Columnist – John Sammon The 10-year anniversary of 9-11 will include memorializing and flag-waving on television networks under the motto “We Won’t Forget,” but will not include any mention of our attack on Iraq in a false attempt to link that country to 9-11.
We choose to forget that part.
No mention will be made of the approximate million Iraqis killed in a war started by George Bush and Dick Cheney, who lied us into a war by claiming that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11. Bush later openly admitted they weren’t.
He has never faced justice for these deceptions.
Apparently, what Americans choose to remember in the 9-11 tragedy through the media is selective.
The fanatics who did 9-11, mostly Saudi Arabians, came from a country with which we have the friendliest of relations. Let’s say for argument’s sake these nuts attacked us and will do so in the future for no other reason than they don’t like us because we are primarily a Christian country.
That still doesn’t change the fact that we attacked Iraq because we didn’t like its leader, and killed a million people not to mention the lives of U.S. soldiers lost because we falsely tried to tie Iraq to 9-11. The perpetrators of this misdeed remain unpunished, even glorified.
The observances of 9-11 will also include no objective assessment of our role in the Middle East in past history, and how it has helped to de-stabilize the region and give impetus to extremists. Let me give some specific examples of the history Americans choose to forget, or are totally unaware of.
Let’s take Iran. The United State backed the former Shah of Iran, a brutal dictator who had secret police forces imprisoning and murdering Iranians. Backing by the U.S. fueled hatred of the U.S. in that country and gave unwitting help to extremists under the Ayatollah Khomeini, which led to the taking of American hostages at the embassy there and the current hostile, authoritarian regime.
Our behavior in the Middle East has been less than wise.
How about Egypt? We supported Hosni Mubarak, a ruthless dictator now facing court trial, virtually right up until the time he was overthrown by a popular people’s street movement.
What about Saddam? We supplied equipped and encouraged him guaranteeing him we wouldn’t let him lose a war with Iran. Former Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld posed for a famous picture shaking Saddam’s hand in his palace.
We choose to forget that.
We gave at least voiced support to rebel units fighting the Russians in Afghanistan during the last of the Cold War who later became the Taliban.
We choose to forget that too.
The list goes on and on.
Bush and Cheney approved the torture of prisoners and threw out the rules of the Geneva Convention, instituted a gulag of camps in which prisoners had no recourse to an attorney, and instituted illegal wiretap spying on American citizens that violated The Bill of Rights under the guise of making us safer and which was ludicrously and perversely called “The Patriot Act.”
We’ll also forget that.
Rather than acting as a peace broker in the Middle East, which occasionally we have, for example, the attempted Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, we have pretty much given Israel a blank check to do whatever it wanted. This included pushing Palestinians out of ancestral homelands and building settlements which has heightened tensions.
Our memorializing of 9-11 will not include an overall objective assessment of this history as a whole. The idea conveyed will be that the U.S., innocent of ever doing anything unwise, was picked on for no reason by evil people.
There is some truth to this. But that is a stilted viewpoint.
What terrorists did on 9-11 is evil. They are fanatics. The heroism of responders to the tragedy and the loss and sacrifice should be remembered and honored.
But to selectively choose to remember only what we want to or to “cherry pick” history so that a one-sided viewpoint (good guys versus evil fanatics) is presented does no one any good. History is not a vacuum, or wearing blinders, but a long catalog of events, often decisions errantly made.
Our history of involvement in the Middle East has not always been wise. That will not be discussed during the remembrances of 9-11. This website, Politicalarticles.net, allows me to say this. Other websites will not and would censor what you are reading here because they are afraid or angry with ideas with which they don’t agree.
There is nothing unpatriotic about the truth, or criticizing the government of this country for its past mistakes in a volatile region. It is not unpatriotic to disagree in a so-called “Free” country.
Think of it, the United States, the most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, has not in 10 years been able to decisively defeat a group of ragged vagabond hit-and-run insurgents some of whom don’t even have shoes on their feet.
The United States, the country instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and which outspent the Soviet Union into ruin during the Cold War arms race, now takes on two pigmy countries so backward some of their citizens still ride camels and live in mud huts.
The United States, the modern Roman Empire.
It just makes you proud.
The war that we entered into under false pretenses, weapons of mass destruction that weren’t, to a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq that wasn’t. In fact, al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until we blundered them there by starting the war.
Americans, some of them, like to say, “they started it, they attacked us” (meaning9-11). But when they say “they,” they can’t mean Iraq. Even Bush finally admitted it. And it wasn’t directly the Taliban, though they provided safe havens for the conspirators, who were in fact mostly Saudis.
Now, none-other than Leon Panetta, the new defense secretary, says we’re going to focus on al-Qaeda and less on fighting Iraqis and Afghans. If the original focus wasn’t the right one, then we must have been wrong. That’s their sly way of admitting they were wrong, without admitting it.
Too bad for a million dead Iraqis caught in the crossfire, but like senators in the old Roman Empire would have rationalized, mistakes have to happen. Or to quote Stalin, when you chop down a tree, splinters fly. Of course, it’s tough to be a splinter.
John Pilger’s ‘The War You Don’t See’ — Atrocities & War Crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan
The media obediently went along with all this and for good measure avoided showing American servicemen coming home in caskets to complete the deception. To their everlasting shame the media network sycophants sucked up to the drumbeat flag waving and failed in their patriotic duty to ask tough questions of officials and hold them accountable.
It just makes you proud.
Panetta added that the new focus will no longer be on surging around impoverished countries with a huge army and using overwhelming high-tech military force. He said instead we would defeat al-Qaeda, but he didn’t specify (they never do) what exactly he meant by defeat. Does that mean there will no longer be any members of the terror organization walking free on the loose? They’re all in jail or dead?
Does that mean al-Qaeda representatives will sign a formal surrender document?
Most reasonably sane people would agree there isn’t much likelihood of either of those scenarios happening. The American people who are paying for it have a right to know what exactly we’re trying to do.
What is meant by defeat? We don’t know. Neither apparently does Panetta. Nobody knows.
The American people don’t care. Like the media.
It just makes you proud.
Nobody will ask Penetta what he means by defeat, no one will ask him to be more specific. That’s because it’s not a war of specifics. It’s a war of allusions, a war of spoken asides, vague assurances casually given and forgotten and never clarified, of alleged progress made, of ground occupied, of the some-day hoped-for ability of the regimes we set up in power to survive.
It’s all vague.
In the meantime, the war goes on, a war between the most powerful country in the history of the world, the richest, and a ragtag group of insurgents in one of the poorest regions of the earth. This is a war that’s not really a war beyond ideologies because there are no front lines or capital cities to capture and the other side doesn’t really have a uniformed army with the equipment of a formal army.
Like a train that runs down a track driverless of its own accord, the pseudo war seems to have a life of its own. The American people don’t demand of their so-called leaders explanations about what we’re trying to do in these countries. Nobody knows. We don’t ask and they don’t tell.
Instead they make vague asides, like Penetta did, using the word “defeat.” What constitutes defeat? We don’t know. Obama used the word “progress.” Exactly what progress have we made? We don’t really know, and you yourself don’t know because you can’t explain it, and if you did know, you could.
Don’t say it’s killing Bin Laden. That’s too simple and doesn’t account for a million Iraqis killed.
It’s a war of shadows with real dead, but also references too vague to allow for the sunlight of reason, like the runway train, with no one in charge, going down the track. We watch it go by and hope things will work out.
This war is a war not only to defeat them in a way our government doesn’t know and can’t explain, it’s as much a war to reassure you, and keep you compliant. They use the word “withdraw,” they say they’ll “withdraw” troops. They pull out 10,000, but leave 50,000. New troops take their places. Over time, you forget about the promise, that really wasn’t a promise meant to be kept at all, but an offhand, sort of easily discarded cheerful-positive-sounding not-really-serious half-believed subterfuge.
Even now they’re asking the Iraqis and Afghans if we should stay.
Nobody cares. Nobody asks. The bureaucrats just keep getting away with it because it’s the kind of war where you can not care and unless somebody you personally know is killed, you ignore it and go about your everyday business.
This war and the lead-up to it represent the Watergate that wasn’t investigated, the Vietnam that wasn’t protested.
It’s not your business. You didn’t make it your business.
By early 1950s, based on the level of economic development and geopolitical alignment, the World was divided into three Worlds: The First World, the industrialised, capitalist, countries of North America, western Europe, Japan and Australia under the United States’ sphere of political influence; the Second World, the former Soviet Union, the socialist counties of Eastern Europe, and China; and the Third World, Africa, Latin America and the rest of Asia and Middle East. For about 4 decades until 1991 the first two worlds had engaged in Cold War with military tensions, arms race, proxy wars, and economic and technological competitions. The Third World was mostly a battle ground for proxy wars between the first two worlds.
This global politico ? economic order was fundamentally altered following the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe that overthrew socialist governments and forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself and the creation of 15 independent states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Following this, socialism also collapsed in less developed countries of Ethiopia, Cambodia and Mongolia.
With the end of the Second World, the concepts of the First and the Third Worlds became irrelevant. At present the world can be categorised into three economic zones: a) Advanced, industrialised countries (which includes all of the former First world countries); b) Emerging Market Economies,(rapidly expanding economies of China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Argentina ,Mexico, South Korea, and Indonesia); and c) Lesser-developed countries mostly in Africa and also in Asia and Latin America.
The next three decades will see major changes in world economic order with emerging markets poised to take over as global economic leaders. The following sections of this brief article investigate the trends in global labour and total factor productivity as engines driving rapid changes in global economic order.
2. Global output growth during the past 60 years
In 1950 the total GDP of India converted at Geary Khamis (GK) [1] PPPs in 1990 US dollar prices was US$ 222 billion, bigger than that of Japan (US $ 160.9 billion), France (US$220 billion), West Germany (US213.9 billion) and China (US$198.6 billion) all at constant 1990 prices. In terms of the size of total output, six decades ago, India was the third largest economy in the World after USA with total GDP at Geary Khamis PPP of US$ 1,455 billion, and United kingdom with total GDP of US $ 347.8 billion (of course excluding the former USSR with the total GDP of over US$ 510 billion) all at the 1990 prices.
During the next three decades the global economy expanded remarkably but at different paces in different major economies. By 1980 India’s total GDP nearly tripled to over US$ 637 billion while that of China grew more than four times to US$805.8 billion. During the same period, the total GDP of Japan grew almost ten times to over US$1,568 billion.
On the other hand, the total output of United States grew only three times to about US$4230 billion over the same period while the UK total output only doubled during the three decades between 1950 and 1980. Western Germany’s total output expanded by nearly four and one half times to US$946 billion while French total output expanded only three and one half times during the same period.
In fact, Japan’s total output exceeded that of each of India and China within a decade and one half after WWII while it exceeded that of each of UK and West Germany by mid 1960s. Therefore, by late 1960s Japan and West Germany emerged as the second and third world economic powers respectively after the United Sates.
However, growth trends for the next three decades ending in 2009 decelerated for most advanced economies. At the 1990 constant PPP prices, the US total output expanded only slightly more than 2 times at the end of 2009 from its 1980 level while that of Japan expanded only by 1.7 times for the same period. Similarly, total output in UK, Germany, and France expanded by less than 2 times during this period.
On the other hand, Chinese total output expanded nearly 11 times while that of India expanded five and one half times during the 1980-2009 period. Clearly, the growth moment started to decline in advanced economies since the early 1980s while it started to pick up in the current emerging market economies such as India, China, Brazil and later the Russian federation.
Based on the Geary Khamis PPPs at 1990 constant prices, in January 2010, China and India have become the second and third largest economies in the world respectively after the United States while Russia and Brazil are catching up with the UK and France. Japan and Germany are fourth and fifth largest economies in the world respectively.
Such rapid growth in some emerging market economies since the 1980s is attributed primarily to continuous improvements in labour and total factor productivity.
3. Labour and total factor productivity
The expansion of total output at any given point in time is strongly positively associated with the growth in labour and total factor productivity. For instance, the total output per person employed in the United States grew 1.7 times during the 1950-1980 period but only 1.5 times during the 1980-2009 period. Output per person employed expanded 3 times in France during 1950-1980 but only about 1.5 times during the 1980-2009 period while in UK there was no major difference in growth of output per employed person during the two periods.. In Japan output per employed person expanded six times during the 1950-80 period but only 1.6 times during the slow growth periods of 1980-2009. Thus, the rapid expansion in total output in advanced economies during the 1950-1980 period was directly linked with the rapid expansion in contribution of labour.
Then opposite is true for most emerging market economies. The, total output per employed person grew only by about 1.6 times in China during 1950-1980 but rapidly accelerated during the 1980-2009 period to about seven times. In India output per employed persons expanded only 1.3 times during the 1950-1980 period but it expanded 3 times during the 1980-2009 period. Thus the first three decades following the end of WWII, saw rapid growth in labour productivity in advanced economies while the past three decades since 1980 saw a sharp decline in labour productivity. This was accompanies by rapid growth in labour productivity in emerging market economies during the past three decades.
In spite of rapid growth in labour productivity in emerging market economies during the past three decades, in absolute terms, labour productivity in these economies is still lower than those of the advanced economies. The United States is still a world leader in total output/labour ratio. The GDP per persons employed in the United States in 2009 is the highest in the world, at about GK $ 66000 followed by Ireland GK$55000, Luxemburg GK$52000 and Norway GK$51000 all at the 1990 constant GK dollars.
Among the BRICs Russia leads in output per person employed in 2009 at about GK$18000 followed by Brazil, GK $ 13000 and China GK $ 11000 and India GK$ 7000, at 1990 constant GK dollars.
Labour productivity performance is critical for economic growth but its effect is usually short term. . The long term economic performance depends on total factor productivity (TFP) which reflects a country’s ability to use a broad range of skills, including its public policies and infrastructural development to improve living standards [2]. The TFP growth accounts for the changes in output not caused by changes in inputs. Its growth represents the effect of technological change, efficiency improvements, and our inability to measure the contribution of all other inputs. It is estimated as the residual by subtracting the sum of two-period average compensation share weighted input growth rates from the output growth rate as log differences of level which are known as Tornqvist indexes[1].
Rich countries are facing an increasing challenge from emerging economies not only in terms of labour productivity bus also in terms of total factor productivity .The growth in total factor productivity in most advanced economies between 1982 and 2008 measured as percent of Tornqvist index was mostly negative and marginal. For instance, between 1982 and 2008 total factor productivity in the United States grew only by 0.35 percent per year on average while in Japan it grew only by about 0.18 percent per year on average.
On the other hand, TFP grew much higher in emerging market economies. For instance, TFP grew by about 1.98 percent per year on average in China, and 0.87 percent in India for the period 1982- 2008 and by over 4 percent in Russia for the period 1995 – 2008.
It can be argued therefore that the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing Great recession were not merely the result of short term bad bank behaviour, but the result of long term decline in total factor productivity in developed economies. Most of the developed economies have shown persistent trend of decline over the past thirty years while emerging economies have shown persistent sign of improvement in productivity and economic growth. The economic resilience of the emerging market economies during the 2008-2009 Great recession is the proof of their long term economic rigour.
4. The changing global economic order
Economist are predicting that during the next there decades the world economic order will change drastically and that China will take over United States as the world economic superpower. Robert Fogel [3], the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, argues that in 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. He states further that China’s per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. Fogel forecasts further that although China will not overtake the United States in per capita wealth, its share of global GDP of 40 percent will be more than 3 times that of USA and more than 8 times that of the European Union after three decades.
The basic factors contributing to China’s faster economic expansion are: enormous investment in education leading to rapid increases in productivity; the continued role of the massive rural sector; currently underestimated economic progress; locally driven reforms and more open criticism than most think; and rapidly expanding consumerism tendencies [3].
The main factors for the relative decline of the European union will be declining fertility and consumer restraints.
However, not everyone shares such optimistic view about China’s economic future. Gordon Chang [4] argues that China will not achieve such massive expansion during the coming three decades. He argues that although China is making record investment in education, its education remains inappropriate for modern society. He further stresses that although China still has cheap labour, there is generally accepted projection that its labour force will level off in a half decade and then shrink.
Chang argues further that in spite of Fogel’s observations, Chinese communist party tolerates less criticism today than it did two decades ago and that economic reforms have stalled because China has progressed as far as it can within the existing political framework. He reiterates that a true market economy requires a rule of law, which in turn requires institutional curbs on government.
Chang rejects Fogel’s view on the role of consumer spending in China. He argues that historically, private consumption in China contributed about 60% of economic output; today it accounts for about 30% as the bulk of growth is driven by government’s massive investment on infrastructure. Change observes further that as much as Europe faces demographic challenges so does China; Chinese statistics show that the country’s birthrate fell 42 percent from 1990 to 2007, and government projections suggest that by 2025, nearly a quarter of China’s population will have celebrated its 60th birthday.
Finally, Chang states that China’s 1.4 trillion people will not earn a per capita income of US$85000 in 2040 for the main reason that the Earth cannot sustain such rapid growth, a clear reminder about China’s responsibility to curb carbon emissions to a sustainable level.
However, only time will tell whether Fogel or Chang will have accurately predicted the future state of the Chinese economy and hence the emergent global economic order.
Media Matters: Sean Hannity deceptively cropped President Obama’s answer to a question about the Cold War to suggest that Obama did not acknowledge the actions of past U.S. presidents in freeing Eastern Europe. [ READ MORE ] [ READ MORE (2) ]
First, I find it despicable for a high-school graduate (Hannity) to be telling a Harvard educated constitutional lawyer — to “HIT THE BOOKS!” [ Hannity graduated in 1980 from St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary high school, located in Uniondale, New York. Hannity dropped out of New York University and Adelphi University. Source: WikiPedia ]
He (Hannity) wanted so desperately for President Obama to mention Ronald Reagan — A SERIAL LIAR who was at the right place at the right time: The Soviet Union was going down with or without Reagan. He (Reagan) did not cause the breakup of the Soviet Union — although we must acknowledge that he played a leading role as the leader of the Soviet Union’s chief adversary — The United States.
And we shouldn’t forget that this man Ronald Reagan, was “sinking into senility” years before he left office.
The Ronald Reagan MYTH is the greatest PR SWINDLE of the our age. Republicans have sold Reagan over the years as the iconic American leader — the LITMUS TEST for measuring other modern presidents. I dis-agree.
Some say he was just as incompetent as George W. Bush, and was only lucky that nothing as catastrophic as 9/11 happened during his tenure — to expose his insanity and criminality.
Reagan was every bit as criminal as is George W. Bush.
Hundreds of thousands of central Americans perished due to Ronald Reagan’s criminal policies. In fact, it is Ronald Reagan who empowered Osama Bin Laden, funding his terrorist army to displace the Russians from Afghanistan.
As is usual with imperialist America, once the mighty “Muhjadeen” had completed their task of throwing out the Soviets, Reagan and his crooks quickly abandoned them and they became the present Taliban and Al Qaeda — primed and very ready to kill Americans.
Reagan was a “showman,” and a very good one, but also a cold-hearted racist — who supported the vicious Apartheid regime in South Africa — an “Immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian” act, per South African Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu.
“The Ronald Reagan who won the cold war, cut taxes, shrank the government, saved the economy, and was the most beloved president since FDR is a myth,” author Will Bunch says….”The truculent jingoist of the myth was concocted after Alzheimer’s silenced the man and the would-be juggernaut launched by the GOP’s 1994 election triumph crashed and burned before a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) who shrank government and the deficit, balanced the budget, and even racked up surpluses,” he adds.
In his book – Tear Down This MYTH, Bunch names the leading, venal mythmakers and shames the myth exploiters, too. Anyone interested in the TRUTH about “Mythical Reagan,” should read this book.
While Reagan may have not been entirely aware of what he was doing (he was sinking into SENILITY during his second term) and how his decisions would impact the world, he was also much more sinister than the media has portrayed him.
Remembering The 1980s: The Press Slept While A SENILE Ronald Reagan Rambled — Some Americans may not remember the era when Teflon news coverage was afforded to a president who fell asleep at White House meetings and didn’t recognize members of his Cabinet. Untethered by cue cards or teleprompter, he could ramble off into dark fogs of gibberish. In October 1987, in his first press conference in seven months, here’s how President Reagan answered a question about whether taxes should be increased:“The problem is the deficit is — or should I say — wait a minute, the spending, I should say, of gross national product, forgive me — the spending is roughly 23 to 24 per cent. So that it is in — it what is increasing while the revenues are staying proportionately the same and what would be the proper amount they should, that we should be taking from the private sector.” With Reagan, relevant questions about his mental competence weren’t even raised– and a President being asleep at the wheel should be as newsworthy as a President sleeping around (Clinton). [ READ MORE ]
—————————————————————————————————————————————— Other Republican THUG GOONS Were Out in Full Force Peddling FALSEHOODS, RACISM and INNUENDO — on Wednesday:
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After just four months, media figures ignore economists to declare stimulus a failure
Right-Wing media THUGS have used a recent comment by Vice President Biden — that the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” — to suggest that the economic recovery package is a complete failure, rather than noting the assessment by economists then and now that the legislation does not go far enough and that further stimulus spending may be necessary. [ READ MORE ]
Kilmeade: Americans don’t have “pure genes” like Swedes because “we keep marrying other species and other ethnics”
Fox’s Napolitano refers to stimulus bills as “bailouts”
Tammy Bruce wants president who “punishes” NYT “when they reveal state secrets. Look, we killed people … for giving secrets”
“Illegel Brit Immigrant” Steyn downplays health crisis, discusses “Al Gore version of Stalinism” and how genocide did “wonders for Bosnian longevity”
“Worst Person in the World” — Republican State Senator, Sylvia Allen, of Arizona believes that the earth is 6,000 years old.
There’s been talk that George W. Bush was so inept that he should trademark the phrase “Worst President Ever,” though some historians would bestow that title on pre-Civil War President James Buchanan. Still, a case could be made for putting Ronald Reagan in the competition. History will some day elaborate on how Reagan’s presidency inflicted perhaps more grievous harm on the American Republic and the American people, than Bush did.
By Robert Parry
Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.
But there’s a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan’s presidency. There’s also a grudging reassessment that the “failed” presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country.
Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges of America’s oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation – all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten America’s future.
Nixon helped create the Environmental Protection Agency; he imposed energy-conservation measures; he opened the diplomatic door to communist China. Nixon’s administration also detected the growing weakness in the Soviet Union and advocated a policy of détente (a plan for bringing the Cold War to an end or at least curbing its most dangerous excesses).
After Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal, Ford continued many of Nixon’s policies, particularly trying to wind down the Cold War with Moscow. However, confronting a rebellion from Reagan’s Republican Right in 1976, Ford abandoned “détente.”
Ford also let hard-line Cold Warriors (and a first wave of young intellectuals who became known as neoconservatives) pressure the CIA’s analytical division, and he brought in a new generation of hard-liners, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
After defeating Ford in 1976, Carter injected more respect for human rights into U.S. foreign policy, a move some scholars believe put an important nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union, leaving it hard-pressed to justify the repressive internal practices of the East Bloc. Carter also emphasized the need to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, especially in unstable countries like Pakistan.
Domestically, Carter pushed a comprehensive energy policy and warned Americans that their growing dependence on foreign oil represented a national security threat, what he famously called “the moral equivalent of war.”
However, powerful vested interests – both domestic and foreign – managed to exploit the shortcomings of these three presidents to sabotage any sustained progress. By 1980, Reagan had become a pied piper luring the American people away from the tough choices that Nixon, Ford and Carter had defined.
Cruelty with a Smile
With his superficially sunny disposition – and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments – Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.
In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
When it came to cutting back on America’s energy use, Reagan’s message could be boiled down to the old reggae lyric, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Rather than pressing Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars, Reagan made clear that the auto industry could manufacture gas-guzzlers without much nagging from Washington.
The same with the environment. Reagan intentionally staffed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department with officials who were hostile toward regulation aimed at protecting the environment. George W. Bush didn’t invent Republican hostility toward scientific warnings of environmental calamities; he was just picking up where Reagan left off.
Reagan pushed for deregulation of industries, including banking; he slashed income taxes for the wealthiest Americans in an experiment known as “supply side” economics, which held falsely that cutting rates for the rich would increase revenues and eliminate the federal deficit.
Over the years, “supply side” would evolve into a secular religion for many on the Right, but Reagan’s budget director David Stockman once blurted out the truth, that it would lead to red ink “as far as the eye could see.”
While conceding that some of Reagan’s economic plans did not work out as intended, his defenders – including many mainstream journalists – still argue that Reagan should be hailed as a great President because he “won the Cold War,” a short-hand phrase that they like to attach to his historical biography.
However, a strong case can be made that the Cold War was won well before Reagan arrived in the White House. Indeed, in the 1970s, it was a common perception in the U.S. intelligence community that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was winding down, in large part because the Soviet economic model had failed in the technological race with the West.
That was the view of many Kremlinologists in the CIA’s analytical division. Also, I was told by a senior CIA’s operations official that some of the CIA’s best spies inside the Soviet hierarchy supported the view that the Soviet Union was headed toward collapse, not surging toward world supremacy, as Reagan and his foreign policy team insisted in the early 1980s.
The CIA analysis was the basis for the détente that was launched by Nixon and Ford, essentially seeking a negotiated solution to the most dangerous remaining aspects of the Cold War.
The Afghan Debacle
In that view, Soviet military operations, including sending troops into Afghanistan in 1979, were mostly defensive in nature. In Afghanistan, the Soviets hoped to prop up a pro-communist government that was seeking to modernize the country but was beset by opposition from Islamic fundamentalists who were getting covert support from the U.S. government.
Though the Afghan covert operation originated with Cold Warriors in the Carter administration, especially national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the war was dramatically ramped up under Reagan, who traded U.S. acquiescence toward Pakistan’s nuclear bomb for its help in shipping sophisticated weapons to the Afghan jihadists (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden).
While Reagan’s acolytes cite the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as decisive in “winning the Cold War,” the counter-argument is that Moscow was already in disarray – and while failure in Afghanistan may have sped the Soviet Union’s final collapse – it also created twin dangers for the future of the world: the rise of al-Qaeda terrorism and the nuclear bomb in the hands of Pakistan’s unstable Islamic Republic.
Trade-offs elsewhere in the world also damaged long-term U.S. interests. In Latin America, for instance, Reagan’s brutal strategy of arming right-wing militaries to crush peasant, student and labor uprisings left the region with a legacy of anti-Americanism that is now resurfacing in the emergence of populist leftist governments.
In Nicaragua, for instance, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega (whom Reagan once denounced as a “dictator in designer glasses“) is now back in power. In El Salvador, the leftist FMLN won the latest elections. Indeed, across the region, hostility to Washington is now the rule, creating openings for China, Iran, Cuba and other American rivals.
In the early 1980s, Reagan also credentialed a young generation of neocon intellectuals, who pioneered a concept called “perception management,” the shaping of how Americans saw, understood and were frightened by threats from abroad.
Many honest reporters saw their careers damaged when they resisted the lies and distortions of the Reagan administration. Likewise, U.S. intelligence analysts were purged when they refused to bend to the propaganda demands from above.
To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable critics, they were un-American defeatists or – in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable attack line – they would “blame America first.”
Under Reagan, a right-wing infrastructure also took shape, linking media outlets (magazines, newspapers, books, etc.) with well-financed think tanks that churned out endless op-eds and research papers. Plus, there were attack groups that went after mainstream journalists who dared disclose information that poked holes in Reagan’s propaganda themes.
In effect, Reagan’s team created a faux reality for the American public. Civil wars in Central America between impoverished peasants and wealthy oligarchs became East-West showdowns. U.S.-backed insurgents in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan were transformed from corrupt, brutal (often drug-tainted) thugs into noble “freedom-fighters.”
With the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan also revived Richard Nixon’s theory of an imperial presidency that could ignore the nation’s laws and evade accountability through criminal cover-ups. That behavior also would rear its head again in the war crimes of George W. Bush. [For details on Reagan's abuses, see Robert Parry's Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege.]
Wall Street Greed
The American Dream also dimmed during Reagan’s tenure.
While he played the role of the nation’s kindly grandfather, his operatives divided the American people, using “wedge issues” to deepen grievances especially of white men who were encouraged to see themselves as victims of “reverse discrimination” and “political correctness.”
Yet even as working-class white men were rallying to the Republican banner (as so-called “Reagan Democrats”), their economic interests were being savaged. Unions were broken and marginalized; “free trade” policies shipped manufacturing jobs abroad; old neighborhoods were decaying; drug use among the young was soaring.
Meanwhile, unprecedented greed was unleashed on Wall Street, fraying old-fashioned bonds between company owners and employees.
Before Reagan, corporate CEOs earned less than 50 times the salary of an average worker. By the end of the Reagan-Bush-I administrations in 1993, the average CEO salary was more than 100 times that of a typical worker. (At the end of the Bush-II administration, that CEO-salary figure was more than 250 times that of an average worker.)
Many other trends set during the Reagan era continued to corrode the U.S. political process in the years after Reagan left office. After 9/11, for instance, the neocons reemerged as a dominant force, reprising their “perception management” tactics, depicting the “war on terror” – like the last days of the Cold War – as a terrifying conflict between good and evil.
The hyping of the Islamic threat mirrored the neocons’ exaggerated depiction of the Soviet menace in the 1980s – and again the propaganda strategy worked. Many Americans let their emotions run wild, from the hunger for revenge after 9/11 to the war fever over invading Iraq.
Arguably, the descent into this dark fantasyland – that Ronald Reagan began in the early 1980s – reached its nadir in the flag-waving early days of the Iraq War. Only gradually did reality begin to reassert itself as the death toll mounted in Iraq and the Katrina disaster reminded Americans why they needed an effective government.
Still, the disasters – set in motion by Ronald Reagan – continued to roll in. Bush’s Reagan-esque tax cuts for the rich blew another huge hole in the federal budget and the Reagan-esque anti-regulatory fervor led to a massive financial meltdown that threw the nation into economic chaos.
Love Reagan; Hate Bush
Ironically, George W. Bush has come in for savage criticism, but the Republican leader who inspired Bush’s presidency – Ronald Reagan – remained an honored figure, his name attached to scores of national landmarks including Washington’s National Airport.
Even leading Democrats genuflect to Reagan. Early in Campaign 2008, when Barack Obama was positioning himself as a bipartisan political figure who could appeal to Republicans, he bowed to the Reagan mystique, hailing the GOP icon as a leader who “changed the trajectory of America.”
Though Obama’s chief point was that Reagan in 1980 “put us on a fundamentally different path” – a point which may be historically undeniable – Obama went further, justifying Reagan’s course correction because of “all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability.”
While Obama later clarified his point to say he didn’t mean to endorse Reagan’s conservative policies, Obama seemed to suggest that Reagan’s 1980 election administered a needed dose of accountability to the United States when Reagan actually did the opposite. Reagan’s presidency represented a dangerous escape from accountability – and reality.
Still, Obama and congressional Democrats continue to pander to the Reagan myth. On Tuesday, as the nation approached the fifth anniversary of Reagan’s death, Obama welcomed Nancy Reagan to the White House and signed a law creating a panel to plan and carry out events to honor Reagan’s 100th birthday in 2011.
Obama hailed the right-wing icon. “President Reagan helped as much as any President to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that transcended politics — that transcended even the most heated arguments of the day,” Obama said. [For more on Obama's earlier pandering about Reagan, see Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan."]
It’s a sure thing that the Reagan Centennial Committee won’t do much more than add to the hagiography surrounding the 40th President.
Despite the grievous harm that Reagan’s presidency inflicted on the American Republic and the American people, it may take many more years before a historian has the guts to put this deformed era into a truthful perspective and rate Reagan where he belongs — near the bottom of the presidential list.
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The 10-year anniversary of 9-11 will include memorializing and flag-waving on television networks under the motto “We Won’t Forget,” but will not include any mention of our attack on Iraq in a false attempt to link that country to 9-11.
