Yep, I think you are correct. I watched a good show this morning on C-SPAN2 about Chalmers Johnson and his new book Blowback. Basically, I think he said American foreign policy is designed to stop Communism, but the strategy is by backing imperialism instead of democracy throughout Asia.
As for bomber pilots, my heart bleeds for them. They are more brainswashed than Elian will ever be. IMO, they are socially conditioned mass murderers. Ah, the benefits of modern science.
A very good post. Well articulated thoughts punctuated with humor. Still, not as succint as the Declaration of Independence lead sentence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind..
Here's a link to a good article by Chalmers.
latimes.com
And here is Amazon reviews on his book:
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century may be a time of reckoning for the United States. Chalmers Johnson, an authority on Japan and its economy, offers a troubling prognosis of what's to come. Blowback--the title refers to a CIA neologism describing the unintended consequences of American activity--is a call for the United States to rethink its position in the world. "The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation," writes Johnson. "The world is not a safer place as a result." Individual chapters focus on Okinawa (where American servicemen were accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in "Asia's last colony"), the two Koreas, China, and Japan. The result is a liberal-leaning (and Asia-centric) call for the United States to disengage from many of its global commitments. Critics will call Johnson an isolationist, but friends (perhaps admirers of Patrick Buchanan's A Republic, Not an Empire) will say he simply speaks good sense. All will agree he is an earnest voice: "I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing." --John J. Miller
From Booklist January 1, 2000
A veteran, and veteran academic on China and Japan, offers a serious indictment of the security system the U.S. organized in East Asia circa 1950 to contain the communists. Convinced the time has arrived to close down bases, bring troops home, and renegotiate extant security treaties, Johnson examines, from a highly critical, almost excoriating viewpoint, the American presence in Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. He wants to connect with general-interest readers, perceiving them blinkered to the resentments engendered by U.S. military activity. When anti-Americanism erupts, Americans tend to be perplexed by it (why are those ingrates rioting?), they and their leaders believing their foreign policy to be animated by virtuous liberal values, not hegemonic self-interest. These occasional but persistent reactions Johnson calls "blowback," and his intimation of disasters to come, possibly wars, drives his insistence on dismantlement of the cold war security structures. This is edgy, unconventional wisdom that deserves hearing and debating. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
In this timely book, noted Asian specialist Johnson (Japan: Who Governs?, 1994) addresses the effects of American global interventionism, delivering a grim warning that the United States will soon experience severe reprisals (or blowback) from the victims of government policies kept secret from the American people. Johnson begins his book with a confession. He admits that as a naval officer after the Korean War, and as an academic who studied the formation of Chinese communism, he was not in a position to witness the results of American power disinterestedly. In fact, he wholeheartedly shared the assumption that America was the necessary guarantor of world peace. Only after his pathbreaking exploration of Japan's economic renewal in MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1973) did he conclude that the US mission to protect the ``free world'' was a justification for empire. This insight became especially clear in the wake of the Cold War. That the US has not significantly reduced or adjusted its military position after the fall of the Soviet Union reveals, to Johnson, this country's imperialistic aims. Moreover, he argues that American fat-headedness is not just confined to the upper echelons of the State Department. From rape in Okinawa to the imposition of economic austerity in Indonesia (followed by the quick purchase of its industrial plant on easy terms), Johnson sees the imperialistic mentality as the defining style of American actions and expectations abroad. In order to curb imminent and massive blowback, he calls for a more humble American presenceboth militarily and psychologicallyin the world. However, one has to wonder about the value of Johnson's dissent: Is humility a realistic solution to the tangle of issues that this nation has persistently involved itself in for half a century? Engrossing and at the same time alarming, Johnson's well-researched book nevertheless presents an easy solution to fundamental problems that have usually forced great powers into catastrophic predicaments. -- Copyright ¸2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
John Dower, author of War Without Mercy, winner of the NBCC Award
"Chalmers Johnson is one of the most influential, brilliant, and provocative intellectuals writing about Asia today."
Book Description
An explosive account of the resentments American policies are sowing around the world and of the payback that will be our harvest in the twenty-first century.
Blowback, a term invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies. In this sure-to-be-controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our actions in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.
In the wake of the Cold War, the United States has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years, argues Johnson. In Blowback, he issues a warning we would do well to consider: it is time for our empire to demobilize before our bills come due.
About the Author
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is author of the classic MITI and the Japanese Miracle and Japan: Who Governs? He lives near San Diego.
amazon.com |
