would probably require a
Constitutional Amendment that has to be ratified by three fourth of all States.
This process usually takes years and is, therefore, only infrequently set in
motion.
At present we only have a choice between
two political parties who serve us nominees they approve of. Independents have
no voice in this process and the only way to register disapproval is by casting
a protest vote or not participating in the voting process. The goal of each
Party is to promote their agenda and when these two agendas conflict stalemate
occurs. This is the case today where the members of Congress hardly talk to their
opposite colleague with resulting gridlock.
As leader of their Party, Presidents are
faced with dual loyalty: the Party and the country at large. This can be a
difficult task and the phrase “rule by the people, for the people” is fantasy that
didn’t exist even in Lincoln’s time. Theoretically a third, more centrist, party
could be formed but this effort has historically been quite unsuccessful in
this country. Its formation would take time and money although in an era where
social media have become powerful it may no longer be impossible. But even if there
were to be large popular support the constitutionally required byzantine Delegate
- Convention - Electoral College route would still have to be retained.
Since we are faced with these realities let
us now try to answer the question: Who is Ted Cruz? Rafael Edward Cruz was born
in 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, of a Cuban father and American mother. At his age
of four years the family moved to the US and Ted, as he now calls himself,
diligently applied himself to his studies. He first graduated from Princeton
and subsequently Harvard Law School. His professional life was largely spent in
the political arena and his various appointments can be found on Wikipedia. He
won the election for junior Senator from Texas in 2012 where he now chairs the
Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Activities as
well as the Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. In
addition he was appointed in November 2012 to Vice-Chairman of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee. His eyes were, however, on the Presidency and
in March of 2015 he set out on the path towards this goal.
His claim to fame in the Senate arrived
in March of 2013 when he gave an impassioned 21 hour speech in favor of the
government shutdown in order to prevent funding for the Affordable Medical Care
Act or Obamacare for short. It was an exercise in futility that cost the
government $20 billion and accomplished nothing. The Act was passed, the rest
of the senators were annoyed by the conduct of this upstart and even some of
the major Republicans voiced their disapproval. His subsequent conduct also did
not endear him to his colleagues and he is probably the most disliked member of
the Senate. He knows it and wears it as a badge of honor. Since he owes his
seat to the ultra-conservative Tea-party (October 1, 2010. Season of Discontent)
he views his obstruction of government as a promise kept to his voters, thereby
disregarding that they represent only a small fraction of the extreme right
wing of the party. He also seems to see himself in the light of the movie “Mr.
Smith goes to Washington,” but without Jimmy Stewart’s engaging qualities.
The reason why he is disliked resides
not only in his political beliefs but also his abrasive personality structure.
He throws insults around without their even being grounded in reality. For
instance: he accused Obama of “openly desirous to destroy the Constitution of
the Republic” and the Iran nuclear agreement “will make the Obama
administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islam.” His anger is,
however, also directed at his own party’s representatives. They were labeled as
“squishy” on gun control; Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, had been
“telling a flat-out lie,” and the Republican majority in both Houses of
Congress has an insufficiently conservative record. In sum and substance:
people, and especially members of the Grand Old Party, don’t like to be scolded
by an upstart of Cuban descent. This led to a couple of unsavory epithets such
as by former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who called him “Lucifer in the
flesh,” or Representative Peter King of NY, likewise a Republican, who stated
that Cruz “gives Lucifer a bad name.” Although this was hyperbolic rhetoric these
voices of disapproval have been joined by others of his colleagues who include
our senior Senator Orrin Hatch. His junior partner representing our State, Mike
Lee, is, however, a fervent devotee who tries to rally support for Cruz in the
Senate in order to lift him from the scant six, out of 54, who Cruz can
currently count on.
The fact that Cruz was born in Canada
might have made him ineligible for the Presidency as Donald Trump pointed out
in one of the early debates. Article II of the Constitution states, “No Person
except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time
of the Adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of
President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not
have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a
resident within the United States.” “Natural born” was the issue “the
birthers,” including Trump, had raised against Obama,
and this year it was used to abort a presidential run by Cruz. Several
law-suits were filed in a number of States but so far all of them have been
dismissed by the various courts.
Yet we are stuck with an ambiguous
phrase. For a physician there is no problem: vaginal delivery is natural born
while a Caesarean section is not. But to ascertain the intent of the framers of
the Constitution, especially by lawyers, is not that simple. They don’t deal
with facts but “opinions” and “interpretations.” These can widely differ
depending on the political views and personal bias of the judge. Constitutional
lawyers are aware of the problem and have noted that the Supreme Court has
never issued a ruling on the topic. What we have instead is a series of laws
passed by Congress as to who is a citizen.
The phrase natural born had its origin
in English law which initially defined it as having been born in the country
rather than elsewhere. But this presented a problem; initially for diplomats
who were stationed outside the country and subsequently military personnel. The
phrase was, therefore finessed into ius loci, law
according to birthplace, and ius generis, law
according to descent. The current terms are ius soli and iussanguinis.
The latter initially conferred the citizenship of the father automatically to
his child. In 1934 it was widened by Congress to include mothers. In the Obama
situation the objection by the “birthers” ran aground on ius soli as well as iussanguinis. Hawaii is part of the US and Obama’s mother
was an American citizen. In the case of Cruz the iussanguinis of the mother’s citizenship is
used by his supporters while ius soli is
demanded by his detractors. As far as the Canadians were concerned Cruz had ius soli citizenship until he resolved this
duality by renouncing it in 2013.
As mentioned earlier concerned lawyers
filed briefs in various States for the court to decide the issue of Cruz’s eligibility
for the Presidency. These well-meaning individuals were concerned that if he
were to win the nomination and/or election and a successful challenge were to
be filed thereafter the country would descend into a similar or worse turmoil
than in the aftermath of the 2000 election. Better now than later was the
motive. Yet all suits were dismissed for “lack of standing” of the plaintiffs.
The courts commented that Cruz had not personally harmed the plaintiffs and it
was impermissible to argue on what might happen in the future.
As mentioned the Supreme Court has never
ruled on the issue, but after Mr. Walter M. Wagner’s suit was thrown out in a
Utah court for “lack of standing,” he succeeded in having it placed on its
docket. It is, however, highly unlikely that it will be taken up in the foreseeable
future. The Court is currently crippled due to the refusal of the Republicans to
allow a Senate vote to replace the recently deceased Judge Antonin Scalia and the
eight judges are evenly divided among the two political parties. In addition
even the full court may not want to address this “can of worms” with all of its
ramifications.
Nevertheless the problem of ius soli versus iussanguinis will have to be taken up at
some point because it is also tied to the illegal immigration issue. The children
of parents who have illegally entered the country are “natural born” and
therefore US citizens. Illegal immigration is a serious issue in the current
election campaign, especially by the Republican candidates, and Donald Trump
said that he would deport all of the 11 million illegal aliens who currently
reside in this country. Since one cannot deport American citizens this would
mean that families would be sundered on a large scale, which is not likely to be
tolerated. Trump has recently backed off this extreme position but the question
lingers and will have to be resolved at some point. A complete discussion of
“natural born” which shows the division of opinion by legal scholars on this
matter is available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause.
At present the question is unresolved
and the issue is dealt with according to political preference. Bloomberg
reported on April 13 that “In the Texas case, Cruz argued the court system shouldn’t ‘“entangle
itself in a political controversy’” and should steer clear of an issue the
Founding Fathers reserved for Congress. The article also stated ‘“The
Constitution commits decisions about presidential eligibility to the House of
Representatives and the Electoral College,’” the senator’s lawyers said in
court filings.”But the reference by Cruz’s lawyers to the Electoral College
and the House of Representatives being responsible for these issues may not be
valid. According to the Constitution, these agencies only come into play if the
Electoral College is deadlocked and cannot agree on a presidential nominee. The
question of what may be called a presidential eligibility challenge is not
addressed in the Constitution and also would require an amendment. The meaning
ofnatural born is indeed a serious problem
because if the Republican Party were to nominate Ted Cruz as their candidate
for the Presidency one can be reasonably certain that the issue will again come
to the fore and especially if he were to win the November election, which is,
however, unlikely.
There are several reasons why I believe that
the Republican Party is not sufficiently suicidal to nominate Mr. Cruz as their
candidate for the Presidency. The dislike of his personal characteristics has
already been mentioned, but there are weightier issues because the real
question is who can beat the almost certain Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton.
While she has likewise a great many negatives they are likely to shrink when compared
to Cruz’s. His core voters are the Tea-party supporters and Protestant
Evangelicals. While this may suffice for local and state-wide elections it is
inadequate for the country at large which is mainly centrist in its political
outlook. A Cruz nomination may well lead to a replay of the 1964 debacle when
Barry Goldwater garnered 52 electoral votes and Lyndon Johnson 486, in spite of
the beginning unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Goldwater’s “Extremism in the
defense of liberty is not a vice,” was not a selling point at that time and
neither is narrow dogmatism today.
We may now ask what Cruz’s policy positions
are. His campaign website https://www.tedcruz.org/issues/
lists the following in this order: Restore the Constitution, Second Amendment
rights, Secure the border, Stand with Israel, Religious liberty, Life marriage
and family, Jobs and opportunities, Rein in Washington. They appear on the
front page in block letters over a representative picture. The Chinese have
told us long ago that a picture is worth a thousand words so I shall present
the first six for flavor. Restore the Constitution shows George Washington
standing on a podium facing a group of citizens with two of them seeming to
want to get his attention. The second Amendment issue shows a rugged
frontiersman standing on a granite rock overlooking a bushy hillside which
presumably belongs to his ranch. Secure the border presents a fence for the
southern side while on the northern there is an unpaved road with what may be
freight cars behind. National defense has a picture of a bomber dropping his
load. Standing with Israel depicts an earnest looking Cruz while he is being
lectured by Netanyahu. Religious liberty shows a hefty open tome, apparently
the Bible although the facing pages show blank inserts, with an American flag
in the background.
These pictures suggest to a longing for an
imagined past which Cruz intends to carry into the future. In regard to the
Constitution he seems to disregard that his eligibility for the Presidency is
actually in doubt by scholars of that document. The frontiersman with his rifle
nowadays exists only on TV and in movies; today’s problems are assault weapons
being used by mentally deranged people on innocent victims. The fence on the
southern border is so rickety that anyone with a wire-cutter can get through
onto the road and hop on a freight car. But it seems to be Cruz’s answer to
Trump’s wall. Bombers cannot solve our national defense problem but they still
lurk as a dangerous fantasy in the minds of those who have never realized that
carpet bombing did not win WWII. It also was totally ineffective in Vietnam
where victory was achieved by the North with their dedicated foot soldiers
while its Air Force largely consisted of Russian MIGs rather than bombers. ISIS
also achieved its conquest of Syrian and Iraqi territory without air power. The
picture reflects, however, Cruz’s pronouncement that he would carpet bomb ISIS.
This shows a profound lack of historical knowledge and dangerous naiveté. The picture
with Netanyahu is also highly instructive as well as disturbing. Cruz and his
followers equate the State of Israel with religious Zionism thereby utterly
disregarding the secular left and centrist elements of that country. To ally oneself
with one extremist political element of a given country is a prescription for
disaster. To identify the Bible with religious liberty is obviously designed to
gain favor with his Evangelical constituents while it ignores the religious
rights of our Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other religious minorities. I have
dwelt on these pictures because they go to the heart of what we could expect
from a Cruz presidency and there is no need at present to go into the
explanation of all the issues as provided by the website.
Thus, the Republican Party indeed finds itself
between a rock and a hard place. Trump is unacceptable for the reasons outlined
in last month’s installment and the Cruz problems should by now be obvious.
Nevertheless both contenders have something in common: they are stubborn and
attention seekers. The major difference between them is that Trump is a
pragmatist who will say anything that suits his purpose at the moment and
rescind it the next when it is no longer useful. Cruz on the other hand is a
dogmatist who will stick to his guns, regardless how nonsensical the effort may
be, as his filibuster in the Senate proved. This makes him actually more
dangerous for the country than his adversary. It will be interesting to see how
the Party will extricate itself from this dilemma that it has created for
itself by lurching too far to the right and obstructing the work of Congress in
the House as well as Senate.
June 1, 2016
POSTPONEMENT
The customary first of the
month issue does not appear at this time because I am scheduled for a
month-long vacation as well as lecture tour in Europe on the extreme slow end
of the brain’s electromagnetic activity. It will contain as yet unpublished
data and, therefore, requires full time preparation. Since I shall be away,
starting on June 6, the next installment is scheduled to appear on July 15 with
impressions from Germany and Austria on the refugee crisis. August 1 is
intended to cover the results, as well as the expected spectacles of the
Democrat and Republican Conventions.
In the meantime best
wishes to my faithful readers
Ernst Rodin
July 15, 2016
HOW A COUNTRY CAN RENEW ITSELF
A few weeks before leaving for
Europe we had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and the fortune cookie,
prepared by the Peking Noodle Co., promised: Amuch needed vacation will bring a great deal of enjoyment. The Chinese
were right and the trip to Bavaria and Austria, which
had a professional as a well as personal component, was indeed most pleasant.
Delta does not have a direct flight
from Salt Lake City to Munich, which was the first destination. To reach the
continent one has to go either via Amsterdam or Paris. I chose Paris and
happened to come face to face with the fact that goodness exists in people
everywhere. The flight itself was uneventful, but in order to make the
connection to Munich one has to go once more through security which
necessitates the placing of one’s belongings, watch, wallet, glasses etc., in a
basket. Since I am no longer capable of walking the distances of modern
airports I’m condemned to a wheelchair which has, however, the advantage that I
don’t have to be scanned any more. A swipe of the hands with some specially
prepared tissue is sufficient to convince the security personnel that I haven’t
been engaged in making bombs. While the wheelchair attendant and I were sitting
in a staging area waiting for a bus to take us to the gate up comes running one
of the security officers waving my wallet in his hand. It had been left in the
basket when I was handed back my belongings and I hadn’t missed it. It was a
gift from heaven.
The short hop to Munich was unremarkable and as promised my
daughter, Krista, met me at arrival. She is a confirmed world traveler, had
left the US about 10 days
earlier, spending the time in Russia,
Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. She had already arranged
the rental of a brand new Ford at the airport which served us very well without
a single mishap and since it ran on Diesel it got better mileage. We then set
out in a steady drizzle on the Autobahn for Graefelfing. The latter is a
little town west of Munich
and not a tourist attraction but it served a professional need. The scientific
program I’m using for analyzing the brain’s electro-magnetic activity is
produced there and I spent the next day with the programmers discussing
potential improvements.
The next overnight stop was Innsbruck where I had an appointment with colleagues at
the UniversityHospital. The city can be reached within
a couple of hours on the Autobahn but we were in no hurry and planned to spend
the day touring the countryside on the way. Of course, it drizzled and it was
somewhat cool but Krista, who is an avid mountain hiker, wanted to show me the Zugspitze near Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Obviously, since I can hardly walk any distance on the flat I’m not able to
walk up a mountain, but it’s not necessary in the Alps.
Cable cars and Gondolas take even the most decrepit senior citizen all the way
up to the top of the mountains where there is always a restaurant with good
local food. But when we got there the lady at the ticket counter took one look
at me and advised against the trip. I had only brought summer clothes (it was
June after all) and she told us that up on top the temperature was at the
freezing point and in view of the clouds no visibility. We abstained and went
on south towards Austria.
Lunch was at a little restaurant in Mittenwald, which prides itself as housing
Germany’s highest elevation brewery and invites one to spend some time there.
We went on, however, and passed into Austria. All of us have heard about
the phenomenal congestion at the border because of the refugee problem, but
there were none in sight. We drove across as if we were going from Utah to Idaho
and the only way of knowing that we were now in a different country was a sign
on the road that had the EU symbol and the flags were no longer the German
black-red-gold but the Austrian red-white-red. Borders, visas etc., are
currently as obsolete as they were prior to WWI and one can only hope and pray,
in view of the most recent political developments, that it will stay this
way.
In Innsbruck we stayed at the Hotel Sailer
on a quiet side street with good accommodations. This and all the other hotels
we stayed in have gratis Internet connections so that one can remain in touch
with the rest of the world. I shall give the names of the hotels we stayed in
because they can be recommended for Americans who intend to include Austria in
their vacation plans. The next morning was spent at the EEG laboratory of the
University Hospital and in the afternoon we headed up the mountain in beautiful
sunshine. The Nordkette
is on Innsbruck’s
doorstep just like the Wasatch here at home. The elevations of the Alps are
lower than the Rockies but they also start a sea level while our home in Sandy
is already above 5,000 feet. As such the views of the mountains are comparable.
A funicular railway takes one about a quarter of the way up then come gondolas
and one ends up at the Seegrube
where there is a fantastic view of the surrounding mountains and the city of
Innsbruck below. Most impressive were the mountain bikers. One can rent a bike
before ascending and it was amazing to see what narrow, steep, rock-strewn goat
tracks they negotiate on their way down. Some intrepid souls even bike up, albeit
on somewhat wider roads. In regard to goats. We didn’t see many but there were
contended cows grazing or just passing the time of day as well as sheep on the
mountain meadows, and I couldn’t help thinking that they must be providing
better milk than their poor relatives who are penned up all day as is the case
in our industrialized agricultural system.
From Innsbruck we went to Zell am See of which I had fond memories
from a 1965 visit when I spent an hour glider flying. The little town is
overrun by tourists and more expensive so we stayed at “Zur Burg” a nice local hotel in nearby Kaprun. Next day via a series
of gondolas we went up the Kitzsteinhorn where people were still skiing on its
dwindling glacier.Thereafter we headed
for Schladming. I had never been
there previously but knew about it from the international ski races that are
regularly held and I wanted to see the mountain. We stayed at “Die Barbara,” in honor of the Saint,
which is located right across the street from the gondolas the lead up the Patai. It’s not
often that one talks about restrooms but the toilet at ground level of the
lifts beats all expectations. One sits in the stall surrounded by wall
paintings of a winter wonderland. Another feature of public toilets is that
they are ecology conscious. There are two levers to push; the smaller one for
liquid and the other for solid waste. By the way they are also installed in
private homes when modernization is undertaken.
The next day was spent on country roads
to Vorau, a
small village in eastern Styria where a friend of mine (former Professor of
Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Zurich) is spending his
retirement in a house inherited from his parents. From there we went on to Mariazell, Austria’s
biggest and best known pilgrimage center. We said our prayers for the family
and the world at the basilica that dates to the middle of the 17th
century.
In the afternoon it was off to the Salzkammergut via
the Autobahn. This is the way to travel if one quickly wants to get from point
A to point B, but it’s no way to see the country. Sound barriers or planted
trees protect the locals from noise but this obliterates the view. On the other
hand the road is superbly paved in striking contrast to what one sees in parts
of our country. We wanted to be in the neighborhood of Salzburg where we have friends and were
offered free lodging. But I also insisted on a lake because I’m addicted to
open water. Krista had searched the Internet and found the Hotel SeegasthofStadler
near Unterach
directly on the Attersee.
That’s where we headed and found it an excellent choice. The facility has been
in the Stadler family since the middle of the 19th
century and is still run by them. The parents and adult children take care of
the business as well as waiting on tables at mealtimes and in one of the
hallways is an old photograph which depicts the original restaurant as built by
their great-grandparents. It was refreshing to see that in some places the
hectic pace of time has not produced profound changes, only improvements. The
great-grandparents clothes were the same “Trachten” as today and only the
quality of photographs has improved and complete modernization well as
enlarging of the facility has taken place.
As mentioned, the hotel abuts the lake
with a lawn one can spend time on. Mountain bikes are for rent, so are some
small boats and there is also direct swimming access. But beware, the Salzkammergut
lakes are leftovers from the last ice-age and bitter cold. This is not a
problem for the locals but takes some getting used to by tourists. In order to
keep the lake clean and avoid excessive noise only sailboats or electric power
boats are allowed. I thoroughly enjoyed the warm sunshine on the lawn after
days of drizzle but underestimated its power. Now a word of explanation. One
can’t sit in the sun in Utah during spring and summer because at our elevation
it stings to an extent that one has to head for shade. Since this was not the
case in Austria
I stayed a couple of hours and paid for it later with massive sunburn that
still peels after nearly a month. Nevertheless the hotel and area were so
pleasant that we decided to return after paying visits to friends in Salzburg and subsequently Vienna.
During our stay in Salzburg we toured
the surrounding lake country and some of its historic sites in the Salzkammergut, which might be translated into Salt
Chamber region. This alpine lakes area is shared by the provinces of Upper
Austria, Salzburg
and Styria and provides not only stunning views but also excellent recreational
facilities. Its name is derived from the previously most important industry:
the mining of salt. For our forefathers salt was white gold without which
civilization was not possible because it was the only available food
preservative. The salt-mines at Halleinand the
nearby village of Hallstatt are
reported to have been in operation since pre-Celtic times. A large burial
ground from the early Neolithic was discovered near Hallstatt during the middle of the 19th century. From
here salt was shipped far and wide, people became wealthy and the era from
800-500 BC has subsequently been named the Hallstatt
Kultur for the distinctive artifacts they
produced.
Since we had visited with the entire
family the salt-mine at Hallein in 1965 we abstained
this time, although I can strongly recommend a visit if one has never been
there. It is an experience one doesn’t forget. Instead we went this time to
Hallstatt where I’d never been. The weather was good and we took a boat trip on
the lake amongst numerous Korean, Japanese and Chinese tourists who had arrived
by busloads. Coming home I read on the Internet that Hallstatt now has a sister city in China. It is one of Austria’s most
picturesque villages and a photo taken from the boat is pasted below.
After a three day stay in Salzburg we
headed on the Autobahn to Vienna which is a trip of about three and a half
hours. We stayed there free of charge due to the courtesy of the son of one of
my schoolmates. The father, who actually was responsible for me having chosen
the medical profession, had become an ophthalmologist and after his death the
son converted the previous office into a guest apartment, which perfectly met
our needs. While Krista visited museums I spent the time with family, friends
and neurological colleagues. We intended to go up to one of our favorite
restaurants the Haueserl am Roan in the Wienerwald but it rained
cats and dogs so this was not feasible. Instead we headed for one of my other
favorite must go-to restaurants in the inner city ZumLeupold.Our evening dinner with another old school
chum and his daughter at the Bristol ended this leg of the trip.
I had frequently returned to Vienna over
the years and was impressed how well the city functions but I had not been in
its outskirts the former workers’ districts of Simmering and Favoriten. Although there were no slums, just apartment
buildings, nevertheless one just had no reason to go there. But on the taxi
ride from the home of one of my colleagues at the outer edge of Simmering through Favoriten to Hietzing I marveled at the change
that had taken place. The area he lives in has single family garden homes and
then one drives along a thoroughfare that is dotted with brand new gleaming
office buildings serving private as well as public functions including for the
EU. American city planners might want to take a look how a city that started as
a Roman military outpost has not only weathered all the disasters that befell
it in the intervening years but has completely renewed itself. This was not
done by tearing down the old structures but by cherishing tradition and
renovating them to an extent that they look new and the truly new ones are made
to blend in with their surroundings. In addition the interiors of old apartment
houses were modernized to the extent that was feasible.
With official functions and family
business having been taken care of we returned to the Stadler Hotel which is now one of my favorite places. While there we
further explored other lakes in the area and the town of Bad Ischl where Emperor Franz Joseph had
his summer residence. The Kaiservilla is open to tourists and one can even see the
desk where the old man signed the fateful declaration of war on Serbia which
led not only to the carnage of WWI but all its ensuing disasters, which we
still have not overcome. He had been duped and told that the Serbs had already
opened fire at Austrian troops which was not the case. “Dann muss man halt zurueckschiessen” (Well, then we’ve got to shoot back) was his
answer. This scenario was actually repeated on August 7, 1964 when President
Lyndon Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which led the US into the
unwinnable Vietnam War. It was based on the report that American ships had been
fired upon in the Gulf
of Tonkin which was not
true. These tidbits of history should give us pause and reflect on the current
activities of our media and politicians.
While lounging at the Atterse Krista
also suggested that we should go up the Untersberg which is shared by Austria and Germany. We tried,
but the cable car was under repair. We, therefore, went on to Bavaria
and Berchtesgaden’s
Koenigssee.
It is a short hop of a little over 20 miles and in Berchtesgaden one can’t miss the sign to the Obersalzberg.
Having grown up in the Nazi era the Obersalzberg, where Hitler’s mountain retreat was located,
had almost mythical connotations for us at the time. During the mentioned 1965
visit we had also passed through Berchtesgaden
and I found a trip up to the Obersalzberg in our rented VW bus irresistible. The area was
strewn with rubble and the Berghof obliterated, but one could enter one of the bunkers
that had been dug into the mountain in case of air raids. We heard about the Adlerhorst –
Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s “tea house,” on top of the KehlsteinMountain but didn’t have
time to explore it.
This deficit was now made up and
provided some surprises when compared with 1965. Tourism has become
industrialized with German precision. One drives uphill to a staging area where
buses await one for the rest of the trip. The reason is that this mountain road
is so narrow that only one bus can go either up or down and congestion from
private vehicles would be impossible to tolerate. There is a small parking
space on the side of the road where a given bus can pull over when the driver
is informed by radio that another bus is coming from the opposite direction.
The buses have a convoy system of six at a time and these take one to another
staging area up on the mountain where there is an entrance to a tunnel. One
walks somewhat over 400 feet through the tunnel and then comes to an elaborate
(and I mean elaborate) elevator that takes one about 430 feet through the
mountain to the “Eagle’s Nest” or Kehlsteinhaus as it is currently called. Luckily the British
bombs on their raid of April 25 1945, which severely damaged the buildings on
the Obersalzberg, had missed the Kehlsteinhaus. It is in original pristine condition and currently serves as a
restaurant and museum. The view from the top is magnificent with the Koenigssee
nestled amid the mountains to the west and the Untersberg with Salzburg to the east.
Since world history was made at this
mountain site I not only bought a brochure about the area but also a DVD at one
of the staging areas. The DVD is excellent but the English language in the
brochure definitely needs improvement. The Bavarian government would be well
advised to commission another edition where the text is provided either by
someone for whom English is the first language or an English literature
graduate from one of the universities. When one glosses over the language and
some misprints the content is quite informative. Since this information is not
widely known I’m now going to present some highlights.
The idea to build a “tea house” on top
of the mountain originated with Martin Bormann, who at that time was overseer
of renovations at Obersalzberg, as a present to Hitler for his 50th
birthday. Ing. Fritz Todt
was charged with the project which had to be completed essentially within the
span of one year. Houses on the top of mountains, especially as shelters for
mountaineers, are commonplace in the Alps. At somewhat over 6,000 feet the Kehlsteinhaus
would have been one among many. For instance the Ottohaus at 6,585 ft. on the Rax, one of Vienna’s closest mountains, was built in 1893.
But it could be reached by cable car which transported the building materials.
At the Kehlsteinthere was, however, neither cable car
nor road. Todt was confronted with a steep granite
mountain that previously had only been climbed hand over hand by dedicated
mountaineers. The mountain was, therefore, first surveyed for a potential route
and then about 3000 stone masons went to work to laboriously chisel away the
rock into manageable blocks and create the road.Apart from dynamite everything was done by
hand and all the material had to be carried on one’s back up the mountain. The
actual work started early in 1938 and had to be finished for Hitler’s birthday
by April 20 1939. Time pressure was enormous especially when one considers
alpine winters with snow, sleet and avalanches. Work went on in shifts around
the clock and the brochure tells us that it was mainly Italian stonemasons who
did the cutting job. They were well paid and promised life-time employment as
well as social services. The mission was indeed accomplished in record time and
as the DVD tells us even prior to April 20. The internet has a number of
entries including pictures one may want to view.
A cynic now might well say: what a waste
of time, money and energy on a stupid whim. Yes it was a whim, but the project
needs to be seen in the light of the era. Massive construction was going on all
over Germany
at the time. To combat the depression, with its attendant joblessness, the
German infrastructure was completely modernized. Roads were built, of which the
Autobahn is simply the most famous, airports, vacation ships as well as decent
housing for workers arose, in addition to public as well as private buildings. Germany was booming and it was a “New Deal” Roosevelt could only have dreamt about. Of course, there
was also re-armament but it is wrong to assume that arms were the only or main
commodity the Nazis produced. Obviously, all of this cost a phenomenal amount
of money. In order to come up with it Hitler took the country off the gold
standard (a practice followed by Nixon in 1971) and the printing presses at the
Reichsbankwent into overdrive. Hjalmar Schacht, the
finance minister, has been reported as having told Hitler in 1939 that this can’t
go on forever but was told: There will be a war. If we win we’ll have plenty of
money and if we lose we are all dead anyway. Judging from all I have read about
Hitler this seems to be true to his character.
On the return trip to the Munich airport
we went via the Chiemseewhere we had lunch at a rest stop on
the Autobahn while admiring the numerous sailing vessels engaged in regattas.
The night was spent at the Seehotel Leoni
onthe Starnbergersee. Although in the
upper price range it was the only one Krista could find that was directly on
the lake. As it turned out this would not have been necessary because it rained
all afternoon and most of the next day. So we just took a three and a half hour
boat tour in the morning which covered the major sights of the lake. SchlossPossenhofen
is of special interest to Austrians because this is where Elisabeth the Empress
of Austria, fondly called Sissi, spent part of her
youth. On the East side of the lake there is a cross in the water to
memorialize the spot where the bodies of King Ludwig II and his psychiatrist
were found. The mystery surrounding their deaths has never been solved. With a
10 a.m. departure for the States on the following day the last night was spent
in the neighborhood of the airport at the little town of Schwaigin a thoroughly Americanized hotel which had nothing to recommend
itself except proximity and a relatively decent price.
All in all it was a memorable trip, and I
marveled how Austria has changed since I left the country in 1950. At that time
it was at its nadir. Partitioned between four occupying powers, three of whom
warily watching the fourth, its cities largely in ruins and its people just
making do with minimal prospects for the future, a pawn in the hands of the US
and Soviet Union. But in the Christmas address of 1945 Chancellor Figl implored the people “… believe in this Austria!” What
he meant was that the strife between the Socialists and Conservatives that had
ruined the country and paved the way for Hitler’s take-over was now over, there
was a coalition government which, conscious of past achievements as well as
errors, will overcome all the enormous hurdles and re-emerge in freedom and
prosperity. The people did and with American help (UNRRA and thereafter the
Marshall plan), which will always be gratefully acknowledged, the country
became once again free and independent. The State Treaty of 1955 demanded
absolute neutrality on the Swiss model and with this anchor Austria can play a
mediating role between East and West, especially since it is not a member of
NATO.
This is Austria’s message to the US in
its current turmoil: Stop demonizing each other, join hands across party
divides and most of all stop warmongering. It could be done and the problem
that prevents us from doing so is conceptual. I often think of Goethe’s
greatest drama Faust where in the
depth of depression he curses the world and all that is in it. I’ve taken the
liberty to change one paragraph slightly because that makes it more relevant:
Cursed be the deception of opinion with which the mind ensnares itself. This is
the crux of the problem. It is our thoughts, and nothing else, that can lead us
to prosperity or doom. This is the idea that should be realized and pondered
upon if we truly want to create a better world.
I have stayed away from the political problems
facing Austria and the EU after Brexit. They will be dealt with, including the
outcome of the political Conventions, in the August 1 issue. For now I would
just like to close with a most hearty THANK YOU to my daughter Krista who has
helped her old father literally at every step of the way to make this trip not
only possible but also most enjoyable.
August 1, 2016
BREXIT, THE REFUGEE PROBLEM AND AMERICA’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CHOICE
While
lounging on the Attersee
shore on June 23, admiring the view of the mountains, sailboats gliding over
the lake, and the wind making small ripples on its surface, a seismic change
occurred in the distant UK where voters decided that they no longer wanted to
be part of the EU. Below is a copy of the front page of the SueddeutscheZeitung with its comments on the event:
A
translation of the comments is as follows: “Europe is shocked.” “Great Britain
has decided to leave” “What Now?” The headlines for subsequent detailed
articles inside the paper include words like “Consternation;” “What happens to
the EU now?” “The massive fall of David Cameron;” “Old against young” in the
plebiscite result as well as fears for the financial markets and Europe’s
economy as a whole. There was, however, not only shock but also anger that the
Brits just shouldn’t have done that. Two camps immediately arose. One said: If
they want a divorce let them have it, but don’t expect it to be amiable. Europe
will insist on conditions that will make other European nations who might have
similar ambitions think twice about leaving. The other group, represented by
Merkel, in essence said: let’s not panic and think this through first. Some
experts argued in the paper, let’s get rid of the Brits fast and then
concentrate on making the necessary EU reforms, while others argued to go slow.
The Brits haven’t left yet and it’ll take two years of negotiations on the
terms once they have submitted their resignation.
Since
the Scots and Northern Irish had overwhelmingly voted for remaining in the EU
there was now talk in these countries of another referendum to decide whether
or not they should stay with England
and Wales
or go their own way with the EU. This would, of course, be the end of the UK,
and a result Cameron had hardly envisioned when he undertook this gamble with
the EU referendum. It had turned into a colossal blunder, the consequences of
which are as yet unforeseeable. On the other hand for the Scottish and the
Irish people leaving the UK
may not be as simple as it sounds even if they were to decide on it. The
British Parliament would have to vote on the question, and what these
politicians will do is anybody’s guess.
In
the last installment I mentioned that we did not encounter the refugee problem,
but it is simmering under the surface. We took cabs to get around in Innsbruck,
because with all the one-way streets we would never have found our destination
had we been driving. The cabbies were dead set against the asylum seekers of
whom Austria had taken about
800.000 (Austria’s
total population is somewhat over 8.5 million). This influx of predominantly
Muslims into a Catholic country was not welcomed. In addition, the complaint
was that tax money has to be spent on housing and feeding them while they are
not working but loafing around all day.
The SalzburgerNachrichten felt obligated to address the problem. The
reason why nearly four times more young males than females arrived is that
families expect them to work and send money home so that they in turn can join
them thereafter. Not everyone who arrives is allowed to stay. The ones from
Syria in nearly all instances, but those from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and
other countries are more thoroughly vetted. To the key question: why don’t they
seek work, the answer was that asylum seekers are not allowed to work for the
first three months, while their request
is processed, and thereafter only in certain manual occupations where a need
exists. Asylum seekers who have professional credentials are allowed to work in
their field provided that no Austrian citizen can be found to fill the
position. In regard to cost, the Land
Salzburg budgeted in 2016 30 Million Euros for asylum seekers, out of a
total budget of 2.88 billion (Milliarden). Asylum seekers receive health insurance, but
this cost is regarded as acceptable.
I have gone into these details because
the contrast between a nation with a social conscience and the US is, of
course, glaring. We refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the disasters
the Bush and the subsequent Obama administration have unleashed. Colin Powell’s
advice to President Bush in 2002: “If you break it, you own it,” went unheeded
and the current tidal wave of refugees, especially from the
Syrian war, is not our concern. This terrible human disaster could be stopped
tomorrow if the US
were to abstain from its insistence that Assad has to be removed. Let’s face
it: he is a dictator; but so is Al-Sisi of Egypt with whom
we have no problem, to say nothing of the Saudis and their abysmal human rights
record. There are obviously other reasons for which we needlessly prolong this
war. If our administration were to give up the demand for Assad to relinquish
the presidency, a lasting cease-fire, that is supported by Russia as well as
us, could be achieved right away, and with it the need for people leaving their
homes. But this is obviously too rational for becoming America’s
official policy.
Although Austria has generously absorbed a considerable
number of refugees it is a fact that a great many Austrians are unhappy about
the situation and this reflected itself in their Presidential election
campaign. In contrast to former years when conservatives and socialists shared
about 30-40 per cent of the respective vote, they were decisively defeated in
favor of an Independent and former Green party member, Van der Bellen, and the Freedom Party’s leader Norbert Hofer. Van der
Bellen achieved a narrow victory that was challenged
by Hofer in the Supreme Court and a new election is scheduled for October. It
should be noted that Hofer’s views on immigration are similar to Donald Trump’s,
“Austria for Austrians” But Austria’s President, in contrast to the US, has
been in the past largely relegated to a ceremonial role. It should be noted,
however, that the Constitution does give him the power to appoint the Chancellor and, by extension, federal cabinet ministers,
Supreme Court justices, military officers, and most major bureaucrats. He also
may dissolve the National Council (Nationalrat). It is clear, therefore, that a determined person,
like Hofer, could bring about a great many changes that will not necessarily be
for the better.
Apart from
Brussels’ attempts to overregulate the EU, the refugee problem was one of the
main reasons behind Brexit. The recent spate of terror attacks in France and Germany may well tilt Austrians
toward Hofer, just as in our country they are grist for Trump’s propaganda
mill. Young males without gainful employment are a powder keg, and we don’t
know if Austria that was termed under its Jewish Socialist Chancellor, Bruno
Kreisky (1970-1983), the “Island of the Blessed,” will be able to escape these
looming tragedies.
For
the return to the US I did not choose to go via Paris again but took a direct
flight from Munich to Detroit in order to visit with our son Peter and his wife
in Grosse Pointe. Driving along I 94 from the airport
one sees a freeway badly in need of repair, overpasses that are rusty, and in
Detroit itself vacant lots where homes had once been that could no longer be
repaired and were torn down. It looked as if about half of the houses on my
previous route to work were now gone, with others boarded up and deserted.
Closer to downtown efforts have been made at renovation as well as attempts at
new malls, but since people have left (Detroit’s population is currently down to
677,000 from somewhat over 1.8 million in the 1950s), their prospects are
bleak. The contrast between capitalist America
and “socialist” Austria
could not have been starker.
Here
the news was dominated by the random mass killings in a number of cities and
the impending Republican and Democrat Conventions. The Republicans were faced
with the “Trump problem” that was about tear the GOP apart and the Democrats
were no better off with Hillary who was saddled with Bernie Sanders’ extremely
vocal and determined supporters. During the Conventions I shifted between CNN,
which favors Democrats and Fox News, which is firmly in Republican hands. It
was interesting to see how these two networks handled the “Bernie” problem. CNN
reporting on the Democrat Convention stressed the fact that Sanders had
accepted the inevitable and not only endorsed Hillary but urged his followers
to work for a Democrat victory because party principles are bigger than any one
person. A “President Trump” was the nightmare and catalyst that should urge
them to stand behind their standard bearer Hillary Clinton. Fox News on the
other hand was happy about the split in Democrat ranks. But when it came to Sanders’
views, they were roundly condemned for turning America into a socialist country
like the ones in Europe. Sean Hannity especially seemed like he had to wash his
mouth after mentioning Social Democracy.
There
is now another interesting parallel between the America
of 2016 and Austria
during the 1920s and the 1930’s. In those years the Conservatives and the Socialists
were bitter enemies, even more so than at present in our country. Each one had
their private militia: the Schutzbund for the Social Democrats and the Heimwehr as well
as the Frontkämpfer
(ex-soldiers of WWI) for the clerical Conservatives who claimed to have God on
their side. The battles were initially limited to brawls, but in 1927 the “Sozis” (the
abbreviation was subsequently applied to the National Socialists – “Nazis”), took
en masse to the street. Vienna’s Supreme Court building (Justizpalast) was set on fire and
the police dispersed the crowd with gun fire. That was the beginning of the end
of the First Republic. The next event occurred in February of 1934 with a brief
civil war. It was won by the conservative government which subsequently made
the mistake of executing by hanging some of the lower leadership of the Sozis. The big
bosses had already seen that the uprising could not succeed and had prudently
left for Czechoslovakia.
The Socialist party was outlawed and not only resentment but outright hate
lingered in the workers’ districts. The Conservatives tried to rule
autocratically but as a minority government they could not succeed in the midst
of the world-wide economic depression. The country was roughly split between 30-40%
Socialists, 30-40% Conservatives and about 20-25% Nazis. The latter also
consisted of two groups. One was the Grossdeutsche, who felt that after WWI the mutilated country
was not viable and only union with Germany would guarantee economic
survival. Their ranks received a boost when they saw Germany flourishing under Hitler. The
Nazi party’s anti-Semitic raving was dismissed with the proverb “that the soup
is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.” The other group did subscribe to
anti-Semitism because they saw that Jews were in leading positions in the
professions that limited the goyim’s
access to them. Thus, the common bond was not necessarily ideology but
economics. By February of 1938 Austria’s
situation had become untenable. The Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, met with
Hitler at the Berghof in the hope he would curb the
unruly Nazis and guarantee Austria’s independence. This was, of course, a
fantasy and Hitler extracted a number of concessions for vague promises that made
the situation in Austria worse. In desperation Schuschnigg made David Cameron’s
mistake and called for a plebiscite. This was intolerable for Hitler who demanded
Schuschnigg’s resignation and the appointment of the Nazi SeiszInquart to the chancellorship; otherwise the
Wehrmacht would enter the country. Schuschnigg capitulated, the Wehrmacht
marched anyway, and Austria
ceased to exist. This success emboldened Hitler to go after Czechoslovakia as
well as Poland’s corridor to the Baltic Sea, which separated the Danzig and
East Prussia from Germany. This relic of the Versailles treaty was to be
abolished and WWII was on its way.
Why did I go into such detail about
“ancient history” and “a quarrel
in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing,” to quote Chamberlain of 1938? For me the
years after 1931 are living memory and they present a lesson for America how not
to proceed. Bernie Sanders, as an unabashed Social Democrat, achieved at least
46 % of the vote in this year’s Primaries (nearly 80% in Utah), while Donald
Trump obtained the Nomination mainly with the help of disgruntled white males
without higher education. This should alert our Republicans that there is a fundamental
problem in America, which will not be solved by Trump’s Law and Order policy. It
was tried in Austria and failed. Not only is a potential class war in the
offing, but so is a potential race war. The unemployment rate for young black
males is significantly higher than for Latinos and whites and this bodes ill
for the future. With time on their hands these youngsters may not only seek
recourse to the drug culture and crime but also to social upheaval. Instead of
despising “socialist” reforms that in Sean Hannity’s words will “ruin the
country,” essential ones should be carefully undertaken on a State by State
basis. I mentioned “State by State” because California’s
problems differ from Michigan’s or Ohio’s and these in turn differ from Utah’s
or Idaho’s. A
“one size fits all” solution is simply not feasible for our diverse country.
In the May 1 installment I discussed
major concerns about Donald Trump’s nomination for the presidency and these
will be further discussed in the next installment since he is now the Republican
Party’s official nominee. But Hillary Clinton likewise, carries so much baggage
that makes her election to the Presidency hazardous not only for our future but
also that of the rest of the world. My main concern is her judgment. Throughout
the Convention it has been praised, and her running mate Tim Kaine told us that
he would entrust his son’s life, who serves in the Marine Corps, to her. I
would not. Some of the reasons have been exposed by the Republicans, but that
is “the pot calling the kettle black.” So let us be objective and list examples
of her lack of good judgment in chronologic order.
As Senator she voted for the Iraq war,
although she now regards it as a mistake. She should have known that attacking
a country that has not harmed us is since the Nuremberg trials a war crime, and
the generals who carried out Hitler’s orders were hanged for it. If I, as a
private citizen, know this, she with all her vaunted experience should have too.
As readers of this site can check, I was even against the Afghanistan war
because a formal judicial inquest into who perpetrated the 9/11 crime had not
taken place. Both wars were started for reasons other than 9/11; this tragedy was
simply the excuse. It is still used by both parties for their ulterior purposes
because even after 15 years there has not been a single international unbiased
investigation to ascertain the perpetrators and their handlers. The 9/11
Commission does not qualify because even some of its members repudiated the
process.
As Secretary of State, Hillary pushed
President Obama into the Libya debacle when she sided with the military as the
decisive voice. To this day she has not admitted that this was a fundamental
misjudgment that led to anarchy in a previously rich country. “Regime change”
in Libya provided an additional lesson for autocrats around the world that is
not discussed by our media. Kaddafi had voluntarily disbanded his nuclear
arsenal and counted on the good graces of the West. That was his literally
fatal mistake. France, Britain and the US would never have attacked his country
if he still had the bomb. This is the lesson that was absorbed, for instance,
by North Korea because the survival of its regime depends on a credible
deterrent. The Republicans amply use the death of our ambassador and three
service members in Benghazi for their propaganda against Hillary but don’t talk
about this fundamental fact.
Another lack of judgment was shown in
the use of a private e-mail server for official State Department business. She
was warned not to do so because it had none of the security safeguards that were
in place on the server for the State Department. Thus, her private server could
have been, and in all probability was, hacked. On June 22nd of this
year Fox News published an article dealing with the security problem that only
recently has come to light. Mrs. Clinton had used her home-server even before
she became Secretary of State and the first concerns were voiced in 2010 and
2011. For instance in August of 2011 she received “infected e-mails, disguised
as speeding tickets from New York. Opening an attachment would have allowed
hackers to take over control of a victim’s computer.” In the Senate inquiry she
defended her action by stating that none of these e-mails had contained secret
or top secret information. This was not true as the FBI investigation reported
on by its Director, James B. Comey, on July 5. He noted that “Although we did
not find evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate
laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that
they were extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly
classified information.” In spite of this finding he did not ask for a criminal
investigation.
“In looking back
at our investigation into mishandling or removal of classified information, we
cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts ….
To be clear, this is not to suggest that
in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no
consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security
or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
The FBI director found himself on a
tightrope knowing fully well that asking for criminal proceedings against the
nominee for the Presidency by the Democratic Party is virtual political
suicide. He, therefore, sidestepped the issue. But let us look at the existing
law that governs such cases as was mentioned by Mr.Comey earlier in the report:
“Our
investigation looked at whether there is evidence
classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that system, in
violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified
information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way [italics
added], or a second statue making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove
classified information from appropriate systems storage facilities.
If a Ms. Hillary Rodham had engaged in
this conduct as a cyber clerk in the State Department she would not only have
been fired but criminally prosecuted. Yet, the Democrat Party found itself in
this bind: they could not disavow the winner of the primaries and, therefore, had
to promote her to nominee for the highest job in the country. Let me
re-emphasize the extreme importance of this e-mail problem. Anyone who applied
for a sensitive position in government, even as a clerk, would automatically be
given a background security check. When this would have turned up the above
mentioned facts, the application would have been denied. Now let us think about
this: she would be rejected for a clerk position in the government but is
regarded as qualified to be President. As it was said in one of the former
Sci-fi TV series: This does not compute! It also tells volume about how our
country is really governed.
There are two additional aspects in the
e-mail saga which the official media side-step. On Monday June 27 Bill Clinton
had a private conversation with Attorney General Loretta Lynch aboard her plane
at the Tarmac of Phoenix’s airport. The former President had been in town for a
variety of meetings and Loretta Lynch was scheduled to arrive later in the day.
The ex-President’s plane was supposed to have taken off to clear space for that
of the Attorney General’s, but Clinton was delayed and both planes were parked
next to each other. When Clinton arrived, he walked up the stairs of the AG’s
plane instead of his and they had a private 20-25 minutes conversation. We were
told that they discussed travel, their grandchildren and golf, at a time when
the FBI investigation of Hillary’s e-mails was nearing its conclusion. When we
now consider that the Attorney General, as CEO of the Justice Department, is
responsible for the decision whether not Hillary’s conduct warrants a criminal
investigation, this impromptu meeting takes on a different flavor. One week
later Comey presented his report where he did not recommend criminal
prosecution and Lynch dismissed the case the following day. A skeptic may be
forgiven if he suspects cronyism and Bill’s powers of persuasion to influence
the issue.
The second aspect deals with unsung
defenders of our freedom and wellbeing: Judicial Watch. This organization of
lawyers had requested from the State Department access to Clinton’s e-mails on basis of FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act). This was denied, and Judicial Watch
obtained them only after successful litigation. Hillary has never testified
under oath why she used a private server. Judicial Watch, therefore, attempted
to depose Clinton as well as several of her key associates on the matter. Seven
of her colleagues took advantage of the Fifth Amendment that allows a person no
to incriminate him/herself. When Hillary refused to testify, the matter was referred
to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan who had previously allowed
Judicial Watch “discovery” of the e-mails. At that time the Judge stated that
“based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton
may be necessary.” In a hearing on that topic last Monday before Judge
Sullivan, Hillary’s lawyer, David Kendall, argued that the former Secretary of
State has nothing new to say and the Judge should dismiss the request. He took
it under advisement and stated that he would issue a ruling as soon as
possible. We can expect a ruling whether or not Hillary will have to testify under
oath within the next month. But this is not the only law suit against Hillary,
there are several others pending which is unprecedented for a person who wants
to be President.
There
are two additional aspect of Hillary’s State Department conduct. One is the
State Department’s conduct during Kiev’s Maidan protests and the other “The
Clinton Foundation. Most of us know that the Maidan protests led to the
toppling of the elected government of Ukraine with all the disasters that
followed: Putin’s annexation of the Crimea, Civil war in East Ukraine, the
downing of Malaysia’s flight 17, the plight of the Ukrainian people and the
rekindling of the Cold War against Russia. But the conduct of our government
that was discussed in “The Ukraine Crisis” (March 15, 2014) is not reported by
our official media. Mrs. Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs at the State Department, was the key stage director who put the
new government under Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place. This piece of “regime change”
was likewise a disaster that can be chalked up to Clinton’s “foreign affairs
expertise.” Don’t believe me; instead please “Google” the key words Victoria
Nuland and you will be amazed to see how our government really works.
The Democrat Convention kept telling us
how much Grandma Clinton cares about our children, but what they didn’t tell us
is that she is trigger happy, under the influence of certain sections of the
military, and has endorsed the “first strike nuclear option.” For my children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren I firmly reject not only the first strike
option but would insist that nuclear weapons be banned just as chemical warfare
has been. It certainly is not good for children and all other living beings.
The Clinton Foundation is, in addition
to Hillary’s e-mail problem, another pigeon that is bound to come home to
roost. It has not yet made the national news but is likely to be raised by the
Republicans in the upcoming weeks. She reportedly used the State Department as
an extension of the Foundation for her family’s financial gain. This is the area
where the e-mails and her conduct at the State Department intersect, and why a
full disclosure of the e-mails is so important.
One may now ask, why an intelligent
person, who she undoubtedly is, would continue to use a private unsecured
server for conducting official government business even when traveling in
countries we regard as hostile to our interests. Hillary’s answer was that it
was simpler to use just one phone rather than several. But this is not true,
she did use several but all were connected to the private server.Judicial Watch came up with a more plausible
answer: she wanted to avoid FOIA. The Freedom of Information Act had a
turbulent history but emerged in its current form after the Nixon Watergate
scandal and had the purpose to keep members of the executive branch honest. The
basic idea was to guarantee free access to government business by any citizen
of our country. As such it is also an invaluable resource for historians.
Hillary, of course, knew this and deliberately chose to avoid this safeguard of
the public. I have said deliberately because she was warned that continued use
of a private e-mail server was inappropriate for official government business,
but she ignored these concerns. It seems obvious that the Clintons, Bill and
Hillary, regard themselves as above the law. This confirms that we are not, as
commonly stated, a country of laws. Instead we are a country of lawyers and
judges were the party that has more money and influence will win the case. This
ugly truth must be faced if we want to be a “free” people. Documentation for
these statements can be found under FOIA.gov, http://www.breitbart.com/hillary-clinton/2016/07/26/judicial-watch-goes-to-court-for-hillary-clintons-testimony
andhttp://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/weekly-updates/clinton-foundation-corruption-news.
It is obvious that none of these
problems were touched on in Hillary’s acceptance speech. She appropriated
Bernie Sanders’ program and portrayed herself as a strong, experienced,
competent, responsible, and caring leader who can be trusted by Democrats,
Independents and Republicans alike. The speech was well written, touched all
bases, and promised the blue from the sky. It will undoubtedly lead to a boost
in the polls but this is meaningless; the only reliable ones will emerge after
the first debate at the end of September. Furthermore, intelligent voters will
not be swayed by rhetoric but look at the person’s track record which is the only
guide to predict future conduct. But this brings up the other crucial question.
How many of our voters take the time to truly inform themselves about the
people who want to lead the nation. The Internet does provide the data which
allows us to sift facts from propaganda. But it is obvious that those who do so
are a tiny minority whose voice is drowned out by believers in what is dispensed
through the official news media.
I have abstained from further discussing
her opponent Donald Trump at this time. Suffice it say for now that he also is
embroiled in ongoing lawsuits and his conduct leaves just as much room for
concern. Thus, a perceptive reader of Der
Spiegel, the German newsmagazine I bought while still in Austria, hit
the nail on the head. The author wrote: I don’t want to be in the shoes of
American voters. They have the choice between cholera and the plague.
These crucial issues for our country and
the world will be explored further in the next installment.
September 1, 2016
QUO VADIS AMERICA?
There exists an ancient story the
Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz has preserved for us
under the title: Quo Vadis: A narrative
of the Time of Nero. The novel was published in 1895 and has had several
resurrections in motion pictures. It was based on the apocryphal Acts of Peter that were written in Greek
during the second century AD. The pamphlet was soon translated into Latin and
this is the version of which one aspect became the centerpiece of Sienkiewicz’s
novel.
Here is a brief synopsis. The Apostle
Peter was in Rome to spread the “Good News,” but had only encountered tragedy. Nero
ruled supreme and the wholesale slaughter of Christians in the Colosseum was
daily entertainment for the masses. His own life was now threatened and he was
urged by the faithful to leave town so that the “Rock” upon whom Christ had
founded his Church would not perish and thereby seal the doom of the entire
effort. He was implored to renew the work in Greece or Asia Minor where there
were no persecutions and where the faith could flower into full maturity,
rather than being nipped in the bud. But there was also his conscience. Should
he really leave his Roman flock to the wolves? Was he a coward
who was trying to save his own life under the guise of preserving the faith?
What would the Master have done under these circumstances? How could he serve
Him better: by leaving and spreading the Word, or staying and be killed?
We are told that he opted for life and
left the city. But on the Via Appia as the sun rose like usual for everybody
else something special happened to Peter. The sun did not proceed on its usual
course but came instead towards the old man who fell on his knees as he beheld
Christ. “Quo vadis, Domine?” – wheregoest Thou oh Lord – he
asked in a broken sobbing voice. The answer was: “If you desert my people I am
going to Rome to be crucified a second time.”
The Master had spoken, doubt was gone.
Rome was the center of the world and death was the way to conquer it. Legend
has it that he was crucified head down because he felt himself unworthy to die
in the manner of his Lord and Master. It took about 250 more years and untold
suffering before Constantine saw the flaming cross in the sky and legitimized
the Christian faith.
Nearly 2000 years of so-called
Christianity have gone by and we now may justly ask ourselves what all of this intervening
tremendous suffering and bloodshed has accomplished? Jesus said:“By their fruits shall ye know them.” We are
the fruits and it is high time that we look at ourselves and ask the Quo Vadis question in a personal manner
as well as for our country. The personal aspect has to be resolved by each one
of us privately and we have no right to foist our answer on others. But we do
have an obligation to act true to our convictions in the spirit of Christ whose
message was to heal wounds rather than inflict new ones.
We are, however, not only private
individuals but also citizens of a country to which we owe an allegiance and
responsibility. Those of us who were born here may not feel strongly about it and
simply “go with the flow,” but others who came here out of free will had to
take an oath before they were granted citizenship. The formula starts with:
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely
and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign
prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore
been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and
laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; …”
We, because I am one of them, therefore, have a special
obligation namely to take our citizenship seriously and whenever we see that
our new home is in danger we have to speak out. We cannot vouch for the result,
because that is out of our hands, but we must make the effort to declare the
truth as we see it.
It
is no secret that our country is in deep trouble at this time. The upcoming
elections dominate cable news and we are told by the pundits as well as the
print media that our choice in November will be crucial for the future of our
country as never before. They admit that both candidates, Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump, have serious characterological flaws but we are supposed to
overlook them and simply vote “our conviction.” But when our conviction says
“None of the above” what are we to do? In theory we could vote for one of the
other parties either the “Greens” or “Libertarians” but that would be simply a
protest vote which carries no weight in our Republic because the popular vote
is meaningless. As has been pointed out again in the May issue, the President
who will be inaugurated next January will have been chosen by the Electoral
College whose members are appointed by the political party that carried their
individual state. Under these circumstances the electors will be beholden
either to the Republican or Democrat standard bearer. Although in theory they
could “vote their conscience,” the party bosses in each State are likely to
make sure that only the most faithful of the faithful will become electors.
When
Trump declared that the election system was rigged he spoke the truth but
applied it to voter fraud at the booth. As noted here the problem is much
deeper and actually anchored in the Constitution. The current system was well
meant by the framers but these men of good will could not clearly foresee the situation where two parties, who have become so hostile
against each other that their members hardly exchange greetings in Congress. This
stifles all constructive action and yet they are the only ones who supposedly
represent us.
When
we are told that our vote for Hillary or Trump is crucial for the direction of
the country’s next four years this is also true only within certain limits. Let
us assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing seriously untoward happens
between now and November 8 when Hillary will be elected President. Since she is
widely disliked by Independents and Republicans, if not detested, she will be
unable to enact pet legislations unless the Democrats win both the House and
the Senate. But even if this were to occur the Republicans could still stymie
her efforts by procedural votes and she will be just as hamstrung as Obama was
and is during his tenure. She may then take recourse to “executive orders,”
bypassing the quarreling Congress. The “executive branch” then also becomes the
“legislative” and by appointing Supreme Court Justices that fit her ideology
this third branch of government would also be fused into the same mold. All the
“safeguards” the Constitution has provided for usurpation of power by one
person, or faction, will have been obliterated. This is not fantasy but
apparent historic inevitability due to the road our country has traveled on for
the past decades. What is not fully appreciated by the majority of our people
is that past actions have consequences that become apparent only after a
considerable lapse of time when the abuses they engendered become obvious.
This
is what is likely to happen on the domestic scene but world events will not
automatically stop with Hillary’s election. She will be confronted with a
number of crises in various parts of the globe at unforeseen times. The blame
will be shifted to others, especially Russia and/or China, when in fact they will
be just the pigeons that will be coming home to roost. It is important to
realize that Hillary has always been a fervent interventionist. She subscribes
to the neocons’ creed that it is America’s responsibility to rule the world and
remove regimes we do not like. Her role as Secretary of State in the Libya
debacle is well known. It is less well known that the ideology that was
responsible for Libya was already at work in the nineties during her tenure as
First Lady. When BillClinton ran for
President he promised us that we would get “two for one” because that seems to
have been the promise she extracted from him for having saved his candidacy
after the Jennifer Flowers crisis. Hillary “stood by her man,” but there was a
price. Bill Clinton apparently had no particular foreign goals and would have
been content with devoting himself to domestic issues.But instead of developing friendly ties with
crippled Russia he was pushed into the confrontation which now is bearing full
fruit. Hillary cannot escape this responsibility because she helped formulate
policy behind the scenes. She favored NATO expansion unto Russia’s doorstep,
when that country was weak. She urged husband, Bill, to enter into the
“liberation” of Kosovo, which subsequently turned into a “narco
state.” She also agreed with the illegal bombing of Serbia.
Hillary’s
involvement in the still on-going Ukraine crisis seems on the surface to be
murkier because it unfolded after she had left the State Department. But the
seeds were sown in the 90’s during the Clinton Administration. Strobe Talbott was a long standing friend of the Clintons and in
February 1994 he was rewarded with the appointment as U.S. Deputy Secretary of
State, a position he held until 2001 when the Bush administration took over. During
Hillary’s Secretary of State Tenure he had privileged e-mail access. This is in
no way remarkable, but while working for the State Department he had hired a
young woman, Victoria Nuland, who had studied Russian literature, political
sciences as well as history at Brown University and had received a B.A. degree
in 1983. This appointment had ominous consequences.
Victoria
Nuland was initially Chief of Staff for Talbott and
soon moved into the position of Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs.
Her political outlook was in line with that of her husband, Robert Kagan, one
of the neocons principal architects and fervent supporter of the New American
Century goals as discussed on previous occasions (April 1, 2003; The Neocons
Leviathan. December 1, 2005; Albert Wohlstetter’s disciples.September 1, 2013; 9/11 Context and Aftermath). Kagan,
by the way rejects the term Neo-conservative used by the founder of the group, Irving
Kristol father of the better known Bill Kristol, and prefers to see himself as
a “liberal interventionist.” This is actually quite apt because he does
interfere “liberally,” in the popular sense of “a lot”, in the affairs of other
countries which should be of no concern to him. Under these circumstances
Victoria made a smooth transition from the Democrat Clinton to the Republican
Bush administration where she served, according to Wikipedia, as the principal
deputy foreign policy advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. For services well
rendered, she was promoted in July 2005 to U.S. Permanent Representative to
NATO, a position she held until May 2008. She with husband Robert and his
brother Fred, who is likewise a fervent neo-conservative, was on the forefront
of leadership that brought on the Iraq war. The U.S. has never formally
admitted that this invasion of a country that had done us no harm was a war
crime under UN Statutes for which German generals had been hanged at Nuremberg.
Our politicians, regardless of party, also have never shown any inkling of
guilt for the disasters they have unleashed in the Middle East and North Africa
that resulted from this war. Condoleeza Rice, as national
security adviser, wrote the Iraq debacle off as the birth pangs of a new Middle
East. This led me to comment at that time that we shouldn’t be surprised if the
baby were to come with a turban on its head. The idea became reality a few
years later in the form of ISIS.
Mrs.
Nuland never had any second thoughts about the wisdom of “nation building” in
the image of U.S.’ neocons and when Hillary became Secretary of State she
appointed her in May 2011 to Spokesperson for the State Department. In the summer
of 2013, after Hillary’s departure, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a position she holds to this day. “Eurasia,”
a term possibly adopted from George Orwell’s 1984, obviously is a polite term for the region
encompassed by the former Soviet Union. Nuland then became the chief architect
of the Maidan protests in Kiev, where she not only handed out cookies to
protesters, but also State Department money to her favorite opposition leaders.
The subsequent coup d’état which replaced, in the name of bringing democracy,
one corrupt president, who was friendly with neighboring Russia, with another
equally corrupt leadership whose allegiance was to the U.S. Regime change used
to be reserved for the CIA, starting in 1953 with the removal of Iran’s elected
leader Mosaddegh, but under Hillary’s tenure the State Department also assumed
this role.
We
keep blaming Putin for his aggression when in fact he was only responding to
the situation created by Nuland at the State Department. I have discussed her
role previously (Ukraine Crisis. March 15, 2014) including her feelings about
our ally the EU. In a tapped phone conversation with
our Ambassador in Kiev, prior to the coup, she gave directions on who should be
appointed to the future government. When the ambassador raised a question about
the feelings of the EU, the curt response was: “fuck the EU.” She has subsequently
apologized, but I am mentioning it here because this spontaneous comment does
reveal the true feelings of our “regime-changers.” This is not some old history
but a potential preview of what we may see if Hillary were to be elected. The
two are good friends and it has already been suggested that another job will be
waiting for Nuland either as National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, or
Secretary of State. Under those circumstances we can kiss all hope for an
understanding with Russia good bye and this new Cold War could readily spill
over into a nuclear one. Not by design, but by ill-conceived provocations
and/or an accidental firing of a nuclear missile by either side which would
lead to a retaliatory response. It is significant in this respect that Hillary
already has formally endorsed the “first strike option,” which had previously
been repudiated. Since the past is prologue this is what we can expect if
Hillary becomes President in January. To summarize: when Hillary talks of her
extensive experience in foreign affairs we should remember that she has left
nothing but disasters in her wake.
Let
us now look at what a Trump Presidency might be like. Here the situation is
much less clear because he never held public office that would allow one to form
an educated guess as to what he might or might not do in the realm of foreign
affairs and their most important decision on war vs. peace. In contrast to
Hillary where the past is prelude private citizens can only comment on what
Trump has done in his private life, to the extent it is known, and how he has
conducted in himself in his business dealings. As far as private life is
concerned he is currently married to his third wife which tends to show that
marital vows are not particular meaningful to him. On the other hand we must
admit that his grown-up children Ivanka, Donald and
Eric appear to be solid citizens with sound judgment and one wonders how a
blustery, narcissistic person accomplished this task. His family seems to be
his closest advisors and whatever slurs the democrats will throw at him from
now till the election anti-Semitism can’t be one of them. Ivanka,
with whom The Donald is closest, married an orthodox Jew, Jared Kushner, and
converted to that religion. Papa Trump likes his son-in law and appreciates his
advice. The oldest son Donald gave an excellent speech at the nomination
Convention and may well have a future on the political stage. His younger
brother Eric is a nice affable person who is in charge of a section of Trump Enterprises
and treats his employees well. I can testify to this with certainty because one
of my granddaughters, Nicole, works at Trump
National Golf Club-Charlotte. Eric
Trump came to inspect the facility in the spring of this year and Nicole participated
in a private luncheon with him at the time. Before leaving, Eric shook hands
with all the staff including the kitchen help.
Papa
Donald does not seem to have a firm political vision apart from keeping
Mexicans and Muslims out, establishing law and order and “Making America Great
Again.” These are campaign slogans which tell us nothing about how he would
actually govern. During the past few weeks his advisors became terribly
concerned about his off the cuff remarks which alienate just about every
thinking person and tried to convince him to stay focused on attacking Hillary.
He agreed, started reading his speeches from the teleprompter but since he
seems to have an adult attention deficit disorder he can’t stick to the written
word and keeps ad-libbing with insults that are now mainly directed at Hillary.
Although he is no fool he certainly behaves in a foolish manner to the great
delight of the Clinton campaign. As pointed out in the August installment Hillary
is in a great deal of trouble over having made the State Department an arm of
the family business called Clinton Foundation and further release of e-mails
that have more than a whiff of corruption has been promised by Wiki-leaks
founder Julian Assange for the next few weeks. Instead of staying with these
issues, and explaining their importance to the average American, Trump resorts
to name calling with “bigot” the latest epithet he hurled at Hillary. As such
he is his own worst enemy and his staff can only cringe because as The Donald
told us the other day: “I am what I am.” This is true and he just can’t help
himself from going off script.
I
have discussed my personal feelings why he should not be elected on November 8 in
the April issue and there is hardly anything to add except two medical points
and some information that has come to light from subsequent reading about the
man. One is that he is chronically sleep deprived and brags that he doesn’t
need sleep. This is not healthy, because sleep-deprived brains can do weird
things for which their owner is not entirely responsible. We don’t know why he
doesn’t get his 6-7 hours of night-time sleep and one wonders if chemical
stimulants play a role. It would be up to the media to pay some attention to
this self-confessed fact. For the second, he fits the official description of
narcissistic personality disorder http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/definition/con-20025568.
How this might impact on his conduct as President we have no way of knowing.
Another
aspect we are woefully ignorant about is his actual wealth. For good reason he
refuses to make his tax returns public because they are likely to be
embarrassing. Although everybody repeats the formula of his being a
billionaire, these billions may well be only on paper rather than cold hard
cash and we don’t know his debt level. In addition, being a shrewd businessman,
who likes money, he might well have some off-shore accounts he may not want us
to know about. In business he seems to have been competent as well as ruthless.
There are several articles I came across. Marie Brenner wrote “After the Gold
Rush” for Vanity Fair which deals
with the time of Trump’s pending divorce from Ivana and the impending collapse
of his business fortune in the middle and late 1980s. http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner.
It is well worth reading because it provides an insight of how Trump handles adverse
situations. The article ends with his testimony in one of the several civil law
suits that had been brought against him.Ms. Brenner wrote: “I wandered down to the press room on the fifth floor
to hear about Trump’s testimony. The reporters sounded weary; they had heard it
all before. “Goddamn it” one shouted at me “we created him! We bought this
bullshit! He was always a phony, and we filled our papers with him.” That was
in the 1980s, and viewing his performances on TV one gets the impression that this
characterization still appears to be appropriate.
Another
disenchanted reporter is Tony Schwartz who wrote The Art of the Deal, Trumps bible, for him. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker talked recently with Schwartz and her report can
be found onhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all.
The essential point is that Schwartz deeply regrets having written the book for
Trump because it painted a picture that hardly corresponded to reality. Coming
forward now was Schwartz’s attempt to atone for his early sin and possibly help
prevent a Trump presidency. Trump has threatened to sue Schwartz for his
comments but seems to have abstained from doing so at present. In addition, there
now exists a spate of laudatory as well as critical
books about Trump but it seems that the essence about the person is contained
in the mentioned two articles.
When
one is aware of the facts as they pertain to these two candidates for the
leadership not only of the country but the world one cannot help but shudder. I
mentioned that if Hillary were to be elected she would have to govern by
executive order because Congress dislikes her, the same would be true in even
greater measure if Trump were to win in November. He has alienated just about
everybody on the Republican as well as Democrat side and all attempts to
present an olive branch are bound to fail, just as Obama could not overcome the
prejudice against him. Thus, regardless who wins our Republican form of
government is likely to die a slow death being replaced by autocracy as
predicted in The Coming Caesars.
The book
was originally published in 1957 and its author, Amaury Riencourt, compared
Greek culture with Roman civilization. He concluded that Europe is the heir of
Greece while America that of Rome and that just as Rome lost its Republican
form government when the Empire became too big, so will America. Although the
Senate continued to exist during the Caesars, it was deprived of power. The same
is about to happen here and Congress may soon assume the role of the German Reichstag under Hitler after he had achieved full
dictatorial power. At present it is highly unlikely that Trump can win the
general election but his supporters are hoping for an “October surprise.” This
could consist of either profoundly damaging information about Hillary or an act
of terrorism that will shock the country into voting for Law and Order.
Regardless
who wins, the country is headed for a great deal of trouble during the next
four years. The debt of>$19 trillion
dollars is unsustainable, the Wall Street created bubble is likely to burst
again and if the current war mongering against Russia persists there may well
be a major war in the offing. If it
were to be nuclear the few remaining pockets of humanity wouldn’t need to worry
about global warming because nuclear winter is likely to have taken its place.
Even
an amateur student of history can only wonder about the infinite stupidity of
our politicians who keep provoking the Russians. All of us know the image of
the Russian bear and our “leadership” assumes that it can be made to dance to our
tune. This is not only fantasy but a serious mistake. A more realistic picture would
be that of a Mama Grizzly who will do everything in her power to protect her
cubs. Defending Holy Mother Russia was after all the rallying cry that defeated
not only Napoleon but also Hitler. Stalin ditched his demand for the people to
be good communists after the 1941 defeats and instead appealed to the masses through
the Orthodox Church. It thereby became “The Great Patriotic War” and this should
tell us what would be in the offing if our ruling circles were to persist in
provoking the Russian bear. Thus, unless whoever gets voted in listens to
impartial historians, rather than the military or self-serving politicians,
she/he will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past with an even worse
outcome for us and the entire world.
The
15th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and since it is this unsolved
crime that brought about all the current and likely future disasters I intend
to present a separate edition on September 15.
September 15, 2016
9/11 AND OUR CULTURE OF DECEPTIONS
9/11 AND OUR CULTURE OF DECEPTIONS
As mentioned in the first of the month
issue the events of 9/11, 2001 represent an unsolved crime that has now reached
its 15th anniversary. Since its aftermath, in form of our response
to this crime, affects people around the world it is essential that we remember
not only the government’s explanation but the facts of that day. This is why I
had intended to call this installment “9/11: America’s Mythos of the 21st Century.” But something happened
during the Memorial Service on “Ground Zero” that may well again shape the
future of our country and thereby the world. Before addressing the event, let
me list again some of the facts of 9/11 that have led to the government’s
conspiracy theory.
One may now object to the term
“government conspiracy theory,” because conspiracies are supposed to be hatched
by people of ill will towards our government and what the government tells us
is authoritative and, therefore, final truth. I did not invent the term
“government conspiracy theory” but owe it to David Ray Griffin who has spent more
than a decade in the attempt to elucidate what really happened on that day. He
correctly pointed out that the bin Laden – al Qaeda guilt is not a proven fact and
the enactment of the plan would have required secrecy among key participants
i.e. a conspiracy. As mentioned in another installment Professor Griffin is
well known for providing a corrected edition of Whitehead’s lectures on
“Process and Reality,” which was a monumental task. The book is fundamental for
understanding our world but cannot be read like any other. It must be studied
and each sentence pondered. God willing I’ll write a separate article on
Whitehead’s contribution to the philosophy of thought and thereby truth,
because if his insights were to be enacted they would markedly change our mental
framework for the better.
Professor Griffin is, therefore, a
serious person who has thought deep and hard about our world. After 9/11 he saw
the flaws in the government’s explanations and took on the task to
systematically explore the numerous aspects that now make up the Mythos of 9/11. This resulted in more
than half a dozen books and vilification by the official media that dutifully
dispense the government’s Pablum. So: What are the facts? In New York three,
not two, World Trade Center steel constructed towers disintegrated into dust
and bent steel. Two, the Twin Towers, did so within one hour of each other and
the third, WTC 7, later in the afternoon. This is unprecedented in the history
of architecture. Plane impacts with fires from jet fuel and office furniture
cannot explain these facts, especially when one considers that WTC 7 was not
hit by a plane. The buildings did not just collapse; they totally disintegrated
within 10 seconds!
Whoever termed the area “Ground Zero,”
which up to that time was reserved for atomic explosions, may well have been
prescient, especially when one views the “mushroom clouds” that heralded the
onset of disintegration of the Towers. We still don’t know how this feat was
accomplished. The government’s models can be discounted because NIST never
responded to requests to publish the details of the models they used for their
explanation of the “collapse.” As every scientist and engineer knows a model
depends on the assumptions that go into its construction and the NIST
engineers, whose incomes depend on the government, had the job to prove a
preconceived idea. Ground Zero has become hallowed ground and anyone who
subsequently publically questioned these results was labeled a “nut case,”
“conspiracy theorist” or worse. This also had real life consequences for some
of them. They lost their jobs in industry and academia. These are the facts for
the WTC.
AA Flight 77 that supposedly hit the
Pentagon had its own set of problems. A maneuver of descending from 7000 feet
to ground level with a low level turn at the end, although possible for a
military plane with a trained fighter pilot, is not likely to have been
accomplished with a commercial Boeing 757 and a pilot, Hani Hanjour,
who reportedly had difficulty handling a Cessna. The hole in the wall of the
building, attributed to the airliner, was too small to accommodate the plane. CNN
as well Fox News was on the scene within an hour or so and reported on the
absence of plane debris.
Major remains of the hijacked UA 93, supposedly
brought down by heroic passengers in the vicinity of Shanksville PA, were
likewise never found. On the day of the event there was only a hole in the
ground with small fragments of debris but no recognizable plane or body parts.
The coroner, Wallace Miller, left after about 20 minutes because there were no
bodies in sight. Later “clarifications” i.e. retractions by Mr. Miller are open
to doubt because first impressions of observable facts on the scene tell the
truth. One must add to these facts that the airspace of the two most highly
guarded cities in the country, New York and Washington DC, presented no problem
for the hijackers who also passed security at their respective airports without
major difficulties. Furthermore, none of the eight pilots who were in charge of
their planes activated the hijack code, the planes just “went missing” on
radar.
Surely, these events in their totality require
a better explanation than what is now regarded as the final truth, which not
only no longer needs further discussions but must not be questioned. This is
literally lethal because in the name of preventing a new 9/11 a vast “national
security” apparatus has been created and wars are being waged on foreign soil.
Yet, unless we really know for a fact who organized
and abetted this crime we cannot be secure, regardless of time, money and
effort, because these individuals have never been identified, let alone brought
to justice.
When President Bush told us immediately
after the disaster that “Justice will be done,” he may well have meant it;
having Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden on his mind. But there is also a problem
with this theory. Bin Laden stated that he was not guilty of this crime. Doctored
videotapes which appeared later can be discounted because the FBI never firmly
connected him to 9/11. He was wanted only in connection with the Kenya and
Tanzania embassy bombings. The previous “Most Wanted” FBI poster that showed
this fact was removed from the Internet. Surely we must ask why this was the
case. Furthermore, as soon as the Afghanistan war seemed to be over and eyes
were riveted on the next one in Iraq, Bush lost all interest in bin Laden
because Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, “had to be brought to
justice.” This is so outlandish that future historians, if there will be any
left after WWIII, will only marvel at our gullibility that accepted these government
stories and what is worse made them the blueprints for conduct.
If we were indeed “a country of laws,”
as our politicians including President Obama assure us, President Bush would
have immediately tasked the justice department with a criminal investigation as
to the perpetrators of this crime. The crime scene would have been cordoned,
the steel beams investigated for the potential presence of explosives and
subpoenas issued for persons in high government positions as to their actions,
or inactions, on that day. This was never done. Instead war was declared when
the Taliban leadership said that they would procure bin Laden if we could
provide reasonable proof of his guilt. The Bush administration refused to do
so.
In absence of judicial proceedings
Congress initiated an inquiry which had the limited goal to ascertain measures dealing
with security aspects and how to prevent future terrorist attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Inquiry_into_Intelligence_Community_Activities_before_and_after_the_Terrorist_Attacks_of_September_11,_2001.
The article documents that the White House, instead of supporting the
investigation, blocked the proceedings to the extent it could and blacked out
sections of the final report. We now know that some of them implicated Saudi
citizens in high positions.
The Bush administration was not only disinclined
to investigate the crime but even efforts by citizen groups, foremost relatives
of WTC victims, to obtain further information were stonewalled. We surely ought
to ask why this was the case. Only later in 2002, under duress, did the
administration allow the creation of the 9/11 Commission. As one of the
Chairmen subsequently wrote it was “set up to fail.” It was underfunded, its
term limit dictated by political considerations, access to crucial material was
seriously curtailed and as Commission Staff Team leader, John Palmer, wrote
they found “either unprecedented administrative incompetence or organized
mendacity on the part of key figures in Washington.“
The Obama administration, and especially
Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, now takes credit for having Osama bin
Laden brought to justice. What are the facts? Navy SEALS conducted a raid on a
compound in Islamabad which supposedly harbored bin Laden. It is undisputed
that five persons were killed in that raid including one who was regarded as
bin Laden. For the rest of the events we have to believe the government. His
body was supposedly taken to the USS Carl Vinson where a DNA analysis confirmed
his identity and the body was then committed to the deep. For the Obama
administration this meant that “justice was done” and the chapter could now be
closed. But was it really? We have not seen the DNA evidence and the person
killed might have been one of bin Laden’s brothers. I am saying this because
there is information that Osama had already been seriously ill from kidney failure
at the time of 9/11 and his death was reported in early 2002 by foreign media.
No, justice was not done; this was a
lynching in the tradition of the American West where no trial was required. The
person should have been taken captive and placed before an American court as
was done with Ramzi Yousef, for placing explosives
inthe basement of the South Tower in
1993, and ZacariasMoussavi
for his participation inthe 9/11 plot. Justice
demands that the accused has a right to testify in his own behalf and this was
denied not only to bin Laden but to all persons who still sit in indefinite
detention at Guantanamo. This is not justice but akin to Nazi concentration
camps and Soviet Gulags. There is a saying in the German language: man muss das Kind beimrichtigenNamennennen – you’ve got to call the child by its correct
name. The euphemisms under which we hide our misconduct should no longer be
acceptable.
The documentation for the statements
made here can be found in previous installments on this site as well as the
voluminous literature that has accumulated over the past 15 years. The
information is available but one has to make an effort to educate oneself and
sift the wheat from the chaff. A good start, apart from Griffin’s books that
delineate the scope of the problem, is: Painful
Questions by Eric Hufschmid which provides a
series of pictures about the disintegration of the Twin Towers. One can ignore
the later chapters and let the pictures speak for themselves. Disconnecting the Dots by Kevin Fenton
is also important because it provides evidence for “How CIA and FBI officials
helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations.” In addition the websites
of “Pilots for 9/11 Truth,” as well as “Architects for 9/11 Truth,” including
their respective video discs can be consulted. The first one raises several important
aeronautic questions about the government’s explanations and the second one deals with the physical structural issues involving the
buildings. The videos of the 2011 “Toronto Hearings,” or a shorter version “9/11:
Experts Speak Out,” are also important. They don’t deal with “who did it?” but the
more fundamental issue: what happened? For the historical background and
context the DVD by the Italian filmmaker Massimo Mazzucco:
The New American Century is important.
It demonstrates the attempt by a small group of intellectuals to assure
American dominance in world affairs for this century. It ought to be viewed by
every American because our future is at stake. The DVD is available on amazon.com
and is allowed to be copied for free distribution. As George
Orwell put it: He who controls the past, controls the future. This is
true and this is why the Mythos of
9/11 is so important.
I owe the Greek term Mythos, rather than simply myth, to none
other than the Nazi party’s philosopher Alfred Rosenberg. During the 1920s he
collected his thoughts on what the German nation should be like and published
them in 1930 under the title: Der Mythus des ZwanzigstenJahrhunderts. Nazi literature is, of course, looked
askance nowadays, but how can you know your adversary’s thoughts without making
the effort to read what he wrote? Rosenberg had a model for his book, Houston
Stewart Chamberlain’s: Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts.Grundlagen
could be translated either as bases or foundations. Chamberlain, in spite of
his British birth, had become a profound admirer of what can be called Germanic
virtues, and in the book he traces the development of German thought through
the Greco-Roman civilizations to its culmination in Christianity. The book is,
however, imbued with a hefty dose of what is now called racism. Jews, who were
regarded as a problem from the middle of the century on, were to be respected
for the tenacity with which they had kept their race pure by forbidding
intermarriage. But they also had sufficient other undesirable traits that were
contrary to Germanic values (Chamberlain always used Germanen and germanisch rather than Deutsch) that made them aliens on German
soil. The problem of Jesus’ “Jewishness” was solved by making a distinction
between race and religion. One is a Jew by race i.e. two Jewish parents
regardless of which religion they adhere to. Since Jesus came from Galilee,
which had only recently been conquered and consisted of different ethnic groups,
he was a Jew only in the religious rather than racial sense. But race –
“blood,” or in modern terms DNA, was the factor that made one what one is. The
two volumes are of historical interest because they provided the intellectual
background for the Nazi movement after WWI. Rosenberg subsequently elaborated further
on the racial aspect and the qualities of honor and duty were to be the key words
to live by. His Mythus
involved the 2 million German soldiers who had fallen on the field of honor
during WWI. Their sacrifice for Germany’s freedom and honor must never be
forgotten and a state must be created that incorporates these values for all future
generations. This state would put an end to the hedonism, pacifism, and
internationalism, attributed to Jews, in the Weimar republic.
Thus, the meaning of the word Mythos, differs
from its English shortened counterpart myth, which has the connotation of a lie.
It presents an elevated vision of heroic memory that should guide future
action. As such it also has the quasi-religious component of dogma, which must
not be challenged. This is precisely what is happening today in regard to
9/11.On national holidays the Boy Scouts
(for a donation) plant American flags on the front lawns of the subdivision
where we live. This year was the first one where flags were also planted on the
weekend of September10-11. The victims of 9/11, who can now be counted in the
millions by the wars President Bush unleashed, with the ensuing turmoil in the
Middle East and North Africa, surely deserve better than pious speeches at key
sites and flags on our front lawns!
Some of us who voted for President Obama
harbored the hope that he would institute the necessary investigation into the
9/11 tragedy. We were sorely disappointed. He told us early on that he will not
look back but forward, which in essence amounted to acceptance of falsehoods.
One can understand his reasons but that does not remove the fact that as long
as the 9/11 Mythos is not exposed the country cannot recover its moral compass.
The exploitation of the tragedy is a cancer which may well destroy us in the
long run.
Americans tend to have short historical
memories and for the most part see themselves as innocent victims of malignant
outside forces. This trait is encouraged by skillful propaganda. Mexico’s
“aggression” had given rise to Mr. Polk’s War, as it was called at the time,
and led to the incorporation of the current southern tier of states from
Florida to California and extending all the way north to Utah. “Remember the
Maine” was the slogan that started the Spanish American war that moved
America’s borders into the Caribbean as well as to the Philippines. The evil
Kaiser blew up innocent American lives on the Atlantic and then wanted to help
the Mexicans regain their lost territory. WWI was entered and what would have
become a stalemate with a compromise peace became the recipe for the next war.
The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in peace-time was fiendish and Hitler had
to be defeated because he intended to destroy America.
This is how Americans see their history.
Yet, all of these events had causes that were hidden by a propaganda machine
with ulterior motives. Thus, we have a string that always produces the same
sound when certain key events strike it: the call for revenge through war. One
should not take this as specific for America, it is universal, and I have
merely used the American example because the events are familiar here.
Underneath this universal phenomenon of either shrinking from the truth, or
deliberately falsifying it, resides in an aspect of humanity that accompanied
the acquisition of language – the ability to lie. I currently believe that this
is inborn and associated with the fight or flight reflex. We try to counteract
it by prohibition and various degrees of punishment. But this has never fully
worked because it is so much easier to lie than to admit an unpleasant or
unpopular truth which is regarded as having serious consequences for oneself.
The lying person does not consider at the time of the lie that, although
punishment can for a time be evaded, its maintenance requires a series of
additional lies which compound the original problem. This refers to what may be
called the defensive lie. The other one which is regarded as more harmless is
the exaggeration of a given event. Initially we may be aware that we are
exaggerating but by repetition it becomes automatic and will then be regarded
as truth, which defies rational explanation when offered.
A good example for the latter is Donald
Trump. When confronted with evidence that there were not thousands of Muslims
dancing in the streets of New Jersey celebrating the disintegration of the Twin
Towers, he brushed it off with having “seen them.” Trump habitually exaggerates
various aspects of life to the point where the border between exaggeration and
lie becomes indistinguishable. For him the exaggerations seem to have become
facts which he believes. This attitude is aided by our culture which dangles
before us “the American dream.” It consists either of material wealth and
comfort or achievements in the public arena resulting from intense personal
effort. While this “dream” is common to human beings around the globe the
specific American aspect is, what I have called on another occasion, “you too
can be a Michelangelo.” Well, we can’t! With hard effort we can excel in a
given field but the degree of excellence that was achieved by a Michelangelo, a
Shakespeare or a Mozart, to name just a few, is foreclosed to the rest of us.
While this should never deter us from striving it should also not lead to ideas
of greatness, which when translated into the political sphere are called “American
exceptionalism.” Once the American experiment with an unbridled capitalist
economy is over we will recognize that there was nothing exceptional about it
because it had the ancient names of pride and greed.
In the meantime our politicians, media
and advertising agencies delude us with a variety of exaggerations as well as
outright hucksterism. “There’s a sucker born every minute,” has been attributed
to the showman P. T. Barnum and seems to be the unacknowledged background idea
behind most of the current deceptions. Childhood trust is inborn, we love to
believe and when our belief is sanctioned by society we are comfortable. When
it is challenged we get angry and either walk away,
resort to name calling or worse. A brief example might be as follows. This past
summer, after my return from Europe, I had a very pleasant conversation with an
American business man who had been successful in his field and was now retired.
But when it veered to 9/11 and I pointed out the various inconsistencies in the
government’s theory he clammed up and any further conversation was impossible.
It was as if I had suddenly become radioactive and needed to be avoided. Yet,
for scientists questioning assumptions is our daily bread. Where is the law
that says “Thou shalt not question your government,” in our supposedly free
society? It is not on the books but exists in fact and even Obama has enforced
it. Whistleblowers who point to mischief in government should be rewarded;
instead they are denigrated and prosecuted. An open society abhors secrecy, but
secrecy is fostered in the name of national security, and maintained by lies.
Last Sunday 9/11 may have claimed
another victim to be added to the roster. Not in the sense of physical death
but that of aspirations. It is far too early to issue a death certificate but
the proverbial handwriting seems to be on the wall. There had been rumors for
some time about Hillary Clinton’s health but I never paid attention to them
because she looked sufficiently vigorous on the campaign trail. She did have a serious
fall with a concussion and a “cerebral venous sinus thrombosis” in December 2012
but she had bounced back and seemed to be doing “just fine.” Sunday evening I
received an e-mail from one of my former co-workers who urged me to view a
video clip showing a Dr. Ted Noel whose Internet claim to fame results from his
opinion that Hillary suffers from Parkinson’s disease. I was asked to provide a
professional opinion on the presumed diagnosis. After viewing the video I wrote
back that if Hillary has Parkinson’s this is the weirdest case that has come to
my attention. She does not show the characteristic masked expressionless
facies, the pill rolling type tremor and there is no good evidence for muscular
rigidity. On Monday morning I found out that this video had gone viral and one of
my sons sent it to me. I merely reiterated my opinion, but now curiosity took
over.
The morning edition of the papers (I get
the SL Tribune, as well as the NY Times) carried articles on Hillary’s
difficulty during the previous day’s Memorial Service on Ground Zero.
Consulting the Internet I immediately found two video clips. One showed her
standing on a curb, supported by another lady, while waiting for her van. When
the door of the van was opened she made a few cumbersome steps and then fell
into the van while being held by three persons. The official explanation was
that it had been hot; Hillary was dehydrated and in addition was suffering from
pneumonia for the past two days. Well, the temperature had been in the high 70s
rather than 90s and there was no obvious reason why someone who has pneumonia
should be up and about attending ceremonies instead of resting in bed. The
diagnosis had been arrived at by her personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, and this terse statement again opened doubts. I
believe it was proffered to explain her coughing fits but that would require
that her pneumonia was present for a long time; an unlikely occurrence.
The mystery was then compounded by
another video clip. We were told that Hillary did not want to go to a hospital
after her collapse into the van but be taken to her daughter’s apartment. Lo
and behold we can see on that clip, likewise taken by a bystander, a healthy,
rejuvenated vigorous Hillary coming out of the apartment building. She is greeted
by a little girl whom she hugs and then strides off with unimpeded gait towards
her van, apparently unaccompanied by a cohort of Secret Service agents. To
shouted questions about her health she replied feeling fine and “it’s a
beautiful day.” To a physician who witnesses miracles only rarely in
professional life this was about as miraculous a recovery as might ever have
occurred. The condition of the Hillary we saw in the first clip was that of a
seriously ill person with some neurologic difficulty while a few hours later
she is supposed to be fit as the proverbial fiddle. The fall into the van might
not have been due to loss of consciousness but merely a stumble. The troubling
aspect is the gait that preceded the fall. It was clearly impaired and this
type of gait hardly ever resolves itself within a few hours. This incongruence immediately
brought up the question did the second clip really show Hillary or a look alike?
A few seconds of browsing led to websites which show that Hillary indeed has a
double, Ms. Teresa Barnwell, who bears a striking resemblance. But she is nine
years younger and not quite as hefty. Rense.com has the videos as well as still
photos where one can compare the two “Hillarys” and
make up one’s own mind. Just as with the 9/11 events I can only point to
incongruities of the official account and will have to leave a definitive diagnosis
for later when hopefully her full medical chart becomes available. But the
whereabouts of Ms. Barnwell on that Sunday should be readily ascertainable.
Hillary’s campaign staff immediately issued
an apology for not having made the pneumonia diagnosis public and promised to
be more forthcoming about her medical condition in the near future. Hillary
herself added in a phone interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that
she “didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal,” and since the
Memorial attendance was important she had hoped “to power through it.”
Yesterday
Dr. Bardack released a letter about Hillary’s health that
contained these salient features:
In
March of this year a CT scan of the brain was performed that showed mild
chronic sinusitis and no brain abnormalities.
On
Friday September 2nd a low grade fever was noted. Clinton was placed
on a short course of antibiotics and advised to rest.
Friday
September 9 a noncontrast chest CT scan revealed that
Clinton had a small right middle-lobe pneumonia that was treated with
antibiotics and she was advised to rest. Her current medications are: the
antibiotic Levaquin (for ten days), Coumadin to prevent blood clots, Armor
thyroid for hypothyroidism, Clarinex for allergies
and Vitamin B12. Dr. Bardack also added: “she has
remained healthy is recovering well and is fit to serve a President of the
United States.”
Hillary returned to the campaign trail
this afternoon in North Carolina. She appeared neurologically intact, read the
speech well from the tele-prompter, and there were no stumbles. During the
subsequent press conference she seemed to tire, but this is understandable. On the
other hand the earlier mentioned “miraculous recovery” on Sunday, in combination
with the history of fainting episodes, now raises the question of some episodic
central nervous system disorder for which an EEG would be indicated. Our
information base is still too sketchy to suggest a specific disorder, so as the
saying goes: stay tuned; the show has just started.
October 1, 2016
A DEBATE AUTOPSY
The much anticipated debate between
our two contenders for the highest office in the country came and went last
Monday. Both had been “prepped” by their advisors but while Hillary took the
advice to heart, her counterpart, “The Donald,” could only partially follow it.
For Hillary success was a must because her
poll numbers were sliding. Among the reasons were the unresolved e-mail issues
and the state of her of health. In the September 15 installment I had referred
to the mishap at the 9/11 Memorial Service where she had to leave prematurely
and then collapsed prior to entering the van that would take her to her next
destination. If a bystander’s video had not caught the scene we would never
have known about it, and this shows how important citizen participation and
documentation of important events can be in the era of high technology.
Since the video raised serious questions
about her health I consulted the Internet and found that the issue had already
been raised by a number of physicians. Parkinson’s disease was advocated but I
dismissed this presumptive diagnosis because coverage of her campaign events
showed none of the classical features. More recently a left sixth cranial nerve
palsy, which leads to a deviation of the eye towards the nose, as a result of
the cerebral venous sinus thrombosis she had suffered in December of 2012 was
suggested. I assume that this event was probably the reason that led to her
resignation from the office of Secretary of State. I, therefore, paid close
attention to the way she handled this obviously stressful test of a 90 minute
debate with a formidable adversary.
She passed it with flying colors. Her
demeanor remained calm throughout, she frequently smiled in a genuine manner,
her thought processes were coherent and her memory appeared to be good. She had
carefully prepared herself, and as she said not only for this task, but that of
the presidency. This should put to rest the diagnoses of Parkinsonism as well
as sixth nerve palsy, for which I likewise found no evidence. But this leaves
her intermittent “fainting spells” unexplained. She does seem to suffer from
some type of episodic disorder which is not accounted for by “dehydration” or
“pneumonia,” as advanced by her personal physician.
Let us remember: she is 69 years of
age and on Coumadin, a blood thinner.This carries the risk of bleeding with hemorrhage in the brain as the
most serious side effect. A person with this type of history should not be
elected to the presidency of this country, especially in these perilous times.
Americans don’t like to “look back,” but knowledge of history is essential to
prevent future disasters. Woodrow Wilson was 62 years old when he suffered a
stroke that incapacitated him for the rest of his presidency. The country was
essentially run by his wife who ferociously guarded access to her disabled
husband. This prevented Wilson from getting his pet project, the League of
Nations, ratified by Congress. It is an open question how America might have
changed the course of history had the League become a functioning organ for
world health instead of a debating society.
The 63 year old President Roosevelt was
seriously ill at the time of the Yalta Conference in 1945 that sealed the fate
of Europe for the next half century. Because of already existing health issues,
beyond his poliomyelitis, he had been advised not to run for a third term. But
with his stamina he thought he could, in Hillary’s words, “power through it.” These
mental blinders even prevented him from informing his Vice-President, Harry
Truman, about the major issues including the work on the atomic bomb. The
office was thrust upon Truman unawares and he did the best job he could
thereafter. Roosevelt’s conduct was irresponsible because all of us arrange our
private affairs, especially in advanced age, for the benefit of our family and
other heirs. Should this not be essential for the person who is not only
responsible for the family’s well-being but the fate of the country and the
world?
From all the issues Hillary has deftly
deflected attention, health is the most critical one and we, the voting public,
need an accurate accounting. It was not brought up by the moderator but will
undoubtedly surface in one of the two subsequent debates. To put all rumors to
rest, Hillary should have a complete medical and neurologic work-up at one of
our leading medical centers and all the results need to be published.
Contenders for the presidency have forfeited the right to privacy because their
actions directly influence the lives of all of us. This applies in equal
measure to Donald Trump. A few days away from the campaign trail in a hospital,
to accomplish all the necessary tests, would be time well spent and show that
the candidates are in fact concerned about the well-being of the voters rather
than just spouting pious phrases about the good they will do when elected. This
would be the reasonable thing to do, but politicians are not known for putting
reason above the will to power.
Donald Trump had a different task last
Monday. His poll numbers were rising, not necessarily because he was an
attractive choice but probably because of Hillary’s woes. He needed to show
himself “presidential” similar to his appearance with the Mexican President
earlier last month. He was advised to stay calm, explain the reasons why a
Hillary Presidency would be a disaster and not let her needling get “under his
skin.” He was apparently also told to be respectful of her gender and refrain
from bullying.
He did not do well. He came across as
unprepared and thought that he could “wing it.” Apart from that he made several
mistakes. First of all he stumbled on the gender issue. While he addressed
Hillary first as “Madame Secretary” and subsequently as “Secretary Clinton” she
did not reciprocate with Mr. Trump, but Donald. At this point he could have
changed the tone of his address, called her Hillary, and stated outright that
gender will not be a point in this race. This would have established equal turf
and cleared the air once and for all. Instead he brought the topic up in a tangential
manner at the end of the debate when he first said that she neither has the
looks nor the stamina of a president. He quickly corrected himself on the
“looks” issue but persisted with lack of stamina, which was clearly wrong
because she has plenty of it. The issue is not whether or not we should elect a
woman as president. Most Americans have no problem with that; it’s only this
particular woman we have misgivings about. Character is and should be the
issue, not gender. But Trump’s pretended respect for Hillary, as shown by the
appellation of Secretary Clinton, was not genuine. Next day on the campaign
trail it was back to “crooked Hillary.”
Hillary’s body language was appropriate for
the circumstances and she even attempted to portray Miss Sunshine. Trump’s was that
of the person we saw on campaign events. The split screen images did him no
favor. When Hillary was talking he tended to revert to his usual squint, which
does not make him more endearing, and intermittently there was a smirk on his
lips. He also kept interrupting Hillary’s allegations with “wrong, wrong.” This
was ineffective. He should have made a note of each statement he objected to
and if she went over her allotted time ask the moderator to give him the same
amount for point by point refutation. He must have known that these issues
would come up and should have been ready with the answers. His conduct was not
“presidential” and regardless what the media pundits say it is not likely to win
him undecided voters.
So far I have concentrated on the
physical aspects of the candidates as they came across on the screen because
these influence the judgment of viewers. The much vaunted “issues” play a
secondary role. When it came to those both candidates merely rehashed their
campaign speeches, with the few key words we have repeatedly heard. Trump was
especially perseverative. He also made the mistake of readily taking Hillary’s
or the moderator’s bait as for instance with the race issue for not renting to
minorities in the 70s, and joining the “birthers” who claimed that President
Obama was not entitled to the presidency because he had not been born in the
United States. He tried to put the blame on the Democrats for the latter, but people
don’t care about who started this particular piece of nonsense. In addition, as
one of my sons pointed out in a recent conversation, it goes beyond race. It is
a constitutional matter that was also raised for George Romney’s (Mitt’s
father) presidential run, McCain’s and most recently Ted Cruz’s.
Racial bias is, however, a major issue
that requires intelligent discussion above and beyond the “law and order”
mantra. Different people will have different opinions on the topic which depend
to some extent where they live and with whom they interact on a daily basis.
Let me now provide a few personal examples. When we bought our first house in
Grosse Pointe in 1957 the area was not only “Lily white” but even Jews could
not move there. My Jewish physician colleagues had to buy either in Birmingham,
Bloomfield Hills or the “Village,” an affluent historic section near downtown
Detroit. Sailors could not join any of the Yacht Clubs but had to found their
own. The situation began to change for Jews in the late 60s and when we now say
“race” African-American citizens are mainly meant. As a result of the riots in
the late 1960s there was “white flight” to the suburbs, but for our family that
was something one read about in the newspapers and magazines. The nursing staff
at the Lafayette Clinic in downtown Detroit, where I was in charge of Neurology
and EEG, was African-American and the head nurse had an additional dose of
Sioux in her genes which made her an excellent administrator. All of us had
mutual respect for each other and race was no problem.
Thus, I thought that we were above bias
but it was not entirely true. On Saturdays we used to intermittently go
downtown to a movie and I vividly recall the feeling of one evening. It was in
1971 and the movie was “Willard.” We were slightly late and the auditorium was
already dark when we entered. When the lights came back on after the movie we
found out that we were the only white family in the entire audience. People
stared at us, we stared at them and I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Some
unconscious deep fear of “the other” had come to awareness. Nothing happened,
nobody bothered us, but it was a lesson for life. We were not aware that
Detroit had profoundly changed and since we are not integrationists who are out
to make political statements that was the last movie night in Detroit for us. I
had learned the truth of the proverb: birds of a feather flock together.
One more anecdote and its counterpart
are also revealing. While working at the University of Michigan’s EEG
laboratory in 1957 its Chief, Dr. Bagchi, took a six month sabbatical to study
the EEG of Yogis in his home country, India. I was in charge of the lab for
that period and when the secretary left I had to hire a replacement. A
pleasant, competent African-American applied and I hired her without any second
thought. When Dr. Bagchi returned he was obviously miffed and I was not
immediately aware of the reason. Later on I was told that Indians had at that
time a bias against “Blacks.”
The corollary happened in the late 1980s
when I was in charge of Harper Hospital’s Clinical Neurophysiology laboratory.
In one particular year I had two physicians in training with one from Pakistan,
who appeared white, and the other from southern India who was ebony black. The
interaction between these two physicians was quite interesting, with the
Pakistani looking down on the Indian. On occasion I had to intervene and remind
the Pakistani that we are in America rather than Asia. But this was not all.
The Indian, a very kind and compassionate person, had wanted to buy a house in
one of the western Detroit suburbs but was rejected because he was taken for “Black.”
Needless to say he was deeply hurt and gave up on the idea of staying in this
country at the end of his training.
These are inconvenient truths to which one
must add another. The feelings described above exist on both sides of the
racial divide and when they are exploited for political reasons, to gain
special privileges e.g. reparations for slavery, the majority of white people
automatically bristle. Conscious attitudes have changed over the decades and
housing barriers have largely fallen, but for the unconscious ones it will
require more time. If we really want to change ourselves, and thereby our
society, we must not shrink from this truth but face it and resolve to improve
our conduct. The past cannot be undone and harping on it without considering
the reasons for past conduct is harmful. The future is what we should be
concerned about. But it can only lead to improvement if there is rigorous
self-inspection on both sides of the divide with the goal of mutual respect and
the avoidance of past mistakes.
Due to my profession we have always
lived in the somewhat more affluent suburbs rather than inner cities and I can,
therefore, not render an opinion on what life is like for the majority of our
African-American citizens who want to make a decent living under adverse
circumstances. I have mentioned this issue in “BarackObama’s Problem” (July 2008). Since it
is highly relevant for Trump’s law and order cure I’ll re-insert it here:
Malcolm [X] had
once said: “What is the name of a black PhD walking at night in a white
neighborhood? Nigger!” Or as Reverend Wright, who also
has a PhD, had put it to Obama on their first meeting: “We don’t buy into these
class divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack, cops don’t check my bank
account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.”
These day to day experiences of the black
community in our inner cities are real and we must listen to reasonable voices
for reasonable changes. The solutions advocated by either party have failed,
and the inner cities are again about to explode with the furor of the sixties.
It may well become worse because youth unemployment is rampant. Trump’s visit
to black churches and listening to the concerns of the members was a good start
but following up with endorsing the “frisk law” will not solve the problem.
We can skip over the other domestic
issues of the debate such as immigration because the positions of the
candidates are well known and they simply repeated their campaign slogans. In
regard to job creation Trump wants us to believe that lower tax rates for
businesses and import taxes on American wares produced abroad will stimulate
the overall economy and that this money can be used to repair our decaying
infrastructure. This is likely to remain a fantasy especially if defense
spending is increased as both candidates have promised to do. By exclusively blaming
outsourcing by American companies to factories abroad where there are cheaper
wages, no health insurance costs and no vacation or pension payments, he
ignores another even more important outsourcing for which we have as yet found
no cure. I am talking about automation where we human beings progressively
outsource ourselves to computers. Their labor is likewise cost-free and their
massive spread, that already has invaded all aspects of life, is bound to
continue. Millions of jobs will be lost right here, unemployment will soar and
with it social unrest. We won’t need Muslim terrorists to create havoc; we are
creating a social scene that will make it inevitable. This is what intelligent
politicians should address because this is the looming future, which inevitably
has to impact on race relationships. But since there are no ready answers for
this impending crisis, time is frittered away on political infighting.
There were other key aspects of the
debate where both candidates missed the boat. They deal with an American fact
of life that is known but not allowed to be talked about. Hillary as well as
Trump agreed that the nuclear issue is an overriding concern and even more urgent
than climate change. While the latter proceeds slowly but inexorably, a nuclear
disaster can hit us tomorrow. It could be inflicted with a “dirty bomb” by a
rogue terror unit that is unaffiliated with a recognized nation state or we can
drift into it in the way Europe drifted into WWI. The dirty bomb, would be a
local issue and although hundreds if not thousands may die it would not alter
the structure of the country unless we permitted it. As I said in regard to
9/11, it was not the event itself that caused the subsequent misery of millions
of people but our response to it. A rational approach would have been to
immediately start a criminal investigation, but instead the tragedy was
exploited for ulterior purposes thereby unleashing much greater disasters. When
one extrapolates from this event it is safe to predict that if a major
terrorist attack were again to occur, with significant loss of life and
property, martial law would be declared and the last vestiges of our freedom
would be gone. There exists a faction within our country that aspires to
despotism and it will exploit whatever opportunity may arise.
The dirty bomb may initially be the
lesser of the two evils the nuclear issue presents, although it is likely to
lead subsequently to the grater one: outright nuclear war between us and our
adversaries. Kim Jong Un of North Korea is an international
pariah and we are told that his nuclear tipped rockets are about to hit our
West Coast. I regard this as propagandistic nonsense because he has not shown
suicidal tendencies. To the contrary he seems to love life and it appears that
he uses his nukes to warn us off from our favorite task of “regime change,”
which we repeatedly promised him. He learned from Saddam Hussein’s as well as Muammar
Kaddafi’s example what we do with countries that give up their nuclear
ambitions, or actual arsenal, when they subsequently don’t toe Washington’s
line. In my opinion Kim wants to keep his job and the good life. If we were to
continue with the status quo for a while longer his regime is likely to implode
similar to the Soviet Union. Starving one’s people forever,
does not succeed forever.
These considerations lead to the key
question of “first strike” that was brought up at the end of the debate by the
moderator. The question was directed to both candidates:
HOLT
…. On nuclear weapons, President Obama reportedly considered changing the
nation's longstanding policy on first use. Do you support the current policy?
Mr. Trump, you have two minutes on that.
TRUMP: …. We are
not -- we are not keeping up with other countries. I would like everybody to
end it, just get rid of it.But I
would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative
happens, it's over.At the same
time, we have to be prepared. I can't take anything off the table.
CLINTON: Well,
let me --let me start by saying,
words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter
when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South
Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor
them. It is essential that America's word be good. And so I know that this
campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders
across the globe. I've talked with a number of them. But I want to -- on behalf
of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say
that, you know, our word is good….
For the rest of her two minutes she went
on in a similar vein without ever answering the question. Yet we need and
deserve an answer because it is crucial and has to do with preventive war. Uncertainty
should not persist because our adversaries will take note and may employ the
first strike option before we do. This is literally a matter of life and death
for humanity. Our current policy as enunciated by the Secretary of Defense, Ash
Carter, on September 27, 21016 is: “The
doctrine of nuclear deterrence that leaves open the possibility of launching a
"’first strike’" before an enemy attacks, will remain the basis of
U.S. policy even as new generations of nuclear weapons are introduced. This is
not “deterrence,” but the road to mutual suicide because Russia has already
responded in the same manner. This situation puts us one accident away from
disaster and it should no longer be allowed to persist. While we can do
nothing about rogue factions and their dirty bomb, the first strike option
should be completely off the table for nation states and this position should
be anchored in law by the United Nations. The survival of civilized humanity is
at stake.
Hillary’s reply brought to mind,
however, the crucial problem which American diplomacy over the past half
century has bestowed on us. We have ignored the farewell advice of our Founding
Father, George Washington, who had admonished us to stay out of European
entanglements. Through
NATO, SEATO and other treaties we now have defense obligations for a host of
countries that can involve us in a major war at a moment’s notice. These are
the implications when Hillary said that “our word is good.” We also have
ignored President Eisenhower’s warning in regard to the dangers the
“military-industrial complex” presents to our society. It now has assumed
proportions, which not only no longer enhance our security but instead threaten
to destroy us. We have allowed a monster to grow in our midst that can no
longer be tamed and is bound to grow further, regardless of who wins in
November.
This brings me to Trump’s mantra of
Making America Great Again. He seems to have the country of the 1940s and 1950s
in mind without realizing that the world has profoundly changed since that
time. These years were an anomaly because the major industrial centers in
Europe and Japan had been destroyed, China was involved in a civil war and Israel
had not yet assumed the role it plays today. Trump brought up the fact that he
had met with Netanyahu and the latter “was not a happy camper,” probably over
the Iran nuclear treaty. But let us be realistic who feels threatened by Iran’s
nukes if and when they decided to get them? They won’t send them against us,
Russia, China etc. If they were to use them at all, which is not necessarily
likely because they may want them for defense rather than offense, it would be
against Israel who is, as we are repeatedly told, our staunchest friend and
ally. But is this really the case?
When we look carefully, we find that
this friendship is predominantly a unilateral one on our part. The Israeli
government needs our support, but is perfectly willing to pursue its own
policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. They live by Moshe Dayan’s maxim: “The
Americans give us money, they give us weapons and they give us advice. We take
the money and the weapons but ignore the advice.” In the 1950s Eisenhower could pressure the
Israelis to give up the Sinai and return to the pre-June 1967 borders. This
changed in 1967 under Lyndon Johnson’s aegis when our naval intelligence ship
the “Liberty” was attacked in international waters with significant losses of
American lives. The event was hushed up by the press and there were no adverse
repercussions for Israel.
Officially our government has continued to
decry the steady continuation of West Bank settlements, which are illegal under
international law, but we still give Israel’s government money, supposedly for
defense, which promptly goes into further settlement building. This policy of
Israel, which has persisted since the 1967 war, has unleashed the killings
during the Munich Olympiad and the hijackings of planes by Palestinians who
tried to raise the world’s awareness to their plight. The efforts were useless
and the Israeli government continues to paint itself in the colors of innocent
victimhood.
Over the years AIPAC (American Israel
Public Affairs Committee) and some of our Jewish billionaires have successfully
hijacked Congress as well as the election for major office to an extent that
candidates, including presidential ones, now have to tailor their policies to
the wishes of the Likud government and its local supporters in our country. The
Israeli position is perfectly understandable from their point of view, but why
we should give up our freedom of action for their sake is not. While it is
noble to help a friend in need, it is silly to provide an alcoholic with drink
even if he is one’s friend. Instead, one has to show one’s friend the error of
his ways and if he persists in his conduct, for whatever reason, it’s time to
part ways. Not a single one of our presidents, starting with Johnson, had this
moral courage. It has become even more difficult now as the $38 billion Obama
promised Netanyahu last month prove. It seems likely that he may actually have
been blackmailed by Netanyahu who may have threatened to “go rogue” with
destroying Iran’s nuclear program.
Hillary as well Trump also have shown
their bona fides to Bibi by assuring him that Jerusalem is indeed the
eternalcapital of the Jewish people und
our embassy would be moved there from Tel Aviv where it currently resides with
that of other countries. This move would add fuel to Muslim anger at us and is
a sure recipe for the continued growth and well-being of our military-industrial
complex. I would greatly appreciate it if Mr. Trump would explain to us in one
of the forthcoming debates how he intends to Make America Great Again in the
foreign arena when we have allowed our country to be tied down like Gulliver by
Lilliputians, but this is not going to happen.
In regard to national security the
moderator had also raised the question of cybersecurity which will indeed
become an increasingly important issue. We no longer need bombs to inflict
serious harm on other countries; we can do it in cyberspace. The candidates
agreed that this is a problem and as usual blamed Russia for nefariousness.
They should have talked about the documentary Zero Days which demonstrates that we, jointly with the Israelis,
started cyberwar with a computer virus that blew up the Iranian centrifuges.
While we were still perfecting the method the Israelis put a cruder version to
use that infected not only the Iranian targets but other installations around
the world. The documentary ought to be watched by everybody because cyberwarfare
will affect all of us and “Stuxnet” was simply the beginning. This type of
warfare by nation states needs to be outlawed just as chemical weapons were and
atomic ones should be.
In
summary:
Trump has not only lost the debate but probably also a significant portion of
the American people. I am saying this, although there are still two debates
during which he could rectify his mistakes. But his post-debate conduct,
including an interview with Bill O’Reilly, showed that he seems incapable of
learning. He suffered from logorrhea, where ill-considered words came streaming
from his mouth in a torrent, and he appeared to be under such internal pressure
that he ignored the wishes of the interviewer to stay with the question at hand.
Instead he kept reciting what we have heard a dozen times. We witnessed, what I
believe, is the “real Donald Trump.”
As it stands right now he is going to
lose the election because it is not a two but a four person race. The voters
who are disenchanted with both of the leading candidates are going to endorse
either Gary Johnson’s Libertarian or Jill Stein’s Green Party, unless they stay
home altogether. Since neither Johnson nor Stein can win outright this will
give the race to Hillary Clinton and, barring unforeseen circumstances, we are
likely to see a replay of 1992 when Ross Perot became Bill Clinton’s enabler.
November 1, 2016
AN AGONIZING CHOICE
Originally I had intended to postpone
writing the customary first of the month issue until the country had cast its
votes and we have an inkling of what the future might hold under the new
president. But I have a professional meeting in the middle of the month, that
requires a great deal of preparation, and there won’t be sufficient time to
discuss the pre-election situation in the depth it deserves. This is why I
decided to stay with the routine and prepare the data for the first of the
month. It was providential because, like everybody else, I had no idea what the
afternoon of Friday the 28th would bring. It takes me about two days
to write the Issues, proofread them, have them once more independently
proofread before they go the webmaster on the last day of the month, which this
time happens to be a Monday. Since I didn’t want to completely spoil the
weekend with work I started on Friday morning without any inkling what the
afternoon would bring. Instead of writing a completely new version I shall
present what had already been written because it can serve as background for
the new revelation that will shape the election campaign up to November 8th and
beyond.
In previous issues I have already
presented the reasons why I feel that neither of the current nominees has the appropriate
qualifications one would expect from a President of the country and thereby the
“leader of the free world.” Instead of repeating myself,
the reader is invited to look at the installments starting with April 1, 2016 because
nothing has happened in the meantime to invalidate these assessments of Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton. The earlier prognosis that Hillary’s e-mail server
and the Clinton Foundation problems would become headlines has proven correct
and so have the statements about Trump’s character flaws.
Let me, therefore, just briefly
summarize last month’s events and why so many of us have such great difficulty deciding
for whom to cast their vote, or why a great many will not participate in this
process at all. The highlights until October 28th were the two debates,
allegations of Trump’s sexual impropriety and a steady stream of e-mails, via
WikiLeaks, that throw an unfavorable light on Hillary.
Although Trump had clearly lost the first
debate, he was gaining momentum prior to the second one and the Hillary
campaign, that was already beginning to suffer from the e-mail scandal, had to
do something to reverse the momentum he was gaining. For this reason they
rolled out a 2005 video where Trump and Billy Bush, a cousin of George W. and
Jeb Bush, engaged in highly graphic banter. Trump boasted that due to his fame
and popularity he can sexually molest good looking women and get away with it. He
was clearly egged on by Bush and one comment, where he bragged that he could grab
women in their genital area, was regarded by the Democrats as their ticket to
win the election because he could now, in addition to his other flaws, be
portrayed as a sexual predator. During the rest of the month up to 11 women
came forth with allegations about Trump’s sexual misconduct and the media had a
feast. The video clip was played over and over again and even Megan Kelly on
the Fox News channel, which is reliably pro-Republican and supports the
standard bearer of the party, couldn’t resist venting her distaste on a daily
basis of such an unsavory character. Yet, let us put this event into context. Boasting
about sexual exploits is common among some men when they are by themselves and
is regarded as “locker-room” talk. Trump’s bragging is legendary and one only
needs to remember his statement during the primary season that “I could shoot
somebody on Fifth Avenue
and people would still vote for me.” Nobody in his right mind suggested at that
time that he is a born killer.
Since distortions as well as outright
lies are such a prominent aspect of all aspects of life in our society let me
now digress for a moment and discuss this prime evil of our time. Both
candidates accuse each other of lying and both are right. But there are several
types of lies that can tell us something about the person. The most common is
defensive where one professes innocence when confronted with proof to the
contrary. The most recent example is Hillary’s lying about her private e-mail
server, where she now claims that it was a “mistake.” Of course it was a
mistake, but the evidence also shows that it was apparently a deliberate
evasion of the guidelines governing the conduct of State Department personnel. She
did so, in all probability, to prevent the public from gaining access to the
contents of her conversations via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This
law was enacted by Congress in 1966, over President Johnson’s objections, precisely
to ensure some degree of accountability by government officials to the public.
Hillary, as well as her staff at the State Department, knew fully well that she
was circumventing the rules; they informed her about it, but she went ahead
anyway. Earlier this year she testified before Congress that there were no
State Department confidential e-mails on her server but FBI Director Comey
proved this to be untrue.
The second type of lie can be called the
offensive lie. This has been used by all governments as an excuse to start a
war. Hitler manufactured the Gleiwitz incident to justify the invasion of Poland and most recently our war on Iraq also
was based on a lie. Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs. The UN inspectors
searching for them were still in the country when the Bush administration
ordered them out because they were in the way of the impending invasion. An
honest administration that had no hidden motives would have let the inspectors
complete their job and subsequently deal with the result within the UN
framework.
To their credit the British investigated
the events leading to Tony Blair’s assistance in the promotion of, and
subsequent participation in, the Iraq war. The final Chilcot Report rendered
a blistering indictment (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry-key-points-from-the-chilcot-report).
This brings up the question:Why can the
British honestly investigate the reasons for the mistakes made by their
leadership but Cheney and Bush, who can be regarded as war criminals by the
standards of the Nuremberg trials which America
instigated, are free from public scrutiny and accountability? Yet it is this
war and the urge for “regime change” which has created all the disasters in the
Middle East and North Africa that are still unfolding, as well as the refugee
crisis that floods Europe. Hillary now says
that her vote in the Senate for the war was a mistake. But it was not simply a mistake,
just like the private e-mail server for government business was not simply a
mistake. These actions are evidence of poor judgment and disregard also of
international law. The war was a crime and I warned against it in these pages
starting on December 2001 (War on Terrorism).It is indeed frustrating when private citizens, on basis of their
limited information, can see disasters unfolding and find themselves unable to
effect meaningful change, while elected officials, who clearly should know
better, pursue policies that are bound to be ruinous.
The third type of lie can be called the
Muenchhausen lie and is used extensively by Trump. Baron Muenchhausen (1720-1797)
was of German nobility and had experienced an adventurous life including service
in a campaign of the Russian army. During retirement on his estate he regaled
his dinner guests with tall tales of his exploits. They were essentially
harmless massive exaggerations to portray himself in a
heroic light and it is unclear how many of these he really believed. His tales
were subsequently fictionalized and became a favorite children’s book. In Trump’s
case he not only exaggerates his effectiveness but also misinterprets events he
has heard about and when confronted with facts he refused to accept them. The
“dancing Muslims” at the fall of the Twin Towers as describedin Twin Specters Haunting America’s Politicians
(April 1, 2016) is a typical example.
On the other hand, Trump does have a
streak of honesty which comes out in unguarded spontaneous eruptions that are
then distorted by his adversaries. A typical example occurred during the second
debate. When Hillary commented that “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament
of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” He interjected: “because
you’d be in jail.” He had insisted for months that the system was “rigged,” by
which he not only meant voter fraud at the polls and the media bias against
him. Furthermore, the Justice Department and the FBI also had not properly
carried out their duty in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server as well as
potential malfeasance in regard to the Clinton Foundation while she was
Secretary of State. In the August 1, issue (Brexit, The Refugee Problem and
America’s Election Choice), I mentioned that if Hillary Rodham had been a lowly
cipher clerk in the State Department and had used a private e-mail server for
official correspondence, she would not only have been fired but probably imprisoned
for sharing state secrets. The media were appalled by Trump’s outburst and told
us that if elected President Trump would put Hillary behind bars. But what he
had said in a spontaneous manner was the truth. If our justice system had not
been corrupted by political pressures, FBI director Comey would in all
probability have recommended criminal investigations to the Justice Department
in July of this year. Instead, he closed the case with merely pointing to
Hillary’s extreme carelessness.
Does it matter if government officials
or persons who want to be President lie to us on a daily basis? Of course it
does; it erodes trust and breeds fear which can become paranoia. In the case of
President, or Secretary of State, it is even worse because they have to deal
with foreign governments. If they lack respect at home how can they expect to
earn it abroad? This is the situation our country finds itself in at present. President
Nixon, when confronted with the Watergate scandal, looked into our collective
eyes and said: “I am not a crook.” Well, he did obstruct justice and had to
resign. President Clinton wagged his finger at us exclaiming emphatically: “I
did not have sexual relationships with that woman; Miss Lewinsky.” But when her
blue dress with presidential semen stains appeared that was the end of that lie
and under oath he lawyered: “it depends on what the definition of is is.”
Although the impeachment trial went nowhere, Clinton did lose his license to practice law
for five years and he had to pay a $25,000 fine. While running for his first
term Bill Clinton told us that by electing him we’ll get two for one,
indicating that Hillary would be a full partner. With Hillary’s election we’ll
again get two for one. The sleaze, as well as the misjudgments of the years
from January 1993-Jauary 2001 is likely to return with a vengeance because the
world has changed since then and become far more dangerous.
In the 1990s Russia was prostrate and suffered
from the effects of “privatization” which created billionaires, while throwing
the masses into poverty. China
was not yet a full-fledged player on the world stage and Europe
an obedient listener to her master’s voice. America
reigned supreme and behind the scenes the neo-cons, of whom nobody knew
anything, were plotting on ways and means to keep America’s dominance for all time.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was hatched and the world was
regarded as theirs for the taking. With the Bush- Cheney administration they emerged
into daylight. The Obama administration forced them somewhat into the
background again but the idea of regime change was not beholden to party
labels. Hillary had pursued it in Libya
as well as in Ukraine (Ukraine
Crisis March 15, 2014, Ukraine:
Let Truth be Told, April 1, 2014) and now is eager to achieve the ultimate
price of forcing Russia
back into her helpless Yeltsin type period. But Putin stands in the way and this
is the reason why he has to be branded as a current source of evil. Since Trump
had said that he wants to make some kind of accommodation with Russia, especially over Syria, Hillary called him in the
third debate Putin’s puppet. He objected, but to no avail. In the current issue
the Editors of The New Yorker wrote,
under the title of “The Choice,” a paean for Hillary combined with what amounts
to a hatchet job for Trump. A picture of the front cover is shown below.
The issues in this campaign, apart from
the sex interlude, revolve mainly around the economy, taxes, health care,
immigration, lawlessness, composition of the Supreme Court, and similar ones that
may be called bread and butter concerns of the citizenry. While these are
indeed important the one issue which overrides all others has so far hardly
been touched by either one of the contestants or the media. It is the foreign
arena where forces in and out of government are working for regime change in Russia and Iran. If President Duterte of the
Philippines were to keep insisting that American troops should leave his
country he is likely to be added to the regime change list. Although this idea
has taken root in the leadership of both political parties it is the most
dangerous for our future and should have been extensively aired in the debates.
We know where Hillary stands, she is for regime change, but we have no idea
what a President Trump would really do.
Donald Trump is a master of evasion.
When confronted with a direct question he does not like, he changes the topic.
He is also not beholden to his own previous firm statements. For instance, he
insisted over and over again that Mexico would pay for the “beautiful
wall” he intends to build between our two countries. Reality is beginning to
sink in and he has changed the mantra to pointing out that the Mexicans will
pay later. The deporting of 11 million Latinos who have moved illegally into
our country has also been pointed out to him as a non-starter, so he changed
his rhetoric to immediately deporting only the criminal element and he would
deal with the others depending upon circumstances later. Initially he declared
climate change a hoax, but is now willing to listen to both sides of the
debate. His fund of historical information seems to be non-existent because
similar to George W. Bush he has never found time to read substantive books. Maybe
the clue to his conduct is that he is both a business man and an entertainer.
During the primary campaign he rejoiced in the role of entertainer where he
liberally fed the media with his antics. He carried this conduct over into the
Presidential race, but when his poll numbers started to fall precipitously
after the third debate he seems to have begun to listen to his friends who urged
him to stay on message. There might, therefore, be at least the hope that as
President he would regard himself as America’s CEO who strikes deals
with foreign leaders instead of applying a pseudo-moral compass that labels
everybody who disagrees with us as evil.
Hillary tells us that she has
tirelessly worked for women and children throughout her life in and out of
office. She also advocates equal pay for women, but apparently this policy has
not reached the Clinton Foundation, where it could most readily be implemented.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/21/news/clinton-paid-women-less. Her conduct as
Secretary of State certainly was not good for the women and children of the
Middle East and Libya
who are now exposed to privations they had never before endured. We should not
condone a policy that advocates further regime change when the results are
nothing but disasters for the people of these countries. Our moral outrage over
the conduct of certain governments is also highly selective and involves only
countries with which we have disagreements. Where, for instance, is the desire
for regime change of Saudi Arabia,
Egypt
and numerous other countries that also treat their people, and especially
women, abysmally? It, therefore, appears that the noble phrases of “free
trade,” “human rights,” etc. are the excuses to hide the real purpose. It is to
create, what may be called, an “Amerocentric planet” where all other nations obediently
cruise in the orbit we have assigned to them. This vision is abetted by the
arms industry which reaps hefty profits, and has Hillary’s full support. Yet it
must be exposed as a highly dangerous fantasy because, barring unforeseen
events, neither China nor Russia
will stand for it and has to lead to global war.
So where are we in regard to next week’s
election? The Democrats’ Bernie supporters will bite their tongue and vote for
Hillary regardless of her obvious faults. So will even some Republicans, simply
because they viscerally hate Trump. He has alienated the Republican leadership
during the primaries and he isn’t a Republican anyway. Philosophically he is unaligned
who runs on the Republican ticket because an Independent can’t win the
election. The Republican leadership knows this and is afraid that it would lose
its clout if Trump were to win. The current strategy is to concentrate on
retaining control of Congress and then subvert whatever program Hillary might
put up for a vote including Supreme Court nominees, while hoping for a better
standard bearer in 2020.This strategy
while sounding reasonable on the surface has a serious flaw because prior to
2020 Hillary’s continued baiting of Putin may have led to a shooting war with Russia.
Early on Trump had a chance to win the
majority of Independents but as the saying goes in this country “he blew it.”
His boisterous erratic conduct turned many of them off to the extent that some
regard Hillary as the lesser of the two evils, while others will either vote
for one of the third party candidates or abstain altogether. These seem to be
reasonable options but in fact they are not. As Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice-Presidential
nominee, has recently pointed out here in Utah, they actually amount to a vote for
Hillary. Anyone of the third party candidates cannot win and therefore would only
dilute the Trump margin. Staying home likewise would deny Trump a vote he needs
to win and give Hillary the advantage.
That was the reason for the “agonizing
choice” of the headline up to the early afternoon of October 28 when the stakes
for Hillary were raised even higher. More e-mail pigeons had come home again.
On that Friday afternoon FBI Director Comey sent a letter to Congress that, although
he had previously testified that the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s e-mails was finished, new e-mails from
an unrelated case had come to the attention of his office and are currently examined
for their potential content of classified information. “Although the FBI cannot
yet assess whether this material may or may not be significant and I cannot
predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, Ibelieve it is important to update your
Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”
This is a serious blow to the Clinton campaign.
Previously it could dodge the issue with the comment that the FBI had not found
evidence for potential criminal conduct and the case was closed. The WikiLeaks
were relegated to Russian hacking and falsification of the material. It was, as
usual, all Putin’s fault, in spite of the fact that the admission of hacking
indicated the vulnerability of the data. Now the case has been re-opened and
this is bad news for Clinton.
She is no longer fighting just for her political life but even her personal one.
This means that she must win the election regardless of cost. President Trump
would immediately appoint a new Attorney General who would order a thorough
investigation by the Justice Department, impanel a Grand Jury, or appoint a
special prosecutor to look into all aspects of the Clinton’s dealings during her tenure as
Secretary of State.
We are now in the unprecedented
situation where the presidential candidate of the likely to win party is being
investigated for potential malfeasance by a government agency. If the November
8 vote were to turn into basically a draw it is likely to be challenged by the
party with the minority vote. We will then be back in 2000 but this time the
Supreme Court is evenly divided with only eight judges. Since this is now a do or die fight for Hillary her campaign is
likely to go into overdrive trying to find some evidence that members of the
Trump campaign not only have business dealings with Russia but got paid for political
services.
We may now ask what motivated FBI
Director Comey to reverse himself 11 days before the election. Speculations
abound, but Director Comey would be well advised to follow the request by
Hillary as well as members of Trump’s campaign to give us a full account of the
reasons for his letter to Congress at this critical time. He is an intelligent
person who must have known that this would create turmoil with the election and
beyond. He should tell us the full truth regardless of personal consequences,
in order to put all rumors to rest.
Let us look at the enormity of what was
done. A large segment of our population is already voting for a candidate who
is under active investigation by the FBI for potential criminal behavior and
who may face indictment some time next year. If Hillary were to win it would be
impossible for her to bring the country together, as she has vowed to do,
because Republicans in Congress would continue looking into the charges and
block all her legislative proposals. The gridlock that currently exists in Washington is child’s
play compared to what is likely to follow after Hillary’s inauguration.
The current situation reminded me of the
summer of 1972 and President Nixon’s re-election campaign. In June of that year
the “dirty tricks” brigade broke for a second time into the DNC’s campaign
headquarters in the Watergate complex to fix listening devices and plant new
ones. They were caught and criminal proceedings were instituted. Nixon, who had
not known of the break-in, dismissed it as “a second rate burglary” and went on
to win the November election in a landslide. But it soon came out that the
burglars had been paid by the Committee to Reelect the President, which clearly
implicated the governing party. Nixon stood by his staff, tried to dodge this
potentially lethal bullet to the extent that he dismissed the Special
Prosecutor who had been appointed to look into this affair. This led to the
resignation of the Attorney General as well as his deputy and became known as
the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Nixon’s reputation was shattered and by August
of the following year he had to resign to avoid guaranteed successful impeachment.
This is a precedent, and the shoe is now
on the other foot. But the Trump campaign also has a real challenge. It can
gloat over rising poll numbers and hope for a win while their standard bearer
keeps putting his foot into his mouth on the campaign trail. Or it can come to
grips with the seriousness of the situation, as outlined above, and convince
Trump to literally put his money where his mouth is and follow the advice from
commentators on Fox News. He should buy 20 minutes TV time and address the
nation, reading from the teleprompter without sarcastic asides, about the type
of government he intends to form. It should be inclusive with Republicans as
well as Democrats and Independents and consist of persons known for their
effectiveness in their professions rather then career politicians.
Those of us, who do not want a Hillary
Presidency, with the consequences outlined above, deserve to know what he
intends to do. The usual “trust me” no longer suffices. The world is too
dangerous, and while our attention is riveted on the election, Russia’s one and only aircraft carrier, the
Kuznetsov, has passed Gibraltar and is sailing with its battle group towards Syria. Can we
protest when we have the USS Boxer amphibious assault carrier in the Persian
Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman in the eastern Mediterranean?
Why is Putin doing this especially at this time? I believe he wants to tell
Obama that Russia
is not just a “regional power,” as he had called it, but a force to be reckoned
with. His country spans two continents and he has more than enough nukes to
wreak global havoc. These are realities and to avoid a catastrophe we cannot continue
with business as usual but new thinking is required.
This week will be another one for the
history books and we ought to pray that sanity will prevail.
December 1, 2016
PRESIDENT TRUMP?
At 2:30 a.m. of November 9 our
political establishment received a wake-up call that they will ignore at their
peril. By that time Donald J Trump had received 306 electoral votes while
Hillary Clinton had garnered 232 and the Associated Press pronounced Trump winner
of the election. Soon after 3 a.m. he greeted his faithful, who had stayed up
half the night at the New York Hilton, with the good news that a few minutes
earlier Hillary had conceded and congratulated him on the victory. The crowd
exploded in delight and Trump gave a remarkably conciliatory speech, which
emphasized that the task now was for the country to get together in order to
build a better future for all. The mood at the JacobJavitsConvention Center, Hillary’s
headquarters, was decidedly different: stunned disbelief. Hillary herself was
too distraught to face her supporters and the disastrous message had to be
conveyed by John Podesta, the campaign chairman. Later in the morning she gave
a private speech to her staff and campaign workers which likewise was as
conciliatory as Trump’s had been earlier in the morning.
After thanking the attendees for all
their efforts she said:
Thank you so
very much for being here. I love you all, too. Last night I congratulated
Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country.
I hope that he will be a successful
president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so
hard for, and I'm sorry we did not win this election for the values we share
and the vision we hold for our country.
But I feel pride and gratitude for this
wonderful campaign that we built together. This vast, diverse, creative,
unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and
being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.
I know how disappointed you feel,
because I feel it too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested
their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a
long time. But I want you to remember this.
Our campaign was never about one person,
or even one election. It was about the country we love and building an America that is
hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more
deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I
always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to
the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind
and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful
transfer of power…
The following day Trump was invited to
the White House by President Obama and the meeting that had been scheduled for
about 20 minutes turned into one and a half hours. Trump seemed properly
subdued by the surroundings in the Oval Office and the enormity of the task he
had undertaken appeared to be sinking in. Obama was gracious and pledged his
full support for the transition period, which ends with the inauguration on January
20. This was a welcome surprise and those of us who had been disgusted with the
status quo and constant infighting that had reached the gutter level breathed a
sigh of relief. Maybe, they thought, Trump will rise beyond the campaign
rhetoric and surprise all of us with a government that is free from sleaze and
operates on sound business principles rather than political expediency. Maybe,
they hoped, Hillary meant what she said and her
supporters would heed her message.
Hope springs eternal but it is always
dashed. Reality immediately set in. Regardless of what Hillary and Obama had
said, some of Trump’s opponents went from stunned disappointment to fury.
Protests, involving thousands, broke out in many of the major cities and all
the official news media, with the exception of Fox News, went into overdrive to
stoke popular discontent. Trump’s victory had been totally unexpected. All the
major news organizations had endorsed Hillary including Atlantic magazine. The latter had stayed above the fray in previous
years and from its inception in 1857 had only endorsed Abraham Lincoln and
Lyndon Johnson. Barry Goldwater’s “extremism in the defense of liberty is no
vice” couldn’t be stomached in 1964, just as Trump’s vituperations in 2016. The
pollsters also were wrong. Although the race had narrowed in the last weeks,
possibly aided by the FBI Director’s announcement that the Bureau was not yet
done with looking at Hillary’s e-mail problem, they still predicted her victory.
What had happened? The answer seems to
be that the elites who try to shape public opinion had misjudged the mood of
the country. The economic doldrums, the never-ending wars, the seemingly
unlimited illegal immigration, the stalemate in Congress, and the push for
“progressive ideas” by the Democrats had alienated about half of the country. An
additional section of our people also would not condone the rapid ascendancy of
“LGBT” (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals) from a ridiculed minority
to a potent political force that enacted legislation, and homosexual marriages
were regarded as an abomination. The big cities on the East and West Coast were
seen as Sodom and Gomorrah that had to be chastised. They also
resented media enforced politically correct speech: euphemisms that mask the
truth with the word “gay” for homosexual and “progressive” for the enactment of
the 1848 Communist Manifesto as prime examples (May 1, 2009. Looking
for Answers). They, therefore, welcomed Trumps’ clear unequivocal speech
patterns, even when they offended less radical ears.
Let us now consider the actual poll
number and voting patterns. The turnout of eligible voters was remarkably low
at 55.4%. This was second lowest for the past 10 years, topped only by the
Clinton Dole contest in 1996. Highest voter participation was in the 2008
Obama-McCain rivalry where 63.7% cast their ballots. Hillary won the popular
vote with 48.0 % vs. 46.3%. But these are not final numbers because some states
are still counting votes and Hillary’s margin keeps increasing slightly. As all
of us know, this situation also pertained to the 2000 election results when Al
Gore won the popular and George W Bush the all-important electoral vote. This
time Hillary’s margin is larger than Gore’s was but, as mentioned, this is
irrelevant because only electoral votes are legally binding.
The following figures from exit polls
are still preliminary and may be revised to some extent when more information
becomes available, but they do tell a story. The country split largely between
urban vs. suburban and especially rural with the latter going to Trump. It also
split on racial lines. Whites favored Trump by 58 vs. 37% and the pattern was
even clearer for white men with 63 vs. 31%. For white women the figures were 43
vs. 53 %. Hillary had banked on the women’s vote, especially in the last week
of the campaign, but they did not vote as a block. The subdivisions are of
considerable interest. Republican women couldn’t stomach Hillary and voted with
89% for Trump. The marital status also made a difference. Married women voted
for Hillary with a margin of only 2% (47 vs. 49%) but for unmarried ones the
numbers were 62 vs. 33%. For married men the choice was clear, Trump won by 58
vs. 37%, but unmarried men leaned toward Hillary with 46 vs. 45%. Educational
status as well as age also played a role. College graduates and those with
additional university degrees went mainly for Hillary. But even within this
group the racial split with whites favoring Trump was apparent. The age of 40
years also was a watershed; those of less than 40 went for Hillary, over 40 for
Trump. In addition religion was a factor. Members of Christian religions
(Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, others) voted with 57 vs. 37 % for Trump,
while Hillary received the Jewish vote with 71 vs. 24%.
In summary: only slightly more than half
of the country voted because the rest could, to a major extent, not accept
either one of the two nominees. Of the votes cast they were about evenly
divided with 26.5 % for Trump and 26.3 % for Hillary. In other words neither
one of the contestants received a mandate and for the country to function it
would be essential that the conciliatory note struck by Trump as well as
Hillary and Obama be heeded. But this was not the case. Human emotions again
overwhelmed reason.
The media, after expressing their
disappointment, continued with attacks on Trump repeating his campaign oratory
as if this was now enacted legislation. His cabinet appointments are lambasted
and comments made years ago are held against them. This attitude denies a
fundamental principle of human nature that allows the changing of one’s opinion
when new evidence becomes available. This was well known to the Romans who used
to say: temporamutanturetnosmutamur
in illis – times change and we change with them.
To deny change is a fundamental mistake, which unfortunately is being repeated
now. They threw down the gauntlet at Trump. A typical example is an article by
Charles M. Blow in the The New York Times of November 26
headlined: “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along.” The insert stated: “You don’t
get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid.” This is incendiary
language that cannot possibly be good for the country.
An added complication arose on November
23 in the person of Jill Stein MD, the presidential nominee of the Green Party who
obtained 1% of the total votes cast on November 8. Up to 2006 she was a
respected physician but at age 56 exchanged her work of helping individual
patients for curing the country and the world. She became a full-time political
activist. While one might applaud her for this career change at the height of
the Iraq
debacle, she apparently forgot the physician’s Prime Directive: Nil Nocere –
First of All Do No Harm. On Wednesday of last week her website started to
collect funds for a recount of votes first in Wisconsin
and subsequently Pennsylvania and Michigan.
At present it is still unclear what
started Dr. Stein on this quixotic expedition for recounting votes but some
disturbing elements in regard to fund raising have emerged. Initially she asked
for approximately 2.5 million dollars for the recount effort in Wisconsin. This proved
to be no problem. The sum arrived within 12 hours and more money came in
torrents. The dollar amount needed for the three recounts was, therefore, raised
to about 7 million and this was met by Monday November 28, which was prodigious
feat. Although her website states that the money came in small amounts from
grassroots supporters, this was not readily believable. It was immediately
pointed out that her entire campaign that extended for more than a year had
only raised somewhat over $3 million, while she now obtained
essentially the same amount within a 24 hour period. It was also noted on the
Internet that identical sums of money, $160,000, had arrived on an hourly basis
for 24 hours, even throughout the night when donors were bound to have been
asleep, suggesting a computer operation. By November 28 it was reported that
the recount effort had reached over $7 million. Obviously we can’t trust
everything that appears on the Internet, but there is certainly enough smoke to
warrant an official investigation. We should find out where this money comes
from.
There are additional problems with the
recount fund drive. There is no guarantee that the states in question will
actually perform a recount and in some it may be meaningless because the
electronic voting machines did not issue paper receipts. This makes it
impossible to check individual votes. Furthermore, Stein’s website explicitly
states that surplus money will not be refunded but used for “election integrity
efforts and to promote voting system reform.” A statement,
which like
so many others from politicians, we have to take on faith.
This continues to be an evolving story
as an Internet report of Monday November 29 showed under the headline “Stein
sues after Wisconsin
refuses to order hand recounts.”
TheWisconsin
Elections Commission agreed Monday to begin a recount of the presidential
election on Thursday but was sued by Green Party candidate Jill Stein after the
agency declined to require county officials to recount the votes by hand.
It will be a race to finish the recount
in time to meet a daunting federal deadline, and the lawsuit could delay
the process. Under state law, the recount must begin this week as
long as Stein or another candidate pays the $3.5 million estimated cost of
the recount by Tuesday, election officials said.
The Hillary campaign initially distanced
itself from this “grassroots” effort but on November 26 lent its support in
spite of President Obama’s expressed wish not to do so and its conflict with
Hillary’s statements made on November 9. This adds a new dimension and makes
ascertainment of funding sources even more important.
We may now ask what and who is behind
this effort to deny Trump his victory. The “Who” is as yet unclear but not the
“What.” The recount effort is a sideshow,
the real purpose is to bring pressure on the Electoral College to deny Trump
their vote. Let us, therefore, remember: on November 8 we did not vote for a
person but for a party! The party appoints the electors who cast the actual
vote for the person. This leads to the anomalous situation that in a country of
somewhat over 324 million, of whom somewhat over 135 million cast their ballot,
538 electors decide who will be President.
I have previously discussed this
situation but it bears repeating. This indirect voting process is anchored in
the Constitution because the framers had a problem with the so-called slave
states. The popular vote would be a decisive disadvantage to them because a)
slaves had no vote, and b) there were too few white voters to counterbalance
the greater numbers of the North. This led to the compromise that individual
Negro slaves were to be regarded as 3/5th of a person. This raised
the number of inhabitants of a given state to an acceptable level. It now would
require a constitutional amendment to change the situation. Although slavery is
no longer relevant, geographic factors still remain and less populated states would
in essence be disenfranchised. The more numerous East Coast combined with California would dictate
the outcome of the popular vote. But there is an additional anomaly of the
current system: the country spans four time zones. If the eastern and central
states were to procure the needed 270 electors we who live in the West need not
bother to vote because the election was already decided before some of our votes
had been cast, let alone counted.
Californians, because of their large
number and Democrat political leanings, resent the current situation. It is
therefore no surprise that Mr. Daniel Brezenoff,
Deputy Chief of Long Beach’s
mayor, availed himself of Choice.Org to start a petition drive to pressure
individual state electors to change their vote from Trump to someone else.The petition was an immediate success and to date has more than
4.6 million supporters. The names of the electors are available on the Internet
and individual pressure can readily be applied. James Evans, Utah’s Republican
Party Chairman who by the way is the first African American to serve in this
capacity, wrote:“I
have had electors reach out to me about the statute saying: do I have to vote
for Trump?” For Utah
the situation is clear: all of our six electors are duty bound to cast their
vote for Trump. But unquestioned obedience to the party’s champion is not
necessarily the case in the rest of the nation. About half the states allow
their electors to change their vote. It has been estimated that if about 37
Republicans deny Trump their vote he will lose the election. Although this
scenario seems far-fetched at this moment this election has been so full of
surprises that we can take nothing for granted any more. This is why this
month’s headline carries a question mark.
What are Jill Stein’s vote
recount effort as well as Mr.Brezenoff’s petition
drive supposed to accomplish? Stein says that she is not doing this to get
Hillary the presidency but only to know if Russia had hacked the voting
machines. Although there is no evidence for this it would make no difference at this point. This is, therefore, obviously
not the reason for her action and this is why we should, as soon as possible,
find out where those 7 plus million dollars she has so far collected came from.
Brezenoff wants to remove Trump from the top of the
ticket.He insisted that the
Constitution gives him the right for his actions. What does the Constitution really
say? Article II Section 1 spells it out and we are currently at the third
paragraph of that section. The electors have been appointed and they will cast
their vote on December 10.The list of
names will then be forwarded to the President of the Senate, Joe Biden. On
January 10 “the votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number
of votes shall be President …” But this is not followed by a period. There is a
comma and the sentence continues with semicolons attempting to cover all
contingencies that might arise. One of them may well become reality on January
10 and is the reason why I am now continuing to quote from the American Civil
Liberties Union pamphlet with where I had left off
, if such number be a Majority of the
whole number of Electors
appointed; and if there
may be more than one who have such Majority and
have an equal number
of votes, then the House of Representatives shall
immediatelychuse (sic) by Ballot one of them for President; and if no
person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List said Houseshall in like Manner chuse
the President. But in chusing the President, the
Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one
Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a
Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of the States
shall be necessary to a Choice.
Unless the Left were to desist from its
current course of action, which is unlikely, this may be a glimpse into January
of next year. Since this document is open to legal interpretations, especially
in regard to the definition of majority, the November election might end up in
chaos. Although Republicans currently have a majority in the House with 247
seats they do not have the “super-majority” of two thirds which Democrats might
filibuster for. So let me ask again: who is the real force behind this
potential road to chaos?
Obviously,
the recount situation did not sit well with Trump who called it a scam and more
recently he alleged that millions of illegal aliens had voted for Hillary,
which in his mind accounted for her margin. But the people who are now shaping
Trump’s appointments should take notice. The pride of having received a mandate
from the American people is misplaced and far from the truth. Although they
have achieved a majority in the Senate, the House and on the grassroots level, where
most of the counties are now in Republican hands, this masks the deep split
between average citizens which extends down to the family level. The dislike of
Trump is visceral and conciliatory attempts to the effect: well, let’s see what
he does rather than what he said, are of no avail. At Thanksgiving dinners a
rule of “no politics” had to be enacted in a number of instances, in order to
keep the peace.
There is no doubt that a considerable
number of our citizens have been frightened by Trump’s campaign rhetoric. His
staff should recognize this and forcefully bring it to his awareness. This fear
of Trump turning America
into an autocratically ruled exclusively white, working class country applies
not only to minorities but even grips members of academia and is fostered by
the media. While Trump would probably like to see bygones be
bygones, their continued efforts to discredit him prevent this from happening.
I regard this as seriously ill-conceived because it aggravates the current
split in our country instead of leading to a healing process. The media’s
actions, thereby, may well produce what they fear.
The current situation is unprecedented
in the 66 years I have lived in this country. There had been close elections
starting, before I came, with Truman and afterwards with Kennedy, but the
current degree of negative reaction and outright panic had not occurred. Truman
became an object of jokes as “haberdasher” and when he fired MacArthur a
cartoon appeared: Who does Harry think he is; the President? In those days I
found myself in the anomalous position of the Austrian visitor having to defend
the American President against his countrymen. The dubious Kennedy election was
taken in stride because Nixon conceded in spite of knowing that Papa Joe had
bought it for his son. During the Primaries in 1960 authorities in West Virginia were paid to
vote for Jack and during the election the mayor of Chicago as well as the Mafia
were the beneficiaries of his largesse. This was the way business was done and
nobody got too upset. But 2016 is clearly different and now some citizens are
even talking about the specter not only of chaos but of civil war.
In the April 1 edition I suggested
certain similarities between Trump’s and Hitler’s attempts to gain power over
the State. They are still valid but the differences between them are equally
important. When I saw, as part of the preparation for the preparation of this
essay, an article on the Internet, http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/it-can-happen-here-has-it-1933-scenario-no-longer-hypothetical,
I thought that it might have further relevant information. The article also appeared
on Salon.com which describes itself as “progressive/liberal, while Alternet regards itself as a “liberal activist news
service.” The author was Andre O’Hehir, the critic
writer for Salon, and any hope for substantive data was immediately quelled.
The article consisted of an anti-Trump tirade. Here is an excerpt:
We don’t know whether the election
of Trump is an American echo of the winter of 1932 in Germany, when a
fragile democracy collapsed into tyranny and an infamous demagogue rose to
power on a promise of economic renewal and restored national pride, with an
unmistakable racial subtext. It’s an inflated comparison in many ways: Trump is
too lazy and stupid to be a good Fuhrer (sic), and lacks any semblance of a
consistent ideology; his true believers are nowhere near a majority, and are
unlikely to participate in any form of mass mobilization that involves leaving
the sofa. Kristallnacht is more likely to come back as a hashtag than a
physical event. But if you’re anything like me, the parallels seem far-fetched
first thing in the morning and way too plausible in the middle of the night.
Articles
like these do a disservice to the genuine study of what Germany’s
winter of 1932-1933 has to teach us. As will be pointed out in a subsequent
edition, that will deal with these events, our “progressives” make the same
mistake Germany’s
left-wing parties did after January 30, 1933 the day when President Hindenburg
bestowed the Chancellorship on Hitler. Hindenburg had no choice: the National Socialists
were the largest party in the Reichstag and all the others had proven
themselves unable to govern the country. The cartoon shown below was copied
from Hitler in der Karrikatur
der Welt. It was published by the Nazis in May of 1938 and tells the story.
The original publication was by the St. Louis Globe on February 2, 1933.
Trump
is not likely to ignore the constant taunts and eventually will strike back, especially if
he were to sit in the Oval Office with the power of the pen in his hand. Retaliation
is anchored in human nature and forgiveness “seven times seven” appears only in
the New Testament rather than the conduct of politicians. If the situation were really to get out of hand Trump is
likely to declare a state of national emergency and suspend certain aspects of
the Constitution, among which freedom of the press would be one of the first.
He could even cite Lincoln as precedent for having suspended habeas corpus in
the first year of the Civil War.
The
“progressive” Left is playing with fire and if the conflagration were to break
out they would have achieved a self-fulfilling prophecy. It happened in Germany
and there is no reason why it can’t happen here unless saner heads start to
study the mistakes of the 1930s and act to prevent their repetition. But it is
not only the Left that is making mistakes so is Trump. He still remains his
worst enemy by sending tweets that go counter to facts and the announced “Thank-you
tour” that will start today in Cincinnati cannot possibly heal the divide that
exists in this country. On the contrary it is bound to exacerbate the split
between “Us and Them.” This does not bode well for the future.
The
Christmas season is upon us and should inspire us with good will towards all. While
there might be a Christmas truce between the warring factions in our country it
is not likely to last beyond a few days. Human ingenuity seems to be at its wits
end and we may be reduced to praying for Divine Intervention.
January 1, 2017
A TIME FOR PRAYER
During the Christmas season it is
customary to send greetings to friends and distant family members that include
wishes for a “Happy New Year.” Although the phrase did show up again this year
many of us have a sense of foreboding. There is major concern, if not outright
apprehension, that our political leadership is likely to drastically interfere
with our “inalienable right” to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as
expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The year 2017 is likely to become
a crucial one for our country and over its entrance portal hang question marks as to where the Trump administration will lead us. On
a personal level this will be the 18th presidential inauguration I
will have witnessed since coming to this country and none had been accompanied
by this extent of unease around the country.
The question mark I placed in the
headline of last month’s installment can now be removed unless some disaster
was to befall the President-elect prior to January 20. The vote recount effort
has fizzled and so did the attempt to sway Republican electors to change their
vote. Although the official electoral vote count will have to wait till January
9, when Congress reconvenes, the media have already told us the result and the
January 9 ceremony will be just that, a ceremony. It is time to get used to the
thought of a President Trump, which had been unimaginable a year ago. As I
wrote on February 1 in these pages after President Obama’s last State of the
Union address it was obvious that Republicans had already assigned him to “lame
duck” status and whatever he wanted to achieve during his last year was
irrelevant. To prove the point John Boehner, speaker of the House of
Representatives, invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of
Congress during early March, just prior to Israeli elections. The purpose was
to give him an opportunity for a blistering attack on the Obama
administration’s impending nuclear agreement with Iran. There was to be no cooperation
with their Democrat colleagues and when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia
died in late February the Republicans blocked Obama’s effort to appoint his
replacement. They were waiting for the November election that would bring them
the hoped for Republican victory. The old saying “be
careful what you wish for” proved again true. They did win in November, but
their new standard bearer was hardly what they had imagined.
In last year’s April 1 issue, entitled
Twin Specters Haunting America’s Politicians, I mentioned the unexpected rise
of Bernie Sanders on the Democrat and Donald Trump on the Republican side. The
issue then continued with a comparison of Trump’s “movement” with Hitler’s “Bewegung” prior
to his appointment to the Chancellorship on January 30, 1933. There are indeed some
parallels, as shown in that essay, but to round out the picture the differences
also need to be mentioned.This will be
done in the February installment because for now we have to discuss the
President-elect’s activities during the past month.
Mr. Trump was quite busy. He conducted
a “Thank you” tour through the states that had awarded him the sought after
prize and some of our Utahn’s were disappointed that
he did not include our state. But others, although Republican by mental outlook
if not party affiliation, were less pleased with his election and there was
talk that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would not participate in the inauguration
ceremony. The issue was resolved that those who felt that their conscience
would not allow them to attend would not be forced to do so and the Choir has a
sufficient number of other volunteers who would do President Trump the honor.
The major portion of Mr. Trump’s
considerable energy was devoted towards filling the positions for White House
Staff as well as Cabinet and Ambassadorships. All in all about two thirds of
them have so far been filled and some of the persons who have been named have
raised serious concerns. It is becoming obvious that much of the campaign rhetoric
cannot readily be discounted because the people he is surrounding himself with
are mostly in agreement with it. Since too little is known about some of the
nominees I’ll concentrate here on those who are likely to become major players
on the international scene. This is, after all, the arena where the most
important decision of peace vs. war will be made. The following information
comes from Wikipedia to which I express my thanks.
Vice-president Mike Pence is a solid Republican
conservative who represents Tea party values and is against the closure of Guantanamo.
Internationally he expressed unqualified support for Israel’s current policies and is
against a Palestinian state. He also favored the Iraq war as well as Kaddafi’s
removal. He is against the Assad government in Syria
and Russia’s
help to keep it in power. The Iran
nuclear treaty should be “ripped up.” He believes that Israel has the right to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if its
politicians felt the need to do so. In spite of all this belligerency he
regards himself as not only a Christian, but “a born again, evangelical
Catholic.” How his political convictions square with the teachings of Jesus is
a question nobody seems to raise but goes to the root of our problems. We are
probably, without even realizing it, the most hypocritical country the world
has ever seen; although the British Empire was
its close second.
White House Chief of Staff will be
“Reince” (Reinhold Richard) Priebus who graduated with cum laude from law school and is Chairman of the Republican
National Committee. He seems to incorporate middle of the road Republican
sentiments and tries to build bridges rather than blow them up. He may provide
a voice of sanity in what is bound to be a turbulent White House. But how he will
be able to get along with “Counselor” Steve Bannon, over whom he has no control,
because Trump made them co-equals, is an open question. If Priebus is the man I
believe him to be his tenure may be reasonably short lived.
Steve Bannon seems more in line with Trump’s ideas
about what the world should look like. He clearly is what one may call a
“colorful character.” He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1976, has a Master’s
degree in National Security Studies from GeorgetownUniversity as well as in 1985 a Master’s
of business administration with honors from HarvardBusinessSchool. He served for
seven years in the US Navy, part of which was spent on board of the destroyer
USS Paul F. Foster before becoming special assistant to the Chief of Naval
Operations at the Pentagon. Thereafter he worked at Goldman Sachs in the
Mergers and Acquisition Department. With colleagues from Goldman Sachs he then
launched Bannon & Co. a “boutique investment bank” specializing in media,
which turned out to be quite lucrative. After its sale he became an executive
producer in the Hollywood film and media
industry. But while managing Bannon & Co. he also became acting director of
“Earth-science research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under his aegis the emphasis was
shifted from research on space exploration and colonization toward pollution
and global warming. Through his media contacts he met Paul Schweizer
and publisher Andrew Breitbart. Thereafter Bannon became a founding member of
the board of Breitbart News, an ultra-right wing publication. Bannon commented:
“We regard ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the
permanent political class.” In August he joined the Trump campaign as its chief
executive officer. He likes to regard himself as a villain and in a November 18
interview he remarked in regard to negative comments about him: “Darkness is
good: Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That’s power.
It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they are blind to who we are and
what we’re doing.” All one can say is that at least he’s honest and that
hypocrisy is not part of his character. On the other hand how a person of this
type will be able to get along with his partner Reince is a good question and
this is why I feel that the latter’s White House stint may not last the four
years of Trump’s presidency. This expectation receives additional likelihood
when one considers some of the other White House appointments, which by the way
do not need congressional approval.
National Security Advisor Mike Flynn seems to be
a kindred soul to Bannon. He is a retired US Army Lt. General with combat
service, conventional and special operations assignments, as well as those
dealing with intelligence matters. In April of 2012 President Obama nominated
Flynn as the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The
assignment was short-lived and he resigned from the position two years later.
Resignation was the polite word for having been fired. Rumor had it that he had
been “abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management
and other non-specified complaints. He was also “loose with facts” and his
repeated questionable assertions were regarded as “Flynn facts,” which would
also be applicable to his new boss, Mr. Trump. Flynn stated that he disagreed
with Obama’s policy of removing Syria’s
President Assad because his agency’s intelligence reports concluded that
radical Islamists were the main force in the Syrian insurgency. His constant
stream of warnings in this regard to an administration that in his words “didn’t
want to hear the truth,” led to his dismissal. He also stated that the drone
war, as conducted by Obama, is futile and fuels the conflict. While I agree
with these assessments his views on Islam cannot be condoned. He is reported to
have said on Fox News that the Muslim faith is one of the root causes of
Islamist terrorism and he described Islam as a political ideology and a cancer.
On Twitter he stated that fear of Islam is rational and that Islam wants 80% of
people enslaved or assassinated. These notions reminded me of the years I lived
in the Third Reich where “the Jew” was assigned the role of ultimate evil.
Since not enough is known about the political
views of other White House staff appointees I shall now mention some key
nominees for cabinet positions and ambassadorships. In contrast to White House
staff positions these will require Senate approval. Rex Tillerson,
the CEO of Exxon, was named Secretary of State. He has no experience in the
diplomatic service but his extensive business contacts around the world are
felt as an appropriate substitute. He has friendly relations with the Russian
government and was awarded in 2013 the “Order of Friendship” by President Putin
alongside his Italian colleague Claudio Descalci,
head of Eni.
For Secretary of Defense retired Marine Corps
General James N. Mattis was chosen. He was greatly
respected by the troops because he shared their hardships and was also known
for having carried Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations at all times with him. He never
married, does not have children, and was nicknamed the “Warrior Monk” for his
devotion to literature on war and other aspects. His political views can only
be described from my perspective as mixed. He admonished his troops that the civilian
population has to be respected because “whenever you show anger or disgust
towards civilians, it’s a victory for al Qaeda and other insurgents.” For the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict he supports the two state solution.
He regards the current situation as: “unsustainable” and that the settlements
are harmful for the peace process and could eventually lead to an apartheid
state. He appreciates the work Secretary Kerry has done for wisely focusing
laser like on a two state solution. Iran
rather than ISIS, he feels, is the principal threat for stability in the Middle East but the nuclear accord, in spite of being flawed;
we will just have to live with. As far as Russia
is concerned he sees Putin as wanting to dismantle NATO and that the
President-elect’s conciliatory statements towards Russia are ill-informed.
As head of the Department for Homeland Security
Marine Corps General John Francis Kelly was chosen. Wikipedia only tells us
about his successful military career but there is no information on his
political views.
For the position of head of the Energy
Department Rick Perry, former governor of Texas was nominated. It is ironic that in
one of the debates during Primary season he listed government departments he
would abolish if he were to be elected but couldn’t recall “Energy” which contributed
to his early withdrawal from office seekers. The department is actually a
hybrid for civilian and military affairs. The six volumes of the 2017 budget
request that had been submitted to Congress lists in the first two items
related to the country’s nuclear and other defense programs. In regard to
political views he severely criticized the Federal Reserve for printing money
that serves partisan political purposes. He was also opposed to Trump’s Wall on
our border with Mexico
and would treat undocumented immigrants and their children more leniently. He
is skeptical about the human contribution to climate change but is in favor of
clean energy, especially “new” coal. In regard to foreign affairs he is a
supporter of the state of Israel
with apparently little sympathy for the Palestinian’s plight and also favors
water-boarding to extract information from prisoners.
In regard to ambassador positions there are two that
could have a major impact. One is to the United Nations and the other to Israel.
For the UN position the governor of South
Carolina, Nimrata “Nikki”
Haley (née Randhawa) was proposed. Her parents immigrated
from Punjab, India,
via Canada
and she holds a BS degree in accounting. She is married to Michael Haley in a
joint Methodist-Sikh ceremony and identifies with both faiths. Politically she
is regarded as “a strong supporter of the State of Israel.” Yet her personal
background might suggest that this may not automatically include unqualified
acceptance of Likud policies towards Palestinians.
The nomination for ambassador to Israel,
on the other hand, can only be regarded as highly problematic. Mr. David Melech Friedman is a bankruptcy lawyer whose only
qualification for the job seems to be that he is a long-standing friend of
Donald Trump whom he rescued from disaster during the bankruptcy proceedings
over his Atlantic City
properties. If he were to be confirmed by the Senate a new Palestinian uprising
would be unavoidable.
Mr. Friedman is an ardent Zionist who is
regarded as standing even to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu. He has a home in
an affluent section of Jerusalem,
and makes considerable financial contributions to Israeli charitable
institutions. Concerns for Palestinians or sentiments in regard to Arab
feelings do not exist and he strongly favors the continuation as well as
expansion of the settlement program. He also favors the relocation of the
American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to
indicate America’s
support for this city’s status as “the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
Not only are Arabs discounted in his view so are American Jews who do not
subscribe to this concept and who feel that their first loyalty is towards the US rather than Israel. Their political headquarter
is on Washington’sJ Street and
Friedman labeled them as “worse than Kapos.”
These were Jewish inmates of concentration camps who had been put in charge over
the other Jewish inmates to keep the system running. Their official title was Funktionshaeftlinge
i.e.prisoners
who served the regime, thereby reducing the number of SS troops that would
otherwise have been required to keep order and oversee forced labor. They did
their level best in regard to brutality to please their Nazi superiors in order
to keep their jobs and with it their perks. This is, therefore, the worst
insult a Jew could hurl against a fellow Jew.
David Remnick Editor
of The New Yorker and secular Jew
addressed the problem a Senate confirmation of the Friedman nomination would
present for the US
as well as the rest of the world.http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump_daily_bankruptcy_israel_ambassador_david_friedman.
Thearticle
appeared in theDecember 16 issue and
was headlined: “Trump’sdaily bankruptcy
and the ambassador to Israel.”
It is worth reading but I don’t think his conclusion that whoever is appointed
to the ambassadorship is really irrelevant because “the Palestinians have given
up anyway,” is necessarily correct. A US ambassador is expected to
represent American interests rather than those of a political party. Our
country, as a whole, is judged by the locals on his/her conduct on the scene. Trump,
as well as in the past Mitt Romney, have promised the relocation of the embassy
but neither one has considered the backlash against our country that would
result. One cannot think of a better present to ISIS because they could
rightfully state that America
has sold out Muslims, and especially Arabs, to Jewish interests. Their only possible
answer would be more Jihad. It seems likely that volunteers
would flock to its banners and terrorism would intensify world-wide because it
is the only weapon at their disposal at this time. Let us not forget that Osama
bin Laden created al Qaeda in response to the Saudi government allowing us to establish
bases in his Holy Land as part of the first
Gulf War under President Bush 41. Jerusalem
is the second holiest city for Muslims and permanent exclusively Jewish occupation,
that threatens access to the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa mosque, is likely
to be regarded as intolerable. One truly wonders how Trump and his supporters
can be so blind to what is obvious to anyone who is not biased by political or
religious prejudices.
While Trump may backpedal on other campaign
promises, Zionism is a family affair and he is likely to get caught in its
snares. He owes his electoral success largely to his son-in law Jared Kushner.
But Jared is not necessarily a free agent. His father is a fervent Zionist and
the fact that Ivanka had to convert to the orthodox branch of Judaism prior to
marriage is testimony to the father’s influence over his son. Even if Trump
might see that unquestioned support of Zionist aspirations is not a wise course
for America,
he will run into opposition from some family members as well as some of the
people he has appointed or nominated.
During the last week of December President Obama
attempted to throw up two roadblocks to the Trump bandwagon. He instructed our
ambassador to the UN to abstain from vetoing a UN Security Council resolution
that condemned Israel’s
settlement policy and he also placed further sanctions on Russia for its cyber meddling with
our election. One obviously wonders about the timing because the President has
only three weeks left in office and will be unable to follow up on his
convictions. It seems that the Israeli vote abstention was designed to make his
views clear for posterity while the Russian initiative was intended to show
that he is not in favor of any rapprochement with that country. To emphasize
the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire secretary Kerry gave an
impassioned speech in which he expressed his frustrations over the failure of
bringing the two sides to the peace table. He criticized both for lack of faith
and while he appreciated Israel’s
security concerns there was no excuse for the settlement program because it
will make the two State solution impossible. Yet it is
the only way to achieve a permanent peace. If Israel were to continue to pursue
its present course towards a single Jewish State it could no longer be
democratic because nearly half of its people would have been disenfranchised. The
speech was a cri de coeur
and an attempt to set the record straight. But he found no echo in the media
who roundly denounced him for being critical of Israel.
What does all of this tell us about the incoming
New Year? One thing can safely be predicted: it will be turbulent. The
different opinions in his administration on fundamental policy questions will
be hard to reconcile and any hope that he will be able to rally Congress and
the majority of the American people to his decisions is likely to remain
unfulfilled. All we can realistically hope for is that he will be prevented
from inflicting further harm on us and the world by rash, ill-considered
actions. This is the major danger. He would need to realize that any action he
undertakes will automatically lead to a reaction by the other side. My father
taught me an ancient Roman admonition: quidquidagis, prudenteragasetrespice
finem. Whatever you do, do it wisely and consider the outcome. It is truly
staggering to consider how much evil could have been avoided if our political
leadership had adhered to this simple statement.
The book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament
sums up the wisdom of the day: “To everything there is a season, and a time to
every purpose under heaven. A time to be born; a time to die, a time to plant
and a time to pluck up, that is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal ….”
So how should mankind conduct itself? Basically the advice was carpe diem: “Go thy way, eat thy bread
with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God now accepteth
thy works.” But it was not quite as simple as that because the final conclusion
was: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Prayer to the Divinity,
which is so essential for Christians, seems not to have been in the preacher’s
vocabulary. Nevertheless now is the time to pray for our country so that the
abyss may yet to be avoided.
It is remarkable that at the end of life I
should be reliving, on the other side of the world, some aspects of early
adolescence. I shall never forget the evening of March 11, 1938 when the family
sat at dinner, the radio played classical music and the program was interrupted
by an announcement that Kurt von Schuschnigg, the chancellor of Austria, was
about to address the country. He told us that the German government had
demanded that Sunday’s plebiscite in regard to Austria’s independence be cancelled
and a Nazi government installed. Failing to do so would have resulted in Austria’s
occupation by the German Wehrmacht. After urging the citizenry to avoid
bloodshed he concluded with: We yield to force. May God protect Austria!
We were stunned; life had changed from one moment to the next. Regardless of
Schuschnigg’s abdication the Wehrmacht was actually
already on its way. For Austrians the “thousand year Reich” lasted all of eight
but it took about another 25 before the country recovered to some extent from
the ravages Hitler had inflicted.
For America the lesson is that we, the
private citizens, will be in no position to avert looming disasters. We can
talk, we can write, we can protest, but it will be of no avail. Greater powers
are at work. In Goethe’s Walpurgisnacht
scene Faust, and Mephistopheles find themselves amidst
a mob on the Blocksberg that strives to get a glimpse
of Satan who holds court at the top. The memorable phrase is: Du glaubstzuschieben und wirstgeschoben,” You believe
that you are pushing but are being pushed. This seems to characterize also what
can be called our Trumpistas who believe they’ll find
salvation in their attempts to rectify the system. British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan is supposed to have answered a journalist as to what is most
likely to blow governments off course: “Events, my dear boy, events.” Yes
indeed. They will inevitably befall President Trump just as they did all
previous ones. How he will react to them cannot be predicted but it is bound to
profoundly affect all of us.
For
politicians it is customary to finish some patriotic speech with “God bless America.”
They may or may not mean it, but not to say these words would get them into
serious difficulty with the media. But in these troubled times it behooves us
to be more humble and pray that God may protect us from the foolishness of our
political leaders in this year and hopefully even enlighten them as to the likely
consequences of their actions.
February 1, 2017
TRUMPED
In Washington DC January 20 was a cold overcast day with intermittent drizzle when our 45th President took the oath of office. An event that was so improbable that nobody expected it a year ago. Yet, there was Donald J. Trump standing at the podium repeating after Chief Justice Roberts that he will “… faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.” Some of us, watching the event at home on our video screens, might have added “and may God give him better judgment than he has shown in the past.” Against all odds he had literally trumped all his competitors and was now in charge of our country.
Our inauguration proceedings are the counterpart of coronations in monarchical societies with a considerable degree of pomp and circumstance. They require benediction speeches by members of the clergy, choral performances and usually exude serenity. To gain the highest office by democratic means in a country like ours is, of course, a major achievement the person could reasonably be proud of and some degree of happiness would certainly have been appropriate. But Mr. Trump does not play by the rules of ordinary mortals and his idiosyncrasies were again on public display.
During the proceedings prior to taking the oath of office our new President showed his usual dour face and one had the impression that he wanted to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. He became more animated during his 16 minutes address which can be summarized as a declaration of war on Washington’s elites of both political parties, lobbyists and the media. The tone of voice was defiant, the facial expression suggested anger and to emphasize the points he had made he concluded the speech with a raised right arm and clenched fist. The moment was saved for world-wide distribution and posterity by Time magazine which used the picture for its January 30 edition.
Americans might remember this gesture as a modified “black power” salute but its history goes much further back. I remember it from my childhood days in Austria where the Social Democrats, Sozis, used it accompanied by the words of either Rotfront or Freundschaft. The gesture is clearly not a sign of friendship and Mussolini, who originally had been a socialist, changed it by opening the raised hand. This was supposed to have been the ancient Roman salute but some historians beg to differ. Hitler copied it and this salute, at times accompanied by the words “Heil Hitler,” became obligatory for all citizens of the Reich especially when confronting authority figures. Everybody had to submit to this ritual and Joachim von Ribbentrop created quite a stir in February of 1937 at Buckingham palace when he greeted the King in this manner during the presentation of his credentials as ambassador to the Court of St James’s. It was apparently routine for him, and he may not even have realized how inappropriate the gesture was for the occasion.
The key points of President Trump’s Inaugural Address as published by CNN were:
“…today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another -- but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes -- starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. .… At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens…. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. … From this moment on, it's going to be America First. … We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. … We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American. … We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world -- but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones -- and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth. … The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. … We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again…
Watching this performance on TV reminded me of a speech by another person who had legally gained the chancellorship over his country against apparently insurmountable odds. In the April 1, 2016 Hot Issue I mentioned that Mr. Trump’s conduct and goals bear a certain similarity to some aspects of the Hitler regime. This opinion was based on his attitude during the presidential debates and his campaign website. The commonalities I noted at that time were: boasting over his achievements, disdain for his opponents whom he smeared with epithets, massive exaggerations of actual or imagined problems, an aversion against Islam as substitute for anti-Semitism, an attitude that problems will be solved “in one way or another,” obviously meaning by force. The latter has its counterpart in Hitler’s oft repeated statements that solutions will be achieved “so oder so.” I concluded at that time that he comes across as an angry, boisterous, person who believes that he can force his will upon the rest of the world. The intervening months and his conduct in office during the past few days proved this assessment to have been correct. His spat with Mexico over financing the wall he intends to build on our southern border now led its former President, Vincente Fox, to publicly express his concern over some similarities.
Since the Hitler comparison is likely to become commonplace it behooves us to study, what can be called, the Hitler phenomenon with an unbiased mind. The German historian Max Domarus has done us a great service by publishing practically all of Hitler’s speeches from 1932-1945. The four volumes, with appropriate commentaries, are a valuable resource in our understanding of this person. History repeats because politicians, who are in charge of countries, either have not taken the time to study it or have failed to read those books which provide original documents from the time the events happened. Many if not most biographies of political leaders are laced with bias, which may well be unconscious. For my own assessment of important individuals I rely mainly upon what a given person has said or written, whenever published original documents are available. For the Nazi era the public as well as private Hitler speeches are, of course, the most important. The public ones were published in 1973 by Domarus and the private ones in 1981 by H. R. Trevor Roper under the titillating title: Hitler’s Secret Conversations. The book covers lunch and dinner conversations with his staff between 1941 and 1944 and is a translation of authentic shorthand notices taken at the time. Due to form they are monologues with an occasional question or comment by the guests. Henry Picker’s personal notes were published in 1993 as Hitler’s Tischgespraeche im Führerhauptquartier and they cover the period of July 21, 1941 to March 11, 1942. The two books complement each other; some conversations Trevor Roper omitted appear in Picker’s book and vice versa. Jointly one gets a firsthand impression of Hitler’s thought processes and since he had few inhibitions about expressing his ideas in public or private (another joint characteristic with Trump) one can get some insight into how his mind worked. For the actual public events during that era I have found the two volumes of Nazism – A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham most informative. They should be read by anyone who is interested in that era and especially by media personalities who genuinely want to prevent a repetition of the ultimate disasters that resulted from Hitler’s decisions. It is inappropriate to limit one’s appraisal of this unusual person to the years of 1939-1945. An unbiased observer also should review what he accomplished in his first five years until February 1, 1938. This is important because I believe that if some higher power had shown him what his beloved Germany would look like in May of 1945 he would probably have recoiled in horror.
I have presented President Trump’s inaugural address above let us now look for comparison at the most salient excerpts of Hitler’s first radio address to the German public on February 1, 1933 when translated from Domarus’ book. I shall omit his rhetorical flourishes, which in part defy accurate translation and concentrate on the essence. But first three points of clarification. When Hitler talked about the new government, which included members of the other major parties except socialists and communists, he used the term Regierung der nationalen Erhebung – government of national uplifting, in order to clearly delineate the break with the past and the rebirth of the nation. Furthermore, as Domarus pointed out, in contrast to most politicians he always wrote his own speeches and thirdly this one was remarkably free of rancor. The word Jew did not appear.
“We are assuming a terrible inheritance. The task we have to solve is the most difficult German statesmen have confronted since time immemorial. Our first task will be to re-create the unity of our people. Our government will firmly protect Christianity as the basis of morality, and the family as the germ cell of our people and nation. Unemployment will be abolished within four years and this will be accompanied by economic revival. The concern for the daily bread will also lead to the implementation of our social duties for illness and old age. In foreign affairs the government’s highest mission is to establish the right to regain the freedom of our people. By ending the chaotic conditions in Germany the government will join other nations with equal values and equal duties. The government is imbued with the conviction of the duty to work for maintaining and strengthening the peace as a free and equal nation. We would be happy if the world were to limit their armaments, which would not necessitate an increase in our own. We want to establish unity among our people; we don’t recognize classes but see only the German people: the millions of farmers, burghers and workers who will either jointly overcome the problems of this era or be overcome by them. We now appeal to the German people to endorse this act of reconciliation. The government wants to work and will work. The Marxist parties had 14 years to show what they can accomplish; the result is a shambles [Trümmerhaufen]. Give us four years and then judge us. May Almighty God provide us with his grace in this work, point our will, as well as judgment in the right direction and bless us with the confidence of our people because we do not want to fight for ourselves but for Germany.
That had been Hitler’s goal but what he accomplished was quite different and therein lies the lesson for our government. Let us remember that many, if not most, Germans did not vote for Hitler in November of 1932 and April 1933 because they liked him. He was simple the lesser of two evils. Ask yourself how you would vote if confronted with the choice of a Communist government that will “nationalize” your private property and a Nazi government that promises full employment, retention of private property, and restoring the country to the status it held in the world prior to November 1918. For most, the fact that Jews would bear the brunt of the burden was regrettable, but of little concern because their own needs had to come first. In last year’s November election we had an equally unrewarding choice. Hillary Clinton was not only disliked on a visceral level by a great number of people, but also for her perceived untrustworthiness as well as belligerency against Russia. The latter was bound to lead sooner or later to war with that country. Trump’s negatives were well known but there was the hope that he might improve the economy, keep whatever peace we have by not pursuing “regime change” around the world, and his aversion against Muslims was to many of us just as little a concern as Jews were in 1933 for Germans.
What I am trying to convey by describing these similarities is that epithets that are used to describe Hitler, such as: monster, arch-criminal etc., say more about the person who uses them than who they want to describe. They merely repeat stereotypes, emphasize total depravity of “the other,” and prevent genuine insights. As I wrote these sentences a recent statement by the Dalai Lama came to mind:
“In Buddhism, one can be grateful even for one’s enemies, ‘our most precious spiritual teachers,’ as they are often called, because they help us develop our spiritual practice’ and to cultivate equanimity even in the face of adversity.”
I owe this information to The Book of Joy, a Christmas present by our daughter. Although Martha is no longer physically with us I can’t bring myself to say “my” about our children because they were a joint product and Martha still lives mentally with me on a daily basis. The book recounts dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both of them had experienced a great many hardships and adversities in their lives. They had not only overcome them, but their suffering had led to the status in life they now occupy. The meeting in Dharamsala between these two spiritual leaders was organized and narrated by Douglas Abrams, a secular Jew. As Abrams wrote “… it sounds a little like a joke: A Buddhist, a Christian, and a Jew walk into a bar …” This little book should be read by our leadership because the content, when taken to heart, is the only way to prevent the Trump administration from turning into a catastrophe for our country and the world.
America today stands at the cusp of an era that could lead to good will and prosperity for the world or a disaster which can be worse than what Europe and Japan in experienced in 1945. The choice is really that stark. When confronted in private conversations by some of Trump’s detractors I used to say: “I realize that what he has so far said raises serious concerns. But words are not actions; let’s see what he actually does. I give him three months and then we’ll know how he conducts himself in office.” His conduct since he took the oath of office suggests, however, that we won’t have to wait three months and that one will be able to render a reasonably informed judgment by the end of the current one.
On the afternoon of the inaugural ceremony he started to issue executive orders and they have continued at the rate of about three a day. This hectic activity, which involves the fulfillment of campaign promises, is aided by his inability to sleep more than a few hours, which in turn raises questions as to how this will affect his judgment. Chronic sleep deprivation is not healthy and although people might point to Napoleon’s four hours of sleep they should also remember that he led Europe into disaster and ended up on St. Helena. Hasty political decisions, which in the long run affect all our lives, are to be shunned because time is needed to weigh the pros and cons of each one of them.
I’ll now discuss just a few of the more weighty ones that have so far been made. The one dealing with repeal of Obamacare lacked the two most important words “and replacement.” Although he does have the latter in mind he apparently fails to consider the legal difficulties that will be encountered and the time it will take for a replacement that will be acceptable especially to patients and physicians. Repeal is easy and takes a few minutes, replacement difficult and will take months, if not years. Worried patients ask themselves how they will fare in the meantime.
The concerns over the Obamacare directive were followed, on an international scale by the one about the wall on the Mexican border. A meeting between President Trump and Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, had to be canceled because of Trump’s insistence that Mexico would have to pay for its construction. This is, obviously, unacceptable not only for the Mexican government, but since it involves national pride, all its citizens. A unilateral solution by placing an import tax on goods from Mexico, as Trump envisions, will have bilateral results because Mexico will retaliate to the detriment of both country’s peoples. The uproar over this ill-considered move towards “securing our borders” was predictable and attempts at damage control are currently in progress. This public affront to Mexico was completely avoidable but set in motion by Trump’s inordinate need for “twittering.” The fact that he has not yet, even as President, abstained from doing so speaks volumes about his character. It demonstrates his impulsivity and he seems to crave the limelight.
One also needs to point out that the ostensible reason for the wall is false. We are told that the purpose is to keep criminals and most of all drugs and their dealers out of our country. While this is laudable, the vast majority of Mexicans who crossed our borders without a visa were and are otherwise law abiding persons simply in search of a better life than their own country could provide. Drug smugglers can avoid the border either by air or sea and to prevent the latter Trump would have to build walls along the Atlantic as well as Pacific coast. This is obvious nonsense and still leaves aircraft landing sites open in our vast deserts.
Efforts to rid the country of illegal drugs need to be directed towards joint efforts with the Mexican government and the consumers in our country. The “coyotes” who bring the illegal immigrants would soon find themselves out of a job if they were not aided by Americans who want cheap labor for their agricultural needs. It is a wrong assumption that the Mexicans are taking jobs away from our citizens. To the contrary, they perform vital services for our economy which Americans by and large disdain because it is hard, back breaking manual labor. Instead of keeping them out we should give them green cards so that they can work legally and are not condemned to exploitation by their employers. A guest worker program would accomplish this. It would not only save the total waste of money spent on the wall but also create good will among neighbors.
Another example of a completely unnecessary blunder is the ban of Muslims to enter the US from seven designated countries. National security is touted as the reason but Trump has undermined rather than enhanced it with this executive order. Last Saturday we were treated to pictures on our TV screens that showed the protests of US citizens when they found out that relatives or spouses were detained upon their arrival at airports nation-wide in spite of having valid visas. This executive order was widely condemned even by Republican members of Congress and General Mattis, our new Secretary of Defense, also voiced his disapproval. Seeing the chaos this ill-considered order had produced, a Brooklyn federal judge issued a nation-wide “a temporary stay” of further implementation. Other judges around the nation issued similar orders.
These self-inflicted wounds were not only completely unnecessary but also point to a deeper problem that is rooted in Trump’s character. Since it is characterological it will continue to haunt him because no one can control his impulsivity and lack of insight. Warnings existed before his inauguration and that is the reason why I entitled last month’s issue with “A Time for Prayer.” We do need prayer and even Pope Francis called for it during the past month, but that is not enough. Nationwide protests over various issues will increase but again this is not enough. While there is still time Republicans in Congress will have to get together with their Democrat colleagues and start reasonable legislation both sides can agree on. If the Democrats were now to play tit for tat with the Republicans for their attitude during the Obama administration when Republicans reveled in non-cooperation, the country will suffer potentially irremediable damage.
It is again useful to consider the events of February 1933. Earlier during that month Hitler tried to strengthen his leadership by amiability towards the other government members and the country at large. But when the Reichstag building went up in flames he grasped the opportunity for obtaining dictatorial powers. People say, well that was Germany and the Germans were always autocratic people while we have a long and strong democratic tradition. But this is only partly true as President Bush’s reaction to the 9/11 tragedy showed. Instead of immediately starting a judicial inquest into how it had occurred, he started war in Afghanistan and Iraq. To its shame Congress gave him the authority just as the Reichstag conferred on Hitler the authority to institute “emergency measures” in March of 1933. The real behind the scenes perpetrators of the Reichstag fire were never ascertained and neither were the enablers of the hijackers in 2001. In both instances a tragedy was used for ulterior motives.
The 9/11 tragedy established an opportunity that had been long wished for by the neo-conservatives in our country. Their manifesto “Program for the New American Century” had outlined how American power could be enhanced and made to last for the current century. They realized the reluctance of the American people to endorse the proposed program unless “a Pearl Harbor type” of disaster was to occur (The Neocon’s Leviathan April1, 2003. 9/11 Context and Aftermath. September 1, 2013). Whether or not some groups in and out of government aided in the creation of this event will never been known. Our government is singularly disinterested in pursuing the truth which will become increasingly difficult to ascertain. Knowledgeable persons are dying and documents have been shredded. Nevertheless 9/11 is the precedent and we have to warn against the repetition of our response to disaster. Let us always remember that whatever disaster may happen, it can be contained and dealt with. But the knee-jerk response to it magnifies the evil a hundred and thousand fold. Official America has never shouldered the responsibility for Bush’s wars and with them the unleashing of the turmoil in the Middle East accompanied by the immense refugee problem. This makes us vulnerable for a repetition.
President Trump undoubtedly has an authoritarian streak in his character and the torrent of executive orders proves that he relishes being in charge. Currently he is still restrained by the other two branches of government. This can change, if a major terror attack were to occur. It does not have to be initiated from abroad. We have more than enough disaffected people right here who are willing and able to commit it. We now should realize that we actually stand on the brink of martial law. There are forces in the Trump administration, as well as factions which represent what Professor Peter Dale Scott has called “Deep State politics,” that are longing for it to be enacted. Under these circumstances certain aspects of the Constitution would be “suspended.” Most prominent among them would be freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. Since our prisons are already full, public dissenters would have to be sent to specially created “detention centers” that were called concentration camps in the 30s and early 40s. All of this is likely to be labeled as “temporary measures” to save the nation. This is the most imminent danger our country faces and in order to defuse it we need to openly talk about it at all levels. The foregoing should not be regarded as “crying wolf” on my part, other clear thinking individuals are aware of it. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan administration has also come to the conclusion that Trump has “declared war” on Washington’s ruling circles in his inaugural address (http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/20/trumps-declaration-war/). Some of our leading scientists and Nobel laureates also have voiced their concerns about President Trump’s ideas and last week The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advanced the Doomsday Clock by another 30 seconds to now read two minutes before global midnight.
Currently our President is afflicted with a serious case of hubris and he should be reminded of the old adage that “pride comes before the fall.” Regardless what further governmental powers may be bestowed upon him in the short run, he is bound to be trumped in the long run. Let us hope that some of his advisors have sufficient insight to prevent him from acting on his worst impulses and save us from disaster. Time will tell, and by March 1 the direction the country is moving will probably be obvious to most people.
March 1, 2017
Ernst Rodin 1925-2017 In Memoriam
Floating off onto the next adventure, Dr. Ernst Rodin, MD, b. Vienna, Austria Aug. 30, 1925 passed away suddenly on Feb. 5th at home. Dr. Rodin was the former President of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society and had received the association’s Jasper Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 for his extensive contributions to the field. He was Adjunct Emeritus in the Department of Neurology at the University of Utah and had earlier been a faculty member at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Following his residency at Mayo Clinic in Neurology and Electroencephalography he became the long-standing director of the Epilepsy Program at Lafayette Clinic in Detroit, in addition to holding hospital appointments at Children's Hospital and Harper Hospital. He became internationally known for his work in epilepsy and published extensively in the field. He was actively publishing and submitting new research papers until his passing. He wrote a monthly blog documenting his thoughts on current events that can be found on his website “thinktruth.com” He loved the mountains and the oceans and was an active skier and sailor for many years. He and his family moved to Sandy, UT in 1990. He was preceded by his wife, Martha, and is survived by his children, Krista, Peter and Eric and their children and grandchildren. A memorial service was held on Saturday, Feb. 25that 3:30pm at the family home.
Dad's Memorial Service – Peter Rodin
It is always hard to try to capture the essence of one's life in just a few short words. If there was one phrase that best describes Dad it would be that he spent his whole life trying to impart knowledge onto others; granted it wasn't always met with a receptive audience, but as you all know he was tenacious in getting his point across.
Dad requested that at his memorial service the poem by Richard Kipling "If" be read as it held for him special meaning and significance, and he made sure all of his family not just read it but lived its virtues.
If
IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Dad had a significant influence on all our lives almost every day starting very early in our youth. For me the quality time we spent sailing racing various yachts on Lake St. Clare had a profound influence. He always said you learn a lot about a person including their character on a boat especially racing since it encompasses almost every human emotion and there is nowhere to escape in a small craft- trust me I got to experience the whole gamut of his wide repertoire of emotional responses both the good and the more challenging. It was always entertaining being around Dad because you never quite knew just what next would pour out from his incredible brain and out his mouth; filtering his comments was strictly not an option.
I recall one time when we were out for just a peaceful Sunday cruiseon a beautiful summer day on the Lake with just the two of us. Dad was very concerned about my future as I hadn't quite settled on a career path. Options had narrowed somewhat as I spent my first couple of years in college enjoying the sailing life on the Michigan State University Sailing Team and had as my crew my companion who would become my wife, Laura. Needless to say studying during that time was not paramount in my life. So Dad being a concerned parent was pushing me to pursue medical school over in Europe as he still held a strong affinity for the European lifestyle. I gave it some thought but then said to him, "you know, Dad, don't worry I will be okay, but for right now I'm having too much fun just being kid." Then in one of those rare moments of reflection he said to me, “you are right, Peter; enjoy this time as you will never have your youth back.“ I took that to heart and certainly enjoyed some of the best years of my life.
When the time did come to getting serious, I did go into medicine but the next dilemma was what discipline to pursue. Both Mom and Dad were brilliant and true luminaries in the field of neuroscience. They were unique, and I felt we did not need another Rodin in the same field. There was also a comment that always stuck with me regarding neurology (no offense to those here in the field) where he said "neurology has allowed me to use my intellectual capacity to study, research and diagnose various neurodegenerative disorders of which I can do very little to change their outcome.". Well, that didn't sound very encouraging to me, so I settled on family medicine and I think my parents came to appreciate that choice of disciplines especially in their later years as they frequently consulted me on the various medical maladies that afflict us as we age. There were so very proud of all the accomplishments of their kids and there grandkids and it gave him and Mom great peace in their last years here at 3 Mountainwood .
Finally sometimes you get glimpses of a person’s heart where you least expect it. One of those moments came just the other day here in the kitchen after Dad's passing, Kris, Eric and myself were discussing some house renovations with Fabian who my parents had come to rely on and truly appreciated for all his efforts for the house maintenance and he recalled a statement that stuck with him. He and Dad had been talking about life experience and Fabian mentioned to him that he must be very proud of all he had accomplished. Dad reflected and commented back, "it's not so much pride (as that might indicate a touch of arrogance), but I am grateful, grateful to have been given the skills in order to do what I have done.” Doesn't that say at all.
Dad we are all very grateful that you were our Dad; we will miss you, may you sail on in peace -sail on.
My Journey with my Father – Eric Rodin
Dad was an exceptional and brilliant man.
Yes, he stubborn in his ways, but he taught all of us the meaning of work,
and as he would always say when a decision must be made, the path to take is the hardest one.
He said that things would work out better in the long run that way.
I did not know Dad on the professional level as I took a different career path but as you know and can see, he was world renowned. To this day I still don't understand how he could look at squiggly lines on EEG or MEG files all day long.
Dad was full of stories, and he would tell them nonstop!!!.
He actually got a kick out of it when I finally made the statement to him, “ Dad, you talk too much.”
That then became one of his many one-liners.
Dad grew up in Europe in the heart of the war and that shaped his many views on life. He fought on the Russian front and he had all his tank stories but the biggest mission was just trying to get home to Vienna after the war just finished. That was a true survival story.
After the war he worked his way into Med School and then came to the US with just a couple of dollars in his pocket and his medical degree but no job and a very bad accent! His only way to find a job was to knock on doors (a lesson I later used as well ). But he was asking if anyone needed a physician. He found a position in Staten Island and low and behold on his first day at the hospital an angel took him under her wings and taught him the ropes. My Mother. They met in his first two weeks in the country and are now together again. He loved her dearly and forever.
That was a life lesson.
I grew up knowing Dad in Grosse pointe by sailing in the summers and skiing in the winters. The stories are many. At first I actually did not liking sailing as I was forced out every weekend to race against HIS peers and Dad was just a little competitive to say the least. It was not until later in life that I realized the great opportunity this gave me to spend time with him.
One day I remember watching Detroit disappear under a squall line and Dad racing to make the windward mark so we could then take all the sails down and race to the downwind mark on just the mast. Well, it worked, and we won that race.
Another time racing down to the Detroit River we had to cross the freighter channel when we suddenly ran out of wind in the middle of the channel. The current was going to make us miss the exit on the other side, so Dad threw out the anchor right there and plays chicken with an oncoming freighter just so that we would not forfeit the race by putting on the motor. Quitting something that he had started was not in his vocabulary.
I remember being out in a complete fog where you could not even see the other side of the boat and hearing the voices of other boats and Dad yelling at them from the top of his lungs to “Poof, Vanish and Evaporate,” simply because they were in a position to blanket us from any air that might develop. That became another of his famous lines.
When I was older and fell in love with sailing myself, I was able to go on many sailing adventures to the waters down South with Dad. When we were sailing our boat, Flybaby, down to the Florida Keys I remember one very miserable day in Ft Lauderdale when it was 30 degrees amidst heavy rain and wind. Dad finally showed me a different side of his personality as he yelled, “GET ME OFF THIS BOAT!!! “ That was not like him, and we always kidded each other about that later.
We also had a crazy night off of St. Thomas island where we thought we were in good shape when we set anchor, but within a couple of hours the wind and the waves really started to howl, to the point that Dad, who was sleeping in the forward berth, and was being lifted up and levitated on each wave.
The funny part was the radio show we had on was a Rock station and their tag line was we were
“ GOING TO ROCK AND ROLL ALL NIGHT LONG. “ Dad was not amused at the time, but we joked about it for all the years after.
Skiing with him was also entertaining
One day when I was young we were at a breakfast dinner and this guy happens to pull in driving a Hurst to the slopes. That began the conversation whether he was the optimist or the pessimist.
You have to know Dad to understand that one.
Dad took us on some great skiing trips. We started with trips up North to Boyne Mt. every year.
One year when I was 11 we were coming out here to Utah but our schedule changed and he could not make the new date so Pete, Mom and I made the trip out here as Kris was in Europe.
I fell in love with this place. The next year Dad took us to Austria on a ski trip and I really hurt his feelings as he showed off his homeland , as this kid kept telling him the skiing was “NOT LIKE UTAH”
He did not take that well. Years later, after I had lived out here for a year while flying and skiing in ‘82
Dad was retiring and looking for a place to be as he wanted out of Detroit.
Well you can imagine what I said. “ UTAH is pretty nice.”
They both agreed, but it was Mom who found this house and told him he needed to pack and that he was moving right away.
They both made a great place here for all of us to come to, and let all of the expanding family spend some great times together.
Dad truly loved Mom, she was his anchor in many ways. After Mom’s passing Kris really stepped up to the plate and tried to fill Mom’s shoes as best she could. She filled Dad’s last year with huge amount of activities. From having the nightly dinner dates and weekend drives up the canyons, to taking him back to Europe for a month, glider flying and even got him in a snow cat to groom the slopes of Alta.
Kris we can’t thank you enough for what you provided for him.
Dad was working right up to the day he died, but he was ready to go. He had published and submitted both his last blog and his research paper on Saturday, and was able to spend a wonderful last dinner date with Amber and his great grandkid, Weston, and even served by his favorite waiter, Carter, Saturday night.
To his last day he lived by his motto of “you finish what you start.” Mid day Sunday he passed from a broken heart from the loss of Mom.
Dad, You taught all of us so much, not only world history but real life stuff too, like “Happiness is a Bow wave “
meaning you always need to be moving forward and growing in life, don’t settle for average.
Safe Travels Dad,
May your seas finally be calm and your winds fair.
We love you and will miss you. You were a Great Dad.
Dad’s Memorial – Krista Rodin
It seems that everyone has their own memories and experiences of another person, no matter how close they are to each other and the person with whom the interaction takes place. Our experiences of each other are uniquely our own. Peter, Eric and I grew up in the same household, but while we have some common memories, most of them are deeply individualized. In contrast to the boys, my relationship with our father was fraught with problems for the first almost 30 years of my life. We basically couldn’t stand one another. This may well be because, as my mother said, we were so similar in some significant ways. While we did not share sailing as my brothers did, and skiing with him was a frightening experience as one or the other of us was always in the other’s icy thread on the t-bars which threw us both off, we did share a fascination and love for history, cultures, philosophy, opera and, of course, Austria. Both of us immersed ourselves in Buddhist as well as Hindu and Christian sacred texts. One of the key statements in the Buddhist doctrine that directly applied to our relationship was that “Your enemy is your greatest teacher.” This realization, that we were supposed to learn to see through the other’s eyes, forced us both to reevaluate our reactions to each other as well as reflect on why we did the things we did and why we believe what we do. In later years, I came to realize that his penchant for lecturing, which he dearly loved to do, was his way to stimulate reflection and that he was in fact a modern day guru. Gurus may be charming to the general public, but are often not perfect or even nice people to their students; instead their job is to push their students to confront a reality they may not want to acknowledge. They often cut their students to the quick in order to force them to reevaluate what they take to be reality. Any of us in the family who was at any time called into the den on Balfour Rd, or here at 3 Mountainwood, know of the wrenching humiliation that was left after those ‘discussions.’ I want you to know now, that he did mean well and that his intentions were always the best, he just wanted us to cut through a materially based world to an inner strength that he knew we all have. He firmly believed that we are spiritual beings stuck in physical bodies, and that the body and our senses inhibit our ability to find “The Truth.” His quest for understanding was a livelong pursuit. One of his favorite poems was from Walter von der Vogelweide, a medieval German poet, that badly translated goes something like: ““I sat upon a rock and covered one leg with the other, upon it I placed my elbow, I had my cheek and chin in one hand, then I thought with great concern about how one should live in this world, and I could not figure out how to achieve three aspects without doing violence to one of them. Two are honor and wealth, which are practically mutually exclusive, the third is the grace of God which surely surpasses the other two. “ He was constantly torn between doing his duty, by which he felt he (& all of us) would ultimately be judged and the hope for God’s grace. He struggled to reconcile Michael’s sword with Mary’s mercy, coupled with the Buddha’s first principle that all life is based on a state of unsatisfactoriness and that to overcome that state one needs “Right Thought, Right Speech and Right Action.” This quest to understand “Right Living” led the scientist to study near death experiences, and various religions’ concepts of what happens in the dying process and after the body has died. He could quote from both the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, as well as recite the Catholic Requiem Mass. When our mother passed, he was in awe of her grace and fortitude, repeatedly saying that she showed us how passing from one state to another should happen. Since she died, he intensified his studies. He put his affairs in order, had finished his current affairs blog on his “ThinkTruth” website with the inauguration, had finished and submitted his last scientific paper on Saturday, had read the Sunday paper and neatly folded it on the counter and put away all the dishes. The conference he was supposed to attend on the Wednesday after he passed, would have taken him on a new tact, one that he was not sure he would be able to conclude. He had had a wonderful time with Amber and baby Weston the night before when he joked with them and was in a good mood. I had had to go to Flagstaff for meetings and was in contact via email. The last message was joking that he seemed to want to enter the 4th stage of Hindu life, into the Forest, although the Forest was the House. He said “Yep”. He was done. He was lonely. He wanted his Martha, and felt she was calling him and he followed his Beatrice, who was love and grace personified, to the unknowable world beyond with the strength of Will that had characterized his entire professional career and personal history. He was an amazing and complicated man. I’m very glad to have had this past year and a half with him when we both found a bit of peace and joy with each other and deeply honored to have had him as my father and my teacher.
We now have a memorial video to share with you, starting with his time growing up with his older brother, Erwin, in Vienna, from whom the flowers on the tables have been sent. The Viennese family send their greetings to everyone here as well.
"The Fruit of Silence" - Mother Teresa
The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.
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