Friday, August 24, 2007

Vietnam, Iraq and Cognitive Dissonance



Vietnam, Iraq and Cognitive Dissonance

Copyright 2007 by James Craven

The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are striking and mounting every day. Some of them (A to Z) are listed here.

What is really at stake in Iraq, and the main reason Bush will not leave (in addition to his monstrous ego, malignant narcissism and megalomania and not wanting to "lose" an illegal war he started--on "his" watch and to an "inferior" enemy) is what was at stake in Vietnam: The DEMONSTRATION EFFECT of a U.S. loss revealing to many potential victims and adversaries of U.S. Imperial system exactly how weak, overextended and vulnerable the U.S. imperial system really is.

Once a given war is clearly illegal by even U.S. laws and standards, there is no "optimum" or "orderly" way to end it but IMMEDIATELY and without any conditions.


"THIS WILL BE THE FINAL MESSAGE FROM SAIGON STATION...IT HAS BEEN A LONG FIGHT AND WE HAVE LOST...THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE FORCED TO REPEAT IT. LET US HOPE THAT WE WILL NOT HAVE ANOTHER VIETNAM EXPERIENCE AND THAT WE HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSON. SAIGON SIGNING OFF."

Last message of CIA Saigon Station Chief Tom Polgar April 29, 1975 quoted in "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner, Doubleday, NY, 2007, p.343


"Chutzpah" used to be defined as "Killing one's parents and then pleading mercy of the court on the grounds that one is now an orphan." The new definition of "Chutzpah" is Chickenhawk and Deserter-During-Wartime Bush and Chickenhawk Cheney speaking to a VFW audience--and, speaking on the need for "Staying the Course" in Iraq as "WE" should have "stayed the course" in the Vietnam War they both worked so hard to avoid. What is also disgusting is some of those patently stupid and backward types found in the VFW and American Legion, (the older they get the bigger "heroes" they used to be) actually sitting and listening to the lies and rationalizations of failure of both of them and even applauding.

There are indeed many parallels between Vietnam and Iraq Wars. And there are also many parallel myths born of cognitive dissonance: the naked contradiction between the BELIEF vs EMOTION, BELIEF vs FACT or EMOTION vs FACTs.

The same cognitive-dissonance-reducing myths and rationales of Vietnam are surfacing again in Iraq--with the same disastrous results.

The parallels between the Vietnam and Iraq Wars are numerous:

a) Both wars were preemptively planned, launched, executed and widened on the basis of lies, phony pretexts, contrived intelligence;

b) Both wars involved illegally (top-down, outside-inside) setting up and maintaining puppet regimes and puppet forces with no mass legitimacy and no military effectiveness;

c) Both wars involved military strategy, doctrine, tactics, equipment, force structures and criteria/definitions of military "success" and "victory" totally inappropriate to the natures of the environments, wars and enemies being fought;

d) Both wars involved ongoing lies to the American Public (that the enemies knew to be lies) about the real causes, status and prospects of the wars and attempts to engineer "manufactured consent" on a mass level;

e) Both wars involved massive, unchecked and even treasonous war profiteering and waste; they involved high rates of no-bid-patronage-based military contracts.

f) Both wars involved public support from known Chickenhawks who, along with their carefully protected children, never served in any of the wars they were actively supporting or even in the military anywhere;

g) Both Wars involved a lot of cognitive dissonance on the part of those who served in those wars as well as on the part of those who planned and launched them: "If your Cause was so just, your training and weapons so good, your forces so heroic, your enemy so "backward" and "exploited", why did you lose?"

h) Both wars involved ongoing intelligence sycophancy, corruption, lies and failures born out of partisan political interests behind and running--and defining criteria and definitions of "success" in--the respective wars;

i) Both wars involved massive ignorance, on the part of those who planned and launched the wars, along with many involved in executing them, of the cultures, geographies, histories, languages, philosophies, intentions, alliances and capabilities of the enemies they proposed to face;

j) Both wars had a lot of bipartisan support, collusion and treachery behind them;

k) Both wars involved puppet regimes installed and legitimated top-down and by foreigners that summarily recognized them even when other U.S. allies did not; regimes that had no real indigenous support and grass-roots origins when they were installed.

l) Both wars, the military and police forces of the U.S. and its allies, in Vietnam as in Iraq, were heavily infiltrated and carefully monitored by their enemies;

m) Both wars involved only token contributions by only a few of the main allies of the U.S. despite repeated attempts to multilateralize the Wars.

o) Both wars involved massive overt and covert state surveillance of and repression against popular dissent; and both wars involved creating and/or exacerbating threats to "national security", and "it's-either-over-THERE-or-over-HERE" rhetoric then used to subvert and suppress civil liberties and Constitutional Rights.

p) Both wars exposed the real impotence and imperial overreach of U.S. imperial power in dealing with multiple, distant, protracted and unconventional insurgencies.

q) Both wars exposed the fallacy of high-tech-weapons warfare being decisive over a determined enemy whether in conventional or unconventional wars. Both wars showed low-tech can defeat high-tech weapons and tactics under varied conditions.

r) Both wars exposed the fact that the imperial U.S. state ultimately has no loyalties to puppets and allies if and when push comes to shove. In both cases, literally hundreds of thousands of former collaborators with U.S. forces, allegedly highly vulnerable to reprisals against themselves and their families, were simply and summarily dumped with no loyalty to them.

s) Both Wars, War Criminal Henry Kissinger, sensing ultimate failure, covertly urged "Decent Intervals" before ultimate troop pull-outs (while publicly urging continuation of the War and claiming victories) in order to "save face", and to be able to place ultimate blame for failure on other parties and regimes who would be handed the Wars with less and less resources and popular support with which to fight them.

t) Both wars involved predictable and predicted quagmires and both wars led to a fear of a "demonstration effect" that loss of the War would signal other potential rivals just how much of a Paper Tiger" the U.S. Imperial War machine really is, and, that it can effectively be taken on by relatively weak but determined insurgent forces.

u) Both wars involved ultra-quantification and indices for every aspect of the wars as if coming up with operational definitions and yardsticks were equal to actually measuring and coming up with real data, and, as if actual measurements were equal to--or even capturing--actual results. Considerable resources were tied up in producing paper and "official statistics" to give the illusion of quantifiable and quantified successes and progress on the ground when real facts on the ground said the opposite of what was being produced on the official paper. Despite the ultra-quantification on certain levels, not even estimates of deaths of civilians as "collateral damage" were ever kept and even deaths of U.S. Forces and civilian contractors were not complete or accurate.

v) In Vietnam there were 44 PICS (Provincial Interrogation Centers run jointly by CIA and locals) that operated with the same torture techniques, secrecy, lack of accountability, cover-ups, cowboys, and bogus/enemy-nurturing results--torture does not work--as their counterparts like places like Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

w) Both wars involved successions of puppet regimes directly installed and managed by U.S. Pro-Consuls and their Administrations through highly problematic elections; and in both wars, the supposed "sovereignty" of the nation in which regime change and nation building was going on, was only selectively, opportunistically and situationally recognized by the U.S.

x) Both wars involved lack of any operational definitions of "tactical success" and/or "strategic victory" or contingency planning for or even recognition of the possibility of: protracted military conflict; a protracted occupation and "civil affairs" campaign; a protracted quagmire; military defeat; political defeat; an exit strategy in the event of military and/or political defeat.

y) Both wars, in-country, involved selected, selective, superficial and highly censored news media coverage by highly embedded, beholden [on U.S. Forces for their safety] and largely sycophantic reporters and reporting operating mostly in relatively secure areas.

z) Both wars involved extensive use of privatized (non-accountable to UCMJ or any law) surrogates for and in conjunction with U.S.Forces including NGOs, ex-pat mercenaries, missionaries, charities, foundations, false-flag operatons, etc. These privatized surrogates allow, as they were intended and designed, the committing violations of various UN Conventions and international law by the privatized contractors that are not traceable to, and are plausibly deniable by, U.S. forces paying and directing them.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Comforting Myths of Vietnam

How to explain that not only was the world's largest and most lethal war machine defeated militarily by a poor "backward" nation like Vietnam, but, also, how it was that the U.S. soldiers, supposedly the best armed and motivated and trained in the world, with the best logistical support known, were defeated by [relatively] poorly armed and poorly supported guerrillas of the NLF and regular troops of the so-called "NVA"? The cognitive dissonance (disharmony and dissonance caused by a naked contradiction between FACT vs BELIEF, BELIEF vs EMOTION--INTERESTS, EMOTION vs FACT) is just too much for many who served in Vietnam (VFW types) as well as those involved in planning it.

Myth Number ONE: The U.S. never "lost" any battles; the War was lost due to pinko protesters, coupled with an impatient public unwilling to sacrifice blood and treasure for long run strategic gains, who gave aid and comfort to the enemy and emboldened their resistance.

The FACT is that in Vietnam, as in the case of Iraq, one cannot or could not, in unconventional wars, define "winning" or "losing" on the basis of conventional definitions and criteria in conventional wars: territory taken/held, body count, "pacification campaigns", prisoners taken etc; The Vietnamese did not need protests around the world to embolden them to stay the course until victory; it was in their over-2000-year history of resistance to foreign invasions that the U.S. hierarchy never bothered to study and digest. At the time of the "Fall of Saigon" there were three NVA divisions outside of Saigon and a NLF Regiment inside that could have easily killed every last American instead of letting them dump their allies, scramble to exit and to "save face".

The same applies with Iraq now. In both cases, the forces faced by the U.S. understand well and are well prepared, for the kinds of sacrifices in the immediate that are necessary for long-run strategic advances--and unlike the U.S. are prepared to pay whatever costs.

Myth Number Two: If the puppet regimes in the "South" of Vietnam installed by the U.S., all of them dictatorships with no real popular support, had just been fully and not partially supported, if the War had been Vietnamized earlier, the forces of the so-called "Republic of Vietnam" could have and would have become more effective and able to undertake their own defense and eventually win the war.

The Fact is that none of the puppet regimes (installed from without instead of arising from within and from truly indigenous grass-roots) and few of their military and police forces had any real popular support for various--and some of the same-- reasons in Vietnam as is the case in Iraq. In both wars, where "success" is really about winning hearts and minds on the ground, the methods and military tactics used, resulting in massive "collateral damage", wound/wind-up creating more new enemies from former friends that new friends from former enemies.

Myth Number Three If U.S. forces had just been allowed to do whatever was/is necessary, use whatever force structures available, engage in whatever military operations imperative, the war can be/could have been won.

The fact is that many military operations in Vietnam, as in Iraq were restrained not to protect the enemy, but to protect U.S. forces from casualties at rates that would further compromise any popular support for the wars at home. Other targets and operations were restrained because attacking unclear targets can wind up creating more enemies than friends and/or cause massive casualties and body bags coming home that an "I-Want-It-All-And-I-Want-It-Now" culture could not/cannot handle.

So now we get more rationales, lies, equivocation and cognitive dissonance with some of those pot-bellied vets at the ol VFW, with empty lives partly filled with their own grandiose notions of what they used to be, listening to a Deserter-During-Wartime not qualified even to be in the VFW, joining in and helping them with their own cognitive dissonance problems:

"How is it that these "heroes", so well-armed, well-trained, well-fed, well-motivated, well-supported", etc (conventional BELIEF/EMOTION) managed to lose in every possible way (FACT) to what they arrogantly viewed with demonizing, dehumanizing and marginalizing epithets like these "little" and "backward" "Dinks", "Slopes" and "Gooks" in Vietnam?"

And today, as then, some U.S. forces are presently having trouble, in Iraq, with what they often privately--and sometimes openly--call these "backward" "Hajis","Ragheads" and "Sand Niggers". Why, if they are so well armed, supported, led and motivated, are they unable to put down--and instead are fueling and expanding--a relatively poorly armed insurgency?

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Evil of Lessers


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The Evil of Lessers
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Copyright 2007 by James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi
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Intro
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My father gave me some advice when I was young that the Democratic candidates, for any office, need to take to heart: 1) "Never wind up the only honest person in a rigged card game."; 2) "Never show up to a gun fight with a knife."
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Five basic possibilities emerge: 1) becoming corrupted by the game and other players; 2) finding onself continually getting taken; 3) trying to survive and outwit the corrupt within their own parameters and rules; 4) trying to evolve and impose a new kind of game with new rules and hoping that those whose interests will be threatened will not be able to resist; 5) Leaving the game and any legitimation of it.
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Under the banner of "lesser of evils" we wind up supporting "the evil of lessers." Or, as Plato put it: "Those who SEEK power, are invariably the least fit to hold and wield it."
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You can see it in the postures and speeches of the present Democratic candidates: "Yeah you may not like our style, you may not like how compromised to big money we all are to get elected, you may not like it that most of us we are part of a corrupt and do-nothing Congress with lower approval ratings than Bush, you may not like it that Bush and his gang could not have done all the damage to America and the world that they have done without our own opportunistic and spineless collusion with them, but, like it or not, your only real "choice" is between us and the likes of Bush and his gang; and we know, in the end, one more time, you'll have no "choice" but to hold your nose and vote--and vote Democratic." Beyond that, each candidate's basic pitch is that choosing them will be less odious, and thus will require less holding of the nose, relative to that required in support of their opponents.
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What we can do in the present circumstances, is to hold the Democratic candidates accountable not only for what they do say and do, for what lies they tell, and what opportunism and compromise they do practice, but also hold them accountable: for the questions they do not pose; for the facts they refuse to acknowledge or deal with; for the lies they sign on to and/or refuse to expose; for the real and necessary hardball they refuse to play and the consequences that follow.
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When Romney took the meaning of "chutzpah" to a whole new level (from the usual of "killing one's parents and pleading mercy to the Court on the grounds that one is now an orphan") saying that his chickenhawk sons were giving best "service" to the nation by not being in the military and in Iraq but rather by working to get him elected, the Dems should be called out for not jumping all over that. Of course one reason they did not is because many of them are also big-mouthed chickenhawks so in love with the military in which they never served even when they had a chance and wars to which they never went.
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Or, when Romney so piously talks about how, at a relatively advanced age beyond youth, he suddenly is no longer "Pro-Choice" on the abortion issue or "Pro Gay Rights", then call out the Dems why they refuse to pose a simple question to Romney: "When you supposedly were "Pro Choice" and "Pro Gay Rights", were you then lying to your fellow Mormons and the hierarchy of the Mormon church about being a "faithful Mormon" (as those positions are considered apostasy and grounds for excommunication) or were you lying to your supporters to get elected Governor of Massachusetts assuming the only positions on those issues that would have allowed you to get elected in that state.?"
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Or, when Giuliani continues to make reference to his early education in Catholic parochial schools, call out the Dems for not asking why he keeps referring to his time in Catholic parochial schools when it is clear that his whole life has shown contempt for some of the basics he was taught in those schools: about marital fidelity, divorce, etc. And perhaps ask Giulliani why his two previous marriages involved annulment (thus logically making his children "illegitimate") instead of his being excommunicated or threatened with it, as happens to a lot of poor Catholics who are not celebrities and not Church-hieriarchy-connected but are real candidates for annulment.
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So when being schmoozed by these Democratic candidates, come with a list of normally "taboo" questions and demand that they be asked when being interviewed by the press and in debates with other Dems or with Republicans. And if they say that those questions are somehow off-limits, taboo, "impolite", not "refined" etc, then ask them how "polite" is the massive death and maiming in the illegal Iraq War, etc.
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In economics, a central concept is that of opportunity cost. The true cost involves not only direct dollar costs,but what one gave up or lost not pursuing the next best alternative. That means there are real costs on real people: when critical questions are not posed; when critical venues are not fully used; when candidates do not pose the questions that need to be posed and are carbon copies of their nominal opponents; when "the evil of lessers" is passed off as "the lesser of evils".
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James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi

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The Spiral of SUCKcess in "Mainstream" News Media


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The Spiral of SUCKcess in "Mainstream" News Media
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Copyright 2007 by James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi
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Intro
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When "news" is a commodity (an object for sale and profit) then news, along with the producers and the reporters of it, all must be bought and "sold" like any other commodities--like Cornflakes.
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Those who select, package and report the news all understand the "game" or the core imperatives of the news business. When the typical editor or reporter says that no one ever told them what to report or not report, they may well be telling the truth because no one had to tell them what was "permissible" to cover and what is taboo; that is how and why they got hired in the first place: they demonstrated throughout their previous work that they had the right paradigm, understood the game and did not need to be told about limits and taboos.
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The game of commodified-profit-driven news goes like this:
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Access brings The Scoop; The Scoop brings Exposure; Exposure brings Celebrity; Celebrity brings Expanded Access; and Expanded Access brings an even Bigger or Expanded Scoop and...
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We have all seen the news conferences where we suspected past presidents were doing what Bush does openly: Not call on a particular reporter as punishment for a previous question thought to be too impertinent or touching on some taboo. We have seen even the most repected journalists, with many years of covering the White House, frozen out from being called on to posing questions as punishment for previous transgressions--with Bush even openly acknowledging he was denying Access as punishment.
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Imagine the following scenarios:
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Bush is at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. giving a speech about how horrible the Nazi Holocaust was (actually happened) and some journalist (perhaps with a terminal disease and deciding to atone for all the years of "Faustian" deals with the powerful to pose only softball qeustions to advance his career) dares to ask the following question: "
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"Mr. Bush. Given that you have never been qualified for nor ever held, even one position, including your present one, that you could have obtained without the direct influence and force of your family wealth and name, and given that your grandfathers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker were, along with Fritz Thuyssen, principal financiers of Hitler from 1924 onward, cited for "Trading With the Enemy During Wartime" for selling Nazi financial securities AFTER Pearl Harbor, and were also co-investors in a synfuel plant at Auschwitz using concentration camp labor, and given where you are and just gave a speech, why do you not feel some need to apologize for the roles--and wealth acquired--in the Holocaust played by your own family from which you continue to benefit personally?"
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Or, how about this scenario for the next Clinton speech on AIDS:
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"Mr. Clinton. Given your present work on AIDS and with AIDS victims through your foundation, have you acquired any new sense of appreciation of just how reckless, self-indulgent and dangerous was your apparent unprotected sex (as evidenced by the "presidue" on the infamous blue dress) with Ms Lewinsky, in addition to it being a betrayal of all those who trusted you to use your political capital for good instead of to save your own political hide and in addition to it putting yourself in a position to be blackmailed and thus potentially compromise national security? And did you have an AIDS test prior to resuming any marital relations with Mrs. Clinton or any other women?
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No reporter would dare to pose such questions and none would need to be told that such questions are taboo. So not only NOT asking taboo questions, but also knowing what questions are taboo and career-destroying, along with a willingness to do Faustian Bargains to do softball questions and interviews, is the key to Access which is part of the key to the Spiral of upwardly-mobile SUCKcess in commodified-for-profit journalism. And just as profits bring market power and market power brings more profits for the news organizations--in relation to competing news organizations--so it is that "Access" brings the Scoops--relative to those garnered by competing journalists--that then bring more of the Exposure to the Public and the Powerful that is necessary to build Celebrity that is necessary for further Access to the Powerful who can hand out or deny ongoing Access.
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Now there are various ways into The Spiral of SUCKcess in Journalism but staying in and moving "upwardly" still depends upon ongoing and preferred Access to the Powerful which requires understanding and accepting what is taboo and what is permissible.
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One can, for instance, supposedly like Woodward and Bernstein, "accidently" hit upon a Big Scoop like Watergate, go on to get more Exposure for the two relatively young reporters that went on to lead to Celebrity and the levels of Expanded Access that they now both enjoy.
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One can enter the Spiral of SUCKcess via some kind of Gimmick or Stunt that leads to instant Exposure that then leads to Celebrity that then leads to Access and so on.
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One can enter as a lateral move as an already-made Celebrity in say Infotainment like Katie Couric on the Today Show making a lateral move to masquerade as a journalist on another venue of Infotainment caled the CBS Nightly News and getting even more Access to the movers and shakers than she had on the Today Show.
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One can also do a "Jeff Gannon" in which one can be summarily be given Access and be summarily declared and accredited as journalist never having been one. James Guckert, who had two internet sites celebrating Gay porn and offering himself as a Gay Escort, while using the personna and pseudonym "Jeff Gannon", an ultra-right-wing and virulently homophobic "journalist", was accredited by the White House (what was the Secret Service doing?) and given entrance over 100 times as Jeff Gannon. Further, he was repeatedly called on to pose extremely sycophantic and softball questions at presidential press conferences. He was also, while operating under a pseudonym, at least publicly, one of the few given the name of Valerie Plame a CIA NOC [Non-Official cover] officer and operative.
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But in all cases, continuing Access, the real "coin of the realm" in commodified-for-profit journalism, depends upon willingness to be a part of the ongoing fraud and Faustian ballet known as The Mainstream News Media". The news makers know, that to have some appearance of "credibility",their counterparts in the Faustian Bargain, masquerading as journalists, also need to have some kind of credibility of their own and thus the movers-and-shakers will allow some of what appear to be tough questions by those interviewing them. After all, naked sycophancy, like Fox's "Fair and Balanced" is just too naked and thus self impeaching. So the "maintstream" journalists and the movers-and-shakers the interview do a delicate tango in which each is giving the other just enough (pseudo-tough questions and answers) to preserve some facade of ligitimacy on all sides.
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There are a few exceptions of journalists like Seymour Hersh, I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Edward R. Murrow who did some serious investigative journalism and did ask some very tough questions on taboss subjects. Because they have built solid reputations for serious journalism, they would occasionally get access not because they had done Faustian Bargains to get it, but, paradoxically, because they hadn't. The powerful, often smug and arrogant, thought they could control them and/or out-think them and thus gave them some access in order to try to shine vicariously through them and/or try to project an image of "I have nothing to hide from anyone even the toughest of the uncorruptable journalists...".
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But just ask Dan Rather what happens to Access, Scoops, Exposure and Celebrity when one dares to pose some taboo questions or pusue lines of investigation (like Bush's illustrious military record in the "Champagne Squadron" [Chickenhawk sons of the powerful] of the Texas Air National Guard) Where is he now?
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Rather was outright set up in a sting known as "the poison pill" in intelligence circles. When a story is building, dangerous facts are coming out and a whole cover-up is unraveling, then documents appearing to be very genuine, enough to pass initial scrutiny, documents that feed the frenzy even further, are planted. Competitive journalists, wanting to "scoop" th eothers, and to be "first with the most exclusive", can be counted upon to jump on the planted documents without a whole lot of expert scrutiny. Then, at a propitious moment, some defect in one or more of the documents is suddenly "discovered", that acts as a "poison pill" tainting the veracity of the whole story and indeed also tainting the motives and competence and overall reputation of the journalist that advanced the story or "scoop". Never mind that the content of the document was correct and backed-up from other sources and documents not tainted. Never mind that it is a classic sting and trick that all journalists should know about, be cautious of being trapped in, and, also, question who would have the expertise and motive to fake the documents well enough to pass initial scrutiny--questions never asked as Dan Rather's "Spiral of SUCKcess" turned into a downward spiral toward the margins of journalism.
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And THAT is why the Blogosphere can, if handled properly, be so dangerous to the powers-that-be. Or, if not handled properly, the Blogosphere can be just another "Opiate of the Masses" mostly giving palliatives and the illusion of being heard and "making a difference" while the "freedom of speech" it brings, if not used to pose the most penetrating questions, or, if used merely to feed one's narcissism and need for attention, can be like having the "freedom of speech" in the remotest regions of Antarctica--as one is drowned out by the shere volume and noise of the internet.
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