Freethought & Rationalism Archive

fanny666 · 03-30-2003, 08:09 PM

I wrote this to some of my friends who (think they) are "pro-war," and are not really politically engaged. Copy and share if you like, reply and deny, if you don't.

-=-=-=-=-=-
I think the thing that is most on people's minds is "TheThreat Posed By Saddam." I'm going to write very broadly, then people can bring up specifics if they want to! Cool?

Now, obviously, we should be concerned about a dictator who invades a tiny nation, sending a bigger number of troops than the population of the entire island, then slaughtering tens of thousands of people, using rape and starvation, setting up concentration camps, and occupying the land for years and years.

Except that's not Saddam I was talking about, it's Suharto of Indonesia, our ally to this day. In fact, we sold him all the weapons, and Carter dramatically increased weapons sales immediately after he had invaded East Timor.

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was nothing like that. It certainly was an evil act of aggression, but he'd done (much) worse things to the Kurds of northern Iraq during the 80s when he was our ally.

The whole thing about 300 premature babies dying was a lie, too. Propaganda.

When I say that you have been SWAMPED with propaganda, I'm not kidding. "Everything you know is wrong," as they say. Stop and think about what it means that most of you had never even HEARD of "East Timor" until just now. We paid for a 25 year (this was going on for the majority of most of our lifetimes) occupation which wiped out a higher percentage of East Timorese than Hitler wiped out Jews. Seriously, turn off the TV. Only morons get hired as news anchors. Literally true. TV will only make your confusion worse. Turn it off. The pundits and anchors are not liars, just gullible and dumb, with a horribly misguided notion that patriotism means "standing behind the leader."

Here's a quote for you: in May 2002, CBS news anchor Dan Rather acknowledged, "What we are talking about here--whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not--is a form of self-censorship. It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'"

Of course, Rather said this to Britain's BBC--and didn't have the courage to say it at home, where he has been leading the patriotic charge in the media ever since September 11. Predictably, almost no outlet of the U.S. mainstream media reported on Rather's comments. (Perhaps he could have somehow been called "Anti-American"?) Of course when weapons manufacturers own television stations, you'd wouldn't expect to see wacky "anti-war activists" like me on TV. Maybe an actress or something. A weekend activist. Getting interviewed by a dense and "patriotic" Dan Rather.

The ONLY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD who are afraid of Saddam Hussein are Iraqis and Americans. In Iraq they are afraid because he still controls the country and he murders dissenters. Here we are afraid because we have been hit with a relentless, vulgar display of propaganda portraying Saddam as an awesome and imminent threat, which he never was, and trying to link him to 9-11-2001, which he was not. Everybody else in the world sees him for what he is (or was): a murderous thug, to be sure- but the dictator of a starving third world nation with a 4th rate military. He doesn't even own a boat or a prop airplane, much less a jet. His missiles couldn't even reach the Atlantic ocean. He's not going to take away your freedoms. Bush, however, will.

Iran and Kuwait- both of whom were invaded by Saddam's army- both long ago began renewing normal relations with Iraq. They live next door, and they are not afraid of Iraq. Israel didn't even consider Iraq in their top 5 threats.

You've been scared into seeing him as this awesome, mighty foe, which he is not.

And let's continue to be blunt. Bush knows perfectly well that this attack will very possibly CREATE an al-Qaeda style "terrorist" counter-attack. He has been told that by the entire intelligence community. Either it did not sink in or he does not care, but the fact is that he was warned.

Right now, our brothers and sisters on the ground are facing troops, which will fight hard and be vicious- this is true. But they are 8000 miles away. WE flew over THERE. They were not about to come here. They don't even own a helecoptor.

Manipulation of fear is right-wing politics 101. In the words of Anatol Lieven, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, the Bush administration (mostly recycled Reaganites) is utilizing "the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism" through fear of external enemies. Remember Reagan? Nicaragua was less than a day away from Texas! We had to attack them because they were coming to get us! And remember when he surrounded the White House with tanks becase Qadaffi was going to come and get us? We had to attack them too because they were coming to get us, too!

Just a guess, but I bet Syria and Iran will threaten us next...

Listen to Bush Propaganda 101. The announcer is heavy on the rhetoric, but the mix breaks down Bush's methods- which are not accidental- very well. The really scary thing is that, just like Reagan, he's too dumb to even understand what he's being told to do. But you can hear the coaching when he tries to ad-lib.
http://homepage.mac.com/benburch/GWBand1984.mp3

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini

"If you're not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you."
-Ralph Nader

RED DAVE · 03-30-2003, 08:13 PM

Good start for a discussion. I'll be interested in hearing how right wingers on the board defend Bush's actions, now, a week and a half into the actual war.

RED DAVE

Jesse · 03-30-2003, 08:27 PM

The whole thing about 300 premature babies dying was a lie, too. Propaganda.

This is true, but it should be pointed out that this was Kuwaiti propoganda, not US propoganda.

RED DAVE · 03-30-2003, 08:31 PM

From Jesse:

Quote:

This is true, but it should be pointed out that this was Kuwaiti propoganda, not US propoganda.

But the US government did absolutely nothing to contradict it. Even Amnesty International spread that one.

RED DAVE

Jesse · 03-30-2003, 08:33 PM

Presumably both the US and Amnesty International believed it at the time.

RED DAVE · 03-30-2003, 08:45 PM

From Jesse:

Quote:

Presumably both the US and Amnesty International believed it at the time.

You are really naive if you think that the largest intelligence apparatus in the world believed that. Amnesty I is just a bunch of naive liberals and radicals who can't make up their minds about the ruling class, but the CIA is something else.

RED DAVE

Jesse · 03-30-2003, 08:58 PM

You are really naive if you think that the largest intelligence apparatus in the world believed that.

Why would they bother making a big investigation into this one incident? It wouldn't be in their interests to discover it was false anyway. Government information is often untrustworthy, but I think it's usually more a matter of selectively emphasizing certain facts and turning a blind eye to others than outright lying through their teeth (except in cases where they are trying to cover up something they were responsible for). I think this short essay on "The Innards of Power" has it about right:

Quote:

What really worries me, however, is that at least some antiwar activists I encounter seem to believe wholeheartedly in a conspiratorial interpretation of how the White House actually works on a day-to-day basis. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other officials are depicted as always knowing what they want to have happen and always doing what exactly what they need to get what they want. Everything is a plan, everything is instrumental, everything goes according to script, and there is perfect unanimity between all parts of the administration. It all locks perfectly in place.

In a more scholarly context, I tend to characterize this view as �power always knows what it needs, and always does exactly what it should to satisfy its needs�, with the usual corollary being that if the powerful do not get what they want, it is because they were opposed. If you want a tremendously sophisticated and often interesting example of this way of thinking, Perry Anderson�s essay in the London Review of Books is a pretty good read. For Anderson, everything that is happening now is part of the same seamless design, even much of the opposition to the war. (I clearly fall under the heading of a 'prudential opponent' who is part of the problem, not the solution, in Anderson's eyes.)

This is simply wrong as an empirical depiction of the ethnographic reality of power. No, I don�t have a bug under the table in the Oval Office. But once upon a time, there was such a bug, placed ever-so-kindly by a gent named Richard Nixon. Now that the question of what Nixon knew and when he knew it is part of the past, the transcripts of his taped conversations and meetings are a treasure trove for historians and anthropologists. Not just for students of the Nixon Administration, but for anyone who wants to know more about how power actually works on the inside.

Reading the transcripts, you sometimes see the conspiratorial, instrumental side of power. Sometimes Nixon and his aides saw the political chessboard clearly and acted forcefully (and illegally or illicitly) to move the pieces according to a grand design. Yes, the transcripts also show that they had more information and more tools to act with than Joe Schmoe on the street: that�s what power is in a nutshell. But far more often, they were fumbling in the dark just as much as anyone else, sharing crackpot theories, going off onto weird tangents, toying with idiosyncratic hypotheses about why events were unfolding as they were, and enunciating contradictory or confusing directions. Sometimes the transcripts are like an echo chamber of Richard Nixon�s labrythine mind and sometimes they are like a bull session between a bunch of middle managers gathered around the water cooler.

This is not the only fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the interior of power available to us. Working in the Zimbabwe National Archives and other archives, I have often read documents that record some inner aspect of deliberations between colonial officials, and similar patterns appear. Sometimes they�re chillingly directed and forceful, but most of the time, they reveal confused men trying to sort out situations they barely understand with imperfect tools that they use badly, if at all.

What does this mean for the Iraq War? Simply this: we do not know for certain what is going on inside the inner circle of power, but we dare not assume it is dictated by some relentless service to a rigorously instrumental goal that is clearly perceived by all of the men and women making policy, that they are power acting as power ought to achieve the things that power wants.

Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice: they�re all human, too. I am not being a carebear, embracing them in a warm and fuzzy hug. Humans can err and prevaricate and commit knowing misdeeds. Humans can be monsters or they can just be bumblers. But any theory about why they are doing this that begins and ends with an assumption that they are not humans just like us is a non-starter. Any representation of their thinking that depends upon them being god-like in the clarity and perfection or their knowledge, or demonic in their ability to completely ignore or commission human suffering, is foolish. They are not homo omnipotentus, a different species.

The question of �why� matters enormously. There are reasonable working hypotheses out there. Personally, I favor the proposition that this is a kind of hubris, that Wolfowitz and Perle actually believe in the �democratic domino theory� and are carrying out a geopolitical experiment on its behalf with all the good intentions in the world. There may be many other motives and ideas, some of them contradictory, some venal, some foolish, some pragmatic. Some of the people in the administration may even wish they hadn�t gotten themselves into this mess but see no way out of the corner they painted themselves into.

If we�re going to talk about the �why�, we have to be talking about human beings. We have to have the same open ethnographic curiosity we bring to the question of why people in general do the things they do. Because only with this kind of understanding do we have any hope of seeing at least some avenues of escape, some possibilities for redeeming the blunder we are now embarked upon, some chance to connect with the interior of power.

RED DAVE · 03-30-2003, 09:06 PM

Quoted by Jesse:

Quote:

Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice: they�re all human, too. I am not being a carebear, embracing them in a warm and fuzzy hug. Humans can err and prevaricate and commit knowing misdeeds. Humans can be monsters or they can just be bumblers. But any theory about why they are doing this that begins and ends with an assumption that they are not humans just like us is a non-starter. Any representation of their thinking that depends upon them being god-like in the clarity and perfection or their knowledge, or demonic in their ability to completely ignore or commission human suffering, is foolish. They are not homo omnipotentus, a different species.

The question of �why� matters enormously. There are reasonable working hypotheses out there. Personally, I favor the proposition that this is a kind of hubris, that Wolfowitz and Perle actually believe in the �democratic domino theory� and are carrying out a geopolitical experiment on its behalf with all the good intentions in the world. There may be many other motives and ideas, some of them contradictory, some venal, some foolish, some pragmatic. Some of the people in the administration may even wish they hadn�t gotten themselves into this mess but see no way out of the corner they painted themselves into.

If we�re going to talk about the �why�, we have to be talking about human beings. We have to have the same open ethnographic curiosity we bring to the question of why people in general do the things they do. Because only with this kind of understanding do we have any hope of seeing at least some avenues of escape, some possibilities for redeeming the blunder we are now embarked upon, some chance to connect with the interior of power.

Now, isn't that special. It turns out that these guys, who are masterminding the military invasion of a fourth-rate country by the greatest military power in the known universe are just "carrying out a geopolitical experiment ... with all the good intentions in the world."

And, shucks folks, "Some of the people in the administration may even wish they hadn�t gotten themselves into this mess but see no way out of the corner they painted themselves into."

Gee, did anyone ever think about resigning?

This kind of mealy-mouthed bullshit is just the warm and fuzzy side of a cluster bomb.

RED DAVE

Optional · 03-30-2003, 09:16 PM

Jesse, re: your cut-n-paste, I actually agree with a lot of it. I think that cheny&wolfowitz&rumsfeld&etc probably for the most part actually DO believe in what they are doing. They believe they are going to bring a Pax Americana to the world, a peace enforced at the barrel of an american m-16, and the world will thank us, eventually.

It is entirely possible they believe they are doing the best thing, for the country, for the world, for humanity.

That doesn't make them any less wrong. All it does is make them more dangerous.

As for super-humasn powers, no, I don't see that. First of all, i think they're highly naively idealistic to think their Pax Americana can actually work, and second of all I see them screwing up what little chance it DID have of working.

-me

Jesse · 03-30-2003, 09:28 PM

So RED DAVE, does that mean you believe his analysis of power is incorrect? You believe the powerful are 100% cynical and that any and all idealistic rhetoric is automatically nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the public to further their own self-interested goals? You don't even think they might sometimes rationalize bad policies, but rather that they always know exactly what they're doing and just don't care? Do you also disagree with his claim that the powerful are often operating on bad information, and instead think that because of organizations like the CIA we really should assume they're pretty much "all-knowing"? (so that failure to debunk something like the Kuwaiti orphans story couldn't possibly have been because they were as in the dark about it as everyone else?)

It seems to me that all this is implausible, as the author of the above piece said, from an "ethnographic" standpoint. This just isn't how most humans, or human organizations, generally operate. To say this is not about being understanding or forgiving, it's just about being realistic and not slipping into paranoid conspiracy-theory-land.

03-30-2003, 08:09 PM	#1
fanny666 Regular Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Boulder CO Posts: 177	The Threat of Saddam. (essay) I wrote this to some of my friends who (think they) are "pro-war," and are not really politically engaged. Copy and share if you like, reply and deny, if you don't. -=-=-=-=-=- I think the thing that is most on people's minds is "TheThreat Posed By Saddam." I'm going to write very broadly, then people can bring up specifics if they want to! Cool? Now, obviously, we should be concerned about a dictator who invades a tiny nation, sending a bigger number of troops than the population of the entire island, then slaughtering tens of thousands of people, using rape and starvation, setting up concentration camps, and occupying the land for years and years. Except that's not Saddam I was talking about, it's Suharto of Indonesia, our ally to this day. In fact, we sold him all the weapons, and Carter dramatically increased weapons sales immediately after he had invaded East Timor. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was nothing like that. It certainly was an evil act of aggression, but he'd done (much) worse things to the Kurds of northern Iraq during the 80s when he was our ally. The whole thing about 300 premature babies dying was a lie, too. Propaganda. When I say that you have been SWAMPED with propaganda, I'm not kidding. "Everything you know is wrong," as they say. Stop and think about what it means that most of you had never even HEARD of "East Timor" until just now. We paid for a 25 year (this was going on for the majority of most of our lifetimes) occupation which wiped out a higher percentage of East Timorese than Hitler wiped out Jews. Seriously, turn off the TV. Only morons get hired as news anchors. Literally true. TV will only make your confusion worse. Turn it off. The pundits and anchors are not liars, just gullible and dumb, with a horribly misguided notion that patriotism means "standing behind the leader." Here's a quote for you: in May 2002, CBS news anchor Dan Rather acknowledged, "What we are talking about here--whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not--is a form of self-censorship. It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'" Of course, Rather said this to Britain's BBC--and didn't have the courage to say it at home, where he has been leading the patriotic charge in the media ever since September 11. Predictably, almost no outlet of the U.S. mainstream media reported on Rather's comments. (Perhaps he could have somehow been called "Anti-American"?) Of course when weapons manufacturers own television stations, you'd wouldn't expect to see wacky "anti-war activists" like me on TV. Maybe an actress or something. A weekend activist. Getting interviewed by a dense and "patriotic" Dan Rather. The ONLY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD who are afraid of Saddam Hussein are Iraqis and Americans. In Iraq they are afraid because he still controls the country and he murders dissenters. Here we are afraid because we have been hit with a relentless, vulgar display of propaganda portraying Saddam as an awesome and imminent threat, which he never was, and trying to link him to 9-11-2001, which he was not. Everybody else in the world sees him for what he is (or was): a murderous thug, to be sure- but the dictator of a starving third world nation with a 4th rate military. He doesn't even own a boat or a prop airplane, much less a jet. His missiles couldn't even reach the Atlantic ocean. He's not going to take away your freedoms. Bush, however, will. Iran and Kuwait- both of whom were invaded by Saddam's army- both long ago began renewing normal relations with Iraq. They live next door, and they are not afraid of Iraq. Israel didn't even consider Iraq in their top 5 threats. You've been scared into seeing him as this awesome, mighty foe, which he is not. And let's continue to be blunt. Bush knows perfectly well that this attack will very possibly CREATE an al-Qaeda style "terrorist" counter-attack. He has been told that by the entire intelligence community. Either it did not sink in or he does not care, but the fact is that he was warned. Right now, our brothers and sisters on the ground are facing troops, which will fight hard and be vicious- this is true. But they are 8000 miles away. WE flew over THERE. They were not about to come here. They don't even own a helecoptor. Manipulation of fear is right-wing politics 101. In the words of Anatol Lieven, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, the Bush administration (mostly recycled Reaganites) is utilizing "the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism" through fear of external enemies. Remember Reagan? Nicaragua was less than a day away from Texas! We had to attack them because they were coming to get us! And remember when he surrounded the White House with tanks becase Qadaffi was going to come and get us? We had to attack them too because they were coming to get us, too! Just a guess, but I bet Syria and Iran will threaten us next... Listen to Bush Propaganda 101. The announcer is heavy on the rhetoric, but the mix breaks down Bush's methods- which are not accidental- very well. The really scary thing is that, just like Reagan, he's too dumb to even understand what he's being told to do. But you can hear the coaching when he tries to ad-lib. http://homepage.mac.com/benburch/GWBand1984.mp3 Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini "If you're not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you." -Ralph Nader

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03-30-2003, 08:13 PM	#2
RED DAVE Banned Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 10,532	Good start for a discussion. I'll be interested in hearing how right wingers on the board defend Bush's actions, now, a week and a half into the actual war. RED DAVE

03-30-2003, 08:27 PM	#3
Jesse Moderator - Science Discussions Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Providence, RI, USA Posts: 9,908	The whole thing about 300 premature babies dying was a lie, too. Propaganda. This is true, but it should be pointed out that this was Kuwaiti propoganda, not US propoganda.

03-30-2003, 08:33 PM	#5
Jesse Moderator - Science Discussions Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Providence, RI, USA Posts: 9,908	Presumably both the US and Amnesty International believed it at the time.

03-30-2003, 09:16 PM	#9
Optional Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Chicago, IL, USA Posts: 1,049	Jesse, re: your cut-n-paste, I actually agree with a lot of it. I think that cheny&wolfowitz&rumsfeld&etc probably for the most part actually DO believe in what they are doing. They believe they are going to bring a Pax Americana to the world, a peace enforced at the barrel of an american m-16, and the world will thank us, eventually. It is entirely possible they believe they are doing the best thing, for the country, for the world, for humanity. That doesn't make them any less wrong. All it does is make them more dangerous. As for super-humasn powers, no, I don't see that. First of all, i think they're highly naively idealistic to think their Pax Americana can actually work, and second of all I see them screwing up what little chance it DID have of working. -me

03-30-2003, 09:28 PM	#10
Jesse Moderator - Science Discussions Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Providence, RI, USA Posts: 9,908	So RED DAVE, does that mean you believe his analysis of power is incorrect? You believe the powerful are 100% cynical and that any and all idealistic rhetoric is automatically nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the public to further their own self-interested goals? You don't even think they might sometimes rationalize bad policies, but rather that they always know exactly what they're doing and just don't care? Do you also disagree with his claim that the powerful are often operating on bad information, and instead think that because of organizations like the CIA we really should assume they're pretty much "all-knowing"? (so that failure to debunk something like the Kuwaiti orphans story couldn't possibly have been because they were as in the dark about it as everyone else?) It seems to me that all this is implausible, as the author of the above piece said, from an "ethnographic" standpoint. This just isn't how most humans, or human organizations, generally operate. To say this is not about being understanding or forgiving, it's just about being realistic and not slipping into paranoid conspiracy-theory-land.

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