Re: [Salon] Letter to Thomas Friedman. Re: "It's Time for America to Get Real with Iran and Israel, " October 15, 2024, opinion

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

Excellent letter!

Related to this, I recommend a book for more information on the accelerant of U.S. Imperialism, the Republican Party, under William McKinley and then more so, under NatCon, Straussian, Republican Josh Hawley’s favorite, Teddy Roosevelt, and seemingly Andrew Bacevich’s as he included Roosevelt’s proto-Fascist speech on The Strenuous Life in his panegyric to ultra-militaristic Conservatives in his book paying homage to them. 

I know no one reads my attachments, if they even read my emails, but, it is my small attempt to rebut and correct the right-wing revisionists busily rewriting right-wing history in building a “Usable Past” for the fascist/National Conservative/New Right of Trumpism, in a naked effort to sell Traditional Conservative Donald Trump as a “Restrainer.” 

So here’s more on Roosevelt, and U.S Imperialism in the attached files, by:

WARREN ZIMMERMANN spent thirty-three years as an officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving in France, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and as our last ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Attachment: Front Matter.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

      

Attachment: Introduction.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

     

Attachment: 1. The Expansionist Impulse.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

 

Attachment: 6. Roosevelt.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

    

Attachment: 10. The White Man's Burden.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: 11. The Imperial Presidency.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

From the Introduction:

"This is a book about imperialism, a word not very popular among Americans as a description of their past. It was not very popular in 1898 either. Even Roosevelt and Lodge, two full-blooded imperialists, found euphemisms. For Roosevelt the preferred description was "Americanism"; for Lodge it was the "large policy." For both, "expan­sionism" was a barely acceptable definition of U.S. policy. 

"Of the five, only Mahan had no fear of defining and using the word "imperialism." He gave its traditional territorial meaning-the acquisi­tion and holding of colonies and dependencies-a political dimension as well. Imperialism, he wrote, is "the extension of national authority over alien communities." This broader definition implies that a coun­try does not have to own the territory of an alien community in order to exercise imperial authority over it. This book uses Mahan's inter­pretation, but with the proviso that imperialism as practiced by the United States contained unique features. 

. . .

"Readers of this book will not be treated to a saga of triumphant America led by a small company of heroic figures. Nor will they be as­saulted by a revisionist diatribe against the use of American power to keep weaker peoples down. The reality of America's rise to great power status was much more complex than a stereotyped account from the right or the left can convey. There was both darkness and light in the characters and actions of the principal American protago­nists. Those peculiarly American combinations of ideology and prag­matism, of power and principle, and of racism and tolerance were as much a feature of the United States of I 898 as they are of the United Stat es today."

On Oct 23, 2024, at 9:25 AM, @listserve.com> wrote:

Hi Tom,

 

The United States is the greatest imperial power in the world history by orders of magnitude. Among other things, we sport more than 800 military bases in foreign countries; special forces deployed in most countries on the planet; $1.5 trillion expended annually on national security; a $1.7 trillion upgrade of our nuclear arsenal over the next three decades; chronic invasions of the sovereignty of multiple nations, for example, criminal wars of aggression against Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, using drones, boots on the ground, bombings, or otherwise and intoning, “international terrorism;” and becoming a co-combatant with Israel in a criminal war of aggression against Iran.

 

We are in no position to lecture other nations about renouncing imperialism.

 

This is what Iran's intelligence chief would say to C.I.A. Director Bill Burns in your recommended meeting between the two in Muscat, Oman:  “The United States is responsible for making Iran an enemy.  The United States overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, who had made Iran the only genuine democracy in the history of the Middle East. The United States installed the corrupt, dictatorial Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The United States created SAVAK, equivalent to the Gestapo, to crush every whisper of political dissent.  The United States created the conditions of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power and entrenched radical Islam. The United States supported Iraq in its 1980-88 war against Iran, featuring Iraq’s use of chemical weapons and Iraq’s multiple deadly missile attacks on Iranian cities. The United States has shut its eyes to Israel’s collection of scores if not hundreds of nuclear warheads and Israel’s implacable opposition to signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  The United States has ignored Israel’s assassinations of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. The United States has aided and abetted Israel’s industrial scale war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.  The United States made clear in its 2011 overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi after his abandonment of WMD that the United States would orchestrate a second edition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran if it abandoned its nuclear ambitions. The United States even shot down a civilian Iranian airplane over the Persian Gulf in 1988 killing 290. Regime change is the United States soundtrack towards Iran.  Do not lecture Iran on a rule-based international order.  The United States foreign policy is indistinguishable from the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

 

What the United States needs to do is to start following its own gospel.  Follow the example of President Eisenhower in 1956 in arresting the unprovoked attack on Egypt by Israel, France, and the United Kingdom. Get out of the region. Tend to your own garden.   So here is what we propose. An end to imperialism in all its ugly moods and tenses.  Iran ends its presence or influence in neighboring countries and Gaza, and the United States shuts down its imperial presence around the globe, including all military bases abroad, special forces, 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and the Monroe Doctrine claiming a United States sphere of influence throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.

 

The United States acts as if it were God’s chosen people endowed with wise and angelic DNA withheld from all other nations. Stop fantasizing. The United States is the only nation in the world that has used atomic bombs against civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We would be crazy not to believe the United States hopes the same for Tehran and Tabriz.  The United States has entered the domain of George Orwell and Animal Farm:  All nations are equal, but some are more equal than others.

 

Iran is eager to conclude with the United States a Joint Termination of Imperialism treaty.  Check with President Biden and the U.S. Senate for a green light and we can start the drafting.”

 

Tom, how would you answer the Iranian intelligence chief?  That would be a wonderful column.

 

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein

Ralph Nader