How the Dulles brothers made Kissinger and Cheney look like peaceniks

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

We don't hear much about these two (apart from the DC airport name), but their beliefs and actions literally shaped the Cold War, US global ambitions, and we are still dealing with the negative repercussions today.

Ike appointed John F. Dulles as his Sec. State and Allen Dulles as the CIA head. They were both corporate lawyers who represented, among others, United Fruit and the financiers of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Enough said. Ike basically gave them carte blanche authority to make enemies and "intervene" in any foreign country they saw fit, and they didn't hesitate: Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Cuba, Indonesia, and Vietnam ... basically our greatest hits. They were especially adamant about Iran, because under no circumstances could they tolerate a leader nationalizing oil reserves for the people, and renegotiating terms on foreign companies. Imagine the shockwaves to big business, and what message that would send to other countries.

Unlike Kennedy's "team of rivals" model, it was very dangerous for Ike to appoint two like-minded, corporate shill, biological brothers into the complementary (and sometime necessarily adversarial) positions of State and CIA. One side shapes foreign policy and strategy, and the other carries it out covertly. Or one side tries to make peace, while the other sows the seeds of war. It's playing with fire. Now they were basically one org, without any sanity checks or devil's advocate to say, "What happens after we overthrow Lumumba? (answer: civil war and genocide for decades)," or "Maybe we can't win in Vietnam."  I guess the Dulles' and their Cold War were enough to make General Ike warn the nation about the military-industrial complex upon his retirement.

The Dulleses believed that the US, its market economy, and its multinational corporations were exceptional and entitled to dominate the globe (because we were the good guys). Anyone who opposed these interests (regardless of the reason, like the crazy notions of self determination and liberty) were automatically evil monsters. It's OK for George Washington, but not for Third World leaders (esp. when they are sitting on natural resources). Clearly enemy #1 was communism, and by extension populist nationalism, because it went against the model of private capital might makes right, and neo-colonialism/imperialism. Any attempt to regulate or take power/profit away from US companies was as much of a threat to US security as nuclear missiles.

Apart from the direct and indirect violence & collateral damage (5M total deaths at least), militancy/extremism, and harm to our global reputation in most of the world, here is the Dulles' biggest legacy and curse on humanity: a pervasive culture of rejecting peace talks and the undermining of democracy.

After Stalin died, the USSR wanted to improve relations with the West. It was a great opportunity, but Dulles was the only major foreign leader to reject this overture (and pressured our allies to do the same), because he thought the Russians were too evil to talk to, and preferred that our conflict continue. Later, both sides' nuclear brinksmanship almost ended the world. During the North-South Vietnam diplomatic talks after the French withdrawal, most European powers felt that the party was over and they should learn to live with Ho Chi Minh. Dulles was the only one who felt that Ho could be beaten militarily if we stuck it out, and he persuaded Ike and Kennedy. We know how that turned out. But you can see this US hubris and misguided thinking carrying over to our negotiations (or lack theoreof) with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea over the years. We have certain beliefs about other people, and our stubbornness ends up prolonging/worsening conflicts and missing out on opportunities.

Why was the US so successful in overthrowing the democratic regimes in Iran, Guatemala, and Congo in the '50s? The author argues that it was because those societies (and their idealistic, civilian, center-left leaders - a.k.a. died-in-the-wool commies) were fairly open and democratic, thereby allowing foreign agitators access to covertly undermine the gov't and eventually launch a coup d'etat (with a pro-US dictator waiting in the wings). Later revolutionaries learned from those cases, and ruled more like repressive tyrants in order to defend against a possible US overthrow. Cuba, North Vietnam, the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, etc. all became more paranoid and less democratic after the Dulles' time. It could just be coincidence, but at least in the case of Cuba, Che and Castro were quoted that they would not repeat the mistakes of Arbenz in Guatemala. They would repress and spy on their own people to make sure the CIA wasn't gaining a foothold.

So even though the US portrayed itself as the global example and defender of democracy, in fact its foreign policy under the Dulleses was terribly undemocratic, and motivated many others around the world to choose brutality over democracy too (tragically, during a time of global change that we will never get back, when we really could have forged tremendous social progress and peace). And the human race may never fully recover from the legacies of those dark times. To me, that is a much greater failure, security threat, and shame on the US than letting a few undeveloped countries elect a socialist leader, or try to nationalize their resources.  

Crazy stuff that went down at Area 51

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/136356848/area-51-uncensored-was-it-ufos-or-the-ussr

An LA Times journalist recently published a history of Area 51, the US government's secret nuclear and air force facility in Nevada. She starts her Fresh Air interview describing all the bone-headed nuclear experiments we did after the end of WWII. As we already know, our gov't detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons above ground (and so did other nations), spreading radiation all over (and in some cases deliberately exposing soldiers to the danger to observe the effects), until leaders finally woke up and agreed to various versions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (that W Bush in all his wisdom pulled the US out of, but Obama is trying to restore despite GOP Congressional resistance). Pretty much all US nuclear testing was executed or planned by personnel at Area 51.

Just to "see what happens", the US gov't detonated nukes in the upper atmosphere above the South Pacific to see how the ozone layer would respond. There was also another defensive objective to see if a nuclear explosion up there (and ensuing EMP) would disrupt the guidance systems of incoming Soviet ICBMs (it didn't). The NYT got wind of this and threatened to expose the gov't, but the Truman administration somehow convinced them to keep quite for "national security" until the 1980s. But still it's unclear whether the test actually damaged the ozone layer and put people at risk. Scientists on the project were aware of this risk at the time, but reassured the team that the atmospheric turbulence following the detonation would "fill" any hole created by the blast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitude_nuclear_explosion#List_of_high-altitude_nuclear_explosions

Even worse for human health, the US gov't had almost around-the-clock nuclear-armed bombers in the air over the North Atlantic as quick responders in the event of a Soviet attack. But as we know, planes crash sometimes. On at least 2 occasions, nuclear bombers crashed in Europe and dropped their payloads. In one accident over Spain, there was a midair refueling gaffe and the plane ejected its warheads while crashing, but their parachutes failed and the bombs spread plutonium all over. A US hazmat team was sent in to clean it up, but they weren't told what they were cleaning, so they had zero radiation protection. I'm sure they're all dead by now. In Greenland, a B-52 crashed on the ice after another refueling goof, and the ensuring fire melted a hole. The plane debris and its 4 nuclear warheads sunk into the ocean, and it's still unclear whether they have all been recovered. That accident was where the term "broken arrow" was coined. How this relates to Area 51 is that the gov't decided to test what would happen if such a plane crash took place on the US mainland. They deliberately exploded a plutonium dirty bomb in the desert to simulate a crash, and tried to figure out ways to clean it up. It was a total disaster, and the site was still being worked on into the 1980s (making Fukushima look like spilled milk). Plutonium's half-life is many thousands of years by the way, and it's pretty much the most toxic inhaled substance known to man. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash

And now for the creme-de-la-creme, the UFO question. We know of stories of a UFO crashing in Roswell, NM in the 1950s, and the gov't trying to cover it up by moving all the evidence to deep inside Area 51. The author interviewed an anonymous source, a veteran of the US Atomic Energy Agency/Manhattan Project who was an insider at Area 51. When "War of the Worlds" aired on the radio in the 1930s, the US went into a panic with many believing it was a real alien invasion. Hitler and Stalin (and Washington) took note of this, and found it to be a legit security concern. Creating the illusion of an alien invasion could cause enough chaos and distraction among US armed forces and the public to make a foreign attack easier. The USSR and Western powers snatched up many of the mad Nazi scientists at the end of WWII. It's possible that Stalin took over some of the work of the Horten brothers who created a "flying wing" craft for Germany. While not a flying saucer, it was some sort of triangular craft that definitely didn't resemble a typical airplane. Some thought the Hortens achieved the ability for the craft to hover. And then there was Auschwitz's Dr. Mengele, who conducted all sorts of unethical human experimentation. Supposedly Stalin cut a deal with him as well, to create genetically or surgically altered people who resembled the child-like, big-headed alien creatures of sci-fi. So the "UFO crash" at Roswell could have been a test run of this Soviet project in order to create American panic over an imaginary alien invasion. Apparently the craft pilots (who looked like aliens) were captured alive, and then interrogated by the US about all this.

Yeah, right, you're probably thinking. Why wouldn't Truman just expose all this to the media to show how depraved and desperate the USSR was? Maybe he was partly worried that the Soviet goal would be achieved, that no one would believe this hoax was actually man-made, and fear an alien attack. Or as the author's source said, we kept it quiet because we wanted to replicate the Soviet project (either to shove it back in Moscow's face, or at least learn the science of how they did it). So supposedly the US tried to alter people to look like aliens as well, which was the last obscene straw to make the author's secret source want to spill the beans. And the US gov't has kept all this and Area 51 quiet so as to not expose the evidence of our horrible experimentation and other crimes to the public.

Well, considering all the wacky research during the Cold War, and all the disturbingly creative strategies the 2 superpowers devised to destroy each other, I guess this isn't so far fetched. But you would think that the author would try to corroborate her source's story. Why hasn't anyone in Russia come forward? Thousands of Americans must have worked on these horrific projects as well. And if the Soviets created a flying saucer, why wouldn't they use that technology in more traditional ways to gain an advantage over us? I suppose it's possible that they just had a stealthy spy plane transport the saucer high over US airspace, and then drop it off with a parachute. But if the Soviets' goal was to trigger an alien panic, why not drop dozens of saucers and "aliens" over populated US metro areas, so the US gov't could never squelch it? Lastly, it's not a new thing that the US has engaged in criminal human experimentation (LSD, Tuskegee, etc.). What's the big deal about keeping this one so secret? I guess we may never know, but it sure is an interesting take on an old story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_brothers
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/experiment.htm

“CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR” and the BS revisionist history behind the film

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17424117

We know Hollywood is almost as full of BS as Washington, and unfortunately many people around the world with limited access to information base a lot of their assumptions about America/Americans on Hollywood (heaven help us all). Films like Clint Eastwood's "Iwo Jima" series, or "Jarhead" about Gulf War I, do accurate justice (without political agenda) to sensitive historical subjects and the parties affected by those monumental events. From what I can tell so far, "Charlie Wilson's War" might get a lot of critical acclaim as an excellent piece of film artistry, but it is not a legitimate historical work. 1980s Washington was still reeling after the American defeat in Vietnam, so of course why wouldn't they try to bait the Soviets into their own foreign quagmire? While the Vietnam War seriously wounded the previously robust US economy and foreign policy, a similar fiasco would be the death blow to an already corrupt, squabbling, and bankrupt Soviet centralized regime. So surely some elements in the US were hoping to help Afghans cause as much trouble as possible for the Soviets, but our involvement was not a simple "good triumphs over evil" matter.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/soviet.html

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1023.htm

http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Afghan_War.html

The myth we often hear about Afghanistan is that the vile Soviets just sought to invade and enslave the poor, innocent, defenseless Afghans to satiate their craving for conquest and empire. Well, it's true that Afghans were poor and mostly defenseless, but the genesis of the war was far from imperialistic. As was the case with most post-colonial 'Stans, Afghanistan was a fragmented, dysfunctional state on the verge of civil war among rival factions/warlords. In 1978 full-fledged civil war broke out, and in 1979 a leftist regime took power, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The Soviets were historically on good terms with the Afghans, and donated or sold military equipment for years (initially to fight British colonialism in the 1920s), but of course the PDPA sought to further strengthen ties with the USSR (and hopefully even sequester troops), to solidify their grip on power and keep down rivals. The Soviets initially balked for a variety of strategic reasons. If they were so conquest-minded, wouldn't they have jumped at the first opportunity to enter neighboring Afghanistan as legitimately-invited allies?

The PDPA was internally fragmented (the president and prime minister were basically at war), and through coups, assassinations, and in-fighting, it was unclear whether the country would lean Islamist, pro-Russian, or pro-Western when the smoke cleared. The events leading up to the Soviet invasion are very complex, involving a lot of politics, religion, and ethnic divisions. But basically, the "official government" PDPA was fighting for its life to maintain power, and also implemented a lot of Soviet-advocated communistic policies (like land reform) which offended rural and Islamic Afghans. A rebellion spread, led by Islamists and former-PDPA members who broke off from the central government. The Rebels killed hundreds of Soviet advisors, and much of the Afghan military defected to the rebel side. As backlash against the pro-Soviet Kabul government, the rebels also made incursions into Southern USSR to kill Russian citizens and engage in other terrorist acts, as the PKK does against Turkey from their refuges in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Now if you were a leader in Moscow and saw these events unfolding on your southern border, what would you do? If a politically like-minded regime was under attack from forces threatening your national interests, what would you do? Isn't that Bush's justification for our continued presence in Iraq? It would be like a civil war in Mexico, and the pro-American government was opposed by Mexican Al Qaeda sympathizers. The rebels penetrate the US Southwest to kill Americans and wreak havoc. Would Washington just sit on its hands and try to work things out diplomatically? They would send troops at the drop of a hat! It was a documented but secret policy of the Carter Administration (as told by Robert Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among others) to use instability in Afghanistan to "induce Soviet intervention", and all this happened even before Charlie Wilson ever heard of the Mujahadeen. In fact, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen and other rebels began at least six months BEFORE the Soviet invasion and the "Peace through Strength" Reaganites continued the effort. But helping oppressed people win their freedom was not our goal.

"The Americans want us to continue fighting but not to win, just to bleed the Russians."- Ismael Khan. Prominent Afghan Commander, who fought against the Russians in Herat.

So as we know, opposing the Soviet occupation was sold abroad as a war for Islam, and many foreign jihadists (funded by wealthy Arabs, and in some cases, US taxpayers) flocked to Afghanistan to be trained and armed by Muslim terrorists and CIA affiliates. They grew proficient at escaping capture, conducting insurgency operations, making bombs, and killing Westerners. As the Cold War ended and America became more entrenched in Muslim/Arab affairs, Osama and others later used those skills against their former sponsors.

There is a scene in "Charlie Wilson's War" where the congressman gazes on a massive, squalid Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, and he is so moved that he vows to help those poor people fight the Soviets and get their country back. Julia Roberts' character feels the same. One problem: the horse that America backed was comprised of the Northern Alliance warlords and Mujahadeen jihadist groups. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, ugly civil war resumed. The PDPA eventually fell to an amalgam of former Soviet opponents who were unable to share power or even govern in the minimalist sense of the word. The Northern Alliance was so corrupt and brutal that the fundamentalist Taleban gained more traction in Afghan society/politics as the only viable alternative. They rolled into Kabul virtually unopposed in 1994 and imposed a repressive form of Sharia law. Some might say that Afghanistan was worse under the Taleban than the Soviets, so where was America then? The Soviet-Afghan War claimed one million Afghans and displaced another five, but the Taleban did almost as much damage. Yet the US did nothing until 2002, so how can we claim to care about the Afghan people? And even today with over 30,000 elite US soldiers in Afghanistan and billions of aid dollars pouring in, Afghanistan is one of the poorest and most desperate/dysfunctional nations on Earth. So what did Charlie Wilson and America really accomplish? Let's not buy the BS and see things for what they are. The history of clandestine and intermittent US involvement in Afghanistan is a shameful tragedy, not a victory to be celebrated on film as if it was D-Day.

The events on the domestic American side, as depicted in "Charlie Wilson's War", may be essentially accurate (albeit in a dark comic light), but let us not forget the initial circumstances surrounding the conflict, nor the violent after-effects that can be felt from Kabul to One World Trade Center. Charlie Wilson and others did what they thought was best for America in order to defeat our Soviet enemy. But this example illustrates how our self-serving meddling in foreign lands can have broad repercussions for years to come. Charlie Wilson might be a great American for helping weaken the Soviet military and USSR as a whole, leading to a peaceful dissolution under Yeltsin years later. He might have helped avert nuclear Armageddon. And yes, the Soviets were too stupid to avoid "The Bear Trap", and subsequently committed horrible Vietnam-like atrocities against innocent people. But they almost had no choice but to get involved militarily. Once again, America gets to dictate the rules of the game, rig events to decide the outcome, pat everyone on the back when the job is done, and write history favorably to make it all sound so noble and heroic. Now I am no friend of the cruel Soviet Union, but the truth is that the people depicted in "Charlie Wilson's War" didn't give a crap about the poor, suffering Afghans either. They USED them, like empires always use poor mercenaries to do the fighting and dying for them. Arming the Afghans was a means to an end to assure US dominance over the Soviets in the global power game. We might have beat them, but we took one hard on the chin for our trouble, in the form of 9/11 and the new struggling NATO involvement in Afghanistan.

Read what the GWU National Security Archive wrote of the Soviets in Afghanistan, compare that to the US quagmire in Iraq, and you will be stunned.

Afghanistan did not fit into the mental maps and ideological constructs of the Soviet leaders. Their analysis of internal social processes in Afghanistan was done through the conceptual lens of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which blinded the leadership to the realities of traditional tribal society. Believing that there was no single country in the world, which was not ripe for socialism, party ideologues like Mikhail Suslov and Boris Ponomarev saw Afghanistan as a "second Mongolia." Such conceptualization of the situation led to the attempts to impose alien social and economic practices on Afghan society, such as the forced land reform.

The Soviet decision makers did not anticipate the influential role of Islam in the Afghan society. There were very few experts on Islam in the Soviet government and the academic institutions. The highest leadership was poorly informed about the strength of religious beliefs among the masses of the Afghan population. Political and military leaders were surprised to find that rather than being perceived as a progressive anti-imperialist force, the Afghanis as foreign invaders, and "infidels." Reports from Afghanistan show the growing awareness of the "Islamic factor" on the part of Soviet military and political personnel.

The Afghan communist PDPA never was a unified party; it was split along ethnic and tribal lines. The infighting between the "Khalq" and the "Parcham" factions made the tasks of controlling the situation much more challenging for Moscow notwithstanding the great number of Soviet advisors at every level of the party and state apparatus. The Soviet underestimation of ethnic tensions within Afghan society was one of the reasons of the unsuccessful policy of national reconciliation.

The realization that there could be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan came to the Soviet military leadership very early on. The issue of troop withdrawal and the search for a political solution was discussed as early as 1980, but no real steps in that direction were taken, and the Limited Contingent continued to fight in Afghanistan without a clearly defined objective.

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What's next, "Oliver North's War" about the heroic (and illegal) efforts of him and the rest of Reagan's cronies to sell arms and drugs to finance a covert war in Nicaragua? BTW, another unintentional similarity between Dubya and the Gipper: Bush broke Reagan's record for most vacation days taken by the POTUS. At least Reagan had the excuse that he was America's most elderly leader, and therefore needed extra nap time.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/mason/5042364.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201703.html