PROPAGANDA REDUX By Ion Mihai Pacepa

[BIGUN 1,490]

Opinion Editorial:

During last week's two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged "the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism" and vowed to follow Winston Churchill's lead and make Britain's ties with America even stronger.

Mr. Brown's statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush's domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania--with two death sentences on his head--in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a "liar," a "deceiver" and a "fraud."

I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.

My father spent most of his life working for General Motors in Romania and had a picture of President Truman in our house in Bucharest. While "America" was a vague place somewhere thousands of miles away, he was her tangible symbol. For us, it was he who had helped save civilization from the Nazi barbarians, and it was he who helped restore our freedom after the war--if only for a brief while. We learned that America loved Truman, and we loved America. It was as simple as that.

Later, when I headed Romania's intelligence station in West Germany, everyone there admired America too. People would often tell me that the "Amis" meant the difference between night and day in their lives. By "night" they meant East Germany, where their former compatriots were scraping along under economic privation and Stasi brutality. That was then.

But in September 2002, a German cabinet minister, Herta Dauebler-Gmelin, had the nerve to compare Mr. Bush to Hitler. In one post-Iraq-war poll 40% of Canada's teenagers called the U.S. "evil," and even before the fall of Saddam 57% of Greeks answered "neither" when asked which country was more democratic, the U.S. or Iraq.

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America's commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O'Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a "deserter." And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, "Give Bush the Boot."

Competition is indeed the engine that has driven the American dream forward, but unity in time of war has made America the leader of the world. During World War II, 405,399 Americans died to defeat Nazism, but their country of immigrants remained sturdily united. The U.S. held national elections during the war, but those running for office entertained no thought of damaging America's international prestige in their quest for personal victory. Republican challenger Thomas Dewey declined to criticize President Roosevelt's war policy. At the end of that war, a united America rebuilt its vanquished enemies. It took seven years to turn Nazi Germany and imperial Japan into democracies, but that effort generated an unprecedented technological explosion and 50 years of unmatched prosperity for us all.

Now we are again at war. It is not the president's war. It is America's war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don't know either. But I do know that if America's political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: "We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West."

On July 28, I celebrated 29 years since President Carter signed off on my request for political asylum, and I am still tremendously proud that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom. During these years I have lived here under five presidents--some better than others--but I have always felt that I was living in paradise. My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress.

For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts. Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies. Let's vote next year for people who believe in America's future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.

Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.

Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010438

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[mnealtx 0]

An interesting read...thanks, Keith.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[warpedskydiver 0]

You have posted an articulate, well thought out, and factual statement.

Sadly many America haters, some of whom are citizens of the USA, and possibly a few on these boards will dismiss anything you just posted as "rubbish"

But yet the will not be able to refute the facts you presented.

All they will do is whine, post hyperbole, and continue to spew their brand of hatred.


It seems that some of the most recent persons the become american citizens are the most patriotic these days.

I think the reason why is they know the truth.

[b1jercat 0]

Swift boat emigrants for the truth, as if.

blues

jerry

[jakee 1,597]

Some interesting points there.

Thing is though, the specific examples he gives of how domestic character assassination of the president by 'top political leaders' poisoned foreign perceptions of the USA come from before the Iraq war.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some people on this site like to point out how the Democrat leadership actually supported Bush in the run up to Iraq? Could the global perception of Bush be so poisoned throughout the world in only 2 - 3 years of his first term, and before the current wave of anti-war vitriol had reached anything like it's peak?

If Mr Pacepa's theory is true I'm sure we'd have to go way back past Bush to see the beginning of the decline. Are those who agree with this theory equally prepared to condemn the indictment of Clinton as damaging to the global perception of America?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[BIGUN 1,490]

It's just his observation and opinion. Just as you have yours.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[nerdgirl 0]

Quote

You have posted an articulate, well thought out, and factual statement.

Concur w/r/t articulate writing and skill in crafting an Op-Ed. It’s good rhetoric (& that’s not a pejorative or sarcastic slam, either), it has to be reasonably good to excellent rhetoric in the precise meaning of word in order to make it into the Wall Street Journal.

Heartily concur with the Op-Ed’s conclusion: “Let's vote next year for people who believe in America's future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.” Of the current candidates, who is most living in the Cold War past?

I am confident that the writer believes/thinks honestly and with complete personal integrity that the analysis and interpretation he draws from objective facts and his expert opinion of history is reasonable, robust, and correct. As the OP wrote, it’s an opinion editorial.

Where do the objective facts and historical analysis & interpretation diverge? And what can historical analysis – like Lt. Gen. Pacepa did in his Op Ed – suggest for current policy?

I want to push the assertion quoted above w/r/t to objective facts in the Op-Ed.

-- Lt. Gen Pacapa writes “Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies.” Was the surrender of Gen Cornwallis in 1781 unconditional?

-- He also writes: “I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.” That’s an incredibly intellectually provocative assertion, and I would love to see a primary data analysis. But how do you determine that? When does one measure that? How does one deconflict the level of international “respect” and positive feeling for the US immediately after the attacks of September 11th when France’s Le Monde proclaimed:

“We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin. Indeed, just as in the gravest moments of our own history, how can we not feel profound solidarity with those people, that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we owe our freedom, and therefore our solidarity?”

versus the level of international “respect” and negative feelings for the US after the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal became known? Does Lt. Gen Pacepa apply a selection bias to fit the argument?

Nota bene: The Pew Global Attitudes Project has tried to do something akin in their 47-nation survey, which found that international respect for America, China & Russia (what they call global powers) has declined over the last 5 years. The Pew survey also notes that there are exceptions – opinion toward the US is largely favorable (very favorable in some cases) in African countries beyond North Africa. And then there are cases like Turkey – in which 83% of those surveyed like our way of doing business but 81% dislike “American ideas about democracy.”

-- Lt. Gen Pacepa notes that “Republican challenger Thomas Dewey declined to criticize President Roosevelt's war policy” as evidence of past support of Presidential foreign policy. What about Wilkie in 1940? He criticized the Roosevelt’s ‘eagerness for war’ (as we of course did not actually declare war until 1941).

I’m impressed with Lt. Gen Papeca's personal choices to defect and respect the authoritative base from which he writes, but I’m not impressed with his dismissing/accusing/intimating (via good rhetoric) that challenging one political party’s policies is akin to abetting America's enemies. What propaganda is resurging or being brought back? Historically, what nation-states are that reminiscent of? Are there lessons to be learned in his writing? Perhaps yes. Should that lesson learned be to not challenge the elected representatives? I don’t think so.

VR/Marg

p.s. What Lt. Gen. Pacepa describes – looking back to history and drawing conclusions to today’s challenges is exactly what I was hoping to get out of this post, when I asked “Steel” if there were lessons that one could learn from the Cold War-era incidents he described that the next president should pay attention to w/r/t DPRK & Iran nuclear proliferation & dealing with radical Islamic/global Salafist terrorism.

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[warpedskydiver 0]

I belive you have hit the nail on the head with your assessment, not learning from past international experiences will surely doom us to suffer to fate of the past.

Pacifism, failure to engage in diplomacy ,and if needed military action, could give us a repeat of what set the stage for WWII