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Deceit
Then, Deceit Now
March
30, 2004
By Joseph P. Firmage
A small network of ideologues in positions of power beyond
their due are intent upon reshaping the world on their terms.
Their existence revolves around a black and white reality;
a world of perfect days ever threatened by perfect storms.
Frustrated with intelligence experts who forecast partly cloudy
skies in the atmosphere of international relations, they conjure
rogue intelligence to justify stormy international arrogance.
They flood media with propaganda. Winds of fear shift the
public mood. Hearts of nations harden. Conflicts simmer. Military
budgets explode.
Sound familiar?
While the plot and the actors are the same, the stage is
different. In late 1975, a small group of conservatives across
the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government
were convinced that America's military strength was falling
behind the Soviet war machine. Out of this group - known as
"the cabal" - came the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD),
a group of like-minded ideologues who contended that CIA analysts
had chronically understated the threat posed by the Soviet
Union, and thus that U.S. military spending levels were dangerously
low.
At the request of then-CIA chief George H.W. Bush, the Committee
was brought in to develop an alternative assessment of the
CIA's raw intelligence. The resulting report - known as the
Team B assessment - wildly overestimated Soviet military capability,
and led to dire warnings to U.S. policymakers and the public.
President Ford's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger condemned
the report.
But one of the assessment's primary promoters acquired what
he needed. That man was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
the same Rumsfeld who championed the war on Iraq nearly 30
years later based upon overblown conclusions of rogue intelligence
analysis. Saying back then that "no doubt exists about the
capabilities of the Soviet armed forces" Rumsfeld and his
allies used the report to undercut nuclear arms control negotiations
for years to come, and to lay the groundwork for procurement
of a wide range of new weapons systems, including the MX missile.
MX was designed to thwart the first-strike threat of the
Soviet Union. It called for a basing system in which hundreds
of missiles - each one capable of destroying scores of Soviet
cities and vaporizing millions of human beings - would be
transported continuously on tracks crisscrossing my home state
of Utah and other surrounding states. It was called the "shell
game" basing system: by employing thousands more decoys on
the same tracks, it was thought, the Russians would not be
able to wipe out the real missiles. In the view of its champions,
the MX missile system might also have served the purpose of
focusing Soviet nuclear firepower into the heart of the West,
away from the more populated East.
To realize this crazy scheme, some astonishing feats of
engineering would have been required: more concrete than was
used to create the entire U.S. interstate highway system;
rivers, reservoirs and aquifers watering five states would
have been tapped; some of the world's most beautiful national
parks would have been destroyed, and sacred American Indian
lands violated.
In short, Rumsfeld's MX would have destroyed America's West
in a twisted effort to save it, transforming an oasis of ancient
natural beauty into the biggest labyrinthine wasteland, by
far, of the many wastelands our children now inherit worldwide
from their fearful, militaristic ancestors.
But today's growing opposition to Rumsfeld's obscene vision
of international policy can take heart: my father and mother
- Edwin and Gloria Firmage - along with scores of other citizens
across the West, mounted a grass-roots campaign 25 years ago.
They brought the MX battle into the streets, synagogues, churches
and schools. Students, teachers, parents, bishops, workers,
cowboys and sisters took the debate to neighbors and newstations
across the West. And after four years of fighting, they brought
down Rumsfeld's monster, and the insanity of policy by brass
was revealed.
As we witness the same old cold warriors regurgitate the
same old insanities, as they shred international accord while
cheerleading international democracy, as they spark nuclear
arms races while decrying nuclear proliferation, we can take
heart: true power always remains with the people willing to
exercise it, and ordinary people have beaten back powerful
barbarians in the past.
If students, teachers, parents, bishops, workers, cowboys
and sisters and those few politicians who remember their roles
also remember their responsibilities, we will do so again
in 2004.
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