"Rogue states" have been the justification for post-cold-war US military operations. Three of the "rogues" attacked by the US military - Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan - are strategic targets related to the control of oil production, distribution, and pricing (see my "Empire expunged" post today). Covert or overt aggressive actions attributed to the rogue states were shown as justification for the US attacks. There is solid evidence that the terrorism charges against Libya were faked and that Iraq was tricked into invading Kuwait. IOW there was a covert US effort closely articulated to overt US strategy to prepare the grounds for a US attack.
The covert and overt components of US expansionism were closely integrated, much like Hitler's directive to create an "incident" in Czechsolovakia was part and parcel of his overall strategy. I hope you can see why labeling this covert component of US policy as a conspiracy is reductionist. It's no more a conspiracy than the rest of the strategic planning and execution. This is simply how governments operate.
Maybe it might help if we look at Israel. Dr. Israel Shahak, a respected peace campaigner, has written: "There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state which, almost from its inception, has used one of its intelligence agencies, the Mossad, to carry out violence or terror, including assassination, it considers necessary for its ends." Over there, some people called him a traitor (which was problematic, because Shahak was a Bergen-Belsen inmate), but nobody called him a conspiracy-monger. The Israelis are far more realistic about the nature of their state than are Americans. Additionally, there's a mind-blowing difference of scale: Israeli ambitions are limited to the Middle East, but those of the US may well extend to other planets.
So again, I totally agree that this is a hellish case to make in the US. Americans just love being on top of an empire.
Hakki Alacakaptan
|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
|| [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
|| Louis Proyect wrote:
|| >
|| >
|| >
|| > The US ruling class will do everything it can to turn a disaster to
|| > its advantage. But to assume that it needed to orchestrate this
|| > disaster is utter folly.
|| >
||
|| Yes. And more -- even if the conspiracy existed it would do us no good
|| to claim it. The arguments for such complex scenarios are long,
|| torturous, & detailed. The vast majority of people are not even going to
|| listen, but assume that it is just wild claims being made by a bunch of
|| nutty leftists. And as a result, we will lose our credibility even in
|| respect to our description of the ongoing "conspiracy in the open" that
|| characterizes imperialist policy.
||
|| It has done damage already. In explaining the crimes of NATO in
|| Yugoslavia to contacts, I will no longer be able to refer them to (or
|| use myself) information for which the only or primary source is
|| Emperor's Clothes. I'm just not going to risk being made a fool of by
|| citing a source which also claims that Tuesday's bombings were the
|| result of a comic-book conspiracy by the Imperialists. I don't read
|| Pugliese's posts, but I would be willing to bet that soon he will be
|| spreading Jared's theory around the net, accompanied by headings saying,
|| in effect, "See, if he can say this, how can you trust him on
|| Srebrenica?" We reached millions of people during the Anti-War movement
|| WITHOUT making any of the claims which the Pentagon Papers proved to be
|| true. That is, the open crimes of the U.S. were sufficient: we did not
|| need the "secret" stuff.
||
|| Capitalism _is_ the conspiracy -- not the machinations of a bunch of
|| spooks in Langley. Let us concentrate on what we know, and what reality
|| endlessly manifests everyday. We have our work cut out for us, and there
|| will be hot disagreements among us in any case which will have to be
|| threshed out or compromised, without adding the extra clutter of this
|| supposed conspiracy to fuss over.
||
|| Carrol