Help In These Times reach its five-week $10,000 online fundraising goal! With two weeks left, we're only halfway there. Donate now!

Overthrow, Over and Over

By Laura S. Washington

The old saw goes, “the trend is your friend.”  Let’s try that one again. Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books) puts the kibosh on that notion. Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, deconstructs America’s disturbingly counterproductive foreign policy through competing critiques of the country’s imperialism and its incompetence. His… return to article

  • subscribe to print magazine

  • Zoom OutZoom In Reader Comments (2)

    Page 1 of 1 pages

    As valuable and timely as these insights are, Mr. Kinzer’s views do not address what is happening both (I) inside our own country and (II) outside of the context of physical borders of sovereign nations.
    (I) Our “leaders” are turning this country into a fascist state.  In the fascist view, the state is the end and the individual is the means.  This is the exact opposite of the democratic philosophy.  For e.g., see:
    http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm and http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14_pts_2.htm
    How are they getting away with this?  One example:
    There are 4 elements in making decisions, whether it’s which shirt to wear to a party, or whether to ask sons and daughters to risk their lives to fight a war:
    1.  Frame, or structure the question
    2.  Gather intelligence
    3.  Come to conclusions
    4.  Learn from feedback
    If you improperly frame the question, you can set out (or, alternatively, set others out ...) to solve the wrong problem by creating a mental framework that causes you (or others) to overlook the best options, to gather the wrong intelligence, and to come to the wrong conclusions.  Here is a must-see for understanding how those speaking at the 2004 RNC (ab-)used framing to drive their agenda:
    http://www.oldamericancentury.org/gopconstrm.mov
    Here is a good breakdown on why the war in Iraq, and arguably in Afghanistan, was an act of aggression, and not a “just” war:
    Go to this site:  http://www.platofootnote.org/, click on “lectures”, and click on “just war”.  What he doesn’t say is that if the war is not a “just” war, then it is an act of aggression—a war crime—and our “leaders” are war criminals.

    In the words of TJ Templeton, we have “...a small cadre of corporate elite have formed a fascist organization which has usurped the United States government through a questionable election and sympathetic court, installed their members in the top levels of the executive, diplomatic, and military offices, and have hijacked the nation’s policy to fit their fascist agenda.”
    Now, on to (II), what is happening outside of the context of physical borders of sovereign nations… 
    Noam Chomsky once said that “The free flow of capital creates what some international economists call a virtual senate, meaning financial capital can impose the social policies that it chooses on governments, and it can punish those that it chooses by capital flight that naturally restricts democracy and undermines the possibility that people can participate in socio-economic planning.”  In other words, corporations have made governments their puppets and have created institutions like the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) for their own protection.  I’ve borrowed some quotes and concepts from Shiva’s “Stolen Harvest”, below:
    A WTO agreement criminalizes seed-saving and seed-sharing.  Think about this.  70% of the world’s people earn their livelihoods by producing food, and now they are forced to buy new seed every year from corporations, in spite of centuries of labor spent developing seeds for particular regions, climates and conditions.  In addition, through the WTO, corporations can usurp the knowledge of the seed and monopolize it by claiming it as their private property.  RiceTec of the US is claiming patents on Basmati rice.  Soybean, which evolved in East Asia, and mustard, of Indian origin, have been patented by Calgene.  Ten corporations control 32% of the commercial-seed market, and 100% of the market for genetically engineered seeds, as well as the global agrochemical and pesticide markets.  Just 5 corporations control the global trade in grain. The WTO and their corporations are driving out polycultures with industrial monocultures. This is a recipe for starving people while making money on selling pesticides, patented seeds, and herbicides.
    In just about every place we look, we see the sacrifice of the future for the present.  And it’s not limited to conflicts between soveriegn entities.

    United States Posted by nyvegan on Jun 17, 2006 at 3:08 PM

    NYVEGAN,
    Good post on the WTO , have you tried links ? 
    No 1<
    No 2


    No 3

    Americans lack a fundamental understanding of the string of failures that our country has used to feather our own nest. It’s what Studs Terkel, America’s historian, calls our “National Alzheimer’s Disease.” We have no memory of history or its abiding lessons. What can we learn? What policy can we expect when contestants on American Idol capture more votes than any American presidential candidate in history? We have wrestled with this conundrum for more than a century. We have repeatedly been pinned to the mat.

    Our dubious and flawed foreign policy is evident to everyone in the world but us. It’s a FUBU foreign policy: For Us, By Us. Americans are anesthetized by rampant consumerism and ideological nonsense jacked up with a healthy dollop of jingoism.

    As a result, the checks and balances provided by an educated electorate have all but disappeared from American governance. The fact that public opinion cannot counter America’s affection for regime change is a fatal flaw.

    On avarice we have no doubt.

    Failure is still being disputed as history unfolds, but I haven’t read the book, so definitions of failure to be discussed.

    I’m afraid vegan is correct on Ricetec, Calgene, the WTO , and my response is to wish them all dead.

    France Posted by frog on Jun 24, 2006 at 10:04 PM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

  • register a new account »Posting Security

    To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.
     

    Retreive lost password »

Article Appeared in this Issue

Full contents
Past issues

Also by Laura S. Washington
Popular Discussions