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Random Thoughts
Sanitizing
History and Choices
to Fool Citizens & the World
by
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
In a previous article, I have argued that since human beings are a
social species, it is very important for them to project a virtuous
character to win the trust, respect and co-operation of their fellow
beings to obtain wealth, power and sexual gratification. Reputations
often stand as spectacular towering monuments despite flawed and shabby
foundations of character. Nations are often, if not invariably equally
afflicted by the disease of status, and shining cities on the hill
derive their glowing effulgence from forced immolation of their
unwilling, ignorant and powerless poor. Their leaders mouth platitudes
that all men are created equal while holding others in slavery or
bondage, expropriating the wealth and property of the indigenous at home
and sending them to perish on the trail of tears or indulging in
genocidal violence to subjugate natives in other countries by aerial
bombardment, with collaboration of greedy treasonous traitors, and
reneging on treaties.
This is why Howard Zinn�s �A Peoples History Of The United States�
and Herman & Chomsky�s �Manufactured Consent� are the two books
that every American should read thoroughly. Zinn and Chomsky are in
their eighties and the real lights of the nation. Manufactured
Consent finds the reporting of David Halberstam and Stephen Kinzer
less than laudatory during the Vietnam War, but since then Kinzer in his
more recent book �Overthrow� has laid it out like it is and in a
speech in 2008 articulates a brutally frank and honest analysis of US
policy. Kinzer, from whose writings the data below is taken, sums up the
stages of policy metamorphosis in three stages. A small country being
exploited by a US multinational demands a fairer redistribution of
profits (sugar industry in Hawaii, banana plantations in Guatemala, oil
in Iran). The US company, a large campaign contributor to the US
congress and presidential candidates complains to the incumbent and asks
for help. The economic motives are transformed into a geostrategic
threat. Covert and overt planning are initiated by the US government by
the State, Defense and Intelligence agencies. The second state molts
into the third stage where the US public is fed the notion that the US
is attacking or annexing the country for its own good, with purely
altruistic and benevolent motives (bring democracy to Iraq or improve
the lot of women in Afghanistan). A new quagmire with sacrifice of blood
(of the poor) and national treasure is created.
Most people are unaware that at a conference in Geneva after WW2, the US
signed an agreement to keep North and South Vietnam separate for two
years and then permit a supervised referendum vote in the South to
determine unification or not. President Eisenhower felt at the end of
two years that the vote would favor unification and election of Ho Chi
Minh as the leader, so he unilaterally and conveniently reneged on the
accord and installed a puppet regime, refused the referendum and sent in
the US armed forces, starting the newest Vietnam War, lost 20+ years
later. To avoid the stigma of losing a war during his presidency, Nixon
made up with China, which has led to industrial and economic
modernization of China to enrich the US corporations. The net result is
de-industrialization of the US, turning it into a debtor dependent on
Chinese financing and partly to the current economic meltdown.
In 1898 Cuban revolutionaries were winning the war of independence
against Spain and were chary of gratuitously offered US military help.
The Congress passed the Teller amendment promising to withdraw the US
troops as soon as the Spanish troops were defeated and left. When the
Spanish left, the US refused to honor its own law and passed a new Platt
amendment that required Cuba to cede Guantanamo Bay and allow US
hegemony in Cuba. When the US realized that the new revolutionary Cuban
government intended to pursue land reform by taking over land from US
companies to give it to landless peasants, it appointed puppet
governments for about sixty years, till a new revolution under Castro
overthrew the puppet government of Batista under US control. Since then
it has embargoed, isolated, boycotted and threatened Cuba on the pretext
of it being a communist government in spite of trade and other relations
with China, USSR and other communist governments. Obama still refuses to
resume normal relations. The US overthrew an elected Iranian government
but refuses to apologize or make amends to Iran, just as it refuses to
do so to its own black citizens for slavery. I concede that Obama is
better than the bozo Bush, but he still faces the Wall Street and Big
Bank Mecca when he bows and makes financial offerings from the public
treasury.
That brings me to the latest Obama hypocrisy. He did have the decency to
publicly reveal the details of methods of torture perpetrated in
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, but he does not wish to prosecute
those CIA operatives who carried it out, those justice department
lawyers who gave legal justification or Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Hayden, the prior CIA chief and Panetta, the current one criticized the
revelation and preferred shoving the torture under the rug. US law and
the Geneva (again) Convention ratified by the US senate requires
prosecution, yet Obama says it is a time for reflection, not
retribution. This is the Bush Cheney style which puts favored government
officials and rich banksters above the law and regulated by the
discretion of their cronies like Paulsons, Rubins, Summers, Greenspans,
Geithners of the revolving doors and tax forgetfulness.
When the US as a victor of WW2 carried out the Nuremberg and Tokyo
trials of Nazis and Japanese, it expressly denied immunity on the
pretext of following orders of higher government officials and held
ministers and cabinet members maximally culpable for criminal policies
and hanged them. Associate US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson�s
words need to be reread. �"If certain acts of violation of treaties are
crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether
Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of
criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have
invoked against us.--- We must never forget that the record on which we
judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us
tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to
our own lips as well."
Now as my beginning words on virtue prove, the hypocrisy of the US and
Obama shows that their concept of justice is not that all people are
created equal, but as Orwell said, �Some people are more equal than
others�. Virtue, justice and rule of law are mere pretenses of US policy
to be conveniently set adrift as in preemptive wars, Vietnam massacres
(My Lai and others), Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Since Arizona
State University refuses to confer an honorary doctorate on Obama, where
he is giving a commencement speech, I wonder if there is a School of
Scoundrels where treaties are made and abrogated conveniently and
expeditiously, which might bestow him, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld
honorary degrees. Failing that we could jointly nominate the Taliban,
Obama, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Osama for the Nobel Peace Prize for
flogging, beheading, terror and condoning torture. They are at least as
deserving as Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin and
some other recipients. If Obama tires of the presidency, he could become
an appellate court judge like Jay Bybee or a law professor like John Yoo,
the Solomons of legal distortion, who wrote the legal memos justifying
torture.
April 19,
2009
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