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EX-STATE DEPT.SECURITY OFFICER SPELLS OUT 9/11 COVER-UP
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Today's Stories February 17, 2006 Floyd
Rudmin Febrauary 16, 2006 Lila
Rajiva Norman
Solomon Ron
Jacobs Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
February 15, 2006 Brian
Conacnnon, Jr. Dave
Lindorff Saree
Makdisi Joshua
Frank Amira
Hass CounterPunch
Wire Robert
Bryce Website
of the Day February 14, 2006 John
Sugg Don
Santina William
A. Cook Ray
McGovern John
Ross Website
of the Day
Lila
Rajiva Christopher
Brauchli Dave
Lindorff Ron
Jacobs Mike
Whitney Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
February 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Pat Williams Fred Gardner Saul Landau John Chuckman Roger Burbach Seth Sandronsky Website of
the Weekend
February 10, 2006 Carl
G. Estabrook Sen.
Russell Feingold Roxanne
Dunbar----Ortiz Saree Makdisi Website of
the Day
Bush and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders-in-Chief The Human Majority was Right About Iraq How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press Inside the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel An American Indian's View of the Cartoons The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the Least Funny People on Earth The New Robber Barons Eyes Wide Open The Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot Making and Unmaking History with General Myers Why Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional Horowitz's Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch 16 Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain Covenant Marriage on the Rocks Inequality and War Nuking Ontario Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons! The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas An Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo-Nazis The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man" Why Hamas Won The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation The Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone Negroes with Guns Spilling Blood: Two Sentences Don't Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win? Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air Who Will Save America: My Epiphany "Lights Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run Pentagon Database Leaves No Kid Alone Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's Office Bush's Energy Escapades RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms? Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops Beware the Ides of March The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech? The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy Hop on the Bus Religion and Political Power RSVP to Bush Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week God's Curse: Selected Poems Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel Killer Tells All! A Parliament of Prisoners Working with Coretta Scott King Racism, Neo-Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink The Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East The Chavez Code Pentagon Pork: How to Eliminate It Outsourcing the Golden Years Danes (Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons) Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up In the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind Words Stew Lives! Japan's Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves State of Nature The Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster Enron and the Bush Administration Getting Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened Oprah and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality" Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife Life After Roe. v. Wade "God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with Henry Ford Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius The Legacy of Coretta Scott King The True State of the Union Candide's Notebooks Revolutionary for the Hell of It: the Good Life of Stew Albert US Prods Lebanon Towards Civil War The Democrats' Alito Debacle Alito: Harry-Kerry in the Senate Hamas' Victory: a New Hope? Pentagon Pork: What is It? Who Cooks It Up? Canada: a Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans Privatizing Health Care: the Poor Pay the Price For Stew Why Bush Probably Won't Attack Iran Celebrating Stew Albert Bush, Fox News and the Coming War on Iran Inside the Pork Shop: the Defense Budget and Congressional Earmarks Development Interrupted "The Real Threat is from Imperial Fundamentalism": an Interview with Tariq Ali Message to Democrats: the Case Against Pre-War Lying is a Slam Dunk, Stupid Swindling the Sick: the IMF Debt Relief Sham The Good News About Hamas' Victory Alito and Opus Dei Of Losses and Lies The Question Journalists Refuse to Ask Bush Finally Some Good News From Haiti Tomorrow is Today; the Time for Resistance is Now "I'm So Bored with Capitol Hill" Nicholas Kristof's Brothel Problem The Impeachable Mr. Bush Spying and Lying by the Pentagon Blind Ignorance: Polls Show Many Americans Simply Dumber Than Bush Homefront War Diary: On Monday, My Husband Didn't Call Google This! Irish "Peace" Process at Recriminations Stage Grover Norquist, Drug Policy Reformer? North Korean Forgeries France's Colonial Blowback Radioactive Money, 2005: How Entergy Gets Its Way at Indian Point Small Fry: If You're Not in Power, You'd Better Not Lie The Demise of Fatah The Medicare Disaster America Wants a Divorce Hippocratic Oaf Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Laymon, Engel, Holt, Davies and Buknatski Your Child Can Be a NSA Spook! January 27, 2006 Making the World Safe for Nuclear Violence, Again The NYT and Alito: Journalistic Schizophrenia The Cold Hard Truth: Marching Backwards on Civil Rights To Talk with Hamas Hamas's Victory: "the Power of Democracy" A New Political Landscape in Palestine King of the Hill: Sen. Ted Steven's Empire of Corruption Bush Jobs Program: You Too Can Be an FBI Snitch An AIM Activist's View of Jack Abramoff: Another Racist Out to Defraud Native Tribes Bolton Orders Syria to Do the Impossible Hamas' Victory A Vaster Conspiracy?: Fitzgerald Probes Niger Forgeries Iran, Nukes and Oil Bush Calls Hamas Kettle Black An Open Letter to the State Dept. on the Cuban Five A Plea to the Marines: Stop Sending Recruiting Letters to Our House! Extraordinary Alito The Core of Zionism Who Will Stop the Slaughter of Yellowstone's Bison? Domestic Spying, Now and Then: When Hoover Bugged Phone Calls with My Father Is Chile's Bachelet Washington's Best New Ally? Alito and Roberts' Self-Gag Rule is a Phony From Chennai with Love Gen. William Odom Supports the Empire, But Opposes the War When a Mother Gets Killed Does She Make a Sound? Anatomy of a Cover-Up Bush War Economy: Exporting Jobs and Security Military Contractor Philanthropy Bob Marley Does Dylan The Patriot Police: the Unfathomed Dangers of Patriot Act Reauthorization Liberation and Deliverance Bush's War Viewed from the South Smoke and Mirrors in the Defense Budget Why We Picket John Kerry: Join Us Friday in Boston The Growing Israel Divestment Movement Bolivia's Evo Morales: Original Mandate for Social Revolution Letter from a Haitian Prison The Terrorist in the Mirror Big Brother Watch January 23, 2006 Pity the Orphan: Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Elections Diebold in Florida: "I Saw It Hacked" Harry Belafonte Reaffirms a Proud Tradition Bush's IRS: Squeezing the Poor The Goon Show Tre Arrow and ELF: Environmentalism on Death Row The Other Shoe Drops: Classified Leaks and Journalists Working for the Railroad: Racicot and the Burlington Northern Inside Cheney's War Workshop Arms Against War Why the Buses Didn't Come: Bush-Linked Florida Company and the Katrina Evacuation Fiasco Congressional Ethics After Abramoff Casualties of War: Neoliberalism, Katrina and the Asian Tsunami CIA Bombs Pakistan, Hits America Tapes and Snitches: Feds Hand Down Eco-Sabotage Indictments Crackdown in San Quentin: Why are They Rounding Up Tookie Williams' Friends? Best Not Drive While Black on I-91 (But Walk Tall With the Bloody Chainsaw You Just Topped Your Neighbor With) Rumsfeld: Venezuela "Overspending" on Military Hour of Reckoning: the Gospel Roots of Wilson Pickett "Metabolic Syndrome" is to "Clinical Depression" as Acomplia is Prozac How Cheney Used the NSA to Spy on Americans Prior to 9/11 Betting on Biscuit: Does Post-Fire Logging Make Ecological (or Economic) Sense? The Emperor's Clothes: from Bonaparte to Bush When Miners March: Struggle and Lose, Struggle and Win! Debunking Democracy Security, Terrorism and Human Rights CounterPunch Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Albert, Holt, Engel and Davies Osama's Book Club: Featured Selection January 20, 2006 What Kind of War Doesn't Allow for a Truce? Revolution in the Andes Israel and US Threats Against Iran Imperial Mongers: From Gladstone to "King George" Hourly Wages Have Fallen in 18 of the Last 20 Months Abortion Before Roe This Dog Bites Political Machines: Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Those Damn Democrats: To End War, Don't Ask for What You Don't Want Reclaiming King Day (From the NAACP) Rot at the Top: If the Democrats Really Want to Stop Bush, They Need New Leadership The Real Chocolate City Dare to Make a Stand Just How Big is the Defense Budget? Leave My Child Alone Gore's Speech: a Challenge That Cannot be Ignored The Crime of Giving the Orders: Executing Clarence Ray Allen The System Doesn't Work Anymore "Extraordinary Circumstances": the Case Against Alito The Crimes of Jimmy Carter King's Mission Endures Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified The Planetary Movement "Real Men Go to Tehran": Has al-Qaeda's Gambit Paid Off? Latin America's Indians on the Move--in Different Directions God, Blood, Oil and Iraq Killing Anna Mae Aquash, Smearing John Trudell No Child Left Unharassed: the Obstacle Course to School in Palestine Alito's CAP: Either He Lied on His Resumé or There's a Cover-Up MLK Day in a Haitian Prison Meet the Son of Jim Crow: MLK Day Below the Mason/Dixon Line Governor on a Killling Spree The Liberties of the Subject January 16, 2006 Tears of a Neocon: The Good News from Daniel Pipes Black Students Under Fire: Racial Profiling in Public Schools Bachelet's Victory: Leftward Drift in Chile? Ted Koppel, NPR and Henry Kissinger: a Natural Fit? Dreams and Nightmares: How Would King Judge America? Martin Luther King and the Deeper Malady Bush Crosses the Rubicon MLK: Beyond Vietnam What the FBI Repairman Wore When He Tried to Bug Edward Said What is an Antiwar Movement? The State of the Empire, 2006 Fifteen Years of War: Who's Better Off? Fly Boys and Lie Boys: Smart-Bombing Iraqi Families While They Sleep The Madness of Ajax: a Play for Our Time Bush on Torture Echoes Charles I on Arbitrary Imprisonment A Last, Desperate Plea to Stay in Canada Victory at Passaic County Jail A Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs? Peeping Tom in the Bush: Nonconsenual Voyeurism and the NSA The House Jack Built: The Abramoff Giude to Buying Friends and Influencing Politics Senator as Illusionist: the Hypocrisies of John McCain The Stepford Hearings of Samuel Alito: The Senator, the Weepy Wife and a Secret Annoiting Is Serota Dead in the Water?: the Ofili Scandal at the Tate Playlsts: What We're Listening to This Week Albert, Engel, Ford and Davies Historians Against the War The Two Questions the Senate Should Have Asked Alito The Singular Story of the Cuban Five Prisoners in Their Own Land: 800,000 Palestinians Sealed Off by IDF in West Bank Airline Workers Fight Back Alito and the Democrats Eight Who Dared: a (Short) Congressional Honor Roll Countdown to War with Iran? How the FBI Spied on Edward Said The Unitary Executive: Why the Bush Doctrine Violates the Constitution Command Responsibility: Torture and Legal Accountability Alito Refuses to Answer Fundamental Questions Corporations, Originalism and the Bill of Rights: an Open Letter to Justice Scalia Killing the Big Sky's Golden Goose: Marc Racicot and the Deregulation of Montana Power The Wage Doldrums New Horizons in Space, New Lows in Government I Was Born in a Small Town: the Fate of Rural America Hugh Thompson and My Lai: He Broke Ranks; He Did the Right Thing Nukes in Space NSA Spied on Baltimore Peace Group (And They've Got the Documents That Prove It) The Big Wiretap Schwarzenegger's Hit List: Smearing Mandela, Killing Tookie Snatching at King's Legacy: Mythmaking, Profiteering & Outright Distortions Evo Morales' Sweater Abramoff's Kind of Big Government Politics of Chaos: Gaza's Turmoil in Context MoveOn Surrenders to Hillary "Eating Palestine for Breakfast": the Real Sharon Memoirs of Rummy's Geisha The Post-Sharon Landscape: Three Fingers, No Fist Different Americas Beyond the Ballot: Iraq, Iran and China Playing with Fire: Congress and Executive Power The War Within the Antiwar Movement Sheehan to Sheehan: Cindy Sheehan's Irish Interview Bush's Con Jobs Who is to Blame for the Deaths of the Sudanese Refugees? US Aid to Israel is Out of Hand How the US Press Squelches Bush Impeachment Drive Smoke a Marlboro, Then an Iraqi: How Media War Images Distort Not Inform The Generosity of Credit Card Companies A Poet's Letter on the Occupation How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003? The NYT's Unconscionable Decision to Sit on the NSA Story for a Year AIPAC on Trial: Them or US Racism and Injustice in Alabama's Courts The Dead Miners in Sago The Dying of Ariel Sharon Two Moms Go to Capitol Hill The Rape of Palestine The Sub Motorcycle Diaries: On the Road with the Zapatistas An Interview with Michael Scheuer on the CIA's Rendition Program Inherit the Wind: the Global Spread of GMO Crops Would Ethan Allen Pay to Protest? Images of Real Eco-Terrorism in Twaneh Business as Usual in San Diego Idaho Timber Industry Leader Advocates Violence Against Green's Mom Abramoff Family Values: the Lobbyist Who Screwed Us All Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Albert and Engel Bush Crimes Commission Posada Carriles May Soon Hit the Streets Gary Freeman's Struggle: a Black Radical from the 1960s Fights Extradition to the US Huge Defense Budget, Lousy Equipment A Former NSA Officer on Snoopgate: the Squawkers Should be Congratulated Snoop and Shred Axis of Fanatics: Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad Remembering Harry Magdoff: the Man Who Explained the Empire Big Profits, Buried Lives: Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans New Challenges for the Antiwar Movement Whistling Dixie Yet Again Simple is Dangerous: the Pentagon's Plan for a Manhattan Project on IEDs The Sham of Homeland Security: a West Virginia Parable Stroke of Luck?: Political Hemorrhage in Israel Sharon Meets His Maker What Hillary Clinton Doesn't Know About Palestine Pity the Miner: A-Diggin' My Bones Terror Hits Bangalore Why the War is Sexist How the West Turned: Biting the Hands That Steal The House That George and Jack Built: Ownership Society Meets the Entrepreneurial Style The Fantasy of "Even-Handedness": Blair's Cynical Policy on Palestine Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws? Rat Out a Lobbyist for Jesus Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and 9/11: How Much Did the Bush Administration Know? Iraqi Intellectuals and the Occupation: an Interview with Dr. Saad Jawad Border Walls: the View from Mexico Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran Inside Rafah: Collective Punishment as Normalcy How My Mother Went from a Republican to a Screaming Progressive A Glossary of Dispossession A Gestapo Administration A Trip to the Far Side of Madness A Tour of Europe: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes A NYT Editorial Contemplates Iraq 
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February 17, 2006 Plan Crimson: War on CanadaSecret War Plans and the Malady of American MilitarismBy FLOYD RUDMIN Between the First and Second World Wars--that is, between 1918 and 1939--the United States developed and approved as official national policy three major war plans: a War Plan ORANGE against Japan; a War Plan GREEN against Mexico, and a War Plan RED against the UK. (The most useful source here is R.A. Preston's 1977 book, The Defence of the Undefended Border: Planning for War in North America, 1867-1939.) But there were other war plans as well. Special Plan VIOLET was approved by the Joint Board of the Army and Navy in 1925 for interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean "to forestall action by other countries including the League of Nations." There was a War Plan WHITE initiated in 1920 for suppressing internal insurrection by U.S. citizens, but it was not developed or approved. These war plans were all declassified in 1974 and (can be purchased from the U.S. National Archives. Germany was color-coded black, but there never was a War Plan BLACK. War Plan RED was the largest of the war plans, the most detailed, the most amended, and the most acted upon. The Plan presumed that a war with the UK would begin by U.S. interference in British Commonwealth commercial trade, "although other proximate causes to war may be alleged". The Plan presumed that the British navy would take the Philippines, Guam, Hawai'i, and the Panama Canal. In exchange for these losses, the U.S.A. would invade and conquer Canada. Though ostensibly for war against Britain Plan RED is almost devoid of plans to fight the British. The Plan is focused on the conquest of Canada, which was color-coded CRIMSON. The U.S. Army's mission, written in capital letters, was "ULTIMATELY, TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL OF CRIMSON." The 1924 draft declared that U.S. "intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained... The Dominion government [of Canada] will be abolished." War Plan RED was approved in May 1930 at the Cabinet level by the Secretary of War and Secretary of Navy. It was not a plan of defense. The U.S.A. would start the war, and even should Canada declare neutrality, it was still to be invaded and occupied. In December 1930, the US Naval Attaché in Ottawa made an espionage report to the Joint Board on Canada's lack of readiness for war: "In as much as Canada had no idea of trouble with any other country it was not considered necessary to maintain a proper air force." The U.S. focus on invading Canada accelerated during the 1930s. Even as late as 1939, when World War II was beginning and the free world was mobilizing to fight fascism, Preston describes how the U.S. Army War College and the Naval War College had set as their planning priority the task of coordinating land and sea forces for a project entitled, "Overseas Expeditionary Force to Capture Halifax from Red-Crimson Coalition." For some unexplained reason, The Washington Post and Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, recently decided to report on War Plan RED. Peter Carlson's Dec. 30, 2005, article in The Washington Post was entitled, "Raiding the Ice Box." Shawn McCarthy's Dec. 31, 2005, article in The Globe and Mail was entitled, "They'd take Halifax (then we'd kill Kenny)." Both articles are written with doses of disbelief, derision, and sometimes giggling or guffaws. But War Plan RED is certainly
not news, nor is the re-re-reporting of re-re-discoveries of
War Plan RED. The first news report of the Plan was in 1935,
when secret Congressional budgeting for three camouflaged air
bases for surprise attacks on Canada, at $19,000,000 each, was
mistakenly made public by the government printing office, which
published "Air Defense Bases: Hearings before the Committee
on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, Seventy-Fourth
Congress". This was reported by the New York Times on
its front page and re-reported by the Toronto Globe under
the headline, "U.S. Disavows Airport Yarn". War Plan
RED was re-discovered and re-reported in 1975 by the Reuters
wire service, and the Globe and Mail re-re-reported it.
It was again re-discovered and re-reported as news in 1991 and
again in 2005. History has lessons, but they cannot be learned
by re-re-repeated disbelief or by giggling. The use of poison gas was conceived as an humanitarian action that would cause Canada to quickly surrender and thus save American lives. (Commander Carpender, A. S., & Colonel Krueger, W. (1934), memo to the Joint Board, Oct. 17, 1934, available in U.S. National Archive in documents appended to War Plan RED.) In March 1935, General Douglas MacArthur proposed an amendment making Vancouver a priority target comparable to Halifax and Montreal. This was approved in May 1935, and in October 1935, his son Douglas MacArthur Jr. began his espionage career as vice-consul in Vancouver. In August 1935, the U.S.A. held its then largest ever peace time military maneuvers, with more than 50,000 troops practicing a motorized invasion of Canada, duly reported in the New York Times by its star military reporter, Hanson Baldwin. What is the mentality and line of illogic that leads ranking military professionals, executive cabinet officers, and congressmen to plan and prepare war on an ally and good neighbor? Secret border bases? Surprise attacks? Strategic bombing of populated cities? Immediate first use of poison gas? And at the same time they were planning this for Canada, they failed to plan for war against German fascism, a very great threat to America. Clearly, something was wrong in the thinking of many high-level civilian and military decision makers. These war plans warrant proper study, not dismissive derision, if America is ever to understand and control its military impulses. For example, War Plan GREEN, for the invasion of Mexico, looks like a mirror image of America's current invasion plan for Iraq. Here are some direct quotations from the Mexican War Plan approved by Secretary of War in August 1919.
Some further direct quotes from the 1927 draft of War Plan GREEN:
Replace the word "Mexico" with "Iraq" and change the corresponding city names, and this war plan will read like America's current military strategy in Iraq:
The current U.S. plan for the invasion, occupation, and continuing control of Iraq is not new. It is almost 100 years old. Thus, the core of the militarism that is endangering America and driving us into bankruptcy, disdain, and dishonor is not new. The fundamental causes of the Iraq war cannot be found in contemporary geopolitics nor in the personalities of the Bush administration, as so many critics of the war think. There is something wrong at a much deeper level in American political culture. The American malady of militarism extends across decades, across generations, and is so deeply rooted in the American mind that attacking another nation seems to be the natural, spontaneous reaction of choice. In fact, the U.S.A. is the least threatened nation on the planet. Its geographic, demographic, and economic size, and its location, give it far greater security than Russia, or Holland, or Hungary, or France, or Finland, or Iraq, or Iran. These nations are easily attacked from several sides, and in modern history have been thus attacked. These nations have reason to be fearful, but in fact are less fearful than is America. Certainly it is impossible for foreign forces to invade and occupy the U.S.A. even should the U.S. have the most minimal defenses. But Americans feel more threatened than most other people on the planet. The U.S. military budget now exceeds that of all other nations combined. The U.S.A. is now the only nation with two defense departments; one to defend the homeland and one to....to do what? To project "defense" of America outside of our borders into other nations? That is normally called "aggression". Projection may be the key to marketing military projects in America. These may begin as "realpolitik" projects: schemes to take economic resources, for example, to increase trade or to control oil. Then we imagine that others are planning to do to us what we know we are planning to do to them, like the "Golden Rule" in reverse. It is classic psychopathic projection. And we feel fear. We believe we are realistic and rational because our plans and our actions fit the fear we have imagined. That is normally called "neurosis" or "insanity". We get into a feed-forward loop of our own belligerent plans projected into others, imagined to have similar belligerent plans against us, causing fear which further justifies our original belligerence. Thus we enter an accelerating cycle of belligerence and fear; each feeding the other and turning "aggression" into "defense". We imagined that Nicaragua's Sandinistas would invade Texas. We imagined that a socialist government in Grenada would destabilize the Western Hemisphere. We imagined that Iraq would put nuclear bombs into New York subways. These are all comic claims, but many in America did not laugh. Instead, we attacked these nations. In the mistakenly published 1935 testimony to Congress about the need for new air bases to attack Canada, a military expert explained that Canada has thousands of lakes, and each of these is a potential float-plane base. He asked the congressmen to imagine the fearful vision of the sky filled with bush-pilot float planes flying down from Canadian forests to bomb Boston and Baltimore:
No one in the hearings laughed
at this. Instead, Congressman Wilcox complemented the speaker,
Captain H. L. George, as "a mighty good teacher" and
Congressman Hill said, "Captain, you made what to my mind
is a very interesting, clear, and lucid statement." No one
asked Captain George how he knew with such certainty that Canada
or Britain had located and targeted U.S. railroad bridges, oil
refineries, power plants and water systems. In fact, the U.S.A.
had located and targeted such facilities in Canada as part of
War Plan RED. We imagine that others are planning to do to us
what we know we are planning to do to them. Projected military
imagination causes paranoia. Perhaps the malady of American militarism can be understood, diagnosed, and eventually curbed or cured. Perhaps an international coalition of social scientists willing to focus their full attention on the history and the social and mental processes of American militarism can begin to understand how it is rooted in our psyche and political culture. Such a coalition should include historians, psychologists, psychiatrists, military strategists, and cultural anthropologists. Considering the large numbers of innocent people we Americans kill when we act on our militarized imagination, considering the immense amount of money we waste building weapons and attacking other nations because our own imagination frightens us, it should be a national priority to understand what is happening, why we act as we do, and how we might stop doing it. Collective neurosis is hard to notice in contemporary contexts. There are few reference points for normality by which to see that our fears are unfounded. But in historical retrospect, it is easy to see how neurotic we were in our projected paranoia, and how wrong. America's historical war plans offer a rare opportunity for insight into the militarization of the American mind. We should take a look inside and try to learn. Floyd Rudmin teaches in the Psychology Dept. University
of Troms, Norway. He can be reached at frudmin@psyk.uit.no
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.            |
