TGIF: The American Disease by Sheldon Richman March 21, 2014 If the purpose of U.S. intervention in the affairs of other countries is really to help suffering people, the program has a fatal flaw. (This should surprise no one familiar with other government programs.) The flaw is that the U.S. government does opposition movements no favors when it gives credibility to the charge that those movements are tools of foreign — particularly American — interests. I call this taint the American disease. Opposition movements have a hard enough time fighting authoritarian regimes without the U.S. government’s “help.” After so many years of U.S. intervention throughout the world, one reasonably suspects that whenever opposition arises in a country not allied with the United States, that opposition is assisted by the American administration, even if the dirty work is done by so-called nongovernmental organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is involved in Ukraine. “NED was created in 1983,” Robert Parry writes, “to do in relative openness what ...
Kennedy’s “Weakness” during the Cuban Missile Crisis Saved Our Lives by Jacob G. Hornberger March 19, 2014 The Obama-Putin faceoff on Ukraine inevitably brings to mind the Kennedy-Khrushchev faceoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The confrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev, of course, was much more dangerous given that it brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of all-out nuclear war. But the two confrontations are similar with respect to the pressure brought on the president to be “tough.” Like Obama, Kennedy was accused of being a weak, vacillating president, one who wasn’t tough enough when it came to standing up to the communists. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the pressure on Kennedy to be tough against the communists came not only from American conservatives but also from the Pentagon and the CIA, both of whom wanted him to teach the Soviets and the Cubans a lesson they would never forget. In fact, the pressure on Kennedy was so immense that Robert Kennedy Jr. even expressed a fear of an imminent military takeover of the ...
America’s Cold War Socialism by Jacob G. Hornberger March 13, 2014 During the Cold War, the U.S. national security state — i.e., the military and CIA — used the dire threat of communism and socialism as a justification for its assassination program and its pro-coup program in Latin America and other parts of the world. Two notable examples were Guatemala and Chile. In both countries, the U.S. national-security state helped oust the democratically elected presidents from office and helped install brutal right-wing military dictatorships in their stead. The idea was that if the citizenry of Guatemala and Chile made what the U.S. national-security state considered to be a mistake with their election of a communist-socialist, it was up to the U.S. national-security state to correct the mistake with a coup, one by which the pro-U.S. standing army within the country, which had been trained at the U.S. School of the Americas, would take charge and make things right. The national-security establishment viewed Latin American elections within the context of “national security,” the ...
The National-Security State’s Cold War Scam on Latin America by Jacob G. Hornberger March 11, 2014 Portuguese Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. national-security state was devoted to keeping communist-socialist regimes from coming to power in Latin America. The idea was that if communism was permitted to achieve a beachhead in the Western Hemisphere, it was a certainty that the U.S. government would end up falling to the communists. That’s of course what ...
So What If the CIA Is Spying on Congress? by Jacob G. Hornberger March 7, 2014 At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II. It would have made sense, given that the justification for making the national-security state apparatus a permanent feature of American ...
Ukraine and the U.S. National Security State by Jacob G. Hornberger March 6, 2014 At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II. It would have made sense, given that the justification for making the national-security state apparatus a permanent feature of American ...
Russia Reminds Us of Us by Jacob G. Hornberger March 3, 2014 U.S. officials and the mainstream press are aflame with outrage and indignation over Russia’s invasion of Crimea. If only they would feel the same degree of outrage and indignation over what the U.S. national security state, which was grafted onto our governmental system without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, has done to our American republic. Isn’t it fascinating ...
Our “Conference within a Conference” by Jacob G. Hornberger February 7, 2014 I can’t begin to tell you how psyched we are about our “conference within a conference” that we are having at the 2014 Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C. The entire conference goes from February 14-16 but all of FFF’s sessions occur on Saturday, February 15. Keep in mind: While the conference is oriented toward students, it is not ...
Unlimited Government by Jacob G. Hornberger January 21, 2014 One of the charades that all too many Americans, especially conservatives, continue to subscribe to is the notion that the federal government is a “limited government” — that is, one whose powers are limited in nature and scope. They like to say that this is what distinguishes the U.S. government from totalitarian regimes. Limited government was the original idea behind ...
The Pipe Dream of NSA Reformers by Jacob G. Hornberger January 10, 2014 The pipe dream of many of those who are complaining about the NSA’s massive surveillance scheme is that the NSA can be “reined in” by some type of congressional legislation. They just don’t get it. As long as the NSA exists, it’s going to do whatever it needs to do to protect “national security,” even if that means breaking ...
Should the Military Have Ousted FDR? by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2014 Among the reasons given for the Egyptian military’s ouster of the democratically elected president of the country, Mohamad Morsi, was that Morsi was exercising dictatorial powers and adopting policies that were destroying any chance of an economic recovery in Egypt. The Egyptian military, which the U.S. government continues to stand with and support, says that protecting “national security” trumped ...
Deliver Us from Evil in Egypt by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2014 Every Sunday millions of American Christians go to church, where they recite the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the following plea to God: “Deliver us from evil.” I wonder how many of them think about their own government’s support of evil in Egypt when they say that prayer. Evil is really the only way to describe Egypt’s military dictatorship. It’s not ...
