Cold War Revisionism: Once Again the Major Historical Task
by Dan Spielberg
by Dan Spielberg
DIGG THIS
As the regime
gears up to wage a new Cold War against Russia over its alleged
"aggression" against the "democratic" (read: pro-U.S.) state of
Georgia, it is time to remind ourselves once again that the first
Cold War was a scam of epic proportions perpetrated by both the
Democrats and the Republicans, for the sole purpose of providing
an excuse for the worldwide expansion of Anglo-American imperialism
and mercantilism. The idea that there was a Soviet threat to the
U.S., indeed to the entire West-with-a-capital-W, was simply invented
to "scare the hell out of the American people" as the sinister Senator
Arthur Vandenberg advised President Harry Truman to do in 1947 in
order to sell the Cold War, which brought to America crushing taxation
and debt and the institution of peacetime military slavery, euphemistically
called the "draft."
It is important
for critics of current American foreign policy to better develop
a detailed understanding of the true nature of the Cold War, in
order to better debunk the anti-Russian war propaganda that is now
emanating like a noxious gas from Washington. To this end I've compiled
a list of books and articles that I have read, along with some comments
on each, that all reveal the true nature of the Cold War. It is
my hope that these works will help to debunk the current propaganda
war which may just be the opening salvo of the next great world-historic
"war" that will replace the current "War on Terror" once that hobbyhorse
has been worn out. The list is as follows:
1. Cold
War Revisionism, the Major Historical Task
This is a
great editorial in the Spring 1966 edition of LEFT
AND RIGHT: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. It is notable
because it highlights how conservatives shifted from opposing
foreign intervention to being warmongers and evangelists for globaloney
once the Commies were the official enemy.
2. Myths
of the Cold War, by Murray N. Rothbard
Published
in the Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought in the
Summer of 1966, this article gets right to the heart of the matter.
It asks all the right questions and shows that the arguments of
the Cold Warriors were nothing but Swiss cheese.
3. Why
the Futile Crusade?, by Leonard P. Liggio
Published
in LEFT AND RIGHT: A Journal of Libertarian Thought in
the Spring of 1965. This long, detailed essay is a review of a
book called The
Futile Crusade, Anti-Communism as American Credo, by Sidney
Lens, which I have not read but which sounds fascinating as well.
This article is especially noteworthy for the quotations it contains
from the old "isolationists" in the Congress like Robert Taft,
George Bender and William E. Borah who all warned that the Truman
Doctrine was nothing but old-fashioned power politics dressed
up in "democratic" garb and would have terrible consequences for
our liberties and our prosperity.
4. Revisionist
Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition,
by James J. Martin
This collection
of essays by the great revisionist historian James J. Martin should
be required reading for anyone who wants to understand US foreign
policy since World War II. Chapter One, "On the 'Defense' Origins
of the New Imperialism," reveals the extent to which World
War II, and by extension its sequel, the Cold War, were mercantilist
enterprises designed to enrich armament makers, bankers and other
state-connected businessmen.
Chapter Seven,
"Revisionism and the Cold War, 1946–166: Some Comments on Its
Origins and Consequences," covers the background of the Cold
War, how it was officially launched and some of the propaganda
that was used to justify it. In this essay Martin claims that
"(t)hough it is commonplace to date the official beginning of
the Cold War with Churchill's famous 'iron curtain' speech at
Fulton, Missouri in March, 1946, it began in actuality with the
British efforts at preventing the Communists from overrunning
Greece in November, 1944, at a moment when these two contenders
were in warm agreement on other objectives. It is just another
commentary on the political expediency of Churchill to see him
in the forefront of the movement to elevate the Yugoslav Communist
Tito to the position of a combination of Robin Hood and William
Tell, at the very same moment he was committing British soldiers
to frustrate Tito's Greek Red neighbors from extending communism
just beyond Yugoslav borders. One must conclude that Churchill
did not object to seeing a dozen European lands go Communist under
regimes subservient to Moscow, but he felt that for Greece to
go, too, was excessive, as well as being a direct threat to British
interests in the Mediterranean. A Communist regime breathing upon
the Suez Canal and Near East oil apparently was too gruesome an
apparition to imagine, though it was hardly in the imaginary stage
in late 1944."
All of the
essays in this book, whatever the subject matter, are chock full
of great insights such as this.
5. Intervention
and Revolution: America's Confrontation with Insurgent Movements
Around the World, by Richard Barnet
Published
in 1968, this book deals not only with many of the important foreign
interventions that occurred during the Cold War such as in the
Greek and Lebanese Civil Wars, the Dominican Republic and of course,
Vietnam, but also contains a comprehensive critique of Cold War
assumptions and the National Security Manager mindset. It also
provides an abundance of evidence which challenges the claim that
America's actions in the Cold War were benevolent and disinterested.
6. The
Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Have Come Home to Roost,
by Harry Elmer Barnes
This is a
privately published monograph from the early 1950s by one the
great Old Liberal scholars of the mid-twentieth century. This
work chides those whom Barnes calls the "totalitarian liberals"
(FDR/Truman-style liberal warmongers who would brook no dissent
from their crazed foreign policy and tried to ruin those who did
oppose it) for calling McCarthyism a threat to freedom of when
it was the "totalitarian liberals" themselves who invented the
Cold War doctrines that lay behind McCarthy's witch-hunting.
Especially
noteworthy is Barnes' contention that the Cold War was launched
for domestic political reasons, just like the war on Iraq was
launched to give Bush a bump in the polls. Barnes has this to
say about it:
"The desire
to retain power and tenure was also the dominant motive which
led us into the Cold War and the Korean War. Some twelve days
before he launched the Truman Doctrine and unleashed the Cold
War, President Truman had rebuked former Governor George H. Earle
of Pennsylvania for his alleged dangerous exaggeration of the
Communist menace to the United States. But, at that moment, Truman's
political prospects were in the cellar, so far as they could be
judged by public opinion polls. Some desperate move was required
at once to save Truman from political oblivion and the Democratic
Party from probable defeat in 1948. As Holmes Alexander had made
clear, it was the bitter attack on the Democrat handling of the
Far Eastern situation after the war which was primarily responsible
for leading Mr. Truman to intervene in Korea."
7. West-Bloc
Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, by William Blum
From 2002,
this is the personal story of Mr. Blum, the great left-wing journalist
who started his career as a liberal Cold Warrior, working for
the State Department in the 1960s. The brutality of the Vietnam
War eventually got to him and, bless his soul, he went on to become
part of the antiwar movement. He has since spent much of his life
opposing and exposing the crimes of the American state committed
abroad.
His theory
as to why the US launched the Cold War is that the US Government
was afraid that another system of economics besides capitalism
would succeed, thereby setting a dangerous example that might
be followed by other countries, and decided to resist Communism
by force. (Whether the US Government, or any government for that
matter, believes in real capitalism, meaning unrestricted commerce,
is ahem...debatable, to be charitable to Mr. Blum, but his is
an interesting theory.)
8. Perpetual
War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath, ed. by Harry
Elmer Barnes
Published
in 1953, this is a spectacular collection of essays by some of
the best revisionist writers of that day and age. Chapter 8 (The
Bankruptcy of a Policy) by William Henry Chamberlin and Chapter
9 (American Foreign Policy in the Light of National Interest at
the Mid-Century) by George Lundberg specifically deal with the
Cold War, which was still a fairly new phenomenon at the time.
Chapter 10,
written by Barnes himself, bears the title "How 'Nineteen-Eighty
Four' Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom and Prosperity."
It spells out with great insight how the Cold War did nothing
to protect any kind of "free world," but in fact did great
damage to freedom by making the world portrayed in George Orwell's
dystopian novel 1984,
with its pervasive war propaganda, brainwashing and spying, a
reality.
There are,
of course, several other books and articles along this same line,
but these are all great places to start. Foreign policy is the area
in which the Government can most easily mislead the people, therefore
it is imperative for us to be truly informed about the subject.
So informed that when they try to "scare the hell out of us" regarding
Russia's intentions again, we can laugh and say "we're not buying
it this time, pal."
September
23, 2008
Dan
Spielberg [send him mail]
works in the real estate industry in Northern California.
Copyright
© 2008 LewRockwell.com
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