The following description of former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles points out how easy it is to “fall” into the system of justifications and “realities” constructed for us by the brass sucked into the abyss of imperialism; the drive to increase the range of power and influence, for the sake of “free enterprise”, and of course, for “democracy and freedom”. What infuriates me most is how “pious” this guy was about all this; wrapping it all in some warped sense of Christian mission.

John Foster Dulles, Henry Kissinger, and others who shaped United States foreign policy during the Cold War were utterly uninterested in the details of life in individual countries, and cared not the slightest whether the regimes that ruled them were dictatorships, democracies, or something in between. Their world was defined by a single fact, the Cold War confrontation between Moscow and Washington. Nations existed for them not as entities with unique histories, cultures, and challenges but as battlegrounds in a global life or death struggle. All that mattered was how vigorously each country supported the United States and opposed the Soviet Union.
—Overthrow, p.198

No interest in that which didn’t feed their bottom line. Gore quote: “You have a stake in NOT understanding something if your paycheck depends on your not understanding it.”

The experiences of the first half of the twentieth century deeply shaped generations of American leaders. Bolshevism triumphed in Russia, and then the Nazis tried to conquer the world. Once Nazism was defeated, the Soviet Union began subduing countries in Eastern Europe. In the minds of many Americans, Soviet Communism assumed the role Nazism had played, that of a fanatic ideology bent relentlessly on world domination.

Also still vivid in the Western imagination was the disastrous policy of appeasement that European powers had used during the 1930s in an effort to avoid conflict with the Nazis. Appeasement gave a deceitful enemy time to prepare for an aggressive war. Its failure taught Americans of the World War 11 generation that some enemies must be ruthlessly opposed. That was certainly true of the Nazis. It may even have been true of international Communism. The great error Americans made was not in overestimating the Soviet threat but in assuming that nationalist challenges were part of it.
–Overthrow, p.197

James Carroll (wrote House of War) would beg to differ; the branches of the services in the Pentagon were always intentionally overestimating the threat, to the degree that their branch benefitted most; the Air Force brass was at work overstating the threat of Russia’s nuclear capabilities, so that their budget would get padded out of the fear they generate from the stated “neccessity” of our own escalation to “keep up”; when it was almost always more a case of our escalations having that effect on the Russians. Indeed, the Russians had far more reason to fear than we did. James Carroll’s father, Joseph, the head intelligence person, found plenty of reason in his investigations to challenge the assesments of administration hawks, who reacted by “retiring” Carroll from his postiion.

Today’s neocons are seeking a more blustery, arrogant* and “straightforward” acceptance of the dominant role of the United States in world affairs,  and an unapologetic use of force to “enforce” this. The extremely scary thing is,  how much closer (or how much further in) to idolatry and greed do we get while still somehow denying that this is , well,  WRONG?  This goes back to the thoughts I posted a while back on EVIL.  This is how EVIL works.  It disguises itself as an angel of light.  Except now,  in this case,  it doesn’t even seem like a good disguise.  It’s like Superman and Clark Kent;  the glasses thing.  We’re not supposed to recognize what’s behind the glasses?

* even rightfully so,  as they see it,  for who is more rigtheous and deserving than “this great country of ours”?  We’re the only ones worthy and capable of ruling the world.