Saturday, July 26, 2014

"EXCEPTIONAL" AMERICA

Remember back in the seventies and the Watergate hearings? Over and over it was “what did the president know and when did he know it?” And that was the attempt to steal an election that Nixon was probably going to win anyway.


Fast forward to the eighties and Iran contra. In a complicated several way dance we channeled arms to Iran in hopes of getting some hostages in Lebanon freed. Weapons and money were channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. Drug dealing was involved. There was a laundry list of suspects that were convicted, then pardoned by Bush I. To the the best of my knowledge nobody ever really asked “what did the president know and when did he know it?” And honestly, if he didn’t know WTF was going on it was because he was sitting in a corner, eyes closed, fingers in ears humming really, really loud.

Google War Against the Poor: Low Intensity Conflict and the Christian Faith by Jack Nicholas-Pallmeyer. It’s actually on the web as a PDF. Because it’s a PDF is doesn’t give me the usual ID so I can link to it. If you copy and paste to Word it runs about 114 pages including notes. If only half of what he wrote back in the eighties was true it’s a scathing indictment of US policy from the early fifties on.

There’s a film out here about how “special” America is. We’re special alright. But not in the way Dinesh d’Souza intended.

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