Passionate Declarations, The Five Wars of Globalization and The Return of the Imperial Presidency

Political Science Summaries

Howard Zinn’s Passionate Declarations, Chapter Three
Violence and Human Nature

The question this chapter is considering is whether or not violence is a “result of some natural instinct” (Zinn 32), whether, as Machiavelli would have us believe “human beings tend to be bad” (Zinn (33) or if perhaps as the scientists who met in Seville Spain state: “It is incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation” (Zinn 36) and that we are capable of “some strong feeling(s) of natural empathy” (Zinn 37) as Stanley Milgram’s experiment showed. One of the clearest answers to this question comes from anthropologist Colin Turnbull who lived and studied two different native tribes in Africa. He found the Pygmies of the Ituri rain forest to be “wonderfully gentle and peaceful people” (Zinn 38) yet while staying with the Ik people of East Africa he describes them as “ferocious and selfish” (Zinn 39). His findings are critical to understanding the interactions and reactions of people of all people throughout the world. He concluded that the differences had nothing to do with genetics or instinctive behavior, but rather, the circumstances in which they were living. “The relatively easy life of the forest people fostered goodwill and generosity. The Ik on the other hand had been driven from their natural hunting grounds by the creation of a national game reserve into an isolated life of starvation in barren mountains. Their desperate attempt to survive brought out the aggressive destructiveness that Turnbull saw” (Zinn 39). This suggests that when placed in desperate situations, people will resort to desperate measures, not that they were innately wicked. Psychologist Erik Erickson explains the problem considering the diversification and divisions of the human race by culture, religion, nationality, tribes, etc. as creating what he calls “pseudospecies” and therefore detracting from the natural compassion one human should have for another member of humanity. (I ran into a situation exactly like this on the internet the other day. My computer is flagged to send me all news articles on the conflict in Darfur. When opening a recent article in the “Gameduck” news written by a political science student on the problems in Darfur, he bluntly stated that it is none of our affair and as long as it does not affect us, individually, as Americans we have no business, let alone responsibility to get involved. I found this so shocking to my basic sense of human decency. It is this type of isolationism view that led to and allowed the Holocaust and Rwandan genocides to occur. Perhaps someone needs to rape his infant daughter to wake him up to the responsibility of being a member of humanity.) Zinn states, “We can always select facts from history to prove almost anything about human behavior” (Zinn 41). Therefore, using history to “prove” anything comes with a great responsibility to look at every and all sides of an assertion. He makes a powerful point about why he dropped bombs and napalm over Europe in WWII. “We had been brought up to believe that our political leaders had good motives and could be trusted to do right in the world; we had learned that the world had good guys and bad guys, good countries and bad countries, and ours was good” (Zinn 42). (This is why we, as responsible citizens must learn to question our government’s motives as we have seen so clearly in the war in Iraq. I hope by now we have all learned that American’s are not innately good and therefore more worthy of basic human rights than the rest of the world. Just as I hope there will come a day when no white individual believes they are superior and therefore their rights are more important than anyone else’s with a darker colored skin.) The wars of the 20th century should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are not innately, instinctively wicked and anxious to kill, torture, rape and mame. If this were the case we would not have seen the massive anti war protests of every major war of the 20th century besides WWII. Men and women gallantly responded to the call of duty in the Second World War both to avenge their country men lost in Pearl Harbor. These individuals were not bloodthirsty killers, merely dutifully citizens protecting and avenging their fellow countrymen.

Global Issues/Annual Edition 2007-2008
The Five Wars of Globalization

The five wars of Globalization are drugs, arms, intellectual property, people, and money. While these are the largest commodities being sold illegally throughout the world they “are not the only commodities traded illegally for huge profits by international networks. They also trade human organs, endangered species, stolen art, and toxic waste” (Naim 67). “The promise of enormous financial gain motivates those who battle the government in these five wars” (Naim 65) and numerous smaller ones. The illicit drug trade alone is approximately $400 billion dollars a year, nearly ten percent of all world trade. “Globalization, especially the information revolution has allowed these criminals/terrorists far more freedom, access, and success than ever at reaching their goals” (Naim 65). “The world’s governments are fighting a qualitatively new phenomenon with obsolete tools, inadequate laws, inefficient bureaucratic arrangements, and ineffective strategies. Not surprisingly…governments are losing.” One of the greatest disadvantages that the authorities have in fighting these crimes is that the perpetrators are in essence ‘stateless’. “Their allegiance is to their cause, not to any nation” (Naim 69). This is not true of the authorities trying to fight them which gives them a “crippling disadvantage” (Naim 69). The major international crime fighting organization, Interpol, has a total staff of only 384 individuals and the average single boat or plane used by these criminal organizations. So why is organized crime so successful? Because it is exactly that: organized. Mistrust amongst the nations fighting these wars undermines any effective international police network.

Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/12/1455210)
Take Over:
The Return of The Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
When addressing the look at “The Protect American Act” by Congress in hopes to restore some checks and balances to the Executive Branch of the government, Bush says “It must grant liability protection to companies who are facing multi billion dollar law suits only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend our nation following the 9/11 attacks.” I can’t help but immediately think of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine and how such disasters grant government officials such carte blanche ability to do things such as warrantless wiretapping of private American citizens and breaking laws without repercussion, things that could have never happened in a pre 9/11 environment in this country. He goes onto to say, “Terrorist in far away lands are plotting and planning new ways to kill Americans.” Once again feeding on the fears of Americans to create a state of shock and fear to gain imperialistic freedoms that would never have been granted to a democratic leader prior to the 9/11 attacks. The checks and balances of the “executive branch secrecy and unchecked power” need restored immediately if we are to remain a democratic society. Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of the book Take Over: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy discusses this problem in depth. Cheney’s political agenda upon entering the White House was to return the imperialistic power to the Executive Branch of the government. This goes all the way back to his time as the Chief of Staff for Gerald Ford at a time when Congress was reimposing checks and balances on the Executive Branch of the government after a long lapse as a result of the Cold War. “Finally, as Vice President, the most experienced Vice President in history dealing with one of the least experienced Presidents in history he was in a position to shape this administrations practices and tactics as it went forward.” A shocking example of this came on 9/11 itself when Cheney, from the White House bunker, ordered the military to shoot United 93 out of the sky (killing Americans on American soil without even a Presidential order). During the 9/11 commission Cheney stated that Bush had given him prior authority to make such a call. Cheney and Bush insisted during the commissions inquiry that they would not give any sworn testimony and that Cheney would be sitting directly next to Bush throughout the proceedings as well as preventing any recording of their testimony. This administration has been more aggressive than any presidential administration in the history of our country. “President Bush has challenged more laws of restraint than all previous Presidents in American history combined.” Bush asserted that he has the power as commander in chief to “bypass laws at his own discretion.” He proceeded to disregard a 1978 law requiring all wiretappings to have warrants. To worsen matters there was no resistance by Congress. The democrats allowed this to happen without question as a result of the atmosphere of crisis that the country was in following 9/11 (again bringing into play the very important issue of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine showing how individuals, even government authorities and in this case Congress itself will follow a leader blindly when in a state of shock as occurred following the 9/11 attacks). “Congress is again unwilling to push back against the White House’s assertion that it needs ever more authority and checks and balances will result in bloodshed.” Since the President has asserted that he can bypass, disregard, or break laws, however one might like to look at it and this assertion remained unquestioned, any President from this moment forward can follow Bush’s example, leading our country farther and farther away from a well balanced Democracy which once had three equally powerful branches of government. Bush is also seeking to close off all means of accountability in providing retroactive immunity to the companies who assisted him in breaking the 1978 law against unwarranted wiretapping. Bush has expanded the secrecy, power, privilege and so on of the Executive branch far beyond any President in America’s history. He has made the Executive branch like a “black box” so that neither Congress nor the voters have any idea what the officials are doing with these powers. Civil Rights Law enforcement is another area in which this power is clearly obvious. Prior to 2002 whenever the Civil Rights Division was in need of filling a position they hired career veterans to decide who should fill the position in the Civil Rights Division, “that meant that they were still hiring people who had demonstrated commitment to enforcing Civil Rights laws.” In 2002 the Bush Administration changed that by appointing the position to members of the federalist society, to the extent of giving positions to people who had fought against Civil Rights in the past. This has allowed the Bush Administration to seize control over this division. Rather than protecting African American rights, as this division was formed to protect, it has instead now focused its cases on reverse discrimination against whites, Christians, etc., whatever fits the bill of Bush’s agenda. If this crisis is not brought under control in our government we will soon find ourselves in a nation that is no longer free or democratic but rather closer to resembling a dictatorship. We should be at this point forced to fall back on the possibility left open to us in the Declaration of Independence “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government).