The Big Lies

You take the trouble to construct a civilization, to build a society based on the principles of... of principle. You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours.
--George, from Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."
--Joseph Goebbels

The basis of all propaganda is the Big Lie. Tell it often and tell it well, and it will become truth. The Bush administration's policies are based upon several big lies. They are as follows:

• The Long War
• The U.S. is the World's Sole Superpower
  
• The Economy

This will be a tripartite blog. Today: The Long War.

The military has developed the concept of the Long War to support U.S. military aggression. There is no war, and GWB is not a great wartime leader. This war is smoke and mirrors. The War on Terror (WOT) is defined as the 21st century's most important ideological struggle, commensurate with the Cold War of the 20th century.

In fact, there is no strategic threat to America, except in Tom Clancy novels and GWB's narrow mind. U.S. policy must deal with what is on the board, and not what may be introduced. The survival of America is not an issue in the WOT. Al Quaida can only hurt U.S. interests through terrorism and pinprick attacks. U.S. intelligence and police, through international cooperation and intelligence-sharing, is more than adequate to address this minimal threat.

The Cold War and the Long War are not even remotely related. GWB certainly does not equate to Truman. The Cold War lasted roughly 50 years, and realized bipartisan support to address the threat of a monolithic nuclear communist threat. The adversary actually had the capability of destroying the U.S. through nuclear war, and vice versa.

As a result, proxy wars became the method of conventional armed conflict on the periphery. To give a domestic analogy, this is akin to the ferocious, but not killing, domestic battles fought by the characters George and Martha in Edward Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

They both had the tools [vicious wit and anger] to fillet the other. But to do so absolutely would end the game of cat and mouse, and they were unwilling to extricate themselves from this painful dans le deux. A direct strike [divorce] would take the other out of the equation, so their proxy wars, fought over other's heads [usually unwitting dinner party guests], became a kind of do-si-do. The opening quote by George recognizes the futility of total warfare, and that the destruction wrought would only be in service of an "up yours".

Greece, Korea and Vietnam were the larger proxy wars in the Cold War. Although both major sponsors had the capability of nuclear war, neither had the intent to unleash this nightmare. Total destruction is not a desirable military or political objective. Wars must serve the foreign policy objectives of the nation's strategic views.

This was the way we won the Cold War, through alliances. The Cold War was conducted within the framework of international alliances and treaties. This was before the State Department became an Equal Opportunity Post for flunky Secretaries of State willing to call the master's tune, which had no grounding in objective facts.

The same is true for defense policy. U.S. policy is now totally concerned with terrorism as the decisive threat facing America. The U.S. is now willing to go to war because nations are trying to develop nukes. Never mind that preemptive invasion policies require these weapons to defend against invasion.

U.S. policy encourages nuclear proliferation. Iran is surrounded on three sides by U.S. aggression, which has preemptively invaded for regime change. Therefore, they see the creation of tactical nukes as a defensive posture, and rightly so. This is not to defend Ahmadinejad's separation from reality on issues such as Holocaust denial; strictly as a state defense posture, nuclear development makes sense for them.

As of yesterday, Jordan announced their intentions to jump on the nuclear bandwagon. Thank you George, Colin, Condi and Rumsfeld.

The question that the U.S. taxpayer must ask is: who/what is benefiting from this phony war of terror. The key is to follow the money.

The American citizenry is not benefiting from this inexplicable wasting of scarce national resources. America cannot sustain this response without destroying our national economy. America cannot afford leaders that are carrying out aggressive wars based upon unrealistic threat assessments.

Reality must enter into the equation, and this won't happen as long as the Big Lie is being pushed by the administration. A nation cannot sustain wars based upon a propaganda lie.