Norman Solomon

The United States of Violence

[This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.”]

We keep hearing that Iraq is not Vietnam. And surely any competent geographer would agree. But the United States is the United States — still a country run by leaders who brandish, celebrate and use the massive violent capabilities of the Pentagon as a matter of course.

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Almost fifty years ago, during the same autumn JFK won the presidency, John Hersey came out with “The Child Buyer,” a novel written in the form of a hearing before a state senate committee. “Excuse me, Mrs., but I wonder if you know what’s at stake in this situation,” a senator says to the mother of a ten-year-old genius being sought for purchase by the United Lymphomilloid corporation. “You realize the national defense is involved here.”

“This is my boy,” the mom replies. “This is my beautiful boy they want to take away from me.”

A vice president of United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” testifies that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” He adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains. About eighteen months ago my company, United Lymphomilloid of America, Incorporated, was faced with an extremely difficult problem, a project, a long-range government contract, fifty years, highly specialized and top secret, and we needed some of the best minds in the country…”

Soon, most of the lawmakers on the committee are impressed with the importance of the proposed purchase for the nation. So there’s some consternation when the child buyer reports that he finally laid his proposition “squarely on the table” — and the boy’s answer was no...

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The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater’s actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better war.

Many politicians are aiding this alchemy. Rhetoric from a House committee early this month audibly yearned for a better war at a highly publicized hearing that featured Erik Prince, the odious CEO of Blackwater USA...

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How Sputnik contributed to the marriage of science and weaponry

When the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite on Oct. 4, 1957, American horizons darkened with self-reproach and fear. Sputnik was a shock to the system. "The fact that we have lost the race to launch the satellite means that we are losing the race to produce ballistic missiles," the influential columnist Walter Lippmann wrote. At a diplomatic party, when an official in the Eisenhower administration commented that Sputnik would be forgotten in six months, Washington's famed hostess-with-the-mostest Perle Mesta shot back: "And in six months, we may all be dead."

Yet we all know the fabled story line: A resilient America rose to the challenge and bested the Soviets in space. A dozen years after its propaganda perigee, the United States landed a man on the moon. And the nation's zeal for cutting-edge technology continues to shape the American experience...

Read the full article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sputnik, 50 Years Later: The Launch of Techno-Power

[This is an excerpt from Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State]

A story could start almost anywhere. This one begins at a moment startled by a rocket.

In the autumn of 1957, America was not at war … or at peace. The threat of nuclear annihilation shadowed every day, flickering with visions of the apocalyptic. In classrooms, “duck and cover” drills were part of the curricula. Underneath any Norman Rockwell painting, the grim reaper had attained the power of an ultimate monster.

Dwight Eisenhower was most of the way through his fifth year in the White House. He liked to speak reassuring words of patriotic faith, with presidential statements like: “America is the greatest force that God has ever allowed to exist on His footstool.” Such pronouncements drew a sharp distinction between the United States and the Godless Communist foe.

But on October 4, 1957, the Kremlin announced the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. God was supposed to be on America’s side, yet the Soviet atheists had gotten to the heavens before us. Suddenly the eagle of liberty could not fly nearly so high.

Sputnik was instantly fascinating and alarming. The American press swooned at the scientific vistas and shuddered at the military implications...

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Political ‘Science’ and Truth of Consequences

[This article is excerpted from Norman Solomon’s new book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State]

Contempt for the empirical that can’t be readily jiggered or spun is evident at the top of the executive branch in Washington. The country is mired in a discourse that echoes the Scopes trial dramatized in “Inherit the Wind.” Mere rationality would mean lining up on the side of “science” against the modern yahoos and political panderers waving the flag of social conservatism. (At the same time that scientific Darwinism is under renewed assault, a de facto alliance between religious fundamentalists and profit-devout corporatists has moved the country further into social Darwinism that aims to disassemble the welfare state.) Entrenched opposition to stem-cell research is part of a grim pattern that includes complacency about severe pollution and global warming — disastrous trends already dragging one species after another to the brink of extinction and beyond.

Disdain for “science” is cause for political concern. Yet few Americans and no major political forces are “antiscience” across the board. The ongoing prerogative is to pick and choose. Those concerned about the ravages left by scientific civilization — the combustion engine, chemicals, fossil-fuel plants, and so much more — frequently look to science for evidence and solutions. Those least concerned about the Earth’s ecology are apt to be the greatest enthusiasts for science in the service of unfettered commerce or the Pentagon, which always seeks the most effectively “advanced” scientific know-how. Even the most avowedly faithful are not inclined to leave the implementation of His plan to unscientific chance...

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