by Oui
Wed Jun 12th, 2024 at 06:12:09 PM EST
... and don't blame the former Soviet State which collapsed in 1989.
1956 Suez Crisis : Causes, Conflict and Global Repercussions
On receipt of the Dulles aide-memoire of February 11, 1957, Ambassador Abba Eban was called to Jerusalem for consultations. On February 18, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion appealed to Secretary Dulles to postpone the discussions in the General Assembly so that a committee composed of representatives of disinterested states should come to Israel to attempt to reach an agreement on the points at issue in Gaza and at Sharm el-Sheikh. On February 20, President Eisenhower broadcast the following address to the American people venting his anger over Israel's failure to withdraw from territories it captured in the 1956 war.
Eisenhower, Decolonization and the Threats from Israel
Daniel Ellsberg Memorial
Hiding Human Toll of America's Wars
The Lasting Legacy of Truth-Teller Daniel Ellsberg | Tom Dispatch |
On a warm evening almost a decade ago, I sat under the stars with Daniel Ellsberg while he talked about nuclear war with alarming intensity. He was most of the way through writing his last and most important book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Somehow, he had set aside the denial so many people rely on to cope with a world that could suddenly end in unimaginable horror. Listening, I felt more and more frightened. Dan knew what he was talking about.
After working inside this country's doomsday machinery, even drafting nuclear war plans for the Pentagon during President John F. Kennedy's administration, Dan Ellsberg had gained intricate perspectives on what greased the bureaucratic wheels, personal ambitions, and political messaging of the warfare state. Deceptions about arranging for the ultimate violence of thermonuclear omnicide were of a piece with routine falsehoods about American war-making. It was easy enough to get away with lying, he told me: "How difficult is it to deceive the public? I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: it's not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you're often telling them what they would like to believe -- that we're better than other people, we're superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world."
[...]
As Dan pointed out, "It is in the power of Congress to decouple the hair-trigger on our system by defunding and dismantling the current land-based Minuteman missiles and rejecting funding for their proposed replacements. The same holds for lower-yield weapons for first use against Russia, on submarines or in Europe, which are detonators for escalation to nuclear winter."
In essence, Dan was telling members of Congress to do their job, with the fate of the earth and its inhabitants hanging in the balance:
"This grotesque situation of existential danger has evolved in secret in the almost total absence of congressional oversight, investigations, or hearings. It is time for Congress to remedy this by preparing for first-ever hearings on current nuclear doctrine and `options,' and by demanding objective, authoritative scientific studies of their full consequences including fire, smoke, nuclear winter, and famine. Classified studies of nuclear winter using actual details of existing attack plans, never yet done by the Pentagon but necessarily involving its directed cooperation, could be done by the National Academy of Sciences, requested and funded by Congress."
But Dan's letter was distinctly out of sync with Congress. Few in office then -- or now -- have publicly acknowledged that such a "grotesque situation of existential danger" really exists. And even fewer have been willing to break from the current Cold War mindset that continues to fuel the rush to global annihilation. On matters of foreign policy and nuclear weapons, the Congressional Record is mainly a compendium of arrogance and delusion, in sharp contrast to the treasure trove of Dan's profound insights preserved at Ellsberg.net.
From the diaries ...
Democrats' War on Whistleblowers Extended | 10 Dec 2021 |
June 10th marks 61 years since American President John F. Kennedy delivered a searing critique of the Cold War and its mindset at a commencement address on the campus of American University in Washington, DC.
In it, Kennedy expounded upon his vision of what peace might look like in the nuclear age.
"What kind of peace do we seek?," he asked.
JFK: What kind of peace do we seek?
"Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons
of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am
talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on
earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow
and to hope and to build a better life for their children -- not merely
peace for Americans but peace for all men and women -- not merely
peace in our time but peace for all time."
For Kennedy, the specter of nuclear war, to which the United States and the U.S.S.R. came within a hair's breadth the previous October during the Cuban Missile Crisis, made the pursuit of peace with the Soviet adversary an imperative. Yet it was one that put the young president at odds, perhaps fatally so, with this own national security-military-intelligence establishment.
But at AU, Kennedy took his case for a sane, rational and above all ethical Cold War policy directly to the American people.
"I speak of peace," said Kennedy, "as the necessary, rational end of
rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as
the pursuit of war -- and frequently the words of the pursuer fall
on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task."
And Kennedy had, over the course of his presidency, and to the great consternation of the Pentagon and CIA, found a most unlikely partner in that pursuit, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Over the course of a series of U.S.-Soviet crises (the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna summit, and the Berlin Crisis) Kennedy and Khrushchev had developed a rapport which helped steer us away from apocalypse during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And in the aftermath of that crisis, the two began working toward a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
"Our interests converge, however, not only in defending
the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is
our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the
Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own
future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of
others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic
system on others is the primary cause of world tension today.
For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from
interfering in the self-determination of others, the
peace would be much more assured."
"This will require a new effort to achieve world law--a new context for
world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the
Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased
contact and communication. One step in this direction is the, proposed
arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington to avoid
on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings
of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.
Kennedy realized that progress was contingent upon seeing the other as we might wish we to be seen, in other words, upon empathy.
"No government or social system is so evil," said Kennedy, "that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue."
"So, let us not be blind to our differences but let us also direct
attention to our common interests and to the means by which those
differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our
differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For,
in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit
this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our
children's future. And we are all mortal."
Such a way of thinking about the current Russian adversary is now notably absent in the corridors of power of Joe Biden's Washington.
Indeed, in our view, Kennedy's speech now stands as an important indictment of how far in the wrong direction recent Democratic administrations have traveled in the decades since Kennedy's speech. While we are both on record condemning Putin's invasion, we are mindful of the administration's failure to pursue diplomatic avenues to both prevent and end the war.
Today we stand perilously close to nuclear escalation as the administration ignores the red lines it set and succumbs to assorted hawks by agreeing to send F-16s to Ukraine. One can only hope President Kennedy's message, delivered six decades ago this Saturday, somehow and in some way is understood by a new generation inside and outside Washington D.C., and has an impact on the course of war -- and peace.
June 10, 1963 | JFK "Peace Speech" at American University
