Fwd: [Peace-discuss] Norman Soloman

[Brussel Morton K.]

Forgot to forward this to all the rest…

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at uiuc.edu>
> Date: May 21, 2009 9:38:56 PM CDT
> To: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Norman Soloman
>
> A few comments:
>
> 1) Norman Solomon is as anti-war and anti-occupation (and empire) as  
> Carl Estabrook, although I agree he left some things unsaid in that  
> article. So, attacking him is misplaced, barking up the wrong tree,  
> and I think harmful to the already sufficiently fragmented antiwar  
> "movement". There's a kind of Leninist mentality working here.
>
> 2) Who expects total consistency? I don't know the facts of the  
> matter, but Tuchman may well have been pro Israel, and hence ready  
> to believe Joan Peters.
>
> 3) You say: "But Tuchman's analysis is unreliable. Hers is a Vietnam  
> book, another version of the "quagmire" myth -- that US policymakers  
> didn't know what they were getting into in SE Asia. "  I think, even  
> if they (US policymakers) had intended to control and occupy South  
> Vietnam (as in S. Korea), they clearly underestimated the resistance  
> they would encounter. In that sense, they did get stuck in a  
> "quagmire", and Tuchman is not wrong. And after all, they finally  
> left. It is not clear to me that from a military point of view they  
> had to.
>
> 4) That Tuchman's work is now contradicted by Estabrook, who is so  
> sure of his own views, is evidence enough of a certain arbitrariness  
> in the interpretation of history. Solomon was convinced by the  
> analogies he saw; I thought what he had to say was worthwhile.
>
> 5) As to the rest, I basically agree, but the vitriolic tone and  
> frequently distorting elements of Estabrook's critiques tend to  
> alienate even those who generally are on the same anti-war, anti- 
> imperialist, anti-capitalist side as he.
>
> 6) Finally, I would only note that the "cognitive dissonance" and  
> imperialist aims are not contradictory.
>
> --mkb
>
>
> On May 21, 2009, at 5:38 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> ..."only lacking," in other words, the reason that Americans are  
>> killing people around the world and inviting reprisals at home.   
>> Some omission.
>>
>> Norman Solomon [sic], rather desperately, puts up an insanity  
>> defense for Obama's war policy.  To do so, he enlists the help of  
>> the late Barbara Tuchman and her book, "The March of Folly: From  
>> Troy to Vietnam" (1984).
>>
>> But Tuchman's analysis is unreliable. Hers is a Vietnam book,  
>> another version of the "quagmire" myth -- that US policymakers  
>> didn't know what they were getting into in SE Asia. That's  
>> nonsense, and it's disturbing that it's being belched out again to  
>> provide a liberal smokescreen over the Long War in SW Asia.
>>
>> About the time of her Folly book (yes), Tuchman was one of the  
>> promoters of the embarrassing hoax by Joan Peters, "From Time  
>> Immemorial," proving that there were no Palestinians...
>>
>> (I'd also like to contest her account of the Reformation, but Mort  
>> tells us that "all this discussion about what might have been [is]  
>> rather silly [because] no one knows what the future might have  
>> been, in the short or the long run, if other actions/policies had  
>> been taken ... It's what's called idle speculation, that leads to  
>> nowhere."  But apparently not, when Tuchman talks about Vietnam,  
>> etc.)
>>
>> To return to the facts, US policy in the 1500-mile radius around  
>> the Persian Gulf -- goals and strategies -- has been consistent for  
>> two generations, and it's quite rational in the Weberian sense of  
>> fitting means to ends.  But both the ends -- US colonial control of  
>> Mideast energy resources, as an advantage over our economic rivals  
>> in Europe and Asia -- and the means to them, are vicious.  (See  
>> "The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia," recently posted here.)
>>
>> Solomon writes that Tuchman "devotes the closing chapters of 'The  
>> March of Folly' to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The  
>> parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are  
>> more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns."  But the  
>> patterns are not in some trick of mind but in the consistency of US  
>> policy.
>>
>> It's right that Obama is like Kennedy in that their "brain power"  
>> is devoted to "counterinsurgency," but counterinsurgency needs to  
>> be called by its right name: terrorism.  As the Kennedy  
>> intellectuals invented death squads for Latin America and then used  
>> them to kill tens of thousands in the "Phoenix Program" in Vietnam,  
>> so Obama has put an assassin in charge of his AfPak terrorism --  
>> which he has increased substantially over Bush's (e.g., 16 drone  
>> strikes in the first four months of 2009 compared with 36 in all of  
>> 2008; ordering the end of the peace deal in Swat).
>>
>> Tuchman and Solomon are wrong to say that "cognitive dissonance"  
>> was the reason the USG remained in Vietnam.  Imperialism was -- the  
>> US set out to demonstrate in Vietnam that no country in the Third  
>> World would be allowed to pursue its own path of development  
>> outside US control. (It would be a bad example to others.) And it  
>> should be clear that the US won the war in Vietnam -- in sense of  
>> preventing an example of alternative development, at astonishing  
>> human and environmental cost.  Vietnam today begs for new Nike  
>> plants.
>>
>> The "unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman charts" and that Solomon  
>> applies to the Obama White House is a chimera -- and a propaganda  
>> cover.  With Tuchman's ambiguous help, Solomon thinks (after  
>> Napoleon's police chief) that Obama's policy in Afghanistan is  
>> "worse than a crime -- it's a blunder."  But in spite of their myth- 
>> making, it's not a blunder -- unfortunately, American policy makers  
>> know what they're doing.  It's a crime.  --CGE
>>
>>
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> A interesting commentary, only lacking, I think, what may be the  
>>> roots of the
>>> Obama administration's policies, i.e., what the "pros" think is  
>>> the value of
>>> controlling S and SW Asia.  --mkb
>>> Published on Thursday, May 21, 2009 by CommonDreams.org <http://www.commondreams.org/ 
>>> >
>>> The March of Folly, Continued
>>> by Norman Solomon
>>> To understand what's up with President Obama as he escalates the  
>>> war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a  
>>> book published 25
>>> years ago. "The March of Folly <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345308239?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0345308239 
>>> >,"
>>> by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very  
>>> smart people in power can do very stupid things -- how a war  
>>> effort, ordered from
>>> on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession --  
>>> and how we,
>>> with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the  
>>> dominant
>>> moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes  
>>> normalized in our
>>> names. <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345308239?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0345308239 
>>> >
>>> What happens among policymakers is a "process of self-hypnosis,"  
>>> Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to  
>>> the British moves
>>> against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing  
>>> chapters of
>>> "The March of Folly" to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The
>>> parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan  
>>> are more than
>>> uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.
>>> With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise  
>>> comments
>>> about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies  
>>> largely
>>> unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of U.S. involvement in  
>>> Vietnam,
>>> Tuchman observes, vital lessons were "stated" but "not learned."
>>> As with John Kennedy -- another young president whose  
>>> administration "came
>>> into office equipped with brain power" and "more pragmatism than  
>>> ideology" --
>>> Obama's policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called
>>> counterinsurgency.
>>> "Although the doctrine emphasized political measures,  
>>> counterinsurgency in
>>> practice was military," Tuchman writes, an observation that  
>>> applies all too
>>> well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And  
>>> "counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded  
>>> zeal of
>>> the theory. All the talk was of ‘winning the allegiance' of the  
>>> people to
>>> their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be  
>>> won by
>>> outsiders was not a good gamble."
>>> Now, as during the escalation of the Vietnam War -- despite all  
>>> the front-paged articles and news bulletins emphasizing line items  
>>> for civic aid
>>> from Washington -- the spending for U.S. warfare in Afghanistan is  
>>> overwhelmingly military.
>>> Perhaps overeager to assume that the context of bombing campaigns  
>>> ordered by
>>> President Obama is humanitarian purpose, many Americans of antiwar
>>> inclinations have yet to come to terms with central realities of  
>>> the war
>>> effort -- for instance, the destructive trajectory of the  
>>> budgeting for the
>>> war, which spends 10 dollars toward destruction for every dollar  
>>> spent on
>>> humanitarian programs.
>>> From the top of the current administration -- as the U.S. troop  
>>> deployments
>>> in Afghanistan continue to rise along with the American air-strike  
>>> rates --
>>> there is consistent messaging about the need to "stay the course,"  
>>> even while
>>> bypassing such tainted phrases.
>>> The dynamic that Tuchman describes as operative in the first years  
>>> of the
>>> 1960s, while the Vietnam War gained momentum, is no less relevant  
>>> today: "For
>>> the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay  
>>> inside. For
>>> the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position,  
>>> not to make
>>> waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to  
>>> accept.
>>> Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant  
>>> information
>>> ‘cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for ‘Don't confuse me  
>>> with the
>>> facts.'" Along the way, cognitive dissonance "causes alternatives  
>>> to be
>>> ‘deselected since even thinking about them entails conflicts.'"
>>> Such a psycho-political process inside the White House has no use  
>>> for the
>>> report from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that came out of  
>>> the
>>> caucus's six-part forum on Capitol Hill this spring, "Afghanistan:  
>>> A Road Map
>>> for Progress."
>>> Souped up and devouring fuel, the war train cannot slow down for  
>>> the Progressive Caucus report's recommendation that "an 80-20  
>>> ratio (political-military) should be the formula for funding our  
>>> efforts in the
>>> region with oversight by a special inspector general to ensure  
>>> compliance."
>>> Or that "U.S. troop presence in the region must be oriented toward  
>>> training
>>> and support roles for Afghan security forces and not for U.S.-led
>>> counterinsurgency efforts."
>>> Or that "the immediate cessation of drone attacks should be  
>>> required." Or
>>> that "all aid dollars should be required to have a majority  
>>> percentage of
>>> dollars tied or guaranteed to local Afghan institutions and  
>>> organizations, to
>>> ensure countrywide job mapping, assessment and workforce  
>>> development process
>>> to directly benefit the Afghan people."
>>> The policymakers who are gunning the war train can't be bothered  
>>> with such
>>> ideas. After all, if the solution is -- rhetoric aside -- assumed  
>>> to be
>>> largely military, why dilute the potency of the solution?  
>>> Especially when, as
>>> we're repeatedly made to understand, there's so much at stake.
>>> During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam,  
>>> "enormity of
>>> the stakes was the new self-hypnosis," Tuchman comments. She  
>>> quotes the
>>> wisdom -- conventional and self-evident -- of New York Times  
>>> military
>>> correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that U.S.  
>>> withdrawal from
>>> Vietnam would bring "political, psychological and military  
>>> catastrophe,"
>>> signaling that the United States "had decided to abdicate as a  
>>> great power."
>>> Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely  
>>> civilized even
>>> in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been  
>>> trumpeted by many
>>> a president even while the Pentagon's carnage apparatus kept  
>>> spinning into
>>> overdrive. "Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than  
>>> all-out war,
>>> as its proponents would have it," Tuchman notes. "It kills with  
>>> the same
>>> finality."
>>> For a president, with so much military power under his command,  
>>> frustrations
>>> call for more of the same. The seductive allure of  
>>> counterinsurgency is apt
>>> to heighten the appeal of "warnography" for the commander in  
>>> chief; whatever
>>> the earlier resolve to maintain restraint, the ineffectiveness of  
>>> more
>>> violence invites still more -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in  
>>> Vietnam,
>>> Laos and Cambodia.
>>> "The American mentality counted on superior might," Tuchman  
>>> commented, "but a
>>> tank cannot disperse wasps." In Vietnam, the independent  
>>> journalist Michael
>>> Herr wrote, the U.S. military's violent capacities were awesome:  
>>> "Our machine
>>> was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop."
>>> And that is true, routinely, of a war-making administration.
>>> The grim and ultimately unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman  
>>> charts is in
>>> evidence with President Obama and his approach to the Afghan war:  
>>> "In its
>>> first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries  
>>> governing
>>> a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and  
>>> failing
>>> function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is  
>>> the period
>>> when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and  
>>> a change
>>> of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard.
>>> Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to  
>>> protect egos;
>>> policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater  
>>> the
>>> investment and the more involved in it the sponsor's ego, the more
>>> unacceptable is disengagement."
>>> A week ago, one out of seven members of the House of  
>>> Representatives voted
>>> against a supplemental appropriations bill providing $81.3 billion  
>>> to the
>>> Pentagon, mainly for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. An opponent  
>>> of the
>>> funding, Congressman John Conyers, pointed out that "the president  
>>> has not
>>> challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the  
>>> foolhardy
>>> belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through  
>>> the
>>> judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence."
>>> Conyers continued: "That belief, promoted by the previous  
>>> administration in
>>> the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that  
>>> the United
>>> States possesses the capacity and also has a duty to determine the  
>>> fate of
>>> nations in the greater Middle East.
>>> "I oppose this supplemental war funding bill because I believe  
>>> that we are
>>> not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of  
>>> empire are
>>> counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical  
>>> religious
>>> extremism. For example, U.S. strikes from unmanned Predator Drones  
>>> and other
>>> aircraft produced 64 percent of all civilian deaths caused by the  
>>> U.S., NATO
>>> and Afghan forces in 2008. Just this week, U.S. air strikes took  
>>> another 100
>>> lives, according to Afghan officials on the ground. If it is our  
>>> goal to
>>> strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken  
>>> the radicals
>>> that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly
>>> counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of
>>> ‘collateral damage,' seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our  
>>> nation. .
>>> . .
>>> "Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a  
>>> fate similar
>>> to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of  
>>> unending
>>> frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the  
>>> same failed
>>> outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and  
>>> heartbreak of
>>> our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad.  
>>> If we honor
>>> the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good faith send  
>>> our fellow
>>> citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too late to turn  
>>> away from
>>> this path."
>>> /Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive  
>>> activist. His
>>> book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us  
>>> to Death <http://www.amazon.com/dp/047179001X?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=047179001X&adid=04HBF8066AX9NX1TM5C8& 
>>> >"
>>> has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His  
>>> most recent
>>> book is "Made Love, Got War. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0977825345?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0977825345&adid=19Q58Q2H7J4MHS54RYPG& 
>>> >"
>>> He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare <http://pdamerica.org/articles/misc/2008-02-29-14-19-42-misc.php 
>>> > campaign.
>>> /In California, he is co-chair of the Commission on a Green New  
>>> Deal for the
>>> North Bay;www.GreenNewDeal.info <http://www.greennewdeal.info/>.
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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