Imperialism 101 - The US Addiction to War, Mayhem and
Madness - Part I

by Stephen Lendman

The US-led aggression in the Middle East and the three
failed attempts to oust Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez since
2002 (with a fourth now planned and likely to be
implemented soon) are just the latest examples of this
country’s imperial agenda and the “new world order” it
has in mind.  The way this country now engages
throughout the world isn’t much different than what
it’s done close to home and worldwide since inception.
Only the venues chosen, the scope of our aims, and
the extent of our power have changed.  This article in
two parts gives some historical perspective and then
concentrates on the imperial grand strategy of the
Bush administration under which regime change is a
central element. 

Maybe it’s something in the air or water around the
Capitol that makes it happen - causing the men and
women elected or appointed to high office to do bad
things.  It may in part be going along to get along
for some of them.  But mostly it’s the dangerous and
deadly sickness or syndrome of power corrupting and
absolute power doing it absolutely.  That’s bad
enough, but when it happens to rulers of a superpower
and those in league with them, it can inflict
immeasurable harm and human suffering.  In
cost/benefit analysis terms: what serves the interests
of a superstate comes at the expense of the public
welfare.

The US Has Always Been A Warrior, Imperial Nation

There’s no longer a dispute that the US pursues an
imperial agenda.  What once was hidden behind a
politically correct facade and would never be admitted
publicly is now seen as something respectable and even
an obligation to advance “western civilization.”  How
low we’ve sunk in coming so far.  But how different is
today from the past?  Not much for those who know the
country’s true history that’s quite different from the
proper and polite version of it taught in school at
all levels.  Expansionism and militarism have always
been in our DNA since the early settlers first
confronted the nation’s original inhabitants and then
over the next few hundred years slaughtered about 18
million of them to seize their land and resources.  We
may even have put language in our sacred Declaration
of Independence to give us a birthright to do it.  In
it we called our native people “merciless indian
savages,” and with that kind of framing gave ourselves
a moral justification to remove them.  It’s a code
based on the notion of might makes right and what we
say goes.  It didn’t matter that our original
inhabitants lived mostly in peace for 20-30,000 years
on the lands we took from them.  There also was no
concern that the native peoples treated the early
settlers graciously, helping them survive through the
early years of struggle and hard adjustment.  We
showed our gratitude with hostility, open warfare and
genocidal extermination.  It never ended and continues
in less conspicuous ways today as the current unstated
national policy is to eliminate native cultures
through assimilation into our own.  It’s hardly a
testimony to the benefits of “western civilization”
Gandhi thought would be a good idea when asked what he
thought of it.

Our belligerence wasn’t just directed against the
indian nations as we always were apparently willing to
pick a fight.  It’s hard to believe that this country
since inception has been at war with one or more
adversaries every year without exception to this day.
That’s in addition to all other attempts to
destabilize or overthrow governments of nations
whenever their leaders weren’t willing to sacrifice
their national interest in service to ours.
Imperialists don’t ever tolerate that, especially one
that happens to be an unchallengeable superpower.

But long before we gained that status, we pursued a
land-grab policy throughout the 19th century to expand
the new nation from “sea to shining sea” including
taking the half of Mexico we wanted along the way.
It’s surprising we didn’t take all or most of Canada
as well and nearly did twice in the past: during the
War of 1812 with the British when our interest was
more on expansion than the British impressment of our
seamen and again in 1920 when we eyed Canada for the
same reason we’re waging two wars today - O-I-L.  Only
fate may have prevented it from happening.  A few
cooler heads also likely prevailed, and our attention
both times got diverted to other “adventures” and
priorities.

But despite our tradition of imperial expansion, we
stated our aims carefully and diplomatically and still
do.  The closest we came early on to an open admission
of our true intent was in code language like “manifest
destiny” or being willing to heed Rudyard Kipling’s
racist call to ally with Britain, take up the “White
Man’s Burden,” and engage in “savage wars” to bring
civilization to dark-skinned people in countries like
The Philippines we decided didn’t have any.  So in our
imperial wisdom, we came, stole, and conquered “for
their own good” and in the process left lots of bodies
around to prove our good intentions.

Theodore Roosevelt welcomed Kipling’s call, publicly
supported an expansionist foreign policy before he
became president and during most of his time in
office.  He wanted colonies to make over in our own
image and was willing to go to war for it if that’s
what it took to do it.  He won a Nobel Peace prize for
his efforts and was the only US president to get one
until Jimmy Carter (another dubious man of peace)
received the award in 2002.  While president, TR’s
foreign policy was to solidify the country’s world
position it gained from the Spanish-American war
during which and after he had a hand in extending the
US empire to The Philippines, Cuba, Haiti,  Guam, the
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone
area part of Colombia that broke away to become the
new nation of Panama.  Building the canal there across
its isthmus fulfilled TR’s dream to link the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans even though it took devious tactics
to arrange the deal, manage to begin construction
during his time in office, and finally see it
completed about four and a half years before he died.
TR also ironically allowed the number of US
possessions to shrink during his second term in office
-  maybe out of guilt over what he did in his first
four years and earlier.

Woodrow Wilson was another of the “noted” presidents
we now revere as one of our greatest who came to
office with noble promises of wanting to reform
national politics and have an enlightened presidency
only to fall far short.  While proclaiming all nations
had the right of self-determination, he believed that
America had a duty to see they all had the kind we
practiced even if we had to bring it to them at the
point of a gun.  The result during his tenure was the
military occupation of Nicaragua, Haiti (beginning 20
oppressive years) and the Dominican Republic.  He also
had his problems with Mexico and did what any good US
president would do.  He sent in the Marines to invade
the country, seize and occupy Veracruz, the country’s
main seaport, manage to resolve that dispute and then
do it again with Army regulars under General John
Pershing (the Dwight Eisenhower of WW I in charge of
the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe) to
hunt down Pancho Villa as payback for Villa’s
cross-border incursion into the US killing 19
Americans.  Pershing didn’t find him but nearly began
a full-scale war with Mexico trying before Wilson
decided the whole adventure was a bad idea and called
it off.

But all this was prologue to what Wilson wanted most
while claiming otherwise - getting the US into WW I to
further our undeclared imperial ambitions.  In 1916
Wilson was reelected on a platform promise of: “He
Kept Us Out of War” - referring to the one raging in
Europe since 1914.  Of course, he had to promise that
as the US public overwhelmingly wanted nothing to do
with it.  But he no sooner was reelected than he began
making plans to get into it.  He established the
Committee on Public Information under George Creel
which was able to turn a pacifist nation into raging
German haters resulting in the Congress overwhelmingly
declaring war on Germany in April, 1917.  Once in the
war, he managed to control most public anti-war
sentiment with the help of the outrageous Espionage
and Sedition Acts that outlawed criticism of the
government, the armed forces or the war effort,
imprisoned or fined violators and censored or banned
publications daring to publish what the Wilson
administration wanted suppressed.  It all has a
familiar ring to it.

After the war, Wilson failed to create the new world
order he had in mind.  The vengeful Treaty of
Versailles set the stage for the greater conflict to
follow in 20 years, and Wilson left office a defeated,
broken and very ill man.  Despite it all, we hail him
as one of our greatest presidents, even though with an
honest assessment it’s clear he fell far short.  It’s
also clear there’s a thin line between the ones we
call our best and those we rate our worst.  It hardly
matters as the only qualification for the job is to
faithfully pursue the interests of the power brokers
who get to choose the ones they think will serve them
best.  It was true for Theodore Roosevelt, his younger
cousin Franklin (who had a little Great Depression to
deal with and had to give some to save capitalism),
Woodrow Wilson and the current undistinguished
incumbent in Washington.

At the heart of those interests is the pursuit of
wealth and power and a system of governance beholden
to capital, now more than ever dominated by giant
predatory corporations that control and decide
everything - who governs and how, who serves on our
courts, what laws are enacted and even whether wars
are fought, against whom and for what purpose.  It’s
for the profit, of course, because wars are good for
business, which is why we wage so many of them.
Corporations have to keep growing.  They’re mandated
by law to do it to maximize shareholder value for
their owners, and the only way they can is by
increasing profits.  They do it by growing sales,
keeping costs low, expanding their market share when
possible and always seeking new opportunities globally
for their products and services.  It doesn’t matter
how they get them as long as they do, and the surest
way when others fail is through strong-arm
imperialism.  The easy kinds through favorable
(one-way) trade agreements or other market-opening
arrangements are always preferred.  But if those
methods fall short, the alternative is direct
confrontation or all out aggressive war.  When it
happens, corporations are the winners as long as the
adventure doesn’t harm the economy.  It usually harms
the public interest asked to sacrifice butter for guns
and their civil liberties in the name of greater
security (never gotten), and then having to pick up
the tab.

It’s part of the same dirty business Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge noted in his 1885 unguarded moment comment
that “commerce follows the flag.”  Today it’s more
true that the flag goes where commerce directs it to
secure new markets and a corporate friendly
environment once they’ve been opened for business.
That’s how imperialism works and why war is an
effective geopolitical way to pursue it.  War, of
course, is just geopolitics by other means, and
powerful capital-controlled countries like the US use
it freely because it works so well most often.  The
great political economist Harry Magdoff wrote of it
this way in his Age of Imperialism in 1969:
“Imperialism is not a matter of choice for a
capitalist society; it is a way of life of such a
society.”  He also knew the only way our system can
work is through repression, institutionalized
inequality and militarism all camouflaged in the
deceit of serving the public interest.  Magdoff knew
those elements are in the DNA of our
capital-controlled society that thrives and prospers
best by pursuing a global predatory policy that
assures continued economic growth at the macro level,
geopolitical control, and greater wealth for the rich
and powerful at the expense of all others.

Our tradition of imperialism began at the republic’s
birth, but until the end of the “cold war” wasn’t
discussed in polite society or acknowledged publicly.
But that changed in the 1990s, and now it’s seen as
something respectable, a matter of national pride and
contributing to the advance of civilization.  It shows
in our new language that portrays us as agents of a
humanitarian mission (a benign Pax Americana or modern
“white man’s burden”) still hiding the cold reality
that what we’re really up to is keeping the world safe
and profitable for corporate America.  Those on its
receiving end need no explanation, but the public at
home does as it harms them too.  They must be
convinced that what’s good for business also serves
them, but it’s never stated in those terms.  It’s
always sold at home as an effort to achieve national
security, make the world safe for democracy, or bring
our form of rule to other parts of the world we
decided need our version of it.  It doesn’t matter if
it’s true or not, just that we say it is and can
convince people to believe it.  Based on our track
record, that’s not a problem as time and again the
public is willing to swallow most any reasons
government officials tell them (reinforced, of course,
by the corporate media trumpeting them like gospel) to
get them to go along with the schemes they have in
mind, no matter how outrageous they are.  They’re
never told the truth because it’s so unpalatable it’s
has to be suppressed, especially in time of war when
it’s the first casualty.

The Second Great War to End All Wars Changed
Everything

The US emerged from WW II as the only dominant nation
“left standing.”  We became the world’s leading and
unchallengeable economic, political and military
superpower almost like we planned it that way, which
we did.  We decided while the war was still ongoing to
take full advantage of our new post-war status once it
was clear what the outcome would be - to dominate all
other nations, have them serve our interests, and do
it either through cooperation or by force of one kind
or other.  With our allied global North partners we’ve
done it through political and military alliances as
well as trade and other economic agreements and
incentives where we have to give enough to developed
nations to get more back in return if we do it right.
With the developing world though it’s another story,
especially those nations with vital strategic
resources like large hydrocarbon reserves.  Our
dealings with them are crafted one-way on the basis of
all take and little give in return.  For us, it’s a
sweet deal to serve our dominant capital interests,
but for them it’s a pact with the devil - one always
made at the expense of the public welfare everywhere.

The Beginnings Of Our Current Imperial Grand Strategy

One way or another, the US is moving ahead with its
plan to rule the world with little regard for how
likely it is to succeed.  The Bush administration
makes no pretense about this and has put its plans in
writing for anyone to read and know what it has in
mind.  Current era thinking goes back at least to 1992
and a Pentagon document written by Paul Wolfowitz,
former Bush administration Deputy Defense Secretary
and current World Bank president, and the now-indicted
Richard Cheney aide Lewis Libby.  It was an outline of
a plan for US world dominance with no allowable
challenge from other nations.  At the time, the George
H. W. Bush administration dismissed it as off-the-wall
and over-the-top after it was leaked to the public,
but in September, 2000 the neo-conservative think tank
Project for a New American Century (PNAC - established
in 1997) revived the plan and put meat on its bones in
a document they called - Rebuilding America’s
Defenses:  Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New
Century.  Leading PNAC members are well known and
include Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a
rogues gallery of many other high ranking Bush
administration neocon officials.

This document was and still is a grand imperial plan

for US global dominance to extend well into the future
to be enforced with unchallengeable military power.
The PNAC plan was a blueprint for the current “war on
terror” (now being rebranded as a war against “Islamic
fascism”) and “preventive wars” now raging in Iraq,
becoming that in Afghanistan, and planned and “signed
off” for against Iran, likely Syria, and possibly
Venezuela and other targeted states not submissive to
US authority.  This plan was also a 21st century
update of the Truman Doctrine, conceived by State
Department advisor and analyst George Kennan who was
the ideological godfather of “containment” and the
“cold war.”  Kennan’s plan became the first post WW II
formulated strategy for US global military and
economic dominance.  He did it by creating the myth
that the Soviet Union was a serious threat to our
security, and we had to take preventive action. 

The truth was the “Russians were never coming.”  In
fact, they had their hands full until around 1960 just
rebuilding their war-torn nation to its former state
after being devastated by the Nazi Wehrmacht.  The
public, of course, never knew the truth, and the
leadership was able to convince it to go along with
the big lie through scare tactics.  As already
explained, it’s an age-old tactic that always seems to
work.  This time it was to justify a planned military
buildup in peacetime.  The myth of a Soviet threat and
world communist conspiracy was used to sell it, and it
remained the method of choice until that nation came
apart in 1991 to what are now 15 separate and
independent republics. 

We then had a brief respite while the first Bush
administration desperately tried to find a new enemy
to keep the public off guard and hypotized by the fear
of a “new Hitler” threatening us.  Saddam, of course,
took the bait and obliged, and the Gulf war and its
aftermath ensued, followed by a dozen years of brutal
and crippling economic sanctions and continued bombing
up to the second Iraq war.  Now after nearly 16 years,
the US-led reign of terror against a defenseless
nation and its people continues unabated with no end
in sight or plan for it except the apparent intent to
foment a full-scale civil war hoping to divide the
country to make it easier to rule.  The combination of
endless war, harsh economic sanctions and no serious
effort to rebuild or aid the people has effectively
destroyed the most advanced and prosperous nation in
the Middle East.  It’s also caused extreme suffering,
hardship and mass disease, death, and destruction to
millions of Iraqi victims whose only mistake was
having been born in the wrong country at the wrong
time.  It’s a country with the terrible misfortune of
having immense and easily accessible oil reserves that
are coveted by the most powerful nation on earth
wanting to control them.

Post 9/11, The Gloves Came Off As Well As Any Pretense
of What Our Present Aims Are

The second war against Iraq became possible after 9/11
and was spelled out in what may be called the Bush
Doctrine.  It refers to this administration’s
aggressive foreign policies which were framed by
George Bush in an address to the Congress shortly
before the attack against and invasion of Afghanistan
in which he stated the US would “make no distinction
between ‘the terrorists’ who committed these (9/11)
acts and those who harbor them.”  Bush arrogantly went
on to say “Every nation, in every region, now has a
decision to make.  Either you are with us, or you are
with the terrorists.”  It didn’t matter that Osama bin
Laden was our invention and a former CIA asset against
the Soviets in Afghanistan and again in Bosnia in the
1990s against Slobadan Milosevic and Serbia in the
Balkan wars.  The public didn’t know it or once did
and forgot so it was easy using him and an ill-defined
al-Quaida to scare it to go along with the schemes we
had in mind but needed the power of fear to do it.
The ploy worked as it always does, and now the nation
is embroiled in two endless wars and others in the
queue to begin by whatever means the plans are to
pursue them and whenever they’re intended to be rolled
out. 

It’s all part of the Bush Doctrine and Messianic
mission which also include the notion of a permanent
state of preventive war (now called “the long war”)
against those nations and “Islamic fascists” we claim
threaten our national security, whether or not it’s
so. That notion became the pretext for the Iraq war,
others we have in mind, and our claiming the right to
ignore the inviolable rules and established codes of
warfare in the Hague Regulations and Geneva
Conventions going back to the 1850s.  This recognized
and accepted body of international law covers what
weapons are banned, the treatment of prisoners
including prohibiting torture and mistreatment, and
the care of the sick and wounded.  But, by Bush
Doctrine standards, those laws are now judged “quaint”
and “obsolete” and no longer apply.  From now on, the
law is only what we say it is or make up as we go
along despite the fact that all treaties and
conventions we’re signatories to are the supreme law
of the land.  That’s a level of arrogance only an
imperial superpower without challengers can get away
with, but it’s much easier when a complicit corporate
media goes along as cheerleaders “fixing the facts
around the policy.”  The Bush administration pursues
this policy wantonly and recklessly regardless of who
approves or doesn’t.  It even writes it down so others
can read it and know what we have in mind.  It makes
for frightening reading for those who do it.

It’s there in the National Security Strategy (NSS) of
September, 2002 that was just updated earlier this
year.  This plan lays out an “imperial grand strategy”
with more belligerent language than the original
version which was intended to be a declaration of
“preventive war” against any nation or force this
administration claims is a threat to our national
security.  It doesn’t mean it is, just that we say it
is.  That threat includes any nation we label
“unstable” or a “failed state,” a term we use for
nations seen as potential threats to our security
which may require our intervention in self-defense.
However, the very notion of what a “failed state” may
be is imprecise at best.  It may be its inability to
protect its citizens from violence or destruction.
But it may also be a nation that believes it’s beyond
the reach of international law and free to act as an
aggressor.  Under any of those conditions, the US now
claims the right to wage preventive war in
self-defense although in so doing that makes us the
kind of “failed state” we claim the right to protect
ourselves from.

Before the NSS was updated in 2006, we had four other
important imperial documents.  First was the May, 2000
Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Vision 2020 that
outlined a plan for “full spectrum (or world)
dominance.”  This was code language or “Militaryspeak”
meaning total control over all land, sea, air, outer
space and information with enough overwhelming power
to defeat any potential challenger or adversary even
by use of nuclear or any other new weapons we might
develop.  Second was the Nuclear Policy Review of
December, 2001 that claims a unilateral right to
declare and wage future wars using first strike
nuclear weapons that have the potential to destroy all
human life on the planet if enough of them are used.
Third was the FY 2004 Air Force Space Command
Strategic Master Plan.  This was a plan to “own outer
space”, weaponize it with the most advanced,
destructive and planet threatening weapons and
technology we have or hope to develop including
nuclear ones.  It also called for developing and
placing out there unmanned space vehicles to surveille
the entire planet and be able to launch an
overwhelming attack against a target country or enemy
force that can’t retaliate against us from that
vantage point.

The fourth document is the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial
Defense Review issued in February.  As congressionally
mandated, this report is a “comprehensive examination
of the national defense strategy, force structure,
force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget
plan, and other elements of the defense program and
policies….for the next 20 years.”  The review covers
the military’s main missions of homeland defense -
which, if implemented, even by federally mandating
National Guard troops to patrol our southern border as
has been done, will violate the Posse Comitatus Act of
1878 that prohibits the military from acting in a
domestic law enforcement capacity unless expressly
authorized by the Constitution or Congress and only in
an extreme situation like putting down an
insurrection.  Other missions are the so-called “war
on terrorism” which famed author Gore Vidal says is
“idiotic…slogans…lies (and as nonsensical as) a
war against dandruff,” irregular or asymmetric warfare
(against non-state enemies), and what Pentagonspeak
calls “shaping the choices of countries at a
crossroad” which translated means the potential threat
of China as an emerging global power able to challenge
our dominance. 

The document also unveiled the notion of “the long
war” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signaled in his
February National Press Club appearance when he said
“The United States is a nation engaged in what will be
a long war.”  George Bush then announced it in his
September 5 speech to an association of US military
officers in which he declared war against “Islamic
fascists.”  The Pentagon report used the phrase “long
war, long global war (or) long irregular war” 34 times
in its Quadrennial Review including as the title for
the first chapter called “Fighting the Long War.”  The
clear message is that all resisting Muslims and their
sympathizers are Islamo-fascists and must be defeated
in a “long war” struggle to preserve and spread
“western civilization.”  The much clearer message is
that post-9/11 the Bush administration embarked on a
messianic bankrupt global racist colonial “war OF
terror” against all nations and peoples everywhere
opposing its quest for world dominance.

The bottom line for the Pentagon, backed by
administration rhetoric, is to assure the Congress
will go along with the near half-trillion dollar
defense budget for adventurism in the next fiscal year
with steady increases in subsequent years plus the
off-budget add-ons for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, others to come, and any other special
funding DOD may ask for.  So far, since 9/11, the
Pentagon got a blank check for anything it wants
called “national security” - meaning grand theft from
the public to enhance profits for defense-related
industries and the well-connected corporations chosen
to rebuild and police the countries we first destroy
so they can then get large, no-bid war-profiteering
contracts.  It also means the erosion and eventual
loss of our civil liberties now fast disappearing, as
a nation dedicated to perpetual unjustifiable war can
only do it at the expense of a free society at home.
It’s what James Madison meant when he wrote: “Of all
the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the
most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops
the germ of every other.  In war, too, the
discretionary power of the executive is extended…and
all the means of seducing the minds are added to those
of subduing the force of the people.”

Imperialism Often Includes Regime Change

A previous article called War Making 101 - A User’s
Manual prompted the writing of this one as a
follow-up.  The earlier article about war making
laid out the steps or rules this country follows in
preparing to take the nation to war.  The same idea is
used here to explain how we pursue our imperial aims.
For them to work, it’s essential to have foreign
leaders in place who know “who’s boss” and will
cooperatively go along and serve our interests ahead
of those of their own people.  When they don’t, the
plan calls for regime change to replace them with
someone who will.  Below are listed and explained the
different ways we go about it in order of preference.
Here they’re called plans instead of rules.

Plan One:  Always try the easy way first.  It works
most often.

No imperial state, now or in the past, prefers the
messiness and bother of hot conflict.  Even the
tyrannical ones need to convince their people of a
plausible reason to get their young men motivated
enough to go to war and fight hard enough to win it.
The US is no different, and ideally prefers
“convincing” foreign leaders to do it our way through
diplomacy with enough of a sweetener to their key
political and business elites to gain their
acquiescence.  That way works best in states headed by
“strongmen” who gained power politically, militarily
or from their royal predecessor or family.  It’s a lot
easier having relations with one person in power who
can decide everything rather than having to deal with
messy democrats chosen by elections who must answer to
voters and may have to consider their needs along with
or ahead of ours.  It still works with them if they’re
subservient enough to our wishes.  It’s only when they
aren’t that we try another method.

Plan Two:  If Plan One fails, up the ante to harsher
tactics.  This second choice also works most often. 

If at first you don’t succeed the easy way, try again
more forcefully.  So the second choice is always:
remove the “uncooperative leader” and install a more
dependable new one we can rely on - to do things our
way but nearly always at the expense of the great
majority of the people.  We’ve also had lots of
experience with Plan Two, and most often it works. 

There are two ways to do it.  Method A is the easy and
preferred way.  It involves co-opting and bribing
officials to do the dirty work.  There are usually
ready-takers willing to go along and share in the
spoils.  We then train and fund them, choose the time,
opportunity and place to implement the scheme, then
stand back and hope all goes as planned.  However it
turns out, we can claim plausible deniability they did
it, not us.  This was the method used in Venezuela in
three unsuccessful attempts from 2002 - 2004 to oust
Hugo Chavez, put the country’s oligarchs back in
power, and destroy the Bolivarian Revolution that
created a model system of participatory democracy
based on the principles of political, economic and
social justice.  Method A failed in Venezuela because
Hugo Chavez gave his people what they never had before
and despite the coup plotters’ best efforts they
weren’t able to defeat the will and spirit of the
people who showed through their determined efforts
they wouldn’t tolerate returning to the ugly past
they’ll never again accept. 

So when things don’t work out, as happened in
Venezuela, Method B is tried.  It involves eliminating
an uncooperative leader by assassination as discretely
as possible.  It may be by a “rogue element’s” bullet,
some well-placed and hard to detect poison, or an
unfortunate plane crash the CIA conveniently arranges.
We’ve used this one enough times too, so we’re
usually able to pull it off with the public none the
wiser in the target country or at home.

The CIA used this method to murder Panamian president
Omar Torrijos in a 1981 plane crash and Equadorian
president Jaimi Roldos in a helicopter crash   the
same year.  Perhaps the most infamous CIA arranged
coup and presidential assassination happened on
another September 11 in 1973 when General Augusto
Pinochet with strong US backing overthrew and had
murdered democratically elected President Salvador
Allende.  It ended the strongest and most vibrant
democracy in the Americas and ushered in a brutal
right wing military dictatorship for the next 16.5
years.  Hugo Chavez now fears this is the fate the US
has in mind for him and has said so publicly.  What
happened in Chile can happen anywhere, and it shows
the fragility of a free and democratic society that
can easily be toppled by forces determined and strong
enough to do it.  It’s not that hard when the public
is unprepared or unwilling to resist to save the
liberties it takes for granted until it’s too late.
But it also shows how successful people-power can be
when mobilized in force to resist a looming tyranny it
refuses to accept.  That’s the lesson of Venezuela
under Hugo Chavez, and it’s visible on the streets of
Mexico in the wake of (another) stolen election and a
system of authoritarian rule the people have begun to
resist.

Plan Three:  This choice of last resort is only used
when the two preferred methods fail - open conflict or
war involving an invasion and possible occupation.

If the top two choices fail, as was the case in Iraq
after years of trying Plans One and Two, and the
target is too important to pass up (again like Iraq),
the only choice left is open conflict or war.  It can
be simple, quick and easy like Ronald Reagan’s
walkover against Grenada in October, 1983 that was
mostly over after several days or G.H.W. Bush’s
Operation Just Cause invasion of Panama in December,
1989 that was almost as easy.  It might also be like
the Gulf war which was not simple because of the long
buildup and expense but was still quick and involved
no occupation. 

However it’s done, this least preferred option is
messy, costly and usually takes much more time from
planning to completion.  It’s also only undertaken
against targeted foes too weak to put up a good fight
and have no weapons that will cause us heavy damage or
loss of life.  Guessing wrong on either count will
make it hard to maintain public support for long, as
it’s never easy explaining the body bags when they
arrive home in large numbers.  It’s even harder when
the pretext for going to war in the first place was
based on lies (as they always are), and they’re
beginning to unravel. 

Once the war option is chosen though, the
administration needs to prep the public to go along
with the “big lie” they concocted.  It takes time and
effort but involves what so far is the proved the
time-tested method of choice guaranteed to work as
explained above - scaring the public to death by
convincing it the targeted country threatens our
national security and welfare.  The message repeated
ad nauseam is that we patiently tried reason, but all
diplomatic efforts failed and we’re only left with one
viable option - force.  We’ve done this so often we’re
expert at it, so it’s likely the public will be
traumatized enough to go along with even the most
implausible, extreme or outrageous plan we have in
mind like using nuclear weapons against a targeted
enemy that likely can’t even put up a decent fight
against conventional ones. 

Sometimes though we outsmart ourselves or refuse to
listen to cooler heads and end up in a hopeless
quagmire.  It happened in Vietnam, and it’s being
repeated again in Iraq and heading toward more of the
same in Afghanistan.  But despite a bad situation
that’s getting worse, it’s usually not good strategy
for an imperial power to admit making a mistake,
decide to cut its losses and leave.  It’s generally
not popular with voters (except when most of them are
fed up and want a quick exit) and doing it also
emboldens others targeted to see us as willing to back
down when things go sour.  They’ll likely get the idea
they can make us quit if they make it tough enough
long enough, and they’re likely to be right.  It’s no
different than a schoolyard bully able to get away
with it as long as the ones picked on allow him to do
it.  Once one retaliates and strikes a telling blow,
it shows the bully isn’t as tough as he wants others
to believe.

So to avoid that fate, as well as saving face, we can
never admit a mistake or decide to give up a bad
fight, even ones we can’t win - just like we’re now
doing in Iraq and beginning to face in Afghanistan.
Instead we foolishly have to keep up the charade with
the public, say we’re making good progress, and claim
there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  At most we’ll
admit it’s taking longer than expected, but we’re
still on plan and with some patience we’ll succeed.
But that strategy only works for so long, because if
winning isn’t likely or can’t happen before patience
runs out, the only light the public will see in the
tunnel is a train wreck in the making.  If it comes to
that, the game is over, the administration suffers,
and the opposition party (if that’s a proper term any
more) will likely be the beneficiary.  The public
never is.  It’s always the patsy during a conflict and
when it ends.  It must sacrifice butter for guns and
then pay the tab when the bill comes due.

Will the Public Ever Realize It’s Been Had

The scaremongering scam has been used so often before
with the same or similar language that later proved
false, you’d think the public by now would have caught
on.  But you’d be wrong.  Up to now, it’s worked like
a charm every time proving again you can fool most
people all the time so why not keep doing it - as long
as it keeps working.  The only differences from one
conflict to the next are the names, dates and places.
The playbook is always about the same.  All that’s
needed is an old one, and then fill in the blanks.

But imagine a “what if” using the well-known Aesop
fable about The Boy Who Cried Wolf but with a
different moral.  We remember the tale about the bored
shepard boy who broke his monotony by falsely crying
“wolf” and getting the nearby villagers to come to his
rescue.  When the villagers tired of his false alarms
they stopped coming.  That’s where our analogy ends.
In the fable the wolf finally came, the villagers
ignored the boy’s cry for help and the flock perished.
Aesop’s fables always had a moral so we’d learn from
them.  His was that even when liars tell the truth,
they’re never believed.  Today, however, when liars
keep lying, the public never catches on and they keep
getting away with it - to our detriment.  Hopefully,
one day the lesson learned will be that liars can only
get away with so many lies until finally no one
believes anything they say.  Maybe some day if the
public knew about famed journalist IF Stone and what
he once said - that “all governments are run by liars
and nothing they say should be believed.”

Watch for Part II of this article to follow soon on
this site.  Part II, the focus is on the war in Iraq as a case
study of imperial madness and its consequences.  It
also covers a possible little discussed economic
motive behind what’s now being called “the long war.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) .  Also visit his blog
site at sjlendman.blogspot.com