A friend of the blog introduces me to John Stockwell, who served in the Cold War CIA for thirteen years in Congo, Vietnam, and Angola before publicly resigning in 1977 and becoming a critic of what he saw as imperialist and immoral U.S. foreign policy.
Catching my attention in my weekend reading is Stockwell’s description of the CIA’s policy of destabilization. The text comes from a speech Stockwell gave on April 10, 1987, at the World Affairs Conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Stockwell was directly addressing American efforts to undermine the Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega (who is in power and in the news again):
To put pressure on this government you decide you don’t like, you set out methodically to rip apart the social and economic fabric of the country. You set out to create conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market, where children can’t go to school, where women are terrified inside their homes as well as outside their homes, where the hospitals are treating wounded instead of sick people, where government administration simply grinds to a halt and things cease to function and international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt [links added; John Stockwell, “The Dark Side of U.S. Foreign Policy,” World Affairs Conference, Boulder, Colorado, 1987.04.10; at 4:48 in audio].
The links I’ve added show why this passage ring my bells 31 years after Stockwell described the CIA’s destabilization efforts in Nicaragua. Given all that is happening here in Trumpistan, one might think some clever intelligence officer had read the CIA playbook and dispatched his spies to infiltrate America and achieve the same destabilization goals without firing a shot.
Trump is threatening the Fed monetary decisions that increase borrowing rates. His economic projections forecast unreachable 5% GDP annual growth.
Armed 3%ers are threatening unarmed Occupy Ice protesters who are carrying banners “FAMILIES BELONG TOGETHER” in Louisville.
Gonna see a lot of those armed dudes because that is the only way they feel tough enough to go to the unarmed protests. Nothing will happen because even though they have guns, they are afraid to use them. Just intimidation.
As an old Cold War veteran, I often think that the country has made drastic and deleterious changes from what the country was then. Most healthy young men served then and were left with the aspirational legacy of the Greatest Generation. A contemporary who served then remarked that if we were drafted under Trump, Canada would be the country building a wall to keep the migrants out. Our Commander in Chief was Dwight Eisenhower, who understood the reason, the responsibility, and the democratic principles of world leadership. We have become the obverse of the country over which he presided.
My unit was sent to Germany to establish air defense guided missile units for NATO. As we deplaned in Frankfort, we were met by throngs bearing signs that said, “Sputnik, Geh nach Hause.” (Sputnik, go home.) This was less than three months after the Soviets launched Sputnik, and the Germans feared we would provoke a nuclear attack. An intensive diplomatic effort by the Eisenhower administration and NATO allies convinced the Germans that our guided missiles would prevent just the kind of attack they feared.
That effort included training the troops in fundamental diplomacy as a person-to-person extension of the Marshall Plan. That meant participating in a lot of good will events and dealing sternly with G.I.s who misbehaved, such as the guy who got drunk and drove a tank on pass to Mannheim. Most of the Friday afternoon Troop Information and Education sessions dealt with building trust and friendship between former combatants and being alert to infiltrators who preferred to disrupt American influence. It was the tenth anniversary of the Marshall Plan and a letter from Eisenhower to General Marshall was used as our charge:
“Today, on the tenth anniversary of the pronouncement that launched this undertaking, free Europe has recovered a remarkable degree of economic health, accompanied by an upsurge in political stability, military power, and spiritual vitality.
“As the world today looks ahead to the troublesome problems of the future, we can take courage and confidence from our experience in this program–from the proven demonstration that even the most intricate of human problems are soluble–from the knowledge that mankind is still capable of moving forward with imagination and faith to build a safer and happier world.”
A different mentality has taken hold over the years, and our country has become the very thing we defended against.
Blackstone “Mystery’
Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next? The Intercept.
Water boarding works for me.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/revealed-pre-election-fbi-memo-says-carter-page-collaborating-conspiring-russian-government/
Story says FBI knew Page was messing with Russians who were coordinating with members of Drumpf campaign.
Excellent post Dr. Newquist, excellent. The draft was the great equalizer. Yes, Canada would be very busy keeping the war dogs out.
Here’s their strategic plan, where we are, where we are going. When the 6-week crisis hits it’s too late to get out, short of violence. It’s not to late to reverse this; yet doubtful we will. Too many Quislings and go-alongs-to-get-alongs.
https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/34-years-ago-a-kgb-defector-described-america-today
From David’s commentary: soldiers acting as diplomats! An interesting example of how our military in Europe recognized that our speech and behavior was as important to the mission as our guns.
From John’s link: Bezmenov describes the KGB’s ideological subversion:
That’s what Putin, Torshin, and Butina are doing. And not only can’t we fight that attack with guns; the Russians are using our ammosexual love of guns against us brilliantly.
We armed the contras and still didn’t achieve our goals in Nicaragua. The Russians are waging a far cheaper and more effective campaign of destabilization and using our own guns and gun nuts against us.
More from Bezmenov:
Gee, so I guess my usual canvassing and campaign newsletters aren’t going to be very effective in turning Trump voters, are they?
I get a kick out of Trumpistan, but remember Pence was the koch bros. first choice. Note; I use small case on koch.
New report out today say the dumbass dubya administration secretly used college students to map every building, floor, wall, window,etc in Iraq. The origi8nal purpose was to document artifacts and buildings to prevent them being bombed, but in reality were used as targets for guided smart bombs.
Sounds like old time CIA dirty trucks.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/assignment-baghdad-did-a-group-of-grad-students-really-help-plan-the-gulf-war
Comrade Franklin Graham and the rest of the Evangelical Quislings are guilty of treasonous acts against Democracy as well.
“About the same time in December 2015, evangelist Franklin Graham met privately with Putin for 45 minutes, securing from the Russian president an offer to help with an upcoming conference on the persecution of Christians. Graham was impressed, telling The Washington Post that Putin “answers questions very directly and doesn’t dodge them like a lot of our politicians do.”
The growing dialogue between Russians and U.S. conservatives came at the same time experts say the Russian government stepped up efforts to cultivate and influence far-right groups in Europe and on the eve of Russia’s unprecedented intrusion into the U.S. campaign, which intelligence officials have concluded was intended to elect Trump.”
Washington Post, April 30, 2017 Guns and Religion: How American Conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia
Keep in mind that this is the same Putin that gave the orders to shoot down an unarmed commercial passenger plane carrying at least one American, and the rest on board were Dutch Nationals and Australian and New Zealand Nationals. The shoot down was deliberate and calculated by Russian gunners over undisputed air routes.
We are definitely back in the cold war again with Putin’s Russia, our hands full of little Bush hot wars tying up and propagandizing our troops & fueling weapons hyper-advancement supporting ambitious “MacCrystal-types” in command. Obama was pivoting to the Pacific to face China. Trump has instead opened up the Israel/Palestine hot war again, restarted Iran nuclear weapons, and smooching up to Saudi bilionaires for personal loans for bankrupt Trump Org Schemes.
Strange: Putin is weakening America by luring us into his style of authoritarianism. He plays to the fundagelicals and other preachers of bad theology with the same sort of Christian-soldier appeal that he uses back home by aligning himself with the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet he’s using the American gun crowd that has no real counterpart in Russia, as Putin and much of his culture resist the guns-everywhere nonsense of the NRA.
Hey! Has anyone heard from Sam Clovis lately? Remember that he testified before Mueller’s grand jury sometime back?
Maybe Sam leaving Washington, D.C. makes him feel invulnerable.
The 2014 midterm elections, polls showed, the Republican Party had an opportunity to retake control of the Senate. Such a change would severely limit President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda during his final two years in office, an outcome that was especially attractive to the National Rifle Association.
In the wake of devastating events like the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the president had become an aggressive promoter of new gun regulations.
Campaign finance rules prohibit coordination between official campaigns and outside groups, like the NRA, who support the same candidate.
To get its message out, the NRA turned to an unknown consulting firm, Starboard Strategic Inc., paying it $19 million….Well-established and well-connected, OnMessage is as transparent as Starboard is opaque. What the FEC and the public do not know is that the two entities appear to be functionally one and the same.
The biggest outlays of the cycle: Thom Tillis, in North Carolina; Cory Gardner, in Colorado; and Tom Cotton, in Arkansas. All of these candidates would defeat Democratic incumbents, cementing the result for which GOP leaders and the NRA had mobilized: a Republican majority in the upper chamber to match the one in the House. Each challenger paid OnMessage between $5 million and $8 million, far more than they paid any other vendors.
This month, two former FEC chairs, one Republican and the other Democrat, reviewed the findings of Politico Magazine and The Trace, and said they found them troubling. “This evidence raises substantial questions about whether OnMessage and Starboard Strategic were used as conduits for coordination between the NRA and the candidates it was supporting,” Trevor Potter, the Republican, said. “It’s pretty serious,” added Ann Ravel, the Democrat. “It doesn’t seem right.” Both former chairs independently came to the same conclusion: “The FEC should investigate.” https://www.thetrace.org/2018/07/nra-campaign-finance-onmessage-starboard-strategic/
Roger, wherever Clovis is now, he didn’t seem to do anything to help farmers while he was at USDA. Just more kakocracy, brought to us by the Russian President.
A question. Who did the DEEP analysis of hacked Dem info to understand and pinpoint HRC weaknesses, Bernie issues ect? Cambridge ANALYTICS-types seem to be number crunchers. Legions of think tanks? Bannon accolytes? Paul Erickson? Who paid for this criminal aiding/betting? Mercer? Kochs? This looks like MANY YEARS of developing GOP strategy. VRWC!!!
Roger, according to the Sioux City Journal via Politico, Clovis is back in iowa and nothing else to report. If I find more I will post it on DFP for you.