A Colossal Wreck

by Alexander Cockburn

  Run, Russ, run.

  December 10

  To: Patrick Cockburn; Jeffrey St. Clair

  Subject: Put it on the wall (or front door)

  COVER: A drawing of the cuneiform transcription of a debt cancellation (amargi law) by Enmetena, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, c. 2400 BC, the first known legal proclamation.

  December 24

  The prime constant factor in American politics across the past six decades has been a counterattack by the rich against the social reforms of the 1930s.

  Twenty years ago the supreme prize of the Social Security trust funds—the government pensions that changed the face of America in the mid-’30s—seemed far beyond Wall Street’s grasp. No Republican President could possibly prevail in such an enterprise. It would have to be an inside job by a Democrat. Clinton tried it, but the Lewinsky sex scandal narrowly aborted his bid.

  If Obama can be identified with one historic mission on behalf of capital it is this, and though success is by no means guaranteed, it is closer than it has ever been.

  As with Clinton, we have an opportunistic, neoliberal President without a shred of intellectual or moral principle. We have disconsolate liberals, and a press saying that Obama is showing admirable maturity in understanding what bipartisanship really means. Like Clinton, Obama is fortunate in having pwogs to his left only too happy to hail him. The landscape doesn’t change much, as evidenced by the fact that Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and George W.’s brother, looks as though he’s ready to make a bid for the Republican nomination.

  December 29

  Unlike the French or the Italians, for whom conspiracies are an integral part of government activity, acknowledged by all, Americans have been temperamentally prone to discount them. Reflecting its audience, the press follows suit. Editors and reporters like to offer themselves as hardened cynics, following the old maxim “Never believe anything till it is officially denied,” but in truth, they are touchingly credulous, ever inclined to trust the official version, at least until irrefutable evidence—say, the failure to discover a single WMD in Iraq—compels them finally to a darker view.

  Once or twice a decade some official deception simply cannot be sedately circumnavigated. Even in the 1950s, when the lid of government secrecy was more firmly bolted down, the grim health consequences of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, Utah, and Nevada finally surfaced. In the late 1960s, it was the turn of the CIA, some of its activities first exposed in relatively marginal publications like the Nation and Ramparts, then finally given wider circulation.

  Even then the mainstream press exhibited extreme trepidation in running any story presuming to discredit the moral credentials of the US government. Take assassination as an instrument of national policy. In these post–September 11 days, when Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, publicly declares, as he did before the House Intelligence Committee, that the government has the right to kill Americans abroad, it is easy to forget that nothing used to more rapidly elicit furious denials from the CIA than allegations about its efforts, stretching back to the late 1940s, to kill inconvenient foreign leaders. Charges by the Cubans through the 1960s and early ’70s about the Agency’s serial attempts to murder Fidel Castro were routinely ignored, until finally the Senate hearings conducted in 1976 by Senator Frank Church elicited a conclusive record of about twenty separate efforts.

  Indeed, there was a brief window in the early ’70s, amid revulsion over the Vietnam War and the excitement of the Watergate hearings, when the press exhibited a certain unwonted bravado, in part because investigative committees of Congress, enlivened by Watergate, made good use of subpoena power and immunity from threats of libel. Hence the famous Lockheed bribery hearings.

  Decorum soon returned, however. Just over twenty years later, in 1996, the Washington Post fired off a six-part series, concocted with the help of Harvard profs, decked out with doleful front-page headlines such as “In America, Loss of Confidence Seeps into Institutions.” The Post’s earnest message was that mistrust is bad and that it is better for social stability and contentment to trust government, as in the golden ’50s, which, the older crowd may recall, was a time when government told soldiers it was safe to march into atomic test sites and when government-backed doctors offered radioactive oatmeal to disabled kids without their parents’ knowledge.

  The mainstream press—what’s left of it—sees an important duty to foster confidence in public institutions. On May 6, right after disclosure of Goldman Sachs’s double dealing, came the plummet in the stock market that for a brief moment sliced 998 points off the Dow, prompting serious losses to small investors who had placed stop-loss orders on individual stocks. On Comedy Central, Jon Stewart showed a stream of news anchors characterizing everything from the GM bailout to the mortgage crisis to the rescue of AIG as caused by a “perfect storm.” Stewart said, “I’m beginning to think these are not perfect storms. I’m beginning to think these are regular storms and we have a s—ty boat.” But the mainstream press zealously steered clear of suggestions that market manipulators might have engineered a killing.

  The integration of journalists into Washington’s policy apparatus—with its luxuriant jungle of lobby shops thinly disguised as nonprofits, with their seminars, “scholars in residence,” and fellowships—has led to a decorous tendency to ignore the grime of politics at the level of corruption, blackmail, and bribery—mostly inaccessible anyway without the power of subpoena. There’s an interesting genre of books, some written by political fixers in the aftermath of exposure or incarceration—Bobby Baker’s Wheeling and Dealing is a good example—that usefully describe the grime, but these are rarely reviewed in respectable journals.

  Sometimes a cover-up does surface, propelled into the light of day by a tenacious journalist. Then there’s the outraged counterattack. Are you suggesting, sir, that the CIA connived to smuggle cocaine into America’s inner cities? Gary Webb’s career at the San Jose Mercury News was efficiently destroyed. Those who took the trouble to read the subsequent full report of CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz found corroboration of Webb’s charges. But by then the caravan had moved on. A jury issued its verdict, but the press box was empty.

  Maybe now the decline in power of the established corporate press, the greater availability of dissenting versions of politics and history, and the exposure of the methods used to coerce public support for the attack on Iraq have engendered a greater sense of realism on the part of Americans about what their government can do. Perhaps the press will be more receptive to discomfiting stories about what Washington is capable of in the pursuit of what it deems to be the national interest. Hopefully, in this more fertile soil, Syd Schanberg’s pertinacity will be vindicated at last, and those still active in politics who connived at this abandonment of principles will be forced to give an account.

  When it comes to journalistic achievements in 2010, the elephant in the room is WikiLeaks. The alleged leaker of the WikiLeaks files, Army Private Bradley Manning, currently being held in solitary confinement in sadistic conditions, should be vigorously applauded and defended for doing his sworn duty by exposing such crimes as the murder of civilians in Baghdad by US Apache helicopters. Assange and his colleagues should similarly be honored and defended. They have acted in the best traditions of the journalistic vocation.

  2011

  January 6

  For the past seven months, twenty-two-year-old US Army Private Bradley Manning, first in an Army prison in Kuwait, now in the brig in Quantico, Virginia, has been held twenty-three hours out of twenty-four in solitary confinement in his cell, under constant harassment. If his eyes close between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. he is jolted awake. In daylight hours he has to respond “yes” to guards every five minutes. For an hour a day he is taken to another cell where he walks figures of eight. If he stops he is taken back to his other cell.

  Manning is accused of giving documents to Julian Assange at WikiLeaks. He has n
ot been tried or convicted. Visitors report that Manning is going downhill mentally as well as physically. His lawyer’s efforts to improve his condition have been rebuffed by the Army.

  Accusations that his treatment amounts to torture have been indignantly denounced by prominent conservatives calling for him to be summarily executed. After the columnist Glenn Greenwald publicised Manning’s treatment in mid-December, there was a moderate commotion. The UN’s top monitor of torture is investigating his case. Meanwhile Manning faces months, if not years, of the same. Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal. Not in the shadows where it used to lurk, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Coercion and humiliation seep through the culture.

  On his second full day in office, President Obama signed a series of executive orders to close the Guantanamo detention center within a year, ban the harshest interrogation methods, and review military war crimes trials. In his first State of the Union address a week later, Obama declared to the joint session of Congress: “I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture. We can make that commitment here tonight.”

  Nonetheless, the torture system is flourishing, and the boundaries of the American Empire are marked by overseas torture centers such as Bagram. There are still detainees in Guantanamo—as of November last year, 174 of them. They are supposedly destined for a supermax in Illinois. Manning fights for his sanity in Quantico.

  January 13

  Tucson is a schizoid town, pleasantly laid back but also with heavy enforcement under- and over-tones. The last time I spoke at a public meeting down there, a couple of years ago, the decidedly countercultural audience looked like a throwback to the late ’70s in New York, which is probably where many in the crowd originally hailed from.

  It’s an informal place, which is why it was not surprising for Rep. Giffords to set up her table in a Safeway grocery store’s parking lot, chatting with locals. This is what she was doing on Saturday. So Jared Loughner, twenty-two, with his newly purchased 9mm Glock with extended magazine, was able to stride up to within a yard of the congresswoman and shoot her in the head, then spray the small area with an extended salvo.

  With this twenty-second fusillade Loughner killed US District Judge John Roll, sixty-three; Dorothy Murray, seventy-six; Dorwin Stoddard, seventy-six; Phyllis Scheck, seventy-nine; Gabriel Zimmerman, thirty; and Christina Green, nine. Zimmerman was Giffords’s; director of community outreach and had helped organize the event. Christina Green, born on September 11, 2001, was taken along to see Giffords by a relative, because the nine-year-old was interested in public affairs. Federal judge Roll had just dropped by to say hello to Giffords, who shared his liberal opposition to Arizona’s fierce stance on illegal immigrants.

  Sarah Palin had played to her base all through the last four months of 2010 with website pictures of select Democratic candidates’ districts—where there was a Tea Party challenger—with crosshair gun sights over them. Giffords got this treatment and stated publicly that Palin should know this sort of rhetoric could have consequences. Palin pulled the image from her site only after the shooting, just after TLC cancelled her Alaska show and will not be bringing it back for a second season. The cancellation didn’t have anything to do with the shooting in Tucson. The show was fairly solid in the ratings at 3.2 million viewers and it seems TLC’s worry was that if Palin runs for the Republican presidential nomination, they’d have to give her opponents equal access time.

  But will Palin now be pilloried as Loughner’s motivator? She’ll certainly get flak, but it will be from people who loathe her anyway. Her base will construe her as a martyr to the Commie conspiracy led by Obama and will turn out for her in even greater numbers. They’ll quote Jefferson even more fervently: “And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

  January 15

  Editor,

  Alex Cockburn has been bashing the “Truthers” for many years now. He finds it OK to attack those who seek the truth of what really happened on 9-11-01. Now, he ridicules those who ask why the CIA “missed” the underpants bomber, even though they had plenty of warning.

  “The Truthers reject the obvious answers—caution, bureaucratic inertia, buck-passing, turf fights—and say it was a plot.” Oh really Mr. Cockburn, do we? We don’t know one way or another, and you are now the spokesperson for the Truthers? What’s obvious is your “strawman” attacks are very misplaced. Like, why spend so much time attacking truth seekers? Especially when these “failures” keep benefiting certain countries and military-industrial-corporations.

  “The Israeli firm, ICTS, and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar F. Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear.”

  A Ha’aretz investigation has learned that the security officers and their supervisor should have suspected the passenger, even without having early intelligence available to them. The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which US President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, “including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.” Nothing to see here, move along Truther scumbags!

  So, the US is relying on Israeli security, and we are to believe that everyone just messed up, again? Mr. Cockburn wants us all to fall in line with his theory, the Official US Government Incompetence Theory. OUSGIT. OUSGIT! OUSGIT!! OUSGIT!!! OUSGIT!!!! Over and over, again and again, just plain dumb goy? For how long? How many more times to fall for lies? As many as it takes. As one commenter wrote online, “If the plane went down, maybe Israel could of fed us intelligence saying it was Iran.” But, that’d NEVER happen, that’s a CRAZY conspiracy theory, false flag operations NEVER happen. I’m sure Mr. Cockburn would be glad to agree.

  Cheers,

  Rob Mahon, Covelo

  P.S. I’d rather be a Truthseeker, than a Denialist.

  Alexander Cockburn replies: From this it’s impossible to discern what Mahon’s version of events is. I’d prefer to stay within the ambit of buck-passing, bureaucratic rivalries, and incompetence, starting with the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn’t show up on the Watch List because someone had entered his name wrong. As for denialism, Rob, go preach Warming in Western Europe or Beijing, as temps plunge to new lows. The world has been cooling since 1998 and that’s da cold truth. Petrolia.

  February 6

  The career profiles of the man Obama picked to send to Egypt to talk to Mubarak give a useful mini-portrait of US-Egyptian realities, shorn of happy talk about democracy and the will of the people.

  The seventy-two-year-old Frank Wisner is a former US ambassador to Egypt and a senior fixer in Washington. He has secure footholds in government and corporate America. Until recently he was vice chairman of AIG, which he left to become a foreign policy adviser at the politically powerful law firm and lobby shop, Patton Boggs. Wisner’s father, Frank Sr., ran the CIA’s covert arm, went mad after the failure of the Hungarian rising of 1956, and committed suicide in odd circumstances in a CIA secure house outside Washington, DC, in 1967.

  As ambassador to Egypt, Wisner formed a close relationship with Mubarak and long after leaving Cairo continued to nourish it. In 2005 he celebrated the Egyptian election (Mubarak “won” with 88.6 percent of the vote) as a “historic day.” Wisner promptly headed further into egregious false
hood: “There were no instances of repression; there wasn’t heavy police presence on the streets. The atmosphere was not one of police intimidation.”

  Mubarak is despised, as he has been throughout his entire career. These days, mutilated by neoliberal policies forced on it by the usual international agencies, Egypt is an economic disaster zone, able to feed its exploding population for only nine months in the year. The current political explosion has sharply aggravated the economic crisis.

  The custodians of the American Empire are right to be perturbed. Those crowds in Tunis and in Cairo, facing projectiles “made in America,” know well enough the ultimate sponsor of the tyrannies against which they have risen. A belated chirp for “democracy” from Obama or Secretary of State Clinton will not purge that record.

  February 11

  We need good news. When was the last time we had some, here in this country? The Seattle riots against the WTO? That was back in 1999. Around the world? Hard to remember—it’s been a long dry spell. It reminds me of the old Jacobin shivering in the chill night of Bourbon restoration, and crying out, “Oh, sun of ’93, when shall I feel thy warmth again!”

  We raise our glass to the Egyptian people.

  The brave Egyptian demonstrators did it. Conscripts ready to mutiny if ordered to fire on the crowds did it. Immensely courageous Egyptian union organizers active for years did it. Look at the numbers of striking workers enumerated by Esam al-Amin today; this was close to a general strike. It reminds me of France, its economy paralyzed in the uprising in the spring of 1968. That was when President de Gaulle, displaying a good deal more energy and sangfroid than Mubarak, flew to meetings with senior French military commanders to get pledges of loyalty and received requisite assurance.