JACKPOT!

Shhhhh...whatever you do, don't say scramble on NPR when you talk about Africa. No matter how obvious (and crass) the military, energy and economic objectives of US foreign policy in Africa are - and no matter that others know a scramble when they see a scramble - keep the focus on the US military or State Department talking points about how noble the aims of the US in Africa are - or at least how they will stop the spread of terrorism there. Zwerdling interviewed Fisher of the BBC about Clinton's trip to Africa:

Zwerdling: "What are a couple of the countries there the US has the most potential problems ahead and what could they do to help you know ameliorate them?"

Fisher: "....but it seems like perhaps Somalia seems to have been a real focus of this trip meeting with that president in Kenya and also Zimbabwe here...two areas...hoping to push things forward..."

Zwerdling: "For example, Somalia, it's been an endless civil war there are apparently huge numbers of militants and extremists crossing the border into Kenya almost unchecked. What realistically could the US do about that?"

Fisher: "...al-Shabab this Islamist group which is causing great concern in Washington, it's said to have links to al-Qaeda and the great fear is that Somalia as a failed state might act as a springboard for further terrorist activity....so Somalia is one of these very difficult problems which Africa has had to grapple with. It's been in a state of almost non-stop civil war since the early 90s so it's not a problem which is going to be solved overnight..."

Not only are the real motives of expanding US hegemony not discussed, but when the focus is on Somalia the recent history of US destruction of stability in Somalia is censored, as it always is on NPR (see April 2007 and November 2007 for two glaring examples). You can't help but sense that to honestly discuss what Uncle Sam is up to in the world might just lead someone to connect the dots and conclude that...STOP! We are not an empire, we are not an empire, we are not, not, not, not....

Phoenix Rising

Steve Inskeep opens this morning's rewriting of the history of the Vietnam War with this gem: "It is of course hard to understand the present without an occasional look at the past." The report claims that 40 years ago a new, successful strategy was launched in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams, the brand spanking new war criminal American Commander of Forces there.

Tom Bowman says that unlike his predecessor Gen. Westmoreland, "Abrams saw the fight in Vietnam differently. In a counterinsurgency, the important thing isn't enemy body count; it's protecting the population, training local Vietnamese forces, providing money and programs for a better life....For Abrams, the right strategy was not 'search and destroy.' He saw it as 'clear and hold,' words that echo four decades later..."

Now that's funny. I could have sworn I read that Abrams strategy meant something besides "a better life" for the Vietnamese. I went to the library and found Fire in the Lake where Frances Fitzgerald writes on page 405 "Abrams...diverted the American forces...to an all out attempt to destroy enemy base areas...under the Accelerated Pacification Campaign the US Ninth Division almost literally 'cleaned out' the Front-held regions...bombing villages, defoliating crops, and forcing the peasants to leave their lands..."

Clear and hold wasn't pretty, and it definitely wasn't about "protecting the population." Bowman also doesn't mention that one side of the Abram's clear and hold strategy was the bloody Phoenix Program. In Fire in the Lake you can also read how under Abrams in 1969 the United States set a goal for the Phoenix Program to 'neutralize' twenty thousand NLF agents during the year. Of the 19,534 people reported "neutralized" that year torture was systemic and one third were dead (page 412).

But tallying the US atrocities of the Vietnam War are beside the point for NPR. Bowman's story is all about how great Abrams' strategy was - "Abrams was also more successful in his strategy. By the end of 1968 and into 1969, an analysis of Abrams' efforts showed the military situation in Vietnam had significantly improved." And of course this strategy (40 years later) is what has delivered such glorious successes in Iraq: "that clear, hold and build strategy in Iraq came after failed attempts, some akin to Westmoreland's....Iraq was being compared to the quagmire in Vietnam, at a time when Abrams' clear and hold approach was finding its way into a new Army manual created by Gen. David Petraeus."

Finally Bowman wants us to know that Vietnam could have been won with Abrams' strategy: "Creighton Abrams believed the South Vietnamese could have been victorious over the North, if only the U.S. continued to support them." Just like the victory that is at hand in Iraq...see, only the fickle US public's lack of support will deliver defeat from the jaws of victory.

Private Shapiro and Sutherland

(Lt General William Caldwell speaking through JJ Sutherland)

The US Army releases its Stability Operation Field Manual and Alabama Moon points out that there's nothing "new" about its goal ("conflict against enemies intent on limiting American access and influence throughout the world") and its author's implied threat against "homeland" instability!

But from the news organization that revels in counterinsurgency and gets all goosesteppybumpy over Army Strong you can expect nothing but an upbeat commercial for this latest product of US militarism.

Here's the meat of the report:

(Ari Shapiro opens with): "When the US army fought its way into Baghdad in 2003 soldiers there found they were not prepared to establish peace, security and the rule of law in Iraq. It's taken the military years to show some progress on those fronts..."

(Sutherland follows): "That lack of coherent planning for what happens after the shooting stops was intrinsic to the army...that process bore terrible fruit in the days, then months, then years after the invasion of Iraq: chaos in the streets, no basic services, a growing insurgency, thousands of dead Americans. Security in Iraq has improved dramatically - from a civil war to at least a modicum of peace. Fragile certainly, but an improvement, an improvement driven by fundamentally changing the army's approach.

The manual lays out a series of steps on how to stabilize a country after a war - from providing security, establishing the rule of law, to things like social well-being, stable governance and a working economy....

....an army needed to win the wars we're in, an army this manual will help to build. "

As always, not a mention of the terrible "fruit" of 4.5 million Iraqi refugees and over a million dead. Makes me want to scream. And this passes for journalism...ugghh.

Set It Up Nicely

As our pipsqueak of a President talks big at the NATO summit NPR is there to help our little tyrant shine his "legacy." As Bush pushes for greater NATO expansion, a thinking person might judge this a good time to question the policy of US/NATO triumphalism and aggressive expansion. Way back in 1998 the "No to NATO expansion Speakers Tour" managed to find a range of critics. Stephen F. Cohen has noted how the US/NATO post Cold War policy represents a tragic, lost opportunity, and in a 2006 article in The Nation he writes,

"The real US policy has been very different--a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia."

Mark Ames, a US reporter living in Russia has also noted the dangers of the US/NATO divide and conquer strategy toward Russia.

On the NPR piece we get to hear plenty from the decider:

• "NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the membership action plan, and NATO membership must remain open to all of Europe's democracies that seek it."
• "I will reiterate that the missile defense capabilities we are developing are not designed to defend against Russia — just as the new NATO we are building is not designed to defend against Russia. The Cold War is over. Russia is not our enemy."

And then for analysis, where does NPR turn? Why, former U.S. ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter! Now that is some daring journalism! I hope Michele Kelemen gets her medal; she tells us that "as for the President's speech, Hunter gives him high marks for recognizing NATO's importance at his last summit of the alliance." And then we get to hear the great Hunter himself:

"The rest of the world is looking to American leadership, and I think he set it up very nicely for the next President — whichever of the three becomes president — because they're going to have a lot of work to do in common."

All's well in the empire...

Newspeak from Oceania

If I were a radio broadcaster working for the Ministry of Peace I'd start my report on the guy who heads up the Pacific Region of the world's most bloated war-making organization by saying,

"This morning we're going to take a look at a military leader who spends his days presiding over peace rather than war."

But wait, that would be plagiarism since that's exactly how Steve Inskeep begins Tuesday morning's NPR report on Admiral Timothy Keating of Pacific Command. In case you missed the subtle Inscreepy® message, he finishes by reminding us that Keating "spends his days preparing for but trying to prevent conflicts in the huge Asia Pacific region."

Mike Schuster (hanging out at the West 2008 warlove convention) takes over the boot licking at this point. Schuster reveals that Keating's "previous assignments seem to have prepared him well for the Pacific Command." Pointedly Schuster tells us that

"Keating has traveled throughout the region, and he has gotten good marks so far from many of the experts who follow US policy in Asia - among them Ralph Cossa of the Pacific Forum in Hawaii."

There's that favorite NPR ploy: a vague and unsubstantiated phrase like "many of the experts." What "experts?" From what agencies? And specifically what outside independent perspective does Ralph Cossa represent? Let's have a look. From his bio at the Center for International and Strategic Studies we learn that he

• served in the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1993, achieving the rank of colonel
• served as special assistant to the commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command
• served as deputy director for strategic studies at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies
• served as a national security affairs fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

I'd say we've been served!

Squeezably Soft

Did you know that "in the past the United States has been particularly good at exporting hope"? Those were the words of Joseph Nye (intellectual from Harvard) and inventor of the concept of "Smart Power." Yes indeed, millions of civilians from Haiti, Iran, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Guatemala, etc....are resting in peace from all that hope that the US brought them.

People often confuse NPR's occasional critique's of the Bush extremist imperialism with a leftist critique of imperialism in general - it is a fatal mistake. See this earlier post for how devoted NPR is to the US imperial role in the world. Of course to sell this requires some serious distortions of history and fact as the quote from Nye above reveals.

On Thanksgiving morning, as part of NPR's series on American Power, Renee Montagne reveals a lot about how distorted history can get on NPR. After Nye critiques Bush foreign policy for relying far too much on the use of force, and contrasts it with the "soft" power of past years, she says, "So you're saying under, in at least the last few years under the Reagan Administration that there was a nice balance between hard and soft power?"

Holy crap! So the criminals of the Reagan years spreading civil war, torture, rape and genocide thoughout Africa and Latin America had found "a nice balance." Nye, agrees that Reagan was "very adept at combining hard and soft power."

Montagne isn't through though. She then goes on to contrast the evil Chinese with the saintly US efforts around the world:

"China...engaging in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East. New markets, oil deals, forgiving debt....its soft power depends to some extent on its willingness and ability in the world to act functionally without morals, not put any conditions on its aid or make demands about human rights when it comes in with its products."

Honestly, as I type this transcription I almost can't believe that I'm not making it up; it's that profoundly dishonest and ridiculous. But Nye can only concur, with "That's true."

Constraints

This morning I had to wake up to Liane Hansen saying, "...this week Putin criticized the United States for what he called imperialism [Hansen’s emphasis] in global affairs, and he said, and I’m going to quote, 'It wasn’t us that initiated a new round of the arms race.' What do you make of that tone?"

Her tone is what struck me. She said imperialism very slowly and with utter disdain - as if the term was nothing but jingoistic nonsense. That's interesting because you have to be a fool or liar to deny that the concept of the US as an empire is taken very seriously by people of many political viewpoints. If the US government does not hold imperial ambitions then how does one explain these statements of the official 2002 US National Security Strategy:

• To contend with uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges we face, the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces.
• Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.
• We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts...are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.

And from whom was Hansen seeking insight on this claim of American imperialism? From the fear-mongering Thomas Pickering, a loyal soldier of US global power who has served Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush (Pickering was also, notoriously, ambassador to El Salvador).

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hearing from such establishment players on NPR , but why is there never any serious counter-perspective? Why don't we hear about Russia from experts like Craig Murray, who also has the dirt on the US-British behavior. Or why not bring on critics of US imperialism such as Chalmers Johnson or Noam Chomsky?

It seems plainly obvious that NPR tightly restricts the limits of what is considered acceptable for debate. Those limits are based in an unquestioning faith in the overall goodness of American power and policy, regardless of any and all evidence that might undermine that faith. It's enough to drive someone crazy...

Twister for the Twisted

Or maybe Twister for mass murderers. Liane Hansen talks with imperial wunder-boy Thomas Barnett about US foreign policy. She begins the piece with this crass attempt at wit: "American foreign policy in the 21st Century is starting to look a bit like a game of Twister: the war in Afghanistan...right hand red if you will...the US became more assertive and involved in other foreign policy pursuits: Iraq, left hand yellow...."

I must just be a hopeless wuss, but I wonder if the 3000 plus victims of "our" tidy little air war on Afghanistan would think is was such a fun game--and God knows the 600,000+ (probably over a million by now) victims of our "left hand yellow" move would have other ideas too.

Barnett's attitudes are as imperial and arrogant. He notes that "the break up of Iraq really forces the fights that need to occur now that Saddam has gone...all going to be tricky and overlapping..." To which Hansen wonders, "Where should the United States actually focus--are there real solutions or is it just a matter of keeping the fires from burning out of control." Oh and the reason for the horrors sweeping the Middle East have nothing to do with the rapacious, violent means of US foreign policy; as Barnett says, "my argument is globalization is finally penetrating a part of the world to which it hasn’t found much purchase..." The old Thomas Friedmann canard of those backwards Arabs finally getting "penetrated" by globalization. Yikes!

Governor General Koppel

Koppel weighs in on the British military personnel that Iran is holding prisoner. Here was the telling moment of Koppel's commentary:

"Either that or the British will dispatch an envoy to eat humble pie, apologize for the intrusion and get their people home again. It's humiliating and outrageous, but we're in no position to have another war in the Persian Gulf."

Hmmm...and did Koppel express any such indignation over the US seizure of Iranian officials in Baghdad in December or later in Irbil in January? I guess it's only "humiliating and outrageous" when the underlings do such things, but it's our right and prerogative -- and military punishment would be justified if only we were in a better position to act.