Ch VII, Part 4 (and last)
VII.I
Discourse and counter-discourse 6:
‘American interests’
97.
In 1997, a right-wing think-tank
called ‘Project
for a New American Century’ was founded ‘to
make the case and rally support for American global leadership’. Its Internet
website95 promulgated a ‘Mission Statement’ including these missions:
‘establish
a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American interests’;
‘provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world’;
‘discourage
advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even
aspiring to a larger regional or global role’;
‘create
a new military service, U.S.
Space Forces, with the mission of space control’;
‘take total control of cyberspace to prevent enemies
using the internet against the US’;
‘fight
and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars’.
In this spirit, they wrote urging President Clinton in 1998 to ‘enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world’, and complained that ‘American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council’. They also issued a 90-page report on ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, which has been called ‘a blue-print for US world domination’ drawn up by ‘chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war’ (Tam Dalyell, longest-serving member of the British Parliament).96
98. Such jingoistic discourse might conjure up the
plot for some futuristic Hollywood rule-the-world fantasy, But now in 2004, the
list of signers reads like a Who’s Who of the two Bush
‘Administrations’ and their associates: Elliott Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen,
Francis Fukuyama, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz…as if the think-tank had been physically siphoned into the
White House. And they are busily teaching the world how to be ‘uniquely friendly to American interests’, which Bush
Jr described to Congress as ‘far-reaching’.
Indeed.
99.
As a long-standing discursive theme, ‘American interests’ have been extolled
for
‘benefiting
the
international
order’
and even
guaranteeing ‘survival’, e.g. [2252]. But lately those interests have
favoured war and annihilation instead [2253-55].
[2252]
Although
it
may
not
have
the
national
will
again
to assume the role of world police- man,
the
U.S.
does
have
the
political
and economic power to be one of the world’s peace legitimizers. The cause of
international survival may depend on renewed American interest and diplomacy in
troubled areas. […] Thus, international American interests benefit both the
international order and U.S. security.
(After the Bicentennial) www
[2253] The incredible military
superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the
world, in any imaginable combination [will] always defend a democratic nation
under attack from nondemocratic forces; […] if you have the kind of power we
now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will
discover them for you. (Irving Kristol in the Weekly Standard).
[2254]
I’m a war president. I make
decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war
on my mind. […] In my judgment, when the United States says there
will be serious consequences, and if there isn’t [sic] serious consequences,
it creates adverse consequences [sic again]. People look at us and say,
they don’t mean what they say, they are not willing to follow through. (Bush
Jr on Meet the Press)97
[2255]
International law is like Santa Claus [that only] exists in law school
classrooms. In the corporeal world, international law is whatever the United
States and Great Britain say it is. (Ann Coulter)98
So
when the US (or any of its ruling chickenhawks) threatens another nation with
‘serious consequences’ like an unprovoked ‘shock and awe’ 99 mega-bombing,
then it must deliver them or else — Katy, bar the door! — be judged
insincere, indecisive, or, worst of all, cowardly (like France, we were told).
100.
In theory, the ‘world
policeman’ could ‘intervene’ to rescue ‘civilised
society’ [2256] on the basis of ‘moral’ and ‘racial superiority’
[2257], but in practice its ‘interests’ seem to have been more tangible
[2258].
[2256]
Chronic wrongdoing [or] a general loosening of the ties of civilised society may
[…] ultimately require intervention by some civilised nation [in] the exercise
of an international police power. (President Theodore Roosevelt, 1904)
[2257] The day is not far distant when […] the whole
hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it
already is ours morally. (President William Howard Taft, 1912)
[2258]
I was a racketeer for capitalism. […] I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for
American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico
safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place for the National City Bank to collect revenues in. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
(Major General Smedley D. Butler of the US Marines)100
101.
More recently, such noble ‘causes’ have been defended by the U.S. Army’s
‘School of the Americas’ (SOA), at Fort Benning, Georgia (from 1946 to 1977
in Panama) — now renamed the
‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’
— which its supporters call ‘an important tool in helping spread democratic
values to Washington’s allies in Central America and South America’.
According to its website (www.soaw.org), instruction is
[2259] focused on nation-building skills,
[…] consolidation of the effective democratic governance, respect for the rule
of law, and economic development along free market principles.
Some
noted graduates seem to have acquired rather special notions of ‘democratic
governance’:
[2260]
dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and
Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez
of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. (School
of the Americas Watch)www
Instruction
relied on some rather special textbooks too:
[2261]
a 1992 report declassified by the Pentagon in 1996 revealed the details of a
manual used at SOA in the 1980s that advocated tactics such as beatings, false
imprisonment, execution, and bounty payments for enemy dead. (Bruce Kennedy, CNN
Interactive)www
At
least one ‘manual’ is posted on the Internet101
and its discourse conveys a special brand of ‘respect
for the rule of law’, e.g.:
[2262]
The agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the
arrest, capture or death of guerrillas.
[2263]
The
employee’s
[i.e.
captive's]
value
could be increased by means of arrests, executions, or pacification, taking care
not to expose the employee as the information source.
[2264]
Familiar clothing reinforces identity and thus the capacity for resistance.
[…] If the interrogatee is especially proud or neat, […] give him an outfit
that is too large and fail to provide a belt, so that he must hold his pants up.
The
manual has a ‘Descriptive
Bibliography’ of notes and references of CIA-funded
studies in psychology and psychoanalysis with titles like ‘Psychic
Self-Abandon and Extortion of Confessions’, alongside a ‘Guide’ on
‘Brainwashing’, and a ‘Police Interview pamphlet’ with a ‘sprightly
style’.
102.
Few Latin American countries have been closer to ‘American interests’ than
Cuba, whose direct annexation as a state was predicted by John Adams back in
1783 but was ironically forestalled by US racism [2265]. Intervention in the War
of Independence against Spain was seen as just the occasion to ‘clean up the
country’ with genocide American style:
[2265]
This population is made up of whites, blacks, Asians and people who are mixture
of these races, [who] are generally indolent and apathetic [and] possess a vague
notion of what is right and wrong. […] The immediate annexation of these
disturbing elements into our own federation in such large numbers would be
madness, so before we do that we must clean up the country. We must destroy
everything within our cannons’ range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade
so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful
population and decimate the army, […] in order to annex the Pearl of the
Antilles. (US Under-Secretary of War J.C. Breckenridge in 1897)
The
‘cannons’ range of fire’ must have fallen short. Cuba became an
‘independent republic’, though its ‘Constitution’ incorporated the
‘Platte Amendment’ authorising invasions by the US (with its proper
‘notion of what is right and wrong’) to ‘restore order’, as duly
occurred in 1902, 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1933. Annexation would hardly have
seemed necessary anyway:
[2266]
By the 1950s U.S. corporations owned 80% of Cuba’s land, most of the sugar
industry, and all of the public utilities, oil refining, nickel industry, and
railroads. (Gary Erb, Rebels and Dollars)www
103.
After the surprise victory of the Cuban revolution, US policy reverted to
‘imposing a harsh blockade’ [2265], which is still in force today. In March, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff forwarded
to the US Secretary of Defense (‘Secretary
of War’ until 1947) a ‘top secret’ document titled
‘Pretexts to Justify US Military Intervention
in Cuba’ and only recently declassified.102 It
affords an instructive counter-discourse to the discourse of the ‘world’s peace legitimizer’
[2252], by cynically proposing ‘incidents
in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by
hostile Cuban forces’, e.g.:
[2267]
(1) Start rumours (many). Use clandestine radio. (2) Start riots near the base
main gate (friendly Cubans). (3) Develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in
the Miami area, […] exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots,
arresting Cuban agents, and releasing prepared documents substantiating Cuban
involvement. (4) A ‘Remeinber the Maine’ incident could be arranged: Blow up
a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. […] Follow up with an air/sea
rescue operation to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the nonexistent crew.
Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national
indignation. […] Conduct funerals for mock-victims.
The
Kennedy Administration rejected the plan, but would Bush/Cheney have done?
104.
Today, ‘American interests’ are hard to distinguish from ‘global
interests’, as represented above all by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), whose policies bear uncanny likenesses to the cynical
indifference if not hostility of moneyed interests toward health, safety, and
the environment as seen in sections VII.E-G, viz.:
[2268]
Oxfam International estimates that, in the Philippines alone, IMF-imposed cuts
in preventative medicine will result in 29,000 deaths from malaria and an
increase of 90,000 in the number of untreated tuberculosis cases. (Panic
Rules)103
[2269] In Africa an estimated
500,000 more children died from the imposed restructuring of their countries’
economies to ensure increased flows of money to external banks, while spending
on health care declined by 50 per cent and on education by 25 per cent. (Unequal
Freedoms)104
105.
Energetic deconstruction and counter-discourse should be duly applied to the
discourses of such institutions, who present themselves on their websites in
glowing terms. As one of the ‘10 Things You Never Knew’ (a phrase that
almost gives the show away — there was nothing to know), the World Bank
praises its inroads into the health care market
[2270]. A counter-discourse of close ‘reading’ deconstructs the
Bank’s World Development Report titled ‘Investing in Health’
[2271].
[2270]
Providing poor people with basic health and nutrition lies at the heart of
reducing poverty and promoting economic growth, […] health, nutrition, and
population projects in the developing world.105
[2271] On first reading, the
Bank’s strategy looks comprehensive, even modestly progresssive. […] But, on
reading further, we discover that the key recommendations spring from the same
paradigm that has worsened poverty and health levels. Governments must […]
‘foster an enabling environment for households to improve health’ — which
really means requiring disadvantaged families to cover the costs of their own
healthcare; ‘improve government spending in health’ — means trimming
government spending from comprehensive coverage to a narrow selection of
cost-effective measures; ‘promote diversity and competition in health
services’ — which means turning over to private, profit-making doctors and
businesses most of those government services that used to provide free or
subsidized care for the poor. […] Loan programmes, development priorities, and
adjustment policies have deepened inequalities and added to the poverty, ill
health and deteriorating living conditions of at least one billion human beings.
(Who Killed Primary Healthcare?)106
106.
Still more effective is the counter-discourse on the World Bank’s ‘Country
Assistance Strategy’
in a ‘four-step programme’ as described by the Bank’s own former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz :
[2272] Step One is
‘Privatization’ — which could
more accurately be called ‘Briberiza-tion.’ […] National leaders — using
the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics — happily flogged their
electricity and water companies. ‘You could see their eyes widen at the
prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few
billion off the sale price of national assets’. […] Step Two [is] ‘Capital
Market Liberalization.’ In theory, capital market deregulation allows
investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and
Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. […] A nation’s reserves can
drain in days, hours. […] Step Three [is] ‘Market-Based Pricing’, a fancy
term for raising prices on food, water, and cooking gas. This leads,
predictably, to ‘the IMF riots’ (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations
dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas), as when the IMF eliminated food and
fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia, the Bolivian riots over water prices,
the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World
Bank. […] This economic arson has its bright side — for foreign
corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining
concession or port, at fire sale prices. […] Step Four [is] Free trade, which
Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars, when the West used military blockades to
force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a
financial blockade just as effective — and sometimes just as deadly. […]
(Greg Palast in the Observer,
‘The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold’)107
The same renowned economist, whose
knowledge of the facts is unassailable, pointed out that ‘IMF/World Bank
plans’ are devised in ‘secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology’ that
‘undermines democracy’; and worse, ‘they don’t work’, as when ‘IMF
structural “assistance” led to Africa’s income dropping by 23%’.
[2273] We have long known that
World Bank projects bring environmental catastrophe and suffering on a grand
scale. Now we know the projects are economic failures as well. This removes the
last shred of justification for the World Bank’s very existence. (Environmental
Digest)www
But the ‘plans’ are not ‘failures’ if their real
‘justification’ is to convert whole nations and governments into handcuffed
debt-repayment mechanisms, flood their markets with first-world imports, and
sell off state industries and public services to multinational corporations at
‘briberised’ or ‘fire-sale’ prices. Slashing health care, dumping toxic
waste, and jacking up the prices of food, water, and fuel are all part of the
same logic of dressing up economic invasion and servitude in the guise of
‘financial support’, ‘economic growth’ and ‘reduction of poverty’ [2770] —
collateral damage, so to speak, like economic cluster bombs waiting to ignite.
VII.J
Discourse and counter-discourse 7:
The ‘Patriot Acts’108
105.
If it seems callous to call the 9/11 attacks a ‘golden opportunity’ for an
illegitimate presidency [2274], the administration’s moves to ‘exploit’ it
have been callous
enough, though
the press
was initially ‘shy’ about ‘pointing this out’ [2275].
[2274]
The events of Sept. 11 shocked and horrified the nation; they also presented the
Bush administration
with
a
golden
opportunity
to
bury
its
previous
misdeeds.109
[2275]
The
press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration’s
exploitation of 9/11, [now] that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious.
As The Washington Post pointed out, in the past six weeks President Bush
has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in
the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget
deficits, and even campaign finance.110
At
all events, the ‘administration’ gladly seized the ‘opportunity’ to foist
an orgy of radically right-wing legislation upon Congress, maximising secrecy
for the government and its agents whilst minimising it for the citizens. In
effect, the ‘government’ arrogated to itself sweeping powers of secret
surveillance and control, and stipulated that citizens or residents who were
‘unpatriotic’ enough to resist, refuse, or speak out can be
fined, imprisoned,
or deported
(or have
their ‘faces slammed into a wall’, 109.2.2).
106.
The outcome was the ‘USA PATRIOT’
Act (342 pages), whose title is a monstrously devious and contrived acronym for
‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism’ (HR 3162 RDS, 107th Congress).111
The discourse actually says nothing at all about ‘patriots’ and refers to
‘patriotism’ exactly once, namely when
[2276] the Nation is called upon to
recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and
religious backgrounds. (Section 102)112
presumptively
including those Black and
Hispanic Americans who were illegally stripped of their voting rights in Florida
(VII.19). A more honest title would be (to ape a post-9/11 threat from Ari
Fleischer) the ‘Watch What You Say And Do, Because We Will Without You Knowing
It’ Act. It was ‘triumphantly signed
into law’ by ‘President’ Bush on October 26, 2001, suspiciously soon (45
days) after the attack, rammed through Congress under unprecedented conditions:
[2277]
The
act
was
hurriedly
signed
into
law
with
overwhelming
approval
within
six
weeks
of
the
terrorist
attacks
on
New
York
and
Washington,
without
hearings
or
without
being
marked
up
by
a
congressional
committee.
(Noell
Straub
in
the
Progressive
Review)www
[2278] Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas [!]) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read
the first Patriot Act […] before its passage,
and no debate was
tolerated by
the House
and Senate
leadership. […] Dick Cheney […] publicly
threatened members of Congress that if they didn’t vote in favor of it they
would be blamed for the next terrorist attack. [Even the far-right columnist]
William Safire described the first
Patriot Act’s powers by saying that President Bush was ‘seizing
dictatorial control’. (Alex Jones in Infowars)
Surely
Cheney’s support in Congress for armour-piercing cop-killer bullets and guns
that fool metal detectors (VII.2) should make him the very darling of
terrorists. Meanwhile, the veil of maximal secrecy enshrouding the passage
coincided with ‘Attorney General’ John Ashcroft’s ‘Memorandum for Heads
of All Federal Departments and Agencies’ goading them to stonewall ‘requests
for information’:
[2279] When you carefully consider FOIA [Freedom of
Information Act] requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part,
you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions.
However,
some authentic patriots posted the secretive discourse of the ‘Patriot Act’
on the Internet, where it has been analysed by citizens’ advocacy groups like
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, at www.aclu.org).
107.
Not content with the radical Patriot Act (hereafter Patriot I), the
‘Department of Justice’ (hereafter DoJ, its own acronym) concocted the even
more radical ‘Patriot
Act II’ (120 pages),
whose
official title is the ‘Domestic
Security Enhancement Act’, dated January
9, 2003 and secretly forwarded ‘for comment’ on January 10 to Speaker
of the House Dennis Hastert and ‘Vice-President’ Cheney,113
but publicly (and
unexpectedly) posted by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) on the
Internet on February 7.114
Though stamped for secrecy with ‘confidential – not for
distribution’ at the top of every page, it opens with a
revealing ‘Section-By-Section Analysis’ evidently intended as a
public or at least congressional advocacy of why previous legislation, including
Patriot I, needs to be ‘amended’.
108.
I downloaded both discourses and installed them as a mini-corpus in WordPilot to
search for significant frequencies and collocations. Admittedly, analysing two
strenuous legal discourses of 56,869 words (Patriot I) and 36,664 words (Patriot
II) is a daunting challenge under any circumstances, but these two discourses
were designed to treat secrecy in secretive language, just in case anyone inside
or outside of Congress should essay to read them (cf. 109.3.1). Still, I shall
essay to isolate and illustrate some major discursive strategies.
109.1.1.
One strategy is to use the term ‘terrorism’ continually or in expansive
senses and contexts. If, as
we, saw, Patriot I says virtually nothing about ‘patriots’ and
‘patriotism’ (VII.106), it makes 336 mentions of ‘terrorism’ and
‘terrorist’, plus their various derivatives
like ‘bioterrorism’ (but mercifully not ‘food terrorism’).115
In Patriot II, where
‘patriot’ or any derivative occurs exactly zero times (except in the name of
the predecessor act), ‘terrorist/terrorism’ occurs 353 times, almost
twice the density (at .096%) as that in the much longer Patriot I (at .059 %).
Typically, the term clusters within
Patriot II in contexts of ‘threatening’ or ‘endangering’ ‘security’,
unsubtly reinforcing the message that the threat is real and omnipresent.
109.1.2.
The term is strategically expanded for ‘domestic’ activities not ordinarily
relating to terrorism, essentially creating a new and broad definition:
[2280] The
term ‘domestic terrorism’ means
activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of
the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be
intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence
the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion. (802)I
In
a literal reading, clause (A) would reclassify as ‘terrorism’ every
‘violation of law’ that ‘endangers human life’, which should include the
various death-dealing attacks on worker safety and consumer health that the
federal government is so reluctant to prosecute (VII.E-F). By the second
and third clauses (B-C), you can qualify as a ‘terrorist’ without doing
anything at all, or even ‘intending’ to; you need merely ‘appear
to intend’
to do it. Thus, overt ‘acts’ become ‘terrorism’ through the
interpretation of the law enforcement agencies or their informants who judge
‘appearances’. For some ‘authorities’,
just being a ‘Middle East citizen’
might be probable cause (cf. VII.45):
[2281]
Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California
jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to
register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and
behind bars […] under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. (Reuters,
19/12/2002)
109.1.3.
Expansive too is having ‘terrorism’ cover ‘intimidating civilians’
(unless the government does), which could include warning them about ‘dangerous
chemical companies’, which Patriot II
restricts you doing, as we’ll see in [2310]. ‘Influencing the policy of a
government’ could include filing a lawsuit for release of White House
documents relating to its collaboration with Enron (cf. VII.23).
109.1.4.
Elsewhere, the term ‘terrorist’ craftily alternates with ‘consumer’:
[2282]
To avoid alerting terrorists that they are under investigation, this
provision would prohibit (absent court approval) disclosing to a consumer
the fact that law enforcement has sought his credit report. (126)II
Yet
even these loose discourses hardly cover acts to which the DoJ is zealously
applying the label of ‘terrorism, where no ‘life is ‘endangered’, and no
‘population’ or ‘government’ is being ‘intimidated’ or
‘coerced’, viz.:
[2283]
In the first two months of this year, the Justice Department filed
‘terrorism’ charges against 56 people. But an investigation has found that
at least 41 of them had nothing to do with terrorism — a point that
prosecutors acknowledge. […] The largest group of ‘terrorism’ cases this
year was [surprise!] from Texas, where prosecutors have won guilty pleas from
Latinos charged with illegally working at the Austin airport. (Mark
Fazlollah in Knight
Ridder Newspapers)