Elites Needed to Lead Masses Through Hell

Elites often accuse common persons of possessing over simplified minds, rendering them unqualified to comprehend fully the complexities of world politics. Such elitism is exhibited toward the American masses over the centuries. Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist who served as an adviser to President Obama when he devised Obama care, shows a recent example of elites seeing themselves as both blessed and cursed with the burden and responsibility of governing the stupid masses. Gruber's comments provide just another example of the cultural and cognitive elite's arrogance. This arrogance is an embedded fixture in human civilization. This elitist arrogance inflicted more tragic consequences during the last several decades on the masses in the U.S., Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq, for example. A review of U.S elite's actions in Vietnam and Iraq in particular show their agenda was complicated by geopolitical conditions. But, these complex geopolitical conditions should not divert our comprehending its rather simple motivation. The U.S. believes its dominion takes precedence over the will of peoples around the world. Simple but true.

An observation that falls under the "simple but true" category is that McGeorge Bundy who served as national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and who was dubbed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as one of the "best and brightest" failed to utter the truth about an event-the fictitious Viet Cong attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964-that Johnson used as the excuse to increase U.S. engagement in a war for almost another 9 years, and caused several hundred thousand deaths. This operative of the best and brightest:

Bundy posed additional questions that help illuminate his struggle, late in life, to understand events in which he was both a central actor and an eyewitness: Why did the president reach 'an instant decision' that the presumptive second attack would serve as the 'grounding' for the resolution? What was the consequence of 'enmeshing' the primary legislative authorization for the Vietnam War in 'an episode which had the serious political flaw that it never happened' or at least was the object of 'grave doubt' jeopardizing the perceived 'honesty of the administration and the integrity of the President himself'? [1]

One need not be an esteemed member of the "best and brightest" to recognize a flaw in justifying war escalation because of an event that didn't actually happen. This deception used to escalate war becomes more scary given how quickly the war makers expressed the options to escalate this war even further.

The ease with which the U.S. Joint Chiefs in March 1964 recommended a fast track to mass murder to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara motivates anarchist impulses to defy the empire's "best and brightest" and their their military contemporaries:

Responding to a request from McNamara for military recommendations, the Joint Chiefs proposed on March 2 that U.S. 'air and naval elements' directly participate in attacks on military and industrial targets in North Vietnam, in addition to the mining of North Vietnamese harbors, imposition of a naval blockade, and in the event that China intervened, the possible use of nuclear weapons [2].  

What troubles me more is the ease with which these military proposals fail to generate intense public skepticism toward our military industrial and propaganda complex. How can we in good conscience interpret such proposals as fundamentally wrong but nonetheless conceived with good intentions? Under what circumstances would nuclear weapons be justified? One circumstance could be that the Vietcong may prevail over Ngo Dinh Diem or any other U.S. supported leader who is by inference the "legitimate" leader of Vietnam? Or, perhaps Chairman Mao may annex a unified Vietnam, rendering them subjects to his communist orbit. The U.S. elites expressed concerns about these possibilities materializing. Those concerns ignore a different dynamic that explains the lack of Vietnamese appreciation and acquiescence toward the French colonial masters and American liberators.

The U.S. military industrial complex consisting of U.S. Joint Chiefs who conceive of conditions justifying consideration of nuclear weapons against the "enemy" would likely avoid seeing any legitimacy in peoples pursuing independence from colonial masters. Thus, those war makers would dismiss any wisdom in an observation made in 1965 by U.S. economic adviser to Vietnam Robert Blum:

We wanted to strengthen the ability of the French to protect the area against Communist infiltration and invasion, and we wanted to capture the nationalist movement from the Communist by encouraging the national aspirations of the local populations an increasing popular support of their governments. We knew that the French were unpopular, that the war had been going on since 1946 was not only a nationalist revolt against them but was an example of the awakening self-consciousness of the peoples of Asia who were trying to break loose from domination by the Western world. [3]

Why should any elites, especially the U.S. military industrial complex, concede to any "awakening self-consciousness of the peoples of Asia'" or heed Blum's Promethian revelation when they have nuclear weapons?

Elites felt no remorse then about about JCS advocating possible deployment of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war to halt any Chinese involvement. Was this unconscionable recourse to nuclear weapons a pathology to be included in the definition of the "Vietnam Syndrome?" This particular version of this syndrome is comprised of other characteristics such as the U.S. inability to be a world leader after losing the Vietnam war as implied by Bush's euphoric proclamation following the U.S. quick victory in Operation Desert Storm: "By God we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." 

What event helped kick this stubborn "syndrome" that had so damaged the U.S. psyche that it nearly lost the confidence needed to impose its will on another nation ever again?  First, a little diplomatic chicanery:

On July 27, 1990, where tensions between Iraq and Kuwait over oil prices were at a peak, the U.S. Ambassador to Bagdahd, April Glaspie, asked for a meeting with Saddam Hussein in Bagdahd to discuss the tense situation. According to official Iraqi transcripts of the exchange, later released by the Baghdad government and by U.S. Congress almost a year after, Glaspie told Saddam that Washington would not take a position on the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. [4] 

This act of diplomatic deception has seemed to be forgotten by most as a meaningless historical footnote. One voice that spoke out in September 1990 showed an exception of the trend established by some former U.S. Ambassadors lecturing Americans against criticizing its relationship with Saudi Arabia. For example:

Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, a respected Washington expert on Middle East affairs, also came out publicly against the Bush war plan against Iraq. Akins pointed out, in a signed article published in the Los Angeles Times of Seprember 12, only days after the decision of President Bush to send U.S. troops to 'defend' Saudi Arabia against threatened Iraqi invasion, that the White House had an 'ulterior motive.' Akins charged that U.S. Defense Secretary Cheney had deliberately misled Saudi King Fahd on the danger of such invasion in order to be allowed to station U.S. troops on Saudi soil, something fiercely resisted by the Saudis for decades. [5]

This analysis was likely heard but encouraged no meaningful debate among elites thereafter. Something else was heard though that contributed to the staging of the agitprop display intended to awaken Americans support of a "humanitarian" war.

The Bush 41 administration's handling of events leading to the first Gulf war demonstrated its ability to lie with impunity to the public in order to justify war. Instead of the U.S. kicking the Vietnam syndrome, have Bush (and his son Bush 43) demonstrated the U.S. public still hasn't kicked the Stockholm syndrome?

I will skip the volume of Bush 43's lies to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. These are too well documented and well known by now. So if you still believe that the "smoking gun is a mushroom cloud," frantic Iraqi purchases of yellow cake had occurred, Mohammed Atta undertook red eye junkets to Prague to meet Saddam Hussein's operatives, there is no cure for such an enlightenment-bypass.

Elites lies continue on a grand scale. Will the masses ever claim enough power to mitigate the damages inflicted upon them by such lies? Judging by the current pattern of color revolutions and regime changes, these past events show a prologue of an empire provoking a state of perpetual war.

1. Goldstein, Gordon M. Lessons In Disaster: McGeorge Bundy And The Path To War In Vietnam. Holt. New York. 2008. Kindle version. p. 135 of 301.

2. Ibid. page 108 of 301.  

3. Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the War in Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Defense. Kindle version location 1567 of 45264.

4. F. William Engdahl. A Century of War.: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World order. New revised edition published bu edition.engdahl Bunsenstrasse 6g 65293 Wiesbaden Germany 2011. Location 4444 of 5686.

5. Ibid. location 4488 of 5686.