From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.desert-storm,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Gulf "War"&Chomsky -- final response (part 3)
Date: 13 Aug 92 01:23:31 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB


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So do past crimes come to bear on the "rightness or wrongness" 
of Washington's policies leading up to and following the Gulf
slaughter?

It is certainly true that the long record of Washington's support for
slaughter, dictatorship, torture, rape, and other familiar features
[in the parts of the world inhabited by the beneficiaries of
Washington's Good Intentions] -- is separate from the case at hand of
the same type of behavior -- support for the Butcher of Bagdad despite
the vast human suffering this has meant for Iraqis and others;
blocking of initiavites for regional disarmaments; blocking the
"diplomatic track" to ensure that the only *two* possible outcomes
would be either an Iraqi capitulation to force or the destruction of
Iraq by force, not a diplomatic or negotiated withdrawal and
resolution of that and other regional issues; and the support for
Saddam after the war as far as that was needed to avoid democracy in
Iraq which would be a problem to "stability" -- i.e., the maintenance
of things "going our way" for the Washington elite, which has meant
the subordination of the living conditions and democratic aspirations
of the miserable creatures which merely happen to live in the region
which is Ours to control and whose resources are similarly Ours to
control and exploit.

It is further true that understanding these underlying realities of
the Gulf Slaughter is, in theory and in some instances in practice,
possible without need for illustrations of Washington's rhetoric,
versus deeds, reality, and motivations, in the past.

However given the record just reviewed of systematic disinformation
and lies, the climate is such that clear thinking is severely
hampered. We all base our "overall world views" after all, on the
"facts and reality" around us as we see them. And people (logically)
tend to fit new data into the established world-view.

To embark on the risky venture of abstract analogies: A person with
worldview X (when the truth is much more closely approximated by
worldview Y), when exposed to the fact x, will give it a Y-based
interpretation.

Mental acrobatics are seen being performed all over the UseNet (and by
most consumers of Mainstream Nooz, when confronted by the rare
occasion of a fact not Fit To Print) in trying to explain facts from
the worldview-basis of a Washington which, unlike "bad" countries (it
is difficult to give effective examples because, in cases like Iraq
and China when elite interests were such that portraying them as
suddenly "moderate" or whatever was expedient, the Free Press was by
and large more than happy to oblige them, with the concomitant effect
on the consumers of Mainstream Nooz), in which Washington departs from
the others by *really* meaning what it says about International Law,
Democracy, Human Rights, and so on -- "meaning it" in a substantive
sense beyond the largely irrelevant sense reviewed earlier that is.

When criticisms of the State are taken by the victims of the
propaganda system as personal attacks upon them -- the "we" syndrome I
frequently refer to in which this label is irrationally attached to
the decisions of elites in policies where the public has little to no
say and in arenas wherein electoral politics are such that the
"debate" focuses on personalities and styles, not the issues, in any
case -- naturally the victims are likely to resist such aspects of
reality -- especially when the facts seem to be accusing that "we"
have so malevolent as to be involved in international terrorism,
support for wholesale slaughter, and the like, and particularly when
the extremely disciplined Free Press parrots so well and regularly the
Washington Party Line about "we" standing against the <this month's
official enemy state>'s support for such evil-doing.

In sum when such double-think is performed as to claim that since the
[longtime U.S.-backed [not relevant to this sentence-phrase] vicious
thug [partially relevant]] Saddam Hussein *could have* unconditionally
withdrawn [under conditions that far less vicious state leaders would
not have taken up due to the "base" considerations that affect their
calculus just as surely as it affects their moral equivalents like
Bush] -- then it follows that "we" -- Washington -- is not to blame
for the slaughter of 250,000 Iraqis is undertook to force the dictator
out rather than pursue [because of Washington's "base" considerations]
an outcome which would have had a good change [a fortiori a 1% chance]
of *not* slaughtering 250,000 Iraqis -- clearly such double-think
need not be corrected by alluding to any external or previous
historical facts; however, any tools which can awaken people from the
fantastic moral insanity of this position -- we may imagine Brezhniev
supporting and arming a vicious dictator in Israel for years, who
later invades a second country this time against Soviet interests,
with the Soviets then blocking the "diplomatic track" in favor of a
two-option "capitulate or die" ultimatum which the Israeli dictator
rejects following which the vastly suprior Soviet forces proceed to
slaughter Israeli conscripts and civilians wholesale, and indignantly
proclaim that it wasn't their fauls since "if the Israeli dictator had
withdrawn" the slaughter of Israelis would not have taken place -- any
such "reality checks" as the historical record might provide about
Washingtons and its operative criteria in foreign policy as can be
employed to point to the absurdity of the Free Press-inspired
hallucinations should be.

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Naturally, for those in power, maintaining the Party Line that there
were no options in resolving the Crisis save for the violent methods
used is of utmost importance -- for without this doctrinal fig leaf to
cover the truth, the Gulf Slaughter is seen for what it is by a public
which is already under far less doctrinal control by the
establishement elite than in previous times when there lacked today's
degree of public cynicism about the proclaimed High Principles envoked
by elite propaganda to rally support for their wars fought for their
own differnt and "base" reasons -- today's public more cynical about
the Stats's lies is kept docile not because they are so convinced
about Washington's High Aims -- beneath the surface, many are not,
despite the rhetorical often repeated from the Party Line -- but
becuse the Slaughter is at least seen as having been un-avoidable.

When the veil of lies about there having been no diplomatic option --
let alone the hysterical Line about Bushing having "gone the extra
mile" for such an outcome -- is removed, there remains the Gulf
Slaughter seen for what is it and rather unpleasant truths about
Washington are revealed, truths that when voiced by dissidents are
evidence of "America Hating" or more revently "America is always
wrong" (or in previous years, evidence of a soft-spot for Stalinism in
one's heart, no doubt). Evidently, these dissidents do not think
"America is wrong" when decent housing, environmental, urban
development, etc policies are implemented so it is a truism that
"America is always Wrong" is not the operative doctrine; rather,
"State-Terrorism is always wrong" -- which when commited by the Well
Meaning and Noble state is a sure sign of America-Hating "America is
Always Wrong" theologies -- according to either the state
propagandists participating in conscious deception, and those who
sincerely feel this to be the case since the realities voiced by the
dissidents are in-audible to them due to their world-view, so there is
no other explanation. [Similarly, the principled stand against
Washington's aggression is so unfamiliar, that when evidence to
discredit Washington's lies about Cuba is presented in the form of
comparative human rights records showing Bad human rights in Cuba,
Worse HRs elsewhere, and so much worse yet that Cuba's record looks
like a human rights paradise in comparison -- this, is taken as
evidence of being an apologist for Castro, it being irrelevant that
the evidence presented by the "apologist" happens to condemn the Cuban
record since mere logic will not stand in the way of this
categorization of the dissident since, again, the victim of the
propaganda system is so unfamiar with the principled stand so well
excluded from the PR system in which Tweedledum and Tweedledee debate
the *modalities* of the implementation of Washington's will rather
than challenging it, that the dissident view point is alien to the
point of bein in-audible and comprehensible by the victim only as
words which an employee of the Castro regime would use]

**

In any event, I will post again "Blocking the Diplomatic Track" and
while the impressive level of media hysteria which so quickly, and so
smoothly, transformed an ally into a the next Hitler about to take the
world over makes a completely rational viewing of the facts next to
impossible for those who consumed the Pentagon-PR-system's "show"
through the Network New "coverage," ultimately the persistent
counterforce to the Party Line re-writing of history is the only
option for actual truth and sanity, in some measure, to make it into
the public consciousness.



**

I will also post in parts what was written in May/June 1991 as a draft
to an article (never "finished") in which I attempted to "bridge" from
"step one" (meaning the world-view of the consumer of Free Press nooz)
to Chomsky's analysis, a tall order indeed as Chomsky would no doubt
agree, especially in regards to articles written for Z magazine.

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