America's Deadliest Export

The introduction to this book snared me - as well as an endorsement of the book, courtesy of Noam Chomsky:

INTRODUCTION

The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has

•    endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected
•    grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries
•    attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders
•    dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
•    attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

In total: since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above-listed actions, on one or more occasions, in seventy-one countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world), in the process of which the US has ended the lives of several million people, condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair, and has been responsible for the torture of countless thousands. US foreign policy has likely earned the hatred of most of the people in the world who are able to more or less follow current news events and are familiar with a bit of modern history.

Well. This is quite the contrast to the current reports of ISIS (Islamic State), another horrid, squalid terroristic band.

Blum is good at making us remember history, not merely as told by the so-called victors.

Also, his best talent in this book, is displaying propaganda as what it really is by contrasting it. An example:

All countries, it is often argued, certainly all powerful countries, have always acted belligerent and militaristic, so why condemn the United States so much? But that is like arguing that since one can find anti-Semitism in every country, why condemn Nazi Germany? Obviously, it’s a question of magnitude.

[...]

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 many Americans acquired copies of the Quran in an attempt to understand why Muslims could do what they did. One can wonder, following the invasion of Iraq, whether Iraqis bought Christian bibles in search of an explanation of why the most powerful nation on the planet had laid such terrible waste to their ancient land, which had done no harm to the United States.

Also, letting persons of interest display their own thoughts is often an extremely interesting thing:

Future president Theodore Roosevelt, who fought in Cuba at the turn of the last century with the greatest of gung-ho-ism, wrote: ‘It is for the good of the world that the English-speaking race in all its branches should hold as much of the world’s surface as possible.’

Apropos why the USA is being attacked:

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

On what the duality of the two main political parties of the USA really mean:

One reason for confusion among the electorate is that the two main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, while forever throwing charges and counter-charges at each other, actually hold indistinguishable views concerning foreign policy, a similarity that is one of the subjects of this book. What is the poor voter to make of all this? Apropos of this we have the view of the American electoral system from a foreigner, Cuban leader Raúl Castro. He has noted that the United States pits two identical parties against one another, and joked that a choice between a Republican and Democrat is like choosing between himself and his brother Fidel. ‘We could say in Cuba we have two parties: one led by Fidel and one led by Raúl, what would be the difference?’ he asked. ‘That’s the same thing that happens in the United States … both are the same. Fidel is a little taller than me, he has a beard and I don’t.’

Some background info on why the Marshall Plan is to be considered not entirely about help and altruism:

Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from any kind of influential role.

[...]

The CIA also skimmed large amounts of Marshall Plan funds to covertly maintain cultural institutions, journalists, and publishers, at home and abroad, for the omnipresent and heated propaganda of the Cold War; the selling of the Marshall Plan to the American public and elsewhere was entwined with fighting ‘the red menace’. Moreover, in their covert operations, CIA personnel at times used the Marshall Plan as cover, and one of the Plan’s chief architects, Richard Bissell, then moved to the CIA, stopping off briefly at the Ford Foundation, a long-time conduit for CIA covert funds. ’Twas one big happy, scheming family.

[...]

The great bulk of Marshall Plan funds returned to the United States, or never left, being paid directly to American corporations to purchase American goods. The US Agency for International Development (AID) stated in 1999: ‘The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States.’

On Yugoslavia, and the Clinton administration's record-breaking bombing:

Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it ‘humanitarian intervention.’ It’s still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, ‘progressives,’ as just that. Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

[...]

In 1999, NATO (primarily the United States) bombed the Yugoslav republic of Serbia for seventy-eight consecutive days, ruining the economy, the ecology, power supply, bridges, apartment buildings, transportation, infrastructure, churches, schools, pushing the country many years back in its development, killing hundreds or thousands of people, traumatizing countless children, who’ll be reacting unhappily to certain sounds and sights for perhaps the remainder of their days; the most ferocious sustained bombing of a nation in the history of the world, at least up to that time. Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia had attacked or was preparing to attack a member state of NATO, and that is the only event which justifies a reaction under the NATO treaty.

Speaking of NATO, a clear-headed thought:

If NATO had never existed, what argument could be given today in favor of creating such an institution?

Another clear-headed one-liner:

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good.

...plus:

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, and social workers? Reread some medieval history, about feudal lords and serfs.

...and:

The more you care about others, the more you’re at a disadvantage competing in the capitalist system.

...also:

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism, the companies take over the government.

And on the Obama administration:

As we’ll see from State Department cables in the WikiLeaks chapter, the Obama administration renewed military ties with Indonesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American diplomats that the Indonesian military’s human rights abuses in the province of West Papua were stoking unrest in the region. The United States also overturned a ban on training the Indonesian Kopassus army special forces – despite the Kopassus’s long history of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder – after the Indonesian president threatened to derail President Obama’s trip to the country in November 2010.

On Guantánamo:

It was recently disclosed that an Iraqi resident of Britain is being released from Guantánamo after four years. His crime? He refused to work as an informer for the CIA and MI5, the British security service. His business partner is still being held in Guantánamo, for the same crime.

[...]

David Hicks is a 31–year-old Australian who in a plea-bargain with a US military court served nine months in prison, largely in Australia. That was after five years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without being charged with a crime, without a trial, without a conviction. Under the deal, Hicks agreed not to talk to reporters for one year (a terrible slap in the face of free speech), to forever waive any profit from telling his story (a slap – mon Dieu! – in the face of free enterprise), to submit to US interrogation and testify at future US trials or international tribunals (an open invitation to the US government to hound the young man for the rest of his life), to renounce any claims of mistreatment or unlawful detention (a requirement which would be unconstitutional in a civilian US court). ‘If the United States were not ashamed of its conduct, it wouldn’t hide behind a gag order,’ said Hicks’s attorney Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

About Iraq, it's interesting to read facts as opposed to prejudice about what life was like, before and after the first American invasion:

Women’s rights, previously enjoyed, fell under great danger of being subject to harsh Islamic law. There is today a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq, which tolerates physical attacks on women for showing a bare arm or for picnicking with a male friend. Men can be harassed for wearing shorts in public, as can children playing outside in shorts.

On Julian Assange and Sweden:

One further consequence of Assange’s predicament may be to put an end to the widespread belief that Sweden, or the Swedish government, is peaceful, progressive, neutral, and independent. Stockholm’s behavior in this matter and others has been as American-poodle-like as London’s, as it lined itself up with an Assange accuser who has been associated with right-wing anti-Castro Cubans, who are of course US-government-supported. This is the same Sweden that for some time in recent years was working with the CIA on its torture-rendition flights and has about 500 soldiers in Afghanistan. Sweden is the world’s largest per capita arms exporter, and for years has taken part in US/NATO military exercises, some within its own territory. The left should get themselves a new nation to admire. Try Cuba.

However, Blum's sexist approach to rape charges against Assange make for a very, very sad read:

There’s also the old stereotype held by Americans of Scandinavians practicing a sophisticated and tolerant attitude toward sex, an image that was initiated, or enhanced, by the celebrated 1967 Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), which had been banned for a while in the United States. And now what do we have? Sweden sending Interpol on an international hunt for a man who apparently upset two women, perhaps for no more than sleeping with them both in the same week.

By quickly googling some, ending up at, for example, The Enliven Project, one quickly finds that there's greater risk of being hit by lightning than being falsely accused of rape. The two women did not know each other, and have rendered quite similar stories of how Assange purportedly assaulted them. Blum's "no more than sleeping with them both in the same week" is as tragic as reading how he deals with the US government's downplays, for example, when writing about Guantanámo inmates.

So, sadly, there is a waft and complete shame about Blum's writing on women. It's really beyond sad.

However, his humanitarian views beyond that seems OK, which feels tainted to say.

‘We came, we saw, he died.’ The words of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Muammar Gaddafi.

Or this:

This also really happened: Jay Leno on his August 7, 2006 television program: ‘There’s news of a major medical crisis from Cuba concerning Fidel Castro. It looks like he’s getting better.’ Think of a US president battling a serious ailment and a broadcaster on Cuban TV making such a remark.

Like I stated, Blum’s way of contrasting statements by displaying how they’d look through someone else’s mouth is one of his his fortés.

On the "Cuban missile crisis", which shows the necessity for Iran to acquire nuclear arms to preserve their peace:

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, historian and adviser to President Kennedy, termed it ‘the most dangerous moment in human history.’ But I’ve never believed that. Such a fear is based on the belief that either or both of the countries was ready and willing to unleash their nuclear weapons against the other. However, this was never in the cards because of MAD – mutually assured destruction. By 1962, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither superpower could entirely destroy the other’s retaliatory force by launching a missile first, even with a surprise attack. Retaliation was certain, or certain enough. Starting a nuclear war was committing suicide. If the Japanese had had nuclear bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been destroyed.

Also, on that "crisis":

John Gerassi, professor of political science at Queens College in New York City, wrote a letter to the New York Times: To the Editor, In his ‘A Spy Confesses’ (Week in Review, September 21, 2008), Sam Roberts claims that folks ‘fiercely loyal to the far left believed that the Rosenbergs were not guilty…’ I am and have always been, since my stint as a correspondent and editor in Latin America for Time and Newsweek, a ‘far leftist,’ and I have never claimed the Rosenbergs were not guilty. Nor have any of my ‘far leftist’ friends. What we always said, and what I repeat to my students every semester, is that ‘if they were guilty, they are this planet’s great heroes.’ My explanation is quite simple: The US had a first-strike policy, the USSR did not (until Gorbachev). In 1952, the US military, and various intelligence services, calculated that a first strike on all Soviet silos would wipe out all but 6 percent of Russian atomic missiles (and, we now know, create enough radiation to kill us all). But those 6 percent would automatically be fired at US cities. The military then calculated what would happen if one made a direct hit on Denver (why they chose Denver and not New York or Washington was never explained). Their finding: 200,000 would die immediately, two million within a month. They concluded that it was not worth it. In other words, I tell my students, you were born and I am alive because the USSR had a deterrent against our ‘preventive’ attack, not the other way around. And if it is true that the Rosenbergs helped the Soviets get that deterrent, they end up among the planet’s saviors. John Gerassi It will not come as a great surprise to learn that the New York Times did not allow such thoughts to appear in its exalted pages.

Some thinking words on sexuality and US politics:

‘Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?’ was the question posed to presidential candidate Bill Richardson by singer Melissa Etheridge. ‘It’s a choice,’ replied the New Mexico governor at the August 9, 2007 forum for Democratic candidates. Etheridge then said to Richardson, ‘Maybe you didn’t understand the question,’ and she rephrased it. Richardson again said he thought it was a choice.6 The next time you hear someone say that homosexuality is a choice, ask them how old they were when they chose to be heterosexual. When they admit that they never made such a conscious choice, the next question to the person should be: ‘So only homosexuals choose to be homosexual? Heterosexuals do not choose to be heterosexual? But what comes first, being homosexual so you can make the choice, or making the choice and thus becoming homosexual?’

Blum delivers very severe and well-deserved critique to Obama. Examples:

When, in 2005, the other Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, stuck his neck out and compared American torture at Guantánamo to ‘Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings,’ and was angrily denounced by the right wing, Obama stood up in the Senate and… defended him? No, he joined the critics, thrice calling Durbin’s remark a ‘mistake.’

Since taking office in January 2005, he has voted to approve almost every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state despite her complicity in the Bush administration’s false justifications for going to war in Iraq. In doing so, he lacked the courage of twelve of his Democratic Party Senate colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

[...] keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran[...]

Another prominent Obama adviser – from a list entirely and depressingly establishment-imperial – is Madeleine Albright, who played key roles in the merciless bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Is anyone keeping count? I am. Libya makes six. Six countries that Barack H. Obama has waged war against in his twenty-six months in office. (To anyone who disputes that dropping bombs on a populated land is an act of war, I would ask what they think of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.) America’s first black president has now waged war in Africa. Is there anyone left who still thinks that Barack Obama is some kind of improvement over George W. Bush?

I could go through the Cairo speech and point out line by line all the political and moral shortcomings, the plain nonsense, and the rest. (‘I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.’ No mention of it being outsourced to various countries, likely including the very country in which he was speaking. ‘No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.’ But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.

All in all, Blum is bitter, yes, but he's got his head where it should be, apart from where women are, apparently, being dealt with. His words on the Assange affair taint the entire book, but other than that, it's a good book, although more fractured than, say, a Chomsky book would be.