An old Soviet weapon, in the form of a book, has been sitting on my shelf for over 20 years. It is titled A New Information Order Or Psychological Warfare? It was published by Progress Publishers in 1984. On page 137 the chapter heading is “LIES MASS PRODUCED.” It summarizes the Kremlin position, both yesterday and today, on Russia’s “main enemy.” It also summarizes the position of a growing number of Americans: “Today imperialism cannot expect to succeed if it openly proclaims its goals. It therefore has to create an entire system of ideological myths to camouflage its true intentions and to lull nations into a false sense of security.”
The Soviet authors refer to the sinister goals of “imperialism.” No doubt, it is the plot of Western imperialism to absorb the Third World through legal and illegal immigration. It is the plot of the “imperialists” to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and North Korea. It is incredibly devious of imperialism, as well, to rig the U.S. presidential elections in favor of Barack Obama – the son of a black African.
How will the world survive the machinations of American imperialism? Think of the evil flow of goods and services between continents. Think of the subversion inherent in a free election. Think of the dastardly influence of prosperity, the malevolent tactic of outsourcing, and the tricky U.S. trade deficit. Everyone thinks the Americans are stupid, that everyone is taking advantage of them. But the Americans cannot be so stupid! They are always up to something. “Anticommunism and anti-Sovietism,” say my Soviet authors, “remain the basis of imperialist ideological subversion in developing countries.”
Is there really such a thing, in this world, as imperialist ideological subversion? Well, President Bush is probably wishing there was such a thing. In that case he might have done better. If there really was a vast imperialist propaganda machine, why did it lose the good opinion of the world? Which ideology won the information war? In the final analysis, who subverted whom? In my view, the side that told the biggest and nastiest lies won, because many people are drawn to things big and nasty: like global warming, nuclear winter, and the wickedness of multinational corporations. Say the Americans are evil. Keep saying it, over and over, and people will start to believe you.
In a recent interview with filmmaker Robert Buchar, the former communist master spy Ion Mihai Pacepa made the following statement: “The whole foreign policy of the Soviet bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world communism. KGB priority number one was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility.”
Pacepa served as deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service. He further stated: “As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol John Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe.”
Here is what Mr. John Kerry – now Senator Kerry – said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971: “I would like to … say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged … veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command…. They told the stories they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”
According to Gen. Pacepa, “KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation.” But the “management” doesn’t stop there. The communist bloc is still in existence, and disinformation operations continue. Washington Times defense and national security reporter Bill Gertz has written a book that touches on this subject. It is titled The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big-Government Republicans are Undermining America’s Security and Leading Us to War. What Gertz shows is that communist disinformation continues to succeed within the U.S. government itself. In his chapter on “The China Syndrome,” Gertz quotes one leading U.S. official after another, each denying that communist China is an enemy of the United States.
President Bush: “First of all, I wouldn’t call China an enemy.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: “I, for one, do not see China as an enemy that is emerging….” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “There is no doubt that we have concerns about the size and pace of the Chinese military buildup … [but] that does not mean we view China as a threat.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “I don’t consider China an enemy.” Admiral William J. Fallon: “We do not see an enemy in China.” CIA Director Michael Hayden: “It is not inevitable that [China] will be an enemy.”
“Chinese deception has worked,” writes Gertz. “Throughout the U.S. government, officials from the president to junior analysts at the CIA have been pressed into conformity to the China-is-not-a-threat theory, as well as the underlying … doctrine that treating China as a threat will create a threat.”
Such is the ferocity of U.S. imperialism, and the straw-stuffed manikins who lead us. Anticommunism is no longer their theme. China’s massive military buildup is said to be non-threatening. Those who massacred the students in Tiananmen Square are “trading partners.” The state founded by Mao Zedong, the world’s foremost mass murderer, is our ally in the war on terror. In his poem, The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot finished with the lines:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
