What Uncle Sam Really Wants (The Real Story Series)

Rating:
Summary: A good place to start
Review: "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" condenses about 10 Noam Chomsky books into 100 pages. Looking at the footnotes of this book, you'll find references to entire chapters in Deterring Democracy, The Culture of Terrorism, Necessary Illusions, Manufacturing Consent, and others. This book was written as a kind of 'Chomsky for beginners' --- you can read this slim volume first, then go to the other books for the full story.

However, just because it's condensed, that doesn't mean it's vague or simplified. As Alex Cockburn once said, the genius of Chomsky's point of view is that it's so clear: The US has no more right to block democracy or violate human rights than any other country. Chomsky backs up this obvious point with a long list of detailed examples. Most of them can be grouped by country --- the US invasion of Vietnam, the war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, support for murderous regimes in El Salvador and Haiti, etc. He also touches on the abuse of power at home. For example, the US is the only industrialized country that uses a 'war on drugs' as population control. (You can make the argument that, although this method of population control exists, it hasn't worked very well.)

If you haven't read Chomsky before, this is a good place to start. He traces the fundamental principles of US foreign policy from the end of World War II to the early 1990s. On every page, he mentions an event or issue you are familiar with, but his take on it is radically different from what you've heard. What makes his view so important is that, although his take is different, it rings true. From the invasion of Panama in the late 1980s to the real roots of the Cold War, Chomsky's research matches what you secretly suspected all along..

Rating:
Summary: A Chomsky Primer
Review: A Chomsky Primer

As other reviewers have noted, this is a good introduction to Chomsky. The topics and themes of this summary are fully expanded in other works. While his critics can be numerous and often vicious, he is nevertheless a necessary voice in the dialog of democracy.

Chomsky's assertion that corporations drive American policy is one of the most common threads running throughout his works. Aided by their favorite tool, the media, corporations guide domestic and foreign policy deftly through the three branches of government. Another war critic, the late USMC Major General Smedley Butler, reflecting on his long military career said:

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." - from "War is a Racket" (1935)

Chomsky makes a compelling case that indeed we have used our military to gain hegemony throughout the world in order to maintain our economic system. Consider that we have over a hundred military bases around the world for starters. Why would a democratic, peace-loving nation need such a presence? I think it would be more appropriate, however painful some might find this, to call the U.S. an empire.

In Latin America, the CIA and our military have repeatedly strong-armed progressive governments that want to restore assets to the lower classes. Whether it is sugar, fruit, oil, or banking interests, progressive governments are undermined and a more U.S.-friendly, conservative power is installed - often in the form of a dictatorship. When that government starts straying from the script, as in the case of Noriega in Panama, the U.S. intervenes to repair the situation.

If our enemy isn't the Cold War, it is such demonized leaders as Saddam Hussein. The Pentagon cycle of arms building, war, and arms research boosts corporate profits and continues the march to hegemony. Have you seen the photograph of Donald Rumsfeld gleefully shaking Saddam's hands while on a visit to Iraq in 183 by the way? I guess our "friend" turned into a foe down the road. He started playing by his own rules and brought down the wrath of the U.S. upon him.

Even though the book is fairly short, it is a great summary of Chomsky's beliefs. It is impossible to convey all of the subjects and events touched in a single review. Whether or not you agree with his point of view, Chomsky is well worth reading. He provides a perspective on the world not often expressed in the corporate media.

Rating:
Summary: the new world order for dummies
Review: a truly indispensible book, chomsky's "what uncle sam really wants" is easy to read and understand. it's a must have for people who are tired of arguing their position with well-intentioned but uninformed friends and relatives. if you really want to sway your people towards the right (left) way of thinking, get them to read this book. claims are backed by massive evidence and recently declassified documents, making it hard for even the most conservative flag-waver to get a word in edgewise.

Rating:
Summary: Another piece of work from the loony high priest of the left
Review: America is Nazi Germany
The former Soviet Union was democratic
America is a totalitarian regime
There was no Cold War
There were no "good guys" during World War II
yeah right
do I have to keep writing?


Rating:
Summary: Ominous Conspiracy?
Review: I suppose you can't fault a booklet of this size for its paucity of substantial and concrete evidence. To butress his points, Chomsky often cites one instance, or declares his opinion, without either taking an opposing view seriously or proposing any reasons to doubt his stance on the issue.

The book expounds and criticizes U.S. military involvement around the world. Its main charge is that the U.S. administrations have ensured their interests by keeping third world nations from forming credible democratically capitalist institutions.

In cahoots are the "corporate" media who are dependant upon so-called "leaks" from high-level members of the administration for their audiences. This dependance results in ignoring certain war atrocities committed by the U.S. in places like Central America.

(A neat part of this booklet is Chomsky's astute analysis of what "the media" is, essentially, about. To paraphrase, we, the audience, are the product that is then sold to the advertisers, the real constituents of the media. That's an enlightening way of viewing things...)

Alas, running wild through this booklet is the animistic fallacy--the notion that consequences in this world are the result of intentional human activity. Sometimes some things are the result of processes, and complex situations that, as it were, force peoples hands. Historical accidents, confusions, and process-oriented institutions may influence the outcome in such a way that all of our wishes, desires and expectations end up frustrated.

Take the stock market as an example. Although some claim to have a good handle on what stocks will go up or down, they still have not provided sufficient credible evidence to suggest that they are right. Instead, we find humorous anecdotes of people throwing darts at a poster of the stock market, buying those stocks and actually doing better than some bundles of stocks professional analysts recommended.

The consequences of certain activities may yet result in the way you wanted them to, but it does not yet prove that it is that way because you intended it. The idea that a bunch of people sit in backrooms "throttling" democracy in third world nations around the world is titilating, but prima facie absurd.

Titilating because we'd like to know why third world nations do poorly and claiming that it's because of "those guys" (U.S. bureaucrats) or "them" (high-level administrators) gives us an easy answer. The more likely answer--a combination of factors including domestic institutional processes, inadequate defense of property, unstable capital acquisition and sale, and, yes, possibly, a bit of U.S. warmongering--is boggled with complexity and does not make for easy sloganeering or a clear explanation of what exactly to do.

Now hold on sports fans, because here is where things become interesting. Chomsky actually manages to draw a potent picture, giving us reason to pause and reflect on his charges. Although lacking in a detailed bibliography for further investigation (*especially* in light of the remarkable charges Chomsky is making), Chomsky does offer connections between events, statements and official documents that compel you to give him a bit more rope to play with. His claims are coherent--which is to say, that they are internally consistent, and paint an overall picture that fails to have bits inconsistent with other bits.

Still, what is missing is motive. Chomsky is convinced that U.S. diplomats, bureaucrats and high-level administration types are all eager to keep third-world nations down, but why they are interested in such a thing is not explained. Or if an attempt is made, it is confusing. The discussion centres around the U.S. trying to keep the third world from making an example of itself by turning to democratic institutions and getting along better. Every time some group of poor folk get together and threaten to form democratically capitalist institutions, the U.S. goes ahead and throttles it. But, for God's sake, *what the hell for?*. Abstract ideals like "ensuring the U.S. remains the number one country" or "proving our mettle around the world"

Chomsky offers one bit of uninsightful explanation: the U.S. governments actual constituents, the mega-corporations, require docile third-world nations to keep their hegemony. But this doesn't answer any question--it just removes the motive one step back. Now we have to ask the "mega-corps", for God's sake, *what the hell for?* To keep the U.S. number one? But they don't have any nationalistic ties--they are multinationals. And keeping the poor without resources eliminates vast amounts of customers and, therefore, profits. Implausible at best.

Four stars, by the way, was not a mistake. Ignoring the lack of antitheses, the animistic fallacy, lack of motive (or incredible motive), and a lame "call to arms", does not detract from making this an eminently readable, exciting and intelligent booklet. Of particular note is Chomsky's analysis of official U.S. use of the term "communist," and the eye-awakening bits on the drug war. The former, delving as it does into language, is obviously Chomsky's strong suit, while the latter shows Chomskyan analysis at its best.

In short, Chomsky truly is an artist, even if this particular painting suffers from certain flaws. On an ironic note, Chomsky decries the New York Times, sarcastically echoing its claim that it is the "paper of record", the same newspaper prominently displayed on the book flap claiming that Chomsky is "[a]rguably the most important intellectual alive."

Who's in cahoots with whom?...

Rating:
Summary: Money Makes the World Go Bang
Review: If you feel uneasy about the long and continuing history of violence perpetrated or sponsored by the US abroad and how it is justified at home, this primer suggests a state of affairs which may well exceed your worst fears.

At the end of World War II, the United States possessed 50% of the world's wealth but little more than 6% of its population. In What Uncle Sam Really Wants, prominent US linguist, philosopher and political commentator Noam Chomsky asserts that since the 1940s his country has pursued a foreign policy which stops at nothing to maintain the disproportionate wealth and power of the American elite.

Citing largely his own extensively researched and referenced writings, Chomsky argues that US terror aims to ensure the economies of the undeveloped Third World continue to complement their advanced counterparts in the West, notably in providing essential raw materials and markets. The US respects democracy, human rights and popular social reform in these developing countries only in so far as they fit this model of global capitalist domination first drawn up by US government planners in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ultimately, the needs and rights of Western investors and the oligarchies which serve them are considered paramount.

Any country developing in a fashion incompatible with US interests is, often in covert operations directed by the CIA, coerced, intimidated, manipulated and, where all else fails, invaded. Enlisting the cooperation of local police and armed forces, and fearful that a developing country might create a good and therefore contagious example at variance with the established global economic order, the US has presided over a long programme of torture, disappearances, murder, subversion, sanctions, coups and guerrilla warfare, in addition to its own military interventions on foreign soil. The author presents examples in Central America, South-East Asia and the Middle East.

Financing such activities once depended on convincing US voters of the need to arm their own country and numerous foreign forces against the threat of Soviet aggression and communist expansion. High-tech industry was thus subsidized by a frightened public prepared to carry the burden of economic risk while private enterprise reaped the resulting profits.

Since the end of the Cold War, Chomsky maintains, the US has identified new enemies in order to ensure the military-industrial-intelligence complex continues to prosper at the expense of the Third World and much of the US population itself. First, Latin American drug traffickers were the target in the war on drugs, substances with far less impact on US health than alcohol and tobacco. More recently, despite growing disquiet, the public has supported what successive US governments portray as a moral crusade against lawless aggressors Ronald Reagan first branded the Evil Empire.

This edited compilation of extracts from talks and interviews Chomsky gave between 1986 and 1991 serves as a brief introduction to the theme of illegal US violence abroad and the interests behind it, as discussed in many of Chomsky's 70 books and more than 1000 articles. For a more detailed, comprehensively referenced (and more difficult-to-read) discussion, see his recent Rogue States, in which he explores the factors motivating the US to use force in contravention of international legal norms. For a focused account of over fifty US military and CIA interventions abroad since the Second World War, see former State Department employee William Blum's well-researched Killing Hope. In parts of his Hidden Agendas, journalist John Pilger depicts some of the very human consequences of the system Chomsky describes.

Chomsky's detractors have called him the 'great American crackpot' and 'outside the pale of intellectual responsibility'. His interpretation of world affairs, rarely encountered amid what he calls the doublespeak of a corporate mainstream media itself an integral part of the global economic order driving US terrorism, is bound to attract vociferous criticism, not least from those with most to lose. He has also been called a communist and a nihilist.

Whatever the reader's assessment of such labels and of Chomsky's wider philosophical and political beliefs, the author rightly attacks the criminally violent record of the US. Its withdrawal this month as a signatory to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court suggests history's first global superpower wishes to avoid the impartial scrutiny critical to a multilateral approach to world affairs. In the same vein, Henry Kissinger has in the past year failed to respond to judicial authorities in numerous countries - including France, Argentina, Chile and Spain - who have requested his testimony regarding assassinations and disappearances in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, as overseer of all US covert operations, he was well placed to know of the activities of the death squads of Operation Condor.

Shunning comfortable orthodoxy, What Uncle Sam Really Wants offers a different perspective from which to view US military and intelligence operations in the past, present and future. Chomsky challenges us to see that there is nothing inevitable about the institutional structures and decision-making which shape our world. These should exist only in order to serve all humankind, not just the interests of the prosperous and powerful few. As such, they can be modified as and when our constant striving for justice and equality of opportunity demands.

In a passionate call to respect the rights of the people of the Third World, as of people everywhere, Chomsky urges citizens to take orchestrated action. Whether we do this as a member of a union, a political party or a pressure group, for example, he exhorts us to ask questions, attend demonstrations, write letters, lobby politicians, vote in elections, research the issues - in short, to be eternally vigilant. At heart, this book is an invitation to play a part in limiting the excesses of wealth and power. What will you do next time the United States decides to go killing abroad?

Rating:
Summary: Good short intro to Chomsky
Review: In 100 short pages, you get a high speed review of Chomsky's politics--focusing on the US use of power, spanning the period from immediately after WWII to the first Gulf War.

The best sections are those which combine Chomsky's linguistic expertise with his political insight to demonstrate how the US has redefined the terms of international political discourse. Peace process means getting what the US wants; democracy means participation without interference in important decisions relating to the distribution of wealth and foreign policy.

Nothing here that isn't spelled out at greater length in others of Chomsky's (longer) books, but a vwery good place to start if you aren't familiar with Chomsky.

Rating:
Summary: Stay Asleep, Obey, Watch Sports...
Review: Of the three little Chomsky books in "The Real Story" series, I found WHAT UNCLE SAM REALLY WANTS to be the most impressive. For the most part, the book focuses on the idea that the United States has for decades opposed the development of governments and economies in the Third World that are ideologically different from our own, particularly when such governments and economies improve the quality of life for the masses. Chomsky argues that such opposition is, in fact, the sum of all U.S. foreign policy.

For example, Chomsky points out that when El Salvador in the 1970s experienced a growth of "peasant associations, cooperatives, unions" and similar socialist-type organizations, the U.S. moved right in to radically destabilize the government by installing our own dictators who suppressed the population using repression, torture, and murder.

Early on, to explain the rationale behind America's oppressive foreign policy, Chomsky cites a 1950s State Department official named Kennan: "...we have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights ... The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts."

Later on, Chomsky argues that our government regarded the real threat of the USSR during the Cold War to be its Communist system, not its military strength. (I found that one part a bit hard to believe, thinking back to my own childhood when I used to imagine all sorts of Russian nuclear warheads targeted on my home in sunny Phoenix.) He observes, more convincingly, that the U.S. and Soviet Union spent most of the Cold War in name-calling, the Russians pointing out our atrocities in the Third World and oppression within our borders just as we accused them of the same (perhaps rightly so, in both cases). When Russia ceased to be an ideological threat, Chomsky argues, our government manufactured a "War On Drugs" as an excuse to continue its brutal subversion of Third World governments.

I found the discussion of propaganda at the end of the book to be the most interesting. For example, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union ever used the term "socialism" in a factual context. In the USSR, socialism was regarded as a good thing, so calling their government a Union of Socialist Republics helped to justify the existence of the government and its authoritarian (i.e., non-socialist) policies. In the U.S. socialism was regarded as a bad thing, so our government could use the term to "defame the feared libertarian ideals" by associating them with oppressive, evil, communist Russia.

On the whole, it's a pretty interesting book, and one well worth reading during this period of "War On Terrorism".

Rating:
Summary: Stay Asleep, Obey, Watch Sports...
Review: Of the three little Chomsky books in "The Real Story" series, I found WHAT UNCLE SAM REALLY WANTS to be the most impressive. For the most part, the book focuses on the idea that the United States has for decades opposed the development of governments and economies in the Third World that are ideologically different from our own, particularly when such governments and economies improve the quality of life for the masses. Chomsky argues that such opposition is, in fact, the sum of all U.S. foreign policy.

For example, Chomsky points out that when El Salvador in the 1970s experienced a growth of "peasant associations, cooperatives, unions" and similar socialist-type organizations, the U.S. moved right in to radically destabilize the government by installing our own dictators who suppressed the population using repression, torture, and murder.

Early on, to explain the rationale behind America's oppressive foreign policy, Chomsky cites a 1950s State Department official named Kennan: "...we have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights ... The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts."

Later on, Chomsky argues that our government regarded the real threat of the USSR during the Cold War to be its Communist system, not its military strength. (I found that one part a bit hard to believe, thinking back to my own childhood when I used to imagine all sorts of Russian nuclear warheads targeted on my home in sunny Phoenix.) He observes, more convincingly, that the U.S. and Soviet Union spent most of the Cold War in name-calling, the Russians pointing out our atrocities in the Third World and oppression within our borders just as we accused them of the same (perhaps rightly so, in both cases). When Russia ceased to be an ideological threat, Chomsky argues, our government manufactured a "War On Drugs" as an excuse to continue its brutal subversion of Third World governments.

I found the discussion of propaganda at the end of the book to be the most interesting. For example, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union ever used the term "socialism" in a factual context. In the USSR, socialism was regarded as a good thing, so calling their government a Union of Socialist Republics helped to justify the existence of the government and its authoritarian (i.e., non-socialist) policies. In the U.S. socialism was regarded as a bad thing, so our government could use the term to "defame the feared libertarian ideals" by associating them with oppressive, evil, communist Russia.

On the whole, it's a pretty interesting book, and one well worth reading during this period of "War On Terrorism".

Rating:
Summary: Lacks substance, data and context
Review: This booklet ostensibly runs around four areas: the alleged goals of US foreign policy; the 'devastation' the US is supposed to have wreaked thereby; what Chomsky calls 'brainwashing at home' (i.e. the fact that Americans overwhelmingly disagree with Chomsky's political opinions); and 'the future'. Unfortunately, whereas the course for scholarly historians is to propound a falsifiable thesis by assembling evidence, Chomsky in this book resorts frequently to unsupported assertion and omission of relevant data.

In their 'forward' [sic], the editors remark that those who admire America's role in defending democracy will "find much of what you read in this book incredible". Couldn't have put it better myself. Chomsky begins with an account of the Cold War that reads as history would have been written if the wrong side had won. Echoing the language of Soviet diplomacy, he refers, incredibly, to 'the US-Nazi alliance'. He depicts US post-war strategy as "hard-line extreme, you have documents like National Security Council Memorandum 68 (1950)" - as if this document were a malign and unprovoked declaration of aggression. Extraordinarily, Stalin appears nowhere in Chomsky's discussion, yet his actions and attitudes were the key to America's reluctantly committing men and materiel to a decades-long struggle to contain Communist totalitarianism. Chomsky fails to mention that President Truman, a fiscal conservative who balked at the idea of tripling the defence budget as envisaged under NSC-68, had initially rejected the document's recommendations. The reason Truman changed his mind was Stalin's aggression in launching the Korean War. Chomsky's is, by any objective standards, a partial and misleading account of post-war US diplomacy. (Chomsky compounds this characteristic by taking out of context a quotation by George Kennan, from Policy Planning Study 23, that supposedly demonstrates US concern to perpetuate global inequality. In the original document, Kennan is in fact making a separate and reasonable point that US security operates under certain constraints.)

Having started in such a vein, the book becomes no more reliable as it proceeds. Chomsky declares, while citing no evidence whatsoever, that "nobody in the corporate world or government takes free trade seriously". The very best one can say about such rhetoric is that it involves an unfalsifiable assertion: I have some experience of "the corporate world", and I can assure Chomsky that I take free trade very seriously indeed, on the demonstrable evidence that it enhances living standards globally. If Chomsky's blanket assertion is to be believed, then I am presumably either lying in this review or deceiving myself; either might in principle be true, but it is incumbent on Chomsky to demonstrate such conclusions rather than merely assert them.

Chomsky proceeds with what is not even a caricature of US foreign policy, for a caricature would at least have a recognisable grain of accuracy contained within it. He presents US foreign policy as "tolerat[ing] social reform only when the rights of labor are suppressed and the climate for foreign investment is preserved". This is a fine example of Chomsky's method. What does he mean by 'tolerate'? Does he mean 'allow to continue without external hindrance'? If so, why between 1985 and 1990 did the US stand by and watch the far-Left President of Peru, Alan Garcia, systematically wreck his country's economy with two million per cent inflation, the bankrupting of public reserves and the nationalisation of private banks? Does Chomsky instead mean merely 'agree with' - in which case why is the US presumed to have no legitimate viewpoints in foreign policy? Chomsky does not say. He claims that studies show a "correlation between torture and US aid and provide the explanation: both correlate with improving the climate for business". He cites no evidence and gives no sources for this charge, which is sharply at odds with the history of US aid in Latin America (torture and violence in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s were negatively correlated with US aid in the region - which is to say, President Carter's human rights policy showed a concern exactly opposite to what Chomsky claims as the basis of US foreign policy, and it didn't have the effect that Carter wished). But even if we accept this claim at face value, it is not generated by Chomsky's premise. Correlation does not indicate causality: both time-series should be joint covariance-stationary. This might seem a pedantic observation about what is, after all, merely a political pamphlet, but Chomsky is cited by the editors as a scholarly authority, and it is therefore worth pointing out some of the straightforward analytical flaws that this work contains.

Such weaknesses appear again and again as Chomsky levels unsubstantiated accusations against America. He asserts that "a tyrant crosses the line from friend to villain when he commits the crime of independence". Really? The US was sympathetic to the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979 precisely because it did promise independence; that view was revised only when it became clear that the Sandinistas' distinctive characteristic was not independence at all, but subservience to Leninist principles of arbitrary despotism. Again: "The US wasn't upholding any high principle in the Gulf." What about the principle that small nations shouldn't be annexed and pillaged by large bellicose ones? Chomsky might believe the US was insincere in its stated objectives, but that stated objective was certainly upheld. The most priceless assertion in the book is, for my money, Chomsky's insistence that "the US has very little popular support for its goals in the Third World". Anyone who recalls the television pictures in December 2001 of the residents of Kabul crying with joy at the fulfilment of the US goal of toppling the Taliban might reasonably wonder at the quality of the research that has gone into this book. As Chomsky concludes the book with the rallying cry "You can also do your own research", one can only hope that his readers will show him how it's done.