Extracts from Daniel J Levinson, in Bramson and Goethals, "War", 1968.

Levinson refers to the people of the USA as "American", ignoring most of the nation of the continent of America ias if they do not exist. It was typical of thw time and remains so for many. In these extracts I try to remind people, at the risk of being tedious,  that there are more than just US Americans on that huge continent, even though the Monroe Doctrine calls it the USA's "back yard" They are, in Levinson's terms mere "outgroups".

Levinson extracts...

»[US] American people tend to be relatively unsophisticated about and only partially involved in foreign policy issues.

The [US] American nation as a symbol is glorified and idealised; it is regarded as superior to other nations in all important respects...
Like other forms of ethnocentrism, [nationalism] is based on a rigid and pervasive distinction between ingroups and outgroups. The primary ingroup in this case is the [US] American nation: all other nations are potential outgroups...
Other nations are seen as inferior, envious and threatening. At the worst, they are likely to attack us; at best, they seek alliances only to pursue their own selfish aims and to "play us for a sucker". Ethnocentric ideas about human nature rationalize a belief in the inevitability of war.
"Human nature being what it is and other races being what they are", so the reasoning goes, 'some nation is bound to attack us sooner or later'. Given this "jungle" conception of international relations, our best policy is to be militarily strongest of all nations so that no one will attack us.

Perhaps the two main forms that [US} American nationalism has taken are isolationism and imperialism, though the two often go together. The guiding image of isolationism has been that of "Fortress America"; its aim is a nation which is militarily impregnable and culturally isolated. Imperialism on the other hand, is prepared to make foreign alliances and commitments, and it frequently uses internationalist terminology. Its aim, however, is the kind of "American Century" in which the development and and reconstruction of other nations can proceed only in terms set by us, for our supposed economic and strategic advantage. Isolationism and imperialism sometimes merge into a single approach as the lines of [US] American defence are conceived to to move outward into Europe and Asia as we extend support for all governments, whatever their character, in exchange for military support.

Nationalists and internationalists show characteristic differences in ideology spheres apparently far removed from foreign policy and intergroup relations. Nationalism is associated, for example, with an autocratic orientation toward child-rearing, husband-wife relations, and other aspects of family life. Nationalists are inclined to conceive of the family in hierarchical terms. They regard the husband as properly dominant over the wife, the parents as strong authorities requiring obedience and respect above all from their children. They tend to be moralistic and disciplinarian in their child-rearing methods and to be guided by rigidly conventionalized definitions of masculinity and femininity.
Nationalism is associated with certain patterns of of religious ideology, notably those that may be characterised as fundamentalistic or conventionalistic. In these religious orientations God is regarded as a kind of power figure [father] who rewards the virtuous and punishes the sinful and who can be directly appealed to or ingratiated. Great emphasis is placed on the efficacy of ritual, and the  precepts of ingroup religious authority are taken literally and unquestioningly.

Nationalism appears most commonly within an autocratic approach to the social world. This approach embraces not only the domain of international relations but the individual's views concerning religion, family, politics, and other aspects of social life as well.

The classic description of [US] American character by de Tocqueville, Bryce and others have brought out two sharply contrasting sides. On the one hand they, they find such traits as anxious conformism, emphasis on socially defined success, a tendency to escape into the crowd rather than look within, and emphasis of work over leisure, on quantity over quality, on varied activity rather than deep experience. [On the other hand are some equalitarian traits actually largely appearing within the overall authoritarian condition].«

Bin Laden Assassination—the Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories about the death of Osama bin Laden have been fueled by the US military’s rapid disposal of the body at sea, and the US announcement it would not release any images of bin Laden’s dead body. When the Americans killed Mullah Dadullah, Taliban’s chief military commander, they publicly showed the footage. Canadian deputy Leader of the Opposition and MP, Thomas Mulcair, stated in an interview with CBC Television:

I don’t think from what I’ve heard that those pictures [of bin Laden’s body] exist.

Fox News has challenged the DNA evidence confirming Bin Laden’s death. Andrew Napolitano of Freedom Watch said Bin Laden’s death could not be verified. To be 99.9 percent certain of the identity by DNA, as was claimed, the test had to have been compared against the DNA of a mother and father, or several natural brothers or sisters. DNA was available only from half brothers and half sisters, which makes that degree of certainty impossible, unless a busload of them had been tested.

Radio host, Alex Jones, among many others, thinks Bin Laden has been dead for years, and his body had been kept frozen on ice to be used as a propaganda tool at a future politically expedient time. In 2002, he claimed that an anonymous White House source had told him that bin Laden “is frozen, literally frozen and that he would be rolled out in the future at some date”. Former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said in 2003, “Yes we have been told by intelligence that they’ve got him, Bush may roll him out but because they exposed that at the election they didn’t do it”.

Stephen Lendman, citing former Pakistani president, Benazir Bhutto, said that Bin Laden died of natural causes in mid December 2001. Obama’s announcement was an excuse to involve the United States in wars with Pakistan. Maybe that is why the Pakistanis are particularly skeptical of the alleged raid and assassination.

Abbottabad residents said the announcement of Osama’s death was a US conspiracy against Pakistan. Some residents doubted not only that Bin Laden was dead, but also that he ever lived among them. A local lawyer agreed with Thomas Mulcair:

They’re just making it up. Nobody has seen the body.

Pakistani officials said no firefight had ever taken place:

Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the US forces and their choppers.

Bin Laden was captured alive, and executed outside the compound in front of his 12-year old daughter. Then his body was taken away by helicopter. An article in the Urdu newspaper Ausaf quoted military sources as saying:

Arabic news network Al-Arabiya claimed senior Pakistani security officials said Osama Bin Laden was captured alive in his Pakistani hideout and then shot by US special forces. His 12 year old saw her father executed and his body dragged to a helicopter.

Another Pakistani official rejected US accounts of the bloody firefight, saying:

Bin Laden has been killed somewhere else. But since the US intends to extend the Afghan war into Pakistan, and accuse Pakistan, and obtain a permit for its military’s entry into the country, it has devised the [Seal operation] scenario.

Hamid Gul former head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) said Bin laden had died many years ago and that the official death story given out by the American media was a hoax. He thinks the American government knew about Bin Laden’s death years ago:

They were keeping this story on the ice and they were looking for an appropriate moment, and it couldn’t be a better moment because President Obama had to fight off his first salvo in his next year’s election as he runs for president.

Contrary to that, others think Bin Laden was actually working with the US during the entire war on terror. Bin Laden was the main source of US help in the war on terror. He had been a US agent in Afghanistan when the Taliban were fighting the Soviets. A source was quoted as saying:

The West has been very pleased with Bin Laden’s operations in recent years. Now the West was forced to kill him in order to prevent a possible leak of information he had, information more precious than gold.

Pakistanis offer a unifying theory for the apparently discordant theories being bandied about. Bin Laden truly did die in 2001, but the US found a body double for them to pretend he was still alive, and to make the Bin Laden videos for “Al Qaida” to release after his death. US agencies and the Pakistan intelligence worked together to keep the double safe, eventually in the compound minutes away from the Pakistani military academy, a very safe place, and a place where videos could be made without fear of detection. Unbeknown to the poor dupe who was now Bin Laden, when the time was ripe, he was to be assassinated as Bin Laden! That is what happened on 2 May, but the release of photos meant the body might be recognized as not being Bin Laden. Diversionary fakes had to be released first, so that when the “real ones” come out, they too will be doubted!

Osama’s Central Role in the US Propaganda “Myth”

Adam Curtis, in the UK Guardian has written an interesting and honest piece about the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the role he had in the US political world view. He explains that although bin Laden helped to kill thousands of innocent people, the west needed him!

When communism collapsed in 1989, the scare story drilled over decades into westerners—that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force—evaporated. The story was that of the good guys against the bad guys, born out of the war against the Nazis and the imperial Japanese in the second world war—a just war. Though in Europe few honest observers will deny that it was the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler’s Germany, after the war it was communism that was set up as the original evil empire, and communists became the bad guys in the cold war, first the Russians, then the Koreans and Chinese too, then the Vietnamese, and constantly all those poor countries whose people tried to get free of the grasp of US business. Then anti-Sovietism and anti-communism were academic subjects, now it is anti-Islam and anti-terrorism.

In the confusion of a global economic crisis in 1998 Bin Laden emerged as responsible for bombing US embassies in east Africa. From 2001, neoconservative politicians took what little they knew of Bin Laden to mold him in the shape of the global monster they were now missing—an evil enemy with spies and sabateurs everywhere intent on destroying western civilisation—ie the US. Al Qaida was the new Soviet Union, and Bin Laden was its evil director, a mad puppeteer pulling strings all over the world. What was a minor threat compared with US power was magnified into something meant to replace the Soviet Union in the minds of the 25 percent or so of people who will believe everything that the pro government media offers them, for the reporting of the Islamist terror threat was always distorted to reflect this propaganda narrative.

Neoconservatives, the news media, and Bin Laden were partners in pumping up the threat of a new evil empire. It gave the neocons a perfect myth, in the pseudo Platonic jargon invented by Leo Strauss, the neofascist godfather of neoconservatism—useful lies, in truth—to feed fear to the masses that would distract them from the shenanigans going on in reality. It served the propaganda function of the media while selling plenty of hair raising copy, and it suited Bin Laden who was desperate to seem to be important to his frustrated Islamist followers. The Moslem Brotherhood, a conservative Islamic organization reject Bin Laden as ever representing Moslem views. In his announcement of the death, Obama agreed—he did not.

In Afghanistan, the neoconservative myth has led to fantasies that justify the activity there of western military, and nothing else. The good against evil myth suits the US political desire to be free to intervene anywhere they choose, but the world is no more just black and white in nature for imagining it to be so. Reality has shades of grey and even different hues. Neglect of them prevents a proper critical framework to judge the whole situation and to tailor responses accordingly.

Of course, Bin Laden’s death was immediately presented as we are conditioned to expect—cowardly, as bullies are meant to be. He was reported as dying while shooting at his assailants, sheltering behind one of his wives, who consequently had to die so that the evil master could be shot twice—blam, blam—in the head. A day later, Bin Laden turned out to unarmed and so unable to get off any shots. Why, then, he had to be shot is unclear, but he was shot in the chest then straight into his left eye. His wife was not killed but wounded in the leg, and it seems she was not shielding him. Another woman was also killed, and one of his sons, whose identity changed also. As the whole thing was reportedly videoed, the confusion seems strange.

Bin Laden’s death is actually a serious blow to the US’s propaganda paradigm. Immediately, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, hurried to assure anyone delerious with relief, that the end of Bin Laden was not the end of terrorism. They need to preserve the myth, and if it fails, they need to find a new one. What will it be? Who will be the next bad guy? The myths are written by those in power, to suit their own interests, and their interests are not necessarily, or even often, those of the ordinary American. America is run for its super rich class. When enough of them realize it, the new myth will be of a monstrous Joker ruling Gotham City from within, and every yankee will be suspect. The stage is set for it already.

NATO Civil and Military Co-ordination in Afghanistan Failing

Lillian Katarina Stene spent six months in war torn and war weary Aghanistan, serving as a major in the US military as a civil and military co-ordination (CIMIC) officer and now is submitting her research there as a PhD thesis. To connect local structures and military intentions, designated civil military coordination (CIMIC) units are set up within NATO. Their three core functions are to liaise, be a support to the civil environment and the military force. They contribute by assessment of villages and supporting basic infrastructure such as roads, water and bridges when needed.

Stene thinks President Hamid Karzai and NATO’s leadership are mistaken in relying on the withdrawal of foreign troops to bring peace. Though more “boots on the ground” are needed, she says:

We must differentiate better between military and civil tasks, and present ourselves more clearly. The military is the prolonged arm of politics, but soldiers are neither politicians nor aid workers. Nevertheless, the NATO strategy presupposes interference with civilian life. This gives rise to concern, and it is not an easy task to win the “hearts and minds” of local people

In short, a peaceful solution requires stability to be enforced with more troops, but the actions of the military and civilian aid in the war effort have to be better co-ordinated. One is inclined to think that none of us would be easily winnable by a foreign coalition whose soldiers kept shelling our villages and breaking into our homes boot first in the early hours of the morning making our lives intolerable, even if they claim to be protecting us form other gangsters. Indeed, the whole situation is reminiscent of the old gangsters’ protection rackets. You had to humor and cough up your hard earned dollars to both sides just to stay alive until one or the other won the territory war between them. Then you just paid your insurance premium, or taxation, to the winner.

That must be how Afghan people feel, not to mention the Iraqis, Vietnamese, and all the others who have gone before in the history of US imperialism. In history, people get rid of their own gangsters, even if they have to wait until the gangsters’ kids are fat and smug before they can do it. They can feel then that they have solved their own problems without any unasked for help from some other gang wanting to rob them instead.

Stene says that as long as war skirmishes are taking place within and among local inhabitants, a popular justification is TINA—there is no alternative. She admits that this is maybe the greatest challenge, a nuanced criticism of the NATO (ie US) strategy. Perhaps she has to humor her own employers, or former employers, from whom she hopes for a pension, but seems in no doubt when she says:

The war in Afghanistan cannot be won by military means. There are only political solutions to crises and conflicts. The Afghan people itself, through its leaders and representatives, must take the lead in finding a solution. Which is quite a challenge as the international community—meaning the UN, NATO’s coalition forces and numerous governmental and non governmental organisations—are all deeply involved in the development of the country.

Conflicting roles among military and civilian personnel is counterproductive to NATO’s strategy for peace in Afghanistan, for, as military forces continue to build infrastructure and cooperate closely with large civilian organizations, local people must find it increasingly hard to distinguish between the different agents’ roles and objectives. Isn’t it obvious that, when there are no military present to interfere with civilian assistance, then there is no problem of co-ordinating them, and the various agencies involved should be at least halved? In her opinion, too little effort is put into long term planning for reconstructing the country. Different national caveats and ingrained practices, attitudes, training and interpretations conducts different operational modes among the countries working under the NATO umbrella. Stene says:

Since there is no unified way of doing things in Afghanistan, NATO has a problem. While Americans like to act quickly, Germans and Scandinavians prefer to consider the long term effects of civil military coordination. The Americans are likely to dig a well on the spot, while Germans prefer to let the Afghans dig the well themselves.

It is the difference of attitude of the arrogant young imperialism with the long in the tooth old one. The young imperialists, the Americans think these inferior races ought to submit to their betters, and when they don’t, then a bullet will encourage them to do so, while the European powers, who have had the same attitude in the past, and have even fought crippling wars among themselves to share out portions of the world pudding, are now more circumspect, if not more humanitarian. While Afghan civilians are being killed in dawn raids and by drone or warplane attacks, it is hard for any rational being not to appreciate why their skepticism over US intentions continues to grow.

So, the military alliance’s “comprehensive approach” is counterproductive to both civilian and military parties operating in Afghanistan, since this strategy enables role conflicts among them. From her access to the inner workings of the NATO forces, Stene believes NATO is too top heavy. When grey zones between military and civilian participants appear, it is harder for locals to separate the two groups, and to establish who does what. Aid workers, whose safety depends on being trusted by the local communities, may be seen as representatives of the occupation force, and thus become more vulnerable.

A case in point is the dramatic increase in the killing of aid workers over the last years. When some of these organizations profess to be impartial, while simultaneously running development projects paid for by Afghan authorities and the international community, they are not considered neutral by local inhabitants. Such organizations suffer more frequent attacks, and their security situation is deteriorating. Stene says:

Building trust takes time. In order to succeed in Afghanistan, we have to spend time in the country and perform our tasks in accordance with the Afghans’ terms.

Spending more time seems to be her justification for more boots on the ground for longer, but the rest of her case might be better served by a withdrawal and an emphasis on civilian aid, as long as it is not allowed to be skimmed off by the US crooks set up as the country’s “proper” representatives to milk the country dry. That perhaps is why she sees the need for a continued NATO military presence:

Civil military coordination is about working behind the scenes, and handing over tasks to the Afghans:

• It is vital to separate between strictly humanitarian organizations, whose task it is to supply basic utilities such as water, food and medicines to everyone in need—regardless of who they are—and international or independent organizations which are building schools and infrastructure and cultivate land in compliance with the international community’s or the Afghan government’s development plans.
• It is vital to gain insight into people’s real needs, and to involve local projects and contractors. Building schools may not always be the answer to everything.

If local structures are not sufficiently developed, I’m afraid we are building a house of cards which will fall down after we have left.