The Making of the Enemy: Only in America

[Paranoid Dot Calm]

The Making of the Enemy: Only in America
By Manuel Valenzuela
December 18, 2005

Part One of Two
http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com

 

[jimmoyer]

Good article on the Making of an Enemy.

It's very true.

But there's one perspective this article lacks.

Historical context.

Indians.
I wonder as the westward expansion from the East
Coast if these 2 cultures could have ever found
a way to co-exist. The concepts of economics of
private property vs communal ownershp
were so wildly fundamentally different, right or wrong,
that whether or not manufacturing an enemy, war
would have inevitably happened anyway.

The Communists.
This article seems to forget Hungary's uprising in 1956
and the Czech uprising in 1968 and how brutally
the people were crushed. And how brutal the
Berlin Wall was. And how the Cuban Missle Crisis
was barely avoided.

WWII Germany and Japan.
China is still asking Japan for more than an apology
for the rape of Manchuria. Germany sought
an evil control, with its brown shirts bullying its own
people. These were not made-up enemies.

Again historical context is completely lacking in
that article.

The overall truth of Manufacturing an Enemy
is somewhat hollow when historical context is used,
especially regarding the Indians and Russian and
North Korean repression.

Where it really rings true, is Vietnam, most of all.
We never understood Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist
most of all. It also rings true with Venezuela,
for we might disagree and point out his dictatorial
leanings and the scaring off of investment where
private ownership is chancy, but we should seek to
back off, even help, and apologize.

 

[Paranoid Dot Calm]

The Making of the Enemy: The Myth of the Superhuman Enemy
By Manuel Valenzuela
December 20, 2005
Part II of II
http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com

 

[pastafarian]

And how the Cuban Missle Crisis
was barely avoided.

But Jim, if the US hadn't launched an intensive campaign of terror against Cuba and there hadn't been intellectual support for a doctirine of pre-emptive war against it, the Missile Crisis would never have happened. It was avoided in spite of the ideology of the US, not because of it,

 

[jimmoyer]

There is no doubt we sent bungling CIA agents and
the Mafia to screw around on that island.

But was it an "intensive campaign of terror" ?

I guess so if you're the object of weird assassination
attempts, and if you're hearing all the political threats
and listening to all the weird crap your own spies
tell you, while you're jailing and executing any opposition
and creating enemies out of the survivors.

But that American President's bungling was done
in such secret, keeping the number of people small
to keep it a secret, and thereby explaining why the
logistical backup was scant ----all so it couldn't be
traced back to an American President.

So it was intense? It was the bungling of an
exploding cigar, the stupidity of a poison ink pen.

And Castro made a lot of enemies who now make
up the Miami community.

This is a man who ultimately didn't care what
happened to his own island or of the America he
purports to woo in Hollywood when he said to the
Russians: DO IT !

Attached to Fidel's intelligence is also a murderer,
a megalomaniac, a Hemingway philosopher, a baseball
lover and one who came the closest in this world
to say DO IT. Exasperation? Righteousness ?
Anger?

Would he have asked the Russians in, if we had left
him alone?

That's the question you gotta ask.

I think his megalomonia, the poetry of his grand
design, his intelligence wanted a revolution certainly
bigger than his island.

Fascinating guy.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

There is purpose behind having enemies, for their existence is the backbone of the corporatists. Indeed, there is a method behind their madness. Having enemies means having control both of fear and hatred of the people, as well as having control of the masses along with their animalistic emotions. Psychology can be manipulated at the push of a few buttons; an entire nation can be mobilized toward war in the time it takes two skyscrapers to be imploded. Nationalism and xenophobia make blind rational thought; ignorance makes deaf the sounds of wisdom.

The use of enemies distracts the minds of the people from their daily lives and chains truth to the dungeons of corporatists and neocons. The silhouette of the enemy helps supply the armies of invasion and occupation, it assists in mobilizing the nation’s economy into perpetual war readiness, and it distracts the people as their treasure is pillaged, just as it demands patience of the citizenry in the face of utter debacle.

how true.!! EXCELLENT articles.....thank you.

A nation like the US NEEDS 'enemies' ....as otherwise it cannot function within the perimeters it has set out for itself. (also the goals) :evil: when it gets down to the basics......it is about raw , bleeding lust for more power and control. .....and to fascilitate that ......they have to have /create "enemies" All they needed was a psychopathic lier for a leader to make this transparently obvious. In reality these tricks have been used repetatively through out history. .....and primarily by power hungry nations. Nothing new......but more clearly defined and understood now.

 

[pastafarian]

Forty years ago Dean Acheson informed the American Society of International Law that legal issues do not arise in the case of a US response to a “challenge [to its] power, position, and prestige.” He was referring to Washington’s response to what it regarded as Cuba’s “successful defiance” of the United States. That included Cuba’s resistance to the Bay of Pigs invasion, but also much more serious crimes. When Kennedy ordered his staff to subject Cubans to the “terrors of the earth” until Castro is eliminated, his planners advised that “The very existence of his regime … represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half,” based on the principle of subordination to US will. Worse yet, Castro’s regime was providing an “example and general stimulus” that might “encourage agitation and radical change” in other parts of Latin America, where “social and economic conditions … invite opposition to ruling authority” and susceptibility to “the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands.” These are grave dangers, Kennedy planners recognized, when “The distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes … [and] The poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living.” These threats were only compounded by successful resistance to invasion, an intolerable threat to credibility, warranting the “terrors of the earth” and destructive economic warfare to excise that earlier “cancer.”17

17 Acheson, see ibid., Chapter 7. Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2002); my Profit over People (New York: Seven Stories, 1999).
--From Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions

 

[jimmoyer]

There is no doubt that America needs to retreat.
And before we do, I wonder if we'll get a leader
to apologize first, then announce a whole new policy,
and a big debate about exactly this issue of
creating enemies.

And even creating enemies gets a little help from
the behavior of the alleged enemy themselves,
especially when view in the historical context of each
situation. Sometime it's true. Sometime it's not.

But again, no doubt, America has often over-reacted
and over-reached.