This is written in June 2004, in the midst of the United States presidential election campaign. Millions of Americans, regardless of what they think of the Democratic Party candidate, are determined to vote for Anyone But Bush, so loathsome and repellent have the man and his policies become for them. They are convinced that the Bush administration is virtually unique in the manner in which it relates to the world; that no previous American government has ever exhibited such hubris, deceit, and secrecy; such murderous destruction, violation of international law, and disregard of world opinion.
They are mistaken. All this wickedness has been exhibited before, regularly; if not packed quite as densely in one administration as under Bush, then certainly abundant enough to reap the abhorrence of millions at home and abroad. From Truman's atom bomb and manipulation of the UN that spawned bloody American warfare in Korea, to Clinton's war crimes in Yugoslavia and vicious assaults upon the people of Somalia; from Kennedy's attempts to strangle the Cuban revolution and his abandonment of democracy in the Dominican Republic, to Ford's giving the okay to Indonesia's genocide against East Timor and his support of the instigation of the horrific Angola civil war; from Eisenhower's overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and the Congo and his unprincipled policies which led to the disaster known as Vietnam, to Reagan's tragic Afghanistan venture and unprovoked invasion of Grenada.
(some examples of stuff that Reagan, Nixon, LBJ, Walt Rostow & others said/did)
Does anything done by the Bush administration compare to Operation Gladio? From 1947 until 1990, when it was publicly exposed, Gladio was essentially a CIA/NATO/MI6 operation in conjunction with other intelligence agencies and an assortment of the vilest of right-wing thugs and terrorists. It ran wild in virtually every country of Western Europe, kidnapping and/or assassinating political leaders, exploding bombs in trains and public squares with many hundreds of dead and wounded, shooting up supermarkets with many casualties, trying to overthrow governments ... all with impunity, protected by the most powerful military and political forces in the world. Even today, the beast may still be breathing. Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1970s, the CIA has regularly refused requests concerning Gladio, refusing not only individual researchers and the National Security Archive -- the private research organization in Washington with a remarkable record of obtaining US government documents -- but some of the governments involved, including Italy and Austria. Gladio is one of the CIA's family jewels, to be guarded as such.
The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia/propaganda: There's a good chance the Russians will launch an unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and act as liaisons with those abroad. The "stay-behinds" would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment and training exercises.
As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasion, the operation was used almost exclusively to inflict political and lethal damage upon the European Left, be it individuals, movements or governments, and heighten the public's fear of "communism". To that end, violent actions like those referred to above were made to appear to be the work of the Left.
