Posts Tagged ‘JOSEPH MCCARTHY’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 5, 2022 at 9:31 am
During the 1960 Presidential campaign, then-Senator John F. Kennedy promised to build a Peace Corps to train people in underdeveloped nations to help themselves.
John F. Kennedy
In March, 1961, the program went into effect, with the President’s brother-in-law, Sergent Shriver, as director.
Starvation, illiteracy and disease were the enemies of the Corps. Any nation wanting aid could request it. The first group of volunteers went to the Philippines, the second to Ecuador and the third to Tanganyika.
The problems of the underdeveloped world were too great for any single organization to solve. But the Corps lifted the spirits of many living in those countries. And it captured the imagination of millions of Americans—especially those of thousands of idealistic youths who entered its ranks.
To combat the growing Communist threat to Latin America, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress. He defined the Alliance’s goal as providing “revolutionary progress through powerful, democratic means.”
Within two years he could report:
“Some 140,000 housing units have been constructed. Slum clearance projects have begun, and 3,000 classrooms have been built. More than 4,000,000 school books have been distributed.
“The Alliance has fired the imagination and kindled the hopes of millions of our good neighbors. Their drive toward modernization is gaining momentum as it unleashes the energies of these millions.
“The United States is becoming increasingly identified in the minds of the people with the goal they move toward: a better life with freedom,” said Kennedy.
Critics of the program, however, charged that the President was trying to “dress up the old policies” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in new rhetoric. Since FDR’s time, the United States has believed in giving economic aid to Latin America.
Much—if not most—of these billions of dollars has wound up in the pockets of various right-wing dictators, such as Anastasio Somoza and Rafael Trujillo.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was urging action on another front—that of outer space.
“This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” declared the President. He committed the United States to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
As indeed it happened less than six years after his death—on July 20, 1969.
Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric masked his real reason for going to the moon: To score a propaganda victory over the Soviet Union.
Another of his anti-Communist goals: To remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba at almost any cost.
Fidel Castro
Immediately after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert–who was then the Attorney General—to oversee a CIA program to overthrow Castro.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy by overthrowing the Communist leader who had nationalized American corporate holdings.
- The Mafia wanted to regain its lucrative casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba the playground of the rich in pre-Castro times.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” then-former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
Nor was everyone in the CIA 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.
- 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, cigars, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
But all of these efforts failed to assassinate Castro–or overthrow the Cuban Revolution he was heading.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Americans would rightly label such methods as ”terrorist” if another power used them against the United States today. And the Cuban government saw the situation exactly the same way.
So Castro appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
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.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 4, 2022 at 11:55 am
This October 16 – 28 will mark 60 years since the world hovered on the brink of nuclear oblivion.
It was the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. And it was the supreme test of John F. Kennedy’s leadership as the 35th President of the United States.
He served as President for only two years, ten months and two days.
Yet today—-61 years since he took office, and 59 years since his assassination—millions of Americans still remember Kennedy with reverence, even awe. This despite decades of highly embarrassing revelations about his scandalous private life.
Some have called the Kennedy administration a golden era in American history. A time when touch football, lively White House parties, stimulus to the arts and the antics of the President’s children became national obsessions.
John F. Kennedy
Others have called the Kennedy Presidency a monument to the unchecked power of wealth and ambition. An administration staffed by young novices playing at statesmen, riddled with nepotism, and whose legacy includes the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam war and the world’s first nuclear confrontation.
The opening days of the Kennedy Presidency raised hopes for a dramatic change in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
But detente was not possible then. The Russians had not yet experienced their coming agricultural problems and the setback in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. And the United States had not suffered defeat in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s first brush with international Communism came on April 17, 1961, with the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This operation had been planned and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency during the final months of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term as President.
The U.S. Navy was to land about 1,400 Cuban exiles on the island to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. They were supposed to head into the mountains—as Castro himself had done against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1956—and raise the cry of revolution.
The invasion would occur after an American air strike had knocked out the Cuban air force. But the airstrike failed and Kennedy, under the pressure of world opinion, called off a second try.
Even so, the invasion went ahead. When the invaders surged onto the beaches, they found Castro’s army waiting for them. Many of the invaders were killed on the spot. Others were captured—to be ransomed by the United States in December, 1962, in return for medical supplies.
It was a major public relations setback for the newly-installed Kennedy administration, which had raised hopes for a change in American-Soviet relations.
Kennedy, trying to abort widespread criticism, publicly took the blame for the setback: “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan….I’m the responsible officer of the Government.”
The Bay of Pigs convinced Kennedy that he had been misled by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Out of this came his decision to rely heavily on the counsel of his brother, Robert, whom he had installed as Attorney General.
The failed Cuban invasion—unfortunately for Kennedy—convinced Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev that the President was weak.
Khrushchev told an associate that he could understand if Kennedy had not decided to invade Cuba. But once he did, Kennedy should have pressed on and wiped out Castro.
Khrushchev attributed this to Kennedy’s youth, inexperience and timidity—and believed he could bully the President.
On June 4, 1961, Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss world tensions. Khrushchev threatened to go to nuclear war over the American presence in West Berlin—the dividing line between Western Europe, protected by the United States, and Eastern Europe, controlled by the Soviet Union.
Kennedy, who prized rationality, was shaken by Khrushchev’s unexpected rage. After the conference, he told an associate: “It’s going to be a cold winter.”
Meanwhile, East Berliners felt they were about to be denied access to West Berlin. A flood of 3,000 refugees daily poured into West Germany.
Khrushchev was embarrassed at this clear showing of the unpopularity of the Communist regime. In August, he ordered that a concrete wall—backed up by barbed wire, searchlights and armed guards—be erected to seal off East Berlin.
As tensions mounted and a Soviet invasion of West Berlin seemed likely, Kennedy sent additional troops to the city in a massive demonstration of American will.
Two years later, on June 26, 1963, during a 10-day tour of Europe, Kennedy visited Berlin to deliver his “I am a Berliner” speech to a frenzied crowd of thousands.
JFK addresses crowds at the Berlin Wall
“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world,” orated Kennedy. “Let them come to Berlin.”
Standing within gunshot of the Berlin wall, he lashed out at the Soviet Union and praised the citizens of West Berlin for being “on the front lines of freedom” for more than 20 years.
“All free men, wherever they may live,” said Kennedy, “are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich ben ein Berliner.’”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 11, 2022 at 12:17 am
According to numerous polls, Democrats are looking at a political massacre this November—losing both the House and Senate.
Nany of the problems facing Democrats are self-inflicted. But they can be resolved if Democrats—and especially President Joseph Biden—are willing to fight fire with fire.
In Part One of this series, four such remedies were listed. Here are the remaining two.
WEAPON #5: ACCUSE—AND PROSECUTE—REPUBLICANS FOR SUPPORTING DICTATORSHIP
Just hours after the deadly January 6, 2021 coup attempt at the United States Capitol, 147 Republicans lawmakers in the House and Senate voted to overturn then-president Donald Trump’s election loss, following months of his baseless claims that the November election had been stolen.
Mounting evidence proves that many Republicans actively tried to assist Trump in illegally overturning the results of the 2020 election.
For example: On January 17, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene texted Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, advising Trump to declare martial law.
Yet not one Republican member of Congress has been indicted—let alone convicted—by the Biden Justice Department. Nor has any key member of the Trump administration, such as:
- Rep, Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) who incited the Trump crowd with: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!”
- Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who cried to the demonstrators, “Let’s have trial by combat!”
- Donald Trump, who incited his followers to attack the Capitol and has spent a year and a half spreading poisonous lies that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him through “massive” voter fraud.
There is no better way to discourage law-abiding citizens and encourage law-breaking ones than to allow notorious criminals to go unpunished.
Donald Trump
President Biden should order Attorney General Merrick Garland to immediately start prosecuting ALL Republicans linked to the January 6 coup attempt.
Democrats should make their slogan for 2022—and 2024: “This time, vote like your whole democracy depends on it.”
WEAPON #6 DROP THE FIXATION ON ADMITTING ILLEGAL ALIENS
The Biden administration is pushing to lift Title 42, a 1944 federal law meant to help prevent the spread of communicable disease.
In March, 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to quickly expel migrants and deny entry to asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
For President Donald Trump, the order restricted migrants’ entry into the country. But many congressional Democrats claimed that it short-circuited the country’s asylum system.
Republicans are fiercely defending Title 42—and holding continued funding for COVID research and vaccines as hostage for its retention.
When people are frightened and angry by high prices for food, housing and gas, they don’t welcome competition from uninvited illegal aliens. This includes Latinos—55% of whom disapprove of the job that Biden is doing.
Biden should drop plans to lift Title 42. He can use this as leverage in dealing with Republicans. And refusing to support illegal immigration won’t cost him support among Latinos.
* * * * *
Millions of Americans believe that only liberals can be Communist sympathizers and traitors. This is the direct result of decades of Republican propaganda dating back to 1946.
Republicans, having lost the White House from 1932 to 1948, furiously sought a return to power. And they found their remedy in attacking the patriotism of their fellow Americans—ushering in the infamous era of Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon and the Hollywood Blacklist.
Democrats need to similarly damn Republicans with the charge of “Traitor.” The difference: There is plenty of evidence—much of it on video—to document its truth.
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
By contrast, Democrats have proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language. This has been true despite overwhelming evidence of Donald Trump’s treason. Out of this could have come:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “Fake President”
- “DJTraitor”
- “Red Donald.”
In addition, Democrats have handicapped themselves via the Michelle Obama formula: “When they go low, we go high.” When you’re in a boxing match and your opponent goes for your groin, you’re a fool to adhere to Marquis of Queensbury.
Finally, Democrats have refused to see most of their fellow Americans for what they are.
Historically, the United States has always been a highly conservative nation. Going from “conservative” to “Fascist” is a relatively easy step—as millions of Donald Trump’s supporters have proven.
That’s why, despite his manifest criminalities, a majority of Right-wing Americans would have given Trump another four years.
But COVID-19 changed all that. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves stuck at home with their children. Many of them couldn’t go to work—because they were sick or their jobs had disappeared. Their 401Ks suddenly became worthless.
Only a lethal pandemic forced them to vote for Joe Biden.
In short: To win elections, Democrats must use the same weapons as their sworn Republican enemies and brutally attack them head-on.
And they must appeal to what truly moves most voters: Greed. Fear. Hatred.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 10, 2022 at 12:22 am
“Republicans have the advantage with voters in 2022 elections, poll finds.”
So read the headline in an April 29 story on the NPR website. According to the story:
- “All signs are pointing to a difficult midterm election for President Biden and Democrats, and a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll has fresh evidence of that.”
- “Of the 1,162 registered voters surveyed, 47% said they are more likely to vote for the Republican in their district, as opposed to 44% who said Democrats.”
- Voters favor Republicans on the issues of inflation, crime and national security. Inflation is Americans’ No. 1 concern.
- On immigration, the country is split.
Political pundits are openly predicting that this will hand Republicans the House, if not the Senate as well.
Yet there are steps that Democrats—particularly President Joseph Biden—can take to try to reverse this outcome.
WEAPON #1: REASSURE VOTERS THAT HE IS ATTACKING INFLATION IN A WAY THEY CAN UNDERSTAND
When people are frightened and angry, they look for simple answers and solutions—and scapegoats. That is how Republicans deal with crises.
Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions.
And Republicans have become experts at appealing to these—especially the baser ones. For Republicans, the Big Three are: Hatred, Greed, Fear.
Voters want to buy groceries at an affordable price—and to walk streets and enter stores without wearing a mask. And they want concrete reasons to believe that these can become reality.
President Biden should do the same in combating rising gas and food prices, which are frightening and angering millions.
Instead of accepting the conventional explanation of “supply chain difficulties,” he should blame rising prices on the entrenched greed of corporations. In many cases, it is no doubt true.
More importantly, Biden should propose a bill to make price gouging a national crime, punishable by a lengthy prison term. It can be modeled on the anti-extortion provisions in the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
No matter what happens on the bill, the President faces a win/win situation.
If it passes, he can rightly take credit for it and reap the popularity certain to result. And if Republicans block its passage, he can rightly blame them, thus ensuring that he and Democrats are seen as “the people’s champions.”
President Joe Biden
WEAPON #2: STOP THINKING OF REPUBLICANS AS “OUR FRIENDS”
The President should stop referring to “our Republican friends.” He has no friends among men and women dedicated to overthrowing Constitutional government and imposing a lifelong criminal and tyrant in his place.
Republicans have enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him—despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t.
Legislators in Republican-controlled states are now working furiously to corrupt election machinery at state and local levels so they can nullify the votes of millions of Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Their ultimate goal: Restore a lifelong criminal and Russia-appeasing traitor to absolute power as “President-for-Life.”
And more than a year after that treasonous attempted coup, many Republicans still refuse to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
Would Franklin D. Roosevelt have referred to his Right-wing enemies as “our Nazi friends”?
January 6, 2021 attempted coup
WEAPON #3: BLAME DONALD TRUMP AND HIS STORMTRUMPERS FOR COVID-19 DEATHS
Trump learned how deadly the virus was in January, 2020. But he
- Publicly denied this and attacked mask-wearing and social distancing;
- Attacked governors who issued stay-at-home orders to contain the virus;
- Incited his followers to defy those orders; and
- Secretly got vaccinated before leaving office and has only reluctantly acknowledged the importance of vaccinations.
His legacy of defying science continues to live on in his millions of Stormtrumper followers—who refuse to mask up, social distance and, most importantly, get vaccinated. The vast majority of those now flooding hospital ICU rooms—and morgues—are unvaccinated.
As a result, countless victims of crime, accidents, heart attacks, strokes and other debilitating conditions find their surgeries/treatments canceled or indefinitely postponed. And doctors and nurses treating these patients are nearing the breaking point of exhaustion.
President Biden and the health officials of his administration should blame the unvaccinated for their egotistical selfishness in causing this crisis. This will put Republicans on the defensive and divert attacks on the President.
He should also propose a national law allowing hospitals to stop admitting unvaccinated anti-vaxxers. These people need to face the consequences of their own irresponsible behavior. Only then will hospitals be free to care for those who deserve medical treatment.
WEAPON #4: BLAME TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS FOR THE CURRENT CRISIS IN UKRAINE
In July, 2019, Trump tried to extort a “favor” from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Investigate on presumed 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
Clearly implied in the call: Produce “dirt” on Biden—or you won’t get the Congressionally authorized $400 million in military aid.
Biden should blame Trump for having encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine. Example: Siding with Putin against the FBI and CIA when they agreed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 Presidential election. The words “traitor” and “treason” should be routinely used when he discusses these incidents.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2022 at 12:10 am
Many “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
First up: Today’s Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refused to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he was the victim of massive vote fraud.
Donald Trump
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to illegally flip the results of the election to give him a win. Pence refused.
For weeks Trump called upon his legions of Right-wing followers to descend on Washington, D.C. on that day. On December 20, he tweeted: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
On January 6, 2021, tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers heard Trump denounce the election. Then they stormed and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite target of Trump and the Right.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley had intended to dispute the results of the 2020 election. As many as 25 Senators and 140 House Republicans had intended to join him.
But now most of Trump’s longtime Congressional supporters feared they would be tarred—rightly—as his accessories to that day’s outrage. They might even be voted out of office!
Suddenly, many of them found reasons to reject a challenge to the Electoral College votes.
In addition:
- Many of them piously claimed they were shocked—shocked!—by that day’s violence—carefully omitting that by their overt or covert support of Trump’s lies they had helped create the climate for its ignition.
- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had refused to condemn Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result—called the invasion a “failed insurrection.”
- Senator Lindsey Graham, who had relentlessly defended Trump’s lies and outrages for four years, now dared to admit: “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected.”
- Twitter, which for years had ignored Trump’s flagrant violations of its rules against threats and harassment, now found it possible to ban Trump from its website.
Something similar happened in Washington, D.C., in 1954.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist—and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
- President Harry S. Truman
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall
- Columnist Drew Pearson
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Later that year, the Senate censured McCarthy and he rapidly declined in power and health.
- Senatorial colleagues who had once courted his support now avoided him.
- They left the Senate when he rose to speak.
- Reporters who had once fawned on him for his latest sensational slander now ignored him.
- Eisenhower—who had sought McCarthy’s support during his 1952 race for President—joked that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”
Fast-forward to July 12, 2012—and the release of former FBI Director Louie Freeh’s report on serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. As the assistant football coach at Penn State University (PSU), he had used the football facilities to sexually attack numerous young boys.
Jerry Sandusky
But Sandusky was regarded as more than a second-banana. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999, and authored several books about his coaching experiences.
In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving underprivileged, at-risk youth.
College football is a $2.6 billion-a-year business. And Penn State is one of its premiere brands, with revenue of $70 million in 2010.
PSU’s seven-month internal investigation, headed by Freeh, revealed:
- Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, was aware of a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky.
- So was president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz.
- In 2001, then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he’d seen Sandusky attacking a boy in the shower.
- Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz then conspired to cover up for Sandusky.
- The rapes of these boys occurred in the Lasch Building—where Paterno had his office.
In 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period.
On June 22, 2012, he was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On the day the Freeh report was released, Nike—a longtime sponsor for Penn State—announced that it would remove Paterno’s name from the child care center at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 24, 2022 at 12:35 am
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American Right felt dejected.
Accusing Democrats of being “terrorist-lovers” just hasn’t been as profitable as accusing them of being “Communists.”
Then fate intervened.
The torch had barely gone out at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics when Russian President Vladimir Putin began menacing the Ukraine.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Even while the Olympics played out on television, Ukrainians had rioted in Kiev and evicted their corrupt, luxury-loving president, Victor Yanukovych.
And that didn’t sit well with his “sponsor”—Putin.
Yanukovych had rejected a pending European Union association agreement. He had chosen instead to pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer ties with Russia.
And that had sat well with Putin.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin had yearned for its reestablishment. He had called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially NATO.
So it was almost a certainty that Putin would retaliate.
And since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.
On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.
And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.
Right-wingers such as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR): ”It is a result of a year of Joe Biden’s impotence and incompetence towards Russia in particular and in foreign policy more generally.”
Cotton had vigorously defended President Donald Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Russian aggression.
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine.
Then, on July 25, Trump telephoned Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate presumed 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
Clearly implied in the call: Produce “dirt” on Biden—or you won’t get the military aid.
All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.
First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.
For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.
And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?
It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
It has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.
For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.
Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.
Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.
Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.
Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.
Latin and Central America
Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.
The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.
In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Tse-tung defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.
China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.
Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”
The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.
They want the United States to “intervene” in Ukraine—even though this would mean going to war with the only nuclear power capable of turning America into an atomic graveyard.
Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 26, 2021 at 12:14 am
Having made threats of violence an integral part of his successful 2016 campaign for President, Donald Trump continued to make violence a hallmark of his Presidency.
Throughout his run for President, Trump’s followers chanted, “Lock her up!” at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Yet Clinton has never been tried for a crime, let alone convicted of one.
As President, Trump still encouraged his followers to shout this chant.
On July 2, 2017, Trump tweeted a video showing him punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head during a WWE wrestling match.
And on August 15, 2017, Trump retweeted a cartoon photo of a “Trump Train” running over a CNN reporter.
Summing up Trump’s legacy of hatred, longtime Republican Presidential adviser David Gergen said:
“Trump unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country from the day he declared he was running for president, and they’ve been snarling and barking at each other ever since. It’s just inevitable there are going to be acts of violence that grow out of that.”
Gergen said this on October 24, 2018—the day that pipe bombs were mailed to:
- Former President Barack Obama
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former First Lady and United States Senator Hillary Clinton
- Former Attorney General Eric Holder
- Congresswoman Maxine Waters
- Former Vice President Joe Biden
- Actor Robert De Niro
- Former CIA Director John Brennan
Trump had brutally and repeatedly attacked all of these intended victims. And the man who sent the bombs—Cesar Sayoc Jr. of Aventura, Florida—had plastered his van with stickers supporting Trump.
Donald Trump
On October 8, 2020, 13 Right-wingers were arrested and charged in a terrorism plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The terrorists intended to overthrow several state governments that they “believe are violating the US Constitution,” including the government of Michigan, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Trump had repeatedly attacked Whitmer for issuing a March 23 stay-at-home order to stem the COVID-19 pandemic in that state.
After losing the 2020 Presidential election, Trump ordered his campaign to file at least 63 lawsuits contesting Joseph Biden’s victory. Upon losing all of these, Trump turned to violence as his last-ditch remedy to stay in office.
On January 6, he incited thousands of his supporters to storm the United States Capitol Building where members of the Senate were counting the electoral votes cast in the election.
The Stormtrumpers’ goal: Stop the ballot counting—and thus maintain Trump in office.
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police.
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents, metal poles and lead pipes.
- At least 140 police officers suffered injuries, including concussions, broken ribs, smashed spinal discs, a lost eye.
- Many lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
- Lawmakers huddled under desks and behind locked doors, expecting to die any minute.
- More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
Stormtrumpers scaling Capitol Building walls
And Republicans?
Even after being forced to flee for their lives or barricade themselves in House or Senate rooms, Republicans refused to condemn Trump. On January 11, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection against the United States government.
Senate Democrats wanted to try Trump while he was still in office. But then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused. On February 13, after a five-day trial, Republicans acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43, failing 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.
Since then, Republicans such as Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have recast the attempted coup as a non-violent—even patriotic—event.
“Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding U.S. citizens, especially Trump voters,” Gosar said, condemning the Justice Department’s Investigation of Capitol attackers.
And Greene claims: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”
A party—Republican—that has made such a heavy, long-running—and successful—investment in violence is not going to voluntarily turn pacifist.
And a party—Democratic—that has generally behaved like cowards and appeasers toward its sworn enemies isn’t going to survive, let alone preserve democracy.
In May, 1967, Israel faced a similar deadly threat.
On May 22, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would be closed to all Israeli shipping. And Nasser mobilized the Egyptian military along the border with Israel.
On May 30, Jordan and Egypt signed a defence pact. The next day, the Iraqi army began deploying troops and armored units in Jordan. They were reinforced by an Egyptian contingent.
Israel was being surrounded—and its sworn enemies were about to attack.
“We are being bullied,” said longtime Israeli soldier Moshe Dayan. “And the only way to handle a bully is to punch him in the face.”
On June 5, Israel struck first, defeating its enemies and securing huge tracts of territory as a defensive barrier.
Democrats have yet to learn Dayan’s lesson. They—and the country—may not turn out to be as fortunate as Israel.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 25, 2021 at 12:05 am
With the rise of Donald Trump to Republican standard-bearer in 2015, threats of violence entered the rhetoric—and tactics—of the Republican party.
On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot:
“I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
Donald Trump
Republicans clearly saw this as a threat is undeniable.
Paul Ryan, their Speaker of the House, said on March 17: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.”
And Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich chinned in. “Leaders don’t imply violence,” Kasich told “Face the Nation” on March 20. “When he says that there could be riots, that’s inappropriate. I think you understand that, okay? Secondly, while we have our differences and disagreements, we’re Americans. Americans don’t say, ‘Let’s take to the streets and have violence.'”
But threatening his Republican and Democratic opponents with violence played a major role in Donald Trump’s campaign for President.
No other candidate—Republican or Democrat—had ever made such repeated and brutal use of threats of physical assault in pursuing the Presidency.
- Philip Klein, the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote on the eve of the Republican National Convention in July: “Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions.”
- On August 9, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- “Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
- “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him,” said Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA).
Threats of this type continued to be made by Trump supporters right up to the day of the election.
- On July 29, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant acting as a Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
- At a town hall meeting where Trump’s Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence appeared, a woman named Rhonda said: “For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution.”
- In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Clinton from the White House if she won the race: “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,”
- Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee: “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take….I would do whatever I can for my country.”
Even Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, expressed fear of what might happen if Trump lost the election:
Fergus Cullen
“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side.
“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.
Trump even began encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He urged them to act as poll watchers in “other” [non-white] communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”
Many of his supporters promised to do so.
“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.
“I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 24, 2021 at 12:17 am
Republicans in past decades tried—and often won—elections on the basis of ideology and/or appeals to racism.
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”—stoking whites’ fears of blacks.
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
Since the end of World War II, Republicans 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.”
Anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech.
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.
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.
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.
For several years, fears of Islamic terror carried Republicans to electoral victory—most importantly in 2004, when George W. Bush won re-election as President.
But after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Americans lost interest in The Maniacal Muslim as a surefire election tactic.
With the rise of Donald Trump to Republican standard-bearer in 2015, threats of violence entered the rhetoric—and tactics—of the Republican party.
For example:
- On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear on [March 16]: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.'”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 23, 2021 at 12:27 am
It was a moment both poignant and prophetic: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) responding to a brutal virtual attack on her by a fellow member of Congress.
Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) had tweeted a doctored anime video depicting him killing Ocasio-Cortez and then turning his sword towards President Joseph Biden.
Paul Gosar
As a result, the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives was now meeting to decide if he should be censured over that video.
“What is so hard, what is so hard about saying this is wrong?” asked Ocasio-Cortez. “This is not about me. This is not about Representative Gosar. This is about what we are willing to accept. If you believe that this behavior should not be accepted, then vote yes. It’s really that simple.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
And the Republican response was equally telling: Of the 213 Republicans serving in the House, only two—Liz Cheney (Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (Illinois)—dared to support censure of Gosar.
A censure resolution is the most severe form of punishment in the House, and stripping a member of committee assignments removes a powerful platform to influence legislation and give voice to constituent priorities.
The resolution approved by the House removed Gosar from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which Ocasio-Cortez also serves on, and the Natural Resources Committee.
“We cannot have a member joking about murdering each other or threatening the President of the United States,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a floor speech.
“Disguising death threats as a video doesn’t make it less real. It’s a sad day for the House of Representatives, but a necessary day.”
Nancy Pelosi
Before the vote which censured him, Gosar said: “I have said decisively there is no threat in the cartoon other than the threat that immigration poses to our country. And no threat was intended by my staff or me.
“I voluntarily took the cartoon down not because it was itself a threat, but because some thought it was. Out of compassion for those who generally felt offense, I self-censored.”
Yet only minutes after the House voted to censure him, Gosar retweeted the video. He also retweeted Right-wing podcaster Elijah Schaffer’s tweet of the video: “Really well done. We love @DrPaulGosar, don’t we folks?”
This marriage of violence with Right-wing ideology is not new.
Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund noted in a June 19, 2015 editorial: “The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it. “
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent—-and violence-arousing—-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like Paul Gosar fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked—-shocked!—that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful, then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
The difference is that, in this case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.
Consider the following:
- Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West, referring to his Democratic opponent, Representative Ron Klein, told Tea Party activists: “You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
- Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MINN.) said she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration.
- Former Governor (R-Alaska) Sarah Palin told her supporters: “Get in their face and argue with them. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!”
- Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TEX.) “We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
Republicans in past decades tried—and often won—elections on the basis of ideology and/or appeals to racism.
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”—stoking white fears of blacks.
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.
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JFK: ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER: PART TWO (OF TEN)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 5, 2022 at 9:31 amDuring the 1960 Presidential campaign, then-Senator John F. Kennedy promised to build a Peace Corps to train people in underdeveloped nations to help themselves.
John F. Kennedy
In March, 1961, the program went into effect, with the President’s brother-in-law, Sergent Shriver, as director.
Starvation, illiteracy and disease were the enemies of the Corps. Any nation wanting aid could request it. The first group of volunteers went to the Philippines, the second to Ecuador and the third to Tanganyika.
The problems of the underdeveloped world were too great for any single organization to solve. But the Corps lifted the spirits of many living in those countries. And it captured the imagination of millions of Americans—especially those of thousands of idealistic youths who entered its ranks.
To combat the growing Communist threat to Latin America, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress. He defined the Alliance’s goal as providing “revolutionary progress through powerful, democratic means.”
Within two years he could report:
“Some 140,000 housing units have been constructed. Slum clearance projects have begun, and 3,000 classrooms have been built. More than 4,000,000 school books have been distributed.
“The Alliance has fired the imagination and kindled the hopes of millions of our good neighbors. Their drive toward modernization is gaining momentum as it unleashes the energies of these millions.
“The United States is becoming increasingly identified in the minds of the people with the goal they move toward: a better life with freedom,” said Kennedy.
Critics of the program, however, charged that the President was trying to “dress up the old policies” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in new rhetoric. Since FDR’s time, the United States has believed in giving economic aid to Latin America.
Much—if not most—of these billions of dollars has wound up in the pockets of various right-wing dictators, such as Anastasio Somoza and Rafael Trujillo.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was urging action on another front—that of outer space.
“This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” declared the President. He committed the United States to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
As indeed it happened less than six years after his death—on July 20, 1969.
Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric masked his real reason for going to the moon: To score a propaganda victory over the Soviet Union.
Another of his anti-Communist goals: To remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba at almost any cost.
Fidel Castro
Immediately after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert–who was then the Attorney General—to oversee a CIA program to overthrow Castro.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” then-former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
Nor was everyone in the CIA 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:
But all of these efforts failed to assassinate Castro–or overthrow the Cuban Revolution he was heading.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Americans would rightly label such methods as ”terrorist” if another power used them against the United States today. And the Cuban government saw the situation exactly the same way.
So Castro appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
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.
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