Monday, May 16, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973---EPISODE 24
IN MARCH OF 1985, MIKHAIL GORBACHEV TOOK OVER AS LEADER OF THE SOVIET UNION
Gorbachev described the situation he confronted this way : "Defense spending was bleeding the other branches of the economy dry." Visits to the defense plants and agricultural production complexes drove home the point. "The defense production workshop making modern tanks . . . had the newest equipment. The one working for agriculture was making obsolete models of tractors on old-time conveyor belts." The cause of this disparity was obvious. "Over the previous five-year plans," Gorbachev wrote, "military spending had been growing twice as fast as national income. This Moloch was devouring everything that hard labor and strain produced." But even Gorbachev found it difficult to obtain the hard data needed to fully assess the situation. "What made matters worse," he explained, "was the fact that it was impossible to analyze the problem. All the figures related to the military-industrial complex were classified. Even Politburo members didn't have access to them."
Precise figures are still hard to come by. Central Committee staffer Vitaly Katayev may have kept the most detailed and accurate records. He estimated that in 1985 the Soviet defense sector accounted for 20 percent of the economy. It incorporated nine ministries, not all of whose functions could be identified by their titles. The ministry dealing with the Soviet Union's nuclear programs, for example, was titled the "Ministry of Medium Machine Building." Defense production consumed the efforts of more than fifty cities and, according to NSA Director William Odom, ate up some 20 to 40 percent of the Soviet budget.
To realize the goals of revitalizing the nation, Gorbachev needed to end the arms race and redeploy resources to productive purposes. He also needed to end the war in Afghanistan, a conflict he thought from the beginning was a "fatal error" and now believed was a "bleeding wound." Achieving those goals would go a long way toward refurbishing the Soviet Union's international image, which had been badly tarnished during the previous decade. One of his foreign policy advisors, Sergei Tarasenko, commented, "One of the first concerns of the Gorbachev administration was to repair this image so the Soviet Union would be viewed as the 'evil empire'." Gorbachev braced for resistance from his own defense sector.
Gorbachev wrote his first of several extraordinary letters to Reagan on March 24, 1985. It was a letter that might have been written by Henry Wallace forty years earlier :
Our countries are different by their social systems, by the ideologies in them. But we believe that this should not be a reason for animosity. Each social system has a right to life, and it should prove its advantages not by force, not by military means, but on the path of peaceful competition with the other system. And all people have the right to go the way they have chosen themselves, without anybody imposing his will on them from outside.
Gorbachev also echoed Kennedy's American University commencement address when he wrote to Reagan in October that despite their differences, they must "proceed from the objective fact that we all live on the same planet and must learn to live together."
Saturday, May 14, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973------Episode 23
REAGAN ACTED LIKE HE WAS MENTALLY UNBALANCED
For a radio broadcast, Reagan quipped during a sound check :"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes." This was picked up by the press all over the world, and Reagan was characterized as an irresponsible old man" by newspapers in Europe. At home, the controversy refused to go away. Commentators raised doubts about Reagan's fitness for the job. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver's admission that Reagan often napped during cabinet meetings didn't help. John Oakes, a former New York Times senior editor, asked what kind of confidence the American people could have during a crisis in a man of such "shallow, rash, and superficial judgment?" He and others cited Reagan's confusion over fundamental policy issues, including contradictory statements about tax policy, and found him unqualified for the job. Former MIT president Jerome Wiesner, who served as science advisor to both Kennedy and Johnson, described Reagan's "gallows humor" as a "verbal Rorschach test" and questioned his competence to continue with his finger on the nuclear button. Some people even raised the question of the president's mental acuity. Reporters were particularly troubled by a recent photo opportunity at his ranch at which Reagan was asked a basic question about arms control. Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer described the scene : "No answer came, and for an embarrassing few moments, the President of the United States seemed lost, gesturing but not speaking. Then his wife, Nancy, at his side, apparently saved him with an answer, uttered while barely moving her lips. 'Doing everything we can,' she said. Reagan repeated, 'We're doing everything we can.' "
Those around Reagan ran interference and protected him as best they could. George Shulz nurtured the side of Reagan that preferred negotiations over belligerency. Backed by Nancy Reagan and Michael Deaver, Shulz battled against the administration zealots. Reagan gave Shulz the green light to improve relations with the Soviets. In mid-1982, the United States and the Soviets began negotiating a new treaty to dramatically reduce strategic forces : the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. But Reagan continued the Committee on the President Danger's campaign of bemoaning American weakness. "You often hear," he stated in late 1982, "that the United States and the Soviet Union are in an arms race. The truth is that while the Soviet Union has raced, we have not . . . Today, in virtually every measure of military power the Soviet Union enjoys a decided advantage." Despite the scare talk, the United States still maintained a small advantage. In 1985, the U.S. arsenal contained 11,188 strategic warheads to the Soviets' 9,907. In total warheads ----strategic, intermediate-range, and tactical ---the United States led 20,924 to 19,774. And global arsenals continued to grow, peaking in 1986 at more than 70,000 nuclear weapons with a total destructive capability equivalent to that of approximately 1.5 million Hiroshima bombs.
Arms control gained renewed urgency when scientists calculated that even a small nuclear exchange would release enough smoke, dust, and ash into the atmosphere to block the sunlight, plunging the earth into a prolonged period of cooling that would kill off much of its plant life. Some predicted dire consequences, even the end of life on the planet, caused by the "nuclear winter" that would result from a nuclear war----even a "small" one.
Tensions between the world's two superpowers were running precariously high when an extraordinary development in the Soviet Union changed the course of history. In March 1985, Konstantin Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in office in two and a half years. His successor, fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, brought new energy and vision to the job. As a young man, he had witnessed the horrors of war. Later, as a Communist Party official, he had traveled widely in the West. As premier, he intended to realize his dream of revitalizing Soviet socialist democracy and improving the lives of the Soviet people. Like Krushchev and othe r reformers before him, he knew that that could not be accomplished as long as military expenditures continued virtually unchecked.
For a radio broadcast, Reagan quipped during a sound check :"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes." This was picked up by the press all over the world, and Reagan was characterized as an irresponsible old man" by newspapers in Europe. At home, the controversy refused to go away. Commentators raised doubts about Reagan's fitness for the job. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver's admission that Reagan often napped during cabinet meetings didn't help. John Oakes, a former New York Times senior editor, asked what kind of confidence the American people could have during a crisis in a man of such "shallow, rash, and superficial judgment?" He and others cited Reagan's confusion over fundamental policy issues, including contradictory statements about tax policy, and found him unqualified for the job. Former MIT president Jerome Wiesner, who served as science advisor to both Kennedy and Johnson, described Reagan's "gallows humor" as a "verbal Rorschach test" and questioned his competence to continue with his finger on the nuclear button. Some people even raised the question of the president's mental acuity. Reporters were particularly troubled by a recent photo opportunity at his ranch at which Reagan was asked a basic question about arms control. Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer described the scene : "No answer came, and for an embarrassing few moments, the President of the United States seemed lost, gesturing but not speaking. Then his wife, Nancy, at his side, apparently saved him with an answer, uttered while barely moving her lips. 'Doing everything we can,' she said. Reagan repeated, 'We're doing everything we can.' "
Those around Reagan ran interference and protected him as best they could. George Shulz nurtured the side of Reagan that preferred negotiations over belligerency. Backed by Nancy Reagan and Michael Deaver, Shulz battled against the administration zealots. Reagan gave Shulz the green light to improve relations with the Soviets. In mid-1982, the United States and the Soviets began negotiating a new treaty to dramatically reduce strategic forces : the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. But Reagan continued the Committee on the President Danger's campaign of bemoaning American weakness. "You often hear," he stated in late 1982, "that the United States and the Soviet Union are in an arms race. The truth is that while the Soviet Union has raced, we have not . . . Today, in virtually every measure of military power the Soviet Union enjoys a decided advantage." Despite the scare talk, the United States still maintained a small advantage. In 1985, the U.S. arsenal contained 11,188 strategic warheads to the Soviets' 9,907. In total warheads ----strategic, intermediate-range, and tactical ---the United States led 20,924 to 19,774. And global arsenals continued to grow, peaking in 1986 at more than 70,000 nuclear weapons with a total destructive capability equivalent to that of approximately 1.5 million Hiroshima bombs.
Arms control gained renewed urgency when scientists calculated that even a small nuclear exchange would release enough smoke, dust, and ash into the atmosphere to block the sunlight, plunging the earth into a prolonged period of cooling that would kill off much of its plant life. Some predicted dire consequences, even the end of life on the planet, caused by the "nuclear winter" that would result from a nuclear war----even a "small" one.
Tensions between the world's two superpowers were running precariously high when an extraordinary development in the Soviet Union changed the course of history. In March 1985, Konstantin Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in office in two and a half years. His successor, fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, brought new energy and vision to the job. As a young man, he had witnessed the horrors of war. Later, as a Communist Party official, he had traveled widely in the West. As premier, he intended to realize his dream of revitalizing Soviet socialist democracy and improving the lives of the Soviet people. Like Krushchev and othe r reformers before him, he knew that that could not be accomplished as long as military expenditures continued virtually unchecked.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973----Episode 22
SOVIET LEADERS FEARED A NUCLEAR FIRST STRIKE
BY THE UNITED STATES IN THE EARLY REAGAN YEARS
The Soviet leaders not only feared the kind of decapitating first strike envisioned in Presidential Directive 59 [ The one signed by Carter describing "flexible" and "limited" nuclear wars, as opposed to mutually destructive wars ] , drummed up by the members of the Committee on the Present Danger, they took concrete steps to ensure the survivability of their nuclear deterrent ----- a form of sub-delegation similar to that undertaken earlier by Eisenhower. Their fears were heightened by U.S. deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe in 1983, which meant that Soviet leaders would have even less time to launch a retaliatory strike. As David Hoffman details in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 work, The Dead Hand, Soviet leaders contemplated constructing a fully automated system, the "Dead Hand," in which computers would launch a nuclear counterstrike if leaders were incapacitated. Frightened by this Strangelovian prospect ----"It was complete madness," said Colonel Valery Yarynich of the Strategic Rocket Forces ---they instead settled on a system in which a small number of duty officers in deep underground bunkers would authorize the launch. The system was tested in November 1984 and put into operation soon thereafter.
Yarynich grappled with a profoundly troubling question that often plagued U.S. nuclear planners as well : he wondered if, knowing that their country was already destroyed, Soviet duty officers would actually decide to launch their weapons. He explained :
We have a young lieutenant colonel sitting there, communications are destroyed, and he hears "boom," "boom," everything is shaking ---he might fail to launch. If he doesn't begin the launching procedure there will be no retaliation. What's the point of doing it if half the globe had already been wiped out ? To destroy the second part? It makes no sense. Even at this point, this lieutenant colonel might say , "No, I won't launch it." No one will condemn him for it or put him before a firing squad. If I were in his place, I wouldn't launch.
Yarynich understood that it was the unpredictability of the officer's response that gave the system whatever limited deterrent effect it might have. He also thought it irrational that the Soviets were going out of their way to hide rather than broadcast the system's existence.
Reagan traced his commitment to eradicating nuclear weapons to his earliest presidential briefings about nuclear weapons :
One of the first statistics I saw as president was one of the most sober and startling I've ever heard. I'll never forget it : The Pentagon said at least 150 million American lives would be lost in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union --- even if we "won." For Americans who survived such a war, I couldn't imagine what life would be like. The planet would be so poisoned the "survivors" would have no place to live. Even if nuclear war did not mean the extinction of mankind, it would certainly mean the end of civilization as we knew it. No one could "win" a nuclear war.
Despite his abhorrence of nuclear war, Reagan possessed a dark side that fantasized about using those weapons to defeat his enemies. Such thinking slipped out in shocking fashion when Reagan quipped during a sound check for a radio broadcast, "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes." Reagan was unaware that the tapes were rolling when he spoke. The reaction was quick and unsparing. Colorado Senator Gary Hart thought that Reagan's "poor judgment" might have been caused by the stress of his reelection campaign but worried that "more frighteningly, it's in moments of that sort that his real feelings come out, which is the most dismaying and distressing possibility." The New York Times reported that the story was front-page news across Europe. Paris's Le Monde figured that psychologists would have to determine whether the comments were an "an expression of repressed desire or the exorcism of a dreaded phantom." West Germany's Social Democrats dismissed Reagan ----"The lord of life or combustion of all Western Europe" --- as "an irresponsible old man . . . who can no longer distinguish whether he is making a horror movie or commanding a superpower," ," while the Greens exclaimed that the "perverse joke makes the blood of every reasonable person run cold." TASS, the Soviet news agency, quoted a Western leader who described Reagan as a man "who smiles at the possibility of the mass extermination of people" and decried "the hypocrisy of his peace rhetoric." Izvestia called it a "monstrous statement."
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973----Episode 21
IN THE REAGAN ERA, NUCLEAR WAR WAS A HOT TOPIC CONSTANTLY BEING DISCUSSED
Reagan decided to protect the United States from incoming missiles by building a high-tech, futuristic atmospheric shield around the nation. But such a seemingly benign defensive shield, if it worked at all, would have done little to protect against a Soviet first strike, it might have offered a measure of protection against a limited retaliatory attack by a Soviet Union already crippled by a U.S. first strike.
Reagan also understood how easily a crisis could be provoked. In September 1963, when Soviet military personnel mistakenly took a Korean Air Lines passenger jet that had crossed into Soviet airspace for a spy plane and, after unheeded warnings, shot it down, killing all 269 people on board, including 61 Americans, Reagan railed against "the Korean Air Lines massacre" as an "act of barbarism"and a "crime against humanity." But in his memoirs he drew a different lesson :"If anything, the KAL incident demonstrated how much we needed nuclear arms control : If, as some people speculated, the Soviet pilots simply mistook the airliner for a military plane, what kind of imagination did it take to think of a Soviet military man with his finger close to a nuclear push button making an even more tragic mistake ?"
His concerns about nuclear war came to the fore again the following month. After watching an advance copy of The Day After , he wrote in his diary : "It has Lawrence, Kansas wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done ---all $7 mil. worth. t's very effective & left me very depressed." The usually unflappable Reagan remained depressed for days. His advisors became so concerned that they brought in Weinberger's Soviet expert, Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Policy Richard Perle, to talk sense into him.
Reagan's concerns didn't abate, although Perle and others could sometimes manipulate him into defending a nuclear buildup that was at odds with his deeper wishes. It was also during this time, in the fall of 1983, that he was beginning to grasp that Soviet leaders took his bellicose rhetoric and military escalation seriously and feared that he was preparing for an attack.
His diary entry for November 18 was revealing. he worried about the Soviets being "so paranoid about being attacked" that he planned to reassure them that "no one here has any intention of doing anything like that. What the h___l have they got that anyone would want." He then noted that Shulz would appear on ABC following The Day After, but now he was more concerned about making sure the film didn't further fuel the already strong public opposition to his nuclear policies : "We know it's 'anti-nuke' propaganda but we're goig to take it over & say it shows why we must keep on doing what we are doing." In that same diary entry, he also wrote about "a most sobering experience with Cap. W & Gen. Vessey in the situation room ---a briefing on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack."
Reagan later wrote in his memoirs, "Three years hd taught me something surprising about the Russians : Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. In fact, I had difficulty accepting my own conclusion at first." When he came to office, it didn't dawn on him that the Soviets could actually fear a U.S. first strike. "But the more experience I had with the Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike."
Although Reagan might have found such an idea inconceivable, he did note that "there were still some people at the Pentagon who claimed a nuclear war was 'winnable'." He concluded that they were "crazy," but he was beginning to understand why the Soviets might take them seriously. In October, he suggested to Shulz that "maybe I should go see [Yuri] Andropov and propose eliminating all nuclear weapons."
Reagan also understood how easily a crisis could be provoked. In September 1963, when Soviet military personnel mistakenly took a Korean Air Lines passenger jet that had crossed into Soviet airspace for a spy plane and, after unheeded warnings, shot it down, killing all 269 people on board, including 61 Americans, Reagan railed against "the Korean Air Lines massacre" as an "act of barbarism"and a "crime against humanity." But in his memoirs he drew a different lesson :"If anything, the KAL incident demonstrated how much we needed nuclear arms control : If, as some people speculated, the Soviet pilots simply mistook the airliner for a military plane, what kind of imagination did it take to think of a Soviet military man with his finger close to a nuclear push button making an even more tragic mistake ?"
His concerns about nuclear war came to the fore again the following month. After watching an advance copy of The Day After , he wrote in his diary : "It has Lawrence, Kansas wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done ---all $7 mil. worth. t's very effective & left me very depressed." The usually unflappable Reagan remained depressed for days. His advisors became so concerned that they brought in Weinberger's Soviet expert, Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Policy Richard Perle, to talk sense into him.
Reagan's concerns didn't abate, although Perle and others could sometimes manipulate him into defending a nuclear buildup that was at odds with his deeper wishes. It was also during this time, in the fall of 1983, that he was beginning to grasp that Soviet leaders took his bellicose rhetoric and military escalation seriously and feared that he was preparing for an attack.
His diary entry for November 18 was revealing. he worried about the Soviets being "so paranoid about being attacked" that he planned to reassure them that "no one here has any intention of doing anything like that. What the h___l have they got that anyone would want." He then noted that Shulz would appear on ABC following The Day After, but now he was more concerned about making sure the film didn't further fuel the already strong public opposition to his nuclear policies : "We know it's 'anti-nuke' propaganda but we're goig to take it over & say it shows why we must keep on doing what we are doing." In that same diary entry, he also wrote about "a most sobering experience with Cap. W & Gen. Vessey in the situation room ---a briefing on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack."
Reagan later wrote in his memoirs, "Three years hd taught me something surprising about the Russians : Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. In fact, I had difficulty accepting my own conclusion at first." When he came to office, it didn't dawn on him that the Soviets could actually fear a U.S. first strike. "But the more experience I had with the Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike."
Although Reagan might have found such an idea inconceivable, he did note that "there were still some people at the Pentagon who claimed a nuclear war was 'winnable'." He concluded that they were "crazy," but he was beginning to understand why the Soviets might take them seriously. In October, he suggested to Shulz that "maybe I should go see [Yuri] Andropov and propose eliminating all nuclear weapons."
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973----Episode 20
THE UNITED STATES SUPPLIED CHEMICAL WEAPONS TO IRAQ IN EARLY 1980s IN THE WAR AGAINST IRAN
Infuriated by Iraq's use of chemical weapons and by U.S. support for such heinous behavior, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had ended the shah's secret nuclear weapons program when he assumed power in 1979, condemning nuclear weapons as anti-Islamic, reversed course in 1984 and started the program back up again.
While the United States was strengthening its support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime, Reagan continued his bombastic anti-Soviet rhetoric and provocative behavior. In 1983, he urged his audience at the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, "to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority . . . not to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulse of an evil empire." The United States deployed ground -- launched cruise missiles to Great Britain and Pershing II missiles to West Germany in November 1983 and conducted Able Archer 83 ---- a massive military test using nuclear weapons ---that same month. By the end of 1983, U.S.---Soviet relations had reached their lowest point in more than two decades. The two nations were conducting proxy wars around the globe, and a real one seemed possible. Some Soviet officials were convinced that a U.S. attack was imminent.
Bellicose rhetoric frightened the public. The Day After, which was viewed by a huge television audience, and other nuclear--war movies heightened the sense of alarm and helped spark a massive nuclear freeze movement. Psychiatrists reported that children in both the United States and Soviet Union were experiencing an outbreak of nuclear nightmares not seen since the early 1960s.
Even nuclear weapons designers were not inured against the implications of the rising threat of nuclear war. Physicist Theodore Taylor had an epiphany during his first visit to the Soviet Union. He described the experience to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, whose own probing scholarship had revolutionized the field of nuclear studies :
Walking in Red Square in Moscow, Taylor saw many young people in wedding parties visiting Lenin's tomb and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and was impressed by how happy they looked. He experienced a flashback to the night of the birth of one of his children years before when, rather than being with his wife, he was at the Pentagon poring over intelligence data, including aerial photographs of central Moscow, in connection with potential plans for nuclear attack. Standing in Red Square, he began to weep uncontrollably :"It was seeing those happy-looking , specific people, going around, working their way up to the mausoleum. For any human being to contemplate setting off a bomb on top of all this, these people, is insane . . . a symptom of insanity." He had experienced such feelings before, but now for the first time "I literally set foot in the SU to see what it was that I was doing with all the details filled in. "Before that, Moscow had been no more than "a set of lines at various levels of rads. . . and. . . pressures and calories . . . per square centimeter" that one had to "match" with "the bombs with those numbers."
Taylor decided to abandon weapons research and devote himself to more life-affirming research.
Despite his bluster, Reagan too feared the possibility of nuclear war, although his knowledge of nuclear weapons was miniscule. In 1983,he shocked a group of congressmen when he said that bombers and submarines did not carry nuclear weapons. But his profound, gut-level aversion to nuclear weapons was sincere. He repeatedly told stunned advisors that he considered them "evil" and wanted to eradicate them. His fears were shaped, in large part, by his religious convictions, particularly his fascination with Armageddon, the biblical account of the bloody conflagration that ends history and augurs Jesus' return, which he believed might be coming. He associated it with nuclear war and thought it his responsibility to protect the American people. Bud McFarlane, who served as Reagan's deputy national security advisor, said, "From the time he adopted the Armageddon thesis, he saw it as a nuclear catastrophe. Well, what do you do about that 's answer was that you build a tent or a bubble and protect your country."
Infuriated by Iraq's use of chemical weapons and by U.S. support for such heinous behavior, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had ended the shah's secret nuclear weapons program when he assumed power in 1979, condemning nuclear weapons as anti-Islamic, reversed course in 1984 and started the program back up again.
While the United States was strengthening its support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime, Reagan continued his bombastic anti-Soviet rhetoric and provocative behavior. In 1983, he urged his audience at the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, "to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority . . . not to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulse of an evil empire." The United States deployed ground -- launched cruise missiles to Great Britain and Pershing II missiles to West Germany in November 1983 and conducted Able Archer 83 ---- a massive military test using nuclear weapons ---that same month. By the end of 1983, U.S.---Soviet relations had reached their lowest point in more than two decades. The two nations were conducting proxy wars around the globe, and a real one seemed possible. Some Soviet officials were convinced that a U.S. attack was imminent.
Bellicose rhetoric frightened the public. The Day After, which was viewed by a huge television audience, and other nuclear--war movies heightened the sense of alarm and helped spark a massive nuclear freeze movement. Psychiatrists reported that children in both the United States and Soviet Union were experiencing an outbreak of nuclear nightmares not seen since the early 1960s.
Even nuclear weapons designers were not inured against the implications of the rising threat of nuclear war. Physicist Theodore Taylor had an epiphany during his first visit to the Soviet Union. He described the experience to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, whose own probing scholarship had revolutionized the field of nuclear studies :
Walking in Red Square in Moscow, Taylor saw many young people in wedding parties visiting Lenin's tomb and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and was impressed by how happy they looked. He experienced a flashback to the night of the birth of one of his children years before when, rather than being with his wife, he was at the Pentagon poring over intelligence data, including aerial photographs of central Moscow, in connection with potential plans for nuclear attack. Standing in Red Square, he began to weep uncontrollably :"It was seeing those happy-looking , specific people, going around, working their way up to the mausoleum. For any human being to contemplate setting off a bomb on top of all this, these people, is insane . . . a symptom of insanity." He had experienced such feelings before, but now for the first time "I literally set foot in the SU to see what it was that I was doing with all the details filled in. "Before that, Moscow had been no more than "a set of lines at various levels of rads. . . and. . . pressures and calories . . . per square centimeter" that one had to "match" with "the bombs with those numbers."
Taylor decided to abandon weapons research and devote himself to more life-affirming research.
Despite his bluster, Reagan too feared the possibility of nuclear war, although his knowledge of nuclear weapons was miniscule. In 1983,he shocked a group of congressmen when he said that bombers and submarines did not carry nuclear weapons. But his profound, gut-level aversion to nuclear weapons was sincere. He repeatedly told stunned advisors that he considered them "evil" and wanted to eradicate them. His fears were shaped, in large part, by his religious convictions, particularly his fascination with Armageddon, the biblical account of the bloody conflagration that ends history and augurs Jesus' return, which he believed might be coming. He associated it with nuclear war and thought it his responsibility to protect the American people. Bud McFarlane, who served as Reagan's deputy national security advisor, said, "From the time he adopted the Armageddon thesis, he saw it as a nuclear catastrophe. Well, what do you do about that 's answer was that you build a tent or a bubble and protect your country."
Monday, May 9, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973-----Episode 19
PENTAGON'S MASTER PLAN FOR 1984--1988
The Pentagon's master plan for 1984---1988 ranked defense of the Middle East second only to the defense of North America and Western Europe. The plan explained :
Our principal objectives are to assure continued access to the Persian Gulf oil and to prevent the Soviets from acquiring political--military control of the oil directly or through proxies. It is essential that the Soviet Union be confronted with the prospect of a major conflict should it seek to reach oil resources of the Gulf. Whatever the circumstances, we should be prepared to introduce American forces directly into the region should it appear that the security of access to Pesian Gulf oil is threatened.
To put this into effect, the United States spent a billion dollars modernizing military bases and deployed nuclear-armed cruise missiles to Comiso, Italy, from which they could reach targets throughout the Middle East. It inserted itself into the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. It provided arms to Iran, helping it turn the tide and begin advancing, by mid-1982, toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Administration officials then had a change of heart and decided to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent an Iranian victory. They did so knowing full well knowing that Iraq was using chemical weapons. On November 1, senior State Department official Jonathan Howe informed Secretary of State Shultz that Iraq was resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against Iran. In December 1983, Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Embassy reported that Saddam showed "obvious pleasure" at Rumsfeld's visit and the letter he presented from the president.
Rumsfeld assured Saddam that the United States was doing all it could to cut off arms sales to Iran.
Rumsfelt returned for a second visit the following March, partly to assure Saddam that the United States' priority was defeating Iran, not punishing Iraq for using chemical weapons. Howard Teicher, a Reagan NSC Iraq expert, later admitted in a sworn affidavit that the United States had "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." More than sixty officers at the Defense Intelligence Agency provided combat planning assistance. Teicher reported that Casey used a Chilean company to deliver cluster bombs, which could effectively repel Iran's human-wave attacks. U.S., British, and German arms manufacturers happily supplied Iraq's growing needs. Under license by the Commerce Committee, U.S. companies shipped several strains of anthrax that were later used in Iraq's biological weapons program and insecticides that could be used for chemical warfare. The Iraqi military brazenly warned in February 1984 "the invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses the insecticide. "
Iran asked for a UN Security Council investigation. Although U.S. intelligence reports confirmed Iran's charges, the United States remained silent for several more months, before finally criticizing the Iraqi use of chemical warfare in early March. But when Iran proposed a UN resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador Kirkpatrick lobbied other countries to render "no decision." Upon the Iraqi ambassador's suggestion, the United States preempted the Iranian measure by getting a presidential statement in late March opposing the use of chemical weapons but not mentioning Iraq as the guilty party. In November 1984, the United States restored diplomatic relations with Iraq. Not only did the use of chemical warfare persist until the end of the with Iran, but in late 1987, the Iraqi air force began dropping chemical weapons against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens, whom the government accused of supporting Iran. The attacks against rebel-controlled villages peaked with the chemical warfare assault on the village of Halabjah in March 1988. Despite widespread outrage in the United States, including many from inside the administration, U.S. intelligence aid to Iraq actually increased in 1988 and, in December 1988, the government authorized a sale to Iraq of $1.5 million in insecticides by Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the napalm used in Vietnam.
The Pentagon's master plan for 1984---1988 ranked defense of the Middle East second only to the defense of North America and Western Europe. The plan explained :
Our principal objectives are to assure continued access to the Persian Gulf oil and to prevent the Soviets from acquiring political--military control of the oil directly or through proxies. It is essential that the Soviet Union be confronted with the prospect of a major conflict should it seek to reach oil resources of the Gulf. Whatever the circumstances, we should be prepared to introduce American forces directly into the region should it appear that the security of access to Pesian Gulf oil is threatened.
To put this into effect, the United States spent a billion dollars modernizing military bases and deployed nuclear-armed cruise missiles to Comiso, Italy, from which they could reach targets throughout the Middle East. It inserted itself into the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. It provided arms to Iran, helping it turn the tide and begin advancing, by mid-1982, toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Administration officials then had a change of heart and decided to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent an Iranian victory. They did so knowing full well knowing that Iraq was using chemical weapons. On November 1, senior State Department official Jonathan Howe informed Secretary of State Shultz that Iraq was resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against Iran. In December 1983, Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Embassy reported that Saddam showed "obvious pleasure" at Rumsfeld's visit and the letter he presented from the president.
Rumsfeld assured Saddam that the United States was doing all it could to cut off arms sales to Iran.
Rumsfelt returned for a second visit the following March, partly to assure Saddam that the United States' priority was defeating Iran, not punishing Iraq for using chemical weapons. Howard Teicher, a Reagan NSC Iraq expert, later admitted in a sworn affidavit that the United States had "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." More than sixty officers at the Defense Intelligence Agency provided combat planning assistance. Teicher reported that Casey used a Chilean company to deliver cluster bombs, which could effectively repel Iran's human-wave attacks. U.S., British, and German arms manufacturers happily supplied Iraq's growing needs. Under license by the Commerce Committee, U.S. companies shipped several strains of anthrax that were later used in Iraq's biological weapons program and insecticides that could be used for chemical warfare. The Iraqi military brazenly warned in February 1984 "the invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses the insecticide. "
Iran asked for a UN Security Council investigation. Although U.S. intelligence reports confirmed Iran's charges, the United States remained silent for several more months, before finally criticizing the Iraqi use of chemical warfare in early March. But when Iran proposed a UN resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador Kirkpatrick lobbied other countries to render "no decision." Upon the Iraqi ambassador's suggestion, the United States preempted the Iranian measure by getting a presidential statement in late March opposing the use of chemical weapons but not mentioning Iraq as the guilty party. In November 1984, the United States restored diplomatic relations with Iraq. Not only did the use of chemical warfare persist until the end of the with Iran, but in late 1987, the Iraqi air force began dropping chemical weapons against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens, whom the government accused of supporting Iran. The attacks against rebel-controlled villages peaked with the chemical warfare assault on the village of Halabjah in March 1988. Despite widespread outrage in the United States, including many from inside the administration, U.S. intelligence aid to Iraq actually increased in 1988 and, in December 1988, the government authorized a sale to Iraq of $1.5 million in insecticides by Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the napalm used in Vietnam.
Thursday, May 5, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973-----Episode 18
IN 1983, THE U.S. INVADED THE ISLAND OF GRENADA
After Grenada, Reagan proudly announced, "Our days of weakness are over. Our military forces are back on their feet and standing tall. " Even the sting of humiliation in Vietnam had been alleviated. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, he claimed, had been "denied permission to win." "We didn't lose the war," he insisted. "When the war was all over and we'd come home -----that's when the war was lost." In December 1988, a National Defense Commission report concluded, "Our failure in Vietnam still casts a shadow over U.S. intervention anywhere."
The U.S. attempt to avenge the killing of marines in Lebanon was badly bungled. Casey worked closely with the Saudis to assassinate the Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, exploding a massive car bomb outside his residence in 1985. Eighty people died and two hundred were wounded, but Fadlallah escaped unharmed.
While running roughshod over Central America and the Caribbean, Reagan also trampled the United States' working class and poor, who were sacrificed to the exigencies of a massive military buildup, which was cheered on by the more than fifty members of the Committee on the Present Danger who held official positions. Right after the 1980 election, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had warned that a "defense spending binge" would be "the worst thing that could happen" to the United States. Reagan ignored that advice, having campaigned on the fiction that the United States was militarily weak and vulnerable to a Soviet attack, saying, "we're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor . Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country."
Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum praised Budget Director David Stockman's adroitness at cutting the budget, "but," he added, "I also think you've been cruel, inhumane and unfair." Four hundred eight thousand people lost their eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children [ AFDC] by 1983, and 299,000 saw their benefits cut. Reagan prodded Congress into cutting $2 billion out of the $12 billion food stamp budget and $1 billion from the $3.5 billion budget for school lunches. The budgets for Medicaid, child nutrition, housing, and energy assistance were also pared. Federal funds for cities were cut almost in half. While waging war on the poor, Reagan cut the highest income tax rate, which was 70 when he took office to 28 percent by the time he left.
New and upgraded weapons systems rolled off the assembly lines, including the long-delayed and very costly MX missile program, which moved missiles around loops that hid their precise location, making them largely invulnerable to a Soviet first first strike. Reagan knew that the Soviets, whose economy was stagnant, would be hard pressed to keep pace.
The nuclear arms budget also grew by leaps and bounds. In 1981, George Kennan, the architect of U.S. containment policy, decried the continuing senseless buildup of nuclear weapons : "We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done this helplessly, almost involuntarily, like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea."
Reagan and Bush were anything but helpless in their arms buildup. They rejected the widely held view that nuclear war would lead to mutual destruction and began planning to win such a war --- an approach advocated by nuclear extremists like Colin Gray and Keith Payne, who declared in 1980, "The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union." They believed that the United States might lose 20 million citizens in the process. The key to surviving a nuclear attack, they posited, was an effective command-and-control structure to prevent chaos and keep lines of communication open. The military called this "C3" : command, control, and communications. Reagan invested heavily to ensure its invulnerability. Perversely, he projected such a war--winning strategy onto the Soviets. He pointed to a massive Soviet civil defense program as proof, even though no such program existed.
After Grenada, Reagan proudly announced, "Our days of weakness are over. Our military forces are back on their feet and standing tall. " Even the sting of humiliation in Vietnam had been alleviated. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, he claimed, had been "denied permission to win." "We didn't lose the war," he insisted. "When the war was all over and we'd come home -----that's when the war was lost." In December 1988, a National Defense Commission report concluded, "Our failure in Vietnam still casts a shadow over U.S. intervention anywhere."
The U.S. attempt to avenge the killing of marines in Lebanon was badly bungled. Casey worked closely with the Saudis to assassinate the Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, exploding a massive car bomb outside his residence in 1985. Eighty people died and two hundred were wounded, but Fadlallah escaped unharmed.
While running roughshod over Central America and the Caribbean, Reagan also trampled the United States' working class and poor, who were sacrificed to the exigencies of a massive military buildup, which was cheered on by the more than fifty members of the Committee on the Present Danger who held official positions. Right after the 1980 election, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had warned that a "defense spending binge" would be "the worst thing that could happen" to the United States. Reagan ignored that advice, having campaigned on the fiction that the United States was militarily weak and vulnerable to a Soviet attack, saying, "we're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor . Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country."
Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum praised Budget Director David Stockman's adroitness at cutting the budget, "but," he added, "I also think you've been cruel, inhumane and unfair." Four hundred eight thousand people lost their eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children [ AFDC] by 1983, and 299,000 saw their benefits cut. Reagan prodded Congress into cutting $2 billion out of the $12 billion food stamp budget and $1 billion from the $3.5 billion budget for school lunches. The budgets for Medicaid, child nutrition, housing, and energy assistance were also pared. Federal funds for cities were cut almost in half. While waging war on the poor, Reagan cut the highest income tax rate, which was 70 when he took office to 28 percent by the time he left.
New and upgraded weapons systems rolled off the assembly lines, including the long-delayed and very costly MX missile program, which moved missiles around loops that hid their precise location, making them largely invulnerable to a Soviet first first strike. Reagan knew that the Soviets, whose economy was stagnant, would be hard pressed to keep pace.
The nuclear arms budget also grew by leaps and bounds. In 1981, George Kennan, the architect of U.S. containment policy, decried the continuing senseless buildup of nuclear weapons : "We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done this helplessly, almost involuntarily, like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea."
Reagan and Bush were anything but helpless in their arms buildup. They rejected the widely held view that nuclear war would lead to mutual destruction and began planning to win such a war --- an approach advocated by nuclear extremists like Colin Gray and Keith Payne, who declared in 1980, "The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union." They believed that the United States might lose 20 million citizens in the process. The key to surviving a nuclear attack, they posited, was an effective command-and-control structure to prevent chaos and keep lines of communication open. The military called this "C3" : command, control, and communications. Reagan invested heavily to ensure its invulnerability. Perversely, he projected such a war--winning strategy onto the Soviets. He pointed to a massive Soviet civil defense program as proof, even though no such program existed.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973---Episode 17
REAGAN'S RIDICULOUS FOREIGN POLICY IN EARLY 1980s ---a continuation
Bogged down in protracted proxy wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Reagan hungered for an easy military victory that would restore Americans' self-confidence and get the Vietnam monkey off America's back. His opportunity came in 1983 when a radical faction overthrew the revolutionary government of Maurice Bishop in Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island with 100,000 inhabitants, murdering its leaders. Before his death, Bishop had alleged that a campaign was under way to destabilize his nation by "the vicious beasts of imperialism" ---- the United States. Using the resulting instability as a pretext for action, U.S. officials decided to invade and topple the new government, despite clear opposition from the United Nations, the Organization of American States [OAS] , and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. U.S. officials pressured reluctant Caribbean nations to call for U.S. intervention.
The timing proved fortunate for the administration. While preparing the invasion, the United States suffered a humiliating setback when a powerful truck bomb blew up a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon, leaving 241 dead. Desperate for a distraction, Reagan announced the invasion of Grenada was needed to rescue endangered American medical students on the island. The students, however, were in no immediate danger. When the dean of the medical school polled them, 90 percent said they wanted to stay. To avoid even the minimalist kind of scrutiny the United States had recieved in Vietnam, U.S. officials banned media from accompanying invading forces for their own "safety" and offered government footage. The 7,000 U.S. invaders encountered more resistance than they had bargained for from a small force of poorly armed Cubans. The entire operation was logistically bungled from the start. Twenty-nine U.S. soldiers died, and more than 100 were wounded. Nine helicopters were lost. Most troops were quickly withdrawn.
Congressman Dick Cheney of Wyoming participated in the first post-invasion congressional delegation and applauded the United States' new can-do image around the world. When another delegation member, Representative Don Bonker of Washington, derided claims that the students had been at risk, Cheney blasted him in a Washington Post op-ed. As if in a dress rehearsal for lying about Iraq two decades later, Cheney claimed that "the Americans were in imminent danger," every effort was made to secure their evacuation by diplomatic means," and the new Grenadan government posed "a threat to the security of the entire region." Fellow delegation member Representative Ron Dellums of California challenged Cheney's distortions, calling the invasion "a thinly veiled effort to use American students and a tiny black Caribbean country to mask the further militarization of American foreign policy." Dellums also dismissed the claim of protecting students, noting "our delegation could not find one confirmed instance in which an American was threatened or endangered before the invasion. In fact, the . . . campus was a mere 20 meters from an unprotected beach. If the safety of the students was the primary goal, why did it take the U.S. forces three days to reach it?" By a ten-to-one margin, the UN General Assembly "deeply deplored " the "armed intervention in Grenada," which it called " flagrant violation of international law."
Among the casualties were at least twenty-one mental patients killed in a misguided bombing attack on their hospital. General Edward Trobaugh , commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, told reporters that the Grenadan People's Revolutionary Army had been inept but the small contingent of Cubans on the island, many of whom were there to build an airstrip, had fought well. He informed visiting congressmen that there was no indication that the medical students had ever been threatened. Reagan criticized the press for labeling the action "an invasion" when it was really a "rescue mission."
In his address to the American people, Reagan emphasized the threat to U.S. security, pointing to "a warehouse of military equipment that contained weapons and ammunition stacked almost to the ceiling, enough to supply thousands of terrorists." Reagan dispelled the notion that Grenada was an idyllic tropical escape : "Grenada, we were told, was a friendly island paradise for tourism. Well, it wasn't. It was a Soviet-Cuban colony, being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy." "We got there just in time," he asserted, just one step ahead of catastrophe.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973------Episode 16
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA IN THE EARLY REAGAN YEARS
In March 1981, the CIA informed Vice President Bush that D'Aubuisson , the "principal henchmen for wealthy landlords," was running "the right-wing death squads that have murdered several thousand suspected leftists and leftist sympathizers during the past year." Three American Maryknoll nuns and a Catholic layperson who had been involved in humanitarian relief work had been raped and slaughtered shortly before Reagan's inauguration. UN ambassador-designate Jeane Kirkpatrick insisted, "the nuns are not just nuns" but FMLN "political activists." Secretary of State Alexander Haig called them "pistol-packing nuns" and suggested to a congressional committee that "perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock."
One atrocity particularly stands out. U.S.--trained and armed Salvadoran troops slaughtered the 767 inhabitants of the village of El Mozote in late 1981. The victims, including 358 children under age 13, were stabbed, decapitated, and machine-gunned. Girls and women were raped. When New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner tried to expose what had occurred, the Wall Street Journal and other pro-Reagan newspapers assaulted Bonner's credibility. The Times buckled under pressure and pulled Bonner out of El Salvadore. Administration officials helped cover up the massacre. Conditions worsened. In late 1982, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that El Salvadore, along with Guatemala, had the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America : "Decapitation, torture, disemboweling, disappearances and other forms of cruel punishment were reported to be norms of paramilitary behavior sanctioned by the Salvadoran government." However, Elliot Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, testified that the reports of death-squad involvement were "not credible."
George Herbert Walker Bush had trouble sympathizing with the suffering of the people in the United States' backyard. Before Pope John Paul II visited Central America, Bush said he couldn't understand how Catholic clergy could reconcile their religious beliefs with Marxist philosophy and tactics and support the insurgents. Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, tried to explain that poverty and social injustice could easily lead priests to supporting Marxists or anyone else challenging status quo. "Maybe it makes me a right-wing extremist," Bush replied, "but I'm puzzled. I just don't understand it."
U. S. economic and military aid grew steadily during these years, spurred by the 1984 Kissinger Commission on Central America. Senator Jesse Helms was the point man for this effort in Congress. Administration officials deliberately concealed U.S. government documents implicating the Salvadoran National Police, the National Guard, and the Treasury Police so that congressional funding would continue. Under Carter and Reagan, Congress funneled nearly $6 billion to the tiny country, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, per capita, in the world. Meanwhile, the death squads continued to cleave a path, of destruction. The death toll reached 70,000 . Approximately half a million Salvadorans tried to escape the violence by migrating to the United States in the 1980s, but most were turned back. In 1984, U.S. immigration officials admitted approximately one in forty Salvadoran asylum seekers, while almost all of the anti-Communist applicants fleeing Nicaragua were welcomed.
In 1980, Commentary magazine, the United States' leading neoconservative journal, published a series of essays decrying what conservatives called the Vietnam Syndrome"---the revulsion against the Vietnam War that made Americans squeamish about using force to resolve international conflicts. Reagan agreed : "For too long, we have lived with the 'Vietnam Syndrome' . . . Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests . . . It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause . . . We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt."
Monday, May 2, 2016
AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973 --- Episode 15
IN THE REAGAN YEARS THE CIA DIRECTOR WILLIAM
CASEY LIED OVER AND OVER TO CONGRESS AND THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE
In order to make an end run around Congress, Casey and NSC official Oliver North concocted an elaborate illegal operation. Aided by Israeli arms dealers, the United States sold missiles to its enemies in Iran at exorbitant prices and used the profits to fund the contras, with Latin American drug dealers often serving as intermediaries and receiving easier access to U.S. markets in return. With U.S. funds and CIA guidance, the contra army grew to 15,000. The CIA also recruited contract mercenaries from countries like Guatemala and El Salvadore who launched independent attacks from offshore, bombing and mining coastal targets and commercial ports.
Reagan defended the United States' covert war with a flight of fancy that bore little resemblance to the reality on the ground in 1984. "The Nicaraguan people," he said, "are trapped in a totalitarian dungeon, trapped by a military dictatorship that impoverishes them while its rulers live in privileged and protected luxury and openly boast their revolution will spread to Nicaragua's neighbors as well. It's a dictatorship made all the more insulting, all the more dangerous by the unwanted presence of thousands of Cuban, Soviet-bloc and radical Arab helpers." Reagan went so far as to call the the contras "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers," a comparison so odious that it drew a sharp rebuke from the Organization of American Historians. Reagan's "moral equivalents" were notorious for torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering civilians. Employing terrorist tactics, the contras destroyed schools, health care clinics, cooperatives, bridges, and power stations and were responsible for the deaths of most of the 30,000 civilians killed in the war. One advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff called them "the strangest national liberation organization in the world." In his view, they were "JUST A BUNCH OF KILLERS." The U.S. Embassy reported one former contra leader's assertion that civilians who refused to join the contras were "shot or stabbed to death" and others were "burned to death in smelting ovens." He said that kidnapped young girls were "raped night and day."
Atrocities were also committed in El Salvador, where U.S. leaders decided to test their new post--Vietnam counterinsurgency doctrines and try to defeat an uprising without a large commitment of U.S. forces. First they expanded and modernized the Salvadoran army, which, by 1983, reached 53,000 troops, many of whom were trained in Fort Benning, Georgia, or in the U.S.-run School of the Americas in Panama. Former U.S. Ambassador Robert White, who served under both Carter and Reagan, testified before Congress :
For 50 years El Salvador was ruled by a corrupt and brutal alliance of the rich and the military. The young officers revolt of 1979 attempted to break that alliance. It was then Reagan renewed tolerance and acceptance of the extreme right which led to the emergence of the National Republican Alliance, ARENA, and the rise of ex-Major Roberto D'Aubuisson.
ARENA is a violent Fascist party modeled after the Nazis and certain revolutionary Communist groups . . . The founders and chief supporters of ARENA are rich Salvadoran exiles headquartered in Miami and civilian activists in El Salvador. ARENA's military arm comprises officers and men of the Salvadoran Army and security forces . . . My Embassy devoted considerable resources to identifying the sources of rightwing violence and their contacts in Miami, Florida . . . the Miami Six explained . . . that to rebuild the country it must first be destroyed totally, the the economy must be wrecked, unemployment must be massive, the junta must be ousted and a "good" military officer brought to power who will carry out a total cleansing ----limpieza---killing 3 or 4 or 500,000 people . . . Who are these madmen and how do they operate ? . . . the principal figures are six enormously wealthy former landowners . . . They hatch plots, hold constant meetings and communicate instructions to D'Aubuisson.
TO BE CONTINUED
CASEY LIED OVER AND OVER TO CONGRESS AND THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE
In order to make an end run around Congress, Casey and NSC official Oliver North concocted an elaborate illegal operation. Aided by Israeli arms dealers, the United States sold missiles to its enemies in Iran at exorbitant prices and used the profits to fund the contras, with Latin American drug dealers often serving as intermediaries and receiving easier access to U.S. markets in return. With U.S. funds and CIA guidance, the contra army grew to 15,000. The CIA also recruited contract mercenaries from countries like Guatemala and El Salvadore who launched independent attacks from offshore, bombing and mining coastal targets and commercial ports.
Reagan defended the United States' covert war with a flight of fancy that bore little resemblance to the reality on the ground in 1984. "The Nicaraguan people," he said, "are trapped in a totalitarian dungeon, trapped by a military dictatorship that impoverishes them while its rulers live in privileged and protected luxury and openly boast their revolution will spread to Nicaragua's neighbors as well. It's a dictatorship made all the more insulting, all the more dangerous by the unwanted presence of thousands of Cuban, Soviet-bloc and radical Arab helpers." Reagan went so far as to call the the contras "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers," a comparison so odious that it drew a sharp rebuke from the Organization of American Historians. Reagan's "moral equivalents" were notorious for torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering civilians. Employing terrorist tactics, the contras destroyed schools, health care clinics, cooperatives, bridges, and power stations and were responsible for the deaths of most of the 30,000 civilians killed in the war. One advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff called them "the strangest national liberation organization in the world." In his view, they were "JUST A BUNCH OF KILLERS." The U.S. Embassy reported one former contra leader's assertion that civilians who refused to join the contras were "shot or stabbed to death" and others were "burned to death in smelting ovens." He said that kidnapped young girls were "raped night and day."
Atrocities were also committed in El Salvador, where U.S. leaders decided to test their new post--Vietnam counterinsurgency doctrines and try to defeat an uprising without a large commitment of U.S. forces. First they expanded and modernized the Salvadoran army, which, by 1983, reached 53,000 troops, many of whom were trained in Fort Benning, Georgia, or in the U.S.-run School of the Americas in Panama. Former U.S. Ambassador Robert White, who served under both Carter and Reagan, testified before Congress :
For 50 years El Salvador was ruled by a corrupt and brutal alliance of the rich and the military. The young officers revolt of 1979 attempted to break that alliance. It was then Reagan renewed tolerance and acceptance of the extreme right which led to the emergence of the National Republican Alliance, ARENA, and the rise of ex-Major Roberto D'Aubuisson.
ARENA is a violent Fascist party modeled after the Nazis and certain revolutionary Communist groups . . . The founders and chief supporters of ARENA are rich Salvadoran exiles headquartered in Miami and civilian activists in El Salvador. ARENA's military arm comprises officers and men of the Salvadoran Army and security forces . . . My Embassy devoted considerable resources to identifying the sources of rightwing violence and their contacts in Miami, Florida . . . the Miami Six explained . . . that to rebuild the country it must first be destroyed totally, the the economy must be wrecked, unemployment must be massive, the junta must be ousted and a "good" military officer brought to power who will carry out a total cleansing ----limpieza---killing 3 or 4 or 500,000 people . . . Who are these madmen and how do they operate ? . . . the principal figures are six enormously wealthy former landowners . . . They hatch plots, hold constant meetings and communicate instructions to D'Aubuisson.
TO BE CONTINUED
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