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Attacking the Messenger
by LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Falk.
Prefatory Note: This is a valuable piece in the manner in which most valuable pieces written by liberals (in this case a “left liberal”) clarify almost as much as they confuse. What Falk and Davidson are saying is that an honest review of US foreign policy methods and objectives is long overdue. Who can disagree with that among relatively educated well meaning people? The problem starts with the context in which answers are sought.
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Davidson asks, [w]ill continued unqualified U.S. support of Israeli oppression of Palestinians increase or decrease future violent anti-American episodes at home or abroad? Yet, this critical aspect of any response to terrorism has apparently never been performed. As regards the administration of George W. Bush, this comes as no surprise. Bush and his neoconservative supporters were (and still are) ideologically driven and so are incapable of the objectivity necessary for such a self-critical review. That is why Bush came up with a range of cockamamy reasons, including the famous “they hate our values,” for the 9/11 attacks. President Obama, on the other hand, seemed, at least at first, capable of corrective insight.
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It’s useless to invoke meaningless categories like “ideologically driven neoconservatives” to explain the criminal nature of our foreign policy. Such utterances hide more than they reveal. How many angels can dance in the microscopic trench between “neocons” and “neoliberals”? Or, say, between neocons and pro-war liberals a la Hitchens? Long, long before there was any such construct, any such cabal, any such term, the US already had a criminal imperialist foreign policy. There has been a criminal foreign policy under practically all US presidents in the last 150 years (am being arbitrary here as we could go back much further and include the full-throttle war against the Plains Indians prosecuted under Republican sponsorship from 1860s as a form of subterranean subsidy to the transcontinental railroads, then the GOP’s chief financial backer ), the only difference being the degree and scope of lawlessness and violence.
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The “best and the brightest” that pursued one of the most astonishingly barbaric sociocides in the 20th century, the American aggression of Vietnam (in the coattails of the already barbarous Korean War), were predominantly self-defined, card-carrying liberals, members in good standing of the Democratic party. They served Kennedy and then LBJ without missing a beat. And, as Profs. Davidson and Falk well know, the criminality was and remains bipartisan, which indicates a systemic origin for the evil, such system being, of course, capitalism, and its inevitable exploitative and imperialist dynamic. How then, I ask, can the author have believed for a single instant that Obama, from the start a transparent shill for the establishment, a role reinforced with each passing day, would set a course much different than Bush’s? Further, what kind of “idealistic” analysis is this that entertains the notion that a president, at this advanced stage of political moral decomposition, can turn the tide all by himself without suffering the murderous wrath of a huge and well entrenched mendacious Congressional-military-media-industrial complex that operates above the law? Truth is, the rulers of this nation know quite well what they are doing and what they have been doing all along.
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Mistakes aside, their actions correspond exactly to the logic and momentum of the system in which they are embedded, the system which produces them and by which they profit handsomely in power and wealth. There is no need to invent fancy categories like “ideological neconservatives” to explain such reality. The facts—correctly interpreted— are more than enough. That said, Prof. Davidson’s article is a brave reminder of the situation we confront and as solid an alert as any. For that alone, he deserves our gratitude.
—Patrice Greanville
—Patrice Greanville
GO TO PAGE 2 TO READ IN PRAISE OF RICHARD FALK
We need much more geanvillepost media. The hope is in the fact that today, the youngest generation is taking their news more from the Intenet than mainstream media… Everywhere outside United States educated people know what is the biggest threat to peace… I’m sure you got the answer!
Cheers for that truth! Countless times every day I share the same sentiment with friends and acquaintances who lament the demise of nearly every aspect of our country and world. The farcical “news” sources keep the public as ignorant of reality as any Orwellian ruler in 1984 could wish! The internet is under attack, slyly but forcefully by the same powers who keep the populace unaware of international upheavals, such as the massive riots in Greece and other “Austerity” victim nations. Were it not for blogs/posts as Greanville and Gaither Stewart’s, I would be far less wise to the truth… Read more »