Fwd: [Peace-discuss] Norman Soloman

[C. G. Estabrook]

I'll try to ignore the ad hominems because I think there's a fairly important
disagreement here.

First of all, aren't you astonished that Solomon is reduced to offering an
insanity defense -- "folly" -- for the undeniable fact that the transition from
Bush to Obama has meant an increase in aggression and violence in the
prosecution of the war, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan?  It's amazing
that he's reduced to that, in order to try to explain how a president he
supports is committing war crimes.

He's taken Tuchman's silly book from a generation ago, a paean of praise to 
Kennedy liberalism, and used it to suggest that the problem is that "Obama's 
policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called counterinsurgency"! 
  (The argument is so weak that even his prose breaks down: can adrenaline 
really surge to engorge something?)

Second, Solomon is in a position and of an age to know how false Tuchman's 
account of Vietnam is.  It does make a difference whether Vietnam was a 
"quagmire" that the US stumbled into inadvertently, or a logical outcome of US 
postwar imperialism.

There were in fact two anti-war arguments in regard to Vietnam, and they are now
being refurbished for the Long War.  The first was that Vietnam began as a
"blundering attempt to do good" and got out of hand; the second was that the US
saw Vietnam as an demonstration war in its imperial policy.  The first is false,
and the second is true.

The US did leave Vietnam, after a fashion, but only after its conscript army
revolted -- and after it had killed millions and destroyed the region, thus
achieving its war aim of preventing "the threat of a good example" of
independent development.  It did not achieve its maximum war aim of placing a
viable puppet government in South Vietnam (the war was always principally
against South Vietnam), but the government that resulted was forced to be
properly dutiful, as it is today.

You're right that "from a military point of view" the US never left SE Asia.
But the mass murder there, as today in Afpak, was not the result of "surging
adrenaline" but imperial policy; it was not "folly" but imperialism, a 
geopolitical advantage for dominant social groups in the US, again as
it is today.

Finally, Solomon argues quite fantastically that American killing in Afpak is a
result of "cognitive dissonance," "self-hypnosis," and an "ultimately unhinged
process" (just like the mid-1960s, according to Tuchman) in order to avoid
admitting that the White House is simply following a murderous imperialist
policy.  Yes, he certainly "left some things unsaid."  --CGE


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> 
>> 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
>>>>  
>>>> <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
>>>>  
>>>> <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."