[Peace-discuss] Herman…

[Brussel Morton K.]

The cartoons which accompanied this article are worth viewing, at

http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/16733

Neither Popular Government Nor Popular Information
On reactionaries, missile shields, and military nuts

March, 01 2008 By Edward S. Herman


One of my favorite quotations, from James Madison in 1822, is that “a  
popular government without popular information, or the means of  
acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps  
both” (this was used as the title of Nichols and McChesney’s valuable  
book on the U.S. media, Tragedy and Farce). We are in the midst of  
both a farce and a tragedy in the United States today: the farce, a  
government of great incompetence and hostile to the interests of the  
general citizenry, a leadership headed by a wild jackass, an elite  
including the corporate media and Democratic leadership unable or  
unwilling to constrain the jackass, and corruption now competitive  
with that of the Gilded Age. A tragedy in the huge pro-wealthy tax  
cuts and overlapping military and corruption waste in the face of a  
distressed majority and deteriorating infrastructure at home, the  
killing, destruction, and foregone opportunities abroad, and the  
domestic and global problems unmet.

By “popular government” I think Madison meant an elected government  
and by “popular information” I think he meant information that would  
be useful to the citizenry and allow them to make intelligent choices  
consistent with their own interests and perception of the public  
interest. Of course, if you have an elected government without  
“popular information” there is a good chance that you may end up with  
a government that serves the special interests that control that flow  
of information. In that case “popular government” would be a  
misleading phrase, as the elected government would likely be a  
servant of those special interests, as is obviously the case today.

The word “popular” is a close relative of the word “populism.” The  
latter is an invidious word, a word of derogation in the U.S.  
political economy today. The trouble with Ralph Nader in the 2000  
election and Dennis Kucinich in 2008 is that they are “populists,”  
which means that they have called for policies that may serve the  
general citizenry but which are disapproved by the corporate  
community. This means that such candidates will not get sufficient  
funding to be competitive and hence can be (and are) virtually  
ignored as well as sneered at in the mainstream media. Candidates are  
vetted by anti-populists and, in a system of “golden rule,” populists  
are automatically disqualified, a disqualification which the  
mainstream media regularly implement (see Lawrence Shoup’s “The  
Presidential Election 2008: Ruling class conducts its hidden  
primary,” Z Magazine, February 2008).

But as these “populist” candidates are the only ones calling for a  
range of policies serving the interests of the majority—with the  
partial exception of Edwards whose populist positions and rhetoric  
have caused him to suffer dwindling attention and credibility—the  
media will ignore those policies and focus on the horse race among  
the funded candidates and occasionally some of the issues they raise,  
but carefully excluding discussion of the solutions proposed by the  
“populists” (e.g., single-payer health care reform, a rapid exit from  
Iraq, a massive cut in the “defense [i.e., offense]” budget, tax  
changes that reverse the Bush-era giveaways to the “haves”). In this  
way “popular information” can be kept at a minimum, the public’s  
electoral choices will exclude a populist who might actually  
represent their interests and carry out major policy initiatives on  
their behalf, and the farce and tragedy can continue under the  
auspices of either party.

Conservatives Versus Liberals, or Reactionaries Versus A Mixed Bag?

It is commonplace language in this country to call George Bush, Dick  
Cheney, Rick Santorum, and, say, Bill O’Reilly “conservatives,”  
contrasted with Nancy Pelosi, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and, say,  
Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen, who are “liberals.” But this usage  
is badly obsolete and fails to take into account the massive shift to  
the right of the entire political spectrum and the resultant  
rightward drift in the actual policies and positions of these  
individuals. A conservative should want to conserve, not overthrow  
major existing institutions and return society to conditions in 1890,  
or those in an authoritarian state where the head-of-state can act  
without legal limits on his power to imprison, wage war, and secretly  
invade the private lives of the citizenry.

Bush, Cheney, Santorum, and O’Reilly aren’t trying to conserve  
anything. They are trying to increase elite economic, political, and  
social power, which entails further centralization of executive  
power, weakening any containing legislative and independent judicial  
powers, curbing individual rights, shrinking or eliminating the  
welfare state and any organized opposition to corporate power and  
freedom of action, and pressing onward with militarization and power  
projection (i.e., imperialist expansion) abroad. One real merit of  
perpetual war is that it strengthens undemocratic power at home as  
“national security” considerations tend to override any popular  
rights. The ends are reactionary and radical, surely not  
conservative, and tend toward a police state and some form of  
fascism, with the masses kept in line by force and the threat of  
force, as well as cultivated fear and terror-war propaganda. We  
should strongly object when these statist reactionaries are described  
as conservative.



Pelosi, the Clintons, Friedman, and Cohen fail one important classic  
liberal test—hostility to “the tyranny of armaments” and recognition  
that “the military spirit eats into free institutions and absorbs the  
public resources which might go to the advancement of  
civilization” (L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism). They have certainly not  
spoken out against the militarization of the United States and power  
projection under the guise of a “war on terror,” have not put up a  
fight over the Iraq war, and have been pretty quiet about the anti- 
civil liberties thrusts of the PATRIOT and Military Commissions Acts.  
They haven’t opposed very strongly if at all the growing racism and  
the prison-industrial complex, or neoliberalism and the growth in  
inequality. They are liberal on social issues and favor mild  
reformist actions on health care, jobs, and environmental matters. If  
we put up a political spectrum line, we would have the Bush-Cheney- 
O’Reilly reactionaries on the right; Pelosi, the Clintons, and a  
large part of the Democratic party and media establishment in the  
mixed-bag of a social liberal-economic conservative-militaristic and  
moderate-expansionist center; and the majority of the public and a  
minority of journalists on the left (anti-militarist, anti-war, anti-  
neoliberal, populist). The mixed baggers have adapted to the  
rightward shift, thereby helping consolidate it.

Bill Clinton was notorious for “feeling your pain” as he inflicted it  
on ordinary citizens, with NAFTA, the WTO, and the ending of federal  
welfare support, and his anti-crime and anti-terrorism legislation  
that helped fill the prisons and fed right into Bush II policies. The  
major contending Democrats now favor mild reformist actions on health  
care and other matters, but even on these, as with Clinton, their  
promises as candidates tend to fade when they take office and must  
face the establishment’s pressures to cut spending, show their  
toughness in resisting their voting constituency’s demands for  
relief, and demonstrate their “national security” credentials. They  
may talk about change, but cannot be relied on to bring it about.

Czech Missile Shield

Poland and Czechoslovakia are planned beneficiaries of a U.S.  
manufactured and funded “missile shield” to protect them and  
everybody in the civilized world from Iran’s missiles that may some  
day be dispensing nuclear weapons. It is a bit frightening that the  
mainstream U.S. media can take this at face value and not see: (1)  
that this plan is a fraud in its pretense that it is a defensive  
weapon and “shield”; (2) that it is in fact an offensive weapon that  
must be taken as such by Russia; and (3) that producing it is one  
more boondoggle in a huge stream servicing the military-industrial  
complex and keeping the arms (boondoggle)-race flourishing.

Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, won’t have one for years if ever,  
and has long been prepared to negotiate a firm commitment not to get  
one if the United States would guarantee abandonment of its long- 
standing “regime change” objective in dealing with Iran. The United  
States has never been willing to do this, so the “threat” is  
contrived and derivative of a U.S. plan of destabilization and  
aggression, in conflict with UN principles but still supported by the  
UN with its U.S.-organized threats to Iran rather than to the  
potential aggressor. But the “shield” plan is also insane in that an  
Iran with a few nuclear weapons would hardly use them to attack  
Czechoslavakia or Poland or the United States, for that matter. Any  
Iranian use of nuclear weapons on the United States or one of its  
allies would be suicidal. It might at some future date, if Iran did  
finally acquire nuclear weapons, try to use one on the United States  
if the United States first used nuclear weapons on Iran, but this  
would make them responsive to a U.S. first strike—it would not  
justify the shield as “defensive.”

But the placement of this “shield” right next door to Russia is an  
obvious threat to that country, as it could be used in a first strike  
against Russia with little time elapsing for Russian defense, or it  
would be useful in the case of a U.S.-based first strike against  
Russia as a means of dealing with any Russian response. The Russians  
feel threatened by this insane action, as they should, but the “free  
press” follows the official party line in considering the negative  
Russian reaction a bit paranoid. Imagine, however, the U.S. media’s  
reaction if the Russians planned on putting up such an anti-missile  
shield in Venezuela and Cuba, on the grounds that both countries, as  
well as Russia, were threatened by Israeli nuclear weapons (weapons  
which at least exist).

The new missile shield, and the establishment of bases all around the  
periphery of Russia, are very provocative. As Vladimir Putin recently  
pointed out, “Nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide  
behind international law…. This is nourishing the arms race with the  
desire of countries to get nuclear weapons” (Imre Karacs, “Putin:  
America is fuelling worldwide nuclear arms race,” Sunday Times,  
February 11, 2008). But this is a plus from the standpoint of the  
Pentagon and military contractors, as it will justify further arms  
expenditures with new “threats” and maybe some nice little wars.  
“Blowback” is profitable, and with the “populists” marginalized, who  
is to stop the process?

The Five Military Nuts

It was recently reported in the press that five leading Western  
military officers had put forward a manifesto calling for a new NATO  
and a “grand strategy” to deal with the “increasingly brutal world.”  
The most notable feature of this new strategy is its claim that, “The  
first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation  
as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass  
destruction” (see Ian Traynor, “Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key  
option, NATO told,” the Guardian, January 22, 2008). The reasons for  
the crisis, according to the five generals, are: (1) political  
fanaticism and religious fundamentalism; (2) the negative effect of  
globalization in stimulating terrorism, organized crime, and the  
spread of WMD; (3) climate change and the quest for energy security;  
and (4) the weakening of national state and international  
institutions like the UN and NATO.

The most notable features of this analysis and program are: first,  
the confusion of cause and effect and failure to see the root of the  
increasing brutalization in the West’s own policies; second, the deep  
irresponsibility and illegality of the novel new proposal; and third,  
the Kafkaesque idea of preventing the use of WMD by using them. The  
confusion of cause and effect is important for the generals because a  
reversal toward reality would call for a change in Western policies  
that are themselves brutal and that induce responsive brutality. The  
Iraq invasion-occupation was and remains very brutal and has  
admittedly provoked a resistance and given a lift to al Qaeda. Logic  
tells us that it was this Western “preemptive” and preventive action  
that was the cause of the brutality, along with the weakening of the  
UN and its and NATO’s excessive subservience to the United States.  
Logic also tells us that if the “preemptive nuclear strike” strategy  
had been in effect in 2002-2003, the United States and NATO might  
have unleashed nuclear weapons on Iraq based on a lie, thus greatly  
increasing the criminality of the actual “supreme international crime.”

The generals fail to see that “political fanaticism and religious  
fundamentalism” pervade the United States and Israel, countries that  
over the past decade have engaged in serial aggressions and (in the  
case of Israel) ethnic cleansing based on a Biblical vision of a  
promised land for a chosen people (accepted also by an important  
segment of the Bush constituency and perhaps Bush himself). Giving  
the go ahead for first use of nuclear weapons to these groups is  
especially insane. Their actions, and corporate globalization, with  
its mass impoverishment effects, have greatly stimulated terrorism,  
and organized crime, and the spread of WMD. These are responses to  
the impact of Western policies. The weakening of the UN and turning  
it into an organization servicing Western policy and the wide  
acceptance of the right of the strong to intervene across borders has  
encouraged aggression by the strong and caused weaker countries to  
hasten to rearm and gain WMD in order to protect themselves. The  
proposal of the five generals will increase that rush to WMD.

The five generals’ proposal ignores the fact that the projection of  
power by the Bush administration, its threat and implementation of  
preventive wars, and its opportunism and complete disregard of the  
Nuclear Proliferation Treaty—except in its bearing on the nuclear  
policy of a U.S. regime-change target, Iran—has been a major stimulus  
to the global quest for WMD. A sane proposal for controlling nuclear  
arms would be to urge a return to and an even-handed enforcement of  
the NPT, which included a call and promise for a gradual reduction  
and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons by the countries that  
possessed them, but the five generals are not interested in such  
ideas as they speak for the main abusers of the NPT and the countries  
that have engaged in serial violations of the UN Charter over the  
past decade.

The five generals’ proposal is a new landmark in the increasing  
willingness of the Western powers to assert their military muscle and  
enforce their vision of a neoliberal world by force and violence. It  
is not surprising that their dramatic new proposal for enhanced  
violence should be a Kafkaesque contradiction—that the West should  
use nuclear weapons to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. It has  
become so commonplace in the nuthouse for Western terrorism to be  
something other than terror, and Western aggression not aggression,  
why not nuclear bombing not being the use of nuclear weapons? Why not  
normalize nuclear war?
Z
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