Self Preservation and Irreversible Decline [was: Electronic Freedom Foundation selective in support of freedom]

[coderman]

On 1/13/16, juan <juan.g71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> 	So, yes. I'm waiting for coderman to make some updated
> 	political comment after hopefully having updated his knowledge
> 	of american wars.

Guantanamo is closing!  (that's not nothing, right? :)

regarding american wars, this is a tale longer than time to tell it...
  instead, this treatise which i enjoyed for through provocation,
   regardless of how your view its correctness:

"On the Moral Superiority"
 - http://www.gatchev.info/blog/?p=1017

---

On the Moral Superiority

There are a lot of news about the leaked Afghan War documents. And a
lot of descriptions of Wikileaks as a threat to the US national and
military security.

Which reminds me a lot of things.

The Cold War

Most Westerners are convinced that Ronald Reagan won it, by raising
the military expenses of USA to a level that the Soviet bloc could not
afford. This is not the first gross Western misconception about the
communism – but is a very important one.

Every single penny in the cost of everything, be that a toaster, tank
or ICBM, is eventually spent on someone’s salary. If you can pay
peanuts, you can produce tanks and ICBMs for peanuts… That was the
case in the Soviet Union. The head of an ICBM project there was paid
about one tenth of the salary of a floor sweeper in an US ICBM
project. And, living in the Soviet Union, he could not run away for a
higher salary. In fact, the Soviet Union could push the military
spending to a level that USA would not be able to afford, just because
they spent so much less per a result than the Americans. (A hint for
the future: watch China.)

Why, then, the Soviets did not win the Cold War, if it was so easy?

Because they could not achieve moral superiority over USA. An
unrealistically sounding answer – if you haven’t lived in a communist
country, and don’t know the situation from inside.

Immediately after the WWII we, who remained in the Soviet bloc, saw
our stand against the Western bloc as a patriotic one. We saw that the
Soviet order was horrible, but the order in the Western bloc was also
not very nice. We had Lavrentiy Beria etc., but the West had Barry
Goldwater etc. The Soviet Union orchestrated aggressions and coups all
around the world, but the U.S. did the same. Where there is no clear
“good” and “evil”, there is only “us” and “them” – and, of course,
everyone is with “us”, not with “them”.

Things changed drastically under John Kennedy, and even more under
Lyndon Johnson. The censorship and the anti-communist witch hunt in
the US disappeared. The civil liberties were strengthened. And despite
the Iron Curtain, this was noticed in the Soviet bloc. Suddenly,
“them” ceased to be about as bad as “us”. We saw that “them” is the
Good, and “us” is the Evil. We started believing that “them” means
freedom, sincerity, truth, decency, while “us” means lies, hypocrisy,
and life in a prison.

The West had achieved a moral superiority.

But how this translated into a Cold War victory?

You can’t run away from a Soviet country, no matter how much you
despise it. However, if you are forced to remain there, you lose your
initiative, inventiveness and desire to work, create and win. And,
most of all, you lose your trust in the system, and your hope for a
better future… The most important engine of the economics, the impulse
of the people to work and create, went dry. The economics continued
going for some time, supported by the effect of the scale, but
eventually stuck. And to our perceptions of the West added one more –
“wealth”. Actually, a “deserved, decently obtained wealth”.

Even the top Soviet functionaries had lost their trust in the
communist system. Publicly, every time they spoke, they acclaimed the
Soviet superiority. Privately, they didn’t believed a word from what
they said. They regarded everyone who believed that the Soviets can be
superior in any way as idiots, brainwashed by the lies they themselves
fabricated. When told: “We can beat the West in the arms and space
race”, they didn’t believed it, despite the calculations they were
shown, and despite that they had nearly done it during the 60s. “If
you believe one thing, and the Western experts believe otherwise, then
it is them who must be right. There is no way you can be right, there
is no way for us to be the better. It is them who speaks the truth,
and us who cheats and lies.” This is what everyone was convinced in –
even the Party core and top.

The military buildup and the “Space Wars” of Ronald Reagan merely
coincided with the final stages of the Soviet economic deterioration.
The rot was clearly seen from inside even before Reagan, and many
people understood it is a matter only of time before the Soviet system
falls apart economically. (Most of us expected this fall to come
later, but to be a catastrophic one: happily, we were wrong.) The
military race could have speeded it up a bit, but I doubt even this –
the Soviet bloc practically didn’t tried to increase the military
spending in order to counter Reagan. There was no use in doing this.
The Cold War was already won by the West, and not in the arms race.

It was the moral superiority that won it. That rendered the Soviet
“army” unwilling to fight – in fact, willing to desert at first
opportunity, and expecting and hoping to lose… The result was the only
possible one. The Soviet bloc simply disappeared into the thin air,
without a single gunshot against the West.

Al-Qaeda

As a student, I saw once a man who was bent on organizing a crusade
against the evil capitalism. He tried to recruit for it every single
person he saw. And always failed… Instead of on the top of some
government body, the system had placed him in a mental clinic. Despite
that this obsession was his only peculiarity.

This is how much the Soviet system believed in itself, facing the
Western moral superiority. In a country where everyone publicly called
for the fall of the capitalism, this man hadn’t seen in his life a
single person who would actually fight the capitalism. Or even believe
that this is a sane idea…

If Osama bin Laden was in a situation similar to the Soviet bloc, he
shouldn’t be able to find a single follower. And the Arab countries
are not as anti-Western as the Soviet bloc was, so his task should
have been even tougher. How is that he found thousands of followers?

Some people believe this to be an effect of the Islam. However, the
communism is a religion also, and one that is much less tolerant of
everything decent than even the darkest sects of the Islam. In
addition, 15% of my country’s population is Muslims, and that madman
could not recruit among them, too. Also, before Osama there were many
other militant Muslims who went on a jihad against the West, and none
found a significant number of supporters. Despite that the US were
supporting then Israel as firmly as now, etc… Obviously, it is the
situation that changed.

The people from Western Europe would not go on a jihad. However,
during the last decade their opinion on the USA plummeted, too. Twenty
years ago, if you were an American in Berlin, you would be revered,
and more honored than the Berliners around… Not anymore. Now, you can
often hear: “The country that lied to the entire world about the Iraqi
WMD? That created and still maintains the Guantanamo gulag? That ran
the Abu Ghraib prison? That bombed to destruction the civilians in
Faluja? That shot the Italian hostage resque mission? That killed the
Reuters journalists in Baghdad? That photographs, fingerprints and
tracks every visitor like a criminal? That created the ECHELON system?
That is killing in Afghanistan maybe more civilians than terrorists?…
If it is decent, then Stalin is, too. This country is a blemish to the
humankind.”

Of course, the real criminal is the war itself. In a war, no involved
army can avoid such things. The war always de-humanizes the people.
And sometimes you can’t avoid wars… However, a moral country is
expected to not lie to the other countries, in order to involve them,
too, in a non-justified war. To not organize gulags. And when its
soldiers perform some nasty crime, to not try first to cover it.
Otherwise, this country starts being considered by the entire world as
an immoral, cheating and lying one. If it is bigger and stronger, it
earns the “Evil Empire” nickname, and deservedly. All of its moral
superiority, earned with bitter, painful and long-lasting sacrifices,
and often paid with the lives of many of its best people, quickly
evaporates.

The worst comes when this country continues to pretend that it is the
mainstay of the world decency, morality and human rights. These
pretensions make me, who has lived twenty-odd years in a communist
country, instantly remember another country. One that pretended that
it is the source of all human rights in the world, but actually was a
big prison. The Soviet Union… Yes, there are differences. But not ones
that matter when it comes to moral image and leadership.

What about Wikileaks?

What Wikileaks does is exposing the indecent and immoral things done,
in this case, by the US army. When Adm. Mike Mullen says that this
risks the lives of American soldiers or Afghan informants, he surely
doesn’t believe himself – the leaked documents do not contain enough
info to endanger them. Few people, if any, will believe him… What he
actually achieves is to remind me (and not only me) of another kind of
people, who also said what neither they nor anybody else believed. The
Soviet functionaries.

I don’t know if Pfc. Manning is the person who leaked those documents
(and the “collateral murder” video on which the US copter pilots
killed the Reuters journalists). If yes, he reminds me of another
person – Hugh Thompson Jr, the officer who stopped the My Lai
massacre, and leaked the info about it. He was sharply criticized by
the US Congressmen for this. He was sent to missions without adequate
cover and supply until he was gunned down and nearly killed. However,
he was awarded a medal by the US government, because of his humanity.

Will the same happen with Pfc. Manning? I doubt it. Given the current
situation, it is more like he will get a sentence, and the medal will
be preserved for those who will succeed to shut down Wikileaks. Which
is another proof that the things in USA have changed – and a proof
which direction they took.

… Remember the great support Obama had among the ordinary people
abroad before the president elections? Especially in Europe? There is
a reason for this support. The ordinary people hoped that he will
restore the US moral superiority, by bringing moral to the US
politics… He failed to do it. The Guantanamo gulag stays. Some
measures are taken to prevent the worst things the US Army does abroad
– however, the “culture of concealment” is stronger than ever. Slowly,
but surely one trend emerges and grows in the thinking of the people
outside US. Namely, that this state has gone too far on the Evil
Empire road. That it cannot be stopped anymore, even by a
good-intended President. And that it is better late than never to say
openly: “Things changed. This is not anymore the moral leader of the
world – this is just another evil empire. One that the decent people
must hate, loathe and oppose to.”

What will happen if this trend of thinking prevails? Easy guess.
Al-Qaeda will grow and attract more and more people, and will probably
obstruct more of the US activity abroad. In fact, it may gain enough
support to carry its fight on American soil. The support for US in
Europe and the rest of the world will gradually diminish, to the
extent that even the pro-US politicians will have to become blind and
deaf to the USA needs. And very surely there will be new “cold wars” –
economic, cultural etc. – between USA and some other countries, but it
will not be possible anymore to win them through moral superiority.

Know Thy Enemy

USA is still the strongest military power in the world. However, even
it cannot afford a major war against a decently strong enemy on its
soil. And an union between some of the other top countries might prove
as strong militarily. Not speaking that USA is not the world biggest
exporter since quite a lot of time, and relatively soon is going to be
dethroned from the first place in the economics, too. (In fact, the EU
already did it.) So, a question arises – how USA is going to maintain
its influence in the world?

Typically, influence is maintained by what you export, in the broadest
sense of the word. Currently, USA exports almost only military power
and economic size. In not a long time these will diminish, compared to
other countries. Unless USA finds something else to export, and to be
the top exporter, its influence in the world will be lost. Which
carries a lot of problems for it, and for the world, too.

The single thing that USA is uniquely positioned to export is exactly
the moral superiority. Its long-standing culture of freedom,
compassion and civil liberties is still unmatched anywhere in the
world. If properly extended to the people outside USA borders, it can
restore this superiority, to the extent USA can become its
overwhelming exporter. However, the freedom and the civil liberties
inside USA are seriously eroded during the last decades, and it seems
that this trend will not be reversed easily. And the growing tendency
to treat the non-US citizens as second-class people doesn’t help too
much.

Still, it is worth trying to do what can be done to preserve the moral
superiority. The history has clearly shown that every bit of it is
worth more than an army of tanks, even in a war. Unless USA choose
this path, they are headed where the decadent Roman Empire was headed
– to internal corruption, weakness and ultimately disappearance. This
is the road down that every evil empire takes, sooner or later.

To preserve moral superiority, the US must first learn what is the
correct move in situations like the current one. Whether Wikileaks is
its enemy, or the best friend they can find – one that is brave enough
to tell you you have a nasty problem, and to press on you to solve it
on time. And whether people like Mike Mullen are its best servants, or
its best enemies – the ones that tell you “There is no problem,
continue this way, people will never learn of the crimes, truth never
comes out”.

If you are still not sure which is the correct position, ask one truly
outstanding soldier – Gen. David Petraeus. He will surely be able to
tell you the truth… Actually, you can tell it yourself, by using his
simple principle – which action decreases the number of your enemies,
and increases the number of your friends.