A Double Standard of Morality

Re: A Double Standard of Morality April 6, 2001

Six Months Before Twin Towers Attack Octogenarian World War II Veteran, Describes A Century Of Conditions Leading To It:

The United States Government’s “morally reprehensible pattern of conduct over the past century has caused death and suffering for millions in Third World countries and provides the motivation and rationale for terrorist attacks against the U.S.A. We can never have a just world when America persists in maintaining a double standard of morality.

The Honorable Colin Powell
Secretary of State
Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Cc: Black Caucus, NAACP, The New York Time, The Nation, The Economist, et.al.

Dear Secretary Powell:

As a World War II veteran who had duty on the front lines of Europe, and who has followed accounts of subsequent wars in which thousands of American solders have died, been seriously injured, or returned hooked on drugs, I am deeply troubled by the pursuit of a disingenuous foreign policy that has led to terrorist attacks abroad and here at home. As you, General Powell, are the architect for the current and future foreign policy of this great nation, I wish to share with you my profound concerns.

Overwhelming is the evidence that America’s opposition to Communism had nothing to do with freedom, democracy, or human rights. For most of the 20th century, America’s oppression of its black population was far worse than any oppression in most Communist countries. The Ku Klux Klan, whose membership included policemen, judges, congressmen, and governors, murdered black people and destroyed black towns and communities with impunity. “Freedom, democracy, and human rights became the mantra for a dogma masking not only the hypocrisy and iniquities of domestic social policy, but also the brazen and horrendous transgressions of the sovereignty of Third World countries. Many of the same congressmen who have supported the cruel and inhumane embargo preventing Cuba from buying food, medicine, and medical equipment vigorously oppose civil right (human rights) for black people here in America and sanctions against that nefarious apartheid regime in South Africa. Buyouts by United States firms in the early 90s have forced Cuba’s European suppliers to cut off sales of drugs, dialysis machines, pacemakers, and parts to repair existing equipment. Children receiving chemotherapy are vomiting 29 to 30 times a day because of drug shortages. Nutrition levels have fallen one third (Molly Moore, Washington Post; 02/23/98.).

The history of U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century demonstrates that our commitment to human rights and freedom have been opportunistic at best and hypocritically self-serving at worst. If America had opened its borders to the Jews fleeing The Holocaust and pressured other nations to do likewise, we wouldn’t have a Middle East crisis. The huge Jewish migration to the small land of Palestine alarmed the Palestinians and led to the never-ending conflict. The over 3.3 million Palestinian refugees, some in Palestine and others scattered in six Arab countries are angry and embittered. They and their Arab sympathizers constitute an invaluable resource for terrorist organizations. The first Arab terrorist attack against America was the assassination of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan. A manifestation of the State Department’s anti-Semitism was the suppression of cables from Switzerland about the Nazi death camps, and making immigration applications longer, more complicated though quotas were unfilled. Our military refused to bomb the railroad tracks leading to these death camps. In the face of the greatest atrocity of the 20th century the U.S. acted not with an eye towards human rights and freedom, but rather with concern for its own strategies and economic interests (Safe Haven PBS documentary).

After World War II, many Third World countries sought independence from their colonial masters. The U.S. could have undercut any Communist influence by being sympathetic and helpful to these independence movements. President Roosevelt was opposed to helping France regain control of Indochina. Archimedes Patti, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), at a meeting with Ho Chi Minh, decided that he was not “a starry-eyed revolutionary or flaming radical given to clichés, mouthing the party line…was intelligent, well versed in the problems of his country, rational, and dedicated.” He was the leader of the Viet Minh resistance movement who provided the only reliable intelligence about Japanese troop activity for American bombers and assisted in the rescue of airmen shot down. He later expressed the desire to become an American protectorate and permission to send fifty Vietnamese youths to America to absorb American culture (James Arnold, The First Domino).

At the end of World War II, pro-European State Department officials outmaneuvered the Asian specialists and taking advantage of President Harry S. Truman’s woeful lack of experience, reverse American policy and obtained backing for France’s effort to reclaim its colonies in Indochina. Ho Chi Minh’s repeated overtures to the United States met with deafening silence (James Arnold, The First Domino).

After the defeat of the French military forces at Dien Bien Phu, General Eisenhower thwarted any free elections as stipulated by the Geneva Peace Accords, because he was afraid that Ho Chi Minh would win. When Ho Chi Minh’s organization became aware of Eisenhower’s intentions, he tried to put a stop to this massive interference in the internal affairs of his country. With a mindset that precluded any sense of reality, the U.S. began an ever deepening involvement in Viet Nam which resulted in our dropping three times as many bombs on Vietnam as we did on Germany, killing three million people and maiming millions more, and setting the stage for the later emergence of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Ralph McGee, a CIA agent for 25 years was so horrified by the suffering and deaths that America was causing the innocent people in Viet Nam that he wrote the book, Deadly Deceits.

Although not ostensibly relevant to a discussion of foreign policy, it would be remiss of me not to mention that while this heinous assault on the people of Vietnam was in progress, police dogs were attacking black people during peaceful civil rights marches, black homes, and churches were being torched and bombed, and black people were being beaten and murdered attempting to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Today, black people are still victims of police violence and of a justice system in which it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent, and which results in a disproportionate number of blacks in prison, 42.3%, and 42.9% on death row (Bureau of Justice Statistics –2000).

Not only have we failed to protect human rights under threat from others, but also our violations of other nations’ sovereignty by actively undermining the freedoms of their people have created problems for our own country. The Gulf War and the ascendance of Sadam Hussein as a threat to world peace is a direct consequence of the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of the popular regime of Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran because he felt at that the oil in Iran should be controlled by Iran and not by foreign oil companies. After making an enemy of Iran with which the U.S. had had cordial relations, the U.S. supported Iraq. In the Bill Moyer’s documentary The Secret Government, Mr. Love, former N.Y. Times reporter, and Professor Firmage of the University of Utah, former White House Fellow and constitutional scholar had this to say:

Moyers: The mobs paid by the CIA, and the police and soldiers bribed by the CIA drove Mossadegh from office.

Mr. Love: Khomeini is a direct consequence, and the hostage crisis is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shia is a direct consequence of the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953.

Prof. Firmage: You create a nation that hates you enormously, who views you as the devil, an evil force. You create in that nation sufficient forces of unrest that you don’t have stability. And those chickens come home to roost; you end up with a violation of the constitution, and a hatred that is propagated today, until you have embassies taken, hostages held, hatred engendered --- hatred simply doesn’t come to rest.

To further illustrate America’s ethnocentric foreign policy, consider the CIA operation against the democratically elected government of Guatemala:

Moyers: The CIA had called its covert operation against Guatemala, “Operation Success.” Military dictators ruled the country for the next 30 years. The U.S. provided them with weapons and trained their officers. Peasants were slaughtered, opponents were tortured, suspected insurgents were shot, stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at one point that coroners complained that they couldn’t keep up with the workload. “Operation Success.”

Col. Philip Roettinger (Retired US Marine Corps): What we did has caused a succession of repressive dictators in that country and has been the cause of death for over 100,000 of their citizens.

The covert operations of the CIA in Latin American reflect our official policy towards our neighbors to the South. On one hand, we welcome all refugees from Cuba driven by the shortages and the hardships created by the embargo. The death rate has escalated 250% for some illnesses since the mergers in the early 90’s of Cuba’s European suppliers of medicine and medical equipment with American corporations (see attached Washington Post article). On the other hand, thousands risk their lives fleeing across the Rio Grande, 254 dying in 1998, from Latin-American countries not only regarded as democracies, but who have received billions of dollars of aid from the United States. The hostility of the U.S to the aims of his revolution: to bring education and health care to the masses and to obliterate systemic racism, drove Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union. The Bay of Pigs invasion was not to restore democracy because Cuba never had a Democracy. Under the dictator, Batista, Cuba was a paradise for the rich, but an appalling hell of poverty for the masses (Encyclopedia Britannica 1993) If Castro had tried to have a democracy, he would have been overthrown and replaced by murderous dictators as was the fate of the democratically elected governments of Guatemala and Chile. The CIA can overthrow decent governments, but is powerless against regimes like Saddam Hussein’s.

The U.S. occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, from 1912 to 1932, and was uninterested in democracy for the people of Nicaragua until the Sandinistas came to power. The Iran-Contra scandal exposed the ignoble conspiracy and lying of President Reagan and his conservative allies to deceive Congress and the American people. Planes protected by the CIA were ferrying arms to the Contras and returning with vast quantities of cocaine, thus fueling a national crack epidemic. The U.S.’s blaming of other countries for America’s cocaine problem instead of the Reagan administration and the CIA for their role in creating a demand for this drug is unethical and an arrogant shameful abuse of power. The crack epidemic, which has become the scourge of our inner cities, did not exist before the Reagan administration.

On March 16, 1998, the CIA’s Inspector General, Fred Hitz, finally let the cat out of the bag…Hitz told the US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals that the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. Even more astonishingly, Hitz revealed that back in 1982 the CIA had requested and received from Reagan’s Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge it might have of drug dealing by CIA assets (Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout –The CIA, Drugs and the Press).

The CIA made conscious use of major drug traffickers as agents, contractors and assets. It maintained good relations with Contras it knew to be working as drug traffickers. It protected traffickers that the Justice Department was trying to prosecute, sometimes by suppressing or denying the existence of information. (Peter Dale Scott, Cocaine Politics).

The former President Bush sent American planes to bomb densely populated areas of Panamanian cities, killing and maiming thousands of people, rendering tens of thousands homeless. Most had nothing to do with Noriega. These were poor people, many of them black people. The loss of their lives was of no importance; their lives were expendable. Our foreign policy suggests that only American lives have value. The American media focused on Noriega, ignoring the monstrous and dastardly air attack on a civilian population. An award winning documentary shows startling images of bodies flattened by American tanks, entire families dead in their cars, fifteen mass graves dug by the U.S. military, a callous disregard for human life. The United Nations overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. for its flagrant violation of international law, the UN charter, and the 1949 Geneva Convention protocol protecting civilians against indiscriminate acts of violence. The arrest of Noriega had absolutely no impact on America’s drug problem or Panama’s role as a conduit for drugs destined for the U.S. (PBS documentary
The Panama Deception). This morally reprehensible pattern of conduct over the past century has caused death and suffering for millions in Third World countries and provides the motivation and rationale for terrorist attacks against the U.S.A. We can never have a just world when America persists in maintaining a double standard of morality.

I hope that you, General Powell, as Secretary of State, will carefully review our country’s stated ideals: freedom, democracy, and human rights for all people. I also hope that you will search for ways to make amends or atone for our ruthless and barbaric misdeeds, thus dissuading nations with valid grievances from supporting terrorism.

Respectfully yours,

G. Henry Wilson

(Please send responses and comments to carolharveysf [at] yahoo.com for G. Henry Wilson, author of the article. Thank you.)