Official website of the author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic.
The Anti-Empire Report #119
By William Blum
– Published July 29th, 2013
It’s not easy being a flag-waving American nationalist. In addition
to having to deal with the usual disillusion, anger, and scorn from
around the world incited by Washington’s endless bombings and endless
wars, the nationalist is assaulted by whistle blowers like Bradley
Manning and Edward Snowden, who have disclosed a steady stream of
human-rights and civil-liberties scandals, atrocities, embarrassing
lies, and embarrassing truths. Believers in “American exceptionalism”
and “noble intentions” have been hard pressed to keep the rhetorical
flag waving by the dawn’s early light and the twilight’s last gleaming.
That may explain the
Washington Post story (July 20)
headlined “U.S. asylum-seekers unhappy in Russia”, about Edward Snowden
and his plan to perhaps seek asylum in Moscow. The article recounted
the allegedly miserable times experienced in the Soviet Union by
American expatriates and defectors like Lee Harvey Oswald, the two NSA
employees of 1960 – William Martin and Bernon Mitchell – and several
others. The
Post’s propaganda equation apparently is:
Dissatisfaction with life in Russia by an American equals a point in
favor of the United States: “misplaced hopes of a glorious life in the
worker’s paradise” … Oswald “was given work in an electronics factory in
dreary Minsk, where the bright future eluded him” … reads the
Post’s
Cold War-clichéd rendition. Not much for anyone to get terribly
excited about, but a defensive American nationalist is hard pressed
these days to find much better.
At the same time TeamUSA scores points by publicizing present-day
Russian violations of human rights and civil liberties, just as if the
Cold War were still raging. “We call on the Russian government to cease
its campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to
expose corruption, and to ensure that the universal human rights and
fundamental freedoms of all of its citizens, including the freedoms of
speech and assembly, are protected and respected,” said Jay Carney, the
White House press secretary.
1
“Campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to
expose corruption” … hmmm … Did someone say “Edward Snowden”? Is
round-the-clock surveillance of the citizenry not an example of
corruption? Does the White House have no sense of shame? Or
embarrassment? At all?
I long for a modern version of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 at
which Carney – or much better, Barack Obama himself – is spewing one lie
and one sickening defense of his imperialist destruction after another.
And the committee counsel (in the famous words of Joseph Welch) is
finally moved to declare: “Sir, you’ve done enough. Have you no sense
of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” The
Congressional gallery burst into applause and this incident is widely
marked as the beginning of the end of the McCarthy sickness.
US politicians and media personalities have criticized Snowden for
fleeing abroad to release the classified documents he possessed. Why
didn’t he remain in the US to defend his actions and face his punishment
like a real man? they ask. Yes, the young man should have voluntarily
subjected himself to solitary confinement, other tortures, life in
prison, and possible execution if he wished to be taken seriously.
Quel coward!
Why didn’t Snowden air his concerns through the proper NSA channels
rather than leaking the documents, as a respectable whistleblower would
do? This is the question James Bamford, generally regarded as America’s
leading writer on the NSA, endeavored to answer, as follows:
I’ve interviewed many NSA whistleblowers, and the common
denominator is that they felt ignored when attempting to bring illegal
or unethical operations to the attention of higher-ranking officials.
For example, William Binney and several other senior NSA staffers
protested the agency’s domestic collection programs up the chain of
command, and even attempted to bring the operations to the attention of
the attorney general, but they were ignored. Only then did Binney speak
publicly to me for an article in Wired magazine. In a Q&A on the
Guardian Web Snowden cited Binney as an example of “how overly-harsh
responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale,
scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a
conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be
destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.”
And even when whistleblowers bring their concerns to the news
media, the NSA usually denies that the activity is taking place. The
agency denied Binney’s charges that it was obtaining all consumer
metadata from Verizon and had access to virtually all Internet traffic.
It was only when Snowden leaked the documents revealing the phone-log
program and showing how PRISM works that the agency was forced to come
clean. 2
“Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs
and national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its
national security,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said recently.
“All I know is that it is not unusual for lots of nations.”
3
Well, Mr. K, anti-semitism is not unusual; it can be found in every
country. Why, then, does the world so strongly condemn Nazi Germany?
Obviously, it’s a matter of degree, is it not? The magnitude of the US
invasion of privacy puts it into a league all by itself.
Kerry goes out of his way to downplay the significance of what
Snowden revealed. He’d have the world believe that it’s all just
routine stuff amongst nations … “Move along, nothing to see here.” Yet
the man is almost maniacal about punishing Snowden. On July 12, just
hours after Venezuela agreed to provide Snowden with political asylum,
Kerry personally called Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua and
reportedly threatened to ground any Venezuelan aircraft in America’s or
any NATO country’s airspace if there is the slightest suspicion that
Snowden is using the flight to get to Caracas. Closing all NATO member
countries’ airspace to Venezuelan flights means avoiding 26 countries in
Europe and two in North America. Under this scenario, Snowden would
have to fly across the Pacific from Russia’s Far East instead of
crossing the Atlantic.
The Secretary of State also promised to intensify the ongoing process
of revoking US entry visas to Venezuelan officials and businessmen
associated with the deceased President Hugo Chávez. Washington will
also begin prosecuting prominent Venezuelan politicians on allegations
of drug trafficking, money laundering and other criminal actions and
Kerry specifically mentioned some names in his conversation with the
Venezuelan Foreign Minister.
Kerry added that Washington is well aware of Venezuela’s dependence
on the US when it comes to refined oil products. Despite being one of
the world’s largest oil producers, Venezuela requires more petrol and
oil products than it can produce, buying well over a million barrels of
refined oil products from the United States every month. Kerry bluntly
warned that fuel supplies would be halted if President Maduro continues
to reach out to the fugitive NSA contractor.
4
Wow. Heavy. Unlimited power in the hands of psychopaths. My own country truly scares me.
And what country brags about its alleged freedoms more than the
United States? And its alleged democracy? Its alleged civil rights
and human rights? Its alleged “exceptionalism”? Its alleged
everything? Given that, why should not the United States be held to the
very highest of standards?
American hypocrisy in its foreign policy is manifested on a routine,
virtually continual, basis. Here is President Obama speaking recently
in South Africa about Nelson Mandela: “The struggle here against
apartheid, for freedom; [Mandela’s] moral courage; this country’s
historic transition to a free and democratic nation has been a personal
inspiration to me. It has been an inspiration to the world – and it
continues to be.”
5
How touching. But no mention – never any mention by any American
leader – that the United States was directly responsible for sending
Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years.
6
And demanding Snowden’s extradition while, according to the Russian
Interior Ministry, “Law agencies asked the US on many occasions to
extradite wanted criminals through Interpol channels, but those requests
were neither met nor even responded to.” Amongst the individuals
requested are militant Islamic insurgents from Chechnya, given asylum in
the United States.
7
Ecuador has had a similar experience with the US in asking for the
extradition of several individuals accused of involvement in a coup
attempt against President Rafael Correa. The most blatant example of
this double standard is that of Luis Posada Carriles who masterminded
the blowing up of a Cuban airline in 1976, killing 73 civilians. He has
lived as a free man in Florida for many years even though his
extradition has been requested by Venezuela. He’s but one of hundreds
of anti-Castro and other Latin American terrorists who’ve been given
haven in the United States over the years despite their being wanted in
their home countries.
American officials can spout “American exceptionalism” every other
day and commit crimes against humanity on intervening days. Year after
year, decade after decade. But I think we can derive some satisfaction,
and perhaps even hope, in that US foreign policy officials, as morally
damaged as they must be, are not all so stupid that they don’t know
they’re swimming in a sea of hypocrisy. Presented here are two
examples:
In 2004 it was reported that “The State Department plans to delay the
release of a human rights report that was due out today, partly because
of sensitivities over the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials
said. One official … said the release of the report, which describes
actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for human
rights by other nations, could ‘make us look hypocritical’.”
8
And an example from 2007: Chester Crocker, a member of the State
Department’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, and formerly
Assistant Secretary of State, noted that “we have to be able to cope
with the argument that the U.S. is inconsistent and hypocritical in its
promotion of democracy around the world. That may be true.”
9
In these cases the government officials appear to be somewhat
self-conscious about the prevailing hypocrisy. Other foreign policy
notables seem to be rather proud.
Robert Kagan, author and long-time intellectual architect of an
interventionism that seeks to impose a neo-conservative agenda upon the
world, by any means necessary, has declared that the United States must
refuse to abide by certain international conventions, like the
international criminal court and the Kyoto accord on global warming.
The US, he says, “must support arms control, but not always for itself.
It must live by a double standard.”
10
And then we have Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat who was an
advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war. Cooper wrote:
The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of
double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and
open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned
kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to
revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive
attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still
live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. 11
His expression, “every state for itself”, can be better understood as
any state not willing to accede to the agenda of the American Empire
and the school bully’s best friend in London.
So there we have it. The double standard is in. The Golden Rule of
“do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is out.
The imperial mafia, and their court intellectuals like Kagan and
Cooper, have a difficult time selling their world vision on the basis of
legal, moral, ethical or fairness standards. Thus it is that they
simply decide that they’re not bound by such standards.
Hating America
Here is Alan Dershowitz, prominent American lawyer, jurist, political
commentator and fervent Zionist and supporter of the empire, speaking
about journalist Glenn Greenwald and the latter’s involvement with
Edward Snowden: “Look, Greenwald’s a total phony. He is anti-American,
he loves tyrannical regimes, and he did this because he hates America.
This had nothing to do with publicizing information. He never would’ve
written this article if they had published material about one of his
favorite countries.”
12
“Anti-American” … “hates America” … What do they mean, those
expressions that are an integral part of American political history?
Greenwald hates baseball and hot dogs? … Hates American films and music?
… Hates all the buildings in the United States? Every law? … No, like
most “anti-Americans”, Glenn Greenwald hates American foreign policy.
He hates all the horrors and all the lies used to cover up all the
horrors. So which Americans is he anti?
Dershowitz undoubtedly thinks that Snowden is anti-American as well. But listen to the young man being interviewed:
“America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing.”
The interviewer is Glenn Greenwald.
13
Is there any other “democratic” country in the world which regularly,
or even occasionally, employs such terminology? Anti-German?
Anti-British? Anti-Mexican? It may be that only a totalitarian
mentality can conceive of and use the term “anti-American”.
“God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits
America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle
Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a)
anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.”
– John LeCarré, London Times, January 15, 2003
Notes
- White House Press Briefing, July 18, 2013 ↩
- Washington Post, June 23, 2013 ↩
- Reuters news agency, July 2, 2013 ↩
- RT television (Russia Today), July 19, 2013, citing a Spanish ABC media outlet ↩
- White House press release, June 29, 2013 ↩
- William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, chapter 23 ↩
- RT television (Russia Today), July 22, 2013 ↩
- Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004 ↩
- Washington Post, April 17, 2007 ↩
- Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Policy Review, June 1, 2002 ↩
- The Observer (UK), April 7, 2002 ↩
- “Piers Morgan Live”, CNN, June 24, 2013 ↩
- Video of Glen Greenwald interviewing Edward Snowden (at 2:05 mark) ↩
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission,
provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this
website are given.
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