Struggle!
This is coolbert:
"Methinks all the people of the world are brethren, then.
Why are the waves and the wind so unsettled nowadays?" - - Emperor Meiji.
During the period of the Cold War [1945-1990], the two antagonists, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, offered to the world via propaganda images of themselves. Images that tried to suggest motivations as to why each was at odds with the other. WHY this conflict, sometimes hot, sometimes luke war, but always COLD, was occurring in the first place.
Both sides described the struggle as having an ideological basis, a struggle of opposites incompatible and irreconcilable.
The U.S. saw itself as being the defender of the "free world". Bravely stemming the tide of totalitarianism and evil that was represented by the brutish and cruel, and even malevolent Soviet Union. The U.S. was the "light to the world" for "freedom loving peoples".
The Soviets saw themselves as a bulwark against the return of neo-imperialism. Defenders of "oppressed" peoples the world over against "the big bosses of international capitalism" who desired to "enslave" the teeming and poverty stricken Third World masses.
Two diametrically opposed societies, each believing it offered a model that everyone around the world could and should emulate. Models that offered freedom, prosperity, and happiness.
This is how each society presented itself to the world. HOW and WHY the conflict known as the "Cold War" was justified.
Were these justifications warranted?
The CIA officer Joseph B. Smith, in his book, "Portrait Of A Cold Warrior", describes a conversation with a Britisher, "an old Malay hand", regarding the entire concept of ideological struggle.
Consider the conversation:
[comments of the Englishman in bold.]
"Mike said he had a special person he now wanted me to meet. This chap, he said, was the oldest Englishman in Perak [Malaya]. He had came out from Cambridge in 1885 [it was 1954 at the time of the meeting] to be the first financial advisor of the Sultan . . . . The ninety-one year old financial adviser was enjoying the cool of the evening when we arrived . . . 'I've never seen many Americans in Kuala Kangar' . . . 'What are you doing here?' . . . 'What in the world are you going to propagandize the poor Malays about?' . . . I tried to explain the free world's burden to him . . . how the United States, humbly but determinedly, was assuming the role of leading the fight for the fundamental values of our civilization . . . 'Young man, I hope you don't really believe any of what you've just told me' . . . 'The real world has nothing to do whatever with anything you've said' . . . 'There are struggles, great struggles in Malaya, in Asia, in the world. There are struggles for money, for power, for lust, greed, because of just plain meanness. But there is no such thing as the ideological struggle you talk about.'"
There you have it. "No such thing as the ideological struggle."
"Struggles for money, for power, for lust, greed, because of just plain meanness."
I wonder what Osama, Zawahiri, and those other jihadis living in caves on the Afghan-Pakistani border would say about that??!! Or George W. Bush for that matter??!!
coolbert.
1 Comments:
The old Malay hand overstated his case; of course we can have pure ideological conflicts, even wars of long duration, on that basis. If he means only that other motives must contaminate, that's another question.
All men are brethren, in the sense of all being of the same species, but not necessarily more than that commonality.
The species solidarity shows up when something external is to be fought, as when a vaccine campaign supervenes in a military conflict. Otherwise, there can be war over anything that differs.
Even the commonality of the species is not perfectly universal, or on what basis do we execute or imprison violent aggressors?
Zimbabweans and Europeans are brethren in that limited sense; but if Mugabe after having cut his people's life expectancy in half, and brought their incomes down 90% on average, then offered a slate of white candidates, and a black one from his own circle, in a free and fair election, who would win?
Suppose that the election were also framed as a battle of ideology with socialism and capitalism on either side, and with neither side using religion, wouldn't the blacks still win, even if they were overwhelmingly suspected of being in it for power and money?
Candidates and parties will always be considered to be in it for the power and whatever else flows from power. In order to have a pure contest of ideas for power, not just influence, there must be those who hold that power, and they must fall under suspicion regardless.
If it is wrong to suspect officials of evil intent, when they seek power greater than what they have at the outset; and a bearer of divergent ideology must do that at least, our constitution would have to be called too suspicious. [but it ain't]
1:53 AM
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