Nowt So Queer as Marxist Folk

A leftist columnist friend of mine who shall remain nameless, but whose name begins with an “X,” has raised the alarm. Apparently “Amerika” is an empire seeking to control regimes around the world.

I guess I agree with the general premise. It is no secret to anyone that the US government has sought to change the regimes of many countries, and seeks to influence their politics as a matter of course.

After all, that is what a diplomatic service, let alone an intelligence service, is for. What nation, by this definition, is not an empire? What nation has ever not been?

Granted, the matter is given false currency by the recent furor about Russia “interfering” in the 2016 US election. As if this were some new or surprising thing.

You cannot do business with the American government without setting up a lobbying and PR operation.

Seeing such things as too significant itself promotes an imperialist/colonialist mentality. If, say, Evo Morales is driven to resign in Bolivia, after serving only four of a constitutionally limited two terms (irony alert), and you blame it on the Americans, as the mysterious Mr. X_ does, that is in effect denying all agency to the Bolivian people, or Evo Morales, and denying all legitimacy to the Bolivian institutions that forced him out. When you blame the CIA for Ghaddafi’s fall, you are denying that the Libyan people could have wanted or done such a thing for themselves. You are seeing the Americans as equivalent to a parent dealing with very young children.

In other words, assuming American control of everything is implicitly saying it is proper for America to control everything. It is demanding American control. Nobody, after all, can do anything without the Americans.

On to details: X repeats the shopworn claim that the US “invented stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear ‘weapons of mass destruction’” in Iraq. But a variety of intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had WMDs. So, apparently, did Saddam. The fact that he mostly did not does not prove that the US had secret knowledge of this fact. You can only assume this if you begin by assuming America is omniscient. Again, if they really are all knowing, they know best. You are justifying American control.

How did we miss this? It's right on the US dollar bill. America sees all. American knows all.

“A matching falsehood “ Xerxes says, again repeating a leftist commonplace, “was the claim that Hussein had links to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, which -- at least according to official reports -- engineered the World Trade Centre bombings on September 11, 2001.”

What the Bush administration actually said at the time, according to Wikipedia, was “there might have been a cooperative relationship, but that Saddam was not supportive of the 9/11 attacks.”

That is no more than expressing a reasonable suspicion.

Yet Xerxes—oops, did I just Doxx someone?--seems in the same sentence to be expressing the suspicion that Al Qaeda was not responsible for the WTC bombings. This seems a far less reasonable premise, given that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden publicly claimed responsibility.

But this is not the end of Amerika’s accomplishments worldwide. Xerxes blames the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the rise of ISIS. But the founding of ISIS happened a decade later, in 2013. If you are going to blame it on any American action, it seems more plausible to blame it on the American pullout, which occurred only two years before, than on the American invasion.

But then Amerika is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. It is again odd to suppose that the Iraqis had no control over their own actions—that it was up to the Americans to cause or prevent an Iraqi uprising.

These damned puppets keep tangling their strings!

And speaking of damned if you do, or damned if you don’t, Xerxes even blames the US for seeking to overthrow Assad in Syria—where they have made a supreme effort to stay out, leaving it all, for better or worse, to the Russians, Iranians, and Turks.

All of whom, along with the Syrians, seem to have no capacity for independent thought or action.

Of course, Ghaddafi comes up:

“Read the CIA’s own Fact Book -- under Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year rule, Libya had improved gender equality, education, life expectancy, literacy, and health services. It had reduced poverty. It was debt-free. All had access to safe drinking water.”

I checked the World Fact Book. None of this information is there, so far as I can see. There is mention that the economic situation in Libya has declined since Ghaddafi was overthrown; no more. But isn’t it interesting that Xerxes relies on the CIA as his ultimate authority?

I don’t think any of the NATO countries imposed their no-fly zone because they thought Ghaddafi had been mismanaging the Libyan economy. It had to do with ending the carnage during an ongoing civil war; and perhaps his financing of terrorism abroad. And his aborted attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

Actually, Xerxes himself suggests that the reason the US overthrew Ghaddafi—denying any agency to the Libyan people who actually fought, let alone the Europeans—is that he nationalized the oil industry.

This is not credible. Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada have also nationalized their oil industry, and their governments have not similarly been overthrown. Most of the world’s oil has been nationalized.

And he then gets to Chile’s Allende. One begins to think Amerika’s record of regime change must be fairly sparse, if he is relying on an example from Nixon’s regime, almost 50 years ago. But then, he also complains of the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953. Under Eisenhower. 

 Breaking News: Chile's Allende commits suicide with a machine gun round to the back.
East German commemorative stamp.

Xerxes writes that “Allende sealed his fate by nationalizing U.S.-owned copper mines.”

This seems unlikely to have been the critical factor, since the nationalization of the copper industry began under the previous administration. And in the election Allende won, all three candidates supported nationalization of the copper industry. Yet the US had been heavily subsidizing the previous administration and Allende’s opponents.

Obviously, Xerxes is working from a tiresome, wildly ahistorical, list of Marxist talking points that has somehow outlasted the Soviet Union.

He also blames the Americans for the fall of the Shah of Iran, despite the fact that he was a US ally—and the regime that replaced him held American diplomats in Iran hostage.

Still, he finds the overthrow of the Shah mostly a good thing, because he was “corrupt” and “ruthless.”

“Ruthless”? Reza Pahlavi is not above criticism, but he arguably fell because he was not ruthless. He refused to give the order to fire on protesters, and resigned instead.

The current Iranian regime is firing on protesters. They remain in power.

As are other autocratic leaders around the world: China, Syria, Venezuela.

The more obvious cause for the Shah’s fall is that he offended traditionalist Muslims with his drive for modernization and Westernization. Who led the opposition that eventually replaced him?

I recall Iranian fellow grad students at the time claiming, improbably, that the Shah planned to eliminate Islam and revive Zoroastrianism.

The world is indeed mad. People in groups can apparently believe impossible things.

But few are as crazy as Marxists.