>From Intellectual Capital
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue183/item2204.asp
The Death of Liberalism
by Eric Alterman
Thursday, March 11, 1999
Comments: 286�posts <Picture>
That the government of the United States is a liar and an accessory to mass
murder is not news; what is news is that no one seems to care anymore.
Examine the media's non-reaction to two of the biggest foreign-policy
revelations of the decade: that the United States subverted the UNSCOM
inspections of Iraq's weaponry and the Guatemalan truth commission's report
that the United States assisted its government's decades-long campaign of
genocide against its own people. Where's the outrage? Where's the anger?
Where, even, is the follow-up story?
In the past few days we have heard a great deal about China's spying on
U.S. weapons programs in Los Alamos. This is a big story, no doubt, and it
is likely to get bigger. The Washington Post, The New York Times and The
Los Angeles Times among many others are killing themselves to try to get
the next big scoop. Republicans are demanding hearings. William Safire is
crying "cover-up" and possibly even treason. The media machine, in other
words, is performing exactly as it is supposed to.
What about the rest of the story?
<Picture: Saddam Hussein was only telling the truth>
Saddam Hussein was only telling the truth
So what, then, is so uninteresting about Iraq and Guatemala? In Iraq,
Saddam Hussein, a murderous dictator, has proven a more credible source
than our own elected officials. Hussein said he could not cooperate with
UNSCOM because it was a CIA front designed to provide the U.S. with
information necessary to plan a military strike. Pundits laughed. Deputy
State Department spokesman James Foley said in a Feb. 23 briefing that
charges of U.S. espionage inside UNSCOM are "unfathomable except as
elements which can only serve Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine." Guess
what?
Saddam was telling the truth. Unbeknownst to UNSCOM, the United States
rigged UNSCOM equipment and office space to intercept Iraqi military
communications. Those communications, carried between microwave towers and
linking Iraqi commanders to infantry and armored forces in the field, were
extremely valuable to U.S. military planners, but wholly unrelated to
UNSCOM's special weapons mandate. According to former U.N. weapons
inspector, Scott Ritter, the U.N. inspection teams included "CIA
paramilitary covert operatives" who were there to subvert Saddam's
government.
Can you blame him for refusing to cooperate? Can you believe anything our
government tells us about its actions overseas? And what of all those
pundits who condemned Clinton for being too soft, too willing to appease
Saddam? Do they dare mention this subject? No, the very idea of
accountability is passe in our democracy.
Why? Why?
It is passe, I might add, even in the case of genocide. The report of the
Guatemalan independent Historical Clarification Commission clearly states
that despite decades of denial, coupled with explicit U.S. support, its
government and allied paramilitary groups were to blame for more than 90%
of 42,000 human-rights violations, 29,000 of which resulted in deaths or
missing persons.
The commission, which had a staff of 272 researchers, listed U.S. training
of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques as a key factor that
"had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed
confrontation." It also noted the close CIA involvement with the Guatemalan
military during most if not all of this period.
Lest we forget, the United States placed this genocidal regime in Guatemala
in power in 1954 during the overthrow of a democratically elected
government. What were the excuses again? The Russians? The Cubans? The
Chinese? Who was it that threatened United States security in Guatemala
sufficiently to justify our complicity in genocide?
For political purposes, it really does not matter. Hardly anyone seems to
care. The president has apologized, which is commendable, but the act
seemed more like diplomacy than true contrition. And even if the president
was sincere,he was centainly not responding to any domestic groundswell,
either in his party, the media, or the country at large. During the 1980s,
when the Reagan administration was attempting to ram its murderous Central
American program through Congress, liberals in Congress, human-rights
groups and most particularly church-based organizations worked to keep some
kind of moral element in the discussion of how we behaved in the world.
Now we have a damaged-goods Democrat in the White House, and the opposition
has all but disappeared. There is no "left" to contend with and the media,
with some honorable exceptions, could not care less. Tell me that one about
the "liberal media" again. "What about Monica's dress?" they scream. "Will
we one day be able to show it to our kids in the Smithsonian?"
The death of liberalism
Now that impeachment is over, we can take stock of some unpleasant truths.
One is that Bill Clinton has helped to destroy liberalism in this country.
Those of us who hated and feared his opponents were forced to make a deal
with a devil, and it has been an expensive one.
Clinton gives the military everything it can think to ask for, and no one
makes a peep. He conducts an air war against Iraq on the basis of lies, and
no serious opposition materializes anywhere. He turns away from the
credible accusation that the United States knowingly participated in
genocide in Guatemala, and no one is left to call him to account.
It is hard to believe there has ever been an uglier time in American
politics.
Back to you, Ms. Lewinsky.
Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and MSNBC. He is the author,
most recently, of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign
Policy(Cornell University Press, 1998). He is also a contributing editor to
IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail address is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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