Reading through a recent interview with Gore Vidal: "I'm Jealous of Cuba", I came across mention of NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security April 14, 1950.
Gore Vidal points to this document, designed during the Truman administration, as a defining shift and honing of American foreign policy. The shift is to the endless war and an endless war economy.
Quoting Gore Vidal on this document, "...We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as now we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant."
A cursory reading of introductory points II and III immediately establishes the fundamental reasoning.
II Fundamental Purpose of the United States - "...Three realities emerge as a consequence of this purpose: Our determination to maintain the essential elements of individual freedom, as set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights; our determination to create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper; and our determination to fight if necessary to defend our way of life, for which as in the Declaration of Independence, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.""
III Fundamental Design of the Kremlin - "...In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority.....The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin."
Talk about establishing a polar opposite tension, and that is putting it in a way that is about as mild as it can be put. Part II establishes "who we are" and if that "who we are" is threatened, then we fight. Part III sets up a monster that is determined to take that "who we are" away. And that monster will not stop at anything until it does so.
To be continued.....
Desperation in the White House
