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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2017 at 12:20 am
Steven Pressfield is the bestselling author of several novels on ancient Greece.
Steven Pressfield
In Gates of Fire (1998) he celebrated the immortal battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held at bay a vastly superior Persian army for three days.
In Tides of War (2000) he re-fought the ancient world’s 25-year version of the Cold War between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta.
n The Virtues of War (2004) he chronicled the military career of Alexander the Great–through the eyes of the conqueror himself.
And in The Afghan Campaign (2006) he accompanied Alexander’s army as it waged a vicious, three-year counterinsurgency war against native Afghans.
Besides being an amateur historian of armed conflict, Pressfield is a former Marine. His novel, Gates of Fire, has been adopted by the Marine Corps as required reading.
So Pressfield knows something about the art–and horrors–of war. And about the decline of heroism in the modern age.
Consider the events of November 9, 2012.
On that date, General David Petraeus suddenly resigned his position as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had held this just slightly more than a year.
The reason: The revelation of–and his admission to–an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, the woman who had written an admiring biography of him called All In.
Ironically, this happened to be the same day that “Skyfall”–the latest James Bond film–opened nationwide.
Since Bond made his first onscreen appearance in 1962’s “Dr. No,” England’s most famous spy has bedded countless women. And has become internationally famous as the ultimate ladykiller.
But real-life doesn’t quite work the same way.
What is permitted–and even celebrated–in a fictional spy is not treated the same way in the real world of espionage.
Prior to this, Petraeus had been the golden boy of the American Army–the best-known and most revered general since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
David Petraeus
The man who
- had given 37 years of his life to protecting the nation;
- had rewritten the book on how to fight counterinsurgency wars;
- had turned around the stagnated war in Iraq;
- had presided over the winding down of the war in Afghanistan.
As President Barack Obama put it:
“General Petraeus had an extraordinary career. He served this country with great distinction in Iraq, in Afghanistan and as head of the CIA.
“I want to emphasize that from my perspective, at least, he has provided this country an extraordinary service. We are safer because of the work that Dave Petraeus has done.
“And my main hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what has otherwise been an extraordinary career.”
It’s why Pressfield candidly admits he prefers the ancient world to the present:
“If I’m pressed to really think about the question, I would answer that what appeals to me about the ancient world as opposed to the modern is that the ancient world was pre-Christian, pre-Freudian, pre-Marxist, pre-consumerist, pre-reductivist.
“It was grander, it was nobler, it was simpler. You didn’t have the notion of turn-the-other-cheek. You had Oedipus but you didn’t have the Oedipus complex. It was political but it was not politically correct.”
To illustrate what he meant, Pressfield cited this passage from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, on how ancient-world politics took on its own tone of McCarthyism:
To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member.
To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward. Any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character. Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.
As if speaking on the scandal involving David Petraeus, Pressfield states:
“Our age has been denatured. The heroic has been bled out of it.
“The callings of the past––he profession of arms, the priesthood, the medical and legal professions, politics, the arts, journalism, education, even motherhood and fatherhood–every one has been sullied and degraded by scandal after scandal.
“We’re hard up for heroes these days, and even harder up for conceiving ourselves in that light. That’s why I’m drawn to the ancient world. It’s truer, in my view, to how we really are.
“The ancient world has not been reductified and deconstructed as ours has; it has not been robbed of all dignity. They had heroes then. There was such a thing, truly, as the Heroic Age. Men like Achilles and Leonidas really did exist.
“There was such a thing, truly, as heroic leadership. Alexander the Great did not command via satellite or remote control. He rode into battle at the head of his Companion cavalry; he was the first to strike the foe.”
Today, generals command armies while stationed thousands of miles from the front. And they face more danger from heart attacks than enemy bullets.
And commanding American generals is Donald Trump, a five-times draft-dodger who equates avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases with surviving the Vietnam war: “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 2, 2016 at 12:02 am
“John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing. They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”
And the loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.
So writes investigative reporter Gus Russo in Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, published in 1998.
In what is almost certainly the definitive account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russo reaches some startling–but highly documented–conclusions:
- Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
- He did it alone.
- Oswald, a former Marine, was a committed Marxist–whose hero was Castro.
- The CIA’s ongoing campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro was an open secret throughout the Gulf.
- Oswald visited New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
- There he learned that Castro was in the crosshairs of the CIA.
- For this, he blamed John F. Kennedy.
- Oswald told his Russian-born wife, Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers.”
- Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, murdered Oswald because he was distraught over Kennedy’s death.
- Ruby was not part of a Mafia conspiracy to silence Oswald.
- Skeptics of the Warren Commission–which concluded that Oswald had acted alone–asked the wrong question: “Who killed Kennedy?”
- They should have asked: “Why was he killed?”
- The answer–according to Russo: “The Kennedys’ relentless pursuit of Castro and Cuba backfired in tragedy on that terrible day in November, 1963.”
Another book well worth reading about America’s Cuban obsession during the early 1960s is American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.
Although a novel, it vividly captures the atmosphere of intrigue, danger and sleaziness that permeated that era in a way that dry, historical documents never can.
“The 50’s are finished,” reads its paperback dust jacket. “Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office.
“J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation….
“Mob bosses, politicos, snitches, psychos, fall guys and femmes fatale. They’re mixing up a Molotov cocktail guaranteed to end the country’s innocence with a bang.”
Among the legacies of America’s twisted romance with anti-Castro Cubans:
- Following the JFK assassination, there was a cover-up.
- Its purpose: To protect the reputation of the United States Government–and that of its newly-martyred President.
- The CIA and FBI concealed the CIA-Mafia assassination plots from the Warren Commission assigned to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
- Other government officials participating in the cover-up included Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- Ironically, this secrecy ignited the widespread–and false–belief that the President had died at the hands of a government conspiracy.
- Robert Kennedy feared that his relentless pursuit of Castro might have led Castro to “take out” JFK first.
- Fearing his own assassination if he continued Kennedy’s efforts to murder Castro, President Johnson ordered the CIA to halt its campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate the Cuban leader.
- The huge Cuban community throughout Florida–and especially Miami–continues to exert a blackmailing influence on American politics.
- Right-wing politicians from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump have reaped electoral rewards by catering to the demands of this hate-obsessed voting block.
- These Cuban ex-patriots hope that the United States will launch a full-scale military invasion of the island to remove Castro.
- Having grown rich and soft in the United States, they fear to risk their own lives by returning to Cuba to overthrow the Castro regime–as he had overthrown Fulgencio Batista.
- Only President Barack Obama had the political courage to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba–in 2015.
- This occurred long after the United States had done so with such former enemies as the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam.
- With President-elect Donald Trump due to take office in January, 2017, America’s future relations with Cuba remain in doubt.
The Cuban Missile Crisis remains the single most dangerous moment of the 50-year Cold War, when the world stood only minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
That crisis stemmed from the American Right’s twisted obsession with Cuba, an obsession that continues today.
So what are the lessons to be learned from that obsession?
- It is long past time to demand major changes in our foreign policy toward Cuba.
- It’s time to end the half-century contamination of American politics by those Cubans who live only for their hatred of Castro–and those political candidates who live to exploit it.
- (For example: Marco Rubio got elected U.S. Senator from Florida in 2010 by claiming that his parents had been forced to leave Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro took power. In fact, they had left Cuba in 1956–during the Batista dictatorship.)
- It’s time to end this wag-the-dog relationship. A population of about 1,700,000 Cuban exiles living in Florida should not be allowed to shape the domestic and foreign policy of a nation of 300 million.
- Those who continue to hate–or love–Fidel Castro should be left to their own private feud. But that is a feud they should settle on their own island, and not from the shores of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 1, 2016 at 10:46 am
On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
He warned that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union–and would trigger “a full retaliatory response” upon the U.S.S.R.
President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation
And he demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba:
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are, but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world.
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”
On October 26, the United States raised the readiness level of SAC forces to DEFCON 2–the step just short of war. For the only time in U.S. history, B-52 bombers were dispersed to various locations and made ready to take off, fully equipped, on 15 minutes’ notice.
Other measures taken included:
- One-eighth of America’s 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert.
- About 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert.
- Air Defense Command redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours with one-third maintaining 15-minute alert status.
- Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union.
An invasion date was set for October 29. But the Kennedy Administration–and the American military–didn’t know that the Russian soldiers guarding the missiles had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
Had the Marines gone in, those mini-nukes would have been used. And a fullscale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would have almost certainly followed.
At the height of the crisis, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy offered a solution.
Khrushchev had sent two teletypes to Kennedy. The first had agreed to remove the missiles, but the second had demanded that the United States remove its own missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union.
Robert Kennedy’s solution: The administration should ignore the second message–and announce that it had accepted Khrushchev’s offer to remove the missiles.
After this announcement was made, President Kennedy said to his advisers: “It can go either way now.”
John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office
The crisis ended on October 28. Under enormous pressure, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba.
Behind his decision lay a secret promise by the Kennedy administration to remove its obsolete nuclear missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. And a public pledge to not invade Cuba.
On the night the crisis ended, there occurred a prophetic exchange between the two Kennedy brothers.
JFK: “Maybe this is the night I should go to the theater”–a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s fatal attendance of Ford’s Theater at the end of the Civil War.
RFK: “If you go, I want to go with you.”
John F. and Robert F. Kennedy
But President Kennedy was not finished with Castro. While continuing the campaign of sabotage throughout Cuba, the Kennedys were preparing something far bigger: A fullscale American invasion of the island.
On October 4, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted its latest version of the invasion plan, known as OPLAN 380-63. Its timetable went:
- January, 1964: Infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles.
- July 15, 1964: U.S. conventional forces join the fray.
- August 3, 1964: All-out U.S. air strikes on Cuba.
- October 1, 1964: Full-scale invasion to install “a government friendly to the U.S.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy–referring to the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor–had resisted demands for a “sneak attack” on Cuba by saying: “I don’t want my brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s.”
Now the Kennedys planned such an attack on Cuba just one month before the November, 1964 Presidential election.
Then fate–in the unlikely figure of Lee Harvey Oswald–intervened.
On November 22, 1963, while the President rode through Dallas in an open-air automobile, a rifle-wielding assassin opened fire. He scored two hits on Kennedy–in the back of the neck and head. The second wound proved instantly fatal.
The nation and the world were shocked–and plunged into deep mourning.
But for some of those who had waged a secret, lethal war against Fidel Castro for the previous two years, Kennedy’s death–at least in retrospect–didn’t come as a surprise.
Robert Kennedy, in particular, spent the remaining years of his life agonizing over the possibility that his highly personal war against Castro had backfired.
That Castro, fed up with the CIA’s assassination plots against him, had retaliated with one of his own.
Robert Kennedy’s fears and guilt were compounded by the fact that, while waging war on Castro, he had waged an equally ruthless crusade against organized crime.
He knew that some of the mobsters he had tried to send to prison had played a major role in the CIA’s efforts to “hit” Castro. Had the Mafia–believing itself the victim of a double-cross–put out a “contract” on JFK instead?
It was a question that haunted him until the day he died.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 30, 2016 at 12:02 am
In April, 1961, the CIA tried to overthrow the Communist regime of Cuba’s “Maximum Leader,” Fidel Castro, at the Bay of Pigs.
When that failed, President John F. Kennedy ordered Castro’s removal through a campaign of sabotage and assassination.
These covert operatives became known within the CIA as the Special Group, and were ultimately supervised by Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General.
The war against Castro became known within the CIA as Operation Mongoose.
But not everyone in the CIA was enthusiastic about the “get Castro” effort.
“Everyone at CIA was surprised at Kennedy’s obsession with Fidel,” recalled Sam Halpern, who was assigned to the Cuba Project. “They thought it was a waste of time. We all knew [Fidel] couldn’t hurt us. Most of us at CIA initially liked Kennedy, but why go after this little guy?
“One thing is for sure: Kennedy wasn’t doing it out of national security concerns. It was a personal thing. The Kennedy family felt personally burnt by the Bay of Pigs and sought revenge.”
It was all-out war. Among the tactics used:
- Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder Cuban police officials and Soviet technicians.
- Sabotaging mines.
- Paying up to $100,000 per “hit” for the murder or kidnapping of Cuban officials.
- Using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Among that “boom and bang” were a series of assassination plots against Castro, in which the Mafia was to be a key player.
Chicago Mobster Johnny Rosselli proposed a simple plan: through its underworld connections in Cuba, the Mafia would recruit a Cuban in Castro’s entourage, such as a waiter or bodyguard, who would poison him.
The CIA’s Technical Services division produced a botulinus toxin which was then injected into Castro’s favorite brand of cigars. The CIA also produced simpler botulinus toxin pills that could be dissolved in his food or drink.
But the deputized Mafia contacts failed to deliver any of the poisons to Castro.
Rosselli told the CIA that the first poisoner had been discharged from Castro’s employ before he could kill him, and the back-up agent got “cold feet.”
Other proposals or attempts included:
- Planting colorful seashells rigged to explode at a site where Castro liked to go skindiving.
- Trying to arrange for his being presented with a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents.
- Attempting to infect Castro’s scuba regulator with tuberculous bacilli.
- Trying to douse his handkerchiefs, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
Former members of the Kennedy Administration later insisted that neither John nor Robert Kennedy knew or approved of these assassination plots. But the sheer weight of available evidence indicates otherwise.
Bobby, in particular, was constantly pressing the CIA to “do something” about Castro. In the world of covert action, words like “Kill Castro” aren’t committed to paper. Or even spoken.
Castro, rightly seeing his life and regime threatened, appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
1960s poster of Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev
Keizers [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D
Khrushchev was quick to comply: “We must not allow the communist infant to be strangled in its crib,” he told members of his inner circle.
By October, 1962, the Soviet Union had sent more than
- 40,000 soldiers,
- 1,300 field pieces,
- 700 anti-aircraft guns,
- 350 tanks and
- 150 jets
to Cuba to deter another invasion.
Most importantly, Khrushchev began supplying Castro with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Their discovery, on October 15, 1962, ignited the single most dangerous confrontation of the 50-year Cold War.
Suddenly, the United States and the Soviet Union–bristling with nuclear weapons–found themselves on the brink of nuclear war.
At the time, Kennedy officials claimed they couldn’t understand why Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Maybe Khrushchev’s gone mad” was a typical public musing.
This remained the official American view for years afterward–as depicted in Robert Kennedy’s memoir, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, published in 1969, the year after his death.
No admission was made that JFK had been waging a no-holds-barred campaign to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its leader.
The same proved true for the 1974 doc-u-drama, The Missiles of October, starring William Devane as John F. Kennedy and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy.
On October 16, President Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. He immediately convened a group of his 12 most important advisers, which became known as Ex-Comm, for Executive Committee.
Then followed seven days of guarded and intense debate by Kennedy and his advisers. Some of the participants–such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay–urged an all-out air strike against the missile sites.
Others–such as Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations–urged a reliance on quiet diplomacy.
It was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who suggested a middle course: A naval blockade–a “quarantine” in Kennedy’s softened term–around Cuba. This would hopefully prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
Finally, the President decided to to impose a naval blockade.
On October 22, Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2016 at 12:08 am
On November 25, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s longtime “Maximum Leader,” died at the age of 90.
Old age and disease finally achieved what years of plotting by CIA and Mafia assassins could not.
To his supporters he was a tireless champion of the poor and a foe of American imperialism. To his enemies he was a ruthless dictator who drove his country to economic ruin in the name of a failed ideology–communism.
His reign began on January 1, 1959, when he swept triumphantly into Havana after a two-year guerrilla campaign against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro
Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began fleeing to America. The first émigrés were more than 215,000 Batista followers. The exodus increased, peaking at approximately 78,000 in 1962.
In October, 1962, Castro stopped regularly scheduled travel between the two countries, and asylum seekers began sailing from Cuba to Florida.
Between 1962 and 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General’s parole authority.
By 2008, more than 1.24 million Cubans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Their sheer numbers transformed the state’s political, economic and cultural life. And not entirely for the better.
Many of these Cubans viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping to eventually return to Cuba after its Communist regime fell from power.
The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s “Little Havana,” allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.
With so many discontented immigrants concentrated in Florida, they became a potential force for politicians to court.
And the issue guaranteed to sway their votes was unrelenting hostility to Castro. Unsurprisingly, most of their votes went to Right-wing Republicans.
John F. Kennedy was the first President to face this dilemma.
During the closing months of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA had begun training Cuban exiles for an invasion of their former homeland.
The exiles’ goal: To do what Castro had done–seek refuge in the mountains and launch a successful anti-Castro revolution.
But word of the coming invasion quickly leaked: The exiles were terrible secret-keepers. (A joke at the CIA went: “A Cuban thinks a secret is something you tell to only 300 people.”)
Kennedy insisted the invasion must appear to be an entirely Cuban enterprise. He refused to commit U.S. Marines and Air Force bombers.
More than 1,400 invaders landed on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs–and were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
Kennedy publicly took the blame for its failure: “Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.” But privately he seethed, and ordered the CIA to redouble its efforts to remove Castro at all costs.
To make certain his order was carried out, he appointed his brother, Robert–then Attorney General–to oversee the CIA’s “Castro removal” program.
Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
It’s here that America’s obsession with Cuba entered its darkest and most disgraceful period.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro–each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy.
- The mobsters wanted to regain their casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba their private playground in pre-Castro times. They also hoped to use their pose as patriots to win immunity from future prosecution.
The CIA supplied poisons and explosives to various members of the Mafia. It was then up to the mobsters to assassinate Castro.
The CIA asked Johnny Roselli, a mobster linked to the Chicago syndicate, to go to Florida in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination teams of Cuban exiles. They were to infiltrate their homeland and assassinate Castro.
Johnny Roselli
Rosselli called upon two other crime figures: Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, the Costra Nostra chieftain for Tampa, for assistance.
Sam Giancana
Giancana, using the name “Sam Gold” in his dealings with the CIA, was meanwhile being hounded by the FBI on direct orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
Giancana was to locate someone who was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his food. Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba, helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island.
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the participants in the plot.
The available sources disagree on what actually happened. Some believe that the Mob made a genuine effort to “whack” Fidel.
Others are convinced the mobsters simply ran a scam on the government. They pretended to carry out their “patriotic duty” while in fact making no effort at all to penetrate Castro’s security.
The CIA’s war against Castro was known as Operation Mongoose–the mongoose being a traditional enemy of the cobra. And those entrusted with this assignment were known as the Special Group.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara later testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2016 at 12:08 am
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The speaker was Donald Trump, holding a July 27 press conference in Doral, Fla.
Donald Trump
And he was urging a foreign leader to hack into the private email server of his Presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
Five days earlier, Wikileaks had released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Cyber-security experts believe the hacking originated from Russia–and that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have authorized it.
Politicians on the Left and Right expressed outrage at Trump’s remarks.
But this is not the first time the Right has jeopardized American security.
During the 2012 Presidential campaign, supporters of Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of leaking top-secret details of the U.S. Navy SEALs raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The raid, launched on May 1, 2011, resulted in the death of the 9/11 mastermind and the capture of a treasury of highly sensitive Al Qaeda documents.
According to Right-wingers, Obama wanted to provide Hollywood screenwriters with material for a movie to glorify his role in authorizing the raid.
In August, 2012, the Right found its own secrets-leakers. And they operated under the name of the Fox News Network.
Their motive: To promote a book–No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden. It was slated to hit bookstores on September 11–the 11th anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
It had been penned under the pseudonym “Mark Owen.” But the real name of the author–a 36-year-old former Navy SEAL Team Six member who took part in the raid–was Matt Bissonnette, of Wrangell, Alaska.
Bissonnette’s real name became public after multiple sources leaked it to Fox News–who revealed it on August 23.
The Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden had previously been left unidentified.
Fox News had repeatedly accused President Obama and members of his administration of treasonously leaking military secrets to the media to glorify the President.
Many former and current SEAL members feared that the book would release information that could compromise future missions.
U.S. Navy SEALs insignia
One Navy SEAL told Fox News, “How do we tell our guys to stay quiet when this guy won’t?” Some SEALs called Bissonnette a “traitor.”
And Colonel Tim Nye, a Special Operations Command spokesman, said the author “put himself in danger” by writing the book.
“This individual came forward. He started the process. He had to have known where this would lead. He’s the one who started this, so he bears the ultimate responsibility for this.”
But Bissonnette placed more than his own life in jeopardy. He endangered the lives of every one of the men who participated in the bin Laden raid.
If Bissonnette fell into the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists or sympathizers, he could conceivably be tortured into revealing at least some of the names and locations of his former team members.
And Fox News not only revealed his true name but the town where he lived.
Even the liberal Nation magazine was appalled at the recklessness of this Right-wing propaganda outlet. Jeremy Scahill, a writer for Nation, tweeted:
“Why on earth would FOX News publish the alleged identity of one of the ST6 members who was in the OBL raid? Seriously.”
Millions of Right-wing Americans have been conditioned by decades of Fascistic propaganda to believe that:
- Democrats are all traitors–or at least potential traitors.
- Even those Democrats who aren’t traitors are too weak-kneed to protect the nation from its sworn enemies.
- Democrats (have betrayed) (are betraying) (intend to betray) national security secrets to the Soviet/Chinese Communists.
- Democrats have (betrayed/) (are betraying) (intend to betray) national security secrets to Islamic Jihadists.
- Only Republicans can be trusted to protect the nation.
Republicans blamed President Harry S. Truman for “losing China” to the forces of Mao Tse Tung in 1949. America could not have prevented a corrupt and incompetent Chiang Kai-Shek from being driven off the Chinese mainland by Mao’s overwhelmingly powerful armies.
Then, in 1950, Senator “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy charged that the State Department was infested by Communists–and that the Truman administration knew it but refused to take action. The charges were false.
Joseph R. McCarthy
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republicans charged that Barack Obama was really a Muslim non-citizen who intended to sell out America’s security to his Muslim “masters.”
Attacking the patriotism of their opponents has repeatedly elected Republicans:
- It elected Dwight Eisenhower President and turned Congress Republican in 1952 and 1956.
- It elected Richard Nixon President in 1968 and 1972.
- It elected Ronald Reagan President in 1980 and 1984.
- It elected George H.W. Bush President in 1988.
- It gave Republicans control of the Congress in 1994 (although Bill Clinton had been elected President in 1992).
- It elected George W. Bush President in 2000 and 2004.
- It gave control of the House to Republicans in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.
And now Republicans hope this appeal will elect a man who has openly called on Vladimir Putin to hack into American computers.
1984 NOVEL, 9/11, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, BIRTH CONTROL, BLACKS, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, DENNIS HASTERT, DISABLED, DISCRIMINATION, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, EDWARD R. MURROW, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, FACEBOOK, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, GAYS, GEORGE C. MARSHALL, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE ORWELL, GOP, GREAT SOCIETY, HARRY S. TRUMAN, HISPANICS, HIV MEDICATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN STEINBECK, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSEPH STALIN, JOSH DUGGAR, KGB, LEE ATWATER, LEON TROTSKY, LESBIANS, LIBERALS, LUCILLE BALL, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MEDICAL CARE, MEIN KAMPF, MICHAEL DUKAKIS, MICHELLE BACHMANN, MITT ROMNEY, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PETE SEEGER, PROPAGANDA, RELIGION, REPUBLICANS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK SANTORUM, ROBERT WELCH, RODNEY KING RIOTS, SCAPEGOATING, SHARIA LAW, SOCIALISTS, SOVIET UNION, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRANSGENDERS, TWITTER, WILLIAM L. SHIRER, WOMEN, WORLD WAR ii
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2016 at 12:05 am
Republicans and their Rightist allies have repeatedly compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. But their propaganda campaign draws heavily on the Nazi leader’s own advice.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H1216-0500-002 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:
“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”
In recent years, the GOP has targeted gays and lesbians as America’s subversive enemies.These attacks have come as thinly disguised as efforts to “restore religious freedom.”
In December, 2014, Republicans in the Michgan House of Representatives passed “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
The bill would allow public agencies and private businesses to refuse service to anyone under the claim that their “religious beliefs” had been affronted.
And the State government would be legally prevented from intervening if a person claimed that his/her “deeply-held religious beliefs” was the reason for acting–or not acting–in a certain way.
Thus:
- An emergency room doctor could refuse service to a gay or lesbian needing medical care.
- A pharmacist could refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control, or HIV medication.
- A DMV clerk could refuse to give a driver’s license to someone who’s divorced.
- An employer could deny equal pay to women.
The bill seems modeled on a proposed law that the Republican House and Senate in Arizona sent to Governor Jan Brewer in 2014.
Under threat of a nationwide boycott of Arizona if the bill became law, Brewer vetoed it.
Republicans have introduced similar “right-to-discriminate” legislation in other states as well:
- On March 26, 2015, its governor, Mike Pence, signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This will allow any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.
- In Kansas, lawmakers voted to exempt individuals from providing any service that was “contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
- That bill passed the state’s House chamber on February 11, 2014, triggering national backlash. It stalled in the Senate and didn’t advance beyond that body.
- In January, 2014, South Dakota Republicans introduced a bill to let businesses refuse to serve same-sex couples on the grounds that “businesses are private and that their views on sexual orientation are protected to the same extent as the views of private citizens.”
- The South Dakota bill–which was killed in February, 2014–would have made it illegal for a gay person to file a lawsuit charging discrimination.
Republicans claim they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” But their fixation on regulating the sexual lives of Americans ensures government intrusions of the most intimate kind.
Since 9/11, Republicans have warned that Muslims are trying to impose Sharia (Islamic law) on America.
Ironically, Right-wing legislators, in elevating religion above the secular law, may have laid the legal foundations for making that possible.
What will happen when some Muslims claim their right–guaranteed in Islamic religious law–to have as many as four wives?
And when they claim that the “religious freedom” laws protect that right?
Republicans have defended such legislation by equating gays with child predators.
In fact, the Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute states that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends, and the majority are men married to women.
Yet Republicans and their Rightist allies have refused to condemn such heterosexual–and Right-wing–child molesters as Dennis Hastert and Josh Duggar.
Josh Duggar, the “all-American” child molester
On May 21, 2015, responding to press leaks, Duggar resigned as director of the Family Research Council, a Right-wing organization dedicated to fighting sexually-oriented issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and pornography.
In 2002-3, as a 14-15 year-old, Duggar had fondled the breasts and vaginas of five underage girls–four of whom were his own sisters.
And on October 28, 2015, Hastert–Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007–pleaded guilty to structuring money transactions in a way to avoid requirements to report where the money was going.
Dennis Hastert
The reason: To conceal the truth about his past as a child molester. Hastert had abused four young boys when he was their high school wrestling coach. One was only 14 years old.
Despite such setbacks, the politics of “smear and fear” have been good to Republicans–and their Right-wing allies.
The Republican “base” refuses to learn that those who portray themselves as morally superior are:
- Hypocrites, who are in effect saying: “Do as I say, not as I do,” or
- Fanatics, who intend to force their version of morality on others.
So long as millions of hate-filled Right-wingers support the endless succession of “two minute hates,” Republicans will continue to target an endless series of victims.
The good news: As blacks, Hispanics, women, gays and others become a significant political force, Republicans will stop attacking them and court them for votes.
The bad news: Republicans will move on to find other still-helpless scapegoats for America’s troubles.
1984 NOVEL, 9/11, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, BIRTH CONTROL, BLACKS, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, DENNIS HASTERT, DISABLED, DISCRIMINATION, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, EDWARD R. MURROW, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, FACEBOOK, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, GAYS, GEORGE C. MARSHALL, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE ORWELL, GOP, GREAT SOCIETY, HARRY S. TRUMAN, HISPANICS, HIV MEDICATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN STEINBECK, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSEPH STALIN, JOSH DUGGAR, KGB, LEE ATWATER, LEON TROTSKY, LESBIANS, LIBERALS, LUCILLE BALL, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MEDICAL CARE, MEIN KAMPF, MICHAEL DUKAKIS, MICHELLE BACHMANN, MITT ROMNEY, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PETE SEEGER, PROPAGANDA, RELIGION, REPUBLICANS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK SANTORUM, ROBERT WELCH, RODNEY KING RIOTS, SCAPEGOATING, SHARIA LAW, SOCIALISTS, SOVIET UNION, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRANSGENDERS, TWITTER, WILLIAM L. SHIRER, WOMEN, WORLD WAR ii
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 20, 2016 at 12:01 am
In 1953, Red-baiting Wisconsin United States Senator Joseph R. McCarthy finally overstepped himself.
He attacked the leadership of the United States Army as “a hotbed of traitors” and convened an inquiry through the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Joseph McCarthy
But the hearings backfired, exposing McCarthy as the bullying demagogue he was. A Senate committee voted to condemn his behavior, charging that he had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Although McCarthy remained in the Senate another two and a half years, his political influence had ended.
Yet even without McCarthy, Republicans rode the issue of anti-Communism to victory from 1948 to 1992.
After holding the White House for eight years under Dwight D. Eisenhower, they lost it in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and again in 1964 to Lyndon B. Johnson.
By 1968, with the nation mired in Vietnam and convulsed by antiwar demonstrations and race riots, Americans turned once more to those who preyed upon their fears and hates.
They elected Richard Nixon, who promised to end the Vietnam war and crack down on “uppity” blacks and antiwar demonstrators.
The same strategy re-elected him in 1972.
After Jimmy Carter won the Presidency in 1976 and lost it in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, Republicans held the White House until 1992.
During the 1970s and 1980s, they continued to accuse their opponents of being devious agents–or at least unwitting pawns–of “the Communist conspiracy.”
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant.
George H.W. Bush
Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow.
Thus, the Republican charged that he might have been “programmed” as a real-life “Manchurian candidate” to become, first, Governor of Arkansas–one of America’s poorest states–and then President.
What made this charge all the more absurd: The Soviet Union had officially dissolved in December, 1991.
Republicans continued to accuse their opponents of being “Communists” and “traitors.” But these charges no longer carried the weight they had while the Soviet Union existed.
Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans–and their right-wing supporters–at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace.
Two highjacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and one struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
Exit The Red Bogeyman. Enter The Maniacal Muslim.
Consider:
- Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn.): On July 13, 2012, she sent letters to the Inspectors General of the Departments of Defense; State; Justice; and Homeland Security, demanding a “a multi-department investigation into potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the United States Government.”
- Rick Santorum: On supporting the racial profiling of Muslims: “Obviously, Muslims would be someone you look at, absolutely.”
- Mitt Romney: “Based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position [for a Muslim] would be justified.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.
Barack Obama
Almost immediately after Obama took office, he came under attack by an industry of right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
The following titles vividly reveal the hates, fears and ambitions of their authors–and audience:
- Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity
- Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation by Jason Mattera
- How Barack Obama is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy by Stephen Moore
- The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein
- The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency by Ken Blackwell
- Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies by Michelle Malkin
- Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer
- To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
- Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One by Joshua Muravchik
- Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policicies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by Christopher C. Horner
- America’s March to Socialism: Why We’re One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades by Glenn Beck
- The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality by Jerome R. Corsi
- Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio by Brian Jennings
- The War On Success: How the Obama Agenda Is Shattering the American Dream by Tommy Newberry
- Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them by Steven Milloy
- Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions by Michael Savage
- Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
- Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter
- Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress and the Special Interests Are Transforming…a Slump into a Crash, Freedom Into Socialism and a Disaster into a Catastrophe….And How to Fight Back by Dick Morris
1984 NOVEL, 9/11, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, BIRTH CONTROL, BLACKS, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, DENNIS HASTERT, DISABLED, DISCRIMINATION, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, EDWARD R. MURROW, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, FACEBOOK, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, GAYS, GEORGE C. MARSHALL, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE ORWELL, GOP, GREAT SOCIETY, HARRY S. TRUMAN, HISPANICS, HIV MEDICATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN STEINBECK, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSEPH STALIN, JOSH DUGGAR, KGB, LEE ATWATER, LEON TROTSKY, LESBIANS, LIBERALS, LUCILLE BALL, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MEDICAL CARE, MEIN KAMPF, MICHAEL DUKAKIS, MICHELLE BACHMANN, MITT ROMNEY, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PETE SEEGER, PROPAGANDA, RELIGION, REPUBLICANS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK SANTORUM, ROBERT WELCH, RODNEY KING RIOTS, SCAPEGOATING, SHARIA LAW, SOCIALISTS, SOVIET UNION, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRANSGENDERS, TWITTER, WILLIAM L. SHIRER, WOMEN, WORLD WAR ii
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 19, 2016 at 12:01 am
The Right’s fixation on transgender “dangers” is only the latest in a long string of “enemies” painted by the Republican party.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the “enemy” was blacks. The key to winning votes of racist whites without appearing racist lay in what Republicans called “the Southern Strategy.”
It was this that won Richard Nixon the Presidency in 1968 and 1972 and the White House for George H.W. Bush in 1988.
In a now-infamous 1981 interview, Right-wing political consultant Lee Atwater explained how this worked:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires.
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.…
“’We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’
“So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”
Lee Atwater
At the end of his life, Atwater recognized the monster he had helped unleash.
Like Reinhard Heydrich–the designer of the “Final Solution” who, on his deathbed, begged forgiveness for his crimes–Atwater, in a 1991 article for Life, apologized to former Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the 1988 campaign.
But blacks have by no means been the only targets–and victims–of Republican hate campaigns. A partial list of these would include:
- Liberals
- Women
- Socialists
- Secularists
- Disabled
- Environmentalists
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
And now transgenders.
George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel, 1984, serves as a better guide to Republican electioneering than any official statement of the GOP.
1984 is set in a futuristic dictatorship called Oceania, whose constantly alternating mortal enemies are Eurasia and Eastasia.
A daily fixture of life in Oceania is the “Two Minutes Hate.” During this, Party members must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and express their hatred for them in exactly two minutes.
Chief among these is Emmanuel Goldstein, who is obviously based on Leon Trotsky, the longtime antagonist of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years.
The “Two Minutes Hate” serves as a form of brainwashing, whose purpose is to whip ordinary citizens into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for whoever the Party designates as its–and their–mortal enemies.
Since the end of World War II, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-approved thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence–by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate in 1946, he rose to national prominence on February 9, 1950, after giving a fiery speech in Wheeling, West Virginia:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Americans were already growing increasingly fearful of Communism:
- Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not withdrawn the Red Army from the countries it had occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II.
- In 1948, the Soviet Union developed–and demonstrated–its own atomic bomb, an achievement U.S. scientists had claimed would not happen for at least a decade.
- In 1949, China fell to the triumphant armies of Mao Tse Tung.
But anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech. Republicans–resentful at being denied the White House since 1932–seized upon anti-communism as their passport to power.
No American–no matter how prominent–was safe from the accusation of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer–”a Comsymp” or “fellow traveler” in the style of the era.
Among those accused:
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who had overseen America’s strategy for defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
- President Harry S. Truman
- Playwrights Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller
- Actors Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, Lloyd Bridges, Howard Da Silva, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield
- Composers Arron Copland and Elmer Bernstein
- Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who presided over the creation of America’s atomic bomb
- Actresses Lee Grant, Delores del Rio, Ruth Gordon and Lucille Ball
- Journalists Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, who had chronicled the rise of Nazi Germany
- Folksinger Pete Seeger
- Writers Irwin Shaw, Howard Fast, John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett
Even “untouchable” Republicans became targets for such slander.
The most prominent of these was President Dwight D. Eisenhower–labeled ”a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” by Robert Welch, who founded the John Birch Society in 1958.
ABC NEWS, ALLEN DULLES, BRIDGE OF SPIES, CBS NEWS, CNN, COLD WAR, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, EAST GERMANY, FACEBOOK, FRANCIS GARY POWERS, JAMES DONOVAN, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, KGB, NBC NEWS, RED SCARE, RUDOLPH ABEL, SOVIET UNION, STASI, STEVEN SPIELBERG, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TOM HANKS, TWITTER, U-2
In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 21, 2016 at 12:01 am
“Bridge of Spies” vividly recaptures a now-forgotten time in American history.
It was the time of “the Cold War.” A time when:
- America was almost universally seen as “The Good Guy,” in contrast to “The Bad Guy” of the Soviet Union;
- The United States and the Soviet Union held each other at bay with arsenals of nuclear weapons;
- Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist–and leaving ruined lives in his wake;
- American TVs blared commercials warning that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had boasted: “We will bury you”; and
- Children and teenagers were taught in school that they could survive a nuclear attack through “duck and cover” drills. They were instructed to keep their bathtubs filled with water for safe drinking, in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike.
Bert the Turtle teaches schoolchildren to “Duck and Cover”
Yet even in this poisonous atmosphere of fear and denunciation, some men stood out as heroes–simply by holding fast to their consciences.
One of these was a New York insurance attorney named James B. Donovan (played by Tom Hanks). Asked by the Justice Department to defend arrested Soviet spy Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance) Donovan did what no one expected.
He gave Abel a truly vigorous defense, arguing that the evidence used to convict him was the legally-tainted product of an invalid search warrant.
Upon Abel’s conviction and sentencing to 45 years’ imprisonment, Donovan again shocked the political and legal communities by appealing the case to the Supreme Court.
Donovan argued that Constitutional protections should apply to everyone–including non-Americans–tried in American courts. To do less made a mockery of the very freedoms we claimed to champion.
He lost by a vote of 5-4. But the arguments he made would resurface 50 years later when al-Qaeda suspects were hauled into American courts.
James B. Donovan
In 1961, Donovan was again called upon to render service by a Federal agency–this time the CIA. It wanted his help in negotiating the release of its spy, Francis Gary Powers, shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 while flying a high-altitude U-2 spy plane.
Throughout “Bridge of Spies,” audiences learn some unsettling truths about how the American government–and governments generally– actually operate.
The first three of these were outlined in Part one of this series:
Truth #1: Appearance counts for more than reality.
Truth #2: Individual conscience can wreck the best-laid plans of government.
Truth #3: High-ranking government officials will ask citizens to take risks they themselves refuse to take.
Now for the remaining truths revealed in this movie.
Truth #4: Appeals to fear often prevail when appeals to humanity are ignored.
After crossing into East Germany, Donovan enters into negotiations with Wolfgang Vogel, a lawyer representing the East German government.
Vogel offers to exchange Frederic Pryor, an American economics graduate student seized by the East German secret police, for Abel. Donovan replies this is a deal-breaker; the United States (which is never mentioned during the negotiations) wants Powers, not Pryor.
Nevertheless, Donovan is equally concerned for Pryor, and adds him to the list of hostages to be released in return for Abel.
Then a new complication arises: The East German government that holds Pryor threatens to pull out. claiming to be insulted because Donovan did not inform them that the USSR was a party to the negotiation.
His reasoned, legal arguments having failed, Donovan resorts to a threat. He conveys a warning to the president of East Germany:
Abel has not yet revealed any Soviet secrets. But if this deal fails, he may well do so to earn favors from the United States government. And, in that case, the Soviets will blame you–Erich Honecker, the president of East Germany–for the resulting damage.
Where arguments based on humanity have failed, this one–based on fear–works. A prisoner-exchange is arranged.
Truth #5: Personal loyalty can supersede bureaucratic inventions.
On February 10, 1962, Donovan, Abel and several CIA agents arrive at the Glienicke Bridge, which connects East and West Germany. The Soviets have Powers, but not Pryor–who is to be released at Checkpoint Charlie, a crossing point between East and West Berlin.
Glienicke Bridge, the “Bridge of Spies”
The CIA agent in charge of the American delegation tells Abel he can cross into East Germany, even though Pryor has not been released.
But Abel has learned that Donovan has negotiated the release of not only Powers but Pryor. Out of loyalty to the man who has vigorously defended him, he waits on his side of the bridge until word arrives that Pryor has been released.
Then Abel crosses into East Germany while Powers crosses into the Western sector.
Donovan returns home. Before flying off to West Germany, he had told his wife he was going on a fishing trip in Scotland.
His wife and children learn the truth about the risks he ran and the success he attained only when a television newscast breaks the news:
Francis Gary Powers has been returned to the United States. And the man responsible is James Donovan, once the most reviled man in America for having defended a notorious Soviet spy.
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HEROES: NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2017 at 12:20 amSteven Pressfield is the bestselling author of several novels on ancient Greece.
Steven Pressfield
In Gates of Fire (1998) he celebrated the immortal battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held at bay a vastly superior Persian army for three days.
In Tides of War (2000) he re-fought the ancient world’s 25-year version of the Cold War between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta.
n The Virtues of War (2004) he chronicled the military career of Alexander the Great–through the eyes of the conqueror himself.
And in The Afghan Campaign (2006) he accompanied Alexander’s army as it waged a vicious, three-year counterinsurgency war against native Afghans.
Besides being an amateur historian of armed conflict, Pressfield is a former Marine. His novel, Gates of Fire, has been adopted by the Marine Corps as required reading.
So Pressfield knows something about the art–and horrors–of war. And about the decline of heroism in the modern age.
Consider the events of November 9, 2012.
On that date, General David Petraeus suddenly resigned his position as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had held this just slightly more than a year.
The reason: The revelation of–and his admission to–an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, the woman who had written an admiring biography of him called All In.
Ironically, this happened to be the same day that “Skyfall”–the latest James Bond film–opened nationwide.
Since Bond made his first onscreen appearance in 1962’s “Dr. No,” England’s most famous spy has bedded countless women. And has become internationally famous as the ultimate ladykiller.
But real-life doesn’t quite work the same way.
What is permitted–and even celebrated–in a fictional spy is not treated the same way in the real world of espionage.
Prior to this, Petraeus had been the golden boy of the American Army–the best-known and most revered general since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
David Petraeus
The man who
As President Barack Obama put it:
“General Petraeus had an extraordinary career. He served this country with great distinction in Iraq, in Afghanistan and as head of the CIA.
“I want to emphasize that from my perspective, at least, he has provided this country an extraordinary service. We are safer because of the work that Dave Petraeus has done.
“And my main hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what has otherwise been an extraordinary career.”
It’s why Pressfield candidly admits he prefers the ancient world to the present:
“If I’m pressed to really think about the question, I would answer that what appeals to me about the ancient world as opposed to the modern is that the ancient world was pre-Christian, pre-Freudian, pre-Marxist, pre-consumerist, pre-reductivist.
“It was grander, it was nobler, it was simpler. You didn’t have the notion of turn-the-other-cheek. You had Oedipus but you didn’t have the Oedipus complex. It was political but it was not politically correct.”
To illustrate what he meant, Pressfield cited this passage from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, on how ancient-world politics took on its own tone of McCarthyism:
To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member.
To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward. Any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character. Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.
As if speaking on the scandal involving David Petraeus, Pressfield states:
“Our age has been denatured. The heroic has been bled out of it.
“The callings of the past––he profession of arms, the priesthood, the medical and legal professions, politics, the arts, journalism, education, even motherhood and fatherhood–every one has been sullied and degraded by scandal after scandal.
“We’re hard up for heroes these days, and even harder up for conceiving ourselves in that light. That’s why I’m drawn to the ancient world. It’s truer, in my view, to how we really are.
“The ancient world has not been reductified and deconstructed as ours has; it has not been robbed of all dignity. They had heroes then. There was such a thing, truly, as the Heroic Age. Men like Achilles and Leonidas really did exist.
“There was such a thing, truly, as heroic leadership. Alexander the Great did not command via satellite or remote control. He rode into battle at the head of his Companion cavalry; he was the first to strike the foe.”
Today, generals command armies while stationed thousands of miles from the front. And they face more danger from heart attacks than enemy bullets.
And commanding American generals is Donald Trump, a five-times draft-dodger who equates avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases with surviving the Vietnam war: “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
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