[Article] America: Back in the USSR?

dahamsta

It's hard /not/ to be so-called anti-american these days. (Of course by this I mean anti-Bush and anti-neo-con, but I suppose it would be too much to ask that the sympathists shut their hypocritical traps and try to understand for a change. (Obviously it /is/ too much to ask, because they're unwilling to debate, in much the same way a child locks up when they know they're wrong.)) Horror stories feed into the trough every day, and it all pools together to paint a rather frightening picture. Sometimes I find myself reading articles like this and think to myself, errah it's ok, these people are extremists. But then someone comes along and gathers it all together in a calm, logical manner like the piece below, and I think, oh, no, it's not ok. It's not ok /at all/.

From Johnson's Russia List, via Dave Farber:

From: Andrei Sitov
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003
Subject: AMERICA: BACK IN THE USSR?

AMERICA: BACK IN THE USSR?
A specter is haunting the US.
By Andrei K. Sitov
Andrei Sitov is the Washington Bureau Chief for ITAR-TASS News Agency of
Russia. The views exressed in the article are his own.

For the past 20 years I've been covering the US first as a Soviet and then
as a Russian reporter. Since the end of the Cold War my country has been
trying to become more like America. Meanwhile the US, especially after
9/11, increasingly resembles the old Soviet Union. Please consider:

- The US acts as if it believes it knows what's best not only for the
Americans but for the rest of the world and shows a willingness to force
this belief down other people's throats. For a while - until the terrorist
attacks - its "elite" even toyed with the ridiculous notion of an "end of
history". This is an idea common to all totalitarian regimes (some scholars
say it is rooted in the Armageddon prophecy in the Bible). At least
Fukuyama's version did not envision a blood bath.

- The US continues to define its national greatness through military
strength - as witnessed by the new National Security strategy. The Soviet
Union always used to do that; Dr. Rice told me she thought it would be a
grave mistake for Russia to act in a similar manner. To me it seems to be
an example of "do as I say, not as I do".

- The US shows a dislike for international agreements across the board -
from arms control to the International Criminal Court and from Kyoto
protocols to tobacco trade. The Soviet Union also seemed to comply only
with those international obligations that it liked. To be fair, as
Secretary Powell pointed out to me, Americans don't break agreements - they
either don't sign them or withdraw from them.

- The US now liberates other nations without being asked. The Pentagon
advisor Mr. Perle told me that "there are more important things than
national sovereignty". Of course the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had
a "doctrine of limited sovereignty" named after him. Mr. Perle also said
the US always leaves the lands it occupies. I shared that opinion with a
Mexican colleague; he begged to differ.

- The US has a curious relationship with its allies. It often carries their
water for them - and gets resentment and ridicule in return. The Soviet
satellites used to pay lip service to their "unbreakable alliance" with the
USSR and sneer behind our backs. They also had a higher standard of living.
The transatlantic partners of the Americans say the US is indispensable
(Secretary Albright was actually vain enough to repeat it publicly; when
I challenged her, she said "other countries call us that"). In the meantime
the Europeans at least once in the last decade managed to get the US
actually go to war for them - in former Yugoslavia. They also believe they
live in a much better and more civilized way than the Americans do.
Personally I think the Americans (like the Soviets in the past) have only
themselves to blame for this situation. They get what they asked for and
shouldn't complain about it.

- The US conducts a large-scale propaganda effort that may not always be
entirely truthful. It uses purely totalitarian slogans such as "Who's not
with us is against us". The government effort is directly coordinated by
the White House though a special office that sends out "Daily Messages"
with key talking points (in Soviet days this was a standard operation
procedure for the Kremlin; it is still used in some post-Soviet states).
The latest press conference of President George W. Bush was by his own
admission orchestrated (this was written before the press conference on
July 30th which was also carefully staged - AS); the White House was never
really challenged on it.
The press seems to have accepted new rules of the game which generally
conform to the so called "patriotic consensus". The coverage of the war in
Iraq by "embedded" journalists (even we at ITAR-TASS had one at an air
carrier) was a perfect example. The reporters were filing directly from the
front lines. Yet it seems nothing that the government wouldn't want to be
known made it to TV screens and newspaper pages. At least one myth - the
Jessica Lynch story in the original propagandistic version - flourished for
a surprisingly long time. There's at least one genuine taboo in American
journalism: admitting that the 9/11 highjackers were personally brave and
committed to their murderous cause.

- The US now has a new "super agency" - the Department of Homeland Security
- whose name is best translated into Russian as an equivalent of the old
KGB. It also has some of the KGB functions. A color-coded system of alerts
adds to the feeling of permanent anxiety, the expectation of new threats
from external and internal enemies.
Internal security has been tightened dramatically. Borders are being sealed
off; the rules of immigration and international travel are hardened. Spying
and informing on your neighbors - a staple of any totalitarian regime - is
encouraged. A government-run "total information awareness" system has been
created. It's reportedly designed to hold the amount of data - much of it
on private citizens - equal to all the Internet pages over the past 5 years.

- The US government seeks and receives additional powers to interfere into
people's lives both through new laws and a more restrictive application of
old ones. It runs a detention camp at a legal no-man's land in Guantanamo,
Cuba. The foreign detainees including some Russians have no legal status
and allegedly can be held indefinitely. Some of the detainees are now
nearing a trial by military tribunals potentially facing death penalty.

- As a result of all of the above the doctrine of containment created to
confront the Soviet Union is now increasingly applied by the outside world
to the US - in practical policy if not in name. On numerous occasions
people from the third world and even Europe told me they wished the USSR
was back - not for its own sake but as a counterbalance to America.
I believe the Soviet Union collapsed largely because it was not telling the
truth about itself either to its own population or to the world. The
Russians do not like to think of themselves as losers in the Cold War
(after all they peacefully rejected communism and won their freedom). But
generally speaking, from a moral standpoint, losing may actually be
preferable to winning. If you lose, you have to ask yourself why it
happened and face your own shortcomings, weaknesses and lies. Meanwhile the
illusions, propaganda and lies of the winning side are usually justified
and reinforced.
Besides, current American policies seem to give comfort to a number of less
than democratic nations around the world including some former Soviet states.
Americans may not recognize their own country in my description. I know for
a fact that many Russians also refuse to believe it. After all America
embodies the best values and ideals that we wanted to make our own when we
started our post-communist transition.
That is exactly why I'm worried about the seeming "Sovietization" of
America. If not yet a reality, it's a dangerous trend, a spooky "specter".
And I think the Americans would be well advised to recognize the threat and
take it seriously. They have everything they need to defeat it while
safeguarding their legitimate security interests and to win back the
confidence and admiration of their friends and partners around the world.

Wook

That is exactly why I'm worried about the seeming "Sovietization" of America. If not yet a reality, it's a dangerous trend, a spooky "specter". And I think the Americans would be well advised to recognize the threat and take it seriously. They have everything they need to defeat it while safeguarding their legitimate security interests and to win back the confidence and admiration of their friends and partners around the world.

this will be a hard thing to do as everybody seriously starts to dislikes their policies and attitude towards the rest of the world.
Also for Americans to understand what is going on with their own country would almost be called a miracle. The media and State doesn't leave much space to manoeuvre in the so called 'free' world. I'd say things will get much much worse before they become better.

good article btw.

sovtek

I've been saying this since the Patriot Act passed (ie America is looking more like the Soviet Union.)
As far as being "anti-American" you should hear all the anti-French, anti-UN, anti-whoever-disagrees-with-us crap I hear, not only in the media, but also from friends and family in the States(oh yea I'm American BTW).
The things that are said in America are TRULY anti-French. They use gross generalizations of the PEOPLE (some based in truth, some based in ignorance of history) and not criticism of their government's policies. Embarassing at the least and deeply troubling.
Mostly what I hear in Europe are sound arguments against despicable acts, like the war in Iraq as well Afghanistan, and not insults directed at the general American population.
I have only had two occasions where I felt that someone was actually insulting me because I was American.
I'd always welcome a friends criticism especially if it was to keep me from making a huge mistake (which Iraq has proven to be).

Wook

you do realize that Boards.ie is being monitored and you Sovtek are now on the black-list of America's 'SS' euh HomeLand Security Program.

sovtek

Originally posted by Wook
you do realize that Boards.ie is being monitored and you Sovtek are now on the black-list of America's 'SS' euh HomeLand Security Program.

That's not as paranoid as you might think. The government has already admitted that it has a list of people to be detained by security at airports in America. Some of the people are merely anti-war proponents who have never even been suspected of commiting a crime (basically did the same thing during Vietnam war as well).
The NSA has a listening post in Diego Garcia that it uses to listen in on transmissions from Europe. Then there's Echelon.

gandalf

Just as a follow up to this. Heres and article from the Indo today. Heheh back in the USSA

http://www.unison.ie/breakingnews/index.php3?ca=30&si=40700
[registration required]

US woman fined for serving as human shield in Iraq
14:47 Monday August 11th 2003

An American woman has been fined $6,000 for going to Iraq to serve as a human shield, in an attempt to stop the US invasion. The Department of the Treasury told 62 year old Faith Fippinger, from Florida, that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border before the war. She was told her travel to Iraq violated US sanctions that prohibited American citizens from engaging in virtually all direct or indirect commercial, financial or trade transactions with Iraq.

Well I suppose they aren't stopping their citizens from Travelling.......yet.

Gandalf.

dahamsta

Originally posted by sovtek
That's not as paranoid as you might think. The government has already admitted that it has a list of people to be detained by security at airports in America.

And of course there's the standard no-fly list that we knew about all along. The second list reeks of Modern-Day McCarthyism though.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/25/no_fly/index_np.html

adam

dahamsta

Heh, from Dewayne-Net via IP:

>>Jay Leno made this comment August 4, regarding the effort now
>>underway to write a constitution for Iraq:
>>
>>"Hey, why don't we send them ours? It worked well for us for over two
>>hundred years . . . and we're not using it anymore . . "

The Beer Baron

Ok, an interesting article- but, much like that link, a little too much scaremongering for my liking. Don't get me wrong- I am proud to be an Anti-American, but then I'm not pretending to be an impartial journalist. Both of those initial articles, to my mind, were obviously written to pander to Anti-American sentiments which seemed to blossom on the eve of Bush's inaugeration.

We never ask ourselves this however. We never look into our minds and ask how this meme came to infect us now. At this specific juncture. Shouldn't that scare us just as much- that we, ourselves, could it be that our minds be under simular control? Surely if the US President says "you're either with us or against us" the Irish reaction I would expect would be, "I don't give a **** about ye!" Even the tabloid-reading plebes seem to view Bush as the new Hitler, or at least on par with how Americans see Bin Laden. Why now? Why do we all balk at the War on Terrorism?

Why didn't we kick up a ****storm over the equally draconian:

War on Drugs.
War on Illegal Immigrants.
War on Communism.
War on Organised Crime.
(Not to mention the actual wars that America were either drawn into by force or by shady politics)

I don't think this anti-Americanism is anything so much as Anti-Bushism, who, in all fairness, is a dozy personification of everything the rest of the world despises about America. Something we already knew was there, but choose to ignore it.
I mean, Clinton was so *nice* wasn't he?

Certainly during the Cold War Europe ignored what the US was really doing, certainly France loved America when it was fighting a loosing battle to maintian control of IndoChina.

Look back upon the 20th Century; at McCarthy, Hoover, LBJ, Nixon (who got caught), CIA, NSA, G-Men, Black Ops and dodgy double-dealing in almost every country you can mention, look at Iraq, parts 1&2 and tell me it's any different to Vietnam? Try and tell me it's different to what Britain was doing prior to their over-shadowing by their wartime ally.

Now look back through your American presidents.
The only 2 popular ones on this side of the pond.
One was assasinated- by an Italian bolt action rifle. (sic)
The other was assasinated by the media's power to consolidate the clout of the moral majority who are pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-capitalism, anti-felatio in the Oval Office.

You take your orders fine, you mess up then they'll ask you to resign, impeach you, or put a bullet in your head- the stakes are too high to mess about. That's always been the game hasn't it?

Bush- pah! He's just a puppet of the Stetson Illuminati. Continuing the same trends that have dogged America since it's very inception. If you want to draw a parallel between the USSR and the latter day US then fine- here's one for the Bush-bashers- Stalin was a man of low intellegence but shrewd and determined. He managed to oust opposition, take control of a massive country and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of deaths- how's that?

hmm...
/me meanders off the topic again.

Sand

was responsible for the deaths of thousands of deaths

Thousands? You dont give him full credit - he killed tens of millions, far more than the more famous Hitler. I heard that if Stalin had not ruled the USSR, modern russias population would be close to twice its current total.

The Beer Baron

er, yeah...uuh- poetic licence.

Certainly he has more blood on his hands than any figure in history- I doubt the death toll could ever be totted up.

In retrospect that was a rather silly comment for me to make.
The, aah, heat was getting to me, yeah that's it.