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Prt#5 – Draft #1 Preston Red Thread An electronic journal for all those on the Left in the greater Preston area. #5 – June 2018 Edited by: Mick Mulcahy, Dave Savage & Michael McKrell “The task of the media in a democracy is not to ease the path of those who govern, but to make life difficult for them by constant vigilance as to how they exercise the power they only hold in trust from the people.” Editorial Our fifth edition has an analysis of contemporary trade unionism from Andy Birchall, some lessons from Vietnam that might be applied in Afghanistan and a look back at Britain's fascist traitors of 1940. Chris Lomax has another excellent brace of radical songs and Alan Dent has a review of a powerful new book on Israel. The editors hold a wide range of party political affiliations and all are (or were) trade unionists representing members in the greater Preston area. The project is not overseen, directed or funded by any political party or trade union. All decisions are made collectively by the editors. If you want to get involved, by sending us an article or review, please let us know – [email protected]. American Hubris – The Unlearnt Lessons of the War in Vietnam General George Patton, political reactionary and brilliant general of the Second World War, once boasted that: “Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle... Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” Well, discounting the stalemate in the Korean War, the resistance of the Vietnamese people to colonial domination (Japanese, French and American) inflicted a military and psychological defeat on the USA, which still resonates three decades later. 2018 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, both of which had a crucial impact on the Vietnam War and how it was perceived, in America and around the world. That Bush, Obama and now Trump are repeating the strategic errors of the Vietnam War in Afghanistan, reveals the continued dominance of the military-industrial complex, the awful weakness of American democracy and the stubborn refusal of the military elite to admit their counter-insurgency doctrines and dogma were, are, and have been proven to be, wrong. The Second World War saw the eclipse of the European empires by the USA and the USSR. American industry - so vast it could equip the Allies with huge quantities of war materiel and still steal commercial markets from its British, French and Dutch rivals - now had economic and financial interests across the globe. President Roosevelt, the architect of US intervention in the Second World War, had no illusions as to the nature of Stalin's regime in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s. But he held out hope for an understanding with the Soviet Union when the war was won. Indeed, the USSR was exhausted by the war, tens of millions of its citizens had been killed and large swathes of the country had been devastated by the competing armies. The notion that the military and civilian leadership of the USSR was so bloodthirsty that they were keen for war in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War must be wide of the mark. Such was the belligerence of American policy that détente would have to wait until 1969, when it was revealed to Richard Nixon (as it had been to Lyndon Johnson before him) that the Vietnam War could not, militarily, be won. As the Nixon Administration sought ways to get out from under its commitment to South Vietnam, it also decided to try and soothe tensions between the two superpowers and their growing nuclear arsenals. This bore fruit when the USSR proposed a nuclear weapons limitation treaty, an international convention on biological weapons and an anti-ballistic missile treaty (all signed by the USA and USSR in 1972). In 1975 the USSR proposed the Helsinki Accords, which set out economic, political and human rights. US delegates rightly enumerated breaches of human rights in the Soviet Union. But the real divergence was on the superpowers' 'rights' to interfere in the internal affairs of third countries. Repeated American intervention in countries across the globe, especially Latin American and South East Asia, was either denied outright by American delegates or justified on the grounds of 'securing human rights.' When the USSR sent troops to bolster a friendly regime in Afghanistan in 1979, Ronald Reagan exploited the issue to help him win the presidential election of 1980. Thereafter, even the desirability of détente was rejected by Reagan's bellicosity. The deliberate deceit, of successive incumbents of the American presidency, in preventing honest military and political analyses of the Vietnam conflict from coming to light, was a crime against democracy. And one that has undermined the reputation of the office of president ever since. War aims in Vietnam were often stated as preventing the 'spread of communism' and 'preserving democracy' in South Vietnam. Yet, there was nothing that could realistically be described as democratic government in the South. What there was, was a regime friendly to the American government (indeed Saigon was reliant on the US economically, politically and militarily); a government willing to accept a huge military presence on its soil as part of the USA's global defence of its 'strategic interests.' The parallels with Afghanistan are obvious. The stated reason that successive presidents have given for maintaining the pro-American regime in Kabul have grown over the years: to eliminate the 'safe haven' for terrorists; to restrict the expansion of Iranian influence; to exert influence on different elements of the Pakistani regime; to demonstrate to the Chinese and the Russians that the US still believes in global hegemony. Yet, the USA did not have the same attitude to Afghanistan in 2001. What has changed? Well, the very fact that there is a significant American presence in Afghanistan means huge profits for the American defence industry. Not only the manufacturers of munitions, vehicles, aircraft and so on but also the Halleburtons and Blackwaters of this world. At the time of writing, there are 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan but 20,000 mercenaries. All need housing, feeding, equipping and paying – by the US government. One conservative estimate is that $100 billion of profit has been made by the various private sector defence companies between 2007 and 2017 (this includes campaigns in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and so on). The establishment of permanent bases in Central Asia also satisfies the rabid imperialists, who see no future for the USA that does not involve it dominating every other country on Earth. Practically-speaking, the US ruling elite needs enemies for its quiescent population to be scared of, otherwise there is a danger that uncomfortable questions will begin to be asked about the necessity for so much defence spending. Especially when there is so much poverty at home, healthcare is so poor and state education is so underfunded. Between them, therefore, the elite and their flunkeys in the media perpetuate the myth of a constantly endangered USA. In 1957 Douglas MacArthur, a senior general in the Second World War and the Korean War, warned against unnecessarily-bloated defence spending programmes. “Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” The USA is deemed to be in a permanent state of war – 'the war on terror,' the war on drugs, the war on crime - with all that that means socially and politically. The call for all 'patriotic' Americans to unite under the flag is heard regularly. The likes of Fox News and the far-right radio 'shock-jocks' denigrate anyone perceived to be criticising the government or the military. Indeed, there is an almost religious reverence for the military in the minds of millions of Americans. How often do you hear, “you servicemen and women are the best of us,” or, “the men and women of our armed forces are America's finest.” And when there are no enemy nation-states to be destroyed, there are always numerous terrorist organisations, some of whom were created by previous disastrous US interventions and or were supported by the US in the past (the sons of the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahedeen, for example, are now leading the anti-US Taliban). When détente with the USSR and China was underway in the early 1970s, the American elite were left with the North Vietnamese as almost the sole major bogey-man. Presidential spokesmen reiterated the dogma of the Domino Theory and the necessity to defend 'liberty' in South East Asia. Yet, despite vigorous attempts to demonise the North Vietnamese, anti-war feeling in the American population mounted steadily. Scepticism and war-weariness was fuelled by the widely-disseminated footage of death and suffering in Vietnam, shown daily on TV news channels.
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