freedom and reason

On Monday, the state supreme court of Connecticut (one of four states that observes civil unions for homosexual couples) became the first in the United States to hear arguments concerning the charge that the establishment of civil unions creates an inferior status for gays and lesbians. The argument moved quickly to the question of whether the doctrine of equal protection covers discrimination against homosexuality. Jane Rosenberg, assistant attorney general for the state, said no. It’s a policy question to be determined by legislators and not court fiat, she argued. Bennett Klein, an attorney representing eight homosexual couples, disagreed. He contends that the question goes to the heart of equal protection doctrine.

The core of the dispute turns on the question of whether homosexuals deserve special legal protections on the basis that they are a suspect class, a categorization requiring evidence of a history of discrimination and political powerlessness. If it were determined by the court that homosexuals constitute a suspect class, then the state would have to present a rational basis or some compelling interest for distinguishing between homosexual and heterosexual couples.

But there is a more important issue here. Should the state be conferring upon anybody, homosexual or otherwise, the status of marriage at all? In arguing his case, Klein noted that “marriage is not just a bunch of legal rights.” Indeed. Marriage is more than this—it’s a religious status. In a country founded on the separation of church and state, what in God’s name is the state doing? To be consistent with the principles of the country, the state should only recognize civil unions—a legal contractual arrangement between two consenting adults. In other words, the problem goes well beyond the state denying couples religious status. The core problem is the state awarding religious status to citizens of any sort.

It’s really quite simple. If a couple wants to get married, then all they need to do is find a church that will marry them and perform the ritual. If they want the state to recognize them as domestic partners, then they need to apply for a civil union and have a justice of the peace join them together. Keep the state out of religious ritual.

According to a just released Army study of 1,767 troops, almost half of US soldiers surveyed said that they should be able to use torture to gather information about insurgents and to save the lives of fellow soldiers. More than half said that they would not report a team member for mistreating civilians or for destroying property unnecessarily. “Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect,” the authors of the study report. Around ten percent of soldiers said they had mistreated civilians. These attitudes are contrary to Army rules, not to mention international law, which forbid torture and require the humane treatment of civilians and prisoners.

The capitalist propaganda machine is focusing on the question of training in battlefield ethics, as if further instruction in the value of basic moral conduct can change the mind and behavior of men involved in the nasty business of war and occupation, men who sought a job where the primary task is to kill and maim people and destroy property. In learning how to carry out this task, military training and the battlefield experience stirs and reinforces authoritarian attitudes in men who were, in many cases, drawn to the job by their already-existing sadistic leanings, attitudes learned by living in a capitalist-patriarchal-racist society, a society in which the weak and different are despised and abused, the aggressive and dispassionate are glorified, and violence is taught as a legitimate means for resolving conflict. The problems of brutalization, torture, and vandalism are inherent in the fascist state of mind that inegalitarian and militarist society and organizations amplify and produce. Indeed, the United States is a country in which even leading liberal intellectuals, such as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, can contend that torture is acceptable and still enjoy their status as authorities in moral matters and civil liberties discourse.

Furthermore, what the state defines as inappropriate behavior legitimates much of the horror of war that state actors assert is appropriate. Condemning the intentional brutalization of civilians and prisoners of war at the hands of individual soldiers whitewashes the intentional brutalization of human beings that occurs under the direction of military commanders and their civilian counterparts. If the US military bombs an apartment building in which civilians are living because there is an “insurgent” or “terrorist” present, an act the state considers appropriate, it is still perpetrating a deeply immoral act. Deft at doublespeak, the military propagandists rationalize the killing and maiming of innocent bystanders, along with the destruction of property and the environment, as “collateral damage,” necessary because there was a “target of opportunity” to be “neutralized” in a “surgical strike” using “smart munitions.” (When off camera, collateral damage is “bug splat.”) As terrible as it is that soldiers use morally-neutralizing language when justifying their own indecent acts, the government uses such language to redefine its immoral actions as morally-upright conduct.

It should shock you that your government labels civilians defending their homeland from invasion and occupation as “irregulars” and “terrorists”; hides the deportation and transfer of prisoners to countries not burdened by international law for the purpose of torturing them under the legalism of “rendition”; puts prisoners of war outside international conventions by labeling them “illegal combatants”; soft sells torture as “interrogation techniques and methods”; permits the bombing of civilians and shooting of journalists, women and children in “free fire zones”; describes the killing of human beings as “neutralizing,” “taking down,” and “taking out” the enemy, as “servicing the target” and “shaping the battlefield,” sometimes requiring “softening the target” to allow for easy “insertion” of military personnel; characterizes unprovoked war — that is, war of aggression — as “pre-emptive action”; describes mercenaries as “security contractors”; and redefines the means by which “collateral damage” is produced — bombs and missiles — as “ordnance.”

All this is the doublespeak of the authoritarian. Accepting and adopting this language — euphemisms designed to clean up the messiness of mass murder and the destruction of land and infrastructure — will change your cognitive stance towards the crimes of war and occupation. Internalizing the doublespeak will make you cold and callus. 

Michel Foucault once wrote, “Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.” This particular society we live in — the United States of America — is fascist in certain of its elements. The complex strategical situation of fascism is one that depends fundamentally on an authoritarian state of mind. Fascism is the “strategic adversary,” Foucault argues; “the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”

We must struggle against the authoritarianism all around us. But we must also struggle against the authoritarianism inside each of us. We cannot stand for the cleansing of the language of war and occupation. We must refuse to allow corporate propagandists to separate out bad soldiers from the bad venture that employs them.

Bill Moyer’s excellent PBS report Buying the War scrutinizes the media coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war. The five-chapter program is available for viewing on-line. It’s must-see TV. Follow this link:

On March 4, 2003, I gave a talk, “Bush’s Dream of a Democratic Middle-East,” at the Plea for Peace Teach-in, held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay. I told a large audience of students and professors that what the Bush administration was telling the world about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda was more than error – it was a pack of lies.

In 2004, I published the study “War Hawks and the Ugly American: The Origins of Bush’s Central Asia and Middle East Policy,” in a German-language book edited by Bernd Hamm. The book has been translated into English as Devastating Society: The Neo-conservative Assault on Democracy and Justice, published by Pluto Press in 2005. My study has also been translated into Arabic and Indonesian.

I had no special access to classified materials. I had worked neither with government organizations nor with media operations. All my information was gathered from reports and news stories, and my conclusions were the result of putting my training as a social scientist to work analyzing facts, studying history, and checking logic.

I am saying this to make the point that nobody who was in a position to know then can now legitimately claim to have been ignorant of the facts in the run-up to the war. So when people who should have known tell you that they didn’t know, you know what to tell them.

I participated as faculty in at the United Nations University International Leadership Institute (UNU-ILI) in Amman, Jordan, April 15-18, 2007. The course was titled Democracy and Human Rights in Transition: Challenges of the Globalizing World. Murad Tangiev, a Chechnyan, organized the course, which was funded by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF). The FNF is a German NGO committed to promoting liberal policy and politics founded by the liberal Free Democratic Party (The FDP is currently the third-largest party in the Bundestag).

FNF literature describes the organization’s purpose: “To create an open society FNF is guided by the principles of Liberalism and its message of tolerance and acceptance of diversity. Its core concepts such as the protection of human rights, the application of the rule of law, liberal democracy and free market economy have proven throughout the centuries that Liberalism offers appropriate solutions for the present and the future in public and personal life.” Most of the participants in the UNU-ILI course embraced FNF’s liberal orientation, which caused a few moments of tension, as I challenged their standpoint, namely the downplaying of social rights. More on this later.

This was my second time teaching at the UNU-ILI. I served as faculty in November 2006 in a course organized by Jordanian political sociologist Ibtesam Al-Atiyat titled Youth Leadership, the Politicization of Religion, and the Future of Democracy in the Middle East. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation, an NGO founded by the Christian Democratic movement (and named after the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic in 1964), sponsored Ibtesam’s course. In that course, I lectured on the subject of Christian neo-fundamentalism and US foreign policy, chaired a panel on resistance and terrorism, and worked with young people from around the world to develop declarations regarding the hopes of democratization and the problems of politicization of religion.

Whereas organizers aimed the November course at young students, Democracy and Human Rights in Transition was, to quote the brochure, “designed for UN and NGO specialists and representatives, mid-level to senior policy makers, academicians, diplomats, post-graduate students, researchers, practitioners working in the field of democracy and human rights.” The course description reflected its target audience:

Democracy and human rights are considered to be fundamental prerequisites for a sustainable development and long-term peace. Nowadays, many societies of the world experience mass violations of human rights and conflicts which pose a considerable obstacle towards building liberal democratic states. Human rights violations are often particularly severe in the periods of transition during which societies are undergoing significant political, social, and economic transformations. Protection of human rights and improvement of their practices in transition is imperative and must be the central goal for political leadership. In fact, democracy is a system of an open political decision making and it is, in many ways, a system of conflict management that provides predictable procedures in which collective decisions can be taken without the risk that losing a political battle will mean grave misfortune, imprisonment, or even loss of life. Even those societies which have managed to build relatively sustainable democracy still need to make a substantial consolidating effort because new democracies are extremely vulnerable. Their inhabitants lack experience of democratic governance but are hoping for a rapid change and improvement in their living conditions. To lead societies safely to democracy it is vitally important to establish democratic institutions, foster democratic culture, ensure free and just elections as well as to build capacity of political leadership.

The syllabus, written by Murad, states course objectives thusly: “In the era of globalization, establishment of democratic institutions and inviolability of human rights have become an essential condition for political, social and economic development. However, the process of transformation or transition to democracy is extremely complex and poses a serious challenge for the societies in the transitional period. Hence, the main aim of the course is to expose and explore the key challenges on the way to democracy faced by polities and societies in transition in the context of globalization of world politics and economy.” The practical purpose of the course was “to create an international network of activists, scholars, researches, students and specialist who work in the field of human rights and committed to promotion of liberal democracy.” The syllabus explains: “The network will basically provide information exchange on relevant courses, forums, conferences, events, campaigns and etc. on democracy and human rights. It will also provide an opportunity for human rights activists, scholars and researches to share their findings and experience with wider communities. Thus, the network should serve as an efficient think-tank or a rich information resource for all who strive for equality, freedom and development.” (I do not know the success of the course in achieving its goal.)

My task was to introduce the conceptual-theoretical foundations and the history of democracy and human rights. I left it to others to present examples of successful transitions to democracy (as well as failures during transition). The discussion over the course of the several days covered the role of civil society organizations and movements in establishment of democracy and protection of human rights, cultural and religious factors encouraging democratic political culture; challenges of democratization in the context of religious extremism and nationalism, and the role of mass media, women and youth movements.

I spoke on day one. I titled my lecture “Democracy and Human Rights: Development and Historical Perspectives.” Rosemary Foot, of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, chaired the session. Also speaking in the session were UNU-ILI director Jairam Reddy (“Concept of Leadership”) and Gurchathen S. Sanghera of the University of Bristol (“Democracy and Human Rights: Challenges of Globalization”). Reddy spoke about the problems of leadership, identifying two problems: the crisis of governance and ecological problems. He emphasized the importance of the moral capital of leaders, the excellence of character and the virtue of integrity. Characteristics of good leaders is vision, trust (accountable and predictable), empowerment, and values and principles. He defined charisma as “the power to connect to a different plane of reality.” Not my cup of tea.

I began my talk by noting that many speak of democracy as something they want, and many governments proclaim it. Indeed, democracy must be quite an elastic concept to fit so many different political systems and individual aspirations. I presented a slide that identified in blue those countries that declare themselves democracies in one form or another. Almost every country was blue. This drew a chuckle from the audience. Commenting that democracy cannot be so many things, I asked the rhetorical question “What is democracy?” I began answering this by establishing the core meaning of democracy, namely government by the people. I then divided democracy into two broad categories: (1) liberal democracy and (2) popular democracy.

To define liberal democracy, I presented material from Freedom House, an organization associated with the National Endowment for Democracy and the ongoing United States policy of global democracy promotion, and from The Economist, an influential British weekly newsmagazine covering world business, current affairs, and cultural trends. Both conceptualize liberal democracy as a competitive, multiparty political system, marked by universal adult suffrage, regularly contested elections with secret ballots and minor voter fraud, significant public access to major political parties through media and generally open campaigns. Both link liberal democracy to freedom, emphasizing political rights and civil liberties. While democracy is associated with freedom, they argue that not every democracy provides maximal freedom. Prominent in the literature of both entities is an emphasis on private property and free markets—indeed, if a country did not allow for substantial private ownership of property, then we could not call that country democratic. I presented several maps portraying the analysis of these entities.

To probe the liberal democratic model for problems, I provided the Republic of Cuba as a contrasting case. After discussing the electoral system in Cuba, I noted that, according to the definitions of Freedom House and The Economist, Cuba was not a democracy; it lacks a competitive, multiparty political system and, being a socialist country, it suppresses capitalist logic. But I pointed out that, historically, political parties and free markets have not been fundamental to democracy. I gave examples, ranging from the ancient Indian republics to the governments of the Native America. Moreover, I noted the considerable body of evidence that suggests that too much property in too few hands undermines democracy.

The point to all this was to demonstrate that the liberal argument is ideological. I cited the work of FA Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, influential voices who argue that inequality is a good thing and government intervention is a bad thing because it interferes with liberty which, if done right, creates inequality. Then I cited the work of those who disagree with the liberal viewpoint. For classical liberalism opponents, notions of democracy as political freedom and civil liberties without social rightsis an empty promise, democratic in form but not democratic in content. I further explained that liberal democracy is what Robert Dahl termed “polyarchy”—a system in which a small group of elites actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites (this is a close paraphrase of William I Robinson’s definition of the term). Polyarchy is democracy of the elites. In a polyarchy, if its assumptions are accepted, there is no contradiction between “democratic” process and a social order punctuated by sharp social inequalities and minority monopolization of society’s material and cultural resources (again, a close paraphrase of Robinson).

In contrast to capitalism, democracy is founded on equity(or fairness) and equalityin that, in the ideal, everybody has an equal say in the decisions that affects them and thus reap some benefit from participation. This is populardemocracy, and, in this model, proponents explicitly join politics and economics in a positive manner. Popular democracy involves a dispersal of power throughout society and requires the participation of broad majorities in decision making and policy formulation. I noted that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in articles 22, 23, and 25, speak to the importance of social rights—work, leisure, health care, housing, and so forth. I projected onto the screen these three articles. I pointed out that many governments ignore these rights, including the United States. I demonstrated the point with the case of the hurricane Katrina disaster. The storm killed so many people, I argued, in part because the government failed to keep the nation’s infrastructure in working order and to respond in a timely manner. But it was even more fundamentally a problem of racism and social class that located and concentrated poor people in low-lying flood-prone areas. Katrina was a human-caused disaster, one long in the making. More than a year later, the city of New Orleans is still a disaster, I told them.

I argued that, while poverty is a moral catastrophe, one can also approach the problem of inequality from a practical standpoint, namely the importance of stability along the path of development. I again used the example of my own country. Compared to most European nations, the United States is extreme in its degree of income and wealth inequality. The primary cause of this dynamic is the overbearing character of business monopoly and oligopoly — a system of megacorporations that stands beyond democratic redress. Such conditions are the breeding grounds for extremism, evidenced by the dominance of fundamentalist and neofundamentalist Christianity in the United States, political forces that are decidedly authoritarian and anti-democratic. These forces, I argued, have sharply weakened the democratic culture of my country and have wreaked havoc around the world, a subject upon which I have written about (this was, in fact, the topic of my lecture in November).

I concluded by arguing that authoritarianism and extremism fill the vacuum left by weak democratic institutions. With observers in every country recognizing that extremism is one of the major problems facing stable development and peaceful governmental relations, understanding the role material inequality plays in undermining democracy’s promise is as important as understanding the ideological content of extremism. Since democracy, in its purest sense, treats common people as constituting the source of political authority, hereditary class or group distinctions and privileges, which give some people cumulative advantages, which translate into more political power, are generally considered antithetical to a functioning democracy. A society in which there are substantial inequities of wealth and power indicate that people are insufficiently free. They may have liberty in the narrow liberal sense, but they do not have the fuller conception of freedom.

Murad had wanted me to give this argument as a lecture ever since he witnessed what happened when I introduced the argument into discussion during the November 2006 course. Then, when I asked the students to consider opening up their conception of democracy to more than the limited rhetoric of liberal-pluralism by considering matters of industrial democracy and collective control over resources, a young woman accused me of advocating communism. I explained that my argument was about democracy and freedom. I pointed out that Capitalism is one of the causes of unemployment and poverty around the world, and that the more unfettered capitalism is the more brutal are its effects. I explained the logic of inequality among the nations, theories of world-systems, dependency, development-underdevelopment and so forth. She was impervious to the science of the matter. In her mind, democracy could only be about political rights and civil liberties. The argument made for highly interesting moment.

The question period following my April lecture was memorable. I had many questions asked of me, but the two that stuck out were these: An American woman, I believe her name is Allison Beth Hodgkins (she is the resident director of the Council on International Educational Exchange Study Center in Amman), argued that democracy was a political system and thus had nothing to do with economics and matters of substantive equality. Much like the student in the November course, Mrs. Hodgkins said that I was advocating socialism (she diplomatically avoided the “c” word). I told her, for one thing, the people of the world have not made up their minds about the definition of democracy and many, if not most, people disagreed with liberal limitations. Second, I explained that I had no practical opposition to markets as long as such arrangements serve social rights (I do, however, oppose capitalist markets at a moral level). A woman in the front row, a Danish woman whom I believe was named Heidi Nygaard (working with the National Center for Human Rights), expanded my point, saying that democracy was a way of life, a basic universal value, and that while the process could differ widely, there needed to be some fundamental things. A Dane would recognize this. A Palestinian woman asked the second question. She referred to maps I presented during the lecture and asked through choked tears, “Can you tell me please, professor, where is my country on your map?”

That afternoon, I chaired the session “Democracy and Human Rights in Transition: Case Study, Part I.” One of the speakers, Uri Dromi, who was to speak about democracy and human rights in Israel, did not show up. I don’t know why he didn’t appear, but it’s probably just as well that he didn’t, as Dromi was a colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, and had participated in the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanon War. He also served as the North American Director of Information for the World Zionist Organization and as Director of the Government Press Office in Israel. Several participants told me they wish he had appeared so that they could confront his war crimes. (Perhaps that’s why he didn’t show?)

His absence was our gain, as his replacements were three wonderful women activists, Tali Nir, an attorney for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Roni Rothler, director of the Disability Rights Clinic and on the faculty of law at Bar Iian University, and Fathiya Husein, administrative director of Adalah, a legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel (this is their web page in English: Adalah). We spent much time throughout the course and in our journey to Petra discussing Arab-Israeli issues. During their presentations, I learned that there are one million Arabs in Israel, twenty percent of which are Palestinians. Arabs are eight-one percent Muslim, ten percent Christian, and nine percent Jews. Thus, the reality of Israel is multicultural and bilingual. Yet the state is a Jewish state in which Arabs are treated as strangers in their own land. Several forms of discrimination were noted, for example immigration; while every Jew around the world is encouraged to come to Israel, displaced Arabs are not permitted to return to their homeland. In fact, families are not allowed to reunite, violating even the basic rules of human decency. Other problems cited were the separation barrier, building laws (even in Palestine Palestinians are not allowed to build), and the allocation of resources (seventy-seven percent of Arab children live in poverty, welfare services are lacking, and educational institutions are in a pitiful state). To address discrimination, Adalah is proposing constitutional framework for the state of Israel “based on the concept of a democratic, bilingual, multicultural state. This proposed constitution draws on universal principles and international conventions on human rights, the experiences of nations and the constitutions of various democratic states.”

Speaking after them was Walid Salem, who lectured on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He argued that as long as the dispute over the occupied territories remained in the political framework it would be easy for Israel to fail to change course. Therefore, it is important to move the discussion into the framework of international law. The separation barrier was the symptomatic of the problem. Israel argues that the separation barrier is necessary in order to protect its citizens from violence. Thus, the wall is self-defense against terrorism. However, the wall runs through the occupied territory and thus represents a backdoor attempt to annex illegally obtained land (it is a crime under international law to annex territories obtain through war). Salem argued that Israel expands the anti-terrorist argument to their policy of pre-emptive and preventative warfare, even claiming the right to attack nonstate actors, which necessarily involves attacking “combatants” in civilian areas. But the international law is quite clear: either persons are combatants or citizens. If an occupied territory then the Geneva convention rules apply, yet Israel argues that human rights only apply in the context of a state. The settlements are clearly illegal. Finally, there is the matter of collective self-determination, namely the right to a state, a right that Rabin recognized (he was assassinated) and the UN says is obligatory. Israel violates this by arguing that self-determination does not require a state.

Joost Hilterman (“Civil War and Human Rights in Iraq”), Anya Wollenberg (“Concepts of Broadcasting in Iraq), and Patricia Gossman (“Transition to Democracy in the Post-Conflict setting in Afghanistan”) followed Salem. Hilterman gave a very detailed presentation of the problems in Iraq, but he made a serious conceptual error when he defined “Islamist” as “devoted Muslim.” As Ibtesam pointed out, “My mother is a devoted Muslim. Is she an Islamist?” Wollenberg’s presentation was interesting. I learned much from it. Gossman’s presentation was, frankly, horrible. One would think from her writings that she knew the history of the Afghanistan conflict, but her presentation was a whitewash of the West’s involvement. So consumed was she with blaming everything on the communists that she grossly distorted the historical record. To hear her tell it, the Evil Empire invaded Afghanistan because the Afghan communists weren’t slaughtering civilians fast enough.

Patricia Gossman identifies herself as an adjunct professor in Women’s Studies at Georgetown University and a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. She has worked for Human Rights Watch and evidently holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Here’s a sample of her writing (from Middle East Report): “The United Front might be new allies, but they are certainly no strangers to the US. Most of the factions currently allied in the coalition fought against the Soviet Union and Afghan communist forces in the 1980s. Some, but not all, benefited from the CIA pipeline that funneled funds and weapons to the Afghan mujahideen (resistance forces).” Note how she characterizes the mujahideen as “resistance forces.” This is a lie. The mujahideen were CIA-backed terrorists whose purpose was to destroy progressive entities and movements in Afghanistan. The mujahideen was organized and led by Middle Eastern practitioners of Salafism or Wahabbism, for example, Osama bin Laden, the son of a wealthy Saudi contractor. It was CIA activities in Afghanistan that led to the successful brutal regimes that ruled Afghanistan. One of these regimes was the Taliban.

Day two involved another long day of lectures. Among the several speakers during the session Democracy and Human Rights in Transition: Case Study, Part II, Rosemary Foote spoke about the changing approach to democracy and human rights in China and Murad spoke about the communist legacy and transitional democracy in the Russian Federation. The following session, “UN, Civil Society, Democracy and Human Rights,” had a very interesting presentation by Adnan Huskic on “Role of the Human Rights NGOs: Bosnia and Herzegovina.” But the highlight of the session was a lecture titled “Women Movements in Democratic Political Process,” delivered by Ibtesam Al-Atiyat. Rosemary Foote leaned over to me during the talk and said, “She is a brave woman.”

Day three involved a study visit to the Political Development Ministry and the National Centre for Human Rights in the morning. I learned that the Jordanian police are not distinct from the military and that there is no internal affairs division. After lunch, we pursued group work. I was in Group One, concepts and their relevance. There were several questions that can be summarized thusly: What kind of democracy best serves human rights and why? Is the concept of liberal democracy universal or a product of the West? Are there universal standards pertaining to democracy and human rights or should each country develop its own standards in accordance with cultural traditions and current political challenges? My group detected that a false dichotomy was afoot and devised an argument that bridged the gap between universal human rights and tolerance for cultural diversity.

This is getting long, so I will wrap it up. I visited Petra again, as well as an ancient theater and stables built by the Roman Empire when it included the land of Jordan, built during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (169-177 AD). I also had a chance to break away from my handlers and tour the Palestinians neighborhoods with Ibtesam. On my way to the airport the cab driver lowered his voice and asked rhetorically, “You know the democracy they say we have? Not so much.”

Time continues to expose the brazen and sinister character of the Bush administration’s propaganda machine, as growing distance from 9-11 makes ever more brave politicians and media figures who should have always been skeptical of government claims about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The fictions created around Private First Class Jessica Lynch and Corporal Pat Tillman are crumbling, revealing the deeply immoral public relations efforts by a government bent on war and occupation.

Much came to light yesterday before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Jessica Lynch, the diminutive former supply clerk with the 507th Maintenance Company, remarked, “I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend.” The government claimed that Lynch valiantly fought off Iraqi soldiers before being taken captive after her maintenance convoy took a wrong turn near Nsiriya in 2003 into an ambush. Television executives managed to turn the story into a television movie before the truth came out. The “story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting” was a lie, said Lynch. She never fired a shot.

There is much more to the story—and none of it makes the administration or the army look good. During the successful rescue effort, US Special Forces invaded the hospital where Lynch was being treated, brutalized the doctors and nurses, and damaged and destroyed valuable hospital equipment. There were no Iraqi military forces in the hospital, and everyone present in the hospital attempted from the beginning to cooperate with US forces. They had, after all, saved Lynch’s life and were providing her medical care. Shoshanna Johnson, an African-American soldier captured in the same ambush, received neither the publicity nor the awards Lynch received. Worse, Johnson’s disability pension was smaller than Lynch’s. Jessica Lynch is white. And on November 11, 2003, Larry Flint, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, received, allegedly from soliders, nude photographs of Lynch. To his credit, Flint locked the photographs away in a safe and has never revealed them publicly. Yet the army has never apologized to Lynch for this despicable attempt to harm her reputation nor, to my knowledge, were any soldiers reprimanded.

Kevin Tillman, the brother of Pat Tillman, a defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals who left professional football to become an Army Ranger killed by his own troops in Afghanistan, condemned the Bush administration for portraying Tillman’s death as an act of heroism. Based on lies, Tillman was posthumously promoted to corporal and awarded the Silver Star for valor. “A terrible tragedy that might have further undermined support for the war in Iraq was transformed into an inspirational message that served instead to support the nation’s foreign policy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Kevin Tillman.

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House committee, said, “We don’t know what the secretary of defense knew. We don’t know what the White House knew. These are questions this committee seeks answers to.” But we do know that soldiers and commanders connected with the Tillman case knew that Pat’s death was caused by friendly fire and that the family was lied to for several weeks about it. Four generals and five other officers are confirmed to have known about this. In fact, Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger Jr., head of the Army Special Operations Command at the time of Tillman’s death, knew the truth during a nationally televised memorial service for Tillman on May 3. Kensinger attended that service, but said nothing to correct the record. (Kensinger has refused to testify at the hearing.)

We also know that Army Specialist Bryan O’Neal, who was there that fateful day, wanted to tell Tillman’s brother, Kevin, what had happened but he was ordered not to by his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Bailey. O’Neal was even threatened to keep quiet and statements attributed to him in the recommendation for Tillman’s Silver Star were not his own. Although persons connected with the case continue to claim there was no cover up, Thomas Gimble, Inspector General for the Pentagon, said he has been unable to determine who altered O’Neal’s statement.

Then there is the matter of the urgent memorandum Major General Stanley McChrystal (now Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal) sent to high-ranking commanders one week after Tillman’s death in which he gave the heads up that Tillman was killed by his own troops. One crucial aspect of the memo is that McChrystal urged commanders to relay this information to president Bush and the army secretary.

Surely, Rumsfeld knew about all this. As Kevin Tillman said, “It’s a bit disingenuous to think that the administration did not know about what was going on, something so politically sensitive.”

Everything the administration says is more than a bit disingenuous.

US officials announced that a team led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory won the design competition for a new nuclear warhead. The design was the product of the 2004 Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which provided millions of dollars to explore making existing nuclear warheads last longer without diminishing their explosive power. Proponents of the design argue that the current stockpile of between 5,000 to 10,000 nuclear warheads is aging (the average age of warheads is 19 years) and its various designs antiquated.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which operates the nuclear weapons complex, reported to Congress that existing warheads are safe and reliable. The plutonium core of the warheads will last at least 85 years without degrading performance. Nonetheless, the Defense Department intends to go ahead with the new design, replacing the W76 warhead that arms the Navy’s 14-boat ballistic missile submarine fleet by 2012. And that’s just the beginning. Proponents dream of extending the Livermore design to all warheads. Senator Pete Domenici, whose state is home to Los Alamos, has called for speeding up the program.

There is opposition to the plan. Representative Pete Visclosky of Indiana, who chairs the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, the body that funds the NNSA, argues that instead of replacing warheads, the agency should be “reconfiguring the old Cold War complex and dismantling obsolete warheads.” Visclosky warned in his March 2 statement that RRW funding could be eliminated. Representative David Hobson of Ohio, the subcommittee’s ranking member and former chair, makes the same argument: the agency is “focusing too much on the program and not paying enough attention to dismantlement and consolidation of the weapons complex.” Representative Ellen Tauscher of California, chair of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, is suspicious of the program, implying that if the design were to have capabilities different from existing warheads, she would kill it like she killed the administration’s Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP).

Outside government, voices were even more skeptical. Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, said, “Clearly, the Reliable Replacement Warhead is a solution in search of a problem.” Steve Fetter, an Arms Control Association board member and dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said. “Mainly, this is a program by the weapons labs for the weapons labs.” He used an interesting metaphor to describe the program: “It’s a self-licking ice cream cone.”

Sources: Arms Control Today (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_04/Warhead.asp); Defense News (http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2698554&C=america)

The Virginia Tech shooting at the hands of Cho Seung-Hui should have sparked more discussion among Americans about gun control and death and violence fascination than it did. Members of the two major political parties, as well as pundits from across the political spectrum, ducked the issue. California Senator Diane Feinstein did note the obvious: “Shootings like these are enabled by the unparalleled ease with which people procure weapons in this country.” But her observation was a lone ripple across the otherwise placid surface of elite opinion. Not even Bush’s inane comment at the Virginia Tech memorial service drew a comment from the talking heads. “It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering,” the Texan said. “They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

But those who died at the hands of Cho Seung-Hui were in the right place at the right time. They were in college classrooms learning—rooms that should be safe from the violence that tragically marks the United States as unique among nations of similar political-economic character. This phrase—“wrong place at the wrong time”—is a brainless and heartless copout. So is the construct “senseless violence.” It is possible to make sense of such violence and suffering; we find that sense in America’s pervasive culture of violence, its fascination with warriors and the instruments of warfare, and its easy access to firearms. To say something is senseless is to say you cannot do anything about it. 

Yet the public, despite supporting rational gun control policy in surveys of their opinions, is paralyzed by the assumption that the politicians can do very little about the problem of gun violence in the United States. The gun lobby has convinced Americans that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own and carry firearms. So standard is this view that the mayor of New York, without fear of contradiction, could say the following: “This tragedy does not alter the Second Amendment.” Rudy Giuliani continued: “People have the right to keep and bear arms, and the Constitution says this right will not be infringed.”

But this belief is mistaken for a very basic reason: the text of the Second Amendment does not guarantee individual citizens the right to possess firearms. Unclouded by ideology, the text and history of the Second Amendment tell a different story.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The first clause of the amendment speaks to intent: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” It’s not a throw-away clause, no matter how much the National Rifle Association pretends otherwise. Ownership occurs in the context of a well regulated militia, an entity deemed necessary for the security of a free state. The people—a collective entity—refers to members of the militia.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.” The ACLU’s judgment follows the sound judgment of courts and constitution:

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, most Americans are in favor of stricter gun control. Two-thirds of adults surveyed said the laws regulating the sale of handguns should be tighter. Only five percent said the laws should be looser. Three-quarters of Democrats support stricter handgun laws, about half of Republicans feel this way, and 60 percent of independents agree. A large minority in the poll (32 percent of those surveyed) say they support a handgun ban (with the exception of handguns for law enforcement officers). That number could grow with more education about gun violence. Also promising is the finding that a slender majority (54 percent) believe that stricter gun control laws and enforcement would have had some effect on the killings at Virginia Tech.

Given the consensus of legal professionals concerning the second amendment, public opinion polls showing Americans in support stricter gun sale laws, and five dead Amish schoolchildren in Nickel Mines, fourteen dead high school students at Columbine, and now 33 dead college students in Blacksburg, why are politicians ducking the question? Why would they ignore the courts, public sentiment, and death and destruction?

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-gun lobbyists outspent gun control proponents 166:1 for Republicans and 3:1 for Democrats. The gun lobby pours so much money into the politicians’ trough that, although only 27 percent of the public believe that private citizens should carry guns, states are passing legislation permitting carrying of concealed weapons. And, while more than 70 percent of the public believe guns possessed by school officials in school would make schools more dangerous, gun proponents are calling for arming school officials.

Shockingly, 26 percent of those surveyed said that allowing adults to carry concealed weapons would have helped in the situation. This percentage reflects the intensity of gun fanaticism, which, although representing only around one-quarter of the public in the poll, nonetheless indicates the existence of a committed block of voters. These are the fanatics flooding switch boards and Internet forums with the pro-gun slogans. A loud minority can sometimes mislead the public.

To make America safer, we must do the hard work of reversing the corrosive effects of the culture of militarization and violence. We can begin this work by bringing our soldiers home from Iraq and drawing down our armed forces. We must strive to build more supportive social networks. The state must stop its example of using violence as a solution to conflict. And we must pass and enforce strict gun laws.

Tightening enforcement of already existing federal gun laws could have prevented the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Enforcement could have stopped Cho Seung-Hui, an obviously disturbed young man, from purchasing the guns he used to kill 32 people and himself. But Virginia’s interpretation of what constitutes mental illness is too narrow to prevent sick individuals like Cho from legally getting their hands on firearms. 

In the final analysis, although the state of Virginia failed to protect its citizens from a deranged gunman, the people and their representatives have failed to address the culture that deranges the minds of young men. Does this excuse what Cho did? No. Individuals are responsible for their actions. But stating the obvious will not reduce the risk of future mass murders.

I recently returned from Jordan, where, at the invitation of Jordanian political sociologist Ibtesam Al-Atiyat and the United Nations University, with whom Ibtesam is a program officer, I participated in the program, Youth Leadership, the Politicization of Religion, and the Future of Democracy in the Middle East, held in Amman and sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and United Nations University International Leadership Institute (UNU/ILI). There, I lectured on the subject of Christian neo-fundamentalism and US foreign policy, chaired a panel on resistance and terrorism, and worked with young people from around the world to develop declarations regarding the hopes of democratization and the problems of politicization of religion I did other things in Jordan, as well, including shopping in downtown Amman and spending a day in the ancient city of Petra among the Bedouin and tourists. I made many friends during my travels and developed a love for a country about which I knew very little before traveling there (aside from research in preparation for the trip, which I have since learned is always inadequate).

My lecture, titled “Christian Neo-fundamentalism, Democracy Promotion, and US Foreign Policy” [based on an article I published with Political Research Associates, “Faith Matters: George Bush and Providence” — but delivered in much less polemical tones to the UNU/ILI], was well received, generating discussion throughout the week-long program. The thesis of my talk was provocative: Assuming that a significant change in foreign policy direction in a democracy requires some degree of popular support, the facts of economic imperative (principally, the need for cheap fossil fuels to power industry) and dedicated hardline Zionists (US neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby) shaping and influencing US foreign policy are insufficient for understanding the direction of US imperialism over the past forty years. What an account of this period requires is a grasp of how the Republican Party, neoconservatives, and rightwing Jewish nationalists have joined with influential conservative Christian leaders to fashion an ideology — Christian Zionism — that has secured the support of tens of millions of Americans for an expansion of the US Empire. This development represents a historic shift from antisemitic fundamentalist Christian culture to pro-Zionist neofundamentalist Christian politics.

To militate against the pessimism that such a thesis might engender, I emphasized throughout the program that not all Christians locate themselves on the political right. Tens of millions of Christians are moderate, liberal, and even socialist. In addition, not all “born again” Christians are Republicans or rightwing Zionists. Black Americans who identify themselves as “born again” are in overwhelming numbers registered Democrats. I relayed to the audience that Jimmy Carter’s recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, represents the views of some (albeit a minority of) evangelical Christians, and that with committed and organized efforts progressive forces may recapture the moral discourse and push the United States towards a rational foreign policy. The problem is not Christianity per se, I argued, but rather the power and influence of neo-fundamentalist Christians, their views embraced and pushed by the Republican Party and the current regime in Washington. The religious problem in America stems from extremist politicizations of Christianity, paralleling the struggle over religion occurring in the Islamic world between Muslims and Islamists, the latter representing extremist politicizations of Islam.

My lecture was part of the opening session, “The Politicization of Religions and the Middle East.” I shared the stage with some weighty figures, most notably His Excellency Dr. Abdel Salam Majali, current Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs and former Prime Minister. Majali was one of the principal negotiators in the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. Also on stage was Dr. Amr El Choubaki, of the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, and Dr. Shlomo Avineri, professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I had asked Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein beforehand to tell me what Avineri’s politics were because I was an admirer of his scholarship on Hegel and Marx, which has been published many year earlier, but knew little of his politics. Both Chomsky and Finkelstein told me he was dug in on the question of Palestine and the occupation.

I kept an open mind. One of Avineri’s books, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, has, more than any other work on Marx, influenced my understanding of historical materialism. However, Avineri’s lecture disappointed me. Given the title of the session and the issue I raised concerning Christian Zionism’s close association with the philosophy of Jewish Restorationism — the ideology justifying a larger Israel that animates such rightwing parties as the Likud — I had expected to draw some response from him. Not only did he neglect to engage the question of the politicization of Judaism in Zionism, but he continually stressed that Zionism was more or less a purely political ideology and movement. The relatively atheistic character of Zionism may have been true decades ago (at least a strain of it), say when a young Noam Chomsky was in the movement, but this is no longer the case. Avineri’s only remark concerning religion — beyond his standard position that religion is not inherently anti-democratic, a point on which we agree — was that Christian Zionism is one of the reasons Jews have a problem with Christians. Obviously, he wasn’t speaking for all Jews.

Later, Avineri took issue with my observation that the major US media and mainstream politicians are rarely critical of Israel and that critics of Israel in America are routinely dismissed as “anti-Semitic,” two what I regarded as rather obvious facts of which Avineri, who closely follows the US media, must certainly have been aware. Indeed, criticism of Israel approaches levels of zero in mainstream American political discourse. (Just ask President Carter what happens when you try to criticize Israel.) Avineri promised publicly that a deeper criticism of my views awaited me in private; however, this confrontation never occurred, even though Avineri and I dined together that evening (we had a wonderful time). I felt let down a little because I so admire Avineri. However, his chauvinism notwithstanding, my respect for Avineri as a scholar of Hegel and Marx remains unshaken, and I found him to be extremely knowledgeable on the affairs and history of the Middle East, a subject which I admit I am not an expert. He is a warm, personally decent, and humorous individual. It was truly an honor to have spent time with such an outstanding scholar and unique person.

The next morning, I chaired the session “Resistance, Terrorism, and State Building: Islamists in Conflict Areas and Countries in Transition,” featuring Dr. Nadir Said, a sociology professor at Birzeit University in Palestine who spoke about the conditions of Palestinians, and Evans Wafula, a journalist writing for African Week Magazine, who spoke on the subject of the Islamic Courts of Somalia. Dr. Said came armed with slides concerning the empirical situation of the Palestinians which, because of the short time given, he unloaded in rapid fire succession, having to skip over several. Nonetheless, he managed to paint a depressingly detailed portrait of the Palestinian situation. Mr. Wafula argued that the reason so many Somalis were supportive of the Islamic courts was because they brought order out of the chaos that had reigned since the devolution of Somali society into a loose network of warlords. However, the Islamic courts, once having established jurisdiction over the legal system, began a political conquest of Somalia. Therein resides the problem. Both presentations were excellent.

The session became contentious when a young Israeli man offered neither a question nor his opinion but instead gave the official Israeli position on the so-called security fence. For those who don’t know the facts, the government of Israel is building a wall through Palestine which Israeli propagandists describe as a temporary “security fence.” The Israeli government claims that fences reduce the number of suicide attacks. The structure, or more accurately a system of structures, is in fact a very high and very permanent wall that separates families from families and individuals from the services they desperately need for survival. Furthermore, the structure does not reduce suicide attacks. Dr. Said argued that only one thing will reduce the incidence of suicide attacks — ending the occupation. This observation is not meant to justify suicide bombings, he stressed, which every reasonable person agrees are a tragedy for victim and perpetrator, but rather to explain them.

The situation of the Palestinians was brought home to me just before I left for Jordan when a student of mine, who had a short time earlier spent two weeks in Palestine, showed me pictures of the wall and described to me the daily existence of the people surrounded by these walls. His experience in Palestine radically changed his perspective on the conflict. With these images and stories fresh in my mind, and with the new ones Said had just given me, I momentarily forgot my moderator duties — the antagonism of the young Israeli man continued, rebutting Said and provoking one of the assistants in the conference, a young British-Palestinian woman, to avail herself of the microphone she was holding to tear into him, speaking so eloquently about the condition of Palestine that I hesitated before interrupting her so that Said could answer the question. Said expressed disappointment in the fact that, rather than sending an independent thinker to participate in the session, Israel had sent an official spokesperson. (Many suspected he was from IDF).

Then, when Said stated that the Israelis never intended to make peace with the Palestinians, Avineri walked out of the session, shaking his head. This protest disturbed many of the western students. Afterwards, Dr. Avineri wanted to make sure I understood that he had not walked out of the session to go to the bathroom, but that he could not stand to once more hear a Palestinian talk about the conflict. I assured him that not a person in the room had misunderstood his actions. He told me how beautiful are the structures of Jerusalem at sunset. A rose color, he said. I tried to comfort the students at the break, but it took a clarification during the following morning student session — with Al-Atiyat announcing that the broad discussion of democracy and the politicization of religion intended by the programmers should not dissolve into a debate about the fate of Palestine — before the tension subsided.

However, the fate of Palestine being the major point of discussion among Arabs, who see Israel as an extension of European colonization, the critics would not remain silent for long. Indeed, on day two, during the session “Political Religion in National and Foreign Policy,” the US Embassy’s Counselor for Press and Cultural Affairs, Philip Frayne, encountered fierce interrogation by the audience concerning the Palestinian situation. His attitude was dismissive and his manner entirely political. He was a buffoon, frankly, sent by the State Department as a gesture and instructed to dissemble. Before the session, Mr. Frayne questioned me about the substance of my talk the previous day, which he apologized for having missed. I painted for him in broad strokes what I had said, which caused him to ask, “So you explained to everybody why the United States is so committed to supporting Israel?” Yes, I responded. He then said, “I am here to tell America’s side of the story.” The substance of his talk told me he was aware of the substance of mine.

Controversy continued when, on day three, the Islamic Action Front refused to participate in the session “Political Religions and the State: The Islamists in Jordan,” because, to quote from their message delivered by Dr. Jairam Reddy, director of the UNU/ILI and moderator for the period, “of the presence of Israelis in the room.” The IAF protest struck me as a missed opportunity for the party to reach young people with their message, which I gathered from discussing their position with others is a positive one. And while I understand that the IAF has a policy against engaging Israelis in dialogue until Israel withdraws from the territory it occupies, it was a United Nations event in which all are welcome, even US-labeled terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. In any case, the extra time was taken up by the Islamic Centrist Party, whose positions on various issues, especially on the subject of women in politics (of which there were two representatives on stage, one a member of the parliament) generated a very interesting question-and-answer session.

The highpoint of day three for most people was the appearance of Her Majesty Queen Noor, who sat and listened intently for much of the two-and-half hour session that Dr. Reddy moderated, and, afterwards, stood outside the room for group photos. It must have taken some courage for the IAF to refuse to participate in protest knowing the Queen of Jordan was present. I wanted to thank her personally for attending and for the good work she does sitting on the board of the United Nations University, but there were many important people in the room and security was tight (and intimidating). Besides, the young people wanted very much to meet with her and time was short. By the time I got close, she was on her way out. At least these were the things I was telling myself. There was something else stopping me: I did not believe I could bring myself to genuflect to a monarch.

The students were on the whole outstanding, and I was extremely impressed with several of them, who showed themselves to quite sophisticated in their understanding of complex issues. Students from places such as Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan were most interested in my arguments. I was disappointed with the more vocal students from the United States; they were robotic in their recitations of standard political science rhetoric. One young woman in particular exhibited deep and unyielding indoctrination in neoliberal ideology. When I asked the students as a whole to consider opening up their conception of democracy to more than the limited rhetoric of liberal-pluralism, for example by considering matters of industrial democracy and collective control over resources, this young woman accused me of communism. F.A. Hayek would have been so proud. When I explained that capitalism was one of the causes of unemployment and poverty around the world, and that the more unfettered capitalism is the more brutal are its effects, citing the Gilded Age as an example, she responded that nineteenth century was not pure capitalism. I couldn’t respond to this point, of course, as it is actually more of a slogan than an argument (can capitalism be any more pure than it was in the nineteenth century?) When I explained the logic of inequality among the nations, she argued that capitalism liberated Europe from its previous third world status! My response to this absurd claim was drowned out by retorts aimed at her from the third worlders. “Europe? The third world?” It took some work to calm the room.

In another student session, with the slogan “one’s politics is not determined by her genitalia,” a young American man objected to a young Israeli woman’s suggestion that some of the time be spent in groups sorted by gender. The Israeli student lamented that she hadn’t time to educate the young man in the sociological distinction between sex and gender. During the exchange, Avineri leaned over to me and informed me that the young woman had announced to him and others her intent to push a feminist agenda during the conference. She had informed others in my company of her agenda, as well, I told him.

The framework used by many of the students was also used by many of the older participants, and, at its worst, was clearly and most unfortunately the rhetoric of the political science school of modernization. The blatant exhibition of neoliberal and liberal-pluralist ideologies worked in my favor, however, since most of the students were yearning for a more expansive way of thinking about the problems of their country — which are, in my view, largely the problems of global capitalism — and the range of possible solutions.

Here I want to offer a sociological observation: Because eastern elites and political actors encounter the ideas of western powers by reading the literature and entertaining the arguments of official diplomats and intellectuals advancing the hegemonic theoretical framework, and because the West is the prevailing intellectual power on the world stage, the peripheral subject parrots the conceptual and theoretical framework of the core. I heard repeatedly discussions using terms and phrases such as “modernization,” “clash of civilizations,” and “democracy promotion.” Democracy was narrowly defined as a list of basic procedures — suffrage, peaceful transition, equality before the law — and not as a substantive understanding of the social being achieving control over her collective existence and destiny. During group discussions I explained that liberal-pluralist ideology not only constrains practical possibility, it also limits the cognitive framework in which the ideas of the possible are generated.

Amman was a beautiful city. Of course, I was not taken to the poorer sections, but instead driven through the wealthy districts where the embassies and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung institute were located, as well as through middle class districts inhabited by affluent Jordanians and Iraqis (wealthy Iraqis fled Iraq with the US invasion, bringing the money and talents to Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries). Perhaps this wasn’t done to hide anything, but rather reflected my purpose there. Nonetheless, I saw some of the signs of poverty we know exist in Jordan when I strolled through the upscale market district in Amman, for example people with disabilities begging for money.

On my last full day there, I traveled to the ancient city of Petra, which lies on the edge of the Wadi Araba, about four hours south of Amman and a couple of hours north of Jordan’s lone seaport Aqaba. Petra was established roughly twenty-six centuries ago by the Nabataean Arabs (a network of nomadic tribes that settled in southern Jordan, the Naqab desert in Palestine, and northern Arabia) and was the center of a trading commercial network extending as far north as modern Syria. (The area is even older than this, inhabited by the Edomites before the Nabataeans settled there and raised their civilization.) The Nabataeans found the geography conducive to the construction of a unique and durable civilization — sandstone mountains in which they carved buildings, temples, and mortuaries. Jordan is ninety percent desert, forcing the Nabataeans to develop their scientists as deft water engineers, irrigating the land by devising a marvelous system of aqueducts, canals, dams, and reservoirs. The rock is beautiful, with whirling and waving strata in vibrant colors ranging from white and yellows to deep reds and browns.

Many foreign powers tried to subjugate the Nabataeans — Seleucid king Antigonus, Roman emperor Pompey, and Herod the Great — but all failed. Finally, around the first century, the Romans overran Petra (by destroying their water system) and controlled the region into the Byzantine period. The Crusaders briefly occupied Petra in the twelfth century, but were forced to abandon the city by the Muslims. Petra is now inhabited by Bedouin peoples, settled nomadic tribes found throughout Middle East, who sell their wares and rent their transportation (camels, donkeys, and horses) to tourists. I cannot find the words to describe the way being in such a place makes one feel. It is a magical place.

I made many friends in Amman, Jordan. I struck up a friendship with a thirty-year-old man from Kenya named Evans Wafula who writes for African Week Magazine. I feel that we became best of friends and we have promised to remain in touch and visit each others homes. I also befriended Murad Tangiev, a Chechnyan who moved all of us with his condemnation of terrorism in his country. As a program officer for the university, Tangiev has invited me back to Jordan in the spring to lecture on the history of democracy. I believe I shall accept his invitation. I also admired the person of Nadir Said, the Palestinian man who spoke so eloquently on the condition of the Palestinians. There are many more, many of them were among the students…

This is getting long, so I will make two concluding remarks. First, an observation. In general, I found many of the Muslims with whom I interacted to be open minded. I expected to find Muslims critical of Israel, as well as Muslims who harbored dislike for Americans because of US financial and diplomatic support for Israel. My first expectation was confirmed. Muslims believe that Israeli occupation of Palestine is the driving source of conflict in the region. However, I found wherever I went a genuine love for Americans. No Muslim was shy about telling me of her or his great dislike for the US government and its policies in the Middle East, but nowhere did I feel anger or hatred directed towards me; I encountered only warm smiles and greetings. Everyone assumed I was Christian (I am an atheist and a secular humanist) and treated me with the utmost respect. On the other hand, I found the thinking of some of the Israelis in the program circumscribed by one or another form of Zionism, their morality shaped by their nationalism, treating with disdain those who asked them to consider the plight of Palestinians. It disappointed me to find young people lacking sympathy sufficient to have an impact on the overall authoritarian mentality that rationalizes occupation and oppression in terms of security and victimhood. It is the persistence of the authoritarian mentality that is the greatest barrier to peace in the Middle East.

This brings me to my closing point. Many of the participants told me that my presence at the program served to improve the image of America among them, since they had heretofore only heard the point of view given to them by the corporate-dominated press in the United States and in their own countries, many of which serve as client states for the global capitalists. Their own experience of authoritarian government told them that there must be Americans who disagreed with US policies. They were very pleased to have their suspicions confirmed, that there were indeed Americans who disagreed with their government, and they assured me that they would share with their friends back home my point of view and the optimistic fact that I possessed it.

(August 24, 2018) I forgot to record a moment in this report that I have since shared numerous times. There was a young Lebanese man who sat through a Jordanian politician’s speech (I do not recall either of their names). He was visibly perturbed the entire time and when he finally got the chance to speak his mind he said, “You referred to Jordanians throughout your speech as ‘citizens.’ Jordan has no citizens. It has subjects. Jordan has a king.”

Skepticism about the official 9-11 account continues.  Individuals questioning the government’s story do so at great risk to their careers and reputations. I have told you about Kevin Barrett and William Woodward. Now another member of the Scholars for 9-11 Truth group has come under fire. Steve Jones, a physicist at Brigham Young University, has been suspended for his argument that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition.  

What’s my position on the matter of the official story?  For the record, I have no certain position on the matter. I presume that the attack was carried out by al-Qaeda, but I remain open to compelling arguments and new evidence.  I wouldn’t feel like I was being consistent if I behaved any differently. I sometimes wish I could have the certainity of those who are absolutely convinced of the correctness of the government’s account or even its opposite.  

I do feel certain about this, though: It isn’t fair to brush off the arguments of those who don’t believe the official 9-11 story as “insanity” or “idiocy.” A friend of mine said today, “If we can get past the idiocy of the ’controlled demolitions’ crowd and agree that our differences are over that [some issue that he deemed worthy of discussion], we would be making progress, as the psychiatrists say.” My response was to draw a real world example. What do you say to a person who makes a version of the argument I articulate below? 

9-11 Skeptic: I saw a special on PBS and there the owner of the World Trade Center complex—his name is Larry something or other—and he says on there that he told authorities to pull Tower 7. And in video of the collapse of Tower 7, you can hear the blasts on the videotape, see people’s reaction to the blasts, and see them fleeing the area as the building comes down.  How did authorities get set up so quickly for a controlled demolition? Why would the police let them collapse Tower 7 given that the whole area was a crime scene? And if the building came down by controlled collapse, as claimed by the owner of the WTC complex—and he ought to know and with my own ears I heard him say that he told them to do it—why does FEMA say it collapsed because of fire? And, finally, why did the government let Popular Mechanics see photographs of Tower 7 collapse but no one else?

If you tell this person that he’s an “idiot,” he is going to stop listening to you. Because he knows things like this: On August 23, 2006, the audience of  KFNX-AM, Phoenix, heard radio talkshow host Charles Goyette interviewing Davin Coburn, senior research editor from Popular Mechanics. They hear Charles Goyette pressing Coburn on the matter of the collapse of Tower 7, and specifically questions concerning the existence of photographic evidence that, according to Coburn, shows the condition of Tower 7 before its collapse on 9-11. Coburn makes several references to photographs that have never been publicly shown. Here is a transcript of the interview:

Popular Mechanics (PM): “Well ya know, here again, there’s an interesting issue that you [Goyette] brought up before, we have seen (WTC-7) pictures, actually, they are pictures that are the property of the New York police department and other various governmental agencies, that we were not given permission to disseminate. And that gets back to your original question, I cannot speak for . . .

Goyette KFNX-AM: But you got to see them, Popular Mechanics got to see them. But the average American citizen can’t see them?

PM: Correct.

Goyette: Well that’s a fine kettle of fish isn’t it?

PM: Yeah it certainly is, and that I guess gets back to, ya know, us trying to do our homework and having the authority to see the pictures though what we are allowed to show everyone else, what is chosen to become public domain isn’t necessarily our—

Goyette: Did you see them?

PM: Yes.

Goyette: Do we have to kill you now?

PM: Let’s hope not.

Goyette: Well, I mean, explain it to me. What did you see there that I can’t see?

PM: Actually it was pretty much just what was described.

Goyette: Well there must be something that would be dangerous for me as an American citizen or a voter to see.

PM: I cannot, ya know, tell you again, why that—

Goyette: You’re publishers. I mean if anybody’s concerned about evidence in a criminal case or something they’ve done the worst possible thing, they showed it to a damn magazine publisher!

PM: Right. And that was done for the purposes of our background research, that we could—

Goyette: What about my background research? What about my background research? Do you see the source of my frustration here? I didn’t know they had different classes of citizens! You can’t tell me it’s because there’s a criminal case because they’ve shown it to a damn magazine publisher!

PM: I’m actually not telling you anything. I can’t answer that question.

Goyette: I know you can’t, alright, let me go to the phones.

When I read this, I can see why people ask questions. One of those questions is, if the authorities don’t want to fuel all these “conspiracy theories,” then why do they withhold evidence that they say would put the matter to rest? “If you knew what we know, then you’d believe it.” Why leave the whole explanation for the collapse of the towers to a Hearst Corporation publication? Why does Popular Mechanics—a lay magazine—and now there’s a book by the same authors of the Popular Mechanics article out called Debunking 9-11 Myths—get a monopoly on the official explanation of the collapse but everybody else are “idiots”?  

I feel the need to defend the integrity and intelligence of people who need to be convinced. I appreciate their curiosity. Don’t you? They aren’t blindly following the leader.  Convincing lies at the heart of rational skepticism. Both you and I know that the government lies constantly. All the lies about Iraq, Iran, Indochina, etc. So does corporate power. Do you really trust the writers at Popular Mechanics or any other mainstream media outlet to report the facts? At this point, isn’t faith in government tattooing the word “sucker” on your forehead? If the people who run this country expect the “idiots” to believe them, then why don’t they release every scrap of evidence they have? A culture of secrecy breeds distrust. 

A version of this essay was published in the Journal of World-Systems Research in 2005.

In the manufacture of consent for its policies and practices abroad, the power elite of the American Empire—the dominant corporate, military, and political  sectors—depends heavily on the arts of propaganda and public diplomacy. To be sure, the fist of force always lies in reserve for the recalcitrant, a fact to which recent history in Afghanistan and Iraq attests. Nonetheless, shaping public attitudes towards the means and ends of US foreign policy has proven an efficient standard practice for the expansion of global domination. Over the past fifty years probably as many boots have stepped onto foreign soil via diplomatic designs as through armed means. Inventing Public Diplomacy (2004), by Wilson P. Dizard Jr., is a friendly examination of a key component of the American project to shape world opinion: the US Information Agency (USIA). 

Of the multitude of published works concerning US public diplomacy (too many to recount here), observers from points beyond the charmed circle of government operatives have penned the majority. However, the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) and the Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired (DACOR), have joined forces to produce a book series organizing the history of diplomacy and intelligence services from the standpoint of the diplomat and the information agent. The ADST is functionally and structurally close to formal state power. An NGO whose mission is to strengthen the efficacy of US diplomacy, it is located on the campus of the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, home to the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), and works alongside the FSI to complement the latter’s work, managing the archives of US diplomatic history and providing these materials to historians and diplomats. Thus the ADST plays a role in the way global history is shaped, both in the manner in which the past is recorded and interpreted by historians, and by supplying a ready and ideologically-consistent history for diplomats to base their present and future work upon. Inventing Public Diplomacy is a product of this project. 

Dizard’s account of US propaganda operations is that of a dedicated insider. From 1951 to 1980, he served in the State Department and the US Information Service (USIS). His expertise is international communications. The aim of Inventing Public Diplomacy is to measure the ideological impact of the US Information Agency and its precursors. Dizard’s account is sympathetic, although his appraisal is at times candid, such as his acknowledgement that Reagan’s Central American adventures, which entailed extensive use of the agency, involved illegal conduct. He is also frank in depicting the agency as a propaganda operation—one that matched the operations of other countries and regions with whom the US competed for global advantage. However, he fails to discuss as problematic the deeper aims of the agency and its sister organizations, namely, their function as instruments of global capitalist domination. Moreover, he fails in an explicit objective of his study: to substantiate his claim that, because the agency reflected the national strategic interests of the day, its structure and practices are explicable within analyses of that larger context. In the final analysis, because of Dizard’s loyalty to the agency, the book fails to develop a critical history of either the USIA or the geopolitical context. 

The book begins with an overview of the USIA. Created in 1955, state elites designed the USIA as an element of public diplomacy in the Cold War milieu. The mission of the agency was to present to contested parts of the world an idealized image of America that would promote foreign support for the economic and political aims of the United States. Dizard contends that until the USIA, America had no global propaganda system. He attributes this to “American exceptionalism,” theorizing that isolationism and disengagement with European cultural models were the major causes of America’s delayed entry into ideological warfare. This insular view of the world dominated elite consciousness until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Much as the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 shattered America’s sense of invulnerability, Pearl Harbor made a big world seem much smaller. In response, US elites built a global communications apparatus. 

The path to the USIA was a blend of international restructuring, historical conjuncture, the evolving configuration of intelligence and propaganda networks, and the personalities of leaders and sponsors. The Office of War Information (OWI) established the Voice of America (VOA) shortwave news service in February to take advantage of new communications technologies that had emerged from WWI. The overseas component of the OWI was the USIS. Nelson A. Rockefeller pushed the Roosevelt administration to embrace a larger role in the struggle against the Nazis, especially in checking their growing influence in the southern hemisphere of the Americas. Through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIA), which Rockefeller ran out of the State Department, the United States distributed pro-American press throughout South America and the Caribbean. Dizard credits Rockefeller with having devised the template for the USIA,the purpose of which was to penetrate Europe with pro-American propaganda in a fashion similar to US American operations. A related effort was the Coordinator of Information (COI), also created by Roosevelt in 1941. This agency morphed into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. The COI and OSS represented the first institutional steps towards the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

The principal activity of the US propaganda efforts during the late 1940s and 1950s was to counter what President Harry Truman called “imperialistic communism” and its “propaganda of slavery.” In 1948, Truman signed into law the Smith-Mundt Act, which established ideological operations as a permanent part of US foreign policy. Legislative backing played a vital role in legitimating Truman’s “Campaign of Truth,” a propaganda offensive coordinating the information services of the United States and other capitalist countries. This direction figured into the design of psychological operations that accompanied the creation of the National Security Council and the CIA in 1947. The academic community, including research units at MIT, Harvard, and Columbia, joined with the government intelligence community in designing psychological operations, in turn contributing to the development of the public opinion and public relations industry. (For a detailed historical account of this, see Christopher Simpson 1994 The Science of Coercion: Communications Research and Psychological Warfare 1945-1960.) Corporations with an interest in overseas operations and markets financed the operations. Largely based upon a particular reading of George Kennan’s thinking about the motives and nature of the Soviet Union, a view of the world emerged in which communications sciences were seen as a vital weapon in political warfare. 

When Eisenhower formally consolidated the various propaganda agencies in under the name USIA, the US commercial media, which was likewise extending its influence over world markets, moved to coordinate its activities even more closely with the government. The goal of the public and private mix of information was to shape cultural attitudes and present the United States, its products and services, as an attractive alternative to communism, as well as foster the development of business climates favorable to overseas investment. USIA and corporate propaganda targeted Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, countries with which, according to Dizard, the United States had limited previous cultural engagement. The USIA used several methods to preach the gospel of Americanism abroad, including shortwave radio, leaflets, magazines, news bulletins, pamphlets, a worldwide library network, exhibits on American life, and exchange programs. The activities of the USIA overlapped with the DOD and CIA, and USIA subsidies were vital in helping US media corporations establish firms in foreign countries. 

During the Kennedy years, elites restructured the USIA to keep pace with rapidly changing world realities and to reflect a unified ideological response to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s declaration of “wars of national liberation.” According to the US intelligence establishment, the USSR was sponsoring communists and left-wing guerrilla groups throughout the periphery of the capitalist world economy. Propagandists depicted global communism as a red army on the march. The US responded to the Soviet threat with modernization theory, a set of assumptions that posited that the infusion of Western ideals  and values would, if adopted, catapult the backward peoples of the undeveloped world into modernity. The USIA scaled back operations in Europe and Japan and stepped up activities in the periphery to advance the offensive. As a point of comparison, Dizard documents that in the USIA had twenty-four posts in thirteen African countries. Four years later, there were fifty-five posts in thirty-three countries on the African continent. To give its propaganda operations more polish, the Kennedy administration brought CBS documentarian Edward R. Murrow on board. Murrow believed the agency should not just inform but persuade. He oversaw propaganda operations during such tense moments as Operation Mongoose, the covert program to sabotage the Castro regime in Cuba, the disastrous Bay of Pigs incident, where CIA-trained exiles attempted to overthrow the Cuban government, and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, in which the Soviet Union endeavored to build missile sites in Cuba. 

During the 1960s and 1970s, the USIA took advantage of several opportunities and struggled with many challenges. The agency successfully exploited the triumphs of the Apollo space program to project the image of a strong America abroad. Advancements in civil rights, however ineffective these were in dealing with the racist heart of America, allowed USIA propagandists to claim victory in the struggle for racial justice, which the Declaration of Human Rights had made an explicit priority in . The always-present specter of nuclear holocaust continued to present problems for the USIA; the agency confronted a world that understood the problem of nuclear weapons through the prisms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The scandalous Nixon administration and the appointment of the ideologically-driven Frank Shakespeare to the USIA, which caused the agency’s objectivity to come into question, presented still more challenges. In response to the ideological bent of the agency under Nixon, Jimmy Carter moved to curtail the USIA’s propaganda efforts by suppressing activities he deemed “covert, manipulative, or propagandistic,” and renaming the agency as the US International Communications Agency. Carter’s attempt to steer the agency back towards its original mission—as objective information disseminating agency—would be short lived. 

Politicization of the USIA reemerged during the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Although changing international communications patterns, such as commercial information firms and advanced communications technologies, complicated the agency’s mission, Reagan’s desire to wage intensive ideological warfare against the “Evil Empire” guaranteed that the USIA would see growth in its budget and a more aggressive outlook. Reagan doubled the USIA budget (its annual budget reached nearly one billion dollars by the end of the decade). The administration threw out the policies on balanced news treatment, and the USIA became a propaganda organ for the Reagan regime. The USIA became closely associated with the Special Planning Group (SPG), created in 1983, an association that made the agency a policy participant and not just a mouthpiece for US policy goals. The SPG was behind the creations of Project Democracy, which Reagan later restructured as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The SPG, along with the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy, became part of Reagan’s shadow government during the Iran-Contra Affair. 

The last chapters in Dizard’s book end the study of the USIA in an abrupt manner, despite the number of pages dedicated to the matter. We learn that in 1999, Clinton returned public diplomacy operations to the Department of States and effectively closed down the USIA as an independent agency. In putting the agency to bed, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright eulogized that it was “the most effective anti-propaganda institution on the face of the earth.” The State Department takeover put operations formerly conducted by the USIA quite low on the priority list, evidenced by the fact that President George W. Bush waited nine months before appointing an undersecretary of state for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. 

In his conclusion, Dizard suggests that the weakness of USIA-style operations during this period was in large part due to an inability to adapt to changing threats. Terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, present a problem for state propaganda operations. As Richard Holbrooke mused, “How can a man in a cave outmaneuver the world’s leading communications society?” The US government had no method for effectively spinning a threat unattached to a state apparatus. In an effort to be more effective in the “war on terrorism,” the White House took over propaganda production, creating the Coalition Information Center, which ran a 24-hour war room staffed with officials from the NSC, DOD, CIA, and State Department. This was followed in July of with the creation of the Office of Global Communications. 

Dizard leaves out much of the story. Because of these omissions, he fails to locate US propaganda operations within the structure of geopolitics and global capitalism. Dizard tells his readers what many of them already know: The official mission of the USIA from its inception through the s was, as Brigadier General Robert McClure put it during the Korean War, to win the “struggle for men’s minds.” This was, for US elites, the qualitative essence of “modern war” and it was embodied in the ideological components of Containment policy. The USIA’s purpose was to counter Soviet propaganda, what Ayn Rand characterized before the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities in “as anything which gives a good impression of communism as a way of life.” And this the agency did well into the s; under Reagan, in conjunction with the National Security Council, the agency launched the “Project Truth” campaign, parroting Truman’s “Campaign of Truth,” thus book-ending the USIA’s role in the anti-communist crusade. 

However, Dizard leaves unexplored the consequences of the fall of the Soviet Union. How were the bureaucrats and professionals going to justify the USIA’s existence with the specter of communism no longer haunting the West? There was, it turns out, a pressing need. Guided by Clinton’s foreign policy team, and led by director Joe Duffy, the agency adopted a new role, best articulated by the NSC’s Anthony Lake, whom in a 1993 speech delivered at the School of Advanced International Studies: “the successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement—enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies.” With this charge, the primary mission of the agency shifted from anti-communist activities to pushing liberalization of trade policy. In short, with the Soviets out of the way, the USIA openly pushed the transnational project of capitalist globalization. 

Of course, in the final analysis, the “Clinton Doctrine” was not inconsistent with or even a departure from the founding mission of the USIA, since its goal had really always been to push the virtues of capitalism abroad and involve the private sector in this effort. Indeed, the aggressive push for liberalization began under Reagan with the creation of the NED and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). Changes in the agency reflected greater shifts in the process of globalization and state strategy to shape that process. In the 1990s, the development of the global system demanded reorganization of the US propaganda network. In 1994, Clinton, with Congressional backing, brought all nonmilitary state international propaganda operations—including Radio and TV Marti, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and Worldnet television—under USIA control. The USIA was put to the task of selling international trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and stressing the importance of membership in such transnational organizations as the WTO. It was a prominent preacher of the gospels of deregulation and trade liberalization. The agency also pushed for the expansion of NATO, helping to transform that Cold War military structure into a transnational security apparatus, as well as collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration to regulate global narcotics trafficking. All of this history is left out of Inventing Public Diplomacy. 

Finally, Dizard fails to sufficiently criticize the agency for its failures to articulate its purpose to the US citizenry and to involve non-business interests in shaping a collective vision of the nation’s aims in the world. The Smith-Mundt act sought to exclude non-corporate voices by prohibiting the targeting of US audiences with programming aimed at foreign audiences. The image of America projected abroad was—and continues to be—neither generated nor consumed by Americans. In 1997, in the essay “Foreign Policy in Focus: United States Information Agency,” published in the Interhemispheric Resource Center and Institute for Policy Studies, Nancy Snow contrasts the alternatives: “Millions of private citizens, both here and abroad, are using their collective vision to promote a one-world community—not a one-world market—where diverse cultures are united in efforts to combat poverty, oppression, pollution, and collective violence. In contrast to the USIA’s boardroom-style globalization, many of these citizen activists favor more freedom of movement for people and greater regulation on the movement of capital.”

Clearly, then, the initial design and guiding vision of the USIA was to serve as a propaganda instrument for the imperial project to spread capitalism across the planet, illustrating Marx and Engels’ famous axiom that the executive of the capitalist state is but an organ for pursuing the common interests of the capitalist class.