Peter Dale Scott’s New Book THE AMERICAN WAR MACHINE

23 Nov

I have long admired Peter Dale Scott’s work on deep politics as it operates in the governing process of this country. It is easier to grasp the idea that there are a variety of undisclosed social forces that create tensions with proclaimed policy goals, if not directly undermining them, than to depict their contours. Scott manages such a depiction in relation to the provocative subject-matter of the drug trade, with the CIA working collaboratively with drug cartels and dealers in various national setting while the stated policy of the country is to wage ‘a war on drugs.’ Who sets American foreign policy? What are its goals? Is it coherent, effective, benign? Reading Scott’s book is educational in the best sense, leading even sophisticated observers of the political scene to have more adequate answers to such questions. Below is the uncut version of my review.

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Although born in Canada, and usually identified as a former Canadian diplomat, Peter Dale Scott has been a vibrant presence in American cultural and political life for more than forty years. During his long career as writer and poet Scott has been influential and productive. He is the author of a series of pioneering inquiries into the hidden realities of the way the United States is governed and behaves in the world. He exposes state secrets and raises severe doubts about official versions of such transformative occurrences as the assassination of JFK and the 9/11 attacks. He has also published a profound and lyrically satisfying poetic trilogy that impressively weaves together autobiography, political commentary, and a mystical understanding of the nature and meaning of life. As well, as a long term member of the English Department at UC Berkeley, Scott gave legendary courses on epic poetry, including the work of such writers as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Dante, which probed the depths of great poets notorious for their allusiveness and obscurity.

Against such a background, it should not surprise us that when Scott deploys his talents to depict the contemporary ills of U.S. imperial geopolitics he shows little interest in mainstream debates and is preoccupied with what lies out of sight, what he provocatively calls ‘deep events’ that are in turn the work of ‘deep forces.’  His principal concern is with ‘violence from an unexplained or unauthorized force’ that result in policy outcomes incompatible with law and morality.  Such conduct also directly contradicts the public official presentation of state policy and belief creating an Orwellian web of lies undermining trust between government and populace. Scott’s vision of our political predicaments, and how to escape their grip, is inherently radical. He finds little reformist potentiality in conventional politics of parties and elections, pointing to disappointment with Obama as president as illustrative. The narrative line of his argument wends its way throughout the course of the country’s history, and is even capable of being generalized beyond the United States. His wider skepticism about political life is acknowledged near the beginning of the book when he observes that “unpleasant facts, such as that all Western empires have been established through major atrocities, are conveniently suppressed” (p. 3) in the teaching of world history.

Scott disarmingly writes in an introductory note to The American War Machine that since his age is eighty-one, he expects this to be his last major political book, and if it is, then it represents a fitting culmination to his work as our leading geopolitical sleuth. The sub-title prefigures the theme of the book, which is to contend that the war in Afghanistan (and several other long lasting political conflicts) is driven by drug-connected violence that reflects the underside of American foreign policy massively executed over many years through the covert operations of the CIA. Scott is an indefatigable researcher, and to the extent that open sources permit documentation, the controversial thesis of the book is sustained by well-evidenced and lucid analysis. Underpinning Scott’s analysis is the startling insistence that the transnational network of drug connections is often directly responsible for keeping in power the most oppressive rulers around the world and works with a series of prominent banks to obtain money laundering facilities that in turn allow the funding of a variety of terrorist operations. What Scott contends so convincingly is that the deep forces of the American state that act without accountability, and are aligned with criminal and intelligence agencies here and elsewhere, are working in exactly the opposite directions from the proclaimed anti-drug and anti-terrorist priorities of the United States Government. In this fundamental respect, the war in Afghanistan, as was the case with other American wars, most spectacularly the Vietnam War, is intrinsically doomed to fail.  On this basis, Scott goes so far as to assert that if the government were genuinely committed to security against terrorism or to the emergence of stability in Afghanistan, it would immediately decriminalize drugs and renounce military options in the conduct of its foreign policy toward countries of the South.

As Scott knows, much would have to happen for any of this to happen. In the meantime, Afghanistan is only the latest reminder that we as a country are trapped in a bloody maelstrom that is leading to decline from within and without.  The American War Machine brilliantly explains why such a dysfunctional policy is not only endorsed in the face of repeated failure but becomes essentially irreversible through the normal give and take of politics. Only a sustained challenge by outraged citizens of the sort that finally managed to bring the Vietnam War to an end might have a chance of mounting a meaningful challenge.

Scott never claims that the global drug/CIA nexus is an all-purpose explanation of everything that has gone wrong for the United States in the world. He acknowledges that a variety of other forces are at work, including the lure of oil, alliance relations and rivalries, and the various impacts of neoliberal globalization as linked to militarism. What he does demonstrate is startling enough—that American overseas interventionism is significantly driven not by the goals of the war on drugs, but more accurately by its opposite, that is, by a lethal partnership between our government and an array of criminalized drug syndicates, warlords, and oppressive rulers. This extraordinary story, with a few rare fleeting glimpses, is being withheld from the American people by the media. With this realization in mind, Scott’s book mounts a vital Jeffersonian eye opening challenge to the citizenry of this country. It pleads with Americans to reclaim their responsibility for a governing process that is truthful and respectful of law at home and abroad. As Scott makes clear at the end of this devastating portrayal of how these deep forces work, this country is not yet a lost cause, that there remains much that is worth saving, and that despite the structural disabilities presidential leadership has managed some peace-oriented achievements as well as dirtying its hands through its disgraceful complicity with the dismayingly dark deep forces of government.

What will it take? Is it possible to overcome the stranglehold of these deep forces that are (mis)shaping America’s global role and behavior? Scott provides no program or answers, but seems to imply that only an aroused citizenry that launches a populist campaign has any hope at all of transforming the present ugly set of realities. In effect, Scott in this book gives us an opportunity to become aware of what it might mean to be responsible citizens in the twenty-first century. It is difficult for me to imagine how one can read this book with an open mind and yet continue to interpret world politics and American foreign policy though a conventional conservative or liberal optic. Above all, Scott is teaching us how to think politically, and by so doing, perhaps laying the foundations for a new politics of engagement that looks below the surface, raising new expectations of a governing process that does what it says, and lives within the constraints of law and morality.

 

Comments on the peace process (XI/21/2010)

21 Nov

The mainstream discourse is preoccupied with whether a deal can be struck, and worries not at all about its fairness or about the process that features a partisan mediator or about Palestinian representation issues (neither inclusive nor legitimate). It speculates that maybe it will be possible to strike a bargain because Israel regards Iran as an existential threat and the PA is weak and badly wishes to solidify its claims to lead some kind of Palestinian entity, and of course the U.S. Government is most eager of all because Obama needs some kind of foreign policy success and it would be a step toward reducing anti-Americanism in the region.

At the moment M. Abbas insists that unless the settlement freeze for the 90 day period is extended to East Jerusalem there will be no resumption of negotiations. Netanyahu is beset by settler militancy, but has been gifted such a bribe by the U.S. that it is hard to imagine that some sort of ambiguous freeze arrangement will be accepted. It still seems likely that U.S./Israeli leverage will revive a negotiating process beset with obstacles from a Palestinian perspective.

An almost condition of the negotiations is that whatever is agreed upon is final so far as Palestinian any future demands are concerned. This reinforces the importance of assessing the adequacy of the process and of Palestinian representation. It also shows how impossible it seems to be that anything will emerge that can be reconciled with even a minimal construction of Palestinian rights or expectations.

There are three severe shortcomings of the peace process as now constituted: (1) the excessive influence of the United States due to its dual role of unconditional ally of Israel and self-appointed ‘honest broker’ for the negotiations; (2) exclusion of any assessment of contested issues by reference to international law, including borders, Jerusalem, settlements, water, refugees- on each of these issues the Palestinian claims accord with international law, while the Israeli position does not, and thus exclusion of international law guidelines from the peace process impairs profoundly prospects for Palestnian self-determination achieved by way of inter-governmental negotiations. (3) exclusion of any consideration of the historical context that if considered would imprint a colonial character on the Zionist Project from at least the time of its endorsement in the London Balfour Declaration of 1917, and which over time has turned the Israeli governing process into one that combines ethnic cleansing, the crime of apartheid, and settler colonialism.

A further observation: the likely presentation of a land swap in exchange for the incorporation of settlement blocs into Israel is both deceptive and sets a trap with regard to Palestinian search for self-determination: what Israel seems prepared to offer is either desert wasteland in the Negev or Palestinian communities situated in the Galilee region of Israel or some combination. The latter would really achieve two Israeli goals in exchange for essentially nothing: somewhat legitimate Israeli sovereign claims with respect to the settlement blocs and at the same time contribute to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians currently resident behind ‘the green line.’

 

If the world ends before I do

21 Nov

If the world lasts longer than I do

As my twilight lingers and fades to dark

I ponder another nightfall

Neither mine nor yours

But the nightfall of the world

That comes as secretly as creation

Heralded yet unannounced

Without lyric farewell

Without autumnal warmth

With fury of unrequited love

Not a spectacle caught on TV

No falling towers no cosmic tremor

Unnoticed by the nearest galactic neighbor

Unworthy of attention by our space siblings

Unnoticed unmourned fully deserved

Yet the saddest day ever recorded

For those dying amid species dusk

 

Reflections at 80: Aging versus Growing Old

16 Nov

Aging is inevitable, growing old is avoidable. Expressed differently, one is never too young to be old or eve die, but one is never so aged as to become old. This is because aging is physical, while being old is mental and spiritual. In my experience one does not grow old if five force fields stay active in daily consciousness: love, health, play, work, and caring for the future.

 

Retirement is an insidious trap that confuses aging with growing old. It is fine to stop doing a kind of work, but not to stop working. Vegetating produces decay. It is fine, often regenerative, to shift the geographic site and nature of work, but never to act as if one has reached the end of ‘working years.’

 

Play has many dimensions: anything that is fun, humor, games, sports, and to resist growing old embodies a subtle sense of irony about our limited understanding of ‘the real.’ It often reaches its climax in very private spaces: In my case, writing poems and playing chess with a computer.

 

Caring for the future may seem an odd component of staying young. Caring for the future is without boundaries: of humanity, of nature, of the cosmos, and of course, of loved ones, possibly including animal companions. It also means in my case a continuation of the always unfinished citizen pilgrimage, an impatience to reach that unattainable ‘heavenly city’ while here on earth. Such a pilgrimage is both vocation and vision.

 

In my case work is connected with caring for the future, and is unlikely to cease prior to my death, or possibly as an effect of severe physical decline. For me work is not always distinguishable from play, and centers upon purposeful engagement with living in a manner that can be shared or that contributes to the joy and betterment of those who are close in mind and spirit.

 

Love and health hardly require comment, and are rarely clarified by words. Both are, of course, foundational for all of us dedicated to staying young, but neither can be purchased in the marketplace, although both require continuous nurturing care. We should all do our best to resist premature old age by remembering that we have freedom and responsibility to overcome most of the annoying intrusions of aging.

 

I have only discovered this vital distinction between aging and growing old while reflecting these past few days on what it means for me to become 80!

 

Personal Background and Blog Introduction

16 Nov

The idea of doing a blog never before occurred to me, but having been given the opportunity, I find it a welcome challenge at the start of my ninth decade on the planet. I hope it will allow me to find at long last unity in diversity, exploring several distinct concerns that constitute my private and professional life, my academic identity and my engagement as a citizen, and fulfill an ambition to write more poems than in the recent past.  I hope, also, that it will stimulate enough of a response to frame dialogues over time on a variety of themes, and that I will not feel either overwhelmed or completely on my own while navigating through cyberspace.

I am not sure, of course, that the interest in this venture will extend much beyond those who are family or unconditionally loyal friends, or even in such close quarters. Because I have had strong involvement with a number of activist struggles over the years, my awareness has to some extent been shaped by happenings in public space. My scholarly life, which has always been in tandem with this activism, is not likely to be of much interest except possibly to others working on similar problems from congenial perspectives. Only time will tell.

I started my teaching career at the School of Law at Ohio State University way back in 1955 after completing a law degree. Although I had never contemplated becoming a university teacher, I was immediately drawn to what seemed at the time a privileged existence: autonomy and the freedom to pursue deep interests. Of course, there was also some anxiety as to whether I could satisfy the academic gatekeepers and gain tenure. I had never lived outside the East Coast, but I found life in Columbus, Ohio socially warm, intellectually stimulating, politically challenging, and quite enlightening about the friendly yet provincial culture of the Midwest.

Two turning points in my life are worth mentioning in this exercise of introducing myself to this as yet phantom blog audience. First, was an invitation out of the blue to visit Princeton for a year in 1961, with a serious prospect of a longer term faculty appointment if I did not mess up too much. Princeton had a chair in international law, which had remained vacant for some years due to the inability to find someone who had a law background yet could fit into a liberal arts university atmosphere. The gatekeepers at Princeton were lenient in those years, and I managed to be invited to stay on more or less indefinitely. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would become a faculty member at such a leading university. It was a trancelike experience for some years as I struggled to overcome a high school and early college identity as an underachiever who was lucky to scrape by.

The second turning point was political, and even more of a rupture with my past. I had gone through my college years under the influence of a very conservative father who loved the U.S. Navy and hated the New Deal; he had been a lawyer for some of the most prominent anti-Communists who were hostile to all forms of progressive thought, which were angrily labeled as ‘socialistic’ or ‘pink,’ with prominent adherents being cast either as Soviet agents or dupes of the world Communist movement. Gradually I liberated myself from such an ideological bondage, but it was my deepening opposition to the Vietnam War that served as my political coming of age. In the beginning, through extensive reading, I opposed the war on realist grounds that it was a repetition of the French failure in Indochina, a waste of lives and resources, and in the end would be a costly setback for the United States. I was also offended by the flagrant violations of international law, especially those associated with the extension of the war to North Vietnam in 1965. I wrote extensively in this vein, and considered myself a participant in the anti-war movement. But what transformed my political outlook was an invitation in June 1968 to view the bomb damage in the vicinity of Hanoi, and to meet the leaders of the North Vietnamese government. It was a deeply moving two weeks in which I came to understand the war from the perspective of the Vietnamese who were exposed day and night year after year to punishment from air, land, and sea, and lacked any capacity to retaliate against the United States. And I met many people while there and political figures who were humanly compelling, remarkably free from bitterness, and seemed genuinely to seek peace and even friendship with the United States and the American people, but at the same time were willing to pay any price in blood and suffering to attain national independence. I came back from Vietnam convinced that the flow of history was running against military interventions by the West, and that it was totally unacceptable for the United States to seek to fill the colonial shoes of France and the United Kingdom. From this time, I have never departed from an essentially critical view of American foreign policy regardless of the party in power, and have called attention to the best of my ability to a series of militarist policies that struck me as legally, morally, and politically deficient.

For complex reasons, after the Vietnam War I came to be increasingly concerned with the Israel/Palestine Conflict, and very opposed to the one sidedness of the American attempt to play the role of ‘honest broker’ in mediating the conflict and yet serve simultaneously as Israel’s most unconditional advocate. Unexpectedly in 2008 I was asked if I would agree to become Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine by the UN Human Rights Council if selected. Knowing of Israel’s public opposition to my appointment, and its influence in Washington, I assumed I would not be selected, but I was, and have taken on this contested unpaid position for a three year term. On December 14, 2008, while attempting to carry out a UN mission that involved visits to East Jerusalem, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip I was denied entry to Israel at Ben Gurion Airport, held in a detention cell overnight, and expelled the next day. As someone of Jewish identity this set of developments led me to reflect upon the relationship between ethnicity and politics in the context of Zionist efforts to stifle criticisms of official Israeli behavior by alleging anti-Semitism.  I received quite a bundle of hate mail, along with a few threats, but I have not altered my sense of the injustice of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the related feeling that associating a state in the 21st century with an exclusive religious/ethnic identity cannot be reconciled with human rights, particularly as is the case for Israel, there exists a significant Palestinian minority that endures an inherent structure of discrimination.

Throughout my professional life I have been concerned with devoting my teaching and writing to an understanding of world order and global justice. I have felt that nationalism and the state system, although performing some positive functions, were dangerously anachronistic given the realities of modern warfare, especially after the use of atomic bombs in the last days of World War II. In this work I have written several books, collaborated with scholars in many parts of the world, and tried to encourage a normative approach to international relations, bringing humanistic values to bear as analytical tools and envisioning better futures for humanity. I intend to continue to use this blog for further explorations in support of nonviolent geopolitics, but adding a special emphasis on the intensifying dangers of global warming as well as the sinister campaign to confuse public opinion about the mounting threats to human wellbeing.

Finally, I hope that this blog will over time become interactive, a way of engaging in digital communication about shared concerns and common interests.

It will be a continuing experiment with lots of questions to answer. Will anyone take note? Can I sustain my own effort to communicate regularly? Will the blog assume a predominantly political character? Or will it serve primarily as an outlet for mostly suppressed literary and philosophic interests? Will it come to please or embarrass relatives and friends?

For me in the end, undertaking a blog is a digital extension of my chosen identity as a ‘citizen pilgrim.’ To venture into cyberspace is to discover a new realm of engagement with a political community that seems without normal terrestrial boundaries. A genuine to an unknown, yet desired future, a time/space for renewal and exploration. To be a citizen pilgrim in the 21st century is to find creative ways to benefit from and enjoy the digital.
All I know is that for me at this moment I am about to dive into an unknown sea from a dizzying height!

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