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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe True History of Blowback in One Sentence
The infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, December 7, 1941.
(Photo: Paul Walsh)
The True History of Blowback in One Sentence
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 23 October 2014
Since you're probably wondering why the Canadian Parliament was shot up and your friendly neighborhood police officer is driving a tank and your savings account is a sad joke and your road is littered with potholes and you can't find a job and three of your friends who joined the Army to pay for college died in Iraq and Afghanistan and two others have brain trauma from IED explosions and won't ever be the same and your tap water is flammable and the ocean is coming for your home, well...
...let me introduce you to the concept of "blowback," which author Chalmers Johnson explained as "another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows," which basically means that when you punch someone in the face, odds are very good that you're going to get punched back, and maybe they land that counterpunch, or maybe they don't, but that fist is going to come whistling at your face, count on it, and if it misses, there is always another fist, curled and hard and ready to fly...
...so let's talk about blowback, the story of which began seventy-three years ago at Pearl Harbor, when we were attacked by the Japanese Empire, and the United States entered the war in Europe and Asia simultaneously, and President Roosevelt endeavored to manufacture the Reich and the Empire out of existence, and placed the American economy on a wartime footing to do so, and in the fullness of time, it worked, and the war was over...
...but actually, it never ended, because the manufacture of war materiel made the manufacturers rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and they began to exert influence over American politics, and then FDR died, and Harry Truman took the big chair, and then George Kennan, the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote what has come to be known as the "Long Telegram," in which he described the bedlam of Stalin and Soviet intentions, and Truman along with a bunch of other people read it, and it scared the cheese out of them, and so the National Security Act of 1947 was passed, making America's economic wartime footing a permanent thing that endures to this day, and thus the Cold War was born...
...which was bully news for the weapons manufacturers who got rich on WWII, because now they were indispensable as a matter of policy, "national security" assets, and before long, tank after tank and warship after warship and nuclear missile after nuclear missile and bullet after bullet and rifle after rifle and bomb after bomb rolled down the production lines, each and every one paid for with tax dollars collected from an American populace which was led to believe this was all vitally necessary because the readers of Kennan's telegram decided the thing to do was to make sure everyone felt threatened because a fearful populace is easily controlled...
...and so the Cold War unfolded, and in the words of Stephen King, O my Lord how the money rolled in, because conflict for conflict's sake became the operational ethos in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Africa and South America and Central America and especially in the Middle East for decades, and in the process of this multi-generational permanent state of conflict the weapons manufacturers became wealthier and wealthier, and more and more powerful, and exerted that power on the body politic of the United States to such a degree that they eventually began purchasing the news media brick by brick, so the people would hear day after day how the corporations who profit from war are actually keeping them safe and stuff...
...and this went on and on, growing and expanding, even to far-flung places like Afghanistan, where big brains like Zbignew Brzezinski decided in 1978 to give the USSR its own Vietnam, and began a process that Reagan eventually took over to underwrite the Mujeheddin, who took on the Soviet Union and learned, with the help of American money and American weapons and a CIA ally named Osama bin Laden, how to take down a superpower, which they eventually did before metastasizing into the Taliban and al Qaeda...
...because Brzezinski's original plan was to arm, train and fund anti-Soviet fighters in Pakistani religious schools to destabilize Afghanistan and dare the Soviets to invade, and that plan was executed, and it worked, and the word "Taliban" when translated means "Religious student," so congratulations, Zbignew, for kicking the pebble down the hill that turned into an avalanche which came in the fullness of time to deprive the New York City skyline of two very tall buildings and the thousands of people who were in them on a perfect blue Tuesday thirteen years ago...
...which led, of course, to another decade of war after all the other decades of war that came on the heels of Pearl Harbor and the National Security Act, which has in this brave new moment led to ISIS, as well as a dementedly paranoid United States that doesn't blink at cops dressed and armed like soldiers while driving tanks down Main Street because OMG TERRORISTS YOU GUYS...
...lots more here: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27000-the-true-history-of-blowback-in-one-sentence
unblock
(52,331 posts)marble falls
(57,267 posts)its a shame that Canadians have to learn a lesson we in the US cannot seem to grasp.
TheProgressive
(1,656 posts)We've always been at war with Eastasia...
samsingh
(17,601 posts)also, there are photos of rumsfield and saddam grinning together during their meetings - probably to arm iraq
sinkingfeeling
(51,474 posts)Autumn
(45,120 posts)Recommended, excellent article and thank you.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)if we'll ever stop digging.
Autumn
(45,120 posts)and yet the digging goes on.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)... should give you the answer.
johnnyreb
(915 posts)Very good essay, thank you. For the too many who don't read and those too busy keeping their heads down, it seems we need a jolt like The 28 Pages might be. Depending of course on their actual joltage. And on the tender mercies of Big Media. Meanwhile I talk with almost everyone, however briefly.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)I think the Military-Industrial Complex began with the Civil War. It was already going full-blast before WWI even started.
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)The Wizard
(12,549 posts)fostered the Industrial Revolution.
cilla4progress
(24,776 posts)except I call it Karma.
And it starts in the 16th century with the "Discovery" of the Americas, genocide of indigenous populations, and enslavement of legal immigrants imported by transnational corporations.
Inevitable.
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)cilla4progress
(24,776 posts)in knowing we are getting what we've got coming to us.
It doesn't matter that I didn't do it, nor my parents. It's the "us" as the US, I'm referring to.
Thank you for your thoughts.
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)put down the shovel, indeed.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)with Molly Ivins' First Rule of Holes and internalize it:
"The First Rule of Holes is that when you are in one, you should stop digging. To keep right on doing what is already causing disastrous consequences is either insane or profoundly stupid."
Unfortunately American reserves of insanity and stupidity are as infinite as the cosmos itself.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)It is good it comes from Molly Ivins.
rurallib
(62,451 posts)doubt if I can find it, but it talked about how JFK was trying to step in to slow down the MIC and he - well - messed with the wrong folks.
The Wizard
(12,549 posts)the change from the Department of War, only fully funded in a declared war, to the Department of Defense. This put us on a permanent war footing. It made off shore accounts in tax havens and money laundries necessary for defense contractors and the legislators they bribe.
Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 Farewell Speech.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)but that just let them do massive layoffs: but it was just a shift in overall doctrine--big-ticket B-1s and -2s and SR-71 Blackbirds and ICBMs were shoved into museums and the MIC just went on building shells, bullets, counterinsurgency bombers, choppers, and trillion-dollar "combined" fighters: Washington's money-to-results ratio dipped even harder than it had been during the Cold War--and remember that the aero"space" sector was the leader in claiming that you can only feed sparrows through horses: by nature it can't retool to make productive stuff like HSR trains or next-generation solar panels
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)We gotta blow up more shit, amirite?
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)I stopped reading when I got to this part :
. . . but actually, it never ended
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)No. Can't be true.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)because these "conflicts" are generally actually about
natural resources or assets like diamonds, gold, water,
oil, port access, etc.
and behind the curtain with the MIC are Big Pharma and
Big Oil, et. al.
Just saying.
It's not just conflict for conflict's sake, it's a
capitalist cluster-fuck of reciprocal interests.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)K&R!
tomp
(9,512 posts)...i think you covered the weapons merchants part nicely. there are other aspects of imperialism to account for as well, global finance, raw materials and markets, i.e., making the world safe for corporatism in general, not just arms merchants.
another example of blowback is our "immigration problem," in which u.s imperialism impoverishes other nations, making it inevitable that people there will try to escape to find better living conditions. i have never seen this idea raised in the "debate" on immigration.
thanks for the read.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)or is it William Faulkner?
muntrv
(14,505 posts)WAR IS A RACKET!