Monthly Messenger©
Article: "DOMINION AND DECEPTION"
by Gillian Norman
jilinda@globalismnews.com
“One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to
name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is
most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of
reputation and kingdom many a time." Niccolò Machiavelli, The
Prince: Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith, Florence,
1532
“You can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you
want to concentrate on.”George W. Bush, joking at a Gridiron Club dinner,
Washington, D.C., March 2001
“Goodbye Jack Daniels, Hello Jesus!" So it was that George W. Bush
says he met the Messiah as he switched the bottle for the Bible on a summer day
after his 40th birthday. When he was young and irresponsible, he was really
irresponsible, he admits, but all that has changed. Now, they say, his Christian
faith permeates his daily life; he starts each day on his knees, reads the Bible
and devoutly attends church. The air in the White House is said to be scented
with the fragrant incense of prayerfulness, and presidential speeches are spiced
with religious metaphors.
Bush envisions himself fulfilling a divine calling, as he heads a global battle
that pits the forces of good against the forces evil. He claims God speaks to
his mind, directing his actions and inspiring his presidential policy decisions.
He says he “felt the call" before his inauguration as Texas governor in
1999, as he listened to Methodist pastor Mark Craig preach on Moses' reluctance
to lead. It spoke conviction directly to Bush’s heart for abrogation of
responsibility. Assembling leading pastors at the governor’s mansion for a
laying-on of hands, he announced the news: "I've heard the call, I believe
God wants me to run for president."
Bush’s testimony appears to the sincere evangelical to be genuine; his heart
was changed in a “born again” experience, through a personal encounter with
Christ leading to repentance, reconciliation with God, and a conviction of God's
plan and purpose for his life. Desperate for a breath of moral fresh air after
the putrid impropriety that disgraced the Clinton White House, honest Christians
who never question the meaning of the word “is”, were swayed by Bush's
invocation of the name of “Christ”. He was, by his own admission, “one of
them”.
Few doubted and even fewer publicly questioned the veracity of Bush’s “born
again” claims. But, hey, hey, in those exuberant days that brought the warm
glow of Christian fellowship right to the heart of the election campaign, who
would have dared to mouth a ripple of doubt? And who could have foreseen that in
pursuing their quest for a leader of integrity and compassion in action, the
Christian churches, armed with the Bible in one hand and the flag in the other,
were just about to exchange one liar in the White House for a better one.
Dominion and deception go claw in glove. From empire to empire there have always
existed foul creatures in elegant attire lurking beneath the mud of political
intrigue with megalomaniac intent. Deeply dark elites have always wielded untold
influence beneath the mantles of anonymity that keep the powers behind the
powers hidden from the public eye. Yet today, as the autocratic American Empire
performs its awesome debut on the global stage, some of these dangerous schemers
have boldly emerged from their subterranean refuge to reveal their previously
hidden lust for power, and are now, in public statements and policy papers,
baring their visible teeth.
These nefarious elitists – all too often naively scorned as paper tigers by
sensible folk who dismiss conspiracy theories – may have a smile as sweet as
sugar and spice, but they also have a nasty snarl and a fearsome bite. The
deception that promotes their bid for dominion is the claim that American
military dominance over the world is best for everyone, and that this policy –
disguised as “democracy” – is endorsed, even directed by God.
The new elite that slipped from the shadows to direct the Bush administration
foreign policy are neoconservatives, or neocons, who have formed an
unprecedented right-wing alliance of former leftists and liberals. Their
ideology is paradoxical, spawned in that fetid breeding ground where right meets
left, producing a hybrid offspring that resembles a power-hungry, pro-Zionist
mutation of Trotsky's ideas on permanent revolution. This new elite now openly
promotes a glorious vision of American supremacy based on a messianic ideology
that exalts American culture as superior in every way to the cultures of other
nations.
Under the motto “peace through strength,” their aim is to subjugate every
aspect of American society to the bare-fisted control of the state, as part of a
military crusade for complete U.S. global dominance. Like the wolf in disguise
who fooled Little Red Riding Hood, their voracious blood-lust is masked by
soothing reassurances of good intentions. Only this time the wolf is far more
ambitious. It is the people of America and the nations of the world who are
lined up for lunch under the guise of benevolence. But first, the trusting
victims must be convinced that the hungry wolf is just as benign as lil’ ole
granny in a frilly nightgown.
The elite made its first move from the shadows of power to the spotlight when a
draft of the Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) on U.S. grand strategy was leaked to
the New York Times in 1992. This literal Pax Americana – American Peace –
was framed along the same lines as the Pax Romana, and foretold a world in which
global U.S. military intervention would become permanent.
Surprised commentators described the policy document as stunning in the clarity
and ambition of the new U.S. military vision. The proposed strategy called for
U.S. military pre-eminence over Eurasia by preventing the rise of any
potentially hostile power. It also established a new policy of pre-emptive
action against any state suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Written more than a decade ago by former Pentagon analysts Paul Wolfowitz, now
Deputy Security of Defense, and I. Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney’s
chief-of-staff, this prospective defense strategy has today become the backbone
of America’s aggressive foreign policy, and many aspects of it are included in
the important document outlining 2002 National Security Strategy. As Richard
Perle put it: "The President of the United States, on issue after issue,
has reflected the thinking of neoconservatives."
Cleverly masked in the rhetoric of justice and benevolence, the new doctrine
promoted by the Bush Inner Circle is characterised by a distinctly Machiavellian
tinge. Niccolò Machiavelli, the political philosopher who served the Italian
government in the 16th century, wrote that the true purpose of political power
is to maintain and extend itself. It has nothing at all to do with the welfare
of the people, nor with principles of right and wrong.
Machiavelli taught that it was useful to promote morals, ethics and religious
convictions among the people for the purpose of maintaining control and
productivity. The ruler himself, while advised to maintain a guise of morality
and religiosity, was sanctioned in the covert use of dishonesty, cruelty,
murder, or any other means necessary to perpetuate power.
The new elite, whose driving force is the pursuit of power, believe they have a
right to impose their rule by way of deceit. As disciples of Machiavelli they
consider themselves to be free from the constraints of moral absolutes. Their
philosophy also encourages them to promote religious faith among the people,
even though they themselves are not true believers. This may, perhaps, explain
why some of the elite clique who are secular Jews and members of occult
fraternities, have strategically embedded themselves with the Christian Right,
and successfully persuaded most influential evangelical churches in America to
serve their cause. The “born-again” George Bush certainly knows just how
important “faith” is to the 100 million professing American Christians who
form the Republican political power base.
In his book, The Prince, Machiavelli writes:
"Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I
have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall
dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is
injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful,
faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed
that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to
the opposite. And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new
one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often
forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship,
humanity, and religion… There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than
this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the
hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with
you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and
those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the
majesty of the state to defend them.”
Surrounded by policy shapers with allegiance to a philosophy that advocates the
shameless blinding of the electorate, President Bush has aggressively pursued
strategies that have finally resulted in the imposition of new moral absolutes.
Grounded neither in truth nor in national interest, the ambitious Machiavellian
clique exploits religion only to rally support for the perpetuation of their own
power and profit. Ironically, this strategic deception and manipulation is the
exact antithesis of the faded values of the Christian community, who remain
entirely oblivious to the elite’s predation.
Like Machiavelli, the German Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss also
taught that the elite, who transcend moral absolutes, should exploit religious
faith in order to autocratically control the masses. Strauss became convinced,
as a result of his experience of World War I, that faith in human nature without
God, as it was exalted in the Enlightenment, was mistaken. He saw religion as
the indispensable opiate of the people. Deception, for Strauss, was a necessity
in political life, and he considered religion to be a desirable “pious
fraud” – a fraud to be encouraged as a means of control, through the
imposition of “moral law”. Religion is necessary for the people, he advised,
but the rulers themselves – not bound by the same moral laws they preach and
impose on others – should maintain only an outward form of religion, a
convincing façade.
Leo Strauss emigrated to the United States in 1938, where he obtained a
fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation and a position teaching philosophy at
the University of Chicago. The eccentric opinions of this obscure German
academic would not be expected to hold much sway, except that Leo Strauss
happens to be the mentor of influential neoconservatives including William
Kristol, former chief of staff to Dan Quayle, and Paul Wolfowitz, now Deputy
Defense Secretary.
In 1997, members of the neoconservative elite formed a number of interlocking
think tanks and front groups dedicated to their fundamental belief that
“American leadership is good both for America and for the world”. Several
founder members were influential veterans of the Reagan administration and
future senior officials of the G.W. Bush foreign policy team.
William Kristol founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with the
stated goal to “promote American global leadership”. PNAC brought the
neoconservatives who promote global U.S. dominance together with powerful
militarists in the Bush administration such as Vice-president Dick Cheney, and
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Here, at PNAC, the neoconservatives and
militant hawks rub shoulders with influential Christian activists such as Gary
Bauer, and other prominent leaders of the Religious Right, who obediently
promote the neocon cause throughout the churches.
Influential think-tank warriors also formed several other revolving door
interfaces between high positions in government and top jobs in the
military-industrial complex. The Center for Security Policy (CSP), described as
the “main battle tank” whose mission is to promote world peace through
American strength. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
links American defense policy with the security of Israel. The American
Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential Washington think tank, is known as
the heartbeat of neoconservative thought.
William Kristol is often described as “the crown prince” of the
neoconservative elite. His father, Irving Kristol, the “godfather” of
neoconservatives, credited with defining the neoconservative credo, was a member
of the American Trotskyists’ Fourth International in 1940, before veering to
the right. Other members of the neoconservative Inner Circle who drive U.S.
foreign policy include Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith;
Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John
Bolton; and National Security Council director of Near Eastern Affairs, Elliot
Abrams, who was convicted in the illegal Iran-Contra scandal run by George Bush
Sr. in the 1980s, involving the sale of American weapons to Iran to fund the
CIA’s covert war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
Serving President George W. Bush as an international affairs analyst is another
neoconservative who was also implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. Michael
Ledeen, an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident scholar with alleged
ties to the Italian P-2 Masonic Lodge, is a long-time advocate of regime change
in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. He believes with Machiavelli that it is the
nature of humans to do evil, and that war is our natural state. Violence, he
claims, in the service of the spread of “democracy”, is America’s manifest
destiny. In his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s
Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago, Ledeen
unapologetically states that the purpose of total war is to permanently force
your will onto another people: “The goal is power, which means the domination
of others, and the winners revel in it, savoring what Machiavelli calls the
‘sweetness of dominion’.”
Described by opponents as a "Nazi/Communist" Michael Ledeen is
pressing now for the overthrow of the same Mullahs from whom he formerly
profited by covertly peddling weapons. Putting his creed into action, he has
fuelled the flames of war from Nicaragua to Iraq.
The ideas of the neocons are forcefully promoted in several important journals. Commentary,
describing itself as "America's premier monthly journal of opinion,"
is published by the American Jewish Council and advocates regime change in all
countries considered hostile to US and Israeli interests.
According to the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative voice with
considerable influence in Washington, peaceful coexistence between the United
States and the rest of the globe is not an option. The Rupert Murdoch-financed Weekly
Standard, published by William Kristol, promotes an idealistic, assertive
America that will, through the barrel of a gun, export
“pro-democratic” revolution around the world.
Yet even when the neocons promote war as a means of extending democracy, the
term “democracy” does not mean what is normally understood as
“democracy” - the participation of informed citizens in governance.
“Democracy” is instead used in an Orwellian newspeak sense to describe only
those acceptable outcomes that result from the manipulation of ostensibly
popular decisions by the controllers. A freely elected Islamic government in
Iraq would, for example, not be a desirable outcome, and would be considered
“undemocratic”.
Gerhard Spörl comments in a Der Spiegel article, “The
Leo-conservatives”,
( http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,259860,00.html
) that a conspiracy theory is developing in which the Bush administration is
portrayed as a puppet, controlled by the Straussian philosophy of the puppet
masters. “The practical consequence of this philosophy is fatal. According to
its tenets, the elites have the right and even the obligation to manipulate the
truth. Just as Plato recommends, they can take refuge in "pious lies"
and in selective use of the truth. It is precisely because of these fundamental
elements of a political theory Strauss represented throughout his life that he
is accused, in today's America, of having used the Nazis to study the methods of
mass manipulation. And "Straussians," such as Wolfowitz and other
proponents of the Iraq war, are now suspected of simply having used the Strauss'
political principles for their own purposes. When seen in this light, the partly
fictitious reasons for the war against Saddam Hussein represent the
philosophical heritage of an emigrant from Germany.”
The lessons of recent history clearly reveal that the neocons’ world view,
that will without conscience use deception as a means of achieving dominion, has
striking similarities with both Stalin’s communist dictatorship and Hitler’s
nazi ideology of National Socialism.
In Chronicles Magazine, Neocoservatism, Where Trotsky Meets Stalin And
Hitler,
( http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST072303.html
) Trifkovic writes: “In the Straussian-neoconservative mindset, those
who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is
only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.
That mindset is America's enemy. It is the greatest threat to the constitutional
order, identity, and way of life of the United States, in existence today. Its
adherents have only modified the paradigm of dialectical materialism in order to
continue pursuing the same eschatological dream, the End of History devoid of
God. They are in pursuit of Power for its own sake – thus sinning against God
and man – and the end of that insane quest will be the same as the end of the
Soviet Empire and of the Thousand-Year Reich.”
Again like Machiavelli, Leo Strauss claimed that only if the state is united by
an external threat can political order be stable. Furthermore, if no real
external threat exists then one would have to be manufactured, maintaining the
citizens in total deception in order to perpetuate the desired state of constant
conflict. President Bush and his neoconservative policy makers have repeatedly
warned that the war on terrorism – that found its moral justification in the
provocative 9-11 attacks – would be a perpetual, global war against the forces
of chaos and disorder, necessitating the shredding of constitutional freedoms
and the imposition of sweeping totalitarian control.
America, a nation that likes to think of itself as an Empire of Liberty has
become as Empire of Dominion. The Pax Americana that the new elite has now
established as U.S. foreign policy clearly does not serve the real interests of
the nations that suffer under American conquest, neither does it serve the
interests of the American people – certainly not the best interests of the
Christian conservatives who believe Bush's profession of “faith”. Nor does
the dominion of the American Empire serve the true interests of the subservient
allies that have depleted their budgets and sacrificed their sons to join in
what is increasingly seen as the coalition of the naïve and deceived, the
bribed and the blackmailed; the coalition of those who are willing to sacrifice
the good of their own nations to serve a ruthless cabal whose openly expressed
goals are to fuel the demands of a power-hungry totalitarian American elite.
The adoption, under the guise of “compassion” in the Bush administration, of
the agenda of a deceitful neoconservative cabal is bitter, since it was largely
achieved on a wave of support from altruistic religious conservatives. What they
hoped for and sought was merely to re-establish a moral anchor in American
politics. George W. Bush gained support only because many people believed him to
be upright, a devout, spiritual man. The crucial swing voters in the 2000
election were those who wanted a leader who would take a stand for integrity.
But then, as George Bush joked at a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C.,
the advice he had been given was clear: “You can fool some of the people all
of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”
The whispers of Machiavelli that echoed in the halls of the Holy Roman Empire
six centuries ago still resonate today: “There is one prince of the present
time, whom it is not well to name, who never preaches anything else but peace
and good faith, and to both he is most hostile…”
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Gillian Norman, a former journalist, is currently writing a book, "Dominion
and Deception", heads Impact Multimedia Group in Australia, and is editor
of GlobalismNews: Perspectives on the New World Empire, http://www.globalismnews.com/