Book Review of Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s
Only Superpower, William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine,
2000, 308 pp.
By Wayne Northey
A former Canadian missionary colleague,
Lloyd Billingsley, has published numerous books since his new-found faith in Americana, and adoption of the United States
as his actual and spiritual homeland.
His books have catchy subtitles such as: “recovering freedom in our
time”, “a critique of Marxism and the religious Left”, “how communism seduced
the American film industry in the 1930s and 1940s”, and “fanaticism in our
time”. In every instance, the United States of America
emerges as Supreme Saviour and Ultimate Messiah. If only we had faith and blind trust in
“her”. Almost all books chastise the
“International Communist Conspiracy”, and uphold America as eminently “the
Beautiful”, of immaculate historical conception, an unblemished paragon of
virtue that shines as the sole beacon of hope in an otherwise morally bankrupt
world of nations. It is, as sometimes
happens with religious converts, faith in America’s civil religion of Manifest
Destiny off the charts, a boundless fanaticism of utter blind trust in all
things American.
In light of such unfathomable devotion, the
final chapter of the book under review asks:
“How do they get away with it?
How does the United States orchestrate economies, subvert democracy,
overthrow sovereign nations, torture them, chemicalize them, biologize them,
radiate them… all the less-than-nice things detailed in this book, often in the
full glare of the international media, with the most stunning contradictions
between word and deed… without being mercilessly condemned by the world’s
masses, by anyone with a social conscience, without being shunned like a leper? Without American leaders being brought before
international tribunals, charged with crimes against humanity? (p. 243)” Sheer romantic mystique, and a gargantuan
propaganda machine are Blum’s explanation.
Canadians have recently been entertained by
comedian Rick Mercer’s hilarious “Talking to Americans”. From the current President, to state
Governors and other politicians, to all kinds of Ivy League professors and
students, to the normal Jane and Joe on the street, Americans have paraded on
film their enormous, unconscionable ignorance of most things Canadian. It is not surprising therefore that this book
should detail a similar abject ignorance of America’s true place in the
world.
As numerous other publications carefully
demonstrate, such as The “Terrorism” Industry by Edward Herman and Gerry
O’Sullivan (Pantheon Books, 1989), and as meticulously documented in this
publication, the most pervasively brutal terrorist organization known to
humanity is the United
States of America. If Billingsley and the vast majority of
similarly duped Americans only had eyes to see, instead of spewing billingsgate
against endless lines of new “America’s/Free-world’s enemies”, the shock would
be incalculable that in fact, writ large across America’s domestic and foreign
policy for decades is not just America the Ugly, but AMERICA THE
MONSTROUS, and that the only “god” trusted in by Americans blithely supportive
of their “Evil Empire” is Violence.
Rogue State
includes an Introduction, and three sections under which twenty-seven chapters
are fitted. The sections are entitled:
“Ours and Theirs: Washington’s Love/Hate Relationship with Terrorists and
Human-Rights Violators”; “United States Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction”; “A
Rogue State versus the World”.
The thesis of the book is laid out clearly
from the outset in three quotes. The
first is from a 1996 Amnesty International publication: “Throughout
the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced,
tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’, at the hands of governments or armed
political groups. More often than not,
the United States
shares the blame (no page number) .”
And: “From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States
attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush
more than
30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable
regimes. In the process, the US caused the
end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions
more to a
life of agony and despair. (p. 2)”
Finally: “There’s a word for such a continuum of policy. Empire.
The American Empire. An
appellation that does not roll easily off an American tongue… The
American Empire? An oxymoron [?] A compelling lust for political,
economic and
military hegemony over the rest of the world, divorced from moral
considerations? Suggesting that to
Americans is akin to telling them of one’s UFO abduction, except that
they’re
more likely to believe the abduction story (pp. 24 & 25).”
Several years ago, a Canadian film producer
described to Peter Gzowsky, host of CBC’s defunct Morningside, that he
had managed to capture on celluloid representatives of all players in the
1980’s Guatemalan tragedy that saw at least 200,000 Mayans and other
“subversives” liquidated. “What became
brutally clear”, he said, “was that a
Holocaust of similar kind, though to a different degree from that in Nazi
Germany, had been perpetrated against these peoples. And the buck for responsibility stopped
with the President of the United
States of America.” He then described that he had gone into deep
depression in the post-production stage of the film, for he knew that his
documentary, despite the undeniable evidence, would not be believed in North America – if anywhere.
When I lived for two years in West Berlin, I asked on occasion older people whom I
trusted, “Did you not know?” They
always said the word, “Nein”, but their eyes invariably said
“Yes!!!”. During the Nuremberg Trials,
one Nazi official said: “You have
defeated us Nazis. But the spirit of
Nazism rises like a Phoenix
amongst you.”
That the vast majority of Americans and
“Free-world” inhabitants could have supported Harry Truman’s decision to
detonate two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in calculated acts of cold blood, instantly
incinerating 120,000 Japanese civilians: men, women, and children, innocent as
any other humans on earth at that time, is beyond imagining. No doubt the Nazi War Trials official had at
least those bombs in mind when speaking of the rising Nazi-like Phoenix. When another terrorist, Timothy McVeigh,
destroyed 168 American civilians in an act of cold blood in Oklahoma
City, the government of America, supported by the vast
majority of its citizenry, judged that act worthy of the ultimate human
penalty. Even though it was the same
government that had taught McVeigh to kill in the first place. Yet Lloyd Billingsley writes, and most
Americans believe, that “fanaticism in our time” is almost everything un-American!
Blum states: “… it can be argued – based on
the objective facts of what Washington has inflicted upon the world, as
described in this book – that for more than half a century American foreign
policy has in actuality, been clinically mad (p. 26).” That of course is a line of defence in a
criminal trial. Unless America can be demonstrated to be
fit to stand trial. But who would do
that? And at what court, even of world
opinion, would America
be indicted?
The premier contemporary cultural theorist
on violence, René Girard, argues that scapegoating violence is most effective
when most hidden. Jesus constantly
challenged us to have “eyes to see”. One
Hebrew prophet announced: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond
cure. Who can understand it (Jer 17:9)?”
A Christian prophet declared: “As it is written: ‘There is no one
righteous, not even one’… (Rom. 3:10)”.
Most chilling for me, as a Protestant
Evangelical Christian, is the awareness that virtually all accepted Evangelical
leaders to the South, from the foremost Evangelical icon, Billy Graham, to
lesser lights such as Charles Colson and Francis Schaeffer, to international
voices such as C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer, all endorse/endorsed the clinical
madness of the ultimate “Rogue State”,
the world’s only Superpower. Blum dubs
it “clinical madness”. There is a
longer-standing old-fashioned word that applies: sin.
The book is well written, carefully
researched, and concludes with a litany of domestic crimes committed by America that
goes on for pages. It is terrible
reading, but not due to the author’s skill, which is admirable. Highly recommended.
The most disturbing question for me as a
committed Christian remains: Just what are American Evangelicals and their
international supporters evangelizing for anyway? I fear, à la Lloyd Billingsley, in the end, it
is to make the world safe for America…. As Jesus would say, it thereby renders
such converts “twice the sons of hell”.
To which I say, in the word of Saint
Paul: Anathema!