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FOCUS | William Rivers Pitt: Bush's Soviet State

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 11:36:42 -0700

 

 

FOCUS | William Rivers Pitt: Bush's Soviet State

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205Y.shtml

 

 

Bush's Soviet State

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Friday 22 July 2005

 

It's funny in an awful sort of way. The defining events of the

last fifty years all centered around the Cold War and the eventual

demise of the Soviet system. Toward the end of the Soviet regime,

their government was often forced to grossly overstate the size of

grain harvests or the preparedness of their military in order to

maintain an illusion of strength and order. In other words,

intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy. In essence,

fixing the facts became the policy.

 

Self-deception was piled upon self-deception. Rather than address

the systemic problems within the nation, the Soviet regime chose

instead to massage the illusions until the problems became too huge to

overcome. Pretending everything was fine became the chosen course of

action, and the state's ability to manufacture a pleasing reality

became a perfect circle of inaction and delusion. By the time the

tanks rolled and the Wall fell, the deal had already gone down.

 

Sound familiar?

 

There has been a lot of noise lately in the news media about the

outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and whether Bush advisor Karl Rove

was the button-man who brought her down. Press coverage of this issue

has been unexpectedly tenacious. White House spokesman Scott McClellan

has been leaving his podium after press conferences lately with fresh

bite marks all over his ankles and legs. The intensity of the pursuit

on this issue has a lot to do with Times reporter Judy Miller. Like

her, hate her, respect her or disdain her, but one thing is clear: The

White House press corps is bird-dogging this story with alacrity

because one of their own has wound up in the bucket because of it.

 

Yet even with all the coverage - The Time cover, the Newsweek

cover, the growling at the press conferences, the intensity of media

attention that has not even been deflected by a Supreme Court

nomination - the press and far too many people seem to be letting the

larger issue slide by. Reporters, columnists and talking heads chew

over minute permutations of the story like whether Rove actually said

Plame's name, or whether he used her maiden name, or whether he

" knowingly " did any of this. The trees are certainly interesting, but

the forest deserves a lot more attention.

 

In short, George W. Bush and his administration are pursuing a

course of determined unreality that mirrors the delusional fantasies

that ultimately consigned the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history.

This Rove-Plame thing is but one small aspect of the main.

 

Valerie Plame's career as a covert CIA operative was spent keeping

weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. Her career

was destroyed by the White House because her husband, Joseph Wilson,

had the gall to publicly contradict Bush and his people regarding

weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was so important for the Bush

administration to maintain the fiction that Iraq possessed these

weapons that they were willing to torpedo a vital intelligence network

set up to protect us all. That fiction was more important than the truth.

 

It seems clear that Rove was central to this action, regardless of

all the arguments over the definition of " is. " It is likewise becoming

clear that Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was

also in on this action. However, focusing only on which laws these two

may have violated in wrecking Plame's ability to do her job does not

encompass the totality of the issue. Valerie Plame is not a central

character in all this, but only another casualty.

 

George W. Bush and his people spent months telling the American

public that Iraq was a direct threat to our security. They invaded

based upon false pretenses. They maintain the fiction that the war was

necessary when it has become manifestly clear that it was not. They

maintain the fiction that freedom has been brought to Iraq when it has

become manifestly clear that it has not. Perhaps worst of all, they

maintain the fiction that the United States and the world are safer

because of the invasion. Recent events in London rip this fantasy to

shreds, and never mind the reports from the French news media that the

London explosives may have been made from materials stolen from the

unsecured Al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq.

 

A recent article from the Associated Press titled " Experts Fear

Endless Terror War " noted, " An Associated Press survey of longtime

students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in

the aftermath of London's bloody Thursday, that the world has entered

a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is

mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other

21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And

the way out is far from clear. In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the

ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States

took a big step backward by invading Iraq. "

 

The article continues, " Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden

unit for nine years, sees a different way out - through US foreign

policy. He said he resigned last November to expose the US

leadership's 'willful blindness' to what needs to be done: withdraw

the US military from the Mideast, end 'unqualified support' for

Israel, sever close ties to Arab oil-state 'tyrannies.' "

 

Willful blindness is an appropriate phrase. It captures not only

the fact that we are manufacturing threats to our security every day

we remain in Iraq, but the fact that virtually everything associated

with Bush administration policy depends on self-delusion and the

manipulation of data to fulfill political desires. Even the most

fundamental underpinnings of conservative political philosophy have

been ground up in the gears of this grand fantasy.

 

Truth no longer matters. Ethics no longer matter. Facts are there

for the twisting. Decades-old conservative ideals regarding the budget

and the size of the Federal government have been thrown under the bus

because they are no longer convenient, and get in the way of the

manufacture of reality. Soviet self-delusion led that nation into

Afghanistan and disaster. The Bush administration's self-delusion has

led us into Iraq. Res ipsa loquitor.

 

The parallel between this Bush administration and the old, failed

Soviet regime can be taken one step further. One of the main reasons

the Soviet government was able to stagger on for years making up facts

out of whole cloth was that the leaders of that regime were

accountable to no one. The Politburo said it, and so it must be true,

and if it wasn't true, there was no authority or check to their power

that could blow a whistle, throw a flag or demand an investigation.

The old Soviet government lived in a bubble, free from the fear that

they might be called to the carpet for lying, getting a lot of people

killed and putting the State in mortal danger.

 

Sound familiar? Bush and his people have managed to walk through

the raindrops since 2001, managed to pull off more than a few

impeachable crimes, for no other reason than that they are accountable

to no one in government ... or, more properly, no one in government

who has the power to call them to account has done so. Congress is run

by Bush allies, the Justice Department is run by his longest-standing

hatchet man, and all of them prefer to maintain the pleasant fictions

over any attempt to fix what has gone so drastically and demonstrably

wrong.

 

We watched the Soviets smash themselves to pieces because they

refused to deal with what ailed them, because lies made life easier on

the powerful, because actually attempting to address a problem might

expose the powerful to censure or even removal, because no one had the

power to stop them.

 

It is happening again, right before our eyes.

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

 

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