On April 19, 1995, the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. The generally accepted account of the Oklahoma City bombing is that one man, with some assistance from an accomplice pulled it off. It was such a horrible event—costing 168 lives—that none of us at the time could bear to think that there could have been something wrong with official account. The evidence that we have about this terrible incident lends itself to several interpretations, none of which can be proven. Some have even connected some strands to suggest that it was some sort of false flag operation gone-wrong that was intended to pin the blame on Saddah Hussein or Muslims. But there is not enough evidence to make that case.
Basic Information
Timothy McVeigh was quickly apprehended and labeled the main bomber. There was a brief search for the second man who was seen with McVeigh just before the explosion—John Doe #2. While still claiming to search for him, the head of the investigations ordered other agents to cease looking for him.
McVeigh’s Army buddy Terry Nichols, who was far away in Herington, Kansas at the time was arrested as an accomplice. Nichols admitted to helping to construct a bomb on April 18.
The prosecution’s supporting testimony came from Michael Fortier and his wife Lori after months of badgering and intimidation. It is also compromised by the effects of drug use on their memories. Lori Fortier was rehearsed her testimony with the FBI for 4 days before she went o the stand. She was granted immunity for here testimony, and Michael was to serve less than 11 years for not warning authorities about a crime he knew was about to be committed.
Some of the witnesses described a man who did not look like McVeigh renting the Ryder truck. McVeigh’s fingerprints did not turn up on the truck or the counter of the body shop where he allegedly rented it. Some of the workers say that two men came in to rent the truck, and that one of looked a lot like Tod Bunting, who was with McVeigh at Fort Riley. Bunting later said he rented a truck at the same place a day later, but this was never pursued. Some experts think Bunting looked a lot like the John Doe- 2 composite. Some who believe there were two trucks, aside from the one Bunting said he rented, note that a second truck was rented a week before McVeigh allegedly rented one.
Some Doubts About the Official Story
Stephen Jones, attorney for Timothy Mc Veigh and a former Nixon aide, was certain that McVeigh exaggerated his own role in the bombing to protect others. The bomber repeatedly said he alone should suffer so that the “revolution” could go on. Sixteen times the prosecution told the court it was not withholding any evidence from the defense. Then three weeks before McVay’s execution, it turned over some additional material. Jones was ultimately able to prove that the FBI withheld hundreds of pages of documents from the defense. Eventually the bureau admitted to withholding over 4,000 pages. The Associated Press reported that 75% of the files used in the McVeigh trial were at least partially sealed.
Jones suspected that McVeigh got some assistance from white supremacists and thought it possible that Nichols could have had a tie to Islamic extremists in the Philippines. Norm Olson, a Baptist preacher and then leader of the Michigan Militia, revealed that McVeigh attended one of his meetings. A number of witnesses saw McVeigh with men who looked like they came from the Middle East. Jayna Davis, a former KFOR- TV reporter has amassed much evidence along these lines. Davis and her partner turned up the fact that McVeigh associated with a number of men from the Middle East. It cannot be established if John Doe #2 existed or if he was from the Middle East.
Some experts thought it would take from 4 to 8 men to pull off the Oklahoma City bombing. Immediately after the event, police circulated composites of two men seen together 15 minutes before the blast. The people who saw more than one suspect were never called before the grand jury.
Craig Roberts wrote that a federal law enforcement official told him that the bombing was about the records of Mountain Aviation, which had operated at the Mena, Arkansas Airport, and allegedly moved drugs. He has a fireman witness to support the report that records were removed from the building the next day. He had another law enforcement source that claimed money for the operation was provided by a Mexican national with previous CIA ties, who might have been working then for the Columbian drug cartel. He, like this writer, found all of the pieces of the story difficult to fit together,
How Much Help?
McVeigh said he alone mixed all that fertilizer. And fuel oil. It is hard to believe one man could have done that. Charles Farley testified to seeing 4 men with McVeigh near Geary State Lake the day before the explosion. The accounts of the explosion raise a question about whether there was a second bomb in the building, and explosives experts, including Brigadier Benton Partin, are on record that the fertilizer bomb was not powerful enough to do the damage attributed to it. It could not have been the only source of damage. It would have been impossible to destroy a large concrete pillar deep in the building. The general thought that demolition charges on some pillars would be necessary. The general is a self-described Christian who hates Communism. For four years, he was chairman of the Republican Party of Fairfax County, Virginia. The FBI interviewed him but ignored his carefully framed comments.
Dr. Roger Raubach, a physical chemist who worked at Stanford, agreed with Partin and said he didn’t care if there were a semi-trailer with 20 tons of ammonium nitrate,” it wouldn't do the damage we saw there." Testimony of people who were inside the building when the explosions occurred has recollections that seemed to support the general’s view. Films of the explosion showed two smoke plumes, one outside the building and one inside. Allegedly two tons of ammonium nitrate was used in the McVeigh bomb, but the smell of ammonia was not present at the scene. The truck was 30 or 40 feet away from the building. Witnesses testified to a tremendous flash and feeling great amounts of static electricity, all characteristics of nuclear and sub nuclear blasts. The Feds demolished the building on May 23. Mc Veigh had military training and would have known that ANFO was not effective in destroying steel and concrete.
Terrance Yeakey, an Oklahoma Police Sergeant, was the first officer to get to the Murrah Building at the time of the explosion. He was certain he saw a flash within and that windows were blown out. He called his former wife to say, it’s not what they are saying it was.” He also over heard ATF agents reveal something else that convinced him the official view of the explosion was very wrong. Three days before he was to receive the department’s Medal of Valor in 1996 his body was found in a field, half a mile from his car. His arms and wrists were slit as well as both jugular veins. There was a downward gunshot wound in the head. When the car door was opened, blood ran out. The death was declared a suicide. No autopsy was done, and the car was not dusted for prints. There was no investigation. But the Medical Examiner did not that there were no’stellat” wounds, meaning a silencer prevented the head from being marked by escaping gas. The mortician found multiple rope burns. His notes on the bombing were never found.
The media reported that two unexplained bombs were removed from the building. There is also a FEMA memo on this subject. CNN reporter Suzanne Sealy told viewers that one bomb was found on the east side of the building and that the FBI sent people a few blocks away.
Yeakey’s former wife revealed that the sergeant shared a safe deposit box with Dr. Charles Chumley, with whom he worked during the rescue effort. After that they conferred several times about what had happened. Chumley and Yeakey had refused to turn in false reports as requested by federal officers. Chumley, a pilot, went down in a crash in August.
Far Right White ExtremistsThere is a dispute about the security tapes at the Murrah building. The FBI says the tapes show nothing, but a Secret Service memo claims the tapes could have had accomplices. There were four security cameras in the area. Eventually footage was released, but there was nothing for the minutes before the explosion. It was said that the tapes were being changed or the camera had run out of tape.
The “major,” one of the men at the enclave, contacted McVeigh at Fort Bragg before he left the army. McVeigh was being recruited to gather intelligence on right-wing groups like the Klan and the Aryan Nation. McVeigh was deeply disappointed at the time that he had not been taken into Special Forces.
David Paul Hammer, a death row inmate, has a manuscript allegedly containing things McVeigh told him. The FBI tried to interview him before he was executed, but the interviews did not take place due to disagreements about who could be present. It claims that McVeigh and Nichols were helped by people connected to Elohim City, Christian enclave in northeastern Oklahoma where Strassmeir was in charge of security. Mc Veigh and Nichols drove from Fayette, Arkansas to Elohim City, on October 12, 1993.
The enclave was run by a Reverend Robert Millar, 71, a Christian Identity minister. His church believes that white Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people and the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Three of the men there had ties to the military. Two of those men, Richard Guthrie and Pete Langan, and McVeigh robbed banks to raise money for the community and to arm it. ( The FBI probably thought Guthrie and Kenney Trentadue were the same person.) Apparently the men McVeigh met at Elohim City went only by code names. One of them was “the major” who contacted him at Fort Bragg. Mc Veigh called Andreas Strassmeir “Andy the Kraut.” Strassmeir was a former panzer officer who had worked for the German Bundesnachrichtendienst ( equivalent to the FBI) and was known to be a Mossad asset. His wife was an Israeli. It is believed that he was somehow tied to McVay through Kirk Lyons, who had been a Klan lawyer. In 2004, the FBI released a memo that indicated that the Southern Poverty Law Center had an informer planted in that small community. Elohim City constituted 1,000 acres and was home to racists, Neo-Nazis, right-wingers, and just plain criminals.
Danny Coulson, director of the FBI’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force checked into an Oklahoma City hotel on April 19, hours before the attack. Attorney General Janet Reno in 1994 established VAAPCON, an operation to learn if right-wing Christian groups and militias were capable of violence, and Coulson was part of that operation. However, the FBI said it had no prior knowledge the Murrah Building would be attacked. .There is an Embassy Hotel receipt, but Coulson wrote 4 years later that he and his wife were house-hunting in Fort Worth that day.
Testimony of AFT Plant Ignored
Transcripts on a December 8, 1997 “in chambers” conference between Judge Richard P. Matsch, Nichols’ attorneys, and Justice Department lawyers reveals that the judge never read the file on what ATF informant Carol Howe, once a Tulsa debutante, told here FBI handler, Angela Finley. She said that the Elohim City ( City of God in Hebrew) community were plotting against the US government. She described its inhabitants as racists and added that Strassmier had threatened to blow up federal buildings.. Two days after the attack she talked to Finley about their plans to blow something up and mentioned Dennis Mahon, a member of White Aryan Resistance, as her source, and added that he talked about Andreas Strassmeir having made three trips to scout out the Murrah Building. She had also travelled with Reverend Millar. Howe was reinterviewed and confirmed that Finley’s written report.
Howe was arrested for making a bomb threat when the prosecutors learned that Stephen Jones, Nichols’ attorney, was going to call her as a witness. She was acquitted, Judge Matsch issued a ruling that prevented the defense from using her file.
Agent Peter Rickel admitted in open court that Millar was a paid informant since 1994. When he spilled the beans, a senior agent bolted the room for some reason. This means there were 3 informants within the compound, including Howe and Strassmeir.
Not long after the bombing, the FBI arrested the “Midwestern Bank Robbers,” men associated with the bank robberies—in all 22 heists. They were part of the Aryan Republican Army. Its headquarters was a safe house in eastern Kansas, and Elohim City was one of many outposts.
Richard Wayne Snell, a neo Nazi leader was executed on the day the Murral Building was attacked in 1995. He had been involved in an earlier plot to attack the building and told guards that Murrah would be attacked on the day of his execution. There were people at Elohim City who were sympathetic to Snell and knew about his prediction.
There are several leads that could point to the involvement of Islamic forces, particularly the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, with the bombing of the Murrah Building. Should this be revealed, it would be clear that people we helped in Afghanistan repaid our support with this terrible deed. That was reason enough to ignore these leads.
Just as the far right militant organizations are filled with government informers, it is likely that there are also informers within the Islamic groups. Gene Wheaton, a former CIA agent, noted “Every major Middle-Eastern terrorist organization is under surveillance and control of the intelligence agencies in the U.S. None of these guys move around as freely as they'd like you to think." To explore the involvement of the white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Islamists would eventually turn up information that federal agents knew about the planned attack and somehow failed to prevent it.
It should be noted that federal moles are not informed of one another’s presence. So they do not compare notes. It is possible that Hussain al-Hussaini of Oklahoma City was a federal mole and even now sees the tragedy simply as a sting gone wrong and something to keep quiet about so that other informants and operations can be protected. In the last analysis, these people probably had very little grasp of the big picture. People above them must digest their reports and make intelligent decisions. What they were thinking, we will never know. We do know that days before the explosion, William Colby told a friend that the right wing militias must be discredited. He wrote: "I watched as the Anti-War Movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War. I tell you, dear friend, that this Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for America than the Anti-War Movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” He must have realized that the bumbling and bloody assault at Waco strengthened the militias and their allies.
Two days after the event, FBI director Louis Freeh told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "Most of the militia organizations around the country are not, in our view, threatening or dangerous." Go figure!
On July 16, 2005, the McCurtain Daily Gazette reported that the Elohim City Christian fundamentalists were involved in the bombing. Mike German, a 17 year FBI man who led the investigation, resigned when he learned that the Bush Justice Department would not follow this lead.
Nichols and Al Qaeda
The travels of Nichols have received too little attention. Usually accompanied by his second wife, Nichols travelled to the Philippines about 16 times. FBI 302 reports and investigators hired by Jones learned that Nichols met with Abu Sayyaf people, Philippine Muslim extremists, in late1993 or early 1994.Nichols is known to have made telephone calls to Cebu city when his wife was not there. The Nichols lived in Cebu City for a time in 1993. Also present were Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. In 1996, Edwin Angeles, military strategist for Abu Sayyaf, surrendered to the Philippine government and said that the Oklahoma City bombing was discussed at that meeting. He was subsequently killed. According to his widow, Elmina -- his third Muslim wife—Nichols was a deep penetration agent for the Philippine government. She said the meeting took place every day for a week in a warehouse in 1994 and that there were two Americans present, Terry the Farmer and another unnamed person. They discussed blowing up buildings. The dying woman said the money came from Yousef. She claimed to here Edwin discussing the role of Yousef as a representative of the Iraqis with a Philippine soldier.
In March, 2008, Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher became interested in the tie between Terry Nichols and Ramsay Yousef and complained that the Bush administration has obstructed his efforts. Richard Clarke, former NSC counterterrorism director, has said the feds have not been able to disprove the Yousef-Nichols connection. Both Yousef and Nichols are now in federal prisons.
In late 1994, Nichols’ first wife discovered that he had $20,000 in stash and precious metals worth at least $60,000. Like McVeigh, Nichols came out of the army with a deep hatred of the U.S. government. Mc Veigh wanted to become an arms dealer but he told people his trips to the Philippines were to bring back little paper butterflies to sell in the US.
The late Sherman Skolnick maintained that two Muslim men were often with Mc Veigh The late Chicago investigator believed they could have been among the hundreds of Iraqi army officers George H.W. Bush relocated in the united States after the First Gulf War. Most of them were settled in Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Cary Gagan, a government informant, attended a meeting at the Western Motel in Los Vegas on May, 1994 attended by 5 from the Middle East, two Columbians, and Terry Nichols. At the time he was moving drugs from Mexico to Denver for two Arabs, Omar and Ahmed, who were at the meeting. The men took some cocaine and then moved to the Players Club, an apartment complex, in Henderson, where they discussed drug dealing. They also discussed blowing up a federal building in Denver with a truck painted to look like a mail truck. On January 14, 1995, Gagan picked up the truck in Golden. It had about thirty duffel bags with ammonium nitrate. He took the truck to the location he was given and informed the FBI where it was and asked for instructions. The FBI did not recontact him, and he went home via bus. At a March 17, 1995 meeting with his employers in Greenwood Colorado, and saw architectural drawings of the Alfred Murrah Building. There was a new figure at the meeting, whom Gagan suspected was an agent. He warned the FBI about what he learned, and the Bureau seemed disinterested. On March 27 and 28 he called the US Marshall’s office in Denver, but his calls were not returned. Then he sent a short letter to Tina Rowe, the head of that office. After the bombing, Rowe told KFOR-TV (Oklahoma City) that the letter had not been received. The feds said he had a history of mental illness, even though he had a letter of immunity on Justice Department letterhead. The effort to discredit him was led by Lawrence Myers, a journalist with likely ties to the government. He had previously succeeded in discrediting a federal grand juror who was view as a problem and played a major role in the conviction of a former CIA agent for allegedly looking for someone to shoot his son.
A Loose End
Prisoner Kenney Trentadue was found dead in his federal prison cell in Oklahoma City in August, 1995. He had been pulled over on June 10, 1995 and was held for a parole violation. The body was covered with bruises and blood. The Burfeau of Prisons and FBI prevented Medical Examiner Fred Jordan from conducting a complete examination and pressured him to drop the matter. Trentadue’s death was ruled a suicide, but his brother Jesse, an attorney, said he was beaten to death by the FBI. He claims they considered Kenney John Doe #2 in the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building because he had a tattoo on his left forearm. In 1997, Oklahoma Republican Senator Don Nikles said prison guards told him they were ordered not to talk about the death of Kenney Trebtadue. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orin Hatch said it looked like Kenny was murdered.
Jesse thought McVeigh’s contact was Andreas Strassmeir. In 1992, he was arrested for driving without a license, but all sorts of pressure was brought to bear to get the charges dropped. He appears to have infiltrated a number of right-wing militias. Terry Nichols said McVeigh had been promised protection in a safe house. Strassmeir, from his home in Berlin, said he met McVeigh once and denied any connections with intelligence operations. FBI teletypes verify that Timothy had connections with Strassmeir and Elohim City, where the German carried out military training for white supremacists.
McVeigh failed a psychological examination to get into Special Forces, but many thought he was the ideal soldier and was leadership material. After he left the Army, something seemed to have happened to him, he was cold and emotionally spent. Yet he was considered a good guard. While visiting a friend in Michigan, he said something strange. McVeigh said the Army implanted miniature subcutaneous transmitter on him to keep track of him. He said it hurt him when he sat down. . It is known that the military had been experimenting with telemet6rics from at least 1968.Dr. Carl Sanders, who has developed military biochips, claims they were used in the first Iraq War. Caspan Advanced Technology Center was working on artificial intelligence and was engaged in microscopic electronic engineering. The sad fact is that the military has a history of using soldiers for experiment of this sort. After his arrest, Mc Veigh presented himself, according to an Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General, as “a polite young man who gave polite, cooperative answers to every question. It was like the dutiful soldier," Gibson said. "Emotions don't come into play, right and wrong don't come into play. What happens next doesn't come into play… his mood was so level, it was unnatural. I looked at him and realized I felt no repulsion or fear. It was like there was an absence of feeling. He exuded nothing.
In a February 9, 2007 affidavit, Nichols said Mc Veigh was “apparently” being directed by Larry Potts, a ranking FBI official. Nichols said Potts manipulated McVeigh to change the bomb target someone in the FBI. Documents to support his claims have been sealed. Nichols said he wrote, offering to help John Ashcroft, but received no reply. Nichols also claims that the bomb used was very different and much more sophisticated than the device he and McVeigh built.
The claim that McVeigh was somehow connected to the government might have some merit. It is known that McVeigh claimed that he had done some special black missions for the Army, and there is much evidence that people like him are often recruited for intelligence work as soon as they leave the military. Before leaving Fort Bragg, McVeigh said a major contacted him about doing intelligence work for the government by infiltrating right-wing militias. Instead, he worked for Burns Security, guarding a facility where government sponsored mind-control experiments probably were conducted. Then he robbed a gun shop operated by a man who had been a CIA contractor. Its probably all coincidental.
There may be a parallel to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. It is now clear that the FBI was using an Egyptian double agent to teach followers of the Blind Shaik’s men how to make bombs. The agency actually provided the materials. When its agent warned that arrests should be made immediately, the FBI hesitated, wanting to gather more information. Perhaps Oklahoma City is another example of bad timing—a sting gone terribly wrong. "
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Exploring Obama’s Ownership of Massive Economic Problems
By persistent obstructionism and using endless false information, the GOP pulled off some big wins in the 2009 elections. Worse still, they have been able to convince people that Obama has handled the economy badly. The YouGov poll shows that 47% disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy, while 43% approve. The biggest problem is that the independents who supported Obama are deserting in big numbers. One reason for this is that unemployment is getting worse, and is now at 10.2%, somewhere around 17% when we take into account all the gimmicks that are employed to keep the figure artificially low. We think that it will be 9.5% next November, around 15% in real terms. That does not bode well for the Democrats in next year’s elections.
Republican politicians and pundits as well as mainstream media types repeatedly say that President Barack Obama now “owns” the bad economy. Likewise, they say that he “owns” the grim situation in Afghanistan. The fact is that both are the result of eight years of Republican bungling. Despite our long-time national faith that progress is inevitable and to be expected to occur quickly, the fact is that we are now looking at some intractable problems.
The more astute Republican spokesmen concede that the downturn began under Bush but insist that Obama should not have sought the presidency if we was unable to administer a quick fix. That they are justified in blaming Obama for lost jobs and the slow recovery. Their false assumption is that all recessions are the same and can be fixed easily.
John Boehner, the typical Republican spokesman, continually asks “Where are the jobs?” thought there has not been enough time for Obama’s policies to work. Then he says that all the stimulus money has been spent and has accomplished nothing. The fact is that $500 billion still has not been committed and much of the remainder is just getting into the pipeline. Republicans have vastly inflated the amount of debt incurred under Obama. The amount of the Stimulus was $787 billion, but the Republicans have been saying it was $ 1 or 2 trillion and no one corrects them.
Obama’s policies saved us from another depression. Yet he is being blamed for not working miracles. He inherited the worst sort of recession---one with very high unemployment , which is followed by very slow recovery of jobs. The financial system he inherited is a basket case,, and it will take years to fix it.
Republican politicians and pundits as well as mainstream media types repeatedly say that President Barack Obama now “owns” the bad economy. Likewise, they say that he “owns” the grim situation in Afghanistan. The fact is that both are the result of eight years of Republican bungling. Despite our long-time national faith that progress is inevitable and to be expected to occur quickly, the fact is that we are now looking at some intractable problems.
The more astute Republican spokesmen concede that the downturn began under Bush but insist that Obama should not have sought the presidency if we was unable to administer a quick fix. That they are justified in blaming Obama for lost jobs and the slow recovery. Their false assumption is that all recessions are the same and can be fixed easily.
John Boehner, the typical Republican spokesman, continually asks “Where are the jobs?” thought there has not been enough time for Obama’s policies to work. Then he says that all the stimulus money has been spent and has accomplished nothing. The fact is that $500 billion still has not been committed and much of the remainder is just getting into the pipeline. Republicans have vastly inflated the amount of debt incurred under Obama. The amount of the Stimulus was $787 billion, but the Republicans have been saying it was $ 1 or 2 trillion and no one corrects them.
Only in the United States, among advanced countries, would a president and his party be punished for heading off a depression and not producing a impossible economic miracle. That is because the level of our political discourse is so low, our voters so uninformed, and our MSM so unprofessional.
No wonder the GOP chants “Where are the jobs?” and complains that Democrats are playing dirty pool by blaming Bush and the Republicans for the terrible problems they created.
Democrats must take a cue from the “Obama owns it” argument to start educating the public in basic economics. The main line should be that the Republicans offer no plan other than tax cuts for the wealthy. We have a plan, and it is beginning to work. It may not create jobs as quickly as we want because the problems are rooted in a system the GOP created and defended. Obama inherited an economic and financial system the GOP created to benefit powerful interests and shift wealth to people in the top 5%. They must hammer away at the fact that the ordinary guy has not had an improvement in real wages in twenty years because of Republican policy. Yes, some Democrats helped them along, but those folks are now becoming contrite. We need proposals for reforming our economy and economic system to make them serve ordinary people. Banks should be prohibited from gambling with our savings. Insurance companies gambled away reserves built on the premiums we paid. Then they got state insurance commissions to grant huge increases in premiums that should be fixed. We need a plan to gradually carve up the banks that are too big to fail.
Susan Jacoby noted that it was not the secrecy surrounding the Clinton health care plan that accounted for its demise. Rather, the Democrats had failed to prepare and educate voters on what the Clinton plan would involve. They should have anticipated simplistic Republican complaints and lies and used facts to help voters see through Republican appeals to emotions and fear. With little good information at their disposal, many average Americans believed the Harry and Louise claims against Clinton care. Now people are believing the wild claims about “socialism,” losing their liberties, and Democrats ruining the economy because they have almost no conceptual framework with which to view the economy. If Democrats do not start educating the public about economic matters, the GOP, with the help of the media, will spin these situations in such a way that many voters will conclude that President Barack Obama created the bad economy and Afghan War.
If Republicans can blame economic problems on Democratic spending, they will have a leg up in their efforts to launch another attack on entitlements. By next year, our debt will be larger and could be a major political issue. Democrats need to explain how it got so large and to tie some of it to recent military adventures. There are signs that the Obama administration is open to reform” as a means of reigning in debt. That term has the same meaning as the IMF’s favorite term, “structural adjustment,” which means making the little guy pay for the mistakes of others farther up the food chain. We may have to swallow some entitlement reduction, but it should not take place without an end to the Bush tax cuts and the institution of excess profits taxes on the energy industry and on any firm’s transactions in hedge funds and derivatives.
It’s a tall order, but if Democrats do not begin to educate voters now, they could lose control of the House of Representatives next year. It will be hard to get people to think seriously about the economy and stop thinking about it in child-like terms. But more people are hurting now, and they may be ready for a little meat rather than economic pablum. The object should be to staunch the erosion of public support and regain some among people willing to think a bit.
Democrats will need to learn a few things about message control and to draw upon the expertise of people in cognitive science like George Lakoff. If Democrats cannot seize the initiative in the national discourse, we could well see a president Sarah Palin and a cabinet stuffed with tea baggers like Dick Armey in 2013.
Republican politicians and pundits as well as mainstream media types repeatedly say that President Barack Obama now “owns” the bad economy. Likewise, they say that he “owns” the grim situation in Afghanistan. The fact is that both are the result of eight years of Republican bungling. Despite our long-time national faith that progress is inevitable and to be expected to occur quickly, the fact is that we are now looking at some intractable problems.
The more astute Republican spokesmen concede that the downturn began under Bush but insist that Obama should not have sought the presidency if we was unable to administer a quick fix. That they are justified in blaming Obama for lost jobs and the slow recovery. Their false assumption is that all recessions are the same and can be fixed easily.
John Boehner, the typical Republican spokesman, continually asks “Where are the jobs?” thought there has not been enough time for Obama’s policies to work. Then he says that all the stimulus money has been spent and has accomplished nothing. The fact is that $500 billion still has not been committed and much of the remainder is just getting into the pipeline. Republicans have vastly inflated the amount of debt incurred under Obama. The amount of the Stimulus was $787 billion, but the Republicans have been saying it was $ 1 or 2 trillion and no one corrects them.
Obama’s policies saved us from another depression. Yet he is being blamed for not working miracles. He inherited the worst sort of recession---one with very high unemployment , which is followed by very slow recovery of jobs. The financial system he inherited is a basket case,, and it will take years to fix it.
Republican politicians and pundits as well as mainstream media types repeatedly say that President Barack Obama now “owns” the bad economy. Likewise, they say that he “owns” the grim situation in Afghanistan. The fact is that both are the result of eight years of Republican bungling. Despite our long-time national faith that progress is inevitable and to be expected to occur quickly, the fact is that we are now looking at some intractable problems.
The more astute Republican spokesmen concede that the downturn began under Bush but insist that Obama should not have sought the presidency if we was unable to administer a quick fix. That they are justified in blaming Obama for lost jobs and the slow recovery. Their false assumption is that all recessions are the same and can be fixed easily.
John Boehner, the typical Republican spokesman, continually asks “Where are the jobs?” thought there has not been enough time for Obama’s policies to work. Then he says that all the stimulus money has been spent and has accomplished nothing. The fact is that $500 billion still has not been committed and much of the remainder is just getting into the pipeline. Republicans have vastly inflated the amount of debt incurred under Obama. The amount of the Stimulus was $787 billion, but the Republicans have been saying it was $ 1 or 2 trillion and no one corrects them.
Only in the United States, among advanced countries, would a president and his party be punished for heading off a depression and not producing a impossible economic miracle. That is because the level of our political discourse is so low, our voters so uninformed, and our MSM so unprofessional.
No wonder the GOP chants “Where are the jobs?” and complains that Democrats are playing dirty pool by blaming Bush and the Republicans for the terrible problems they created.
Democrats must take a cue from the “Obama owns it” argument to start educating the public in basic economics. The main line should be that the Republicans offer no plan other than tax cuts for the wealthy. We have a plan, and it is beginning to work. It may not create jobs as quickly as we want because the problems are rooted in a system the GOP created and defended. Obama inherited an economic and financial system the GOP created to benefit powerful interests and shift wealth to people in the top 5%. They must hammer away at the fact that the ordinary guy has not had an improvement in real wages in twenty years because of Republican policy. Yes, some Democrats helped them along, but those folks are now becoming contrite. We need proposals for reforming our economy and economic system to make them serve ordinary people. Banks should be prohibited from gambling with our savings. Insurance companies gambled away reserves built on the premiums we paid. Then they got state insurance commissions to grant huge increases in premiums that should be fixed. We need a plan to gradually carve up the banks that are too big to fail.
Susan Jacoby noted that it was not the secrecy surrounding the Clinton health care plan that accounted for its demise. Rather, the Democrats had failed to prepare and educate voters on what the Clinton plan would involve. They should have anticipated simplistic Republican complaints and lies and used facts to help voters see through Republican appeals to emotions and fear. With little good information at their disposal, many average Americans believed the Harry and Louise claims against Clinton care. Now people are believing the wild claims about “socialism,” losing their liberties, and Democrats ruining the economy because they have almost no conceptual framework with which to view the economy. If Democrats do not start educating the public about economic matters, the GOP, with the help of the media, will spin these situations in such a way that many voters will conclude that President Barack Obama created the bad economy and Afghan War.
If Republicans can blame economic problems on Democratic spending, they will have a leg up in their efforts to launch another attack on entitlements. By next year, our debt will be larger and could be a major political issue. Democrats need to explain how it got so large and to tie some of it to recent military adventures. There are signs that the Obama administration is open to reform” as a means of reigning in debt. That term has the same meaning as the IMF’s favorite term, “structural adjustment,” which means making the little guy pay for the mistakes of others farther up the food chain. We may have to swallow some entitlement reduction, but it should not take place without an end to the Bush tax cuts and the institution of excess profits taxes on the energy industry and on any firm’s transactions in hedge funds and derivatives.
It’s a tall order, but if Democrats do not begin to educate voters now, they could lose control of the House of Representatives next year. It will be hard to get people to think seriously about the economy and stop thinking about it in child-like terms. But more people are hurting now, and they may be ready for a little meat rather than economic pablum. The object should be to staunch the erosion of public support and regain some among people willing to think a bit.
Democrats will need to learn a few things about message control and to draw upon the expertise of people in cognitive science like George Lakoff. If Democrats cannot seize the initiative in the national discourse, we could well see a president Sarah Palin and a cabinet stuffed with tea baggers like Dick Armey in 2013.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
An Afghan Quagmire in the Making : Considering the Options
We are mourning the loss of eight American soldiers who died in a day-long battle near the Pakistan border. They were killed by a well armed force that dwarfed them in size. Their mission was to try to stem the flow of Pakistani Taliban fighters over the border to join their allies in the Afghan Taliban. Indeed, a number of the fighters were Pakistani Taliban expelled from the Swat Valley by Pakistan’s army.
The guerilla force that confronted the Americans numbered about 300. In Iraq, the guerilla forces seldom exceeded 30, with the possible exception of the fighting in Falluhah.
Now we are facing the decision of whether to send in many more troops to continue a policy of nation-building and providing population security. The situation in Afghanistan is enormously complex, and there clearly is no easy resolution or way out.
Lieutenant General Stanley McCrystal has warned Washington that we are losing in our battle against the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. He has called for an additional 10,000 to 40,000 troops, and he has the backing of his very popular boss, General David Petraeus. There is a parallel to the “clear and hold” strategy employed in Vietnam, but McCrystal would be more careful with firepower and more interested in economic development.
During the campaign, Barack Obama sought to show that he was strong on national security by saying that Afghanistan was the necessary war. Now those remarks are haunting him as he ponders the sad history of foreign involvements in Afghanistan and our unpromising situation there now. Much of latter was due to the policies of the Bush Administration, but voters have short memories, and Obama will pay for lack of success in Afghanistan. Not long ago, Obama once referred the Afghanistan effort as “a necessary war,” but he has not repeated that term. Necessary wars involve out nation’s vital interests. No vital interests are involved in Afghanistan, so this is a “war of choice.”
The fact is that preoccupation with Iraq and Afghanistan represent massive distortions of American foreign policy. Our main concerns are elsewhere. Obama needs to help our people regain a sense of perspective.
For the moment, Obama is taking time to reconsider our objectives in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has become a NATO mission, and our president would be well advised to invite NATO to join in these deliberations. Otherwise, it will appear that we are continuing the Bush policy of dictating to others. Obama was selected for the Nobel Prize in part because he turned away from unilateralism and opted for engaging our allies and others. France, Germany, and Great Britain have asked for an international conference to discuss how NATO forces can be phased out in Afghanistan. In view of the growing sentiment in Europe against the Afghanistan operation, it would be wise to learn how much support we could count on if we ramp up the effort to provide population security. Already some writers fear that extended involvement in Afghanistan could be the rock on which the NATO vessel breaks. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has endorsed Obama’s decision to review the policy and has said that it is more important to get the right strategy than to rely on putting in more troops.
Biden’s Approach
Vice President Joseph Biden, after much study and two unpleasant meetings with Hamid Karzai, has concluded that the current regime in Afghanistan will not be a reliable partner for an effort to establish security for the population in Afghanistan. Until recently, National Security Advisor James L. Jones appeared to agree. Biden’s view is that the US needs to focus less on Afghanistan and more on Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is and where instability makes that nation’s nuclear weapons a potential problem.
Biden suggests ramping down the counter-insurgency effort and focusing on damaging Al Qaeda, partly through Predators and air power. Spies and Special Forces and other black ops would also be involved. The US will be able to continue its drone air strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but it is doubtful that Pakistan can permit the US to bomb Taliban sites in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province. We can be of greter help to the Pakistanis as they are finally going against their own Taliban. At the moment, they are preparing an offensive in Waziristan.
Of course, the US will need enough stability in some parts of Afghanistan so they can be used as bases to launch all manner of assaults against Al Qaeda. In the long run, it is doubtful that we can put Al Qaeda out of business, but we should make it out top priority inflicting as much damage as possible.
There are signs that some of the insurgents are amenable to negotiations, and it is possible that money and diplomacy could accomplish with them what more troops may not. There are now pilot efforts to negotiate with and build up the forces of some warlords. In some ways this more parallels what the surge was all about in Iraq than manipulating the number of troops on the ground.
Of course, the Biden plan would not stop the training and recruitment of Afghan soldiers and police. It should include giving the army better equipment. Much more attention must be given to rapidly enlarging and retraining the Afghan military. At this point, it has a 24% defection rate. Soldiers even take weapons home and sometimes continue to receive pay. Much needs to be done building a centralized police force. The fact that Taliban fighters could get attack the Indian Embassy in Kabul underscores the dimensions of this problem.
In the last analysis, preventing a Taliban victory in Afghanistan is out of our hands. It depends upon what the people think of the Karzai regime and the extent to which the Afghan police and army can be effective.
Should the Al Qaeda reenter Afghanistan, we would have no choice but to resume round-the-clock carpet bombing of areas where they establish bases. Taliban leaders remember the bombing and realize that it would be repeated should they assist Al Qaeda establish camps and bases in their country.
Republicans Demand Escalation of the Afghanistan War
With the remarkable exception of George Will, Republicans back the former Special Forces commander. They stand to gain no matter what Obama does in Afghanistan. If more troops are sent, and there is still failure of stalemate, they still win big time. Few will remember that John McCain and others beat the drums for more troops and a long war.
A common argument is that any backing away from an all-out effort will give Al Qaeda new energy and attract more recruits to their standard. In truth, American policy in Iraq and our tactics in Afghanistan, which harmed many civilians, were responsible for recruiting people for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Sami Yousafzai’s interviews of Taliban people in the current Newsweek demonstrates how Bush Administration tactics alienated many and strengthened the Taliban. It is unlikely that the salutary change in course under General McCrystal can reverse the damage. Moreover, his turn toward the exercise of soft power -- economic and social development-- is all to the good, but this policy will require more time than we have. It can be recalled that it took John Paul Vann many years to work economic and social miracles in the Mekong Delta.
We frequently hear that anything less than a ramped up war in Afghanistan will damage U.S. credibility abroad. There may be some truth to this. Certainly other nations will not doubt that we have the ability to go anywhere and bring about massive destruction when we do not get our way. The real question should be “Does our national interest require expenditure of a great deal of blood and treasure in Afghanistan? “
A similarly weak argument is that we must prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failed state so that Al Qaeda will not use it as a base of operations. This wrongly assumes that there are no other failed states Al Qaeda can use as a base. Moreover, the terrorist organization appears to be unhampered in its operations in Pakistan. As General Jones has admitted, there is no reason why the Taliban would want to leave. He claims there are less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Republicans could argue that the long term morale of our armed forces could be adversely effected if we did not escalate and then “win” in Afghanistan. The Vietnam War was devastating, and it took a long time for our military to restore its spirits. Right now, the military seems to be thinking in terms of “winning” and “loosing.” Its leadership should be educating our forces to think in terms of accomplishing limited goals.
Republican columnist Michael Gerson eschews the most simplistic arguments and admits the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan. Still, he senses that Obama is in a no-win situation. Gerson redefines the civilian-military relationship a bit by insisting that suggesting that tradition demands that Obama select his best general and get out of the way. He even mentions Harry S. Truman in this respect, though the use of that precedent can be debated. In the end, Abraham Lincoln accepted U.S. Grant’s meatgrinder approach, but he had been involved in many military decisions throughout the war. Another way to look at this is to recall that Lincoln bucked the popular George Mc Clellan and that Truman sacked th4e very popular Douglas Mc Arthur.
One can only wonder if any of the critics are concerned that the US be in a position to construct the long-desired twin pipelines down through Afghanistan to carry Caspian gas and oil to Pakistan and , by ship , to India. This was the object of a great deal of diplomacy before 9/11, and the Bush administration even resorted to the threat of bombings. The pipelines are in our national interest but it is doubtful if soldiers should lose their lives to get them.
Another Surge?
Those who insist that Obama bow to Petraeus and McCrystal is that they think that copying the surge strategy in Afghanistan will work. The surge worked best in the urban areas of Iraq, and there are few urban areas in Afghanistan. The surge also worked in Iraq because the United States literally bought off its enemies, paying large amounts to tribal leaders and monthly stipends to their armed retainers. Only Bob Woodward has openly discussed another reason why the surge worked. Special Forces in Iraq, under McCrystal, carried out something like the Vietnam War’s Operation Phoenix and eliminated thousands of the insurgent cadre.
Repeating some version of Phoenix in Afghanistan does not require a huge increase in American forces there. Over seven years, we have spent $38 billion in Afghanistan, with few discernable positive results. Perhaps more of the money sent there should be used to buy off warlords and put their troops on retainer. Its worth a try.
Should We Bet on Karzai?
We still come down to whether a large new commitment in human lives, money, and American prestige should be made in Afghanistan. Many Afghans believe that the present regime is hopelessly corrupt. The recent rigged election of August 20 is one indication of how weak the Karzai regime is. The UN found that one third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent. The resultant acrimony has been so great that it is unrealistic to believe that Afghans can be unified around Karzai—no matter how many troops we send there. Karzai has not bothered to denounce those who rigged the election on his behalf. His reliance upon war lords and human rights abusers is not likely to win new grassroots supporters. Of course, policy makers recall that in Vietnam the elimination of the corrupt Ngo Dinh Diem resulted in even worse leaders.
The idea that we can, using soft power, somehow win over large numbers of Karzai opponents to support him is fanciful. The counter insurgency strategy has been based upon the idea that we could eventually build a large and effective Afghan army and matching police force. The Afghan army stands at 94,000 and has had a little success in the north. It will take two years to increase it to 134,000. That is still far short of the 300 or 400 thousand that are needed. Who can remember that there were 91,000 when George W. Bush began to rebuild the army. A rational person would look at these figures and conclude that Bush either the Republican administration had done poorly or it was unrealistic to expect rapid growth of that force. Our problems began when the Bushies somehow bungled the effort to nab Osama and then pulled out our most effective people so they could begin their adventure in Iraq. Any way you look at US policy there under Bush, it is impossible to conclude that anything was accomplished. Obama inherited a ticking time bomb but don’t look to any Republican politician or publicist to mention this. The truth is that it could be too late to do much there.
There is also the lesson of Vietnam, where we did build a large, well-equipped ARVIN force that was ineffective and heavily infiltrated by the enemy. There were also many “potted plants,” units that existed on paper but not in reality.
Unless Karzai abandons brutality and corrupt practices overnight and becomes a Boy Scout, the prospects of bringing much stability to Afghanistan are slim. The man is a Pashtun and that should have helped him with the nation’s largest ethnic group. Instead, the Taliban, also largely Pashtun, have been able to play on Pashtun nationalism to enlist support.
Effectively ending with Taliban jihadism may be beyond our ability. The Afghan Taliban practices jihad but only locally. They are only a threat to the United States unless they could again provide Al Qaeda with a base of operations. However, there is no reason for Al Qaeda to leave the Waziristan area of Pakistan, where they have the run of things and even have located families there. Though the Taliban previously sheltered Al Qaeda, many Taliban are not warm friends of the Arab-led terrorists, and it is possible that clever intelligence people could drive a wedge between them. It should also be remembered that many who call themselves Taliban in Afghanistan are simply insurgents capitalizing on that name. Many of them can be bought off.
The Pakis Will Play a Double Game
Pakistan will continue playing a double game—doing enough to get aid while keeping the Afghan Taliban alive. The best we can do is induce them to do more for us. Our primary goal there is to foster enough stability in Pakistan to keep the jihadists from getting their hands on the nation’s nuclear assets. That is no small job.
The Pakistani Army, though secular, long ago resorted to sponsoring Islamic jihadism as a means of countering Indian power. They built jihadist movements to threaten India in destabilizing Kashmir. In time, a jihadist opposition emerged in Pakistan itself, and the army officer corps now must deal with the fact that religious fanaticism has infected more than a few junior officers. Because Pakistan needs to have a strong influence in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, with the help of the United States, in the late 1970s and eighties, nurtured jihadism in Afghanistan. Many in Pakistan’s ISI—once closely tied to the CIA-- are not inclined to do anything to injure the Afghanistan Taliban, and they believe that United States will not be in Afghanistan indefinitely.
The only vital interest we have in the region is preventing the destabilization of Pakistan.
In part, that is because they have nuclear weapons. We would not want those weapons or that technology to fall into the hands of terrorists. There is little we can do directly to improve the situation in Pakistan. Until a month ago, we were spending 33 times as much in Afghanistan as in Pakistan. We have recently tripled what we spend in Pakistan, but more must be done. How we do it is ticklish. The Pakistan military loudly objected to the wording of our recent aid bill because it set performance standards for receiving installments of aid. Recently, five Taliban fighters entered the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, killed some soldiers, and held 22 people as hostages. Until recently, the Taliban controlled the Swat Valley, an important district.
Unless Pakistan can be induced to stop its help of the Afghan Taliban, a US counter insurgency program will require far more troops that McCrystal is now requesting. Afghans in the south and east already see the US as an occupying power, and the presence of more troops is certain to deepen that impression in those places and possibly spread it to the rest of the country. The Mc Crystal strategy would be an occupation, and foreign occupations of that country since the time of Alexander the Great have been failures. Simply put, occupations breed angr, and long occupations breed still more anger and violence.
In retrospect, it appears that most of the billions poured into Afghanistan were a poor investment. One leading member of Karzai’s coalition said he will withdraw if more American troops are committed. This man is an American ally but thinks that more troops would mobilize more people against the government.
Too much was filtered through foreign contractors. The money would have been better spent buying off the Pakistan generals and ISI and bringing greater political stability to Pakistan. Fortunately, Congress has just tripled its appropriation for Pakistan; but the amount is still relatively small.
-------------------------
The Obama Administration wisely ended its war against the farmers growing poppies. It might be worthwhile to buy and destroy the Afghan opium crop. Using last year’s data, that might cost as much as $3.4 billion. This would not stop the Taliban from collecting taxes on it, but destruction of the whole crop would prevent the Taliban from moving large quantities of opium to the international market. That would cut their income by a third.
The situation in Afghanistan is very complex and unpromising. There are variables that the American public does not perceive. Do they know that many Afghans speak Persian and that they are strongly influenced by Iran? The latter could make things even worse for us but it has no reason now to want an unstable Afghanistan. Our dealings with Iran can impact upon what goes on in Afghanistan. By appearing to be more reasonable than Bush, President Obama has obtained some important concessions from Iran and may be able to do more. If Israel were to move against Iran, we could expect Iran to use its influence against us among its Afghan clients.
Richard Holbrooke has given us an idea of how bad the situation in Afghanistan is: “Its worse than the Nam!” It is very important that the American people understand what is involved here because a decision to make a long term commitment to pacification and nation-building will require years of commitment, massive amounts of money, and far more troops than we are now contemplating. Even with all that, there will be no guarantee that we can succeed in building a stable nation there. That is why House Minority Leader John Boehner is so angry that President Obama wants to take time making this decision. John Mc Cain has been busy claiming there is no difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda in an effort to stampede Obama into waging a full scale war. If thoughtful independents come to understand much of what is involved, they might support Obama in redefining the mission there. Information is, as usual, the enemy of Republican policy here. The more people understand, the less damage Afghanistan will inflict on Obama’s political future.
.
A Plug for Sherm’s Book
Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. It discusses elements in the Republican coalition, their ideologies, strategies, informational and financial resources, and election shenanigans. Abuses of power by the Reagan and G. W. Bush administration and the Republican Congresses are detailed. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go to http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping. It can also be obtained through the on-line operations of Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Do not consider purchasing it if you are looking for something that mirrors the mainstream media!
The guerilla force that confronted the Americans numbered about 300. In Iraq, the guerilla forces seldom exceeded 30, with the possible exception of the fighting in Falluhah.
Now we are facing the decision of whether to send in many more troops to continue a policy of nation-building and providing population security. The situation in Afghanistan is enormously complex, and there clearly is no easy resolution or way out.
Lieutenant General Stanley McCrystal has warned Washington that we are losing in our battle against the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. He has called for an additional 10,000 to 40,000 troops, and he has the backing of his very popular boss, General David Petraeus. There is a parallel to the “clear and hold” strategy employed in Vietnam, but McCrystal would be more careful with firepower and more interested in economic development.
During the campaign, Barack Obama sought to show that he was strong on national security by saying that Afghanistan was the necessary war. Now those remarks are haunting him as he ponders the sad history of foreign involvements in Afghanistan and our unpromising situation there now. Much of latter was due to the policies of the Bush Administration, but voters have short memories, and Obama will pay for lack of success in Afghanistan. Not long ago, Obama once referred the Afghanistan effort as “a necessary war,” but he has not repeated that term. Necessary wars involve out nation’s vital interests. No vital interests are involved in Afghanistan, so this is a “war of choice.”
The fact is that preoccupation with Iraq and Afghanistan represent massive distortions of American foreign policy. Our main concerns are elsewhere. Obama needs to help our people regain a sense of perspective.
For the moment, Obama is taking time to reconsider our objectives in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has become a NATO mission, and our president would be well advised to invite NATO to join in these deliberations. Otherwise, it will appear that we are continuing the Bush policy of dictating to others. Obama was selected for the Nobel Prize in part because he turned away from unilateralism and opted for engaging our allies and others. France, Germany, and Great Britain have asked for an international conference to discuss how NATO forces can be phased out in Afghanistan. In view of the growing sentiment in Europe against the Afghanistan operation, it would be wise to learn how much support we could count on if we ramp up the effort to provide population security. Already some writers fear that extended involvement in Afghanistan could be the rock on which the NATO vessel breaks. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has endorsed Obama’s decision to review the policy and has said that it is more important to get the right strategy than to rely on putting in more troops.
Biden’s Approach
Vice President Joseph Biden, after much study and two unpleasant meetings with Hamid Karzai, has concluded that the current regime in Afghanistan will not be a reliable partner for an effort to establish security for the population in Afghanistan. Until recently, National Security Advisor James L. Jones appeared to agree. Biden’s view is that the US needs to focus less on Afghanistan and more on Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is and where instability makes that nation’s nuclear weapons a potential problem.
Biden suggests ramping down the counter-insurgency effort and focusing on damaging Al Qaeda, partly through Predators and air power. Spies and Special Forces and other black ops would also be involved. The US will be able to continue its drone air strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but it is doubtful that Pakistan can permit the US to bomb Taliban sites in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province. We can be of greter help to the Pakistanis as they are finally going against their own Taliban. At the moment, they are preparing an offensive in Waziristan.
Of course, the US will need enough stability in some parts of Afghanistan so they can be used as bases to launch all manner of assaults against Al Qaeda. In the long run, it is doubtful that we can put Al Qaeda out of business, but we should make it out top priority inflicting as much damage as possible.
There are signs that some of the insurgents are amenable to negotiations, and it is possible that money and diplomacy could accomplish with them what more troops may not. There are now pilot efforts to negotiate with and build up the forces of some warlords. In some ways this more parallels what the surge was all about in Iraq than manipulating the number of troops on the ground.
Of course, the Biden plan would not stop the training and recruitment of Afghan soldiers and police. It should include giving the army better equipment. Much more attention must be given to rapidly enlarging and retraining the Afghan military. At this point, it has a 24% defection rate. Soldiers even take weapons home and sometimes continue to receive pay. Much needs to be done building a centralized police force. The fact that Taliban fighters could get attack the Indian Embassy in Kabul underscores the dimensions of this problem.
In the last analysis, preventing a Taliban victory in Afghanistan is out of our hands. It depends upon what the people think of the Karzai regime and the extent to which the Afghan police and army can be effective.
Should the Al Qaeda reenter Afghanistan, we would have no choice but to resume round-the-clock carpet bombing of areas where they establish bases. Taliban leaders remember the bombing and realize that it would be repeated should they assist Al Qaeda establish camps and bases in their country.
Republicans Demand Escalation of the Afghanistan War
With the remarkable exception of George Will, Republicans back the former Special Forces commander. They stand to gain no matter what Obama does in Afghanistan. If more troops are sent, and there is still failure of stalemate, they still win big time. Few will remember that John McCain and others beat the drums for more troops and a long war.
A common argument is that any backing away from an all-out effort will give Al Qaeda new energy and attract more recruits to their standard. In truth, American policy in Iraq and our tactics in Afghanistan, which harmed many civilians, were responsible for recruiting people for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Sami Yousafzai’s interviews of Taliban people in the current Newsweek demonstrates how Bush Administration tactics alienated many and strengthened the Taliban. It is unlikely that the salutary change in course under General McCrystal can reverse the damage. Moreover, his turn toward the exercise of soft power -- economic and social development-- is all to the good, but this policy will require more time than we have. It can be recalled that it took John Paul Vann many years to work economic and social miracles in the Mekong Delta.
We frequently hear that anything less than a ramped up war in Afghanistan will damage U.S. credibility abroad. There may be some truth to this. Certainly other nations will not doubt that we have the ability to go anywhere and bring about massive destruction when we do not get our way. The real question should be “Does our national interest require expenditure of a great deal of blood and treasure in Afghanistan? “
A similarly weak argument is that we must prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failed state so that Al Qaeda will not use it as a base of operations. This wrongly assumes that there are no other failed states Al Qaeda can use as a base. Moreover, the terrorist organization appears to be unhampered in its operations in Pakistan. As General Jones has admitted, there is no reason why the Taliban would want to leave. He claims there are less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Republicans could argue that the long term morale of our armed forces could be adversely effected if we did not escalate and then “win” in Afghanistan. The Vietnam War was devastating, and it took a long time for our military to restore its spirits. Right now, the military seems to be thinking in terms of “winning” and “loosing.” Its leadership should be educating our forces to think in terms of accomplishing limited goals.
Republican columnist Michael Gerson eschews the most simplistic arguments and admits the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan. Still, he senses that Obama is in a no-win situation. Gerson redefines the civilian-military relationship a bit by insisting that suggesting that tradition demands that Obama select his best general and get out of the way. He even mentions Harry S. Truman in this respect, though the use of that precedent can be debated. In the end, Abraham Lincoln accepted U.S. Grant’s meatgrinder approach, but he had been involved in many military decisions throughout the war. Another way to look at this is to recall that Lincoln bucked the popular George Mc Clellan and that Truman sacked th4e very popular Douglas Mc Arthur.
One can only wonder if any of the critics are concerned that the US be in a position to construct the long-desired twin pipelines down through Afghanistan to carry Caspian gas and oil to Pakistan and , by ship , to India. This was the object of a great deal of diplomacy before 9/11, and the Bush administration even resorted to the threat of bombings. The pipelines are in our national interest but it is doubtful if soldiers should lose their lives to get them.
Another Surge?
Those who insist that Obama bow to Petraeus and McCrystal is that they think that copying the surge strategy in Afghanistan will work. The surge worked best in the urban areas of Iraq, and there are few urban areas in Afghanistan. The surge also worked in Iraq because the United States literally bought off its enemies, paying large amounts to tribal leaders and monthly stipends to their armed retainers. Only Bob Woodward has openly discussed another reason why the surge worked. Special Forces in Iraq, under McCrystal, carried out something like the Vietnam War’s Operation Phoenix and eliminated thousands of the insurgent cadre.
Repeating some version of Phoenix in Afghanistan does not require a huge increase in American forces there. Over seven years, we have spent $38 billion in Afghanistan, with few discernable positive results. Perhaps more of the money sent there should be used to buy off warlords and put their troops on retainer. Its worth a try.
Should We Bet on Karzai?
We still come down to whether a large new commitment in human lives, money, and American prestige should be made in Afghanistan. Many Afghans believe that the present regime is hopelessly corrupt. The recent rigged election of August 20 is one indication of how weak the Karzai regime is. The UN found that one third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent. The resultant acrimony has been so great that it is unrealistic to believe that Afghans can be unified around Karzai—no matter how many troops we send there. Karzai has not bothered to denounce those who rigged the election on his behalf. His reliance upon war lords and human rights abusers is not likely to win new grassroots supporters. Of course, policy makers recall that in Vietnam the elimination of the corrupt Ngo Dinh Diem resulted in even worse leaders.
The idea that we can, using soft power, somehow win over large numbers of Karzai opponents to support him is fanciful. The counter insurgency strategy has been based upon the idea that we could eventually build a large and effective Afghan army and matching police force. The Afghan army stands at 94,000 and has had a little success in the north. It will take two years to increase it to 134,000. That is still far short of the 300 or 400 thousand that are needed. Who can remember that there were 91,000 when George W. Bush began to rebuild the army. A rational person would look at these figures and conclude that Bush either the Republican administration had done poorly or it was unrealistic to expect rapid growth of that force. Our problems began when the Bushies somehow bungled the effort to nab Osama and then pulled out our most effective people so they could begin their adventure in Iraq. Any way you look at US policy there under Bush, it is impossible to conclude that anything was accomplished. Obama inherited a ticking time bomb but don’t look to any Republican politician or publicist to mention this. The truth is that it could be too late to do much there.
There is also the lesson of Vietnam, where we did build a large, well-equipped ARVIN force that was ineffective and heavily infiltrated by the enemy. There were also many “potted plants,” units that existed on paper but not in reality.
Unless Karzai abandons brutality and corrupt practices overnight and becomes a Boy Scout, the prospects of bringing much stability to Afghanistan are slim. The man is a Pashtun and that should have helped him with the nation’s largest ethnic group. Instead, the Taliban, also largely Pashtun, have been able to play on Pashtun nationalism to enlist support.
Effectively ending with Taliban jihadism may be beyond our ability. The Afghan Taliban practices jihad but only locally. They are only a threat to the United States unless they could again provide Al Qaeda with a base of operations. However, there is no reason for Al Qaeda to leave the Waziristan area of Pakistan, where they have the run of things and even have located families there. Though the Taliban previously sheltered Al Qaeda, many Taliban are not warm friends of the Arab-led terrorists, and it is possible that clever intelligence people could drive a wedge between them. It should also be remembered that many who call themselves Taliban in Afghanistan are simply insurgents capitalizing on that name. Many of them can be bought off.
The Pakis Will Play a Double Game
Pakistan will continue playing a double game—doing enough to get aid while keeping the Afghan Taliban alive. The best we can do is induce them to do more for us. Our primary goal there is to foster enough stability in Pakistan to keep the jihadists from getting their hands on the nation’s nuclear assets. That is no small job.
The Pakistani Army, though secular, long ago resorted to sponsoring Islamic jihadism as a means of countering Indian power. They built jihadist movements to threaten India in destabilizing Kashmir. In time, a jihadist opposition emerged in Pakistan itself, and the army officer corps now must deal with the fact that religious fanaticism has infected more than a few junior officers. Because Pakistan needs to have a strong influence in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, with the help of the United States, in the late 1970s and eighties, nurtured jihadism in Afghanistan. Many in Pakistan’s ISI—once closely tied to the CIA-- are not inclined to do anything to injure the Afghanistan Taliban, and they believe that United States will not be in Afghanistan indefinitely.
The only vital interest we have in the region is preventing the destabilization of Pakistan.
In part, that is because they have nuclear weapons. We would not want those weapons or that technology to fall into the hands of terrorists. There is little we can do directly to improve the situation in Pakistan. Until a month ago, we were spending 33 times as much in Afghanistan as in Pakistan. We have recently tripled what we spend in Pakistan, but more must be done. How we do it is ticklish. The Pakistan military loudly objected to the wording of our recent aid bill because it set performance standards for receiving installments of aid. Recently, five Taliban fighters entered the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, killed some soldiers, and held 22 people as hostages. Until recently, the Taliban controlled the Swat Valley, an important district.
Unless Pakistan can be induced to stop its help of the Afghan Taliban, a US counter insurgency program will require far more troops that McCrystal is now requesting. Afghans in the south and east already see the US as an occupying power, and the presence of more troops is certain to deepen that impression in those places and possibly spread it to the rest of the country. The Mc Crystal strategy would be an occupation, and foreign occupations of that country since the time of Alexander the Great have been failures. Simply put, occupations breed angr, and long occupations breed still more anger and violence.
In retrospect, it appears that most of the billions poured into Afghanistan were a poor investment. One leading member of Karzai’s coalition said he will withdraw if more American troops are committed. This man is an American ally but thinks that more troops would mobilize more people against the government.
Too much was filtered through foreign contractors. The money would have been better spent buying off the Pakistan generals and ISI and bringing greater political stability to Pakistan. Fortunately, Congress has just tripled its appropriation for Pakistan; but the amount is still relatively small.
-------------------------
The Obama Administration wisely ended its war against the farmers growing poppies. It might be worthwhile to buy and destroy the Afghan opium crop. Using last year’s data, that might cost as much as $3.4 billion. This would not stop the Taliban from collecting taxes on it, but destruction of the whole crop would prevent the Taliban from moving large quantities of opium to the international market. That would cut their income by a third.
The situation in Afghanistan is very complex and unpromising. There are variables that the American public does not perceive. Do they know that many Afghans speak Persian and that they are strongly influenced by Iran? The latter could make things even worse for us but it has no reason now to want an unstable Afghanistan. Our dealings with Iran can impact upon what goes on in Afghanistan. By appearing to be more reasonable than Bush, President Obama has obtained some important concessions from Iran and may be able to do more. If Israel were to move against Iran, we could expect Iran to use its influence against us among its Afghan clients.
Richard Holbrooke has given us an idea of how bad the situation in Afghanistan is: “Its worse than the Nam!” It is very important that the American people understand what is involved here because a decision to make a long term commitment to pacification and nation-building will require years of commitment, massive amounts of money, and far more troops than we are now contemplating. Even with all that, there will be no guarantee that we can succeed in building a stable nation there. That is why House Minority Leader John Boehner is so angry that President Obama wants to take time making this decision. John Mc Cain has been busy claiming there is no difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda in an effort to stampede Obama into waging a full scale war. If thoughtful independents come to understand much of what is involved, they might support Obama in redefining the mission there. Information is, as usual, the enemy of Republican policy here. The more people understand, the less damage Afghanistan will inflict on Obama’s political future.
.
A Plug for Sherm’s Book
Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. It discusses elements in the Republican coalition, their ideologies, strategies, informational and financial resources, and election shenanigans. Abuses of power by the Reagan and G. W. Bush administration and the Republican Congresses are detailed. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go to http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping. It can also be obtained through the on-line operations of Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Do not consider purchasing it if you are looking for something that mirrors the mainstream media!
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Nature of Parahistory, Part Three
The prevailing wisdom has a seductive charm. To accept it means one does not have to endure the scorn that attends departing from the herd. The prevailing wisdom is usually fairly simple and straight-forward and non threatening. Its better to think that one lone nut somehow got lucky and killed a president than that there could be powerful forces out there that can accomplish this, hide their tracks, and go on to accomplish their ends. It is known that in the heat of the Cold War that the CIA bought off some journalists, and some have said the practice was more widespread than admitted and that it continues. This suggestion is disquieting because we would be more comfortable believing that most journalists really want to be investigative reporters and that they are busy safeguarding the republic through their sleuthing.
Thomas Jefferson said that “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Given this definition, he would be considered a conspiracy theorist today. Americans forget that there was a time early in the Twentieth Century when leaders spoke against conspiracies against the people.
Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
These were the words of one of the tamer of these leaders, Woodrow Wilson in “The New Freedom “ (1913) Since then concentrated corporate and money power has grown far greater, as has the mechanisms of the national security state. Yet, we have been so inoculated against conspiracy theory and related speech such as “class envy” that we would reject a politician as a dangerous extremist if he used similar words to discuss gasoline prices and how they can jump a dime in a twenty-four hour period
There has been a rash of conspiracy theories in the last 40 years partly because the US psyche had experienced so many traumas and because people have learned the hard way that those in government frequent lie to them. The media appears to have become more and more disinclined to track down the lies or dig up inconvenient truths. In 2002 and 2003, the mainstream press aided and abetted the Bush administration in peddling fabricated information about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, even though there were good reasons to doubt those claims.
Outlandish conspiracy theories often grow out of legitimate questions that emerge when the conventional wisdom is thin, overlooks obvious questions, or are clearly implausible in some regards. The outlandish explanations tend to explain too much on the basis of too little evidence, and they frequently trot out some historic villain or other, the Vatican, Free Masons, the Illuminati, the Rothschilds, or the Jews. Maybe they offer up-to date all purpose villains, such as advocates of the New World Order or Reptilian aliens, or just plain aliens. The existence of such outlooks strengthen the case of those who discourage questioning of the official story or the conventional wisdom.
The outlandish conspiracy theories are entertaining, and remind the reader that any story must be examined carefully. The trouble is that too often stories that contradict the conventional wisdom or suggest dangerous criminal conspiracies in government are simply ignored by the media. In January, 2008, the Times of London produced evidence that there was validity to Sibil Edmonds’ claim that high ranking figures in the State Department and Pentagon were selling nuclear secrets to other countries. The US media pretty much ignored the story.
When President Clinton appointed Webster Hubbell to a high post in the Department of Justice, he told him to get answers to two questions: are there UFOs and who killed John F. Kennedy. Of course, Hubbell could find answers to neither. We know what the simple answers to these questions are, but they are unsatisfying. Alternative answers are blocked by secrecy, missing evidence, and the unwillingness of “reputable” investigators to look into them. For that reason, we need something like’soft conspiracy theorists,” people who apply conventional historical techniques to investigations of these questions, insist upon plausibility, and and probably almost never come up with concrete, and full explanations. They cannot because there are so many barriers to their probing. The best they can do is learn which prevailing truths are least believable and perhaps suggest alternative explanations that are most worthy of pursuing.
There are many conspiracy theorists who construct massive interpretations out of very little evidence. They deserve sharp criticism. There are more than a few historians and journalists who do likewise; they are said to be wrong or “off-base.” There is what Alexander Cocburn called a ‘soft" version of the conspiracy theory” It raises questions, offers reasonable hypotheses about possible conspiracies, but seldom can offer rock solid explanations because complete evidence is rarely available. It questions “public truth” which so dominates our culture and offers the traditionally disempowered other possible explanations and challenges those who seek monopolies in the creation of public knowledge.
The work of historians and the conspiracy theorists both deal with the past. They could both be called “history.” The work of the outlandish conspiracy theorists do not deserve that name because they constitute very flimsy constructs. On the other hand, the soft conspiracy theorists carefully test information and only suggest fact- based possibilities that challenge “official” history. Although it relies too much upon inference and the assumption that people often have base motives, soft conspiracy theory probably falls within the boundary of legitimate knowledge but fall short of history as defined by professional historians. An appropriate term for their work might be “parahistory.” The trouble is that Peter Dale Ecott has used this term to describe the reconstructed histories of events that are based upon document once not available when the first accounts were produced. Scott is a good scholar, but is is mystifying why any term other than history should be applied to these revisionist accounts. Parahistory seems to be a good term to apply to tentative accounts, based on available knowledge, that raise the possibility of conspiracy.
The consolidation of media into fewer and fewer hands may make necessary some alternative to mainstream journalism. At this point in our history, government is anything but transparent and trustworthy. Some other approach to interpretating what occurs must be available as an alternative to approaches to rely too much upon official sources. Dr. Condoleezza Rice deliberately misrepresented the famous presidential intelligence briefing paper of August, 2001 to be a mere historical discussion about Al Qaeda when it really warned that that organization was now getting ready to attack in the United States. The president’s press secretary added to the lie by leaving out the word “in” from the title, which left the impression that Al Qaeda just wanted to attack the US. The proceedings of the 9/11 Commission made it clear that Condoleezza Rice was continually duplicitious in her dealing with it and that the Bush administration worked hard to prevent the commission from getting the information it needed. Its obsession with secrecy and track record for lying suggests that its official pronouncements cannot be trusted and the likelihood that it has much to hide. Fearful of being deprived of what information there is, the press has failed to get behind the regime’s spin and dissembling. Under these circumstances something like parahistory is necessary. Don Delillo has talked about that this does not really exist.
The trouble with relying on parahistory is that it leaves us in a situation where the public exists in a state of confusion because nothing can be known for sure. Perhaps it does little to reduce the political impotence of ordinary citizens, but it is an improvement upon leaving them to believe official lies doled out by government and the elite media and academy. Bill Moyers remarked, `Well, there's a legitimate government, but from time to time, to do a certain job, they hire a rather unseemly crew, and sometimes they get a little out of control and make trouble.' About the best the parahistorians can do is alert the public when this seems to be happening. The record shows that journalists and the academic historians will be the last to spot the problem.
Thomas Jefferson said that “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Given this definition, he would be considered a conspiracy theorist today. Americans forget that there was a time early in the Twentieth Century when leaders spoke against conspiracies against the people.
Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
These were the words of one of the tamer of these leaders, Woodrow Wilson in “The New Freedom “ (1913) Since then concentrated corporate and money power has grown far greater, as has the mechanisms of the national security state. Yet, we have been so inoculated against conspiracy theory and related speech such as “class envy” that we would reject a politician as a dangerous extremist if he used similar words to discuss gasoline prices and how they can jump a dime in a twenty-four hour period
There has been a rash of conspiracy theories in the last 40 years partly because the US psyche had experienced so many traumas and because people have learned the hard way that those in government frequent lie to them. The media appears to have become more and more disinclined to track down the lies or dig up inconvenient truths. In 2002 and 2003, the mainstream press aided and abetted the Bush administration in peddling fabricated information about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, even though there were good reasons to doubt those claims.
Outlandish conspiracy theories often grow out of legitimate questions that emerge when the conventional wisdom is thin, overlooks obvious questions, or are clearly implausible in some regards. The outlandish explanations tend to explain too much on the basis of too little evidence, and they frequently trot out some historic villain or other, the Vatican, Free Masons, the Illuminati, the Rothschilds, or the Jews. Maybe they offer up-to date all purpose villains, such as advocates of the New World Order or Reptilian aliens, or just plain aliens. The existence of such outlooks strengthen the case of those who discourage questioning of the official story or the conventional wisdom.
The outlandish conspiracy theories are entertaining, and remind the reader that any story must be examined carefully. The trouble is that too often stories that contradict the conventional wisdom or suggest dangerous criminal conspiracies in government are simply ignored by the media. In January, 2008, the Times of London produced evidence that there was validity to Sibil Edmonds’ claim that high ranking figures in the State Department and Pentagon were selling nuclear secrets to other countries. The US media pretty much ignored the story.
When President Clinton appointed Webster Hubbell to a high post in the Department of Justice, he told him to get answers to two questions: are there UFOs and who killed John F. Kennedy. Of course, Hubbell could find answers to neither. We know what the simple answers to these questions are, but they are unsatisfying. Alternative answers are blocked by secrecy, missing evidence, and the unwillingness of “reputable” investigators to look into them. For that reason, we need something like’soft conspiracy theorists,” people who apply conventional historical techniques to investigations of these questions, insist upon plausibility, and and probably almost never come up with concrete, and full explanations. They cannot because there are so many barriers to their probing. The best they can do is learn which prevailing truths are least believable and perhaps suggest alternative explanations that are most worthy of pursuing.
There are many conspiracy theorists who construct massive interpretations out of very little evidence. They deserve sharp criticism. There are more than a few historians and journalists who do likewise; they are said to be wrong or “off-base.” There is what Alexander Cocburn called a ‘soft" version of the conspiracy theory” It raises questions, offers reasonable hypotheses about possible conspiracies, but seldom can offer rock solid explanations because complete evidence is rarely available. It questions “public truth” which so dominates our culture and offers the traditionally disempowered other possible explanations and challenges those who seek monopolies in the creation of public knowledge.
The work of historians and the conspiracy theorists both deal with the past. They could both be called “history.” The work of the outlandish conspiracy theorists do not deserve that name because they constitute very flimsy constructs. On the other hand, the soft conspiracy theorists carefully test information and only suggest fact- based possibilities that challenge “official” history. Although it relies too much upon inference and the assumption that people often have base motives, soft conspiracy theory probably falls within the boundary of legitimate knowledge but fall short of history as defined by professional historians. An appropriate term for their work might be “parahistory.” The trouble is that Peter Dale Ecott has used this term to describe the reconstructed histories of events that are based upon document once not available when the first accounts were produced. Scott is a good scholar, but is is mystifying why any term other than history should be applied to these revisionist accounts. Parahistory seems to be a good term to apply to tentative accounts, based on available knowledge, that raise the possibility of conspiracy.
The consolidation of media into fewer and fewer hands may make necessary some alternative to mainstream journalism. At this point in our history, government is anything but transparent and trustworthy. Some other approach to interpretating what occurs must be available as an alternative to approaches to rely too much upon official sources. Dr. Condoleezza Rice deliberately misrepresented the famous presidential intelligence briefing paper of August, 2001 to be a mere historical discussion about Al Qaeda when it really warned that that organization was now getting ready to attack in the United States. The president’s press secretary added to the lie by leaving out the word “in” from the title, which left the impression that Al Qaeda just wanted to attack the US. The proceedings of the 9/11 Commission made it clear that Condoleezza Rice was continually duplicitious in her dealing with it and that the Bush administration worked hard to prevent the commission from getting the information it needed. Its obsession with secrecy and track record for lying suggests that its official pronouncements cannot be trusted and the likelihood that it has much to hide. Fearful of being deprived of what information there is, the press has failed to get behind the regime’s spin and dissembling. Under these circumstances something like parahistory is necessary. Don Delillo has talked about that this does not really exist.
The trouble with relying on parahistory is that it leaves us in a situation where the public exists in a state of confusion because nothing can be known for sure. Perhaps it does little to reduce the political impotence of ordinary citizens, but it is an improvement upon leaving them to believe official lies doled out by government and the elite media and academy. Bill Moyers remarked, `Well, there's a legitimate government, but from time to time, to do a certain job, they hire a rather unseemly crew, and sometimes they get a little out of control and make trouble.' About the best the parahistorians can do is alert the public when this seems to be happening. The record shows that journalists and the academic historians will be the last to spot the problem.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Nature of Parahistory, Part Two
Only a few mainstream historians have not touched the assassination of JFK, RFK, or Martin Luther King, Jr. The exception is David Kaiser of the Navy War College, who has written a good book on the death of JFK that was published by the Harvard University Press. Questions have been raised as to whether Harvard should give legitimacy to conspiracy theory. He asked “Cui bono” and tackled a question that can probably never be resolved—two characteristics of “conspiracy theory.”
Historians have also steered away from 9/11. In all of these cases, there is not enough evidence to establish irrefutable cases that conspiracy was involved. By not seriously exploring those subjects, historians tacitly endorse the lone nut theory in respect to the assassinations and some implausible official explanations of 9/11. It is forgotten that George Orwell was not so wrong when he wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful . . . and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He also said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." This is why coincidences, discrepancies, and holes in official stories. We owe this to future generations.
Many leading historians were reared in a time when it was simply unthinkable that Americans, some of whom being security employees, would plot to murder a US president or prominent political figure. In dealing with a great deal of United States history, they could safely join A. M.Schlesinger, Jr. in accepting Blaise Pascal’s dictum that “Man is neither angel nor brute.” But there have been other times and places when the opposite might be operable: man can be both and brute. This was scertainly applicable to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. One hesitates to place Oliver North and Dick Cheney in their company, but the possibility deserves examining.
In the 1950s, conservatives, led by Joe McCarthy, were propounding all sorts of conspiracy theories, and they enjoyed a lot of support in the mainstream press. Today, they offer knee-jerk denunciations of notions they violently oppose as “conspiracy theories,” and are joined in these comments by much of the mainstream press. They object to people who claim that some in government aim at enhancing the power and wealth of privileged elites. Of course, no one would gather in a Cabinet room, board room, or Pentagon office to strategize, plan, or conspire to accomplish goals that are not in the interest of most people. Watergate was not a conspiracy any more than effort to invade Iraq was! The suggestion that people at the top could have a secret agenda is usually met with a patronizing smile. We know they are just there to protect and serve.
“Conspiracy theorists” are said to be people who are inclined to doubt commonly accepted explanations of events and to look for more complex explanations. For example such people note that Winston Churchill’s grand history of World War II placed too emphasis upon the Soviet contribution to victory. They qestion the British official casualties figure for the third Battle of Ypres ( often called the battle of Passchendaele—238,000. Even General Haig put the figure at 500,000. The British Public Records Office is still sitting on records that could settle the matter. Even the cabinet records for 1914-1918 are still closed to the public. Since 1954, about 200,000 people in Guatemala have been tortured, raped, murdered, and disappeared. Much of this grisly activity was undertaken with the full cooperation of US intelligence agencies.
Our government refuses to open records on these deaths, though President Clinton reluctantly did open records on Americans who were killed there. More recently, the US seized the records of the thugs who ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994 and has refused to return them. This is probably because those US-backed rulers killed 3,000 people and the records would show the complicity of our intelligence people. Who can forget Oliver North publicly explaining how he shredded hundreds of documents related to the Iran/Contra scandal? In all these matters, we are expected to accept the official explanation.
Most people would not object to the claim that the conspiracy theorists are probably psychologically disoriented in some way. The very term “conspiracy theorist” is a put-down and automatic dismissal and appeals to the belief that people work in secrecy very seldom, if ever. As William March said, “[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing….” We don’t want to think ill of others, especially of those who rule. Most people are fundamentally decent and cannot imagine that elected officials would betray them in sinister ways. There are massive advertising operations, backed by deep research in psychology, that persuade people that nothing is amiss. A third rerason for being hostile to so-called conspiracy theories is that knowledge brings with it the responsibility to act on what we know.
We Americans know that in repressive societies the truth is manipulated on a daily basis because the ability to shape what is perceived is true is the untimate power mechanism. In a democracy, this cannot happen because we have an inquiring press and a well-informed public.
Over the years, the United States has become a national security state. To build this state, officials repeatedly relied on th eir own conspiracy theory, asserting that there was a communist conspiracy to take over the world. and domestically more and more power has been gathered in fewer and fewer corporate hands. These developments made it necessary and possible for the national security mechanism and the corporate powers to manipulate opinion more and more. To acknowledge such is not a pleasant matter, and some people can do so more easily than others. Even Albert Einstein lapsed into conspiracy theory when he suggested that there were powerful interests that benefited by continuation of the Cold War: “The men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war."
It seems that denial is the best unconscious psychic self-defense mechanism for many. It shields us from anxiety and guilt. Six years after the US invaded Iraq, most Americans believe Saddah Husein was involved in 9/11. Not to believe so could bring about guilt that we are not doing enough to demand honesty in government. Or guilt that we twice entrusted the executive branch to scheming liars. Or the recognition could bring on fear. If Cheney and his friends could lie about Saddam and Weapons of Mass Destruction, they might lie about other things. This is why people talk about “unpleasant truths.” Truth is often very unsettling, and sometimes there is little we can do about really bad situations. To protect ones self from disinforemation, spin, and manipulation does not mean believing everything that comes down the pike.
Truth has a great deal to do with keeping democracy alive. When people stop looking hard for it, they have surrendered their power to influence what government does. Without truth, democracy and republicanism begin to wither. If someone can contol our view of the present they control us. Orwell noted "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." That is why it is so important that historians and journalists construct an accurate account of what is goind on today so that republicans and democracy can survive into tomorrow.
Mathematicians have combinatorial analysis, combinatory, or combinatorie. It uses the mathematics of probability to learn how likely it is for certain configurations of objects and sets to occur together. If only historians had a tool that precise. We know that odd coincidences sometimes occur in real life and that sometimes simple, seemingly explanations are accurate. At other times, simple explanations see all too facile and the coincidences seem too many and too improbable. We know that eye-witnesses to traumatic and chaotic events are often wrong, but what should we conclude when many of them insist they saw the same thing which is flat out excluded from an official account. These involve matters of judgment. Oddly, there is one great similarity between some people labeled as “conspiracy theorists” and those who willingly accept even the most improbably official explanations. They both want simple, all inclusive explanations that are built on too few facts. Hence, some build elaborate explanations that always lead back to the Vatican, Jesuits, Jews, Freemasons, or a murky group called the Illuminati. Those who seek the simplistic, thin explanations going back to the Illuminati or some other demonic group might deserve the term conspiracy theorist.
The problem is that the term “conspiracy theory” is used to marginalize other people who advance reasonable arguments based more than a few facts that are contrary to accepted truth. People in government and their apologist most commonly use the term and apply it to those who rock the boat by doubting official explanations. In earlier times, people who doubted the conventional wisdom were called heretics and witches. Even though the conspiracy theorists can point to implausible aspects of conventional wisdom and too many coincidences heaped upon coincidences, those who go about labeling people conspiracy theorists are really saying that those people should not be listened to. The word “theorist” is used to suggest that these people construct explanations out of thin air; hence, their views are based on theory and not evidence. A careful examination of “conspiracy theories” suggests that they are almost always based on facts. The problem is that they often rely on facts that have been overlooked by those who construct the conventional wisdom.
So called conspiracy theorists are accused of being paranoiac. Poet William Burroughs said “`Paranoia means having all the facts.” Of course, in dealing with historical events, all the facts simply cannot be found. It is enough to have fore reasonable factual information than that possessed by purveyors of the conventional wisdom. That justified raising questions, and, if there is ample evidence, even hypothesizing on what could be other explanations. Those who crave the CIA+Watergate stumble over the truth, but they pick themselves up and continue on as if nothing had happened.” None of us are that good at finding the truth. If we don’t look and develop a reverence for it, we mill rarely make its acquaintance.
The label came into widespread use after the assiassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The implication was that the findings of the Warren Commission were to be taken on faith, including the crazy lone gunman and particularly the magical single bullet theory that claimed that the same bullet, following a very odd trajectory, hit Kennedy and Connally came out in pristine condition and turned up on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital. This is the famous exhibit #399, the mysterious, undamaged bullet. Conspiracy theories often attribute events to concealed plots by individuals or an individual effect events in some way. In this case, it might boil down to whether the death of Joyhn Kennedy was the work of one man’s plot or that of several people or groups. The official story is that three shots were fired, with one missing. That left two to inflict seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled in the 1970s that four shots were fired.
Today, those who question the official explanation of 9/11 are considered unstable conspiracy theorists. The evidence is clear that just as J. Edgar Hoover moved heaven and earth to steer the Warren Commission toward predetermined conclusions. 9/11 staff director Philip Zelikow worked overtime to produce a report that concealed the Bush administration's low level of interest in the terrorist threat. The record shows that a NORAD two star general told the commission that he was above Washington coordinating a response when Flight 93 was to appear in the area. The fact is that commission investigators learned from NORAD tapes that he was lying; the Air Force was unaware of Flight 93, which was to crash in Pennsylvania. The commission would not have learned that had it not finally screwed up its courage to subpoena tapes, which it was first told did not exist. The Bush White House stonewalled on every front from the beginning, and Speaker Dennis Hastert stood in the way of the commission even getting all the records the congressional investigators had acquired. Yet, the so called benighted conspiracy theorists are denounced for not being sufficiently trusting.
Nellie Connelly kept notes on what she thought happened. She insisted that there three shots, but she seemed to reject the magic bullet theory.. The first bullet hit Kennedy, because the governor wheeled around and saw that Kennedy had been hit. The second hit John Connelly, and she said the third hit Kennedy in the head. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was generally considered a conspiracy theorist of the worst sort because his explanations of the assassination of John F. Kennedy seemed far-fetched. That judgment of Garrison was also rooted in solid fact and that there is a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967 reveals that the agency cranked up a disinformation campaign against Jim Garrison. When Garrison left office, his successor, Harry Connick, Sr., destroyed the records of the investigation.
TWA Flight 800, a 747-100, exploded over Long Island on July 17, 1996. 230 people perished. Scores of people saw something looking like a missile hit the plane. The official explanation was that the explosion was due to a bad electrical circuit. They were called “conspiracy theorists.” Three days after the crash, the Jerusalem Post reported that a French Defense official said the missile would have been US because terrorists weapons did not have the capability to do that much damage. .A retired White House press secretary, taken in by a former pilot trying to peddle a bogus radar tape, did himself some harm by claiming there was a cover-up and that he was privy to damning evidence. Two hundred miles south of the site and in September, 1996, two pilots reported seeing what they thought was a missile. We do not know if naval exercise were being conducted then, but they were underway when TWA exploded. Red residue was found in three rows of the plane, and some thought it similar to the color of rocket fuel. The NTSB report stated that Dr. Charles Bassett found that it was seat glue. However, the learned doctor later swore out a statement saying that was not what he found. . In this case, there probably is not enough evidence available to decide who is right or what happened. But if one persists in simply doubting what we have been told, one is a conspiracy theorist.
Some of us recall that The Washington Post insisted that those who claimed that Oliver North was engaged in illegal trade with Iran and forbidden supplying of right wing militias in Nicaragua were way off base. They were wacko conspiracy theorist. It even censored a Jack Anderson column on Iran/Contra. Readers had to be protected from conspiracy theorists! Then it distorted information coming out of Charles Rangel’s subcommittee investigation into the Contra drug trade and refused to print Rangel’s letter of complaint. More recently, the Post. joined the rest of the mainline press in protecting readers from information that the Bush Administration had lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq. There is a long history of the press avoiding such stories even though conspiracies of businessmen, politicians and others also have a long history. That’s how business is done here.
There is so much clamor about “conspiracy theories” that we have come to almost believe conspiracies do not occur. Adam Smith thought tradesmen got together to raise prices. There were all sorts of conspiracies to defraud US railroad investors in the late 19th century. In the early twentieth century, providers of electricity colluded to set p[ices and at mid century people met in hotel rooms to set prices in their bids for government contracts. How soon we forget. Watergate was a conspiracy, and who can be blamed for thinking there was a conspiracy to lead the US into invading Iraq. Someday, there might be enough printed evidence to prove this. At the moment, there are many intelligent people who canot figure out why the US made such a massive investment there. All they knmow is that the official story does not hold water.
Often so-called conspiracy theories gone too far in putting aside theories assign causation to large and distant social and economic forces. Conspiracy theorists prefer to look at concrete events and they believe that people are behind almost all events and that , as in the past, people have a way of scheming, lying, cheating, cooperating with others, and doing anything necessary to acquire money and power and then working overtime to cover their tracks.
If you were an historian writing a textbook about recent times, you might resort to stating that the US invaded Iraq, that the stated reason was belief that Saddam had WMDs, and that after the invasion many expressed doubts that the story about WMDs was fabricated. Rock solid evidence would not permit going much further. If one were to add a possible explanation that relied upon broad historical forces, or perhaps geopolitical theory, it would be methodologically acceptable and also could not be checked out. It can be argued that the default position for the historian is to fall back on official government sources and what is printed in newspapers of record. The method has a certain conservative bias. Four years after the invasion, the White House admitted that millions of its e-mails had inadvertently been lost. Are there aspects of what happened that could not be documented any other way than through those e-mails? Historians have a strong bias against conspiracy theories in part because they associate them with the ravings of the populists, Father Charles Coughlin, and Senator Joseph McCarthy.
On the other hand, leftists are not much given to conspiracy theories and are inclined to buy the official 9/11 story in its main outlines because they are more likely to think in terms of historical forces. A major basket of exceptions include the reasons for building and deploying the atomic bomb and US policy in t he early cold war. Perhaps some historians have come to consider conspiracies because a growing number of them no longer come from the moneyed elite, as had once been the case. It is still recalled with some embarrassment that a president of the American Historical Association nearly four decades ago worried about what would happen to the craft as Jews, Catholics, children of recent immigrants, and products of the working class entered the profession. Maybe these people would be less inclined to assume that those with power and wealth usually behaved as gentlemen and were animated by noblesse oblige.
Historians have also steered away from 9/11. In all of these cases, there is not enough evidence to establish irrefutable cases that conspiracy was involved. By not seriously exploring those subjects, historians tacitly endorse the lone nut theory in respect to the assassinations and some implausible official explanations of 9/11. It is forgotten that George Orwell was not so wrong when he wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful . . . and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He also said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." This is why coincidences, discrepancies, and holes in official stories. We owe this to future generations.
Many leading historians were reared in a time when it was simply unthinkable that Americans, some of whom being security employees, would plot to murder a US president or prominent political figure. In dealing with a great deal of United States history, they could safely join A. M.Schlesinger, Jr. in accepting Blaise Pascal’s dictum that “Man is neither angel nor brute.” But there have been other times and places when the opposite might be operable: man can be both and brute. This was scertainly applicable to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. One hesitates to place Oliver North and Dick Cheney in their company, but the possibility deserves examining.
In the 1950s, conservatives, led by Joe McCarthy, were propounding all sorts of conspiracy theories, and they enjoyed a lot of support in the mainstream press. Today, they offer knee-jerk denunciations of notions they violently oppose as “conspiracy theories,” and are joined in these comments by much of the mainstream press. They object to people who claim that some in government aim at enhancing the power and wealth of privileged elites. Of course, no one would gather in a Cabinet room, board room, or Pentagon office to strategize, plan, or conspire to accomplish goals that are not in the interest of most people. Watergate was not a conspiracy any more than effort to invade Iraq was! The suggestion that people at the top could have a secret agenda is usually met with a patronizing smile. We know they are just there to protect and serve.
“Conspiracy theorists” are said to be people who are inclined to doubt commonly accepted explanations of events and to look for more complex explanations. For example such people note that Winston Churchill’s grand history of World War II placed too emphasis upon the Soviet contribution to victory. They qestion the British official casualties figure for the third Battle of Ypres ( often called the battle of Passchendaele—238,000. Even General Haig put the figure at 500,000. The British Public Records Office is still sitting on records that could settle the matter. Even the cabinet records for 1914-1918 are still closed to the public. Since 1954, about 200,000 people in Guatemala have been tortured, raped, murdered, and disappeared. Much of this grisly activity was undertaken with the full cooperation of US intelligence agencies.
Our government refuses to open records on these deaths, though President Clinton reluctantly did open records on Americans who were killed there. More recently, the US seized the records of the thugs who ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994 and has refused to return them. This is probably because those US-backed rulers killed 3,000 people and the records would show the complicity of our intelligence people. Who can forget Oliver North publicly explaining how he shredded hundreds of documents related to the Iran/Contra scandal? In all these matters, we are expected to accept the official explanation.
Most people would not object to the claim that the conspiracy theorists are probably psychologically disoriented in some way. The very term “conspiracy theorist” is a put-down and automatic dismissal and appeals to the belief that people work in secrecy very seldom, if ever. As William March said, “[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing….” We don’t want to think ill of others, especially of those who rule. Most people are fundamentally decent and cannot imagine that elected officials would betray them in sinister ways. There are massive advertising operations, backed by deep research in psychology, that persuade people that nothing is amiss. A third rerason for being hostile to so-called conspiracy theories is that knowledge brings with it the responsibility to act on what we know.
We Americans know that in repressive societies the truth is manipulated on a daily basis because the ability to shape what is perceived is true is the untimate power mechanism. In a democracy, this cannot happen because we have an inquiring press and a well-informed public.
Over the years, the United States has become a national security state. To build this state, officials repeatedly relied on th eir own conspiracy theory, asserting that there was a communist conspiracy to take over the world. and domestically more and more power has been gathered in fewer and fewer corporate hands. These developments made it necessary and possible for the national security mechanism and the corporate powers to manipulate opinion more and more. To acknowledge such is not a pleasant matter, and some people can do so more easily than others. Even Albert Einstein lapsed into conspiracy theory when he suggested that there were powerful interests that benefited by continuation of the Cold War: “The men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war."
It seems that denial is the best unconscious psychic self-defense mechanism for many. It shields us from anxiety and guilt. Six years after the US invaded Iraq, most Americans believe Saddah Husein was involved in 9/11. Not to believe so could bring about guilt that we are not doing enough to demand honesty in government. Or guilt that we twice entrusted the executive branch to scheming liars. Or the recognition could bring on fear. If Cheney and his friends could lie about Saddam and Weapons of Mass Destruction, they might lie about other things. This is why people talk about “unpleasant truths.” Truth is often very unsettling, and sometimes there is little we can do about really bad situations. To protect ones self from disinforemation, spin, and manipulation does not mean believing everything that comes down the pike.
Truth has a great deal to do with keeping democracy alive. When people stop looking hard for it, they have surrendered their power to influence what government does. Without truth, democracy and republicanism begin to wither. If someone can contol our view of the present they control us. Orwell noted "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." That is why it is so important that historians and journalists construct an accurate account of what is goind on today so that republicans and democracy can survive into tomorrow.
Mathematicians have combinatorial analysis, combinatory, or combinatorie. It uses the mathematics of probability to learn how likely it is for certain configurations of objects and sets to occur together. If only historians had a tool that precise. We know that odd coincidences sometimes occur in real life and that sometimes simple, seemingly explanations are accurate. At other times, simple explanations see all too facile and the coincidences seem too many and too improbable. We know that eye-witnesses to traumatic and chaotic events are often wrong, but what should we conclude when many of them insist they saw the same thing which is flat out excluded from an official account. These involve matters of judgment. Oddly, there is one great similarity between some people labeled as “conspiracy theorists” and those who willingly accept even the most improbably official explanations. They both want simple, all inclusive explanations that are built on too few facts. Hence, some build elaborate explanations that always lead back to the Vatican, Jesuits, Jews, Freemasons, or a murky group called the Illuminati. Those who seek the simplistic, thin explanations going back to the Illuminati or some other demonic group might deserve the term conspiracy theorist.
The problem is that the term “conspiracy theory” is used to marginalize other people who advance reasonable arguments based more than a few facts that are contrary to accepted truth. People in government and their apologist most commonly use the term and apply it to those who rock the boat by doubting official explanations. In earlier times, people who doubted the conventional wisdom were called heretics and witches. Even though the conspiracy theorists can point to implausible aspects of conventional wisdom and too many coincidences heaped upon coincidences, those who go about labeling people conspiracy theorists are really saying that those people should not be listened to. The word “theorist” is used to suggest that these people construct explanations out of thin air; hence, their views are based on theory and not evidence. A careful examination of “conspiracy theories” suggests that they are almost always based on facts. The problem is that they often rely on facts that have been overlooked by those who construct the conventional wisdom.
So called conspiracy theorists are accused of being paranoiac. Poet William Burroughs said “`Paranoia means having all the facts.” Of course, in dealing with historical events, all the facts simply cannot be found. It is enough to have fore reasonable factual information than that possessed by purveyors of the conventional wisdom. That justified raising questions, and, if there is ample evidence, even hypothesizing on what could be other explanations. Those who crave the CIA+Watergate stumble over the truth, but they pick themselves up and continue on as if nothing had happened.” None of us are that good at finding the truth. If we don’t look and develop a reverence for it, we mill rarely make its acquaintance.
The label came into widespread use after the assiassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The implication was that the findings of the Warren Commission were to be taken on faith, including the crazy lone gunman and particularly the magical single bullet theory that claimed that the same bullet, following a very odd trajectory, hit Kennedy and Connally came out in pristine condition and turned up on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital. This is the famous exhibit #399, the mysterious, undamaged bullet. Conspiracy theories often attribute events to concealed plots by individuals or an individual effect events in some way. In this case, it might boil down to whether the death of Joyhn Kennedy was the work of one man’s plot or that of several people or groups. The official story is that three shots were fired, with one missing. That left two to inflict seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled in the 1970s that four shots were fired.
Today, those who question the official explanation of 9/11 are considered unstable conspiracy theorists. The evidence is clear that just as J. Edgar Hoover moved heaven and earth to steer the Warren Commission toward predetermined conclusions. 9/11 staff director Philip Zelikow worked overtime to produce a report that concealed the Bush administration's low level of interest in the terrorist threat. The record shows that a NORAD two star general told the commission that he was above Washington coordinating a response when Flight 93 was to appear in the area. The fact is that commission investigators learned from NORAD tapes that he was lying; the Air Force was unaware of Flight 93, which was to crash in Pennsylvania. The commission would not have learned that had it not finally screwed up its courage to subpoena tapes, which it was first told did not exist. The Bush White House stonewalled on every front from the beginning, and Speaker Dennis Hastert stood in the way of the commission even getting all the records the congressional investigators had acquired. Yet, the so called benighted conspiracy theorists are denounced for not being sufficiently trusting.
Nellie Connelly kept notes on what she thought happened. She insisted that there three shots, but she seemed to reject the magic bullet theory.. The first bullet hit Kennedy, because the governor wheeled around and saw that Kennedy had been hit. The second hit John Connelly, and she said the third hit Kennedy in the head. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was generally considered a conspiracy theorist of the worst sort because his explanations of the assassination of John F. Kennedy seemed far-fetched. That judgment of Garrison was also rooted in solid fact and that there is a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967 reveals that the agency cranked up a disinformation campaign against Jim Garrison. When Garrison left office, his successor, Harry Connick, Sr., destroyed the records of the investigation.
TWA Flight 800, a 747-100, exploded over Long Island on July 17, 1996. 230 people perished. Scores of people saw something looking like a missile hit the plane. The official explanation was that the explosion was due to a bad electrical circuit. They were called “conspiracy theorists.” Three days after the crash, the Jerusalem Post reported that a French Defense official said the missile would have been US because terrorists weapons did not have the capability to do that much damage. .A retired White House press secretary, taken in by a former pilot trying to peddle a bogus radar tape, did himself some harm by claiming there was a cover-up and that he was privy to damning evidence. Two hundred miles south of the site and in September, 1996, two pilots reported seeing what they thought was a missile. We do not know if naval exercise were being conducted then, but they were underway when TWA exploded. Red residue was found in three rows of the plane, and some thought it similar to the color of rocket fuel. The NTSB report stated that Dr. Charles Bassett found that it was seat glue. However, the learned doctor later swore out a statement saying that was not what he found. . In this case, there probably is not enough evidence available to decide who is right or what happened. But if one persists in simply doubting what we have been told, one is a conspiracy theorist.
Some of us recall that The Washington Post insisted that those who claimed that Oliver North was engaged in illegal trade with Iran and forbidden supplying of right wing militias in Nicaragua were way off base. They were wacko conspiracy theorist. It even censored a Jack Anderson column on Iran/Contra. Readers had to be protected from conspiracy theorists! Then it distorted information coming out of Charles Rangel’s subcommittee investigation into the Contra drug trade and refused to print Rangel’s letter of complaint. More recently, the Post. joined the rest of the mainline press in protecting readers from information that the Bush Administration had lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq. There is a long history of the press avoiding such stories even though conspiracies of businessmen, politicians and others also have a long history. That’s how business is done here.
There is so much clamor about “conspiracy theories” that we have come to almost believe conspiracies do not occur. Adam Smith thought tradesmen got together to raise prices. There were all sorts of conspiracies to defraud US railroad investors in the late 19th century. In the early twentieth century, providers of electricity colluded to set p[ices and at mid century people met in hotel rooms to set prices in their bids for government contracts. How soon we forget. Watergate was a conspiracy, and who can be blamed for thinking there was a conspiracy to lead the US into invading Iraq. Someday, there might be enough printed evidence to prove this. At the moment, there are many intelligent people who canot figure out why the US made such a massive investment there. All they knmow is that the official story does not hold water.
Often so-called conspiracy theories gone too far in putting aside theories assign causation to large and distant social and economic forces. Conspiracy theorists prefer to look at concrete events and they believe that people are behind almost all events and that , as in the past, people have a way of scheming, lying, cheating, cooperating with others, and doing anything necessary to acquire money and power and then working overtime to cover their tracks.
If you were an historian writing a textbook about recent times, you might resort to stating that the US invaded Iraq, that the stated reason was belief that Saddam had WMDs, and that after the invasion many expressed doubts that the story about WMDs was fabricated. Rock solid evidence would not permit going much further. If one were to add a possible explanation that relied upon broad historical forces, or perhaps geopolitical theory, it would be methodologically acceptable and also could not be checked out. It can be argued that the default position for the historian is to fall back on official government sources and what is printed in newspapers of record. The method has a certain conservative bias. Four years after the invasion, the White House admitted that millions of its e-mails had inadvertently been lost. Are there aspects of what happened that could not be documented any other way than through those e-mails? Historians have a strong bias against conspiracy theories in part because they associate them with the ravings of the populists, Father Charles Coughlin, and Senator Joseph McCarthy.
On the other hand, leftists are not much given to conspiracy theories and are inclined to buy the official 9/11 story in its main outlines because they are more likely to think in terms of historical forces. A major basket of exceptions include the reasons for building and deploying the atomic bomb and US policy in t he early cold war. Perhaps some historians have come to consider conspiracies because a growing number of them no longer come from the moneyed elite, as had once been the case. It is still recalled with some embarrassment that a president of the American Historical Association nearly four decades ago worried about what would happen to the craft as Jews, Catholics, children of recent immigrants, and products of the working class entered the profession. Maybe these people would be less inclined to assume that those with power and wealth usually behaved as gentlemen and were animated by noblesse oblige.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Nature of Parahistory, Part One
The Nature of Parahistory
The late Murray Rothbard ( the original TRB of the New Republic) wrote in 1977,
Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a "conspiracy theory of history," "paranoid," "economic determinist," and even "Marxist."
Three decades ago, these investigators were able to make considerable progress by asking the ancient question “cui bono? ( Who benefits?)” Today things are so much more complicated, and that question often cannot be answered with any certainty. Indeed, One recent writer classified anyone who asked the question as a conspiracy theorist. Today, it seems that these theorists are more worried about the machinations of government than those of the so-called economic power elite. They should probably be looking at the links between government and the people who own massive corporations and media operation. One thing remains the same; when people complain about conspiracy theories, they often mean someone is getting too close to the truth.
Ellen J. Langer, the renowned Harvard psychologist, wrote, “Certainty is based on flimsier evidence than most of us realize.” Some of the ancient historians of Rome knew this and tried to break through what was then the official story to get at what was really going on. Appian, a Greek, focused on the decline of the republic. He was described as a “genuine historian” in part because he wanted to get at the heart of matters. He was contemporaneous with but younger than Plutarch and unfortunately was somewhat colorless, perhaps like the present writer. Cassius Dio, another Greek, pursued the same theme and found that Octavian was installing an autocracy by stealth. He saw a sharp division between the official version of events and even admitted to employing heresay when it seemed to help explain events. He was fortunate to have good contacts, being a member of the Senate, a consul, and once srving as a proconsul in Africa. Complaints about not being able to get at the real re4asons for events wre echoed by Tacitus, who wrote much about the difference between public claims and private motives. When Tacitus left the Senate for the last time, he said in Greek, “Men fit to be slaves.”
These historians also complained about how surveillance made it difficult for individuals in private discussions to learn what was going on around them.
Livy, the most famous historian of the era, was not concerned about asking tough questions and usually conveyed the conventional wisdom and found truth on the side of the establishment, and valued ccconciliation and moderation.
These historians had serious evidenciary problems then, and their succeessors today face similar if not greater problems. Surveilance techniques have improved greatly and those who put out the official line are the beneficiaries of remarkable advances in cognitive science. We still cannot condone relying on heresay, but investigators cannot be blamed if they use it to ask questions and seek out verifiable leads.
Historians, working from official sources, often put together a stories that are close to what those in power want them to produce. Nevertheless, they still encounter gaps that they fill as best they can, through digging and careful analysis. Writers who look into questions that go beyond the official sources have far many more gaps to fill, but they use the same tools to fill them. I.F. Stone, patron saint of investigative reporters, said it is best to assume that politicians are fcrequently lying. He added that “The search for meaning is very satisfying; its very pleasant, but it can be very far from the truth.” He thought it necessary to continually call attention to evidence that does not fit, and warned that this could mean the good reporter must repudiate what he wrote just a few weeks ago.
There has always been much more going on than historians have seen. Above all, it should be remembered that history and culture has many layers and is eeen from a variety of perspectives. Cultural and historical analysis should reveal a variety of perspectives, eschewing one consensus approach. It is best rendered through “think description,” and one important strand should concern itself with likely private motives and activities that are important in influencing events but are not intended for public scrutinity. Over time, people have learned to look into such matters, and they are now firmly anchored among human “webs of significance.” They are more important for some people than others, and it seems there are those who , even in the days of Tiberius, could not live with the possibility that his numerous homilies about civic virtue did not wholly reveal what was the essence of this complex man. For these people the “said” of discourse must be about all there is—something that smothers what are complexities and inconsistencies for others. On the other hand, many more will see uninterpreted data as mere data and expect layered, thick descriptions to make interpretation possible. But including many perspectives in a thick discourse means that different hearers or readers will take away different meanings, depending upon the outlooks they brought to the work.
There have always been political processes that fly under the normal political radar and are marked by deceit, disinformation, concealment, and covert action. This is what is called deep politics or parapolitics. If the historian does not resort to thick descriptions, she many never come to ask research questions that can turn up traces of what is going on below the radar. From time to time, most people suspect that deep politics exists, often in relation to the drug trade, but the consequences of investigating and pursuing this are disquieting, and we usually suppress such thoughts. One professional historian , Alfred McCoy carefully investigated the CIA drug trade during the Vietnam war and barely came out of the effort with his life. In recent times, it seems that deep politics probably account for much of reality.
The stuff of deep politics rarely appears in mainstream, conventional, or orthodox history. Traditional history is ruled by rigid methodological rules that privilege official government explanations. This history is ideologically safe and unthreatening and favors history’s winners. Its version of “objectivity” is sharing the biases of the conventional wisdom and those who wield power. It usually distorts through fear of heterodox explanations and a deep attachment to ideological respectability. Patriotism also plays a role, and the flag can be used as a blindfold when one simply cannot entertain the possibility that our leaders could do some truly despicable things.
J.Edgar Hoover once said "The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” It is perfectly natural for humans to want comforting, non-threatening answers to important questions and historical puzzles. If someone had told Julius Caesar that almost 30 Senators had conspired to kill him when he showed up at the Senate, he would have dismissed the story as too monstrous to believe. He had enemies, yes, but he did not face a threat of this magnitude. For one thing, too many people were involved in this story. Someone would have talked by then.
How many people today really believe the conventional wisdom about the Kennedy assassination? The Warren Commission is a classical example of orthodox or mainstream history at its worst. The editor who published the first serious critique of the Warren Commission Report was a paid CIA asset. When he published the critique, he noted that it did not represent the opinion of his magazine. But the editor later remarked to a friend that the critique was probably true, but "The truth is too terrible. The American people would never be able to stand it."
The conventional explanations of 9/11 are so lame that a growing number suspect there is far more to that terrible story. Sometimes outlandish scandals simply evaporate such as the BCCI affair. Only John Kerry showed an interest in pursuing the matter, and he was blocked at every turn and there were whispers in the corridors of power about how he was a little kooky and addicted to conspiracy theories. We never learned entirely what went on with BCCI, probably because it provided many keys to deep politics. Historians and journalists avoid deep politics for any number of reasons. Several amateur journalists who pursued aspects of this story were most probably suicided. One is that it is so hard to access evidence of parapolitical activity. Sometimes, as in the case of US complicity in the murders of priests, nuns, and thousands and thousands of dissidents in Central America, is ample, and the stories still are not pursued. All of that is so distasteful and challenges everything we want to believe about ourselves and this country.
John Zaller and Dennis Chiu studied how the mainstream media covered 42 foreign policy crises between 1945 and 1999, and found the media consistently functioned as “government’s little helper.” In the build up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the media simply parroted the Bush administration line. On May 26, 2004, The New York Times found it necessary to publish an editorial apologizing that covcerage of Bush claims about Iraq was “not as rigorous as it should have been.” There has been a steady dedterioration of the news media. Some of it is attributable to lack of zeal and human weakness. Some of the blame is due to the difficulty in obtaining accurate information from government.
Recently, the United States has begun the process of establishing nuclear missile bases in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The US consistently claims that the missiles are only aimed at Iran, which someday will have some nuclear weapons. The Soviets complain that the weapons are aimed at them and they sometimes sold a bit paranoiac, unless one notices that the US has recently been building these bases all around Russia. Absent proof that the missiles will be pointed at Russia the journalist and historian can only report what the US has said its intentions are. The possibility that the Russians could be partly right cannot be entertained without clear evidence that the Pentagon is lying. Historians build their work partly on what journalists have reported and upon government documents they have been able to study. Lacking a document revealing hostile intentions toward the Russians, the historian’s account will reflect what the US government claims. This writer recently attended a lecture given by a respected specialist on Russian history about this situation. The specialist is a long-time acquaintance and almost certainly doubts the statements made by Dr. Condoleezza Rice on this matter. But his lecture did not reflect any doubt. He was trapped by historical method and perhaps aware that there was a clean-cut young man in the front row carefully tape recording his every word.
There is such a thing as the’shadow” or’secret” government. Eliot Abrams, then Undersecretary of State, referred to it in the Iran/Contra hearings. The problem is that its operations are open and transparent. If one wants to get closer to a more accurate picture of how things happen, it is necessary to dig for traces of its operations and sometime make inferences. Critics refer to that as empty “theory,” as in conspiracy theory. But to refuse to look for its workings is to wholeheartedly assume another theory, that things are exactly as the official story goes. The trouble is that accepting the official story usually ends up with what onbe could call Disney history. As William Faulkner wrote, the “past is never dead and buried, it isn’t even past.” Past events continually affect present happenings; without something approaching a realistic view of the past, it becomes impossible to grasp what goes on now.
In 1965, Indonesian military and paramilitary forces carried out one of the worst massacres of that century against Communists and labor leaders. The CIA had funded the creation of hit lists and was behind a barrage of stories and sometimes forged documents attributing plots and atrocities to the leftists. Despite much evidence of the agency’s involvement, The New York Times simply denied that the CIA was involved. The false news coverage of the massacre will become the basis for fake history.
The 9/11 attack was the defining event of recent times, and yet there are many contradictions and improbabilities within the convention wisdom. For some unknown reason, the Bush administration held up the establishment of an independent investigative commission for a year. For a month almost 4000 people served on an FBI task force investigating the tragedy, then the task force was shut down because the bureau said these people were needed to investigate terrorist plots.
We do not even have a thorough official account of what wrong with our national defenses that made those tragic events possible. The 9/11 Commission issued its report in July, 2004, and it was soon reported that many of the commissioners thought that the NORAD generals had lied to them. NORAD and the FAA released a number of time lines that are contradictory and establish that there was plenty of time to shoot sown at least one of the first three planes. The FAA also held back vital information. The 9/11 commission that investigated these matters labored under so many disadvantages that it was unable to produce a solid report. Fearing that the report would show that the it had down played the terrorist threat, the White House’stonewalled” –in the words of Republican Commissioner John Lehman, making it very difficult to extract basic information. Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton, the two co-chairs, defended themselves in a 2006 book, essentially arguing that they were set up to fail. They wrote, "We were set up to fail. The thought occurred to both of us as we prepared to meet for the first time …" They also complained about how the CIA stonmewalled them. In 2007, it was learned that the CIA destroyed tapes that would have been very useful to the investigators. This prompted Keane and Hamilton to write to The New York Times, charging that the CIA had obstructed the investigation. The CIA had denied the commission access to captives and to their interrogators and was asked to make do with incomplete and poorly written summaries. Tenet’s testimony was filled with an unbelievable number of “I don’t remember’s and some commission members doubted the veracity of his testimony. Though spending money does not guarantee good results, the fact is that only $15 million was spent on the commission, while the government paid $40,000,000 exploring Bill Clinton’s sex life and a land deal in Arkansas.
AP reporter Leslie Miller wrote on May 6, 2004 that several hours after the attack a manager at New York air traffic control asked controllers who had handled two of the flights to record their experiences. A FAAquality assurance manager destropyed the casette sometime between December, 2001 and February, 2002. He used his hand to crush the case and then cut up the tape , throwing the pieces into multiple trash cans.
NORAD sent a two star general to the commission who claimed he was circling Washington coordinating efforts to shoot sown Flight 93, when the fact was that NORAD did not even know about the hijacking of that flight at the time he claimed to be in the air. It was reported soon after the 9/11 Commission Report was released that many of the commissioners thought the NORAD generals had lied to them, and that some wanted the Justice Department to review their testimony.
The same agency denied it had any tapes of what went on in traffic control towers. The commission learned about the tapes by accident and had to issue subpoenas to get them. NSA documents were only made available days before the report was to go to the printer. Speaker Dennis Hastert blocked the commission’s access to materials gathered by the House, even though one commissioner had just left Congress and had had access to those materials. . A close reading of the evidence indicates that the CIA twice warned President Bush that Al Qaeda was ready to seize planes in the United States and attack in the United States. Jane Mayer demonstrated that the CIA frequently briefed Bush on Al Qaeda.
Moreover, the evidence suggest that national security advisor deliberately mischaracterized the famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing paper, as did the White House press secretary. She seemed to be almost consistently duplicitous when discussing the National Security Council’s approach to terrorism. There is no good evidence that the staff director Philip Zelikow was planted by the White House. He had been on Bush’s transition team and had drafted a paper that helped justify the invasion of Iraq. It is clear that this good friend of Condoleezza Rice created a very hostile work environment for the staff, alienated and demeaned the 9/11 widows, and worked consistently to cover up Bush administration failures. He was accused by staff of trying to sabotage subpoenaing NORAD tapes, which were crucial for the investigation. He was in telephone contact with Carl Rove, visited Condoleezza Rice, and instructed his secretary not to log White House phone calls. Zelikow, who later became Counsellor at the State Department, was briefed on the findings of the Able Danger intelligence project on Al Qaeda, but did not let the commission see the information. To avoid internal turmoil, the commission ecided assign any blame for what had happened. Its report became the official story, from which mainstream journalists and historians would have to work.
The late Murray Rothbard ( the original TRB of the New Republic) wrote in 1977,
Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a "conspiracy theory of history," "paranoid," "economic determinist," and even "Marxist."
Three decades ago, these investigators were able to make considerable progress by asking the ancient question “cui bono? ( Who benefits?)” Today things are so much more complicated, and that question often cannot be answered with any certainty. Indeed, One recent writer classified anyone who asked the question as a conspiracy theorist. Today, it seems that these theorists are more worried about the machinations of government than those of the so-called economic power elite. They should probably be looking at the links between government and the people who own massive corporations and media operation. One thing remains the same; when people complain about conspiracy theories, they often mean someone is getting too close to the truth.
Ellen J. Langer, the renowned Harvard psychologist, wrote, “Certainty is based on flimsier evidence than most of us realize.” Some of the ancient historians of Rome knew this and tried to break through what was then the official story to get at what was really going on. Appian, a Greek, focused on the decline of the republic. He was described as a “genuine historian” in part because he wanted to get at the heart of matters. He was contemporaneous with but younger than Plutarch and unfortunately was somewhat colorless, perhaps like the present writer. Cassius Dio, another Greek, pursued the same theme and found that Octavian was installing an autocracy by stealth. He saw a sharp division between the official version of events and even admitted to employing heresay when it seemed to help explain events. He was fortunate to have good contacts, being a member of the Senate, a consul, and once srving as a proconsul in Africa. Complaints about not being able to get at the real re4asons for events wre echoed by Tacitus, who wrote much about the difference between public claims and private motives. When Tacitus left the Senate for the last time, he said in Greek, “Men fit to be slaves.”
These historians also complained about how surveillance made it difficult for individuals in private discussions to learn what was going on around them.
Livy, the most famous historian of the era, was not concerned about asking tough questions and usually conveyed the conventional wisdom and found truth on the side of the establishment, and valued ccconciliation and moderation.
These historians had serious evidenciary problems then, and their succeessors today face similar if not greater problems. Surveilance techniques have improved greatly and those who put out the official line are the beneficiaries of remarkable advances in cognitive science. We still cannot condone relying on heresay, but investigators cannot be blamed if they use it to ask questions and seek out verifiable leads.
Historians, working from official sources, often put together a stories that are close to what those in power want them to produce. Nevertheless, they still encounter gaps that they fill as best they can, through digging and careful analysis. Writers who look into questions that go beyond the official sources have far many more gaps to fill, but they use the same tools to fill them. I.F. Stone, patron saint of investigative reporters, said it is best to assume that politicians are fcrequently lying. He added that “The search for meaning is very satisfying; its very pleasant, but it can be very far from the truth.” He thought it necessary to continually call attention to evidence that does not fit, and warned that this could mean the good reporter must repudiate what he wrote just a few weeks ago.
There has always been much more going on than historians have seen. Above all, it should be remembered that history and culture has many layers and is eeen from a variety of perspectives. Cultural and historical analysis should reveal a variety of perspectives, eschewing one consensus approach. It is best rendered through “think description,” and one important strand should concern itself with likely private motives and activities that are important in influencing events but are not intended for public scrutinity. Over time, people have learned to look into such matters, and they are now firmly anchored among human “webs of significance.” They are more important for some people than others, and it seems there are those who , even in the days of Tiberius, could not live with the possibility that his numerous homilies about civic virtue did not wholly reveal what was the essence of this complex man. For these people the “said” of discourse must be about all there is—something that smothers what are complexities and inconsistencies for others. On the other hand, many more will see uninterpreted data as mere data and expect layered, thick descriptions to make interpretation possible. But including many perspectives in a thick discourse means that different hearers or readers will take away different meanings, depending upon the outlooks they brought to the work.
There have always been political processes that fly under the normal political radar and are marked by deceit, disinformation, concealment, and covert action. This is what is called deep politics or parapolitics. If the historian does not resort to thick descriptions, she many never come to ask research questions that can turn up traces of what is going on below the radar. From time to time, most people suspect that deep politics exists, often in relation to the drug trade, but the consequences of investigating and pursuing this are disquieting, and we usually suppress such thoughts. One professional historian , Alfred McCoy carefully investigated the CIA drug trade during the Vietnam war and barely came out of the effort with his life. In recent times, it seems that deep politics probably account for much of reality.
The stuff of deep politics rarely appears in mainstream, conventional, or orthodox history. Traditional history is ruled by rigid methodological rules that privilege official government explanations. This history is ideologically safe and unthreatening and favors history’s winners. Its version of “objectivity” is sharing the biases of the conventional wisdom and those who wield power. It usually distorts through fear of heterodox explanations and a deep attachment to ideological respectability. Patriotism also plays a role, and the flag can be used as a blindfold when one simply cannot entertain the possibility that our leaders could do some truly despicable things.
J.Edgar Hoover once said "The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” It is perfectly natural for humans to want comforting, non-threatening answers to important questions and historical puzzles. If someone had told Julius Caesar that almost 30 Senators had conspired to kill him when he showed up at the Senate, he would have dismissed the story as too monstrous to believe. He had enemies, yes, but he did not face a threat of this magnitude. For one thing, too many people were involved in this story. Someone would have talked by then.
How many people today really believe the conventional wisdom about the Kennedy assassination? The Warren Commission is a classical example of orthodox or mainstream history at its worst. The editor who published the first serious critique of the Warren Commission Report was a paid CIA asset. When he published the critique, he noted that it did not represent the opinion of his magazine. But the editor later remarked to a friend that the critique was probably true, but "The truth is too terrible. The American people would never be able to stand it."
The conventional explanations of 9/11 are so lame that a growing number suspect there is far more to that terrible story. Sometimes outlandish scandals simply evaporate such as the BCCI affair. Only John Kerry showed an interest in pursuing the matter, and he was blocked at every turn and there were whispers in the corridors of power about how he was a little kooky and addicted to conspiracy theories. We never learned entirely what went on with BCCI, probably because it provided many keys to deep politics. Historians and journalists avoid deep politics for any number of reasons. Several amateur journalists who pursued aspects of this story were most probably suicided. One is that it is so hard to access evidence of parapolitical activity. Sometimes, as in the case of US complicity in the murders of priests, nuns, and thousands and thousands of dissidents in Central America, is ample, and the stories still are not pursued. All of that is so distasteful and challenges everything we want to believe about ourselves and this country.
John Zaller and Dennis Chiu studied how the mainstream media covered 42 foreign policy crises between 1945 and 1999, and found the media consistently functioned as “government’s little helper.” In the build up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the media simply parroted the Bush administration line. On May 26, 2004, The New York Times found it necessary to publish an editorial apologizing that covcerage of Bush claims about Iraq was “not as rigorous as it should have been.” There has been a steady dedterioration of the news media. Some of it is attributable to lack of zeal and human weakness. Some of the blame is due to the difficulty in obtaining accurate information from government.
Recently, the United States has begun the process of establishing nuclear missile bases in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The US consistently claims that the missiles are only aimed at Iran, which someday will have some nuclear weapons. The Soviets complain that the weapons are aimed at them and they sometimes sold a bit paranoiac, unless one notices that the US has recently been building these bases all around Russia. Absent proof that the missiles will be pointed at Russia the journalist and historian can only report what the US has said its intentions are. The possibility that the Russians could be partly right cannot be entertained without clear evidence that the Pentagon is lying. Historians build their work partly on what journalists have reported and upon government documents they have been able to study. Lacking a document revealing hostile intentions toward the Russians, the historian’s account will reflect what the US government claims. This writer recently attended a lecture given by a respected specialist on Russian history about this situation. The specialist is a long-time acquaintance and almost certainly doubts the statements made by Dr. Condoleezza Rice on this matter. But his lecture did not reflect any doubt. He was trapped by historical method and perhaps aware that there was a clean-cut young man in the front row carefully tape recording his every word.
There is such a thing as the’shadow” or’secret” government. Eliot Abrams, then Undersecretary of State, referred to it in the Iran/Contra hearings. The problem is that its operations are open and transparent. If one wants to get closer to a more accurate picture of how things happen, it is necessary to dig for traces of its operations and sometime make inferences. Critics refer to that as empty “theory,” as in conspiracy theory. But to refuse to look for its workings is to wholeheartedly assume another theory, that things are exactly as the official story goes. The trouble is that accepting the official story usually ends up with what onbe could call Disney history. As William Faulkner wrote, the “past is never dead and buried, it isn’t even past.” Past events continually affect present happenings; without something approaching a realistic view of the past, it becomes impossible to grasp what goes on now.
In 1965, Indonesian military and paramilitary forces carried out one of the worst massacres of that century against Communists and labor leaders. The CIA had funded the creation of hit lists and was behind a barrage of stories and sometimes forged documents attributing plots and atrocities to the leftists. Despite much evidence of the agency’s involvement, The New York Times simply denied that the CIA was involved. The false news coverage of the massacre will become the basis for fake history.
The 9/11 attack was the defining event of recent times, and yet there are many contradictions and improbabilities within the convention wisdom. For some unknown reason, the Bush administration held up the establishment of an independent investigative commission for a year. For a month almost 4000 people served on an FBI task force investigating the tragedy, then the task force was shut down because the bureau said these people were needed to investigate terrorist plots.
We do not even have a thorough official account of what wrong with our national defenses that made those tragic events possible. The 9/11 Commission issued its report in July, 2004, and it was soon reported that many of the commissioners thought that the NORAD generals had lied to them. NORAD and the FAA released a number of time lines that are contradictory and establish that there was plenty of time to shoot sown at least one of the first three planes. The FAA also held back vital information. The 9/11 commission that investigated these matters labored under so many disadvantages that it was unable to produce a solid report. Fearing that the report would show that the it had down played the terrorist threat, the White House’stonewalled” –in the words of Republican Commissioner John Lehman, making it very difficult to extract basic information. Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton, the two co-chairs, defended themselves in a 2006 book, essentially arguing that they were set up to fail. They wrote, "We were set up to fail. The thought occurred to both of us as we prepared to meet for the first time …" They also complained about how the CIA stonmewalled them. In 2007, it was learned that the CIA destroyed tapes that would have been very useful to the investigators. This prompted Keane and Hamilton to write to The New York Times, charging that the CIA had obstructed the investigation. The CIA had denied the commission access to captives and to their interrogators and was asked to make do with incomplete and poorly written summaries. Tenet’s testimony was filled with an unbelievable number of “I don’t remember’s and some commission members doubted the veracity of his testimony. Though spending money does not guarantee good results, the fact is that only $15 million was spent on the commission, while the government paid $40,000,000 exploring Bill Clinton’s sex life and a land deal in Arkansas.
AP reporter Leslie Miller wrote on May 6, 2004 that several hours after the attack a manager at New York air traffic control asked controllers who had handled two of the flights to record their experiences. A FAAquality assurance manager destropyed the casette sometime between December, 2001 and February, 2002. He used his hand to crush the case and then cut up the tape , throwing the pieces into multiple trash cans.
NORAD sent a two star general to the commission who claimed he was circling Washington coordinating efforts to shoot sown Flight 93, when the fact was that NORAD did not even know about the hijacking of that flight at the time he claimed to be in the air. It was reported soon after the 9/11 Commission Report was released that many of the commissioners thought the NORAD generals had lied to them, and that some wanted the Justice Department to review their testimony.
The same agency denied it had any tapes of what went on in traffic control towers. The commission learned about the tapes by accident and had to issue subpoenas to get them. NSA documents were only made available days before the report was to go to the printer. Speaker Dennis Hastert blocked the commission’s access to materials gathered by the House, even though one commissioner had just left Congress and had had access to those materials. . A close reading of the evidence indicates that the CIA twice warned President Bush that Al Qaeda was ready to seize planes in the United States and attack in the United States. Jane Mayer demonstrated that the CIA frequently briefed Bush on Al Qaeda.
Moreover, the evidence suggest that national security advisor deliberately mischaracterized the famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing paper, as did the White House press secretary. She seemed to be almost consistently duplicitous when discussing the National Security Council’s approach to terrorism. There is no good evidence that the staff director Philip Zelikow was planted by the White House. He had been on Bush’s transition team and had drafted a paper that helped justify the invasion of Iraq. It is clear that this good friend of Condoleezza Rice created a very hostile work environment for the staff, alienated and demeaned the 9/11 widows, and worked consistently to cover up Bush administration failures. He was accused by staff of trying to sabotage subpoenaing NORAD tapes, which were crucial for the investigation. He was in telephone contact with Carl Rove, visited Condoleezza Rice, and instructed his secretary not to log White House phone calls. Zelikow, who later became Counsellor at the State Department, was briefed on the findings of the Able Danger intelligence project on Al Qaeda, but did not let the commission see the information. To avoid internal turmoil, the commission ecided assign any blame for what had happened. Its report became the official story, from which mainstream journalists and historians would have to work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)