US EXCEPTIONALISM

“We will soon kick the ass of that Indian shit [president of Bolivia, Evo Morales] … You think we care about money? We have plenty of money! We don’t care if we lose millions of dollars, even tens of millions! We will spread insecurity, uncertainty, fear, deficits and if we have to, even hunger… We’ll bleed those Indians to death!”—Local Bolivian aristocrat.

MIKE HEAD—Last Sunday, Australia’s Channel 7 network broadcast an interview with Jennifer Robinson, an Australian-born, London-based lawyer who represents WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. She issued a clear demand for the Australian government to carry out its responsibility to secure his freedom, as an Australian citizen.
The interview and 10-minute segment on the nationally-televised “Sunrise” morning program was a significant break in the general silence within the Australian corporate media on the more than seven-year detention of Assange.

GEOFFREY O’NEILL—Most Americans are unaware of the amount of human suffering the U.S. government has inflicted on others throughout the world, especially post 9/11. We are incessantly told it is our duty to support the troops and our leaders who invade, bomb or otherwise intervene in other nations. The motives offered might be to stop genocide, to take down a maniacal despot, or to spread democracy and American values. Our government purportedly acts with reluctance as well as with compassion, respect for others, and good intent. We are reminded that the troops keep us safe, all the while helping spread the American way of life to a needy world. Why? It is because we are “exceptional.”

STEVEN JONAS—In the view of the US leadership of the time, everything had to be done that could be done to prevent the democratic process from introducing socialism to a country and then possibly succeeding in a peaceful setting.  The peaceful establishment of socialism in Viet Nam was prevented.  Its spread by example and peaceful means to neighboring countries was prevented.  Vietnam today has a sort of market socialist economy, becoming more “market” and less “socialist” by the year. But the country was ravaged by almost 20 years of war and two to three million of the best and the brightest of its people were killed.  It is hardly the economic or social engine of the development of democratically-installed socialism that it might have become had it been left alone.  In terms of the original American goals for the intervention, this was thus a win, a palpable win.