THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 3

“September 11, 1973″ by Carlos Latuff; depicts the U.S.-backed attack on democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.”

by Stefan Schindler

Disturbing facts from American history, continued:

11 – The first 9/11 occurred on September 11th, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger overthrew the elected government in Chile, the longest running democracy in South America, beginning’s America’s subsequent support of the 16-year Pinochet dictatorship and slaughter of liberal activists.

12 – The Carter administration launched a terror campaign against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan in 1979, leading to the Russian counter-intervention in 1980, which led to Reagan’s eight-year creation, arming and financing of Al Queda to fight “the godless communists” occupying Afghan territory and preventing the installation of American pipelines for the transport of Iraqi oil.

13 – In the first five years of his administration, Ronald Reagan transformed America from the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation in the world.

14 – Ronald Reagan conducted an eight-year terror campaign against the social democratic government of Nicaragua, which had finally overthrown 40 years of American supported dictatorship.

15 – The Bush-Cheney wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were an updated repeat of the lies that led to America’s Indochina Holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War to obliterate memory of U.S. devastation of Laos and Cambodia).

16 – The Bush-Cheney Administration’s continuation of Reagan’s attempt to unravel Roosevelt’s New Deal for the American people, with its regulatory safeguards, led directly to the all too predictable economic meltdown of 2008: the largest stock market crash since 1929, from which millions of Americans, and many people around the globe, are still suffering.

17 – The single greatest factor leading to the outbreak of World War Two was the U.S. stock market crash of 1929.  That crash had ripple effects around the globe, including the implosion of Germany’s already impoverished economy.  In desperation, the German people elected a charismatic lunatic named Hitler.

18 – America’s neutrality during the so-called Spanish Civil War (actually a coup d’état) from1936 to1939 – the only place in Europe where ordinary citizens were actively fighting the rise of fascism – led to the overthrow of Spanish democracy by a cabal of Hitler-supported bankers, bishops and generals, and persuaded Hitler that he could continue Nazi expansion into other parts of Europe, including Czechoslovakia and Poland.

19 – American banks and corporations (including Ford and General Motors) helped Hitler build his war machine, and sanctioned Hitler’s persecution of German socialists (hoping that Hitler would invade Russia and put an end to the Soviet experiment in communism).

20 – Japan was begging to surrender in late 1945, asking only that their emperor, Hirohito, be left in place as the nation’s nominal leader.  Truman refused to accept Japanese surrender because of that single condition.  No American troop invasion of Japan was necessary to end the war.  Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki primarily as a warning to the Soviets.  After Japan’s surrender, Hirohito was allowed to maintain his nominal political title.

21 – During World War Two, the American air force was ordered not to bomb Nazi war-making factories owned by Ford and General Motors.  After the war, the CEOs of Ford and General Motors were awarded millions of taxpayer dollars in compensation for “collateral damage,” instead of being tried and convicted for treason.

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City.  He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.  He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.

Does nonviolent resistance work? What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (Part 1b)

Second in a series by guest author Ian Hansen

This is a continuation of Part 1 of a four-part series: Does nonviolent resistance work?

  • Part 1: What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (also see Parts 1a1c2a2b and 2c)

The short video at the beginning of this post features Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, 2013 winners of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for their book Why Civil Resistance Works—a thesis that is not surprisingly under debate.

In defense of Stephan and Chenoweth’s argument that the Otpor Revolution in Serbia and the No! movement in Chile are strong examples of the power of civil resistance, I am actually quite impressed with how the U.S. provided support to these movements without either (a) accidentally tarring those they supported as American stooges or (b) accidentally undermining American interests in the targeted countries.

The Otpor revolution is one of the more inspiring moments of world history—overthrowing a genocidal dictator with a nationwide nonviolent campaign. The U.S. deserves to bask somewhat in the moral glow of that operation, though its assistance was financially miniscule by the standards of foreign aid and the vast majority of the credit for the revolution goes to the Serbian people.

Moreover, supporting the No! campaign against Pinochet was a brilliant way of covering the tracks of U.S. involvement in the coup that put Pinochet in power in the first place, allowing him and his class to rape a nation for a decade and half.

By 1988, the damage Pinochet had done to Chile was very hard to reverse and there was no prospect of returning to the open horizon of possible societal change that the assassinated democratically-elected president Salvador Allende had enjoyed. The U.S. could thus afford to stand beside those who fought that Quixotic-looking but ultimately successful campaign against Pinochet, and by doing so could also bargain for some continued influence in the economic structuring of post-Pinochet Chile.

Clearly, there is something creepy about an ultraviolent hyperpower basking in the moral glow of nonviolent revolutions against scummy genocidal dictators (including ones they once put in power), but in general I think that imperialism that makes liberal use of nonviolence is probably better for all involved than imperialism that does not.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.