VOICES OF EMPIRE: FROM CIA’s CULTURAL GREAT GAME TO GLOBAL GREAT GAME TODAY By:: Dr. Rahmat Rabi Zirakyar, Independent Scholar, U.S.A. February 15, 2010 The emergence of the United States “as a full-fledged global empire” reminds us of a 1919 essay “The Sociology of Imperialism” by Austrian economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) in which he wrote: “There was no corner of the world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest- then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.” Quoted in Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the post-911 World, 2005, p. 53.   INTRODUCTION Once you have finished reading my writing, you might become suspicious of any organization whose name includes the word “information”, “culture”, “freedom”, or “democracy”. You might even become suspicious of yourself whether you were an unaware player in the CIA’s cultural operations?! U.S. Professor of History Robin W. Winks shares his observations about the difficulties of writing reliable accounts of intelligence agencies: “There are very few reliable histories of intelligence, and with good cause. The sources lie, are lost, are nonexistent, are withheld. Journalists (often) lack the patience, scholars (often) lack the clout to gain access, to stay the course, to outlast those who would with both good and malign intent seek to influence the writer’s conclusions.” (“The Wise Man of Intelligence: Uncovering the Life of Allen Dulles,” in Foreign Affairs, November and December 1994 ). Electronic version [January 3, 2010] Global media consultant Alan Simpson suggests that students of intelligence should be “inquisitive, skeptical and unemotional about analyzing the use, and abuse of intelligence information.” Comlink.com [Jan. 26, 2010] The desire to stop emotions about analyzing a socio-political issue is almost impossible. Yet, I will try to contain my feelings while analyzing intelligence research. Mainly, I am focusing here on a crucial book, in which the author analyzed recently declassified documents, exclusive interviews, and 111 relevant published books: Frances Stoner Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 1999), ix+509 pages. Her pioneering book is a starting point for further investigation. Because culture has the potential to impel people’s hearts and minds, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) penetrated every corner of the cultural sphere in the world during the Cold War. English journalist and independent film producer Saunders’ book is a significant work in investigative history of the cultural Cold War funded covertly by the CIA.   FROM CIA’s CULTURAL GREAT GAME TO GLOBAL GREAT GAME In the aftermath of Second World War, the U.S.A. as the key figure in the “free world” was foremost interested in harnessing intellectual products and energies as one means to the end to defeat an ideology that counteracted individualism and capitalism. Many of the Cold War era’s top intellectuals and artists come into sight in the book by Saunders: Isaiah Berlin, Clement Greenberg, Sidney Hook, Arthur Koester, Irving Kristol, Robert Lowell, Henry Luce, Andre` Malraux, Mary McCarthy, Reinhold Neibuhr, George Orwell, Jackson Pollock, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Stephen Spender, among others. Many were unaware players in the CIA cultural operations while others were willfully accommodating in the game. In the aftermath of the Second World War, General George Marshall, Secretary of State in President Truman era (1945-1953), designed a strategy for Western Europe that was based on two pillars: a package of economic assistance coupled with a doctrinal imperative of a secret cultural- ideological war on communism. So Cold War became a holy war against a Godless Communism. Because America did not have a ministry for cultural affairs, the Great Cultural Game has to be assigned to another U.S. agency, the CIA. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was formed in 1942 in the wake of Pearl Harbor and abolished in September 1945 by President Truman. It was the institutional forerunner to CIA established in 1947. George Kennan, diplomat-scholar, architect of the Marshall Plan, and as director of State Department’s Policy Planning Staff was one of the father of the CIA. General William J. Donovan is also known as the father of today’s CIA. He was chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Allen Dulles was chief of OSS in Europe. Donovan organized the Coordinator of Information (COI) in 1941 in Rockefeller Center and appointed Allen Dulles to head its operations. COI was the institutional predecessor to the Office of Strategic Services in 1942. Congress passed the Central Intelligence Act of CIA in 1949. According to this Act, the Director of the CIA had the power to spend funds without having to account for disbursements. When the CIA moved from its temporary buildings in Washington, D.C. to its new Longley headquarters in Virginia in 1961, the Agency’s Director Allen Dulles “arranged for one of his favorite quotes from scripture[the Bible] to be engraved on the wall of the Langley lobby: ‘And ye[you]shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’.” (The Bible, John: 8, 32), Saunders, p. 280. Listen to Tom Braden, the CIA agent who put together the International Organizations Division and later wrote about truth: “Truth was reserved for the inside”, namely inside the CIA. He added that “To the outsider, CIA men learned to lie consciously and deliberately without the slightest tinge of the guilt that most men feel when they tell a deliberate lie” (Saunders, p. 380, quoted from Braden, “What Was Wrong with the CIA?”, Saturday Review, 5 April 1975) Under President Eisenhower, Allen Dulles became CIA director (1953- 1961). He was also involved in the covert operations that lead to the removal of democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq, Prime Minister of Iran, by the Shah Reza Pahlavi (1953-1979). The Congress of Cultural Freedom was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in West Berlin on June 26, 1950, just a day after North Korea invaded the South. For Korean War, see two excellent books: I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War(Monthly Review Press, 1952), 364 pages; Joseph C. Goulden , Korea: The Untold Story of the War (McGraw-Hill, 1983 paperback ed., 690. pages. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was the focal point of the U.S. government secret program of cultural propaganda in Western Europe. This organization operated at the discretion of the CIA. It was run by CIA agent Michael Josselson (1950-67), who was originally an East Berliner. A raft of journals and magazines was linked to the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Der Monat (in Germany) was acquired by the Congress from the Ford Foundation in 1954; the periodical History was “as much a product of the Cold War as the Crusade for Freedom.” (p.137); Perspective was published in four languages(French, German, English, and Italian); Hewar was published in Arabic; Encounter magazine was the centerpiece of post-World War II intellectual history and discussion (1953-90), and Stephen Spender was chosen by the CIA and MI6 (British Secret Intelligence Service) to co-edit it. Other magazines were: Tempo Presente (Italy), Quadrant (Australia), Quest (India), Quardernos (Latin America), Jiyu (Japan), Preuves (‘evidence’, France), Forum, Science and Freedom, and Soviet Survey(“Bizarrely, even some communist journals felt they could usefully borrow material” from this magazine. Saunders, p.213). Also, CIA’s men were writing articles for scholarly journals like Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, The New Republic, and the Irish University Review. According to a chief of the CIA’s Covert Actions Staff, books are most important among all other propaganda media: “primarily because one single book can significantly change the reader’s attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the impact of any other single medium[such as to]make books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.” (ibid.,p.245, quoted from Final Report of the Church Committee, 1976). As stated in New York Times (25 December 1977), the CIA was engaged in the publication of “at least a thousand books.” ( Saunders,p.245). Here are a few examples: Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (first publ. in Italy in 1957); Marxist-writer-intellectual El Campesino’s Listen Comrades: Life and Death in the USSR ( 1952); Chilean Marxist Eudecio Ravines, The Yenan Way: The Kremlin’s Penetration of South America (1951); The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System 1957 by dissident Yugoslav Communist leader and writer Milovan Djilas. “Sometimes, reviews of books in the New York Times or other respected broadsheets were penned by CIA writers under contract.”(p.247). A CIA operative talking with the editor of Washington Post, Philip Graham, about the availability and compensation of journalists ready to promote CIA cover stories and propaganda stated: “ You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” Quoted from Deborah Davis, Katherine the Great (1991) in “Mockingbird-The Subversion of the Free Press by CIA”, blueskysunshine.org/blog [January 9, 2010]. In 1947, Frank Wisner established “Operation Mockingbird”. In 1948, the CIA created a covert action division, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. In 1948, Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP), the forerunner of OPC in that year. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the British animated allegory based on the popular book of the same title by George Orwell (1903-1950), who was British novelist, journalist and political writer. Frank Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events, such as the CIA plots to topple the governments of Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). Alex Constantine writes in his book (Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA[2000]) that in the 1950s “some three thousand salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost of disinforming the world cost American tax payers an estimated $265 million” a year by 1978. This equals to “ a budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuter, UPI and AP news syndicates.” Also, in 1977, the Copley News Service acknowledged that “in fact,” its 23 employees “were full-time employees of the [Central Intelligence] Agency.” Quoted in spartacus.school.net.co.uk, [January 9, 2010]. White Houses staffer, covert operative for CIA (1950-1970s), convicted Watergate “plumber” and novelist E. Howard Hunt’s memoir (American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, published 2007) will introduce you to the covert designs under four U.S. presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (1953-1974). See also Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, 2008). Frank Wisner used the metaphor “Mighty Wurlitzer” to characterize the CIA’s array of front organizations. Arthur Schlesinger (1919-2007) was Professor of History, a Pulitzer Prize recipient, intellectual and social critic. He was a leader of anti-communist liberals in the McCarthy era and beyond. After World War II, the U.S. government became concerned about the threat of communism expanding in Eastern Europe, China (1949) and appealing to some Western intellectuals. Named after a young Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (1946-1957), McCarthyism was a politically and ideologically charged phenomenon of internal/U.S. cultural Cold War or an “ugly mood of national hysteria” characterized by two elements: (a) reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of subversions or treasons directed against leftist U.S. citizens, and (b) attacks on the patriotism of political adversaries. Even “New Deal and Fair Deal Democrats were called <Commiecrats>.” President Truman (1945-1953) himself “would later complain of the <great wave of hysteria> sweeping the nation”, despite the fact that to a great extent his politics contributed to that hysteria. From March 1947 to December 1952,”some 6.6 million persons were investigated. Not a single case of espionage was uncovered.” Regardless of “the failure to find subversion, the broad scope of the official Red hunt gave popular credence to the notion that the government was riddled with spies,” and consequently American “became convinced of the need for absolute security and the preservation of the established order.” ( Douglas Millar and Marion Nowack, The Fifties , 1977, quoted in Prof. of History, Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1980, pp. 420ff; see also: Main Problems in American History, edited by professors of history Howard H.Quint, Dean Albertson, and Milton Cantor, 1987, pp. 276ff; Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, 1982, p. 437-39; and Haynes Johnson, Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, 2005). This dark and repressive era of U.S. democracy lasted roughly from 1950 to late 1950s, but its fear and suspicion lived on through 1970s. Arthur Schlesinger served as adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He had worked during the Second World War at the Research and Analysis department of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and was acquainted with Allen Dulles-America’s chief of espionage in Europe during the World War II, since 1951 CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, “the inspiration” behind the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the brother of John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State, 1953-59). In May 1949, Allen Dulles conducted the formation of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), which was “one of the CIA’s most ambitious fronts.” (Saunders, p. 130). He proposed to Schlesinger in 1950 to “sit on” the Executive Committee of Radio Free Europe, which was launched that year by the CIA. Radio Free Europe began broadcasting in 1951. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a broadcast organization which was founded as an anti-communist source of news and information during the Cold War. Its current official “mission is to promote democratic values and institutions by reporting the news in countries where free press is banned by the government or not fully established.” (rferl.org, visited on Feb. 8, 2010). From its current headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, RFE/RL broadcasts in 28 languages (including Pashto, Dari/ Farsi [Persian] and Arabic) to 20 countries (including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Iraq). The author and writer William Blum, a former U.S. State Department employee until 1967, who resigned from his job because of his disillusionment with American foreign policy, writes: “In actuality, the CIA covertly funded almost all of the cost [of RFE/RL] until 1971; exposure of the [Central Intelligence] Agency’s role in 1967…led to Congress eventually instituting open governmental financing of the stations.” Blum criticizes the broadcast stations that although they “served the purpose of filling in some of the gaps and correcting the falsehoods of the Communist media”, they “could not escape presenting a picture of the world, both East and West, shot through with their own omissions and distortions.” Blum adds that their “mission in life was to emphasize was whatever could make the Communist regimes look bad.” Blum quotes Victor Marchetti, former senior official of CIA, “the primary value of the radios was to sow discontent in Eastern Europe, and in the process, to weaken the communist governments.”[Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, 1975, pp. 204-206]. Blum observes that “many” of the Russians hired by various radio stations, “which broadcast at length about freedom, democracy and other humanitarian concerns, were later identified by the U.S. Justice Department as Hitler’s notorious Einsatztruppen [Operation Forces].” Also, Blum points to German war criminals, who “were employed by the CIA in a variety of anti-Soviet operations.” (William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, updated ed., 2004, pp.118, 59-61). Arthur Schlesinger was falsely accused of as “Harvard Communist” by reporter John Fox in 1954. Schlesinger, “the Cold War theologian” Reinhold Niebuhr, James T. Farrell, Richard Revere of the New Yorker, former Socialist Party chairman and six times candidate for U.S. president, Norman Thomas, and Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv belonged to the moderate camp of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom ( ACCF), which was founded in New York in 1951. This organization’s first chairman was Sidney Hook( a “contract consultant” for the CIA), as well as it was “the official American affiliate” of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Through its front organizations, the CIA could conceal its involvement from public view. The American Committee for Cultural Freedom, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the National Committee for a Free Europe were front organizations of CIA, which “had a power of veto” over front activities (Saunders, pp. 57-59, 203). Three seminal books served as an effective weapon in the psychological warfare: The Vital Center by a leader of anti-communist liberals Arthur Schlesinger (1949); The God That Failed by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler (1949); and British novelist George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). All these three books were designed to convert the disillusioned non-communist Left to the Western liberal democracy. Recapturing overseas opinion leaders (such as journalists, commentators, artists, professors and scientists) to the cause of ‘liberty and freedom’ necessitated a program for “ ‘learned operations like seminars, symposia, special tomes, learned journals, libraries, exchange of persons, endowed professorships etc.’” (Saunders, p.151). U.S. Professor of History Howard Zinn wrote about the fade of anti-communist films: “Between 1948 and 1954, more than forty anti-Communist films came out of Hollywood.” (A People’s History of the United States, op.cit., p. 428). In Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, the “Cultural Scientific Conference for World Peace” was organized (March 1949) by leftists including Soviet delegates. To marginalize the communist propaganda, an international counter-committee was established, which was comprised of the following prominent intellectuals: Benedetto Croce ( 1866-1952: Italian critic, politician, cultural historian, and philosopher who rejected Karl Marx’s determinism); T.S. Elliot( 1888-1965: American-born English poet, playwright with religious orientation, and literary critic-arguably one of “the most daring innovators” of the twentieth-century poetry); Karl Jaspers (1883-1969: German philosopher and psychiatrist, who was one of the originators of existentialism and had influenced theology, psychiatry and philosophy) ; Andre` Malraux (1901-1976: French novelist, art historian, and statesman for many years as Frances’s minister of information and minister of cultural affairs) ; Jacques Maritain (1882-1973: converted to Catholicism, he was French philosopher, political thinker, and a prominent interpreter of the theology of the thirteenth-century influential Italian philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas-he considered philosophy as ancilla theologiae[handmaid of theology]) ; Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) a British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic-most known for his work in analytic philosophy and mathematical logic. Also, he was noted for significant contribution to education, history, political theory, religious studies, as well as for his anti-war and anti-nuclear protests. Russell was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. He criticized Stalinism/Soviet totalitarianism and U.S. war in Vietnam); Igor F. Stravinsky (1882-1971: Russian-born pianist and conductor, major composer of the 20th century, and since 1946 naturalized U.S. citizen); and Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965: Alsasian-German theologian, humanitarian, philosopher and medical doctor; he obtained Ph.D. dissertation on the religious philosophy of Emanuel Kant in 1889 and M.D. degree in 1913. He was doctor and surgeon in the hospital he founded at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa where he died and was buried. He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his philosophy of “Reverence for Life”[Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben]. From 1952 until his death, Dr. Schweitzer was engaged in protest against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons with the father of modern physics, German-born American Dr. Albert Einstein[1879-1955] and British philosopher Bertrand Russell)-see Saunders, pp. 45-48, and other electronic sources. “The Farthfield Foundation was a CIA foundation and there were many such foundations,” said CIA agent Tom Braden. He was working for Allen Dulles, CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, as “one of his most dashing” OSS officers. (Saunders, pp. 127, 95). Maintaining cultural freedom was an expensive project. From 1950-1967, CIA has to spend tens of million dollars on the Congress for Cultural Freedom and connected projects. With such a pledge, the CIA was the de facto U.S. “Ministry of Culture.” (ibid, p.129). U.S. diplomat and strategist George Kennan “never felt the slightest pangs of conscience” about the fuss regarding CIA money. The United States did not have “Ministry of Culture”, and the CIA just “filled] the gape”, Kennan concluded(ibid., p.408). CIA had a “cover branch” for supplying funding cover, namely foundations of private citizens, such as Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Farthfield Foundation, etc. “Over 170” foundations are reported to have willfully promoted CIA funding ‘passes’.” There was a joke about the words <free> or <private> used in connection with foundations: “if any American philanthropic or cultural organization carried the words <free> or <private> in its literature, it must be a CIA front.” (ibid., pp. 135-136). One and the same, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation were “an integral component of America’s Cold War machinery.” Nelson Rockefeller’s brother David was an important multi-functional man: He was a trustee of the Council of Foreign Relations, Chairman of the Executive Committee for International House, and “close friend” of Allen Dulles and Tom Braden. With Dulles permission, Braden “often briefed” David Rockefeller on what they were doing. Sometimes David would provide Braden with money for doing things that were not covered by CIA budget. This way, CIA “never came to the equation”, recalled Braden in an interview, Virginia, August 1996. “These freelance transactions” , continues the author Frances Stoner Saunders, “gave new meaning to the governmental buccaneering, and were an inevitable bi-product of the semi-privatization of American foreign policy during these Cold War years.” (pp. 144-145). The President Eisenhower (1953-1961) “splurge” was continued by the desire of President Kennedy administration’s “productive relationship” with artists. “156 of the more famous of them” were present at his inaugural ceremonies. Many Cold Warriors enjoyed the imperial-inspirational aura, as one admirer reminded Kennedy just ten days after his inauguration: Similar to the pride of Romans expressed in the phrase <civis Romanus sum>, now once again Americans can enjoy “civis Americanus sum” (I am an American citizen). This was, in a way, indicating membership in Roman civilization. Lord Palmerston (June 25, 1850), was proud to announce that every British citizen in the world “should be protected by the British Empire.” This proud boast was repeated by President Kennedy in his speech in West Berlin (June 26, 1963) in this form: “Ich Bin ein Berliner”(I am a Berliner). After the end of the Second World War, Germany was divided, and 96-mile (155 km) long and nearly 12-foot high wall separated West and East Berlin. In his speech, President Kennedy used the construction of the Berlin Wall as an example of the incompetence of communist regime: “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.” Twenty-four years later in 1987, President Ronald Reagan visited West Berlin and urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” From the western perspective, the wall was designed to prevent East Berliners escaping to the West and freedom. William Blum was a U.S. State Department employee until 1967. He resigned from his job because of his disillusionment and opposition to American foreign policy. He is the founder of Washington Free Press, author and writer. To William Blum, the wall was constructed for two reasons: First, “The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers….This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported [June 27, 1963, p.12]: <West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin>.” Second, “during the 1950s, American coldwarriors” in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) launched “a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany [the Democratic Republic of Germany] designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear.” Blum describes the CIA and other US intelligence and military services operations as follows: They “recruited, equipped, trained and financed” East and West German “activist groups and individuals, … to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies[communists] look bad.” (William Blum, “Another Cold War Myth: The Fall of the Berlin Wall”, Counterpunch, October 2-4, 2009). Professor Huntington’s book (Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996) has attracted not only the attention of the world’s intellectual community, but also his thesis “was dominating the U.S. political scene” since the 911 attacks ( September 11, 2001; see bellow). THE COLD WAR IS OVER, LONG LIVE THE “CLASH OF CIVILIZAIONS”? The Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989. Twenty years later, on November 9, 2009, the fall of the Berlin Wall was commemorated in Berlin, which welcomed many heads of states and governments. How can you celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall without even saluting to the Afghan nation that tore the “Iron Curtain” and broke down the Berlin Wall?! After the end of World War II, former allies went from cooperation to confrontation, and the Cold War started. After the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991, the “clash of civilizations” started. We cannot get away from the fact that without an “enemy” there will be a vacuum in news coverage as in politics. The alliance of Christian-Western and Islamic-Eastern civilizations defeated the Soviet aggression against Afghanistan (1979-1989). Both allied civilizations enjoyed their victory over the “Godless Communism” of the Cold War. Listen to Huntington: “To Americans and Westerners generally Afghanistan was the final, decisive victory, the Waterloo, of the Cold War….What the West sees as a victory for the Free World, Muslims see as a victory for Islam[emphasis added]” (Clash of Civilizations, 1996,pp.246-247). Soon after the demise of the Soviet Communism, “The Roots of Muslim Rage”(Atlantic Magazine, 1990) by the veteran Orientalist Professor Bernard Lewis, The End of History and the Last Man by Professor Francis Fukuyama(Free Press 1992), and “The Clash of Civilizations?” by Professor Huntington (Foreign Affairs, summer 1993-expanded to a book in 1996) emerged. Generally, the West discovered Islam (officially radical Islam) as the “New Communism”. Thus, a dangerous adversary was identified, and so a vacuum no more existed. The three professors (Lewis, Fukuyama and Huntington) are more or less clamoring for a religious-civilizational war, a global equivalent of the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648 in Europe. (See Rahmat Zirakyar, “Relocate United Nations to Jerusalem to Harmonize Civilizations”, January 2008, pp. 13-14; electronic version). Internationally renowned U.S. scholar Professor Noam Chomsky comments on Blum’s book (Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 2004,): “Far and away the best book on the topic.” A major U.S. intellectual, author and speaker Gore Vidal “enjoyed it immensely.” Blum writes: “The Cold Wars is Over. Long Live the Cold War.” After the end of the Cold War, the death of International Communist Conspiracy, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact,“There was none of the <peace dividend>” for anyone. “Nothing changed in American foreign policy” and even NATO, which was created for the protection of Western Europe against Soviet invasion, “remained, ever increasing in size and military power, a treaty on wheels which could be rolled in any direction to suit” U.S. current foreign policy. Blum comes to the conclusion that “the whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism pr se had not been the object of Washington’s global attack. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire;” continues Blum, “by whatever names the U.S. gives to the enemy: communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist…” Blum compares attack on “symbolic buildings” to the retaliation of a “symbolic country”: “The 11 September terrorists had chosen symbolic buildings to attack and the United States then chose a symbolic country to retaliate against.” CONCLUSIONS “The illusion of dissent [in democracy]” was carried on: The CIA backed up “socialist and cold warriors, black and white warriors”. In his article “CIA: The Great Corrupter” (Feb. 1967), Andrew Kopkind stated that the “sham pluralism…was utterly corrupting.” Two other intellectuals Jason Epstein in 1967 and Connor Cruise O’Brien in 1966 criticized that “second-class passengers were travelling first class.”(Saunders, pp 409 & 473, footnote 9 to chapter 26). Robert Lowell (1917-1977), the son of U.S. Navy Commander T.T.S. Lowell, was one of the distinguished U.S. poets of the day, and a friend of Robert Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. He became skeptical after participating in a White House dinner (May 11, 1962) in honor of the French author and Minister of Culture Andre` Malraux, a player in the CIA’s cultural Great Game: “Then the next morning you read that the Seventh Fleet had been sent somewhere in Asia.” He believed that “the real government was somewhere else”, namely, “something much closer to the Pentagon [Defense Department] was really running the country.”(This sounds something like Military-Industrial Complex). Robert Lowell “feels[s] we intellectuals play a very pompous and frivolous role-we should be windows, not window-dressing.” (Quoted in Saunders, pp. 344-45). Frances S. Saunders finishes her book with this fascinating paragraph: “Behind the ‘unexamined nostalgia’ for the ‘Golden Days’ of American intelligence, lay a much more devastating truth: the same people who read Dante...went to Yale [University] and were educated in civic virtue, recruited Nazis, manipulated the outcome of democratic elections , gave LSD to unwitting subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens, overthrew [foreign] governments, supported dictatorships, plotted assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster[ failed U.S. invasion of Cuba during the early months of John F. Kennedy administration]. ‘In the name of what?,’ asked one critic ‘Not civic virtue, but empire’.” (p. 427). Listen to the voices of the empire now: In the aftermath of the Cold War end, the empire declared in 1992: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union….we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overrun the established political and economic order….we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” (Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999, as quoted from New York Times, March 8, 1992 by Blum). The Project of New American Century (PNAC) is a neoconservative think tank created in 1997. Its goal is “to promote American global leadership”. PNAC’s statement of principles was signed by 25 Americans, including: William Benet, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. William Kristol, who was the son of Irving Kristol (an important figure during the CIA’s cultural Cold War), was the chairman of PNAC. In its report we can read: “Our military requires a dramatic transformation, lest we lose our ability to fight the future unconventional wars…some may be fought in cyber space, others under water or in outer space. And some even within our bodies.”(PANAC-“Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, 2000) As the empire expands, a base in every neighborhood is needed to quell any challenge to imperial rule: Subsequent to “ its bombing” of Iraq in 1991, the United States “wound up with military bases” in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Subsequent to its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the empire “wound up with military bases” in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Next to “its bombing” of Afghanistan in 2001-2002, the empire “wound up with military bases” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzistan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti. “Following its bombing” of Iraq in 2003, the empire “wound up with Iraq.” In the aftermath of 911 catastrophe, President George W. Bush (2001-2009) said: “we will smoke them [Bin Laden and his warriors] out of their holes.”(This sounds like exorcism. See: Joshua Gunny, “The Rhetoric of Exorcism: George W. Bush and the Return of Political Demonology”, 2004, in quistia.com; [Feb. 15, 2010]). U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell declared in February 2002 that “America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before.” Also, later that year, the U.S. Defense Department announced that the U.S. military “is currently deployed to more locations then [than] it has been throughout history.” U.S. Army Major General Franklin Hagenbeck speaking of the destruction of three villages in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan (March 2002): “We leveled it. There was nobody left, just dirt and dust.” (For above quotations, see William Blum, Killing Hope, pp. 382-391). If history and the physical world exists “only in mind”, and if the mind itself is manageable-what then?! Following the war of “dirt and dust” in the Pashtun areas, the “war of perception” was launched on February13, 2010 on Marja town in Afghanistan. If war is “a brutal and ugly enterprise”, then the war on Marja might be less brutal and ugly: a real war sprinkled with mind control plus the use of battle tanks with missiles, rocket launchers…, helicopter gunships, and probably some physical nations building with ugly scars on the mind of Afghans who have a culture of resistance. And here, it goes again: Marja (Afghanistan, 2010) = Fallujah (Iraq, 2004). For war on Marja, see: Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 2010; electronic version. Global Research’s frequent contributor Bill Van Auken quotes Stratfor, a global intelligence website “with close ties” to the U.S. administration, as follows: “the assault is likely to include the cordoning off of the area, so many of the fighters dedicated to its defense will probably be forced to fight to the death or surrender.”(“US to Launch Fallujah-style Attack in Afghanistan”, in Global Research.ca [Feb. 14, 2010]. Van Auken continues to explain that US military command wants to set an “example of a population center known as a center of resistance” to empire. President Obama should know that the city of Marja cannot be rebuilt once your military poisons it (like Tora Bora in 2001-2002) and its environs with depleted uranium, tungsten (chemical element W[olframium]) and other toxins? Depleted uranium contaminates food, water, air and land for ever, and it is the ultimate “dirty bomb.”(See: “Current Issues-Depleted Uranium Weapons in Afghanistan”; last updated July 22, 2009; in wise-uranium.org [Feb. 14, 2010] ). German Federal Defense Force (Bundeswehr) manual disputed U.S. and U.K. denial over depleted uranium use in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora area: “During the operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in support of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban-Regime, US-aircraft used, amongst others, armour-piercing incendiary munitions with a DU-core [DU: Depleted Uranium].” (Translated from German), Zentrum fuer Nachrichtenwesen der Bundeswehr: Leitfaden fuer Bundeswehrkontingente in Afghanistan, Stand: 11/2005, pp. 1-11 (written by German “Federal Defense Force’s Center for Communication). Prof. of Medicine at Georgetown University Dr. Asef Durankovic writes that Natural uranium was “found in drinking water and in urine of civilians in Eastern Afghanistan.” (Military Medicine, vol. 170, No 4 (April, 2005), pp. 277-284; electronic version [Feb. 14, 2010]. Reports point to “spontaneous abortion among women and animals” in Tora Bora area of Eastern Afghanistan. (For more information, see: Afghanistan after ‘Democracy’: The Untold Story through Photographic Images” by Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki; electronic version; and “Silent WMDs-Effects of Depleted Uranium” by Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former chief of the Naval Staff, India, February 29, 2004/Conference Hosted by the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development, February 29, March 1-2, 2004; electronic version [February 15, 2010]). End: February 15, 2010 ***************************** Dr. Rahmat Rabi Zirakyar, Independent Scholar, living in California, USA. He is a regular contributor to Sabawoon Online and write on verity of other respected Afghan and American Journals and publications. He can be reached by e-mail: zirakyar1234@yahoo.com

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