@@ A good introduction to monsters - for people with brain only! @@
Arash
July 14, 2005
The Politics of 'Creative Destruction'
By Chris Moore
International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff recently reported
(http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_04/article2.html) that the Bush
administration's new Bureau of Reconstruction and Stabilization, a State
Department subgroup, has been tasked to prepare for a frighteningly
expansive future of warfare.
"The bureau has 25 countries under surveillance as possible candidates
for Defense Department deconstruction and State Department
reconstruction", writes William Pfaff. "The bureau's director is
recruiting 'rapid-reaction forces' of official, non-governmental, and
corporate business specialists. He hopes to develop the capacity for
three full-scale, simultaneous reconstruction operations in different
countries".
Pfaff notes that this ambitious undertaking "occurs at the same time
American military forces still are unable to pacify Iraq or Afghanistan,
agricultural societies of less than 25 million people each, both largely
in ruins."
By the September end of the federal government's fiscal year, the U.S.
will have spent some $350 billion on the wars in those countries and on
other "anti-terrorist" activities around the globe since 9/11
(http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=7927).
But the massive spending hasn't ended there. According to the Cato
Institute's Veronique de Rugy
(http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-087es.html):
"Total federal outlays will rise 29% between fiscal years 2001 and
2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in
February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002,
2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the
last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of
the government's return to massive budget deficits.
"Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on
terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense
spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. … Congress has failed to
contain the administration's overspending and has added new spending of
its own".
And this at a time when America is already burdened with a national debt
of $7.8 trillion (http://www.federalbudget.com).
In March, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan took a look at the
government's spending habits in conjunction with its current and future
financial obligations and warned that the "large deficits will result in
rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment
deficits in future years". His startling conclusion? "These projections
make clear that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path…".
U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas puts it another way
(http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2004/tst102504.htm):
"Debt destroys U.S. sovereignty, because the American economy now
depends on the actions of foreign governments. While we brag about our
role as world superpower in international affairs, we are in truth the
world's greatest debtor. … Ultimately, debt is slavery".
When it comes to an appetite for demolishing the existing order, whether
militarily or economically, the Bush administration is clearly entering
uncharted territory. But most Americans have thus far assumed that the
decimation is to be wrought entirely abroad. They may, however, want to
rethink those assumptions.
In his 2002 book "The War Against the Terror Masters"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312320434), in a rare
moment of unguarded intellectual honesty, Jewcon guru Michael Ledeen
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/ledeen/ledeen.php) unwittingly let
slip what is probably the best two-word description of the underlying
agenda that has been pursued by the neocons over the last several years
and is ongoing today: "Creative destruction".
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=981
"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society
and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to
science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the
law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and
creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and
shames them for their inability to keep pace. … They must attack us in
order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic
mission."
Given the Bush administration's astoundingly reckless spending habits,
the retrospective knowledge of its eagerness to lie the country into the
Iraq quagmire, and the neocons' enthusiasm for tearing down the old
order – "both within our own society and abroad" – is it possible that
our current bind is the deliberate result of a policy of destruction?
Is it possible that it is not just the Middle East that the Bush
administration, Michael Ledeen, and the other neocons want to destroy in
order to reconstruct, but America as well? But why? Why would our own
leadership want to deliberately put our country into a position of
vulnerability?
In an article for popular libertarian Web site Lew Rockwell
(http://www.lewrockwell.com/manion/manion41.html), Christopher Manion
offers a clue. And as so often in the past, it looks like it may be
crackpot socialist theory that is the driving force behind the neocons'
harebrained, post-9/11 scheme to remake America and the world.
"In the view of the leftist conservatives, the free world –
Christendom – conjured up its historical contradiction (its negation),
revolutionary totalitarianism culminating in the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union has now disintegrated. To the neocon leftist conservative,
this is not sufficient. The 'thesis' – our America of limited
government, a thriving free market, and a virtuous, free people,
respectful of others in the world – must also be negated, destroyed,
just as the Soviet Union was, so that history can move forward – and
inexorably upward. …
"For Hegel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegel) and his Trotskyite
progeny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyite) – the materialist
secular leftists who constitute the neocon leadership – history is 'the
movement of the concept.' The concept matures, conjures up its negation,
and both are then annihilated (the 'negation of the negation') by what
Hegel called the 'Aufhebung,' which means both destruction and lifting
up".
Like many Americans, Christopher Manion entertains doubts about Bush's
intellectual capacity to comprehend the trap into which we are being
led, let alone the inclination to derail the neocon Master Plan:
"George Bush might be sitting at the table, but it is fair to say he
is not theoretically engaged in this enterprise. His habits of mind do
not include the independent prudential powers and analytical tools
necessary to descry the 'second reality' that his chosen circle of
ideologues have created, into which they want to drag America and,
eventually, the rest of the world, kicking and screaming (and dying), if
necessary."
The "second reality" Christopher Manion mentions is a historical
reference to the delusional fantasy often created by ideologues that
their destructive ambitions actually have transcendental qualities. They
construct this fantasy so that they can "settle in comfortably (to
their) web of lies and never have to live in, or even look at, reality
again. This serves the purpose both of self-deception and of mass
deception and manipulation", says Manion.
The acceptance of reality has long been a staple of conservatism.
Remember Ronald Reagan's famous quote: "Facts are stubborn things". But
not for the Bush administration.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind found out as much in a
meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. Recalling the incident in the
October 17, 2004, issue of The New York Times magazine
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ei=5090&en=890a96189e162076&ex=1255665600&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position),
Ron Suskind wrote:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the
reality-based community', which he defined as people who "believe that
solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality'. I
nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and
empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works
anymore', he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously,
as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you
can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do' ".
In effect, the neocons are saying to their duped supporters and anyone
else foolish enough to listen: Don't worry about the reckless spending,
the bloody wars, the imperial overreach and the mounting burden on
Americans. It's all part of the plan. We create history. We create
reality. And we can create a new historical reality where none of that
matters.
Back to Christopher Manion: "Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao made it
clear that bloodthirsty, violent revolutionary conquest could alter the
truth whenever the 'correlation of forces' required".
But "the construction of an 'alternate reality' with a different logic
and different content is required for the successful ideology. Why?
Because reality poses a problem for the power-hungry politician".
The idea that the Bush administration can "create its own reality"
should thus be seen for what it is: pseudo-intellectual cover for what
is obviously a naked power grab in the service of a deeply
anti-conservative cause – the advancement of a "historical imperative"
wherein the country and the world are decimated in order to fulfill
socialist theory and "advance history".
In his article on America's vast new bureaucracies and huge warfare
ambitions, William Pfaff noted:
"One of the most significant aspects of the totalitarian regimes of
the 20th century was that they 'made reality' out of fictions. They were
based on ideological fantasies that were false, but these fantasies were
made into the reality upon which national policy was based. They thus
came catastrophically true – until their inner falsehood brought
disaster".
Those who believe it is a stretch to link neocons with Marx-inspired
revolutionary ambitions should read Michael Lind's excellent assessment
of neoconservatism that appeared in the February 23, 2004 issue of The
Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040223&c=2&s=lind) – a
magazine that, given its deep liberal roots, recognizes leftist thought
patterns when it sees them:
"The idea that the United States and similar societies are dominated
by a decadent, postbourgeois 'new class' was developed by thinkers in
the Trotskyist tradition like James Burnham
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham) and Max Shachtman
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Shachtman), who influenced an older
generation of neocons", says Lind.
"The concept of the 'global democratic revolution' has its origins in
the Trotskyist Fourth International's vision of permanent revolution.
The economic determinist idea that liberal democracy is an epiphenomenon
of capitalism, promoted by neocons like Michael Novak, is simply Marxism
with entrepreneurs substituted for proletarians as the heroic subjects
of history".
Paul Gottfried (http://www.lewrockwell.com/gottfried/gottfried-arch.html
/ http://www.vdare.com/gottfried), professor of humanities at
Elizabethtown College, recognizes the overlapping interests as well. In
an article examining those who most regularly hurl the epithet
"Islamofascist", Gottfried notes that in addition to the neocon Right,
some of the most prosaic offenders reside on the Left.
"Clearly, some who rail against Islamofascism, like Christopher Hitchens
and Peter Beinart and Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic, have domestic
fish to fry. They all see the possibility of tying together the war
against Islamic theocratic fascists abroad with one against the hated
Religious Right at home", wrote Paul Gottfried in the July 4, 2005,
issue of The American Conservative.
"Plunging one's country into foreign crusades has often been a means for
changing things at home", Paul Gottfried adds. "The enemies of
Islamofascism are not the first to play this game".
No wonder so many in the Democrat establishment continue to support the
internationalist "democracy" project being undertaken hand-in-hand with
(or under the guise of) the "War on Terror" long after the Iraq war has
been exposed as having been built on a foundation of half-truths and
outright lies.
Envisioning a future in which the Republican machine collapses under its
own weight (and the weight of the Bush administration's incompetence),
they understand they will be the heirs to the shiny new police state the
administration has constructed. This explains why they go along with so
many foreign and domestic neocon initiatives, feign opposition to a few
others, and only dig in their heels when the ability of the state to
exercise power is independently threatened – for instance, over the
confirmation of potentially conservative federal judges who might be
inclined to limit the power and prerogative of the federal government in
the future.
In retrospect, doesn't it make perfect sense that those inclined toward
totalitarianism would seek to infiltrate the opposition
conservative/libertarian Right in order to co-opt its weak links (the
half-baked conservatives) and destroy the rest?
After all, when highly centralized, big-government policies designed for
purposes of social-engineering (both at home and abroad) are instigated
by unreconstructed leftists, they can be easily identified by
traditionalists for what they are through linkage alone – and summarily
rejected. But when they are advocated from the right, and ushered in
through a Trojan horse like the "War on Terror," they can be passed off
as essential to national security and even "conservative." Many of those
who would normally be opposed are thus enlisted; the rest are dismissed
as paranoid or "unpatriotic"
(http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_6_55/ai_98954244).
And instead of burning the seeds of socialism, former skeptics become
enthusiastic Johnny Appleseeds and go about spreading them to the winds
with a naive gaiety.
And so we have come full circle. The sacrifices made by millions of
Americans in both blood and treasure over the course of generations to
defeat messianic totalitarian ideologies may well have been in vain.
"History's actors" – who are in reality hyper-ambitious,
totalitarian-minded ideologues – couldn't destroy America from without,
and so they have found a way to worm themselves into the American
leadership to do it from within – and for our own good, no less.
* Chris Moore is the founder and editor of Libertarian Today
(http://www.libertariantoday.com).
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cmoore.php?articleid=6649
-- Justin Raimondo explains how the neoconservatives went from being
communists to Republicans, and why they took America to war in Iraq.
Audio
http://www.weekendinterviewshow.com/InterviewDisplay.aspx?i=94
-- Neoconservatism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_%28US%29
-- Trotskyist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trotskyists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_%28US%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trotskyist_internationals
-- Dr. Shadia Drury is an expert on Straussian JewCons
http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC
-- A conversation with professor Shadia Drury on Leo Strauss
Audio (20 minutes long)
http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/media/strauss_se050410.ram
Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0410cdi.php
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/97c8cbcf1dea31ec?hl=en
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/71746826656cb555?hl=en
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/e56bcd23057944db?hl=en
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/9dd30bf1e9dcfeb6?hl=en
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/34a674fcce7bc5eb?hl=en
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/2084ae28bb19dfd6?hl=en
Moonies (Unification Church - Sun Myung Moon)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/ucm.php
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/cfr.php
Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS)
Jerusalem
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/iasps.php
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/jinsa.php
American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/aipac.php
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/memri.php
Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/winep.php
Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/pnac.php
Committee on the Present Danger (CPD)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/cpd.php
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/fdd.php
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/aei.php
Benador Associates
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/corp/benador.php
Office of Special Plans (OSP)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/govt/osp.php
Heritage Foundation
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/heritage.php
Middle East Forum (MEF)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/mef.php
Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVT)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/avt.php
Center for Security Policy (CSP)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/csp.php
Empower America
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/empower.php
Defense Policy Board (DPB)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/govt/dpb.php
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/fpri.php
Jamestown Foundation
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/jamestown.php
National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/ned.php
National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/nipp.php
National Strategy Information Center (NSIC)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/nsic.php
Project on Transitional Democracies (PTD)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/ptd.php
U.S. Committee on NATO
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/uscnato.php
New Atlantic Initiative (NAI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/nai.php
Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/ppi.php
Lexington Institute (LI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/lexington.php
Hoover Institution
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/hoover.php
Freedom House
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/freehous.php