Reply #21: Rich, let's put this into perspective...

[IrateCitizen]

First off, what we are talking about here isn't really all that new, and it's pretty damned predictable. What the DLC really represents is the center to center-right on the overall political spectrum. They only seem to the outside observer that they would be center or even center-left simply because any views that are actually "left" are completely marginalized, while those that are far-right are actually given legitimacy and sold as being center-right to right.

Realizing this means going back to Chomsky and Herman's work in "Manufacturing Consent".

Powerful sources may also use their prestige and importance to the media as a lever to deny critics access to the media: the Defense Department, for example, refused to participate in National Public Radio discussions of defense issues if experts from the Center for Defense Information were on the program; Elliott Abrams refused to appear on a program on human rights in Central America at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University, unless the former ambassador, Robert White, was excluded as a participant; Claire Sterling refused to participate in television-network shows on the Bulgarian Connection where her critics would appear. In the last two of these cases, the authorities and brand-name experts were successful in monopolizing access by coercive threats.

Perhaps more important, powerful sources regularly take advantage of media routines and dependency to "manage" the media, to manipulate them into following a special agenda and framework (as we will show in detail in the chapters that follow). Part of this management process consists of inundating the media with stories, which serve sometimes to foist a particular line and frame on the media (e.g., Nicaragua as illicitly supplying arms to the Salvadoran rebels), and at other times to help chase unwanted stories off the front page or out of the media altogether (the alleged delivery of MIGs to Nicaragua during the week of the I984 Nicaraguan election). This strategy can be traced back at least as far as the Committee on Public Information, established to coordinate propaganda during World War I, which "discovered in I9I7-I8 that one of the best means of controlling news was flooding news channels with 'facts,' or what amounted to official information."

The relation between power and sourcing extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to-day news to shaping the supply of "experts." The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority. This problem is alleviated by "co-opting the experts"-i.e., putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages. In this way bias may be structured, and the supply of experts may be skewed in the direction desired by the government and "the market." As Henry Kissinger has pointed out, in this "age of the expert," the "constituency" of the expert is "those who have a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining its consensus at a high level has, after all, made him an expert." It is therefore appropriate that this restructuring has taken place to allow the commonly held opinions (meaning those that are functional for elite interests) to continue to prevail.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

What the DLC is representing here is nothing less than consensus opinion among elites. The debate among elites vis a vis US Foreign Policy has never been about neoimperialism vs. global cooperation, but rather has been limited to varying shades of neoimperialism. This could be summed up adequately by the former Sec. of State in the Clinton administration, Madeline Albright, who famously quipped, "We will act multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must." Couple this with her statement regarding US use of military force to protect US interests: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future." You begin to see a pattern emerging, one that differs from the current neoconservative agenda not in stark measures, but rather in degrees.

In fact, it could be argued that the strategy of the Clinton administration was simply a much smarter one for pursuing neoimperialistic aims because it realized its own limitations and sought to act within them. Both visions triumphed the myth of American exceptionalism. The main difference is that the current neoconservative cabal was so blinded by their own hubris that they failed to realize their limitations if such limitations conflicted with raw ideology.

What the DLC view fails to realize, however, is that we can never go back to this kind of softer unilateralism -- simply because the curtain has been ripped off of it by the raw arrogance of the neoconservatives. I would liken it to a crime racket in which a group of people have a good thing going, making easy money without stirring up trouble. Then, a few of these people begin to get greedy, and feel that they have to go for the big score all the time. Due to this overreaching, the authorities become alerted to what they are doing. The members of their group who didn't want to get too greedy would like to go back to the way things were before, but they can't, because the authorities have seen what their racket really is -- simply lessening it in degree won't absolve them of their guilt.

I am particularly alarmed by the likening of the current situation to the Cold War. Chalmers Johnson, the political scientist who wrote the book Blowback prior to 9/11 predicting an adverse reaction to US foreign policy during the Cold War, was once a full supporter of the Cold War. In its aftermath, however, he began to wonder if the real goal of the US during the Cold War was to counter the Soviet menace, or if it was instead to develop a worldwide empire. I think that the attempts of the DLC to draw this comparison simply help to confirm Johnson's conclusions.

But, if we are to put credence into Johnson's analysis, it should also be noted that he says that nobody "won" the Cold War -- we simply have been able to stave off "losing" it longer than the Soviets did. All the DLC proposals listed in this article would do is hasten that inevitable decline, not that that is a good thing for any of us, but it probably is for the rest of the world.