[Peace-discuss] Obama and Bush incompetent?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Bill Blum quotes Richard K. Moore to indicate how the political class buy 
Rep/Dem propaganda.]

"The presumption of 'government incompetence' is seldom a useful assumption in 
evaluating the behavior of governments. We only reach such a conclusion if we 
take their official rhetoric at face value. In terms of 'achieving democracy', 
the official rhetoric, Bush has been 'incompetent' in Iraq. But in terms of the 
real agenda — building permanent bases and controlling the oil — he has in fact 
been successful. I have found that this is always the pattern: some real agenda 
is always being achieved by the policies in force, despite the apparent bungling 
in terms of the official agenda" - the "official agenda" being the USG 
propaganda account.

This is nothing new. The leading intellectual in the US foreign policy 
establishment, George Kennan, wrote in 1948 in a top-secret paper (State 
Department Policy Planning Staff #23) - in the course of assigning each region 
of the world its proper role within the overarching framework of American power 
- that the basic policy goal is to maintain the "position of disparity" that 
separates our enormous wealth from the poverty of others; and to achieve that 
goal "We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as 
human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization," 
recognizing that we must "deal in straight power concepts," not "hampered by 
idealistic slogans" about "altruism and world-benefaction." The idealistic 
slogans woud be saved for the official propaganda.