America’s Experience With Foreign Intervention

     Once again, our nation finds itself poised to use military force to cope with an evolving situation in the Middle East. After spending $2 Trillion and losing almost 5,000 soldiers to install an Islamic, Iranian-oriented state in Iraq, America is now being challenged to re-engage in the war-torn nation and help defend the Shiites from Al Queda extremists. We are coming to the awkward realization that, if we intervene in the conflict, we will be fighting alongside Iran, our mortal enemy. We are told that the advancing forces of ISIS are so evil they were kicked out of Al Queda but the situation is slightly more complicated. They actually are the extremists of Al Queda and are funded partly from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, just like Al Queda.

   The apparent use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war also faced the United States with a difficult conundrum. Should we have the moral stance and strike back against Bashir Assad, punishing his behavior and decreasing his capacity to carry on further attacks? Should we have sought further international support and try to resolve the issue diplomatically? The pathway we seek in these thorny issues will not be easy and the decision we make on our use of force could end up affecting us for many years to come.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the proper course of action in this difficult situation. But, as a student of history, I do know two things: (1) we should be dubious of the justification for military intervention and (2) Any use of military force in the Middle East is likely to be unsuccessful and counterproductive. Throughout human history, nations have gone to war to achieve various goals but the rationale for doing so has almost always been suspect. And when the bullets stop flying, the results are rarely what the participants wanted.

Americans are proud of our democracy and have often gone to war “defending” the principles of liberty and justice. In both World Wars, our participation was based on this broad rationale and Americans felt like we were carrying out a moral crusade by standing up to the forces of fascism and totalitarianism. Later research has shown that our participation in these two conflicts was somewhat more nuanced and other factors were involved that the public was not aware of. In most of our other conflicts, however, the justification for intervention was based on misdirection, misinformation and, let’s face it, just plain lies.

At the beginning of the 20^th Century, America was growing in wealth and prosperity and our nation was beginning to make its presence felt on the World stage. With oceans on both sides of us, we were insulated from the continuous warfare of Europe and most Americans felt we should stay out of foreign entanglements.

This changed overnight on February 15, 1898, when the American battleship Maine exploded and sunk in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Suddenly, public outrage pushed the government into action.

People had already been subjected to information on supposed “atrocities” by the Spanish rulers of Cuba. Two of the biggest newspaper publishers in the country, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, were in a circulation war and both felt that a war would definitely boost readership of their newspapers.

Frederick Remington, working for Hearst, portrayed an incident where a Cuban woman was allegedly searched by Spanish authorities for rebel messages. The search actually happened but it was made by a female matron.

They began publishing inflammatory, fact-challenged reports of Spanish atrocities that whipped up enthusiasm for retaliatory action. Using a dopy-looking cartoon character called the “Yellow Kid,” Hearst pushed hard for war and the biased news reporting on the issue became known as “Yellow Journalism.”

The media of the time ignored facts and just printed information supporting a war.

Essentially, both publishers swayed US public opinion to believe that the Cuban people were being unjustly persecuted by the Spanish, and that the only way for them to gain their independence was through American intervention.
With the sinking of the Maine (blamed on the Spanish), The US declared war with Spain and our “Splendid Little War” took us to Cuba, the Pacific and eventually, to the Philippines. When the dust had settled, we had defeated the Spanish navy in Manila Harbor and America suddenly became a global power, with possessions all over the globe.

"Remember the Maine" became a rallying call for a generation of Americans who believed the explosion had been set by Spain.

But our grandiose vision of the American ascendency was marred by the fact that the outcome of the war did not exactly work out for the best. We found ourselves “nation-building” in the Philippines but our efforts were hampered by a 10-year insurgency that was eventually put down by brute force. It turns out Filipinos don’t like occupiers any more than Iraqis do.
 The World Wars, as has been mentioned were seen as much more “righteous” wars and deception doesn’t seem to play a large part in entering both conflicts but the desired outcome of both never materialized. Waged to make the World “safe for democracy,” these wars resulted in massive destruction, millions of deaths and economic devastation in Europe and Japan. Obviously, World War I failed in that the defeated nation of Germany was right back at it and within 20 years, democracy was threatened once again. World War II certainly didn’t defeat Democracy’s enemies, considering that after the war we just switched the Nazis for the Communists and just went right on fighting.
 Our foreign intervention really began picking up in the 1950s. Once we learned in Guatemala how easy it is to overthrow another country with covert action, we began to use the technique with other problem nations. When the democratically-elected President of Iran asked for a bigger percentage of oil profits being taken from his country, the US decided an intervention was necessary. Intelligence agents distributed propaganda, hired fake supporters and stirred up foment until the country’s leader was overthrown. 
   Our preferred substitute, The Shah of Iran turned out to be a brutal dictator, who used his elite intelligence unit, the SAVAK, to suppress all dissent and intimidate the country’s citizens. When the Shah was overthrown and American intelligence agents were taken captive, our nation was outraged that a foreign nation would challenge our supremacy and we have essentially been in a proxy war with Iran ever since. Pretty much all of our current problems with Iran go back to our misguided intervention in their own sovereign affairs in 1954. 
  Since Communism became such a perfect enemy, we began taking them on wherever we could across the globe, usually with negative consequences. Using the discredited “Domino Theory” past administrations argued that it was necessary to intervene militarily to stop the spread of this political scourge.

The military argued that all of Asia would fall to the Communists without our intervention.

Only America, it was argued, could stop the Communists from their plan to enslave the World. Americans were told that we must intervene in Korea, and later Vietnam, because the evil Communists would seize every other country in the World if we did not take a stand for democracy. In both cases, the U.S. suffered its first military “defeats” (although we liked to characterize them as a draw….). Especially in Vietnam we learned that there are limits to having massive military superiority.

Propaganda would have us believe America was "forced" to fight in Vietnam.

Deception was also used, of course, in getting us more entangled in Vietnam. Falsely claiming that one of our warships had been brazenly attacked by North Vietnam, the U.S. military convinced Congress, and a majority of Americans, that we must take a stand to defend democracy once more and punish the Vietnamese for their bad behavior.

It is said that LBJ carried around a copy of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to show anyone who challenged his authority to carry on the war.

     We all know how that one came out. Millions of deaths later, America quietly withdrew from the war-ravaged nation after having dropped more ordinance on this tiny Asian nation than had been dropped in all of World War II. Today, land mines and Agent Orange are still causing suffering in Vietnam.
After our embarrassing performance in Vietnam, the military needed an ego-booster so, in 1983, they conceived of an intervention that would make us all feel good but would pose little danger to our military forces. Ronald Reagan, who wanted to reinforce his image as a tough, no-nonsense leader, had been bothered when the liberal-leaning Maurice Bishop was elected President of this tiny, Caribbean nation. Why not get rid of this nuisance and show off our military prowess at the same time? U.S. intelligence agents whipped up opposition to Bishop and talked his opponents into taking action. 

  

News reporting made it seem like we were the saviors of this poor nation.

When the popular President was seized and executed, American troops flooded the island, claiming they were there to “protect” some American medical students studying there.

Propaganda was issued to let the people of Grenada know that we were there to "save" them from Communism.

  We got rid of Bishop, alright, but we were condemned by the United Nations, and our actions were considered "a flagrant violation of international law."The U.S. vetoed the resolution, of course. Over 5,000 medals were awarded for valor to American troops…..

The Grenada invasion might have helped US troop morale but it did little to affect the situation for the average residents of the island.

 I doubt there are any Americans left who don’t know that our involvement in Iraq was based on lies, in fact many of them. Bush administration officials, somehow beholden to a think-tank plan known as the New American Century, seemed to honestly believe that getting rid of Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein, would usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. But their many falsehoods, including the supposed “weapons of mass destruction,” ties to Osama bin Laden, and the pending mushroom cloud dragged us into the conflict with bad intelligence, no Iraqi support and pretty much no plan for what happens afterwards.
   Of course, the lying about Iraq did not originate with George W Bush. His father also should share responsibility for involving us in this Middle Eastern country. Many have already forgotten that deception was used to get us involved in the first Iraq invasion. Americans were shocked by the testimony of an Iraqi young woman named Nariyah, who told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers entering a Kuwaiti hospital, seizing the baby incubators there and leaving the babies to die on the floor. The U.S., claiming to be standing up for standards of decency and human rights, intervened and brought us the first Gulf War.

Americans were horrified at Nariyah's vivid description of the inhuman killing of infants. They only learned later that the whole thing had been a lie.

  Later, it turned out that Nariyah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and that her false testimony had been provided as part of a propaganda effort to convince Americans to act. The entire story, of course, was false. 

     Although we did succeed in the stated goal of getting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, most people would admit the issue was not really resolved by our actions. Hussein remained as the country’s leader and George W. Bush apparently felt the need to resolve the “unfinished business” of Iraq 12 years later. 

     So, as we ponder the decision to intervene once again in the affairs of yet another Middle Eastern country, we should consider our past experiences with military interventions. Based on our history, we should have learned to be highly-suspicious of the reasons and rationale for warfare and we must certainly question whether the expected results will actually turn out. In fact, our track record in Africa and the Middle East is so dismal, it’s hard to see how any military involvement could possibly make things better. For 50 years, America has squandered its wealth, prestige and human resources in one military action after another, all supposedly to advance the cause of democracy and economic advancement. What we have ACTUALLY achieved is a bankrupt economy, thousands of dead soldiers, millions of foreign victims, and a terrible loss of prestige around the World.

We've tried war many times but Peace - not so much!

     The belief that military might is necessary to achieve our goals must be seriously questioned at this point. The Pentagon would be hard pressed to come up with any successes they can point to when it comes to questions of national defense. We have consistently sought war when other ways to resolve crises have been available. Maybe it really is time to “Give Peace a Chance.”

Big Brother Comes of Age

     When George Orwell wrote his prophetic novel “1984” in 1948, he envisioned a society where all information was totally controlled, all citizens were under constant surveillance, and even THINKING negatively about the current conditions was considered a crime.

As the actual date of 1984 approached there was much speculation about whether Orwell’s chilling predictions would come true. Essentially, the nation breathed a huge sigh of relief when the magical year arrived with no “Big brother” cameras installed in people’s homes, no monitoring of public sentiment to detect unpatriotic speech, and no attempts to control information through language (what Orwell called “Newspeak”).

     Now, with the leaks of information suggesting new encroachments on our civil liberties, it looks like Orwell may have been right, it just took a few decades later than he thought to get there. 

Cameras now monitor our every movement in pretty much every public space. All residents now carry personal tracking devices which broadcast their location in real-time to anyone with the equipment to see it. Consumers have been convinced that it is better to store all of your personal data in “the cloud”, where it is easily accessed by government snoopers. The English language, itself, has been twisted so that words often mean exactly the opposite of what they are (e.g. “job creators”, “peacekeeper” missiles, “pro-life”) or totally innocuous words are used to describe horrible things. We use the word “drone”, for instance, when we actually mean “flying killer robot.” In many ways, it seems, we have reached the kind of society that Orwell warned us about.

     When the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency has been routinely been gathering personal information on EVERYBODY, not just terrorists, we all seemed shocked, although we should have seen it coming. Ever since the beginning of the Cold War, a secret power has grown within the government. This hidden manipulation, by what Bill Moyers calls the “Invisible Government,” has grown continuously and after the events of 9/11 it expanded even more. This powerful force behind the scenes in our nation is 

The powerful forces of the military, CIA, NSA and agencies we don’t even know about have been pulling the strings behind World events totally outside all 3 branches of government for more than 50 years. President John F. Kennedy discovered it when he was informed of an imminent invasion of Cuba, something planned completely outside the Executive Branch. We learned about it in the 1980s when President Reagan secretly used the Intelligence agencies to sell arms to Islamic terrorists so he could raise money for his own terrorists in Nicaragua. Although today’s conservatives are falling all over themselves accusing the whole thing as yet one more nefarious plot by our Nazi/Commie/Fascist/Kenyan usurper to bring down the jack-booted thugs of the IRS on innocent civilians, this invisible government operates totally outside of the President’s control and began its work long before Obama came on the scene. 

     In fact, some of this is the result of the Republican Party, which took the lead after 9/11 in calling for the most aggressive intelligence operations. I watched many of the C-Span hearings when the rules for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were being hammered out. In every case, the Republicans wanted to give intelligence agencies more authority and leeway than the Democrats, in fact they demanded it.

     It was at this point where America went off the rails.

     We all learned from High School civics that our unique 3-branch political system was designed to protect Americans from governmental abuse. With the addition of the Bill of Rights, our Constitution provided essential protections to Americans that we all take for granted today. The First and Second Amendments get discussed frequently, but it may be that the Fourth Amendment turns out to be the most important. This basically says that all Americans are free from unreasonable search and seizure unless there is PROBABLE CAUSE to believe they are committing a crime. The term “probable cause” has been well-defined in past judicial rulings and law-enforcement officers have been bound to follow its restrictions. If there is a suspicion that someone is engaged in illegal activity, the police must go to a judge, present evidence of that crime, and only then are allowed to intervene. Initially, this was the case with the FISA rules. Intelligence agencies had to make their case before a judge if they wanted to wiretap or search anyone because they had to follow rules laid down after the FBI/CIA abuses of the 1970s.

     Of course, probable cause had already been thrown out the window because of the drug war. Using the thinly-disguised excuse of “sobriety checks” ALL police agencies are now allowed to set up roadblocks anywhere, anytime and stop and search EVERY vehicle that comes by. The first thing they do is ask for “your papers.” The public hasn’t even noticed that this important protection has been removed.

     During the hearings on FISA legislation, intelligence chiefs assured Congress that the surveillance would NEVER involve Americans unless a terrorist’s phone calls were to or from an American’s telephone. The Republicans were not happy with this provision, saying that it hampered ongoing investigations into terrorism and they sought to get fewer restrictions on surveillance activities. The Bush administration was more than happy to support their efforts and very quietly, they removed the Fourth Amendment from the Constitution. This was done by a top-secret ruling which determined that from now on, the standard would be “reasonable suspicion” rather than “probable cause.” It may not seem like that much of a difference, but legally, reasonable suspicion is a loose, poorly-defined standard that essentially means that, if any intelligence official even suspects someone is a criminal or could in any way be associated with a terrorist, they are free to ignore the Fourth Amendment. Even if they are an American citizen. No evidence is necessary. No judge needs to be consulted. Nobody needs to be informed. They have been acting under this standard ever since.

     It should be no surprise, then that the intelligence agencies have interpreted this Patriot Act disaster to mean they are allowed to vacuum up information en masse, in the hopes that they may divine some future terrorist plot by doing so. No more probable cause. No more terrorist-only surveillance. No more judicial review. Add to this the fact that ALL parties involved (Verizon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.) are forbidden to even admit they have cooperated with the authorities, thus the denials by all of them that their data has been compromised. If they were to admit it, they would be subject to criminal prosecution, so it’s no surprise they all act like they never heard of it.

    To be fair, there are some problems with the Washington Post report. Their story outlines the PRISM project, which they claimed was the code name for this massive intelligence-gathering project. Their “evidence” was in the form of 4 leaked Top-Secret Powerpoint slides which seemed to suggest that the major Internet vendors were providing information to the government. There is a website listed on one of the slides which eventually gets you to the Federal Airline Administration’s vendor database, nick-named PRISM. The FAA page describes PRISM as just the gathering of information from Google and friends on its own government contractors and vendors, nothing even resembling the Post story. One of the Powerpoint slides also lists the entire PRISM project as costing only $20 million dollars, chicken feed for a massive data-gathering program that is vacuuming up huge amounts of personal data and storing it somewhere. Either the entire FAA/PRISM is a major misdirection funded by a black budget, or the Post found a few slides and inferred nefarious activity when the explanation was much simpler.

     At any rate, we are now faced with answering some tough questions about the future of our society. Will we try to put curbs on this practice of massive intelligence gathering? How much more of our civil liberties are we willing to give up? Can anyone put the genie back in the bottle? I have found that many Americans are unaware of this loss of liberty and have, in many ways, helped to bring it on. George Orwell would never have imagined that all you needed to do to follow somebody’s movements is give them some flashy toys with apps on it and they will willingly carry their own tracking device. We have all been seduced by the promises of “the Cloud” and are willingly shoveling mass amounts of our private data into online repositories where we have little control over it. We must demand more control over our own information or we may just end up living in the world that Orwell imagined…….