Global Research
Washington’s Secret Agendas
The public fell for the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan are
terrorists allied with al Qaeda. Americans fought a war for 13 years
that enriched Dick Cheney’s firm, Halliburton, and other private
interests only to end in another Washington failure.
The public fell for the lie that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had “weapons
of mass destruction” that were a threat to America and that if the US
did not invade Iraq Americans risked a “mushroom cloud going up over an
American city.” With the rise of ISIS, this long war apparently is far
from over. Billions of dollars more in profits will pour into the
coffers of the US military security complex as Washington fights those
who are redrawing the false Middle East boundaries created by the
British and French after WW I when the British and French seized
territories of the former Ottoman Empire.
The American public fell for the lies told about Gaddafi in Libya. The formerly stable and prosperous country is now in chaos.
The American public fell for the lie that Iran has, or is building,
nuclear weapons. Sanctioned and reviled by the West, Iran has shifted
toward an Eastern orientation, thereby removing a principal oil producer
from Western influence.
The public fell for the lie that Assad of Syria used “chemical
weapons against his own people.” The jihadists that Washington sent to
overthrow Assad have turned out to be, according to Washington’s
propaganda, a threat to America.
The greatest threat to the world is Washington’s insistence on its
hegemony. The ideology of a handful of neoconservatives is the basis for
this insistence. We face the situation in which a handful of American
neoconservative psychopaths claim to determine the fate of countries.
Many still believe Washington’s lies, but increasingly the world sees
Washington as the greatest threat to peace and life on earth. The
claim that America is “exceptional and indispensable” is used to justify
Washington’s right to dictate to other countries.
The casualties of Washington’s bombings are invariably civilians, and
the deaths will produce more recruits for ISIS. Already there are
calls for Washington to reintroduce “boots on the ground” in Iraq.
Otherwise, Western civilization is doomed, and our heads will be cut
off. The newly created propaganda of a “Russian threat” requires more
NATO spending and more military bases on Russia’s borders. A “quick
reaction force” is being created to respond to a nonexistent threat of a
Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland, and Europe.
Usually it takes the American public a year, or two, three, or four
to realize that it has been deceived by lies and propaganda, but by that
time the public has swallowed a new set of lies and propaganda and is
all concerned about the latest “threat.” The American public seems
incapable of understanding that just as the first, second, third,
fourth, and fifth, threat was a hoax, so is the sixth threat, and so
will be the seventh, eighth, and ninth.
Moreover, none of these American military attacks on other countries
has resulted in a better situation, as Vladimir Putin honestly states.
Yet, the public and its representatives in Congress support each new
military adventure despite the record of deception and failure.
Perhaps if Americans were taught their true history in place of
idealistic fairy tales, they would be less gullible and less susceptible
to government propaganda. I have recommended Oliver Stone and Peter
Kuznick’s The Untold History of the US, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the US, and now I recommend Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers,
the story of the long rule of John Foster and Allen Dulles over the
State Department and CIA and their demonization of reformist governments
that they often succeeded in overthrowing. Kinzer’s history of the
Dulles brothers’ plots to overthrow six governments provides insight
into how Washington operates today.
In 1953 the Dulles brothers overthrew Iran’s elected leader,
Mossadegh and imposed the Shah, thus poisoning American-Iranian
relations through the present day. Americans might yet be led into a
costly and pointless war with Iran, because of the Dulles brothers
poisoning of relations in 1953.
The Dulles brothers overthrew Guatemala’s popular president Arbenz,
because his land reform threatened the interest of the Dulles brothers’
Sullivan & Cromwell law firm’s United Fruit Company client. The
brothers launched an amazing disinformation campaign depicting Arbenz as
a dangerous communist who was a threat to Western civilization. The
brothers enlisted dictators such as Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in
Cuba against Arbenz. The CIA organized air strikes and an invasion
force. But nothing could happen until Arbenz’s strong support among the
people in Guatemala could be shattered. The brothers arranged this
through Cardinal Spellman, who enlisted Archbishop Rossell y Arellano.
“A pastoral letter was read on April 9, 1954 in all Guatemalan
churches.”
A masterpiece of propaganda, the pastoral letter misrepresented
Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was the enemy of all Guatemalans.
False radio broadcasts produced a fake reality of freedom fighter
victories and army defections. Arbenz asked the UN to send fact finders,
but Washington prevented that from happening. American journalists,
with the exception of James Reston, supported the lies. Washington
threatened and bought off Guatemala’s senior military commanders, who
forced Arbenz to resign. The CIA’s chosen and well paid “liberator,”
Col. Castillo Armas, was installed as Arbenz’s successor.
We recently witnessed a similar operation in Ukraine.
President Eisenhower thanked the CIA for averting “a Communist
beachhead in our hemisphere,” and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
gave a national TV and radio address in which he declared that the
events in Guatemala “expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin.” This
despite the uncontested fact that the only outside power operating in
Guatemala was the Dulles brothers.
What had really happened is that a democratic and reformist
government was overthrown because it compensated United Fruit Company
for the nationalization of the company’s fallow land at a value listed
by the company on its tax returns. America’s leading law firm or perhaps
more accurately, America’s foreign policy-maker, Sullivan &
Cromwell, had no intention of permitting a democratic government to
prevail over the interests of the law firm’s client, especially when
senior partners of the firm controlled both overt and covert US foreign
policy. The two brothers, whose family members were invested in the
United Fruit Company, simply applied the resources of the CIA, State
Department, and US media to the protection of their private interests.
The extraordinary gullibility of the American people, the corrupt
American media, and the indoctrinated and impotent Congress allowed the
Dulles brothers to succeed in overthrowing a democracy.
Keep in mind that this use of the US government in behalf of private
interests occurred 60 years ago long before the corrupt Clinton, George
W. Bush, and Obama regimes. And no doubt in earlier times as well.
The Dulles brothers next intended victim was Ho Chi Minh. Ho, a
nationalist leader, asked for America’s help in freeing Vietnam from
French colonial rule. But John Foster Dulles, a self-righteous
anti-communist, miscast Ho as a Communist Threat who was springing the
domino theory on the Western innocents. Nationalism and
anti-colonialism, Foster declared, were merely a cloak for communist
subversion.
Paul Kattenburg, the State Department desk officer for Vietnam
suggested that instead of war, the US should give Ho $500 million in
reconstruction aid to rebuild the country from war and French misrule,
which would free Ho from dependence on Russian and Chinese support, and,
thereby, influence. Ho appealed to Washington several times, but the
demonic inflexibility of the Dulles brothers prevented any sensible
response. Instead, the hysteria whipped-up over the “communist threat”
by the Dulles brothers landed the United States in the long, costly,
fiasco known as the Vietnam War. Kattenburg later wrote that it was
suicidal for the US “to cut out its eyes and ears, to castrate its
analytic capacity, to shut itself off from the truth because of blind
prejudice.” Unfortunately for Americans and the world, castrated
analytic capacity is Washington’s strongest suit.
The Dulles brothers’ next targets were President Sukarno of
Indonesia, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo, and Fidel Castro.
The plot against Castro was such a disastrous failure that it cost Allen
Dulles his job. President Kennedy lost confidence in the agency and
told his brother Bobby that after his reelection he was going to break
the CIA into a thousand pieces. When President Kennedy removed Allen
Dulles, the CIA understood the threat and struck first.
Warren Nutter, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, later Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, taught his
students that for the US government to maintain the people’s trust,
which democracy requires, the government’s policies must be affirmations
of our principles and be openly communicated to the people. Hidden
agendas, such as those of the Dulles brothers and the Clinton, Bush and
Obama regimes, must rely on secrecy and manipulation and, thereby,
arouse the distrust of the people. If Americans are too brainwashed to
notice, many foreign nationals are not.
The US government’s secret agendas have cost Americans and many
peoples in the world tremendously. Essentially, the Foster brothers
created the Cold War with their secret agendas and anti-communist
hysteria. Secret agendas committed Americans to long, costly, and
unnecessary wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. Secret CIA and
military agendas intending regime change in Cuba were blocked by
President John F. Kennedy and resulted in the assassination of a
president, who, for all his faults, was likely to have ended the Cold
War twenty years before Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity.
Secret agendas have prevailed for so long that the American people
themselves are now corrupted. As the saying goes, “a fish rots from the
head.” The rot in Washington now permeates the country.
About the author:
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Dr. Roberts can be reached at http://paulcraigroberts.org
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on
Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect
statement in this article. The Center of Research on Globalization
grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on
community internet sites as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For
publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms
including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: publications@globalresearch.ca
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: publications@globalresearch.ca
Copyright © Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment