What is there in Syria? Apocalypse

"Mesopotamia . . . yes . . . oil . . . irrigation . . . we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine . . . yes . . . the Holy Land . . . Zionism . . . we must have Palestine; Syria . . . h'm . . . what is there in Syria? Let the French have that." — Lloyd George during the 1919 Peace Conference, thinking aloud in the presence of Arnold Toynbee [Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, page 381]

What is there is Syria? Not Lebanon or Palestine. Both were traditionally part of Syria, but were partitioned off by the Great Powers (the old French Empire and British Empire) in the early 20th century.

How many people are left in Syria? Maybe 18 million. Note that Greece has a smaller population, about 11 million. So why are we so worried about a debt default in Greece, when the Apocalypse has already come to Syria? Because the Greeks owe the rest of Europe so much money. Syrians made the mistake of not borrowing vast sums of money from America and Europe.

Of course, to borrow vast sums of money from Europe and America, the Syrians would have had to give up much of their autonomy. They would have to undertake a pro-American and pro-Israeli foreign policy. And they would have to use the loans to make profits for the lenders, which was a little hitch the Greeks forgot about.

After the French Empire finished mismanaging Syria in 1945, it was left to the locals to mismanage their country. The French apparently trained the locals well.

At one point, when the two empires were dividing up what bits of the world they had not grabbed already before World War I, the city of Mosul and the area around it was supposed to be part of Syria. Mosul was already known to have oil. The French and British argued. They decided Mosul would be part of British Iraq, but that French oil companies would share the profits from Mosul oil, and would allow a pipeline to be built through Syria so the oil could be picked up on the Mediterranean coast.

Syria may not have much, but people want it all the same. It was building up a respectable tourist industry before the current civil war began. So of course President Bashar Assad and the political and economic elite wanted to hold on. It's not like they were in the position to grab anything else. They could not even grab the Golan Heights back from Israel.

Every system, no matter how democratic or how authoritarian, has its outsiders who would like to become a new part of the old elite, or a new elite. Assad and friends had made enemies, and for all I know some of their complaints might have been justified. In any case protest turned to civil war in 2011.

Civil war is usually a bad choice. Maybe the legally elected regime could have compromised more and averted the war, but I doubt it. The Syrian civil war was always about Islamic radicalism. Sunni Arabs account for about 60% of the population, yet Assad is Shia and the government is dominated by the Shia minority. Politically the government is dominated by the Baath party and its allies in the National Progressive Front, which includes many Sunni Arabs.

Some people just never modernize. They think religious platitudes are actually fact-based. They don't want to tolerate anyone who does not believe in the same fairy-tales as themselves. Apparently there were plenty of these people in Syria, because they flocked to the rebellion. Then the I-am-more Islamic than you game got some momentum. Al Qaeda became prominent, then its even-more-radical offshoot the Islamic State.

Syria may not have anything the British Empire wanted after World War I, but when you have nothing, even Syria may be attractive. The Islamic State wants Syria, and since the U.S. has an irrational hatred of Assad and the Baath Party, it won't be a big surprise if the Islamic State gets what it wants.

Wither then? Turkey? More likely Jordan. The difference is that Jordan has long been a U.S. client state. Whoever is President (of the U.S.) at that point will probably try to get Saudi Arabia or Israel to defend Jordan. But likely at that point, if they are not needed somewhere else in the world, U.S. troops will be deployed in earnest.

Even when you are better armed and better trained, fighting fanatics is not a job any sane person wants. They just keep coming at you. You begin to feel like you are a minor character in the Walking Dead series. You can't let your guard down for a moment. Ask any Vietnam Veteran.

It kind of makes me wish we had just let the old U.S.S.R. have Afghanistan and a free hand to convert the lot of them to atheism.

Legal Basis for the Separation of States

Suppose the citizens of one of the states constituting the United States, for whatever reason, wanted to separate from the United States. How could they do that?

So far in U.S. history there is only one precedent. The states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina, by the end of 1861, withdrew from the United States of America by votes within their states. President Abraham Lincoln, supported by a Republican Party-controlled Congress, simply made war (the Civil War) on the untied states, and the federal government won that war.

Since then the predominant thinking in the re-United States has been that a state cannot separate from the Union because military force will be used by the federal government to overcome any such manifestation of local democracy. Kind of like when Czechoslovakia tried to opt out of the Soviet Block. Because the issue of slavery was entangled with the issue of separation of states during the Civil War, it is still hard to have a rational discussion of the topic.

Clearly the U.S. Constitution allows for an amendment that would either allow a particular set of states to separate, or would set rules for separation in general. In fact, one could dissolve the entire Union with a Constitutional amendment. However, before writing such an amendment, we should look at the Constitution as it now stands.

Reading the Constitution, you will not find a single phrase that says that a state cannot withdraw from the union. Nor does it say that a state can withdraw. This is not that different from many issues of federal powers. How broad the specific powers granted the the Federal government are to be in practice has been a constant source of argument and litigation since the ink was dry on the original Constitution.

A majority of Americans opposed the Constitution as written at the time. To get it passed by the nine required states a great deal of bribery and intimidation was used. Also, it was promised that a number of amendments would be appended to the Constitution, to make the package more attractive.

Regarding the separation of states, clearly Amendment X, the Tenth Amendment, has the greatest bearing. Many people voted for the new Constitution with the idea that their state could withdraw from the Constitution if the whole experiment did not work out. They feared a central government that could become as tyrannical as the British Empire had been. Hence the amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I don't think you can get more clear than that without illegally declaring war on your neighbors, as Abraham Lincoln did. No where in the Constitution did it say that the Federal government could prevent a state government from withdrawing. The power to decide whether to be part of the United States was clearly a power "reserved to the States."

To force people to be governed against their will by any government, including the Federal government of the United States, is against the natural right of the people to govern themselves. That was recognized by the architects of the American revolution, or at least was prominent in their rhetoric.

If citizens of a state should ever decide they want to separate from the United States, I suggest they go about it with more care than the State of South Carolina did in 1860.

First, the government of the State in question should write a state law saying that it has they right to separate and is indeed separating. Then this should be the basis of trying a case in the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Supreme Court is most likely, in fact certain, to rule that the State cannot secede by virtue of its own legislation. The point is not to expect an honest verdict, but to get a statement of why they cannot rule themselves, and of the construction of the Constitution the court uses to rationalize this un-democratic ruling.

Then, having been ruled to still be part of the United States, the state needs to introduce legislation in the U.S. Congress allowing it to leave. Its leaders should also try to pass a U.S. constitutional amendment making it clear what the rules are for leaving.

Of course, this whole path could be cut off by a Constitutional Amendment saying, roughly, "no State shall be allowed to separate from the United States, and the President and Congress shall have the power to use the military to enforce this provision."

The United States went to a great deal of trouble to break up the former nation of Yugoslavia just a couple of decades ago. We broke Vietnam in half in the 1950's when we did not like the projected outcome of elections there. I don't see why U.S. states should not be granted the same rights of divorce that the U.S. empire has so gladly imposed on weaker nations.

On the other hand, no one should want a messy divorce. Any such separation should be mutual and amicable.

But, given sufficient unaddressed grievances, a Declaration of Independence, backed by the right to self-defense, may be worth a try.

Kenya Invades Somalia: World War III?

On Saturday, October 15, 2011, Kenya invaded Somalia. Earlier in the week President Barack Obama announced he was sending U.S. combat troops to Uganda [See Obama Sends U.S. Gunmen to Uganda]. Uganda and Burundi already have troops occupying part of Somalia. Meanwhile the U.S. occupation army has not quite left Iraq. The U.S. is now in an undeclared war with Pakistan [as I predicted in U.S. Close to War with Pakistan on April 23, 2011] and has operations in Oman and other nations. Iran, too, is on U.S. target lists.

Note that the United Nations (U.N.) is not going to protect Somalia. The U.N. does not exist to protect weak nations from invasions by stronger ones. The U.N. exists mainly to further the agendas of the Great Powers, and right now the only powers of any global importance are the U.S., Europe, and China. None of them care for the current de facto government of Somalia, the militia/political party Al Shabaab. Surprisingly the Kenya military did not announce it was "invited in" by the "provisional government" of Somalia, a hand-picked group of U.S. puppets backed by hundreds of genuine supporters and those Ugandan troops already mentioned.

Maybe the U.S. forgot to order President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to invite in Kenya as an ally in the civil war. Don't forget the formidable Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in 2006, financed by the U.S., with the same purpose, with the brilliant result of destroying the moderate Islamic de facto government, leading to the rise of Al Shabaab as the dominant popular government. [Sharif Ahmed, now a U.S. puppet, was a leader of the regime destroyed by Ethiopia, the Islamic Courts Union.]

Sure, there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, but this is really beginning to look like World War III, with the United States playing the role Britain played in World War II: an imperialist power about to be bankrupted.

Neither World War I nor World War II started on a single day. Both had their preludes and aftermaths. A smart and strong U.S. President could defuse the situation by withdrawing from Afghanistan, apologizing to Iran, Pakistan, and Oman, recognizing Al Shabaab, and recognizing the state of Palestine and the right of Palestinians to have their private property returned to them. Obama can't do that; he has become a subservient tool of the U.S. corporate security state, and was certainly vetted for that role before being allowed to become the Democratic Party frontrunner in 2008.

A single incident, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is said to have started World War I. More important than the spark were the stacks of powder kegs all around: the rivalries of the imperialist, industrialist powers, most notably between the British capitalists and their German cousins.

World War II is more instructive. It is generally marked as starting when German armies attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, or when Great Britain declared war on Germany the next day, escalating a regional conflict into a global war. But in East Asia the anti-imperialist war of Japan and its allies against the European colonialists had long been underway, and would last until the United States withdrew, defeated, from Vietnam in 1975. In Europe World War II probably became inevitable when Britain, France, and the United States refused to support the democratically elected government of Spain in its civil war with General Franco (with support from his fellow Catholics Pope Pius XI, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini), leading to Franco's victory in March 1939.

Al Qaeda is not a great industrial power that can have its factories bombed into impotence, as happened to Germany, Italy and Japan in World War II. The strategy of Al Qaeda has always been based on Osama Bin Laden's analysis of the fall of the Soviet Union. It was caused by a lopsided militaristic economy, aggravated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's goal has always been to cause a similar collapse of the United States economy by irritating the U.S. into asymmetrical expenditures. It has largely succeeded. At this point the only way Al Qaeda can fail is if the U.S. severely cuts back its military and homeland security expenditures and starts taking care of its own people. Instead our leaders continue to fall into the Al Qaeda trap.

Al Qaeda, however, will not be the ultimate winner in this global contest. Al Qaeda has proven it knows how to fight, but not how to govern. When Germany and Britain fought for world dominance in World War II, it was the U.S. that inherited the earth. Who will dominate the economy and culture of the next century is not easy to predict, although the easy bets are on India and China. Hopefully no nation will be stupid enough, after the lessons of the 20th century, to try to become the global superpower. That is just a recipe for eventual bankruptcy.

The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, only two weeks after the German invasion (in fairness, Poland did not exist before the end of World War I, so both Germany and the U.S.S.R. claimed to be reclaiming lost territory). Yet the British Empire did not declare war on the U.S.S.R. Germany was seen as more of a threat to the British Empire, short run. Britain (and its ally France) was in no position to fight both Stalin and Hitler at the same time. So they chose to fight Hitler. Even that kind of pragmatisim did not save the British Empire (or the French, or Dutch empires) in the long run. When the French, after the briefest face-saving hint of battle, were brought over to the German side (by Marshal Petain, another Roman Catholic fascist), that should have meant global dominance for Germany. That, in turn, would have required more patience than Hitler had. The Catholic armies of Europe, instead of finishing off the British, attacked the athiest U.S.S.R., cheered on by the Pope. Everyone forgets that some 30 million athiests died before Hitler's Catholic hords were defeated.

If the United Nations were about peace, it would sanction Kenya and, if necessary, send in troops to expel the Kenyans from Somalia. Watch it do nothing, just as its predecessor, the League of Nations, consistently did nothing to prevent World War II. Again, there was a reason: Woodrow Wilson designed the League of Nations to be a racist, imperialist institution, and it stuck to that design.

Korea, Barack Obama, and Theodore Roosevelt

Korea, historically, has benefited and suffered from being located between two major civilizations, China and Japan. These last couple of days Korea, or at least the northern Kingdom (let's call it what it is), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has been in the news because it detonated a nuclear device. President Barack Obama made vague threats to do something about this terrible evil.

In North Korea they probably are concerned, because they know Barack Obama's party, the Democratic Party, is the only political party in the world to ever actually use a nuclear device in a war. Not only that, but there was a conscious decision by former President Harry Truman to use the first atomic bombs against civilian targets with only symbolic military significance.

To the extent that Americans have historical memories of Korea at all, they start after World War II, when we invaded southern Korea, thus taking it from the Japanese empire and adding it to our own. In 1948 the North Korean government almost succeeded in freeing South Korea, but the United States invaded again and captured almost all of Korea, for a few days. Then the Chinese caught General MacArthur napping, and drove the U.S. troops back to about the midpoint of the Peninsula. There an uneasy armistice emerged that has left Korea divided in half to this day.

American interest in Korea long predates Harry Truman. It was seen as another part of Asia ripe for trade, exploitation, and perhaps even conquest at about the same time long-sighted, greedy Americans began coveting Japan and China. By 1900, when Theodore Roosevelt was elected Vice-President (he became President when Saint Czolgosz took out the war criminal William McKinley), some business men based in the United States had large businesses in Korea. Notable among them were Collbran and Bostwick, which also operated in China, and Leigh Hunt in mining, who was a sometimes guest Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. In 1900 Russia and Japan were struggling for control of Korea, but the British and Germans were also interested in its commercial exploitation.

Roosevelt decided that Russia was the greater threat to the overall interests of the United States. He encouraged Japan to fight with Russia over Manchuria, resulting in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which Japan won. Recall that the U.S. was still in the genocide business in the Philippines at that time. In order to keep Russia out of North China, secure Japan as a regional ally, and secure the Philippines, Theodore Roosevelt gave his permission to the Japanese to take over Korea [See Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power by Howard K. Beale p. 279].

Attitudes of the U.S. ruling class towards Japan changed as Japan became a more powerful economic and military competitor. At the end of World War II the U.S. thought it would gobble up the Japanese empire, but it was not so easy. Nationalist sentiment in Asia resulted in a long transition from colonial states to independent states.

What actually happened between 1880 and 1950 has been obscured by the economic separation of the two Koreas since then. South Korea was built up as an economic powerhouse by Japan (then a U.S. underling) and the United States. North Korea's promise was stifled by an increasingly rigid ruling class that put most of the country's resources into its defense budget.

The common appraisal of the North Korean nuclear development program is that both its first and second nuclear explosions were substandard even compared to the primitive U.S. explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It sounds like making a nuclear bomb is simple: just get enough fissionable material together for a few microseconds. But in fact the teams that developed the original atomic bombs for the U.S. had to confront multiple technological problems in diverse areas such as electronics, metallurgy, conventional explosives, as well as atomic physics. They included the world's best scientists of that era. But sooner or later, if they keep at it, the Koreans will have an atomic bomb. The problem with having an atomic bomb is that if you use it, you no longer have it as a deterrent. I don't see how a nation with North Korea's resources could ever mass manufacture atomic weapons.

What should President Obama do? Instead of enlarging upon the over 100 year history of the U.S. threatening and betraying Korea, he should say:

"On behalf of the Democratic Party I sincerely apologize for our long history of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including our use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and our invasion of Korea after World War II. I welcome northern Korea into the community of nations. I am pulling all U.S. troops out of Korea and promise that the U.S. will allow Korea to follow its own destiny. I hope that Korea will refrain from continued development of nuclear weapons, but in any case I am ordering an immediate major reduction of the U.S. arsenal. If Russia, China and other nuclear powers follow this path, we can eliminate nuclear weapons from the global arsenal by 2010."

The chances of that happening?

Can we serve Democratic Party brand militarist swill and say it is a Change from Republican Party brand militarist swill?

Yes We Can!

Theodore Roosevelt, Obama and Afghanistan

I've been meaning to write more about Theodore Roosevelt for some time, given the central role he plays in the history of United States imperialism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Today the New York Times published an article [From a Carrier, Another View of America's Air War in Afghanistan by Elisabeth Bumiller] that allows me to make some connections to our current era.

According to the article, there is a weapon of mass destruction, an aircraft carrier named the, yes, U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, parked in the sea off Pakistan. Every day, weather permitting, jet bombers take off from the carrier and bomb the people of Afghanistan. They try to bomb Taliban, soldiers. The Taliban were the ruling "party" until the U.S. installed a puppet government in 2002. I am not at all fond of the Taliban, but I recognize that they are the only group in Afghanistan that is fighting against foreign domination. They are, largely, the same group that the CIA once armed in order to drive the former Soviet Union out of the country.

It is very safe on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. Accidents are the greatest danger to the sailors and combat pilots. It is not so safe on the ground for American troops, given how much they are hated and how many Afghanis have armed themselves. But mostly a battle in Afghanistan goes like this: the Afghans attack the Americans (or their NATO henchmen). The Americans hunker down in fear and scream into their communications gear that they are under attack. The nearest fighter-bomber screams in and unleashes bombs. The Afghan (Taliban) soldiers are mostly killed; those who are not dead, retreat. What is amazing is that given that this scenario is repeated daily, the Afghans are brave enough and motivated enough to fight the invaders.

The left opposition in the United States of America largely blames the war in Afghanistan on former President Bush, forgetting that the Democratic Party leadership were frothing at the mouth to go into Afghanistan too. "Progressive" Democrats hoped that the election of President Barack Obama would bring an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead Obama has broadened the war to include Pakistan and is sending another 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. He is escalating the war. Since the war is against the Afghan people, it cannot be won without essentially exterminating those people. Barack Obama has quickly joined the long list of American presidents, starting with George Washington, who have participated in genocide.

Theodore Roosevelt, in contrast to Obama, was an honest man. A miserable, twisted, psychotic murdering honest man, to be sure, but everyone knew that. He began calling for war at an early age. He was among a cabal that pushed Spain into a war with the U.S. that it did not want, the Spanish American War. He gloried in fighting the war himself. Unlike Obama, who has never been in the U.S. military or in the militant opposition to U.S. imperialism. Elected Vice-President and assuming office in 1901, "T. R." quickly became President when Leon Czolgosz successfully assassinated President William McKinley. As such, he presided over the genocide against the Philippine people, usually known as the Philippine War, in which 2 million islanders, mostly non-combatants, were murdered by U.S. troops.

If the U.S. ruling class were running the Philippine War today, they'd call the anti-U.S. opposition terrorists. Regardless of whether they were Islamic or Communist or just Nationalists or Vegitarians, and regardless of the tactics they used.

Theodore Roosevelt, like most humans, had his good side. He was a nature lover of sorts. He loved to kill wild animals with a rifle, being too slow-footed and chicken shit to try to kill them with his bare hands. He enlarged the national park system. Given the complexity of the legislative process, he probably signed some laws you would approve of, and some you would oppose. Such is the nature of the Presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt particularly liked to slaughter bears. Strangely, that brought us the beloved stuffed animal toys known as Teddy Bears.

So the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt is named appropriately. From it, at no risk to himself, Barack Obama can kill Afganis.

Somalia and Barack Obama: Prelude

What will Barack Obama do? Will he continue the disastrous United States policy of imperialism in Somalia?

This week the U.S., or at least the George W. Bush Administration, was pushing in the U.N. for further military intervention in Somalia [See US Calls for Decision on UN Force in Somalia, Associated Press, January 12, 2009].

You will recall that the U.N. (United Nations) is the successor to the League of Nations, which was formed during World War I to maintain the global power of the white imperialist nations (See Barack Obama and Woodrow Wilson). The U.N. is not a democratic organization, but has always been controlled by the United States, its allies, and puppets. It has never protected a small nation against U.S. (or English, or French, or even Russian) military or covert interference. It has been used by the U.S. to give international sanction to military adventures in Korea (See The U.S. Conquest of Korea), Vietnam (See Vietnam notes), the former nation of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among others.

So it should have surprised no one that the U.N., a war crimes organization, sanctioned U.S., Ethiopian, and African Union military invasions of Somalia this past few years. This remarkable example of human viciousness and stupidity has largely gone unnoticed even by peace activists in the United States because of the ongoing wars against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Somalia adopted a tribal, non-centralised form of governance in the 1980's. There is nothing illegal about that. The Somalians invaded no foreign nation, so there was no legitimate pretext for any other nation to make war upon Somalia.

Throughout the 1990's and the new millennia the U.S., working mainly through the CIA, supported one of more factions in Somalia. It even got the world press to call the factions it supported a "Provisional Government." A few years back the people of Somalia, tired of fighting between tribal war lords, decided to set up a just, democratic, trans-tribal but decentralized governmental structure called the Islamic Courts. This system was based on Islamic Law. Not how I'd do things, I prefer a just non-sectarian government, and but note they did not attack any foreign nation. They were trying to bring peace and justice to their nation.

The Bush Administration went ballistic. Why weren't the people supporting the perfectly good CIA-trained puppet government in Baidoa? Time to invade. The Ethiopians (Christians) were hired to do the job, but the U.S. shelled Somalia from battleships and with high-tech fighter bombers, and dropped in some special ops guys to do some wet work.

The Islamic Justice Courts were unable to immediately repel Ethiopian tanks and heavy artillery. For about 3 months. Somalians just hated the U.S. puppet "Provisional Government" even more after the occupation by the Ethiopians. The Islamic Courts (often now called "moderate Islam") and new, more radical Islamic factions, soon began eating away at the CIA's tenuous hold on the country. Come December 2008 and the Ethiopians were in full retreat back to their homeland.

Now the CIA wants to get the moderate Islamic Justice Courts that they overthrew a few years ago to cooperate with the "Provisional Government" to prevent the "radical" Islamic factions from gaining power.

How about this: we hold war crimes trials. We hang every U.S. policy maker who is found to have made it a policy to use military force against Somalia.

Oh yes. We stop interfering in Somalia. In any way.

Will this just policy that might make Americans think twice before committing war crimes and crimes against humanity be pursued by the Obama administration? Will he usher in a New Era of Hope and Peace and Justice? What do you think?

Vietnam by Stanley Karnow, a review

I picked up a used copy of Vietnam by Stanley Karnow to help with my current book project, The U.S. War Against Asia. I found the book to be well written, but focussed on history in the context of what we call in the United States the War in Vietnam. In my generation that was frequently just called The War.

There is a general history of Vietnam leading up to the French colonial period that emphasizes the various independence struggles in the area we now call Vietnam. If you want a cultural history of Vietnam, or a detailed look at Vietnam before 1500, this book does not cover that adequately.

If you want to understand the motives of the Vietnamese independence movement and major players like France, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States, this book is great. Karnow views everyone with an eye that is capable of both compassionate understanding and a hard gaze. He does not gloss over any parties attrocities or stupidities. On the whole it seems like a fair, balanced, factually-based book.

Karnow shows that there were times when France and the United States came quite close to at least a temporary defeat of the Vietnamese communists. In a sense the book supports the hypothesis that America lost the war because of its lack of intelligence (that is, spying capabilities). It creates a strange symmetry with the War against Japan (part of World War II) in which it is fair to say that the U.S. won the war because it had better intelligence capabilities. In Japan's case, the U.S. broke Japan's encryption, and simply new everything Japan would do in advance. In Vietnam encryption was not an issue: on the Vietnamese end it was a low-tech war, and intelligence was provided mostly by sympathisers inside the domestic establishments of the South Vietnamese regime and the American invaders.

We tend to see the war as a two-sided affair, with the communists on one side and the U.S. and its local allies on the other. But in fact is was extremely complicated, with many groups trying to maintain an independence from both the U.S. and the communists. In a civil war groups and individuals flip sides; the winner is usually the group that is best at gaining the support of formerly neutral groups.

The effects of politics in the United States are well-documented. President Eisenhower, a Republican, tried to avoid involvement in Vietnam largely in reaction to Truman's policy in Korea, which itself was in reaction to accusations that President Truman lost China to the communists. President Kennedy greatly increased involvement in Vietnam. A member of one of the most successful capitalist families in the United States, he lacked Eisenhower's gravitas and allowed himself to be pressured by the Pentagon. Lyndon Johnson inherited the war and felt the Republicans and his enemies in the Democratic Party, in particular Robert Kennedy, would crucify him if he lost Vietnam. Richard Nixon actually started pulling troops out of Vietnam soon after his election in 1968 and was still in office after they were all withdrawn, yet the liberal establishment still insists on blaming Nixon and the Republicans, rather than themselves and the Democrats, for the war.

The French come out looking badly as well. When Hitler conquered France and set up the Catholic, nationalist, racist Vichy regime, the French colonial structure in Vietnam simply agreed to follow orders from Japan. So the Japanese did little fighting in Vietnam in World War II. To the extent there was fighting, it was with the Vietnamese resistance movement that was already fighting the French. The U.S. encouraged the resistance even though it was dominated by communists (we were allied with the communists in World War II) and implied Vietnam would become independent when Japan was defeated. Of course Vietnam was handed back to the French just as Britain was given Hong Kong and the U.S. and Russia divided up Korea.

This book is probably the single best book on the Vietnam War. It was fascinating to read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Vietnam or in U.S. history.

This book should be generally available in libraries and used book stores, but you could also pick up a copy of Vietnam at Amazon.com.

Cynthia McKinney Rallies Greens in Fort Bragg, California

On Saturday I drove up to Fort Bragg see Cynthia McKinney, who is seeking the nomination of the Green Party to run for President of the United States of America. Cynthia McKinney, a former Democrat, served in the Georgia state legislature and then four terms as Georgia's 11th district Congresswomen. Saturday night she was scheduled to speak in Ukiah, California, where she would be joined by another former Democratic Party congress person, Dan Hamburg, who is also now in the Green Party. Here I am with Cynthia:

Local singer/songwriter Chris Skyhawk started off with some political folk songs, and Cynthia pulled shakers out of her purse and got with the rhythm:

Peace activist Dr. Carol Wolman spoke next about why she decided to challenge the local Democratic Party incumbent for his congressional seat. She said that the possibility of nuclear war has increased greatly, that the incumbent (Mike Thompson) has voted for all funding bills for the war in Iraq, and that he also supported all of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich. She promised represent this mainly liberal district's pro-peace, pro-economic justice, pro-environment citizens. She also explained why we need to impeach both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Cynthia gave an excellent speech touching on many of America's problems and their solutions. She pointed out how racism can still be a problem in the United States. She recounted how she was attacked by the press and both the Republican Party and Democratic Party when she stood up on the floor of Congress and asked the obvious question after the 911 attacks on the World Trade Centers: "What did the administration know and when did they know it?"

She said history has shown a nation can't have both Guns and Butter without crippling its economy. Joining the Green Party was her own declaration of independence from participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also talked about how hard it is to take on the political establishment. Her father had begun protesting against racism in Georgia (an all Democratic Party state back then) when he returned from serving in World War II. Supporting the Green Party now is difficult, but it is creating a path to a United States that is at peace with the world and where there is true democracy, social justice, and an environmentally sustainable economy.

Cynthia McKinney with Carol Wolman while taking questions from the audience:

The audience of about 50 people gave over $500 to Ms. McKinney's campaign. Run Cynthia Run!

More data:

Cynthia McKinney's campaign web site: www.runcynthiarun.org
Carol Wolman's campaign web site: http://www.carolwolmanforcongress.com/

Vietnam: Harry Truman's War?

Democratic Party partisans like to remember Vietnam as Richard Nixon's war. Clearly that view is merely propaganda. Richard Nixon ended American involvement in the war, accepting the political consequence of a defeat of the United States and its South Vietnamese allies by the communist party of Vietnam. It is true that the peace plan Nixon had when elected in 1968 did not work out (basically, peace through victory), and a lot of people died needlessly during further years of bloody fighting, with U.S. troops involved until 1973. But it was Richard Nixon's war by inheritance only.

Former president Lyndon Johnson gets most of the blame for the Vietnam War. He deserves it. He was, of course, the leader of the Democratic Party, so its partisans like to try to pretend he did not exist, except when you start talking about Civil Rights. Lyndon Johnson was the first Democratic Party President of the United States who really fought for civil rights [possible exception: Harry Truman].

Lyndon Johnson became President when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. At that time the United States had a major presence in South Vietnam, mainly providing economic and military aid to the puppet government of Ngo Dinh Diem. But the U.S. already had 16,000 military personnel stationed in South Vietnam. We had a naval fleet off the coast of Vietnam (including off North Vietnam) and a large military presence in our nearby former colony, the Philippines. While Diem was a Vietnamese nationalist who did not like taking orders from the U.S., his ability to fight to retain his hold on South Vietnam was nearly totally dependent on U.S. aid. So in effect South Vietnam had become a U.S. colonial possession with a government that was semi-autonomous. Just like under the old French colonial system. Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Navy faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify even greater U.S. military intervention. When Johnson left office in early 1969 the U.S. had 550,000 troops on the ground in South Vietnam and was bombing North Vietnam on a daily basis.

Democratic Party partisans hate it when you blame the war on John F. Kennedy. They like to say that if Kennedy had lived he would have with withdrawn U.S. troops from Vietnam. Some conspiracy theorists believe that Kennedy was getting reading to pull the plug; that was why he was assassinated. It is not that there is absolutely nothing to support this view, but the support is thin. The basic facts speak for themselves: when Kennedy entered office the U.S. had 500 military advisors in South Vietnam. When he died he left 16,000 U.S. soldiers there. That sounds like a solid escalation of the conflict to me.

But hey, most sources put the number of U.S. military men in South Vietnam when Ike left office in 1961 at 500. I heard a Democratic Party hack say the Vietnam War was a Republican Party war because Dwight Eisenhower was the first to send military advisors to Vietnam. This takes us back to 1953, when a variety of Vietnamese nationalist groups were trying to oust the French colonial rulers. The communists, or Vietminh, were the largest group and were the only serious military threat to the French. The U.S. was providing most of the money and military material that enabled the French army to fight. Then in 1954 the Geneva Conference was held. The French agreed to withdraw from Vietnam. A non-communist but nationalist regime would take temporary control of the South. The Vietminh took over in the North. A nationwide election was to take place within 2 years. The Vietminh would have easily won a nationwide election, but might have allowed non-communist parties to be part of the government.

The U.S. and France, however, were determined to stop communism from spreading. The gave the governance of South Vietnam to Ngo Dinh Diem and his crew. No national elections were held. The communists were not particularly strong, militarily, in the south. U.S. aid and a handful of advisors, along with continued French ownership of important businesses, were all that were needed during the Eisenhower years. Of course Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice-President, and was as anti-communist as the Kennedy brothers were at that time. It should be noted that one of Diem's big supporters in the U.S. in the 1950s was Senator John F. Kennedy.

But the whole idea of aiding the French to defeat the Vietminh goes back to Harry Truman. Both parties and the media blamed him for losing China to the communists. He (and most high-ranking Americans) saw communism as monolithic. He did not want to involve U.S. troops. So he paid the French to fight the Vietminh, which they were happy to do, given the economic benefits to France of retaining their colony.

To add some irony to the situation, Vietnam had been one of the sore points that had led to the conflict between the U.S. and Japan in World War II. In Vietnam during World War II the French were happy to follow the orders of Hitler's puppet Vichy regime in France, and Hitler's orders were to do what the Japanese occupiers said. So when the U.S. was trying to get guerillas to fight Japan, which in Indochina meant fighting the French army, it trained and armed -- the Vietminh! Then, instead of punishing the French in Indochina for siding with the Nazis, the U.S. backed their continued control of the colony!

So which president is to blame for the Vietnam War? Take your pick. Or think of it this way: the U.S. has a ruling elite. The elite rules regardless of which party is in power. And a policy, once set, can go on for decades no matter how stupid or inhumane it is.

recommended reading: Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, A History

What To Expect From a Democratic President

What can we expect from a Democratic President?

If you believe in social justice and peace, the record is not encouraging it. I'll review the highlights before analysing the potential of an Barack Obama presidency.

The first Democratic Party President of the United States was named Andrew Jackson. He was, in short, a murderer and genocidal maniac. He thought nothing of killing white gentlemen who disagreed with him over minor points. He had a 16 year old boy volunteering in stead of his older brother in the War of 1812 executed for not kowtowing to him. He traded in slaves, breaking up families. He provoked Native Americans to defend their land so he and his friends could exterminate them and steal the land. I can't think of a more brutal, unjust person in American History.

But the monstrous nature of Andrew Jackson's "frontier" personality is not the key take-away from his administration. The ruling class, which Jackson belonged to, needed two parties in order to rule effectively. These parties have to be competitive, and they have to control sections of the population that are sometimes at odds with one another. Andrew Jackson was used as a nucleus of a party, the same Democratic Party that we have today, that kept newly enfrachised, relatively poor, white male voters in line with ruling class interests by poising them against even more oppressed workers: women, Native American Indians, and African American slaves.

After losing the Civil War the Democratic Party established a strong base in the former states of the Confederacy and allied itself with corrupt, mostly Catholic, urban machines in the Union states. The Republican Party became the preferred party of industrialists and Wall Street by 1872. Still, there were times when the true leaders of the ruling class preferred a Democratic Party President. In particular, when a big grab was planned involving a war.

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson was made President. He was portrayed at the time, and is portrayed in most "standard" (approved by the powers that be) history books as a liberal peacemaker. He maneuvered the U.S. into World War I, which resulted in major economic gains for the Morgan family and the like. He talked about peace and international borders based on national self-determination. But he kept the Philippines enslaved by the U.S. and was an overt racist and segregationist. I would go on about what a jerk he was but moving on ...

When the possibility of real social reform came to the United States in the Great Depression, in stead we got President-for-Life Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the Democrats in Congress blocked Herbert Hoovers' attempts to provide relief for distressed Americans, the measures Hoover had advocated were passed under Rooosevelt. But something far more ominous was done as well: the power of the Federal Government was vastly strengthened. And the real agenda was war, which Roosevelt prepared for with more vigor than he committed to his welfare programs. Roosevelt demanded that the Japanese give up their colonies while the French and British were to be allowed to keep their Asian colonies. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, because the astonishingly large fleet of battleships in the harbor were being readied for an attack on Japan to follow up on a war ultimatum Roosevelt had already issued to the Japanese.

Harry Truman is the only executive of any nation to order the use of atomic weapons in war, and against civilians.

John F. Kennedy is the former Democratic Party politician who is most often compared to Barack Obama. They both went to Harvard Law School. Kennedy was young when elected President. Kennedy was a racist who refused to follow up on progress made towards recognizing the civil rights of African-Americans during the Eisenhower administration. But he gave racism a liberal gloss by upholding the Warren Court decisions in rhetoric, if not in reality.

Kennedy was favored by the ruling class because they needed some dirty jobs done. Communist insurgencies were at work in virtually every country in the world when Kennedy took office. Kennedy began a 16 year global reign of terror against people who dared to rebel against Wall Street. He invaded Cuba. The invasion of Cuba failed because the Cuban people did not rise up against Castro as Kennedy had deluded himself into believing. He upped the ante in Vietnam. He supported the ongoing colonial policies of the French and British. But most important, he lowered tax rates for rich Americans. The war against the poor in the rest of the world was to be financed by taxes on the backs of American workers.

Why was Bill Clinton made President? The ruling class loved Bill. He pushed through trade globalization treaties that would have been resisted by grass-roots Democrats if a Republican president had been pushing them. He feinted left on medical care and then used the leftover "reform" energy to set up the rapacious HMO system. He did nothing about global warming in 8 years in office. He had U.S. war planes attack Iraq on a daily basis for 8 years, enforcing a cruel embargo and the "no-fly zone."

So why does the ruling class need a Barack Obama in the President's office so badly now? It is not just that people are tired of George W. Bush. Something bigger is up.

I am just speculating here. I don't think it is the "war on terror." Islamic fundamentalist warriors could be controlled with an extra billion dollars or so a year to the CIA, not the hundreds of billions of dollars per year the wars on the people of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan have cost. If it is just a matter of money you could let the Taliban take over Afghanistan again and then finance a guerilla insurgency against them that would keep them too bogged down to do much on an international scale.

At the top of the capitalist food chain analysts and decision makers may pay attention to detail, but promoting Barack Obama to the Presidency is part of a big picture. It could have to do with the global food shortages that have emerged in the past few years and appear to be accelerating. Maybe we are about to do major military intervention in Africa and need to put a black face on that. Most likely, though, working class Americans are about to have the economic screws put to them in a way we have not seen since the Rockefellers turned their machine guns on us over a century ago. On the other hand there is something happening that even I don't know about. An unknown unknown.

But Barack Obama knows. You don't get the kind of free-ride from major corporate media that the Obama campaign has gotten without there already being a tacit understanding in place.

Barack Obama simply does not have the spine to stand up to a bunch of powerful men in the situation room of the White House. The guy has never made waves in any political office he has held, and he won't as President.

Bad things are going to happen. Obama's job will be to tell his progressive and middle class and rich-liberal supporters to get in line and follow orders.

I hope I am wrong, but things really don't look good from where I'm sitting, peering out at the world and back into history.

Spanish Beatified Priests, Nuns, and the Luftwaffe

At my Vatican Rag web page I recently posted a commentary, Vatican Names Fascist Saints. In short the Catholic Church has beatified almost 500 clerics who it claims were killed by the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's.

Coincidentally further light was shed on the situation because last weekend I went to the local Pay and Take, a fundraiser for seniors, in Gualala to check out the used books for sale. I bought four, spending $3.00 of my hard-earned dough. One book was The Rise of the Luftwaffe - Forging the Secret German Air Weapon 1918 - 1940 by Herbert Moloy Mason, Jr. Like most curious people and particularly political scientists, I have spent some time studying the Nazi (German National Socialist Party) rise to power. I figured at worst I would be treated to stories of air battles and design changes in early aircraft.

The book added some fascinating insights to the Nazi story. One of the most powerful, and bizarre, Nazis was Hermann Goering, a World War I ace fighter pilot. After the Nazis came to power (they were elected on a program virtually identical to that of the U.S. Democratic Party of the same era) Goering was put in charge of the German air force, or Luftwaffe. The first combat the Luftwaffe saw was in the Spanish Civil War. The Luftwaffe provided an air lift to General Franco's troops, from Morocco into Spain. Then the Luftwaffe bombed the Spanish Navy, which had mostly stayed on the side of the Republic (the sailors mostly had to kill their officers to achieve that end). Then the Luftwaffe took on the Republican air force, since most of the pilots had sided with the Republic.

At that point the Luftwaffe began the first major aerial bombing campaign in human history. They attacked the Basques, who had sided with the Republic. Which brings us back to the Catholic martyred saints story. I quote from page 231 of The Rise of the Luftwaffe, about Operation Magic Fire:

"The raid caught Durango at the time of early mass, and the town's three large churches were filled. One bomb plummeted through the roof of the Church of the Jesuit Fathers, killing everyone inside except the vicar. Another ripped into the roof of the Santa Susana chapel, killing fourteen nuns. Santa Maria was hit just as Father Don Carlos Morilla was elevating the Host; he was crushed under tons of rubble. The bombs poured through the rest of the town, and when the Ju.52s had emptied themselves, the He.51s swooped down ... the next day ... The fighters added new touches to their technique by machine-gunning the streets after scattering their fragmentation bombs, and two Sisters of Charity were thus killed while running for safety."

A few days later the more-celebrated carpet bombing of Guernica took place.

But the Nationalists fought for religious intolerance of a Catholic sort, Adolf Hitler himself was a Catholic, and by then Pope had already made a pact of collaboration with Benito Mussolini (who also aided General Franco).

Maybe if an outcry is raised, some day the priests and nuns killed by the Fascists will be beatified. That would surprise me, but they say with God anything is possible. More likely the Catholic Church will make Francisco Franco a saint first. After all, he is the Constantine the Great of the 20th century.