Thwarting independent nationalism

IT is not archaic reasoning and neither is it "Cold War rhetoric" to note that the real enemy of the United States and its Western allies has long been independent nationalism, particularly when it threatens to become a "contagious example," borrowing the characterisation of Chile's democratic socialism by Henry Kissinger.

This writer has had substantial feedback discouraging him from pursuing the anti-imperialist credo because it is alleged such writing does not fit "the 21st century lifestyle," whatever that means. One reader who never misses any of this writer's weekly pieces has of late been arguing that "neo-colonialism only exists in the minds of those still living in the 19th century."

Of course, one such harsh critic of this writer who never stops accusing this writer of living in the past and being a hypocrite "who does not want to live in Zimbabwe" is Iden Wetherell, the so-called Muckraker.

Sometimes, Muckraker comes up with these attacks that may give the easy impression that the columnist has these moments he writes under the influence of insanity.

Just how is it hypocritical for one to show love for his own country while surrounded by foreigners and strangers?

But I digress.

The driving force behind the 21st century Western elite
The essence of this piece is to interrogate the assertion that the West's policy of fighting independent nationalism ended with the end of the Cold War; and that now we have a 21st century Western elite that is driven by a desire for a free world, a democratic global village, and above all, by the undying aspiration for the happiness of all peoples.

The virus that Kissinger feared was at that time seen as a threat that could spread as far as Southern Europe, and he shared this concern with Leonid Brezhnev.

According to the politics of the Kissinger days, the source of contagion had to be extirpated, as it was on Tuesday, September 11, 1973, in Chile, essentially the first 9/11, as asserted by many in Latin America today. Perhaps we can decide to learn from the effects of this 9/11 and the other one that later happened in Washington in 2001. We are often told that the world irrevocably changed after the 2001 9/11, but not after the first 9/11 that happened in Chile.

Both calamities officially claimed slightly over 3 000 lives. The victims of the second 9/11 were from a country whose leadership hailed and lauded the first 9/11 after they actively involved themselves in its execution. And today, the leadership of this same country criminalises the hailing and lauding of the second 9/11, and any persons suspected of not mourning enough over what happened that day are treated as "terrorists," deserving blacklisting and perpetual harassment. But Allende's demise and its subsequent death toll of 3 000 can of course be celebrated as one of the CIA's triumphant ventures in the 20th century.

After years of US subversion of Chilean democracy, support of terror, and "making the economy scream" General Augusto Pinochet's forces attacked the Chilean presidential palace, fully backed by the CIA. It was an operation spearheaded by military renegades similar to the defectors from the Libyan army barracks; who are today fully backed by NATO, as the triumvirate US, UK and France is trying to repeat the Chilean feat on Col Muammar Gaddafi's residence. Salvador Allende, Chile's popular and democratically elected president, died in the palace, apparently committing suicide because he was unwilling to surrender to the assault that demolished Latin America's oldest and most vibrant democracy - establishing a Western-backed unprecedented regime of torture and repression, led by the monstrous traitor by the name General Pinochet.

If a miracle does not happen soon...
A similar regime could soon be established in Libya, and if a miracle does not happen soon, Gaddafi is likely to go the Allende way, maybe not by suicide but by blatant assassination at the hands of the clearly insane NATO operatives. In fact the Libyan disaster is a lot more blatant than what happened in Chile. The attack on Libya is brazenly and arrogantly carried out in such a conquest style only reminiscent to the Biblical times, such as the attack on the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15: 3.

Once in power, Pinochet was tasked by the US to thwart independent nationalism in Latin America, and he obliged by integrating other US-backed Latin American dictatorships into an international state terrorist programme called Operation Condor, killing and torturing mercilessly within the region, and even pursuing political opponents to as far as Europe and the United States.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were extremely impressed and they greatly honoured Pinochet, with the honour encouraging Pinochet so much that he ended up ordering the assassination of respected Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington DC, in 1976.

As is the norm with the US, there always comes a time when its sponsored dictators become expendable. The assassination of Letelier marked the beginning of the end for Pinochet, just like the invasion of Kuwait marked the beginning of the end for Saddam Hussein, or like the alleged harbouring of Osama bin Laden marked the end of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It turned out he was actually in Pakistan.

The fear of independent nationalism can go to very impressive lengths, as can be seen today with the antagonism levelled against Zimbabwe for both its land redistribution programme and the 51 percent local ownership policy for all large businesses in the country. US Senator Max Baucus once remarked about "the administration's absurd and increasingly bizarre obsession with Cuba." During the Clinton and Bush (George W) eras, Cuba took precedence over the threat of terror, itself an enormously exaggerated myth meant to shake the hearts of the masses.

US' obsession with other countries
The obsession with countries like Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Bolivia may be bizarre, but certainly not absurd, at least from the viewpoint of Western policy makers. In the case of Cuba, declassified documents from the Kennedy-Johnson years gave the reasons for this kind of obsession - warning that the "very existence" of the Castro regime is "successful defiance" of US policies that dated back 150 years.

The threat was this intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere, much like Zimbabwe's successful defiance against Britain in 2000, Iran's historical defiance of 1979, or Syria's rejection of Bill Clinton's demands. In 1960, just a year after Fidel Castro had assumed the leadership of Cuba, Adolf Berle warned that the Castro era had marked "the end of the Monroe doctrine."

Such warnings resulted in the remarkable savagery and fanaticism of the assault on Cuba, much like we have seen with the assault on Libya today, as well as with the decade-long strangulation of the Zimbabwean economy. In 1993 the US Army College was concerned over what they called the "innate emotional appeal" driving US policy makers who saw Castro as "the embodiment of evil who must be punished for his defiance of the United States as well as for other reprehensible deeds."

Just like what has been the case with the people of Zimbabwe over the last ten years, the punishment of the Cuban people intensified, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, who was to later become a Senator, was the author of the 1992 measures to tighten the blockade on Cuba. He publicly proclaimed that "my objective is to wreak havoc in Cuba."

This was based on the pure logic explained earlier on by President Eisenhower's Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon who said, "The Cuban people (were) responsible for the regime," and as such the United States had every right to cause them to suffer by economic strangulation.

In 2001, a year after Zimbabwean masses occupied white owned commercial farms in demand for land reforms, US Senators Bill First, Russ Feingold, Jess Helms, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joseph Bidden sponsored a Bill in the Senate on March the 8th. Senate passed the Bill on August 1 the same year, and on December 4 President George W Bush signed it into a sanctions law against the people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's
Senator Cynthia A McKinney questioned "how the people in question who now have the land in question in Zimbabwe got title to the land?''

She was referring to the white commercial farmers. In reference to Zimbabwe's "successful defiance" and independent nationalism; the land acquisition, she pointed out "the unspoken but real reason for why the United States Congress is now concentrating its time and resources on squeezing an economically-devastated African state under the hypocritical guise of providing a "transition to democracy.'"

Just like George W Bush approved illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe on December 4 2001, Dwight David Eisenhower had approved similar sanctions on Cuba 44 years earlier.

Then, the declared expectation was that "if (the Cuban people) are hungry, they will throw Castro out," in the words of Eisenhower himself.

President John F Kennedy concurred that the embargo would hasten Fidel Castro's departure as a result of the "rising discomfort among hungry Cubans," just like President Barack Obama declared about Zimbabwe: "I am continuing for one year the national emergency," soon after taking over from George W Bush. Indeed, the illegal economic sanctions imposed by Western countries on Zimbabwe are a critical national emergency, a deadly one, as evidenced by the August 2008 cholera outbreak that claimed no less than 4 000 lives in a matter of weeks.

Along with expanding the embargo on Cuba, Kennedy initiated a major terrorist campaign designed to bring the "terrors of the earth" to Cuba, much as we see "the terrors of the earth" descending on Libya today.

Back to Cuba, Robert Kennedy was put in charge of this terror campaign, as documented by his biographer Arthur Schlesinger. Perhaps the basic thinking was expressed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory in April 1960. He suggested that Castro would be removed "through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship (so) every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba (in order to) bring about hunger, desperation and (the) overthrow of the government."

Chester Crocker warned Stan Mudenge when he was still Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister. He told him that Zimbabwe's economy was "going to scream" and Crocker's British counterpart Jack Straw also warned: "Stan, your people are going to throw stones at you." As Louis Perez once wrote about Cuba, US leaders could not tolerate "Cuban refusal to submit to the United States" because they were "a people still convinced that they have a right of self-determination and national sovereignty."

These words, though written in summary of over 50 years of terror and economic warfare against Cuba, could easily fit in describing the people of Zimbabwe and their intolerable belief in independent nationalism and sovereignty - a sin so unforgivable that the West will not even allow the small Southern African country the basic right to sell its own diamonds.

The records of Cuba and Zimbabwe are a clear illustration of well established principles, considered quite rational in Western political circles, and the victims are largely clear on what is expected of them by the imperial masters.

It does not matter that some in the intellectual community are victims of deceit on these principles, running aimlessly with the misleading doctrine that says the West is motivated by something they call "democratisation" of weaker nations.

Apart from Cuba's "successful defiance" the ruthless punishment meted by the United States was also based on the fear that Cuba might be another of those "contagious examples," like Chile, Nicaragua, or Zimbabwe and its dangerous inspiration to neighbouring black South Africans.

Libya's sins
Libya is one such country, which dared to invest US$30 billion towards an African Bank, and of all sins, dared to call for the United States of Africa - uniting against the will of the West. For these kinds of crimes, the result has always been the same; subversion, aggression, and international terrorism.

Cuban independence is seen as dangerous because, as stated by Arthur Schlesinger, it has always been based on the "Castro idea of taking matters into their own hands."

Of course, all matters to do with the running of countries must rest in the hands of the US and its Western allies.

This is precisely why Zimbabweans must save themselves from the wrath of Western masters by voting a puppet government into power so that the West can once again enjoy free reign over the resources of the country. It is believed that the population has probably been punished and intimidated enough. What, with Morgan Tsvangirai openly threatening the masses with sanctions and more hunger in the run up to the March 29 harmonised election of 2008?

The West cannot ask for more from its sponsored collaborators.

One of the greatest challenges Castro gave to the US was that he had "gained great prestige in Latin America," as observed by Eisenhower, who was concerned that "governments elsewhere cannot oppose him too strongly since they are shaky with respect to the potentials of action by the mobs within their own countries, to whom Castro's demagoguery appeals."

Worrisome disciples of Mugabe
This is the same challenge posed by President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, seen by the West as "revered in Africa," with regional leaders within Sadc largely seen as incapable of opposing him too strongly since they fear the potentials of action by the masses within their own countries, to whom Mugabe's popular people-based policies appeal.

Julius Malema and his ANC Youth League are worrisome disciples of the Mugabe doctrine - unapologetically declaring compulsory acquisition of land without compensation, and even going further to call for the nationalisation of South Africa's mines.

As noted by Schlesinger, the dangers are particularly grave as "the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favours the propertied class . . . and the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living."

More than 40 years after Schlesinger spoke these words; this historical quote resonates so sharply with what is happening in Zimbabwe today.

This is because the whole system of Western domination unravels when the idea of taking matters into one's own hands spreads beyond just one country inspired by independent nationalism and sovereignty.

The British intelligence has a very rich experience with insubordination, and Zimbabwe is not the first of its headaches.

Warning the US in 1961, the Joint Intelligence Committee said, "Castroism still retains much of its popular appeal. If, in the longer term, the Cuban revolution succeeds in achieving a stable regime, which appears to meet the aspirations of the depressed classes, there will be a serious risk that it will inspire similar revolutions elsewhere in Latin America."

Indeed, the threat of people being inspired to meet their aspirations is dire and quite persistent for Western elites.

It is a constant frustration to planners dedicated so wholeheartedly to "democracy promotion" and "respecting human rights," as we see them relentlessly trying to do in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iran and all these other countries known to have carried out "successful defiance" against the global hegemony of Western influence.

The West's reaction to Zimbabwe's land reform programme was quite furious, especially from Britain and the white community of South Africa.

It can be compared to the wrath seen when Haiti became the first country to be independent in North America in 1804, frightening its slave state northern neighbour to the limits, which totally refused to recognise

Haiti, until 1862, albeit in anticipation that Haiti would be a destination for expelled slaves from the US, more like Liberia.

The United States has effectively taken over the tormenting of Zimbabwe from Britain, and it is highly unlikely that current efforts to have the illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe lifted will yield any positive result; not until the prospect of a Tsvangirai-led puppet government materialises, in the event that those taking care of the country's national security allows it to occur.

These few historical citations and comparisons to the present were employed to prove that indeed the war against imperialism is a matter alive and not merely the rhetoric of bucolic boofheads drunk with leftist fantasies - wallowing away from the reality of the 21st century.

What was seen 45 years ago is being repeated today in a manner even more brazen.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

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Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawa rova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com